Читать книгу The Fortress - Hugh Walpole - Страница 9

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They—Judith and Adam—had spent the most glorious night at the ‘George,’ Stamford, in the very room, so the landlord himself informed them, occupied by his Sacred Majesty, King Charles the First, when he slept there on his way from Newark to Huntingdon on the night of August 23, 1645. This Judith, in ordinary circumstances, would never have believed (although the room was splendid with oak beams and a huge four-poster and a small closet off it where Adam slept and snored), but the fact was that she was so greatly excited by her journey and by the expectation of London (where she had not been for so long a time) and by the temporary escape from Uldale, that she behaved like a child of ten and was ready to believe anything. One of the drawers remarked to another of the drawers that he’d never yet seen an old lady like it. They had had to wait for their adventure, for it was not until the second week in October that they left Uldale.

Adam was quite as deeply excited as his mother and expressed his emotions in sudden fiery little sentences, like shots from a gun, that seemed to have little or no relation to one another.

Everything was glorious, the long ride in the coach the day before (Adam had insisted on sitting outside, although it was terribly cold and there was a place for him inside), the sound of the horn, the spanking pace of the horses, the incidental humours of the road and, most especially, the powers and personality of Mr. Joe Dorset, the Coachman, with whom Adam was utterly and entirely in love.

Then had come the falling dusk, the lights of the town, the bustling courtyard of the ‘George,’ the wonderful dinner when, like a gentleman, Adam had drunk his mother’s health in marvellous claret, sitting up in his chair so straight that he nearly broke his back in two (he and his mother so grand at a table all to themselves, while the old gentleman with three chins and two daughters entertained the table in the middle of the room with his anecdotes of Tom Hennessey and his shooting adventures in Scotland), and then the great bedroom in which King Charles had slept, and his mother going upstairs to it in such stately fashion, the landlord himself in front with two candles, that you would have thought her Royalty.

But all this was nothing at all to the glory of the next day when they started in a pale golden dawn, frost in the air, and the roans stamping their hoofs to be off. Adam, wrapped in a hundred coats, had the glory of sitting beside the great Joe with the old three-chinned gentleman on his other side.

He could observe everything and listen to everything too. He saw the gold fade from the sky and give place to one of the loveliest mornings of the year. The fields were yet frosted, the road was hard; only once had they to travel through water, which gave Joe (who had a voice like a gurgling water-pipe) occasion to describe what had happened once to the Stamford Regent when going through St. Neot’s, fifty-six miles out of London—how the Ouse had overflowed its banks there, and although an extra pair of leaders were put on, ridden by a horse-keeper, yet the water was up to the axle-trees and even, for a while, the Regent was afloat, to the dreadful peril of some ladies inside it. And that led the stout gentleman to talk of Tom Hennessey’s famous whip, which, as everyone knows, was a crooked one so that it could tickle the lagging wheelers in a fashion no other whip could achieve. And that led Joe to show what he could do with his whip, and a stout lady behind them begged him to be careful and not to hurt the horses, which Adam thought the funniest thing he’d ever heard. (But then women were peculiar, all of them, even his mother.)

There came a glorious moment, later in the morning, when Joe actually entertained Adam himself in conversation.

‘And what might your age be, young gentleman?

‘Fifteen.’

‘Fifteen! Deary me! Think of that now! . . . Learnt to fight yet?’

‘A little.’ (Adam was modest. Rackstraw had taught him well.)

‘Going to see a Fight in London?’

‘I hope so.’

‘Next week, come Friday, there’s the Nottingham Pet and John Willis at Islington. That’ll be something.’ Then, after a pause, ‘Going to school in London?’

‘No; just for a visit.’

‘Ever been to London afore?’

‘No, never.’

‘Ah! That’s a treat for a young lad. That’s a treat, that is. All the same the country’s better. Live in the North?’

‘Yes, in Cumberland.’

‘Ever seen the Crusher?’

‘No. I’m afraid I haven’t.’

‘Never seen the Crusher—and live in Cumberland? Why, think of that now! I remember his fight in Newcastle when he smashed Foxy Rundle in twenty rounds—in ’23 I think it was.’

But here the old gentleman broke in; he hadn’t seen the fight himself but he had heard . . . and here the coach had to be stopped for a lady with enough baggage for a journey to China, who didn’t like this, and wouldn’t have that, until Joe’s temper was as purple as the capes of his riding-coat. And then—somewhere early in the afternoon—the foretaste of London began to creep upon Adam. London! London at last! How faint suddenly were Uldale, Skiddaw, the village shop with the green bottle window. . . . Dorothy and the way she’d take the jars of preserve out of the cupboard and examine them one by one with a seriousness . . . old Bennett and the way he’d pinch his leg . . . even John standing there, looking at Adam, telling him that horrid hateful news, that he loved Walter’s daughter . . . all figures as dim now as the faded pinks and blues on the Chinese screen in his mother’s bedroom! London!

Already they were at the ‘Peacock’ at Islington, and the hostler was shouting, doors were slamming, old Joe Dorset taking up parcels, answering silly questions from nervous ladies, drinking out of a jug, examining the horses, reassuring a nervous old gentleman wrapped in a vast white muffler—and then, in another moment—Tantivy! Tantivy! Tantivy!—they were off again.

‘Are you comfortable, dear?’ his mother had asked him, poking her head out of the window. ‘Not too cold?’

‘He’s all right, ma’am,’ Joe Dorset had answered, ‘as right as a ’edge’og’; and Adam had been proud all down his spine. Certainly he was all right. What a pity his mother hadn’t come outside! She would have enjoyed it. Now, after Islington, lights flared on the country road, for the dusk is creeping up and out of it suddenly loom drovers and a herd of cattle. Then Smithfield and Cow Lane, then up Holborn Hill. But these places were, of course, nothing to Adam. What did he see? In detail very little, for mist is everywhere, noise is everywhere—through the mist lights and flares, a blazing window, a crooked chimney, a barrow alive with flame. And the noises—hackney cabriolets, drays, waggons, wheelbarrows, shouting boys, bawling men, screaming women, ringing bells—and through it all, above it all, beyond it all, his heart beating like an African drum!

He was never one to show his excitement. He sat now in absolute silence, his hands tightly clenched together under his coat, his mouth firmly closed, but his eyes staring, staring as though they would pierce this foggy, noisy mystery through to the other side.

Tantivy! Tantivy! Tantivy! He felt now Joe’s pride that he was bringing his coach in on time. How they dashed over the cobbles, how the roans tossed their heads, how through the murk and gloom one could dimly feel figures sliding, horses slipping, voices shouting to be out of the way. Then, one more blast and into a courtyard of light and splendour the Stamford Regent dashes. The ‘George and Blue Boar,’ Holborn: London’s heart is touched at last.

He discovered then, quite to his own surprise, that he was extremely sleepy; he discovered, too, for the first time in his young life, what every traveller discovers, that once at a destination and the life that only a moment earlier had been pulsating with fire and energy is collapsed at your feet like a spent balloon.

Even Joe Dorset was fading. Not that he wouldn’t be pleased to meet Joe again somewhere, but his figure was shrunk and his voice sounded miles away.

No, his mother was once again the centre of his world. She dominated the place, sending hostlers here and stable-boys there, collecting their luggage, standing over it, ordering a hackney cabriolet, and all as quietly but as imperiously as though London were at her feet and knew it.

‘Now, Adam,’ she commanded. ‘In you get!’ And in he did get, into the mustiest, smelliest, darkest interior that his enterprising life had yet known. Mice, straw, newspapers, stale beer and damp cloth all seemed to have gone to the making of that hackney cab. There was indeed straw on the floor of it and old newspaper squeezed into the hinge of one of the windows. The driver was a little man with a pinched white nose and no eyebrows. He seemed to be terrified of Judith, for when she said, ‘Number Nine, Cadogan Place,’ he almost bowed to the ground.

They were crushed together inside the cab, for they were piled round with parcels and small boxes. Judith put her arm around him, and so they bumped and jumped and swayed and sank as though on a tempestuous sea. Houses rose and fell beyond the misty windows, horses loomed gigantic, figures sprang up before them and vanished again, and in Adam’s nostrils was that smell with which he would associate London all his life long—straw, ale, and the faint scent of violets that stole from his mother’s clothes.

They had arrived. The cab had stopped with a jerk, the door creaked open, and a little boy with a large broom was there on the pavement, his hand out, begging.

When Judith had given the little boy a shilling (which astonished him very much and led the driver of the cabriolet to wet his lips in anticipation) the big solemn door (supported by black marble pillars) was slowly opened and a very thin footman with powdered hair and an ornamental waistcoat stood there staring at them. It seemed from his expression that he could not believe that anyone should be arriving in a hackney cab at that particular moment, but Judith walked straight past him as though she were the Queen of Egypt, and then, remembering that the driver had not yet been paid, hurried down again, directed the bringing-in of the luggage, smiled at the footman, said her name in a very determined manner, and entered the house a second time, on this occasion followed closely by Adam.

The hall was so extremely dark and a lamp by the staircase so exceedingly dim that a white bust of a gentleman with a lot of hair and naked shoulders, and a large picture of Moses addressing the Children of Israel, were the only things for a long while visible.

‘Madame Paris,’ said Judith again. ‘We are expected.’

The footman disappeared and returned to say, ‘This way, Madame,’ disregarding Adam altogether. He, however, was determined not to be left alone in that darkness, and setting his face into its ugliest scowl (his manner when he was ‘against the world’) stumped along behind her. They were shown into a very large drawing-room that seemed to Adam, accustomed to the bright colour of Uldale, the most funereal he had ever seen. There were two large white marble pillars at one end, dark brown curtains across the windows, a huge portrait of a gentleman with a white stock and an immense watch-chain over the white marble mantelpiece, a long bookcase buried in glass, and a marble pedestal with a simpering bust of a lady’s head on it between the windows.

All this he quickly observed, and then he noticed the people present. (He had ample time for this because no one spoke to him during the first five minutes.) Mr. Newmark he knew already, his high stock, his large nose, his long legs. He seemed more dignified than was possible for a flesh-and-blood human being to be. Mrs. Newmark he knew too. He liked her. He noticed that she had grown very stout. There was an elderly gentleman in a brown wig, an elderly lady in a vast hat, and a very pretty young lady in a most bewitching poke-bonnet of the lightest blue. So, standing near the door, rubbing one leg against the other, he watched the greetings.

‘Judith! . . . Judith!’ Phyllis Newmark ran forward, kissed her again and again, dragged her to the fire. There was nothing false or affected about Phyllis.

‘Oh, you are here! You have arrived! After all that dreadful journey! You must be frozen indeed. Frozen. Simply frozen. We have been expecting you these ages, have we not, Stephen?’

Mr. Newmark, unbending in a slow solemn process from the crown of his head to the middle of his extremely thin waist, greeted them with the manner of one of England’s Ambassadors receiving a deputation from a foreign tribe. He hoped that the journey had not been too positively inclement. Judith, her eyes twinkling, assured him that it had not.

‘And this is Mr. Pomeroy.’

The gentleman in the brown wig kissed her hand.

‘And Mrs. Pomeroy.’

‘And this is Sylvia—Sylvia Herries, Garth’s wife. You know Durward’s son.’

The eyes of the young lady in the poke-bonnet—eyes alive with merriment and impudence—and the eyes of Judith—also, although so much older, alive with merriment—met, and in that instant the two of them, the girl of twenty and the woman of fifty-six, were friends for life. Judith seldom made a mistake. She had not made one now.

‘Is not that perfect that you are here at last? Is it not wonderful, Mrs. Pomeroy? All the way from Cumberland. Oh, I must embrace you once more. I am so very glad to see you. Stephen, is it not excellent that they have arrived safe and sound?’

‘And there is my Adam,’ said Judith, turning round. She knew that it must mean some real sacrifice of his principles that Stephen should receive a little bastard into the very heart of his sanctified family. It had been Phyllis’ doing, of course. Nevertheless, it was good of him. She would not forget it. Adam came forward. Although there was always something clumsy in his movements, Judith had taught him good manners. He bowed and said: ‘How are you, sir?’ ‘How are you, ma’am?’ ‘Very well, I thank you, ma’am.’

What the next step might have been no one could tell, for there came, suddenly, a portentous and dramatic knocking on the door—in fact, two knocks, most solemnly delivered, with a proper interval between.

‘Come in!’ cried Mr. Newmark.

The door slowly opened and a procession entered. First, a tall, severe woman in black silk, then in order, it seemed, of ages, all the Newmark children. When Judith had last seen them at Westaways there had been but three; now there were seven if you included (as indeed you must) an infant who, in the arms of a stout, bonneted nurse, brought up the rear. The procession assembled itself at the door and waited.

‘Good evening, Miss Trindle,’ said Mr. Newmark in his deep bell-like tones.

‘Good evening, sir. Good evening, ma’am.’

‘Come, children,’ said Mr. Newmark. ‘You may bid us good night.’

Then they all advanced—Horace, aged eleven, first, then Mary, aged ten, Phyllis nine, Katherine seven, Stephen five, Emily four and the infant Barnabas of almost no age at all.

The Ceremony was magnificent.

Horace was a thin, pale-faced boy, large spectacles covering wide-open, anxious eyes. He advanced timidly to his father, gave an absurd little bow. ‘Good night, Papa.’

Mr. Newmark bent down and in a dignified but kindly fashion kissed his cheek. Horace then went round and bowed to the others. ‘Good night, sir.’ ‘I wish you a good night, ma’am.’ He came to Judith, who caught him up and kissed him on both cheeks, disarranging his spectacles. He looked at her quickly, then carefully straightened his glasses. He paused before Adam and gave him a comical twinkling look, as much as to say: ‘This is all very absurd. Don’t think I’m taken in by it.’ His mother hugged him in a quite human manner.

The others followed. Mary was stout and plain. Phyllis slender and pretty. Katherine stolid. Stephen nervous of his father. Emily yawning. Barnabas from the arms of the nurse gazed at his father as though he had never seen anything so droll in his life. They were all marshalled at the door and, together, standing in a row, made a simultaneous bow.

‘And now,’ said Phyllis (she was blushing a little), ‘let us come upstairs and I will show you and Adam your apartments. Mrs. Pomeroy, pray, forgive. We shall speedily return.’

Their rooms that night were of an icy chill, but English men and women were hardened—not for them the soft and effete comforts of more degenerate nations. Nevertheless, both Judith and Adam slept like the dead, bathed next morning in round tin baths brought in elaborately by a heavily breathing, muscle-straining maidservant. They were both in time for Family Prayers, held in the long, cold dining-room. Beyond the windows as Mr. Newmark read (as it seemed to Judith) almost the whole of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, a yellow fog wriggled and bridled up and down the Square.

But it was afterwards, over empty egg-cups, vast cold hams and two terrific coffee-pots that Judith heard a most interesting discourse from Stephen Newmark. As Judith sat there listening she decided that she liked him better, far better, than she could ever have supposed that she would. He was at his best, serious, informed and exceedingly interesting. As he propelled his long, thin body up and down the breakfast-room, speaking in his deep, measured voice, he was like some prophet of old proclaiming woe to all the world. And yet he was not unduly sensational, did not, she was convinced, go further than the facts warranted. Being an intelligent, active-minded woman, she had, even in the confines of Cumberland, realised the critical time through which England was passing—and not only England but all the civilised world. The Revolution in France that very summer had been sufficient to point a packet of morals. The riot at Uldale ending in poor Reuben Sunwood’s death had driven home all the local lessons. She had felt, for years past, what every other thinking man and woman had felt, that one cry, one lifted rifle, one more revelation of the filth, degradation, misery in which half England was living, might precipitate here a Revolution worse than any France had ever known. But Newmark dealt with facts, and facts only. Huskisson’s death on September 15 at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway seemed to him a sort of omen. He returned to it again and again: such a fine man, one of the few men of intelligence in the country, such a foolish accident! These Railways—you were at the mercy of these horrible engines. One day it would be all engines. Human beings would be crushed by them. Will Herries had been there, had been standing quite close to Mr. Huskisson at the time. He would tell her all about it.

‘I don’t suppose that I shall be seeing Will,’ said Judith grimly.

‘No?’ said Stephen, surprised. ‘You will find him now a man of very great importance.’

‘I don’t doubt,’ said Judith.

After that the general lawlessness, the riots at Otmoor in Oxfordshire, followed by the calling out of the military at Oxford, Captain Swing and his rick-burning, the hanging of three men by the High Sheriff in Somersetshire, an execution witnessed by fifteen thousand people, the stirring up of the people everywhere by Cobbett and Carlyle, outrages in Kent and Wilts, in Bucks and Surrey, followed always by summary executions.

Then to London—dirt and starvation and wretchedness cheek by jowl with a luxury, extravagance and heartlessness that had never been witnessed before in any living man’s memory. Materialism, immorality of the grossest, an utter scoffing disregard of religion.

‘They say,’ Stephen burst out, ‘that all this is still the effect of the wars. But, good God, this is 1830—Waterloo was in ’15!’

He passed on, growing ever more and more agitated beneath his cold and pedantic exterior, to the King, the Court and the burning question of Reform. The King was an old fool. They had hoped, in the summer when George, unregretted by anyone alive, had at last seen fit to die, that this honest, worthy old man who succeeded him would save his country. But this honest, worthy old man was nothing but a fool, nay, a maniac. Everyone had been pleased at first by his easy, simple manners. He was crazy from the first, wouldn’t have his own servants in mourning, but had ordered Mrs. Fitzherbert to put hers into black, put on his plain clothes and went wandering into the streets where he was followed all the way up St. James’s by a mob until a woman, outside White’s, pushed her way through and kissed him; had a party at Buckingham House and dismissed the people by saying: ‘Time you were off. Come along to bed, my Queen.’

‘Well, you know, Judith, it isn’t amusing. No, indeed, it is not. In such times to have such a crazy old monarch. A bad effect on anybody.’

And for the rest where was a man we could trust? The Duke, Peel, Lord John, Brougham—all mad about this Reform one way or another. What’s the Cabinet to do? It spends all its time sitting to concoct proclamations offering rewards for the discovery of rioters, rick-burners. That’s not the way a country ought to be governed.

Stephen’s agitation was truly genuine. You could not listen to him and not respect him. You could not listen to him and not think of that little procession of the night before nor see that it was in his mind that all of them from Horace to young Barnabas might have their throats cut by the mob any of these days. And meanwhile, the candles guttered within, outside the yellow fog went sliding and whispering among the tall black houses. Judith, in spite of herself, shivered. The room was so desperately cold.

‘We have forgotten God!’ cried Stephen, ‘and God will punish us.’

But then he cheered up a little, and, pouring himself out a cup of what must have been very chilly coffee, lifted his voice a tone and began to talk about ‘Our Family.’

It amused Judith greatly to discover that he considered himself completely a Herries and his children Herries too. They were the nephews and nieces of Lord Rockage and cousins to all the Herries tribe and that was enough for him. Whoever the Newmarks were or had ever been they were now altogether behind the curtain. She saw that it was his idea that the Herries were going to save the country, if not in the foreground of affairs, why, then, very active in the background.

But Will Herries was in the foreground; it was expected that he would be a baronet any day. And there was Carey Rockage a peer, James Herries (‘stupid pompous Ass he is’) a baronet, Sylvia Herries, Garth’s wife, ‘one of the loveliest, wittiest girls in town,’ Walter adding field to field in the North, Jennifer’s boy (as he had heard) one of the handsomest young fellows in England, and she, Judith, herself——

‘And I, Stephen?’ asked Judith, laughing.

‘Well, anyone with half an eye——’

In short, she became aware that she had, in a very few hours, made a strong impression upon Stephen. It was idle to pretend that she was not pleased. All her old love of power came surging up within her. She began already to realise that this visit to London was going to rouse in her another crisis, a crisis not unsimilar to the one that had driven her to abandon Watendlath. She had been too long up there buried in the country. Here were the Herries going up, up, up. Here was she, even though she was fifty-six (and she didn’t feel a day more than thirty), with all these conquests ready to her hand. A sudden violent distaste attacked her—a distaste of Jennifer with her crazy imaginings, the stout bullying form of Walter, the littleness and gossip of Keswick, the long slow curve of the Uldale hills——

‘We are becoming every day more powerful as a family,’ proclaimed Stephen. ‘Will is intimate with Peel. He is throwing himself into these new Railways. He grows richer every hour. Carey’s boy, Roger, is only nineteen but shows excellent political ambitions. My own boy Horace——’ He broke off as though this were too personal. Then added: ‘These are the times for people like ourselves. The best class in England, the soundest, the most solid. Money, brains, beauty—and a proper fear of God.’

He broke off and finished his cup of coffee. Strange, she thought, considering him, how although he was not a Herries he was proclaiming himself so curiously a cousin to Will, Walter, the Venerable Archdeacon Rodney, Jennifer’s father and the others. All the qualities that her own father had so sadly lacked, and Francis and Reuben and now, she feared, young John. And she herself—she was a combination of the two opposites, the only one in the family who was so, which was exactly why she could, if she liked, dominate the lot of them!

‘Stephen!’ she cried. ‘I shall enjoy my time in London!’

From the moment of that breakfast-hour she never ceased to realise that this visit was a crisis for her and for her Adam as well. Adam himself had indeed the most glorious time. It was as though Stephen relaxed his pomposity and Phyllis her housewifely burdens under the influence of their visitors. The children—Horace, Mary, Phyllis—had never known such a time. Either with their mother or with the grim Miss Trindle they discovered all the glories of the Town for Adam’s benefit. They went to Miss Linwood’s Exhibition of Needlework Pictures, and saw the Malediction of Cain and Jephtha’s Vow, to Barford’s Panorama where were wonderful displays of foreign scenes. One of the most marvellous of all things was the Panorama of London at the Colosseum in Regent’s Park, where, raised in a lift (the wonder of the Town), you saw the Conservatories, Swiss Cottage, Alpine Scenery. In St. Martin’s Lane was the pavilion of the gigantic whale which was found dead off the coast of Belgium on November 3, 1827. This skeleton was ninety-five feet long and eighteen broad, and for another shilling you might sit ‘in the belly of the whale.’ This both Horace and Adam were permitted to do. But better still were the Zoological Gardens in Regent’s Park (only opened in 1828 and therefore still a sensation) and (best, oh, far best of all for Adam and Horace) ‘Weeks’ Mechanical Exhibition’ in Tichborne Street, where you might see an automaton tarantula spider made of steel which moved its claws and horns, an animated white mouse formed of oriental pearls that ran about a table ‘feeding at pleasure,’ a caterpillar of enamelled gold and brilliants feeding on the foliage of a golden tree, and an old woman who, at a call, came forth from her cottage, walked about supported by crutches ‘while the joints in her arms and legs are all in apparently natural motion.’

For Judith, too, her progress about London during that first week was one thrilling adventure. All her earlier doings there rushed up to her as though they had occurred but yesterday, a strange haphazard married life with Georges, money one day, none the next, the visit to the ‘Elephant’ when the coach had overturned, the famous Ball, the awful moment in the Square when Georges told her that he must flee for his life—that other world, a London so different from this, so ancient, gone like a dream with its colours, its fans and powder and elegance, and Georges, dear, dear Georges, so feckless, so venturesome, so unreliable, beside her now at every step, his hand through her arm in the old persuasive way, forcing her to agree to something weak or hopeless or mad.

Georges, Georges. . . . And here she was an old lady of fifty-six with a boy of fifteen who ought to have been Georges’ son but wasn’t, in this Town that Mr. Nash had covered with whitewash, where poverty of the most hideous mingled with riches of the most extravagant, where the very pavement seemed to threaten, at any moment, an earthquake.

At the beginning of the second week she encountered Will.

She was sitting before a small, smoky, cold fire in the marble-pillared drawing-room, her feet on the fender, plucking up her energy to go up to her icy bedroom and dress for dinner, when the footman opened the door, murmured something and withdrew. She looked round to see Will standing there. The same old Will, only grander. He carried his years well. He did not look sixty nor anything like it. Sixty! and it was only yesterday that, a boy on a horse outside Stone Ends, he had listened to a child, Judith, declaring firmly that she would not return to Uldale, no, not if she died for it! He did not look sixty and he did not look as though he could conceivably be Walter’s father. He was dressed most handsomely in black. His coat was so waisted that it gave him an almost feminine appearance, but he was not feminine. Oh, dear me, no!

If he was startled at seeing Judith he gave no sign of it. Her pale face was yet paler. She looked at him with all the distant haughtiness that she could command, but in her heart she wished that she did not instantly once again feel like a child in pantalettes.

‘Why, Judith!’ he said. He came forward and gravely shook her hand. ‘I thought that I should see you. I heard that you were in Town.’ Then he added, smiling a little: ‘It has been unkind of you not to pay Christabel a visit.’

She did not answer that but said:

‘Phyllis has not yet returned. Won’t you sit down?’

He did—with great care and dignity.

‘Well—how are you, Judith?’

‘In excellent health, thank you, Will.’

‘I am glad to hear it. And your boy?’

‘Also in excellent health.’

‘Good.’

There was a pause.

‘And how are all at Uldale?’

‘Admirable, thank you.’

‘Good. I hear that John is a fine boy. You yourself, Judith, look younger than ever.’

She said nothing to that, but wished for the millionth time that God had made her taller. Then he went on—his voice was now exceedingly measured and assured as though he were always accustomed to speaking to people of the utmost importance:

‘I am glad that Phyllis has not yet returned. It gives us a moment for speaking together, Judith. You are fifty-six’ (how characteristic of him to remember her age!) ‘I am sixty. Is it not rather childish of us to continue this feud?’

‘I am continuing no feud,’ she answered. ‘You had better ask Walter about feuds.’

‘Ah, Walter!’ he sighed. ‘Walter is very headstrong. I admit that that has been in part my fault—my fault and his mother’s. But he would have his own way from earliest childhood. And are you not imagining things, my dear Judith? You also, if I may say so, have always had plenty of character.’

‘Imagining!’ she broke out. ‘Imagining!’ Then, controlling herself, she went on: ‘You know, perhaps, that he is building on a hill above Uldale simply that he may overlook us and interfere with us in every possible way.’

‘He told me that he was to build,’ Will said quietly. ‘I advised him against it.’

‘He murdered Francis,’ she said, ‘and he is frightening Jennifer into her grave.’ She saw then that she touched him. At the mention of Francis a faint flush coloured his sallow cheeks.

‘Francis,’ he said at last. ‘Poor Francis! He was his own enemy.’

‘He need not have been,’ she answered hotly. ‘It was because of Walter’s spies that Francis learnt of Jennifer’s infidelity.’

But he was not to be stirred.

‘Is not this all rather old history, Judith, my dear? There are two strains in our family—let us face it—and they are never at peace together. I was never at one with Francis myself. We sought different things out of the world. What he sought for was perhaps harder to obtain than what I sought for. He never found it, and in his disappointment—— No, no, my dear. You cannot lay all that upon Walter. You know the world too well. You are altogether too wise.’

She considered that. There was something in what he said. Then she began in another more friendly, more impetuous tone.

‘Will—cannot you persuade Walter to cease this building? Cannot you persuade him to leave Jennifer and her children in quiet? Then we will be friends. I shall be only too happy.’

He looked at her with a strange, almost human, smile.

‘Persuade Walter? My dear, he has gone far beyond my persuading. I have no influence over him whatever. He would even rather that his mother and I did not come to Westaways.’ He waited a moment and then continued: ‘You know, Judith, I have all my life been pursuing money—money and power. I have got both. I do not regret it. But in that pursuit one loses other things. I have lost human relationships. I have no time for them. As I say, I do not regret it. But it is so.’

She felt herself being drawn closer to him than she had ever been before.

He went on: ‘Once, years ago, when we were children—do you remember?—we were watching fireworks on the Lake, you, Francis, Reuben Sunwood and I. We all said what we would do with our lives. I have fulfilled almost exactly those early ambitions. I would not, however, say that I am a happy man. But who is happy? I have my moments. That is, I suppose, as much as one may ask.’

She heard the opening of the outer door and then the comfortable friendly tone of Phyllis’ voice, so hurriedly she said:

‘Will, I have no unfriendliness to yourself or Christabel—none whatever—but I will fight like a tiger to keep Jennifer and her children safe. I may be an aged tiger and not a very large one, but I can still be fierce. I am Walter’s enemy so long as he is Jennifer’s and John’s and Dorothy’s, so now you know.’

Will looked at her gravely and opened his mouth as though he would speak, but Phyllis’ entry in a bustle of welcome prevented him. There was some chatter, and Will got up to depart. It was only then that he said to them with great solemnity:

‘My reason for calling—I should have told you before—I thought that you would like to know. His Majesty has graciously offered me a Baronetcy which I shall accept.’

Yes, indeed, the Herries were going up, and Judith shared now in all the drama of family life to the full. It took her only a fortnight to be considered the most impressive figure among them all.

The Family Letters of this time are filled with references to her:

Madame Paris has been the Family Sensation this week. Your father is laid up with the gout but he permitted me (you know what he is) to dine at Lady Rosbey’s. Our cousin, Judith (is she a cousin?) arrived with the Newmarks and in five minutes had the whole room laughing. She must be any age and wears the most outrageous colours. Nevertheless, she was sprightly as a kitten and without losing her dignity an instant. She was as up in everything as though she’d never moved out of Belgravia and kept us all vastly amused with her Paris adventures in ’15 where it appears that she. . . .

And another:

Judith Paris is the rage. I must confess that I find her charming for she is kindly as well as intelligent, enjoys everything as though she were born yesterday (she’s fifty if a day!), and is no snob like dear William and others of our relations. She has with her an illegitimate boy (they say he is Warren Forster’s son. You remember Warren—a little peaked man with a nervous habit of snapping his fingers) and takes him about with a great deal of pride. It is a thousand pities that she should be buried in the North for we sadly need her esprit and intelligence. . . .

And a third:

We dined last night at the Bulwers in Hertford Street. That amusing young man, whom you enjoyed so greatly at Barnet last year, was there, Mr. Disraeli. Rosina Bulwer was a sight! Plastered with jewels and painted to the eyes, while Bulwer himself glittered all over! There were plenty of the Family as you may suppose and of all people the solemn Newmark and his fat dowdy Phyllis. However, the excuse for their coming was our cousin Judith from Cumberland. I had heard of her often enough and was all eagerness to behold her. Well she is a little short pale-faced thing with grey hair and had a dress of brocaded pink gauze (of all things for a woman over fifty!). She carried an ivory cane and should have been altogether absurd. But she was not! Disraeli was enchanted with her and Rosina talked to her an immense deal and even Miss Landon admitted her ’ton.’ I can tell you how she does it. By being perfectly natural, having plenty of humour and common sense. I never saw anyone enjoy herself so completely. . . .

Indeed she did. She went everywhere, did everything, and knew, for the moment, no weariness. Sylvia Herries was her principal companion. That girl, with her eagerness, sense of adventure and gaiety that had at its heart some undefined melancholy, was designed for her affections. Then suddenly Judith woke. That ‘unhappiness’ was everywhere, hidden by a superficial eagerness that had no stability.

She saw that she was in a society where nothing was real, where no one believed in anything at all, where everyone feared what the morrow would bring. The ‘Silver Fork’ novels of fashionable life, just then beginning to be so popular, were symptomatic of the falsehood and sham, while cruel and malicious sheets like the Age and the John Bull of Theodore Hook showed where the rottenness was hidden.

Prolonged war had killed sincerity, every kind of faith, social behaviour. The world of London that she, for a moment, invaded was dominated by a new aristocracy of wealth, an aristocracy without tradition, without breeding, an aristocracy that in its aggressive uneasiness suffered itself to be blackmailed by the vilest panders and the most worthless adventurers. Most of the great houses in London were occupied by ‘new men’ who hurried to learn manners that could never truly be theirs and sought, with drink, gambling, orgies and ostentation, to give a semblance of splendour and security. The roads to prominence lay through scandal, back-biting and jealousy. Sport, jewels, wild expenditure covered meanness and vice. All was fake; for a woman to be virtuous proclaimed her dowdy. Men lived by their wits and climbed relentlessly over the backs of their dearest friends.

Such was the fashionable world of which Judith had a glimpse. But it was in just such a world that the opportunities of such a family as the Herries—sober, careful, traditional—lay.

The Herries in London were separated into three parts—the business Herries, Will at their head, James the baronet following rather clumsily, and Amery Herries, Sylvia’s brother-in-law, very able and sharp, a possible successor when Will was in his dotage. There were secondly the religious Herries, headed by Stephen Newmark, who, as Judith soon perceived, when he was not sensible, was very tiresome indeed. Stephen had his pet clergyman—Mr. Aubrey Grant of St. Anne’s, Pimlico—a gentleman very often at Stephen’s table, a stout, effeminate, purring gentleman, adored by the ladies and detested by Judith. There was also in the Newmark household the Methodist tradition of the Rockage family in which Phyllis had been brought up. Maria Rockage was still alive, a kindly rheumatic old Dowager in the place in Wiltshire. She was for ever sending the Newmark family pamphlets—‘The Miner’s Lament,’ ‘The Royal Road to Hell,’ ‘The Shopman’s Vision’—interspersed with delightful, gay and very human epistles. She lamented grievously that she could not come up to London to see Judith, who had once lived with her for nearly ten years and whom she adored. Many of Mr. Aubrey Grant’s congregation came to Cadogan Place—old Mr. and Mrs. Pomeroy were very prominent—and quite awful Judith found them all. The scent on Mr. Grant’s handkerchief alone was enough to send her out of the room when he was there.

The third division was the social one. Into this, at times, the other two divisions penetrated, but Will and Christabel, Newmark and Phyllis, various Newmark cousins, did not truly belong.

Sylvia Herries, young though she was, was mistress here. She knew the London social, literary, Bohemian world completely. She laughingly declared that all the adventurers in London came to her tiny house in Brook Street. Indeed she did not care who came. She kept open house. Neither she nor Garth—now a very elegant, charming young man—seemed to have much money. They were for ever in desperate straits. Will—who was in these days more generous than of old—must have helped them again and again. They reminded Judith constantly of herself and Georges in those old, mad, adventurous days. That was perhaps why she came to care for them more than any other of the Herries relations, and why she made her alliance with them. Sylvia was her own kind—audacious, reckless, pleasure-loving, but also serious, practical and wise about other people.

It soon became obvious that Stephen disliked her constant visits to the little house in Brook Street, a little house that was all light colours, jingling pianos, poodle dogs and noise. There were authors like the Bulwers, Letitia Landon, Theodore Hook, young Ainsworth, of whom he could not possibly approve. There were dancers, opera singers, racing men and ladies of extremely doubtful reputation. Judith had, alas, no more of those fine serious conversations with which on the first morning she had been honoured. It seemed to him really lamentable that a woman of her years should care for such a world. He had been right, as he constantly told Phyllis in the sacredness of their huge four-poster, in wondering whether anyone so brazen about her bastard child was a suitable guest for them, and poor Phyllis, who loved Judith with all her heart, tried to keep the peace. But what Phyllis really did not understand was that Judith should be so deeply horrified at the present state of the London world and yet enjoy the parties in Brook Street so greatly. She seemed like two different women in one.

Then the climax arrived. On an afternoon of the third week of Judith’s stay, Sylvia Herries was alone with Judith in the Newmark drawing-room. Sylvia was looking most bewitching with her ringlets, rose-coloured tulle, a waist so small as to be almost invisible, and a printed satin scarf. She danced about the room like a fairy, she bowed with mock ceremony to the pedestal and the lady’s head thereon, she imitated Stephen, whom she found entirely ridiculous. Judith also was seized with a devil. She valsed with Sylvia round and round the room. The ‘valse’ was still new enough to be divine. They danced ever more madly. They danced into a small table that held a large preposterous vase of the brightest green. It tumbled with a crash to the ground, and, of course, at that precise moment Stephen entered with old Mr. Pomeroy.

There was nothing to be said, nothing to be done. There the vase was in a thousand pieces. There were the two ladies—one of them old enough to be the other’s mother—hot, dishevelled, and Judith had, a moment before, lost one of her shoes. Stephen gave one of his grim sacrificial smiles, Sylvia departed with a private moue of amusement for Judith’s benefit (seen, however, by Stephen). Judith did her best to become, quickly again, an elderly dignified lady.

‘Oh, it is of no importance, no importance at all,’ said Stephen, bending stiffly to pick up some pieces. ‘An old family heirloom—but still—no matter, no matter.’

But he never forgave Judith that broken vase. An ivory fan, a green vase: these are the things of which family histories are made. It was quite clear—Stephen now made it plainly apparent—that it was time that the visit of Judith and Adam came to an end.

‘Come and stay with us, darling,’ said Sylvia. ‘For as long as you please.’

‘No,’ said Judith. ‘Cumberland is my proper place.’

And it was. She would not, she knew, be happy in the little house in Brook Street. That was not her home, any more than was Stephen’s. Her holiday (and oh! how she had enjoyed it!) was at an end.

So she looked round her to collect herself and her things, and found Adam. Not that she at all had forgotten him. It had been wonderful to see him against this new background and with new people. She found that he was enterprising, reserved and extraordinarily generous. She had known all these things about him since the beginning of time, but they wore a fresh dress in this fresh world. His generosity was surely astonishing, for he had very little money unless his London relations gave him some. In any case he was always buying things for the little Newmarks, for his mother, for Phyllis. To Sylvia, whom he worshipped, he gave nothing. All the little Newmarks loved him, even the spectacled Horace, who was not lavish with his affections. Mary and her sister Phyllis would be demonstrative, but he shrank from their demonstrations with horror. He allowed no one any physical approach. He produced a toy, a doll, a horse, a rattle for the baby, flowers or whatever, and he said ‘Here!’ or ‘That’s for you, ma’am.’ He looked at you sternly while he presented it, forbidding you to thank him. Then he escaped. He escaped very often, went off on his own affairs. He was, in fact, very happy during this visit.

The visit came to a close, both for Judith and Adam, with an adventure that it was not likely that they would forget. It was the recurrent adventure of Judith’s life: once, in London, a boy hanging; twice, in Paris, an elephant escaping; and now, the third time.

On the evening of Monday the eighth of November, Amery Herries took Judith, Adam and his sister-in-law Sylvia to the Adelphi Theatre to witness a performance of The Heart of London, or A Sharper’s Progress, by William Thomas Moncrieff. This was a glorious play, and although not intended for the young did Adam no kind of harm.

The play over, they stepped from one melodrama into another.

The Strand, lit with the flares of burning stakes carried head-high, and in the distance towards Covent Garden by an overturned cart that had been set alight, showed a wild fantasy of faces, a mob that now was stagnant like a dead pond and then broken as though by a whipping wind, all this driven by a roar that had nothing human in it save an occasional woman’s scream.

The citizens of London, excited by Mr. Hunt at a meeting at the Rotunda in Blackfriars Road, were making their way to the West End that they might assist the cause of Reform. As soon as the shouts were heard the doors of the Adelphi were closed, but Amery’s party had slipped out five minutes earlier, to secure a hackney coach. The doors were closed behind them; before they could consider their position they were swung forward into the street. Judith, Adam’s arm through hers, saw neither Amery nor Sylvia again that night.

It was as though Judith and Adam fell into a jungle of undergrowth. Above them bodies towered and whether they wished it or no they were carried forward to the cries of ‘Down with the Police!’ ‘Reform!’ ‘No Peel!’ ‘No Wellington!’

Down there in the undergrowth they conversed:

‘Never mind, Mother: I’m here,’ said Adam.

‘Now, don’t you let go!’ Judith said crossly. This was impertinence, to treat her and her son in this fashion. A light swung to the sky, and stars escaping, a golden net scattered among the chimney-pots. Then the sky was darkened, and a large face attached to a stout body in moleskins was rosy in the glare of a burning stake stinking of tar.

‘No Wellington! Down with Wellington!’ roared the moleskins most good-naturedly. He stank of gin, and his hand, roughened with honest toil, stroked Judith’s cheek.

At that touch fear, that she had known so seldom in her life, caught her and pressed against her. A bear tortured, a boy hanged, Adam’s father clinging to her while the horses’ hoofs pranced in the air, these once again encompassed her.

‘Reform! Reform!’ shrieked a woman, her hair about her face and a basket on her arm. Judith looked at Adam and saw that he was quite unafraid and greatly enjoying everything.

‘Adam, in a moment there should be a turning to the river. Watch for it!’

But the impetuous movement ceased. Staring around her she saw that their progress had been far more rapid than she had supposed, for they were in Downing Street and had halted in front of Lord Bathurst’s residence. She knew the house well, for Garth Herries had taken her to a reception there. By squirming her body through a funny jumble of legs, chests, arms and hands she found a corner for Adam and herself against some railings, and was able to observe from there how a gentleman, his face crimson with rage, came out on to the balcony. He was armed with a brace of pistols and, shouting in a voice thick with anger, told them that if they committed any illegal act he would fire. Groans, yells, shouts of ‘Go it! Go it!’ answered him, whereupon another gentleman arrived on the balcony and took the pistols from him. Then everyone cheered and seemed suddenly radiant with good spirits.

At that same moment Judith perceived that Adam was gone. She became at once a frenzied woman. Any self-control that she had ever learnt, any caution or reserve, was lost. She screamed like a madwoman, ‘Adam! Adam!’, tried to move and found that she could not, beat on some stout manly chest: ‘Let me go! Let me go! Let me through! Can’t you see? My boy. . . . Adam! Adam!’

But it happened that a strong body of the new police had just arrived from Scotland Yard that they might form themselves into a line at the end of King Street to prevent the mob from proceeding to the House of Commons. At once a great shout went up: ‘The Peelers!’ ‘The Peelers!’ ‘Down with the Peelers!’ As though the ground were agitated with earthquake, the crowd rocked forward and back, seeming to rise in places like a bulging floor about to crack. A line of wavering flame ran against the walls of the houses where men with lighted wood were ranging themselves in a line of defence. But Judith saw and heard nothing. Adam was lost, Adam might be crushed underfoot, she would never see Adam again; and at that frantic thought all the world that had seemed so important, social, political, religious—yes, and all the Herries, all Uldale, all her individual life and desires, blew like scraps of burnt paper into the air. Her shawl was torn from her, her wide-puffed sleeves rent. She beat on some face with her hands, she tore some cheek with her nails. ‘Let me go! Let me go! Can’t you see? My boy’s gone!’

But no one saw and no one cared. A general fight was toward. Inspector Lincoln of the E Division had arrived with seventy men. The tri-coloured flag that had ‘Reform’ painted on it—the banner of the riot—was captured by the Peelers. There was a rush to recapture it. A man, bare-breasted, his shirt hanging in ribbons from his back, black-haired, brawny, his chest tattooed with a ship in violet and green, hung above the mob like a sign. He had in his hand a hatchet. Judith, seeing him with a strange and memorable distinctness, beheld him, as it seemed to her, trample on her boy. The crowd rose and fell; she was swept off her feet and would, it may be, have ended all her adventures there and then for ever had not some man caught her to him so that she was soaked, as it were, in his sweat and ale and dripping clothes, her head against his beard, his hand upon her breast. A fine thing for an old lady of fifty-six! But it saved her. Crushed, with her face in his rough hair, seeing nothing, frantic for Adam, she heard around her the strange sough and sigh of a mob suddenly terrified, resolved to run, the wind beating from under their feet as though it would raise them to the sky. ‘Reform!’ ‘Reform!’ ‘Reform!’ ‘The Peelers!’ ‘The Peelers!’

And then sudden quiet, a child crying, a whistle sharply blown, and she herself, her cheek bleeding, was half sitting, half crumpled on the pavement. But she was up in a moment. She could run now; there was nothing to stop her. As though God had crooked His little finger, there was no one there. Some man leant against the railings moaning and nursing his head, a beaver hat lay in the roadway, a burning faggot sent up a twist of smoke, and the silence was like a miracle. A yard away there was Adam, crying ‘They’re on the run! They’re on the run! Mother, look, look!’

He had never been more than a yard away, then. She was furious with him and, her hair about her face, did what she had never done before—slapped his face.

‘You careless boy! You careless boy!’

But he was enchanted. It was the best adventure of his life so far. His mouth was bleeding, his coat and trousers torn, but he laughed and laughed as though he’d never have done.

Then she hugged and kissed him.

‘I thought you were killed,’ she said. She felt an old, old woman, an ache in every bone and her head like a turnip. Very characteristically, she recovered her dignity.

‘Now we’ll find a hackney coach,’ she said.

The watchman was calling up from the street below two o’clock of the morning before Adam came in to wish her good night. She was sitting up, a very old lady indeed she felt, propped up with pillows and telling her different aches to mind their business and behave. There was a bruise on her forehead, one knee was lamentably swollen, but there was no real harm done . . . only she was very old of a sudden. Nine hundred and ninety.

‘Come here and kiss me,’ she said.

Adam was in his nightdress, and, with a purple lump the size of a lemon over one eye, looked no beauty.

He laughed and sat on the bed, her arm around him. She made him put on her furred dressing-gown and furred slippers, for the room was viciously cold. There was a warming-pan inside the bed now, and she made him slide his feet inside against hers.

So he slipped into the circle of her arm, lay there with his black hair in his eyes, too eagerly excited to sleep yet. The panic of her fear that she had lost him was still with her. She had never loved him with such passionate intensity and she had never felt so old. Her brain formed odd confused pictures for her, nothing tangible, nothing consecutive. In the big stone fireplace a baby fire leapt as though it were trying its first steps in life so that it might really be a fine grown-up fire one day. An impenetrably black picture of a forest, a lonely tower, and some horsemen swayed a little on its cord, blown by all the draughts of heaven, some of whom whistled through the wallpaper like lonely spirits trying to keep their courage up. Three candles guttered on the table beside the four-poster with the green hangings; a mirror topped with heavy gilt feathers reflected the light. And under and above all this was the dreadful cold, a cold worse than Arctic, for it was damp. Soon Adam was lying inside the bed folded in his mother’s arms as he had not been since he was a tiny boy at Watendlath.

Without words they reached a loving intimate security that daylight and Adam’s dislike of manifestation had hindered at Uldale. It had always been there, but for long now she had not had his heart beating, as it were, inside her very body.

Idly she watched the pictures come and go: Stephen saying ‘And now let us pray’; Sylvia Herries imitating some ballet-dancer at the Opera; young Mr. Harrison Ainsworth (so handsome but wearing too many rings and his curls too heavy with Macassar oil) telling her about his recent Italian journey, and how he had found a rouge-pot at Pompeii; gossip about Ball Hughes and the Bulwers and Lady Blessington and Holland House—and then, over all this nonsense, the figure of the man with the ship of violet on his chest, raising his hatchet. . . .

She held Adam closely to her, kissed him, stroked his forehead. He did not resist nor move away as he would normally have done, but sleepily murmured: ‘Down with the Peelers!’ ‘Down with Wellington!’ ‘Down with the Peelers!’

‘Hush, dear. Don’t think of the horrid thing. I wonder how Amery and Sylvia are! Dear me! how incredibly selfish! I have never thought of them until this instant!’

Then the dancing pictures vanished. She saw something else and with extraordinary clearness. She raised herself on her pillows. Adam tickled her foot with his.

‘Adam, wake up! There is something that I must say!’

He took her hand in his.

‘Adam—you will shortly be a grown man and I shall be an old woman. I had not thought of it until this moment. How dreadful to be old! And I shall not be a nice old woman. I shall want my way. I made the mistake of my whole life when I stayed at Uldale. We should have gone to Watendlath. I have become Herries and made you Herries and shall wish you to be more and more Herries. Adam, promise me that, however I wish it, you will keep your independence. You are not to be Herries. You are illegitimate anyway, and your father was so little Herries as not to matter. I shall want to keep you later. You will be all I shall have. But you are not to permit me. Do you hear? However much I love you. . . . Dear me, dear me, what a nasty old woman I am going to be!’

Then, as there was no response, she said again:

‘You are not to allow me to swallow you, do you understand? Fight me, if need be. In another ten years I shall be completely Herries, from head to toe. How horrible! Adam, do you hear me?’

‘What, Mama?’

‘You are to keep your independence. I love you too much for it to be good for either of us.’

‘And when the Peelers were coming . . .’ he murmured.

The vision passed. She saw nothing, but gathered him closer into her arms, and he slept, holding her hand tightly in his, while she gazed out into the room and watched the little fire surrender its life, and the candles blow unsteadily in the wind.