Jill made no further endeavour to restrain the guilty laughter which was trembling upon her lips.
“I b-believe you just love her,” she bubbled.
I thought very rapidly. Then—
“I think we all do,” said I. “She’s very attractive.”
“I mean it,” said Jill.
“So do I. Look at her ears. Oh, I forgot. Hides them under her hair, doesn’t she? Her eyes, then.”
“I observe,” said Jill pompously, “that you are sitting up and taking notice. Your adol – adol – er – what you said, is at hand. You are emerging from the chrysalis of ignorance—”
“This is blasphemy. You wicked girl. And what are you getting at? Matchmaking or only blackmail?”
Well, it’s time you got married, isn’t it? I don’t want you to, dear, but I know you’ve got to soon, and – and I’d like you to be happy.”
There was a little catch in her voice, and I looked down to see her eyes shining.
“Little Jill,” I said, “if I marry six wives, I shall still be in love with my cousin – a little fair girl, with great grey eyes and the prettiest ways and a heart of the purest gold. And now shall we cry here or by The Serpentine?”
She caught at my arm, laughing.
“Boy, you’re very – Oh, I say! Where’s Nobby?”
We had reached the Achilles Statue, and a hurried retrospect showed me the terrier some thirty paces away, exchanging discourtesies with an Aberdeen. The two were walking round each other with a terrible deliberation, and from their respective demeanours it was transparently clear that only an immediate distraction could avert the scandal of a distressing brawl.
Regardless of my surroundings, I summoned the Sealyham in my “parade” voice. To my relief he started and, after a menacing look at his opponent, presumably intended to discourage an attack in rear, cautiously withdrew from his presence and, once out of range, came scampering in our direction.
My brother-in-law and Daphne, whom we had outdistanced, arrived at the same time.
As I was reproving the terrier—
“The very people,” said a familiar voice.
It was the Assistant Commissioner, labouring under excitement which he with difficulty suppressed. He had been hurrying, and was out of breath.
“I want you to cross the road and walk along by the side of The Row,” he said jerkily. “If you see anyone you recognize, take off your hat. And, Mrs Pleydell, you lower your parasol.”
“But, my dear chap,” said Berry, “they were all masked.”
“Well, if you recognize a voice, or even—”
“A voice? My dear fellow, we’re in the open air. Besides, what jury—”
“For Heaven’s sake,” cried the other, “do as I ask! I know it’s a chance in a million. Think me mad, call me a fool – anything you like…but go.”
His earnestness was irresistible.
I whistled to Nobby – who had seized the opportunity of straying, apparently by accident, towards a bull-terrier – and started to stroll in the direction of The Row. Jill walked beside me, twittering, and a glance over my shoulder showed me my sister and Berry a horse’s length behind. Behind them, again, came the Assistant Commissioner.
We crossed the road and entered the walk he had mentioned.
It was a beautiful day. The great sun flamed out of a perfect sky, and there was little or no wind. With the exception of a riding-master and two little girls The Row was empty, but the walk was as crowded as a comfortably filled ball-room, if you except the dancers who are sitting out; for, while three could walk abreast with small inconvenience either to others or themselves, there was hardly a seat to spare.
I have seen smarter parades. It was clear that many
habitués
had already left Town, and that a number of visitors had already arrived. But there was apparent the same quiet air of gaiety, the same good humour which fine feathers bring, and, truth to tell, less
ennui
and more undisguised enjoyment than I can ever remember.
Idly I talked with Jill, not thinking what I said nor noticing what she answered, but my heart was pounding against my ribs, and I was glancing incessantly from side to side in a fever of fear lest I should miss the obvious.
Now and again I threw a look over my shoulder. Always Berry and Daphne were close behind. Fervently I wished that they were in front.
I began to walk more slowly…
Suddenly I realized that I was streaming with sweat.
As I felt for my handkerchief—
“Look at Nobby,” said Jill. “Whatever’s he doing?”
I glanced at my cousin to follow the direction of her eyes.
Nobby was sitting up, begging, before a large elderly gentleman who was seated, immaculately dressed, some six paces away. He was affecting not to see the terrier, but there was a queer frozen look about his broad smile that set me staring. Even as I gazed he lowered his eyes and, lifting a hand from his knee, began to regard the tips of his fingers, as though they were ungloved…
For a second I stood spellbound.
Then I took off my hat.
How Adèle Feste Arrived,
and Mr Dunkelsbaum Supped with the Devil
“There she is!” cried Jill.
“Where?” said I, screwing up my eyes and peering eagerly at the crowded taffrails.
“There, Boy, there. Look, she’s seen us. She’s waving.”
Hardly I followed the direction of my cousin’s pink index finger, which was stretched quivering towards the promenade deck.
“Is that her in blue?”
But a smiling Jill was already nodding and waving unmistakably to the tall slim figure, advances which the latter was as surely returning with a cheerly wave of her slight blue arm. Somewhat sheepishly I took off my hat.
Adèle Feste had arrived.
More than fifteen months had elapsed since we had reluctantly seen her into the boat-train at Euston and wished her a safe journey to her American home. At the time, with an uneasiness bred of experience, I had wondered whether our friendship was to survive the battery of time and distance, or whether it was destined to slip into a decline and so, presently, out of our lives, fainting and painless. Touch, however, had been maintained by a fitful correspondence, and constant references to Miss Feste’s promised visit to White Ladies – a consummation which we one and all desired – were made for what they were worth. Finally my sister sat down and issued a desperate summons. “My dear, don’t keep us waiting any longer. Arrive in August and stay for six months. If you don’t, we shall begin to believe what we already suspect – that we live too far away.” The thrust went home. Within a month the invitation had been accepted, with the direct result that here were Jill and I, at six o’clock of a pleasant August evening, standing upon a quay at Southampton, while the Rolls waited patiently, with Fitch at her wheel, a stone’s throw away, ready to rush our guest and ourselves over the odd fifteen miles that lay between the port and White Ladies.
With us in the car we could take the inevitable cabin trunk and dressing-case. Adèle’s heavy baggage was to be consigned to the care of Fitch, who would bring it by rail the same evening to Mockery Dale, the little wayside station which served five villages and our own among them.
Nobody from the quay was allowed to board the liner, and none of the passengers were allowed to disembark, until the baggage had been off-loaded. For the best part, therefore, of an hour and a half Jill and I hovered under the shadow of the tall ship, walking self-consciously up and down, or standing looking up at the promenade deck with, so far as I was concerned, an impotently fatuous air and, occasionally, the meretricious leer usually reserved for the photographer’s studio.
At last—
“If they don’t let them off soon,” I announced, “I shall break down. The strain of being cordial with somebody who’s in sight, but out of earshot, is becoming unbearable. Let’s go and have a breather behind the hutment.” And I indicated an erection which looked like a ticket-office that had been thrown together during the Crimean War.
But Jill was inexorable.
“It can’t be long now,” she argued, “and if we go away – There!” She seized my arm with a triumphant clutch. “Look! They’re beginning to get off.”
It was true. One by one the vanguard of passengers was already straggling laden on to the high gangway. I strained my eyes for a glimpse of the slight blue figure, which had left the taffrail and was presumably imprisoned in the press which could be observed welling out of a doorway upon the main deck…
A sudden and violent stress upon my left hand at once reminded me of Nobby’s existence, and suggested that of a cat. Mechanically I held fast to the lead, at the opposite end of which the Sealyham was choking and labouring in a frenzied endeavour to molest a sleek tabby, which, from the assurance of its gait, appeared to be a
persona grata
upon the quay. The attempted felony attracted considerable attention, which should have been otherwise directed, with the result that a clergyman and two ladies were within an ace of being overrun by an enormous truckload of swaying baggage and coarsely reviled by a sweating Hercules for their pains. As it was, the sudden diversion of the trolley projected several pieces of luggage on to the quay, occasioning an embryo stampede of the bystanders and drawing down a stern rebuke, delivered in no measured terms, from a blue-coated official, who had not seen what had happened, upon the heads of innocent and guilty alike. The real offender met my accusing frown with the disarming smile of childish innocence, and, when I shook my head, wagged his tail unctuously. As I picked him up and put him under my arm—
“So this is Nobby,” said Adèle.
I uncovered and nodded.
“And he had a bath this morning, so as to be all nice and clean when Miss Feste arrived. I did, too.”
“How reckless!” said Adèle. “You look very well on it.”
“Thank you,” said I, shaking hands. “And you look glorious. Hullo! You’ve let your hair grow. I am glad.”
“Think it’s an improvement?”
“If possible.”
The well-marked eyebrows went up, the bright brown eyes regarded me quizzically, the faint familiar smile hung maddeningly on the red lips.
“Polite as ever,” she flashed.
“Put it down to the bath,” said I. “Cleanliness is next to – er – devotion.”
“Yes, and he’s been counting the days,” broke in Jill. “He has really. Of course, we all have. But – Oh, Adèle, I’m so glad you’ve come.”
Adèle drew my cousin’s arm within her own.
“So’m I,” she said quietly. “And now – I did have a dressing-case once. And a steamer-trunk… D’you think it’s any good looking for them?”
Twenty minutes later we were all three – four with Nobby – on the front seat of the Rolls, which was nosing its way gingerly out of the town.
“I wonder if you realize,” said Adèle, “what a beautiful country you live in.”
At the moment we were immediately between an unpleasantly crowded tram and a fourth-rate beer-house.
“Don’t you have trams?” said I. “Or does alcohol mean so much to you? I suppose prohibition is a bit of a jar.”
“To tell you the truth, I was thinking of the Isle of Wight. It looked so exquisite as we were coming in. Just like a toy continent out of a giant’s nursery.”
“Before the day is out,” I prophesied, “you shall see finer things than that.”
Once clear of the streets, I gave the car her head.
For a while we slid past low-lying ground, verdant and fresh and blowing, but flat and sparsely timbered, with coppices here and there and, sometimes, elms in the hedgerows, and, now and again, a parcel of youngster oaks about a green – fair country enough at any time, and at this summer sundown homely and radiant. But there was better to come.
The car fled on.
Soon the ground rose sharply by leaps and bounds, the yellow road swerving to right and left, deep tilted meadows on one side with a screen of birches beyond, and on the other a sloping rabble of timber, whose foliage made up a tattered motley, humble and odd and bastard, yet, with it all, so rich in tender tones and unexpected feats of drapery that Adèle cried that it was a slice of fairyland and sat with her chin on her shoulder, till the road curled up into the depths of a broad pinewood, through which it cut, thin, and dead straight, and cool, and strangely solemn. In a flash it had become the nave of a cathedral, immense, solitary. Sombre and straight and tall, the walls rose up to where the swaying roof sobered the mellow sunshine and only let it pass dim and so, sacred. The wanton breeze, caught in the maze of tufted pinnacles, filtered its chastened way, a pensive organist, learned to draw grave litanies from the boughs and reverently voice the air of sanctity. The fresh familiar scent hung for a smokeless incense, breathing high ritual and redolent of pious mystery. No circumstance of worship was unobserved. With one consent birds, beasts and insects made not a sound. The precious pall of silence lay like a phantom cloud, unruffled. Nature was on her knees.
The car fled on.
Out of the priestless sanctuary, up over the crest of the rise, into the kiss of the sunlight we sailed, and so on to a blue-brown moor, all splashed and dappled with the brilliant yellow of the gorse in bloom and rolling away into the hazy distance like an untroubled sea. So for a mile it flowed, a lazy pomp of purple, goldflecked and glowing. Then came soft cliffs of swelling woodland, rising to stay its course with gentle dignity – walls that uplifted eyes found but the dwindled edge of a far mightier flood that stretched and tossed, a leafy waste of billows, flaunting more living shades of green than painters dream of, laced here and there with gold and, once in a long while, shot with crimson, rising and falling with Atlantic grandeur, till the eye faltered, and the proud rich waves seemed to be breaking on the rosy sky.
And over all the sun lay dying, his crimson ebb of life staining the firmament with splendour, his mighty heart turning the dance of Death to a triumphant progress, where Blood and Flame rode by with clouds for chargers, and Earth and Sky themselves shouldered the litter of their passing King.
An exclamation of wonder broke from Adèle, and Jill cried to me to stop.
“Just for a minute, Boy, so that she can see it properly.”
Obediently I slowed to a standstill. Then I backed the great car and swung up a side track for the length of a cricket-pitch. The few cubits thus added to our stature extended the prospect appreciably. Besides, it was now unnecessary to crane the neck.
At last—
“If you’re waiting for me to say ‘Go,’” said Adèle, “I shouldn’t. I’m quite ready to sit here till nightfall. It’s up to you to tear me away.”
I looked at Jill.
“Better be getting on,” I said. “The others’ll be wondering where we are.”
She nodded.
We did not stop again till the car came to rest easily before the great oak door, which those who built White Ladies hung upon its tremendous hinges somewhere in the ‘forties of the sixteenth century.
“It is my duty,” said Berry, “to inform you that on Wednesday I shall not be available.”
“Why?” said my wife.
“Because upon that day I propose to dispense justice in my capacity of a Justice of the Peace. I shall discriminate between neither rich nor poor. Beggars and billionaires shall get it equally in the neck. Innocent and guilty alike—”
“That’ll do,” said Daphne. “What about Thursday?”
“Thursday’s clear. One moment, though. I had an idea there was something on that day.” For a second he drummed on the table, clearly cudgelling his brains. Suddenly, “I knew it,” he cried. “That’s the day of the sale. You know. Merry Down. I don’t know what’s the matter with my memory. I’ve got some rotten news.”
“What?”
Daphne, Jill, Jonah and I fired the question simultaneously.
“A terrible fellow’s after it. One Dunkelsbaum. Origin doubtful – very. Last known address, Argentina. Naturalized in July, 1914. Strictly neutral during the War, but managed to net over a million out of cotton, which he sold to the Central Powers
at a lower price than Great Britain offered
before we tightened the blockade. Never interned, of course. Well, he tried to buy Merry Down by private treaty, but Sir Anthony wouldn’t sell to him. They say the sweep’s crazy about the place and that he means to have it at any price. Jolly, isn’t it?”
There was a painful silence.
Merry Down was the nearest estate to White Ladies, and was almost as precious to us as our own home. For over two centuries a Bagot had reigned uninterruptedly over the rose-red mansion and the spreading park, the brown water and the waving woods – a kingdom of which we had been free since childhood. Never an aged tree blew down but we were told of it, and now – the greatest of them all was falling, the house of Bagot itself.
One of the old school, Sir Anthony had stood his ground up to the last. The War had cost him dear. His only son was killed in the first months. His only grandson fell in the battles of the Somme. His substance, never fat, had shrunk to a mere shadow of its former self. The stout old heart fought the unequal fight month after month. Stables were emptied, rooms were shut up, thing after thing was sold. It remained for a defaulting solicitor to administer the
coup de grâce
…
On the twelfth day of August, precisely at half-past two, Merry Down was to be sold by auction at
The Fountain Inn
, Brooch.
Berry’s news took our breath away.
“D’you mean to say that this is what I fought for?” said I. “For this brute’s peaceful possession of Merry Down?”
“Apparently,” said my brother-in-law. “More. It’s what Derry Bagot and his boy died for, if you happen to be looking at it that way.”
“It’ll break Sir Anthony’s heart,” said Daphne.
“But I don’t understand,” said Adèle. “How – why is it allowed?”
“I must have notice,” said Berry, “of that question.”
“Have you ever heard,” said Jonah, “of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Alien Enemies?”
Adèle shook her head.
“I think you must have,” said Jonah. “Some people call it the British Nation. It’s been going for years.”
“That’s right,” said I. “And its motto is ‘Charity begins at Home.’ There’s really nothing more to be said.”
“I could cry,” announced Jill, in a voice that fully confirmed her statement. “It’s just piteous. What would poor Derry say? Can’t anything be done?”
Berry shrugged his shoulders.
“If half what I’ve heard is true, Merry Down is as good as gone. The fellow means to have it, and he’s rich enough to buy the county itself. Short of assassination, I don’t see what anybody can do. Of course, if you like, you can reproduce him in wax and then stick pins into the image. But that’s very old-fashioned, and renders you liable to cremation without the option of a fine. Besides, as a magistrate, I feel it my bounden duty to—”
“I thought witchcraft and witches were out of date,” said Adèle.
“Not at all,” said Berry. “Only last week we bound one over for discussing the housing question with a wart-hog. The animal, which, till then, had been laying steadily, became unsettled and suspicious and finally attacked an inoffensive Stilton with every circumstance of barbarity.”