A Night in Cold Harbour Page 3

  ‘Very well, Romilly! Very well, sir! If you won’t, you won’t. But I warn you I may be obliged to close with Cranton.’

  Having said this a dozen times the pig-headed old gentleman began to believe it. In the end he parted with the land as much to punish Romilly as to enrich himself. Nor did anybody imagine that much would come of it. Cranton might have secured the valley but it was supposed that a good many years must elapse before he did anything with it. Mr. Brandon did not expect smoking chimneys to rise during his own lifetime, though they might do so to plague Romilly after his death. They rose within a very few months. A tatterdemalion horde known as ‘Cranton’s people’ came swarming through the forest to build their huts round the kilns. There was no remedy save to ignore the very existence of the place, which was easy for the Brandons, since rising ground and thick plantations lay between the river and Stretton Courtenay.

  The eyesore vanished when the carriage had taken the second turn down the hill. Thereafter the prospect indicated order and prosperity. They saw well tilled fields, fine timber, thriving farms and neat cottages. As they approached Stretton their consequence increased. They were no longer mere travellers in a post-chaise. Romilly was the most important creature within a radius of ten miles. He looked about him and thought that his neglect did not seem to have done his people much harm. Giles, his steward, maintained the family tradition of treating them well. Should they fall into trouble his mother and old Newbolt, the Parson, supplied soup and blankets.

  The village was very pretty. On its wide triangular green some boys were playing cricket. Others sat watching under the trees. This pleased Latymer, who leant out again to look, and heard, above the noise of the carriage, the sounds of a summer evening, when the shadows lengthen and folk turn from work to play. He heard the caw of homing rooks, the smack of a ball on a bat, and a lazy cheer from the group under the trees.

  ‘I think I could still enjoy a game of cricket,’ he said.

  ‘Could you?’

  Yawning, Romilly reflected that he had this fellow on his hands for the best part of a fortnight. But I won’t play cricket, he thought. I draw the line at that. Ellen can play with him; if I’d thought of it in time I could have bought her a cricket bat in Severnton. I suppose I should have bought presents for all of them.

  Ellen, whom he remembered as a long-legged rosy child, was his youngest sister. Now that he was bowling along beside the walls of his own park he began to picture his arrival — his mother’s exclamations and her probable tears. She would ask why he came, how long he meant to stay, yet would give him no time to answer. He must endeavour to be patient with her, to listen to her budget of tedious news, and to kiss Bet and Amabel with some attempt at cordiality. Ellen was the only one of the girls for whom he felt any affection. He wished that he had brought her a pretty work box. To pinch her round cheek and to make her laugh was not a duty but a pleasure. She would hardly regard Latymer as much of a present.

  They were at the lodge gates. An old woman opened them, bobbed a curtsey, recognised Romilly, and bobbed another with an audible squawk of surprise. They bowled through the park, crossed a bridge spanning an ornamental canal, and drew up before the honey-coloured façade of Stretton Priors.

  Partridge, the butler, had the door open before they had alighted. He was too well trained to squawk, and contrived to look as though his master had just returned after an hour’s airing.

  ‘How d’ye do, Partridge? I am come home, you see. Is all well here?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Here is Mr. Latymer come with me. You had better get a room ready and all that sort of thing. Where is my mother?’

  She should have been in the hall already, fluttering and exclaiming. Partridge, in a tone of apology, explained that Madam was from home.

  ‘She’s dining out?’

  ‘No, sir. She has gone to Hereford, to Mrs. Sykes, for a fortnight, and taken all the young ladies with her.’

  Mrs. Sykes was Sophy, Romilly’s second sister. When he heard the news he burst out laughing, and turned to Latymer.

  ‘We might as well have stayed with Scrutty. Here’s another bachelor’s hall.’

  2

  HE AWOKE NEXT morning in excellent spirits. This was so unusual with him that he put it down at first to the fact that he had not been obliged to drink too much, the night before, or to lose money at play. Then it struck him that Stretton Priors might be a very agreeable place could he always have it completely to himself.

  For a fortnight he would not be obliged to play the central part in an intricate pattern, devised and ordained long before he was born. To fly from it had hitherto appeared to be the only course, since he might not alter it by a hairbreadth. He might receive deference, give orders, but he had never thought it possible to escape from the life which his father had led before him. If he lived at Stretton Priors at all he must take his place on the Bench, confer pompously with Giles, visit the local bumpkins, and eat his dinner at four o’clock.

  Now, sipping his morning chocolate, he asked himself why these plagues should be obligatory. After some reflection he decided to make a list of important reforms, immediately to be set on foot. To head such a document with the word Object was in itself stimulating: he often thought that he might be a happy man could he but find a satisfactory object.

  A French cook. (Supper last night abominable.) Dine at six o’clock.

  Water closets. Tell Partridge I’ll have no jordans in the sideboard.

  Throw out pictures. Replace with better.

  Library?

  Cellars? Probably adequate.

  These pleasing projects could only occupy him as long as he was able to fancy that his ladies had gone to Hereford for ever. Their return within a fortnight was not propitious to his Object. His mother’s conversation would ruin any meal, even though it were dressed by a French cook. He could not inflict it upon the kind of company which he meant eventually to discover and collect, in place of local bumpkins who might continue to demand jordans in the sideboard. The wives of these bumpkins were his mother’s oldest aquaintance: she might, with justice, refuse to drop them.

  What, he wondered, did other men do with their female relations? Scrutty had a mother and a sister or two who had fled to Bath rather than share a roof with the Seraglio. But Scrutty was no model for elegant seclusion. Other men seemed to put up with this nuisance until they married, when the problem was solved by some convenient dower house.

  There was such a house on the Brandon property, which had stood empty since the death of his grandmother. He remembered it as a very pleasant place. For a party of ladies no house could be more suitable than Corston. It stood on a river bank, opposite a fine wooded hill. Established there they could entertain whom they pleased. They could, besides, take the present cook with them. There need be no painful dismissals. They could take any servants they chose, so long as they left Partridge. Corston would answer perfectly if suggested in some way which could not possibly hurt their feelings.

  He thought that he had better inspect it immediately. According to his father it afforded ‘the prettiest peep’ in all Severnshire. The river there ran very smooth and clear; it reflected every leaf on the wooded hill opposite. If one crossed the bridge, there was the house, dreaming upside down against the clouds. It had always looked more beautiful, that house in the river, than any real house could hope to be. He and Jenny, as children, had devised some curious legends concerning it and the person who lived in it. They had a name for it which they had got from some old book belonging to Dr. Newbolt. This name now escaped Romilly’s memory, but the mythical owner had been, he thought, called Lord Carn. These memories, however, must be dismissed if he was to revisit Corston. Fear of them had kept him away for ten years. He rang the bell for his boots.

  The penalties of good nature were brought home to him when no Markham answered the bell. After a very long delay a hobbledehoy appeared who disclaimed all knowledge of boots.

&nbs
p; ‘Find out!’ snapped Romilly. ‘And tell them I want a horse. Two horses. Stay! Take my compliments to Mr. Latymer and ask if he would choose to ride with me this morning.’

  The creature gaped and vanished. Romilly looked about for his clothes which must have been unpacked and put away by some demented devil. He was still hunting for a shirt when the half-wit returned, breathing heavily:

  ‘Your boots is a-bringing, sir. And Mr. Partridge says for to say the other gentleman have et enough breakfast for six, these three hours gone, and we don’t none of us know where he be now.’

  ‘What d’ye call yourself?’ asked Romilly, amused in spite of his vexation.

  ‘George, so please your honour.’

  ‘I should have said what’s your service?’

  ‘Second-man-on-approval, so please your honour.’

  ‘The devil you are! What’s become of … of … the other fellow …?’

  ‘William is gone with the ladies, sir.’

  Partridge here appeared with the boots, swept George out of the room and helped Romilly to dress. He explained that this lubberly fellow was cousin to Mrs. Flinders, the housekeeper, who had begged Madam to give him a trial. He was new to the work and would have been kept out of sight, had William not gone to Hereford. Romilly had forgotten old Flinders and her innumerable cousins. They could all go to Corston, he thought, as Partridge knelt to put on his boots. A clean sweep. I’ll have decent people about me.

  When asked whether all the horses had also gone to Hereford, Partridge became regretful and apologetic. Not much in the way of a mount, he admitted, could be produced for his master that morning. Romilly enquired sarcastically after the cook, and learnt that she had gone to Bristol. Some underling called Dolly Skeate had produced that abominable supper.

  ‘Mrs. Flinders? Where’s she? At John o’ Groats?’

  ‘No, sir. She and the maids are taking the opportunity to clean the library.’

  ‘What? D’ye mean to say I can’t sit in my library? Upon my word, it has all been very ill managed. When I come home I don’t expect to find half my servants gone off and half my rooms unfit for use.’

  Partridge bowed his head, accepting the reproof, attended his master downstairs, and saw him onto one of the errand horses.

  This contrast between the real and the imagined return amused Romilly, although he kept up a scowl. It served him very well to have a grievance. As he rode off he delivered a neat ultimatum to the apologies which his mother would be obliged to offer on her return.

  ‘My dear ma’am, why should you not visit Sophy whenever you please? But you must admit that these upheavals won’t do if I am to be living in my own house. I can’t be left with no horses, no cook, and nobody to clean my boots. Yet it would be a melancholy thing if my return were to restrict your freedom. Were I married, you would, of course, enjoy all the advantages of your own establishment….’

  Things could hardly have fallen out better. This neglect was far more propitious to his Object than any anxious attempts to please and content him.

  Occupied with these reflections, he rode on towards the rise in the ground separating Stretton from the river valley. Here, where the track led through a plantation, he began to take some notice of his surroundings. There had been, he perceived, a loss of brightness in the day, a dimming of the sunshine. His nose now protested against an acrid smell. The air was full of smoke. Ahead he could see great clouds of it, inky black, drifting through the slender trees. Then he was in the midst of it. This was no heath fire! It was not wood smoke.

  With a slight shift in the wind it veered aside. He could see the plantation ride again and noticed that all the eastward sides of the trees were slightly blackened. Then the dense cloud poured down on him once more, so that he could scarcely see a yard ahead. He was half choking when, with the next wind shift, he saw the track leading out of the trees and up over Corston Common. The great wall of blackness rolled away on his left. Now he rode in sunshine, but even here the grass and bushes had a scorched smutty look.

  Cranton! The explanation burst on him. This was a Saturday, when they burned coarse salt in the kilns, leaving the ovens to cool over Sunday. His mother often complained of the smoke as a great evil, although it seldom blew as far as Stretton.

  Hopes of Corston began to decline when he remembered its situation, so close to Cranton’s. A Saturday there would be unendurable. With mounting anxiety he reached the top of the rise and went a little way down a rutted lane. He knew exactly when he should first catch sight of the house. They had ridden over there so often in the old days; he, Jenny, her brothers, Charles and Frank, his sisters, Charlotte and Sophy, a party of children in the care of an elderly groom. Down this lane they went to Corston. The rest would raid the famous strawberry beds. He and Jenny would run across the footbridge to look at the house among the clouds.

  Here was the turn in the lane where one could look over a gate. He drew rein and looked. The blackened house was still there, rotting away beside a river which could never reflect anything, so thick it ran with scum and clay deposit from the pottery above. He stared long enough to know that everything down there, the weedy lawns, the young green foliage, the mellow walls, now bore the same squalid smear. Then he turned his horse and rode away. So much for Corston! He had, he knew, been a little afraid of seeing it again, but he had never dreamt that nobody would ever see it again.

  Ten years rolled away, as the black smoke rolled when the wind shifted, leaving him defenceless against pain. He might be feeling his loss for the first time. It drove like a keen pure blade into some part of him which he had hitherto contrived to protect.

  She had never been a beauty. She was too tall, her face was too long, she had no complexion, and her dark hair could seldom be kept in curl. Yet there had been a time when the handsomest women in the country looked insipid beside her. They were all determined to please him, all hoping that he would fall in love with them. She never altered. She said what was in her mind, and that mind was completely congenial to him. She had been, still was in memory, superior beyond comparison to any other woman.

  With what exquisite tranquillity could he go down a dance with her! He knew himself to be the target of so many smiles, the object of so much conscious flattery, and exulted in his secret immunity. Only once, for a week or so, had his heart wandered. A very lovely girl came to visit a neighbouring family. She had all the enhanced interest of a complete stranger. His head had been a little turned until he chanced to overhear her scolding her maid and felt that a wasp might make as good a wife. Only with Jenny could a man hope to be safe from shocks of that kind.

  The celebration of his twenty-first birthday was to culminate in a great ball. It was then that he meant to announce his choice to an astonished world. She had fallen in with the plan, just as she had shared his choice of Corston as the only house in which they could possibly live. They had but one mind between them until that unspeakable day when she faced him, dressed all in black save for an apron as white as her face, and insisted that everything was now quite changed. It was a wintry day, very soon after her mother’s death. There had been a heavy frost, he remembered, on the day that they had buried poor Mrs. Newbolt.

  Again the familiar pall of resentment rolled over him, numbing his grief. The past was the past. Nothing could recall it. He must make as much of the present as he could. He had an Object. Every day should see some step forward in the transformation of Stretton Priors. As soon as he got home he would give orders that dinner must, in future, be served at six o’clock.

  On second thoughts he decided, for Latymer’s sake, to postpone this particular reform for twenty-four hours. Poor Latymer, expecting to eat at four, might grow confoundedly hungry if kept waiting till six. But the more elegant timetable should certainly be ordained for tomorrow.

  3

  AT FOUR O’CLOCK, therefore, they dined. Romilly came to the conclusion that Dolly Skeate must be a descendant of Mme de Brinvilliers, the celebrated poisoner. Laty
mer, however, swallowed all that was set before him with the greatest satisfaction. It appeared that he had been fishing all day.

  ‘And when I came back,’ he said, ‘I made the acquaintance of a very pretty girl.’

  ‘You’ve lost no time! Pray where did you find her?’

  ‘Playing the pianoforte in your drawing room.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘I heard her as I came in and wondered who it could be. When I had changed my dress I ventured to peep in, and there she was, hard at it. As lovely a girl as ever I saw.’

  ‘But who is she?’

  ‘A Miss Newbolt. The daughter of the Parson here.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘Your mother told her to come here whenever she likes to practise her crotchets and quavers. But you must know her?’

  ‘To be sure I do. And you think her … handsome?’

  ‘Anybody must think so. On the tall side, of course, and not one of these rosy girls. Something pale. Don’t you admire her, then?’

  ‘I’ve not seen her for a long time. Go on!’

  ‘I introduced myself and begged her to continue, which she refused to do. She said she must be going home, so I walked with her across the park.’

  ‘Did she know that I … that we were here?’

  ‘To be sure she did. We talked about you on all the walk. She’s wild with curiosity to see you, and asked a great many questions, most of which I couldn’t answer.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  ‘Your habits. Your tastes. The books you read. I fancy she might be a trifle bookish and poetical. But there’s no harm in that if a girl is pretty.’

  Romilly was stunned. If this was true the change in Corston could be nothing to the change in Jenny. The indelicacy of such an intrusion, forcing herself into the house although she knew him to be there, would once have been impossible to her. She knew his tastes. She knew what books he read. Or had that been a delusion? Had she been no more than a posturing cheat, like all the rest? Or had she sunk to this after breaking with him? Despite his resentment he had been, in his own way, faithful to her for ten years. He had always thought of her as superior. Must he now learn to despise her?