§
While they, along the roads, were drawing every minute nearer, the
unconscious Duke was sitting in his plain study, having his plain tea,
which had been set beside him by his plain parlourmaid. This is not to
say that the parlourmaid was ill-favoured, but only that she wasn’t a
footman.
There were no footmen at Crippenham. There was hardly anything there,
except the Duke. For years it had been his conviction that this annual
fortnight of the rest that is obtained by complete contrast prolonged
his life. Something evidently prolonged it, and the Duke was sure it was
Crippenham. There he went every Easter alone with Laura, because it was
a small house, and an ugly house, and a solitary house, and had nothing
to recommend it except that it was the exact opposite of every other
Moulsford possession.
Only Charles could come and go as he pleased; only he could dare break
in without notice on the sacred yearly business of prolonging life.
Although he had had ninety-three years of it, the Duke still wanted
more. He liked being alive, and it pleased him to keep Streatley
waiting. Streatley, and the other three children of his first
marriage--absurd, he thought, to have to refer to those four old things
as children--were unpopular with their father. He had never at any time
cared much for them, and had begun to be really angry with them when he
was a lively seventy, and perceived that the possession of children
bordering on a heavy fifty made him seem less young than he felt himself
to be. Now that they were practically seventy themselves, and old
seventies too, and he not looking a day different, he hoped, from what
he had looked thirty years before, he was angrier with them than ever.
He admitted that other people might be old at ninety-three, but he
wasn’t; he was the exception. He didn’t feel old, and he didn’t, he
considered, look old, so what was all this talk of age? The press never
mentioned him without the prefix venerable; people pretended he was
deaf, when he could hear as well as any man if he wasn’t mumbled at;
Laura was continually making him sit out of draughts, just as if he were
a damned invalid; arms were offered him if he wanted to walk a few
steps--he couldn’t appear in the House without some officious member of
it, usually that ass Chepstow, who was eighty if a day himself, ambling
across to help; and every time he had a birthday the newspapers tumbled
over each other with their offensively astonished congratulations.
Couldn’t a man be over ninety without having it perpetually rubbed into
him that he was old?
What he loved was his brood of young ones--Laura, Terry, and Charles;
and of this lively trio the dearest to him was Charles. So that, looking
up from his seedcake and seeing his last born coming into the room, not
only entirely unexpectedly but with a young woman, though he was
surprised he wasn’t angry; and when on their coming close to him he
perceived the exceeding fairness of the young woman, his surprise
became pleasurable; very pleasurable; in fact, pleasurable to excess.
He stared up at Sally a moment, not listening to what Charles was
saying, and then struggled to get on to his feet. Younger than his three
young ones ... much, much younger than his three young ones ... youth,
ah, youth ... lovely, lovely youth....
Charles wanted to help him, but was thrust aside. ‘Poor old gentleman,’
said Sally, catching him by the arm as he seemed about to lose his
balance and drop back into the chair.
‘Married?’ asked the Duke, breathing hard after his exertion, and
looking at Charles.
Charles shook his head.
‘’Course I’m married,’ said Sally with heat.
‘He means us,’ said Charles.
‘Us?’ repeated Sally, much shocked.
‘You’re going to be, then,’ said the Duke, looking first at her and then
at Charles, his face red with pleasure.
Charles shook his head again, and laughed.
But the Duke didn’t laugh. He stared at him a minute, and then said,
‘Fool.’
‘I _got_ a nusband,’ said Sally indignantly.
‘He can’t hear,’ said Charles. ‘He’s very deaf.’
‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke. ‘Speak clearly, my dear--no, don’t
shout,’ he added; though Sally, far from going to shout, wasn’t even
opening her mouth. Poor old gentleman, she thought, gazing at him in
silent compassion; fancy him still being anybody’s father.
The Duke took her hand in a dry, cold grip.
‘Like shakin’ ’ands with a tombstone,’ thought Sally. And she was
filled with so great a pity for anything so old that she didn’t feel shy
of him at all, and in the coaxing voice of one who is addressing a baby
she said, ‘’Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot--do, now.’
Charles looked at her astonished. Nearly everybody was afraid of his
father. She reminded him of the weaned child in Isaiah, who put its hand
fearlessly on the cockatrice’s den.
‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke, gazing at her with delight.
‘This is Mrs. Luke, Father--a friend of Laura’s,’ shouted Charles, ‘and
I’ve brought her----’
‘Write it down, my dear,’ said the Duke, not heeding Charles, and
drawing Sally into a chair next his own and pushing paper and a pencil
towards her with his shaking old hands. ‘Write down what you were saying
to me.’
Charles became anxious. He felt sure Sally couldn’t write anything down.
Nor could she; for if her spoken words were imperfect her written ones
were worse, so that to be given a pencil and paper by the Duke and told
to write might have been embarrassing if she hadn’t, owing to his
extreme age and evident dilapidation, felt he wasn’t, as she said to
herself, all there. Poor old gentleman, she thought, full of pity. What
she saw, sitting heavily in the chair, breathing hard and blinking at
her so kindly, was just, thought Sally, the remains, the left-overs;
like, she said to herself, her images being necessarily domestic,
Sunday’s dinner by the time one got to Friday,--not much good, that is,
but had to be put up with. No; there was nothing frightening about
_him_, poor old gentleman. More like a baby than anything else.
‘’Ave yer tea while it’s ’ot,’ she said again, gently putting the paper
and pencil aside. ‘Do you good,’ she encouraged, ‘a nice ’ot cup of tea
will.’
‘He can’t hear, you know,’ said Charles, much relieved by Sally’s
attitude. But with what confidence, he thought, couldn’t a thing so
gracious approach the most churlish, disgruntled of human beings; and
his father wasn’t either churlish or disgruntled,--he only looked as if
he were, and frightened people, and when he saw they were frightened he
didn’t like them, and frightened them more than ever.
The Duke, watching Sally’s every movement with rapt attention, thought
when she put her hand on the teapot to feel if it was still hot that she
wanted tea herself, and bade Charles ring the bell and order more to be
brought, and meanwhile he took the cup she offered him obediently, his
eyes on her face. He hadn’t got as far, being still in too great a
condition of amazement at her beauty, as wondering which of the ancient
families of England had produced this young shoot of perfection, and not
being able to hear a word she said took it for granted that the
delicate-ankled--he was of the practically extinct generation that looks
first at a woman’s ankles,--slender-fingered creature belonged to his
own kind. True her hands were red hands; surprisingly red, he thought,
on her presently taking off her gloves, which she rolled up together
into a neat tight ball, compared to the flawless fairness of her face;
but they were the authentic shape of good-breeding, even if her
nails----
The Duke was really surprised when his eyes reached Sally’s nails.
Charles drew a chair close up to his father, and began his explanations.
He was determined the old man should attend, and shouted well into his
ear as he told him that he had motored Laura’s friend, Mrs. Luke, down
from London, where she had been staying with Laura at Goring House, to
Crippenham for the night because it was quieter, and she hadn’t been
well----
‘_I’m_ all right,’ interrupted Sally, who had been listening in an
attitude of polite attention.
‘Oh, my dear child--when you fainted,’ protested Charles in his ordinary
voice, raising a deprecating hand.
‘Speak up,’ said the Duke, impatiently.
‘’Course I fainted,’ said Sally, looking pleased.
‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.
‘Yes--and were unconscious for at least half an hour,’ said Charles.
‘That’s right. _And_ sick,’ said Sally, looking proud.
‘Sick? Were you sick as well? Then see how really ill----’
‘Speak up, speak up,’ said the Duke testily.
But Sally said nothing further, and merely smiled indulgently at
Charles.
‘What did she say?’ asked the Duke, not wishing to lose a word that fell
from that enchanting mouth.
‘She said,’ shouted Charles, ‘that she is quite well now.’
‘Of course she is,’ said the Duke, staring at her face and forgetting
her nails. ‘Anyone can see she is as perfectly well as she is perfectly
beautiful.’
‘Oh lor,’ thought Sally, ‘now _’e’s_ goin’ to begin.’
§
That afternoon and evening were a triumph for her if she had known it,
but all she knew was that she was counting the hours to next day, and
Jocelyn, and the settling down at last to her home and her duties. The
old man was her slave. Crippenham and everything in it was laid at her
feet, and the Duke only lamented that it should be to this one of his
houses that she had come, where he couldn’t, he was afraid, make her
even decently comfortable. Positively at Crippenham there was only one
bathroom. The Duke seemed to regard this as a calamity, and Sally
listened with mild wonder to the amount he had to say about it.
‘Fair ’arps on it, don’t ’e, poor old gentleman,’ she remarked to
Charles; and bending over to the Duke’s ear--Charles looked on in
astonishment at the fearless familiarity of the gesture--she tried to
convey to him that it wasn’t Saturday night till the next night, and
that by then she’d be in Cambridge, so there was no need for him to take
on.
‘Eh?’ said the Duke. ‘What does she say?’ he asked Charles.
‘She says,’ shouted Charles, ‘that it doesn’t matter.’
How very glad he was that his father was so deaf. Often he had found his
deafness trying, but how glad he was of it now. Not Saturday night....
Charles fell silent. It was then Friday. Could it be that since the
previous Saturday----?
The Duke, however, knew nothing of Sally except what his eyes told him,
and accordingly he was her slave. When she presently went up to Laura’s
room with the housekeeper, who had instructions to place everything of
Lady Laura’s at Mrs. Luke’s disposal--Crippenham had no spare rooms,
only a room each for the Duke, and Charles, and Laura, the other six or
seven bedrooms being left unfurnished and kept locked up--and Charles,
who from long practice could make his father hear better than anyone
except Laura, settled down to telling him as much about Sally as he
thought prudent, the old man listened eagerly, his hand behind his ear,
drinking in every word and asking questions which showed that if he was
really interested in a subject he still could be most shrewd.
He was delighted that Sally should have run away from her mother-in-law,
said it was proof of a fine, thoroughbred spirit, and asked who her
father was.
Charles said his name was Pinner.
The Duke then inquired whether he were one of the Worcestershire
Pinners, and Charles said he didn’t know.
The Duke then rambled off among his capacious memories, and presently
brought back a Pinner who had been at Christchurch with him, and who had
married, he said, one of the Dartmoors, an extremely handsome woman,
fair too, who was probably the girl’s grandmother.
Charles merely bowed his head.
The Duke then asked who the Lukes, apart from this boy-husband at
Ananias, were; for, he said, except the fellow in the Bible, he couldn’t
recollect ever having heard of a Luke before.
Charles said all he knew was that they lived at South Winch.
‘What?’ cried the Duke. ‘Has she married beneath her?’--and was so
really upset that for a time he blinked at Charles in silence. Because
he felt that if only this dear son of his had secured the beautiful
young creature he could have died content; and it seemed to him a double
catastrophe that not only should his boy have missed her, but that she
should have been caught into a misalliance with some obscure family in a
suburb.
‘Upon my word, Charles,’ he said, after a dismayed silence, ‘that’s a
pity. A very great pity.’
And rambling off into his memories again, he said it was a good thing
that poor Jack Pinner was dead, for no man had a keener family feeling
than he, and it would have broken his heart to think his grand-daughter
had made a mistake of that kind.
He couldn’t get over it. He had never, in the whole of his long life,
seen anyone to touch this girl for beauty, and that she should, at the
very outset of what ought to have been a career of unparalleled
splendour and success, have dropped out of her proper sphere and become
entangled in a suburb really shocked him. Kings at her feet, all Europe
echoing with her name--this seemed to the Duke such beauty’s proper
accompaniment.
‘Tut, tut,’ he said, his hands, clasped on the top of his stick, shaking
more than usual, ‘tut, tut, tut. What was her mother thinking of?’
‘Her mother is dead,’ said Charles.
‘Her father, then. Jack Pinner was no fool. I don’t understand how his
son--where is he, by the way? I heard something about the Worcestershire
estates having been sold after the war----’
Charles said he didn’t know where her father was, because, although
Sally had told him the shop was at Woodles, he had never heard of
Woodles, which indeed is not marked on any map, so that he felt he
wasn’t lying in saying he didn’t know.
The Duke, however, appeared to be seized by a sudden fierce desire to
track down his old friend’s reprehensible son and tell him what he
thought of him, and Charles was dismayed, for no good, he was sure,
could come of tracking down Mr. Pinner. Sally, he knew, was anxious her
father shouldn’t find out her disobedience to his orders, and though of
this disobedience Charles held Laura guilty, not Sally, yet he didn’t
suppose Mr. Pinner would look at it like that, and it was, besides,
important, Charles considered, that his father, who had always had a
rooted objection to any woman who wasn’t well-bred, should go on
thinking Sally was a Worcestershire Pinner.
It seemed, then, to Charles a good thing to keep his father and Mr.
Pinner apart, and it was therefore with regret that he listened to the
old man asking Sally the moment he next saw her, which wasn’t till
dinner, for she stayed up in her room till fetched down by the
scandalised housekeeper, to whom it was a new experience that His Grace
should be kept waiting even a minute after the gong had sounded, where
her father was.
‘’Im?’ said Sally, turning pale but forced by nature and her upbringing
to an obedient truthfulness. ‘’E’s at Woodles, ’_e_ is.’ And, ‘Oh my
gracious,’ she added to herself, ‘they ain’t goin’ to tell ’im I’m
’ere?’
‘What does she say?’ the Duke asked Charles.
‘She says,’ shouted Charles, following his father, who was shuffling
along leaning on Sally’s arm, to the dining-room, and shouting with
outward composure but inward regret, ‘that he is at Woodles.’
‘Woodles? Woodles?’ repeated the Duke. ‘Never heard of it. Is it in
Worcestershire?’
Sally shook her head. She didn’t know where Worcestershire was, but she
felt pretty sure Woodles wasn’t in it.
‘_I_ dunno wot it’s in,’ she said. And then, impelled as always to the
naked truth, she added, ‘Close by ’ere, any’ow.’
‘What does she say?’ inquired the Duke, turning again to Charles.
‘She says,’ shouted Charles, obliged to hand on the answer correctly
with Sally listening, but doing so with increased regret, ‘that it isn’t
far from here.’
‘How very lucky,’ said the Duke, ‘and how very odd that I shouldn’t have
known he was so near.’ And he added, when he had been lowered into his
chair at the head of the table by the parlourmaid, who held one arm, and
his servant, who held the other, ‘I’d like to have a talk with that
father of yours, my dear.’
Sally turned paler.
‘Your grandfather was one of my oldest friends,’ continued the Duke,
with difficulty unfolding his table-napkin because of how much his hands
shook.
‘I ain’t _got_ no grandfather,’ said Sally anxiously, who had never
heard of him till that moment.
‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.
‘She says,’ began Charles reluctantly--‘You know,’ he muttered quickly
to Sally, for how could he tell the old man what she had said? ‘you
_have_ a grandfather--or had. You must have. Everybody has them.’
‘What? What?’ said the Duke impatiently. ‘Send a message round tonight,
Charles, and say with my compliments that I’d very much like to see
Pinner. Tell him I’m too old to go to him, so perhaps he’ll be obliging
enough to come to me some time tomorrow. You can say his father was at
Oxford with me if you like, and that I’ve only just heard he is in the
neighbourhood. Say his daughter----’
‘Now don’t--now _don’t_ go doin’ a thing like that,’ Sally faintly
begged of Charles.
‘What does she say?’ asked the Duke.
‘Do you think it’s wise to break your rule of never seeing anybody while
you’re here?’ shouted Charles. ‘You shouldn’t,’ he added to Sally, ‘have
told him about Woodles.’
‘But ’e _ask_ me,’ said Sally, distressed.
‘You’re not obliged to tell everybody everything,’ said Charles.
‘But if they _asks_ me----’ said Sally, almost in tears.
The Duke became suddenly cross. ‘I hate all this muttering,’ he said.
‘Why on earth can’t you speak up, Charles?’
Charles spoke up. ‘It’s impossible to send tonight, Father,’ he shouted.
‘If you won’t keep servants here you can’t send messages.’
‘Then you can go yourself tomorrow,’ said the Duke.
‘Now don’t--now _don’t_ go doin’ a thing like that,’ implored Sally
again.
‘And bring him back in your car,’ said the Duke.
‘I believe Mrs. Luke would rather not see her father,’ shouted Charles.
‘That’s right,’ said Sally, nodding her head emphatically. It did sound
awful though--not wanting to see one’s father. ‘Ain’t I gettin’ wicked
_quick_,’ she thought; and hung her head.
He didn’t seem to think so, however, the old gentleman didn’t, for he
leant across to her looking as pleasant as pleasant, and patted her
shoulder with his poor shaky old hand, and said she was quite right.
Right? Poor old gentleman, thought Sally--past even knowing good from
bad.
The Duke bent across and patted her shoulder, a broad smile on his face.
Such spirit--running away from her mother-in-law, and kicking at seeing
her father--delighted him. She was a high-stepper, this lovely, noble
little lady, and all his life he had admired only those women whose
steps were high.
‘You shan’t see him, my dear,’ he said. ‘Quite right, quite right not to
wish to.’ And just as she was heaving a sigh of thankfulness he added,
‘But _I_ will. I really must have a talk with him.’
Strange, thought Charles, this determination to talk with Sally’s
father. How much better, how much more really useful, to talk with her
husband, or her mother-in-law.
§
After dinner, which Sally ate reluctantly, for she well knew by now that
her ways with knives and forks were somehow different from the ways of
people like Lukes and dukes, and she felt, besides, that the old
gentleman’s eye was on her--which it was, but her face, for she was of
course now without her hat, engrossed his whole attention, and he saw
nothing that her hands were doing--after dinner, after, that is, the
small cups of clear soup and the grilled cutlets with floury potatoes
which were the evening meal at Crippenham during the severity of the
retreat, Charles went into the garden to smoke.
It was a small garden, with nothing in it but a plot of rough grass,
some shrubs, a tree or two, and in one corner the shut up four-roomed
cottage his father had had built for him and Laura and Terry twenty-five
years ago, when first he bought Crippenham, to play at housekeeping in.
For years it had been unused; a melancholy object, Charles thought
whenever he went into the garden and saw it there, smothered in creepers
and deserted, a relic of vanished youth, a reminder that one was
getting old.
Beneath its silent walls he wandered up and down, thinking. Every now
and then, drawn by the light streaming out through the uncurtained
window of his father’s study, he crossed the grass and stood a moment
looking in, fascinated by the picture inside,--the two figures
brilliantly lit up, the hunched-up old man, with his great bald head
glistening in the light, talking, talking, and the exquisite girl, her
head bowed in a divine courtesy and patience, listening, though her
angelic little face was distinctly troubled. That was because of the
fear of her father, Charles knew. She needn’t be afraid. If the old man
insisted on seeing Pinner he would have to go to Woodles himself, for
Charles certainly wasn’t going to fetch the creature. Charles didn’t at
all like Mr. Pinner--imagine turning down a daughter, and such a
daughter, when she fled to him for sanctuary!--but though he didn’t like
him, and quite shared his father’s opinion that he should be talked to,
wisdom told him that the best thing to do with Mr. Pinner was to leave
him alone. The Lukes were the ones needing talking to. The Lukes were
the people to deal with. The Lukes----
Yes; what line had he best take with his father in the conversation he
meant to have after their adorable guest had gone to bed? He wandered up
and down the path beneath the shuttered windows of the deserted cottage,
deep in reflection. It was clear to him that nobody except his father
could really help Sally. Laura, though she was provided with everything,
and more than everything, that she wanted, had no separate income of her
own, and could do nothing beyond giving moral support. He himself
couldn’t lift a finger without at once causing scandal. His father
could; his father was the only person who could; and his father, Charles
determined, should. There were, then, after all, thought Charles, back
at the window again and staring through it, compensations in being so
old: one could help Sally. His father was revoltingly rich. It would be
nothing to him to set her on her feet. True, there was no earthly reason
why he should, but sometimes--great God, couldn’t a man sometimes come
out of the narrow ring of reason, get outside the circle of just claims,
forget his cautious charities, be unbusinesslike, break traditions,
shock solicitors, and for once in his life do something absurd, and
beautiful, and entirely for nothing?
Charles threw away his cigarette, and with his hands in his pockets took
a few quick strides about the little garden, excited, stirred out of his
customary calm. Why, even if the old man did as little for her as
interrupt his rest-cure for a few hours and take her into Cambridge
himself, just for the girl to be seen with him, just for her to appear
under his wing, would knock every obstacle out of her path, except that
one obstacle of young Luke’s poverty. His father knew the Master of
Ananias; his father knew everybody. They all listened when he spoke. The
merest indication of a wish would be attended to. It was, of course,
regrettable that there should be this attentiveness to a man merely
because he was rich and a duke, but by God, thought Charles, how damned
convenient.
He walked quickly about the little garden. His father must be made to
understand the situation. He would sit up all night if necessary,
getting it into his head. He would tell him everything Sally had told
him, adding anything that should seem in his judgment effective, and
only keeping Mr. Pinner back, and the fact that the darling, lovely girl
was not at her best in conversation and no good at all at writing things
down. His father must take the Lukes by the hand; he must be led to
desire to do so above all things. Tact, skill, judgment,--Charles would
sit up all night exercising these. Mrs. Luke must be suppressed. The
unpleasant youth, who dared be angry, must be taught his incredible good
fortune in getting such a wife. Those Lukes----
Suddenly Charles stood still.
Those Lukes....
Queer, but the words had sounded in his ears like a cry of pain.
He was down at the edge of the garden, which ended in a ditch, and on
the other side stretched flat, empty fields divided from each other by
hedges and rows of elms, darker than the darkness. The air smelt of damp
grass. The sky was wonderful, thick strewn with stars. A great peace lay
over the fields. They seemed folded in silence. He could hear nothing
but the croak of a far away frog. Why, then, had it seemed to him as
if----
Charles stood motionless.
Those Lukes ... what must they not, since yesterday, have suffered?
Extraordinary, that he hadn’t thought of it before.