There would be additional guests in the persons of Canon and Mrs. Waldegrave and Mr. Hunt, the curate.
Canon Waldegrave was a tall, beautiful old man with a Grecian profile and a white beard. When seated meditatively under the east window in the chancel whilst Mr. Hunt occupied the pulpit (it was his custom to leave his curate to preach the sermon almost every Sunday) he was the embodiment of Phyllis’s idea of an ancient Druid, though in reality much more like a Greek philosopher. Mrs. Waldegrave was a little scrap of a woman always dressed in black with a large lace cap.
The place of assembly before meals was the library—the least beautiful of the principal rooms—and the books lining its walls were with one exception of small value. Lady Vayne maintained that, when shown this one exception, the lady librarian of Chatsworth had actually betrayed signs of envy! The one ewe lamb, as Lady Vayne called it, was nothing less than the earliest known edition of the Sarum Missal, printed for Caxton in Paris in 1487—but how and when this unique volume had been acquired the family history did not reveal.
When everybody had assembled in the library and Truelove had announced dinner, they would process into the dining-room, Sir Thomas taking in Mrs. Waldegrave, and Lady Vayne bringing up the rear with the Canon. Probably Cousin Amy would be allotted to Mr. Hunt. The boys and girls would bunch in together at the last. Through the little tapestried anteroom they would pass into the big Georgian dining-room. The long table extending almost the entire length of the room would glitter and sparkle with the lights reflected in the silver and the white of the cloth and from the walls the family portraits would smile benignly on the company. On one of the four gilt side-tables would stand the wonderful rose-water dish and ewer, silver and parcel-gilt with the Vayne arms embossed in coloured enamels—made in the reign of Bloody Mary. (Truelove had discovered this treasure, its existence apparently unknown, in the depths of a plate chest.)
The footmen would be wearing their knee-breeches—so much Sir Thomas had had to concede for special occasions—but they were of the plainest, most unobtrusive black, nothing like the gorgeous confections Phyllis had caught sight of in certain grand houses in London. Uncle William’s and Lord Belgrave’s valets would be helping to wait, for the company would number about thirty.
They would begin with grace said by the Canon and then the meal would proceed eaten off silver plates, not so pleasant as the china service because scratchy under the knife and fork, but welcome because they were part of the Christmas ritual. The candle shades in the tall candelabras had little garlands of silver spangles and there would be crackers laid amongst the flower decorations.
First there would be soup of the clearest consistency imaginable, and then some kind of fish which melted in the mouth. Then an entrée, perhaps a vol au vent or small mutton cutlets, and then roast turkey or pheasant. Then a wonderful sweet into which Pérez had put all his artistry: perhaps baskets of nougat with ribbons of spun sugar containing a creamy ice, and muscat grapes coated in sugar and crystallised quarters of orange and tiny pastry cakes.
The last course, the savoury, was never handed to the little girls. Without any instruction in the matter Truelove had made this decision, and nobody questioned it. On the other hand, he always allowed them a little champagne. Dessert was almost the nicest part of the meal, and the scent of tangerine oranges would all her life be associated in Phyllis’s mind with Christmas dinner at Vyne.
With dessert came the crackers, always a trial to Sir Thomas, for whom the sight of grown men and women in paper caps was anathema.
When the last cracker had been pulled, the mottoes read, the puzzles examined and the jewellery and toys appropriated, Lady Vayne would somehow down the great length of the table manage to catch Mrs. Waldegrave’s eye and the ladies would leave the dining-room, passing out by a door opposite to that by which they had entered, into another tapestried anteroom containing Stuart relics. This, like its fellow flanking the dining-room, was pure Jacobean. A painted plaster frieze in high relief contained medallions depicting the life of the stag, and over the chimney-piece the house, as it was in the seventeenth century, was sandwiched between two groups of stags standing one upon the other and almost as large as the house. Below this again two figures symbolising peace and plenty with the Stuart coat of arms between them. A glass case held the precious relics, Charles I’s embroidered gloves and his agate-hilted dagger. Sometimes poring over the contents of this case, fascinated by the thought that Charles’s hands had grasped that dagger, worn those long-fingered gloves, Phyllis would marvel that the same term could apply to these richly embroidered, gold-laced works of art and the machine-made, strictly utilitarian articles she wore on her own little chapped hands. A portrait of the Martyr King in Puritan dress painted just before his execution, his death warrant in his hand, hung beside the fireplace. But best of all were the six Chippendale chairs, their backs carved with the entwined scrolls C.R., their seats covered with the embroidered cloth which had been Charles’s cloak and for which these peerless chairs had been made. Without pausing, the procession of ladies would pass through this Jacobean anteroom, which was known as the Stag parlour, into the Elizabethan drawing-room.
Everyone is only too familiar with the cliché, “One seemed on entering to step back into the past.” But no words could be more adequate to describe the impression made by this room.
Although, or perhaps because, it was only used on special occasions, it possessed a more individual atmosphere than any other room at Vyne. Even the most insensitive were touched by it. It seemed to breathe peace; to murmur of happiness, a happiness of lives spent in love and charity; and leisure which had not been abused and humility whose pride was service.
The walls were oak-panelled to within three feet of the ceiling in an elaborate pattern of pillars with interlacing arches inlaid in places with satinwood. Above this a deep plaster frieze with masks and scallop shells, gilded and painted and in high relief. In this Elizabethan setting stood furniture—acquired by successive generations—ranging in period from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century and the result was a complete harmony. Gilt tables with cabriole legs stood beside high-backed carved Stuart chairs; above them hung portraits of the same period and gilt girandoles by Chippendale surmounted by birds. Chippendale settees were set beside Jacobean elbow chairs. In the huge Tudor chimney-piece, almost a counterpart of the one in the Long Gallery, stood a cut steel Adam grate, and the whorls and bosses of the ceiling were repeated in the close pattern of the carpet. But the chief feature of the room was the wide bay, its three long windows filled with sixteenth-century heraldic glass which in the daytime glowed and glimmered in squares and lozenges of emerald, ruby, sapphire and topaz like the contents of a giantess’s jewel case. In the central window was set a miniature portrait of the Elizabethan Sir Piers in beard and ruff. Guarding the entrance to these splendours like tall twin sentinels, on Chippendale brackets each side of the bay stood blanc de Chine figures of the goddess Kuan Yin, smiling her Mona Lisa smile.
Smiling her Mona Lisa smile
Seated at schoolroom supper Phyllis pictured in her mind’s eye exactly how it would be to-morrow night.
Grandmamma, who did not come in to dinner, would be waiting for them on the settee by the fire in her rose-coloured silk dress.
Phyllis was never quite at her ease with her grandmother. Perhaps it was because she was very easily moved to tears and seemed to feel things so intensely.
Lady Vayne might be recounting how someone, perhaps Richard, had been suffering from one of the usual complaints of youth, measles or chicken-pox, which was now, however, happily over. Grandmamma would exclaim in broken accents: “Poor boy, poor boy,” and dissolve in tears. Or perhaps Phyllis, who was growing fast, was looking a little tired. “That child’s terribly pale,” she would say in tragic tones. One never knew who would be the next object of her concern. Old age, which makes so many people seemingly indifferent to events, seemed to have increased her capacity for feeling.
/>
Aunt Lucy knew best how to handle her. To-morrow evening there would be a short interlude whilst they all gathered round her and coffee was being served. A few tenderly bantering remarks would have to be made by Aunt Lucy, one or two humorous anecdotes retailed by Cousin Amy, before they could all settle down, Mrs. Waldegrave, Lady Vayne and Aunt Lucy beside the settee, another and far larger group round the card table, of which Fräulein would be the centre of interest, for this was her time for telling the cards.
Aunt Sybil, Sir Thomas’s sister, had a great belief in Fräulein’s psychic powers. She and Cousin Amy would be the first to have their fortunes told, then Lettice and Hilda, lastly Alethea and Phyllis.
The little girls were not much interested as yet, except in the part where one was told about getting one’s wish, and that was thrilling. There was always a dark woman making a nuisance of herself and a dark man in trouble or ill. A fair man was in love with a fair woman and a lot of people at the house, most of which one knew already. Probably the queen of diamonds, which was Lettice, and the king of diamonds would come out next each other, and Aunt Sybil would exclaim how uncanny the cards were, for everyone knew Captain Tarporley to be a serious admirer of Lettice’s.
By the time the cards were told the men would emerge from the dining-room. Sir Thomas never kept them long, even though he would be sure to want to talk to Lord Belgrave about the bill for National Service he hoped to bring before Parliament and which Lord Belgrave was to sponsor in the Lords. Sir Thomas was the sitting member for one of the County Divisions, having been more fortunate than his brother-in-law, who had lost his seat in the recent Liberal landslide. Phyllis could well remember the day when the bad news had arrived.
They had just started out for a drive, and meeting the telegraph boy on his way up to the house Lady Vayne stopped the carriage and with eager, trembling fingers tore open the telegram. “Withinshaw returned,” she read out in accents of despair, and Phyllis, who was unfamiliar with political phraseology, could only guess that Uncle William had not got in.
He had represented a rather red industrial town, whereas Sir Thomas’s constituency was mainly rural, and in addition in those parts the name Vayne of Vyne would secure the votes of all but the reddest radicals.
With the appearance of the men there would be a general exodus to the hall. Then a round game would be started, perhaps Racing Demon, perhaps Up Jenkins, or possibly Charades. Mr. Hunt would be included but not the Canon or his wife. Lord Belgrave would probably play billiards with Uncle Andrew on the miniature table. Mr. Blunt and Uncle William each in their own way would be the moving spirits of the round game. In one called Impertinent Questions, Piers and Mr. Blunt would sometimes overstep the mark and cause Fräulein to look down her pointed nose. Lady Vayne never took part in the games. She would be seated quietly talking to the Canon on the sofa or simply looking on. Sometimes she suffered from a feeling of irritation of the skin, and if seated by Phyllis would perhaps whisper to her in an interval of the game. Then Phyllis, unobtrusively but quite unconcernedly and without anyone seeming to notice or care, would pass her-short finger-nails to and fro over her mother’s bare shoulders till the irritation was allayed or it was time to resume the game. She often ministered to her mother in this way and was rather proud to be the one always chosen to do so. The entrance of the servants with the tray of drinks was the signal that the evening was nearly at an end and very shortly after Mrs. Waldegrave would make a move and the first perfect day would be over.
Phyllis had to rouse herself from her happy reverie to attend to Alethea, who was talking about Christmas presents. Would it be best to keep their own particular gifts for the tree or give them beforehand?
“We always give ours to Papa and Mama before breakfast,” said Hilda. “And the ones for each other after church. There’s just time before luncheon.”
By mutual agreement the cousins never gave each other presents; the state of their finances would not have allowed it.
“Are you going to the wishing well these holidays, Hilda?” asked Alethea.
A pleased, reminiscent look came into her cousin’s eyes.
A year or two ago before Fräulein’s reign she had gone every day of the holidays to the wishing well to wish for the removal of an unpleasant governess. The wish had been granted soon after.
Wishing Well Wood was the loveliest in the park. In the late spring the high banks on either side of the drive which ran through it were clothed in bluebells—in the autumn with bracken. A little rushing stream ran beside the drive, and sometimes on the boulders at its edge there was a thick white froth which looked so exactly like icecream that Phyllis had once, to Fräulein’s disgust, tasted it. But it tasted of nothing. The wishing well was in a little fern-fringed stone basin beside the drive. Three times one drank from the cold, delicious water and wished, then threw the last handful over the left shoulder. Near the wishing well was the turning to the quarry, a wild, uncanny place of towering stone cliffs, tawny-yellow, almost rose-coloured in places, the stone from which the south front of Vyne had been built. This quarry was still worked, and Hilda had once found a note lying on a shelf of stone: “Come and bring your tools to the south front.” Evidently some minor repair in the masonry was needed.
The last drive of the pheasant shoot was in this wood, the guns being stationed along the drive, and the birds driven from the high ground above came over at such a height that even the best shots often missed.
Fräulein remarked that Alethea was looking tired, and Alethea admitted she was a little and agreed to go to bed directly they had finished eating. Phyllis for her own reasons made no objection, and accordingly they bade goodnight to Fräulein and Hilda and parted from each other at the door of the schoolroom.
On entering her room, Phyllis found Lettice just emerging from her own to go down to dinner.
Lettice’s room, access to which could only be gained through Phyllis’s, was in that angle of the house against which at certain seasons of the year the south-west gales beat and battered with greatest fury.
Sometimes, Lettice said, she thought the walls would collapse and go crashing into the Italian garden forty feet below. But in summer she slept peacefully to the sound of the splashing fountain.
She was looking radiant to-night in a dress of green and silver tissue. Having just been put on an allowance, she was able to indulge her individual taste. She favoured the soft greens and mauves of the iris, and where other girls wore high stiff collars in the daytime she preferred low-necked blouses.
Phyllis glanced approvingly at her sister as she paused to give one more look at herself in Phyllis’s long, narrow mirror.
“I do like that dress, Lettice.”
“Yes, it’s not bad, is it?”
“What will you wear to-morrow night?”
“Oh, I don’t know, my green tulle I expect.”
“I do think Captain Tarporley’s nice, don’t you?”
“Yes, quite.” Lettice touched the little curls under her pompadour.
It was a great concession Captain Tarporley’s being allowed to play the ‘jeune premier’ to Lettice’s ‘ingénue’ instead of it being as usual given to Harry. Any young man who came to the house was immediately a suspect to Sir Thomas, who, whilst taking pride in her powers of attraction, dreaded the loss of his eldest daughter’s companionship through marriage.
But it was quite evidently a loss he would have to face sooner or later.
Lettice sometimes treated her young sister as a confidante. She had once asked Phyllis what one had better do supposing one liked somebody very much but wasn’t quite sure if one wanted to marry him. Phyllis thought for a little then gave her considered opinion.
It would be best to tell him she wasn’t sure, but if he liked to wait and nobody else came along she liked better Lettice might take him.
But Lettice said no. It wasn’t fair to keep a man dangling in case no one better turned up. One simply could not do such things—and Phyllis felt rath
er ashamed of what had seemed to her a very sensible solution.
The gong sounding whilst Lettice was having her final look at herself, the sisters bade each other goodnight and Lettice vanished through the door to the grand staircase.
Phyllis should by rights have started undressing, but she could hear Louisa still tidying up in the next room, and seizing her opportunity turned and ran down the passage in the opposite direction.
The great entrance hall at Vyne stood on a level of its own, above the cloisters but below the first floor; a short flight of stairs at either end connecting it with the passage which ran round the other three sides of the courtyard. Above the hall lay the Long Gallery, below it the dark, vaulted passage between the kitchen and the servants’hall.
To enter the hall from outside one mounted a double flight of stone steps in the inner courtyard. Inside, to right and left of the central doorway, other doors gave access to the rest of the house; and dividing this passageway from the main portion of the room stood a row of towering Corinthian pillars, for the hall was both large and lofty. Great pieces of Mortlake tapestry covered three of the walls, depicting the story of Hero and Leander in the glowing umbers, blues and crimsons of the seventeenth century: the lovers standing with clasped hands before a columned building, a cupid with bent bow hovering over their heads, Hero peeping through her doorway at Leander prone in the swirling waters, which seemed threatening to flood the house, Hero alone upon the shore, hands raised to heaven, her draperies fluttering in the breeze. Over the chimney-piece hung a three-quarter length portrait of the ubiquitous Elizabethan Sir Piers, one long-fingered hand resting on his gold-embossed sword, the hilt of which was still preserved among the family relics.
In the words of a well-worn cliché—the owner of those impassive features might have been meditating on the vanity of human affairs: of what account were man’s ambitions, his pains and pleasures, hopes and fears, viewed against the background of eternity, etc.? Without doubt those impassive features had, through the centuries, witnessed countless scenes both grave and gay in this same room. Here his descendants and their servants had rendered daily homage to Almighty God, the men filing in at one door, the women at another, and the head of the house from a central position, surrounded by his family, had read the prayers. Only in the last year or so had this practice been discontinued. It was too patriarchal, pompous and, anyhow, hard luck on the servants, said Sir Thomas, neglecting to add that he found it personally embarrassing.
A Country House Christmas Page 6