‘She is asleep, I expect,’ said Mrs Brandon calmly. ‘I had better go and see her. Where is her room?’
From her voice Sparks knew that Mrs Brandon had now stopped being a sympathetic friend and had resumed her position as an employer. With sad resignation she took Mrs Brandon up to Miss Morris’s room. Mrs Brandon knocked, received no answer, opened the door and went in. She saw what she expected, Miss Morris lying in an exhausted sleep. She told Sparks, who having been disappointed of seeing a bleeding corpse with its throat cut was hoping at least for a death by drugs, to go and make some tea and bring it up. To this she added a request for some nice bread and butter, knowing what magic the word ‘nice’ has in the kitchen. She then sat down and waited.
As she waited she looked at the bedroom. One could not say it was a servant’s bedroom, but neither could one call it a guest’s room. The furniture obviously consisted of rejects from better bedrooms, the bedstead was of black japanned iron with brass knobs and rails from which all pretence of polish had long since departed, and Mrs Brandon’s housekeeping eye could see how the old-fashioned wire mattress sagged and she could imagine how noisy it would be whenever Miss Morris turned. The carpet had been good but was now faded to a nondescript colour, the dressing table had a mirror which had to be wedged with a piece of cardboard to prevent it from turning somersaults, the thin curtains would obviously keep out neither light nor cold.
When Sparks came back Mrs Brandon told her to put the tray down and then go and get a nice cup of tea for herself, with which crumbs of comfort Sparks departed for the housekeeper’s room, there to boast a good deal about what she had seen and heard.
Mrs Brandon poured out a cup of tea, clinking the china as much as possible. Miss Morris stirred a little.
‘Do you feel like a cup of tea?’ asked Mrs Brandon in her usual placid voice.
Miss Morris sat up, pushed her hair back, and looked wildly at the newcomer for a moment. Then she recovered herself and with almost her usual calm accepted the tea and thanked Mrs Brandon.
‘I am afraid I must have been asleep,’ she said. ‘What time is it?’
‘Eleven,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘Didn’t you have any breakfast?’
‘I lay down for a few moments after I left Miss Brandon this morning. Oh, did you know?’
Mrs Brandon said Dr Ford had told her.
‘I was rather tired, so I suppose I went to sleep,’ said Miss Morris. ‘I wonder what I could do now. I suppose I can stay on here for a little and be useful.’
Mrs Brandon looked at Miss Morris, saw the dark circles under her eyes and the shaking of her hands as she held the cup and saucer, and determined to tell the staff what she thought of them for forgetting Miss Morris and never offering her breakfast. Then she determined to tell a lie and said, ‘Dr Ford wants you to come back with me to Stories.’
A look of intense relief came into Miss Morris’s face and then the mask of the professional companion fell again.
‘How very kind of you, Mrs Brandon,’ she said, ‘but I ought to stay here. I expect I’ll be needed.’
‘There will be plenty of people to look after everything,’ said Mrs Brandon, not caring in the least whether there would be or not, ‘and Dr Ford said most particularly that I was to take you with me now. So if you will drink the rest of the tea and eat up that nice bread and butter, I will wait for you downstairs. I will send Sparks up to help you to pack.’
Without waiting for any possible protest she went down to the drawing-room, where Mr Grant was sitting in a horrid atmosphere of sherry, and rang the bell, looking so determined that he dared not address her.
‘Please send Sparks to me at once,’ she said when the butler appeared.
In a few minutes Sparks came in, still chewing the remains of her nice cup of tea.
‘Please go and help Miss Morris to pack,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘I’m taking her home with me. And I find that she had no breakfast this morning. How was that?’
Sparks said she supposed the third housemaid, who was supposed to take Miss Morris’s breakfast up to her room, was upset. They were all upset downstairs, she said, and she could hardly manage more than cocoa and a piece of cake herself.
‘Then I’d better see the housekeeper. Please tell her I want to speak to her at once,’ said Mrs Brandon with a tone of cold finality that sent Sparks speechless from the room and made Mr Grant cringe inside himself.
She then went to the dining-room, where Mr Grant could hear her telephoning.
The housekeeper came and looked at Mr Grant as if he were a beetle. She then said to no one in particular that she understood Mrs Brandon wished to see her. Mrs Brandon, coming back from the telephone, said she did, and that she wished to know why no one had taken up any breakfast to Miss Morris.
‘I am sure I could hardly say, madam,’ said the housekeeper.
‘Then that is not much use,’ said Mrs Brandon with icy politeness. ‘Miss Brandon’s lawyers are going to send out someone to look after the house till suitable arrangements are made. The person who is sent will give you any orders that are necessary. That is all, thank you.’
If Mr Grant could have got under a sofa, he would gladly have done so. The goddess armed with Jove’s thunders was a formidable being whom he had never suspected, and he hardly knew whether to worship or to shut his ears and eyes. He did shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them the housekeeper had gone, probably shrivelled into nothingness, and the kind goddess was once more apparent.
‘I am going to ask you to do something for me, Hilary,’ she said. ‘I am going to take Miss Morris home with me now. Will you please stay here and see Mr Merton? I managed to get him on the telephone at the Deanery and he is coming out with someone from the lawyers. Tell him how sorry I am I couldn’t stay, and you could bring back any messages from him. I will send Curwen back to fetch you as soon as possible.’
Mr Grant said of course he would.
Miss Morris then came downstairs with Sparks carrying her suitcase. Mr Grant stood up respectfully.
‘Give Miss Morris some sherry,’ said Mrs Brandon. ‘Yes, of course you can drink it; it will do you good.’
Miss Morris obediently drank the sherry and thanked Mr Grant. Mrs Brandon then led her captive to the car and Mr Grant was left alone. His feelings were mixed. The foremost was a kind of anger that Mr Merton, that stranger who spoke with such ease and assurance to Mrs Brandon as if she were an ordinary person, should be coming to the house at all. It was like his impudence to be staying at the Deanery at such a time; even more like it to answer the telephone when Mrs Brandon rang him up; and most like it to be coming out with someone who would give orders. On the other hand Mrs Brandon was not waiting to see him, which made Mr Grant smile a smile of grim satisfaction that afforded him much pleasure till he suddenly saw his face in one of the looking glasses on the overmantel and hastily recomposed it in case any of the servants came in. But though his face now betrayed no emotion, none the less did he inwardly exult. Mr Merton, the man of the world, the gilded popinjay, the roué (for to such heights did Mr Grant’s imagination in its flights now ascend) would arrive at the Abbey, all expectation, to find the bird flown and in its place a coldly courteous representative (bearing the form and lineaments of Mr Grant) who would give him any necessary information, hear anything that he might have to say, and then rejoin the goddess, leaving Mr Merton to deal with graves and worms and epitaphs. Turning over in his mind these agreeable thoughts he walked up and down the drawing-room, when suddenly something dreadful occurred to him. It might be that Mrs Brandon was deliberately shunning Mr Merton because she wanted to see him. He had heard, and read in books, that women often fled where they would most fain pursue; that Ravishers (for such Mr Merton was rapidly becoming in his mind) were more inflamed by the fugitive nymph than by bold advances; and, as a happy afterthought, that women were well known to have nothing but contempt for men who were content to worship from afar.
Thus unpleasantly and unfruitfu
lly meditating he did not hear a car drive up. The first thing that attracted his attention was the sound of voices in the hall, and the butler saying to Mr Merton that he thought the young gentleman that come with Mrs Brandon was in the drawing-room. Mr Grant would have ground his teeth if he had known how to do it. ‘Young’ forsooth, and ‘gentleman’ indeed! Then Mr Merton came in and said very pleasantly, ‘Grant, isn’t it? I think we met here before. Mrs Brandon has gone, I expect.’
Mr Grant said she had, and had taken Miss Brandon’s companion away with her.
‘Splendid,’ said Mr Merton. ‘I have to get back to town today so I haven’t much time. I’ve brought a man from my father’s office who is used to this sort of thing and he will take over for the present. Are you staying here?’
‘No,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I’m only waiting for Mrs Brandon to send the car back. She said you might have some messages to send her.’
‘I don’t think there will be anything special,’ said Mr Merton. ‘They will let her know about the funeral from the offices of course. Simpson!’
A youngish middle-aged man who looked as if he spent his life carrying out instructions to the letter, came in.
‘Mr Simpson from the office, Mr Grant,’ said Mr Merton. ‘Now, Simpson, you might as well see the servants and I’ll go up and see the nurse and then I must go. Well, goodbye, Grant. I hope we’ll meet again. Tell Mrs Brandon not to worry about anything and I hope very much to come over and see her when next I’m down.’
He went upstairs and Simpson went into the dining-room. Mr Grant, consumed with envy of people who knew how things were done and could grapple with nurses, felt the house was no place for him and wandered into the garden, where he had the pleasure of tormenting himself by the remembrance of the afternoon he had spent there with Mrs Brandon, and reflecting how he had then every opportunity of casting himself at her feet and saying ‘Oh, Mrs Brandon,’ but had not done so. A man like Mr Merton, he felt, would not so basely have wasted his opportunities. In these unprofitable musings he was surprised by Mr Simpson, who came advancing over the grass with the staid yet cheerful step of an undertaker.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said Mr Simpson, ‘but Mrs Brandon’s car is here.’
‘Oh, thanks awfully,’ said Mr Grant. ‘How did you know where I was?’
‘Not at all, sir,’ said Mr Simpson, apparently in reply to the first of Mr Grant’s remarks, and leaving that young gentleman to marvel secretly at the powers of divination that had found him near the lily-pond. Mr Simpson then insisted, much to Mr Grant’s discomfiture, on seeing him into the car and telling Curwen he would not be wanted again. Mr Grant, who had already seen from Curwen’s expression how deeply he resented having to do the journey to Brandon Abbey twice in a morning, feared that this final insult would cause him to overturn the car into a disused quarry, or into the River Rising, out of sheer spite, but Curwen found all the outlet he needed in the back of his neck, which expressive portion of the human body so paralysed Mr Grant that he would have given anything to be allowed to get out and walk. When they got near Pomfret Madrigal Curwen further completed his discomfiture by suddenly opening the glass slide with one hand and asking through the corner of his mouth whether Mr Grant wished to be taken to Stories or to the Vicarage.
Thus challenged he dared not say Stories, and said he would get out at the Cow and Sickle and walk, which made Curwen despise him more than ever, as one who was not born to a car.
The Vicarage and its garden looked so peaceful in the sun that Mr Grant found it difficult to believe that anything had really happened. Time seemed to have stopped since he got into Mrs Brandon’s car at her gate and he thought it was probably tea-time, when the church clock striking two made him realise that he was extremely hungry and very late for lunch. He hurried up the flagged path to the house, where he found Mr Miller smoking a pipe over a book and the remains of lunch.
‘Hullo,’ said Mr Miller. ‘I thought you were out.’
‘So I was,’ said Mr Grant.
‘Well, here you are,’ said his tutor. ‘Had lunch?’
Mr Grant said he hadn’t and would awfully like some if it weren’t a bother. Mr Miller then rang for Hettie, who conferred with Cook and brought word that there was a nice piece of the beefsteak pie left that could be hotted up in a moment, so Mr Grant sat down to wait and drank a whole glass of beer.
‘Thirsty?’ said Mr Miller kindly.
‘I was,’ said Mr Grant. ‘I’ve been at Brandon Abbey. I happened to be passing Stories just as Mrs Brandon was starting, and she asked me to come.’
‘I suppose —’ said Mr Miller.
‘Oh yes, really dead,’ said Mr Grant, fully understanding that Dr Ford’s message was not in itself a death certificate. ‘And Mrs Brandon?’ asked the Vicar.
‘She was splendid, sir. She simply took charge of everything. Poor Miss Morris had been up for nights and not had any breakfast, and Mrs Brandon simply pitched into the servants like anything. Oh, thanks awfully, Hettie, that looks splendid. I just stayed on a bit to look after things till Mr Merton came. He is some kind of relation of Miss Brandon’s lawyers.’
‘That must be Noel Merton,’ said Mr Miller. ‘A very brilliant barrister. I coached him one vacation. I must ask him down here some time. I like to keep up with my old pupils. Is your lunch all right, Hilary?’
‘Rather, sir,’ said Mr Grant, his mouth full of beefsteak pie with the crust for which the Vicarage cook was doubtfully famous, mashed potatoes, french beans and gravy.
Mr Miller went on with his book and his pipe, while Mr Grant finished his pie and Hettie brought him gooseberry fool and cream with sponge fingers from the baker, and coffee. When Mr Grant had finished, she cleared away, and all the time Mr Grant had a feeling that his host was saving something up to say to him. When Hettie had gone back to the kitchen Mr Miller put his pipe into his book to mark the place and looked confused.
‘Is that a good book, sir?’ asked Mr Grant.
‘Journalism, journalism,’ said Mr Miller, looking at A Waste-paper Basket from Three Embassies by Jefferson X. Root, who had never certainly set foot in any of them, but was well into his second hundred thousand, ‘as practically everything is now.’
He paused again uncomfortably.
‘I wonder,’ said Mr Grant to ease the tension, ‘if the French think it funny that their chief classical authors are called Mr Root and Mr Crow.’
Mr Miller stared for a moment and then laughed and said the Romans had some curious names themselves, and what about Naso and Locusta.
‘By the way,’ he continued quickly, before his courage could cool. ‘I don’t want to interfere of course, Hilary, but have you any idea whether your aunt’s death will in any way affect you?’
Mr Grant went bright red.
‘Of course nothing is further from my mind than any wish to ask indiscreet questions,’ Mr Miller pursued, ‘but if an older man’s advice would at any time be of any use, I thought I would like you to know that it is entirely at your disposal.’
This was an act of truly disinterested kindness on Mr Miller’s part, as he had no capacity for or understanding of business at all, and except for the lucky fact that his private income was under a Trust would doubtless have been entirely dependent on his small stipend. As it was he always found himself in or out of pocket over any accounts in connection with church activities, and after the last Fête had been obliged to make up a deficit of seventeen shillings and threepence from his own purse.
Mr Grant, who didn’t know this, was much touched, and thanked his coach warmly, after which he too fell into silent confusion.
‘I cannot understand the appeal that this kind of book makes to the public,’ said Mr Miller, whose pipe was lying in page two hundred and seventy. ‘It is like Dr Johnson’s mutton, ill-conceived, ill-written, ill-presented.’
Mr Grant laughed a little too loudly.
‘By the way,’ he said, before his courage could cool, ‘you’ve been so decent to m
e, sir, that I’d like to say something.’
By way of carrying out this resolution he suddenly stopped speaking and looked with intense interest at the photograph of the Lazarus Eight in 1912 with Mr Miller looking incredibly young and round-faced.
‘Yes, my boy,’ said Mr Miller encouragingly, and then wishing he hadn’t used this form of address.
‘I only meant,’ said Mr Grant, still studying the photograph with an absorbed face, ‘that if I did happen to get anything I wouldn’t take it.’
Mr Miller vaguely felt that there was some Scriptural precedent for this, but was too much surprised by his pupil’s statement to run this fugitive thought to earth, so he made a deprecating kind of noise which might also be taken for agreement, sympathy, or a slight clearing of the throat.
‘I think,’ said Hilary, ‘it would be jolly unfair if I got anything, considering Mrs Brandon is Aunt Sissie’s niece, and how jolly good she was to her, going to see her at that awful Abbey. I think I ought to do some work, sir, as I didn’t do any this morning.’
The Brandons: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 20