by Angus Wilson
Professor Stokesay's invitation followed hard upon his son's letter of warning. Looking back to it, Gerald felt embarrassed by the touch of Mr Collins it contained. 'Mrs Portway - the great Lilian Portway - has urged me to invite you. She is a remarkable woman of extraordinary beauty, considerable personality, and, in addition, she is very cultivated. Her reception of us here has been truly magnificent, and, despite all the claims on her time, she professes and, I truly believe, feels great interest in the excavations. I do not normally attend the theatre, but I promise myself a visit when she next appears in London, for she has a notable and, I can easily believe, well-deserved reputation. She is, alas! deeply involved in the follies of women's suffrage, but with the typical tact of a great lady she has never mounted the soap-box in my presence. If only some of these raucous-voiced women would follow her example, they might do their cause more good than by their present irresponsible behaviour! I do not know how much you will see of Gilbert, for, between ourselves, he is showing a lively interest in a very charming little lady in the neighbourhood. Despite all his Timon orations against the modern woman, Gilbert seems to have fallen a willing victim to one now, for Miss Armstrong - Dollie as I am allowed to call her - is a champion tennis-player!
'I have no doubt that Mrs Portway will send her motor-car to fetch you from the station. Her chauffeur, Barker by the way, is a splendid local character, a fine specimen of East Anglian manhood, who has proved invaluable to us, both by his knowledge of the locality and by the loan of his considerable muscle power, which, in view of the difficulty of engaging satisfactory labour, has been very welcome. ...'
Mrs Portway's Delage had, in fact, met Gerald - a plum-coloured motor-car with Barker in a plum-coloured uniform matching his complexion. Gerald, more accustomed to such luxuries than Dr Stokesay, was in the habit of making up for his father's taciturnity by a few polite observations to the chauffeur. Such replies as he received from Barker, however, were neither intelligible nor encouraging. He gave himself up to watching as much of the countryside as could be seen through the August dust. Rolling country, oak-wooded here and there among the buff-coloured corn, gave way to flat, marshy heath. Through the dust-choked air Gerald began to sense salt-freshened currents in the slight east wind that cut the morning's heat. Wilting loosestrife, its purple bruised, giant yarrows, their lace dried and buckled, were interspersed increasingly along the roadside by clumsy-headed bullrushes and bushes of feathery tamarisk, their growth twisted westwards by the strong sea gales. It was almost twenty miles from the station to Melpham House, but they had hardly travelled an hour before the motor-car turned into a drive lined by St John's wort and variegated hollies.
'There'll be no one at the house but the mistress,' Barker remarked. 'We turned up something to the west of Long Mile Meadow this morning. It seems that'd be a bishop's grave that they put out in the marshes in those times. Young Rammage came on the stone coffin digging there with young Mr Stokesay. But that's pretty deep laid. That'll take more than they've got down there to raise. The master's quite taken on with it though, says he must have it up. And Dr Stokesay, he says the same.' He was still talking as Gerald caught sight of his hostess on the steps of the square red-brick house; his tongue once loosed, it seemed that Barker could be both loquacious and intelligible.
The sight of Mrs Portway, however, at once took all Gerald's attention. He had been famous at Cambridge for his success with young married women and widows. With his dark good looks and flushed, heavy face, he seemed older than his years and was seldom rejected as a 'mere boy'. In face of Mrs Portway he felt, and was convinced that he looked, even less than his twenty-two years.
She was indeed the great lady, as she came down the white steps, disconcertingly tall, embarrassingly beautiful, and a shade too striking. Gerald tried to comfort himself by imagining her on rain-swept platforms, their purple-and-yellow decorations bedraggled and sordid; or, being frogmarched into a police van. It was impossible to do so - she was so very elegant in her long, tight, draped dress in two shades of mauve muslin, above her massed red-gold hair a great mauve straw hat covered in Parma violets, and, held up above that again, a little parasol in the same mauve shades. By the time her wonderful intense voice reached him, he felt unsure of stepping with ease from the motor-car, and, indeed, he slipped and fell on the gravel.
If there had been any likelihood of his capitulating to Lilian Portway's charm, that moment saved him. She could have been disconcerted, annoyed, or amused by his sudden and clumsy fall. She was none of these things; with grande dame grace, she simply did not notice it.
'Welcome, Hermes!' she cried, her long arms with their flowing angel sleeves extended in lovely gesture to meet him. 'Dr Stokesay spoke of you as young, brilliant, his most promising pupil. All no doubt true, but a little mundane. I know better. You have brought sunshine where we had cloud, success where we had deep disappointment. And so, I prefer to ask you - What is the news from Olympus?' She smiled a little wry, whimsical smile.
Gerald scrambled to his feet with difficulty. One foot that had bent beneath his body as he had fallen seemed absurdly painful. He dusted himself down before he answered. All his youthful embarrassment had vanished at the spectacle of her shyness, her absurdity; from that moment she was fixed for ever outside his category of desirable women.
'Yes,' he said, 'I've heard the news. It's very exciting. I suppose the monks brought the body here from Sedwich. One more historical mystery solved, and an important one, I should think, though it's not my period, of course.'
Mrs Portway smiled sweetly. 'Thank you,' she said, 'for your interest. It's wonderful for us, isn't it? that it should have been found here at our dear sleepy Melpham? But then Reggie always said it would be. I wonder what other treasures its soil will reveal now that it has been woken from its long sleep?'
Gerald could think of no answer to this question, so he smiled the neutral, polite smile that he used for mothers of friends. 'I'd rather like to have a wash,' he said, brushing the gravel off the palms of his hands, 'and I think they'll probably be glad of a hand with the digging.'
'Oh, you mustn't wear those smart boots up in the marsh,' Mrs Portway said; 'we'll see what...' But before she had finished, Gerald let out a cry of pain. As he started to walk towards the house, he had put his full weight on his left foot and immediately hot needles seemed to be tearing their way through the flesh of his ankle.
This time Mrs Portway could no longer retain her composure. 'Barker,' she called, 'don't stand there doing nothing. Mr Middleton's hurt. Help him into the house. Alice!' she called into the doorway, 'Alice! come and lend your father a hand. All the men are down on the marsh,' she said in explanation to Gerald, as though his evident pain would only make him more socially critical of any defects in the household management.
'I'm so sorry, so frightfully sorry,' Gerald could do no more than mutter.
'My dear Mr Middleton, it is you we have to be sorry for,' she said, but she looked furious.
An ample young parlourmaid, ribbons flying from her cap, came to assist Mr Barker. 'Now,' she said, 'easy does it, sir. Go gently, Father, with the gentleman's arm.'
With difficulty, supporting Gerald on each side, Father and Daughter Barker hoisted him up the front steps. Mrs Portway folded her parasol, lifted Gerald's hat from the drive, and followed them indoors. 'On the sofa in the morning-room would be best, I think,' she said with a certain distaste. She did not care for furniture removals, fuss on hot days, attention distracted from her, illness, or cowardice; she felt an unpleasant mixture of all five in Gerald's accident.
Alice began to unlace Gerald's boot, but the ankle was swelling. Her firm handling caused him obvious pain, but this did not deter her.
'If you don't want the motor-car again this day,' Barker said, 'I'll put that away, ma'am.'
Mrs Portway did not answer. She looked at Gerald with roguish sadness, shaking her head. 'Not Hermes at all,' she said, 'but Phaeton fallen from his golden chariot.'
There was no saying what other parallels from classical mythology she might have found, but as she spoke a fresh-complexioned, light-haired young girl of seventeen or so came into the room. 'I say, what's up?' she asked, then, seeing Alice Barker's efforts with Gerald's boot, she rushed forward before Mrs Portway could explain.
'Oh, do be careful, Alice,' she cried. 'Let me. Have you a penknife, Barker?' She began at once to cut away the boot. 'Get me some bandage, Alice,' she said, 'and a jug of cold water, as cold as you can find it.'
Alice clearly left the room with a very bad grace, but Gerald was too taken up with the pain to mind the moods of those around him any more. He closed his eyes. The girl said, 'It's a very bad sprain, Lilian.' Mrs Portway said nothing, but he could guess at her expression of annoyance, for the girl's voice had a soothing note as she said, 'Oh! It'll be perfectly all right. There's no need for a doctor.'
Gerald felt the cool of her fingers and the icy tightness of the bandage as she began to bind his ankle.
'He'll have to be here for a while yet. I'd like to have him here all day if possible,' and then in reply to a murmuring of Mrs Portway's, 'Oh, that's all right. I make a top-hole nurse.'
'Mr Middleton,' Mrs Portway said with dramatic urgency, 'you mustn't move on any account. We can't think of it. Miss Armstrong will look after you. Don't hesitate to ask Alice for anything you want, Dollie. And now, I think the less people fussing round you the better,' she said and was gone.
At first the day passed in pain and enchantment with Dollie Armstrong; later it passed in enchantment with twinges of pain. Neither mood, however, inclined him to wish for any contact with the members of the household. He could hear a great deal of coming and going in the hall outside, and once, Dollie, who sat in an armchair reading a number of Nash's Magazine, said, 'They're all in a great fuss about this coffin they've found. I suppose it is jolly exciting, but I can't see the point of it myself.'
Gerald agreed with her. He would have agreed with anything that this attractive girl, so cool in her white linen dress with its huge sailor collar, might say to him.
As the day passed, they were interrupted more frequently. Professor Stokesay was the first to come in. He had talked over the wonderful discovery with all the other excavators and he could not bear any longer to deny himself a further audience in Gerald. He looked taller than usual in his tweed knickerbockers and woollen stockings. His face was fresh and weather-beaten, his brown beard trim and neat.
'My dear boy,' he said, 'what an unfortunate accident, and today of all days.' He paused as he saw Dollie. 'Ah! but you're well looked after.' He did not quite like the idea of a young man and a young woman shut up all day in the morning-room like this, but Mrs Portway's position as lady of the manor and famous actress reconciled him to her advanced ways. 'How is the patient, nurse?' he asked.
'Oh, he'll be up and walking by tea-time,' she answered, 'I don't think ...' She stopped, for Professor Stokesay was no longer listening. He knew now that this embarrassing incommoding of their hostess would not last and he felt free to talk of the excavation.
'A most wonderful find,' he said. 'Now be prepared for a great shock. I can hardly believe it yet. We've discovered Eorpwald's tomb. Those loyal monks brought him here to Melpham. Stone coffin with inscription in an excellent condition. We've moved it to the outhouse. Some trace of the skeleton....' And then, as Gerald was about to speak, he held up his finger for attention. 'But wait a bit! That's less than half. In the coffin with its Christian inscription, the remains and the well-preserved remains of a wooden figure. I don't know what to make of it; if it wasn't too extraordinary I would say it was a pagan idol. I've only seen sketches and poor photographs of the Anglo-Saxon gods found in Friesland and on the Baltic coast, but I'd swear it was the same. After all, there were many of them in the country. It might be. Nothing like it has been found in England before, it's true, but there must have been many of them, and the lucky chance of a preserving peaty soil. ... But, in a Christian tomb! Well, I have my ideas, though it's too soon to speak yet. All I hope, my dear fellow, is that Portway doesn't rush
His voice tailed off and, in a rather artificial note, he said, 'Ah! Portway! I'm just telling this young fellow of our remarkable discoveries and adding a word of caution about rushing to conclusions. But I forgot, you don't know each other. Mr Portway, my promising pupil, Middleton. Promising that is if he doesn't make a habit of damaging his ankle when visiting other people's houses.'
Reginald Portway's handsome dark eyes seemed to give Gerald a faint wink. 'Don't regard Stokesay at all. You break your ankle whenever you come to a country-house party. The more demonstrations against landed property we have the better, and breaking your ankle's a novel one. You might suggest it to my sister-in-law for the Suffrage campaign.' It was a feature of his support of advanced causes that he wore them all with a smile and a touch of humour. He saw, he always said, no reason to offend by shouting one's convictions in an unmannerly way. It had given him a most useful reputation in the Church world as one of the powerful-thinking, progressive clergymen with a sense of humour and decent manners. 'I only hope you're feeling better,' he said, and Gerald realized his charm from the immense conviction of personal solicitude he gave to the conventional inquiry. 'But I'm sure you are, with so charming a Florence Nightingale to attend you.' Gerald saw a slight look of hostility in Dollie's eyes and decided at once that Portway's charm was very meretricious.
'As to caution, my dear Stokesay,' he went on, and once again he seemed to wink at Gerald as he addressed Lionel Stokesay - he was clearly always on youth's side against the absurdities of middle age, 'I agree with you, but I doubt if we shall have to be cautious long in this case. I admit it gave me an unpleasant surprise at first, and so it should have done to a good Churchman. But the Church has always had its odd fish.' He laughed. 'Some people would say you see one before you. And Eorpwald was clearly one of the oddest. After all, he came of pagan stock. We aren't surprised when some poor fellow in Africa or Asia gets confused between the true God and his idols. Don't let us condemn poor Eorpwald too quickly.'
His mobile, handsome features took on a look of understanding compassion, then changed to lively interest. 'No, Stokesay, what of course engrosses me is the way that this confirms the anonymous chronicler writing in his monastery up here six centuries later. I've been looking up the passage. There it is as bold as life - charges of sorcery, and I think we know now what that sorcery was. But no mention in Bede, of course. So much for your national historian; it's the local man and the local tradition that get there every time. You see my parochialism, Middleton,' he said with a smile.
'You may be right,' said Professor Stokesay, 'but after all the vita anonymi is a piece of very late special pleading. He wanted Rome to canonize Eorpwald.'
'All the more extraordinary,' said Portway, 'that he should have put in the story of the charge of sorcery. The answer, of course, is that he had to. It was too well known locally even after all those centuries for him to dare to leave it out. And judging by the complete failure of the plea at Rome, Innocent III knew something of the story as well.' He did not seem to notice that he was contradicting his defence of local tradition as the sole repository of truth.
'That may be so,' said Lionel Stokesay, 'but I made a search some years ago in the Vatican Library for a deposition against Eorpwald, when I was working on Wilfrid, and could find nothing. That's what makes me doubtful of the value of the anonymous life.'
'Well, you can't be doubtful now,' Reginald Portway said heartily, 'and as to the manuscript not being at the Vatican, that doesn't surprise me.' He gave a worldly look. 'I know Church politics too well. Ah! come in, Frank,' he went on, as the head of a Botticelli cherub surmounted by red-gold curls peered round the door. 'I've just been defending our local traditions against those Londoners.'
The owner of the angel's head appeared as a stockily built youth of between sixteen and seventeen, his muscles already suggesting a future fatness. He was dr
essed in a neat pepper-and-salt cloth suit. 'I'm just going home now, Mr Portway,' he said.
'Yes, yes, Frank, but look in again this evening. I've written down that song the old chap sang in the workhouse at Great Yatsley. I'd like to hear you sing it. Frank has a fine alto voice,' he told the company. 'This is Mr Middleton, Frank, who's just won high distinctions in his Cambridge finals. We don't despair of Cambridge ourselves, do we, Frank? Or rather, our preference is for Oxford. Frank is our local scholar, Middleton, with a nice old-fashioned taste for the classics. But we may see you an historian yet, Frank, after your part in our discovery. Frank was with Gilbert when the coffin was uncovered early this morning.'
'No,' said Frank; 'that was Barker. I didn't come until later.'
'Oh, I understood it was you. Never mind, you've done stalwart work. Well, don't forget, come about six.'
When the boy had left them, Reginald Portway said dramatically, 'He talks of going home. But he has no real home, poor boy. He's an orphan brought up by an old woman in the village. I have great hopes for him. He's got a good brain, a fine musical sense, and he's a charming lad. I intend to see that he has education too. Education, you know, is the one road by which the simple people of this country may come into their own once more.'