Andrew and Tobias

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘It’s partly that, I suppose. Artists do have their conventions. But one comes to see a real strain of family likeness too, I think. Over quite a number of centuries, as you can see.’ Elma pointed from one canvas to another. ‘I find that rather fascinating, I must confess.’

  ‘Aye, mebby.’ Andy didn’t sound impressed. In fact he seemed definitely to be taking against Feltons viewed en masse. ‘They’re a’ gowking at ye sideways under thon helmets and wig-things an’ whatever. They’re no thinking to know ye at a’, I’d say.’ Andy was silent for some moments. ‘An’ they a’ hang thegither. That’s it.’

  These were comments of little aesthetic interest. It was plain that Andy was not among those who would exclaim with sudden interest, ‘That must be a Bartholomew Dandridge!’ or indicate awareness that Romney is as inferior to Lawrence as Lawrence is to Reynolds. But Elma was quite clever enough to know that at a simple human level, he had made a not imperceptive remark. The likeness running through the Feltons for many generations was not of the kind manifested in Andy and his brother. It was a matter less of features than of regard. They were diffident people, you would have said, and although they didn’t look at you with arrogance, they did look at you as from a certain distance. An observer more sophisticated than either of the young people now surveying them might have judged that there was something clannish and provincial about them, such as may show itself in the hereditary nobility of some out-of-the-way continental state. Although many of the men were exhibited in gowns and robes and uniforms of one sort or another, and the women were sometimes attired as if for court, there was an over-riding impression that as a crowd they hadn’t perhaps got around a great deal, and that they judged it – or rather quite unconsciously accounted it – of more importance simply to be Feltons than to be Feltons achieving this or that.

  ‘You mean that they’re rather stand-offish?’ Elma asked.

  ‘I’d no’ ca’ it that.’ Andy had been obliged to take a guess at this expression. ‘They’d gie ye a beck in the street as soon as if ye were a laird yoursel’. An’ they’d dae mair for ye than that – just as if they really believed that we’re a’Jock Tamson’s bairns. But in their hairts it’s no’ quite like that – an’ no shame to them either. For there’s aye the bluid, ye ken. An’ they folk can think o’ bluid when we hae’ to think o’ siller.’

  Elma in her turn had to grope for the sense of this, and she was startled when she found it: partly by Andy’s embarking upon philosophic generalities at all, and rather more by what, in terms of enlarging social awareness and judgement, was implied by his use of the word ‘we’.

  ‘I don’t think you’re being fair,’ she said – not very coherently. ‘Think of how they’ve all welcomed you – Mr Felton, Mrs Warlow, Toby himself. Absolutely genuinely. And Ianthe will be like that too.’

  ‘Aye, it’s as kind as kind – and dinna’ think, Elma lass, but that I ken it weel. But we’re no’ connected, them an’ me, but by a freak o’ fortune. There canna’ be ony hurt done, either way on. It’s Toby I’m thinking o’. It’s Toby and me that are thegither in our ain bluid, whatever that bluid may hae been. Tak’ a look at the twa o’ us, and then at they folk gowking from the wa’s, and that’s as clear as clear. Toby has grown up amang them, but his distance is written on his face. And it maun be the clearer still wi’ me beside him, like we were twa china dugs on a mantelpiece. If there’s any may be hurtit, it’s him.’

  Elma was silent. In fact she said little more until they were out on the terrace again. She might have been taken for one who had been given food for thought – or even whose own thoughts had been lent unexpected definition by this strange Scottish plough- boy (Toby even down to those strange eyebrows) who had turned up at her cherished Felton House.

  V

  ‘Where,’ Howard felton asked soon after dinner that evening, ‘has Toby cut off to in such a hurry?’

  ‘He said he was driving off with Andy to a pub.’

  The elder Feltons, brother and sister, were sitting together in a deep window embrasure in the drawing-room – Howard with the glass of port he had brought from table and Grace with her embroidery frame. In the garden outside the summer dusk was deepening, and against a clear sky house-martins were darting high – behaviour approved by Howard as presaging another fine day.

  ‘That’s pleasantly companionable,’ he said. ‘I wonder where they’ve gone?’

  ‘I can tell you where Toby meant to go, and I’m glad he mentioned it to me. He was proposing that they’d walk up to the Arms.’

  ‘Well, it would be a nice evening for that. This fine spell is quite a relief, I must say. Holden’s people ought to have another good day in the corn. And they’ve gained a great deal already. I walked round there this morning, you know. It was all quite dry by eight o’clock.’

  ‘Was it, indeed?’ Mrs Warlow was seldom interested in agricultural intelligence, and would sometimes murmur ‘How a good yoke of bullocks at Stamford fair?’ when her brother embarked upon it. ‘I told Toby the Felton Arms would never do.’

  ‘You mean they’ve had to go somewhere they’re not known?’ This came from Howard on his note of dismay. ‘Like people who get in a mess and find themselves in the newspapers?’

  ‘Approximately like that.’ Mrs Warlow gave some moments to matching threads in the basket beside her. ‘Nobody would venture to be openly impertinent, but I can imagine some of the younger men sniggering over their dartboard. And Toby firing up at it.’

  ‘I should damned well hope so!’ Howard exclaimed – and then chuckled suddenly. ‘But I’d say our two could take on any four of them.’ The squire of Felton, like many mild men, was attracted by vicarious violence.

  ‘I scarcely think, Howard, that a brawl would be agreeable to us.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Howard was dashed. ‘You think, Grace, that we should get Andy away? It’s Hugh’s view, as you know.’

  ‘I less regularly approve of Hugh’s views than you do.’

  ‘Yes – but what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t think he should go away, or not at present. I told him so earlier today. I said that—’ Mrs Warlow checked herself. ‘It’s my feeling that nothing would be gained by the boy’s leaving us – or not until we have a clearer view of the whole problem he presents.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be at all sure you’re not right, Grace.’ Howard said this like a man carefully studying an issue that hangs before him in balanced scales. In fact he was much relieved by his sister’s attitude – or by what his sister had judged it prudent to say. And Grace, after giving close attention to several stitches, glanced up at him with a certain dry affection. Howard, she perfectly well knew, had taken to Andrew Auld. In his heart of hearts he saw Andy’s rising up, as it were, from the ocean as romantic beyond anything he had experienced; as renewing in him, indeed, the spirit in which, long ago, he had brought home a fatherless child to be reared in love and to splendid chances. It was touching. It was even charming. But Mrs Warlow believed that – whether unfortunately or not – it by no means certainly reflected what was likely to be a stable condition. ‘Our two’, Howard had said. With two sons – or dream-sons – where one had been a week ago, her brother almost certainly had some stiff bewilderments before him. But now wasn’t the time to conjure them up. Mrs Warlow, drawing her needle gently to its repose, pursued the subject on an immediately practical level.

  ‘Howard, dear, I think you have gained a certain authority with Toby’s brother. More, in a way, than Toby has. And what authority you have, I think you should now exert. It would of course be absurd to speak of the boy as presentable in any conventional sense, or of his possessing innate refinement, or anything of that kind. He is a Scottish peasant lad. But I think he is intelligent, and sensitive as well.’

  ‘And good-hearted. I feel Andy is a good-hearted lad.’

  ‘Of course I hope he is that too. But my point is this. Despite the difficulties, he must be persuaded that while at Felton �
� which is where we want him to be – he can only live as Toby’s equal and therefore ours. The Misses Kinch must give him up, although I suspect they’ll be sorry to do so. Hawkstone must give him up, and will be uncommonly glad to be rid of him.’

  ‘My dear Grace, you are absolutely right.’ Howard was once more the sagacious and level-headed elder brother. ‘But, you know, he must have something to do. In two or three weeks Toby will be going back to his acceptance people. And Andy can’t simply be left taking tea and sandwiches with us. He wouldn’t stand for it, for one thing.’

  ‘Perfectly true. But if you were to guarantee young Purbrick the continuance of his uncle’s lease, he’d take over running that farm for the old man like a shot. And that would leave Mr Tarling without an assistant in the estate office. Andy could start in like that. Even if he were fully a member of the family that sort of job and training on the estate would be perfectly unexceptionable. It’s a gentleman’s position as often as not nowadays.’

  ‘Absolutely true. That really is an idea. I suppose Andy can read and write – and even manage sums after a fashion?’

  ‘At least he’d come to command these accomplishments rapidly.’ Mrs Warlow in fact had no doubts about Andrew Auld’s elementary literacy and even numeracy. ‘And Mr Tarling is a most understanding man, and would see that the key to the thing would be working Andy very hard right from the start.’

  ‘So it would.’ Howard was impressed by his sister’s grasp of this point. ‘The boy would respond to challenge, and to a sense that he must pull his weight. I’ll talk to Tarling in the morning. And to the Purbricks after that. By Jove, yes!’ As he said this, Howard actually sprang to his feet, much as if under the persuasion that it was morning already. A sudden small impatience of this sort was familiar to Grace Warlow in her brother. It was quite harmless: a kind of ritual counterpoise to that tendency in himself – of which he was perfectly aware – to drag his heels a little as the necessity for some decision drew on. But it faintly reflected, too, that deeper impulsiveness, running in the family, which could occasionally produce what Mrs Warlow thought of as irreversible surprises.

  ‘But ought you not perhaps to begin with Andy himself?’ Mrs Warlow now asked. ‘You give those other people – the Purbricks and even Mr Tarling – orders, in the last resort. But Andy you will have to persuade.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And I don’t find him difficult to talk to. It was pleasant that he came up to tea again today. Elma Loftus apparently showed him some of the pictures, which was kind of her.’

  ‘I think myself that it was slightly out of turn.’

  ‘Oh, surely not, Grace. Elma is almost one of us in a way, and a very nice girl. Or woman, rather, since she is now entirely grown up. Her brother, though, remains rather the unlicked cub, wouldn’t you say? Almost what might be called a little underbred.’

  ‘Which would not be said of Andrew Auld.’

  ‘No more it would.’ Howard gave this assent with satisfaction, but at the same time looked slightly puzzled. ‘Of course with Andy there are expectations one doesn’t have. Yet it’s not quite that. Do you know? I think he’s learning from Toby rather rapidly.’

  ‘Howard, dear, you didn’t bring the decanter with you. Shall I fetch it?’

  ‘No, no – although thank you very much. The single glass is just right.’ Howard had been pleased by this sisterly attention. ‘Now, what was I saying?’

  ‘We were talking about the Loftuses.’

  ‘Ah, yes! I hadn’t quite realised that Ianthe and that charming girl were such close friends. Elma and her brother walked across, it seems, because they thought Ianthe was home again.’

  ‘Are they such friends? I feel we have chiefly Elma’s word for it. Has it occurred to you, Howard, that Elma’s friend at Felton may be Toby?’

  ‘Oh, I should think they’re very good friends too.’ Howard said this easily and not particularly attentively. Although a single glass of port had contented him it had come in the wake of half a bottle of claret, and his mood was benign. ‘They’ve known each other since they were children, after all. So you see—’ Howard broke off, and stared at his sister in surprise. ‘You’re not suggesting—?’

  ‘I was wondering about Ianthe. I’m not sure that she really cares greatly for Elma Loftus. Of course they play tennis together, and so on. But the point is quite unimportant.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Howard didn’t quite look as if he judged the point to be this. But he was always disappointed when he heard of anybody as not greatly caring for somebody else – his vision of society being coloured by the theory of universal benevolence. Then he took heart again. ‘Anyway,’ he declared, ‘Toby and Andy at least are getting on uncommonly well.’

  This was true of the two young men as they drove through Felton Canonicorum in the search for anonymity in the next county. Toby, having concurred in his aunt’s view that the Felton Arms wouldn’t do, had declared that it was just the evening for a decent spin, and that of course even without getting on the motorway they could do thirty miles in thirty minutes flat. Once or twice since his first and fateful trip in the Aston Martin, Andy had agreed to be conveyed short distances in it. But he had yet, Toby said, to see it put through its paces.

  Toby was wearing the jacket and tie without which he could hardly have sat down at Mrs Warlow’s dinner-table, and Andy, on observing this, had said doubtfully that perhaps he’d better get back to the lodge and put on his suit. Toby didn’t much fancy the idea of Andy in his suit, which he thought it likely would be of the sabbath order and more suited to hearing a sermon in than to drinking several pints of beer. So he persuaded his brother to get into a jacket of his own. It was an old jacket, but very much of the sort that looks all the better for that. It inevitably fitted Andy exactly, and it had the effect, for what the point was worth, of making the pair of them as socially indistinguishable as when they were working on the prunus hedge in practically nothing at all. This was a first step towards realising Toby’s short-term plan for a common wardrobe upon necessary occasions until matters (as they must do) happily sorted themselves out. He was put in good humour by this; his spirits rose; he drove accordingly.

  On his driving it might have been felt that Andy reserved judgement for five or ten miles. Then his spirits rose too, as those of any young man would have done in the circumstances unless he were too wet for words. ‘Wet’ was a favourite dyslogistic term of Toby’s, and Andy had been puzzled when introduced to it. He had concluded – and it wasn’t a bad guess – that it meant ‘dreich’. And Andy particularly didn’t care for people ‘dreich i’ the draw’, having as fair a share of his brother’s active temperament as he had of his underlying prudence. So whenever on this breakneck drive Toby shouted to the winds for no reason at all, Andy shouted too. It particularly delighted Andy that his new-found brother owned and commanded the splendid projectile in which they sat. Its very smell of leather amazed him. As for Toby, he rejoiced that he was coping with the strange relationship that had come into his life; that he was bringing off an adequate and successful response to its challenge. These were thirty minutes of unflawed happiness. Even the Aston Martin purred contentedly when touching ninety on a straight stretch.

  ‘Wha’ was Tobias?’ Andy suddenly shouted. The oddity of his brother’s name had been troubling him for some time.

  ‘He had a dog.’ This was a riposte that had been available to Toby since his prep school days. ‘It’s the only dog to be mentioned at all politely in the Bible.’

  ‘Did they ca’ ye that because Mr Felton liket dugs? There’s nae dugs to go slavering at that dug gate now.’

  ‘No more there are.’ Toby had never much considered why he had been christened (for he had been promptly christened in Felton parish church) with his not very common name. He had vaguely supposed it to be a Felton family name, but he had never inquired about this. If it had been chosen merely as a fancy name any assumption to the contrary might be tactless. But he had read the Apocrypha. ‘It w
as Tobias they dug a grave for on his wedding-night,’ he said, ‘because they were sure it would be too much for him. But he got away with it, and lived to be a hundred and seventeen.’

  ‘It’s a daft tale, that yin,’ Andy said, apparently on an impulse of disapproval. But suddenly – and for the first time since his arrival at Felton – he gave a shout of laughter. ‘We’re no’ like to live to e’en a hunner, you an’ me, Toby. But it wad be a richt randy lass should moil us deid on our bride-nicht.’

  This was a satisfactory exchange, and on the fringe of fresh territory. Toby would have liked to tell his brother about Elma at once, but felt it wouldn’t be very nice to do so hard upon his ribald perversion of an episode in Tobit. So when they had both stopped laughing it was Andy who spoke again.

  ‘There’s no’ ony story like that aboot Andrew,’ he said. ‘But when they’d crucified him and a’ that, there was a chiel ca’d Acca that brought his banes as relics tae Scotland an’ some say it was to Galloway. They learnt me that at school – an’ that it was why there’s more Andrews in Kirkcudbright than there are bristles on the back o’ a pig.’

  ‘And I expect the relics were pigs’ bones,’ Toby said irreverently. He was in fact rather impressed by this evidence of his brother’s religious education. ‘But here’s a fairly decent-looking pub – and high time too. I could down my first pint at a gulp.’

  This wasn’t quite true, Toby not being in any notable manner a gulper down of beer. But he was remembering that first glass of the stuff with his newly-discovered brother in his room at home, and how the occasion had somehow fallen quite flat. It would be different this time. For as two young men in a genuine fraternal relationship Andy and he were now well on their way.

  It was rather a large pub with rather a large car park, at the entrance of which there was the usual notice saying ‘Patrons Only’ and the almost equally usual one saying ‘No Coaches’. But there were several coaches ranked on it, and facing them was a large number of cars of which the majority were quite of the Aston Martin class: Lotuses and Bentleys, a Rolls or two and a whole leash of Jaguars. Toby drew up between a Mercedes and an Aston Martin a good deal younger than his own, and viewed the whole scene with some misgiving. The coaches all bore labels announcing themselves as conveying the ‘supporters’ of a soccer team whose ‘supporters’ were notorious, and the cars looked as if they belonged to what some poet or other had called the loitering heirs of City directors. The scene, in fact, reeked of the class war. Toby, who had the establishing and consolidating of what might be called a class peace on his hands, didn’t like it at all. As for Andy, he seemed not to make much of what he saw, and he certainly wasn’t discomposed. He must still be at the stage of finding a lot in England very odd indeed. And, of course, similar spectacles were perhaps on view outside large Scottish pubs generally.