By this time the room was nearly full and it was twenty-five minutes to four. Lord Stoke had not yet arrived, nor had Lord Pomfret, and Lady Bond was beginning to chafe and told Mrs Middleton so.
‘I know Stoke had started,’ she said, ‘because Spencer rang up to enquire just before we left home. I do hope he hasn’t had an accident. He is so deaf now.’
‘But he doesn’t drive himself, does he?’ asked Mrs Middleton.
‘Stoke? He never tried,’ said Lady Bond. ‘He is a perfect fool about machinery. But it is worrying. Mr Middleton,’ she called as her host came in. ‘Stoke hasn’t come, has he?’
‘He has come all right,’ said Mr Middleton, ‘but I can’t find him. His car is in the lane, but I can’t see him anywhere about.’
‘Then he is down in the field talking to your cowman,’ said Lady Bond, who knew her brother’s peculiarities. ‘C.W., you had better go and look.’
‘Certainly,’ said young Mr Bond. ‘Which field would he be down, sir?’
Daphne said she would show him and they went off together, to the simultaneous annoyance of Lady Bond and Mr Cameron, who were both even more annoyed when Lord Stoke came in by the French window.
‘Oh, there you are, Stoke,’ said Mr Middleton. ‘It is time we began.’
‘I’ve been having a most interesting talk with your cowman,’ said Lord Stoke. ‘I remember his father quite well. He fell into a ditch coming back from the Southbridge Cattle Show one year and a waggon of hay overturned just at the same spot. When they got the waggon right next day and reloaded the hay, of course Pucken was dead. Suffocated. Don’t suppose he suffered, though. He must have been quite drunk when he fell in. At least they had refused to serve him with any more beer at the Stoke Arms and you know what Glazebury was, old Glazebury I mean; he’d go just as far as the law would let him and if he refused to serve a customer it meant that customer was pretty tight already.’
‘Well, we ought to move a chairman,’ said Mr Middleton. ‘You are going to do it, I believe.’
‘Eh?’ said Lord Stoke.
‘We ought to be getting down to business,’ said Mr Middleton, not quite patiently and rather loudly.
‘Business, eh? Quite right. Who is that woman sitting in the back row, Middleton? I ought to know her face,’ said Lord Stoke, who had been surveying the audience with much interest.
‘That’s Mrs Pucken,’ said Mr Middleton unwillingly.
‘Of course, of course,’ said his lordship. ‘Sarah Margett she was. Her brother keeps the shop at Worsted. Used to be Lucasta’s kitchenmaid. I must have a word with her. Well, Sarah, how are you?’
Mrs Pucken got up and shook Lord Stoke’s proffered hand and said she was nicely.
‘And how are the new lowers?’ said his lordship.
Mrs Pucken smiled broadly with a slightly seasick motion of her lower teeth and said there wasn’t really nothing she couldn’t eat now.
‘Lou here wants a set like mine, my lord,’ she said. ‘Her teeth are something awful. But I say Just you wait a bit, my girl, we can’t have everything we want not all at once, didn’t I, Lou?’
But Lou, a step further than her mother from familiar terms with the aristocracy, went bright scarlet and although she opened and shut her mouth several times was bereft of the power of speech.
‘That’s right,’ said Lord Stoke approvingly, for he was used to finding his friends inaudible and took it for granted that Lou had spoken. ‘Always do what your mother tells you. Called after Lady Bond, isn’t she?’
Mrs Pucken replied that in a manner of speaking she was, implying that she fully realized Lady Bond’s condescension in lending her name. Lord Stoke would have lingered indefinitely, asking after the various members of Mrs Pucken’s family, but Mr Middleton, made quite desperate, seized his distinguished guest by the arm and propelled him to the other end of the room. Lord Stoke, seeing an armchair, and being used to taking the chair on every possible occasion, sat down in it and Mr Middleton, who had rather meant to conduct the meeting himself, was forced to take the inferior seat at his lordship’s side. Denis caught Mrs Middleton’s eye and received from her a look expressing amusement combined with despair.
Lord Stoke lost no time in telling his audience that they had been convened to discuss a public meeting to be held about the proposed building of a garage on Pooker’s Piece. As everyone had already been informed of this by the leaflet of invitation, and in many cases by word of mouth, the news created very little sensation. He then by easy stages passed to the suitability of Pooker’s Piece for grazing land, his own opinion of pure-bred Jerseys as against a mixed strain of milker and a pressing reminder to his hearers of the importance of the Skeynes Agricultural Show. At this point Lady Bond, who had been listening to her brother’s words with growing disfavour, wrote on a visiting card the words ‘Let Mr Middleton speak’ and handed it up to the chairman’s table.
‘What’s that?’ said Lord Stoke. ‘Middleton speak? Of course, Lucasta, of course. I am just coming to that. Well, Middleton, what have you to say, eh?’
Seizing this favourable moment Mr Middleton rose to his feet and launched into a spirited defence of the amenities of Pooker’s Piece, with special and lengthy reference to the pleasure it had so often given him to ramble over it with Flora, who barked at her own name and had to be suppressed by Mr Cameron, glad of an excuse to vent an unaccountable irritation of feeling upon a dumb beast. Mr Middleton’s rolling periods gave his audience time to think in some cases about nothing, in others about their own affairs. Flora at intervals gave an hysterical whimper, till Lou, sitting just behind Mr Cameron and at the end of a row, was moved to an heroic impulse.
‘Shall I take her away, sir?’ she said hoarsely. ‘She knows me.’
Flora, on hearing this, made a wild struggle as of a beast starved and tortured to escape to freedom, for with the profound instinct of her kind she associated Lou with bits of food surreptitiously bestowed whenever she went into the Puckens’ cottage or the kitchen of the White House.
Mr Cameron thankfully allowed Lou to pick Flora up bodily and take her out by the service door and relapsed into gloomy meditation till he saw Mrs Stonor looking anxiously and sympathetically at him. Somehow this sight cheered him a good deal and he began to wonder what everyone else had already been wondering for some time, whether Mr Middleton would ever stop. This question was suddenly settled by Lord Stoke, who looked at his watch, and uttered an exclamation.
‘Good heavens, Middleton, it’s half-past four,’ he said. ‘Sorry I must be off. Sub-Committee of the County Council at Southbridge at five. Most interesting meeting. Does a lot of good getting people together.’
He then descended among the crowd and began saying good-bye to his hostess. Everyone got up or shuffled their chairs, eager for Mrs Middleton’s good tea. Mr Tebben, driven to desperation by a wasted afternoon in which nothing whatever had been accomplished except the ruin of his working day, got between Lord Stoke and the door.
‘Excuse me one moment, Lord Stoke,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ said Lord Stoke, stopping courteously.
‘It’s about that find of bones,’ said Mr Tebben.
‘Eh?’ said Lord Stoke.
‘Bones!’ said Mr Tebben at the top of his voice. ‘Viking’s bones! My name is Tebben.’
‘Tebben?’ said his lordship. ‘Good Lord! Tebben! Snorri Society. I read your paper on the Laxdaela Saga in their transactions. Most interesting. I’d like you to come over and see those bones. At least what there is of them. Most of them were broken and a lot crumbled away, but we’ve got the rest up at the Castle for the moment.’
‘And do you think they are definitely of that period?’ said Mr Tebben.
‘Couldn’t say,’ replied Lord Stoke. ‘Bones aren’t much in my line. Might be a man’s, might be a dog’s as far as I’m concerned. But come over to-morrow and have a look. I’ll send the car for you. Or come to lunch. That’s it, lunch, one-thirty, and we’ll have a good look
at the excavation. Is this your wife?’ he added as Mrs Tebben who had a passion for Getting to the Bottom of Things came up to see what it was all about. ‘Will you introduce me?’
Mr Tebben introduced Lord Stoke to Mrs Tebben, adding quickly that he was going to lunch at Rising Castle on the next day.
Mrs Tebben, who held that an invitation to a husband should include a wife, was about to be disappointed when a thought struck her.
‘That will be splendid, my dear,’ she said. ‘I had meant to have a little bit of neck of lamb for lunch tomorrow and open a tinned tongue for to-night. But if you are going to Lord Stoke we will keep the roast till Monday and I shall have a picnic on some Heinz beans by myself for Sunday lunch. Or, I wonder, would the lamb keep till Monday in this weather? Perhaps it might be wiser to have it to-night. It is such a small piece that there will be time for Mrs Phipps to put it in the oven for our supper when we get home, and I shall just have time to hurry down the garden and get some peas.’
She paused, her hat a little on the back of her head with enthusiasm.
‘Well, that’s splendid,’ said Lord Stoke, who had but imperfectly understood Mrs Tebben, but gathered that her inclinations were friendly. ‘Now I must really be getting along. My car will fetch you at one o’clock tomorrow, Tebben. Lamb’s Piece at Worsted, isn’t it? I used to know old Margerison who owned it. Married his housekeeper – high time too.’
But just as he was going his eye was caught by Ethel, important and flustered, speaking to her mistress. His lordship, who had a violent curiosity about everyone with whom he came in contact, paused to listen.
‘Show him in, of course, Ethel,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘Jack, Lord Pomfret is here.’
‘Then we’ll get something done,’ said Lady Bond, whose disapproval of her brother and her host had been increasing rapidly. ‘Don’t let the people have tea yet, Mr Middleton. One moment,’ she added to the room in general in her committee voice.
The rush towards tea was stemmed and Lord Pomfret came in.
‘I am so glad you could come,’ said Mrs Middleton, ‘but I’m afraid the meeting is almost over. Would you care to say anything?’
‘Depends on what’s been said,’ said Lord Pomfret, looking suspiciously around.
‘Absolutely nothing at all,’ said Lady Bond. ‘I understood that this meeting was called to arrange for a public meeting about Sir Ogilvy Hibberd’s plan for building on Pooker’s Piece, but nothing has been settled at all.’
‘Not much good my coming then,’ said Lord Pomfret. ‘However, as I’m here can I have a cup of tea, Mrs Middleton?’
‘Of course,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘Will you come into the dining-room?’
‘Crowd there,’ said Lord Pomfret. ‘I’d rather have a cup here with you.’
Mrs Middleton, who liked Lord Pomfret but did not intend to be bullied, said she must look after her guests and would send some tea to him and come back herself before long. She then introduced her sister-in-law to Lord Pomfret and went away.
7
Epilogue to a Meeting
In the dining-room the fun, as Mrs Tebben said, was fast and furious. Most of the other guests were gorging on Mrs Middleton’s excellent cakes, telling each other that they were on a diet but when you were out to tea it didn’t count. Denis and Mr Cameron were being very obliging with strawberries and ices. Mr Cameron had always found that hard work was a good way of taking one’s mind off things, and to fill people’s plates seemed better than to wonder where Daphne and young Bond were; so he industriously did both.
As a matter of fact Daphne and young Mr Bond, having conducted the most perfunctory of searches for Lord Stoke, had gone down to the cowshed and had a delightful conversation with Pucken, who obliged them with his valueless views on the Milk Marketing Board. They then discussed the cows, the probable date of Lily Langtry’s expected calf and the chances of the various exhibitors at the Skeynes Agricultural Show, after which young Mr Bond gave Pucken a cigarette and followed Daphne to the strawberry beds. Here they performed a difficult but humane deed by rescuing a thrush who had entangled himself in the net and deeply resented their kind interference.
‘By Jove, he has bitten me to the bone,’ said young Mr Bond as the thrush gave one last vindictive dig at his hand and fled shrieking to the wood.
‘That always happens if you help people,’ said Daphne. ‘I expect you’ll see that thrush walking up and down outside your window to-morrow with a placard saying “Mr Bond Unfair to Thrushes”.’
‘If he does I’ll jolly well drive my car up and down outside his wood with a placard to say “Thrush Ungrateful to Mr Bond”.’
‘Well, that’s about all,’ said Daphne, straightening herself. ‘I don’t think there’s a single one we haven’t eaten. It won’t matter because I know Catherine has got all she wants for to-night. I suppose we’d better go back to the meeting.’
‘Need we?’ said Mr Bond.
‘Well, not for pleasure,’ said Daphne, ‘but Catherine might want me to help and I’d hate to let her down.’
Young Mr Bond, who really had a sense of duty, at once recognized the justice of Daphne’s remarks and admired her for them, so they went back to Laverings, entering the library by the French window just as Mr Cameron was bringing a tray of strawberries and cream for Lady Bond, Mrs Palmer and their parties.
‘Hullo, Alister,’ said Daphne. ‘I’d adore some of those.’
Mr Cameron smiled at her and brought his tray.
‘I should have thought you’d had enough,’ said young Mr Bond. ‘Guzzling away under the strawberry net.’
‘Well, they do make me come out all over spots sometimes,’ said Daphne candidly. ‘Thanks awfully, Alister, but I’d better not.’
Mr Cameron took his tray away and saw that Lady Bond, Mrs Palmer and Mrs Tebben were properly looked after. Lord Pomfret, Lord Bond, Mr Palmer and Lord Stoke, who had now decided that it was too late for the sub-Committee, were deep in professional talk about cows, and Mr Middleton for once in his life found so little attention paid to his remarks that he was glad to give Mr Tebben his views on the Icelandic sagas. Lady Bond, still annoyed by the very inconclusive character of the meeting and what she inwardly called the maunderings of her brother and Mr Middleton, was in her most aggressive humour and had already had one or two sharp passages with Mrs Palmer. Mrs Middleton, who had come back as she promised, found that Lord Pomfret was immersed in cow talk, so she tried to pour oil on the rising billows of their politeness, though without much success.
‘What play are you giving this year, Mrs Palmer?’ she asked.
Mrs Palmer said they were having a complete change from Greek plays and doing Twelfth Night in modern dress.
‘We are still short of principals,’ she said. ‘I suppose, Mrs Stonor, your daughter wouldn’t help us by doing Olivia?’
‘Well,’ said Mrs Stonor, who had been listening with some amusement to the bickerings between the other ladies, ‘she is really my stepdaughter, but I don’t see why she shouldn’t be able to act. I’ll ask her, Daphne!’
‘It is quite in the nature of an experiment,’ said Mrs Palmer. ‘Everyone is as far as possible to be his or her natural self. My butler, for instance, is doing Malvolio and the doctor’s twin girls are doing Viola and Sebastian, and the Rector’s parlourmaid will be Maria.’
‘It seems a pity, Louise, that Ed Pollett couldn’t do the fool,’ said Mrs Tebben. ‘Of course he can’t ever remember his lines and has no voice, but I daresay someone else could sing his part off.’
‘Ed isn’t a fool, Winifred,’ said Mrs Palmer sharply. ‘He’s only wanting. Miss Stonor, would you care to do Olivia for us?’
‘Not if it’s Shakespeare, thank you,’ said Daphne, retreating. ‘We did a lot of him at school.’
‘It is in modern dress,’ Mrs Palmer urged.
‘But that wouldn’t feel like Shakespeare,’ said Daphne, basely changing her tactics. ‘I mean you can generally get away with it with rob
es and things, but I’d feel an awful fool in my ordinary clothes.’
‘Well, think it over,’ said Mrs Palmer graciously. ‘We have a most enthusiastic audience. Our high water mark was the production of Hippolytus a few years ago.’
‘That was the year Richard made his wonderful catch,’ said Mrs Tebben, beaming at the thought.
Lady Bond who did not like this allusion to her son’s defeat said nothing in a very marked manner, but young Mr Bond with perfect honesty said what fun it was and what a splendid tea the two elevens had had afterwards.
‘That was the year Mrs Palmer’s niece, Betty, did Phaedra so well,’ Mrs Tebben continued. ‘Didn’t you think her splendid, Mr Bond?’
Young Mr Bond, with less enthusiasm, said she was awfully good.
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