‘I don’t think,’ said Mr Cameron, who had expended some ingenuity in preparing this approach to his subject, ‘that you have ever seen my rooms in the Middle Temple.’
‘No, I don’t think I have,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘In fact,’ she added in a burst of candour, ‘I am sure I haven’t, because I have never been in them.’
‘I have a particularly delightful view,’ said Mr Cameron. ‘Very green and peaceful.’
‘That must be enchanting,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘It is extraordinary what lovely views there are in London. Absolutely as quiet and green as the country. At least not at all really, because there is always the noise and the smuts, but one would hardly notice the difference except for the way you can’t hear yourself speak and the seats come off on your clothes. When I was little we lived in Cadogan Square and I used to get absolutely filthy in summer, playing in a corner of the Square under some laurels.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Cameron with a visible effort, ‘you would come to lunch or tea with me one day.’
Mrs Stonor said she would love to.
‘And bring anyone you like, of course,’ said Mr Cameron.
‘Well, I don’t think that would matter,’ said Mrs Stonor, ‘because the Temple isn’t like Albany.’
‘Do you have that feeling about Albany?’ said Mr Cameron, more human than he had been that morning. ‘How splendid.’
‘I am absolutely convinced,’ said Mrs Stonor, ‘that a Guardsman is lurking in every set of chambers in Albany to Ruin people’s reputation.’
‘Instead of which it is women now, and young men with beards,’ said Mr Cameron morosely. ‘If you wanted to have your reputation ruined there is really nowhere to go nowadays. I’m afraid we can’t even make a pretence of it in the Temple, but I do hope you’ll come all the same. And of course,’ he added, with a return to his former nervous manner, ‘do bring someone with you if you’d care to.’
‘I’m sure Daphne would love to come,’ said Mrs Stonor, sorrier than ever for Mr Cameron’s difficulties.
‘Oh, Daphne. Yes, that would be very nice,’ said Mr Cameron, with an airy manner which he flattered himself entirely disguised his feelings. He then fell so uncomfortably silent that his hostess was paralysed and hunted wildly for some remark to break the embarrassment.
‘It’s funny,’ she said desperately, ‘how well we have got to know you this summer, Alister, without really knowing anything about you.’
She then wished she had not said it, for it sounded exactly as if she were a real mother asking her daughter’s suitor what his intentions and position were. But Mr Cameron appeared to be rather glad than otherwise of the opportunity.
‘There’s practically nothing to know,’ he said. ‘My parents died when I was at school and left me pretty well off, and when I left Oxford I went into an architect’s office and then I came in as partner to Middleton and the firm is doing very well.’
‘I am sorry about your parents,’ said Mrs Stonor, with such genuine sympathy that Mr Cameron was moved to tell her a great deal more about himself. In the course of this narration it was discovered that he was almost exactly two years older than Mrs Stonor, that his father had been in Colonel Stonor’s regiment and that his old nurse came from the same village as Palfrey. By this time it was one o’clock and Mrs Stonor said the children were probably having lunch at Woolworth’s and would come out by the half-past one bus, so Mr Cameron said good-bye and went back to Laverings. Half-way down the garden he remembered that what he really went to the White House for was to ask Mrs Stonor whether she thought he would have any chance if he urged his suit upon Daphne, but he had so much enjoyed himself that the moment never seemed to arise. He wished she had not spoken of Daphne and Denis as the children. The word child seemed to open a wider gulf than he liked between him and Daphne. On the other hand it had put him and Mrs Stonor into a pleasant conspiracy together against the disturbing element of youth. Daphne was horribly disturbing, no doubt of it. So very friendly, so very remote; so sympathetic, so unconcerned. A riddle well worth solving, but it was sometimes dangerous to read a riddle aright.
After lunch Mr Middleton went up to his room to do some concentrated work, leaving his wife and his partner in the library. Mrs Middleton described rather amusingly how she had wrestled with a Women’s Institute Committee meeting in Skeynes and then asked Mr Cameron how he had spent his morning. He said he had been over at the White House.
‘I thought Daphne might be there,’ he said, ‘but she and Denis had gone to Winter Overcotes, and I stayed and talked to Lilian. I hope she and Daphne will come and lunch in my rooms in the autumn. You must come too, Catherine, and make a fourth.’
‘Too many women,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘One too many certainly; possibly two too many.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Mr Cameron.
‘I don’t exactly know,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘Do you know yourself, Alister?’
‘I still don’t understand,’ said Mr Cameron. ‘You wouldn’t be one too many ever, Catherine.’
‘Not as a general rule,’ said Mrs Middleton, ‘but on occasion, yes. And on such an occasion I am rather wondering who else would be a little superfluous.’
‘Dear Catherine,’ said Mr Cameron, ‘how straight you look at things. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Of course you know what I feel about Daphne.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Middleton, ‘and I am not going to talk about it. I’ll give you my blessing, or I’ll bind up your wounds, but not now. Not till one or the other is needed. Was Lilian nice?’
Mr Cameron said she couldn’t have been nicer. One of the most sympathetic women he had ever met. They had had, he said, a perfectly delightful conversation.
‘About what?’ said Mrs Middleton.
Mr Cameron said she had asked him a good deal about himself. Then, with a little hesitation, he said did Mrs Middleton think that was a good sign?
‘It depends,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘It is certainly a sign that Lilian is a very intelligent person, but I have known that for a long time. Very intelligent.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr Cameron.
‘As you ought to know if you have any intelligence yourself, Alister,’ said Mrs Middleton in a detached way. ‘But I rather think you haven’t just now. You will never find out what Daphne thinks by talking to her stepmother.’
‘You couldn’t —?’ Mr Cameron began.
‘Certainly not,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘I believe in non-intervention. If Daphne is your fate, Alister, speak to her yourself.’
Mr Cameron pointed out to his hostess that he had already waited all morning in vain to try to see Daphne and then by degrees began to talk about Daphne and himself, gradually widening his treatment of the subject to include himself and Daphne and at length treating it on so ample a scale that Daphne vanished and he only spoke about himself. Mrs Middleton listened kindly and sometimes let her thoughts wander. By the time tea came Mr Cameron, who as a rule spoke so little, had talked himself nearly dry, but after a refreshing cup he showed every symptom of running on, when luckily Mr Middleton summoned him to his work-room to discuss the central heating system for the Epistemological Ideological College. Mrs Middleton, feeling the need of a change, went for a walk by herself down the fields to the coppice and thought with her accustomed tolerance of several things. Alister was certainly to go a little further from her, taking all he could before he went, all the attentive listening, the cool advice which she never gave unless asked, never spared if it was really wanted. And Denis was coming to play duets with her one day, when Jack was in London and would not be disturbed by the piano.
At a quarter to eight Lord Bond’s little car, with Ed Pollett at the wheel, came to collect the Stonors and Mr Cameron. Denis, who had heard that Ed knew one of the local folk songs hitherto unedited, went in front to explore this unworked mine. Ed, with the true countryman’s caution, heightened in his case by his slightly defective mentality, would not commit himself, on the grounds that ‘sh
e’, by which he meant the song, belonged to old Margett at Pooker’s Piece. Denis, enchanted by this survival of the singer’s property in a song, asked Ed if he thought old Margett would sing it, but was dashed by hearing that Margett, apparently a Puritan in his mode of thought, considered it unsuitable for the lay ear.
‘Now if you was old Mr Patten up at Skeynes Agnes,’ said Ed, ‘old Mr Margett he’d sing her for you.’
On further enquiry Denis learned that old Margett and old Patten each had a song which he guarded jealously but would sing for the other, honour among bards being a marked quality. Ed, being a nephew of Mr Patten the station-master at Worsted, grandson of old Mr Patten, and well known to be wanting, had from time to time been admitted to these bardic feasts, and with an intellect unspoilt by schooling, to which he had been practically immune, had retained the songs in his mind.
‘You’d had ought to be there last Christmas,’ said Ed, ‘when old Mr Margett sang her and old Mr Patten he played the mouth organ. That was a fair treat.’
Denis, with the cunning of the collector on the warpath, asked Ed if he liked mouth organs.
Ed expressed the greatest admiration for that instrument and said he had a lovely one but it fell on the line and was flattened by the 6.47 down. His mother, he said regretfully, to whom he gave all his wages, wouldn’t allow him two shillings to buy another and them sixpenny ones didn’t seem to sing like. Enflamed by this poetic flight Ed, to Denis’s great terror, took both hands off the wheel and went through the actions of playing a first-class mouth organ.
‘That’s how she goes,’ said Ed, carelessly taking the wheel again.
‘I’ll tell you what, Ed,’ said Denis. ‘I’ve got a mouth organ at home. She cost five shillings and sings like a crooner. If you sing me old Mr Patten’s song, you can have her.’
On hearing this Ed would undoubtedly have upset the car into the ditch in his rapture, but for the opportune arrival of the Winter Overcotes motor-bus which debouched upon the road they were following. As the driver, who also gave out tickets and knowing all his passengers was agreeable about giving credit to ladies who had left their purses at home or spent all their money at Woolworth’s, was a second cousin of Ed’s, Ed felt obliged by family pride to play a kind of cup and ball with the bus, finally outdistancing it by the narrowest of margins and turning triumphantly into Staple Park. Denis, who had been almost rigid with fright, realized that Ed’s skill in driving was something out of the common and was quite ready to laugh at his own fears by the time they arrived.
‘Now this is what I call really pleasant,’ said Lord Bond as he greeted his guests. ‘You will all have some sherry, won’t you? Dinner nearly ready, Spencer?’
‘Mr Bond is not yet here, my lord,’ said Spencer reproachfully. ‘I was given to understand, my lord, that he would be here for dinner.’
‘Well, if he isn’t, we won’t wait,’ said Lord Bond pettishly.
Spencer managed to express without speaking that he could easily reduce Lord Bond to a charred cinder by a glance and only refrained from doing so out of consideration for the guests assembled. He then left the room and shortly reappeared to announce in a voice of Christian resignation that dinner was served.
‘I must apologize for that boy of mine,’ said Lord Bond as they took their seats. ‘He was to be next to you, Miss Stonor, between you and your brother.’
Daphne said it didn’t matter a bit and very likely he had forgotten. She then devoted herself to talking to Denis and Mr Cameron, while Lord Bond and Mrs Stonor laid the foundations of a sympathetic friendship, each talking on the subject uppermost in his or her mind but listening with great courtesy to what the other had to say and never interrupting.
‘I hope you are liking our part of the world, Mrs Stonor,’ said Lord Bond, speaking not so much as royalty, as representing the landowners of the county.
‘I simply love it,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘And do you know, talking of the county, my maid Palfrey whom you wouldn’t know, though she did come to the meeting and enjoyed your speech so much, comes from the same village as Mr Cameron’s nurse. Isn’t it extraordinary?’
‘Cameron’s nurse, eh?’ said Lord Bond, looking at Mr Cameron rather nervously.
‘His nurse when he was a baby,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘He doesn’t have one now, though I believe he has quite a nice housekeeper, but of course it’s not the same. Foxling-in-Henfold.’
‘Eh,’ said Lord Bond.
‘The village,’ Mrs Stonor explained.
‘Oh, Foxling; of course, of course. Used to go there when I was a boy. The Rector was a friend of my father’s. He used to shoot jackdaws in the church tower and used incense. Now I’ll tell you a remarkable thing. There was a farmer at Foxling who had a good Jersey, splendid milker. He tried crossing the strain with a West-Midland Shorthorn. What do you think happened? The calf, nice little heifer she was with a crumpled horn, won every prize she could at the Barchester Agricultural next year, but she never did any good after that. I told the farmer so, Hopgood his name was, I told him the heifer hadn’t got the stamina. And I told Stoke so. That heifer won’t have any stamina, I said. Extraordinary how often I’ve been right in things like that.’
‘One often is,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘And what is even more extraordinary his father was in my husband’s regiment.’
By the time Lord Bond had elucidated the fact that it was Mr Cameron’s father, not the father of Farmer Hopgood or the Rector of Foxling that was in question, Spencer was pouring champagne with a scorn that no one noticed.
‘I hope my chauffeur brought you here comfortably,’ said kind Lord Bond, turning to Daphne on his left. ‘He is only temporary, but Mr Middleton’s chauffeur, whose brother he is, highly recommends him.’
‘He’s a jolly good driver,’ said Daphne. ‘I thought he’d hit the motor bus but he didn’t.’
‘He is going to sing me one of old Margett’s songs,’ said Denis. ‘Do you know them, sir?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Lord Bond. ‘We’ll have a talk about them after dinner.’
And with what Denis thought a curious want of interest in one so devoted to his neighbourhood, Lord Bond changed the subject and then young Mr Bond came in, full of apologies, having been detained he said in town. He slipped into his seat between Daphne and Denis, apologized again to everyone for not having changed, and applied himself to catching up on the two previous courses, which he quickly did, talking to Daphne at the same time. But Daphne, not as a rule a stickler for etiquette, seeing her stepmother and Mr Cameron in talk, found that duty compelled her to turn to the deserted Lord Bond and discuss cows with great animation, having had a talk with Pucken to that very end during the afternoon. Young Mr Bond was not altogether happy. He had been looking forward to this evening with almost excitement. To snatch an evening with Daphne without his mother’s rather cramping presence had seemed to him a delightful adventure. He found Daphne one of the nicest girls he had ever known, perhaps the very nicest, and had no reason to think she felt otherwise than kindly disposed towards him. Now all was changed. Daphne was distinctly avoiding his conversation. Not so had the nymphs of New York treated the heir to an English title; not so did the nymphs of the London season treat a good dancer with a good car. Was it for this that he cut a very dull dinner and even duller dance and had motored forty miles on a lovely summer evening? He turned to Denis and gave him an account of a new ballet company he had lately seen, which turned out to be the company who might do Denis’s ballet. What with the champagne and a very good ice pudding and the subsequent strawberries the two young men were quite happy when Lord Bond called down the table.
‘I heard some news to-day that will interest you, C.W.,’ he said. ‘Palmer told me. He was on the bench with me at Southbridge. It’s about his niece Betty, your great friend. Nice girl. She’s just back from America —’
Whether this was the end of the sentence no one ever knew, for Mrs Stonor suddenly remembered that she could not remember whether or no
t she had remembered to tell Palfrey to remember to tell Mrs Pucken to catch the butcher’s boy at the end of the lane about the cutlets, and as they had all finished dinner Lord Bond asked Mrs Stonor if she and Daphne would care to have coffee in the library where the men would shortly join them. Owing to the position of the dining-room door Daphne was able to turn a scornful shoulder on young Mr Bond as she got up, at the same time issuing a pressing invitation to Mr Cameron not to be long.
The two ladies were not long alone, but long enough for Mrs Stonor to wonder uncomfortably whether Daphne was behaving badly by accident, which was not at all like her, or on purpose, which was not like her either. What the ins and outs were, Mrs Stonor was not quite sure, but that Lord Bond’s reference to Mr Palmer’s niece had annoyed Daphne was to her almost maternal eye only too clear. If pique with young Mr Bond was going to make Daphne, no good hand at dissembling her feelings, show an even more open interest in Alister Cameron, she was afraid of the consequences. It seemed to her that in this unnecessary game of hurting people, not only were Alister and Daphne to be involved, but also C.W., whose only fault was that he had a great many female friends and perhaps a tactless father. If Daphne, so tolerant, so easy-going, had to be rude because Lord Bond said he had news of Mr Palmer’s niece, it was all a pretty kettle of fish. She looked at her stepdaughter, but that young lady, whom she had never tried to control except by kindness, was scowling so truculently at herself in a mirror that Mrs Stonor dropped any idea she had of trying to make her reasonable.
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