Lord Mullion's Secret
Page 4
‘I don’t want to be a nuisance,’ he said. ‘But the fact is that I’ve done something uncommonly stupid: run out of petrol the better part of a mile back. Can you tell me how far I am from Mullion Castle now?’
‘Not all that far, sir. The gates are only a couple of hundred yards ahead of you. And then there’s the drive through the park, which is just under half a mile.’
‘Well, that’s not too bad.’ The stranger didn’t seem to feel that it was too good either. ‘I said I’d arrive in time for luncheon, and it seems uncivil to be late.’
‘I could go ahead at the double, sir. It’s really rather a nice run. I’d explain things. If you were to mention your name.’
‘It’s Charles Honeybath. I–’
‘Mine’s Swithin Gore.’
‘How do you do?’ Mr Honeybath said this instantly. ‘But, no – I couldn’t possibly trouble you in that way. If there were some petrol around, and I could be driven back with it to my car–’
‘Is the key in the ignition?’ It didn’t seem to Swithin that the elderly Mr Honeybath was being too clear-headed.
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Then much better walk straight on to the castle, sir, and leave things to me. I think I can get hold of some petrol, and bring the car up to the castle not all that long after your own arrival. I do drive. I’ve driven his lordship’s Rolls from time to time.’ Swithin, who had his naive side, added this particular with some satisfaction. ‘And you’d better start off at once, sir. I’m afraid it’s going to rain rather heavily quite soon.’
‘So it is.’ Mr Honeybath glanced up at the heavens apprehensively. ‘And it’s uncommonly kind of you.’ Mr Honeybath’s hand moved towards a pocket, and then came away again. Swithin detected and approved this second thought. He didn’t propose to be tipped by Mr Honeybath, either now or later. Payment for the petrol was one thing, and he’d make sure of collecting it. Accepting the price of a couple of drinks in return for giving an old buffer a helping hand was quite another. And now he hastened the old buffer on his way, and went about the business of retrieving his car. First Lord Wyndowe’s tennis gear and now this visitor’s stranded bus. He was doing the right thing about both of them, he told himself, like the model little lackey he was. He wondered, darkly, if Lord Mullion’s elder daughter saw him that way.
5
An obliging young man, Charles Honeybath told himself as he walked on towards Mullion Castle. When explaining the manner of his arrival to his host and hostess he would not omit to express his sense of this strongly. For it must be said in general that disobligingness was abroad in the land, so that conduct of a contrary character deserved to be marked. It was true that the under-gardener called Swithin – an attractive name – had been amused as well as polite. But this was fair enough in face of that rash assumption that here had been Henry’s son Cyprian. Moreover, stranded motorists are always for some reason mildly laughable, just as are equestrians who have tumbled off a horse. Honeybath imagined that upon socially appropriate occasions young Swithin might reveal a mildly satirical bent. It was possible that his mind was a little too lively for his job.
It suddenly became apparent that the lad was at least a good meteorologist. The rain was falling. In fact it might be said by a person of literary bent that the heavens had opened. And there was no shelter in sight. Along the hedgerow, indeed, there was a scattering of stately elms. But as these were all dead they were unlikely to afford much protection.
Honeybath hastened forward. The village of Mullion, he vaguely believed, lay some way ahead. But he must now be quite close to the entrance to the castle’s drive, and there would probably be a lodge in which he could seek refuge for a time. If the rain were to prove continuous he could even remain there until Swithin turned up with his car. It looked as if Swithin’s obliging disposition was going to earn him a good soaking at the start.
Honeybath became aware that there was, after all, a building in sight. It lay behind a high wall which had suddenly appeared on his right hand, so that its character was not immediately apparent. Honeybath was still in doubt about this when a head appeared above the wall and he found himself being addressed by a venerable clergyman.
‘My dear sir,’ the venerable clergyman said, ‘can I not prevail upon you to enter the church?’
‘Thank you. You are very kind.’
‘Not at all. It is an invitation, alas, which I am well accustomed to addressing to those who ought to regard themselves as my parishioners. And now here I am – calling out, it may be said, in the highways and byways. Pray hasten, before you are soaked to the skin. There is an entrance, or better an aperture, only a few yards ahead. Strait is the gate, so far as our local people are concerned. The most imposing access to the churchyard is from the direction of the castle, naturally enough.’
Honeybath, not much regarding the element of chit-chat in this, hurried on and found the aperture. Within seconds he was inside the church itself. It was crepuscular and diminutive, the latter attribute being accented by the presence of a great deal of monumental and funerary sculpture of the more massive sort. He was incongruously reminded, indeed, of a doll’s house lavishly equipped with furniture a size too large for it. But at least it was shelter, and Honeybath hastened to express his gratitude for this and to explain himself.
‘A shocking downpour,’ he then said. ‘It was predicted by a young man who has now very kindly gone in search of petrol for me. I jumped to the rash conclusion that he must be Lord Mullion’s son, but he proved to be one of the gardeners, and told me his name was Gore.’
‘Ah, yes – Swithin Gore. I saw him myself only a little time ago, and he was good enough to wave to me.’ The clergyman, who appeared to find this an amusing circumstance, glanced at Honeybath thoughtfully. ‘You are on your way to the castle, sir?’
‘I am on my way to stay there. But my immediate idea was to get as far as the drive and seek refuge in the lodge.’
‘An idle thought, I fear. The lodge is empty and boarded up. The rich man is still in his castle, I am happy to say. But the poor man is no longer at his gate. Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis. May I mention that my name is Atlay? I am the incumbent.’
‘How do you do? Honeybath is my name.’
‘Ah, indeed!’ Dr Atlay’s features registered a kind of magisterial pleasure. ‘I might have supposed it to be so, Mr Honeybath. Lord Mullion has mentioned to me that you were coming down. And upon what occasion. An excellent idea upon Mullion’s part – as I told him at once. Nobody could do better justice to his wife than yourself, if I may venture a mere amateur’s judgement upon such matters.’
‘Thank you very much.’ Honeybath didn’t manage to say this particularly gratefully, since the receiving of formal compliments invariably irritated him. ‘I don’t know Lady Mullion very well, but she appears to be an admirable woman.’
‘She is so, indeed – although not quite sound, I am sorry to say, upon the grand principle of subordination. It comes of belonging to a ducal house. Dukes are very odd fish, Mr Honeybath, as you have no doubt had abundant occasion to remark. Particularly when they are Whigs, as most of them are. Indeed, Mullion made a venturesome marriage, and I am inclined to regard as a matter of special dispensation by the Divine Providence the fact that it has been a happy one. There are two delightful daughters.’
‘And a son, of course.’
‘And, indeed, a son. I fear the rain is becoming, if anything, heavier.’ Dr Atlay had paused to open the south door of the church and peer out. Hung on the door was a notice – addressed perhaps to the faithful or perhaps to casual gazers – saying Please keep closed to conserve heat, although in fact there was no visible provision for providing anything of the kind. ‘However,’ Dr Atlay continued, ‘you and I are quite snug for the moment, Mr Honeybath. It is true that the church is somewhat tenebrous and even speluncar in suggestion, a state of affairs attributable to the opaque quality achieved by Victorian stained glass – of which, I may say,
we owe our abundance to the generosity of the eleventh earl. However, to his successor we owe similarly the repair of the roof, which is now watertight. So if light be excluded so, too, is the rage of the elements. You and I, my dear sir, may consider ourselves as cosily accommodated as Aeneas and Dido in their cavern.’
‘Yes, indeed.’ Honeybath was a little surprised by this pagan – and somewhat scandalous – comparison, which was no doubt to be attributed to the vicar’s orthodox classical education. ‘Are all those monuments and effigies,’ he asked, ‘connected with the Wyndowe family?’
‘Assuredly they are – except, of course, that a number of my own predecessors are suitably commemorated on unobtrusive tablets in the chancel. The first Wyndowes, you will recall, were no more than knights of the shire, and the first whose sepulture is recorded here is Sir Rufus Windy. His is the figure on your right hand, with his nose broken off.’
Honeybath surveyed Sir Rufus with proper respect – but what he was then prompted to say was not untouched by levity.
‘It has always struck me as odd, Dr Atlay, that in this matter of Christian burial it is the upper classes who enjoy God’s chilly benediction, while their inferiors in this transitory state are out in the warm sun.’
‘Ah!’ If Dr Atlay was put momentarily to stand by this he recovered quickly. ‘I do not recall that Shakespeare’s application of the old saw is precisely to that effect. But you are, of course, perfectly right. The rude forefathers of the hamlet are out in the churchyard and certainly exposed to the elements – sun, wind and rain alike. However, that grand principle of subordination is involved. Are you familiar with the sermons of William Gilpin, as you doubtless are with his Observations relative chiefly to picturesque beauty in the mountains and lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland?’
‘I do know Gilpin on the Picturesque. He holds an important position – does he not? – in the history of English taste.’ Honeybath felt that with Dr Atlay in learned vein it was necessary to put one’s best foot forward. ‘But his sermons, I am afraid, have escaped me.’
‘They were published, I believe I am right in saying, in several volumes between 1799 and 1804. And in one of them he remarks that subordination pervades all the works of God. It is a profound truth not much regarded by modern theologians, I am sorry to conclude.’
Honeybath began to regret that he had accepted sanctuary as he had done. Had he walked on to the lodge, shut up though it might be, he could at least have cowered under its eaves until the arrival of Swithin in his car. As Swithin would now drive past the church unregarding, it looked to Honeybath as though he were booked to enjoy Dr Atlay’s company until the tempest abated. Nor did he judge the topic upon which they had fallen particularly congenial. In an effort to find an alternative he now looked carefully round the gloomy little church. A number of its tombs and monuments, he felt, could be made to serve very tolerably as conversation pieces in the modern sense of the term. So he did his best to respond to such observations as were offered to him.
‘As you will see,’ Dr Atlay said, ‘we are particularly rich in monumental work of the Elizabethan period. May I ask if it is a special interest of yours?’
‘It is, indeed – but chiefly in the painting of the period, as you may imagine. And I am much looking forward to seeing the Mullion Hilliards. But dear me!’ Honeybath had broken off, and was pointing to an ornate affair in the north aisle. ‘Nollekens, surely? It can’t be by anybody else.’
‘Certainly Nollekens, and among the most distinguished of his works. Or so I have been told, although I must defer to your professional opinion, my dear sir. The reclining figure in classical drapery is, of course, a Countess of Mullion, and the medallion to which she points with upraised arm and extended index finger is naturally of her husband, the Earl. The weeping cherubs are much admired by our visitors. Remark how delicately their very tears are registered on the marble.’
Honeybath obediently studied Nollekens’ blubbering brats. He had seen plenty of them before, and was rather fond of them. He read a long inscription enumerating the astounding virtues of the nobleman and his ‘afflicted and disconsolate’ wife. Then, guided by the vicar, he moved more or less systematically round the church. A Chinese gentleman, he reflected, unacquainted with the principles of the Christian religion or the purposes for which it built edifices like this one within which he found himself, would conjecture that here was a family mausoleum erected for the entombment of a line of persons who had richly merited a far more resplendent resting-place – and this less because of their inherited rank than of their unfailing eminence as models and exemplars to society as a whole. The Tudors in quaint verses, the Augustans in balanced and cadenced prose, and between these the Elizabethan lords of language and their intricately conceited Jacobean successors: all these celebrated, in words incised in marble, sundry Wyndowes as very paragons, marks, and cynosures of their time. Even the present earl’s grandfather, who had lived on into the year 1906, was described as having been solicitous for the welfare of the deserving poor; and his successor, Sylvanus Wyndowe, Lord Mullion, was commemorated not only as a Lord Lieutenant and a Knight of the Garter but also as a conscientious Chairman of the Mullion and Little Lintel Rural District Council. And then, after all this Rococo twiddliness and verbal orotundity, Honeybath noticed a small plaque which read simply: RUPERT WYNDOWE LORD WYNDOWE, followed by two dates from which it was to be inferred that Rupert Wyndowe Lord Wyndowe had survived only into his thirty-sixth year. He was that uncle of Henry’s, Honeybath recalled, who would have succeeded to the earldom had he not predeceased his father.
‘Rupert’s memorial,’ he said to Dr Atlay, ‘is surely on the reticent side?’
‘Indeed, yes. He might have been a mere vicar of the parish.’
‘Dear me! Did he, in fact, take holy orders?’
‘No. It was decidedly not a course of life that would have entered Rupert Wyndowe’s head. And that, perhaps, was just as well. It may have been injudicious of the late earl to commemorate his elder brother so ostentatiously sparely – if the expression is a permissible one. But Rupert’s short life had been far from uniformly edifying, I am sorry to say. The family would not, at the time, have regarded it as at all suitable for – as one might express it – window-dressing.’ Dr Atlay frowned, as if conscious that the lure of this somewhat laboured witticism (which had nothing classical about it) had led him into a minor impropriety. Rupert Wyndowe, after all, had been a close relative of the present earl, and ought not to be exhibited as a bad hat to a stranger only just encountered. It was true that Lord Mullion had not yet been born at the time of his uncle’s untimely decease; and, further, that this distinguished portrait painter had apparently some claim to be Lord Mullion’s intimate friend. But a gossiping approach to family history had been indelicate, all the same.
Charles Honeybath, unfortunately, seemed to be unaware of this regard for the higher seemliness of things. He continued to look thoughtfully at Rupert Wyndowe’s commemorative tablet.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘it may be considered only as an interim measure or holding operation? Black sheep are often brought back into family esteem after no more than a couple of generations – their shabby tricks taking on a patina of endearing foible. Unspeakable reprobates are in a different category, so that a couple of centuries may pass before their descendants start taking pride in them. And I imagine this Rupert Wyndowe to have been of the former sort.’
‘Oh, entirely so.’ The vicar was clearly not going to be tempted into further disclosures about the obscurely unsatisfactory uncle of the present Earl of Mullion. ‘I take it, Mr Honeybath, that most of the family as now constituted is known to you fairly well?’
‘Far from it. Mullion and I have been in the habit of meeting from time to time – but more on the strength of past associations, which were extremely agreeable, than of common interests now. And of course I have made the acquaintance of his wife. But the rest of the people down here are strangers to me.’
‘No doubt. But I imagine that the more one feels oneself to be of consequence the more of a problem may younger sons present. You can’t set them to the plough-tail, even if that would be their natural mark.’ Even as he uttered this small acerbity Honeybath was a little ashamed of it. His wife had died childless long ago, and he had done nothing to provide himself with children since. Yet he would have liked to have a son, and had this been granted to him he would at least have brought up the boy not to suppose himself the owner of any consequence he hadn’t earned. But he mustn’t, he told himself, be irked by Dr Atlay, who had been his Good Samaritan in a sense, and whose devotion to what used to be called the landed interest had at least no vice to it. Honeybath, moreover, made most of his living out of people of consequence. So it wasn’t for him to quarrel with the traditional set-up of English society – or even, if it came to a pinch, with what Atlay described as the grand principle of subordination. ‘I gather,’ he said, ‘that Mullion is troubled only by one younger brother, the Sylvanus of the present generation.’ In talking to this cleric, who doubtless regarded himself as primarily a kind of domestic chaplain to the Wyndowes, Honeybath seemed to have settled for ‘Mullion’ – which was less formal than ‘Lord Mullion’ but less intimate than ‘Henry’. Nothing, he thought, is more tricky in an entirely trivial way than this particular area of nomenclature. For example, he was presumably going to be introduced to a lady whom Henry would casually name ‘my Great-aunt Camilla’. But was she ‘Lady Camilla Wyndowe’, or ‘the Hon. Camilla Wyndowe’ (which one would have to know if one was going to address a letter to her), or just plain ‘Miss’? It was a question not answerable until one had worked it out that she was the daughter of a younger son of an earl, and even then some complicating factor might have provided her with a handle to her name. Honeybath was about to make an inquiry about Camilla when he recalled Lord Mullion as having said something to the effect that this aged kinswoman was off her head. So he stuck to Sylvanus instead. ‘I’ve gathered,’ he said, ‘that Mullion’s brother lives in the dower house. Is he a married man?’