Rudd reined in again and sat quite still, staring over the hillside to a great sprawl of woods on the far edge of the moor and it seemed to Craddock that he was almost willing the nearest clump of oaks to topple and crash. Suddenly he looked directly at Craddock and his full lips twitched in an unexpectedly frank smile.
‘I don’t blame you thinking me a rum ’un,’ he said, ‘but the fact is I’m pretty much on edge these days and there’s reason enough for that right enough! I’ve been waiting here ever since Sir George died up north, and even before that I had no kind of instructions from him or his solicitors. They even let me read about Mr Hubert’s death in the newspapers. I suppose Shallowford means little enough to them but they might have had the decency to reassure me about my own future. After all, I’ve served them well for close on twenty years, and if they had any complaints I’ve yet to hear of them!’
‘You mean your position as agent has neither been confirmed nor terminated since the estate was put up for sale?’
‘I’ve not had a word, one way or the other, nothing except a telegram about the furniture sale from the solicitors.’
‘It all seems a bit casual,’ Craddock said, ‘and I can understand you feeling touchy about it. Did you intend leaving when Shallowford is sold?’
‘I’ve nothing else in the offing at the moment,’ Rudd said grimly, ‘but it would be unreasonable to discuss that with you at this stage. In any case,’ he paused a moment, looking down at the cob’s bristles, ‘to be honest it wasn’t my position here that made me fly off the handle just now. I jumped to the wrong conclusion, that’s all.’
‘That the Lovell family had written to me about you?’
‘Yes, and rather more than that.’
‘You can’t expect me to follow you there, Mr Rudd. Either tell me what’s in your mind or let’s ride on and we can discuss your position as agent when I’ve had a chance to make up my mind. It isn’t made up in advance, you know.’
Rudd said, breathing heavily, ‘No … wait, Mr Craddock! You’ve served overseas, so it isn’t like talking to a complete stranger. I’d rather tell you at once why that “innocent question” of yours encouraged me to make an ass of myself! The fact is, I have served in the Army. Until I was twenty-eight I held a commission in the Light Cavalry and I too served in Africa but another part of Africa.’ He paused a moment and then said, flatly, ‘I was cashiered, more or less.’
‘How can an officer be cashiered “more or less”?’ Craddock asked.
‘What I mean is it wasn’t official but it was a drumming-out just the same,’ Rudd said, ‘and it wasn’t for debt either but something a damned sight worse! It was that that gave the Lovells, father and sons, the edge on me all these years, and they still have it, even though all three of them are dead now, damn them! And on top of it all Hubert had to win a V.C.! Well, thank God I wasn’t called upon to congratulate him on that!’
‘Then the Lovells were bad people to work for?’
‘They were but I don’t hate them for that,’ Rudd said, ‘any more than do the rest of the people around here, folk dependent upon them for one reason or another.’ He seemed to rise slightly in his stirrups and survey the whole sweep of the moor as far as the sea. ‘This has been a bad place to be,’ he said quietly, ‘rotten bad for three generations if you had no means to escape from it! It need not have been but it was, for they made it so, one and all! It took me years to make up my mind about that, that it was them and not the place itself. However, that doesn’t explain my touchiness, does it?’, and unexpectedly he smiled again and kicked his heels, so that the cob began to walk on down the slope and the well-mannered grey followed.
‘I don’t see that you are under the slightest obligation to explain things to me at this stage,’ Paul said.
‘Oh, come, Mr Craddock,’ said Rudd, good-humouredly, now, ‘suppose I left it there? You would only get to wondering and wondering and be driven to find out one way or another. Anyone would, especially a lad your age, who could never imagine it happening to him.’
‘A good deal has happened to me already,’ Paul said. ‘I only pulled through by a miracle. They gave me up time and again and I got in the habit of hearing my chances chewed over by doctors and nurses. That can teach you a thing or two if you’ll let it.’
Rudd looked frankly at him and for the first time there was tolerance in his eyes.
‘Exactly what did it teach you that was new, Mr Craddock?’
‘Patience, I suppose, and gratitude for being alive. Also respect for people who seemed to go to a great deal of trouble to improve one’s chances—those kind of things.’
‘I was a pupil at a different kind of school,’ Rudd said. ‘Did you ever hear of the Prince Eugène Napoleon? The “Painted Emperor’s” son, the one killed in the Zulu War?’
‘Certainly. He was killed on June 1st, 1879, whilst on reconnaissance during the advance on the Zulu capital’
‘Now how the devil do you come to know that?’ exclaimed Rudd, and Craddock chuckled. ‘Because it happens to have been the day I was born, so naturally I made a mental note of it when I’d read an account in one of the Strand Magazines we had at home.’
‘Now that’s very odd,’ said Rudd, musing, ‘that’s damned odd! If I was a superstitious man I’d say that was some kind of omen but good or bad I wouldn’t know. Do you recall the circumstances?’
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t,’ said Craddock, ‘but I imagine you liked the Prince Imperial as much as you seem to have liked your late employers.’
‘About even I should say,’ retorted Rudd easily,’ for both had a peculiar propensity for winning notoriety at other people’s expense! That young man had nobody but himself to blame for what happened. He off-saddled in shoulder-high grass out of range of the camp, with one wretched lieutenant and six troopers as escort. The Zulus jumped the troop and they had to bolt for it. Everyone got away but the Prince. He was riding a nervous horse and couldn’t get a leg over when the firing started. He had about a dozen assegai wounds when they found him. All in front. Very proper.’
‘How were you involved?’
‘I was sent after the patrol by an officer who should never have sent it out in the first place, and when I met them coming back hell for leather I turned and rode in with them. Was that so odd? What is a man supposed to do when he sees a reconnaissance patrol riding for their lives? Stop them and ask for a written report?’
It was strange, Craddock thought, how time had done nothing to dull the man’s memory of that single moment of panic, now twenty-three years behind him. It was as though, up to that moment, nothing of importance had occurred to him, and after it he had lived a kind of half-life in which the most sensational event came a poor second to a wild gallop across the veldt, with troopers gasping out news that the Prince Imperial was back there, speared through by assegais.
‘Why are you telling me all this, Mr Rudd?’ he asked and Rudd said, ‘God knows! I haven’t mentioned it to anyone else in twenty years! Not that everyone here doesn’t know about it, Sir George and Hubert saw to that.’
‘But they continued to employ you as their agent.’
‘That’s why they employed me and also why I stayed. What kind of future was open to a man who had turned tail and abandoned a Prince Imperial to a few savages?’
They rode silently for a moment and then Craddock said, ‘Very well, now you’ve told me, but as far as I’m concerned I don’t give a damn what bad luck you ran into all that time ago. I’ve done my share of dodging tricky situations and so has every other soldier, unless he’s a fool, or a bit slow off the mark! I was hoping to rely on you for straightforward advice on my chances of making some kind of success with this place; if I decided to buy, that is, but you ought to know right away that it wasn’t my idea at all but Zorndorff’s. I can’t even legally buy it for another five years.’
Rudd looked su
rprised. ‘You mean your money is tied up until then?’
‘That’s so but it needn’t necessarily stop a purchase. Mr Zorndorff seems anxious that I should take the plunge, although administration of an estate this size was only a vague notion at the back of my mind, something I used to think about when I knew I would be invalided out. I’ve had no previous experience and wanted a single farm. The only qualifications I have are that I should be interested and I can ride. I’m not a crock either. When this stiffness eases I’ll be as fit as the next man. I wanted an open-air life and Mr Zorndorff seemed to think this was as good an opportunity as any.’
Rudd was smiling again. The man had almost as wide a range of expression as Zorndorff. No trace remained of his previous sullenness and he looked, Craddock now felt, like a man one could trust.
‘Well, I suppose you might do worse, things being what they are and I mean your circumstances, not those of the estate. It’s badly run down and peopled with backward, lazy rascals but they ought to welcome you; if they have any sense that is! The Lovells took their rents every quarter day for a century or more and cursed them if they asked for a new tile on the roof. You’ll need to put money into it for a spell but the land on this side is as good as any in Devon and there’s good timber behind the house. The Home Farm is in shape, for I’ve seen to that, and Honeyman is a good farmer. It’s in the Coombe area that you’ve got layabouts and they’re mostly confined to one family, the Potters, of Low Coombe. However, there’s no point at all in my influencing you one way or the other at this stage, you’ll have to make up your own mind after you’ve gone the rounds.’ He chuckled and glanced sidelong at Craddock through half-closed eyes. ‘Well, this is a rum do I must say! I expected all kind of developments when I got the enquiry but nothing quite like this, I can assure you.’ And then he seemed to brace himself in the saddle, assuming a paternal, businesslike air. ‘We’re about half-way down,’ he said, ‘so I’ll do what I should have done at first instead of crying on your shoulder, Mr Craddock!’ He pointed left towards the steep wood that bounded the moor. ‘That’s Hermitage Wood, close-set oak and beech mostly but with a big fir plantation higher up. This moor is called Blackberry Down and it’s common land, used by us and also by the Gilroy Estate, our nearest neighbour across the Teazel. That’s the smaller of the two streams, this one on your right is the Sorrel that flows through our land as far as the sea at Coombe Bay, four miles from here. Coombe Bay isn’t much more than a small village but we own some property there, held on long leases. The roads runs beside the river here for a mile or more and the park wall is over there on your left, beyond Hermitage Farm. Martin Codsall’s Farm, Four Winds, is down there across the river, the biggest we’ve got, and fairly well run. Above you, hidden by that clump, is Hermitage, farmed by Pitts and his son, sound enough chaps but very unenterprising. Beyond the park wall …’
He broke off as Paul, lifting his head, trotted forward and reined in on the very brow of the hill where he could look across the long, rolling slope to the sea.
‘One minute, Mr Rudd,’ he called. ‘I’ve never seen anything quite like this before!’ and he swept the prospect from west to east, from the thin sliver of the Teazel marking Gilroy’s boundary on the right, to the high, wooded bluff above the outfall of the River Sorrel, that ran below in a wide curve to the left. He could sniff the sea breasting the scent of heather and gorse, a smell of summer released from the bracken by the grey’s hooves, and hear the light breeze shaking Martin Codsall’s corn on the slope where Four Winds’ meadows met the great sweep of the woods and the Sorrel, ten yards wide, and spanned by a wooden bridge, began its final curve to the sea. He could even see the sun glinting on a roof in the distant village and as his eyes followed the course of the shallow stream a kingfisher flashed and then disappeared into the brake.
Rudd said, ‘Ah, it looks tame enough now, Mr Craddock, but some of its moods are damned ugly! You should see it when the sou’westers come roaring in from over the Whin, and sleet drives at you from every point of the compass!’, and he led the way down on to the track that followed the bend of the river; a broad path thick with spurting white dust that swept up in clouds and then settled to bow the stalks of cowparsley in the hedgerow on their side of the river.
It was this tall bank that held Paul’s attention until they passed the angle of the grey stone wall, bordering the park, for its colours defied the dust every yard of the way. Tall ranks of foxgloves grew there, and at their roots a thick carpet of stitchwort, ragwort, dandelion, honeysuckle, dog rose and campion. The air throbbed with the hum of insects and huge bumble bees droned from petal to petal, like fat, lazy policemen checking the doors of silent premises. As they trotted past the wooden bridge Rudd told him that it was the only one spanning the Sorrel between the railway and the sea, and rightly belonged to Codsall of Four Winds but was used by everyone when the ford from which the estate derived its name was impassable. As the little grey lodge came in view beyond the Home Farm buildings, he added, ‘I took the liberty of getting Mrs Handcock, the housekeeper, to make you up a bed in my lodge. There used to be a lodge-keeper of course, and I lived up at the house, but when he left I moved in and have been too lazy to shift. I’m a widower, and can look after myself although one of Tamer Potter’s sluts looks in to clean up every once in a while. I live a solitary life down there and get sick of my own company, so you’ll be welcome to stay with me as long as you are here. The guest rooms up at the big house are in poor shape. If we get a wet spell after this long drought the ceilings will leak.’
‘The lodge will suit me very well,’ Paul said but absently for he was still a prey to pleasurable excitement and nagging anxiety, sparring one with the other just below his belt. The whole place, he thought, was so immense, and not only vast and awesome but overpowering. By acquiring suzerainty of such a domain, he would be shouldering the cares of a small kingdom and that without a notion of how to rule unless he placed himself under the thumb of this square-faced, unpredictable agent, a man who rode with a chip on his shoulder, a chip the size of a French Prince. He must, he told himself, take plenty of time to think this out, and do his thinking in solitude.
The park gates looked as if they had remained open for years and hung by rusting hinges to a pair of fifteen-foot stone pillars, crowned by stone eagles. A stone’s throw from the entrance was the ford, paved with flat stones and no more than six inches deep where the river ballooned into a pond. Geese honked among buttercups and anemones growing on the margin, and the lodge, a snug little house with a pantiled roof and trim muslin curtains, stood only a few yards inside the drive. All that Paul could see of the house itself was a cluster of chimney pots soaring above the last few chestnuts of the drive which curved sharply at the top of the steep ascent, where grew huge clumps of rhododendron, now in flower.
Mrs Handcock, the housekeeper, came waddling to the lodge door as they clattered up and Rudd, dismounting, introduced Paul, giving the horses to a boy of about twelve who somehow contrived to hoist himself on to the cob and rode away across the paddock to the Home Farm. The housekeeper was a large, pink-faced woman about fifty, with greying hair and a rich Westcountry brogue, the first purely Devon accent Paul had ever heard. She was respectful in her approach but by no means humble, as she shepherded him into the parlour where the table was laid for tea, a traditionally Devonshire tea of scones that Mrs Handcock called ‘chudleys’, and huge bowls of homemade strawberry jam, served with thick, yellow cream. Paul was too elated to do justice to her hospitality but he did his best and was afterwards shown to his room which was very small but scrupulously clean, with a copper can of hot water set ready for his use. He listened a moment to the rumble of Rudd’s voice below, guessing that the agent was giving Mrs Handcock his first impressions of The Prospect but then he thought that this was taking mean advantage of them and having washed, came downstairs again, to find Rudd very much at ease in his big armchair, with jacket off, feet up and a Meerschau
m pipe between his teeth. Paul lit his own pipe and tried to pretend that he too was at ease but Rudd was not fooled. He said, ‘I didn’t tell you the conditions of the furniture sale, Mr Craddock. The curtains and carpets, together with various fittings labelled “R”, go with the property; all the other stuff is up for sale the day after tomorrow. Coombes and Drayton are doing it from Whinmouth, that’s our nearest town, some three miles west of Gilroy’s place, across the Teazel. If you have made your decision before the auction you can bid for anything you want, or I’ll get someone to bid for you. Would you like to go up there now, or will you wait until morning?’
‘I should like to go now,’ Paul said, ‘and if it’s all the same to you, Mr Rudd, I’d prefer to poke around on my own. I can make notes of anything I might want to ask and I expect you’ve got plenty to do.’
‘I’ve got an inventory to make out,’ Rudd told him. ‘The lawyers have been pestering me for it ever since the sale notices went up. The place is locked so you’ll need the front-door key,’ and he handed Craddock a key that looked as if it would have opened a county gaol. ‘I usually have a toddy before bed,’ he added, ‘would you care to join me, after dusk?’
‘Very much,’ Craddock said, ‘and convey my thanks to Mrs Handcock for the tea.’ He left then, more than ever anxious to be alone, yet conscious of a growing liking for the agent, and climbed the steep drive, discovering the brazen heat had gone from the day and that long, evening shadows were now falling across the smaller paddock, beyond which he could just see what looked like a formal garden enclosed by ragged box hedges. It was so quiet that he could hear the rustle of birds in the rhododendron thickets and then, as he rounded the curve, there was the house twenty yards distant, looking like a great grey rock, with the last rays of red-gold sunlight lighting up its westerly windows but its eastern wing blank, as though such life as remained in the pile had gone to watch the sunset.
Long Summer Day (A Horseman Riding By) Page 5