Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  ‘Aha! So the authorities are already in conference?’ Gingrass spoke with robust cordiality. At the same time he gave Clout his conspirator’s smile, thereby indicating that for the two of them there was to be great fun ahead. ‘But you won’t find anything here. I went through it all years ago. New Hall’s the place for both of you. I’ve just rung up Sir John. We’ll all three drive out there now.’

  2

  It didn’t take them long in Gingrass’ large car. Very quietly and gently, Professor Milder talked all the time, so that one could scarcely have got in a word had one wanted to. Nevertheless Milder’s tone was constantly that of a man accepting and amplifying observations just made to him. Clout was still wondering how on earth he came into the picture. It was certainly true that in American universities there was always an enormous amount of what might be called Shufflebotham business going on. But it didn’t seem plausible that the most abstruse of transatlantic researchers should propose to devote himself to the Jorys.

  This mystery, however, was presently resolved by Gingrass. Gingrass’ line with Milder was to attend to him in a spirit of whimsical connoisseurship. Everything that was sturdily provincial in Clout condemned this. It was true that Milder appeared to be less a man than a wandering catastrophe. But as he had wandered in, so would he wander out. In the meantime one had better put up with him – dumbly and glumly if one must, but not in a pose of ghastly superiority. However, Gingrass did, after his own characteristic fashion, a little explain the man. ‘I suppose’, he said merrily to Clout, ‘you know the Professor’s work?’ He spoke not in a pause in Milder’s discourse – for there wasn’t one – but underneath it. ‘No doubt you’ve read his books?’

  ‘No, I don’t know his work. And I’ve never seen any of his books.’

  ‘Ah – you must keep up, my dear Clout. That hour before breakfast with the learned journals. That couple of hours after dinner with your batch of books from the London Library. Nothing is more important.’

  ‘What are his books, anyway?’

  ‘Oho!’ Gingrass was jocose. ‘That would be cheating – eh? No short cuts in research.’

  Clout was silent. It was quite plain to him that Gingrass had never had a volume of Milder’s in his hands in his life; that he had probably heard of him for the first time, indeed, that morning.

  ‘But of course it’s quite fair to tell you what he’s doing now. Liberation in the Romantic Age.’

  ‘Godwin and Shelley stuff, and Byron at Missolonghi?’

  ‘Not precisely. Not precisely liberation in that sense.’ Gingrass raised his voice, and boldly cut into Milder’s murmuring. ‘What is the title, Professor, of the work you’re engaged on now?’

  ‘That’s a question that I find a little hard to answer at this stage.’ Milder’s tone as he offered this answer positively exuded poppy and mandragora, much as if he apprehended that Gingrass was on the brink of nervous paroxysm. ‘The chronological limits haven’t yet clearly defined themselves. Provisionally, I figure it might be “English Aristocratic Depredation in the Later Eighteenth and Earlier Nineteenth Centuries”. But perhaps that’s a mite clumsy.’

  ‘Not at all, not at all!’ Gingrass was delighted. ‘On the contrary, my dear Professor, I judge it most felicitous. And now Clout understands the sense in which we are speaking of liberation.’

  Clout thought he did. ‘Lord Elgin liberated those marbles from the Parthenon?’

  Gingrass nodded. ‘Exactly. An excellent – indeed, the transcendent instance.’ Sitting back at the wheel he began to recite in his special lecturing voice:

  ‘Let Aberdeen and Elgin still pursue

  The shade of fame through regions of virtu;

  Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,

  Misshapen monuments and maim’d antiques;

  And make their grand saloons a general mart

  For all the mutilated blocks of art…’

  He paused.

  ‘But better, of course, is the epigram:

  Noseless himself, he brings home noseless blocks,

  To show what time can do, and what…’

  ‘A brilliant couplet – certainly a brilliant couplet.’ Milder had interrupted – seemingly in the interest of propriety. ‘So Professor Clout will understand why I am interested in Sir Joscelyn Jory. Of course his depredations weren’t on Lord Elgin’s scale. He didn’t walk off with much of the world’s greatest sculpture. Still’ – Milder was soothingly judicious – ‘he is a very interesting late instance of the form of social behaviour I am proposing to study. He should certainly have an appendix to himself, if not a chapter. And that’s why I’m taking time to look him up.’

  Clout said nothing. At least he now understood about Milder. It seemed a little hard on Sir John Jory, that, having innocently agreed to one literary detective getting to work on his great-grandfather, he should incontinently be saddled with another in the shape of an American proposing to honour Sir Joscelyn with a minor niche in a species of thieves’ gallery. The absoluteness with which Lord Elgin had stolen those celebrated marbles Clout had forgotten, or never known. Certainly Byron had denounced him roundly enough. But no doubt a lot of that sort of thing had gone on, and Sir Joscelyn’s later methods of acquiring tombs and the like had merely taken him a little late into the swim. The whole subject would doubtless lend itself to a quietly amusing book. But Milder would never be amusing – or he would be amusing only to one who, like Gingrass, had a perverted sense of humour. As one who should bring Sir Joscelyn Jory to life again Milder wasn’t a serious rival. Even fewer people would read his book than would read Clout’s biography. And perhaps nobody at all would ever get as far as the appendices.

  At this point in Clout’s speculations Gingrass swung his car off the high road and up the short drive to New Hall.

  The grandeur of the Jorys couldn’t have lasted long. From Old Hall, which had replaced an unpretending earlier residence, they had withdrawn to New Hall within a few generations. New Hall was a good deal older than Old Hall, since the real Old Hall was the Caroline building which had virtually disappeared. New Hall was, in fact, Queen Anne, but there was a late Victorian wing, run up decidedly on the cheap, which rather spoilt its modest elegance. All this had to be explained to Professor Milder – and had then to be fed back by Professor Milder to his companions – before they climbed out of Gingrass’ car. It was then necessary to pause.

  It was necessary to pause and regain one’s nerve. The front door of the house was open, and from it there had emerged as they drove up a black spaniel dog. The creature had advanced and stood inoffensively at gaze with them; whereupon another, and identical, dog had come out behind it. What was disconcerting was merely the fact that this process was continuing indefinitely. There were now some twenty dogs: all jet black, but all with the natural mournfulness of their kind enhanced by a faint powdering of grey about the muzzle. For a few seconds they stood in a wide semi-circle before the visitors. Then they converged upon them – without haste and without sound.

  ‘Black spaniel dogs,’ Professor Milder said informatively. ‘A large number of black spaniel dogs.’

  ‘Do you think they’re all right?’ Gingrass clearly wasn’t a doggy man, and his voice was apprehensive.

  From somewhere amid the score or so of dogs there rose a half-hearted growl. Clout couldn’t resist this. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it at all. Far too many of them. They might get utterly out of control.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’ Gingrass eyed the dogs in incipient panic. They continued to advance. ‘Good dogs!’ he suddenly cried out desperately. ‘Good doggies! Goo-ood doggies!’

  At this, the spaniels stopped as one dog. They all bore expressions of sombre hauteur. Gingrass continued his abject propitiatory noises. ‘Good old doggies-woggies!’ he screamed – and fell to clicking his fingers as if eagerly solicitous that the brutes should crowd around him. At the same time he began to edge backwards towards his car. But the spa
niels were now in movement again. This time they were drifting sideways and away. It was demonstrable that they had turned the visitors down.

  ‘The dogs are going away,’ Professor Milder said – and added, as an afterthought: ‘Black spaniel dogs.’

  At this moment Clout became aware that a lady and gentleman had come out through a french window at the end of the house. They must have observed the scene which had just transacted itself, and they were now coming forward with courteous haste. At the same time it was obvious that they were exchanging perplexed speculations. Sir John and Lady Jory were probably unused to persons given to calling spaniels doggie-woggies. It didn’t seem a terribly good start to the afternoon.

  Lady Jory provided tea in a long, low drawing-room upon which Clout at once fell to making conscientious mental notes. It sounded what he recognized from his reading as the authentic note of a derelict landed class. The curtains were so frayed and the chintzes so faded that in his mother’s house they would long ago have been abandoned as not respectable. There were a good many pieces of really beautiful eighteenth-century French furniture; and on the walls there was an extraordinary mingling of darkened oil paintings, wishy-washy watercolour sketches (presumably by ladies of the family), and innumerable photographs of people clasping swords, reading books, smelling flowers, sitting on horses, talking to dogs, gazing at mountain scenery painted on canvas, or represented simply as bodiless busts hovering in a void. Over the fireplace there was a portrait of a melancholy, long-faced man, depicted as deciphering an inscription incised on a stone slab embellished with blubbering infants. Clout eyed this with a somewhat unenthusiastic proprietary interest. It was undoubtedly Sir Joscelyn.

  Lady Jory’s conversation was conscientious but admitted of numerous pauses. During these she appeared to be running over in her mind the names of all her acquaintance in the hope of hitting upon one that any of her visitors might know. Her interest lay in the present whereabouts and activities of specific persons, and any advance to more general topics found her rather at a loss. Her husband seemed to suffer from absence of mind – in just what sense Clout felt it would as yet be difficult to say – but combined this rather unexpectedly with a perfect attention to the material wants of his guests. He had the sort of moustache that can be chewed with ease in ruminative moments. But at the moment he was confining himself to buttered toast. One favoured spaniel was admitted of the company. The creature lay with its head flat on the hearth-rug, peering out through a sort of tunnel formed by its enormous ears.

  ‘No doubt you know my daughters, Jane and Elizabeth.’ Lady Jory addressed herself to Clout. ‘No doubt you have met them at dances, and so on. They were at the Dangerfields’ at Christmas, for instance.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘But now they are abroad.’ Clout noticed that Lady Jory didn’t really take much account of anything he said. ‘But Jerry, our son, is at home. I am surprised he hasn’t come in to tea. But tell me’ – and Lady Jory leant forward and appeared to believe that she was lowering her high, clear voice – ‘is your friend in the brown suit a foreigner?’

  ‘Professor Gingrass?’ Clout was surprised, since he had gathered that his chief was in the enjoyment of the Jorys’ intimacy. ‘Oh no – I believe he’s quite English.’

  ‘I supposed he must be a foreigner because he was frightened of the dogs.’ Lady Jory made this incursion into the sphere of logical inference with some air of intellectual triumph. ‘But your other friend? Surely he is a foreigner?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a professor from America.’

  ‘From America? How very interesting. He may know the Van Burens. Or the Reichenbachs. It is always interesting to meet Americans. It makes a change.’

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it?’

  ‘As a girl, I lived for some time in France. There were a great many American girls. They rode very well.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  Lady Jory was silent for some moments. The mental roll-call was on again. It prolonged itself while she consulted the interior of her teapot. Then plain inspiration came to her. ‘I think’, she said, ‘you know George Lumb?’

  ‘Yes – although I met him only quite lately.’

  ‘Of course we have known George since he was a child, and are very fond of him. I understood he was to be here to tea.’ Lady Jory turned to her husband. ‘John, surely George Lumb was coming to tea?’

  ‘Certainly. Ought to be here now. Has something to say about the – um – business that has brought these gentlemen to visit us.’

  ‘Business? Oh, yes – of course.’ Lady Jory spoke with gentle relief, as if the events of the afternoon were now slightly less mysterious to her.

  ‘Getting out this book-affair, you know, about Joscelyn Jory. Seems to be a sudden interest in all that.’ Sir John looked a little misdoubtingly at his guests. ‘Taken up by the University.’

  ‘The University, John?’ Lady Jory was puzzled.

  ‘The College, m’dear. Old Hall. Place Lumb put George to. Calls itself the University now. Quite proper. Go-ahead sort of place in its own way. Run by Principal Gingrass here.’

  Gingrass, thus oddly promoted, was jovially explanatory. Milder, who had been taking stock of his surroundings, began describing them to Lady Jory in detail. Lady Jory was at first bewildered, but quickly became attentive. Presumably large new realms of conversational resource were opening out before her. She even forgot to ask about the Van Burens and the Reichenbachs.

  Sir John came over and sat beside Clout, thoughtfully bringing a plate of plum-cake with him. ‘Know’, he asked, ‘about this Shufflebum business?’

  Clout was nonplussed. He didn’t know whether this perversion of the late alderman’s name was inadvertent and to be discreetly corrected, or whether it was a jest with that eighteenth-century flavour in which a baronet of ancient lineage might suitably indulge. ‘Yes, sir, I know about it,’ he finally said. ‘In fact, it’s me who’s to do the writing.’

  ‘You Clout?’

  ‘Yes, I’m Clout.’

  ‘Odd. That Gingrass fellow said you were clever but unpresentable. How would you account for that?’

  Clout thought it discreet not to try. So he merely shook his head.

  Sir John lowered his voice – more successfully than his wife had done. ‘Bit of an ass, isn’t he?’

  Clout, although he felt this judgement upon Gingrass to be highly perceptive, resolved to continue on the note of discretion. ‘He’s a little disconcerting at times.’

  ‘Ah! Fellow your head man?’ As he asked this question, Sir John gave Clout, rather surprisingly, a shrewdly appraising stare.

  ‘Yes, he’s my professor.’

  ‘Um.’ Sir John took a bite of plum-cake. ‘About this book on Joscelyn. You’ll do. Go ahead.’

  Clout, who hadn’t at all realized that a viva voce examination was in progress, felt for a moment the simple joy which he had experienced throughout life as he successfully cleared another rung of the interminable educational ladder. Moreover Sir John had spoken so incisively that he felt it almost incumbent upon him to produce a fountain pen and proceed to sketching out Joscelyn Jory’s early life forthwith. ‘I’m afraid’, he said cautiously, ‘that there’s a lot of spade-work still to do.’

  ‘Spade-work?’ Sir John appeared not to follow this. ‘That was Joscelyn’s line, certainly. Always digging up this and that, it seems. Learned, you know. Credit to a family – once in a way.’ He paused. ‘I wish George would come.’

  ‘George Lumb?’

  ‘Yes. Been finding out a thing or two, it seems. Intellectual lad. Preach a better sermon than his father, if you ask me. And now he says there’s something that should be matter of general communication.’ Sir John paused. ‘Talks like that, you know. Might be reading it out of a book. But a nice lad.’

  ‘Yes – he seems all right.’

  ‘Been doing a very decent job for me. Couple of fellows on the estate want Dutch barns. Perfectly reasonable. And Smith at the Home Fa
rm needs a milking-parlour. Quite right. Go-ahead chap. So George is seeing what we might get out of the books. Friend of mine tipped me the wink on that at the Cavalry Club.’ Sir John turned as the door opened. ‘Ah – here is George.’