Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  Edward, however, continued with his banter; and it was clear to me that he was bent upon mystification. I asked him if the unhappy girl was a peasant. He replied that he believed her to come, on the contrary, of maritime stock; and that although he had found her in a very lowly situation, there was good reason to suppose her connected with the highest circles. He then recurred to the theme that she was going to be too much for Joscelyn by a long way. It was apparent that Edward believed himself to have accomplished some stroke of extraordinary adroitness. I asked whether the poor creature was provided with any friend or attendant of her own sex; and whether, if not, some discreet woman from among the cottagers might not be employed in this office. Edward seemed to think little of this. I therefore begged him – such was my distress as I felt with increasing poignancy the misery that must attend the girl in her isolation – to let me go to her myself. At this, Edward was silent for a while. I was happy, and at the same time touched, to observe that my offer had, for the moment, made him unmistakably ashamed of himself. He took a turn about the hall, muttered something to the effect that I was a good sort of soul enough – and then, with a sudden change of mood, burst into laughter. She wasn’t yet, he said, fit for the company of ladies. He must first take soap and water to her, and then we should see. To this Edward added something further in bad French. I caught the words tetons and fesses. This grossness I was unprepared to suffer. I bade Edward good night, and left him.

  It is now Saturday, and I have entertained myself (not, I hope, to any effect of tedium in yourself) for the greater part of the day in the composition of this epistle. We await, I suppose, the arrival of Sir James Dangerfield and others of his set, whereupon our gentlemen will no doubt divert themselves with playing out the last act of their comedy. From something let drop by Lady Jory’s maid (who is good enough to attend on me for a few minutes when I rise) I gather that not only the servants’ hall but the whole country (and our neighbourhood, as you know, is extensive) is very well aware of the state of the case, and that the Duke himself has declared he is minded to ride over from Nesfield Court to have a few words with Ned Jory’s Maid of Athens.

  All this is most distasteful, as you may imagine, to my sister and myself. At breakfast (which, according to the sound old custom of this house, we partake of at a set hour and together) we were none of us in spirits. If Joscelyn had experienced any triumph in bringing his Caucasian queen and her treasure safe to Old Hall, he appeared now to be experiencing some dismal reflex of feeling. He delivered himself of a sort of jeremiad on the insufficiencies of his whole collection. If the mausoleum were never finished, he said, it would be no matter. He had, indeed, variety enough of funerary exhibits to deploy in it. But the great things had always eluded him.

  I was much struck by the revelation of this vein of the highest connoisseurship in my brother; it somehow made his hobby-horse appear to me of greater interest than hitherto. I asked him what in all the world he most coveted. He replied gloomily that the Medici Tombs of Michelangelo would be something; that he had treated at one time for the Lorenzo II, which he judged to be the finest; but that the damned Florentines refused to part with as much as the Dawn or Twilight on the sarcophagus beneath it. He added that in Toledo he had come across something yet more to his liking – the burial of a certain Count Orgaz depicted by a painter named (if I remember rightly) Theotocopuli and popularly styled El Greco. He had again made a handsome offer. But, he concluded, there’s nothing so proud as your damned penniless Spaniard.

  I own that I was diverted by these confessions of Joscelyn’s unsuccessful designs. There is quite as much of the artist in him, surely, as there is of the savant or the philosopher. His collection has fallen short of its possible perfections, and the consciousness of this makes him melancholy. Is it conceivable that Edward is in similar case – tormented that he has not been able to do as Faust did, and add Helen of Troy to the number of his conquests? But this is an idle speculation, and indeed you may judge it not a delicate one. I can only plead something sadly corrupting in the present air of Old Hall. Certainly I have been drawn on into writing at most inordinate length on the present perplexing posture of our family affairs. But then are you not one of that family’s oldest friends? Once more, then, I subscribe myself, dear Miss Bird,

  Your affectionate pupil,

  SOPHIA JORY.’

  5

  There was a short silence when Sadie Sackett concluded reading this letter. The spaniel, which had earlier retreated to a secluded corner, now advanced across the floor, stood on the hearth-rug, and gazed upward in a sort of melancholy dubiety at the portrait of Sir Joscelyn.

  ‘Berkeley’, Jerry Jory said, ‘is a most intelligent dog. He wonders. He wonders whether Mr Clout ought not perhaps to devote his learned energies to somebody else. It sounds to me as if the family could stand up to a little of Joscelyn in a footnote of Professor Milder’s but might find a full-length biography rather too much of a good thing.’

  ‘My dear boy – I don’t see that at all.’ Sir John Jory was unexpectedly emphatic. ‘Joscelyn appears to have been an interesting fellow. Went all over the place collecting things, you see. Mind you, I don’t say a wager of that sort would be quite the thing today. Still, Joscelyn’s side of it was perfectly decent and so forth. Edward’s enterprise is another matter. But then it’s always been known that Edward was a bit of a bad hat. Eh, Jory?’

  Dr Jory, thus appealed to, vigorously shook his head. ‘No Jory – I don’t see that. Edward, I take it, had simply picked up somewhere or other a particularly beautiful mercenary girl, hoping she would win him his bet. Not very moral, perhaps – but decidedly not criminal.’

  ‘I agree with Daddy.’ Olivia had sat down with some informality on the floor and was stroking Berkeley’s muzzle. ‘So far as Sophia’s letter goes, we don’t even know that Edward’s relations with his exhibit weren’t entirely virtuous. Whereas Joscelyn–’

  ‘Whereas Joscelyn’, Dr Jory said, ‘had plainly involved himself in large-scale loot or robbery. His turning up on that barge and so forth is very amusing. But he was obliged to it simply because he had been engaged in theft.’

  ‘Depredation, Dr Jory.’ It was Professor Milder who came forward soothingly with this. ‘Depredation, I guess, is the proper word. I find Miss Sophia Jory’s letter most interesting – most interesting, indeed. But it’s unfortunate about Mr Edward Jory. Yes, all that is very much to be regretted–! very much to be regretted. I was struck by what Miss Sophia writes about the duties of governments in the matter. In my country, right now, you just can’t take a girl across a state boundary that way. American womanhood makes a stand against anything of that sort. I need hardly say that my own work will make no reference to Mr Edward Jory. All that is quite aside from my field of research. But I do find Sir Joscelyn’s Caucasian treasure very interesting – very interesting, indeed.’

  Jerry Jory nodded. ‘So, I imagine, do several of us. What happened to it? All this makes me feel that I know shamefully little of the family’s history. But if this treasure entered prominently into it, I supposed one would have heard. Perhaps George knows.’

  ‘There’s m-m-more, you know, to c-c-come.’ George Lumb pointed towards Sadie’s portfolio. ‘B-b-but it’s indefinite. The t-t-treasure may be hidden away. That’s what Olivia thinks.’

  Olivia nodded. Clout could see that this public hammering out of the situation wasn’t to her taste. But she appeared to be taking it in good part. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My first guess when I heard of it – and it does, you see, exist as a sort of hazy tradition in our branch of the family – was that it might be buried in the mausoleum. But of course it might be buried anywhere else – anywhere in that whole great park.’

  ‘Buried?’ Olivia’s father shook his head. ‘That would be just too bad, eh?’ He seemed to take a humorous view of his daughter’s involvement in the mystery. ‘You know that, if it were found under the soil, it would undoubtedly belong to the Crown?’

 
‘Treasure trove!’ Lady Jory, who had not hitherto participated in the debate, brought this out triumphantly. ‘I had a very interesting book about it from the circulating library not long ago. The illustrations were good – which is always the great thing.’

  ‘But suppose’, Olivia asked, ‘it was found not buried, but tucked away in a secret chamber–’

  Jerry Jory interrupted with laughter that Clout didn’t think at all polite. ‘My dear Miss Jory, Georgian houses don’t have secret chambers.’

  ‘Well, something of the sort.’ Olivia was unperturbed. ‘Whose would it be then?’

  ‘The University’s.’ Gingrass, who had been fidgeting on his chair while seeking an entry into the conversation, brought this out perhaps with more absoluteness than he had intended. It was not well received.

  ‘The University?’ Sir John demanded. ‘Stuff and nonsense – eh, Jory?’

  ‘Certainly not the University, Jory. I regard the Professor’s suggestion as absurd.’ Dr Jory turned to Gingrass. ‘Quite absurd, sir. Olivia here could scarcely get a sillier notion into her head – and that says a lot.’

  Gingrass was somewhat abashed by this onslaught. ‘A share,’ he said – apparently by way of hedging. ‘I think it likely that the University would be legally entitled to a share. If the stuff were not in fact buried, that is to say.’

  ‘Most improbable.’ Jerry Jory was preremptory in his turn. ‘The University owns what it bought – or what its predecessor, the College, bought before it. And it certainly didn’t buy a treasure that nobody had ever heard of. If I sell my house, you know, and leave my wrist-watch on a mantel-piece, it doesn’t become the property of the chap who moves in. If he pockets it, I can jolly well have him put in quod.’

  Dr Jory laughed. ‘Isn’t that where somebody might have had Joscelyn put? Even if this treasure turned up in England in such a way that it was not technically treasure trove now, it was almost certainly treasure trove, or the equivalent thing in the lingo of the Caucasus, when your enterprising ancestor, my dear Jory, first nabbed it. A very reasonable claim, I imagine, would vest in whatever is the legal government of those parts now. The Russian Government, would it be?’

  ‘The Russians!’ Lady Jory was disturbed. ‘Surely it wouldn’t be right to give a valuable treasure to them? John, dear – you would certainly have to consult the Prime Minister first.’

  For a moment Sir John made no reply to this. It was to be conjectured that a new and startling idea was forming in his mind. ‘There might be a lot in this treasure? More to be got out of it by a long way than out of books and so forth? Jory, you’ve a head on your shoulders. What would you say?’

  ‘If the treasure was valuable when Miss Sophia saw it, you may be sure it’s more valuable today. Pearls and enamels and the like might deteriorate. But not diamonds and rubies. And gold doesn’t corrupt – or not if one sticks to the intransitive use of the verb.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Sir John was a shade baffled by this grammatical subtlety. But he clearly had a high regard for his kinsman’s sagacity. ‘I’ll be glad of your advice my dear fellow, I need hardly say. If you care to give it, that is. Of course I realize the affair’s no concern of yours.’

  Olivia, who had grown bored with Berkeley and returned to her sofa, reacted violently. ‘No concern of ours, Sir John? You mean we’re butting in?’

  ‘Not at all, my dear – not at all.’ As he made this hasty and courteous disclaimer Sir John eyed Olivia with some shrewdness. ‘I merely mean that, if this treasure can be thought of as legally Joscelyn’s – and not belonging to some fellows in the Kremlin, as your father seems to suppose – then, of course, it would come down in the senior line. Full of interest for you, and all that. But, regarded as property–’

  ‘You haven’t heard the whole story, Sir John. You haven’t heard about the swap. It’s true that it too has only been a vague tradition, so far. But I think we’ll find Sophia has something to say about it. Has she, Miss Sackett?’

  Sadie had been turning over her papers. At this question she nodded curtly. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘There’s something.’

  ‘There’s something f-f-fairly d-d-definite,’ George Lumb put in. ‘And there’s something n-n-not definite as well – and rather sinister, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Sinister?’ Jerry Jory asked sharply.

  Sadie nodded seriously. ‘There’s something that certainly puts Dr Jory – or all the junior Jorys – into the picture. And there’s something rather grim, as well. But of course George and I don’t know either what force those wagers and bargains and so on have, or how much Sophia Jory may have taken to imagining things. Shall I read the next letter?’

  Lady Jory, to whom this question had been addressed, nodded with her customary placidity. The somewhat sombre tone of both Lumb and Sadie by no means disturbed her. ‘Yes, my dear,’ she said. ‘When I was a girl, we always had reading aloud after tea. It is a very nice sort of thing to have, just at that time of day. Particularly in winter, and with candles.’

  6

  ‘Dear Miss Bird, – Do not be unduly alarmed when I say that I write this letter (so soon after my last) in an endeavour to calm an agitation of spirits! We are of a sudden surrounded at Old Hall by perturbations and suspicions – and I have been the more distressed in that one of these last concerns myself. It is not unknown to me that unmarried members of our sex may become subject, at a certain age, to disorders of the imagination, and these, too, in the most intimate departments of life. My Aunt Elizabeth (whose sad history you will recall) was a case in point. On those occasions when she believed herself to be a conveyance, her concern was embarrassingly with attracting the notice of gentlemen whom she judged likely to be skilled with the reins. I have had to ask myself whether it be merely by some like aberration of intellect that I have come to suppose my elder brother suddenly overthrown by a violent erotical distemper.

  You will not find it difficult to believe that I shudder as I pen these appalling words. Yet I persuade myself that I am in my senses, and that the events upon which I must now touch are not in fact the product of my fancy. Women of no, or inconsiderable, station have wrought havoc in our family before. Arthur Jory, having successively and without unseemly enthusiasm enjoyed the favours of several ladies of rank, hanged himself for a milkmaid. And there have been other painful instances of this inflammable propensity in our menfolk, which it would be idle here to recall. Yet that Joscelyn, whose course of life hitherto, although in some particulars singular and perverse, has been distinguished, to my almost certain knowledge, by an entire probity in this so often fatal sphere of feeling and action – that Joscelyn, I say, in the very evening of his life, should be suddenly subjected to a libidinous and concupiscent frenzy, is surely a circumstance conducing, dear Miss Bird, to the most solemn reflections on the hazardousness of the earthly condition. Dr Samuel Johnson, selections from whose Moral Prose we used to read with such profit and pleasure together, has, I think, some serious and edifying observations on this subject in his Rambler. But let me not procrastinate telling what I must tell!

  This morning early, being Sunday, my brother Edward, together with his reprehensible friend Mr Kent, presented themselves at the Hall. Breakfast indeed being not yet concluded, they sat down with us and proceeded to make good the large deficiencies doubtless characterizing their temporary housekeeping in the Temple. Edward, with a familiarity to which he must, I suppose, be held entitled at his brother’s board, called loudly for broiled bones; and Mr Kent, with what was certainly unpardonable insolence, rudely demanded to know whether there was no salmi of game? Lady Jory and I, you will readily believe, rose to withdraw at the earliest moment compatible with unflawed civility. But I was not allowed to pass behind Edward’s chair without his catching me round the hips – a frolick gesture permissible to a brother in strict family privacy, but intolerable in the presence of such a low blackguard fellow as his Mr Kent – and jocosely whispering that the soap and scrubbing-brush had done wonders, and h
er flanks were now gleaming like a thoroughbred’s. And at this Kent gave a loud guffaw. I disengaged myself with what dignity I could. Mr Kent, upon the pretext of politely anticipating the servant who was preoccupied with the chafing-dishes, moved to the door and held it open – this for the sole purpose, I am persuaded, of favouring me with a final vulgar smirk. Such was the displeasing prelude to a melancholy day.

  Shortly afterwards the gentlemen repaired together to the coach-house, and I concluded that the two parties to the fatal wager had made a compact each to be permitted a glimpse of the other’s bid. It was known to me that Sir James Dangerfield and several other gentlemen had been engaged to a supper which Lady Jory and I were not expected to attend; and I had accounted it a token of grace in Joscelyn that he had by this arrangement mitigated the gross impropriety that would have marked our exclusion, when resident in the country, from the more formal occasion of dinner. There was something a little unexpected, it seemed to me, in this preliminary inspection. Since the whole sorry affair appeared conceived in terms of theatrical effect, it would have been natural to suppose that an element of absolute surprise would have been treasured to the last. But about both my brothers there has been – as I believe myself to have remarked in my last letter – an odd air of uneasiness. Neither seemed very confident of what he was about. It almost seemed as if each was seeking some reassurance from the other.