I turned to Cecil. Civilized man, I reflected, retains dangerously little of the sense of danger. But perhaps it was a matter of ear. I should have been scared if just that quality of voice had come in my direction. Cecil, no doubt, had simply not heard. Indeed he seemed to have been deaf not only to the implicit emotion but to the mere prose statement; he showed no resentment at having been charged with a muddled mind on his own field. Anything so outrageous simply failed to find the passages to his mind. On ordered freedom, on preparation for the battle of life, on the sense of fair play he continued to discourse throughout luncheon. And I noticed that Wale, as if with the instinct of a man who fears to have betrayed himself, took occasion to interpolate a number of civil and colourless observations.
The meal ended; it was the last placid meal that Belrive was to enjoy. Basil led Ralph Cambrell away to his study, presumably for that business talk for which he had come to the Priory. At the door my cousin turned round to us with an apology. ‘Will you all amuse yourselves? And, Lucy, will you look after tea again? I have a lot to do – there’s an appeal I must get out – and I shall probably be working right through to dinner. Cudbird, can you possibly stop for that?’
Cudbird replied that he could not stop, but would return. And on that Basil and Cambrell disappeared and the rest of us went our several ways. I took myself off to the library, where I was presently joined by Lucy, once more draped in proofs. Feeling some reason to apprehend the emergence of the interior monologue, together with a good deal of reluctance to confront it at this slightly somnolent hour, I took down a heavy extra-illustrated history of Belrive – my favourite among Basil’s treasures – and applied myself to it at a lectern. For some time Lucy’s pencil strayed about her galleys and I read in silence.
‘Arthur,’ said Lucy suddenly, ‘I have a suspicion.’
I believe I started slightly; certain curious speculations of my own may already have been forming themselves deep in my mind. ‘A suspicion?’ I replied. ‘Believe me, you must have a whole cornucopia of them. They represent your way of life.’
‘I have,’ said Lucy firmly, ‘a suspicion.’
‘You mean’ – I turned away reluctantly from my folio – ‘about Basil’s appeal?’
‘Basil’s appeal?’ Lucy rummaged for her pencil and finally found it in its commercial position behind her ear. ‘What is Basil’s appeal?’
We were completely at cross-purposes. ‘You have a suspicion,’ I countered, ‘about what?’
‘About this evening’s mystery, of course. Basil’s Mr X.’
I had forgotten about Basil’s Mr X, the unknown who was coming to dinner and who was to be a special treat for one of us. ‘What you suspect,’ I said, ‘is that Mr X is going to be a special treat for you.’
Lucy lost her pencil again. ‘However did you guess that?’ she asked.
This was awkward. It was evident that Lucy was the only person among us for whom it would occur to one to prepare a surprise of this sort – like something beguilingly wrapped up in coloured paper on a children’s Christmas tree. While I was casting about for some vague reply Lucy went off at a tangent. ‘Arthur,’ she said, ‘I have been thinking about The Golden Bowl.’
If Lucy had announced that she had been thinking about The Hound of the Baskervilles or The Woman in White I might have stayed. As it was, I got up hastily and looked at my watch. ‘Half past two,’ I said. ‘And I promised to look in on this studio affair of Hubert’s.’
Lucy rose too, scattered her proofs about the floor. ‘But how interesting. I think I’ll come with you.’
This again was awkward. That I had made any such promise was a lie, invented on the spur of the moment to save me from a discussion of the higher fiction. I had even no reason to suppose that Hubert would at all welcome an investigation of his activities. But I was fairly caught. Lucy retrieved her pen from the recesses of a large chair, put her bag where she was sure to remember it behind the clock, brilliantly cached her papers in the coal-scuttle and preceded me from the room.
We found the painters, father and son, in a large attic on the north side of the house – and with them Cecil, uneasily islanded amid much inexplicable professional activity. Geoffrey Roper was on top of a step-ladder, tacking a large sheet of some gauze-like material across a skylight. Hubert was abstractedly setting up a surprisingly large canvas on an easel; every now and then he would break off from this and wander off to a table which was already littered with sketches. He would study these for a time and then look sombrely at Cecil; to the entrance of Lucy and myself he gave not the slightest attention.
‘Of course,’ Hubert was saying, ‘Cecil is not uninteresting in himself.’ He accorded his nephew a perfunctory smile which was meant, I supposed, to be the essence of tact.
‘Oh, quite.’ Geoffrey on his perch spoke in the tones of a man who inwardly does not at all agree. ‘I say nothing against Cousin Cecil. There is some good bony structure here and there. Still, it’s not a commission, is it? It seems a chance.’
Cecil, I inferred, being a relation and not a fashionable client, could be dealt with in a spirit of light-hearted – or perhaps of absorbed – experiment. And this supposition was presently confirmed by a succession of bumping noises outside and the entrance of Basil’s butler, chauffeur, and gardener’s boy staggering under the weight of a vast gilt-framed mirror. This was placed against the wall under Hubert’s direction and the men went away. Some minutes later the butler and the chauffeur returned carrying between them a cheval-glass; behind them came a housemaid with one of those circular, concave mirrors which are still a common adornment of drawing-rooms.
Hubert looked about the bare attic. ‘Later I shall have to work in some sort of décor. A bedroom, I think – lavish, overfurnished, feminine.’
‘A big bed,’ interrupted Cecil – envisaging himself, I think, as depicted in bed with some monstrous pet.
Geoffrey nodded. ‘A sort of woman’s slipper, that is. And viridian, I should say, to tone up the whole composition.’
‘All the movement,’ said Hubert, ‘might start from the mule.’
‘What about Cecil holding the mule?’ demanded Geoffrey, as if suddenly inspired. ‘The viridian mule and his rather pasty hand: now just what would one get from that? Some rather interesting values, I should say.’
Cecil shifted uneasily on the single hard chair with which the attic was provided. ‘Really,’ he said, ‘I hardly think it appropriate to represent an unmarried man–’
‘But at the moment’ – Hubert was quite unheeding – ‘the interesting thing is the edges. In the big glass there will be the reflection of Cecil reflected in the cheval-glass. One should get some odd edges out of that.’
Geoffrey shook his head. ‘I think, Dad, it should be the other way round. Use the big glass as a powerful diagonal…’
Suddenly father and son were arguing fiercely. The servants, still standing about to shift the mirrors, stared; Cecil continued to wriggle; Lucy and I endeavoured to follow with the air of artists in a line of our own. And presently Hubert was flourishing his sketches in Geoffrey’s face. ‘You opinionated young puppy,’ he cried, ‘do you realize that I’ve been hard at work on the sort of thing for months – slaving at it till I’ve felt like Alice and the looking-glass? And then you come walking in from your flat geometrical pap and lay down the law! Get out of it!’ He turned round with a sweeping gesture. ‘And the rest of you too. You make the whole room a mess.’
We went – Lucy, Geoffrey, and myself down one staircase and the servants down another. There is nothing sinister in what is called an exhibition of artistic temperament, and the little performance put up by Hubert and Geoffrey was, if anything, mildly exhilarating. This could not be said of the quarrel into which we descended in the hall. Quarrel is perhaps the wrong word, for there was only one active participant. The thing might be called the Cambrell incident. Subsequently, it offered a good deal of matter for speculation. At the time, it was embarrassing merely.
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A voice said: ‘Forty, perhaps?’ The tones suggested leisured debate; they rose, however, above the sound of footsteps briskly crossing an uncarpeted floor. ‘Forty-five.’ The voice was louder – partly because it was advancing through the inner hall at the end of which stood Basil’s study; partly because urgency was creeping into its smoothness.
A second voice offered a monosyllabic reply; the footsteps with deliberation for the outer lobby; Cambrell turned aside to pick up a coat and hat. The coat he began to put on; then he stopped and strolled across the hall to study a picture. ‘I’ve always admired your Guardi,’ he said casually. ‘It isn’t for sale?’
‘Yes,’ said Basil matter-of-factly, ‘it is.’
‘Fifteen hundred?’
‘Yes. Will you take it under your arm?’
Cambrell laughed dubiously. ‘I’ll send round, and I count myself thoroughly lucky – really grateful. Now surely forty-five is more than–’
Basil had got hold of Cambrell’s hat. He handed it to him. And because it was Basil the action was not rude; it was politely ruthless. ‘I prefer the other idea,’ he said. ‘And there’s an end on’t.’
His guest made that motion with his eyebrows which is the Saxon equivalent of shrugged shoulders and gesturing hands. ‘My dear Roper, of course you must decide as you choose. And I wish you all good luck.’
Nothing could have been more proper than this pretty speech; it relieved us of some of the discomfort we felt at stumbling upon what was none of our business as we scuttled hastily across the hall. And nothing more, I believe, would have happened but for the accident with the hat.
Cambrell dropped it – a clumsiness betraying suppressed emotion. He bent to pick it up, and as he straightened himself his face flushed dark red. ‘You damned fool,’ he cried, ‘even your idiot paint-splashing brother would have more sense!’
He was gone. Basil strolled over to the Guardi, glanced at it, and turned to me as I was disappearing into the library. ‘Do you think, Arthur, that Cambrell really cares for the arts?’ And as I made some inarticulate reply he took a notebook from his pocket. ‘Fifteen hundred,’ he said, ‘–and you are a witness.’ He smiled faintly and jotted with a pencil. ‘Every little helps.’
8
Tea, though not this time marked by the horror of intellectual games, was restless. It came into a library about which people were uneasily prowling and had no sedative effect. We balanced cups on inadequate ledges amid cliffs of books; wandering round the long dusky room we laid snake-like trails of crumbs across the floor.
Cecil was the centre of disturbance. I imagine that the roast duck had made him disinclined for further recruitment till dinner and that the sight of the Belrive muffins irked him. He had mislaid Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life: this ethical inconvenience he was allowing nobody to forget. Lucy too was on the hunt – first for her proofs in the coal-scuttle, next for her bag behind the clock, and finally for a great deal of note paper. With this last she proceeded to construct a dummy book of the blank-paged sort which publishers mysteriously find it expedient to create before they begin to set up type. Lucy’s idea was to mark in the chapter-heads and so, by turning over the pages, to get the physical feel of the chapters: the physical feel being a new aspect of her problem which had just occurred to her. We all helped to fold the pages into some semblance of the gatherings of a book; assembly was nearly complete when Lucy let the whole thing slip and the floor was littered with the debris of her project. This produced a mixture of polite scramble and acid comment – Wale leading the scramble, Anne the comment, and Wilfred being vigorously active on both fronts.
‘Has nobody,’ asked Cecil accusingly when this diversion was over, ‘seen my Serious Call?’
‘Talking of serious calls,’ said Wilfred, ‘I must write to a fellow about his margins.’ He began to prowl about peering into ink pots.
‘In his picture,’ said Geoffrey, ‘Cousin Cecil shall have the mule in one hand and Law’s Serious Call in the other. Behind him the concave mirror shall reflect a distorted version of Titian’s Sacred and Profane Love. It will be a problem picture in the hoary old manner and quite the success of the year.’ He nodded at his father. ‘Veteran painter’s perplexing vision.’
Anne put down her cup. ‘Sir Mervyn should have his place in the composition. Whither Cecil goes–’
I saw Wale looking more than startled at this impossible personality and judged it well to intervene hastily. ‘I have always felt,’ I said, ‘that tea is the turning point of the day.’
The remark was meant to be soothing rather than meaningful. But Anne considered it gravely. ‘A sentiment,’ she asked with deliberation, ‘which marks Uncle Arthur as of the turned rather than the turners?’
‘The day,’ said Geoffrey, ‘carries him on its great arc from morn to evening. And, supine, he murmurs such aphorisms as these.’
The gibberish of these young people was becoming wholly tiresome. I was about to brace my mind to the not-too-stretching task of evolving some more cogent witticism in reply when Anne took up her part in the verbal pit-pat again. ‘But what,’ she asked, ‘will Uncle Arthur do when Hesperus nightly cries banishment from the bed of his bride Belrive?’
‘The sword,’ said Geoffrey, ‘thrust between the sheets at ten p.m. sharp.’
‘Hurry up, Uncle Arthur, it’s time. Hurry up, please it’s time.’
Cecil, who had been poking after William Law’s masterpiece in a dark corner, turned round abruptly. ‘What extravagant nonsense are you talking, Anne?’
‘Haven’t you gathered? Cousin Basil is selling Belrive to Horace Cudbird to build the world’s biggest pub.’
‘On the contrary’ – Geoffrey shook his head – ‘he is selling the place to Ralph Cambrell to run more Cambrell benevolence. Cambrell houses, shops, and cinema. The week will begin with worship in a Cambrell chapel and end with football and hockey on Cambrell fields under the Cambrell code. A happy self-contained community financed by Cambrell all round. For the study of the ruins a Cambrell Archaeological Society will be formed.’
Cecil sat down abruptly. ‘Why ever should Basil do either of these abominable things?’
‘To reach the moon,’ said Anne. ‘Again, haven’t you heard? There is to be a great rocket winging through space. And Geoffrey and I are putting in for the job of pilots. Like the interstellar necking party in Wells’ film. We look at the moon and feel there may be a square deal in those argent fields.’
‘Actually,’ said Geoffrey, ‘the idea is to start a meteorological station in the Antarctic. A great deal of money is required: that’s what Basil’s appealing for. As human purposes go it has much to commend it.’
‘But surely’ – Cecil was looking round him in bewilderment – ‘Basil cannot legally–’
His brother Wilfred gave a muffiny snort. ‘I don’t believe a word of it. But if it were true I know who could stop him.’
‘Lucy, might I after all have a cup of tea?’
The voice at the door was Basil’s; the effect upon the company in the library was discomposing in the extreme.
‘If you will allow me to carry it off, that is.’
‘The Serious Call,’ said Cecil loudly. ‘I wonder if any of you have seen my Serious Call?’
Wilfred put down his muffin. ‘That fellow’s margins,’ he said. ‘Really must get off a note.’ He peered into the nearest ink pot.
I changed early that evening and was back in the library by seven o’clock. It would be half an hour before the dressing bell rang. But there was nobody about, and I concluded that most people had gone to their rooms early. When one has been only too much a member of a family a little solitude is a natural resource. And a large house can thus mysteriously untenant itself. In Lucy’s stories there is always some animation. The door – of kitchen, billiard-room, boudoir, pantry – is opened, and there on the other side is invariably somebody ready and eager to keep things going. Actually, such wanderings are likely to be lone
ly as a cloud. And this is particularly so with family parties, during which only servants are aware of how much time people put in skulking in their own fastnesses.
These are relevant reflections. Later that night I had stoutly to maintain against a good deal of covert incredulity that between seven o’clock and ten to eight I encountered no living soul at Belrive.
Of course I went out. And that I went out was to seem highly suspicious. We are all sentimental – and yet how unaccountable a dash of sentiment in one’s actions may make them appear!
I like the place in the dark. And – it is a sad admission – I particularly like the ruins in the phantasmagoric light of Cudbird’s bottle. Half-close one’s eyes in a fire-lit room and one can see what shapes one wills stirring in the corners and flitting across the ceiling; wander among the ruins in that fluctuating twilight of commercial enterprise and one can see cloister and dorter, night stair and warming-room possessed once more by those who first laid stone in the building of this ancient place. What daylight shows as crumbled chapel and a ruined choir one can dream of as a great design well begun.
At about ten past seven I opened the front door and stepped out on the terrace. It was icy cold: earlier in the day it had been chilly enough but now the temperature had suddenly dropped and I knew that we were in for a black frost. I hesitated and, stepping indoors again, secured a heavy coat which I had left in a cloakroom by the outer lobby. I found too my galoshes – the possession of such things dates me sadly, I fear – and slipped them over my pumps. I crossed the terrace and leant for a moment on its high balustrade. It will be as well to confess at once that I was in considerable agitation of mind.
Crossing the hall I had glanced at the square little Guardi which Basil had so briskly sold to Ralph Cambrell. For the painter I do not greatly care – he is a mannerist to my mind – but the impending disappearance even of this restless and inconsiderable heirloom startled me. The deal might have been over a red setter or a second-hand car.
There Came Both Mist and Snow Page 6