Shabby Summer

by Warwick Deeping

  “Good morning, Mr. Ghent. Thanks for this promptness. I shall have to ask you to forgive my incognito.”

  Ghent’s stiff young face softened.

  “Maybe it was my fault, sir. I ought to have been able to put a name to a——”

  “Household face, my lad! I am wondering whether you are suspecting me of wholesale vanity.”

  “Hardly that, sir.”

  “And of expecting the whole world to cry ‘Hail,’ when one strolls in Hyde Park. No, just a little puckishness, but propitiously so. Well, here’s Thursby.”

  He stood beside Ghent, on the topmost step, and looked over the domain that was his. Dressed in velvet and lace he could have been no more adequate as the central figure on the stage. His white head was almost the head of a cavalier. Even the landscape itself might have been the England of three hundred years ago, with no new building to show like a raw wound in the greenness.

  “I suppose it is selfish to like it like that, Mr. Ghent, but I do.”

  “Well, one does, sir,” said Ghent, looking into the distance, “if one hasn’t a brick and mortar mind. Besides, to be honest, I don’t see that there is any sin in feeling like that. If you plumped half Battersea in bungalows down there, they’d be dreadfully bored, and the result would be beastly.”

  Sir Gavin chuckled.

  “Well, let us be Elizabethan. Moreover, haven’t we countrymen a right to wish the country to be country? There is such a lot of humanistic humbug talked on platforms. Now, I expect you would like to look round.”

  “I should, sir.”

  “By yourself?”

  “If I may. You have to tread softly in a place like this, and stand and stare. But perhaps, if you want me to work out a scheme——”

  “I think so.”

  “You might go round with me first, sir, and give me any impressions you have. I mean, everybody, and you in particular, has likes and dislikes.”

  “Carnations and the common sycamore.”

  Ghent laughed.

  “I don’t think Thursby would require either.”

  They strolled across the grass towards the house whose weathered stone and high chimneys were backed by the contours of old trees.

  “Any ideas here, Mr. Ghent?”

  Peter paused and stood at gaze.

  “I think it was meant to stand like that. One couldn’t fuss it. Just grass, and of course, the parterre idea on this upper terrace.”

  “A casket on a green cushion. The turf is rather hopeless.”

  “You’ll have to wage war on the rabbits, sir, or wire them out.”

  “Would you returf or sow?”

  “I don’t think I would do either. Very expensive, too. I rather believe in leaving the natural turf. It’s amazing what you can do with feeding, watering and weeding. Of course, the seed-merchants wouldn’t tell you that.”

  “No,” said Sir Gavin, twinkling; “bad for business. Well, what is your process?”

  “A dressing of good loam and Sorbex in winter. A dose of mixed artificial in April, and again in July. Rolling with a spiked roller. Watering in dry weather. No close cutting for the first year.”

  “Stimulating the local inhabitants?”

  “That’s the idea, sir. What grows here is probably meant to grow. But war on the rabbits. I think I’d wire the whole garden, if I were you.”

  They had turned the corner of the house, and so came upon Ghent’s old car, and its solitary occupant. Sir Gavin saw a lover’s look light up Peter’s face.

  “Oh, my fiancée, sir. I hope you don’t mind. She wanted to see the house.”

  Now, Sir Gavin had an eye for a pretty woman, and a liking for young lovers who were decorative. He was not jealous of the young. He took Ghent by the arm. “Come and introduce me.” And Mrs. Strangeways, standing up in the old car, and looking shy and glowing, was certainly a quite charming addition to the landscape.

  “Mrs. Strangeways—Sir Gavin Marwood,” said Ghent.

  Mrs. Strangeways gave Sir Gavin a salutation that suggested a little curtsy.

  “Please, may I get out?”

  Sir Gavin opened the door for her, and his eyes were jocund.

  “Most ungallant of you, Ghent, to leave the lady shut up here.”

  Peter laughed and blushed.

  “Oh, well, sir, you see, attention to business.”

  * * *

  Sir Gavin had chairs brought out to the terrace for himself and Mrs. Strangeways, while Ghent went off to inspect the gardens. He found three broad terraces, one below the other, and in the green hollow below a weedy little lake surrounded by alders and straggling old sallows. There were a few good trees here, Lawson cypress and sequoia, and the garden ended in a ha-ha and the park. A path led him along below the hillside to a garden house, and what appeared to be the remains of a moat in whose black mud water-weeds flourished. Above the moat Ghent discovered an immense walled garden, box-edged, and full of fruit trees that were senile, and suggesting gouty old men. A large wired fruit-cage had fallen inwards upon the bushes. A blue door in the wall was half off its hinges. North of the walled garden neglected shrubberies and plantations surrounded the outbuildings.

  Ghent judged the gardens to be about twelve acres in extent, and there was hardly a square yard that did not need renovating. In fact, the whole place cried out for help. It asked for hundreds of flowering shrubs and trees, herbaceous plants by the thousand, mountains of dung and fresh loam, lime, gravel. Almost the capital expenditure that would be required for the transfiguration frightened him. It would run into thousands of pounds.

  Returning, he found Mrs. Strangeways and Sir Gavin drinking sherry on the terrace, and obviously enjoying each other’s company. Sir Gavin, observing Ghent’s grave face, poured him out a glass of wine.

  “Well, spied out the land, Ghent?”

  “Yes, sir. Do you mind if I look down from the top of the steps?”

  He walked away with his glass of sherry, and standing by a brick pillar, gazed upon the scene, and became lost in dreaming how it could be dealt with. What a superb setting, that little lake transfigured, the green hollows below brilliant with rhododendrons and azaleas and all manner of flowering shrubs, the terraces sheeted with colour!

  He heard Sir Gavin’s voice beside him.

  “Well, my lad, just a little scared?”

  Ghent turned with a quick smile.

  “In a way, sir, yes. It’s rather a vast job.”

  “Roughly, what do you think it would cost?”

  “That would depend——?”

  “On our ambition?”

  “Quite, sir.”

  “Well, to do the job thoroughly.”

  “I hardly like to——”

  Sir Gavin chuckled.

  “Afraid of frightening me, Ghent? How far would five or six thousand pounds go?”

  He saw young Ghent’s head rise with a little jerk.

  “Do you mean that, sir?”

  “I do.”

  “Well, of course, one could make a lovely job—— I mean the man who gets it could.”

  “Supposing you draw out a plan in the rough,” and then, sensing Ghent’s embarrassment, and understanding what might lie behind it, he took the young man by the arm.

  “Look here, my lad, that means time, and the commitments would seem considerable. Perhaps you are worried——”

  “I’ll be quite frank, sir. I’ve had a bad year, and financially—— No, I don’t want to plead that sort of thing. But what I mean is, if I have a chance, I could and would afford the time to plan for you, on the understanding that you commit yourself to nothing. No charge for the plan, or estimates.”

  “You would take that risk?”

  “Certainly, sir.”

  Sir Gavin gave his arm a playful shake.

  “Mr. Ghent, you are a very poor business man. But I think I like that kind of innocence.”

  * * *

  As they drove away from Thursby Ghent was very silent, and his face was s
o problem-ridden that she, loving him with understanding, left him in peace. She wanted to prattle like an excited child, but she sat almost demurely, with her hands in her lap, her honey-coloured hair blowing about her little face. But inwardly she was laughing, laughing, laughing, and her spirit was like a lark fluttering and throbbing with song.

  Not till he had brought Old Oliver, wart and all, out on to the high road did Ghent speak.

  “By God, what a morning! I wonder if I can get the job? I’m going to start work directly I get back.”

  “Plans, darling?”

  “Yes, in the rough. I’m going over again to-morrow to measure up. My God, if only I can pull it off.”

  She looked with sly tenderness at his stiff face. Didn’t he realize, dear lamb, that the prize was his, that Sir Gavin liked him rather tremendously, and that when a man like Sir Gavin liked you——? Well, well, and she too had got on very well with the great man. But she did love her lover’s innocence. Life with him would always be the eternal adventure.

  “Do you have to colour your plans?”

  “Yes, it makes them look more attractive.”

  “Well, couldn’t I do that? I can play about with a brush.”

  “I say, that’s an idea!”

  “And you are going to be frightfully busy. Have you a typewriter?”

  “Of sorts.”

  “Well, I can type. I can deal with all the correspondence. And though you mightn’t believe it, I can keep accounts.”

  He looked at her devoutly.

  “You’re marvellous! But do you know what it would mean to us, if——?”

  “Quite a lot of money, I suppose?”

  “My fees at ten per cent would run to about six hundred pounds, without counting my profit on trees and shrubs supplied.”

  “Oh, Peter, how splendid!”

  “But we haven’t got the job yet. I say, but I must turn in at Temple Manor. I want to kiss her dear, blessed hands.”

  * * *

  Lady Vandeleur often asked herself why the intellectual Drearies would not allow you the pleasure of giving pleasure to others, but must pillory you as an egoist swollen with patronage and power. There appeared to be nothing spontaneous about the Drearies. They made of everything a study in still life, and a rather nasty study at that, rotting fruit and crabs that were decaying and malodorous. Life and its loveliness eluded you when you began to sniff over it and pull it to pieces, for Lady Melissa believed that life was a miracle not a morgue.

  She was writing letters when those two young things were shown in to her, and somehow their happy, vivid faces were so satisfying and worth while. Mrs. Strangeways did not stand upon ceremony, but was spontaneous as a bird.

  “Oh, thank you, for everything. May I kiss your pretty white hair?”

  Lady Melissa returned the kiss, planting it on a soft, warm cheek.

  “Well, what have you two children been up to?”

  Ghent stood on the other side of her table, rather like a young man who was moved to make a speech, and couldn’t.

  “I’ve been to Thursby.”

  “Oh, to Thursby.”

  “The most marvellous job. If I can get it, we shall owe it to you.”

  “Not a bit, my dear. Kissing may go by favour, but unless you are up to your job kisses don’t carry cheques.”

  “I hope I’m up to the job. I’m just a bit——”

  “Of course he is, isn’t he, Lady Vandeleur? He is going to make a marvellous garden there.”

  Lady Melissa looked at them both, and smiled.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” said Ghent, “we’re going to be married. I didn’t think she ought to take such a risk.”

  Lady Melissa laughed.

  “Marriage is a devil of a risk. But if you can make as marvellous a job of it as you—— Well, come and kiss me, Peter. You’re not on sentry-go.”

  He came round the table, and she put up her face, and his lips touched her forehead.

  “Thank you, for everything.”

  “I’m getting my pleasure, so we can cry quits. But, Sybil, my dear, you can’t very well be married from a tent on an island. But, of course you can.”

  “It is going to be very quiet.”

  “Well, why not be married from here?”

  “Do you really mean it?”

  “No, of course, I am just being polite!”

  “You are. But there is not going to be any honeymoon. Is there, Peter?”

  “Well, if I get the Thursby job, we shall be up to the eyes——”

  “In love,” said Lady Melissa, under her breath.

  XXVII

  Mr. Crabtree was opening his morning letters at the Temple Towers’ breakfast table, and since most of them were charitable appeals, he tossed them on the floor. “Gosh, you’d think this country was nothing but an asylum, and a home for lost dogs. Nothing but crocks and unemployables!” His habit of strewing the floor with circulars and discarded letters was a source of annoyance to poor Mary who had one of those patient, tidy minds, and who years ago had made the experiment of placing the waste-paper basket beside her husband’s chair, only to find that it somehow failed to give him satisfaction. But Roger Crabtree did receive one letter that pleased him, a communication from a back-street solicitor in Loddon who had stepped into the shoes of Messrs. Snape & Sowerby. This gentleman had been playing the ferret in Mr. Crabtree’s interest.

  “Ha, I thought so, young Ghent’s pretty well done for.”

  And was that a cause of satisfaction?

  “I should say so. Damned young pup. I want that place of his, and I’m going to get it.”

  “What for, Roger?”

  “Nice little building estate. Old Ma Vandeleur won’t like it.”

  He had another piece of news for his wife.

  “Well, well, Marwood’s taken Thursby. We ought to call on him.”

  “I thought you rather wanted Thursby?”

  Apparently, Mr. Crabtree did not mind having his eye wiped by so great a man as Sir Gavin Marwood.

  “No. Just an idea of mine. Glad for Marwood to have it. Yes, we ought to go and call, Mother. He doesn’t belong to the old gang. Man of ideas, like me. Expect we’d see eye to eye on most things. Coming in to Loddon this morning? I’m taking the Rolls.”

  “No, Roger; we’re making jam.”

  “There’s no need for you to make jam, is there?”

  “But I like it.”

  “Well, that’s funny. Rich people like us don’t have to make jam. By the way, I’m getting fed up with that fellow Scattergood.”

  “What’s the matter with Scattergood?”

  “Dumb-saucy. Discontented swine. I believe the fellow’s a Bolshie. For tuppence I’d sack him.”

  “He has a wife and children, Roger.”

  “Let him think of that!”

  * * *

  Ghent, feeling that the moment was more than propitious for the interviewing of bank-managers, drove on from Temple Manor to Loddon, taking Mrs. Strangeways with him. There was the conventional question of a ring, but though the buying of rings when your balance was overdrawn might be an act of gallantry, it did not strike Ghent as being sound economics. Yet, he was a little worried about it, and no man likes to feel mean.

  “If the Thursby job comes off, there is something I want to buy you.”

  She was quick to understand him.

  “I don’t want anything, Peter. You’re worrying about a ring.”

  “Not worrying.”

  “Well, all we need is a gold one, isn’t it? So simple. You see, my dear, baubles don’t matter when one’s got the real thing.”

  “Oh, we’ll see about that.”

  “I won’t have you wasting our money.”

  He laughed.

  “All right, Mrs. Ghent, you are going to keep the accounts.”

  Ghent’s bank was in Loddon High Street, and as he brought his old car up to the pavement, he saw in front of him the portentous yellow rump o
f a vehicle that was familiar. Old Crabtree’s Rolls! And did they share the same bank? None the less he parked his car behind Mr. Crabtree’s, and drew Mrs. Strangeways’s attention to it.

  “Know that chariot?”

  She did. She crinkled up her nose.

  “Yes, dear, I can smell it.”

  “Rather singular! Do you believe in omens?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Well, is this one good or bad?”

  “Good. Hall-marked, I should say!”

  “My sweet, I do love your spirit.”

  “So do I!”

  And then the swing doors of the bank opened and Mr. Roger Crabtree emerged, looking rather as though he had swallowed a wad of ten-pound notes. He saw the two in that ramshackle old car, and received the impression that they were laughing at him, which was not true. They were laughing with each other. Mr. Crabtree did not salute Mrs. Strangeways. He turned abruptly to his own car, only to find that Scattergood was not in evidence. Scattergood had sneaked off to buy cigarettes. Mr. Crabtree got into his car, slammed the door, and waited ominously for his man.

  Scattergood came strolling down the pavement. He had a kind of meditative smirk on his sallow face, but when he saw the figure in the limousine, the smirk died away. Mr. Crabtree was making significant movements with a hand.

  Scattergood opened the door.

  “What d’you mean by keeping me waiting?”

  “I’d only just gone up——”

  “Don’t argue. I don’t pay you to argue. Haven’t I told you before not to leave the car?”

  Scattergood’s sulky face concealed murderous thoughts.

  “Well, a man must relieve himself sometimes.”

  “I don’t see the necessity,” said his master. “Always some excuse, haven’t you? Home.”

  Ghent had entered the bank, after turning to wave half ironically to Sybil. How one’s fortune could change its face within twenty-four hours! A friendly cashier smiled at him from behind the counter. No, Ghent did not require money; he had come to see the manager, and was the gentleman disengaged? He was, and recovering from a surfeit of Mr. Crabtree, a Mr. Crabtree who had had the impertinence to ask questions as to the state of another client’s bank balance. And here, strangely enough, was the client in question.