A Buyer's Market (21 page)

I was rather glad to think that Barbara herself was in Scotland, so that there would be no likelihood of meeting her at her uncle’s house. I felt that, if we could avoid seeing each other for long enough, any questions of sentiment—so
often deprecated by Barbara herself—could be allowed quietly to subside, and take their place in those niches of memory especially reserved for abortive emotional entanglements of that particular kind.

All the same, this sensation of starting life again, as it were, with a clean sheet, made me regret a little to find on arrival that the assembled house-party consisted only of Sir Gavin’s unmarried sister, Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson, Rosie Manasch, and Johnny Pardoe. On the way down in the train I had felt that it would be enjoyable to meet some new girl, even at risk of becoming once more victim to the afflictions from which I had only recently emerged. However, it seemed that no such situation was on this occasion likely to arise. Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson I knew of only by name, though I had heard a great deal about her from time to time when talking to Eleanor, who, possessing a great admiration for her aunt, often described the many adventures for which she was noted within the family.

The other two guests, although in theory a perfectly suitable couple to invite together, were, I thought, not quite sure whether they liked one another. Barnby used to say that a small man was at more of a disadvantage with a small woman than with a big one, and it was certainly true that the short, squat, black figures of Rosie Manasch and Pardoe sometimes looked a little absurd side by side. “Johnny is so amusing,” she used to say, and he had been heard to remark: “Rosie dances beautifully,” but almost any other pair of Eleanor’s acquaintances would have liked each other as well, if not better. As a matter of fact, Sir Gavin, hardly concealed a certain
tendresse
for Rosie, which may have accounted for her presence; and he certainly felt strong approval of Pardoe’s comfortable income. Eleanor’s own indifference to the matter might be held to excuse her parents for asking to the house guests who at least appealed in one way or another to their own tastes.

The red brick Queen Anne manor house stood back from the road in a small park, if such an unpretentious setting of trees and paddocks could be so called. A walled orchard on the far side stretched down to the first few cottages of the village. The general impression of the property was of an estate neat and well superintended, rather than large. The place possessed that quality, perhaps more characteristic of country houses in England than in some other parts of Europe, of house and grounds forming an essential part of the landscape. The stables stood round three sides of a courtyard a short way from the main buildings, and there Eleanor was accustomed to spend a good deal of her time, with animals of various kinds, housed about the loose-boxes in hutches and wooden crates.

Within, there existed, rather unexpectedly, that somewhat empty, insistently correct appearance of the private dwellings of those who have spent most of their lives in official residences of one kind or another. A few mementoes of posts abroad were scattered about. For example, an enormous lacquer cabinet in the drawing-room had been brought from Pekin—some said Tokyo—by Sir Gavin, upon the top of which stood several small, equivocal figures carved in wood by the Indians of an obscure South American tribe. The portraits in the dining-room were mostly of Wilson forebears: one of them, an admiral, attributed to Zoffany. There was also a large painting of Lady Walpole-Wilson’s father by the Academician, Isbister (spoken of with such horror by Mr. Deacon), whose portrait of Peter Templer’s father I remembered as the only picture in the Templer home. This canvas was in the painter’s earlier manner, conveying the impression that at any moment Lord Aberavon, depicted in peer’s robes, would step from the frame and join the company below him in the room.

The Wilsons had lived in the county for a number of generations, but Sir Gavin had bought Hinton (with which he possessed hereditary connections through a grandmother) only after retirement. This comparatively recent purchase of the house was a subject upon which Sir Gavin’s mind was never wholly at rest; and he was always at pains to explain that its ownership was not to be looked upon as an entirely new departure so far as any hypothetical status might be concerned as a land-owner “in that part of the world.”

“As a matter of fact, the Wilsons are, if anything, an older family than the Walpoles—well, perhaps not that, but at least as old,” he used to say. “I expect you have heard of Beau Wilson, a young gentleman who spent a lot of money in the reign of William and Mary, and was killed in a duel. I have reason to suppose he was one of our lot. And then there was a Master of the Mint a bit earlier. The double-barrel, which I greatly regret, and would discard if I could, without putting myself and my own kith and kin to a great deal of inconvenience, was the work of a great-uncle—a most consequential ass, between you and me, and a bit of a snob, I’m afraid—and has really no basis whatever, beyond the surname of a remote ancestor in the female line.”

He was accustomed to terminate this particular speech with a number of “m’ms,” most of them interrogative, and some uneasy laughter. His sister, on this occasion, looked rather disapproving at these excursions into family history.

She was a small, defiant woman, some years younger than Sir Gavin, recently returned from a journey in Yugoslavia, where she had been staying with a friend married to a British consul in that country. Although spoken of as “not well off,” Miss Janet Walpole-Wilson was also reported to maintain herself at a respectable level of existence by intermittent odd jobs that varied between acting as secretary, usually in a more or less specialised capacity, to some public figure, often a friend or relative of the family; alternatively, by undertaking, when they travelled abroad, the rôle of governess or duenna to children of relations, some of whom were rather rich.

“Aunt Janet says you must never mind asking,” Eleanor had informed me, when speaking of the ease with which Miss Walpole-Wilson, apparently on account of her freedom from inhibition upon this point, always found employment. Her aunt certainly seemed to have enjoyed throughout her life a wide variety of confidences and experiences. She dressed usually in tones of brown and green, colours that gave her for some reason, possibly because her hats almost always conveyed the impression of being peaked, an air of belonging to some dedicated order of female officials, connected possibly with public service in the woods and forests, and bearing a load of responsibility, the extent of which was difficult for a lay person—even impossible if a male—to appreciate, or wholly to understand. The outlines of her good, though severe, features were emphasised by a somewhat reddish complexion.

Sir Gavin, though no doubt attached to his sister, was sometimes openly irritated by her frequent, and quite uncompromising, pronouncements on subjects that he must have felt himself, as a former diplomatist of some standing, possessing the right, at least in his own house, to speak of with authority. Lady Walpole-Wilson, on the other hand, scarcely made a secret of finding the presence of her sister-in-law something of a strain. A look of sadness would steal over her face when Miss Walpole-Wilson argued with Sir Gavin about ethnological problems in the Sanjak of Novi Bazar, or spoke of times when “the Ford’s big end went in the Banat,” or “officials made themselves so disagreeable at Nish:” geographical entities of that kind playing a great part in her conversation. Although seriously concerned with the general welfare of the human race, she sometimes displayed a certain capricious malignity towards individuals, taking, for example, a great dislike to Pardoe, though she showed a guarded friendship towards Rosie Manasch. I was relieved to find her attitude to myself suggested nothing more hostile than complete indifference.

One, perhaps the chief, bone of contention lying between herself and her brother was Miss Walpole-Wilson’s conviction that the traditions of his service, by their very nature, must have rendered him impervious to anything in the way of new ideas or humanitarian concepts; so that much of Sir Gavin’s time was taken up in attempting to demonstrate to his sister that, so far from lagging behind in the propagation of reforms of almost every kind, he was prepared to go, theoretically at least, not only as far as, but even farther than, herself. Both of them knew Sillery, who had recently stayed in the neighbourhood, and for once they were in agreement that he was “full of understanding.” The subject of Sillery’s visit came up at dinner on the night of my arrival.

“It was at Stourwater,” said Lady Walpole-Wilson. “As a matter of fact we have been asked over there on Sunday. Prince Theodoric is staying there with Sir Magnus Donners.”

I knew the castle by name, and was even aware in a vague kind of way that it had often changed hands during the previous fifty or hundred years; but I had never seen the place, nor had any idea that Sir Magnus Donners lived there.

“And I so much wanted that afternoon to see those two hound puppies Nokes is walking,” said Eleanor. “Now it turns out we are being forced to go to this ghastly luncheon-party.”

“Got to be civil to one’s neighbours, my dear,” said Sir Gavin. “Besides, Theodoric has particularly asked to see me.”

“I don’t know what you call ‘neighbours’,” said Eleanor. “Stourwater is twenty-five miles, at least.”

“Nonsense,” said Sir Gavin. “I doubt if it is twenty-three.”

His attitude towards Eleanor varied between almost doting affection and an approach most easily suggested by the phrase “making the best of a bad job.” There were times when she vexed him. Arguing with her father brought out the resemblance between the two of them, though features that, in Sir Gavin, seemed conventionalised to the point, almost, of stylisation took on a peculiar twist in his daughter. As she sat there at the table, I could recognise no similarity whatever to Barbara—of whom at times I still found myself thinking—except for their shared colouring.

“I explained to Donners that we should be quite a large party,” said Sir Gavin, “but he would not hear of anyone being left behind. In any case, there is plenty of room there, and the castle itself is well worth seeing.”

“I don’t think I shall come after all, Gavin,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson. “No one will want to see me there—least of all Prince Theodoric. Although I dare say he is too young to remember the misunderstanding that arose, when I stayed with you, regarding that remark about ‘travesty of democratic government’—and you know I never care for people with too much money.”

“Oh, come, Janet,” said Sir Gavin. “Of course they will all want to see you—the Prince especially. He is a very go-ahead fellow, everyone who has met him agrees. As a matter of fact, you know as well as I do, the old King laughed heartily when I explained the circumstance of your remark. He made a rather broad joke about it. I’ve told you a thousand times. Besides, Donners is not a bad fellow at all.”

“I can’t get on with those people—ever.”

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘those people’,” said Sir Gavin, a trifle irritably. “Donners is no different from anyone else, except that he may be a bit richer. He didn’t start life barefoot—not that I for one should have the least objection if he had, more power to his elbow—but his father was an eminently solid figure. He was knighted, I believe, for what that’s worth. Donners went to some quite decent school. I think the family are of Scandinavian, or North German, extraction. No doubt very worthy people.”

“Oh, I do hope he isn’t German,” said Lady Walpole-Wilson. “I never thought of that.”

“Personally, I have a great admiration for the Germans—I do not, of course, mean the Junkers,” said her sister-in-law. “They have been hardly treated. No one of liberal opinions could think otherwise. And I certainly do not object to Sir Magnus on snobbish grounds. You know me too well for that, Gavin. I have no doubt, as you say, that he has many good points. All the same, I think I had better stay at home. I can make a start on my article about the Bosnian Moslems for the news-sheet of the Minority Problems League.”

“If Aunt Janet doesn’t go, I don’t see why I should,” said Eleanor. “I don’t in the least want to meet Prince Theodoric.”

“I do,” said Rosie Manasch. “I thought he looked too fetching at Goodwood.”

In the laugh that followed this certainly tactful expression of preference, earlier warnings of potential family difference died away. Sir Gavin began to describe, not for the first time, the occasion when, as a young secretary in some Oriental country, he had stained his face with coffee-grounds and, like Haroun-al-Raschid, “mingled” in the bazaar: with, so it appeared, useful results. The story carried dinner safely to the dessert, a stage when Pardoe brought conversation back once more to Sunday’s expedition by asking whether Sir Magnus Donners had purchased Stourwater from the family with whom Barbara was staying in Scotland, for whose house he was himself bound on leaving Hinton.

“He bought it from a relation of mine,” said Rosie Manasch. “Uncle Leopold always says he sold it—with due respect to you, Eleanor—because the hunting round here wasn’t good enough. I think it was really because it cost too much to keep up.”

“It is all very perfect now,” said Sir Gavin. “Rather too perfect for my taste. In any case, I am no medievalist.”

He looked round the table challengingly after saying this, rather as Uncle Giles was inclined to glare about him after making some more or less tendentious statement, whether because he suspected that one or other of us, in spite of this disavowal, would charge him with covert medievalism, or in momentary hesitation that, in taking so high a line on the subject of an era at once protracted and diversified, he ran risk of exposure to the impeachment of “missing something” thereby, was uncertain.

“There is the Holbein, too,” said Lady Walpole-Wilson. “You really must come, Janet, I know you like pictures.”

“The castle belongs, like Bodiam, to the later Middle Ages,” said Sir Gavin, assuming all at once the sing-song tones of a guide or lecturer. “And, like Bodiam, Stourwater possesses little or no historical interest, as such, while remaining, so far as its exterior is concerned, architecturally one of the most complete, and comparatively unaltered, fortified buildings of its period. For some reason—”