A Night of Errors (2 page)

To Sir Romeo it appeared evident that his forebears, from the rash Sir Ferdinand onwards, had merely tinkered with the disruptive legacy of Miss Eugenides. If his own remaining years were to pass in moderate tranquillity, if his heir was to be unharassed by fraternal cares, if the bouquet of the Dromio wines and the pile of the Dromio carpets were to retain that excellence which would come only from the superintendence of a eupeptic palate and untroubled eye, then it was essential that the late decisive action of Lady Dromio should be met by countermeasures of a like decisiveness.

To take two of the triplets and expose them upon the rooftop, although legitimate in both Syracuse and Ephesus a long time ago, would not be consonant with the domestic manners of the country in which the Dromios had now sojourned for some centuries. To give the younger boys their breeding at a distance would be reasonable and assuredly not criminal, but to Sir Romeo in his present excited state this in itself seemed a measure insufficiently permanent in its effects. For even if (what would come uncommonly expensive) an adequate provision were made for establishing the growing lads in whatever counts as a respectable station of life in Oregon or New South Wales it was almost certain that sooner or later they would come home to roost beneath the ancestral rooftree of Sherris Hall. And the thought of this Sir Romeo could by no means abide. Very possibly he himself would be gone. But this consideration, which would surely have afforded solace to a man not under the influence of a fixed idea, only agitated Sir Romeo the more. That the eldest of the three sons now born to him might so far modify recent family history as adequately to cope with such a family reunion never entered his head. For his thought now based itself upon a single irrational postulate: the disastrous triplet situation must not continue through another generation.

Increasingly in the grip of this persuasion, Sir Romeo paced his study, taking occasional swipes at any breakable object within reach. But no inspiration came – nothing in fact was wafted to him but a faint wailing from the nursery wing. Sir Romeo seized a stick, strode through a French window, gave himself the mild satisfaction of knocking down the gardener’s boy on the terrace, and strode across the park, occasionally cursing the browsing sheep and cattle in a manner altogether unusual among the landed gentry. It was only when he reached the boundary of his demesne that the gardener’s boy (who had followed in the inchoate hope of retaliating with some sudden privy injury to his employer’s person) perceived him to grow suddenly composed. Sir Romeo returned to the house meditatively and without giving so much as a single thwack to the lowing kine. His bearing was that of a man to whom some great conception has come – a conception however which must be filled in with much meticulous detail.

Two days later the inhabitants of Sherris Magna were horrified to hear that a disastrous fire had broken out at Sherris Hall. The nursery wing was totally destroyed. Thanks to the courage of his father (who was early on the scene) the eldest of the triplets, Oliver, had been saved, but his brothers, Jaques and Orlando, had both perished. Such a calamity evoked the widest sympathy, and when they buried them the little port had seldom seen a costlier funeral.

It was otherwise with the funeral of Sir Romeo Dromio himself three months later. Unobtrusiveness is the right note to strike in the obsequies of a baronet who has died mad.

‘Lucy,’ said Lady Dromio, ‘can you see the little silver bell?’

There was a lot of silver on the tea-table; nevertheless Lucy did not trouble to survey it, or to take her eyes from the single fleecy cloud sailing past almost directly overhead.

‘No, mama. Swindle has forgotten it.’

‘How very vexatious.’ Lady Dromio, who had been peering despondently into an empty hot-water jug, glanced with equal despondence over the spreading lawns by which she was surrounded. The grass, she was thinking, was in something worse than indifferent order, and the motor-mower with which a sulky youth struggled in a distant corner must be some twenty years out of date. ‘How very vexing,’ Lady Dromio repeated.

‘Yes, mama. But the situation is a familiar one.’

‘Familiar, child?’ From under her white hair the faded blue eyes of Lady Dromio expressed a large, vague surprise.

‘Swindle, I think, has a horror of the ringing bell. He avoids it. One day he will undoubtedly try to avoid the clangour of the angel’s trumpet too.’

‘Lucy, dear, what odd, clever things you say.’ Lady Dromio’s tone was placid, but there was a remorselessness in the way she flicked open and shut the lid of the hot-water jug. The sound had no power over the absent Swindle, gently respiring in a summer day’s slumber in his distant pantry. But it brought Lucy to her feet – a tall, dark girl in her early thirties, at once lackadaisical and restless. Her movement was received by Lady Dromio as if it was something entirely unexpected.

‘Well, dear, if you
would
like to fetch some that will be very nice.’

Lucy compressed her lips, held out her hand for the hot-water jug and departed across the lawn. Lady Dromio watched her go, turned to scrutinize her tea-table, watched again. Across the hot lawn Lucy was almost out of earshot. Lady Dromio called; she picked up and waved an empty cream-jug. Lucy turned obediently back.

Lucy Dromio (for she was called that) was Lady Dromio’s experiment, an experiment made some thirty years before. The Reverend Mr Greengrave, now advancing up the drive to pay a call, and observing the girl as she trailed towards the house, reflected that she was an abandoned experiment. Most experiments were that, of course, after thirty years. Was she an abandoned girl? Mr Greengrave, who was professionally obliged to weigh questions of this sort, shook his head doubtfully. He knew very little about Lucy despite an acquaintance stretching back over a considerable period. She was secretive. But then for that matter so was Lady Dromio, despite her open, amiable air. After all, was not Lucy perhaps Lady Dromio’s experiment still – or rather a sort of private laboratory for the carrying out of tiny, daily vivisections? This was an uncharitable thought. But Mr Greengrave was aware that one has to do a lot of uncharitable thinking if one is to get people clear. And until one does that how can one help them?

What sort of a woman had Lady Dromio been before Mr Greengrave’s time as incumbent of Sherris Parva? Pausing by a tulip tree and mopping his brow (for he was a shy man who had often thus to brace himself before plunging into parochial duties), the vicar reviewed what he knew of that early time. The lady now waiting placidly for her cream and hot water was the widow of Sir Romeo Dromio. Her married life had early ended in tragedy. Two of her children had died in a horrible disaster and not long afterwards her husband had died also – mad, it was said, and talking strangely. Sir Romeo, it seemed, had been a wayward and violent man, brooding over sundry reverses and misfortunes which the family had over several generations suffered. Through half a dozen parishes queer tales were still told of him. If some of these were true it must be judged that Lady Dromio had got off lightly, even at the cost of widowhood and the difficult care of a single surviving son. But these legendary tales were already hopelessly confused with popular memories of other and earlier Dromios noted for this or that sultry eccentricity. Not a comfortable family, had been Mr Greengrave’s summary. He had never been prompted to sift or analyse chronicles so patently barren of edification.

But he knew that Lady Dromio had to all seeming taken everything quietly. The tablet she had erected to her husband’s memory in Mr Greengrave’s church was quiet. Any reference she ever made to him was quiet to the extent of, as it were, a metaphorical inaudibility. And she had done nothing in haste. When her son was eight years old, and having maturely rejected, maybe, any thought of second marriage, Lady Dromio had adopted the infant girl who was now Lucy Dromio. Perhaps she judged that a sister might ameliorate the manners of her son; perhaps she merely obeyed an inadequately satisfied maternal instinct. But all that was long ago. And, whatever the bill, Mr Greengrave doubted whether Lucy had filled it. Of necessity she must have been a pig in a poke, her virtues and vices unfolding from an unknown stock. And almost certainly she abundantly if covertly possessed something that had not been desired. Was it passion, or intelligence, or independence? Mr Greengrave did not know. Such ignorance about a parishioner disturbed him. Could the girl, he wondered, be drawn out? Perhaps now was a favourable time to gain her confidence, since her foster-brother was abroad and the atmosphere at Sherris Hall something less oppressive as a result.

Not, Mr Greengrave reflected, that Sir Oliver could be called a dominant personality. Weak, vain, sensitive, easily depressed: the master of Sherris was not one to a brief view of whom distance lent any enchantment. Yet (and this the confidential annals of the parish abundantly attested) he was markedly attractive to women. How frequently do concrete human relationships run counter to expectation and rule! Mr Greengrave, to whom musings of this sort came more easily than that blending of tea-table talk with faint overtones of spiritual advice which is the parish priest’s task, turned left and took a procrastinating route round the lily pond.

‘One wonders,’ said Lucy, setting down the jugs, ‘if something might be done about Swindle.’

‘Done, dear?’

‘He was actually asleep. It’s like living at Dingley Dell with the Fat Boy.’

‘But Swindle is extremely thin.’

‘He certainly has a lean and hungry look. And possibly Dickens was wrong. If fat men sleep at night there may be an inference that it is thin ones who are inclined to sleep during the day. But it would be curious if Shakespeare threw any light on Swindle.’

Lady Dromio put down the teapot. ‘Shakespeare?’ she said. ‘Well, that reminds me. I seem to have mislaid my novel. Such an interesting and unusual novel, Lucy, about a lot of people in a big hotel. Do you know, I think I must have left it in the drawing-room?’

‘It is no matter, mama. For Mr Greengrave is about to call. Were he a resolute man he would be with us now. Look beyond the lily pond.’

‘Well, that is very nice. He will bring us a breath of the great world.’

‘That doubtless.’

Lady Dromio patted her well-ordered hair. ‘But it will mean more sandwiches, dear. And surely there must be another cake?’

Lucy rose. ‘This time,’ she said with resolution, ‘I shall waken Swindle.’

‘I think it will be better to wait until Oliver gets home.’

‘But that may be months. We can’t have Swindle turned into a Rip van Winkle.’

‘No, dear – certainly not. I merely mean that about things in general we had better wait until Oliver gets home.’

‘Which, I hope, will be soon.’ Mr Greengrave, who usually made his eventual entry with a plunge, spoke heartily as he took Lady Dromio’s hand. ‘It will be a pleasure to hear him read the lessons again.’

Lady Dromio produced a welcoming smile and a non-committal noise. Very possibly she doubted the propriety of describing as a pleasure anything that transacted itself within the walls of a church. ‘Lucy,’ she said, ‘if you could just ask Cook–’

‘Yes, mama. Sandwiches and a caraway cake and a cup and saucer.’

Lady Dromio watched her adopted daughter trail across the lawn once more. ‘Dear, dutiful girl,’ she said.

‘Yes, indeed.’ But because this had been insincere Mr Greengrave in penance resolutely added: ‘It is to be hoped that she will marry.’

‘So it is!’ Lady Dromio spoke as if concurring in a novel and surprising thought. ‘But it is to be feared that she will not.’

It occurred to Mr Greengrave that sometimes, and with an odd effect, the elder lady fell into the clipped and mannered speech of the younger. He felt that this pointed to Lucy’s possessing the stronger will. Of course a stranger would take Lady Dromio to possess no will at all – but that would be a mistake. Aloud Mr Greengrave conventionally said: ‘But so attractive a girl – and so advantageously placed in the county.’

Lady Dromio received this old-world civility with a bow and at the same time turned in her garden chair. Perhaps she was looking for Lucy and the sandwiches, but the motion enabled her to make a critical inspection of Sherris Hall. The house was imposing enough and doubtless estimable among surrounding seats. Equally evidently it was in a state of some disrepair. Mr Greengrave, who had turned also, felt himself awkwardly involved with his hostess in a joint contemplation of this disagreeable fact. It was an attempt to suggest that he was aware only of the more permanent aspects of the building that prompted his next remark.

‘How sure they were of their proportions in those days! The whole effect has always seemed to me a delight to the eye. And yet I have sometimes wondered about that wing where the billiard-room and gun-room are. Had they carried it up another storey–’

‘But they did. I got the trustees to take it down. Those were the nurseries, you know, that were destroyed by fire. I am so sorry that Lucy is being rather a long time with your cup. You will be thirsty, dear Mr Greengrave, after walking across on this warm afternoon.’

Mr Greengrave coughed. Having unwittingly led the conversation to painful memories he felt it incumbent upon him not to retreat upon small talk. ‘Your great sorrow,’ he said. ‘was before my time here. But I have often thought of it.’

‘So have I. I had been puzzled over it for years.’

Mr Greengrave considered this doubtfully. ‘Yes,’ he said with caution; ‘the ways of Providence are often inscrutable indeed.’

‘Not over what happened, for that was always fairly clear to me. But over what I should have done. I was very young and I ended by doing nothing, apart from having that wing rebuilt as you see it now. I waited for Oliver to grow up.’ Lady Dromio sighed heavily. ‘But has he grown up? It is hard to say.’

Mr Greengrave felt somewhat out of his depth. The afternoon was drowsy; the effect of his visitation was perhaps soporific; Lady Dromio seemed almost like one speaking in sleep. ‘I am sure,’ he said politely, ‘that Sir Oliver must be a great support.’