Christmas at Candleshoe (12 page)

He hauled down the flag. As he did so he heard the hum of an engine, and went to peer over the apex of the great pediment immediately before him. One of his father’s cars had drawn up before the main entrance and somebody had got out. A footman was hoisting a suitcase from the boot. Arthur glanced at his watch. Somebody arrived by the London train. There were half-a-dozen visitors at Benison already, and his father hadn’t mentioned that another was expected… He folded the flag, dropped it into its locker, and turned to re-enter the house.

Lord Scattergood was at the door of the small, strategically placed room from which he conducted domestic business. Seeing his son come down the great staircase, he waved a slip of paper in triumphant summons and disappeared within. Arthur followed and found that his mother was there too; she sat in a window-seat and was engaged in removing burrs from an Old English sheepdog. Lord Scattergood again waved his paper. ‘A very good day. Fifty-seven pounds fifteen shillings more than last week.’

Lady Scattergood looked up. ‘Fifty-nine.’

Lord Scattergood picked up a pencil. ‘Fifty-nine? I could swear–’

‘Fifty-nine burrs on Brown.’

Brown uttered a low woofing sound. He was always gratified on hearing his own name, despite its humble associations.

‘It’s not bad going, even when you make deductions for wear and tear. And, of course, it is educative.’ The Marquess seemed to challenge his son to deny this gratifying consideration. ‘Lets one fellow see how another fellow lives.’

‘Or lived.’ Arthur walked over to Brown, disentangled an ear and tugged it. ‘This creature’, he said affectionately, ‘looks more and more like a filthy old grey rug, with some appearance of animation deriving from the presence of unspeakable things crawling about beneath.’ He turned to his father. ‘You know that this game is all nonsense?’

Lady Scattergood raised her head. ‘Surely not
all
nonsense, Arthur? In your father’s ideas I have always been able – well, to feel something shining through. There has always been a
gleam
. Don’t you agree?’

‘Possibly so. There is something to be said for hanging on, without a doubt. In three or four years’ time – well, one just doesn’t know. Circumstances may change, feelings may change – and with them the whole drift of social legislation. Brown’s day may be over.’

‘Brown’s day over?’ The Marchioness was dismayed. ‘Brown’s and Jones’ and Robinson’s. It’s excessively unlikely. But, as I say, one just doesn’t know. So there is something to be said for living from hand to mouth.’

‘I’m very glad to hear you say so, my boy.’ Lord Scattergood was delighted. ‘In point of fact, I have one or two plans maturing now. One of them is maturing here at this moment – I suppose in a hot bath. That is to say, if they go in for that sort of thing.’

Arthur looked suspiciously at his father. ‘If who go in for what sort of thing?’

‘Connoisseurs for baths. I’ve asked a fellow called Rosenwald for the weekend, and he arrived a few minutes ago. From Rome.’

‘A man called Rosenwald has come all the way from Rome to spend a weekend at Benison?’ Arthur shook his head. ‘It sounds too like old times to be true.’

‘There will be a small fee.’

Lady Scattergood was startled. ‘You mean this man is going to
pay
?’

‘Certainly not, my dear.’ The Marquess was really shocked. ‘We haven’t gone into the hotel business yet, I am thankful to say. This fellow Rosenwald
gets
the fee. And his fare.’

Lady Scattergood parted the curtain of hair hanging over Brown’s nose and gazed thoughtfully into the creature’s seldom-revealed eyes. ‘I should pay him only from Hamburg. It seems more suitable, with a name like that. And
why
does he get a fee?’

‘For making an expertise.’ Lord Scattergood was solemn. ‘That, it seems, is the technical term. It means that he will find buyers for both Titians, and possibly for the two Velasquez portraits as well.’

Arthur Spendlove sat down abruptly. He possessed neither knowledge nor love of the fine arts in any marked degree, but he felt both startled and shocked. For a long time, indeed, he had been convinced that these and other family treasures should go. But the revelation that the cold wind of sober fact in such matters had at last penetrated the thick garments of his father’s comfortable illusions was formidable. ‘You’ve really made up your mind to sell?’

‘Certainly. The right moment has come.’ Lord Scattergood was very serious. ‘It’s much as with timber, you know. Or as it is with livestock. Recall how I found the psychological moment for parting with the Aberdeen Angus herd. I have an instinct that it’s like that with Titian now. And probably with Velasquez as well.’

Arthur frowned. ‘It’s no more than so many square feet of canvas gone from the walls. But we’ll feel it as the deuce of a gap.’

‘Of course more must be laid down.’

Arthur stared. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It came to me not long ago that what one does with wine one ought to be doing with pictures and everything of that sort as well. Your mother must go round and pick things up. The same sort of thing, you know – but done by young fellows today. Nymphs and goddesses and portraits of bigwigs. We’ll hang ’em up in place of the Titians and whatnot. And – mark my words, my boy – in a couple of hundred years they’ll have matured out of all recognition. Given a century or two, the octagon room would do wonders for any picture.’

Arthur had heard his father assert much the same thing about the Benison cellars in relation to port. ‘There may be something in what you say. But who is this Rosenwald, and how does he go to work?’

‘He may come from Rome.’ Lady Scattergood had her own problem. ‘But is it from a shop, or from a museum? I mean, is he to have his meals–’

‘My dear Grace, he is our guest – decidedly our guest. I understand him to be a private gentleman, who has become a great authority on his subject. I understand that he advises the Pope and a number of other respectable people who have these Titians and so forth on their hands. And his method of going to work is admirable. The buyer pays for the expertise. Rosenwald inspects the paintings – although of course he has seen them before – and then approaches his man. He explains that there is a chance – just a chance, you know, and extravagant hopes must not be entertained – that if he were authorized to negotiate with me–’

‘I seem to have met expertise before – but I didn’t know that was the name for it.’ Arthur got up and opened the door for his mother, for a low-toned bell had begun to sound through Benison. ‘It sounds as if the fellow will need a bath
after
the transaction as well. When does he inspect?’

‘I thought we might all go up after dinner in a perfectly informal way, taking the Fernalls and the Crespignys and the L’Estranges along with us. It seems that Rosenwald likes these things to begin quite casually as a result of his having chanced to be stopping here or there with people of our sort.’

‘What revolting rot.’ Arthur gave the Old English sheepdog a prod, and it moved shapelessly from the room like an enormous decayed chrysanthemum. ‘What advantage can he get from a sort of charade played out before dreary people like…’

‘Arthur, my dear.’ Lady Scattergood was mildly reproving.

‘Very well, Mother, very well. But Brown must come too.’

‘Brown, Arthur?’

‘Yes, indeed. Isn’t he the last of us to know how to live with any dignity in this unfortunate house?’

It was early evident to his host – as also to the Fernalls, the Crespignys, and the L’Estranges – that Dr Rosenwald was a person of high distinction in the distant world from whence he came. He spoke with whimsical affection of the Pope, praised the claret, and described modestly but in some detail the little house – already a gem even amid the sequestered villas of the Brianza – around which, for the solace of his retirement, he was slowly creating a
giardinetto tagliato
in the antique Sienese style. Lord Scattergood, listening to this silken old person’s evocation of the severities of composition involved, felt that Benison, where not a garden but an entire landscape had been made to order, must be a shockingly tasteless and extravagant place. The Fernalls, who were accustomed to spend a fortnight of the year with an aunt at Saltino, and who had several times under the superintendence of that lady surveyed the antiquities of Florence, were conscious of a just superiority over the Crespignys, whose acquaintance with the continent was virtually confined to the city of Paris and the more hazardous parts of Switzerland. Mrs L’Estrange, since she had artistic interests and was painted almost every year for the purpose of being exhibited at Burlington House, felt it due to herself to offer some remarks on Leonardo da Vinci. Her opinions, it turned out, were of quite amazing delicacy and penetration; Dr Rosenwald, picking them up as they were delivered – somewhat embryonically, it is true – from her lips, developed them into an elaborate and felicitous discourse upon
contrapposto
and
chiaroscuro
. This continued until the ladies had withdrawn, whereupon Dr Rosenwald, easily accommodating himself to the interests of the barbarians around him, fell to patronizing the port. Lord Scattergood, who had for some years been constrained to drink wood port except upon the very highest occasions, took even this in good part. As a salesman, Dr Rosenwald struck him as being incontrovertibly in the very highest flight. With an unwonted exercise of imagination, he pictured the excellent creature putting on just such a turn as this for some tremendous American millionaire – and all in the interest of the Spendlove pictures. It was in high good humour that he presently suggested picking up the womenfolk again and proceeding to the octagon room at once.

‘Aha – the
salon carré
of Benison!’ Dr Rosenwald struck his whimsical note, and at the same time gracefully accepted a cigar. Lord Scattergood, as a consequence of some odd upsurge of knowledge from the large school near Windsor, found himself wondering how
carré
could well described an eight-sided chamber. He perceived however that some compliment was intended – this sort of foreigner was always dishing out compliments – and he responded with the courteous hope that Dr Rosenwald wouldn’t think the proposal an awful bore.

‘But, milord, I am
enchanté!
This is a pleasure of which I not thought.’

Lord Scattergood saw Arthur gulping the last of his port and at the same time giving him a decidedly grim look. It was evident that Dr Rosenwald liked to play out his charade with an elaboration and completeness attributable – no doubt – to his large possession of the artistic temperament. Looking firmly at his son, Lord Scattergood inquired whether his guest might not, after all, prefer a game of billiards? Dr Rosenwald replied that the notion of taking a look at the pictures was a delightful idea of his host’s, and one that he was altogether unwilling to forgo. He remembered them tolerably well, having seen many of them when they were on exhibition in London before the war. He assured Lord Scattergood that his collection was one, if not of the first importance, yet of very considerable interest and charm.

At this the entire party was presently reconstituted; a footman dispatched to switch on about a quarter of a mile of lights in corridors which it would be necessary to traverse; the ladies donned wraps – for even in summer the immensities of Benison could be chilly after nightfall; and the cavalcade made its sortie from the habitable corner of the house.

Dr Rosenwald paused to admire the Swedish Countess’ sledge. Unlike the mortician from Buffalo, he did not apply a scratching finger, but sketched instead a graceful arabesque in air, presumably implying that thereby here was a formal assemblage of lines and volumes conformable with the nicest artistic taste. Lord Scattergood wondered if he was marking the outlandish old contraption down for offer to some hyperborean magnate in Greenland or Alaska.

Because Lord Scattergood had forgotten an appropriate key, the party had to pass down the long corridor that ran behind the main line of state apartments. It was crammed – as indeed were the leagues of similar corridors throughout the building – with the junk of three centuries of random collecting. On one side, in glass-fronted cabinets between the twenty regularly spaced windows, stood, hermetically sealed, sufficient china – much of it exquisite and most of it inconceivably hideous – to banquet the entire peerage; on the other were paintings, prints, statues, fossils, idols, flags, miniatures, enormous vases, fans, cannon, snuff-boxes, coins, medals, suits of armour, dugout canoes, travelling-libraries, geological specimens, and almost everything else that it is possible to amass. As Dr Rosenwald was delighted with all this, and remorselessly evinced the liveliest and most informed interest in the most outlandish of the exhibits, the progress of the party was on the slow side. Lord Scattergood wished that he had thought to put the cigar-box under his arm. His wife conversed alternately with Colonel Fernall and with Brown, neither of whom appeared to be in a communicative vein. Arthur listened to Mrs Fernall describing, in a powerful and resonant voice, her own wretched ill health. The other gentlemen had fallen into a grave discourse of fowl pest, hard-pad, and foot-and-mouth disease. Except for the exotic note struck by Dr Rosenwald, any stranger dropped miraculously into these domestic sanctities would have been gratified by an exhibition of English territorial life at its best.

At length they passed into Queen Caroline’s Drawing-Room, and from thence to the Great Gallery. Dr Rosenwald stopped and pleasantly announced a modest desire to be shown the Cima da Conegliano.

Lord Scattergood glanced at the endless vista of paintings that ran in a double or treble line down the north wall and felt a moment of dismay. His librarian, Mr Archdeacon, knew something about these things – but Mr Archdeacon he had carelessly not thought to detain, and he would long ago have departed to Great Benison on his bicycle. The five-shilling tourists were uninterested in Cima da Conegliano, and Lord Scattergood was himself in consequence not as clear about this particular possession as he might have been. All the pictures here, he knew, were worth anything from five hundred to five thousand pounds apiece. It might he a good idea to sell the lot, and decorate this room with a nice line of mirrors. He seemed to remember that there was something of the sort at Versailles, a place at which the turnstiles clicked in a very satisfactory manner all day.