The American Boy (24 page)

By the time we swung off the road, the afternoon was turning to twilight. A grim-faced lodge-keeper opened the gates. We followed a winding, gradually ascending drive through parkland. Trees swayed like maenads against a gloomy sky. The wind threw drops of rain against the carriage windows.

The house burst into view, a great rectangular block with three storeys and five bays, faced with stone that gleamed coldly against the darkening landscape. We were clearly awaited, for as we drew up at the door, two footmen ran out with umbrellas and ushered us through the driving rain and up the steps into the hall. I recognised one of them as Pratt, the thin-faced sycophant whom Mr Carswall must have brought down with him from town. Charlie Frant flew to greet his friend, followed at a more sober pace by the two ladies, arm in arm.

“Edgar!” Charlie cried. “Let me show you our room. Oh, we shall have such larks.” His mother touched his shoulder and reminded him of my presence. Blushing, he turned to me. “Mr Shield, sir, how good of you to come.”

Mrs Frant shook my hand and gave me her gentle smile.

“My father is closeted with his agent on estate business,” Miss Carswall told me. “But you will meet him at dinner.” She glanced at the hovering footmen. “Pratt will show you to your room. I daresay you will want to rest after the fatigue of your journey. But not for long, I am afraid – we dine at half-past five o'clock. We keep country hours at Monkshill.”

I mounted the stairs in the wake of the footman. Far above me was an oval skylight which seemed less a means of admitting light than a way of emphasising the height of the house and the breadth of the stairwell. Monkshill was on the grand scale, a residence fit for giants. I was sensible of a stillness beneath me, as if the women in the hall below were holding their breath.

My room was large, a little shabby and very cold. I washed and changed as quickly as I could. Somewhere in the house a clock was striking five when I went in search of the drawing room. Lamps and candles lighted the landings and the stairs. But they failed to expel the darkness from the immense spaces of the mansion.

In the hall, I hesitated, wondering where the drawing room was. A figure detached itself from the shadows to my right.

“Good evening, sir.”

Startled, I swung round. “Why, Mrs Kerridge! I trust I find you well?”

“As well as can be expected.” She nodded towards the door on my right. “If you want the boys, they're in the drawing room.”

She left as suddenly as she had arrived, the abruptness of her manner reminding me of my ambiguous status, neither gentleman nor servant. I knocked lightly on the door and went in. The drawing room was filled with the shifting, faded yellow light of a dozen candles. Mrs Frant was sitting almost in the grate, with a book in her hand. The boys were huddled on the sofa, engaged in a whispered conversation.

“I – I beg your pardon, ma'am,” I said. “Am I early?”

“Not at all, Mr Shield,” Mrs Frant said. “Pray sit down. And, on the way, I wonder if you would be so kind as to ring the bell. We need more coals for the fire.”

I did as she asked and then sat opposite her. It is curious the effect that widow's weeds have on those that wear them. Some women drown in their dark folds; they become their mourning. Mrs Frant, however, belonged to the second category: the very simplicity of her plain black gown set off her beauty.

“My cousins will be here in a moment,” she said. “You are not cold, I hope?”

“Not at all,” I lied.

“This is a cold house, I'm afraid,” she said with a faint smile. “We have not been here long enough to warm it.”

The door opened and Miss Carswall came into the room. Her face broke into a smile.

I may have been mistaken, but I thought I heard Sophia Frant add in a whisper: “And an unlucky house, too.”

Five of us sat down to dinner – Mr Carswall, Miss Carswall, Mrs Frant, an elderly lady named Mrs Lee, and myself. Mrs Lee was the aunt of a local clergyman, and I understood she was paying a long visit to Monkshill-park. There was little conversation apart from that which emanated from Mr Carswall himself. He ate sparingly, but drank deeply, working his way through glass after glass of claret.

“I took it upon myself to investigate the state of Charlie's Latinity,” he announced. “The Rector called the other morning, and I asked him to interrogate the boy on his knowledge of the
Eton Latin Grammar
. He was shocked –
shocked
, Mr Shield – when he plumbed the depths of the lad's ignorance. Why, he could not even distinguish between a gerund and a gerundive. What does Mr Bransby teach them?”

“He has not had much opportunity of teaching Charlie anything, sir. Nor has any of us. Charlie attended the school for less than a term, and for much of it he was absent.”

Mrs Frant turned her face away.

“It has not been an easy time for him,” put in Miss Carswall.

Carswall shot his daughter a glance. “True enough, my dear,” he rumbled. “Still, that don't alter the case. The boy wants instruction, and I daresay Edgar Allan does too. You had better stay for the rest of their holidays, Shield, and read with them in the mornings.”

I bowed.

“If the arrangement is quite convenient for Mr Shield?” Mrs Frant said, looking at me.

“Of course it is,” Carswall said. “Mr Bransby raised no objection when I put it to him, so why should he? Neither of them will be the loser.”

“And I'm sure Mr Shield will make himself useful in other ways,” Miss Carswall said. “He will be quite an addition to our little society. You like a game of chess in the evening, do you not, Papa, and I'm sure he can make a fourth at whist. If the weather is bad, one hardly ever sees anyone in the country, especially in winter.”

“People did not mind the weather when I was a boy,” Carswall grumbled. “We were more sociable then.”

“Why, Papa, we are sociable still. Or we try to be. Did not the Rector ride over the other day? And in the rain!”

The meal continued to its weary end. There was some hesitation about which lady should give the signal to withdraw. In the end, Miss Carswall was the first to rise. I held open the door for them. Mrs Lee and Mrs Frant hurried past, their faces averted, but Miss Carswall smiled up at me. The cloth was removed. Carswall beckoned me back to my seat and pushed the decanter towards me.

“You will not dine with us every night,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Mind you, Flora may have a point. Do you play chess or piquet? Whist?”

“Indifferently, I'm afraid.”

“No matter. You play – that is the main thing.” Carswall stared into his glass. “We exchange few visits in this part of the country.”

We drank in silence. A clock ticked. Whereas Mr Rowsell drank wine because he enjoyed it and its effects, Mr Carswall drank it as if it were his bounden duty.

“I did not wish to alarm the ladies at dinner,” he said after a while, “but this afternoon I received intelligence that there is a band of housebreakers in the vicinity. We must be on our guard. So it is no bad thing to have another man in the house, particularly a former soldier.”

The old man gnawed his lower lip for a moment and then bade me ring the bell. When the butler came, Mr Carswall ordered him to lock up with particular care. Then, to my relief, he gave me permission to go. I left him to his wine and his fire and went to the drawing room in search of tea. Only Miss Carswall and Mrs Lee were there, one on either side of the fire. Mrs Lee was asleep. Miss Carswall's face was uncharacteristically sad, though she looked up with a smile when I entered and patted the sofa beside her.

“Sit down and have some tea, Mr Shield. I cannot tell you how pleased Sophie and I are to see you. Papa becomes quite bearish without masculine company. I am sure you will do an admirable job of drawing his fire. Isn't that how you military men put it?”

I smiled back and said I would do my best. As I spoke, I glanced in the direction of Mrs Lee.

“You must not mind her,” Miss Carswall murmured. “Mrs Lee is very short-sighted and rather deaf: in other words, one could not ask for a better chaperone.”

“She is a near neighbour?”

“No. In fact, I had not met her before she came here on Tuesday. She seems most amiable, though, and I will not hear a word against her. It appears that all her relations are clergymen, which constitutes her principal charm in Papa's eyes.”

I burst out laughing.

“But it is true,” she went on. “Papa feels that neither Sophie nor I is quite the thing, albeit for different reasons. He is anxious that we should be accepted in the neighbourhood, that we should take our proper position in society. Hence Mrs Lee. She has such a store of respectability that she cannot help but shed her surplus on those around her. She is a perfect paragon in every way, and one of her nephews was acquainted with Sir George Ruispidge when they were up at Oxford.” Her eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “Believe me, Mr Shield, there can be no higher recommendation.”

“I'm afraid I do not know of the gentleman.”

“What? How can this be? Sir George Ruispidge is our very own none-such. He lives nearby at Clearland-court. They say his rent-roll brings in six or seven thousand a year.” She looked down at her lap but I saw the smile on her face. “And the dear man has coal mines besides, as well as a charming house in Cavendish-square and a seat in Parliament. His family have been here for generations – they know everybody, go everywhere. So you will understand that we find him a most agreeable neighbour.” She raised her head just in time to catch me with an answering smile. “And the general opinion among the ladies is that he is a very handsome man, too.”

“And what is your view, Miss Carswall?”

Her eyelashes fluttered. “It would not be seemly for me to disagree with an opinion held so firmly by the majority of my sex, Mr Shield. But you may soon be able to judge for yourself. We may see the Ruispidges in church on Christmas Day. Certainly my father hopes so. He has a very pressing reason for wishing it.”

“And may I ask what that is?”

For an instant the skin tightened over the bones of Miss Carswall's face. “Why, he hopes that Sir George will make an offer for me.”

Flora Carswall was her father's child in more ways than one. Their virtues and their vices went hand in hand. Both of them spoke their minds, and both lacked cant; but both could also be shockingly frank.

Carswall was almost certainly wealthier than Sir George Ruispidge but the Ruispidges were one of the first families of the county, and had been for generations. One might say that Carswall wished to purchase a form of immortality by allying his family with them. No doubt he would have had no trouble in buying a gentleman, even one with a title, a man prepared to ignore the father's mean birth and the daughter's illegitimacy for the sake of the dowry she would bring. But it is human nature to desire what one cannot easily obtain. Carswall wanted a gentleman who was not on the brink of ruin, or already deep in that bottomless abyss. He wanted a gentleman who held his head high in the world.

So much I had already inferred, not merely from my conversation with Miss Carswall on the night of my arrival at Monkshill but also from what I knew of her father. What I did not then know was that there was another reason why Sir George Ruispidge was so pre-eminently suitable for the rôle of Mr Carswall's son-in-law. Looking back, however, I realised that I received a hint of it on my very first evening.

I had left the drawing room and was climbing the stairs towards my own chamber when I heard a door close and footsteps above. At the head of the flight I met Mrs Kerridge. I presumed she had been attending Mrs Frant. I made some remark in passing about the size of this house relative to those in Margaret-street and Russell-square – a pleasantry, merely, suggesting that we had risen in the world.

“He can never rise high enough for this house,” Mrs Kerridge hissed. “Not for Monkshill – and he knows it.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She came close to me. “I spoke plain enough, did I not?”

“Who can never rise high enough? Mr Carswall?”

“Who else could I mean? All the other men in this house are servants.” She raised the candle she carried in her left hand and gave me a hard, considering look.

“Mrs Kerridge –”

She cut me off with a laugh. “None of our affair, though, is it? Master Charlie's asleep, by the way – I looked in on him earlier. His friend was reading, but I made him blow out his candle.” She walked away from me, turning as she went to throw a few more words over her shoulder: “It won't do you no good, you know, coming here. This place does no one any good. You should have stayed at that school of yours.”

The next day, Friday, was Christmas Eve. In the morning the two boys and I continued our long march through the
Eton Latin Grammar
. In the afternoon, we walked in the park. It was exceptionally cold that year. Everywhere the ground was hard and white with frost.

The mansion-house stood at the southern end of a ridge. The boys took me north along a path running up the ridge's spine, which commanded a prospect of the river's sinuous, shining curves beyond the turnpike road in the valley below. No expense had been spared to accentuate the picturesque nature of the spot. An obelisk surrounded by seats artfully constructed of rustic stone marked the highest point of the park and also the place where six paths intersected. We followed the widest of them, which led north-west and gently downwards to a small lake formed by damming a stream that drained down to the river. To the north and west, beyond the stretch of frozen water, lay dense woods.

Charlie pointed to the trees. “Mr Carswall has ordered the gamekeepers in the covers to shoot strangers on sight. There are poachers at work, he says, and some of them may be housebreakers too.”