Theirs Was The Kingdom

by R. F Delderfield

  Thus, in a sense, Henrietta was able to discount Stella whenever she did her family sums. There was nothing to worry about over at Dewponds. All one had to do was to sit back and await the arrival of grandchildren at brief intervals, and if Stella became shapeless in the process, that was her business and Denzil's.

  As to George, her source of satisfaction concerning him was twofold, for although he seemed settled enough with that pretty little Austrian girl hanging on his words and trotting at his heels, his obsession, as she well knew, was not with Gisela, or the fat little boy Gisela had produced a few months after her arrival here, but for that ponderous great engine he had assembled and was forever tinkering with over in the old stables.

  Adam had given them the old millhouse, the house right of the drive entrance where the Michelmores had once lived, and with a little help from the Twyforde Green joiner, George had converted it into a comfortable home. Unlike any of the others, including Adam, he was an expert handyman and could have learned any craft that took his fancy, she supposed, apart from his overriding interest in engineering that must have come from Sam.

  Aside from his absorption with the smelly old machine, however, George was more than pulling his weight at the yard, or so she gathered from odd remarks let fall by Adam. In addition to being clever with hands, it seemed, he was extremely shrewd when it came to dealing with customers, and his command of three languages gave him unique advantages as a salesman, or so Adam said, although, up to that time, she had been unaware that merchants spoke anything but English.

  So George, too, was settled, and Adam had what he badly needed—a son to take his place when he turned his back on that slum and addressed himself to planting Tryst with exotic woodlands, making an Italian garden over by the fruit cage, and turning the house into a kind of museum that would find a place in Kentish guidebooks by the time they were coining up to their golden wedding anniversary.

  There was even more abundant promise in Giles's future, for by now Henrietta had taken the measure of that Rycroft filly. Wild and wilful she might be, and a rare handful, no doubt, for a husband with a gentle disposition, but he had the advantage of her in one respect. Watching them clearly, Henrietta had made up her mind that she was madly in love with the boy and that, surely, was all that mattered in the long run.

  They were to be married, so Romayne told her, on his twenty-first birthday, a date that had been selected by the lawyers arranging her settlement. It awed her a little to reflect that at least one of her sons would be marrying an heiress, and sometimes seemed too good to be true, for Giles had never struck her as a boy likely to attract luck in the way his brothers did—Alex by surviving that awful battle, George in lighting upon a dutiful little wife who was prepared to play second fiddle to an infernal machine. As regards Giles, in fact, Henrietta had only one source of disquiet these days and this was centred on the girl's impatience, almost publicly proclaimed at a Tryst birthday party when, claiming a forefeit, she plumped herself on Giles's knee and gave him the kind of kiss that many young men would be lucky to get in private from a girl as richly endowed as Romayne. Had she been the girl's mother, instead of her mother-in-law elect, she might have had cause for concern. As it was, well, it was up to the boy, she supposed, and none of her business.

  It was after that little give-away, however, that she began to watch them, and it occurred to her that a shorter engagement, lawyers notwithstanding, might have been wiser for all concerned. A year was a long time at that age and she found herself thinking, half-sympathetically, “I know precisely how she feels… but it wouldn’t do to rush fences with so much money in the offing—might even create bad blood between the families.” It made her think of her own waiting time, however, when she was a year younger than Romayne, and Adam was about his business and never on hand to court her. “I can remember a rash of goose-pimples when he touched me, so maybe it was as well he wasn’t, although nobody can tell me that little madam doesn’t know far more about men than I did in those days…”

  Stella… George… Giles. She could contemplate all three clearly and coolly, for they were out in the open with their courses set. But the others, the younger ones, were still in shadow, so that her thoughts concerning them were more random. What, for instance, was one to make of Hugo, eighteen and already serving an apprenticeship at the yard. She remembered that curious letter Giles had written home from school, suggesting the boy made a career of athletics, and it really did begin to look as if Adam, so hard-headed in most respects, had been taken in by that gaff, for he seemed not to mind Hugo spending most of his time travelling about the country competing in sports events and even took a pride in his succession of triumphs and trophies. Already a dozen or more of the latter crowded Hugo's mantelshelf and when she went in there to give them a polish (Hugo did not like the maids to touch his paraphernalia) she wondered how on earth one conducted serious business on a cindertrack. Yet there was logic in it somewhere for Hugo, in high starched collar and dark serge business suit, looked no more than an amiable oaf, whereas Hugo, loping across the forecourt in shorts and singlet, was quite beautiful. There was no other word for it and she had watched him until he passed behind the rhododendron clump. She knew nothing at all of athletics but it did not need a practised eye to recognise the grace of his movements, the long measured stride that set his calf-muscles rippling, the proud way he held his head, reminding her of a Greek god she remembered seeing in a catalogue of the Great Exhibition when she was a girl. Pride possessed her then, that she had given birth to such a specimen, so that she remembered something else from her girlhood—old Mrs. Worrell, who had known her Irish mother, telling her that the Irish were all the descendants of kings. Where would Hugo's path lead, she wondered. Many women, particularly the flighty variety, would go crazy over him, but Hugo, more than any of them, was going to need a wife with both feet on the ground. Where was such a one to be found in rural Kent?

  Then there were the two younger girls, copper-haired Joanna, favouring her, and a saucy brunette, Helen, who favoured Adam, nineteen and sixteen respectively, but showing no signs as yet of developing into girls likely to attract sober husbands. Oh, they were pretty enough, and great flirts into the bargain, but no man wanted a tomboy and neither of them, so far as she could discern, had a serious thought about anything, much less selecting a husband from the flock of lively young mashers who squired them at balls and tennis parties. Well, then, if needs be, she would do it for them, and go about it more judiciously than she had in respect of Stella, the first or second time round. For one farmer's lad was enough for any family, notwithstanding the domestic bliss that prevailed at Dewponds. A first step, possibly, would be to confide in Phoebe Fraser and seek ways and means of taking some of the bounce out of them.

  She was less concerned about the two youngest, Edward, now eight, and Margaret, six, for both were young enough to keep under close observation. Lately, moving in and out of the nursery, she had noticed a curious thing about “The Stragglers.” Each seemed to have taken on the looks and temperament of their grandfathers, in itself a very unlikely circumstance, for no two men could have been more dissimilar. Edward, strutting about house and garden with the air of knowing precisely what he was about, and getting his own way by a mixture of brashness and truculence, not only behaved like old Sam but was also beginning to look like him, with his solid, thickset frame, prominent blue eyes, and hard-set jaw, as square and uncompromising as the butt end of a carpenter's plane. Margaret, on the other hand, had the old Colonel's colouring and his meandering gentleness too, so that everyone made a pet of her, but she did not spoil easily and Henrietta had yet to see her in a tantrum. It was with a sense of shock that she discovered the child at work on a watercolour one morning, a very clever little painting too, if she was any judge—which she wasn’t really, although she had always exclaimed over the landscapes the dear old man had hung about the house. There she was, sitting at the nursery window trying to capture the movement of clouds over the
spinney below the paddocks, her little pink tongue peeping out in just the way the Colonel's had when he sat in front of his easel in that old boat-shelter on the bluff behind the house. It brought home to Henrietta, as nothing had up to that time, the realities of heredity. There must be many, many strains here, but she could only identify four. The wide-ranging Swann freebooters, the industrious d’Auberons from Gascony, the Rawlinson roughnecks, and her own Irish strain from the far west, of which she knew virtually nothing. It was rather wonderful, she thought, how all four had combined to produce the latter-day Swanns, bestowing a characteristic here, adding a trait there, so that each child was touched by one or more of their four grandparents, just as surely as by her and Adam. The Irish peasant was showing very plainly in Stella and the Swann military legacy in Alex. In George she could identify her father's obsession with machines and in Giles the gentleness that had been, according to the Colonel, the one outstanding characteristic of his little Gascon wife. Hugo had something of her own ancestors in him, or why should she remember that remark of Mrs. Worrell about Irish kings; whereas both Joanna and Helen had Irish-Lancastrian sparkle, together with a generous dash of Swann swashbucklers. Young Edward was predominantly Lancastrian, with that aggressive jaw, whereas Margaret reverted to the French strain again, reproducing not only the gentle streak in some of the Swanns (so marked in all she remembered of the old Colonel) but also the daintiness of Monique d’Auberon, whose portrait still hung in the room that had been the old man's. It was all very mysterious and some time, when he had a moment to spare, she must discuss the subject with Adam.

  In the meantime, there was so much to do. At Tryst, with so many of them coming and going, there was always plenty to do. She went downstairs, intending to finish some neglected work in the sewing room, but was brought up short at the bend of the staircase, for there stood Alexander, looking up at her from the hall; when he saw her he grinned, but nervously, as though caught out in an act of mischief.

  She began to descend then but he stayed her, holding up his hand and glancing over his shoulder at the closed drawing-room door. Then he moved up towards her and said, in a voice pitched so low that it was close to a whisper, “Someone here… someone I want you to meet… You’re not… not specially busy, are you?”

  “No,” she said, knowing somehow that this was an important moment in his life and hers, “I’m not in the least busy if you’ve brought a guest.” And then, because he still looked a little confused, “It's a young lady, I presume?”

  Improbably he blushed scarlet, saying, “Did one of the children see us arrive and let on…?”

  But she replied, soothingly, “Certainly not, it's written in large print all over your face, dear boy. Come, we can’t leave her sitting alone,” and she moved round him to descend the stairs.

  She was two stairs down when he swung round and shot out his arm, grasping hers at the elbow, in a grip that made her wince. “Wait! I’ve something to tell you. Something important.” He took a deep breath. “We’re to be married. Quite soon.”

  “Married?”

  “It has to be soon. I’m posted abroad… India…”

  She had difficulty in keeping her voice low. “But, Alex! To someone we’ve never met, never even heard about?”

  “It's all happened so quickly and I’m due to sail a month from today. Her name's Lydia, Lydia Corcoran, the Colonel's daughter. I did tell you he had a daughter. I’m sure I told you, that time I came on leave from Ireland.”

  She did not know whether to laugh or cry. He was so anxious and so hopelessly embarrassed that he was gibbering, and it astounded her that a boy who had faced enemy shot time and again since that first hair-raising adventure of his should prove so unequal to a situation of this kind. His eyes, she noticed, were slightly glazed, indicating that he had already been at the decanter, no doubt to fortify himself, and he was sweating freely at the temples. She saw him then as by far the most vulnerable of the flock, notwithstanding his seniority and battle experience. Maternal concern submerged her. She said, patting him, “There now, pull yourself together, lad. I’m not angry, just… well… bowled over, and you can hardly blame me for that, can you? Come now, introduce me, do,” and she shook herself free of his restraining hand and moved down another three stairs before he dived in pursuit and caught her arm again, shaking his head and opening and closing his mouth, but conveying nothing at all save a kind of agonised indecision.

  They were level with the newel post then, ten feet or less from the drawing-room door, and suddenly impatience got the better of her. She said, sharply, “Really, Alex, this is quite ridiculous! You bring home a guest, a young lady, and tell me you’re to be married almost at once. Very well, then! You’re twenty-five, and can marry whom you please. But I may meet her, mayn’t I? For, if not, why did you bring her here?”

  Her tone of voice rallied him so that his confusion ebbed a little and she saw him as she had seen him many times in her mind's eyes over the last few years, a lanky boy scared half out of his wits but determined to set an example to those under his command, so that he had learned the trick of holding himself poker-straight and making his face expressionless. He said, doing just this, “Er, before you go in, mother… She isn’t pretty, like Stella and George's wife. And she isn’t stylish, like you and the girls. She's older than me, too, three years older. But she's right for me, you understand? I’m sure of that. Quite sure.”

  She paused with her hand on the latch, wondering what it had cost him to make that little speech, but then a burning curiosity swamped every other emotion and she said, swiftly, “Leave it there, Alex. Now let me judge for myself.”

  He seemed to consider this and then nodded, circling her, opening the door, stepping back, and half bowing, in a way that struck her, even then, as being dreadfully old-fashioned and quite unlike any gesture his brothers would have made, although people were always complimenting her on their manners. She went in, blinking in the strong sunlight that patterned the waxed floor, bypassing the small, grey-mantled figure standing over by the tall window looking out on the paddock, but before she was clear of the threshold he shot past her at the double, crying, “Lydia… my mother… mother, Miss Lydia Corcoran!” The grey-mantled figure bobbed unsmilingly and raised a long, sad face to Henrietta, who at once thought of Gipsy the ageing, bottlenosed skewbald they had bought for the Colonel when he was too old and frail to sit a proper hack.

  She knew why the skewbald came to mind. Horse and girl shared the same half-mournful, half-wistful expression and acknowledging this Henrietta's glance dropped, shifting from Lydia's face to her handkerchief dress, with its stiff cuirassed bodice, short basque, and fanned throat screen. A dress like that had been all the rage in 1880, when Lydia and everyone else was six years younger.

  It was the costume that struck her more than the girl's long, sad face, with squarish chin (Sam Rawlinson's kind of chin), much at odds with the rest of her features. For while one was obliged to accept the face and figure dispensed by Providence, one was surely at liberty to do something about clothes and posture. “Not stylish” Alex had said, and it was a lover's understatement. In her entire life Henrietta had never seen a woman with less claim to be called stylish, for even when it was in vogue the handkerchief dress was the last thing Lydia Corcoran should have chosen to wear. Its long row of buttons tended to flatten such curves as she had, whereas the lacy display at her throat drew attention to her short neck and rather angular shoulders. Even as she murmured a conventional greeting, directing Alex to pour sherry for all three of them, her mind was engaged in dressing the girl in a way that would enable her to pass in a crowd.

  But then, telling herself she was rude and uncharitable, she pulled herself together and led Lydia to a chair, gesturing to Alex to hand round the sherry, and while Lydia reached for a glass at once addressed herself to the task of locating something—anything—to offset the poor little devil's lamentable lack of charm. Slowly and carefully, her glance travelled from a middle-
aged pair of buttoned boots, over the flattish chest, past the square, mannish chin, to the downcast eyes and here, at last, there was something arresting. It was the girl's eyes, grey and widely spaced, with long curling lashes and a kind of steadiness one could look for in someone of authority, tempered by complete honesty. And perhaps, lurking behind the iris, there was courage for good measure.

  She thought, wretchedly, “What can one say? What is there to say? None of them ever brought any one like this into the house, no one so… so frumpish! ” But then, as she once again contemplated the creased, dusty pouches of the bag-plastron under the almost nonexistent bosom, her attention was deflected by a silvery glitter and her glance shot up again just in time to see two large tears drive parallel courses over Lydia Corcoran's prominent cheekbones.

  The tears humbled Henrietta as she had never been humbled in twenty-eight years as a wife and mother. Not because they told her, unequivocally, that the girl was fully aware of her rawboned awkwardness, but because they performed a time miracle on Henrietta herself, whirling her back to a day when she had stood in Lydia Corcoran's place, a travel-worn, tongue-tied stray, paraded for inspection in Colonel Swann's Derwentwater home and feeling even more inadequate than Lydia looked after a hundred-mile cross-country journey as Adam Swann's pillion-rider in the crinoline she had worn when she fled the embrace of Makepeace Goldthorpe.

  Identification with the girl was so vivid and so compelling that she could have wept. Every nuance of that terrifying confrontation returned to her as clearly and faithfully as though she had been turning the leaves of a family album. For Alex, hovering nearby, was Adam, wondering wryly if he had just committed the crowning folly of his life by bringing her here, whereas she was Adam's sharp-tongued Aunt Charlotte, honking dismay at the prospect of receiving such a bedraggled fugitive into her house; and in Lydia's place was the forlorn little wretch Henrietta had been at that moment in time, so that pity welled up in her like some swift underground stream seeking the surface.