When lunch-time came, however, Mr. Ferris, working steadily and silently, was unwilling to stop. He had a perfect model—Lady Ashton was rising rapidly in his estimation, so amenable, so placid was she—and so silent. Rae, who had come upstairs to find out why they were keeping the General from his lunch, had to go down again with a request from Mr. Ferris for coffee and sandwiches.
“Does he think,” the General demanded of Miss Beckwith, “does he think he can keep Dorothy up there all these hours on coffee and sandwiches? Does he?”
“The best thing we can do,” said Miss Beckwith sensibly, “is to give him exactly what he wants, and do exactly as he asks, and then in that way we shall be rid of him soonest. Doesn’t he remind you a little of poor Mark Hewling, who went down in that ship crossing to the Isle of Man?”
The General made no response, but the question seemed to cheer him; he walked into lunch with Rae, and Miss Beckwith went out to the kitchen to order the sandwiches.
Mr. Ferris left before dinner. Judy came over to fetch him, but did not come into the house. Rae went down the steps and leaned against the car door, talking.
“How did you get on yesterday?” asked Judy. “Mother said you spent the day out. Walking, she said, but I bet you didn’t walk. Except to Thorpe Farm, of course.”
“I got knocked over by a bath chair,” said Rae, not without pride.
“Good Lord—the Duchess?”
“Yes.”
“Did she stop?”
“No. She called me a silly gel. Could I sue her for a new coat?—She tore the shoulder.”
“You could sue her, but it wouldn’t do you any good. She’s a horrid bit of work. Did you tell Uncle Bertram?”
“No.”
“Well, don’t. The very mention of the Duchess upsets his liver—they loathe each other. She despises him and thinks he’s a weak-kneed escapist and he thinks she’s a cunning old bitch, though no Fitzroy could bring himself to use the word, especially of a lady. You see, she keeps going on at him for letting the servant problem drive him out of his house.”
“Did it?”
“Yes. He believed in the old kind—print gowns, white caps— the sort that got on with the work and didn’t obtrude —do I mean obtrude? yes—didn’t obtrude their personalities—or their problems. When they died out, he gave up, but not the Duchess. She didn’t have a mere ten-bedroom Manor like the Fitzroys—she had a forty-room Castle to keep going, and she keeps it going, too. It’s the only ancestral home in England that isn’t either all shut up, or half shut up, or thrown open to the public, or handed over to whatever that Trust is that takes them. What’s its name?”
“Never mind its name—go on about the Duchess.”
“Well, she gets all the servants she wants. She engages them herself, gives them a pittance instead of a proper wage, and stipulates that they must stay six months. At the end of the six months, she writes two lines in her own fair hand on her own embossed notepaper—she just says this flunkey or varlet or whoever he or she was—has worked for me for six months.—That s all. Just that bare statement. And on that recommendation they can get jobs wherever they like, and at any salary they like. It’s like a rosette at the horse show— you get it pinned on you and you take it home and it’s yours for ever.”
“But I don’t see why her recommendation should have more weight than—”
“You’ve seen her, haven’t you?” demanded Judy. “She’s knocked you down and ruined your garments and rolled on regardless? Well, that’s a good sample of her behaviour. She rolls over everybody. And she’s so awful that six months in her service is regarded as a—well, as a terrific test. Anyone that survives it is made for life. It isn’t only because they’ve come through it—it’s because during those six months they’ve seen service of the highest sort. The castle’s always full of the bluest blood—the very bluest. Six months there means six months of serving kings and princes. They just finish bowing out one when the next drives up. So you see why they’re so sought-after when they’ve done their awful probation?”
“Yes. Do the princes ever borrow the bath chair?”
“No—that’s exclusively Duchess. Did you like her wonderful topee? One of these days she’s going to hear that Aylmer Ferris is here, and she’ll come bowling down—she likes to keep in with the Arts—she can’t quite make up her mind whether she’d rather be hostess to a prince or patroness to a poet.—Here’s Mr. Ferris. I posted that thing, Rae.”
“Was it wise?”
“The very highest wisdom,” said Judy. “See you on Friday.”
Rae went upstairs for what she now called Operation Silk Frock, and passed the open door of the room in which the sittings were taking place. The General, standing moodily in front of the easel, called to her as she went by.
“Come in, come on in,” he invited. “Come and tell me what you think of it.”
Rae looked; there was not much to see, and she thought it too early for the General to look gloomy.
“It’s hard to judge yet” she began.
“I don’t think much of it,” growled the General. “Look at that vase beside her. Look at the real thing, I mean there it is. Now look at the shape he’s made it—d’you call that a reproduction of the thing he was looking at?”
“Well, they don’t always—”
“Quite so, quite so. They don’t always paint what they see. They paint a teapot upside down and call it Sunset, or Obsession, or Frustration or some such. But if a man’s going to paint a portrait, is he going to paint what he’s asked to paint, or is he going to daub away at something that’s got into his eye?”
In Rae’s opinion, which she did not voice, they could only wait and see.
“Wait here,” said the General suddenly. “Just wait here a minute and I’ll bring you something that’ll show you I’m not merely carping. Now wait here—I won’t be long.”
He returned with a large framed portrait under his arm. Propping it against the back of a chair, he led Rae up to it.
“Look there now,” he said. “That’s my mother—Judy’s grandmother. Old Ambrose Fitzroy painted that against the same screen. Look at the screen—every detail as sharp as life. Look at that face—it might be my mother sitting there. No drapery and no fuss—he just put her against the screen and painted’em both.—Like it?”
“It’s most awfully like Lady Ashton,” said Rae. “It’s almost exactly like her.”
“Well, yes, she’s like her mother,” admitted the General. “I’m not quite sure how old my mother was when that was painted, but she’d be about the same age, perhaps. Yes, they’re alike. None of the children took after her—pity. But I value that picture very highly, and if this painter johnny can produce anything half as good as this is, I’ll make him a handsome apology, upon me soul I will. But I don’t think I’ll have to.”
Rae went to her room and dressed. She went downstairs to find Miss Beckwith coming away from the telephone.
“It’s for you,” she said.
Rae’s heart gave a bound, and she had a second’s wild hope of hearing Richard’s voice. Before she reached the instrument, however, she had pulled herself together and put the possibility firmly aside. She picked up the receiver and heard a childish voice.
“Rae?”
“Yes.”
“This is Alan. Will you come swimming to-morrow?”
“I’d love to. Thank you. Where?”
“Oh—just swimming,” said Alan. “Have you brought a bathing costume, Mart says, ’cos if not she says you can borrow Hugh’s trunks and she can fix you up a sun-suit sort of top.”
“Well, I might get one here—there’s a girl of my own age and—”
“No,” said Alan. “I mean, don’t borrow one.”
“Why on earth not?”
“Because—well, if you asked them to lend you one, they might say where were you swimming, and p’raps they wouldn’t like you to swim if you told them you were going to, ’cos some people don’t, do th
ey? If you just said you were coming to see us, you could come without any bathing suit and then we’d—”
Throughout this circumlocution, Rae’s mind worked swiftly. They were obviously going to swim in forbidden waters—the General had mentioned something . . . had closed something. . . . But a swim was a swim, reflected Rae, and the less she knew of prohibitions, the better it would be for all swimmers.
“What time?” she asked, breaking in upon Alan’s monologue.
“Mart says to come early and have lunch, and then we’ll go swimming afterwards.”
“It’s a date.”
“That’s good,” said Alan, with flattering sincerity. “But if I were you, I wouldn’t say anything about—”
“I never say anything about anything,” said Rae. “It’s a way I’ve got. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
Chapter 9
Rae awoke next morning to find rain—the first since her arrival at Thorpe—pattering against the windowpanes. Swimming seemed a less likely and certainly a less attractive proposition than it had done the previous evening. By the middle of the morning, the showers had settled to a steady downpour, and Rae went to the telephone to cancel the day’s engagement with Hugh and Alan.
“Will you come tomorrow instead?” asked Hugh.
Rae hesitated; Judy was to come home on Friday, but it was unlikely that she would arrive before dinner—she had to take Mr. Ferris back after the sitting.
“I’ll come if it’s fine,” she promised.
It proved to be fine indeed. Rae, who had spent the previous day reading in the drawing-room, sniffed the cool, fresh air, and walked briskly in the direction of the farm. Reading, she conceded, was all very well, but people ought to have books that people could read. Lady Ashton had offered her Ethics of the Dust and thrown in Don Quixote as light relief; Miss Beckwith had brought her two volumes entitled Disasters of the Deep, and the General, finding her gazing out into the dripping garden, had led her, with the utmost kindness, into the library and personally selected three volumes: Gulliver’s Travels, Bacon’s Essays and The Swiss Family Robinson. Surrounded by these excellent works, Rae passed the day in misery, looking out at the downpour, and finding her only comfort in the recollection that Mrs. Noah had put up with several weeks of it.
The farm was in sight; Hugh and Alan were approaching, Mart was waving a duster from an upper window; Bianca, wearing one shoe and swinging the other, was on her way across the field to meet Rae. The sun shone, and spirits were high.
Swimming took place after lunch, and Rae, keeping to her resolve to ask no questions, followed without comment the boys’ wide detour round the Thorpe Lodge property and the subsequent double back in the direction of what was clearly a Thorpe Lodge field. The gate was padlocked, but Hugh passed it by without pause and, straddling the ditch a little farther on, stooped and removed a neatly-cut-out piece of hedge.
“Go on,” he said, with a jerk of his chin.
Alan scrambled through; Rae handed over Bianca and followed; Hugh came last and filled up the hedge. In single file, with every appearance of innocence but with a certain caution in keeping close to the sheltering fence, the four went on until they reached a gate. This, too, was stoutly padlocked; Hugh gave the bottom bar a twist and escorted his charges through, replacing the bar after them. Rae saw that they had come to a sudden widening of the river, and drew a deep breath as she stood on the bank and looked about her.
It was a perfect little pool in a perfect setting. Encircled by trees, with a tiny waterfall at one end, the water glistened in the sun, sparkling and clear. A tree stump near the water’s edge made a convenient diving board. As Rae looked round, enchanted, Alan emerged from the bushes which had served as a dressing-room and plunged into the water. Hugh went next, and Bianca, dancing to and fro in excitement, waved her diminutive bathing suit at Rae.
“Come on and thwim, come on and thwim,” she urged.
“Well, come on,” said Rae. “Come and undress in this woody bit.”
Bianca slipped off the shoulder-straps of her dungarees and sat on the ground to pull them off. Rae, absorbed in the problem of adjusting the two badly matching pieces of her borrowed suit, forgot her companion until, hearing a yelp of glee, she looked up. Bianca was walking steadily towards the water; as Rae watched, she marched on without pause, descended the bank, stepped into the river and vanished.
It took only a few seconds for Rae to plunge in, seize an arm and a strap and haul her in to the side. Patting his sister vigorously on the back, Alan addressed her in angry tones.
“What d’you think you’re trying to be?” he demanded, “A submarine?”
“Why did she do it?” asked Rae, still breathless with fright. “Has she ever done that before?”
“She’s never been before,” said Hugh calmly. “I suppose she just thought she could do it, like us.”
“I thwam,” announced Bianca, between splutters. “I did thwim.”
“You didn’t, you silly little fathead,” denied Alan. “You’ve got to stay on top of the water if you want to swim.”
“I thwam on the bottom,” explained Bianca.
“But that’s no good, don’t you see?” pointed out Rae. “You’ve got to learn how to—”
“You’ve got to wriggle your hands and feet about, and then you won’t sink,” explained Hugh. “Now look—I’ll throw in that fat branch and you’ve got to hang on to it—see? If you let go, you’ll go down again. Come on. Now hang on and twiddle your feet and you’ll—your feet, I said, not your hands. You’ve got to hang on with your hands. Got it? Well, don’t let go.”
He gave the craft a push, and Bianca was launched. The curls clinging damply round her head, two tiny hands clutching the knots of the branch, she performed a slow circle in the middle of the river and then let go and sank. The three watchers dived together and effected a rescue.
“You look here,” said Hugh angrily. “I’m not going to stay here all the time fishing you off the bottom. You either stay on top or you get out and stay out.”
“I’ll stay with her,” offered Rae.
“No—we’re all going to dive,” said Alan. “She’ll be all right—look, I can see the stones at the bottom—we can’t lose her. Come on. Now you hang on, Bianca.”
“I thwam. I can make my legs go like—”
“All right—pipe down.”
The rest of the afternoon passed without incident. Rae found that Bianca’s submersions were invariably preceded hy a triumphant ‘I’m thwimming—look.’ Her alarm was succeeded by astonishment at the amount of water Bianca could take in without apparent harm.
They dressed and drank the flask of hot cocoa which Mart had provided. Rae, wringing out her suit and swinging it to and fro to dry it, was surprised to see Alan clambering up a tree with Hugh’s suit and his own.
“Chuck me up yours and Bianca’s,” he said, holding out n hand. “And the towels.”
“What for?” asked Rae.
“We don’t take ’em home any more now that it’s warm enough to swim every day. We leave them up here so’s people won’t see—won’t take ’em.”
Rae, without further parley, threw up the two suits and saw him fasten them carefully to a leafy branch. Hugh, walking round the tree and surveying it from all angles, pronounced that nothing was visible.
“That’s all right,” said Alan, descending. “Do you know how to get here direct, without coming to us first?” he asked Rae. “It’s much shorter for you if you come on your own, and we could fix a time to meet you.”
“I think I’d get here,” said Rae. “Down the lane with the big oak, then the gap in the hedge—”
“And put it back properly, remember.”
“—and then the gate. Yes, I think I know. But why all the precautions?” she asked. “Anybody who was taking a walk could just turn up suddenly while you were swimming.”
“If it was anybody from the Lodge,” said Alan, “then we’d hear a whistle.”
>
Rae stared at him.
“What whistle?”
“Oh—just a sort of warning whistle.”
“I see. Your friend the gardener, I take it?”
“Well, he’s really Mart’s friend,” explained Alan. “Will you come tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow, and not Sunday,” said Rae, remembering Judy. “But Monday, if it’s fine.”
“Monday, then. If we walk back slowly,” said Alan, who appeared to forget nothing, “your hair’ll be nice and dry.” Walking back slowly, Rae got to the Lodge to find the General going indoors after an afternoon’s work in the greenhouse. He led her round to a side-door, indicating his out-at-elbows jacket and heavy boots.
“Mustn’t go in the other way with these on,” he said. “How far did you get to-day?”
“Far? Oh, I—well, I didn’t get far at all, as a matter of fact. I went to lunch at the Farm again.”
“Making friends? That’s good,” said the General. “I don’t know much about the people down there. Fellow called Moore, I understand—I’m told he’s not much of a farmer. Schoolmaster or something of the sort, I fancy. I suppose it’s the girl you’ve met—his daughter.”
“Well, yes.”
“Couple of sons, too, I hear. Are they nice lads?”
“They’re awfully nice,” said Rae. “I don’t see much of their father—he’s really their stepfather, and his name is—”
“Stepfather, is he? I didn’t know.—If I’m not mistaken, that’s Judy’s car coming round—yes. I wish you’d ask her to hurry up and take that feller off. Coffee and sandwiches up there again to-day.”
Men and Angels Page 10
