Evenings apart, it was unlikely he’d see much of Leonard Sedley. For Sedley had been making those afternoon trips to the river-bank not in the least to enjoy the improving conversation of Mungo Lockhart, his cher but undeniably juvenile confrère. About this Mungo had been under a flattering delusion. Sedley’s talk had been nothing more than a circumspect cover for his desire – not really all that indecorous a desire – to watch another young man gracefully catching, or failing to catch, salmon. And for that young man his companion wasn’t in the least a substitute: a circumstance which somehow for Mungo preserved Sedley his dignity. The eminent novelist (or ex-novelist) wasn’t promiscuous. Mungo could stand waist-deep in those chilly Highland waters until the cows came home, without rousing in Sedley anything more than a polite willingness to converse instructively on the aesthetics of fiction.
So he was surprised when, a couple of days after Ian’s departure for Fochabers, Sedley turned up as usual at the cottage. Seeing him coming down a path to the river, he hastily shoved aside his typewriter – this out of a feeling that it would be awfully embarrassing to have a pro looking over his shoulder as he clattered away at his artless tale. Mungo was at the stage of feeling that the novel absolutely wouldn’t do; that its immaturity and ineptitude piped and burbled from every line of it; and that he was bloody well going to finish it, all the same.
Of course Sedley wasn’t deceived; he couldn’t be, seeing he knew exactly what Mungo was engaged on. But his apology for interrupting work seemed sincere without being in the least fussy. He then took it for granted they were going to talk, leading the way to the river-bank and the tree-trunk that had been dedicated to their former conversations. The river, minus Ian, had rather a vacant look, but Sedley eyed it for a minute with complete satisfaction. When he spoke it was gently, but with a directness that startled Mungo for a moment.
‘It was so very sad that I upset Ian the other evening as I did. Do you remember, Mungo, how Othello speaks of “heat, the young affects in me defunct”? Scholars say the text is corrupt, but the sense is clear. Not, mark you, that the Moor is being very honest with himself, for he plainly has the power of a lusty lover in him still. But I am a doddering old gentleman, moved by certain quiet affections from time to time, and according them the recognition of a tone, a gesture, maybe.’ Sedley produced something between a soft laugh and a sigh. ‘However, it is entirely one’s own fault if one is misunderstood.’
‘I’d hope,’ Mungo said firmly, ‘Ian would never think of so small a thing again.’
‘Ah, but he will! There are areas of feeling in which Ian doesn’t enjoy your sense of security.’ Sedley waited, but Mungo said nothing. His psycho-analysing of Ian, he felt, hadn’t been particularly useful. Perhaps it had been intrusive, even allowing for the fact that he and Ian were sworn brothers, or whatever was the best way of describing it. He certainly wasn’t going to air the theory of uncle-eclipse in Ian’s absence and for the benefit of Leonard Sedley. Not that he was in the least eager to feel towards Sedley other than admiringly and respectfully. Sedley was not only the first author he had met in the flesh; in An Autumn in Umbria he had written a book which Mungo knew he himself couldn’t equal if he lived to be a hundred. And Sedley’s subsequent silence or near-silence as a writer was more than a mere mystery. It attracted sympathy – almost something like compassion – as well as curiosity.‘But we’ll drop Ian for the moment,’ Sedley said. ‘After all, you’ve sent him about his business for a time – his business being to fish as many waters as possible while the season lasts. It must be wonderful to have ambitions as simple as that.’
‘Ian has a good many other things in his head besides fishing.’ Mungo wasn’t too pleased even with mild and whimsical denigration of his friend. ‘And as for sending him about his business—’
‘Come, Mungo, be honest. Those people at Fochabers were your idea. And a good idea, as things stood. I’m grateful to you. However, I haven’t come over to talk about Ian. I’ve come over – or been sent over – to talk about you.’
‘Sent over? I don’t understand you.’
‘By David. But also, in a way, by the whole family. I suspect them of having been writing round to each other. Of scratching one another’s heads, one might say. They feel the whole thing is delicate, and I don’t say they’re wrong.’ Sedley paused, and eyed Mungo intently. ‘I’d find this easier if you could give a hint that you do a little understand.’
‘You seem to be talking about something rather serious. So you mustn’t ask me for guesses.’ Mungo said this stiffly. Leonard Sedley was an intimate friend of the family. He was even some sort of remote relation. But it wasn’t proper that he should have been sent to say – to reveal, as they must judge it – what Lord Brightmony had failed to get round to a few evenings before. It wasn’t proper. It was even, Mungo fleetingly thought, rather odd. And Sedley himself appeared to be aware of what was going through his mind.
‘Of course, Mungo, you’re quite right. And I don’t see why it should be me who has to break the ice. Except that I’m a very old family friend – which is precisely what I hope you will remember as we talk. And it is, no doubt, a family friend to whom it is natural to turn in so odd a state of affairs. Then, again, you intend to be a writer, and it’s a writer that I’ve been. That could be seen as a bond of sorts between us, I suppose.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You can’t be unaware, my dear Mungo, of how these people feel towards you.’
‘The Cardowers in general? Well, I suppose not. They’ve all been extremely nice to me, as Ian’s friend. But there’s this big social gap – in outlook, and assumptions, and moment-to-moment manners, and everything else. I have to ask myself sometimes if I’m at sea in it. If all their niceness is as simple and spontaneous as I’d like to think it.’
‘There’s a sense, but an innocent and honourable sense, in which it is not. Let me come to the point. Has it ever occurred to you, Mungo, that you may be Douglas Cardower’s son?’
‘Yes, it has. In fact, I’ve become sure of it.’
As Mungo got out this affirmation he felt the force of the cliché that speaks of getting a load off one’s chest. The sensation brought him to his feet and to facing Sedley squarely. Sedley, too, seemed relieved; he put his two hands on the tree-trunk, and eased himself into a more relaxed posture.
‘You see,’ Mungo said, ‘Ian once made a joke about it.’
‘A joke?’ Sedley’s eyebrows went up. ‘I’m afraid I can’t see how he could possibly—’
‘It was in Italy. I’d invented a kind of psycho-analysing game with Ian. Or not a game exactly.’ Mungo felt the danger of incoherence. ‘I really did think I could get him clearer to himself about – about one thing and another which rather bothered him. And this joke of Ian’s about Douglas Cardower – which was just a joke – was a kind of paying me back. You see, I’d learnt about Douglas Cardower having been a tremendous libertine, and having had any number of illegitimate children—’
‘Quite so. It was a very odd joke to make to you, all the same.’ Sedley spoke coldly. ‘It’s almost a new light on Ian.’
‘No, no – you don’t understand. We say anything to each other, Ian and I. So you see—’
‘I’m sure you do. You have, or seem to have, one another’s confidence completely.’ Sedley’s mouth hovered into the motions of a smile. ‘Still, it was exactly the sort of thing that your generation describes as simply not on. To put it bluntly, it was a joke about the chastity of your mother.’
‘Yes, I know. As a matter of fact, Ian was uncomfortable about it almost as soon as he’d come out with it. But there’s another thing. He rather challenged me to deny that I hadn’t already dreamed up the idea myself. And I had, you know. It’s this business of what he called the Myth of the Birth of the Hero. I believe there’s a book called that.’
‘There well may be.’ Sedley’s gaze was still intently upon Mungo’s face.
‘As children, we’ve all indul
ged fantasies of—’
‘Yes, yes, Mungo. That’s obvious stuff. But this particular fantasy had been coming to you now that you were grown up?’
‘It sounds idiotic. And I hadn’t nursed it or elaborated it. It’s partly, I suppose, that I have the kind of mind that is always starting to tell itself stories.’
‘Quite an arbitrary story on this particular occasion?’
‘Oh, no. I’m not really as daft as that. For a start, you see, I never knew the people I’m told were my parents. And there’s money comes to me mysteriously through a lawyer in Edinburgh, a Mr Mackellar. And I’d found out that at least I hadn’t been—been conceived in wedlock, or whatever the jargon is. I suppose you may say that set my rash imagination to work.’
‘Let us not asperse our imaginations, Mungo.’ Sedley spoke with a sudden grimness. ‘They’re what we hope, or have hoped, to earn our keep by. And I assure you that building up stories about oneself needs no apology to me.’ Sedley took an impulsive step towards Mungo, almost as if intending to lay a hand on his shoulder. Then he checked himself. ‘And the imagination, you know,’ he said gently, ‘is surely the organ by which we sometimes learn a truth about ourselves. But get this clear. You haven’t been indulging a purely private fantasy. Lord Auldearn, who used to be spoken of as the best brain in the Lords, believes that you are his grandson. David and Robert both believe that you are their nephew.’
‘That’s what I’ve become more and more aware of, really: their belief. And, you see, there was something in their heads – in Ian’s father’s and grandfather’s heads – awfully early on. In fact, they were imagining things well before I was.’
‘How could you tell that, Mungo?’
‘It was a bit indefinable. I’d call it something in the quality of their interest in me. And now what’s believed by the family is perfectly plain – so you’re not in the least springing a surprise on me. What I haven’t yet got hold of is their evidence.’ Mungo paused. ‘Lord Auldearn showed me a photograph of his son Douglas, and I could see that I’m not a bit like him. So it isn’t that.’
‘No, Mungo – it certainly isn’t your good looks. They’re there, but they’re quite different from Douglas’s.’ Sedley said this with a sudden faded coquetry which was startling. ‘They have grounds – as Hamlet says – more relative than that. You come from Fintry, near Forres, and you are Mungo Guthrie Lockhart. What more they’ve been fishing up, I just don’t know. Of course, there are your manners.’
‘What have my manners got to do with it?’
‘I think I’d rather say your bearing. Perhaps they wouldn’t have fallen so in love with you, if you’d been, well, a more rustic character.’
‘What do you mean by saying they’ve fallen in love with me?’
‘C’est une façon de parler. They think they see in you, no doubt, what was attractive in Douglas when his years were as yours are now.’
‘I see.’ Mungo didn’t care for much in this – including that final literary cadence. ‘Do they know about Mr Mackellar and the money from Edinburgh?’
‘I don’t think so. That must have been something arranged long ago, and by—by somebody else. Of course I’m sure they’d now want to push it up.’
‘To push it up! Please, what do you mean?’ Mungo had flushed in a way that showed he didn’t really need to ask this question.
‘The money. To get you launched, my dear lad. The Robert Cardowers aren’t particularly wealthy, but Lord Auldearn is a very—’
‘You think I’d do that? Take money, because of the accidental coming to light of some casual’—Mungo searched for a word—’liaison that happened twenty years ago? You think I would?’
‘Don’t let’s get side-tracked by that.’ Sedley looked like a man conscious of having made a mistake. ‘At least the family isn’t lacking in delicate feeling about the thing. They’ve asked themselves whether their discovery ought to become your discovery as well – or Ian’s, even. They’ve been far from thinking it’s anything particularly grand or grateful they have to communicate. They’d have answered themselves No, I think, but for knowing that you yourself were wondering about your birth.’
‘But they couldn’t know that!’
‘Why, Mungo, you told Ian, didn’t you?’ Sedley’s almost covert smile hovered again. ‘And the Cardower family grapevine is always in singularly good trim.’
‘I see.’ Mungo was conscious of a strange dismay – not in his head but somewhere in his chest. ‘And Ian knows all this – all that these other people have come to believe?’
‘He hasn’t spoken to you about it?’ Sedley asked gently.
‘No. But I believe he knows – has just come to know. And I don’t feel it has made him fall in love with me.’
‘Ah!’ Sedley, too, was on his feet now, and regarding Mungo gravely. ‘I’m not, as I think you can guess, as much in Ian’s confidence as I’d like to be. But I have a great respect for his intelligence. He’s a far abler man than his talkative father – or, for that matter, my very old friend, his Uncle David. He’s going to be of the same weight as his grandfather, to my mind. He’s your equal in wits, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Of course I would. But that isn’t—’
‘If you were pitted against each other, it would be a stiff struggle. However, my dear Mungo, we must stick to the point. I can’t think Ian would have made that joke to you on the basis of nothing at all. It might even have been an abortive shot at bringing the thing into the open and discussing it. Do you remember the occasion as having that feel, at all?’
‘It might have. But I don’t think so.’ Mungo had to fight off a sense of mere confusion. ‘If any member of his family had told him about—about what was being believed, I wouldn’t have expected him to keep mum to me.’
‘He might have been told in confidence.’
‘I wouldn’t expect him to accept a confidence about me.
We’re wholly in each other’s confidence – as you said yourself.’
‘Yes – of course.’ Sedley hesitated. He seemed almost to be wondering how not to take this conversation further. Then he spoke impulsively. ‘Listen, Mungo! There’s something I haven’t said. And it’s certainly something I haven’t been commissioned to say – for the simple reason that nobody else has thought of it. Except, perhaps, Ian himself – quite recently.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. Tell me, please.’
‘Just one moment. Did you find it quite easy to persuade Ian to clear out for a week in order to ease our small embarrassment of the other evening?’
‘Yes, I did. I was rather surprised, as a matter of fact. And I thought that, when he came back from the Castle on the morning after that awkwardness, he was a little strange, actually.’ Mungo paused, and saw no virtue in this understatement. ‘In fact, he seemed rather queerly shattered.’
‘Indeed?’ For a moment Sedley occupied himself with examining his well-manicured nails. ‘Then let me be frank with you. What occurs to me is that, just possibly, he has gone off to think the thing out.’
‘To think it out? This other-side-of-the-blanket oddity? I don’t see—’
‘Or even positively to set some investigation afoot. Ian’s highly intelligent, as I said. He mayn’t merely know what the others know, and be resting there; in fact, it looks as if he has really had your own sort of intuition about that for some time. But when suddenly he was told by David – say on the morning of his coming to the Castle to make his touching apology to me – he may in that instant have seen a possibility that hasn’t entered their heads. A pretty stiff possibility!’
‘A possibility?’
‘A challenging possibility, which I happen to know some relevant facts about myself. Did I tell you, by the way? I was quite as close a friend of Douglas as of David twenty years ago. It could be rather an onerous position at times. There were things about which it was best to decide that one had better hold one’s tongue.’ Sedley paused for a moment, stood up, and looked dow
n at Mungo smilingly. ‘I’ve never had a clue, you know, about your having come into the world. Please remember that.’
There was a silence. Mungo had opened his mouth to say he made nothing of this. But it wouldn’t have been true – or not quite. He had never, perhaps, formulated what would be the ultimately strange thing, but it had lurked, somewhere in his mind, all the same.
‘But here you are,’ Sedley said. ‘The big surprise! So if Douglas and your mother were legally married – which is what I had reason to suspect but judged it pointless to go digging after – just where do you all stand now they’ve dug you up? Perhaps Ian is wondering.’
‘It wouldn’t make any difference.’ Mungo’s head was swimming. ‘It wouldn’t make any real difference. Not after all these years.’
‘Of course it would make a difference. As long as the Cardowers take your illegitimacy for granted, nothing more is called for from them than an easy benevolence. But if Ian has seen the possibility of your legitimacy, he has seen the possibility that neither his father nor he will ever be Marquis of Auldearn.’
‘But that’s all rubbish!’ Mungo cried out this passionately. ‘A thing like that couldn’t come between—’ He broke off, arrested by something implacable in Sedley’s face.
‘Have some sense, Mungo. Are you telling me that Ian regards the family title as rubbish?’
‘I didn’t mean that. He thinks the world of it, although he’s careful to conceal the fact. I meant he couldn’t for a moment believe I’d—I’d go after the thing. Not any more than that I’d steal the coins in his pocket.’
‘I don’t know that you’d necessarily have much choice in the matter.’
‘We’re talking, for a start, about something that’s still wildly improbable.’ Mungo had a sense, perhaps irrational, that he was fighting with his back to the wall. ‘It may be difficult to stop off being a Lord. I don’t know about that. But I’m almost sure you can refuse to become one. You renounce your claim, and then it simply passes to the next chap. That would be Lord Robert, and after him of course it would be Ian.’
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