by John Buchan
Sally turned to me, hiding a yawn with her small hand. Her head on its slim neck was as erect as a bird’s, and her body had a darting, bird-like poise, but I could see that the poise required some effort to maintain it. She patted my sleeve in her friendly way.
“I am so glad you came,” she said. “I know you want a rest.” She screwed up her eyes and peered at me. “You look as if you hadn’t been in bed for a month!”
“I’m nearly all out,” I said. “You must let me moon about by myself, please, for I’m no sort of company for anybody.”
“You shall do exactly as you like. I’m pretty tired also, and I’m giving a ball next week, and there’s Ascot looming ahead. Happily we’re having quite a small party — and a very quiet one.”
“Is this the lot?” I asked, looking down the table. I knew her habit of letting guests appear in relays during a weekend till the result was a mob.
“Practically. You know all the people?”
“Most of them. Who’s the dark fellow opposite George Lamington?”
Her face brightened into interest. “That’s my new discovery. A country neighbour, no less — but a new breed altogether. His name is Goodeve — Sir Robert Goodeve. He has just succeeded to the place and title.”
Of course I knew Goodeve, that wonderful moated house in the lap of the Downs, but I had never met one of the race. I had had a notion that it had died out. The Goodeves are one of those families about which genealogists write monographs, a specimen of that unennobled gentry which is the oldest stock in England. They had been going on in their undistinguished way since Edward the Confessor.
“Tell me about him,” I said.
“I can’t tell you much. You can see what he looks like. Did you ever know a face so lit up from behind? . . . He was the son of a parson in Northumberland, poor as a church mouse, so he had to educate himself. Local grammar school, some provincial university, and then with scholarships and tutoring he fought his way to Oxford. There he was rather a swell, and made friends with young Marburg, old Isaac’s son, who got him a place in his father’s business. The War broke out, and he served for four years, while Marburgs kept his job open. After that they moved him a good deal about the world, and he was several years in their New York house. It is really a romance, for at thirty-five he had made money, and now at thirty-eight he has inherited Goodeve and a good deal more . . . Yes, he’s a bachelor. Not rich as the big fortunes go, but rich enough. The thing about him is that he has got his jumping-off ground reasonably young, and is now about to leap. Quite modest, but perfectly confident, and terribly ambitious. He is taking up politics, and I back him to make you all sit up. I think he’s the most impressive mortal I have ever met. Bored stiff with women — as stony-hearted as you, Ned. He’s a sort of ascetic, vowed to a cause.”
“His own career?” I asked.
“No. No. He’s not a bit of an egotist. There’s a pent-up force that’s got to come out. He’s a fanatic about some new kind of Empire development, and I know people who think him a second Rhodes. I want you to make friends with him and tell me what you think, for in your fish-like way you have good judgement.”
Sally yawned again, and I respected more than ever the courage of women who can go on till they drop and keep smiling. She turned away in response to a question of Mayot’s, and I exchanged banalities with the lady on my other side. Presently I found myself free again to look round the table. I was right: we were the oddest mixture of the fresh and the blasé, the care-free and the care-worn. To look at Tavanger’s hollow eyes and hear in one’s ear the babble of high young voices made a contrast which was almost indecent . . . I had a feeling as if we were all on a vast, comfortable raft in some unknown sea, and that, while some were dancing to jazz music, others were crowding silently at the edge, staring into the brume ahead. Staring anxiously, too, for in that mist there might be fearful as well as wonderful things . . . I found myself studying George Lamington’s face, and felt a childish dislike of him. His life was so padded and cosseted and bovine. He had just inherited another quarter of a million from an uncle, and he had not the imagination of a rabbit in the use of money. Why does wealth make dull people so much duller? I had always rather liked George, but now I felt him intolerable. I must have been very tired, for I was getting as full of silly prejudices as a minor poet.
Sally was speaking again, as she collected eyes.
“Don’t be afraid. This is going to be a very peaceful party.”
“Will you promise me,” I said, “that I won’t come down tomorrow and find half a dozen new faces at breakfast?”
“Honest Injun,” she replied. “They are all here except one, and he arrives tonight.”
When the women had gone Evelyn Flambard brought his port to my side. Having exhausted horses during dinner, he regaled me with the Englishman’s other main topic, politics. Evelyn despaired of the republic. He had grievances against the Budget, the new rating law, and the Government’s agricultural policy. He was alarmed about the condition of India, where he had served in his old Hussar days, and about Egypt, where he had large investments. His views on America were calculated to make a serious breach between the two sections of the Anglo-Saxon race. But if he feared the Government he despised the Opposition, though for politeness’ sake he added that his strictures did not apply to me. There was no honest Toryism left, so his plaint ran; there was not a pin to choose between the parties; they were all out to rob struggling virtue — meaning himself and other comfortable squires. He nodded down the table towards Goodeve. “Look at that chap,” he whispered darkly. “I mean to say, he don’t care a straw what he says or does, and he’ll have Tommy Twiston’s seat, which is reckoned the safest in England. He as good as told George Lamington this afternoon that he’d like to see a Soviet Government in power for a week in England under strict control, for it was the only way to deal with men like him. Hang it all, there’s nothing wrong with old George except that he’s a bit fussy, if you see what I mean.”
I said that I rather agreed with Goodeve, and that set Evelyn pouring out his woes to the man on the other side. Reggie Daker had come up next me, his eye heavy with confidences. I had acted as a sort of father-confessor to Reggie ever since he came down from the University, but I hadn’t much credit by my disciple. He was infinitely friendly, modest, and good-humoured, but as hard to hold as a knotless thread. Usually he talked to me about his career, and I had grown very tired of finding him jobs, which he either shied off or couldn’t hold for a week. Now it seemed that this was not his trouble. He had found his niche at last, and it was dealing in rare books. Reggie considered that a lad like himself, with a fine taste and a large acquaintance, could make a lot of money by digging out rarities from obscure manor-houses and selling them to American collectors. He had taken up the study very seriously, he told me, and he actually managed to get a few phrases of bibliophile’s jargon into his simple tale. He felt that he had found his life’s work, and was quite happy about it.
The trouble was Pamela Brune. It appeared that he was deeply in love, and that she was toying with his young heart. “There’s a strong lot of entries,” he explained, “and Charles Ottery has been the favourite up till now. But she seems a bit off Charles, and . . . and . . . anyhow, I’m going to try my luck. I wangled an invitation here for that very purpose. I say, you know — you’re her godfather, aren’t you? If you could put in a kind word . . .”
But my unreceptive eye must have warned Reggie that I was stony soil. He had another glass of port, and sighed.
I intended to go to bed as soon as I decently could. I was not sleepy, but I was seeing things with the confusion of a drowsy man. As I followed my host across the hall, where someone had started a gramophone, I seemed more than ever to be in a phantasmal world. The drawing-room, with the delicate fluted pilasters in its panelling and the Sir Joshuas and Romneys between them, swam in a green dusk, which was partly the afterglow through the uncurtained windows and partly the shading of the elec
tric lamps. A four at bridge had been made up, and the young people were drifting back towards the music. Lady Nantley beckoned me from a sofa. I could see her eyes appraising my face and disapproving of it, but she was too tactful to tell me that I looked ill.
“I heard that you were to be here, Ned,” she said, “and I was very glad. Your god-daughter is rather a handful just now, and I wanted your advice.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “She’s looking uncommonly pretty.” I caught a glimpse of Pamela patting her hair as she passed a mirror, slim and swift as a dryad.
“She’s uncommonly perverse. You know that she has been having an affair with Charles Ottery ever since Christmas at Wirlesdon. I love Charles, and Tom and I were delighted. Everything most suitable — the right age, enough money, chance of a career, the same friends. There’s no doubt that Charles adores her, and till the other day I thought that she was coming to adore Charles. But now she has suddenly gone off at a tangent, and has taken to snubbing and neglecting him. She says that he’s too good for her, and that his perfections choke her — doesn’t want to play second fiddle to an Admirable Crichton — wants to shape her own life — all the rubbish that young people talk nowadays.”
Mollie’s charming eyes were full of real distress, and she put an appealing hand on my arm.
“She likes you, Ned, and believes in you. Couldn’t you put a little sense into her head?”
I wanted to say that I was feeling like a ghost from another sphere, and that it was no good asking a tenuous spectre to meddle with the affairs of warm flesh and blood. But I was spared the trouble of answering by the appearance of Lady Flambard.
“Forgive me, Mollie dear,” she said, “but I must carry him off. I’ll bring him back to you presently.”
She led me to a young man who was standing near the door. “Bob,” she said, “this is Sir Edward Leithen. I’ve been longing for you two to meet.”
“So have I,” said the other, and we shook hands. Now that I saw Goodeve fairly, I was even more impressed than by his profile as seen at dinner. He was a finely made man, and looked younger than his thirty-eight years. He was very dark, but not in the least swarthy; there were lights in his hair which suggested that he might have been a blond child, and his skin was a clear brown, as if the blood ran strongly and cleanly under it. What I liked about him was his smile, which was at once engaging and natural, and a little shy. It took away any arrogance that might have lurked in the tight mouth and straight brows.
“I came here to meet you, sir,” he said. “I’m a candidate for public life, and I wanted to see a man who interests me more than anybody else in the game. I hope you don’t mind my saying that . . . What about going into the garden? There’s a moon of sorts, and the nightingales will soon begin. If they’re like the ones at Goodeve, eleven’s their hour.”
We went through the hall to the terrace, which lay empty and quiet in a great dazzle of moonlight. It was only about a fortnight till midsummer, a season when in fine weather in southern England it is never quite dark. Now, with a moon nearing the full, the place was bright enough to read print. The stone balustrade and urns were white as snow, and the two stairways that led to the sunk garden were a frosty green like tiny glaciers.
We threaded the maze of plots and lily-ponds and came out on a farther lawn, which ran down to the little river. That bit of the Arm is no good for fishing, for it has been trimmed into a shallow babbling stretch of ornamental water, but it is a delicious thing in the landscape. There was no sound except the lapse of the stream, and the occasional squattering flight of a moorhen. But as we reached the brink a nightingale began in the next thicket.
Goodeve had scarcely spoken a word. He was sniffing the night scents, which were a wonderful blend of early roses, new-mown hay, and dewy turf. When we reached the Arm, we turned and looked back at the house. It seemed suddenly to have gone small, set in a great alley-way of green between olive woods, an alley-way which swept from the high downs to the river meadows. Far beyond it we could see the bare top of Stobarrow. But it looked as perfect as a piece of carved ivory — and ancient, ancient as a boulder left millenniums ago by a melting ice-cap.
“Pretty good,” said my companion at last. “At Flambard you can walk steadily back into the past. Every chapter is written plain to be read.”
“At Goodeve, too,” I said.
“At Goodeve, too. You know the place? It is the first home I have had since I was a child, for I have been knocking about for years in lodgings and tents. I’m still a little afraid of it. It’s a place that wants to master you. I’m sometimes tempted to give myself up to it and spend my days listening to its stories and feeling my way back through the corridors of time. But I know that that would be ruin.”
“Why?”
“Because you cannot walk backward. It is too easy, and the road leads nowhere. A man must keep his eyes to the front and resist the pull of his ancestors. They’re the devil, those ancestors, always trying to get you back into their own rut.”
“I wish mine would pull harder,” I said. “I’ve been badly overworked lately, and I feel at this moment like a waif, with nothing behind me and nothing before.”
He regarded me curiously. “I thought you looked a little done up. Well, that’s the penalty of being a swell. You’ll lie fallow for a day or two and the power will return. There can’t be much looking backward in your life.”
“Nor looking forward. I seem to live between high blank walls. I never get a prospect.”
“Oh, but you are wrong,” he said seriously. “All your time is spent in trying to guess what is going to happen — what view the Courts will take of a case, what kind of argument will hit the prospective mood of the House. It is the same in law and politics and business and everything practical. Success depends on seeing just a little more into the future than other people.”
I remembered my odd feeling at dinner of the raft on the misty sea, and the anxious peering faces at the edge.
“Maybe,” I said. “But just at the moment I’m inclined to envy the people who live happily in the present. Our host, for example, and the boys and girls who are now dancing.” In the stillness the faint echo of music drifted to us from the house.
“I don’t envy them a bit,” he said. “They have no real sporting interest. Trying to see something solid in the mist is the whole fun of life, and most of its poetry.”
“Anyhow, thank Heaven, we can’t see very far. It would be awful to look down an avenue of time as clear as this strip of lawn, and see the future as unmistakable as Flambard.”
“Perhaps. But sometimes I would give a good deal for one moment of prevision.”
After that, as we strolled back, we talked about commonplace things — the prospects of a not very secure Government, common friends, the ways of our hostess, whom he loved, and the abilities of Mayot, which — along with me — he doubted. As we entered the house again we found the far end of the hall brightly lit, since the lamps had been turned on in the porch. The butler was ushering in a guest who had just arrived, and Sally had hastened from the drawing-room to greet him.
The newcomer was one of the biggest men I have ever seen, and one of the leanest. A suit of grey flannel hung loose upon his gigantic bones. He reminded me of Nansen, except that he was dark instead of fair. His forehead rose to a peak, on which sat one solitary lock, for the rest of his head was bald. His eyes were large and almost colourless, mere pits of light beneath shaggy brows. He was bowing over Sally’s hand in a foreign way, and the movement made him cough.
“May I present Sir Edward Leithen?” said Sally. “Sir Robert Goodeve . . . Professor Moe.”
The big man gave me a big hand, which felt hot and damp. His eyes regarded me with a hungry interest. I had an impression of power — immense power, and also an immense fragility.
II
I did not have a good night; I rarely do when I have been overworking. I started a chapter of Barchester Towers, dropped off in the middle, and
woke in two hours, restless and unrefreshed. Then I must have lain awake till the little chill before dawn which generally sends me to sleep. The window was wide open, and all the minute sounds of a summer night floated through it, but they did not soothe me. I had one of those fits of dissatisfaction which often assail the sleepless. I felt that I was making very little of my life. I earned a large income, and had a considerable position in the public eye, but I was living, so to speak, from hand to mouth. I had long lost any ordinary ambitions, and had ceased to plan out my career ahead, as I used to do when I was a young man. There were many things in public life on which I was keen, but it was only an intellectual keenness; I had no ardour in their pursuit. I felt as if my existence were utterly shapeless.
It was borne in on me that Goodeve was right. What were his words?—”Trying to see something solid in the mist is the whole fun of life, and most of its poetry.” Success, he had argued, depended upon looking a little farther into the future than other people. No doubt; but then I didn’t want success — not in the ordinary way. He had still his spurs to win, whereas I had won mine, and I didn’t like the fit of them. Yet all the same I wanted some plan and policy in my life, for I couldn’t go on living in the mud of the present. My mind needed prospect and horizon. I had often made this reflection before in moments of disillusionment, but now it came upon me with the force of a revelation. I told myself that I was beginning to be cured of my weariness, for I was growing discontented, and discontent is a proof of vitality . . . As I fell asleep I was thinking of Goodeve and realising how much I liked him. His company might prove the tonic I required.
I rose early and went for a walk along the Arm to look for a possible trout. The May-fly season was over, but there were one or two good fish rising beyond a clump of reeds where the stream entered the wood. Then I breakfasted alone with Evelyn, for Flambard is not an early house. His horses were mostly at grass, but he lent me a cob of Sally’s. I changed into breeches, cut a few sandwiches, and set out for the high Downs. I fancied that a long lonely day on the hills would do me as much good as anything.
