The two men stood gazing out at the slopes with their faces against the glass, until their breath clouded the panes. Then they drew back, and Arthur looked at Armstrong again with an expression half ashamed, half proud.
‘It feels like being in the fore-part of a ship with a big sea on,’ said Armstrong.
‘I don’t know about that,’ the boy answered, ‘but it makes you feel queer even when you’ve known it’s been there ever since you could remember. But I like to see it surprise other people. Some of them are too dull to feel anything at all. I thought you might.’
‘Thanks,’ said Armstrong, though the grammar was somewhat vague. ‘I was!’
His capacity for replying in the fashion in which Arthur had spoken evidently made a still more pleasant impression, for the boy’s face cleared in an extraordinary way. There was a certain force in his regular features that made him more handsome than his brother, and yet in the end would spoil its outline by adding to its character.
‘Well, I suppose we must change,’ he continued in a resigned way. ‘Your room’s along here,’ and he turned back towards the landing, opening a door near the head of the stairs. Beyond there was a wide panelled room, the ceiling cut into squares and decorated with gilded stars. A man-servant was busy laying Armstrong’s clothes upon the bed.
There was a large orange-red fire in the grate and a sufficiency of candles to show the room furnished in a manner of out-of-date comfort that had still no pretension to old-fashion. It had a sort of dingy grandiloquence about it that formed a very adequate background to the pompous butler, whose well-rounded face would naturally have been graced by the bristling whiskers of an earlier Victorian era. He retired with an unctuous gesture of self-effacement that somehow suggested an unuttered benediction.
‘What is the bishop’s name?’ Armstrong asked in an awed voice as the door closed with minute attention to noiselessness behind him.
Arthur, balancing in his favourite attitude against the mantel-piece, grinned appreciatively. Armstrong was relieved to see that he could contrive something more human than a mere smile: to Godfrey such a thing would have been impossible.
‘His name is Pym,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think we all look a bit clerical?
Father was made for a dean and Godfrey for a pet curate. Can’t you see him wallowing in votive-offerings of knitted slippers? That’s what they want me to be, you know,’ he added with a burst, kicking the fender furiously with his heels.
‘I suppose they won’t force you,’ Armstrong rejoined.
‘I suppose not,’ he replied slowly, frowning, ‘but they might make me do it all the same.’
‘Well, that depends upon yourself, doesn’t it?’
‘I don’t know,’ he answered sullenly, giving the fender one more kick and lifting himself clear of the mantel-piece. ‘Dinner’s at eight—sharp. But I forgot, you’re an honoured guest. That’s a bit different. You can be one minute late, and father’ll still smile; two minutes and he’ll only look urbane; three minutes and he’ll forbear in silence. I haven’t seen the fourth minute, so I can’t tell you any more.’ Whereupon he went out, shutting the door with a bang.
Somehow Armstrong felt he liked the boy—he was so uncompromisingly young and natural in this house of extraordinary politeness. His surly aloofness showed perplexity at finding himself in surroundings so different from his own nature, and an absolute inability to solve the problem. It would be likely for him to go knocking his head against the family wall for many years to come yet, Armstrong decided, as he fastened his collar before the glass and carefully tied his tie. He was fastidious in his tastes without exception.
A dinner gong presently sounded in the distance, and Armstrong, remembering Arthur’s warning, proceeded quickly to the drawing-room, much as he felt tempted to linger on the stairs. The whole family, with the exception of Aunt Ellen, was assembled on the hearth-rug. Mr Delane-Morton beamed at him.
‘Punctuality is the stamp of genius!’ he cried, ‘I always say so. Some say it’s a matter of cobbler’s wax—application and so on—but I always say
“punctuality”. But let us come in to dinner. My poor sister is unfortunately paralysed,’ he added in a minor key, ‘so we will take ourselves in, shall we not?’ He was so very like an elderly dowager that Armstrong had nearly offered his arm to his host by mistake. ‘I will lead, since you do not yet know your way,’ and he puffed ahead of Armstrong across the hall to a doorway on the opposite side. ‘How cold it strikes when once one leaves the fireside, but then we forget how soon Christmas will be upon us—six days only. We are quite old-fashioned in our love of Christmas. I wish you could be staying on long enough to see our celebrations—carol-singers, you know, and waits, and plum puddings,’ he paused here, rather at a loss evidently as to what further seasonable subjects could be added to this list.
They had now reached the dining-room, where the old lady already sat at the end of a long, narrow table. Around on all the walls a perfect patchwork of portraits stared vacantly across at one another in a disjointed assembly of dates and sizes.
‘Sit by me, dear Armstrong, if you do not fear the fire,’ she said, seizing the conversation as though with a grappling-hook; ‘and were you talking about dear Christmas time with all its quaint customs? It always makes me feel as though I ought to wear a ruff and farthingale whenever I think of it.
And I’m sure one would suit you excellently—a ruff, of course, I mean. They always wore those nice pointed beards in old days, didn’t they? and I’m sure that is why I thought of Sir Philip Sidney as soon as you entered the room.’
Arthur was here seen to snigger at the other corner of the table opposite Armstrong.
‘Oh, Arthur laughs at my love of old things,’ said the old lady, half turning her head in her nephew’s direction.
‘It wasn’t that, Aunt Ellen,’ he replied, and then seeing his father’s eye wandering in his direction, he reddened and relapsed into silence. ‘Sir Philip never wore a beard,’ he was heard to mutter.
Mr Delane-Morton had made a counter-attack on his guest.
‘Curious,’ he said, ‘very curious how effeminate many of the fashions of the day appear to us now; for instance, ear-rings, even when—so I am told on quite excellent authority—they only wore one at a time. And yet they were not economical people, I’m sure. The stuff of which their clothes was made must have cost quite a fortune.’ He paused to swallow a spoonful of very hot soup, and before Armstrong could reply Aunt Ellen was down on him again like a chicken after a worm.
‘Now do tell me, is it really a fact that men wore an ear-ring in one ear only? Does it not seem too strangely barbaric? And do tell me if Mary Queen of Scots really did lose that wonderful rope of black pearls that somebody was said to have found at Hampton Court? It was in all the papers. No? You do not think it true? Ah, well, you see what it is to live all the time in the country and fall a dupe so easily to these newsmongers. And only think what a joy it must be to people like ourselves when someone who really knows the truth about four hundred years ago, as if it were yesterday, comes and puts our stupid notions right!’
‘Half the newspapers lie from malice-aforethought,’ announced Mr Delane-Morton from the other end of the table, ‘and the rest lie because it is in their nature to avoid the truth. If you come to think of it, how seldom you ever come upon a sound common-sense point of view, such as you might find for yourself! But when you do you may fall on your knees, and thank Heaven for an honest editor. I always say—as a plain man—“Now that is just what I would have said.” Truth doesn’t always lie at the bottom of a well.’
Meanwhile Aunt Ellen had been keeping up a persistent under-current of talk which now burst the bounds of lower tone and crushed her brother into silence.
‘I remember there was a once a man who came here some years ago, during the life of my poor sister-in-law: he called himself the correspondent of some London newspaper whose name I forget. A very curious man he was too; he had knick
erbockers and a red beard; and he said he would like to take photographs of the house, and then write an article upon it. He wanted my sister-in-law to give him the information. But I knew more about the place than she did, poor thing! and the idea amused me. I was more of an invalid in those days, and everyone was so kind: they always humoured me at every turn. So I interviewed the man. It was so interesting telling him all one knew, and he listened charmingly without interrupting me once. Not at all what one might have expected from a man in knickerbockers, was it? You must let me tell you my chronicle, as I call it. You see, we old people are really so much more in touch with the past because we are part of it.’ Here a slight wheezing draught from the far end of the table showed that Mr Delane-Morton was sighing for his share of the conversation, but the old lady was adamant. ‘It does not begin further back than the year 1501, when the house was built by a certain John Morton. Then a hundred years or so went by and your friend—another John—added the side wings and the porch to the house.
Cromwell knocked off some of the stone-work, for of course the Mortons were Royalists. There seems to have been little of interest in the years following, but I have a few quaint anecdotes to tell you about some of the pictures. One story is really very funny because it is such a muddle. The muddle is all due to my poor sister-in-law, I believe. Now, you see those two gentlemen in snuff-coloured coats and curled wigs, both in one frame? Well, they were supposed to have killed one another in a quarrel over some lady; but my sister-in-law always would have it that it was those two, one in a buff coat and a powdered queue, and the other in a blue cloth suit and gilt buttons.
Isn’t it queer how people can mix things up so? and the worst of it is that they were both brothers. Not all four at once. No, of course not: how could I think you would be as stupid as I am, dear Mr Armstrong. No, what I meant to say was—that there were two sets of brothers a hundred years apart. My poor sister-in-law’s story was not half so romantic as mine. Her brother, she said, quarrelled simply over money. The elder one had gambled his away, and the younger one refused to lend him any. Now, I really do not think such a thing could be true, do you? No, of course not. At least I was not sure, because we old people are not so clever as you young ones. We had not the same chances of education. In my day if a girl could sew, and sing a little, and speak a few words of Italian everyone was quite content. But now . . .’ she waved her little withered hand expressively, and the lace ruffles which she wore at her wrists fluttered. She was an exquisite, expensive-looking little thing—the most complete and cared-for object that Armstrong had yet seen in the house. For upon everything else there rested a certain incompleteness, of either too much or too little use: the one showing in worn edges or threadbare patches, the other in a reverence which placed objects under glass cases or handled them over-carefully. The pompous Pym was an emblem of the latter, and a drear youth in livery too evidently adapted from a line of predecessors emphasised the former.
As she made this pause Armstrong found himself without any word to say. The extraordinarily unexpected twists and turns in the conversation, or rather monologue, which had led from a newspaper correspondent to the change in education, all accomplished during the two shortest dinner-courses—soup and fish—paralysed his faculties. The rest of the party seemed to experience the same eclipse. Mr Delane-Morton, who had lapsed into discontented gloom, was addressing disconnected remarks to Godfrey, whilst Arthur and his sister sat side by side in the mutest fashion. Armstrong noticed that no one had spoken to Miss Josephine since they sat down to dinner.
When she was not eating she remained with her eyes cast abstractedly upon her knives and forks, and when she did raise her eyes it was to cast rapid glances at each one of the persons around the table in turn. She had a singularly quick and defiant way of looking at anyone that was almost a challenge.
There seemed to be no help except in the weather, which had already formed the prelude or dinner-march of the evening, when a sudden impulse forced him to ask the old lady if there were any secret panels or hiding-places in her chronicle of antiquities. Miss Josephine looked up at him in her sharp fashion and made as if to speak.
The old lady shook her head, protesting that he was over-exacting of the house, and that he must be contented with the little feast rather than the plenteous banquet. If the table had not been so preternaturally long that Miss Josephine appeared almost a league’s distance away, he would have ventured to ask her for the banished remark. Her very silence, her abruptness presented themselves as virtues in face of urbanity and talkativeness as contrasted by the rest.
Dinner moved ponderously along, and at length reached the moment when wine was placed upon the table, and Miss Josephine rose to retire. A sudden animation of the family accompanied this movement, as though it were the signal for some strategical manoeuvre: at the same instant Pym emerged with pomp from the shadows of a flanking screen, and he, together with Godfrey, bore Aunt Ellen, her chair, and her laces with reverence from the room. Armstrong watched the small procession cross the hall, followed by Arthur carrying a footstool, and Mr Delane-Morton with the ostensible purpose of opening the door, which he did after having kept the procession waiting some seconds. Then the two women vanished into the shadows, the men returning to their wine and cigarettes. But not for long.
‘We usually sit in the library after dinner, and smoke there to keep my sister company,’ explained Mr Delane-Morton with an air of unconscious ruefulness, and presently with the same ruefulness the entire party followed in the direction the women had taken.
The ‘library’ was gloomy, oak-panelled, low-ceiled. It was almost innocent of books, one large case alone sustaining its title to the name. The two little women sat in the midst of the gloom on either side the fireplace with empty hands, and silence only as an occupation. Miss Josephine had a newspaper across her knees at which she frowned from time to time, as though it were an enemy she wished to attack but did not dare. Mr Delane-Morton drew up chairs for himself and Armstrong before the hearth, Godfrey completed the circle, and Arthur hung on the outskirts. There was chat between the two elders and their guest. Armstrong acknowledged a kind of perverted charm about the old lady such as spoilt beings, brute or human, generally manage to acquire—a certain habit of expectation that fulfilled its ends. The time passed almost pleasantly.
‘I’m sure those panels near the fireplace were meant for use,’ said Armstrong at last.
‘Try and see,’ said the brother and sister, smiling at their own suggestion.
‘Let us see who can find the hidden place first,’ Armstrong returned.
‘Quite a delightful game. How amusing you are!’ cried the little old lady, chuckling gleefully. The whole party arose and began a careful tapping and scratching of the oak. Only Miss Josephine soon returned to her seat.
‘Shirking, Ape’s-face!’ said Arthur. She shrugged.
No hollow sounds responding to their efforts the party presently resumed their former positions and desultory conversation. The firelight and an ill-trimmed lamp illumined the scene only scantily. It was during a pause, which this dimness seemed to appropriate, that the wood panelling gave one of those curious sudden cracks so familiar to the wakeful sleeper in old houses.
There is something almost intentionally malign in the sound, like a jesting boggart. The two women jumped.
Conversation continued but heralded the final move to bed, when the panelling again uttered its protest.
‘We seem to have disturbed it,’ said Armstrong, and the dim silence again descended on the company.
‘A protest to your touch, dear Mr. Armstrong.’
Again the noise traversed silence, this time with a continued heaving sound as of something trying to get free. It came rather oddly, and somehow held the group in a strained attention. The crack expanded to a creak, the creak to a noise like the rending of woodwork, and then with a crash a portion of the panelling fell out on to the floor at Ape’s-face’s elbow, barely missing her in its fall
. Behind it left a dark and yawning space about the size of an ordinary paving-stone. The family sat and gaped upon it with a sort of awe.
‘How very queer, dear Mr Armstrong,’ said the old lady. ‘John, do pick it up, and let Arthur ring for Pym to sweep up all those untidy chips. I’m sure that’s a cobweb. Godfrey, do find me a duster!’
This recall to the uses of civilisation roused Mr Delane-Morton from his seat, and induced him to gather up the fallen panel. He then proceeded cautiously to the aperture in the wall and peered within.
‘Dear me,’ he said, ‘I think I see a few old books.’
Armstrong struck a match and held it against the darkness. The flame flickered and the coldness of stone struck against his hand. Mr Delane-Morton reached for the match-box and imitated his guest.
‘Perhaps you would not mind lifting them on to the table for me,’ he said. Armstrong complied. There were only three gaping volumes of thick parchment, two bound in brown calf-skin, the other one unbound. But for them the cupboard was empty. They were laid upon the table and the family crowded round. There was a brief silence whilst Mr Morton turned the leaves. He could not read the writing within.
‘Ah!’ sighed the little old lady from her distant chair, ‘dear Mr Armstrong, will you not tell me what they have found?’ The implied reproof, reproach, or whatever it might be, caused a flutter in the circle, bringing Mr Delane-Morton, books and all, to her knee. She too turned the leaves, frustrated.
‘We turn to you,’ she said, looking up at Armstrong.
Having held back a little, he now came forward to examine. The unbound book was merely an account-book, but the others contained the manuscript of John Morton’s work on the Soul.
Ape's Face Page 3
