‘We shan’t wait, Gudgeon,’ said Mr Leslie. ‘Her ladyship will be late.’
‘Very good, sir,’ said Gudgeon pityingly. There was very little about the family that Gudgeon did not know before they knew it themselves.
‘When are you expecting your niece, Mrs Graham?’ asked Mr Macpherson.
‘Tomorrow for lunch. She was seeing her mother off today.’
‘Let me see,’ said Mr Macpherson, who prided himself upon knowing every ramification of the Leslie family, ‘she will be the daughter of Colonel Graham’s eldest sister, I’m thinking, the one that married Colonel Preston that was killed in the War.’
‘Yes, that’s it. My eldest brother was in his regiment, you remember, as a subaltern. They were killed about the same time, poor darlings. Mrs Preston has never been very well since then.’
‘I mind it now,’ said Mr Macpherson, ‘and there was but the one child, this Miss Mary. I saw her the once, here, when she was only a lassie.’
‘She is such a darling, we all adore her. It is so sad for her that her mother has to go abroad, so Mother and I thought she had better come here for the summer.’
‘What does Mrs Preston want to go abroad for?’ asked Mr Leslie.
‘I think her doctor wanted her to, Father,’ said Agnes.
‘Doctors!’ said Mr Leslie, wiping the whole of the Royal College of Physicians off the face of the world with this withering remark.
‘And when do you expect your husband back, Mrs Graham?’ continued Mr Macpherson, bent on bringing his family knowledge up to date.
‘I don’t quite know. It is so annoying,’ said Agnes in a gently plaintive voice. ‘The War Office said three months, but you never know. And it really takes quite some time to get back from South America, you know. But what is very nice is that he has seen Father’s bull out there.’
‘Not Rushwater Robert?’ asked Mr Macpherson.
‘Yes, he was champion at Buenos Aires and Robert, I mean my Robert, not the bull, saw Robert at the show. But he didn’t know him.’
‘Then how did he know it was Robert?’ asked Mr Leslie.
‘He didn’t, Father, that was the sad part. Darling Robert looked at him with his lovely great eyes, but he had forgotten him. And when you think that he was called after him!’ Agnes sighed comfortably.
‘There was something to be said for the Romans having more than one kind of personal pronoun,’ said John, to no one in particular. Mr Leslie grappled mentally with the difference between his prize bull and his son-in-law, but Agnes’s next remark drove it out of his head.
‘Can Weston meet Mary tomorrow, Father?’ she asked.
‘Meet who? Oh, Mary, yes, of course, Mary Preston. Bless me, I remember her mother quite well at your wedding, Agnes. Why does she take any notice of the doctors? Why doesn’t she come here? She might take the vicarage, Banister, if you really want to let it.’
‘But my dear Leslie, I have already let the vicarage, as I told Lady Emily last week.’
At this moment Lady Emily came in with her head ennobled in fine lace and a large silk shawl clutched round her.
‘What did you tell me last week, Mr Banister?’ she asked as she arranged herself in her chair. ‘Gudgeon, take my stick and put it there; no, just there in the corner. And have I got a footstool? Yes, here it is; I can feel it with my foot. Was it about your tenants, Vicar? I know you did tell me something about them and I must call on them, only I can’t go till Tuesday, because Sunday is Sunday, and then,’ she continued with the air of one who has brought to birth a profound thought, ‘Monday is Monday, and, Henry, we must see about having Mary Preston met at the station. Do you remember her father, Colonel Preston, Mr Macpherson? He was here once before the War. Well, about your tenants, Mr Banister, Tuesday is Tuesday, and then I hope to be able to go. What is that?’ she inquired of Walter, who was handing her a dish.
‘Eggs in mushroom sauce, my lady.’
‘Oh, I see, you have all got on to the second course. No, not egg. Give me some of what it is you are all having. Chicken? Give me some chicken. Mr Macpherson, I was thinking in church this morning about the cricket pavilion roof, but Henry tells me you mended it last October. Oh, Walter, that is too much chicken. I’ll put some on the vicar’s salad plate as he has finished his salad, and then you can bring back the eggs and I’ll have some of everything all together. Do you think Tuesday will do?’
‘My tenants,’ said Mr Banister, who had been vainly endeavouring to get a word in, ‘don’t come till August, Lady Emily, but if you will be kind enough to call upon them when they do come, it will be very good of you.’
‘Oh, August,’ said Lady Emily rather dashed. ‘Then I had better not call on them on Tuesday. Henry,’ she called to her husband at the other end of the table, ‘who do you think I have had a letter from?’
‘Can’t say, my dear.’
‘Wait a minute, I had it somewhere,’ said Lady Emily, turning out the contents of a large bag on the table. ‘No, it isn’t here. Gudgeon, tell Walter to ask Conque for a large flat basket in my bedroom with some letters in it. Not the small round basket with the green edge, because that has only answered letters in it. I can’t think why I keep answered letters,’ she said to the company generally, flashing a self-deprecating look on them, ‘but some day I must really go through them and burn some. David, you shall help me and we will have great fun reading them before we burn them. But it is not that basket, Gudgeon, but the other basket which has my painting things and a dead thrush in it. Martin, did I tell you I found a dead thrush on my window-sill this morning, and I don’t know what to do with it?’
‘Oh, the poor darling,’ said Agnes.
‘Can I have it for a funeral?’ asked James, raising his head from his chocolate pudding.
‘Yes, darling, of course. Well then, Gudgeon, I want the dead thrush and a letter with a coronet on the back of it. And who are your tenants, Mr Banister?’ said her ladyship, who however far she divagated always returned to her subject in the long run.
‘Very delightful people. I am sure you will like them. I met them in Touraine last year, where I went to see my old friend, Somers, who keeps a coaching establishment.’
‘Will he bring Mrs Somers too?’ asked Lady Emily, who had minced her chicken up into small pieces and was eating it and tepid egg with a spoon, with apparent relish.
‘No, it isn’t Somers who is taking the vicarage. It is some friends of Somers’s called Boulle.’
‘Funny thing,’ said Mr Leslie, ‘I have never met anyone called Bull in France. Plenty of people called Bull in England, of course.’
‘Not Bull, Leslie, Boulle. They are French.’
‘Like something out of the Wallace Collection, Father,’ said David helpfully.
‘Good name for your young champion,’ said John. ‘Rushwater Boulle.’
‘First time I ever heard Bull was a French name,’ said Mr Leslie, sticking manfully to his guns.
‘I believe the family is Alsatian,’ said Mr Banister.
‘You might make a joke about Alsatians and Boulledogs,’ said Martin.
‘No, you mightn’t,’ said David.
Here Gudgeon came back with a silver tray on which were the dead thrush and a letter.
‘Oh, thanks,’ said Lady Emily. ‘Gudgeon, put the poor bird in a box and Master James can have it as soon as he has finished lunch.’
‘Can I get down now?’ said James, rapidly spooning the last of his second helping into his mouth. Permission being given, he pushed his chair back, took possession of the corpse, and left the room.
‘Has anyone seen my spectacles?’ inquired Lady Emily. ‘Gudgeon, tell Conque I want some spectacles and I must manage somehow till she finds them.’
‘Let me read the letter for you, Mother,’ said David, coming round and pulling a chair between his mother and Mr Macpherson. ‘It’s from a person called Holt, Yours sincerely C. W. Holt. He wants to come to lunch tomorrow and see the garden, and he is staying w
ith Lord Capes at Capes Castle, and he wants you to send the car to fetch him as Lord Capes’s is not available. He seems to have considerable aplomb, Mamma, whoever he is.’
‘Well, he’s really a very nice little man,’ began Lady Emily, but Mr Leslie interrupted her.
‘He’s an infernal bore, Emily. Last time he came here he invited himself for a night and stayed for three, and treated the car as if it were his own. He talks about nothing but gardens and his titled friends. I can’t stand the fellow, no more can anyone else. He invites himself to people’s houses and they are too good-natured to say they don’t want him. I shouldn’t wonder if he is keeping a diary about us all and means to publish it when he is dead, like that Weevle fellow or whatever his name was.’
‘Creevey,’ said David.
‘Greville,’ said Banister at the same moment.
‘Jobling,’ said John, under his breath, for his own satisfaction.
‘I said Weevle,’ said Mr Leslie angrily. ‘Emily, must you have him?’
‘Not if you’d rather not, Henry. Thanks, Gudgeon. Oh, it’s the wrong pair, but I dare say I can manage. You see, he says Lord Capes is going to town and he will be all alone, and as he is going on to the Nortons we are really on his way, and I can’t help feeling sorry for him.’
‘Well, Mamma,’ said David, ‘the Nortons are thirty miles away on the other side of the county, but I dare say in the eye of the Almighty – sorry, Mr Banister – it’s the same thing.’
‘Look here, Emily,’ said the exasperated Mr Leslie, ‘the car can’t fetch Holt from Lord Capes and meet the train for Mary Preston, that’s all.’
‘But, Henry, if Weston went early to fetch Mr Holt, and got him here about twelve, he would have plenty of time to go on and meet Mary. She is coming to Southbridge because there aren’t any good trains to Rushwater on Whit Monday.’
‘Gran,’ said Martin, ‘couldn’t I take the Ford over to Southbridge.’
‘Certainly not,’ said his grandfather.
‘But I could run the Ford over, Father,’ said David, ‘and Martin can come with me. So that’s all right.’
‘Then, Gudgeon,’ said her ladyship, ‘tell Weston he will be wanted tomorrow to fetch Mr Holt from Lord Capes’s in time for lunch. I suppose he had better leave here about eleven o’clock, at least, I don’t really know how long it takes to get there, because last time we went, you remember, Martin, we were coming from London, so of course it took several hours, but I dare say Weston knows. And then, David, you and Martin had better leave with the Ford at—Oh, what time does Mary’s train get there, Agnes?’
‘Gudgeon will see about it, Mamma,’ said Agnes. ‘He always knows everything. Let’s come in the drawing-room now, because the children will be coming down for their afternoon walk.’
‘Oh, but one moment,’ said Lady Emily, rewinding her shawl round her. ‘My stick, Gudgeon. What about Mr Banister’s tenants? Am I to call on Madame Boulle this week? And is she a widow?’
‘My dear Lady Emily, I don’t know what I can have said to lead you to think that she is a widow—’ began the vicar.
‘Frenchwomen are all widows,’ said Mr Leslie. ‘Look at them.’
‘But Alsatians are different,’ added David, with great presence of mind.
‘No, no, she has a husband and two or three young people. They are in some way connected with a French university. In fact, both M. Boulle and his eldest son are, I believe, professors. They just want a month’s holiday in England. They take in paying-guests in France, young men and women who want to study French for business, or for a degree. Delightful and cultivated people.’
‘I shall certainly call on them,’ said Lady Emily, “but not before Tuesday. Now we must go and see James’s funeral.’
The vicar excused himself on the grounds of a children’s service. Mr Leslie and his agent went off to look at the young bull, while the rest of the party rejoiced James’s heart by following the thrush to its wormy home.
3
Arrival of a Toady
It was the habit of Lady Emily’s children and grandchildren to make her bedroom a kind of family council chamber. She herself believed, and told all her friends, that she used the hour between nine and ten for writing her letters and getting through any business connected with the house. But as this was the only time of day when her family could be sure of finding her in a given place, her room was usually a melting-pot for the day’s plans.
On Whit Monday morning at half-past nine Lady Emily was still wrapped in two large Shetland shawls, her head swathed in folds of soft cashmere pinned with diamond brooches. On her bed were a breakfast tray, the large flat basket of letters, the small round basket with the green edge which contained answered correspondence, a large piece of embroidery, several books, another basket of combs and pins, and some newspapers. On a table by her side were a paint-box, a glass of water, and a white paper fan, which she was decorating with a dashing design of fishes and seaweed. The large bedroom was crammed to overflowing with family relics, and examples of the various arts in which Lady Emily had brilliantly dabbled at one time or another. Part of one wall was decorated with a romantic landscape painted on the plaster, the fourpost bed was hung with her own skilful embroidery, watercolour drawings in which a touch of genius fought and worsted an entire want of technique hung on the walls. Pottery, woodcarving, enamels, all bore witness to their owner’s insatiable desire to create.
From their earliest days the Leslie children had thought of their mother as doing or making something, handling brush, pencil, needle with equal enthusiasm, coming in late to lunch with clay in her hair, devastating the drawing-room with her far-flung painting materials, taking cumbersome pieces of embroidery on picnics, disgracing everyone by a determination to paint the village cricket pavilion with scenes from the life of St Francis for which she made the gardeners pose. What Mr Leslie thought no one actually knew, for Mr Leslie had his own ways of life and rarely interfered. Once only had he been known to make a protest. In the fever of an enamelling craze, Lady Emily had a furnace put up in the service-room, thus making it extremely difficult for Gudgeon and the footman to get past, and moreover pressing the footman as her assistant when he should have been laying lunch. On this occasion Mr Leslie had got up from the lunch-table, ordered the car, had himself driven straight to London, and gone on a cruise to the Northern Capitals of Europe, which were not so essentially foreign as more southern parts. When he returned, the enamelling phase had abated and the furnace had been moved to the cellar.
Agnes Graham was sitting in the window, looking over the gardens, with Clarissa, her youngest, on her lap. Agnes was not so tall as her mother, whose dark hair and eyes she had inherited. She had an appealing smile and a very gentle voice, which she never took the trouble to raise. Her marriage had been settled for her, to her entire satisfaction, by her mother, who, despairing of ever marrying a daughter who had gone through two seasons without appearing capable of showing any preference of any kind, had told Colonel Graham to declare himself. When Robert Graham had disentangled from his future mother-in-law’s very discursive remarks what it was she wanted to say, he had at once proposed to Agnes, who said she dared say it would be very nice to marry dear Robert, and the affair was concluded. She now lived in a state of perfectly contented subjection to her adoring husband and children. Her intelligence was bounded by her house and her exquisite needlework, and to any further demands made by life she always murmured, ‘I shall ask Robert.’ When Robert’s sister, Mrs Preston, had been ordered abroad for the summer, it was Robert who offered to pay for her stay at a Swiss clinic, while Agnes so far exerted herself as to write to her mother and say how nice it would be if darling Mary could go to Rushwater for the summer, especially as she and the children were to be there while Robert went on a mission to South America, and Mary was always so good with the children. She was the special favourite of her elder brother John, who often wondered lovingly how anyone could be quite such a divine idiot as A
gnes.
On the floor James and his other sister, Emmy, were doing a large jigsaw puzzle, assisted by John. Emmy was a stout and determined young woman of five of whom her elder brother was rather in awe.
‘All the same, John,’ said Agnes in her comfortable, placid voice, ‘you might let the children have their fair share. You have got more green and blue bits than anyone could possibly want over on your side.’
‘I am concentrating on the trees and the sky,’ said John. ‘James is doing the dark bits which are either somebody’s clothes or a railway engine, we aren’t quite sure which yet. This is called division of labour. Emmy has been trying for ten minutes to fit two bits together that anyone can see with half an eye bear no relation to each other. This is called determination, or imbecility.’
‘Imbecility, I expect,’ said Agnes fondly. ‘She is the silliest of a clever family, just like me. Darling Emmy.’
‘It is spiritual pride to run yourself down like that, Agnes,’ said Lady Emily from her bed. ‘How old is Robert’s niece now?’
‘Mary? About twenty-three, I think. You will like her so much, Mamma, and she sings so nicely, and she can help you with your village mothers and things. She will love to help.’
‘But isn’t the poor girl coming here to rest?’ asked John. ‘Someone said something about a breakdown.’
‘No, not a breakdown. But Robert’s sister is really rather selfish and she makes poor Mary quite a slave, so Mary got quite run down, and when her mother had to go abroad, Robert said he thought it would be a good thing for Mary to come here. Running down is quite different from breaking down.’
There was a knock at the door and David came in.
‘Good morning, Mamma,’ he said. ‘May I just finish my cigarette, or shall I chuck it out of the window? Here’s a telegram for you, Agnes. I know what you are thinking. Your offspring are all here under your eyes, so they can’t have fallen into the fire or broken their legs. Therefore it must be Robert. Shall I open it for you and tell you the worst?’
Wild Strawberries: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC) Page 3
