‘“I’ve got another bed. Marcus will probably break the new one which is delightful, except when he’s in it: gilt and adorable lovers’ knots. Hah! The old one could only be tolerable for a honeymoon while your attention is being well distracted. An ark! A sarcophagus! It is gone to some attic. I believe the servants sleep upstairs except, of course, the running footman. We have a new one, I hear. Marcus says he has been here two months, but one doesn’t notice servants’ faces.
‘“I wish they’d learn to call me ‘Madame’; they say ‘Mam’ or what sounds like ‘Mum’. Terrible! If I can manage their language they ought to mine. I speak English quite nicely now, though I do relapse into French, I’m told — when I’m excited or annoyed, I suppose. One is annoyed, oftener.
‘“With evenings dark and cold the garden is largely closed to me and our nightly round of cards and solitaire lies before me. The grounds of Delaye are beautiful — no manner or chic, but open and a little formal, like the English themselves. No fuss.
‘“The temple I had built is finished and looks far too new and as out of place as I, and the peacocks and I make a charming effect when I sit there sewing or writing, only there is nobody to admire us. Marcus sets store by the peacocks, the only artistic trait I have observed in him. He won’t admit it and when I chaff him says that peacocks are an appurtenance of what he called ‘Landed gentlemen. (Haute Noblesse?) England is full of landed gentlemen. Here, they aren’t quite Noblesse or Haute, but in good standing. This trick of calling themselves ‘Roundelay’ I find ridiculous, when they are Rohan de l’Oeux. False modesty, I expect. I won’t do it. It annoys Marcus so much, poor man.”’
Winchcombe, his eyes still on the album, said, ‘And that was to be her downfall, poor little thing. One can see, now, how that fixed French outlook must have overflowed when she returned to her own country, making her more French than the French, out of pure cussedness and relief, fairly oozing caste at a time when the bottom was being knocked out of privilege . . . Er — what the dickens do “d’ailleurs” and “d’abord” mean? I never can remember.’
Angela fluttered the dictionary. ‘“Moreover” and “at first”.’
‘Oh. Ah . . . “Moreover, it’s snobbery, as though to be of French descent had to palliated, though at first it amused me to be ‘Missis Roundelay.’ When one’s in love one will accept anything, it’s nature’s way of cheating us: one of them, for the sake of the family, of course, and I haven’t even one child, yet. Extraordinary in the circumstances!”’ (At this point, Basil Winchcombe flicked an eye of tentative apprehension at Angela Roundelay, but her answering smile was amused and appreciative.) “‘I would love a daughter. There aren’t enough women to talk to, here. She must be just like me, Rohan de l’Oeux looks won’t come out so well in women as they do in men: we St. Lunaires are all dark and small and a little becomingly pale, that ceruse looks well on. I am glad I am well stocked with cosmetics, they don’t understand these things in England, certainly not in the country. Marcus will be disappointed about having a daughter, and his vanity piqued, but he has the estate and his dogs and his foxes to amuse him.
‘“Our chief diversion of late has been a round of autumn visits to big houses in this and other counties, returning late the same day. I become abominably sleepy and fatigued. Being driven for hours is always tiring, yet the coach is more comfortable than our French ones. Even looking out of the window loses its novelty after a few miles and sometimes there is nothing to see for hours except hedges and fields and, if the road takes a curve, the footman running in front. I watch him out of sheer boredom and wonder when the horses will catch him up, as they sometimes do, which makes Marcus angry and the coachman sulky, and shout at him. Once, he actually got left behind by the coach and Marcus said if it happened again he’d have to go. And, of course, it does look bad to arrive in a village and see your courier whooping for breath in a ditch fifty yards behind, as if the horses sat down suddenly and refused to stir. But the harness keeps them in their place and Marcus would never permit the coachman to overdrive them, they are so valuable, and Marcus actually knows their names.”’
Winchcombe’s hand lay for a second on Angela’s wrist as he made a brief, involuntary pause in the reading.
‘“I suppose they get tired? One doesn’t think of them in that way because it’s their job, any more than one would go into the kitchen and ask the cook if she liked stirring soup.”’
‘And so on, and so on,’ murmured Winchcombe, turning the pages, ‘nothing for us until — oh, here, some weeks later:
‘“This evening, when home from a long drive I saw a servantmaid loitering at the back-door to one of the kitchens. She was crying.”
‘And, from entries covering another three weeks:
‘“Does this girl spend her time in tears? My curiosity is aroused, and I must make enquiries. Besides, it is depressing to be greeted by this spectacle when getting, tired and stiff, out of the coach. I think it unlikely that the girl ought even to be in sight on our returns.
‘“I asked who she was, to-day, and it seems she is a kitchen-maid here. I gave her a comfit, she was so alarmed at being spoken to! When I gave her the comfit she curtseyed and wept anew. A fountain! I left her to it. My maid was disapproving and hinted that Madame mustn’t trop s’encanailler.”’
Angela here applied herself to the dictionary, but Winchcombe said, ‘You won’t find it; it’s a nice portmanteau verb for which there’s no exact English equivalent. Marguerite doesn’t tell us if this maid was French or local: if the latter she probably said “You don’t want to demean yourself, M’m”. It means a lowering, a mild form of touching pitch, or social defilement, like our vicar says I risk doing when I try and play darts at The Coach and Horses here.’
‘“The worst of initial good deeds is that you are impelled to follow them up! If I could have stopped at a comfit and a smile all might have been different, but curiosity and boredom together have done their work. Bore a woman enough, deprive her at one blow of modiste, milliner, mantua-maker, friseur and light conversation and it’s a hundred to one but that she’ll start being philanthropic. This, ‘Polly’, I see now, is quite ruining her looks, for she is pretty, in her way — was, rather, for a face abreuvée — ”’
(‘Soaked’ supplied Angela)
‘ — “with tears gives no girl a chance and I suppose she expects to marry one day or where would our future servants come from? though heaven knows where and how they contrive to, in places like Delaye.
‘“The girl scuttles whenever she sees me, now. It’s an incalculable class. She’s probably conceived a humble, squalid little passion for Marcus. What a joke! Droits de Seigneur. Do they have that in England, too?”
‘And two weeks later:
‘“Glancing out of the coach this afternoon I saw we had a new footman, though ‘new’ as applied to such a sorry object is not at all the right word. Thin as a rake and his face a kind of blue-white and when we returned home the girl ‘Polly’ was on the main staircase. Even I know she should not be in this part of the house at such a time. It is impertinence and I am outraged after my condescension. Is she then a pilferer? . . .
‘“This evening I saw ‘Polly’ once more and there was something in her hand, so I was right. As though one hasn’t enough to worry and sadden and enrage one, with the packet delayed and no news out of France for two weeks, and Maman and Clymène in the hands of the rabble for all I know. Has France gone quite mad? Even if the harvest has failed there’ll be another one next year. And who is this Danton? We seem to know nothing of him until he is the talk of the town and apparently all-powerful and a sort of dictator. That system won’t last. The Bourbons aren’t perfect but they are gentlemen, and if there are injustices, Royalty at least gives the mob something picturesque to look at, and inherited dynastic faults are surely more tolerable than those which you elect and set up yourself to rule you — like the difference between a father and a husband: the former is a providence for good or i
ll, the latter the outcome of caprice, your own fault if he turns bad on your hands. We haven’t even been outside our own gates for three weeks.
‘“Still no news.
‘“A letter at last! Maman writes that as far as they can see, life in Paris is far more nearly normal than is believed, though those iniquitous executions go on. Even Tussaud carries on with his wax models! Plenty of subjects now, when the knife falls. Ugh! As for life aux environs, except that the lower classes are looking sulky there is nothing sensational toward. The Chateau de St. Enogat was visited by some rapscallions with scythes — the insolence of it! — but M. le Marquis strolled into their midst and told them some of his best stories and made them rather tipsy and they went, roaring with laughter and very unsteadily. And they want to ‘down’ men like the Marquis! Blood tells. They think so, too, but their solution is to shed it. Tragic foolery! The people aren’t fit to govern the country: they can’t even govern themselves and their lusts. And the family want me to come over. Oh God, how I’d love to!
‘“. . . That girl again. This time, I saw her skirts vanishing up the main staircase above my bedroom. I called her, had her into my room, and at long last she told me that she and this fellow, the running footman, are in love. I said ‘Which one?’ thinking of the new scarecrow I had observed from the coach window, and she stared, and said he was the same man who had been in our service for months.
‘“I was shocked. So he is as ill as that? Unrecognizable. And they cannot marry on his wage, I suppose? I asked, and reached for my purse, but it wasn’t that, she explained, but he is dying. I said, ‘Take me to him’, and then she began to be terrified and to cry again. I waited — the only way with these people, and at last she confessed that she had smuggled him upstairs to nurse, using the front staircase to avoid comment in the kitchen. She knew, they both did, the presumption of it, and the danger of dismissal, and it fretted him all the time. The cook was glad to be rid of the sight of him in the kitchens: his home is in the village, too far for him to attempt — now, and he was always too tired to visit it often, with the long runs he must make. He had, of course, never had a place of his own at Delaye, and it was the beautiful bed of ‘Ma’am’ (that ark!) which had tempted her. He has never lain soft in his life. The whole affair began through pity — that fatal snare of us women! The ‘Polly’ girl used to admire him when first he came to Delaye; she told me he was young and handsome and a picture when he ran . . . as time went on, he lost looks, weight — everything. She knew it wasn’t right, but she used to watch for his returns with the coach to see how he had stood the day, and always he was whiter and more blown, too exhausted to eat. She would help him to wash, when the other servants were scattered, but there was little privacy in the outer kitchen . . .”’
Over the next four lines the compassionate eye of Basil Winchcombe ran swiftly and he deliberately omitted them from the reading. Details of illness, of such an illness, were not for the ears or imagination of Angela when recorded from the stark statement of a servant by the practical realism of a Frenchwoman.
‘“She says that now he is living like the gentry, and is so proud of it.
‘“I have just come down from that bleak servant’s room, writing in my diary to take my mind off.
‘“The man (it is ‘Peacock’, I find, and means Paon) is dying, no doubt of that. He has consumption. I saw, and bit back a scream of pity and — I must confess it — disgust. It is terrible. He tried to struggle to his feet when I came in, but the girl said ‘She is our friend, Thomas,’ and then begged my pardon which I freely gave. He was incredulous, relieved and distressed; he feared he had fouled the fine sheets (they were servants’ sheets, coarse cotton: ‘Polly’ has taken them from her own bed).
‘“I sat by his side. I believe I took his hand — who cares? I told him the room was his henceforth. He couldn’t speak much. My mind was confused with sorrow so that, the girl told me, I spoke to him in French. I remember, now. I said, ‘Poor lad, you’ve run so far, to-day,’ and promised him it should never happen again. He hasn’t of course. We haven’t made an expedition for weeks. And yet, though he was all lackey’s gratitude, I think his wrongs have bitten very deep. Can he really forgive? Who knows? They are never themselves with Us.
‘“By the bed I saw pieces of food that the girl had brought him, the best bits from her own meals, she admitted, although I doubt but that it has come too late.
‘“I have told Marcus about it: what’s a husband for if not to sympathize? And I am going to France. For he was coldly angry with me — no noise or scenes, but the Englishman’s edged incisiveness, like a rapier that cuts. I had overstepped my province . . . the menservants were his affair . . . I had grossly encouraged the staff to presume . . . run the risk of infection . . . made an awkward situation, and so on and so on. I said I was going out of England on a long visit; he said I should not. I said he had lost my heart and if he cared to detain my body he was without pride. That stung him, and he gave permission at once with eyes like chill blue steel. The English have a sense of justice: I salute that, at least. I made him promise that the man shall be allowed to remain up there, and he assented, too proud to argue such an affair. He will keep his word, I know him well enough to know that.”’
(‘And so he may have,’ interpolated Winchcombe, ‘but he sacked Polly at no notice afterwards!’)
‘“The packet sails at sunset to-morrow. I have given ‘Polly’ two papers written ‘He is better’ and ‘He is dead’, and my address and a sum of money. I shall entrust my diary to her — not safe, here! but she can’t read my language, or her own? I may come back, or I may not. It will depend on Marcus.”’
Basil Winchcombe closed the book at that final entry.
‘And fate disposed of that domestic problem. Well, well . . .’
‘And Marguerite never had the daughter who was to be “exactly like” her.’
The clergyman’s glance rested speculatively upon Angela’s face.
‘M’m, no . . . no. A pity . . . and no indication of where Peacock is buried. One sees now what made him scrawl those words on the pane: the proud sense of possession and dignity that Marguerite was perceptive enough to give him . . . his room . . . his grand bed (that ark!). I think I should have liked Marguerite.’
‘Oh yes!’
He smote the table with his fist. ‘What I’d give something to know is: did old Granny Privett know about this diary?’
‘She couldn’t read French, I think, even if she did know of it.’
He grinned. ‘Perhaps not; but as Marguerite would say, I am now sufficiently “Enrohané” to suspect her!’
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know. That, my dear, is the essence of being enrohané.’
Through the second little window which overlooked the street a small procession filed into the village. It consisted of Dickon wheeling a barrow full of cut flowers and Miss Jessie Roundelay bearing a basket of potatoes and onions. With her other hand she mirthlessly clasped a giant marrow to her bosom.
They turned into the churchyard.
TAILPIECE
1
QUITE often, when shopping in Norminster, the residents and those from surrounding estates and villages remember to throw into their temporary farewells a little something about the war, though, by now, all have omitted to bring in their gas-masks.
Dolly’s goes on and on: her cakes are wonderfully as before, her prices slightly more so, her prestige unassailed. No less than three of the Archbishop’s evacuated boys are now, to their helpless consternation, actually in the cathedral choir. They do not know how it happened. One, still feeling his upheaval and realizing that in this epoch anything may happen, is even experimenting with the hobby of good behaviour. Everything once.
Mrs. Galbraith’s cats are all reprieved, as their owner now believes that as there was no air-raid over the village on that fatal Sunday or even upon the following Monday, there will now be none at all, the Germans having obviously o
verlooked the county of Normanshire.
There is already talk of re-opening Guild Hall and City walls to the public, while innumerable shops have removed from across their windows those zig-zags of buff paper designed for protection against non-arriving splinters, so that the goods are now seen to full advantage. Occasionally a British bomber, outward bound, zooms over the ancient city, to the singular non-disturbance of its soul. Indeed, a far more significant sign of upheaval lies in the homely fact that owing to present restrictions upon meat, the confection of Norminster’s celebrated ‘puddings’ can now no longer be undertaken. An army marches on its stomach, but the evanishment from their lives of an institution as stable as and far more warming than the Church of England goes deeper than creature comfort, and trenches perilously upon the realms of sentiment, and to tamper with the feelings of a citizen is a dangerous thing, from which, blindly, instinctively, evolves the heartier bayonet thrust, the grimmer determination.
A Footman for the Peacock Page 24