by Robert Neill
At Hammersmith they pulled suddenly to the side of the road, all but off it, as the Exeter mail came storming up, perhaps a little late, and sweating the horses for the last few miles. It went roaring past, maroon and black turned grey with dust, guard blaring his horn to assert right of way, and the incident seemed to rouse Wickham from his thoughts. He glanced back at the receding mail-coach with its three ‘outsides’ clinging to their seats.
‘What a way to travel!’ he remarked. ‘That’s how I came up, and there’s no comfort anywhere. It’s what you pay for speed, I suppose.’
‘It’s probably better inside.’
‘I was inside. Apart from that, you get nothing to eat.’
‘But the thing stops?’
‘For fifteen minutes, and the inns know all about it. They bring you your dinner at the thirteenth minute, and the soup’s scalding hot.’
‘Oh, I see. We’ll do it better today, I hope.’
‘We certainly will. What’s your notion of dinner-time, by the way?’
‘I don’t know. I was surprised to find it six o’clock in London.’
‘So was I. It used to be half past four. At home we dine at half past three, and Barford has it at four. I should call that late enough for anyone.’
‘It’s long enough to last from breakfast.’
‘Of course it is. But have you noticed that these London people are putting another meal into the day now? I don’t mean the cake and sherry. That’s reasonable, but some of them are putting a regular meal in. Luncheon, they call it. Soups and chicken and all sorts of things. Well, let’s stop for dinner about three, shall we? Ah, this looks like the stage.’
They were ten miles out and turning off the road to an inn whose range of stables marked it as a posting house. The chariot rolled into the yard, the postboy hallooing, and the waiting ostlers were at the horses’ heads before they had even stopped. Within a minute another pair were brought out, ready harnessed, and another postboy with them, and Grant sat watching while Wickham went inside to pay the bill, two horses and a postboy for the ten-mile stage. Each ten miles, more or less, on their journey, the process would be repeated. It was expensive, as Wickham remarked, but Barford could afford it. He could call it the delivery charge for his fine new chariot.
‘We’ll go direct to Barford tomorrow,’ he added as they went swaying down the road again. ‘He’ll expect his chariot, and we can’t send it to him empty, with a postboy. We’ll have to deliver it properly. Besides, Mary may be there.’
‘Your sister?’
‘Yes. She’s been staying with him while I was away. Well, we might get to Salisbury tonight, and if so . . .’ He paused to consider it. ‘That should bring us to the Manor about three o’clock. Time for Barford’s dinner if we want it, and then we could walk home across the park.’
That seemed to end the matter, and the sounds of travel came pleasantly into mind again to fill the silence, clop of hooves, jingle of harness, crunch of tyres on the dusty road. It was soporific, a gentle lazy rhythm, and Grant sat back, finding music in it, letting his eyes range down the road ahead, white in the sun between the green of fields. It was a better road than he had known as a boy. Things had improved. All England had improved, and this was a richer countryside than he had known, and one more lovely. There were no wild commons here. All was enclosed, trim green hedges bounding the fields that were stubble now, thick and close from the harvest, or pasture, lush with clover and lucerne, with the sheep and the grazing cows; and in all were the trees, oak and elm and ash and beech, trees by the road, trees in the fields, dotted in clumps or set as a prospect before a house, ranging to a blue horizon, soft in the English haze. There were the houses, the farms and scattered cottages, all trim and clean and painted, each with its garden, and its pigs and hens and geese. There were villages and orchards, white-painted beehives and geese among the grass, and the buildings that served the road, here a smithy, there an alehouse with its tables under the trees. The people matched their country, the smocked and hatted labourers, the gleaners in the stubble, a smith at his anvil, all were strong and healthy, clean and brightly dressed. It was beauty everywhere, and prosperity, as if England had come to wealth in war.
Clop and jingle, crunch of wheels. Ten miles an hour down the Exeter road. This was the way to see it, behind the horses, with the jogging postboy as a splash of colour against the green; broad white hat of beaver, yellow jacket with silver buttons, breeches of clean white corduroy. Grant saw it all, and was in a mood to like it. He was lazily content, drowsy from the steady sound and a night that had not been restful, and this was a change from the sea, from the eternal wind and sky. It was a change from London too, and Hyde Park and . . .
He tried to change the thought, but it would not quite change. The westerly wind would suit the Dover packet, and she would be in France tonight, with . . . Again he stopped, and then he made the thought change. He was better here. He could not have stayed in London, and she was entitled to her choice. There was much to be said for the country--but not, perhaps, everything. He could accept John Wickham and be glad of him, but there would be others in the country, a sister and Lord Barford; and one who would not be in the country. He was less sure now that he had been last night at dinner. Something had happened since.
They arrived as Wickham had foretold. They were at Salisbury that night, and they had four hours more of the road the next morning. Then they turned away, taking now to the country lanes, and it was a quarter past three when they came to tall iron gates, set back from the road in an arch of stone with a gilded crest above. Then there was a gravelled drive between an avenue of beech trees, and at the end of it, as a nicely calculated vista, was the house, dignified and imposing, and apparently modern. It had a classical front, a portico with Doric columns and a frieze and cornice, all as was proper for a nobleman’s home. The house behind all this could, of course, have been older.
‘Oh, that was Barford,’ said Wickham airily. ‘He rebuilt the place when he got his money. It was a bit more than putting a new front on, though. He pretty well gutted the inside. I suppose he had to, if he wanted decent rooms.’
‘It was old-fashioned?’
‘He thought so. Of course, the Barfords have been here for centuries, and they certainly had a Tudor house here--one of those timbered black-and-whites. But it got knocked about in the civil wars, which didn’t do it any good, so when the Barfords came home again they rebuilt. Sixteen-sixty, of course, so by the turn of the century I suppose it really was old-fashioned. I can just remember it--low ceilings, and little rooms. Didn’t go with a peerage at all.’
‘And your own family? Have they been here---‘
‘Oh no. Only since--when was it?--1750. Sixty-five years. That was my grandfather. He was a friend of the Barford of the day--this man’s father. They were in the regiment together. He sold out, and then he had a scandal and more or less had to run for it.’ Wickham chuckled happily. ‘So he came here, with another man’s wife and the village witch. She came too.’
‘With your grandfather?’
‘Yes. I must tell you about it some day. At the moment, though, I’m more interested in Barford’s dinner. He has some uncommonly good port, I may tell you.’
They had crossed the park, and they were emerging from the green shade of the trees into the blaze of sunshine on a broad sweep of gravel that fronted the house. They swung in a wide semicircle as a liveried footman came solemnly down the steps, and from somewhere at the side of the house a groom came running to take the horses’ heads.
‘Here’s Barford,’ said Wickham.
Another man, tall and thin, in white pantaloons and a green tail-coat, had come from the house as the chariot came to a halt by the steps. Wickham spoke with his hand on the chariot door.
‘Just bear in mind,’ he said, ‘he’s straight out of the last century. What they used to call a man of sensibility.’
He stepped out, standing bareheaded in the sunlight as the older man c
ame down the steps. Then he spoke cheerfully.
‘Good-day, sir. Reporting back--and here’s your chariot. I hope you’ll like it.’
‘So do I.’ It was the pleasant easy voice of the man of taste and of the world. ‘I’ll see it better when they’ve washed some dust off it.’
‘Not to be avoided, sir. But meantime . . .’ He turned for a moment. ‘I’ve a friend with me, from the Navy. We once tried beach warfare together. Permit me--Captain Grant.’
‘You’ re very welcome, sir.’ It came at once, with the practised affability of the diplomat. ‘Do you stay with John?’
‘For a few days, my lord.’
‘Then I shall hope to see you here again. But for the moment...’ He glanced quickly at Wickham. ‘You’ll stay to dine with me?’
‘We should like to. But is Mary here?’
‘No. She went home this morning. Said she must have the house ready for you.’
‘She doesn’t know I’ve a guest.’
‘Then I’ll send across to tell her. However . . .’ He pulled his watch from his fob and glanced quickly at it. ‘A bottle of sherry, I think, before we dine. There’s just time for it. And thank you for the chariot.’
He stood for another moment on the steps, slim and straight, contemplating the chariot and carrying easily his sixty years and more. He could have been called good-looking, a man of quality in every sense, dignified and confident, with fine intelligent eyes and a lean spare vigour that told of interests and an abstemious life. There was shrewdness in his clear sharp face, and certainly a worldly sagacity; but then, as he turned for an instant to look straight at Grant, there was a sudden glimpse of something deeper.
‘I’m glad to see you, sir,’ he said again. ‘I--have some ties with the Navy. Pray come in.’ For an instant his eyes seemed tired and sad, but then he turned briskly to the groom, who was still standing with the horses. ‘See these beasts fed. Then dinner for the postboy. Now, if you please.’
He led up the steps, his guests on either side of him, and into a hall that was as classical as the portico, a vaulted ceiling of ornamental plaster carried on fluted Doric columns, a stairway that went sweeping left and right, and tall mahogany doors behind the columns. Sherry was in his library, where pilasters graced the plastered walls, and three tall windows looked out to a velvet lawn fringed with cedars. Then he took them to dinner, set on a table of rich mahogany that could have seated twenty, in a softly carpeted room whose windows looked across the park to an ornamental lake with a miniature of a Grecian temple on its further bank. Dinner was worthy of the room, perfectly cooked, perfectly served by a butler and three young parlour-maids. It was not a heavy meal, for which their host politely apologized, saying that he had seen enough of mottled noses and found it better, in these days, to be sparing of food. There was a turbot with lobster sauce, a pair of boiled fowls, a ham, a saddle of mutton, a pudding, a syllabub, and fruit; with madeira, claret, and champagne; the port and the coffee and brandy to follow.
He was an admirable host, leading the talk so deftly that his guests seemed to talk rather than he. Nor was he solemn about it. He sat back, delicately taking the scent of the madeira, and eyed his nephew quizzically before asking how the pretty horse-breakers fared, these days.
‘Or should I ask,’ he added, ‘how you fared with them?’
‘Not I, sir. It’s Grant you should be asking. He had a rose from the Anstey.’
‘That being a matter for congratulation?’ An eyebrow quivered delicately. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know the lady.’
‘Nor I, alas! She prefers the Navy, it seems. Something about a sailor, and who cares then for a marching regiment?’
‘That’s not new. It was the same in my day, I remember.
And---‘ He stopped, and the amusement had left his eyes as he looked for a moment at Grant. ‘My son was in the Navy.’
‘Indeed?’ A sudden instinct warned him to be careful. The son should surely have been in the regiment, where all of his line had been. ‘I was wondering if I could have met him?’
‘I wondered too. He was in Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar. A midshipman.’
‘Oh, I---‘
Grant stopped short, meeting the older man’s eyes and knowing that he need ask no more. Royal Sovereign had been Collingwood’s flagship in the Lee Division. She had broken the enemy’s line, as Victory had done, and she had paid the price in casualties.
‘I see you’ve guessed.’ The quiet voice came again to check his thoughts. ‘I have not had a son, since then.’
‘No.’ He spoke shortly, with memories rising that would not lie down. ‘I was in Lysander, also in the Lee Division. Five ships astern, though, and that was easier.’
‘But I was asking if you had met him?’
‘There wasn’t wind enough.’ He was answering his own thoughts, the memories that would not quite go, and he had to bring himself sharply to what was needed. ‘Midshipman Barford? I think--I think perhaps I did. Not well, but there’s a memory. I was a midshipman myself, you see, and, of course, we did take our boats to the flagship at times--Captain seeing the Admiral, perhaps--and we’d be asked aboard.’
‘Exactly.’
There was silence. Grant stirred slightly in his chair and saw Wickham sitting very still, looking down at his plate and toying with a crumb of bread. The parlour-maids stood waiting. The room was drowsy in the sunlight of the afternoon, and through the open windows came a hum of bees. Beyond was the lawn, soft and green, and then the lake, with the white stone temple set among the trees. It was quiet, and utterly peaceful. It mirrored an England made for the delight of man, where only peace could dwell. Wickham was rolling the breadcrumb into a ball, and he had lost his father and his brother-in-law.
‘Very well.’
Barford spoke suddenly and with a sharp change of tone, as if he were pulling himself together. His nod set the parlour-maids leaping for the plates. The room roused to activity, and he had an easy smile as he turned to his nephew again.
‘We seem to be losing this tale, John. You were telling me of the--Anstey, did you say? A daughter of Phryne, I suppose? But what’s she like?’
‘Ask Grant, sir. But she’s Phryne, as you say. She burst on the town the other week--in a curricle.’
‘Curricle! A woman?’
‘Driving it herself. So she’s the talk everywhere.’
‘But tell me more of this.’
It took the next twenty minutes, while the boiled fowls came and went, and it was not a monologue. Barford saw to that, with his lively questions, shrewd comments, and smiling reminiscences of some earlier pretty horse-breakers, as he called them. Wickham was amused and interested, very ready with his interjections, and Grant was willing enough to talk of her--except of the last night. That belonged to him alone, and he made no mention of it, though neither of them would have lifted an eyebrow if he had done. That, he noted thoughtfully, seemed certain.
He thought the topic ended when the talk was turned to Altair and the way he had met John Wickham; but later, when the fruits were on the table, the grapes and peaches and nectarines, their host came suddenly back to Hildersham and his dealings with Anice.
‘Typical of him,’ was his dry comment. ‘What I think he calls prime style.’
‘You know him?’ asked Grant quietly.
‘Slightly. I knew his father better. Well . . .’ He leaned forward for a biscuit, which was a signal to the butler that he was ready for the port. ‘Let’s hope he can afford it.’
‘Anice? Oh, surely---‘
‘It depends on what else he’s been doing. Though I’m told he’s careful at the tables.’ He pushed out his glass as the butler came deferentially with the decanter. ‘Do you play at cards, Grant?’
‘Hardly at all’
‘Excellent. There’s more ruin in cards than in women.’ He waved his hand gently over the glass for the scent of the wine. ‘At all events, if you must play cards for money, don’t do it after dinner, especially
when you’ve liked the wine. There may be someone sitting there who hasn’t.’
‘Hasn’t?’
‘Dined so well. He’ll have a clearer head. That’s what Hildersham seems to have noticed.’
‘A nice point. I hadn’t thought of it.’
‘Because you’ve been at sea, where you don’t have gaming tables. A naval upbringing can keep a youngster out of mischief. Some sorts of mischief, at any rate.’
‘There’s another side to it, though.’ Grant hesitated, and then decided to press it. ‘I feel at a loss these days, out of soundings, and that’s due to being at sea. I don’t know what is thought, or how people look at things.’
‘Such as?’
‘This Hildersham affair, say, with Anice. How about his wife?’
‘Does it concern her at all?’
‘I’d have thought if a man goes to Paris with---‘
‘My dear Grant . . .’ There was a quick touch of amusement in his tone. ‘It happens, surely?’
‘Often enough. But I thought Hildersham a very decent fellow.’
‘So he is. And you are therefore surprised that he should leave his wife?’ He spoke steadily now, with the amusement gone. ‘Am I to explain?’
‘I’m asking you to.’
‘If I can.’ He sat in silence for a moment, and then spoke thoughtfully. ‘He has a great inheritance--estates, high rank, an ancient name--and such things can be a burden. They put duties on a man, and the first duty is to provide an heir. I speak feelingly of that, since I have not done it.’ For an instant he was silent, and then the level tone continued. ‘So he must find a wife, and early. She must be of proper age and health, and of a family that matches his own. A settlement must be made, which can be hard to reach. And I suppose it’s needful that the lady should be willing. In one way and another, you see, it’s difficult. Not many ladies fit requirements, and in the end his choice is small. He must take what wife he can. You could even feel sorry for him.’
