‘She never goes out,’ she said, ‘despite my utmost endeavours when it’s a nice day. It would do her good. It would freshen her up – a thing needful to my mind, Sir Bernard. She may be nigh losing the use of her feet, for aught I know.’ Mrs Peglin’s idiom had always been a little peculiar, perhaps as bearing traces of ‘period’ parts she had sustained in youth. ‘The shadows lengthen and the scene darkens – which is only the sad legacy of eld, after all.’
‘No doubt it is, Mrs Peglin. But you will recall that I have particularly asked to be informed should there be any marked change in your aunt’s health. Please remember that.’
‘Go up and look for yourself.’ Mrs Peglin did now show some sign of taking umbrage at this stiff note. ‘Her physician has attended her, and at my own behest. On account of her rambling chiefly, although incontinence looms ahead. We end as running brooks, do we not? But it’s her speech at present. She prattles like a shallow stream over the pebbles. “Confabulation” is what the doctor says.’
‘Does he, indeed?’ Sir Bernard was not quite sure of the force of this word when used in a technical sense, but reflected that it must be familiar to Roland. If it indicated, as he conjectured, persistent and pointless fibbing, it was just as well that he had abandoned the thought of putting Mrs Corler in a notional witness-box. ‘I’ll go straight up,’ he added abruptly. And he gave Mrs Peglin a nod more dismissive than was wholly accordant with the fact that he was standing in that lady’s hall.
The staircase was lined with photographs of male and female theatrical celebrities of a former age, each stepped a little above the last, so that one felt one ought to be moving past them on an escalator. All bore the appearance of signatures and even affectionate messages, but these had already been printed on them when they left the shop. Sir Bernard doubted whether there was any longer a lively trade in such naïve deceptions; they were as outmoded as horse-brasses and bogus warming-pans in a pub. Mrs Peglin belonged to a discarded age, and Mrs Corler to an age before that. Mrs Corler must be nearly ninety, and entitled to confabulate if she wanted to. Sir Bernard had probably been insufficiently alert to degenerative processes going on in her during the last few years. It was something that made the idea of interrogating her additionally inapposite. He would simply hand over his gift, make kindly inquiries and remarks, and come away.
Her little living-room (it was both parlour and kitchen, although her dwelling did run to a bedroom as well) was unchanged since his last visit – only perhaps a trifle stuffier, as Mrs Peglin had hinted. The gas fire, economically constructed so as to operate either on two little burners or on four, produced an innocent smell, not to be taken exception of. There was also a fish-like smell which was disturbing until one noticed, strung up across the closed window like gardening gloves put to dry, a couple of kippers that had probably been forgotten about. Before the fire Mrs Corler’s cat sat on the mat, surrounded by the heads, tails and vertebrae of further fish. Sir Bernard had to make no additional inventory, nor recall in detail the starched and chintzy propriety of the housekeeper’s room at Cray, in order to conjure up reflections of the tempus ferox, tempus edax order. He was given little time, however, for this indulgence, since Mrs Corler had instantly risen from her chair to greet him. She had risen and then at once appeared to stumble, so that Sir Bernard started forward to save her, and even the cat was alarmed. But – was it possible? – what Mrs Corler had been minded to contrive was a curtsy. She had always – and even then it had been an antique usage – performed this reverence before either of Sir Bernard’s parents, but certainly not before the younger members of the family. She must be confusing father and son now. So strong was her visitor’s persuasion of this that he involuntarily exclaimed ‘I’m Sir Bernard,’ before realising the mild absurdity of the statement.
‘I’m very much honoured, Master Bernard, I’m sure.’ Mrs Corler invariably produced these words, and invariably accompanied them with a gesture of restrained elegance in the direction of a chair. It was Sir Bernard’s mother’s gesture, and it always touched him on that account.
‘I hope you’re feeling fit, Mrs Corler,’ he said. (Honesty forbad ‘I’m delighted to see you looking so well’.) ‘And I’ve brought you a small present which my wife and I hope you’ll like.’
The quilted dressing-gown was a success. Mrs Corler, although too refined to don such a garment even over day-clothes in the presence of a gentleman, was certain that it was what she had desired for a long time; prompted to an enhanced hospitality by the gift, she turned on the two additional jets on the gas fire and made proposals for brewing tea. But presently the kettle was steaming away disregarded, the old lady having discovered a great deal it was incumbent upon her to say. Sir Bernard couldn’t remember her ever having been so talkative before. Disconnected fragments of Balmayne family history seemed endlessly at her command, and she recounted them with a surprising vividness but in a complete chronological confusion. It was some time before Sir Bernard realised that what he was listening to was matter and impertinency mixed, although the effect was not so apocalyptic as in King Lear’s case. It was quite amiably for the most part, indeed, that Mrs Corler was making things up, and her motive was perhaps a harmless desire – shoved into this shabby corner as she was in disregarded age – to render herself interesting to a distinguished visitor. Probably, Sir Bernard thought, that was what confabulation was. So he listened to the old creature patiently enough, although at times his mind wandered. He felt relaxed and not a little pleased with himself, if the truth be told. He had come to a wise and honourable decision, worthy of his father, in deciding not to pump Mrs Corler about her long-since deceased fellow-servant, Hedgepath later Redpath.
‘My little niece read it to me out of the newspaper,’ he suddenly heard Mrs Corler say.
‘I beg your pardon?’ It was a moment before Sir Bernard realised that ‘my little niece’ must be Mrs Corler’s rather grand way of referring to Mrs Peglin downstairs. But what the woman had read out of the newspaper had escaped him entirely.
‘Miss Claribel’s engagement, Master Bernard. I hope she has found a nice young gentleman, fully worthy of her, and proper to enter into your own family in a manner of speaking, sir. A Mr Redpath, my little niece read out.’
‘Yes, Roland Redpath. An excellent fellow, I am glad to say, Mrs Corler.’ It was astonishing, Sir Bernard thought, how the old soul had suddenly come bang up to date. It was also – but how irrational this was! – a shade alarming.
‘And what is Mr Hedgepath’s profession, sir?’
‘Not Hedgepath – Redpath.’ Sir Bernard’s eyes had rounded on Mrs Corler. It was almost as if she were threatening to reveal herself as endowed with some sinister and sibylline power. ‘He’s a psychologist – a kind of scientist, that is.’
‘The one name must have reminded me of the other,’ Mrs Corler said – so prosaically that she at once seemed no more than a commonplace old woman again. ‘You’ll remember Hedgepath, Master Bernard?’
‘Barely, if at all.’ Sir Bernard got to his feet with some notion of taking his leave at once. Perhaps only his sense of the ludicrous nature of this reversal prevented him. He had resolved not to pursue Mrs Corler with Hedgepath. Now she seemed to be showing every sign of pursuing him.
‘A regular rascal, Mr Hedgepath was.’ Mrs Corler appeared not to have noticed her visitor’s desire to depart. ‘But at least they put him where he deserved.’
‘Do you mean he went to gaol?’ This was an unnecessary question. Sir Bernard knew very well that Mrs Corler meant just that. Out of the blue, his worst fear had been confirmed. His daughter was going to marry the son of a convicted criminal! ‘It was over the burglary?’ he added weakly.
‘Of course it was over the burglary.’ Mrs Corler had been surprised by this question. ‘You were in foreign parts at the time, I remember. But your father must have told you all about it.’
‘Very little, as a matter of fact.’
‘Well, he did say he wanted n
o great sensation made, and the whole thing soon forgotten about. I believe he was quite glad that Hedgepath got off lightly. It was because they said he was a minor figure – a dupe, they said – who supposed he was only helping with some petty theft. He was out in two or three years, I believe. But I never saw him again.’
‘It may have been just as well.’ This was an almost meaningless remark, and witnessed to the extent of Sir Bernard’s perturbation. There could surely be no question of Mrs Corler romancing now, for her speech was coherent and her manner matter-of-fact.
‘Only I did hear that he had changed his name, and so got into respectable service again. Would you know about that, sir?’
‘No, nothing at all.’ It was with astonishment that Sir Bernard Balmayne heard himself thus utter a blank lie to a faithful old family retainer.’ I am afraid that I must leave you now, Mrs Corler. Unfortunately I have an appointment with a client.’
‘You must be a busy man, I’m sure, Master Bernard. And that’s just as your father was. But it was wonderful how, with all those great concerns on his hands, he could take thought about everything at Cray. Like that time with the silver and all those other valuable things.’
‘What time, Mrs Corler?’ It seemed to Sir Bernard that the old woman must be beginning to ramble again. But he asked this question patiently enough. In fact he sat down again. His agitation was subsiding. He now knew the worst about Roland Redpath’s father, and it was knowledge he must learn to put up with. There seemed no reason why he should ever share it with anyone. ‘Do you mean,’ he added suddenly, ‘the time of the burglary?’
‘There we were, you see, just the master and myself, hard at work all through the small hours.’ Mrs Corler had ignored Sir Bernard’s question as one to which an obvious reply need not be given. ‘The thieves had been surprised or alarmed, you see, and had got away with very little. And, of course, only Hedgepath was ever caught. I can see the master now.’ Mrs Corler paused in order to emit, quite suddenly, a shrill cackle of laughter such as Sir Bernard had never heard from her before. It was so senile in suggestion that he had to return to the view that nothing she said was to be relied upon in the slightest degree. ‘I can see him now,’ she repeated, ‘the most handsome man in England, to my mind—’
‘My father?’ Sir Bernard asked, momentarily surprised as well as bewildered. It had never occurred to him that Mrs Corler’s devotion to her employer might have included a strong romantic component.
‘Of course. There he was, working as hard and carefully with newspaper and straw and the like as if everything had been crystal, and himself from Pickfords or Carter Patterson.’
‘Good heavens, Mrs Corler! Whatever are you talking about?’
‘He didn’t trust the police, he said. Not even to protect Cray from another and more successful burglary straight away.’
‘This—this nocturnal activity you shared with my father was just after Hedgepath and his accomplices had made their attempt? I simply don’t understand you in the least, Mrs Corler.’ Sir Bernard was shocked by the dismay in his own voice. ‘What were the police saying about it all?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mrs Corler was momentarily doubtful. ‘I think they mayn’t have been called in until the morning. We’d got everything out to the barn by then, ready for the master to take to his bank later. Of course we had to keep quiet about it, he said – himself and me. Otherwise there might be a misunderstanding by the insurance company.’
‘I see.’
This was true. Sir Bernard could scarcely believe that he saw. But he did.
‘Mrs Corler,’ he asked, ‘have you ever told this story to anybody else?’
‘No.’
‘Not even to your niece, Mrs Peglin?’
‘Certainly not, sir. But I remember it well enough. The master ended in such high spirits, you see. He even made a joke before sending me off to bed.’
‘A joke?’
‘He said, “Corler helps to turn the corner”. I didn’t understand it, sir. But the master did seem to find it very funny.’
Sir Bernard Balmayne spent a night as sleepless as that which Mrs Corler had called to mind – or had invented. The crux of the matter lay there. She was a dotty old creature and utterly unreliable. A good deal that she had said earlier in that dreadful interview had been demonstrable fabrication – and some of it of a sensational sort. But that purported joke of his father’s carried a horrible suggestion of authenticity, and he doubted whether the decayed mind of Mrs Corler could have made it up. Moreover the story, fantastic though it was, seemed coherent in its way – and to cohere with other things. Raymond Balmayne had always taken risks, and they had sometimes left him with awkward corners to turn quite late in his career. It was conceivable that what the insurance company had paid out, together with some subsequent criminal trafficking in the spoils of Cray, had provided a bridge which, although comparatively slender, had carried him safely over a financial chasm.
But it was all in doubt. That, surely, was the truly terrible thing. He had been telling himself that he couldn’t live comfortably with an uncertainty as to whether his daughter’s husband was the son of a crook. Now here was the same uncertainty about his own heredity!
What could he do about it? What could he do about it without starting a scandal that would be only the more intolerable if it turned out to be wholly unfounded: the mere fantasy of a crazed old servant? His only course, he saw, was to sound Mrs Corler again – and then perhaps, in the most confidential fashion, bring in physicians who could assess her state of mind. As preliminary action, indeed, this was his only feasible course.
He was in Pimlico once more before noon. For some reason there was a little knot of idle persons staring up at the house from the other side of the street. Suddenly full of a wild misgiving, he rang the door-bell violently, and was confronted by Mrs Peglin at once.
‘Can I see Mrs Corler?’ he demanded abruptly.
‘That, Sir Bernard, you cannot.’ A sense of high drama clearly possessed this beastly woman. ‘The final curtain has fallen on that blameless life. My poor aunt has passed away.’
Sir Bernard stared at Mrs Peglin unbelievingly. He felt a little dizzy. Was it possible that the excitement of her yesterday’s disclosure had been too much for the aged housekeeper and that she had failed to survive it?
‘Dead?’ he said.
‘It was that dressing-gown, Sir Bernard. She went too near the gas fire in it. The doctor from the police says it must have been all over within a minute. We must be thankful that no foul play can be suspected.’
So Sir Bernard was never to know. Without danger of publicity impossible to contemplate, there was nothing he could do. He had to live with the doubt, and he lived with it alone – saying not a word even to his wife. Claribel’s wedding took place quite soon. Roland Redpath (who clearly had never heard of his father’s felonious behaviour) had been modestly dissimulating the fact that he was a very up-and-coming young man indeed. In fact he knew that he was about to be appointed to a Chair at Cambridge, and that no house in a provincial wilderness would be required. So quickly did all this happen and transpire that the Balmaynes were still involved with The Prime Minister when the couple returned from their honeymoon. There were several chapters to go before Ferdinand Lopez, that unspeakable son of an unknown Portuguese father, should precipitate himself under a train.
THE CHOMSKY FILE
It was some years since Herbert Humbert had published anything, even an article in a journal. He was beginning to be worried by this. More and more in England – as for long in America – you had to keep in print if you were to hold your place in the academic rat race. A man must ‘contribute to his subject’ in a manner immediately apparent on a library shelf. It was no good being a brilliant lecturer, or a tutor whose talk had fructified whole generations of young minds. It no longer even much help to be known as a nice chap, guaranteed not to rock the boat, and always ready to lend a colleague a hand. Print it had to be, followed
by decently respectful even if somewhat astringent notices in periodicals with titles like Modem Language Notes or the Journal of English and Germanic Philology.
Humbert had to think and count for a minute before being sure of when the Review of English Studies had published a paper of his with the challenging title, ‘The Yale Formalist Fallacy’. That had looked like something of a breakthrough at the time. But nobody – or certainly nobody at Yale – had paid any attention to it, and somehow he had failed to follow it up. To follow it up in print, that is to say, for he had done plenty of thinking about the subject, and about the Theory of Literature in general, since then. And indeed literary aesthetics (if the term were still an admissible one) had been his single passion since he was an undergraduate. He had filled scores of notebooks with his enquiries in this supremely fascinating field. But he hadn’t yet, somehow, managed to sort out the complexities, ponder and resolve the contradictions, establish a systematic approach to the grand problems.
Significantly as it was to transpire, this unsatisfactory state of the case was particularly troubling him on the day he ran into Vivian Cardwell. It happened in the London Library, the habitués of which, on the whole, may be said to cough in ink and each to know the man his neighbour knows. An erudite homogeneity is the rule. Yet in this instance you could have told at once that here was an encounter between two scholars inhabiting substantially different worlds. Cardwell, only the more certainly because so unobtrusively, betrayed himself as one who might have stepped out of a club in St James’s round the corner. This was a matter of his bearing rather than of his clothes, although these would have declared themselves – at least to a stray emissary from the Tailor and Cutter – as having started off in life in the same superior quarter of the metropolis. Humbert, in a way, would have been harder to place. His garments, of a marked antiquity, had certainly come from off the peg at Marks and Spencer, and there was something badly wrong with his shoes. But in the London Library there is nothing out-of-the-way about this, since an honourable disregard of sartorial nicety frequently characterises members of the learned classes. Humbert’s singularity lay elsewhere.
The Bridge at Arta Page 16
