by D. J. Taylor
‘Who is this Happerton fellow who is set on ruining you?’
‘Ruin me?’ Mr Davenant gave a savage laugh. ‘He is a scoundrel, no doubt, but he does not want to ruin me. If he wished to do that he could have done it ages ago. No, he is after – Tiberius.’
‘And you never heard of him before?’
‘I think I did – just. One of those men who speculate in horses as you would in guano or shellac. Heaven knows what he may do. But come, Glenister, let us take a walk. I feel that if I went inside the walls would press in on me and seem set to crush me.’
Mr Glenister wondered at this turn of phrase, but consented to follow his friend along a path that led from the rear of the stable yard past the eastern side of the house and down towards the garden and the wood beyond it. As they neared the point at which the lawn began its slow decline into the trees there came a sudden blur of movement, and a pale, white figure – a girl in a print dress with her boots flying over the turf – came and buried her face in Mr Davenant’s shirtfront.
‘Evie.’ Mr Glenister, watching the tremor of the girl’s white head, was struck by his friend’s solicitude. ‘You should not be here. You should not, indeed. Where is Mrs Castell?’
Getting no answer, he made a little delicate movement with his hand and raised her face up to meet his own. ‘What if you were to fall, and no one to see you?’
The girl murmured something that Mr Glenister could not catch. He thought, staring closely at the quivering head – it was not often that he met her on his visits to Scroop – that her skin had no pigmentation in it all. Then he saw that her eyes had perhaps the faintest tinge of grey.
There was a sound of hard breathing and urgent footsteps a few yards away, and a stout woman in an apron with her hair coming down her back came shambling into view around the side of the house.
The girl opened her mouth – she performed this act in the manner of a fish that lies stranded on a river bank – and looked as if she might shriek her displeasure, but then lowered her head and walked meekly back to the spot, about ten yards away, where Mrs Castell, very indignant and with her hands on her hips, stood waiting for her.
‘She is no better, I suppose?’ Mr Glenister wondered, as they carried on down the path.
‘Evie? No, she is no better. She can read, you know, after a fashion. I won’t say what fashion, but – well. She made a drawing of a pheasant the other day, that Raikes’ – Raikes was the keeper – ‘had shot in the wood. But there are times when you would think she did not know me, when she flies into passions and Mrs Castell does not care to have her in the room.’
‘Do the doctors say what is wrong?’
‘Nothing. They say she should see other children, but there are none that would willingly see her.’
‘Perhaps the new governess will be able to do something with her.’
‘Ah yes, the new governess,’ said Mr Davenant absently, and Mr Glenister knew that his mind had gone back to his other troubles.
They had reached the entrance to the wood, where the gibbet barred their way. Here the keeper had nailed up a stoat and a pair of martens, and a black shrike was tearing at the stoat’s head with an odd, repetitive motion of its beak. There was blood on the grass and Mr Glenister, looking at the martens’ sightless eyes and the stoat’s ravaged skull, knew that if it had been left to him he would have taken down the gibbet.
There was not, in truth, a great deal to Mr Davenant’s woods. Anyone who was not their owner could have walked through them in five minutes and thought that he had not missed anything. But they were Mr Davenant’s pride and joy – more so now that his position as the owner of Scroop Hall was in jeopardy – and he took Mr Glenister through them with a kind of defiance.
‘You’ll see that tree there, Glenister? I was advised to have it down, as the man said that the wood was rotted. But I told him it should not be touched and, do you know, it has righted itself?’
‘It is certainly a very fine tree,’ Mr Glenister said, who had had this miracle of nature drawn to his attention half a dozen times before.
And so they pottered about in Mr Davenant’s wood, as the clouds marched off towards the coast, and a very weak sun came out to supplant them, and an occasional pheasant scuttled out across the path, and all the time the shadow of Mr Happerton hung over the skyline together with the retreating rain. In the end Mr Davenant could find no more to say about his trees.
‘Did you ever feel,’ he asked, quite out of nowhere, ‘that you had not made the best of your life? I don’t mean in the manner of making yourself comfortable, but in taking the chances that were offered you?’
‘I suppose we all of us feel that,’ said Mr Glenister, who had never thought such a thing in his life.
‘Do we? My brother – I don’t think you ever met him – is a Fellow of Balliol. He could have had the living here, only the place bores him. He told me so. He wrote a book about – Greek particles. I looked into it once and could make neither head nor tail of it. And yet he has taken his chance. I never did that.’
‘But you were not your brother,’ Mr Glenister said, good-naturedly. ‘As you say, he never wanted to live at Scroop, and yet you did.’
‘And what have I done? I have had the house I loved, I have spent all my money on it and now there is this Mr Happerton, a man I never met or knew, come to take it all away. It is very hard, Glenister,’ Mr Davenant went on. ‘Do you know, when we were first married, my wife used to write verse for the keepsakes? She wrote a poem for Evie when she was born. I don’t think I could bear to read it now. There is a scrapbook full of them in the house. I used to read them in the evenings, to keep me – to keep me sane. If that man ever comes here I shall burn it and throw the ashes in the yard.’
They had come back out of the wood now and were approaching the stable yard. Mr Glenister searched for a way to raise his friend’s spirits.
‘Let us see that horse of yours that Mr Happerton thinks so much of.’
‘Well – if you wish it.’
The stable was empty except for a man shovelling up a collapsed straw bale, who touched his hat to Mr Davenant as he passed. The horse stood at the further end, in a little pen of Mr Davenant’s own devising, with an oak rail and a metal gate, the light that illuminated it coming in from a little square window up in the eaves. Some months ago a sporting newspaper had printed a description of his attributes which Mr Glenister, who was amused by such things, had cut out and kept in a drawer of his desk. The man who had written it had no doubt been commended by his editor for his historical and literary knowledge, for every name that had ever been given to a horse had been ceremoniously invoked. There was talk of Pegasus and mention of Houyhnhnms. It was suggested that Richard Crookback, had he wanted to escape Bosworth Field, should have had him standing by. Looking at him through the murk of the stable, as his eye became habituated to the uncertain light, Mr Glenister thought that he was very lithe and slim, with perhaps a touch of the Arab that distinguishes the very greatest ornaments of the turf.
‘He is a fine fellow.’
‘Yes, isn’t he? He was got by …’ And here Mr Davenant reeled off a list of genealogical detail, most of which was already known to Mr Glenister from the columns of Bell’s Life.
‘Where does he get his exercise?’
‘Oh Curbishley gallops him on the wolds. Curbishley knows all about it. Hi! You there!’ He gestured angrily with his fist, and Mr Glenister saw that a short, bearded man was staring into the space before the stable door and talking to the labourer engaged on the collapsed straw bale. When he saw Mr Davenant the expression on his face, which had formerly been one of high good humour, changed on the instant and he came forward, very timidly, knotting his hands together in submission. Rightly supposing that this was not a conversation that concerned him, Mr Glenister went back to his inspection of Tiberius’s points. Looking up a moment or so later, he saw that the man had returned to the stable door, while Mr Davenant continued to gesticulate at his
retreating back.
‘Who was that, I wonder?’
‘Wilkinson? You recollect him, perhaps?’ Mr Glenister thought that he did not. ‘He used to help with some of the outside work. I had to dismiss him, but now he is always coming back and hanging around the place.’
‘Why should he do that if he is dimissed?’
‘It is the horse,’ Mr Davenant said. ‘Why, I think Wilkinson would work for no wages if he could be near the horse. It is the same with Curbishley. I found him practically mooning over him the other day, like a nursemaid looking at a dragoon in the park.’
As it was now about half past twelve – Mr Davenant suggesting to Mr Glenister that he might like to have lunch – they strolled once more round to the front of the house. Here the winter sun had got out above the drive and the disreputable caryatid, there was light sparkling over the window panes and Mr Glenister forgot about the melancholy walk, the shrike’s darting head and the blood from the dead marten spilled over the wet grass. There was another vehicle – a little gig, albeit of a faintly agricultural kind – unloading baggage onto the gravel, and a tall, sad-looking girl bent over a trunk that had fallen haphazardly on its side. Mr Davenant, who had lapsed into silence on their walk from the stable, raised his head.
‘That must be the governess.’
‘What is the young lady’s name?’
‘Miss Effingham? No, that was the old admiral. Miss Ellington? Well, we shall find out in due course. Good morning, Jorkins.’
This was addressed to the owner of the cart, who first tapped his finger to his bald forehead and then reached into a canvas bag he wore around his waist and presented Mr Davenant with a newspaper and a buff-coloured envelope. Mr Davenant peered at the superscription, was about to put the letter in his pocket, but then thought better of it and tore it open.
‘Not another of Mr Silas’s bills I hope?’ Mr Glenister said, a couple of paces away and preparing to help the governess with her trunk.
‘It is from Happerton. For God’s sake, Glenister, never mind Miss Ellington’s things and come inside.’
And so the two men went indoors, Mr Jorkins took his fare and departed, Miss Ellington – if that was her name – who looked as if she was nearly in tears, rang upon the bell in the hope that someone would attend to her, but all that could be heard was the sound of the cart, growing ever more remote, grinding up the gravel of the drive.
V
Marriage à la Mode
The married young lady who sets out upon her wedding tour may wonder what recreations – save, of course, the constant society of her husband – are available to her. And yet she will discover, if she only looks about her, that there is a great deal to do, a great deal to see and a great deal on which to inwardly reflect. Above all there is that delightful opportunity to engage in conversation with the person to whom fate has joined her, and the delicious intimacy that such talk habitually promotes …
A New Etiquette: Mrs Carmody’s Book of Genteel Behaviour (1861)
SIX WEEKS HAD gone by since the wedding breakfast at Belgrave Square, and the Happertons were still in Rome. In fact only a day or two of their holiday remained to them, and preparations for their departure were well advanced: several valises, packed and unpacked, lay across the floor of the apartments in which they were lodged, and the portrait of Tiberius had been taken down and stowed in Mr Happerton’s travelling case. Just at this moment – it was about ten o’clock on a Sunday morning, with the bells of countless clocks ringing the faithful to Mass – the Happertons were at breakfast, Mrs Happerton in fragrant déshabillé, Mr Happerton in one of the violently checked suits he thought appropriate for foreign visiting. It is doubtful whether Mr Happerton noticed the déshabillé, as his head was bent low over a three-day-old copy of The Times, and he was thinking hard: not about anything the newspaper had to say to him, but about the six weeks that had passed and the infinity of weeks that were to come.
The Happertons had done all the correct things in Rome. They had visited the English church – once. They had observed the Forum and the Doria Palace. They had walked up to St Peter’s and descended into the catacombs, and Mr Happerton thought that he had enjoyed himself. He had looked at the pictures, sneered at the superstition, eaten the dinners without serious digestive hurt, and, he imagined, done everything he could to make his wife comfortable. As to whether Mrs Happerton had enjoyed herself, Mr Happerton had not the faintest clue. She had looked at the pictures – she knew a little about pictures, he had discovered – sneered at the superstition and eaten the dinners, but none of her ideas about them had been communicated to her husband. Mr Happerton had an inkling that newly married persons, thrown upon their own society in a continental city, generally said more to each other than he and his wife had done, and these silences baffled him. He would ask a question of her simply for the satisfaction of hearing it answered, make some comment about scenery or locale merely to contrive a response. At other times, as now, covertly, behind his newspaper, he took to staring at his wife, and when he did so he discovered that she seemed to be brooding – not miserably, as he had sometimes seen ladies of his acquaintance brood, but with a fierceness that rather alarmed him. ‘What are you thinking about?’ he had several times asked her, and Mrs Happerton had said, very promptly, that she was wondering which dress to wear; if it would be fine for their drive; whether the post would bring a letter from home. But Mr Happerton, marching at her side through some picture gallery, gazing with brisk contempt at the statuary of some Roman church, or vigilant behind his newspaper, had not believed her.
‘What a deuced racket those bells make,’ he exclaimed now, putting down the newspaper and looking at his wife across the breakfast table.
‘I suppose they have to call the people to church.’
‘Horrible popish places. They would be better off staying at home.’
To this Mrs Happerton did not reply. Looking at her, as she reached forward to refill her coffee cup with a long white hand, Mr Happerton wondered what he thought about her. Even now, he discovered, after six weeks’ intimacy, he could not make her out.
‘I have had a letter from Captain Raff,’ he began again. Captain Raff had sent several letters during the course of their stay.
‘Oh indeed. What has Captain Raff to say?’
Captain Raff was rather a joke between them.
‘Oh – nothing very much, you know.’ In fact Captain Raff had had a great deal to say about the man who had been sent to Boulogne, and another man who might be coming back from Boulogne, and a third man who was already offering odds of a hundred to seven on Baldino for the Derby.
‘Then I am surprised Captain Raff took the trouble to write.’
The bells had stopped ringing. The only sound Mr Happerton could hear was the squeak of his boots – he had a new pair of top-boots, bought specially for his wedding tour – as he shifted in his chair.
‘Well,’ he remarked, after another long pause. ‘We have seen all there is to see of Rome, I suppose. I hope you have enjoyed yourself, my dear.’
‘I have enjoyed myself very much,’ Mrs Happerton said.
‘And now we must go home again, eh? One can’t sit around for ever, you know. Not when there is work to be done.’
Mr Happerton knew, as he said this, that he was not making himself plain, that there were things he wanted to say to his wife – about their joint future interests, about one very particular thing that he wanted with regard to his own personal security – that he could not quite bring himself to utter. It was not exactly that she intimidated him, he told himself, merely that the look on her face awoke in him a kind of self-consciousness that he had not experienced before.
‘Your father is rather an old man,’ he began again.
‘I suppose he would be thought – old.’
There was a coolness in the way she said this that almost made Mr Happerton quake in his top-boots. But he persevered.
‘The halest man for his age I ever saw. He’ll
be with us for a good many years, I suppose, and a very good thing too.’ Mr Happerton had never quite gauged the relationship between Mr Gresham and his daughter. ‘Do you suppose that he has made a will?’
‘He has never said anything about it.’
‘Well, I suppose not. Only they say a lawyer is always the first to make a will – ha!’ Mr Happerton knew as he made this joke that it was not a very good one. ‘The first to change it, too, when circumstance demands.’
Mr Happerton could not tell why he was proceeding in hints and allusions rather than telling his wife what was really on his mind, but – there it was.
‘I suppose’, Mrs Happerton said, with the asperity of a governess rebuking a young lady of fourteen who has broken a pen nib, ‘that you wish for some of Papa’s money?’
‘Eh?’ Mr Happerton was astonished to hear her say this. He had known many women in his life, and was fond of saying that he could talk to a dairymaid as well as to a duchess, but he had never thought to hear a lawyer’s daughter from Belgrave Square tell him that he wanted her father’s money. For a moment he wondered whether he had made a dreadful mistake. He did not know, such was the sphinx-like stare that Mrs Happerton had turned on him, whether he was being asked for information, rebuked, or connived with, and the confusion flustered him and sent him back to the hints and allusions in which he had previously dealt.
‘I tell you what it is, my girl,’ he said, with a husbandly affability he did not altogether feel. ‘I am thinking of buying – a horse.’
‘A horse?’
‘Well yes. Tiberius, that has been hanging on the wall above us these past six weeks. The owner is embarrassed and will very probably sell if he is dealt with in the right way. Such things don’t come cheap, indeed they don’t. Now, if your father could advance me a little money – merely in the form of a loan – it would help me a great deal in this undertaking.’
