by D. J. Taylor
The story has ceased to interest Miss Ellington. All her stories do in the end. They start well and then fizzle out: a consequence, she thinks, of her not possessing any true imaginative power. The creature who sits on his little island, fishing with his parasol, is called Lancelot, merely because she has been reading Tennyson, and will not, she thinks, do. Not, she concedes, that Evie is capable of distinguishing between a good story and a bad one. On the other hand all stories, good and bad, seem to awaken an interest, which poetry and recitations on the cracked drawing-room piano have not so far been able to produce. Coming to a passage in which Lancelot, walking the perimeters of his island, is gripped by the suspicion that it is actually a huge, floating fish, Miss Ellington takes a sidelong glance at Evie, who fascinates, depresses and rather scares her. She has a habit of asking questions that bear no relation to the world she inhabits. ‘Is it far?’ ‘Will he come?’ ‘How did it get there?’ She is still interested in Pusskin, a bowdlerised version of whose fate has several times been vouchsafed to her. Taken out on a walk, when the weather permits, she wanders in a kind of dream from plant to plant and gatepost to gatepost. The island, on which Lancelot has so innocently loitered, has started to sink, the waves come lapping menacingly over the rocks and crevices, Lancelot himself hanging terrified from the branches of a tree. Now the water is at his toes. Now at his ankles. Perhaps Evie has registered this transformation, and is moved by it? Who knows. Sometimes Miss Ellington wonders what is to become of Evie.
If it comes to that, what will become of them all? Miss Ellington has several times found herself asking this question, which is in truth of more interest to her than the fate of Lancelot, now assuming his true, bat-like shape and preparing to take wing from the tree-top. Mr Glenister says that the estate is to be sold, that its new owner is Mr Happerton, but that there may be some delay before he comes to claim his property and that he will very likely suffer Mr Davenant to remain as his tenant. This information is troubling, and there is no one with whom she can discuss it, certainly not Mr Davenant. Indeed there is not a great deal that anyone can discuss with Mr Davenant, who keeps mostly to his study, but can sometimes be seen walking in the fields, not seeming to care which way his feet take him. Lancelot has flown off into Yorkshire, taking his dinner from a pastrycook’s tray in an unguarded window, and Miss Ellington decides to leave him there. ‘Where have they gone?’ Evie demands suddenly, and they stare uncomprehendingly at each other, while the rain rattles agitatedly at the window, the pools of water gather in the wild garden and the wind whips under the eaves.
She hears, rather than sees, Mr Glenister arrive – doors opening and closing a long way off; feet drawing steadily nearer on the creaking staircase; the handle turning in the door – but there he is suddenly, nodding his head, smoothing back his hair and giving her his hand to shake. Miss Ellington is not sure what to make of Mr Glenister. The Lincolnshire squires are not generally prepossessing. There is an old man three miles away with seventy acres at his command who is said scarcely to be able to read. Mr Glenister can certainly read – there is usually a book poking from the lip of his coat-pocket – but, still, Miss Ellington does not know precisely what manner of man he is. She is used to complimentary attorneys, crimson-faced boys, clerical gentlemen requiring to be offered sherry. Warwickshire society is very polite. Mr Glenister, who lives in solitary, wifeless comfort, attended by a couple of serving maids, and can sometimes be found sitting on tree-stumps reading a copy of the Athenaeum, is a little much for her.
‘How is Evie?’ he asks as he comes into the room, and Evie, who likes Mr Glenister, starts up and says words that might mean The man has gone into the wood, or might not, and Mr Glenister smiles and pats her on the shoulder (she puts her hand there after him, as if she does not know what the gesture means). Miss Ellington has been to Glenister Court once – they went as a family party in the days before Mr Happerton’s shadow came to disturb them – and found it odd, full of queer decorations and paintings and pieces of tapestry, and not at all what a Lincolnshire gentleman should have in his house.
‘Tell me,’ Mr Glenister says – he has very long legs that as he sits in a chair rise almost to the level of his chest and make him look like a grasshopper – ‘how is Mr Davenant?’ And Miss Ellington knows that they are to have one of their little coded conversations about Scroop and its prospects, and the peculiarities of its owner, in which more is implied than is stated and less demanded than inferred. ‘Mr Davenant is mostly in his study,’ she says, and Mr Glenister nods into his tea cup, gives Evie something to play with that he finds in his pocket, and goes on:
‘They say there is a man coming to ride Tiberius.’
‘I thought that it was Mr Curbishley who was to ride him?’ Miss Ellington knows only a little about horse racing, which was thoroughly disapproved of in Warwickshire.
‘This is the man who will ride him in the Derby. Major Hubbins, he is called.’
‘And who is Major Hubbins?’
‘Rather a dog in his day,’ Mr Glenister says, with a peculiar little smile. ‘But that day was rather a long time ago. There are people saying that Tiberius is to be used only for the market.’
‘For the market?’
‘Forgive me. It means that a person who enters a horse in a race does so with the aim of talking up its chances, but all the while he is secretly staking his money at better odds on his rival.’
‘Does Mr Davenant know this?’
‘I think not. But it would break his heart if he thought Tiberius was being used for some low game. Though I expect it is all the same to Mr Happerton.’
While Mr Glenister talks, Miss Ellington thinks of other men she has known. Once, in the drawing room at Warwick, one of these – one of the complimentary attorneys – had absolutely taken to his knees and asked her to marry him. Flattered by this declaration, if ultimately disapproving, she had also been startled by its incongruity. It was not, she thought, that complimentary attorneys should not be permitted romantic feelings, merely that the expression of them, in a room full of chintzes and subscription cards and embroidery, seemed so very odd.
Mr Glenister is still talking about Tiberius. ‘He would be certain to win the race if he were ridden properly, Miss Ellington, you see, and that Major Hubbins is fifty-five years old.’
Miss Ellington has forgotten who Major Hubbins is and has to force herself to remember. He is quite animated, she thinks, as she has previously seen gentlemen animated by politics, or Sir Charles Lyell’s discoveries among the stones, or suffrage petitions.
‘And how old should a man be to ride a horse?’
‘Well, there is an old gentleman of eighty still rides to hounds with the Sleaford pack. But fifty-five would be thought rather old for the Derby, for all it is such a short course. Why, if Major Hubbins were to be thrown or ridden down by another horse one would fear for his life.’
Evie is nodding her head, and crooning over the ball of string Mr Glenister has given her. Miss Ellington looks out of the window at the dripping caryatid, the long expanse of gravel drive and the wild fields beyond. She thinks of Pusskin, stretched out on the gamekeeper’s gibbet, with his eyes staring from his head, and his tail pinned up beside him, and another story told to Evie – she does not quite know where this one came from – about a black dog with live coals for eyes and claws like steel talons that prowls the wolds. Lincolnshire, she thinks, is beginning to oppress her. There are live things in the roof – they make a pattering sound that does not sound like any rat or bird that ever lived – which haunt her sleep.
‘It seems to me,’ Mr Glenister says – he is choosing his words carefully, looking at Evie’s white face and the little agitated movements of her hands, like doves, he thinks, pinioned in a net and striving to break free – ‘that Mr Davenant is not quite himself. Men who are in such a condition may do things that they come to regret. They brood upon their misfortunes and feel nothing but their immediate hurt.’ Mr Glenister has never had any misf
ortunes worth speaking of, and felt no hurt, but still he is sorry for Mr Davenant.
‘I suppose they may,’ Miss Ellington says. She thinks – she is surprised at the snappishness of her thoughts – that she has no patience with men who are not quite themselves, and that ‘being oneself’ is itself a suspect phrase, for of all things that self is horribly uncertain.
‘What will Mr Happerton do?’ she asks.
‘What will he do? Well, I doubt he will come to live here permanently. He is a London man, I believe. A Lincolnshire winter would finish him off, I fear.’
The question that has not been asked, but which hangs in the air between them, is: what shall Mr Davenant do, and his dependants? Mr Glenister gets to his feet, glances at Evie, who is still occupied with the string, takes his pipe out of his pocket, puts it back, and suddenly asks: does she remember the occasion when she discovered Mr Happerton in Mr Davenant’s study and the file of facsimile signatures under his hand?
‘Certainly I remember them,’ Miss Ellington says. She wants nothing to do with Mr Davenant’s signatures, Mr Davenant’s study, or Mr Happerton, but she has been brought up to believe that gentlemen’s questions are there to be answered.
‘There is a great deal of paper in Mr Davenant’s study,’ Mr Glenister says. ‘A great pile of it stacked up next to the desk. Old newspapers. Bills.’ Mr Glenister made a little twist with his face as he said the word ‘bills’. ‘Might they not be there?’
To this Miss Ellington has no answer. Who knows where anything is at Scroop, she thinks, where there is no salt in the salt cellars and no logs in the grate and no one to cut the grass beyond the window.
‘I should give a great deal to have that slip of paper,’ Mr Glenister says. He is not looking at her, but beyond the windows at the fields, where there is a black scarecrow flapping dismally in the wind. ‘Could you find it for me? I cannot go myself, for Davenant is always there. But you – you are not so constrained.’
And rather to her surprise, Miss Ellington finds herself agreeing to examine Mr Davenant’s study for evidence of the sheet of facsimile signatures. It will very probably have to be done at night, Mr Glenister says, and she nods her head, bemused by what seems to her the effrontery of the request, and her own bewildering haste in agreeing to it. ‘Where did it go?’ Evie says suddenly, which for once is rather apposite. They stare across the room, a little conspiratorially, and Miss Ellington thinks of Pusskin with his bloody fur, and Lancelot, parasol in hand, wings sharply extended, taking flight from the island that vanishes beneath his feet over the grey North Sea.
*
Scroop Hall by night is a mystifying place. The angles disappear. There are great banks of shadow that conceal solid objects or, in certain cases, nothing at all. Some of the passages are so dark that not even a candle can penetrate the murk. There are also inexplicable shafts of light glimmering from banisters and picture-frames, curious scufflings behind the wainscot and, it sometimes seems, in the walls themselves. But still, here she is, in her nightgown and shawl, quietly descending the main staircase to the pitch-dark hall. It is just gone midnight – the grandfather clock in the vestibule struck five minutes ago. The house is asleep. Evie has a queer way of sleeping, half-in and half-out of consciousness, asking questions of the curious people who populate her dreams. Of Mr Davenant there is no sign. The hall is so black as to be almost unnavigable, but gradually her eyes grow accustomed to the lack of light and she presses on. She is not afraid of the dark, but she has a horror of something she cannot see scampering over her feet. Once, in Warwick, someone put a mouse in her bed for a joke and she astonished herself by attacking it with a poker. There were no more mice, and no more jokes.
The door creaks and is difficult to open. Outside the wind is careening over the garden. Mr Davenant’s study is in chaos. There are wineglasses all over the desk, and a map of Lincolnshire has been spread out over the carpet and trampled over by someone with muddy feet; one or two of the pictures on the walls are slightly askew. For a moment she worries that the chaos will extend to the mass of old papers, but there it is, gathered up in shadow, apparently unchanged. Holding the candle in one hand, she bends cautiously down to examine the pile. At first she finds nothing except copies of the Agricultural Gazette and old receipts, but after a while there are other things: letters; a Grantham seedsman’s catalogue; a Corn Law pamphlet; pages out of a book that must have displeased Mr Davenant, for they have been ripped halfway through. Moonlight is streaming in through the window now, which makes her job easier, but also alarms her, for there is something ghostly about the prospect before her: the spines of the books gleaming on their shelves, a stuffed falcon under glass gazing cruelly down from a recess in the wall. Once or twice she finds paper on which Mr Davenant has begun, and abandoned, letters, in which he urges his correspondent to certain courses of action, offers prompt reassurance, and in one very terrible passage throws himself on their mercy. She wonders what effort it took Mr Davenant to write them, here in a room where Davenants have written letters for two hundred years. She is tearing on through the pile – the candle is on the carpet by her side and may very soon go out – as the dates of the newspapers grow more and more ancient, and the receipts more dusty, and then, all of a sudden there it is, half of a foolscap sheet, nearly hidden beneath a newspaper that almost swamps it, in handwriting which is like Mr Davenant’s and then again curiously unlike it, a dozen representations of his name – samuel Davenant. Sam. Davenant. Samuel Davenant Esq. – running on to the page’s end. She places the sheet in the fold of her shawl, bends to her knees and restores a little of the fresh disorder she has created.
And then, suddenly, in the passage – she has gone barely two yards and the door is scarcely shut behind her – is Mr Davenant, still in his day-clothes, very pale in the face, bustling towards her. She does not scream, for she has no breath, and even in the split second of apprehending him, she realises that he does not quite see her. There is a little gleam of something in his hand, on which the light shines for an instant, and then nothing. The candle falls to the floor – it is about to go out – and Mr Davenant picks it up and stares wonderingly at the tiny flame. The wind pours against the window and she hears herself making some excuse: a toy of Evie’s needed to quieten her. Mr Davenant stares blankly at her and does not, she thinks, properly take it in. She leaves him standing in the passage, with the queer look still on his face and the light flickering under his nose, and hurries away into darkness.
And so it is done, and in the morning Mr Glenister has a sheet with a dozen approximations of Mr Davenant’s signature on his desk for him to ponder.
XIX
Visitors
Even in the best-regulated establishments, where all is sweet amity and conjugal bliss, a gentleman needs his sanctum. The newly married young lady will find that her husband, when sequestered in his study, will be as chary of interruption as a lion in its den …
A New Etiquette: Mrs Carmody’s Book of Genteel Behaviour (1861)
ON A PARTICULAR Wednesday afternoon, towards the end of April, when there were only five weeks remaining until the day of the great Derby race, Mr Happerton had two unexpected visitors to his study.
The Pardews were gone from Shepherd’s Inn. A butcher’s boy, calling there with a bill for thirty-five shillings, found the door wide open and a cat tearing a newly killed mouse in half on the mat. The porter knew nothing about it. In fact, the Pardews had removed to Richmond – not to the mansion with its bright lawn running down to the Thames which stretched itself through Mr Pardew’s imaginings, but to a terraced house in a little thoroughfare off the high street. There was no carriage, but the woman who called herself Mrs Pardew – there was already a doubt about this in the neighbourhood – sometimes had herself driven about in a fly. All this suggested a need for prudence and quiet economy. Mr Pardew was actually the proud possessor of seven hundred pounds – a lot of money, but not enough for Mr Pardew, and some of it was already spent, not least o
n the house, which, unlike the rooms at Shepherd’s Inn, had been taken unfurnished. It was a pleasant house to begin with, and by judicious purchases in Richmond High Street Jemima made it more so, but Mr Pardew was uneasy in it. He thought that seven hundred pounds, or rather the six hundred pounds that remained, was a poor reward for the labour put into getting it, not to mention the trouble that might lie in wait. For her part, Jemima was quite happy. She had sent a ten-pound note to her sister in Islington, and did not notice Mr Pardew’s depression of spirits.
Mr Pardew found that the seven hundred pounds – the six hundred pounds – and the move from Shepherd’s Inn, which had been done rather late at night, noiselessly, in a covered wagon, had made him restless. He made one or two trips into the City in an omnibus but did not stay there long, and he joined a club at an institute on Richmond Hill to read its newspapers. He was always reading newspapers, particularly the police reports. He had a habit of sitting in the parlour, or the kitchen, or wherever Jemima had gone to occupy herself, and staring at her as she went about her work. It occurred to him that, in all the years he had known her, he had never inspected her closely, had no real idea of the person she was. He saw, as he watched, that she was very adept at her household tasks. He thought that he liked the way her hands moved over the objects around her. Once at this time he said:
