by D. J. Taylor
All this was torture to him. Three or four hours came and went, the dawn rose slowly above the Ryder Street chimney-pots, and the sound of one or two pleasure-seeking artists coming back from their nocturnal revels echoed across the passages, and still Captain Raff rocked back and forward in his armchair. By this time a certain amount of his courage had returned to him. He found the half of a bottle of brandy in a cupboard, drank some of it and felt braver still. He would essay some bold stroke, he thought, make some gesture that would not only redeem himself but show Mr Happerton the mistake he had made. After this he grew serious again, took a sheet of paper from his desk and various bills that littered the floor beneath it and began to compile a list of his assets and liabilities. It was a disagreeable task, and when he had finished it Captain Raff heaved a sigh and stared wildly about him. By chance he caught sight of himself in the glass and marvelled at how pale his face was and how bloodshot his eyes.
The calculations were not to his taste. In fact they showed that his liabilities exceeded his assets by the small matter of two hundred and twenty pounds. But still Captain Raff was not discouraged. He pulled down an old tobacco tin that lay upon the mantelpiece and fished out a twenty-pound note that he had hidden there long ago against such an eventuality as this. Then he looked into a pot that stood nearby and extracted a Crimea medal and a gold watch chain. The gold watch chain had belonged to Captain Raff’s father. ‘And a precious lot he gave me, but for this,’ he said to himself. It was past breakfast time now, but sleep was altogether beyond him. Instead, at about ten, he stole down to a pawnbroker’s in Jermyn Street and exchanged the medal and the watch chain for two ten-pound notes. Then, a little later, he took a cab to Putney – the cab-man wondered at his staring eyes – and drove up to a little villa on the edge of the heath. What he said to the lady he met there, and in what relation that lady stood to him, is not recorded, but at any rate he emerged with another twenty pounds. Ten pounds of the sixty Captain Raff kept for himself, but the other fifty he placed on Baldino at odds of six to one. Three hundred pounds! He had never seen such a sum. The thought drew him out of his misery. Later, after he had finally permitted himself to sleep for an hour or two, he shut up the room in Ryder Street and walked off in the direction of Soho. He would lie low, he thought, and consider his opportunities. In any case it wanted only a few weeks to the race. He went on through the crowded streets, his feet dragging behind him and a peculiar expression on his face, so that the people that he passed took pains to avoid him, and turned to look back at him as he went by, until the Soho pavements swallowed him up and he was gone.
XX
More from Bell’s Life
AS THE GREAT day nears … Mr Gulliver, a gentleman without whose attendance no race meeting in the north of England is truly complete, has sent us this account of BALDINO: ‘A very chaste horse, and dainty, who caused a sensation at the Bolton handicap, where he was very nearly bought up by a syndicate, only that his owner, Mr McWilliam, stood firm. Very neat on his toes, minds the whip, but is not its slave. Mr Solloway rode him previous and may well do again. Will sit upon the rail, if not steered elsewhere. Lost against COALHEAVER in March but carried a stone and was full of running at the finish, and Mr Solloway confessed an error on his part, viz fearing he was blown early on. He was got by EXCALIBUR of DAWN’S DELIGHT, whose victory in the Oaks may be cordially recollected. I have heard it said that he lacks application, but have never seen so …’ We are obliged to Mr Gulliver for his report, a model of judicious impartiality that may be favourably compared with some of the dubious encomia offered up elsewhere for our inspection …
For SEPTUAGINT we have nothing but praise. In a packed field, he is discreet but effective, will seem not to be there yet rise suddenly to outdistance the throng. In a procession he will move stealthily, fix his sights upon the next impediment to his progress and swiftly overhaul it. Mr Gladstone has not more staying power, and Lord John not less poise. We have seen him make up a dozen yards in a furlong and maintain a four-length advantage with a dozen Pegasuses on his tail. Lord Trumpington – a very modest and circumspect man – is to be credited with not overusing him or ruining him through premature growth in the equine forcing-houses to which so much of the sport of kings are now unhappily given up. We should proclaim him a certainty, were it not for a slight stiffness in the hindquarters and the consequent unwieldiness that is its inevitable companion …
… Of Mr Happerton’s TIBERIUS much has been written and said. Was a finer-looking horse ever seen on Newmarket Heath in recent years? But then how many fine horses have been rendered down into cat’s-meat a year beyond their pomp? He will toss his head, to his rider’s disadvantage, but there are graver sins than this. Dan Wickens, who rode him for Mr Davenant, his quondam owner, kept him on the tightest bridle imaginable, and seemed to prosper. Full of vigour, running, spirit, etc. Bred up by Mr Curbishley, of whom all the world knows, in Lincolnshire. A strong horse, no doubt, but we have seen him wearied by his exertions. He is to be ridden by Major Hubbins, whose best days are behind him, it has been averred, but then the same was said of His Grace the late Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. We observe again that we are no prophet, and that those in search of financial gain should straightaway take themselves off to the warm embrace of Captain Crewe, and yet experience, foresight, history and intuition decree that the race will be fought out between TIBERIUS and SEPTUAGINT, with BALDINO’S ability to interfere in this Herculean contest by no means to be discounted …
XXI
The Governess’s Tale
There’s many a wretch
Shall meet Jack Ketch.
And many a wight
Struck down in fright
And fear in the brook
That a dozen has took
Sing hey for the Lincolnshire Crowner!
The Lincolnshire Songbook (1819)
IF THEY LIVED once in a dark house, now it was darker still, with a crêpe wreath upon the door, to silence the knocker and black-edged cards on the dining-room table. The rooks mourned with them, and the cries of the birds echoed their own.
Scroop was gently disintegrating under the rain. Half a chimney had fallen away in the March gales, and the stone still lay on the gravel where it fell. There were holes in the roof-tiles that nobody came to mend. But if there was no occupation, except for the safeguarding of the schoolroom carpet, then at any rate its inhabitants were not alone. Indeed it sometimes seemed that the place was nothing but a giant magnet drawing people towards it, and in this power lay the root of their distress. Mr Silas the Sleaford attorney had come, by whom Mr Glenister had been so amused and whom Mr Davenant hated so much, and his clerk. A pair of lawyers from Lincoln, dressed in black and looking very like the rooks, followed him, and Mr Happerton too, and then a long, low equipage with a couple of black-dyed horses to draw it, and a pair of very discreet men in subfusc to unload from it the object that now lay in Mr Davenant’s study, lengthwise upon a trestle.
*
It seemed to Mr Glenister and Miss Ellington, when they discussed the matter, that the moment of Mr Davenant’s decline could be fixed to a visit that Mr Happerton paid them at about the end of April. The rain had ceased, and the sun come out – or what passes for sun in Lincolnshire – and with it came Mr Happerton, bringing with him the celebrated Major Hubbins, who was to ride Tiberius – this fact was conveyed to them out of Bell’s Life in the Scroop kitchen – in the Derby. It was apparent that Mr Davenant was made yet more wretched by Mr Happerton’s appearance, and when the latter offered him his hand – for he was always very civil – absolutely refused it, and slunk away, the same treatment, Miss Ellington later saw, being meted out to Major Hubbins, when he went over to him upon the lawn to offer some polite word. As for Major Hubbins, Miss Ellington thought she had never seen such a sedate old gentleman, or one so careful that his feet should not be wetted by the grass, or his glass of negus brought to him hot and with cinnamon in it. ‘Surely,’ she remarked to Mr Glenist
er, ‘there is some mistake, and this is Mr Happerton’s butler or his uncle?’, but no, Mr Glenister said that it was Major Hubbins right enough, and indeed, a day or so later, they saw him out in the lanes upon Tiberius, and a great deal more purposeful, but still, Miss Ellington thought, wishing that he had stayed at home with his old wife and his grandchildren to play about his knees. His hair was quite white, and he talked like Mr Spectator in the old books and said he was obleeged, and was quite harmless, and yet it was plain that Mr Davenant could not stand to look at him, and that his presence near the stables – where Mr Davenant sometimes lurked of a morning – was simple torture.
Mr Happerton, like Major Hubbins on his horse, was exceedingly purposeful. He had a surveyor come over from Lincoln with a map, and the two of them paced out the boundaries of the estate. He went down to the cellar and brought up the hogsheads that lay there. Seeing that Mr Davenant shunned his company, he asked Mr Glenister to accompany him (Mr Glenister thinking, as he told Miss Ellington, that he might serve his friend by this attendance, although he knew Mr Davenant would resent it) and was, Mr Glenister said, remarkably shrewd in his judgements. Imprimis, he had a plan to cut down part of the wood and to drain certain of the fields beyond it. Did this mean, Miss Ellington asked Mr Glenister, being very struck by the seigneurial air with which Mr Happerton went about the property, that he was now its owner, and Mr Glenister confirmed that the legal papers had been signed the previous week. And something of the pathos of Mr Davenant’s situation was brought home to the governess, and she regretted that her master should have to skulk around the back ways of a house that he had called his own for twenty years, while a man in bright top-boots strode about his gates and made notes in a pocketbook.
And then came two incidents that no historian of the last days of Mr Davenant’s discomfiture could fail to omit.
There was an old man living in the village, half-blind but with an amiable disposition, who came to the house sometimes of an evening with his fiddle, and was helped into the back-kitchen by Mrs Castell, given his supper and permitted to play for whomever was sat there. While he ate, Mrs Castell catechised him as to the progress of his family: had Martha any more children? Was Jane married? Was Peter – a notorious scapegrace, famous in the neighbourhood – to be brought once more before the bench? All this roughly, but with a genuine charity. And they were assembled there one night – Mrs Castell, Miss Ellington, Hester, Evie half-asleep with her head upon her shoulder – listening to this modest entertainment, when the door was flung open and Mr Davenant strode in, very pale and grim, with the queerest expression on his face, to say that he would have no music, the sound was a torment to him and the man must go. To all of which instructions they instantly acceded, though with reluctance and, on Mrs Castell’s part, an exceedingly bad grace, she remarking that it was all very well a bankrupt sending a poor old man out into the night without his supper, but there might come a time when he would want supper himself.
And then, the next afternoon, walking with Evie in the garden, Miss Ellington observed the most painful scene. It appeared that Mr Happerton, having inspected the wood and the fields, had now turned his attention to the house, and together with the surveyor was standing on the lawn examining certain of the stone buttresses. It being a warm day, he had his hat in his hand, which had some bearing on what followed. Mr Davenant had not been seen all day – it was thought that he had locked himself in his study, or perhaps gone over to Glenister Court – but suddenly, with a kind of jerky precision, like a little wooden puppet whose strings are suspended from above, he emerged out of the wood and, seeing Mr Happerton and the surveyor on the lawn, started instantly toward them. Whether Mr Happerton saw him or not, or had merely (being so engrossed in his architectural survey) determined to ignore him, Miss Ellington did not know, but at any rate Mr Davenant came almost within a yard of him before Mr Happerton so much as raised his hand, and stood there, as it seemed to her, spluttering with rage. ‘Well Davenant,’ Mr Happerton now said, having registered the fact of his presence, ‘what is it that we may do for you? I am afraid we are rather busy here.’ Whereupon Mr Davenant, not caring for the sensibilities of anyone who might be passing, shouted that he was a villain and he would see him d——d. ‘Indeed,’ Mr Happerton said, who did not seem very put out by this irruption, ‘why am I a villain?’ ‘You have pulled down the gibbet,’ Mr Davenant shouted at him. ‘Pulled it down and burnt it.’
‘Why certainly I have taken it down,’ Mr Happerton told him – the surveyor had backed away a little by this time, but Mr Happerton still stood in his original attitude. ‘A badger’s head and half a dozen polecats nailed to a couple of fence-posts. Who would want to see that while walking round a gentleman’s garden?’ ‘It was there in my great-grandfather’s day,’ Mr Davenant told him, now fairly shrieking, and Mr Happerton, turning back to the surveyor with a gesture indicating that they should resume their work, said that his great-grandfather had probably worn a wig and gaiters, but that was no reason for him to wear them. What Mr Davenant said Miss Ellington did not hear. There was a moment when she feared he might absolutely assault him (and would have come off the worse for his pains, for Mr Happerton was a well-made man and perhaps two stone the heavier) but then, thinking perhaps that some symbolic gesture would suffice, he seized Mr Happerton’s hat, threw it down upon the grass and fairly trampled it beneath his feet. Then he went back the way he had come, still with the same disjointed movements, back towards the wood, where he soon disappeared into the trees. ‘He is not quite right in the head, I am afraid,’ Mr Happerton said, picking up the ruined hat from the lawn and ruefully regarding it, and the surveyor, wondering perhaps at the spectacle, raised an eyebrow and the work was resumed.
Later that evening, when Evie and Miss Ellington were sitting in the drawing room playing at spillikins, with Mr Happerton and Mr Glenister talking together in the corner, Mr Davenant appeared suddenly in the doorway, said something in an undertone which sounded like an apology, shook Mr Happerton’s hand, gave Evie a very longing look, which she, staring up from the tray on which the pieces were set out, quaintly returned, and then was gone. Mr Glenister started from his chair, made as if to follow him and then recovered himself and resumed his conversation.
On the next day he was gone: his bed had not been slept in, Mrs Castell said, who had the care of it; his study locked up and the key vanished, but no sign of anyone behind the window; no trace of his whereabouts inside the house or out of it. At first no great fright was taken at his absence. Somebody remembered that the horse fair at Sleaford fell on that day, which he was in the habit of attending; Hester recalled that he had asked for his boots to be brushed on the previous night, which was thought significant in this respect. But then, at teatime, when no word had been heard of him and a neighbour, back from Sleaford, reported that he had not been seen there, a council of war was held in the kitchen, at which Mr Happerton, Mr Glenister, Mrs Castell and Miss Ellington discussed what ought to be done. ‘He has gone on one of his walks, I daresay,’ Mr Glenister said, ‘but all the same it is inconvenient of him not to have given us notice.’ ‘I confess I did not like the look on his face that time yesterday,’ Mr Happerton said, who of the two perhaps seemed more anxious. ‘What do you suppose is in that study of his?’ The key still not being to hand, Mr Happerton and Mr Glenister broke down the door, but there was nothing there – only a great mass of papers thrown over the desk, and – which Mr Glenister said privately that he wondered at – a Bible open on a chair. But when Miss Ellington ventured in there later she found a miniature of Mr Davenant done when he was a boy cast on the floor with its frame cracked that alarmed her greatly.
There was a wind that evening, and a storm that flattened the tops of the trees in the wood and smashed a chair that had been left out on the lawn into matchwood, and Mr Glenister said that it was a bad night to be out in, but he had no doubt that Mr Davenant had taken shelter somewhere. Miss Ellington was left with the task of comforting
Evie, whose distress was very pitiful to see, although it seemed to the governess that what had happened was in some measure beyond her understanding, that she grasped at its shape in the air above her but could not bring it down. This thought had occurred to Mr Glenister. ‘Do you suppose she knows?’ he asked Miss Ellington at one point, who said that she thought she did, whereupon Mr Glenister brushed up his moustaches, offered to dance a hornpipe, imitate a pig, &c., all impostures that generally had Evie shrieking with laughter, but on this occasion fell sadly flat.
On the next morning Mr Glenister had his men search the estate and make enquiries in Scroop, but all to no avail. There was another storm that night, and a great rattling of windows – the trees dancing up beyond the panes like a forest of imploring hands – but Mr Glenister said nothing about it being a bad night to be out in.
And then came a curious time at Scroop, quite three days at least, of people going about their tasks in the most regular way, but knowing all the while that a great cloud of disquiet hung over their heads, the post earnestly examined but bringing nothing, the least stir of gravel on the drive calling faces to the window to see who might be coming and what they might bring.
On the evening of the third day they found Mr Davenant in a little stream that runs to the north of Scroop, drifted up against a copse of alder trees that hangs over the water. Miss Ellington saw him lying on the rail, by which they carried him up to the house, his face all white and mottled from the river.
He had a little scimitar paper-knife in his hand, which she remembered from his study.
