Old Hall, New Hall

by Michael Innes

  I next saw Edward at about noon. Going out to take a turn in the shrubbery (for I am convinced of the value of vigorous exercise at that time of day) I observed him standing moodily at the far end of the terrace. I resolved at once to take advantage of Mr Kent’s absence to expostulate with him on both his own behaviour at the breakfast-table and that of the companion whom he had thought proper to introduce to it. He heard me, I fear, without attention – and then burst into inconsequent speech of surprising vehemence. It seemed, he said, that I had been admitted to the coach-house; did I realize what it was that Joscelyn had brought home? And was Joscelyn demented? Did he really propose, for the sake of their paltry wager, to divulge to Jim Dangerfield and half the riff-raff of the country a prize that, rightly disposed of, would set us above all but the Duke himself?

  Although I had no doubt that this was a grossly exaggerated estimate of the worth of the Caucasian treasure, I was yet rendered very uneasy by Edward’s speech and manner. I replied that Joscelyn was scarcely a practical man of affairs, and that his ambitions had ever been aside from the ordinary. The intrinsic value of what he had brought home with him he had probably given little thought to. Had he done so in the first instance, indeed, he might have felt a wholesome hesitation in possessing himself of it.

  At this, Edward asked me if I supposed Joscelyn made no distinction between the treasure and all the loathsome rubbish he had been collecting these past thirty years? I replied that I believed Joscelyn to regard this as by far his most notable acquisition; but that yet he appeared not contented, and that I was inclined to suspect his long mortuary mania to be at last burning out in him.

  Edward heard me broodingly, took a turn on the terrace, and then fell into a long complaint of what he chose to term his beggarly condition. He was ashamed of his stables; he had not a sound wine in his cellar to set before a guest; when he travelled abroad it was in the condition of a parson or a governess; and things were at such a pass that, were he minded to make a small gift to a lady, he must first sell the gown off his own wife’s back.

  To a speech ending in so offensive a turn I could make no other reply than to walk away; but Edward pursued me, talking still. From his present condition (as he chose to depict it) he passed to a sort of diabolical essay on the right use of riches. With any account of this I shall not distress you. Suffice it to say that I was reminded of Sir Epicure Mammon in the old play, entertaining himself to the most wicked imaginations of a more than Neronian licence. At length he looked at his watch and was recollected. The hour had come, it seemed, at which he was to conduct Joscelyn to the Temple. I returned to the house and endeavoured to compose myself by reading one of Dr South’s sermons.

  It was with some relief that I found only Joscelyn and his wife at the dinner-table. Edward’s presence would have distressed me, and Mr Kent I should now have found intolerable. Joscelyn was quite silent, and I noticed that he was very pale. Although conversation, even within the family circle at its narrowest, is surely essential to good-breeding, I myself judged that on this occasion we had better dine as quietly as Joscelyn chose. But it will be within your recollection, dear Miss Bird, that Lady Jory, although placid, is not perceptive. No doubt her husband’s appearance caused her some anxiety; and this she endeavoured to dissipate in chatter. It appeared that she had not been privileged to visit the coach-house, but she was aware that Joscelyn had brought some notable accession home with him. She must have known too, in a general way, about the wager. Now she asked for particulars – a request very reasonable in a wife – and Joscelyn, although his manner was constrained, replied with civility. Gathering that something very valuable was in question, and in an endeavour to see her husband in better spirits, Lady Jory professed herself to be highly pleased at his good fortune, and happy in the prospect of presently being permitted to view objects so splendid. And at this Joscelyn suddenly cried out in a high, strange voice, such as I had assuredly never heard from him before, that it was all nought but barbarous rubbish, such as might adorn some savage orgy, but was of no consonance with the dignity and absoluteness of death.

  I need scarcely say that this speech was incomprehensible to my poor sister, and that I had myself no confidence of discerning from what state of mind it issued. But if I felt alarm, I felt at least curiosity too. With some boldness therefore I asked my brother whether he had been this morning at the Temple; and, if so, had he there seen anything that it was fit to tell us of?

  He eyed me askance. It is no habit of Joscelyn’s; and it was in this moment, I believe, that I first conceived the shocking thought that all was not well with his reason. His reply was enigmatical. He had indeed been at the Temple. And it had lived up to its name as a place of revelation. Pray what was that, my dear? asked Lady Jory. That Edward, he answered, had made the better bargain with Fortune, and commanded the only true felicity he could now conceive.

  Here was something more that my good sister could make nothing of, and I chose not myself to probe the matter further. For the truth, I think, had begun to dawn on me, and I judged that we should be better separated while Joscelyn remained minded to such rash and unbecoming utterance. If it was a mere vagary, a freak of fancy roused by the unashamed vice of Edward and the lewd suggestions which one can well imagine emanating from Mr Kent, then the arrival of Sir James Dangerfield and his friends, although little likely to conduce to edification in any positive sense, might divert his mind from the fond and dangerous channel in which it had begun to run. Meanwhile Joscelyn had fortunately fallen into an abstraction, and said no more. So sunk in sombre thought, indeed, did he become, that when my sister and I rose to withdraw, he remained inert and regardless in his chair – an action (or lack of action) unparalleled in my recollection.

  That Sunday afternoon may with a peculiar appropriateness be dedicated to charitable exertion is a lesson which, my dear Miss Bird, I have never forgotten your impressing upon me; and, when at Old Hall, I am the more exigent with myself in the discharge of such duties upon those alternate Sundays on which we are unhappily without a morning service in our parish church. It was my intention, then, on this occasion, to go a round of the cottages, making such inquiries, and distributing such small gifts, as seemed proper. I was to be back, you see, with the good poor; and if the employment was not likely to be entertaining, it might at least distract me from those anxious thoughts to which the whole trend of events around me was irresistably prompting.

  Providing myself, then, through the kindness of my sister, with a stout serving-maid fit to carry a well-filled basket of soups and preserves, I set out on this unexciting occasion. You may wonder, indeed, why I pause to record it. Another moment will enlighten you!

  The third on my list was Mrs Grindell, the widow of a stone-breaker, necessarily very poorly left, and with but one young son (whom I supposed I had never seen) to afford her some support. I had been told that the boy was now entered upon casual labour on the waterways, and unlikely to be at home; it was therefore no surprise to me to find Mrs Grindell in solitude. Our conversation did not very well sustain itself, for the good woman’s cottage was clean and orderly, so that I found little upon which to admonish her; moreover she appeared neither to suffer from any of the ailments common to her station nor to nourish any persuasion that she did so. This, you will admit, was a hard case for the visitor! I was about to bid her return to her employments, and myself proceed in search of less stony ground, when there was a sound of running feet in the lane outside, mingled with what could only be a dismal blubbering. A moment later there burst in upon us a panic-stricken lad who could be no other than Tom, Mrs Grindell’s son. He was not, after all, unknown to me. I had last seen him, not in his present decently-patched attire, but in wretched rags – and in receipt of the curses and objurgations of my own grotesquely disguised brother. Here, in a word, was Joscelyn’s assistant smuggler!

  I was so confounded by this unexpected irruption that it was some moments before I became aware of what had reduced young Tom
to so unmanly a condition. It was likely, I confusedly thought, that some other lad had bested him in a bout of fisticuffs, or that he had been swinged by one of our farmers for robbing an orchard. Presently however I caught a reference to the Squire, and realized that Joscelyn was involved in the boy’s story. I therefore bade him with some severity address himself to me, and begin his narrative again. The effect of my interposition was sobering; Tom made some rude effort after coherence and lucidity; and presently I was in possession of new and perplexing intelligence.

  The Squire (Tom said) had lately employed him about some private business, wholly without sense to it, such as only the gentry could engage in. There was a wager to it, he supposed; much of the madness of the gentry was over wagers. What the Squire had required of him was no concern of his; he had done what he was told, been rewarded generously, and instructed to say nothing to anybody. Nor had he – not even to his own mother. But now the outlandish men had got it out of him. Not much – for it was not much that he knew. But what he did know, he had been frightened into telling.

  Tom Grindell had now stopped his blubbering. I could see that he was ashamed alike of it and of his failure to keep my brother’s confidence. I could see too that he was a lad not without some natural quickness of wit. Thus when I asked him whether by outlandish men he meant simply persons not of this part of the country, he replied, begging my pardon, that he meant those they called foreigners. Foreigners! I exclaimed in surprise. Yes and if it pleased me, Tom said, those that dragged him to the inn were out of Muskovy. And at this Mrs Grindell, sensible woman though she be, fell to blubbering in her turn, declaring it was but a Providence her boy’s throat had not been slit from ear to ear. Bidding the woman be silent, I questioned Tom with all the diligence (and discretion) that his astonishing statement required. And presently I satisfied myself that there could scarcely be any doubt of the alarming fact. The boy had been waylaid by a stranger and in some manner enticed to the inn, where he had been interviewed by another stranger in a private room. When, by means of threats and promises, these men had extracted from him something of his late services for Joscelyn, they commanded him to stay where he was, and both hurried out to the yard. Tom, although vastly terrified, had ventured on a peep through the window. What he had seen was a carriage with drawn blinds, and his captors reporting, cap in hand, to some person (whom he judged to be of great consequence) invisible within. Almost immediately, the carriage drove away. The two men returned to the inn, commanded Tom to say nothing to anyone, and dismissed him. At this the boy (although already on the verge of tears) had the spirit to demand who they were, that had so treated him? Whereat one of the men, laughing contemptuously, had replied that it would mean little to an English peasant lad to be told that he was in the presence of those who served the Tsar of all the Russias.

  All this, although surprising, was scarcely Greek to me. I assured the Grindells, mother and son, that nothing of moment had occurred; that the interview at the inn was but a trivial matter consequent upon the wager which Tom had so sagely suspected; and that it would now be best to forget the matter, and in particular to say nothing of it to the neighbours. I then gave Tom his own jar of our housekeeper’s special strawberry conserve, and came away (I trust) in what a soldier would call good order – although with grave and serious thoughts, as you may imagine.

  But the afternoon’s revelations were not over! I had scarcely determined upon the truth of our situation (namely, that Joscelyn’s possessing himself of so inordinately valuable a treasure as he had, must have roused the concern – perhaps the just indignation – of a powerful and arbitary Ruler), when, upon turning into the park, I encountered once more the objectionable Mr Kent. He appeared to be hurrying from the Hall to the Temple, and was at first disposed to pass me by with a bare civility. Then he paused, in an odd irresolution, and I observed that he was agitated. He asked me, had I heard any untoward news abroad? I replied instantly that I had not. Nothing of foreigners come into the neighbourhood? This put me rather at a stand. But I presently replied that had I intelligence of anything of the sort, it would be with my brother, Sir Joscelyn, that I should think proper to discuss it. Sir Joscelyn! he cried violently. The devil and nothing it had to do with him, the covert, cunning dog. It was poor Edward that would take the knock, did it come to a bruising-match.

  I was about to bow and pass on (for I had no wish to bandy riddles with a low person) when he burst out with information that made me pause. The Duke of Nesfield, it appeared, had that morning sent his steward (a man he would occasionally employ upon the most highly confidential business) post-haste to the Hall, with the message that Mr Edward Jory had better know the jest was gone too far. His Grace had news there had been interest made at Court; that a certain Chancellery was incensed; and that it would be well that the Grecian tune be transposed swiftly from the Lydian to the Dorian mode. Mr Kent repeated this last expression with the utmost contempt, clearly regarding it as little better than gibberish. But his uneasiness was not to be mistaken. I think I must myself have betrayed evidence of some dismay, and certainly I cried out that we were all like to be involved in the just retribution presently to be visited, it seemed, upon Edward’s latest base amour. Mr Kent stared at me and then burst into his harshest laughter. It was too bad, he said, to be a virtuous Christian gentlewoman, and at the same time sister to one who had abducted the mistress of the Sublime Porte. He then turned from me with a flourish of his hat and hurried on to the Temple.

  I confess myself to have been in such agitation by this time (my dear Miss Bird) that only after an interval did the element of unashamed nonsense in Mr Kent’s last asseveration become apparent to me. The Sublime Porte is not a person. But I have no doubt that it is an institution scandalously prolific, if not in mistresses, at least in concubines. It seemed only too assured that Edward’s prize was not the unregarded peasant girl I had imagined. And here were we, an English family of honourable, if private, station, subjected, through the folly of my brothers, to the unfavourable notice – perhaps to the unscrupulous enmity – of two formidable Foreign Powers!

  It has been my intention, so soon as I should arrive back at the Hall, to seek out Joscelyn, give him my disturbing news, and endeavour to draw him to a course of rational conduct, which should include immediate reparation of the luckless treasure. I have been the more hopeful of success, since he expressed himself at dinner as so violently discontented with it. Unfortunately I have not been able to put this plan into execution. Joscelyn is invisible; and to a note that I sent him (with a brief, and, as I hoped, arresting account of my experience) there has been returned only the very formal answer that he hopes to have the honour of attending on me later. Meanwhile the evening wears away; and I have endeavoured to beguile its anxieties by penning you these few rude and hasty pages. But now I must break off! At an earlier hour than I have apprehended, the sound of a curricle on the sweep informs me that either Sir James Dangerfield or one of the other expected guests has presented himself.

  What, then, are we to suppose should issue from the crowning folly planned as this night’s diversion? That my next communication will give other than a melancholy reply is something, dear Miss Bird, for which I devoutly hope, but which I by no means find myself able to expect!

  Your affectionate pupil,

  SOPHIA JORY.’

  7

  ‘That is very nice.’ Lady Jory – who seemed to Clout to have all the placidity attributed to her predecessor of a century before – was absently fondling one of Berkeley’s large ears. ‘There is nothing more pleasant, after tea, than a good long read. And you read very well.’ Lady Jory paused, and some echo of Sadie Sackett’s honest regional accent seemed to strike her ear. ‘Unaffectedly, that is to say. My dear father used commonly to remark that he always loved an unaffected girl. There was frequent evidence that he did.’ Lady Jory looked round her drawing-room, as if a little puzzled by the direction her own remarks were taking. ‘George, don’t you agree?’ />
  George Lumb hesitated. ‘About your f-f-father, Lady Jory?’

  ‘About that being a very nice piece of reading – very informative and entertaining.’

  ‘I l-l-like Sophia Jory’s m-m-majestic and m-m-monotonous prose. A b-b-bomb couldn’t alter its tempo, one feels.’ Lumb delivered this professional appreciation with some enthusiasm.

  ‘Was there a bomb – or what used to be called a bomb-shell?’ Jerry Jory asked. ‘Are we going to know? Is there more?’

  Sadie nodded. ‘There’s one more letter. It was written on the following morning. And Sophia certainly felt there was a bomb-shell. Several.’

  Olivia Jory leaned forward. ‘The swap, for instance? There’s something about that?’

  ‘You needn’t worry, Miss Jory. You’ll get your swap. It’s on record, all right – for what it’s worth.’

  ‘It sounds to me’, Dr Jory said, ‘as if it was worth the deuce of a lot. Jory, what do you make of all this?’

  Sir John Jory, thus appealed to, walked slowly to the hearth-rug, as if feeling that a more authoritative pronouncement might be made from this point of vantage. ‘It doesn’t seem to me’, he presented offered, ‘that they were all quite playing the game, you know. Travelling and collecting and so forth is all very well, and if a fellow carries off a tomb or two from niggers or savages, I don’t say there’s any great harm done. As for Edward Jory’s girl – well, it was quite the thing at that time, as I believe I’ve said before. But, of course, bringing her along was another matter, particularly if she was the sort of girl that the people in some embassy or legation were going to get worked up about. I’m sure Jerry, with his experience of that sort of thing, agrees.’ Sir John stopped. Like his wife, he was inclined to become rather bewildered about the tenor of his own utterance. ‘I mean, that is, Jerry’s experience of diplomatic folk, not of girls – or at least of that sort of girl.’