Everything Henrietta saw enchanted her; the broad, curving staircase, with its balustrade made from the timbers of Miles Conyer's first privateer, the minstrel gallery over the hall where, so Phillips said, Conyer's son entertained guests with his own madrigals (one of which had survived down to this day), the long, wainscotted passage leading to a chamber Phillips called the “Muniment Room,” whatever that meant, the portraits of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Conyers by Lely and Kneller, as predatory-looking a bunch as one could find today up in the Lancashire cotton belt, the Dutch garden where tulips and weeds fought one another for living-space, the great rhododendron banks climbing behind each wing into the woods crowding the slope and forming a convenient windbreak to the north-east. There was the cubby-hole behind one of the fireplaces that Phillips said was a priest's hole, although he did not explain how such a feature came to be included in the country seat of a family of militant Protestants and, above all, the Conyer crest in stone over the front porch, a shield bisected by a St. Andrew's cross with a variety of unidentifiable birds and fishes in the spaces. It was, Mr. Phillips admitted, a rather suspect coat-of-arms, for this branch of the Conyers were never ennobled, but its presence, merging into the mellow brick-work of the long façade, was additional proof of the ex-miller's enterprise.
Henrietta did not know, of course, that old Collinwood's sudden death had converted Tryst into an expensive white elephant, for such of the Conyers who possessed the means or inclination to occupy the place were serving in various parts of the colonies and the agent had instructions to find a tenant for a period of five years, after which the situation was to be reviewed. He mentioned this just as he was leaving, saying that he had an appointment with a prospect that very evening. It was this parting remark, perhaps, that made Henrietta very thoughtful over her broth and beefsteak, eaten under the sullen glare of a Jacobite Conyer who had died of drink in Rome after a curious incident Mr. Phillips referred to as “The Fifteen.”
He came about noon the next day, bringing a new day dress she had ordered in anticipation of regaining her normal figure. It was, he thought merrily, a very fetching dress, its tight waistcoat bodice featuring pagoda sleeves finished with what he had been told were known as “engageantes.” The crinoline skirt displayed multiple flounces and there was a trimmed bonnet to match but it was not the new ensemble that engaged her attention when he displayed it on its wire hanger. He said, “I’ve seen Doctor Birtles, and he tells me you can travel home tomorrow. I’ll send Mandrake over to fetch you and the baby early afternoon. Be ready because he's due to meet me at Croydon before six,” but then noticed that her expression clouded, and that she made that familiar, appealing grimace that he had first noticed when he tried to abandon her at the wayside station of Lea Green during the earliest stage of their escape from Seddon Moss.
He said, “You want to come home, don’t you?” and she replied, devastatingly, “I am home, Adam. I’m more at home here than I’ve ever been anywhere in my life.” Then, as he raised his eyebrows, “Oh, I daresay it sounds silly but it's true, it's true, Adam! I love this house, and I love this garden. I belong here and I never want to leave it.”
He said, reasonably, “Come now, that's nonsense, Henrietta. It really is, and you must see that it is. I know that I said you should live in an old house eventually but I didn’t mean now, and I certainly didn’t mean a place of this size. It's not only the upkeep, it's the distance from London. Shirley was bad enough, and I hoped to move closer in when the lease ran out, but this is more than twenty miles out and in bad weather it could take me two hours to get into Croydon. Quite apart from that I couldn’t afford to buy Tryst, even if I called off the expansion and pledged every penny I possessed.”
“Oh, but you don’t have to buy it, it's for rent. Mr. Phillips, the agent, told me so only yesterday. They want a tenant for five years and after that you could almost surely get it renewed if you wanted to.”
“No,” he said, “it's quite mad!” but she went on, obstinately, “Why is it mad? Your friend Avery is always telling you to think in guineas and not sixpences, and if I understand that rightly it means pretending to everyone that you’re richer than you are. In the meantime you’d have somewhere peaceful and lovely to come to whenever you were tired, somewhere for your children to grow up and give me what I want and need, a home to love as well as a husband.” Suddenly she became very earnest. “You’d never ever regret taking it, Adam, I promise you. It isn’t because baby was born here, and everyone has been so friendly and helpful, it…it's something I feel but can’t properly explain, I mean…how there comes to be a house here, and the man who built it, and how like you he was in the way he went about it!”
She paused for a moment trying to assess whether her outburst had made any impression, whether he regarded it as anything more than an exhibition of what people called “post-pregnancy fantods.” He looked astonished but there was no sign of the indulgent smile he sometimes used when she made more modest demands on his pocket and patience. Instead there was a hesitant, rather speculative gleam in his eye as he ranged, hand in pockets, along the façade of the house, looking about him with the air of a man seeking an escape from her importunities.
She held her breath when he stopped, turned, and looked up at the roof and then, pivoting slowly on his heel, took in the full length of the house, from the muniment room in the west to the little gargoyle perched below the twisted chimney pot of the eastern wing where it jutted out, as though it was one of Miles Conyer's afterthoughts. He came back to her.
“How much do they want per annum? Did you ask Phillips? Or didn’t it occur to you that the old rascal was hard at work selling you something?”
She threw up her head as though he had offered a personal insult.
“No, it didn’t and I don’t think he was. He told me because I asked about the history of Tryst. He was just being kind and polite, in a way you couldn’t understand.”
He said, goodhumouredly, “There now, I don’t want to upset you. You shouldn’t work yourself up in a state at a time like this. Come down off that high horse and don’t resort to snivelling, because it doesn’t fool me any more than your other little tricks, although I never seem able to convince you of that, do I?” and he threw his arms around her and kissed her, saying, “Come right out with it if you must. I’ll accept the fact that you’re taken with the place, and that you made up your mind to bully me into taking it the moment you heard it was in the market. But what's this nonsense about me and that pirate who built it three centuries ago? What the devil have people like the Conyers and me got in common?”
“A lot more than you think. He was someone else who wouldn’t take no for an answer, who thought he was capable of anything and proved it. That's why I know Tryst is right for you, apart from what I think about it. You’ll succeed here, far more than if you buy or rent some ordinary little place. Besides,” here she pouted again, “how long do you spend at home anyhow?”
A male thought occurred to him. With a place like this on her hands her mind was likely to be so occupied that she would make fewer demands on his time than she had been making of late. There was also something to be said for her theory that it would bring prestige to the enterprise. Every successful city man was a snob, and the more money a man was seen to be making the more emphasis rivals placed on his social background. He could imagine the impact his tenancy of a grand house like this might make in and around London Bridge, and on the Manchester and Birmingham exchanges. “That Swann feller—the haulier with the strange device. Must be doing well. Bought himself a country estate they tell me. Up and coming man I should say…” and again he thought how much of the father had rubbed off on the daughter.
He said, finally, “Look here, Henrietta, there might be certain advantages but it depends entirely on what Phillips hopes to get in the way of a rental. I’ll not be held to ransom because you see yourself as lady of the manor. And it’ll mean me spending more time in London, for I can
’t be expected to come back here every night of the week. I should spend half my time travelling. When it comes down to it, it's a question of asking yourself which you prefer most, a place in the country, or a lodger for a husband.”
“You know that isn’t true,” she said, spiritedly, “and it's unkind to imply it. Of course I’d sooner have you than a house, any kind of house, but I can have both if all you say about the future of Swann-on-Wheels is true, and not just the kind of talk men use to convince themselves that what they are doing is right. I don’t want this place if you don’t. Why don’t you explore it, as I have? All I’m saying is it's the kind of place a successful man of business ought to be looking for if he means to raise a family.”
He said, “Don’t threaten me with any more children for a spell. We haven’t even found a name for the first one yet. Have you got any more bright ideas? That last list sounded pretentious to me, especially “Patience.” Patience, indeed, when she was practically born behind a carriage horse! Put your thinking cap on for she’ll have to be christened in a week or two.”
He went off then and she saw by the way he moved that he was embarking on one of his exploratory probes, of the kind that had already taken him from one end of the country to the other. She thought, gleefully, “He’ll have it! That shot about thinking in guineas went home!” and addressed herself to the less important problem of finding a name for the baby.
He explored the outside first, moving up the grassy incline above the Dutch garden and taking the path that led through the rhododendron clumps until he could look down on the house from the wooded eminence that rose to a height of a hundred feet. When he had seen it in moonlight he had thought of it as an old man, composing himself for sleep, but now it looked very feminine, a cheerful, broad-beamed matron of about forty-five, with a spread of handsome children and a hearty husband who still appreciated what she had to offer on the table and between the sheets. There was vitality down there harnessed to a settled habit of mind, as though something of old Conyer's restlessness had been built into the place and was still trying to get out after three centuries of sun, rain, and wind. The colours appealed to him, the cider-apple redness of mellowed brick and pantiles, the chocolate brown of the cross-timbers and the yellowish white of the chimneys, with their long, graceful twirls, more like the work of a pastry-cook than a mason. And beyond, where the double row of copper beeches ran down to the lane, there were great patches of bluebells that had been budding the evening he brought her here but were now in flower, as were the primroses under the hedges either side of the drive. Away to the left, half-hidden in a wooded hollow, he could see a blur of buildings that was Twyforde Green, and between here and the village the river ran across level fields and coppices on its way to join a broader stream that would carry it to the Channel nearly forty miles to the south. Behind him, running the whole length of the escarpment that sheltered the house, were trees that had taken root the time the Kentishmen marched on London under Tyler and Ball, some of the older oaks towering to a height of a five-storey building, others gaining in spread what they lost in height. The place had a settled, civilised look that recommended itself to him as the end product of centuries of conservation and commonsense. It was planned, ordered, and deeply rooted, and although it promised comfort the pursuit of ease was not its mainspring. The merchant impulse in Henrietta had detected something that he had missed. The house was redolent of achievement and endeavour on the part of a long line of Englishmen, all of whom knew what they wanted and meant to get it, come what may.
He moved over to the balustrade that overlooked the stableyard and went down a flight of shallow terraces to the kitchen quarters. Here was a range large enough to roast a buck, and the ironmongery that would attend the endeavour. There were several still rooms and pantries floored with blue slate, and an ornate pump beside a stone-lined well covered with an iron grating. Three jerks on the handle brought water gushing into the wooden trough and he thought, “That's a spring in the slope above and will keep the house bone dry in winter, for the well will drain every gallon that slips through the spread of roots beyond the yard,” and he passed on through rooms with which he was half-familiar until he came to the little sewing chamber off the drawing-room, where the baby lay in a cot under the window.
He looked down at her, surprised at the power she had to enchant now that she looked like a real baby instead of the puckered, squalling bundle they had shown him the morning he returned here after his night at the mill. The tuft of hair was receding and under it was a glint of gold so that he thought, “She’ll be fair, like her grandfather, not blackpolled like me, and there's not much of her mother's mulishness about her so far as I can see. I wouldn’t wonder if she isn’t a withdrawn little thing, who lets her mother put upon her,” and he reached down, lifting the tiny fist and noting the perfect formation of fingernails that reminded him of forget-me-not petals. The fingers uncoiled and made a feint at his thumb and two unwinking blue eyes looked up at him with the solemnity of an old bishop pronouncing a blessing.
He stood there conjuring with names, an avalanche of names but none of them seemed apt. There were the usual biblical names, Judith and Ruth and Rachel and Rebecca, and a string of maiden-aunt names, like those of his father's sisters, Emma, Harriet, Martha, Ann, and Charlotte. There were fashionable names like Florence, and royal names, like Adelaide and Victoria, and names that were supposed to set the owner an example, like Faith and Charity, and the one Henrietta had suggested, Patience. Patience might have suited her, but now, because of the circumstances of her arrival, it had an ironic ring. He wanted something that symbolised feminine qualities and Eve was an obvious choice, but then he had another thought and a very arresting one. There was that child's body he had lifted from the well at Cawnpore just as dusk was falling, and a single bright star hung in the sky, witness to the ghoulish task that he and Roberts were performing on that sombre occasion. He recalled that the presence of the star had seemed to him a kind of requiem and now, looking down at his own child, he remembered that a solitary star had hung low over the woods when he set off on that mad gallop for the doctor. Stella. She should be Stella. To him at least it represented renewal and suddenly he was resolved upon it, whether Henrietta approved or not. He replaced the hand under the coverlet and went upstairs, ranging along the corridors, glancing into the bedrooms, and wondering how much of the furniture was Collinwood's and how much went with the house. In a row of intercommunicating attics, he saw a huge cistern, presumably installed with the object of building a modern plumbing system, and made a mental note to pursue inquiries in this direction, but now his examination was no more than cursory. He had made up his mind and was already casting around for a formula that would save his face. Ordinarily he was not a man to bother about such niceties but with Henrietta it was always advisable to take this kind of precaution.
She said, when he rejoined her, “Well, what do you think?” and he replied, “Stella. We’ll call her Stella. It's an easy name and she's going to have starry eyes.” Then, before she could exclaim, “As for the house, it's more intelligently planned than I supposed, and there's pasture here for half-a-dozen horses. I’ll see Phillips before I go up to town in the morning and find out what he's asking. More I don’t promise. Let's have supper.”
His nonchalance did not deceive her but she was wise enough to let the subject drop. All she did, in the way of bolting the door on him, was to slip a message to the miller's wife to get word to Phillips to be available the following day until noon. She had no need to do more than hint at the reason. Ellen Michelmore was already her sworn ally.
Five
1
ON HER ACCOUNT HE HAD MISSED HIS TARGET DATE. IT WAS HOPELESS, IN VIEW of all that followed that eventful evening drive across the Kentish border, to adhere to his plans to break out into even a few of the mapped-out territories, yet some good came of it. She was still, if unwillingly, mascot and talisman of Swann-on-Wheels.
If this was he
r function, the role of Tybalt, the old-maidish clerk Keate had introduced into the business, was that of power-house, for it was Tybalt who collected and scrutinised the county almanacks, Tybalt who hit upon the idea of compiling a list of potential customers from Berwick to Fishguard, across the empty pockets of the west to the sheep farms of Dorset, then eastward to where the South Eastern Railway ran almost within sight of Tryst. More important still, Tybalt put into practice Adam's own notion of consolidating this vast amount of information and relating it to all the data reposing between the covers of the red travelling diary.
Tybalt, a man who did not indulge in frivolities, called his apparatus “The System” but Adam, always inclined to romanticise commerce, soon found another name for the ungainly object they built to make the information readily available. He called this aide-memoire “Frankenstein,” for that is how it looked to him when it was complete, a method of fact-assimilation that seemed to him, when he consulted it and got an unexpected answer, to combine the logic of Solomon and the willingness of the Genie of Aladdin's lamp.
The almanack survey came first, for without it Frankenstein would never have been invented. Adam estimated that he had lost six weeks’ leeway on account of Stella and her mother's infatuation with Tryst, but the time sacrificed was not wasted. It was put to good use by Tybalt and Keate, and led to all manner of changes and adjustments in the original plan, not least the introduction of some medium-sized waggons that he came to call frigates, because they were handier than the drays and possessed twice the carrying capacity of the one-horse pinnaces. He invested another five hundred pounds in frigates and teams to pull them, and because their design was his, and had been disowned by Blunderstone the coach-builder, he took a proper pride in their arrival in the yard, a fleet of handsome, high-sprung, canopied waggons that would stand up to any amount of hard usage on country roads but were yet light enough to come within a mile or two of the records set up by coaches like the Bagshot to Staines “Quicksilver” and the Leicester to Nottingham “Lark.” For in the territory they were designed to exploit the emphasis would be on light merchandise rather than on the heavy hauls requiring three-horse drays.
God is an Englishman Page 27
