It was, however, only to be expected that the Ganders should be upset by the prospect of George’s return with a family of unknown origin and colour. What no one could have foreseen was the effect of the news on so many other people in Lammiter, and on almost everybody in Lammiter West. The apprehension, the cold dislike, the drawing-room dismay with which it was first received, grew imperceptibly to a kind of panic. Miss Montgomery remembered, with advantage, that George had once seduced her parlourmaid. Mrs Sabby recalled the rumour that he had ruined hers. The Chairman of the Education Committee, thinking of the similar fate that had befallen a young teacher of gymnastics, gravely warned the assembled headmasters of Lammiter that danger, like a lion in the way, would shortly attend the coming to and fro of all their female assistants. Mothers whose eldest sons had drunk their first glass of beer under the shadow of George’s elbow grew alarmed for the safety of their Benjamins. Shopkeepers determined to give no credit to George or to his family, and bank managers told their cashiers to scrutinize with added care all cheques that were presented. The Empire League of Youth passed a resolution condemning, in the strongest terms, miscegnation; and the Women Citizens contemplated a petition to the Home Secretary to prevent George from landing at any English port. The British Women’s Temperance Association was urged to special prayer – but the motion emanated from a somewhat fanatical member – and the Special Constables, in the privacy of their bedrooms, assiduously practised the rapid drawing of their truncheons.
Such, after infinite repetition of gossip and the inordinate exchange of rumours, was the effect of George’s telegram. In the course of three or four days he came to be regarded as a monster, a kind of dragon, or evil spectre. The most sober and responsible people yielded to the infection of this superstitious fear, while domestic servants, errand-boys, and children were roused to almost intolerable excitement. It was generally assumed that George’s offspring were black: there was no authority for this belief, for no one had seen the complexion of their mother, but it was perhaps a natural supposition: so attendant upon George – at least in the imagination of children, errand-boys, and domestic servants – there would be a troop of swart young heathens, brightly clad. It was, then, with feverish anticipation that Lammiter awaited the day of their arrival.
In the early afternoon of 25 May Mr Peabody received a radiogram from the s.s. City of Prague, then at sea, which read: ‘Docking at Plymouth early tomorrow reach Lammiter two o’clock Gander.’ By tea-time the news was common property, and on the following day a crowd of more than fifteen hundred people assembled at the station to see George’s arrival.
Hilary and Mr Peabody were there, with Arthur and Wilfrid, but Stephen had refused to come, and Jane, thanks to the timely synchronization of unrelated events, was playing in the Ladies’ Open Golf Championship at Porthcawl. The crowd was quiet and orderly, but Hilary was sorely embarrassed to see that George’s advent had already provoked such interest, and had it not been for Wilfrid she would have fled from so many spectators. Wilfrid, however, was delighted by the crowd’s attention, and his high spirits fortified her against the beam of three thousand curious eyes.
The train was signalled. Wilfrid, arm-in-arm between Hilary and Arthur, capered excitedly on the platform. The crowd on the road outside pressed against the railings and closed densely round the station entrance.
Coming smoothly and slowly round a bend in the line, coming almost silently – steel kissing steel and steam with a sigh escaping – the train slid to a standstill. Doors opened, porters hurried, and seven passengers got out. But none of them was George, none was a child, and all were obvious though unassuming Nordics.
Mr Peabody fumbled in his pocket and found George’s telegram.
‘“Reach Lammiter two o’clock,”’ he repeated. ‘It’s quite clear and definite. I can’t think why he isn’t here, unless the ship was delayed by fog, or some accident, and then surely he would have let us know.’
‘Perhaps he’s changed his mind and isn’t coming at all,’ suggested Arthur hopefully. Ten minutes earlier Wilfrid had assured him that the five hundred pounds bet he had lost had not been seriously intended; and Arthur, who had avoided Wilfrid for the last ten days, was so greatly relieved – though he had never meant to pay so monstrous a debt – that his normal tendency to optimism was greatly exaggerated.
‘George has missed his train,’ said Hilary decisively. ‘That’s the explanation, and it’s what we might have expected from him.’
Mr Peabody looked incredulous, for punctuality was a condition of his life, and he thought the missing of trains was part of a humorist’s stock-in-trade rather than a piece of actual existence; but Wilfrid, calling to the stationmaster, asked when the next train from Plymouth was due.
‘Five-thirty,’ said the stationmaster, ‘but it’s a local, and Mr Gander won’t be in that, if he’s sensible. The next fast one’s nine-thirty-seven.’
‘We’d better meet the five-thirty as well,’ said Hilary, turning to go. ‘George would no more avoid a bad train than a bad habit.’
The crowd was disappointed and somewhat resentful to find they had wasted their time. It was Wilfrid who appeased their curiosity and loudly announced that George had missed the train. The word was repeated, and grumbling comment accompanied it. The pressure of the crowd changed its direction outwards, and, to the sound of hoarse complaint and the cackle of disillusion, dispersion began. The crowd thawed, obstructed its own movement, melted, and vanished. But at half past five nearly six hundred of them returned to the station, again to be disappointed, and at twenty-seven minutes past nine they were back in full strength, inclined to be noisy now, and many of them smelling healthily of beer.
For the third time their mission was in vain: George had not yet arrived; and the crowd grew angry. Someone, they thought, had tricked them. And they began to show their displeasure. A police inspector escorted Arthur, Wilfrid, and Mr Peabody from the station, while six constables benignly opposed their strength against the unruliest sections of the mob.
Hilary, after two useless journeys, had stayed at home. She heard the latest news with a slightly irritated composure. ‘We might have known what would happen,’ she said. ‘If George is to be relied on for anything at all, it’s for being unreliable. Well, I’m going to no more trouble for him. If he comes here, he can stay here; and if he doesn’t, so much the better.’
Wilfrid said, ‘I suppose it isn’t possible …’
‘What?’ asked Arthur.
‘Well, people sometimes play practical jokes.’
Mr Peabody pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows – because his skin was so tight these were both difficult processes – and looked the very picture of legal scepticism. Hilary seemed thoughtful for a moment, then slowly shook her head. But optimism and credulity, those rosy twins, led Arthur up the garden-path immediately, and ante-dating his instant conversion he declared, ‘That’s it! Of course it is. George has been pulling our legs! I suspected it from the very beginning. Those letters of his didn’t read like serious inquiries – we should never have been deceived by them, and, in fact, I wasn’t – and those two telegrams could have been written by anyone. I was never convinced of their authenticity. And now, of course, it’s quite clear that he persuaded some friend of his to send them: someone who happened to be coming home, who wasn’t too scrupulous, and had the same idea of a joke as George. Well, well! He’s had us absolutely on a string, hasn’t he? Or most of us, at any rate. Even Wilfrid was caught to begin with: weren’t you, Wilfrid? George is a clever fellow, a very clever fellow indeed, but he’ll have to get up earlier in the morning if he wants to surprise me. I’m too old a bird to be caught napping. It was a good try, though. I give George full marks for it. A very good joke indeed. And Hilary got their rooms all ready for them, eh? Well, George would laugh if he knew that!’
Arthur stood before the fire, his right hand in his trouser-pocket, his left elbow on the mantelpiece – the fingers amiably waving – and
looked down at the others with a plump and happy smile. No one answered him. But he chuckled loudly. ‘An extremely good joke,’ he repeated. I’ll remember this, and give George credit for it, as long I live.’
At the far end of the room a maid came in with a tray of glasses and a decanter. Hilary looked inquiringly at Mr Peabody, and suggested bridge. Mr Peabody was eager for a game, Wilfrid and Arthur v/ere agreeable to it. They played for an hour, intent upon their cards but aware of an underlying euphrasy that had nothing to do with good hands or successful bidding: for George and his family had not arrived, and though Arthur’s optimism might be unwarranted, there was none of them could wholly withstand the infection of hope. At the least they had been given another evening’s grace.
At a quarter to eleven Mr Peabody remarked, with obvious intention to continue, that he hoped they would have time for another rubber. Arthur helped himself to whisky and soda, and sat down again. Hilary, in the act of dealing, paused and listened. Her ears, attuned to the life of the house, had caught, or so she imagined, a distant noise, unusual at that hour and surprising. But she might have been mistaken: she continued to deal. ‘One heart,’ she said carefully.
The door at the far end of the room opened again, and a maid, in a voice that was high-pitched with excitement, announced, ‘Mr George Gander, ma’am.’
Chapter 17
Blinking at the light, George came into the room, and after a moment’s hesitation, stepped cheerfully forward. ‘Well, Hilary!’ he exclaimed, and before he could say more tripped over a rug, and stumbling violently, broke into a little run to maintain his balance and brought up with a heavy hand on Mr Peabody’s shoulder: for the card-players sat still, their heads turned towards him, but too surprised for any larger movement.
‘That bloody rug!’ he said amiably. ‘If I’ve tripped on it once I’ve tripped on it a hundred times. Why don’t you give it away, or hide it when you know I’m coming home?’
‘How did you get here?’ asked Hilary.
George bent and kissed her affectionately. ‘You look younger every time I see you,’ he said. ‘If we hadn’t been brought up together like brother and sister.…’
‘We weren’t,’ said Hilary brusquely. George’s kiss had been too alcoholically scented for her liking.
‘…if we weren’t right in the middle of the prohibited degrees I couldn’t stay in the same room for two minutes without making love to you, in spite of old Peabody there. How are you, Peabody? Grave-robbing still profitable? Still plundering widows and orphans at six-and-eight a kick? And Arthur, by God! Arthur, you old hypocrite, I’m damned glad to see you.’
‘This is Mr Follison: my cousin George,’ said Hilary.
‘How d’you do, old man?’ said George. ‘Any friend of Hilary’s is a friend of mine.’ He shook Wilfrid warmly by the hand, who stared at him in simple amazement.
George pulled a chair nearer to the table, and sat down. ‘The wanderer’s return,’ he said, beaming on all impartially. ‘“The Good Wife’s sons come home again, for her blessings on their head.”’
He was a little man, very shabbily dressed in a thin blue suit. His collar was soiled, and his pale brown shoes were cracked. He had a broad, innocent forehead, and dark hair that was growing thin on top. Under briefly srnudged brows his eyes, though somewhat bleary, somewhat yellowish at the circumference, were an undefeated and ever-twinkling blue, and his lips, though they parted to show blackened teeth, were well and whimsically cut. His complexion was a pallid yellowish-brown, and his fingers, none too clean, were broadly tobacco-stained. He was by no means the monster, the ogre, of popular imagination, but in Hilary’s drawing-room he looked startlingly disreputable, and his voice did nothing to discount his appearance. For his voice was rich and deep and a little too loud; his intonation was vulgarly assured; and his accent was a strange amalgam, such as sailors acquire, with sometimes a hint of American, and sometimes a touch of cockney in it.
Mr Peabody cleared his throat. ‘We expected you to arrive early this afternoon,’ he said.
‘And that’s what I expected,’ said George. ‘But you’d got nothing else to do but expect: you could sit still and expect in comfort: I’d got to catch a train as well.’
‘And you missed it?’ asked Hilary.
‘By an hour and a half,’ said George, ‘and so did three of my fellow-voyagers and a bottle of brandy that one of them was taking home to cure his father-in-law’s rheumatism. And the next one I missed by all eternity, because I knew nothing about it till it had gone. But I caught the third. I caught it very comfortably indeed. I was nestling in the arms of Morpheus, in a corner-seat with my back to the engine, half an hour before it started.’
‘But that must have been the nine-twenty-seven,’ said Mr Peabody, ‘and you certainly didn’t arrive by it. I was on the platform myself in order to meet you.’
‘If Gabriel and God’s own string-band had been there I’d have disappointed them. I’m no sleep-walker, and I didn’t lift an eyelid till we got to Wishington. Then the girls began to tickle rne, so I woke up, and they said they thought we must be getting near Lammiter.’
‘The girls!’ said Hilary.
‘By God!’ said George. ‘I’d forgotten all about ‘em. They’re downstairs somewhere: they were too shy to come up, I suppose. And that badmash of a taxi-driver’s there too. He wants thirty bob for driving us back from Wishington, the suar, and I’ve lost my pocket-book somewhere. Lend me a couple of pounds, Peabody, will you? You can charge it to the estate.’
Hilary led the way downstairs, closely pursued by Wilfrid and Arthur. George and Mr Peabody followed as soon as George had received his two pounds.
Four steps from the bottom Hilary halted to look, with dismay, at the picture of George’s family. It was worse than she had expected. It was as bad as she had ever feared … Sitting on the oak settle were two small boys in dirty sailor-suits: they were thin, coffee-coloured, black-haired, with bulging foreheads and very bony knees: one was sniffing and sobbing, the other, open-mouthed, was silently weeping. Beside them sat a dumpy girl of about fifteen, rather lighter in colour, with a khaki topee on the back of her head. On the opposite side of the hall, in a tall brocaded chair, sat another girl intently scrutinizing an illustrated magazine: on closer inspection she was seen to be extremely pretty, and the magazine turned out to be the Illustrated Nudist Gazette. The eldest of the family stood near the door talking to the taxi-driver. She was a slim and lovely young woman, and from her animated demeanour she was clearly enjoying herself: the taxi-driver was not ill-looking. Lying untidily about the hall were eight or ten pieces of luggage: two battered fibre trunks, a bruised tin trunk, a string-bag, and several brown-paper parcels.
With a last bewitching smile the oldest girl left the taxi-driver and came to meet Hilary. Her manner was self-possessed, her voice was thin and rather metallic, and she spoke with a quick sing-song intonation.
‘I am Miss Doris Gander,’ she said. ‘You are my Aunt Hilary, no doubt. Our father has told us all about you, and I am very pleased to meet you.’
‘How do you do,’ said Hilary faintly. ‘I’m sorry you were left downstairs, but George – your father, that is….’
‘Oh, that is quite all right. We have been admiring your bungalow. I think it is ripping.’
‘You must take your little brothers to bed,’ said Hilary. ‘They look tired-out.’
‘There is nothing the matter with them,’ said Doris. ‘They are just cry-babies, that is all.’
George, with Mr Peabody’s two pounds in his pocket, came briskly downstairs. ‘Well, Hilary,’ he exclaimed, ‘what d’you think of them? Isn’t this a girl to be proud of? Aren’t they a healthy-looking crowd? “And they learned from their wistful mother to call Old England home.’”
‘Where is their mother?’ whispered Hilary.
George pointed to the floor with his tobacco-brown index finger. ‘Under the sod in a foreign soil,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘The tragedy of my
life, Hilary. Don’t let’s talk about it. Have all the children been introduced to you?’
‘Only Doris,’ said Hilary.
‘Well, that’s Tessie, with the magazine. A very studious girl, quiet and bookish in her tastes, like me. Come and say how-d’you-do to your Aunt Hilary, Tessie. What have you been reading, eh? Good God, where did you get this?’
‘You bought it at the station,’ said Tessie.
‘Our father is always taking pains that we shall be well educated,’ said Doris. ‘We are all great readers. Our father…’
‘Don’t call me “our father”,’ said George irritably. ‘You make me sound like a bit of the Lord’s Prayer, and for a modest man that’s most embarrassing. Now, the other girl, the fat one with the hat on, is Clarice, and the boys are Edward and Timothy. What are you crying for, Timmy?’
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