Mr. American

by George MacDonald Fraser

  They reached the house as the remaining guests were preparing to depart, and Mr Franklin remarked that he, too, must be on his way. Would he not stay to luncheon? Sir Charles and the children would be delighted; it would be especially pleasant to have him join the family party ... Mr Franklin, feeling that if he had much more formal courtesy he would be in danger of breaking down and taking it all at its face value, in which case he'd presumably be at Oxten Hall for the rest of his life, was firm. He must be going. In that case, Arthur would drive him over to Castle Lancing ...

  But when Mr Franklin had collected his bag from the beery servitor in the West Wing, it was not Arthur, but Peggy, who was waiting with the family's open Humber at the front door, adjusting her motoring veil in the rear-view mirror, and looking thoroughly efficient in dust-coat and gauntlets.

  'I suppose you imagine I'm not fit to drive this thing?' she said, noting Mr Franklin's hesitancy; in fact, he had been thinking exactly that. 'Well, Arthur has been in every ditch between here and Norwich, so think yourself lucky. Jump in.'

  She set off with a great clashing of gears and stamping of the clutch, and so far as he could judge, drove extremely well, if rather fast; he was not used to 20 m.p.h. Conversation was impossible above the coughing roar of the 25 h.p. engine, but after a mere twenty minutes of jolting over the Norfolk back roads, with Mr Franklin clutching his hat in one hand and the car-door in the other, they swung through the gate of Lancing Manor, and Peggy yanked on the brake to bring them to a shuddering stop on the gravel before the front door. Jake emerged as from a trap round the side of the house, peered, and then effaced himself with many a backward glance as Mr Franklin handed the driver down and invited her inside.

  'I think that performance calls for a cup of tea,' he said, and left her removing her veil and bonnet and shaking out her hair as she surveyed the hall. As he brewed the tea he found himself wondering what she thought of the place - until now he had never considered it as something to show off; what did it look like, anyway? For that matter, if you had a lady visitor, did you serve her tea in the hall, or in the drawing-room? Which, if any, was the drawing-room? He frowned; better take the ginger biscuits out of their wrapper, anyway, and put them on a plate - and was there milk at the back door? (There was.) He surveyed the tray critically, used his handkerchief to dust a shaving out of the new and unused tea service, and carried the tray through to the hall. Peggy was examining the charro saddle which occupied a corner near the front door; he still hadn't decided where to put it.

  'I'm not really . . . prepared for receiving, I'm afraid,' he said.

  'It's beautiful,' she said. 'Simply beautiful. Who arranged everything?'

  'Well ... I did, I guess. With the help of a few magazines ... people from the shops. Milk and sugar?'

  'Just milk, thank you.' She glanced round at the set of antique chairs against the panelling; the big refectory table and hall-stand; the Chinese rugs on the well-worn but highly-polished floor; the heavy damask curtains which her feminine eye identified as Liberty's; the hunting prints, small and discreet, near the fireplace. Watching her sidelong as he poured the tea, he said. 'I hope you like it. If you do, it isn't my fault. I just saw a few things I liked, and told them to go ahead.' He handed her cup, and indicated a seat, but Peggy remained standing, looking round her.

  'It's remarkable,' she said at last. 'What a strange man you are. I'm sorry - I didn't mean that to sound rude. But - well . . . it's unusual, isn't it? I mean, here you are, all alone, in this lovely old house, which you've furnished beautifully - you'll let me see the rest of it, won't you? - and yet ... well, why? I mean,' she added hastily, 'you don't seem like the kind of person who would ... well, do all this, unless you had some ... well, some good reason for doing it.'

  'Living in the place is a good reason, isn't it?' He offered her a biscuit.

  'Yes, for some people.' She took a biscuit and grimaced. 'The King ought to have stayed here - you have ginger biscuits. No, what I meant was - someone older, who was retiring, or coming to live with his family - but you're not. You don't seem to belong to this ... quiet life, d'you see what I mean?'

  'What kind of life do you think I belong to?' he wondered.

  'Oh, something much more active -something busy. Well, look at that saddle - or the spurs you gave Mrs Keppel. That's the sort of thing I mean - they suit you much better than Chinese rugs.'

  'Oh? I thought I looked pretty good standing on a Chinese rug.'

  Peggy laughed. 'You know what I mean! You're an out-of-doors man - or a business man, if you like. I mean, if you were living in Town, and this was a country retreat, that would be perfectly understandable. But you haven't got a place in Town, have you? I asked Soveral, you know, and he said you hadn't. ..'

  'Well, if that's what he said, you can be sure it's correct. I doubt if that gentleman ever gets things wrong.'

  'And he said you were not in business, or had any connections in the City - or anything at all. He just didn't know anything about you; nor did anyone else. Well,' said Peggy firmly, 'that won't do. You can't go about being so mysterious, when everyone wants to know about you. Now can you?'

  'I doubt,' said Mr Franklin, 'if everyone wants to know about me.'

  'They do, though. Everyone at Oxton kept asking me who you were, and where you came from, and what you were doing here. So I said: "Why don't you ask him - if it's any of your business", which put them into a huff, naturally.'

  'Naturally. Some more tea. I'd offer you another ginger biscuit, but I gather you don't go for them. Well, no one came and asked me, so they can't have been all that curious, can they?'

  'Oh, stuff!' said Peggy. 'I'm curious - as you know perfectly well. No, I'm not, either. Curiosity's vulgar. But I am interested, you know.'

  Mr Franklin looked at the beautiful, smiling face under its Titian halo as he handed back her cup. 'Well, I'm flattered. But I'm not really interesting at all, I'm afraid. Just an ordinary man, doing something quite unremarkable. That's the strange part of it, I guess. If I'd come here making a big noise, doing all sorts of-well, the kinds of things American visitors do, I guess - you know, trying to buy the Houses of Parliament, or the fishing rights on the Thames ... everyone would say, "Oh, another mad Yankee", and lose interest -'

  'It's not ordinary and unremarkable to pinch people's foxes, and have the King on the verge of apoplexy with the way you play bridge, or have fights in the middle of the night in country houses,' said Peggy calmly, looking at him over her cup.

  'Oh, you heard about that?'

  'Somewhat. Arthur told me. You knocked Frank Lacy down - which you'd been itching to do all day, of course. Nothing wrong with that - although I think you might have chosen a better excuse than Poppy Davenport.'

  Mr Franklin stirred his tea for a moment. 'The only excuse I had was that Lord Lacy came at me like a wounded buffalo,' he said. 'There was no matter of choice.'

  'Oh? Arthur seemed to think you were protecting a damsel in distress. Not that I'd describe Poppy as a damsel, exactly, and if she was distressed I imagine it was entirely her own fault. It usually is. She manages to attract a good deal of attention - or notoriety might be a better word.'

  Mr Franklin felt irritated; cross-examination he could take, placidly, but not when it was accompanied by innuendo. But he said easily:

  'I'm not really concerned with Poppy, or with any of the peculiar circle she moves in. And I certainly wouldn't want to protect any of them - I doubt if they need it, or it would do them any good. My only regret about what happened last night is that I gather - from your father - that it's led to an estrangement between him and Lord Lacy. That's a pity - but it wasn't really my fault.'

  'Oh, come off it! You don't need to be so coy, you know.' He looked up in surprise; she was laughing, but the tiny sneer which he had noticed the previous evening was now quite marked. 'Poppy was in your room, after all.'

  'Uninvited - and by mistake. I gather your brother's playful friend Jeremy had changed the card
s on the doors. I was putting her out, within half a minute of her arrival, when your friend Lacy came on the scene, and misunderstood what was happening.' He paused. 'That was all. On the whole, it really seems to me that if anyone has a right to be offended, it's me - but then, I'm not conversant with English country-house manners and customs. Anyway, it doesn't matter.'

  There was a strained pause, and then Peggy put down her cup and observed: 'I could break Arthur's blasted neck!'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Oh, he and his giggling little friends - oafs like Jeremy who think it's just splendid to cause trouble, and little tarts like Poppy who just revel in that sort of thing. You can guess what they make out of it - all the sniggering and sly glances, and whispering: "I say, did you hear about Poppy and the American, and Frank walked in and caught them? Such a lark!" Ugh! They make me sick!' She looked at Mr Franklin. 'But it wasn't like that, was it?'

  'It was exactly as I've told you.'

  'I know. I'm awfully sorry. I don't know what you must think. ...' She smiled quickly, and held out a hand to him. 'And when I heard that that little beast Poppy had been in the thick of it ... oh, they make me so tired! Don't think too badly of us.'

  Mr Franklin took her hand automatically. 'I don't think badly - I mean, it's none of my business. I ... I'm just sorry if it's caused any trouble.' He hesitated. 'I got the impression from your father that Lacy and you. .. well, that it might have spoiled things ...'

  'There wasn't all that much to spoil,' said Peggy carelessly. 'Oh, father may have thought there was. Maybe he hoped that Frank and I ... in fact, I know he did. But . . she shrugged. 'Oh, Frank's all right, in an ape-like sort of way - but I've never cared for him all that much. Certainly not enough to marry him. So you haven't done me a bad turn, you see.' She regarded him calmly. 'What's the matter?'

  'I'm not quite sure. It's just ... well, you'll probably think me no end of a stuffed-shirt, but ... well, the kind of conversation we've just had - I find it sort of ... unusual.'

  'Young ladies didn't ought to know about such things - or talk about them?' Amusement sounded in her voice.

  'I'm not used to England, I guess. It's still a little strange.'

  'Our loose ways distress you?' The little sneer was evident again. 'I'm not surprised. Don't judge us all by Poppy and Jeremy and Frank Lacy - oh, and Arthur. They're a pretty disky lot - oh, not Arthur, really; he's not a bad sort. A bit of an ass, but. ..' Peggy shrugged. 'And I'm sorry if I seemed to be prying - about last night, I mean. But I'm glad I did; it clears the air, don't you think?'

  Quite illogically, and for no good reason except that this unusually beautiful girl was standing in front of him, in the dim quiet of his hall, Mr Franklin felt a strong urge to kiss her. It shocked him, momentarily, but once the shock had passed he found that the urge was still there. There was no particular expression in her eyes, but the angelic face was smiling, in the most friendly way, and he had a vague sense that she was waiting for something. It couldn't be that, though; she was a lady, his hostess of the previous evening, who had just driven him home, and graciously accepted tea in his bachelor establishment - he wondered for a moment about the propriety of that, and decided it must be all right, or she wouldn't have done it. He felt uncomfortable about her reference to the Poppy incident - but, after all, she'd been perfectly right to want to know the truth of it, since she was the lady of Oxton Hall, and he'd been relieved to be able to explain it to her. She was uncommonly pretty, though, and ...

  'You said you'd like to see the rest of the house?' he said suddenly.

  'If you don't mind,' said Peggy. `And I'm still curious - oh, no, we agreed interested was the word, didn't we? - about its owner. You can't put me off the track by talking about last night, you know. Tell me as we go round.'

  This proved impossible, of course; possibly the woman exists who can listen to someone's life story when there is a newly-furnished house to be examined at the same time, but probably not. Peggy was all agog at Lancing Manor, admiring fittings, decoration, and furniture to the point where Mr Franklin became quite proud of it, and wondered if by some freak of chance he possessed that mysterious thing known as good taste; he was also fairly silent because he knew that he was going to satisfy her curiosity, and since this was against his rather retiring nature, he was not certain how he was going to go about it. He had withstood inquiry pretty well, up to now, even Thornhill's, but it would have been rude to be reticent with this girl; the sense of intimacy that he had felt sitting beside her at dinner the previous night, the shared feeling of being on her side and her father's during the ordeal of the royal visit, the fact that he had, in a curious way, helped to make the visit a success - all that combined to make him feel more at ease in her company than he had felt with anyone since he came to England. Even Pip, in their brief passage of physical love, hadn't been as close as this. She had been different - cheerful, charming, animal, obvious, and simply out to enjoy herself; Peggy was - well, she was a lady, for one thing, and on quite a different plane. (It did not occur to Mr Franklin that in assuming the surroundings, dress, and to some extent the ways of his new environment, he might also have assumed some of its social standards). Anyway, he knew that he could talk to her as he would not - could not - have talked to Pip.

  So when she had seen the house, and they had returned to the hall, and she had pointed to the charro saddle and said: `Now tell me, what the man who owns that, and can't bear to hide it away out of sight, is doing in this cosy little nook?' he did not laugh. She walked across to kneel in the window-seat beside the saddle, looking out across the drive at the chestnuts dripping in the light rain that had begun to fall; Mr Franklin studied the back of her auburn head and the graceful figure with its arms resting on the sill, and said:

  `It's not easy to explain. You see, I know what I'm doing - but I'm not so sure I understand why I'm doing it. Does that make any sense?'

  `It may. What are you doing?'

  'Well, I'm here - living here, but I'm not altogether sure why. My people left this very place - not this house, but this village - more than two centuries ago. Like an awful lot of Americans; but most of us don't know all that much, I suppose, about where we came from; my family, by chance, handed it down: Castle Lancing, in Norfolk County.' Peggy caught herself smiling in the window-pane at the odd-sounding American phrase: Norfolk County. 'My father talked a lot about England; he was a country schoolmaster, but he was the most educated man, in his own way, that you ever saw. When he talked about a thing - say, about England - it wasn't about how many tons of coal or how many acres under cultivation or what the climate was like - it was about Bosworth Field and the old stories of King Arthur and Wordsworth's poem about daffodils, until you could almost see it all in your imagination. He'd never been here, of course - except, as he used to say, "in his mind's ship". I guessed he loved it - or what he thought was it. So I suppose that's what started it; I hoped I'd come home, some day.'

  `Home?' Peggy frowned. `But home is where you're born - at least the country you're born in.'

  `Maybe, if you're born here. But when you spend your childhood in half a dozen different states, it's not so easy to say which is home. I used to see people, in Texas and California, who were settled; the homes they were in were their grandparents' houses; their people had broken the land maybe a hundred years ago. Even when I was quite small, I used to envy them: they had a place to go back to. I'd never stayed in one place more than a few months at a time - then, just when I was getting used to a bed or a chair and a picture on the wall, Dad would move on to another school. It seems, after my mother died, when I was about three years old, he just couldn't bear to settle in one place any more. So he kept moving on ... and of course I went along. He was still moving, the day he died. We were on the road out of a little place in North Texas - I don't even remember its name - and we were in a horse and buggy. I was driving; I was fourteen. All of a sudden he said: "Pull up, son", so I pulled up, and he sat, and took off his hat,
and fetched two or three deep breaths, and looked at his hands, and said: "I'll be leaving now, Mark". Then he closed his eyes and he was dead, with his hat still in his hands.'

  Peggy said nothing, and after a moment Mr Franklin went on.

  'In a way, he was the last home I had - wherever he was. Since then, I've been on my own. And I guess the nearest thing I've had to a home has been that old saddle - or a blanket, or a pair of boots. Don't misunderstand me; when I say that, I'm not feeling sorry for myself. There's a lot of advantage to not having a home, except where you hang your hat. No ties, no responsibilities, no crops to gather, no bills to pay, no neighbours to fuss you, no worries about the roof letting in. If you don't like a place, you move on. That's what I did, for ten years.'

  He paused so long that she turned to look at him, and said: 'And then you wanted to settle down?'

  He shook his head, smiling. 'No, then this old sourdough and I, an old miner called Davis that I'd teamed up with, we struck a line of luck. I'd prospected a little, not much, just paying my way, but old Davis had been in on some of the biggest strikes there were: Comstock, Yukon, Australia. He wasn't a careful man, though - hit paydirt, go on the spree, look for another lode: that was his mark.' Mr Franklin laughed quietly. 'He was an old reprobate, but I liked him. Maybe I sort of adopted him, having been left an orphan myself; I couldn't say he was a second father to me. My father was everything that old Davis wasn't: decent, well-read, kind, careful. He was all wool and a yard wide, was Dad. Davis - well, he only had one virtue. No, two, for he could smell silver ten miles away. But the great thing about him was,