Nightingale Wood

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Just a little more to the left. That’s it. Thank you.’

  They sat side by side, leaning against the Rolls, their mouths full, glasses in their chilled hands, staring, as they munched, away across the clear air of the valley. Cloud shadows sailed across the purple ploughed land. The larches were out, pale among the darker trees. The cries of rooks came loudly; then softly, as the wind changed. For a minute Saxon wished that Tina were there; she was so fond of scenery. Then he forgot her, for she would be waiting when he got home that evening and there was no reason for thinking about her.

  ‘Nice bit of country.’

  Mr Spurrey, with his mouth full, waved at the prospect before them. It was so delicate, vivid and splendid, glowing through such miraculously clear air, that it was like some marvellous painting.

  ‘Pretty steep, that hill.’ Saxon narrowed his eyes. ‘About one in four, I sh’d say. How about trying her up that, after lunch?’

  Mr Spurrey was agreeable; and after lunch was over and Mr Spurrey had smoked a little cigar and Saxon a cigarette, they did try her up that, and superbly she did it.

  What with trying her up that, and others, and stopping on a hill near Marks Tey to admire the sunset, it was dark before they got back to Buckingham Square; but as he climbed stiffly out of the Rolls and turned to say good night to Saxon, Mr Spurrey felt that it had been one of the pleasantest days he had spent for years. The Rolls had done so well, the champagne had tasted so good drunk under a tree like that, the country had looked so pretty, and that boy, Saxon, was such good company. Nice, sensible boy. Knew his place, yet none of your soft-soaping. No wonder old Wither’s gel got smitten.

  He turned to give his wrinkled old smile, that years of unconscious self-defence had made malicious, to the young man who sat smiling at the wheel of the splendid car.

  ‘Well, good night, Saxon. Pleasant day, eh?’

  ‘Very pleasant, sir.’

  ‘Must do it again some time, eh?’ He paused, nodding, one foot on the step, and added:

  ‘How’s your wife these days?’

  ‘Very well, thank you, sir.’

  ‘Ah … h’m. Well … give her my regards.’

  ‘I will, sir. Thank you. Good night, sir.’

  The car glided away into the spring dusk.

  Mr Spurrey let himself in, nodding to the butler, and went slowly up the stairs. It had been on the tip of his tongue to suggest to Saxon that he and Tina should come in to dinner one night … and damn what the servants thought. Two nice young people … why shouldn’t he have them in, if he wanted to? But then he thought, no. Women … always laughing, making fun of perfectly ordinary remarks, trying to get something out of a man. No. Let her stay where she was. Later on, he might have the boy in, by himself.

  Thus did Mr Spurrey hide from himself that he was jealous of Saxon’s wife.

  There was a good fire in the library after dinner, the decanter of port and the new Dorothy Sayers; but the fresh air had made him so sleepy that his head was nodding before he had read a chapter, and at last he dozed off. When he awoke, with a start, the fire was very low, the room chilly, and nine o’clock striking. He sat up, yawning, the book sliding to the floor. Suddenly the yawn turned to a sneeze; and Mr Spurrey shivered violently. That night in bed he could not get warm.

  The next day was mild and calm, the bitter little wind had gone, but Mr Spurrey lay in bed, still trying to get warm; and in the evening Cotton, the butler, took it upon himself to send for the doctor. It was a cold, only a cold, said the doctor (as though anyone cared enough about Mr Spurrey to need reassuring) but Mr Spurrey had best stay in bed. There was a lot of flu about still, and bed was the best place, said the doctor.

  The next afternoon it had turned to a feverish cold, and it got steadily worse; slowly, like a rising flood, it crawled through the old body and got hold of one part after another; his limbs ached, he shivered and burned, and then it got to the lungs; suddenly it was pneumonia, with all the stops out, full orchestra, two nurses, and grumblings in the kitchen about extra meals, shaded lights burning all night and straw down outside the house, the doctor calling twice a day and oxygen ready; and at last, on the fifth day, the doctor asking Cotton in a low voice in the hall, ‘Isn’t there anybody who ought to be told, Cotton?’ and Cotton answering almost defiantly, ‘No, sir, not that I know of, sir. I believe that Mr Spurrey has some friends living in Essex, sir, but they’re not what you might call close friends, sir, and he has no relations. Mr Spurrey is the only son of an only son, sir, or so I always understood him to say.’

  But that evening Mr Spurrey rallied a little, and the first person he asked the nurse for, when he had found out where he was and what had happened to him, was Saxon.

  Tina and Saxon were at supper when the parlourmaid, looking suspicious and disagreeable, came over to give the message, and he got up at once, eager and embarrassed. He who never had ‘feelings’ had had a feeling that Mr Spurrey might want to see him. He had also been wondering if he had been long enough with Mr Spurrey for the old man to leave him a legacy if he died. Tina, looking at her husband under her eyelashes, felt a little disturbed. She knew that shrewd, wary look. It meant that the self-seeking strain in his nature was uppermost. She watched him hurry across the courtyard with a dismayed feeling.

  The big bedroom was in shadow except for the subdued glow of a lamp by the bed, and in the shadows sat a nurse, watchful and quiet. She looked up as Saxon tip-toed in and said in the softest possible voice:

  ‘Just a few minutes; then you must go.’

  Mr Spurrey lay in the bed, looking yellow and very old. All the wrinkles had come into his face to stop now, and his pale protuberant eyes were even bigger than usual; they looked bewildered. He stared up at Saxon for what seemed a very long time, then ran his tongue over his lips and said in a low, strange voice:

  ‘I’m very ill.’

  ‘Yes, sir. We’re all very sorry.’ Saxon tried to talk quietly yet naturally, bending a little over the bed.

  ‘I’m not going … not going …’ Suddenly tears ran out of his eyes, tiny rivers. Saxon stared, fascinated; then he said quickly:

  ‘No, sir, of course you’re not,’ in a bright tone, with a merry, stupid smile.

  There was a silence.

  ‘Good day that … we had … eh?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it was. We’ll be doing it again soon, don’t you worry.’

  Mr Spurrey smiled faintly, and shut his eyes. Then he opened them again.

  ‘Want to say … so tired …’ his head lolled to one side, then to the other, ‘want to give you something … a present … good boy …’

  The nurse glanced up sharply, her face full of professional concern and pure human curiosity, and rose from her chair.

  ‘Now, Mr Spurrey, you mustn’t excite …’

  ‘Yes, I know … I know …’ waving her away. ‘Got a pencil …?’

  The nurse glanced across at Saxon, nodding meaningly, and he at once moved towards the door, but Mr Spurrey raised his head and peered into the shadows beyond the glow of the lamp.

  ‘Saxon!’ he cried weakly. ‘Don’t go away … Saxon!’

  ‘As the young man paused, glancing inquiringly at the nurse, the night nurse rustled in, settling her apron strings, took in what was happening, gave the younger nurse a look and said softly but firmly to Saxon:

  ‘All right. You can stay.’

  ‘Saxon …’ a whimper from the bed.

  Saxon tip-toed forward again, and sat down cautiously. Mr Spurrey, still with those unnaturally large and bewildered eyes turned towards the young man, nodded, and shut them. Presently his hand, the bent fingers stained by nicotine, came out from under the bedclothes and fumbled anxiously about. Half-pitiful, half-ashamed, Saxon took it firmly in his own. Mr Spurrey opened his eyes.

  ‘It’s all right, Dad. Don’t you worry,’ muttered Saxon roughly, and to the comfort of the homely name, with his hand in Saxon’s, Mr Spurrey fell into an uneasy sleep.


  Presently the night nurse bent over him. After a little pause she smiled at Saxon, and moved her head towards the door. With the greatest care, a fraction of an inch at a time, Saxon got his hand away, stood up, and went softly away. He glanced back once at his employer, lying small and yellow, like a Chinaman, in the big bed while the nurse cautiously pulled the clothes round his chin. He never saw him again.

  He went back and told Tina what had happened. He was excited yet ashamed. He kept on telling her that of course it didn’t mean anything.

  After the funeral, at which Saxon and Tina, the servants, and one old gentleman from Mr Spurrey’s club were the only mourners, Mr Spurrey’s lawyer assembled the household in the library, where the Dorothy Sayers still lay beside Mr Spurrey’s big chair in its bright yellow jacket, and read them Mr Spurrey’s Will.

  There were generous legacies for Cotton and the maids, a present of a bust of Joseph Chamberlain to Mr Wither, because he always admired it, and a small bequest to his Club, but the bulk of his fortune, some hundred and twenty thousand pounds, was left, by a Will dated the day before his death, shakily signed, and witnessed by the two nurses, ‘to my chauffeur, Saxon Caker, for companionship and faithful service’.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  It would take Shakespeare and Proust, working in shifts, to cope with the reactions when this piece of news burst upon The Eagles.

  Tina telephoned it to her mother just after tea, and Mrs Wither shrieked to Mr Wither as he sat in his den, and he came shuffling out, unable, as the saying is, to believe his ears. Madge and Viola burst out of the drawing-room, having heard only shrieks in which Saxon’s name recurred and supposing that he had had an accident with the car and killed Mr Spurrey.

  Perhaps nothing but a piece of news about money would have made Mrs Wither so far forget herself as to shriek in front of the maids, who were putting the last touches to the cleared tea-table and setting it for dinner. There was nothing shameful about somebody getting a huge sum of money, and Mrs Wither instinctively felt this. Sex was shameful, and any bit of news about it must be hidden, but money was all right: anyone might hear about that. So Fawcuss and Annie took it all in, and went down and told Cook.

  When the excitement had died down a little, the chief feeling at The Eagles was one which may be described as righteous indignation. It was generally felt to be A Bit Too Much. Saxon, having stravagued about the country as a boy, neglected his mother, hypnotized and corrupted Tina, and underhandedly obtained a job with an old friend of Mr Wither’s, to say nothing of living in a mews with Jews, was now, as a punishment for all this, a rich man. There was no justice in earth or heaven. Fawcuss, Annie and Cook said it really did seem that those who deserved least got most; of course, Saxon (or Mr Caker, they supposed they ought really to call him now he had all that money) had always been very nice to them; they had no cause for complaint against him, but – a hundred and twenty thousand pounds! It didn’t seem right.

  Mr Wither was very angry about all sorts of things; with Mr Spurrey, for behaving in so eccentric and unfriendly a manner, with Tina for having again concealed from her family something which they would have liked to know, with Saxon for having (no doubt) lied, sponged and flattered his way into a handsome fortune. But Mr Wither kept a special corner in sorrowful indignation for the bust of Joseph Chamberlain. All he had done, while on a visit once to Mr Spurrey’s house, was to remark that the bust was a good likeness. Never given the thing another thought. And here he was, landed with an objet d’art weighing goodness-only-knew how much, which would cost heaven-knew-what to bring down from London. And where, when it did reach The Eagles, could it Go? Every cranny was occupied. Besides, it would look so strange, a bust of Joseph Chamberlain about the place. People would always be asking who it was meant to be, and who it was by, and how did Mr Wither come to have it, and Mr Wither, who hated explaining about the furniture, which he liked to take for granted, would have to find out who had done it in order not to be shamed by saying, ‘Don’t know.’

  In short, Mr Wither was so annoyed by the catastrophes brought about by Mr Spurrey’s death that he had no real feeling of regret for Mr Spurrey. After all, he and Gideon had drifted apart a good deal since the ’nineties, when a tallow-faced Mr Spurrey and a port-faced Mr Wither had together dared the Empire Promenade, and Mr Spurrey had always backed out at the very last minute with an excuse about last trains while Mr Wither had gone bulldoggishly ahead. Gideon had got such an old woman as he grew older, too, always chin-wagging; and there was that habit of knowing all the disagreeable things that were going to happen weeks before they did. No wonder that Mr Wither, reading a few days later a cutting sent him by some kind friends in London that was headed

  FORTUNE FOR CHAUFFEUR

  LONELY CLUBMAN’S AMAZING WILL

  could not really feel much sorrow for Mr Spurrey.

  Even the smallest, meanest legacy would have been less insulting than a bust of Joseph Chamberlain.

  But below all Mr Spurrey’s angers, there was another feeling. It was a pure and sacred, an almost priestlike longing, to get his fingers on that hundred and twenty thousand pounds and, with the help of Major-General Breis-Cumwitt, manage it. A boy like Saxon, a wild, raw, common boy, would not be capable of managing all that money without expert advice from older and more experienced men. It was an unpleasant, a humiliating, a disagreeable task, but Mr Wither did not really see how he was going to avoid writing to Tina and suggesting that she and Saxon should soon come down to The Eagles for a long weekend. After all, the money did make a difference. Now, Tina was not likely to come asking her father for money; even a wild, raw, common boy would take a month or two to spend a hundred and twenty thousand pounds. Much as Mr Wither shrank from the task, he felt that it was his duty to suggest that weekend.

  Tina, hanging up the receiver in the telephone-box at the end of the mews, walked slowly back to her blue front door. The window boxes were blue, as well, and out of them, glowing in the evening sunlight, hung the purple and cherry-red heads of begonias. It was a quaint, inconvenient, charming little place, and she had been sweetly, completely happy there, and now she was never going to be so happy again.

  For one of the very few truths of which we may be sure in this world is that Money Makes All The Difference; and Tina, an intelligent woman, knew it. There was a particular feeling of peace that came over her every evening about half-past five, when the sky was beginning to deepen in blue, and the children came out after tea to play in the mews, and she knew that this was the last time she would ever have it. It was only three hours since the Will had been read; but Saxon was already a different person from the cheerful, calm but wary young man who had gone with her that morning to his employer’s funeral.

  He had gone off with Mr Spurrey’s solicitor to his offices, and was not yet back. His manner, as he had nodded to his wife and said that he would try not to be long, adding crisply that perhaps she had better not come, had been such a blend of solemnity, and pompousness, with beneath it an hysterical and almost awed exultation, that Tina had felt stunned.

  Saxon had come through the test of Love with honours; apparently it was in the test of Money that he would fail.

  He’ll be like so many other people, she thought, opening the door; admirable when he’s hard up, but just not able to stand oats. She went slowly up the stairs, picturing peace, modest comfort, domestic pleasures and bohemian gaiety flying horror-stricken out of the window, while expensive and dull killtimes, the servant problem, super tax and social climbing came swarming in, like demons, to take their place.

  If only he’d left us five hundred a year … even three hundred, it would have been perfect, she thought, beginning to slice tomatoes for supper. But this is appalling, it’s an avalanche. It’s … what …?

  … six thousand a year. We can’t spend a sixth of it, unless we live like film stars.

  But that’s how he’ll want to live. I saw it in his face.

  Then, when we’ve got out into that worl
d where most of the women know how to get men, and don’t let anything stop them from trying, someone’ll get him away from me.

  And I’ve been looking so plain lately, with this horrible indigestion.

  She carefully mixed some bicarbonate of soda and drank it; but it did not do the indigestion any good.

  Those women (Tina’s fancy was fed on photographs in Vogue) will fall for him, too; sure to, because he’s so … untarnished.

  I can see just what’s going to happen.

  While she let these ripe fancies drift through her head, she was resting by the open window, watching the sunset on the red and creamy chimney-pots of the old houses opposite, and sometimes staring dreamily round the room in which she had been so happy, and as she idly gazed, she saw without realizing it the face of an old friend.

  It was Selene’s Daughters, lying meekly sideways on the top of a row of books on cookery, and books on history and economics, and mere fiction. Viola had sent it on with the rest of Tina’s things.

  In the midst of her depression and fears about the Vogue sirens, Tina smiled. How far off seemed the days when Miss Christina Wither, the earnest student of mental hygiene, had tried to manage her love-life with the help of Doctor Irene Hartmüller! Now Mrs Saxon Caker was up to her neck in Life: and her psychological studies seemed very amusing indeed, and almost endearingly youthful.

  And yet, thought Tina, resting by the window, supper waiting on the table, it wasn’t altogether silly and a waste of time. Poor little Doctor Irene (I wonder if the Baumers’ story is true?) she did teach me to try and tell the truth to myself; and if I hadn’t done that I should never have tried to get Saxon’s friendship, and if I hadn’t tried …

  But here Mrs Saxon Caker (who was even further up to her neck in Life than she suspected) heard her husband coming upstairs.

  To her immense relief Saxon came in looking his usual self. He smiled at her, hung up his coat and hat, and said, ‘Well, that’s that. Sorry I’m late, but I thought they’d never get through. Is there a lot to be done! Well … how does it feel to be rich?’