“Definitely.”
“Then bring Boot here.”
“Yes, Lord Copper.”
It was an inauspicious beginning to Mr. Salter’s working day; worse was to come.
That afternoon he was sitting disconsolately in the News Editor’s room when they were interrupted by the entry of a young man whose face bore that puffy aspect, born of long hours in the golf-house, which marked most of the better paid members of the Beast staff on their return from their summer holidays. Destined by his trustees for a career in the Household Cavalry, this young man had lately reached the age of twenty-five and plunged into journalism with a zeal which Mr. Salter found it difficult to understand. He talked to them cheerfully for some time on matters connected with his handicap. Then he said:
“By the way, I don’t know if there’s a story in it, but I was staying last week with my Aunt Trudie. John Boot was there among other people—you know, the novelist. He’d just got a letter from the King or someone like that, saying he was going to be knighted.” The look of startled concern on the two editors’ faces checked him. “I see you don’t think much of it. Oh well, I thought it might be worth mentioning. You know. @Youth’s Opportunity in New Reign@, that kind of thing.”
“John Boot—the novelist.”
“Yes. Rather good—at least I always read him. But it seemed a new line for the Prime Minister…”
*
“No,” said the Prime Minister with unusual finality.
“No?”
“No. It would be utterly impossible to change the list now. The man has been officially notified. And I could not consider knighting two men of the same name on the same day. Just the kind of thing the opposition would jump on. Quite rightly. Smacks of jobbery, you know.”
*
“Two Boots.”
“Lord Copper must know.”
“Lord Copper must never know… There’s only one comfort. We haven’t committed ourselves to which Boot we are welcoming on Thursday or where he’s come from.” Mr. Salter pointed to the engraved card which had appeared during the week-end on the desks of all the four-figure men in the office.
VISCOUNT COPPER
and
the Directors of the Megalopolitan Newspaper Company request the honor of your company at dinner on Wednesday, September 16th, at the Braganza Hotel, to welcome the return of BOOT of THE BEAST
7.45 for 8 o’clock.
“We had a row with the social secretary about that. He said it wasn’t correct. Lucky how things turned out.”
“It makes things a little better.”
“A little.”
“Salter, this is a case for personal contact. We’ve got to sign up this new Boot and any other Boot that may be going and one of them has got to be welcomed home on Thursday. There’s only one thing for it, Salter, you must go down to the country and see Boot. I’ll settle with the other.”
“To the country?”
“Yes, tonight.”
“Oh, but I couldn’t go tonight.”
“Tomorrow then.”
“You think it is really necessary?”
“Either that, or we must tell Lord Copper the truth.”
Mr. Salter shuddered. “But wouldn’t it be better,” he said, “if you went to the country?”
“No. I’ll see this novelist and get him signed up.”
“And sent away.”
“Or welcomed home. And you will offer the other Boot any reasonable terms to lie low.”
“Any reasonable terms.”
“Salter, old man, what’s come over you? You keep repeating things.”
“It’s nothing. It’s only… travelling… always upsets me.”
He had a cup of strong tea and later rang up the Foreign Contacts Adviser to find out how he could best get to Boot Magna.
Two
At the outbreak of the war of 1914 Uncle Roderick had declared for retrenchment. “It’s up to all of us who are over military age to do what we can. All unnecessary expenses must be cut down.”
“Why?” asked Great Aunt Anne.
“It is a question of national emergency and patriotism.”
“How will our being uncomfortable hurt the Germans? It’s just what they want.”
“Everything is needed at the front,” explained William’s mother.
Discussion had raged for some days; every suggested economy seemed to strike invidiously at particular members of the household. At last it was decided to give up the telephone. Aunt Anne sometimes spoke bitterly of the time when “my nephew Roderick won the war by cutting me off from my few surviving friends,” but the service had never been renewed. The antiquated mahogany box still stood at the bottom of the stairs, dusty and silent, and telegrams which arrived in the village after tea were delivered next day with the morning post. Thus, William found Mr. Salter’s telegram waiting for him on the breakfast table.
His mother, Priscilla, and his three uncles sat round the table. They had finished eating and were sitting there, as they often sat for an hour or so, doing nothing at all. Priscilla alone was occupied, killing comatose wasps in the honey on her plate.
“There’s a telegram for you,” said his mother. “We were wondering whether we ought to open it or send it up to you.”
It said: MUST SEE YOU IMMEDIATELY URGENT BUSINESS ARRIVING BOOT MAGNA HALT TOMORROW AFTERNOON 6.10 SALTER.
The message was passed from hand to hand around the table.
Mrs. Boot said, “Who is Mr. Salter, and what urgent business can he possibly have here?”
Uncle Roderick said, “He can’t stay the night. Nowhere for him to sleep.”
Uncle Bernard said, “You must telegraph and put him off.”
Uncle Theodore said, “I knew a chap called Salter once, but I don’t suppose it’s the same one.”
Priscilla said, “I believe he means to come today. It’s dated yesterday.”
“He’s the Foreign Editor of the Beast,” William explained. “The one I told you about who sent me abroad.”
“He must be a very pushful fellow, inviting himself here like this. Anyway, as Roderick says, we’ve no room for him.”
“We could send Priscilla to the Caldicotes for the night.”
“I like that,” said Priscilla, adding illogically, “Why don’t you send William, it’s his friend.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Boot, “Priscilla could go to the Caldicotes.”
“I’m cubbing tomorrow,” said Priscilla, “right in the other direction. You can’t expect Lady Caldicote to send me thirty miles at eight in the morning.”
For over an hour the details of Priscilla’s hunt occupied the dining-room. Could she send her horse overnight to a farm near the meet; could she leave the Caldicotes at dawn, pick up her horse at Boot Magna, and ride on; could she borrow Major Watkins’s trailer and take her horse to the Caldicotes for the night, then as far as Major Watkins’s in the morning and ride on from there; if she got the family car from Aunt Anne and Major Watkins’s trailer, would Lady Caldicote lend her a car to take it to Major Watkins’s, would Aunt Anne allow the car to stay the night; would she discover it was taken without her permission? They discussed the question exhaustively, from every angle; Troutbeck twice glowered at them from the door and finally began to clear the table; Mr. Salter and the object of his visit were not mentioned.
*
That evening, sometime after the advertised hour, Mr. Salter alighted at Boot Magna Halt. An hour earlier, at Taunton, he had left the express, and changed into a train such as he did not know existed outside the imagination of his Balkan correspondents; a single tram-like, one-class coach, which had pottered in a desultory fashion through a system of narrow, under-populated valleys. It had stopped eight times, and at every station there had been a bustle of passengers succeeded by a long, silent pause, before it started again; men had entered who, instead of slinking and shuffling and wriggling themselves into corners and decently screening themselves behind newspapers, as civilized p
eople should when they travelled by train, had sat down squarely quite close to Mr. Salter, rested their hands on their knees, stared at him fixedly and uncritically and suddenly addressed him on the subject of the weather in barely intelligible accents; there had been very old, unhygienic men and women, such as you never saw in the Underground, who ought long ago to have been put away in some public institution; there had been women carrying a multitude of atrocious little baskets and parcels which they piled on the seats; one of them had put a hamper containing a live turkey under Mr. Salter’s feet. It had been a horrible journey.
At last, with relief, Mr. Salter alighted. He lifted his suitcase from among the sinister bundles on the rack and carried it to the center of the platform. There was no one else for Boot Magna. Mr. Salter had hoped to find William waiting to meet him, but the little station was empty except for a single porter who was leaning against the cab of the engine engaged in a kind of mute, telepathic converse with the driver, and a cretinous native youth who stood on the further side of the paling, leant against it and picked at the dry paint-bubbles with a toe-like thumb nail. When Mr. Salter looked at him, he glanced away and grinned wickedly at his boots.
The train observed its customary two minutes silence and then steamed slowly away. The porter shuffled across the line and disappeared into a hut labeled “Lamps.” Mr. Salter turned towards the palings; the youth was still leaning there, gazing; his eyes dropped; he grinned. Three times, shuttlecock fashion, they alternately glanced up and down till Mr. Salter with urban impatience tired of the flirtation and spoke up.
“I say.”
“Ur.”
“Do you happen to know whether Mr. Boot has sent a car for me?”
“Ur.”
“He has?”
“Noa. She’ve a taken of the harse.”
“I am afraid you misunderstand me.” Mr. Salter’s voice sounded curiously flutey and querulous in contrast to the deep tones of the moron. “I’m coming to visit Mr. Boot. I wondered if he had sent a motor-car for me.”
“He’ve a sent me.”
“With the car?”
“Noa. Motor-car’s over to Lady Caldicote’s taking of the harse. The bay,” he explained, since Mr. Salter seemed not to be satisfied with this answer. “Had to be the bay for because the mare’s sick… The old bay’s not up yet,” he added as though to make everything perfectly clear.
“Well how am I to get to the house?”
“Why, along of me and Bert Tyler.”
“Has this Mr. Tyler got a car then?”
“Noa. I tell e car’s over to Lady Caldicote’s along of Miss Priscilla and the bay… Had to be the bay,” he persisted, “because for the mare’s sick.”
“Yes, yes, I quite appreciate that.”
“And the old bay’s still swole up with grass. So you’m to ride along of we.”
“Ride?” A hideous vision rose before Mr. Salter.
“Ur. Along of me and Bert Tyler and the slag.”
“Slag?”
“Ur. Mr. Roderick’s getting in the slag now for to slag Westerheys. Takes a tidy bit.”
Mr. Salter was suffused with relief. “You mean that you have some kind of vehicle outside full of slag?”
“Ur. Cheaper now than what it will be when Mr. Roderick wants it.”
Mr. Salter descended the steps into the yard where, out of sight from the platform, an open lorry was standing; an old man next to the driving seat touched his cap; the truck was loaded high with sacks; bonnet and back bore battered learner plates. The youth took Mr. Salter’s suitcase and heaved it up among the slag. “You’m to ride behind,” he said.
“If it’s all the same to you,” said Mr. Salter rather sharply, “I should prefer to sit in front.”
“It’s all the same to me, but I dursn’t let you. The police would have I.”
“Good gracious, why?”
“Bert Tyler have to ride along of me, for because of the testers.”
“Testers?”
“Ur. Police don’t allow for me to drive except along of Bert Tyler. Bert Tyler he’ve a had a license twenty year. There weren’t no testers for Bert Tyler. But police they took and tested I over to Taunton.”
“And you failed?”
A great grin spread over the young man’s face. “I busted tester’s leg for he,” he said proudly. “Ran he bang into the wall, going a fair lick.”
“Oh dear. Wouldn’t it be better for your friend Tyler to drive us?”
“Noa. He can’t see for to drive, Bert Tyler can’t. Don’t e be afeared. I can see right. It be the corners do for I.”
“And are there many corners between here and the house?”
“Tidy few.”
Mr. Salter, who had had his foot on the hub of the wheel preparatory to mounting, now drew back. His nerve, never strong, had been severely tried that afternoon; now it failed him.
“I’ll walk,” he said. “How far is it?”
“Well, it’s all according as you know the way. We do call it three mile over the fields. It’s a tidy step by the road.”
“Perhaps you’ll be good enough to show me the field path.”
“Tain’t exactly what you could call a path. E just keeps straight.”
“Well I daresay I shall find it. If… if by any chance you get to the house before me will you tell Mr. Boot that I wanted a little exercise after the journey?”
The learner-driver looked at Mr. Salter with undisguised contempt. “I’ll tell e as you was afeared to ride along of me and Bert Tyler,” he said.
Mr. Salter stepped back into the station porch to avoid the dust as the lorry drove away. It was as well that he did so, for, as he mounted the incline, the driver mistakenly changed into reverse and the machine charged precipitately back in its tracks, and came noisily to rest against the wall where Mr. Salter had been standing. The second attempt was more successful and it reached the lane with no worse damage than a mudguard crushed against the near gatepost.
Then with rapid, uncertain steps Mr. Salter set out on his walk to the house.
*
It was eight o’clock when Mr. Salter arrived at the front door. He had covered a good six miles tacking from field to field under the setting sun; he had scrambled through fences and ditches; in one enormous pasture a herd of cattle had closed silently in on him and followed at his heels—the nearest not a yard away—with lowered heads and heavy breath; Mr. Salter had broken into a run and they had trotted after him; when he gained the stile and turned to face them, they began gently grazing in his tracks; dogs had flown at him in three farmyards where he had stopped to ask the way, and to be misdirected; at last, when he felt he could go no further but must lie down and perish from exposure under the open sky, he had tumbled through an overgrown stile to find himself in the main road with the lodge gates straight ahead; the last mile up the drive had been the bitterest of all.
And now he stood under the porch, sweating, blistered, nettle-stung, breathless, parched, dizzy, dead-beat and disheveled, with his bowler hat in one hand and umbrella in the other, leaning against a stucco pillar waiting for someone to open the door. Nobody came. He pulled again at the bell; there was no responsive spring, no echo in the hall beyond. No sound broke the peace of the evening save, in the elms that stood cumbrously on every side, the crying of the rooks and, not unlike it but nearer at hand, directly it seemed over Mr. Salter’s head, a strong baritone decanting irregular snatches of sacred music.
“In Thy courts no more are needed, sun by day nor moon by night,” sang Uncle Theodore blithely, stepping into his evening trousers; he remembered it as a treble solo rising to the dim vaults of the school chapel, touching the toughest adolescent hearts; he remembered it imperfectly but with deep emotion.
Mr. Salter listened, unmoved. In despair he began to pound the front door with his umbrella. The singing ceased and the voice in fruity, more prosaic tones demanded, “What, ho, without there?”
Mr. Salter hobbled down the steps, c
lear of the porch, and saw framed in the ivy of a first-floor window, a ruddy, Hanoverian face and plump, bare torso. “Good-evening,” he said politely.
“Good-evening.” Uncle Theodore leaned out as far as he safely could and stared at Mr. Salter through a monocle. “From where you are standing,” he said, “you might easily take me to be totally undraped. Let me hasten to assure you that such is not the case. Seemly black shrouds me from the waist down. No doubt you are the friend my nephew William is expecting.”
“Yes… I’ve been ringing the bell.”
“It sounded to me,” said Uncle Theodore severely, “as though you were hammering the door with a stick.”
“Yes, I was. You see…”
“You’ll be late for dinner, you know, if you stand out there kicking up a rumpus. And so shall I if I stay talking to you. We will meet again shortly in more conventional circumstances. For the moment—a riverderci.”
The head withdrew and once more the melody rose into the twilight, mounted to the encircling tree-tops and joined the chorus of the homing rooks.
Mr. Salter tried the handle of the door. It opened easily. Never in his life had he made his own way into anyone else’s house. Now he did so and found himself in a lobby cluttered with implements of sport, overcoats, rugs, a bicycle or two and a stuffed bear. Beyond it, glass doors led into the hall. He was dimly aware of a shadowy double staircase which rose and spread before him, of a large, carpetless checker of black and white marble paving, of islands of furniture and some potted palms. Quite near the glass doors stood a little armchair where no one ever sat; there Mr. Salter sank and there he was found twenty minutes later by William’s mother when she came down to dinner. His last action before he lapsed into coma had been to remove his shoes.
Mrs. Boot surveyed the figure with some distaste and went on her way to the drawing-room. It was one of the days when James was on his feet; she could hear him next door rattling the silver on the dining-room table. “James,” she called, through the double doors.