With a strong effort Bill recovered the chivalry of the Rowcesters. ‘I’m sorry, Moke old thing. I’ve got a headache.’
‘My poor lamb!’
‘It’ll pass off in a minute.’
‘What you need is fresh air.’
‘Perhaps I do.’
‘And pleasant society. Ma Spottsworth’s in the ruined chapel. Pop along and have a chat with her.’
‘What!’
Monica became soothing.
‘Now don’t be difficult, Bill. You know as well as I do how important it is to jolly her along. A flash of speed on your part now may mean selling the house. The whole idea was that on top of my sales talk you were to draw her aside and switch on the charm. Have you forgotten what you said about cooing to her like a turtle dove? Dash off this minute and coo as you have never cooed before.’
For a long moment it seemed as though Bill, his frail strength taxed beyond its limit of endurance, was about to suffer something in the nature of spontaneous combustion. His eyes goggled, his face flushed, and burning words trembled on his lips. Then suddenly, as if Reason had intervened with a mild ‘Tut, tut’, he ceased to glare and his cheeks slowly resumed their normal hue. He had seen that Monica’s suggestion was good and sensible.
In the rush and swirl of recent events, the vitally urgent matter of pushing through the sale of his ancestral home had been thrust into the background of Bill’s mind. It now loomed up for that it was, the only existing life preserver bobbing about in the sea of troubles in which he was immersed. Clutch it, and he was saved. When you sold houses, he reminded himself, you got deposits, paid cash down. Such a deposit would be sufficient to dispose of the Biggar menace, and if the only means of securing it was to go to Rosalinda Spottsworth and coo, then go and coo he must.
Simultaneously there came to him the healing thought that if Jill had gone home to provide herself with things for the night, it would be at least half an hour before she got back, and in half an hour a determined man can do a lot of cooing.
‘Moke,’ he said, ‘you’re right. My place is at her side.’
He hurried out, and a moment later Rory appeared at the library door.
‘I say, Moke,’ said Rory, ‘can you speak Spanish?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried. Why?’
‘There’s a Spaniard or an Argentine or some such bird in there telling us about his horse in his native tongue. Probably a rank outsider, still one would have been glad to hear his views. Where’s Bill? Don’t tell me he’s still in there with the White Man’s Burden?’
‘No, he came in here just now, and went out to talk to Mrs Spottsworth.’
‘I want to confer with you about old Bill,’ said Rory. ‘Are we alone and unobserved?’
‘Unless there’s someone hiding in that dower chest. What about Bill?’
‘There’s something up, old girl, and it has to do with this chap Biggar. Did you notice Bill at dinner?’
‘Not particularly. What was he doing? Eating peas with his knife?’
‘No, but every time he caught Biggar’s eye, he quivered like an Ouled Nail stomach dancer. For some reason Biggar affects him like an egg-whisk. Why? That’s what I want to know. Who is this mystery man? Why had he come here? What is there between him and Bill that makes Bill leap and quake and shiver whenever he looks at him? I don’t like it, old thing. When you married me, you never said anything about fits in the family, and I consider I have been shabbily treated. I mean to say, it’s a bit thick, going to all the trouble and expense of wooing and winning the girl you love, only to discover shortly after the honeymoon that you’ve become brother-in-law to a fellow with St Vitus’s Dance.’
Monica reflected.
‘Come to think of it,’ she said, ‘I do remember, when I told him a Captain Biggar had clocked in, he seemed a bit upset. Yes, I distinctly recall a greenish pallor and a drooping lower jaw. And I came in here just now and found him tearing his hair. I agree with you. It’s sinister.’
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ said Rory. ‘When I left the dining room to go and look at the Derby Dinner, Bill was all for coming too. “How about it?” he said to Biggar, and Biggar, looking very puff-faced, said “Later, perhaps. At the moment, I would like a word with you, Lord Rowcester.” In a cold, steely voice, like a magistrate about to fine you a fiver for pinching a policeman’s helmet on Boat Race night. And Bill gulped like a stricken bull pup and said “Oh, certainly, certainly” or words to that effect. It sticks out a mile that this Biggar has got something on old Bill.’
‘But what could he possibly have on him?’
‘Just the question I asked myself, my old partner of joys and sorrows, and I think I have the solution. Do you remember those stories one used to read as a kid? The Strand Magazine used to be full of them.’
‘Which stories?’
‘Those idol’s eye stories. The ones where a gang of blighters pop over to India to pinch the great jewel that’s the eye of the idol. They get the jewel all right, but they chisel one of the blighters out of his share of the loot, which naturally makes him as sore as a gum-boil, and years later he tracks the other blighters down one by one in their respectable English homes and wipes them out to the last blighter, by way of getting a bit of his own back. You mark my words, old Bill is being chivvied by this chap Biggar because he did him out of his share of the proceeds of the green eye of the little yellow god in the temple of Vishnu, and I shall be much surprised if we don’t come down to breakfast tomorrow morning and find him weltering in his blood among the kippers and sausages with a dagger of Oriental design in the small of his back.’
‘Ass!’
‘Are you addressing me?’
‘I am, and with knobs on. Bill’s never been farther east than Frinton.’
‘He’s been to Cannes.’
‘Is Cannes east? I never know. But he’s certainly never been within smelling distance of Indian idols’ eyes.’
‘I didn’t think of that,’ said Rory. ‘Yes, that, I admit, does weaken my argument to a certain extent.’ He brooded tensely. ‘Ha! I have it now. I see it all. The rift between Bill and Biggar is due to the baby.’
‘What on earth are you talking about? What baby?’
‘Bill’s, working in close collaboration with Biggar’s daughter, the apple of Biggar’s eye, a poor, foolish little thing who loved not wisely but too well. And if you are going to say that girls are all wise nowadays, I reply “Not one brought up in the missionary school at Squalor Lumpit.” In those missionary schools they explain the facts of life by telling the kids about the bees and the flowers till the poor little brutes don’t know which is which.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Rory.’
‘Mark how it works out with the inevitability of Greek tragedy or whatever it was that was so bally inevitable. Girl comes to England, no mother to guide her, meets a handsome young Englishman, and what happens? The first false step. The remorse … too late. The little bundle. The awkward interview with Father. Father all steamed up. Curses a bit in some native dialect and packs his elephant gun and comes along to see old Bill. “Caramba!” as that Spaniard is probably saying at this moment on the television screen. Still, there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t suppose he can make him marry her. All Bill will have to do is look after the little thing’s education. Send it to school and so on. If a boy, Eton. If a girl, Roedean.’
‘Cheltenham.’
‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten you were an Old Cheltonian. The question now arises, should young Jill be told? It hardly seems fair to allow her to rush unwarned into marriage with a rip-snorting roué like William, Earl of Rowcester.’
‘Don’t call Bill a rip-snorting roué!’
‘It is how we should describe him at Harrige’s.’
‘As a matter of fact, you’re probably all wrong about Bill and Biggar. I know the poor boy’s jumpy, but most likely it hasn’t anything to do with Captain Biggar at all. It’s because he’s all on ed
ge, wondering if Mrs Spottsworth is going to buy the house. In which connection, Rory, you old fat-head, can’t you do something to help the thing along instead of bunging a series of spanners into the works?’
‘I don’t get your drift.’
‘I will continue snowing. Ever since Mrs Spottsworth arrived, you’ve been doing nothing but point out Rowcester Abbey’s defects. Be constructive.’
‘In what way, my queen?’
‘Well, draw her attention to some of the good things there are in the place.’
Rory nodded dutifully, but dubiously.
‘I’ll do my best,’ he said. ‘But I shall have very little raw material to work with. And now, old girl, I imagine that Spaniard will have blown over by this time, so let us rejoin the Derby diners. For some reason or other – why, one cannot tell – I’ve got a liking for a beast called Oratory.’
10
* * *
MRS SPOTTSWORTH HAD LEFT the ruined chapel. After a vigil of some twenty-five minutes she had wearied of waiting for Lady Agatha to manifest herself. Like many very rich women, she tended to be impatient and to demand quick service. When in the mood for spectres, she wanted them hot off the griddle. Returning to the garden, she had found a rustic seat and was sitting there smoking a cigarette and enjoying the beauty of the night.
It was one of those lovely nights which occur from time to time in an English June, mitigating the rigours of the island summer and causing manufacturers of raincoats and umbrellas to wonder uneasily if they have been mistaken in supposing England to be an earthly Paradise for men of their profession.
A silver moon was riding in the sky, and a gentle breeze blew from the west, bringing with it the heart-stirring scent of stock and tobacco plant. Shy creatures of the night rustled in the bushes at her side and, to top the whole thing off, somewhere in the woods beyond the river a nightingale had begun to sing with the full-throated zest of a bird conscious of having had a rave notice from the poet Keats and only a couple of nights ago a star spot on the programme of the BBC.
It was a night made for romance, and Mrs Spottsworth recognized it as such. Although in her vers libre days in Greenwich Village she had gone in almost exclusively for starkness and squalor, even then she had been at heart a sentimentalist. Left to herself, she would have turned out stuff full of moons, Junes, loves, doves, blisses and kisses. It was simply that the editors of the poetry magazines seemed to prefer rat-ridden tenements, the smell of cooking cabbage, and despair, and a girl had to eat.
Fixed now as solidly financially as any woman in America and freed from the necessity of truckling to the tastes of editors, she was able to take the wraps off her romantic self, and as she sat on the rustic seat, looking at the moon and listening to the nightingale, a stylist like the late Gustave Flaubert, tireless in his quest of the mot juste, would have had no hesitation in describing her mood as mushy.
To this mushiness Captain Biggar’s conversation at dinner had contributed largely. We have given some indication of its trend, showing it ranging freely from cannibal chiefs to dart-blowing headhunters, from headhunters to alligators, and its effect on Mrs Spottsworth had been very similar to that of Othello’s reminiscences on Desdemona. In short, long before the last strawberry had been eaten, the final nut consumed, she was convinced that this was the mate for her and resolved to spare no effort in pushing the thing along. In the matter of marrying again, both A.B. Spottsworth and Clifton Bessemer had given her the green light, and there was consequently no obstacle in her path.
There appeared, however, to be one in the path leading to the rustic seat, for at this moment there floated to her through the silent night the sound of a strong man tripping over a flowerpot. It was followed by some pungent remarks in Swahili, and Captain Biggar limped up, rubbing his shin.
Mrs Spottsworth was all womanly sympathy.
‘Oh, dear. Have you hurt yourself, Captain?’
‘A mere scratch, dear lady,’ he assured her.
He spoke bluffly, and only somebody like Sherlock Holmes or Monsieur Poirot could have divined that at the sound of her voice his soul had turned a double somersault, leaving him quivering with an almost Bill Rowcester-like intensity.
His telephone conversation concluded, the White Hunter had prudently decided to avoid the living room and head straight for the great open spaces, where he could be alone. To join the ladies, he had reasoned, would be to subject himself to the searing torture of having to sit and gaze at the woman he worshipped, a process which would simply rub in the fact of how unattainable she was. He recognized himself as being in the unfortunate position of the moth in Shelley’s well-known poem that allowed itself to become attracted by a star, and it seemed to him that the smartest move a level-headed moth could make would be to minimize the anguish by shunning the adored object’s society. It was, he felt, what Shelley would have advised.
And here he was, alone with her in the night, a night complete with moonlight, nightingales, gentle breezes and the scent of stock and tobacco plant.
It was a taut, tense Captain Biggar, a Captain Biggar telling himself he must be strong, who accepted his companion’s invitation to join her on the rustic seat. The voices of Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar seemed to ring in his ears. ‘Chin up, old boy,’ said Tubby in his right ear. ‘Remember the code,’ said the Subahdar in his left.
He braced himself for the coming tête-à-tête.
Mrs Spottsworth, a capital conversationalist, began it by saying what a beautiful night it was, to which the Captain replied ‘Top hole’. ‘The moon,’ said Mrs Spottsworth, indicating it and adding that she always thought a night when there was a full moon was so much nicer than a night when there was not a full moon. ‘Oh, rather,’ said the captain. Then, after Mrs Spottsworth had speculated as to whether the breeze was murmuring lullabies to the sleeping flowers and the captain had regretted his inability to inform her on this point, he being a stranger in these parts, there was a silence.
It was broken by Mrs Spottsworth, who gave a little cry of concern. ‘Oh, dear!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve dropped my pendant. The clasp is so loose.’
Captain Biggar appreciated her emotion.
‘Bad show,’ he agreed. ‘It must be on the ground somewhere. I’ll have a look-see.’
‘I wish you would. It’s not valuable – I don’t suppose it cost more than ten thousand dollars – but it has a sentimental interest. One of my husbands gave it to me, I never can remember which. Oh, have you found it? Thank you ever so much. Will you put it on for me?’
As Captain Biggar did so, his fingers, spine and stomach muscles trembled. It is almost impossible to clasp a pendant round its owner’s neck without touching that neck in spots, and he touched his companion’s in several. And every time he touched it, something seemed to go through him like a knife. It was as though the moon, the nightingale, the breeze, the stock and the tobacco plant were calling to him to cover this neck with burning kisses.
Only Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar, forming a solid bloc in opposition, restrained him.
‘Straight bat, old boy!’ said Tubby Frobisher.
‘Remember you’re a white man,’ said the Subahdar.
He clenched his fists and was himself again.
‘It must be jolly,’ he said, recovering his bluffness, ‘to be rich enough to think ten thousand dollars isn’t anything to write home about.’
Mrs Spottsworth felt like an actor receiving a cue.
‘Do you think that rich women are happy, Captain Biggar?’
The captain said that all those he had met – and in his capacity of White Hunter he had met quite a number – had seemed pretty bobbish.
‘They wore the mask.’
‘Eh?’
‘They smiled to hide the ache in their hearts,’ explained Mrs Spottsworth.
The captain said he remembered one of them, a large blonde of the name of Fish, dancing the can-can one night in her step-in
s, and Mrs Spottsworth said that no doubt she was just trying to show a brave front to the world.
‘Rich women are so lonely, Captain Biggar.’
‘Are you lonely?’
‘Very, very lonely.’
‘Oh, ah,’ said the captain.
It was not what he would have wished to say. He would have preferred to pour out his soul in a torrent of impassioned words. But what could a fellow do, with Tubby Frobisher and the Subahdar watching his every move?
A woman who has told a man in the moonlight, with nightingales singing their heads off in the background, that she is very, very lonely and has received in response the words ‘Oh, ah’ is scarcely to be blamed for feeling a momentary pang of discouragement. Mrs Spottsworth had once owned a large hound dog of lethargic temperament who could be induced to go out for his nightly airing only by a succession of sharp kicks. She was beginning to feel now as she had felt when her foot thudded against this languorous animal’s posterior. The same depressing sense of trying in vain to move an immovable mass. She loved the White Hunter. She admired him. But when you set out to kindle the spark of passion in him, you certainly had a job on your hands. In a moment of bitterness she told herself that she had known oysters on the half-shell with more of the divine fire in them.
However, she persevered.
‘How strange our meeting again like this,’ she said softly.
‘Very odd.’
‘We were a whole world apart, and we met in an English inn.’
‘Quite a coincidence.’
‘Not a coincidence. It was destined. Shall I tell you what brought you to that inn?’
‘I wanted a spot of beer.’
‘Fate,’ said Mrs Spottsworth. ‘Destiny. I beg your pardon?’
‘I was only saying that, come right down to it, there’s no beer like English beer.’
‘The same Fate, the same Destiny,’ continued Mrs Spottsworth, who at another moment would have hotly contested this statement, for she thought English beer undrinkable, ‘that brought us together in Kenya. Do you remember the day we met in Kenya?’