Megan muttered something elusive, propped up her bicycle against the kerb and dived in a purposeful way into the International Stores.
“Extraordinary child,” said Miss Griffith, looking after her. “Bone lazy. Spends her time mooning about. Must be a great trial to poor Mrs. Symmington. I know her mother’s tried more than once to get her to take up something—shorthand-typing, you know, or cookery, or keeping Angora rabbits. She needs an interest in life.”
I thought that was probably true, but felt that in Megan’s place I should have withstood firmly any of Aimée Griffith’s suggestions for the simple reason that her aggressive personality would have put my back up.
“I don’t believe in idleness,” went on Miss Griffith. “And certainly not for young people. It’s not as though Megan was pretty or attractive or anything like that. Sometimes I think the girl’s half-witted. A great disappointment to her mother. The father, you know,” she lowered her voice slightly, “was definitely a wrong ’un. Afraid the child takes after him. Painful for her mother. Oh, well, it takes all sorts to make a world, that’s what I say.”
“Fortunately,” I responded.
Aimée Griffith gave a “jolly” laugh.
“Yes, it wouldn’t do if we were all made to one pattern. But I don’t like to see anyone not getting all they can out of life. I enjoy life myself and I want everyone to enjoy it too. People say to me you must be bored to death living down there in the country all the year round. Not a bit of it, I say. I’m always busy, always happy! There’s always something going on in the country. My time’s taken up, what with my Guides, and the Institute and various committees—to say nothing of looking after Owen.”
At this minute, Miss Griffith saw an acquaintance on the other side of the street, and uttering a bay of recognition she leaped across the road, leaving me free to pursue my course to the bank.
I always found Miss Griffith rather overwhelming, though I admired her energy and vitality, and it was pleasant to see the beaming contentment with her lot in life which she always displayed, and which was a pleasant contrast to the subdued complaining murmurs of so many women.
My business at the bank transacted satisfactorily, I went on to the offices of Messrs. Galbraith, Galbraith and Symmington. I don’t know if there were any Galbraiths extant. I never saw any. I was shown into Richard Symmington’s inner office which had the agreeable mustiness of a long-established legal firm.
Vast numbers of deed boxes, labelled Lady Hope, Sir Everard Carr, William Yatesby-Hoares, Esq., Deceased, etc., gave the required atmosphere of decorous county families and legitimate long-established business.
Studying Mr. Symmington as he bent over the documents I had brought, it occurred to me that if Mrs. Symmington had encountered disaster in her first marriage, she had certainly played safe in her second. Richard Symmington was the acme of calm respectability, the sort of man who would never give his wife a moment’s anxiety. A long neck with a pronounced Adam’s apple, a slightly cadaverous face and a long thin nose. A kindly man, no doubt, a good husband and father, but not one to set the pulses madly racing.
Presently Mr. Symmington began to speak. He spoke clearly and slowly, delivering himself of much good sense and shrewd acumen. We settled the matter in hand and I rose to go, remarking as I did so:
“I walked down the hill with your stepdaughter.”
For a moment Mr. Symmington looked as though he did not know who his stepdaughter was, then he smiled.
“Oh yes, of course, Megan. She—er—has been back from school some time. We’re thinking about finding her something to do—yes, to do. But of course she’s very young still. And backward for her age, so they say. Yes, so they tell me.”
I went out. In the outer office was a very old man on a stool writing slowly and laboriously, a small cheeky-looking boy and a middle-aged woman with frizzy hair and pinze-nez who was typing with some speed and dash.
If this was Miss Ginch I agreed with Owen Griffith that tender passages between her and her employer were exceedingly unlikely.
I went into the baker’s and said my piece about the currant loaf. It was received with the exclamation and incredulity proper to the occasion, and a new currant loaf was thrust upon me in replacement—“fresh from the oven this minute”—as its indecent heat pressed against my chest proclaimed to be no less than truth.
I came out of the shop and looked up and down the street hoping to see Joanna with the car. The walk had tired me a good deal and it was awkward getting along with my sticks and the currant loaf.
But there was no sign of Joanna as yet.
Suddenly my eyes were held in glad and incredulous surprise.
Along the pavement towards me there came floating a goddess. There is really no other word for it.
The perfect features, the crisply curling golden hair, the tall exquisitely-shaped body! And she walked like a goddess, without effort, seeming to swim nearer and nearer. A glorious, an incredible, a breathtaking girl!
In my intense excitement something had to go. What went was the currant loaf. It slipped from my clutches. I made a dive after it and lost my stick, which clattered to the pavement, and I slipped and nearly fell myself.
It was the strong arm of the goddess that caught and held me. I began to stammer:
“Th-thanks awfully, I’m f-f-frightfully sorry.”
She had retrieved the currant loaf and handed it to me together with the stick. And then she smiled kindly and said cheerfully:
“Don’t mention it. No trouble, I assure you,” and the magic died completely before the flat, competent voice.
A nice healthy-looking well set-up girl, no more.
I fell to reflecting what would have happened if the Gods had given Helen of Troy exactly those flat accents. How strange that a girl could trouble your inmost soul so long as she kept her mouth shut, and that the moment she spoke the glamour could vanish as though it had never been.
I had known the reverse happen, though. I had seen a little sad monkey-faced woman whom no one would turn to look at twice. Then she opened her mouth and suddenly enchantment had lived and bloomed and Cleopatra had cast her spell anew.
Joanna had drawn up at the kerb beside me without my noticing her arrival. She asked if there was anything the matter.
“Nothing,” I said, pulling myself together. “I was reflecting on Helen of Troy and others.”
“What a funny place to do it,” said Joanna. “You looked most odd, standing there clasping currant bread to your breast with your mouth wide open.”
“I’ve had a shock,” I said. “I have been transplanted to Ilium and back again.”
“Do you know who that is?” I added, indicating a retreating back that was swimming gracefully away.
Peering after the girl Joanna said that it was the Symmingtons’ nursery governess.
“Is that what struck you all of a heap?” she asked. “She’s good-looking, but a bit of a wet fish.”
“I know,” I said. “Just a nice kind girl. And I’d been thinking her Aphrodite.”
Joanna opened the door of the car and I got in.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she said. “Some people have lots of looks and absolutely no S.A. That girl has. It seems such a pity.”
I said that if she was a nursery governess it was probably just as well.
Three
I
That afternoon we went to tea with Mr. Pye.
Mr. Pye was an extremely ladylike plump little man, devoted to his petit point chairs, his Dresden shepherdesses and his collection of bric-à-brac. He lived at Prior’s Lodge in the grounds of which were the ruins of the old Priory.
Prior’s Lodge was certainly a very exquisite house and under Mr. Pye’s loving care it showed to its best advantage. Every piece of furniture was polished and set in the exact place most suited to it. The curtains and cushions were of exquisite tone and colour, and of the most expensive silks.
It was hardly a man’s house, and it
did strike me that to live there would be rather like taking up one’s abode in a period room at a museum. Mr. Pye’s principal enjoyment in life was taking people round his house. Even those completely insensitive to their surroundings could not escape. Even if you were so hardened as to consider the essentials of living a radio, a cocktail bar, a bath and a bed surrounded by the necessary walls. Mr. Pye did not despair of leading you to better things.
His small plump hands quivered with sensibility as he described his treasures, and his voice rose to a falsetto squeak as he narrated the exciting circumstances under which he had brought his Italian bedstead home from Verona.
Joanna and I being both fond of antiquities and of period furniture, met with approval.
“It is really a pleasure, a great pleasure, to have such an acquisition to our little community. The dear good people down here, you know, so painfully bucolic—not to say provincial. They don’t know anything. Vandals—absolute vandals! And the inside of their houses—it would make you weep, dear lady, I assure you it would make you weep. Perhaps it has done so?”
Joanna said that she hadn’t gone quite as far as that.
“But you see what I mean? They mix things so terribly! I’ve seen with my own eyes a most delightful little Sheraton piece—delicate, perfect—a collector’s piece, absolutely—and next to it a Victorian occasional table, or quite possibly a fumed oak revolving bookcase—yes, even that—fumed oak.”
He shuddered—and murmured plaintively:
“Why are people so blind? You agree—I’m sure you agree, that beauty is the only thing worth living for.”
Hypnotized by his earnestness, Joanna said, yes, yes, that was so.
“Then why,” demanded Mr. Pye, “do people surround themselves with ugliness?”
Joanna said it was very odd.
“Odd? It’s criminal! That’s what I call it—criminal! And the excuses they give! They say something is comfortable. Or that it is quaint. Quaint! Such a horrible word.”
“The house you have taken,” went on Mr. Pye, “Miss Emily Barton’s house. Now that is charming, and she has some quite nice pieces. Quite nice. One or two of them are really first class. And she has taste, too—although I’m not quite so sure of that as I was. Sometimes, I am afraid, I think it’s really sentiment. She likes to keep things as they were—but not for le bon motif—not because of the resultant harmony—but because it is the way her mother had them.”
He transferred his attention to me, and his voice changed. It altered from that of the rapt artist to that of the born gossip.
“You didn’t know the family at all? No, quite so—yes, through house agents. But, my dears, you ought to have known that family! When I came here the old mother was still alive. An incredible person—quite incredible! A monster, if you know what I mean. Positively a monster. The old-fashioned Victorian monster, devouring her young. Yes, that’s what it amounted to. She was monumental, you know, must have weighed seventeen stone, and all the five daughters revolved round her. ‘The girls’! That’s how she always spoke of them. The girls! And the eldest was well over sixty then. ‘Those stupid girls!’ she used to call them sometimes. Black slaves, that’s all they were, fetching and carrying and agreeing with her. Ten o’clock they had to go to bed and they weren’t allowed a fire in their bedroom, and as for asking their own friends to the house, that would have been unheard of. She despised them, you know, for not getting married, and yet so arranged their lives that it was practically impossible for them to meet anybody. I believe Emily, or perhaps it was Agnes, did have some kind of affair with a curate. But his family wasn’t good enough and Mamma soon put a stop to that!”
“It sounds like a novel,” said Joanna.
“Oh, my dear, it was. And then the dreadful old woman died, but of course it was far too late then. They just went on living there and talking in hushed voices about what poor Mamma would have wished. Even repapering her bedroom they felt to be quite sacrilegious. Still they did enjoy themselves in the parish in a quiet way… But none of them had much stamina, and they just died off one by one. Influenza took off Edith, and Minnie had an operation and didn’t recover and poor Mabel had a stroke—Emily looked after her in the most devoted manner. Really that poor woman has done nothing but nursing for the last ten years. A charming creature, don’t you think? Like a piece of Dresden. So sad for her having financial anxieties—but of course all investments have depreciated.”
“We feel rather awful being in her house,” said Joanna.
“No, no, my dear young lady. You mustn’t feel that way. Her dear good Florence is devoted to her and she told me herself how happy she was to have got such nice tenants.” Here Mr. Pye made a little bow. “She told me she thought she had been most fortunate.”
“The house,” I said, “has a very soothing atmosphere.”
Mr. Pye darted a quick glance at me.
“Really? You feel that? Now, that’s very interesting. I wondered, you know. Yes, I wondered.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Pye?” asked Joanna.
My Pye spread out his plump hands.
“Nothing, nothing. One wondered, that is all. I do believe in atmosphere, you know. People’s thoughts and feelings. They give their impression to the walls and the furniture.”
I did not speak for a moment or two. I was looking round me and wondering how I would describe the atmosphere of Prior’s Lodge. It seemed to me that the curious thing was that it hadn’t any atmosphere! That was really very remarkable.
I reflected on this point so long that I heard nothing of the conversation going on between Joanna and her host. I was recalled to myself, however, by hearing Joanna uttering farewell preliminaries. I came out of my dream and added my quota.
We all went out into the hall. As we came towards the front door a letter came through the box and fell on the mat.
“Afternoon post,” murmured Mr. Pye as he picked it up. “Now, my dear young people, you will come again, won’t you? Such a pleasure to meet some broader minds, if you understand me. Someone with an appreciation of Art. Really you know, these dear good people down here, if you mention the Ballet, it conveys to them pirouetting toes, and tulle skirts and old gentlemen with opera glasses in the Naughty Nineties. It does indeed. Fifty years behind the times—that’s what I put them down, as. A wonderful country, England. It has pockets. Lymstock is one of them. Interesting from a collector’s point of view—I always feel I have voluntarily put myself under a glass shade when I am here. The peaceful backwater where nothing ever happens.”
Shaking hands with us twice over, he helped me with exaggerated care into the car. Joanna took the wheel, she negotiated with some care the circular sweep round a plot of unblemished grass, then with a straight drive ahead, she raised a hand to wave goodbye to our host where he stood on the steps of the house. I leaned forward to do the same.
But our gesture of farewell went unheeded. Mr. Pye had opened his mail.
He was standing staring down at the open sheet in his hand.
Joanna had described him once as a plump pink cherub. He was still plump, but he was not looking like a cherub now. His face was a dark congested purple, contorted with rage and surprise.
And at that moment I realized that there had been something familiar about the look of that envelope. I had not realized it at the time—indeed it had been one of those things that you note unconsciously without knowing that you do note them.
“Goodness,” said Joanna. “What’s bitten the poor pet?”
“I rather fancy,” I said, “that it’s the Hidden Hand again.”
She turned an astonished face towards me and the car swerved.
“Careful, wench,” I said.
Joanna refixed her attention on the road. She was frowning.
“You mean a letter like the one you got?”
“That’s my guess.”
“What is this place?” asked Joanna. “It looks the most innocent sleepy harmless little bit of England you can
imagine—”
“Where to quote Mr. Pye, nothing ever happens,” I cut in. “He chose the wrong minute to say that. Something has happened.”
“But who writes these things, Jerry?”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“My dear girl, how should I know? Some local nitwit with a screw loose, I suppose.”
“But why? It seems so idiotic.”
“You must read Freud and Jung and that lot to find out. Or ask our Dr. Owen.”
Joanna tossed her head.
“Dr. Owen doesn’t like me.”
“He’s hardly seen you.”
“He’s seen quite enough, apparently, to make him cross over if he sees me coming along the High Street.”
“A most unusual reaction,” I said sympathetically. “And one you’re not used to.”
Joanna was frowning again.
“No, but seriously, Jerry, why do people write anonymous letters?”
“As I say, they’ve got a screw loose. It satisfies some urge, I suppose. If you’ve been snubbed, or ignored, or frustrated, and your life’s pretty drab and empty, I suppose you get a sense of power from stabbing in the dark at people who are happy and enjoying themselves.”
Joanna shivered. “Not nice.”
“No, not nice. I should imagine the people in these country places tend to be inbred—and so you would get a fair amount of queers.”
“Somebody, I suppose, quite uneducated and inarticulate? With better education—”
Joanna did not finish her sentence, and I said nothing. I have never been able to accept the easy belief that education is a panacea for every ill.
As we drove through the town before climbing up the hill road, I looked curiously at the few figures abroad in the High Street. Was one of those sturdy countrywomen going about with a load of spite and malice behind her placid brow, planning perhaps even now a further outpouring of vindictive spleen?
But I still did not take the thing seriously.