“Plainly I cannot glose,
Ye be, as I divine,
The pretty primerose,
The goodly columbine.”
He looked at her and saw that her whole face was rosy, and her eyes were wide in wonder as she looked at him. She was, he realized, being treated as a woman by a man for the first time in her life, but she was neither mischievous nor coy, merely full of wonder as to what this new thing could be. Though she was what most people would have called a plain child he saw beauty in her smallness and delicacy, in the hollowed flushed cheeks and the slim fingers laced together on the pointed knees. A breath of warm wind stirred in the garden, bringing the scent of the violets under the wall, and lifting the child’s hair back from her face so that he saw the blue veins on her temples and the small ears close against her head. A wave of happiness broke over him with the wind. He seemed to be making up for lost time, falling in love practically at first sight for the second time in a few days. And with no loss of devotion to his first love in capitulating to the second. Could a man be in love with a little girl? He smiled at Margary and was met with a smile of such delight that it startled him. Her shoulders straightened and her fingers relaxed, so that he could slip the sprig of rosemary into the hollow of her hands. He did not know yet how instantly she responded to delight in others but his sense of her sudden well-being increased his own.
“ ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray you, love, remember,’ ” he said, and wondered as he spoke how many times those words had been spoken in this place, and if he was saying them now because they echoed here.
“Yes, I will,” said Margary matter-of-factly, and her fingers closed on the sprig of rosemary. “Did you know we have a dog?” she added.
He laughed. Certainly a man could fall in love with a little girl if such was the bent of his mood, gently and idyllically in April sunshine, but he must not expect any sentimental response to his nostalgic utterances. “What sort?” he asked.
“Pekinese,” said Margary. “He is too fat just now but he won’t be when we have walked him a bit. He loves being our dog. Winkle is showing him to Aunt Maria and Walsingham. Are you going to stay with us for a long time?”
“Until I wake up,” said Michael. He was astonished at his answer, but he realized it was the right one. The dream of the silver shield had been a dream within a dream. The world of Belmaray was no more the world of reality as he knew it than that had been; or perhaps one might put it another way and say that the dream of the shield had been just as real as this dream of Belmaray. But reality as one knew it was what claimed one’s allegiance. Deepening experience might change one’s conception of it but until that happened the life one knew was the life one had to live. “When I wake from this dream I shall have to go back.”
“But you have woken up,” said Margary. “You were asleep when I looked at you from behind the bush but you aren’t now. Do you want to go on weeding? If you do I’ll help you.”
“I want to weed the whole garden,” he said.
“I’ll help,” she repeated, and slid off the wall.
Five minutes later they were struggling with the weeds side by side and talking irrelevant nonsense in the way that two friends do who are happy and at ease together, drifting from one subject to another without knowing how they got there. They talked of books and brown sugar, the relative merits of toffee and fudge, gilt on gingerbread, and then with the remembrance of dust that is a little gilt, and the gilt o’erdusted, he suddenly found he was declaiming Shakespeare to her, and she was sitting back on her heels and drinking in the music of the words. It was the great speech from Troilus and Cressida which he had once learned by heart but had not dared to think of for years. “For honor travels in a strait so narrow . . . keep then the path.” The words no longer had power to stab him because he had committed himself.
Chapter 15
1
Only his great age, which made him reluctant to exert himself, and his sense of duty as a host, kept Walsingham from seizing the thing as though it were a rat and shaking it until it died. He had never seen such a creature and scorned to give it the name of dog. He sat back on his haunches, outraged, and looked down the delicate pencilled line of white fur that travelled the length of his nose, from his wise forehead to his quivering nostrils, to the thing beyond. Not far enough beyond. He could smell it overwhelmingly. He could see it more than enough. With every quivering hair he knew it had come to stay.
He would say for it that it implored permission. Cringing there on the stones before him not only the whiskers but the whole obese body quivered, and the bulging terrified eyes seemed about to pop out of the head at any moment. It was the size of a rat but not the color. Its color was actually a pleasing golden-brown. He growled slightly and in a paroxysm of alarm the object rolled over on its back on the stones, its ridiculous forepaws clutched at its chest and its hind legs stretched out in a manner expressive of the depth of abject humility. Its chest, like his own, was white. He had a soft spot for white-chested dogs. Shirt fronts always gave an added air of distinction to a gentleman, though they increased the vulgarity of the mixed breeds. Was this a gentleman? He advanced his nose half an inch and definitely smelled good breeding. There was grey on the muzzle, for like himself the creature was no longer a callow youth. It was possible they might have something in common. He relaxed and his jaws parted in so tolerant a manner that the creature’s parody of a tail trembled slightly on the flagged stones; he relaxed further and the tail fluttered, still more and the tail thudded. He lay right down and Baba rolled over and crawled a little nearer, he closed one eye and Baba slobbered with relief. He closed the other and Baba crept as near as he dared and lay down also. They communed together. “Sir,” said Baba, “I had a bad home and now I have a good one. I have, now, a mistress who will keep faith. I adore my mistress. Sir, I have found a refuge for my old age.” Walsingham replied, “Sir, you may remain.” He slept and Baba did the same.
“Is it all right?” breathed Winkle.
“Deep has called to deep,” said Miss Wentworth. “It’s a question of the mutual recognition of gentlemanly birth.”
“Orlando likes him too,” said Winkle.
“There’s no accounting for the taste of cats,” said Miss Wentworth.
“Do you like him, Aunt Maria?” asked Winkle anxiously.
“I am delighted that there should once more be a dog at the vicarage,” said Miss Wentworth guardedly. “What is a vicarage without a dog? A well-trained dog is like religion, it sets the deserving at their ease and is a terror to evildoers.”
“Yes,” said Winkle, swinging her fat legs. She did not always understand what Aunt Maria was talking about but this worried neither of them. They were sitting together on the wooden bench on the terrace regarding the geraniums, Winkle with pleasure and Miss Wentworth with patience. The dogs slept now at their feet. Winkle’s small fat hand was within her great-aunt’s and she was sitting as close to her as she could. Winkle was independent and did not generally want to be close to people, but Aunt Maria was different for they were very much one person. Their names, Henrietta and Maria, linked together made up the name of a queen whom they regarded as one of the family. When they were with each other they both unconsciously had an added air of regality.
Mr. Entwistle, approaching along the terrace, noted it, and noted for the first time that Miss Wentworth, with her hat perched well forward over her forehead and her bun of hair sticking out behind, was in silhouette not unlike the Red Queen. Winkle, of course, with her smooth gold hair tucked back under its snood, was the image of Queen Alice, but that he had always known.
“Your Majesties, your humble servant,” said Mr. Entwistle, bowing hat in hand, portly and pink, his beautiful white moustache gleaming in the sun. “You get younger every day, Miss Wentworth. Little Henrietta, how she grows!”
“My good sir, children do,” said Mis
s Wentworth with a touch of asperity. “Sit down. Winkle, shake hands with Mr. Entwistle and take Baba in to see Mrs. Prescott. I want to talk to Mr. Entwistle.”
Winkle went away with Baba cradled in her arms like Alice’s pig-baby, and Miss Wentworth turned to Mr. Entwistle. “How’s your gout?” she asked, her asperity infused with sudden kindliness. Mr. Entwistle’s compliments had always annoyed her but he had been her faithful friend for fifty years and he was now her guest. She waited with genuine anxiety for his answer.
“So-so,” sighed Mr. Entwistle, his fat hands on his knees. “I’m not so young as I was.”
“A mere seventy,” said Miss Wentworth. “I remember you in your perambulator. Will you take anything? A glass of wine?”
“No, dear lady, not on any account,” said Mr. Entwistle in horror.
“But you like a glass of wine,” said Miss Wentworth.
“My own taste and that of my gout are not identical,” said Mr. Entwistle.
“I don’t hold with pandering to the body,” said Miss Wentworth. “A body is like a dog. Once let it have its own way and you will never have yours. A cup of tea? No? Then smoke, old friend, for goodness sake. You like your pipe I know, and I’ll have a cigarette.” She took one from her gold case and lit it from the lighter he held. “Food and tobacco do so soften difficult situations. What are we to do this time?”
Mr. Entwistle lit his cherry wood pipe, that harmonized so perfectly with his large white moustache, his bald head, his round rosy cheeks and his gold spectacles, and puffed in silence for a few moments. He was the very picture of kindly benevolence but the eyes behind the glasses were very shrewd. Miss Wentworth had discovered through many troublous years that if she disregarded his advice she was sorry afterwards.
“Miss Wentworth,” he said, “there’s nothing we can do this time.”
“Are you quite sure?” she asked quietly.
“Quite sure,” said Mr. Entwistle.
Miss Wentworth smoked on serenely for a few moments and gazed upon the garden with untroubled eyes, but Mr. Entwistle, observing her acutely without appearing to look in her direction, was well aware that this was a bad moment. It was the same for him and he could not, himself, put the situation into words. It was she who did that.
“Belmaray must go on the market,” she said.
“Unless your nephew can enormously increase his contribution to its upkeep,” said Mr. Entwistle.
“You know he can’t do that,” said Miss Wentworth. “He gives more than he can afford already.”
“Will you explain the situation to him or shall I?” asked Mr. Entwistle.
“Neither of us will at present,” said Miss Wentworth. “For my sake he would be most painfully distressed and plunge into some quixotic action that might ruin himself but do no good to me. You know what he is, one of those half-way cases; neither sufficiently a saint nor sufficiently a sinner to have much sense. Oh yes, saints have sense; when they really are saints. It’s surprising how sanctity clears the mind. Mr. Entwistle, I am talking for the sake of talking.” She paused and for the first time the misery of her mind was evident. Her hand shook and some ash fell from her cigarette and lay unheeded on her lap. “The publicity,” she said. “The advertisements in the papers. Prospective buyers always coming over. These old places are hard to sell. Perhaps in the end Belmaray will have to be auctioned; or bought by the county council for lunatics or moral delinquents.”
“Sometimes congenial sales can be privately arranged,” said Mr. Entwistle gently.
“Have you anything in mind?” asked Miss Wentworth.
“Have I your permission to continue private enquiries?” he asked.
“What have you been up to?” asked Miss Wentworth sharply. “Telling half the county the Wentworths must leave Belmaray before you tell the Wentworths?”
“No, no,” protested Mr. Entwistle. “But I’ve a client, in point of fact an old friend of my own, in need of just such a property as Belmaray.”
“You’re up to something,” said Miss Wentworth resignedly. “Underground, like a mole, and I suppose I should be thankful for it. I have, in the past, been thankful for your private burrowings.”
“And never found your confidence misplaced?” asked Mr. Entwistle gently.
“No,” said Miss Wentworth. “Not once in fifty years. You can put that on your tombstone if you like. Go on with it, then, and we won’t speak of it to my nephew until we must. How’s your son in Kenya doing?”
The talk turned to Mr. Entwistle’s affairs, upon which he expatiated at some length, and he did not say good-bye until he had asked for and received her sympathy and advice in full measure, and could leave her feeling she was still of use. Mr. Entwistle was a very clever man.
2
Driving back to Silverbridge in his shining little car Mr. Entwistle thought chiefly of Miss Wentworth. He understood her very well. It would not be the loss of what she possessed that might break her so much as the loss of the sphere of her usefulness, that had grown to fit her as her own body. Belmaray and her own heart alike received their guests, alike gave the shelter of their courtesy and warmth. He feared for her, leaving Belmaray. Could a woman so old achieve again that delicate adjustment of character and environment that can give the maximum of usefulness to both? At Belmaray it had grown with her growth. In a new home it would have to be something willed and wrought. Those who loved her, and he counted himself among them, would have to make considerable and well considered demands upon her.
He was thinking of the nature of these demands as he drove past Oaklands, and his thoughts were deflected, for Mrs. Belling had also been one of his clients for many years. It was he who had succeeded her husband as solicitor at Silverbridge. He had heard that she was not well, though not sufficiently indisposed to have sent for the doctor. So far as he knew she had made no will. Why was that? In his experience those who made no wills either had nothing to leave, feared death too much to face up to its preliminaries, or had so little imagination that unless some sudden shock brought it home to them they could not visualize it in connection with themselves. Leaving Oaklands behind him he tried to put Mrs. Belling out of his mind, for in spite of her unalloyed sweetness he did not like her and did not at all want to be summoned to her bedroom to help her make her will.
Now he came to think of it he remembered that he had not added a necessary codicil to his own will. A poor thing if a solicitor had to have a shock before he. . . “Hi, you darned idiot!” he yelled. “What the blazes do you think you’re doing? What the. . . phew! My God!”
It was the mercy of heaven that his sudden swerve had brought him crashing into nothing more solid than a wooden garden fence, that had gone down before him like matchwood. The fool who had shot out of a side road on the wrong side had skidded and collided with a stationary greengrocer’s van. Out of the corner of his eye he could see oranges and cabbages all over the road. Whether the fool was hurt or not was a matter of indifference to him, kindly man though he was by nature. He had had a nasty shock and at his age it was impossible to surmount the experience with charitable feelings towards the shocker. “Damn fool!” he growled. “He’ll have a piece of my mind when I get my breath.” He puffed and blew, stroking his beautiful white moustache with his white handkerchief. “A piece of my mind. And I’ll report it.” He paused, his handkerchief suspended in mid air as a tall figure reared itself up beside him and an agitated well-known voice smote upon his ear.
“Sir! The fault was entirely mine. Are you hurt at all? Entwistle!”
Mr. Entwistle put away his handkerchief and beamed all over his face, for he was very fond of John Wentworth of Belmaray. “Not so much as a bruise,” he said heartily.
“My fault,” said John. “I don’t know how it happened. I must have been thinking of something else.” He caught himself up, aware of insincerity. “I do know how it happened. My brakes need attend
ing to and I was thinking of something else, and I didn’t sound my horn.”
“You were on the wrong side of the road, Sir,” said a policeman who had apparently risen out of the ground, and was now producing notebook and pencil. A small crowd had collected; the irate owner of the smashed fence, the driver of the greengrocer’s van, women with prams, several small boys, several dogs and a tall badly-dressed woman with a shopping basket. The policeman licked his pencil. “The Reverend Wentworth, isn’t it? The Reverend Wentworth, Belmaray Vicarage.”
An anguished expression crossed John’s face. He would have to appear in court. He was a bad enough example for the youth of the parish as it was, what with one thing and another, without this. “And my only excuse, I was thinking of something else!” he mourned, unaware that he spoke aloud.
“So was I,” said Mr. Entwistle. “I was thinking of wills. Officer, I am bringing no summons. The fault was as much mine as Mr. Wentworth’s. I did not sound my horn either. Yes, sir, your fence will be repaired at my expense and that of Mr. Wentworth. The officer has our names and addresses. No, my man, you will get into no trouble over those cabbages. Get along, boys, get along.”
The affair promising no further excitement the crowd, with the exception of the tall woman, melted away. Mr. Entwistle, who had an engagement, talked a little to John and then wrung him warmly by the hand and drove off. . . The dear fellow was a fool, but engaging, and he had never liked him so much. . . John remained helping the driver of the van to pick up the oranges and cabbages, with such a touching humility, and such abject apologies, that the man was led to revise his hitherto unfavorable opinion of the clergy; especially after a handsome tip.
“Thank you, Sir,” he said. “Good-day, Sir. Oh, thank you, Ma’am.”
It was the tall woman, who had retrieved some oranges that had rolled down the gutter. She handed them over and the greengrocery van drove away.