'Talking of Spring . . .' said the poet.
Cupid (proceeded Mr Mulliner), has always found the family to which I belong a ready mark for his bow. Our hearts are warm, our passions quick. It is not too much to say that my niece Charlotte was in love with this young man before she had finished spearing the first anchovy out of the hors-d'oeuvres dish. He was intensely spiritual-looking, with a broad, white forehead and eyes that seemed to Charlotte not so much eyes as a couple of holes punched in the surface of a beautiful soul. He wrote, she learned, Pastels in Prose: and his name, if she had caught it correctly at the moment of their introduction, was Aubrey Trefusis.
Friendship ripens quickly at the Crushed Pansy. The poulet rôti au cresson had scarcely been distributed before the young man was telling Charlotte his hopes, his fears, and the story of his boyhood. And she was amazed to find that he sprang – not from a long line of artists but from an ordinary, conventional county family of the type that cares for nothing except hunting and shooting.
'You can readily imagine,' he said, helping her to Brussels sprouts, 'how intensely such an environment jarred upon my unfolding spirit. My family are greatly respected in the neighbourhood, but I personally have always looked upon them as a gang of blood-imbrued plug-uglies. My views on kindness to animals are rigid. My impulse, on encountering a rabbit, is to offer it lettuce. To my family, on the other hand, a rabbit seems incomplete without a deposit of small shot in it. My father, I believe, has cut off more assorted birds in their prime than any other man in the Midlands. A whole morning was spoiled for me last week by the sight of a photograph of him in the Tatler, looking rather severely at a dying duck. My elder brother Reginald spreads destruction in every branch of the animal kingdom. And my younger brother Wilfred is, I understand, working his way up to the larger fauna by killing sparrows with an air-gun. Spiritually, one might just as well live in Chicago as at Bludleigh Court.'
'Bludleigh Court?' cried Charlotte.
'The moment I was twenty-one and came into a modest but sufficient inheritance, I left the place and went to London to lead the life literary. The family, of course, were appalled. My uncle Francis, I remember, tried to reason with me for hours. Uncle Francis, you see, used to be a famous big-game hunter. They tell me he has shot more gnus than any other man who ever went to Africa. In fact, until recently he virtually never stopped shooting gnus. Now, I hear, he has developed lumbago and is down at Bludleigh treating it with Riggs's Super-fine Emulsion and sun-baths.'
'But is Bludleigh Court your home?'
'That's right. Bludleigh Court, Lesser Bludleigh, near Goresby-on-the-Ouse, Bedfordshire.'
'But Bludleigh Court belongs to Sir Alexander Bassinger.'
'My name is really Bassinger. I adopted the pen-name of Trefusis to spare the family's feelings. But how do you come to know of the place?'
'I'm going down there next week for a visit. My mother was an old friend of Lady Bassinger.'
Aubrey was astonished. And, being, like all writers of Pastels in Prose, a neat phrase-maker, he said what a small world it was, after all.
'Well, well, well!' he said.
'From what you tell me,' said Charlotte, 'I'm afraid I shall not enjoy my visit. If there's one thing I loathe, it's anything connected with sport.'
'Two minds with but a single thought,' said Aubrey. 'Look here, I'll tell you what. I haven't been near Bludleigh for years, but if you're going there, why, dash it, I'll come too – aye, even though it means meeting my uncle Francis.'
'You will?'
'I certainly will. I don't consider it safe that a girl of your exquisite refinement and sensibility should be dumped down at an abattoir like Bludleigh Court without a kindred spirit to lend her moral stability.'
'What do you mean?'
'I'll tell you.' His voice was grave. 'That house exercises a spell.'
'A what?'
'A spell. A ghastly spell that saps the strongest humanitarian principles. Who knows what effect it might have upon you, should you go there without someone like me to stand by you and guide you in your hour of need?'
'What nonsense!'
'Well, all I can tell you is that once, when I was a boy, a high official of Our Dumb Brothers' League of Mercy arrived there latish on a Friday night, and at two-fifteen on the Saturday afternoon he was the life and soul of an informal party got up for the purpose of drawing one of the local badgers out of an upturned barrel.'
Charlotte laughed merrily.
'The spell will not affect me,' she said.
'Nor me, of course,' said Aubrey. 'But all the same, I would prefer to be by your side, if you don't mind.'
'Mind, Mr Bassinger!' breathed Charlotte softly, and was thrilled to note that at the words and the look with which she accompanied them this man to whom – for, as I say, we Mulliners are quick workers – she had already given her heart, quivered violently. It seemed to her that in those soulful eyes of his she had seen the love-light.
Bludleigh Court, when Charlotte reached it some days later, proved to be a noble old pile of Tudor architecture, situated in rolling parkland and flanked by pleasant gardens leading to a lake with a tree-fringed boathouse. Inside, it was comfortably furnished and decorated throughout with groves of glass cases containing the goggle-eyed remnants of birds and beasts assassinated at one time or another by Sir Alexander Bassinger and his son, Reginald. From every wall there peered down with an air of mild reproach selected portions of the gnus, moose, elks, zebus, antelopes, giraffes, mountain goats and wapiti which had had the misfortune to meet Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake before lumbago spoiled him for the chase. The cemetery also included a few stuffed sparrows, which showed that little Wilfred was doing his bit.
The first two days of her visit Charlotte passed mostly in the society of Colonel Pashley-Drake, the uncle Francis to whom Aubrey had alluded. He seemed to have taken a paternal fancy to her: and, lithely though she dodged down back-stairs and passages, she generally found him breathing heavily at her side. He was a red-faced, almost circular man, with eyes like a prawn's, and he spoke to her freely of lumbago, gnus and Aubrey.
'So you're a friend of my young nephew?' he said, snorting twice in a rather unpleasant manner. It was plain that he disapproved of the pastel-artist. 'Shouldn't see too much of him, if I were you. Not the sort of fellow I'd like any daughter of mine to get friendly with.'
'You are quite wrong,' said Charlotte warmly. 'You have only to gaze into Mr Bassinger's eyes to see that his morals are above reproach.'
'I never gaze into his eyes,' replied Colonel Pashley-Drake. 'Don't like his eyes. Wouldn't gaze into them if you paid me. I maintain his whole outlook on life is morbid and unwholesome. I like a man to be a clean, strong, upstanding Englishman who can look his gnu in the face and put an ounce of lead in it.'
'Life,' said Charlotte coldly, 'is not all gnus.'
'You imply that there are also wapiti, moose, zebus and mountain goats?' said Sir Francis. 'Well, maybe you're right. All the same, I'd give the fellow a wide berth, if I were you.'
'So far from doing so,' replied Charlotte proudly, 'I am about to go for a stroll with him by the lake at this very moment.'
And, turning away with a petulant toss of her head, she moved off to meet Aubrey, who was hurrying towards her across the terrace.
'I am so glad you came, Mr Bassinger,' she said to him as they walked together in the direction of the lake. 'I was beginning to find your uncle Francis a little excessive.'
Aubrey nodded sympathetically. He had observed her in conversation with his relative and his heart had gone out to her.
'Two minutes of my uncle Francis,' he said, 'is considered by the best judges a good medium dose for an adult. So you find him trying, eh? I was wondering what impression my family had made on you.'
Charlotte was silent for a moment.
'How relative everything is in this world,' she said pensively. 'When I first met your father, I thought I had never seen anybody more completely loa
thsome. Then I was introduced to your brother Reginald, and I realized that, after all, your father might have been considerably worse. And, just as I was thinking that Reginald was the furthest point possible, along came your uncle Francis, and Reginald's quiet charm seemed to leap out at me like a beacon on a dark night. Tell me,' she said, 'has no one ever thought of doing anything about your uncle Francis?'
Aubrey shook his head gently.
'It is pretty generally recognized now that he is beyond the reach of human science. The only thing to do seems to be to let him go on till he eventually runs down.'
They sat together on a rustic bench overlooking the water. It was a lovely morning. The sun shone on the little wavelets which the sighing breeze drove gently to the shore. A dreamy stillness had fallen on the world, broken only by the distant sound of Sir Alexander Bassinger murdering magpies, of Reginald Bassinger encouraging dogs to eviscerate a rabbit, of Wilfred busy among the sparrows, and a monotonous droning noise from the upper terrace, which was Colonel Sir Francis Pashley-Drake telling Lady Bassinger what to do with the dead gnu.
Aubrey was the first to break the silence.
'How lovely the world is, Miss Mulliner.'
'Yes, isn't it!'
'How softly the breeze caresses yonder water.'
'Yes, doesn't it!'
'How fragrant a scent of wild flowers it has.'
'Yes, hasn't it!'
They were silent again.
'On such a day,' said Aubrey, 'the mind seems to turn irresistibly to Love.'
'Love?' said Charlotte, her heart beginning to flutter.
'Love,' said Aubrey. 'Tell me, Miss Mulliner, have you ever thought of Love?'
He took her hand. Her head was bent, and with the toe of her dainty shoe she toyed with a passing snail.
'Life, Miss Mulliner,' said Aubrey, 'is a Sahara through which we all must pass. We start at the Cairo of the cradle and we travel on to the – er – well, we go travelling on.'
'Yes, don't we!' said Charlotte.
'Afar we can see the distant goal . . .'
'Yes, can't we!'
'. . . and would fain reach it.'
'Yes, wouldn't we!'
'But the way is rough and weary. We have to battle through the sand-storms of Destiny, face with what courage we may the howling simoons of Fate. And very unpleasant it all is. But sometimes in the Sahara of Life, if we are fortunate, we come upon the Oasis of Love. That oasis, when I had all but lost hope, I reached at one-fifteen on the afternoon of Tuesday, the twenty-second of last month. There comes a time in the life of every man when he sees Happiness beckoning to him and must grasp it. Miss Mulliner, I have something to ask you which I have been trying to ask ever since the day when we two first met. Miss Mulliner . . . Charlotte . . .Will you be my . . . Gosh! Look at that whacking great rat! Loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo!' said Aubrey, changing the subject.
Once, in her childhood, a sportive playmate had secretly withdrawn the chair on which Charlotte Mulliner was preparing to seat herself. Years had passed, but the recollection of the incident remained green in her memory. In frosty weather she could still feel the old wound. And now, as Aubrey Bassinger suddenly behaved in this remarkable manner, she experienced the same sensation again. It was as though something blunt and heavy had hit her on the head at the exact moment when she was slipping on a banana-skin.
She stared round-eyed at Aubrey. He had released her hand, sprung to his feet, and now, armed with her parasol, was beating furiously in the lush grass at the waterside. And every little while his mouth would open, his head would go back, and uncouth sounds would proceed from his slavering jaws.
'Yoicks! Yoicks! Yoicks!' cried Aubrey.
And again,
'Tally-ho! Hard For'ard! Tally-ho!'
Presently the fever seemed to pass. He straightened himself and came back to where she stood.
'It must have got away into a hole or something,' he said, removing a bead of perspiration from his forehead with the ferrule of the parasol. 'The fact of the matter is, it's silly ever to go out in the country without a good dog. If only I'd had a nice, nippy terrier with me, I might have obtained some solid results. As it is, a fine rat – gone – just like that! Oh, well, that's Life, I suppose.' He paused. 'Let me see,' he said. 'Where was I?'
And then it was as though he waked from a trance. His flushed face paled.
'I say,' he stammered, 'I'm afraid you must think me most awfully rude.'
'Pray do not mention it,' said Charlotte coldly.
'Oh, but you must. Dashing off like that.'
'Not at all.'
'What I was going to say, when I was interrupted, was, will you be my wife?'
'Oh?'
'Yes.'
'Well, I won't.'
'You won't?'
'No. Never.' Charlotte's voice was tense with a scorn which she did not attempt to conceal. 'So this is what you were all the time, Mr Bassinger – a secret sportsman!'
Aubrey quivered from head to foot.
'I'm not! I'm not! It was the hideous spell of this ghastly house that overcame me.'
'Pah!'
'What did you say?'
'I said ''Pah!''.'
'Why did you say ''Pah!''?'
'Because,' said Charlotte, with flashing eyes, 'I do not believe you. Your story is thin and fishy.'
'But it's the truth. It was as if some hypnotic influence had gripped me, forcing me to act against all my higher inclinations. Can't you understand? Would you condemn me for a moment's passing weakness? Do you think,' he cried passionately, 'that the real Aubrey Bassinger would raise a hand to touch a rat, save in the way of kindness? I love rats, I tell you – love them. I used to keep them as a boy. White ones with pink eyes.'
Charlotte shook her head. Her face was cold and hard.
'Good-bye, Mr Bassinger,' she said. 'From this instant we meet as strangers.'
She turned and was gone. And Aubrey Bassinger, covering his face with his hands, sank on the bench, feeling like a sandbagged leper.
The mind of Charlotte Mulliner, in the days which followed the painful scene which I have just described, was torn, as you may well imagine, with conflicting emotions. For a time, as was natural, anger predominated. But after awhile sadness overcame indignation. She mourned for her lost happiness.
And yet, she asked herself, how else could she have acted? She had worshipped Aubrey Bassinger. She had set him upon a pedestal, looked up to him as a great white soul. She had supposed him one who lived, far above this world's coarseness and grime, on a rarefied plane of his own, thinking beautiful thoughts. Instead of which, it now appeared, he went about the place chasing rats with parasols. What could she have done but spurn him?
That there lurked in the atmosphere of Bludleigh Court a sinister influence that sapped the principles of the most humanitarian and sent them ravening to and fro, seeking for prey, she declined to believe. The theory was pure banana-oil. If such an influence was in operation at Bludleigh, why had it not affected her?
No, if Aubrey Bassinger chased rats with parasols, it could only mean that he was one of Nature's rat-chasers. And to such a one, cost what it might to refuse, she could never confide her heart.
Few things are more embarrassing to a highly-strung girl than to be for any length of time in the same house with a man whose love she has been compelled to decline, and Charlotte would have given much to be able to leave Bludleigh Court. But there was, it seemed, to be a garden-party on the following Tuesday, and Lady Bassinger had urged her so strongly to stay on for it that departure was out of the question.