“The first thing I can remember in life is that old toad,” said Charles, the first time he had taken Maria to Coldhammer, touching it affectionately with his foot. And Maria, pretending to admire it, thought with sudden guilt that it bore an unfortunate, and rather malignant, likeness to Lord Wyndham himself. When Niall came he noticed it at once.
“Old clothes for the country,” Pappy said before the visit; “old clothes are always best. A man who goes down to the country in a London suit deserves to be blackballed from his club.”
“But not that cardigan darned with my stockings,” protested Celia. “And those pajama trousers have no seat.”
“I shall be alone in the four-poster,” said Pappy, “unless her ladyship deigns to visit me. What are the odds?”
“A hundred to one against,” said Celia. “Unless something happens like a fire. Pappy, not that tie. It’s far too red.”
“I must have color,” said Pappy. “Color is all. A red tie with a tweed jacket is correct, my darling. It strikes the casual note. Let us, at all costs, be casual.”
He had too much luggage. One suitcase was entirely filled with medicines. Enos, cinnamon, Vapex, Taxel, friar’s balsam, even syringes and rubber tubes. “You never know, my darling,” said Pappy. “I may be taken ill. I may have to stay at Coldhammer for months, with two nurses, night and day.”
“But why, Pappy? We’re only going for a night.”
“When I pack,” said Pappy, “I pack for all eternity.”
And he shouted to André to bring up a malacca cane, presented to him once by the Lord Mayor; and a Hawaiian shirt and straw sandals in case of a heat wave. Also a volume of Shakespeare and an unabridged edition of the Decameron, illustrated by an unknown Frenchman.
“Old Wyndham might like this,” said Pappy. “I ought to take a present to old Wyndham. I paid five pounds for this at Bumpus yesterday.”
It was decided to hire a car for the occasion, because everybody could not fit into Pappy’s car. Not with the luggage.
And Pappy made the fatal mistake of buying a cap. He was convinced that because he sported a tweed suit he must wear a cap. The cap was new. It looked it. Not only did it look new, it looked common. It gave Pappy the appearance of a giant costermonger on Easter Monday.
“It came from Scott’s,” said Pappy. “It can’t be common.”
He planted the cap firmly on his head and took up his stance beside the driver, with an enormous map upon his knees giving none of the roads that mattered, but every bridle path in the immediate Coldhammer country. He argued the course of direction during the full seventy miles of the drive. The fact that his map was eighteenth century did not fluster him.
If Pappy had brought too much in the way of suitcases, Freada had erred to the opposite extreme, and had brought too few.
Her belongings were packed in paper parcels, and she had a sack, like a postman’s, thrown over her shoulder, in which was wrapped an evening dress. She and Niall had come over to London for the wedding, intending to stay two nights, and had stayed four weeks, and neither of them had bothered to buy suitcases. It was only when they were ready to start for Coldhammer that Niall had misgivings.
Freada was overdressed. Her long silk frock was striped, increasing her height, and she wore the large picture hat that she had bought for the wedding. White gloves, to the elbow, suggested a Royal garden party.
“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” she said to Niall.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s the hat.”
She whipped it off. But they had done her hair badly at the hairdressers’. The man had been careless with the dye, and it was much too bright. Niall said nothing, but Freada understood.
“I know,” she said; “that’s why I’ve got to wear the hat.”
“What about tonight,” said Niall, “when we change for dinner?”
“Tulle,” said Freada briefly, “thrown round my head. I can tell Lady Wyndham it’s the latest fashion in Paris.”
“Whatever happens,” said Niall, “we must not let Maria down. We must remember, this is Maria’s show.”
He began biting his nails. He was nervous. The thought of seeing Maria again as a month-old bride distressed him. Living in Paris, living with Freada, knowing sudden, unexpected success with his catchpenny tunes, counted as nothing.
The ease of manner that had come to him had vanished. The Niall Delaney who was run after in Paris, and spoiled and petted, was nothing but a boy again with jittery hands.
“We’ve got to remember,” he repeated, “that though all this Coldhammer business seems false as hell to us, it’s terribly important to Maria.”
“Who says it’s false?” said Freada. “I have the greatest respect for English country life. Stop biting your nails.”
She walked down the steps to the waiting car, swinging the postman’s bag, and the long, white gloves came right above her elbows.
The party had been asked to arrive in time for lunch. Luncheon, Lady Wyndham called it. Luncheon at one fifteen. “But come about twelve-thirty,” she had said in her letter, “which will give you time to settle in.”
Because of Pappy’s eighteenth-century map, the car took a wrong turning after leaving Hyde Park Corner. There was no question of anybody settling in. The car did not arrive at Coldhammer until five minutes past two. Celia was in agony.
“We must pretend we have lunched,” she said. “They will have given us up. We can’t possibly ask for lunch now. Maria can get us some biscuits during the afternoon.”
“What do you take me for, a hound?” said Pappy, peering round at her from the front seat of the car, his spectacles on his nose. “I haven’t driven all this way to eat biscuits. Coldhammer is one of the stately homes of England. I intend to eat, and to eat well, my darling. Ah! What did I tell you…” He leaned forward and nudged the driver as the car bumped suddenly in a narrow lane. “This is one of the bridle paths. It’s marked quite clearly on the map.”
He brandished the map in the air, tremendously excited. Freada opened her eyes and yawned.
“Are we nearly there?” she said. “How wonderful the country smells. We ought to ask Lady Wyndham to let us sleep on the lawn. I wonder if they could produce camp-beds.”
Niall did not answer. He was feeling sick. He always felt sick in the back of a car. It was one of those wretched things that he had not yet outgrown. Presently the car came to a standstill before a pair of wrought iron gates. Two columns stood at either side, and on top of the columns a pair of stone griffons rampant.
“This must be it,” said Pappy, still following an eighteenth-century coach road on the map. “Look at the griffons, Celia darling. They may be historical. I must ask old Wyndham. Sound the horn, driver.”
The driver sounded the horn. He had aged years during the drive of seventy miles. A woman came running from the lodge and opened wide the gates. The car swept through. Pappy bowed to her from the window.
“A nice touch, that,” he said. “Probably an old retainer. Been with the Wyndhams for years. Dandled Charles upon her knee. I must find out her name. Always a good thing to know these people’s names.”
The drive wound across the park towards the house that stood blank and impassive at the far end.
“Adams,” said Pappy promptly. “Doric columns.”
“Don’t you mean Kent?” said Freada.
“Kent and Adams,” said Pappy generously.
The car swerved in a circle and drew up before the gray façade. Maria and Charles were waiting, with linked arms, upon the steps. There were far too many dogs, all of different breeds.
Maria broke away from Charles and ran down the steps to open the car. Her natural feelings were too strong for her after all, and she could not keep up the Tatler pose that she had planned. She had been standing on the steps, the dogs grouped about her, for nearly two hours.
“You’re terribly late. What happened to you?” she said.
Her voice sounded high-pitche
d and unnatural, and Niall guessed, from the expression on her face that he knew so well, that she was as nervous as he was himself. Only Pappy remained unperturbed.
“My darling,” he said. “My beautiful,” and he stepped out of the car, scattering rugs, cushions, walking sticks, and volumes of Shakespeare onto the drive, while the dogs barked furiously.
Charles, with the quiet, firm manner of one used to dealing with disciplined men, began explaining to the driver, who was on the verge of a breakdown, the best approach to the garage in the stable yard.
“Leave everything in the car,” said Maria, her voice still high. “Vaughan will deal with it. Vaughan knows where it all has to go.”
Vaughan was the footman. He stood to attention behind Maria.
“What a disappointment,” said Freada, a shade too loud. “I hoped the servants would be powdered. A fine-looking creature all the same.”
She stepped out of the car, but, in doing so, her heel caught in a piece of loose rubber on the running board, and she fell full length at the footman’s feet, her arms spread wide as in a swallow-dive.
“That was effective,” said Pappy. “Do it again.”
Vaughan and Charles assisted Freada to her feet. Smiling broadly with a cut lip and laddered stockings, she assured them both that to fall on entering a strange house spelled good luck to the owners.
“But your lip is bleeding,” said Pappy, his interest quickening. “Where is that case of medicines?”
He turned to the boot of the car to fumble for his luggage.
“I don’t think it’s much,” said Charles, proffering his handkerchief with Raleigh courtesy. “Just a scratch at the corner.”
“But, my dear fellow, she might get lockjaw,” said Pappy. “Never neglect a scratch. I heard of a man in Sydney who got lockjaw within twenty-four hours. He died in agony, bent backwards like a hoop.” In a fever he began throwing the luggage onto the drive. His medicine case was at the bottom. “Ah! I have it,” he said, “iodine. Never travel without iodine. But the lip must be washed first. Charles, where can Freada wash? It is imperative that Freada should wash.”
Lord Wyndham advanced to the top of the steps, his watch in his hand.
“Glad to see you. Glad to see you,” he muttered, his face set in hard, grim lines. “We feared an accident. Luncheon is just going in. Shall we eat at once? The time is exactly eight and a half minutes past two.”
“Let Freada wash afterwards,” whispered Celia. “Lockjaw can’t act as swiftly as all that. We’re keeping everybody waiting.”
“I also wish to wash,” said Pappy loudly. “Unless I wash now it will mean leaving the luncheon table after the first course.”
As the group swept up the steps and past the pillars into the house, Niall glanced back over his shoulder to the car. He saw Vaughan staring at the postman’s bag.
It was after half-past two when the party finally settled down into their seats in the large, square dining room. Pappy, on Lady Wyndham’s right, talked without ceasing. Celia felt this was a great relief to Lady Wyndham, who wore upon her face the haunted, abstract expression of the hostess who knows that the menu she ordered the day before with confidence has been thrown completely out of gear.
She sat at the head of the table watching her butler and his assistant hand the dishes, and her guests eating what was before them, much as the uneasy producer of a play watches his team of actors in a rehearsal that has started ill.
Freada, on Lord Wyndham’s left, had launched into a discussion on Swedish pewter that was to prove abortive. She had noticed an old tankard on a console table in the far corner of the room, but Lord Wyndham refused to be drawn.
“Swedish?” he muttered. “Possibly. I’ve no idea. It may be Swedish. Can’t say I care very much whether it’s Swedish or Japanese. The tankard has always stood there since I was a boy. Probably before.”
Niall was watching Maria, who, having recovered her equanimity now that the party was settled, was busy playing the Hon. Mrs. Charles. Because she was the bride she sat, as guest of honor, on Lord Wyndham’s right. A Wyndham relative or neighbor, with a sandy, bushy mustache, sat on the other side of her.
“But you’re coming to us for Ascot, aren’t you?” Maria was saying. “Oh, but you must. We have a box. Leila will be with us, and Bobby Lavington, and we have the Hopton-D’Arcys coming over with their party from Windsor. Did you know that Charles and I are moving into our house at Richmond in two weeks’ time? It’s Regency. We’re mad about it. Father and Mother have been so sweet. We’re having some of the lovely stuff from here to help furnish it.”
She put out her hand affectionately to Lord Wyndham, who muttered something under his breath. Father and Mother. She called the Wyndhams Father and Mother. “We think it’s so right,” Maria went on, “to be just on the fringe of London. Then we can see all our friends.”
She caught Niall’s eye, and looked away hurriedly, crumbling a piece of bread. She had done her hair in a new way. It was a little longer than before, caught up and swept behind her ears. And she was thinner in the face. She looked lovelier, Niall thought, than she had ever done, the vague blue of her dress took on the color of her eyes, and because she knew Niall was watching her she lifted her chin in an arrogant, half-defensive manner, and began talking even louder than before about the plans for Ascot. He loved her so much that it hurt, and he could not eat. And he wanted to hit her very, very hard.
Lunch over, at a quarter to four, an intolerable lethargy stole upon the house party, but Pappy, mellow with port and Stilton cheese, announced his firm intention of seeing every inch of Coldhammer, from the attics to the kitchens. “Not forgetting the grounds,” he said, waving his hands towards the terrace, “the farmeries, the piggeries, the still-rooms, the venison chambers. I must see all.”
“The Home Farm is quite three miles from the house,” said Lady Wyndham, her eye searching her husband’s, “and there have never been any deer at Coldhammer. I think possibly that, if we put off tea till five, you would have time for a stroll round the pleasure grounds as far as the spinney. That is, unless Dobbin has arranged something else?”
Her glance wavered from her husband towards the butler. A flash of understanding, like a secret code, passed between them. Celia knew that this meant “tea at five,” although the words did not frame themselves on Lady Wyndham’s lips.
“Too late to follow my arrangements now,” snapped Lord Wyndham. “According to my arrangements, we should have done the pleasure grounds by three o’clock. At a quarter to four we were to have driven to see the view from Beacon Hill of the three counties, above Huntsman’s Folly.”
“Huntsman’s Folly? That sounds like folklore and fairies,” said Freada. “Can’t we visit it tonight, by moonlight? It might be just what you want, Niall, for that ghost dance you were planning?”
“It’s only a broken piece of wall,” said Lady Wyndham. “I don’t think it would inspire anyone to dance. Perhaps in the morning, though, if you wish to see the view…”
Lord Wyndham compared his watch with the clock on the drawing room mantelpiece, and Lady Wyndham seized a sunshade. Grim, determined, suffering, with the faces of crusaders, they led us all out onto the terrace, with Pappy in the van wearing his new tweed cap, and brandishing his malacca cane.
The day dragged onto evening. The exhaustion of the walk to the spinney and the tour of the house was followed by tea, heavy and indigestible, and the arrival of more guests who had been bidden for this meal only. Pappy, who never touched tea, began to feel the need of stimulant. Celia caught his eye and watched it rove towards the dining room. The question was, how well did he know Charles? Would Charles prove helpful? Or would asking for a whiskey at a quarter to six look odd, coming from the father of the bride? There was a flask upstairs, of course, in case of high emergency, but a pity to touch that too soon. Celia knew all these thoughts were passing through Pappy’s mind. She moved over to the window by Maria and pulled her sleeve.
“I know Pappy wants a drink,” she whispered. “Is there any hope?”
Maria looked anxious.
“It won’t go awfully well,” she whispered back. “They never have anything here until just before dinner, and then it’s always sherry. Didn’t he bring his flask?”
“Yes. But he might want that for later.”
Maria nodded. “I’ll try to get hold of Charles,” she said.
Charles was nowhere to be seen. Maria had to go to look for him. Celia’s anxiety mounted. Pappy would never hang on until after six. He was like a baby with a bottle. He had to keep to his regular time for his whiskey or his whole system became disorganized.
Presently Charles appeared again with Maria. He went over to Pappy and bent his head in furtive consultation. The two of them left the drawing room together. Celia sighed with relief. There must be a kind of freemasonry between men about these things.
“Your father has not touched his tea,” said Lady Wyndham. “He has let it go quite cold. Shall I pour it away and order fresh? Where has he gone?”
“I think Charles is showing him the pictures in the dining room,” said Celia.
“There is nothing very good to see in there,” said Lady Wyndham. “If it’s the Winterhalter he wanted to look at, it’s at the head of the stairs, and the light is just wrong for pictures at the moment.”
Her duties at the tea tray kept her from pursuit, and soon Pappy came back into the drawing room, bland innocence upon his face.
The dressing gong sounded at a quarter to seven, and with relief the weary guests, and their hosts as well, sought sanctuary within their rooms. Niall flung himself on his bed and lit a cigarette. The need of it at that moment was like cocaine to a drug fiend. He had smoked below, but smoking below was not like smoking alone, in an empty room.