“Well, Lord Copper, the choice seems between sending a staff reporter who will get the news but whose name the public doesn’t know, or to get someone from outside with a name as a military expert. You see since we lost Hitchcock…”
“Yes, yes. He was our only man with a European reputation. I know. Zinc will be sending him. I know. But he was wrong about the battle of Hastings. It was 1066. I looked it up. I won’t employ a man who isn’t big enough to admit when he’s wrong.”
“We might share one of the Americans?”
“No, I tell you who I want: Boot.”
“Boot?”
“Yes, Boot. He’s a young man whose work I’m very much interested in. He has the most remarkable style and he’s been in Patagonia and the Prime Minister keeps his books by his bed. Do you read him?”
“Up to a point, Lord Copper.”
“Well get onto him tomorrow. Have him up to see you. Be cordial. Take him out to dinner. Get him at any price. Well, at any reasonable price,” he added for there had lately been a painful occurrence when instructions of this kind, given in an expansive mood, had been too literally observed and a trick-cyclist who had momentarily attracted Lord Copper’s attention, had been engaged to edit the Sports Page on a five years’ contract at five thousand a year.
*
Mr. Salter went to work at mid-day. He found the Managing Editor cast in gloom.
“It’s a terrible paper this morning,” he said. “We paid Professor Jellaby thirty guineas for the feature article and there’s not a word in it one can understand. Beaten by the Brute in every edition on the Zoo Mercy Slaying story. And look at the Sports Page.”
Together, in shame, the two men read the trick-cyclist’s Sports Page.
“Who’s Boot?” asked Mr. Salter at last.
“I know the name,” said the Managing Editor.
“The chief wants to send him to Ishmaelia. He’s the Prime Minister’s favorite writer.”
“Not the chap I was thinking of,” said the Managing Editor.
“Well, I’ve got to find him.” He listlessly turned the pages of the morning paper. “Boot,” he said. “Boot. Boot. Boot. Why! Boot—here he is. Why didn’t the chief say he was a staff man?”
At the back of the paper, ignominiously sandwiched between Pip and Pop, the Bedtime Pets, and the recipe for a dish named “Waffle Scramble,” lay the twice-weekly half-column devoted to Nature: LUSH PLACES edited by William Boot, Countryman.
“Do you suppose that’s the right one?”
“Sure of it. The Prime Minister is nuts on rural England.”
“He’s supposed to have a particularly high-class style: @Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing
[email protected]… would that be it?”
“Yes,” said the Managing Editor. “That must be good style. At least it doesn’t sound like anything else to me. I know the name well now you mention it. Never seen the chap. I don’t think he’s ever been to London. Sends his stuff in by post. All written out in pen and ink.”
“I’ve got to ask him to dinner.”
“Give him cider.”
“Is that what countrymen like?”
“Yes, cider and tinned salmon is the staple diet of the agricultural classes.”
“I’ll send him a telegram. Funny the chief wanting to send him to Ishmaelia.”
Two
Change and decay in all around I see,” sang Uncle Theodore, gazing out of the morning-room window. Thus, with startling loudness, he was accustomed to relieve his infrequent fits of depression; but decay, rather than change, was characteristic of the immediate prospect.
The immense trees which encircled Boot Magna Hall, shaded its drives and rides, and stood (tastefully disposed at the whim of some forgotten, provincial predecessor of Repton) single and in groups about the park, had suffered, some from ivy, some from lightning, some from the various malignant disorders that vegetation is heir to, but all, principally, from old age. Some were supported with trusses and crutches of iron, some were filled with cement; some, even now, in June, could show only a handful of green leaves at their extremities. Sap ran thin and slow; a gusty night always brought down a litter of dead timber.
The lake was moved by strange tides. Sometimes, as at the present moment, it sank to a single, opaque pool in a wilderness of mud and rushes; sometimes it rose and inundated five acres of pasture. There had once been an old man in one of the lodges who understood the workings of the water system; there were sluice gates hidden among the reeds, and manholes, dotted about in places known only to him, furnished with taps and cocks; the man had been able to control an ornamental cascade and draw a lofty jet of water from the mouth of the dolphin on the South terrace. But he had been in his grave fifteen years and the secret had died with him.
The house was large but by no means too large for the Boot family, which at this time numbered eight. There were in the direct line: William who owned the house and estate, William’s sister Priscilla who claimed to own the horses, William’s widowed mother who owned the contents of the house and exercised ill-defined rights over the flower garden, and William’s widowed grandmother who was said to own “the money.” No one knew how much she possessed; she had been bed-ridden as long as William’s memory went back. It was from her that such large checks issued as were from time to time necessary for balancing the estate accounts and paying for Uncle Theodore’s occasional, disastrous visits to London. Uncle Theodore, the oldest of the male collaterals, was by far the gayest. Uncle Roderick was in many ways the least eccentric. He had managed the estates and household throughout William’s minority and continued to do so with a small but regular deficit which was made up annually by one of grandmama’s checks. The widowed Lady Trilby was William’s Great-Aunt Anne, his father’s elder sister; she owned the motor-car, a vehicle adapted to her own requirements; it had a horn which could be worked from the back seat; her weekly journey to church resounded through the village like the Coming of the Lord. Uncle Bernard devoted himself to a life of scholarship but had received little general recognition, for his researches, though profound, were narrow, being connected solely with his own pedigree. He had traced William’s descent through three different lines from Ethelred the Unready and only lack of funds fortunately prevented him from prosecuting a claim to the abeyant barony of de Butte.
All the Boots, in one way or another, had about a hundred a year each as pocket money. It was therefore convenient for them to live together at Boot Magna, where wages and household expenses were counted in with Uncle Roderick’s annual deficit. The richest member of the household, in ready cash, was Nannie Bloggs, who had been bed-ridden for the last thirty years; she kept her savings in a red flannel bag under the bolster. Uncle Theodore made attempts on them from time to time, but she was a sharp old girl and, since she combined a long standing aversion to Uncle Theodore with a preternatural aptitude for bringing off showy doubles during the flat racing season, her hoard continued to grow. The Bible and the Turf Guide were her only reading. She got great delight from telling each member of the family, severally and secretly, that he or she was her heir.
In other rooms about the house reposed: Nannie Price, ten years the junior of Nannie Bloggs, and bed-ridden from about the same age. She gave her wages to Chinese Missions and had little influence in the house; Sister Watts, old Mrs. Boot’s first nurse, and Sister Sampson, her second; Miss Scope, Aunt Anne’s governess, veteran invalid, of some years seniority in bed to old Mrs. Boot herself; and Bentinck the butler; James, the first footman, had been confined to his room for some time, but he was able on warm days to sit in an armchair at the window. Nurse Granger was still on her feet, but as her duties included the charge of all eight sick-rooms, it was thought she would not long survive. Ten servants waited upon the household and upon one another, but in a desultory fashion, for they could spare very little time from the five meat meals which tradition daily allowed them. In the circumstances the Boots did not entertain and were indulgently spoken o
f in the district as being “poor as church mice.”
The fashionable John Courteney Boot was a remote cousin, or, as Uncle Bernard preferred, the member of a cadet branch. William had never met him; he had met very few people indeed. It was not true to say, as the Managing Editor of the Beast had said, that he had never been to London, but his visits had been infrequent enough for each to be distinct and perennially horrifying in his memory.
“Change and decay in all around I see,” sang Uncle Theodore. It was his habit to sing the same line over and over again. He was waiting for the morning papers. So were William and Uncle Roderick. They were brought by the butcher, often blotched with red, any time between eleven and mid-day, and then, if not intercepted, disappeared among the sick-rooms to return at tea-time hopelessly mutilated, for both Bentinck and old Mrs. Boot kept scrap-books, and Sister Sampson had the habit of cutting out coupons and losing them in the bedclothes. This morning they were late. It was a matter of great anxiety to William.
He had never been to the Megalopolitan offices or met anyone connected with the Beast. His job as author of Lush Places had been passed on to him by the widow on the death of its previous holder, the Rector of Boot Magna. He had carefully modeled his style on the late Rector’s, at first painfully, now almost without effort. The work was of the utmost importance to him: he was paid a guinea a time and it gave him the best possible excuse for remaining uninterruptedly in the country.
And now it was in danger. On the previous Thursday a very dreadful thing had happened. Drawing on the observations of a lifetime and after due cross-examination of the head keeper and half an hour with the encyclopedia, William had composed a lyrical but wholly accurate account of the habits of the badger; one of his more finished essays. Priscilla in a playful mood had found the manuscript, and altered it, substituting for “badger” throughout “the great crested grebe.” It was not until Saturday morning when, in this form, it appeared in the Beast, that William was aware of the outrage.
His mail had been prodigious; some correspondents were skeptical, others derisive; one lady wrote to ask whether she read him aright in thinking he condoned the practice of baiting these rare and beautiful birds with terriers and deliberately destroying their earthly homes; how could this be tolerated in the so-called twentieth century? A major in Wales challenged him categorically to produce a single authenticated case of a great crested grebe attacking young rabbits. It had been exceedingly painful. All through the week-end William had awaited his dismissal but Monday and Tuesday passed without a word from the Beast. He composed and dispatched a light dissertation on water voles and expected the worst. Perhaps the powers at the Beast were too much enraged even to send back his manuscript; when Wednesday’s paper came he would find another tenant of Lush Places. It came. He hunted frantically for his half-column. It was there, a green oasis between Waffle Scramble and the Bedtime Pets. “Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole…” It was all right. By some miracle Saturday’s shame had been covered.
His uncles peevishly claimed the paper; he surrendered it readily. He stood at the french window blinking at the summer landscape; the horses at grass beyond the ha-ha skipped and frolicked.
“Confound the thing,” said Uncle Roderick behind him. “Can’t find the cricket anywhere. Whole page seems to be given up to some damn-fool cycling championship at Cricklewood Stadium.”
William did not care. In the fullness of his gratitude he resolved to give rodents a miss that Saturday (though he was particularly attached to them) and write instead of wild flowers and birdsong. He might even risk something out of the poets.
“Nay not so much as out of bed?
When all the birds have Matins said,”
he sang, in his heart, to the recumbent figures above him. And then, wheezing heavily, with crumbs on his mouth, ponderously straddling across the morning-room, came Troutbeck, the aged “boy,” bearing a telegram. Curiosity and resentment contended for mastery in Troutbeck’s demeanor; curiosity because telegrams were of rare occurrence at Boot Magna; resentment at the interruption of his “elevenses”—a lavish and ruminative feast which occupied the servants’ hall from ten-thirty until noon.
William’s face quickly reassured him that he had not been called from the table on any frivolous pretext. “Bad news,” he was able to report. “Shocking bad news for Master William.”
“It couldn’t hardly be a death,” said the third housemaid, “All the family’s here.”
“Whatever it was we shall soon know,” said Troutbeck. “It struck Master William all of a heap. Might I thank you to pass the chutney.”
Bad news indeed! Oblivious of the sunshine and the grazing horses and the stertorous breathing of his Uncle Theodore, William re-read the frightful doom that had fallen on him.
REQUEST YOUR IMMEDIATE PRESENCE HERE URGENT LOR.D COPPERS PERSONAL DESIRE SALTER BEAST.
“Nothing serious, I hope!” said Uncle Theodore, to whom telegrams, in the past, had from time to time brought news as disquieting as to any man living.
“Yes,” said William, “I have been called to London.”
“Have you, my boy? That’s interesting. I was thinking of running up for a night myself…”
But Uncle Theodore was speaking to the air. William was already at work, setting into motion the elaborate household machinery which would, too soon, effect his departure.
*
After an early luncheon, William went to say goodbye to his grandmother. She looked at him with doleful, mad eyes. “Going to London, eh? Well I hardly suppose I shall be alive when you return. Wrap up warm, dear.” It was eternal winter in Mrs. Boot’s sunny bedroom.
All the family who had the use of their legs attended on the steps to see William off; Priscilla bathed in tears of penitence. Nannie Bloggs sent him down three golden sovereigns. Aunt Anne’s motor-car was there to take him away. At the last moment Uncle Theodore attempted to get in at the off side, but was detected and deterred. “Just wanted to see a chap in Jermyn Street about some business,” he said wistfully.
It was always a solemn thing for a Boot to go to London; solemn as a funeral for William on this afternoon. Once or twice on the way to the station, once or twice as the train stopped on the route to Paddington, William was tempted to give up the expedition in despair. Why should he commit himself to this abominable city merely to be railed at and, for all he knew of Lord Copper’s temperament, physically assaulted? But sterner counsels prevailed. He might bluff it out. Lord Copper was a townsman, a provincial townsman at that, and certainly did not know the difference between a badger and a great crested grebe. It was William’s word against a few cantankerous correspondents and people who wrote to the newspapers were proverbially unbalanced. By the time he reached Westbury he had sketched out a little scene for himself, in which he stood resolutely in the boardroom defying the doctrinaire zoology of Fleet Street; every inch a Boot, thrice descended from Ethelred the Unready, rightful 15th Baron de Butte, haughty as a chieftain, honest as a peasant. “Lord Copper,” he was saying. “No man shall call me a liar unchastised. The great crested grebe does hibernate.”
He went to the dining-car and ordered some whisky. The steward said “We’re serving teas. Whisky after Reading.” After Reading he tried again. “We’re serving dinners. I’ll bring you one to your carriage.” When it came, William spilled it down his tie. He gave the steward one of Nannie Bloggs’s sovereigns in mistake for a shilling. It was contemptuously refused and everyone in the carriage stared at him. A man in a bowler hat said, “May I look? Don’t often see one of them nowadays. Tell you what I’ll do, I’ll toss you for it. Call.”
William said, “Heads.”
“Tails it is,” said the man in the bowler hat, putting it in his waistcoat pocket. He then went on reading his paper and everyone stared harder at William. His spirits began to sink; the mood of defiance passed. It was always the way; the moment he left the confines of Boot Magna he found himself in a fore
ign and hostile world. There was a train back at ten o’clock that night. Wild horses would not keep him from it. He would see Lord Copper, explain the situation fully and frankly, throw himself upon his mercy and, successful or defeated, catch the train at ten. By Reading he had worked out this new and humble policy. He would tell Lord Copper about Priscilla’s tears; great men were proverbially vulnerable in appeals of that kind. The man opposite him looked over the top of his paper. “Got any more quids?”
“No,” said William.
“Pity.”
At seven he reached Paddington and the atrocious city was all around him.
*
The Megalopolitan building, numbers 700–853 Fleet Street, was disconcerting. At first William thought that the taxi driver, spotting a bumpkin, had driven him to the wrong address.
His acquaintance with offices was very small. At the time of his coming of age he had spent several mornings with the family solicitor in King’s Bench Walk. At home he knew the local Estate Agents and Auctioneers, the bank and the Town Hall. He had once seen in Taunton a barely intelligible film about newspaper life in New York where neurotic men in shirt sleeves and eye-shades had rushed from telephone to tape machine, insulting and betraying one another in surroundings of unredeemed squalor. From these memories he had a confused expectation that was rudely shocked by the Byzantine vestibule and Sassanian lounge of Copper House. He thought at first that he must have arrived at some new and less exclusive rival of the R.A.C. Six lifts seemed to be in perpetual motion; with dazzling frequency their doors flew open to reveal now left, now right, now two or three at a time, like driven game, a series of girls in Caucasian uniform. “Going up,” they cried in Punch-and-Judy accents and before anyone could enter, snapped their doors and disappeared from view. A hundred or so men and women of all ranks and ages passed before William’s eyes. The sole stationary objects were a chryselephantine effigy of Lord Copper in coronation robes, rising above the throng, on a polygonal malachite pedestal, and a concierge, also more than life size, who sat in a plate glass enclosure, like a fish in an aquarium, and gazed at the agitated multitude with fishy, supercilious eyes. Under his immediate care were a dozen page boys in sky blue uniforms, who between errands pinched one another furtively on a long bench. Medals of more battles than were ever fought by human arms or on earthly fields glittered on the porter’s chest. William discovered a small vent in this tank and addressed him diffidently. “Is his Lordship at home?”