*
“P.S.,” wrote old Mrs. Hopkins, “and better send pellets.”
“Proper mad-house indeed!” thought Mrs. Winter again as she buttered her toast.
23
At Nine, Mellton’s day really began: for at Nine the Master came down.
Gilbert’s post was a large one, but today he gobbled his breakfast and left his letters to read in the train. He had to get up to Town in a hurry. The election was over last Thursday, but no one knew yet who had won: the cards had been dealt but the hands had still to be played.
Baldwin had gone to the country on “Protection”: Liberals and Labour alike had stuck to Free Trade. Clearly the country rejected Protection since less than five and a half millions had voted for it while more than eight and a half voted against; but there all clarity ended, for the “defeated” Protectionists were still the largest party in a House where no single party had a majority (and where Labour had now somehow got thirty-three more seats than the Liberals had). Suppose, then, that when Parliament met in January the Tories were forced to resign, who ought to succeed them? The party second in strength, the Socialists? But if eight and a half million votes had rejected Protection, nine and a half must be reckoned as anti-Socialist votes! Only the Liberals opposed both policies the country rejected: thus in a true sense only the Liberals represented the popular will. The Liberals themselves then? No doubt some Tories would have supported them to keep the Socialists out: all the same, since the popular will had made them the smallest group in the House ...
(Mary’s post was more moderate in size than Gilbert’s, but the German stamp was on top and she wanted to read Augustine’s letter at leisure: she would wait till Gilbert was gone.)
... The practical answer of course was simple in principle. Since a Liberal administration was really out of the question and the very word “Coalition” these days was something which stank, either the Protectionists must stay in office but at the price of forswearing Protection, or the Socialists must forswear Socialism and step into their shoes. In either case Centrist policies would have to be carried out—by n’importe qui, provided it wasn’t the Centrists. So the Liberals though the smallest were today the most powerful group in the House, having absolute power to decide who should govern (provided that wasn’t themselves), and how they should govern, and for how long ...
(Without opening the envelope Mary pinched it with her fingers: it was certainly bulky.)
... Well then, which should it be? Should the two elder parties combine to “save the country from Socialism,” or shall we let Labour in on Liberal leading-strings? “In such a dilemma,” said Gilbert, “Ethics must guide us not Interest. I abhor Socialism—at the very thought of a Socialist government my being revolts. But I see this as just a plain question of right and wrong, Mary: whatever the pretext it would be morally indefensible to cheat Labour of the prize their electoral victories have earned them.”
For a moment Mary looked puzzled. After all, whichever party was forced into office on such miserable conditions must cut a pretty poor figure there: at the next election they’d be bound to be out for the count ... In other words, which did the Liberals hate most? “‘Electoral victories?’” she queried: “Oh, I see what you mean: put them in because they’re the ones who’ve been pinching rightful Liberal votes!”
But Gilbert was gone. Now his mind was made up he was off to London post-haste.
*
... For several days the police were in and out all the time [Augustine had written], comic little chaps in green looking more like gamekeepers—no helmets even! Something about a body being found somewhere Irma told me (she is one of the children). Irma said he hanged himself in the attic but she must have made that up the little ghoul for how could a stranger have got in and got up there?
(Mary wondered if Mr. Asquith would listen to Gilbert: he’d better, this was jolly ingenious!)
... But if it had just been a tramp died of cold in a barn or something why the police buzzing around all that much? Then a very decent-looking old boy turned up who Trudi said was the father [Trudi is the eldest he had written in afterwards] and this is interesting, he had a young chap with him I more or less knew, he changed some money for me at that hotel I spent my first night in Munich at! It must have been the funeral they came for but it was all kept mighty quiet ...
(Jeremy had once defined “political instinct” as “letting one’s transparent nobility of character compel one to some highly profitable course of action.”)
... and Walther and Franz both said nothing to me with such emphasis it obviously wouldn’t have done to ask questions.
(Jeremy’s an absolute pig!)
The kids are a lot of fun now though they were a bit sticky at first, I suppose my being foreign and I don’t think anyhow they are used to a grown-up spending most of his time with them, in their world, in fact treating them as fellow-humans with equal rights ...
With the tail of her eye, through the window Mary caught sight of a groom walking her horse up and down (Heavens, she was supposed to be riding up to the Hermitage this morning!). She had better stop now and get changed. She would take the letter upstairs and read some more while she dressed. But she mustn’t be long or the horse would get cold (and Nellie might want to go out).
The other day, Trudl and Irma ...
24
Nellie had been at the Hermitage for more than a month by now, and somehow—with Mrs. Wadamy’s help, and Maggie’s —a whole new rhythm of living for Nellie had bit by bit grown up.
Milk had seemed an insuperable difficulty at first, since there were no farms in the chase. But Mrs. Wadamy had evolved an ingenious plan whereby a farm-lad on his way home from work every evening left it in a hollow oak only half a mile from the house: from there Nellie lantern in hand fetched it as early as she could fit in the time (though sometimes this wasn’t till near midnight, after the baby’s last feed). As for the water, each bucket took seven minutes to draw (it was lucky that Nellie for all her book-learning was strong as a horse). There was one advantage in well-water, though: there were no pipes to freeze, now that even in England it had turned really cold (especially up here in the chase).
In short, things weren’t easy for Nellie. Some people find even a baby a whole-time job, while Nellie had the constant care of an invalid as well and on top of all that the shopping. In the past, Nellie’s housekeeping had been of the town kind which includes constant poppings round the corner for little things forgotten, the matching of rival shop-windows for bargains—a penny off this or that at So-and-so’s this week. But Mellton village had only one shop-of-all-sorts, and here the prices were uniformly higher than town prices: all the pennies were on, not off.
Mrs. Wadamy rode her horse over three times a week to see all was well and generally she brought something in her saddle-bags, but these little presents were “extras”—calves’-foot jelly and the like: the shopping still had to be done. Maggie had lent her sister her bicycle, and this was an enormous help; but even then Mellton, nearly five miles away, was a major expedition to be made as seldom as possible and loads were heavy in consequence. Wheeling the old machine all hung round with stores (and with its tattered dress-guard of lacing that kept catching in the spokes till Nellie took it right off) it was a long pull up the hill to the chase gates; and Nellie was always in a hurry to get home, for she was acutely anxious every minute she had to leave Gwilym in his bed alone. Already the disease had begun to attack his spine and he had bad bouts of pain.
Whenever Nellie went out, Gwilym insisted on having the baby’s Moses-basket put in his shed with him where he could look after the little fellow and talk to him. Gwilym couldn’t get out of bed unaided so there was nothing he could do about it if the baby did cry: this distressed Gwilym, so Nellie made plentiful use of a soothing-syrup if ever she had to go out. Thus, mostly they enjoyed undisturbed their long conversations together, the father and his sleeping poppied son: conversations adapted to whatever age t
he son was supposed to have reached that morning.
“That’s it, Syl: hold onto my finger ...” (for today he was teaching little Syl to walk). Another day he would be sitting by a four-year-old’s cot at bedtime, telling him Bible-stories—the infant Jesus, and Joseph with his many-colored coat. “Well, what did they teach you today, Syl?”—for now a bright-cheeked boy had just run in from school. His father heard him his three-times, and (a few years later) helped with his prep ... while the baby lay all the while in his basket and bubbled.
“Syl! What’s that one called, Syl?” For sometimes they went for long walks in the woods together, that father and his growing son, and Gwilym taught him the names of the birds and Syl showed him the nests he had found. Then they talked about God, who created all those beautiful birds and painted their eggs; and the baby still bubbled.
When Sylvanus entered his teens his Dad insisted on serious practical talks about all possible sorts of jobs, though knowing full well the one thing Sylvanus wanted was to be a preacher like Dad (but every call to the ministry has to be tested like this). Whereon the baby woke up and crowed, and opened a mouth toothless as a tortoise’s in a wide smile, dribbling and showing his gums.
But always, whatever the boy’s age at that moment, Gwilym talked to him endlessly about that little angel who sat at a window in Heaven and watched him whatever he did, the guardian-sister whose love he must learn to deserve: “Syl, if ever you’re tempted to think about girls with ... in a way you know to be wrong, just say to yourself five words: ‘My angel-sister was one.’”
All this made Gwilym blissfully happy, and he often thought how lucky he was. Nowadays it never struck him as in any way sad that the boy’s whole upbringing had to be condensed like this into a few months at most.
On fine afternoons—at least on the days when Gwilym’s back was a little less bad—Nellie used to take both of them out for their “walk” together. She half-lifted Gwilym from his bed into an old wicker Bath chair Mary had lent them, and tucked him up well with blankets topped with an old horse-rug from the Mellton stables. Then she set the baby on Gwilym’s knee, and trundled them a few hundred yards over the frozen turf to the edge of the escarpment where the whole deep river-valley lay spread beneath them, and there they rested awhile. It was a perilous journey, for the topheavy Bath chair was not intended for such rough going; but the view at the end was well worth it at least so far as Gwilym himself was concerned. Far beneath them the river curled: in the distance the downs rolled and rolled: on clear days you could even see Salisbury spire. For now he was ill Gwilym found an infinite pleasure in this beau-tiful terrestrial world: no longer was it the arid “vale of woe” he had once decried from the pulpit, and he took to writing poems.
An idyllic life while it lasted: till Gwilym’s accident, that later was to leave such a load of guilt on the wife and child, occurred.
25
The horse Mary was riding was an old cob steady as a billiard-table (and much the same shape), for Mary was now two months gone with child and her doctor did not really approve of her riding at all. But surely sitting on Cherry hardly counted as “riding”! Cherry was more stable than the hills; for according to the psalmist the hills can skip—but certainly Cherry couldn’t. The doctor moreover had prescribed a daily walk, so for part of the way Mary got off and led him. This gave her an opportunity too for another mouthful or so of Augustine’s letter:
... I must say, they have got plenty of guts ...
(Who? Oh, those everlasting Kessen children of course!)
... especially the twins. You remember that horse-sleigh I told you we went out in that day? Yesterday the horse bolted with it (empty) and little Heinz fell down right in its light. He just lay still, though, and one of the runners went right over him and I thought he would be cut in half but he was sunk right into the snow and the empty sleigh was so light it went right over him without the runner even touching him. What saved him of course was because he had had the nerve to lie still. But the others just hooted with laughter and he was laughing too when he got up, while the horse charged on down the hill like a dog with a tin can on its tail—you ought to have seen it! The sleigh swinging from side to side and banging on the trees till it smashed to matchwood. End of sleigh! Trudi (she’s the eldest) laughed and laughed till it gave her a pain.
Tomorrow though I’m off to Munich. Frankly, I have been here exactly three weeks now ...
Mary turned back to look at the date: yes, this had been a long time in the post ...
exactly three weeks now and it is high time I saw something of the real, new Germany for a change. Lucky I don’t just judge present-day Germany by this place or I’d come home knowing no more than I set out. Actually of course all this is right out of the picture, the whole set-up here is just a left-over from the past. They are even R.C.’s still, here! Judging just by here you would hardly guess the new Germany with its broad-minded peace-loving spirit and its advanced ideas and its Art existed even, but I met an awfully nice chap that day we went for the sleigh-ride and he has invited me ...
Even that wasn’t nearly the end, but Mary pushed the sheets back in her pocket and remounted. An odd sort of letter from someone of twenty-three and intelligent! That last paragraph—really! Indeed the whole tone of the letter was childish. Like a kind of regression. What an unexpected effect for travel to have on Augustine! It worried her rather. She knew he had taken his guns, but no mention of shooting ... in fact, Augustine seemed to like messing around with small children better than being with his natural companion Franz—let alone with Walther or Otto. Trust Augustine to be adored by the children wherever he went—but not, not to waste his whole time with them this way: he didn’t do that even with Polly, and she was his niece ...
Trudi the “eldest,” he had said? Trudi hadn’t been born ... Funny none of his letters had mentioned once that eldest girl Mary remembered. Little Mitzi’d be now ... what, seventeen? “I suppose,” thought Mary, “she must be away at school.”
In the far distance a few small patches of snow on the hilltops seemed to float in the haze, each with its own dollop of white mist like wool clinging close to it. Otherwise the day was a gray sort of day: dead still, with a faint haze the sun just showed through like a small, watery-yellow pea. The light was indefinite: a dim, ominous, over-all glare that was shadowless.
Slowly Cherry plodded his uphill way on a long rein, gently rocking under Mary like a ship. Fleetingly for no reason she found herself recalling her father who had died when she was a child ... tweeds like nutmeg-graters for bare skin to sit on, and his long mustache that smelt of tobacco and tickled ... But suddenly Cherry blew a deep organ-note through his nostrils—tremolo, so that with its vasty vibration Mary’s legs quivered like jellies and the whole landscape shook.
When it settled again, lo—there were the chase gates in sight now, and Nellie running towards her half tripping over the ruts in the turf that the workmen’s cart had made weeks ago. Nellie was panting and her eyes starting out of her head: would Mrs. Wadamy please go at once for the doctor? Something about Gwilym being worse, and a frightful accident yesterday: it was all Nellie’s own fault, she would never forgive herself ...
In later years Gwilym’s “accident” came to loom so large we had better be quite clear what did happen, that frosty day on the downs.
Yesterday the baby had had a stomach-upset and so couldn’t go out. But the weather yesterday had been wonderful, so rather than do Gwilym out of his walk Nellie had wheeled him to his usual viewpoint and left him there by himself while she dashed back to see to the baby. She meant just to give Sylvanus his peppermint-water and come straight back to Gwilym again; but the little wretch wouldn’t stop crying, so she stopped with him.
Gwilym must have dozed off, for the heavy horse-blanket slipped from his knees and he woke feeling cold. In trying to retrieve it he overbalanced the chair and was spilled out on the ground. There he lay, too weak to get up by himself. Nor could he even shout: his
cauterized throat could only whisper “Help!” He was blue with cold and nearly unconscious when at last the terrified Nellie got back to him. Strong as Nellie was she had a terrible struggle to get him back up into his chair off the ground.
That evening Gwilym’s temperature had soared to new heights, but Nellie dared not leave him to go for the doctor. How could she? She had to wait for the morning and hope that Mary would come.
When Mary did bring the doctor at last he looked grave: a touch of pneumonia, he said. The patient might live through the attack but it would certainly leave him weaker.
In Nellie’s mind as the years passed it became more and more that accident which had tipped the scales: without it the sick man might have—must have recovered. Little Sylvanus was a murderer before he was born, twice a murderer ere he was weaned.
26
Far more lay behind Augustine’s disgruntlement with Lorienburg and his exeat to Munich than he chose to tell Mary. At the time of writing he had been in love for a whole three weeks yet his progress was nil. True, Mitzi appeared at meals now, but she seemed more distraite than ever and vanished as soon as she could. The only person she seemed to respond to ever was Otto. In short, Augustine could sometimes feast his eyes on her now (and he certainly made the most of it); but he never again got a chance like the one he had missed in the chapel of talking to her, he never once saw her alone.
Somehow it never entered Augustine’s head to offer to take Mitzi for a walk. But once, greatly daring, he did summon up courage to offer to read to her: “Schiller or something.” Mitzi thanked him warmly, which made his heart hop like a bird: but instead of taking him to the empty library she led the way to the drawing-room, and thus the reading took place with her mother there and her two younger sisters as well (for the children shadowed Augustine now like dogs everywhere, and they wanted to make him come out and play in the snow). The two little girls were palpably bored by Schiller and longing to carry him off for themselves: Adèle jumped like the toothache at every mispronounced word: Mitzi showed no reaction whatever till he paused, when she thanked him again and slipped away to her room. The reading was not a success, and was never repeated. How he cursed the German language! For in English he knew he read rather well.