The Fox in the Attic
Dropping into a chair, Augustine just had time to snatch the towel from Nanny to cover himself as Polly sprang squealing straight from the water into his lap—with half the bath following her, it seemed.
Well! Bursting in like that without knocking! Nanny pursed her lips, for she didn’t at all approve. Nanny was a Catholic and believed it is never too young to start teaching little girls Shame. They ought to mind men—even uncles—seeing them in their baths, not go bouncing onto their laps without a stitch. But she knew it was as much as her place was worth to breathe a word to the child, for Mrs. Wadamy was Modern, Mrs. Wadamy had Views.
Meanwhile Polly, lonely no longer, was in the seventh heaven of delight. She tore open Augustine’s waistcoat to nuzzle her damp head inside it against his shirt, where she could breathe nothing but his magic smell, listen to the thumping of his heart.
Reluctant at first to let his still-tainted hands themselves even touch the sacred child, he dabbed with a bunch of towel tenderly at the steaming, flower-petal skin. But with her head inside his waistcoat she grabbed his hand tyrannically to her and pressed its hard hollow palm tight over her outside cheek and temple and little curly ear, so that her lucky head should be quite entirely squeezed between him and him. But that very moment he heard Mary’s voice from the stairs, calling him: he must come at once.
Augustine was wanted on the telephone: it was a trunk call.
12
This was the dead child asserting precedence over the living one; for the untimely call was from the police at Penrys Cross. But it was only to say the inquest was put off till Friday as the coroner was indisposed.
Flemton Banquet had ended as usual—in a fight. This year the occasion had been the final torchlight procession: it had fired some of the street decorations, and Danny George declared the burning of his best trousers had been deliberate. Flemton had been happy to divide on the point, and in the fracas Dr. Brinley’s old pony took fright and galloped him off home in the rocking trap, splashing across the sands through the skim of ebb that still glistened there in the moonlight. He had been properly scared and shaken. Thus he had missed the Tuesday and Wednesday Meets after all, taking to his bed with a bottle instead.
The experienced Blodwen had been firm with them: Friday was the earliest the Coroner could be fit for duty.
The next day, Wednesday, Mary was taking Polly back to Dorset. The extra day just gave Augustine time to go with them and spend one night there before having to be back in Wales.
The weather had cleared, and Augustine and Polly wanted to travel together, in the Bentley; but Nanny objected. She said it was crazy in any weather to let a child with a cold travel in a thing like that; for Augustine’s 3-liter Bentley was an open two-seater—very open indeed, with a small draughty windscreen and with even the handbrake outside. Mary Wadamy, on the other hand, was rather in favor. A big wind, she argued, must blow germs away. And it would soon be over; whereas in the stuffy family Daimler, with the luggage and Nanny and Mary’s maid Fitton and Mary herself, the journey would take the best part of the day.
Trivett, their old chauffeur, was carriage-trained and had no liking for speed. But even at twenty miles an hour he drove dangerously enough for the most exacting: “Best anyway not put all your eggs in one basket when the basket is driven by Trivett!” said Augustine grimly.
As for Polly, speech was so inadequate to express her longing that she was silently dancing it, her tongue stuck out as if in exile for its uselessness. That decided Mary: “Being happy’s the only cold-cure worth a farthing,” she said to herself, and gave her consent.
So Nanny, her face full of omens, wrapped the child into a woolen ball where only the eyes showed, and set it on the leather seat beside Augustine.
Augustine was a brilliant driver of the youthful passionate kind which wholly identifies itself with the car. Thus once his hands were on the wheel this morning he forgot Polly entirely. Yet this didn’t matter to Polly. She too knew how to merge herself utterly in dear Bentley (another of her loves): the moment the engine broke into its purring, organ-like roar she uncovered her mouth and began singing treble to Bentley’s bass, and for two hours Bentley and she did not for a moment stop singing, through Staines and Basingstoke, Stockbridge, Salisbury, out on the bare downs.
On the tops of those empty high downs, above the hanging woods of ancient yews clinging to their chalky sides, there was only a thin skin of rabbit-nibbled turf that was more thyme than grass and a sky full of larks. Polly had got her arms free now and waved to the larks, inviting their descant to make a trio of it.
Mellton lay in a deep river-valley folded into these bare chalk downs. In the flat bottom land as they neared the house there were noble woods of beech and sweet-chestnut, green pasture, deep lanes that Bentley almost filled, little hidden hamlets of mingled flint and brick with steep thatched roofs. Bentley and Polly sang together for them as they passed.
As Bentley rounded through the ever-open wrought-iron gates and purred his careful way on the last lap through the park, Polly was now entirely free of her cocoon and standing bolt upright against the dashboard, using both arms to conduct the whole chorus of nature. “Home!” she was chanting on every note she could compass, “Home! Home! Home!” And to Polly’s ears everything round her intoned the answer “Home!”
Then at the front door of Mellton Chase Augustine switched off the engine and Polly and Bentley both fell silent together.
Augustine wiped her nose and lifted her out.
Mellton was large, nearly as large as Augustine’s lonely hermitage Newton Llantony. It was all an Elizabethan house, entirely faced and mullioned with stone and with a little half-naïve classical ornament. It had originally been built as a hollow square on the four sides of a central quadrangle, like a college. In the middle of the façade there was still a great vaulted archway like a college gate: once, you could have ridden on horseback under it right into the quadrangle without dismounting, but now the arch was blocked and a modern front door had been constructed in it.
The well-known music of Augustine’s Bentley could be heard afar, and the butler was standing waiting for them outside this front door when they arrived. Wantage was his name.
Wantage was a thin man, prematurely gray: his eyes stood out rather, for he had thyroid trouble.
13
Polly greeted Mr. Wantage warmly but politely (he was Mr. Wantage to her, by her mother’s fiat). Once inside the door she sat herself expectantly on the end of a certain long Bokhara rug: for as usual on first getting home she wanted to set out at once for the North Pole drawn on her sledge by a yelping team of Mr. Wantage across the frozen wastes of ballroom parquet.
For no longer was there any open quadrangle here at Mellton that all the business of the house had to criss-cross, wet or fine. A Victorian Wadamy had arisen who disliked so draughty a way of living. Fired by the example of the new London railway-stations and of Paxton’s Crystal Palace, he had roofed the entire thing over with a dome of steel and glass. So now in the middle of the house there was nearly an acre of parquet dotted with eastern rugs, instead of the former lawn and flagged paths. What now stood waiting at the far side by the old mounting-block with its tethering-ring, at the foot of the stone steps leading up to the State Rooms and the Solar, was a grand piano.
The quadrangle was now called the Ballroom. Few mansions in the county had ballrooms half its size: tradition said that on one Victorian occasion two thousand couples had danced there, watched by the Prince and Princess of Wales. But this vast “room” was still lit by the glazed sky above. Its walls of weathered stone were still unplastered. Windows and even balconies still looked down into it. Yet alternating with these windows and balconies steel armored fore-arms now projected from the walls gripping outsize electric light bulbs in their gauntletted fists; for this had been one of the very first houses in Britain to adopt the new lighting, with current generated by its own watermill.
Polly and Wantage may have been looking f
or the North Pole, but what they found at the far side of all this was Minta the under-nurse. She carried Polly off at once, and Polly went with her readily enough because Polly was always docile when she was happy and at the moment she was full of happiness—full as an egg.
As soon as Polly was gone with Minta and Augustine was washing his hands, Wantage vanished rather nervously into the dining-room. He wanted to assure himself that the cold sideboard carried everything it should for Mr. Augustine’s solitary luncheon. Wantage knew of old that Mr. Augustine preferred not to be waited on yet objected strongly to having to ring for something which had been forgotten. If he was like this by twenty-three, Wantage often wondered, what would he be like at fifty-three? “A holy terror and no mistake!” was Mrs. Winter’s forecast—unless he got married, of course.
Wantage straightened a fork that was slightly out of plumb: nothing else seemed amiss.
By rights Wantage was “off” now, and ought to be able to put up his feet in peace. But there was still Mr. Augustine’s bag! Passing out through the serving-pantry he ordered a rather bucolic boot-and-knife boy, in tones of concentrated venom, to fetch the luggage out of the car and carry it up the back way.
That venomous tone of voice meant nothing: it was merely the correct way for Upper Servants to speak to Boys (indeed Wantage had rather a soft spot for Jimmy—hoped one day to make quite a proper Indoor of him). It meant no more than the tones of deferential benevolence he always used to all Gentry—who were stupid sods, most of them, in his experience. True, their word was their bond; but they acted spoilt, like babbies ...
Not that all babbies were spoilt—not his little Miss Polly-olly she wasn’t! It was her Nanny was the spoilt one—that Mrs. Halloran the blooming nuisance ... and Minta the Under aiming to take after her: a little bitch hardly turned eighteen, I ask you! A slipper to her backside would do her a power.
Mrs. Winter agreed with him about those two, but constitutionally Nursery was a self-governing province where even a Housekeeper’s writ did not run.
Wantage’s back was giving him gyp; but he’d got that bag to unpack before he could look to a proper sit-down. “Off-duty” didn’t mean a thing nowadays, not since the War with everywhere understaffed. Time was, he had known four footmen here at the Chase: but now—just fancy Mellton and the butler having to valet visiting gentlemen himself! How was he to keep his end up with Mrs. Winter—her with all those girls under, and him with no one under his sole command but Jimmy?
All those girls ... Mrs. Winter, with her black silk and her keys, was hard put to it to count them all. But that’s what the Gentry (the old ones: war profiteers weren’t Gentry) were come down to nowadays indoors: girls. Why, some houses and quite good ones too nowadays they even let women clean the silver! “Parlourmaids”... Mellton hadn’t fallen as low as that yet, thank God.
But where was the satisfaction, rising to the top in Service and still no men under you? That was the sting. Outdoors, two keepers and a water-bailiff: an estate carpenter: six men in the Gardens still—and three (even not counting the exiled Trivett) in Stables! Only Indoors was so depleted, that’s what was so unfair.
Mean! The Master ought to bear in mind what was due from a Wadamy of Mellton Chase ...
As Wantage fitted the links into Augustine’s white shirt ready for the evening he heaved a deep sigh that turned to a hiccup and left a nasty taste of heartburn in his mouth. Dead Sea Fruit! That’s all his promotions had amounted to ever since he entered Service, from first to last.
14
When at last Wantage was free to relax it was the Housekeeper’s Room he went to that afternoon, not his own Pantry; and he slumped into a comfortable basket chair there as near as possible to a breezy window.
Mrs. Winter was sitting bolt upright before the fire on a straight-backed hard chair loose-covered in a flowered chintz. Her hands were folded in her lap. Mrs. Winter never slumped—never appeared to wish to, even if her whalebone would have let her. Wantage studied her. Nowadays she looked like something poured into a mould: just brimming over the rim a little but not enough to slop. She didn’t seem to possess a Shape of her own any more. It was hard to believe that once “Mrs. Winter” had been Maggie the lithe, long-legged young under-housemaid game as any for a spot of slap-and-tickle.
That was at Stumfort Castle, when he himself was a half-grown young footman—years before they had met again at Mellton Chase. Wantage licked his lips at certain recollections. Jimminey! He’d gone a bit too far with her that one time! Might both have lost their places only they were lucky and she didn’t have it after all ...
He’d happened on her sudden, up the Tower—in the Feather-room, sitting on the floor refilling a featherbed and herself half drowned in feathers ... with her ankles showing. Her ankles—and the sight of her Shape sunk in all that sea of soft feathers—had been too much for him. Too much for both of them, seemingly.
But after! Picking hundreds of downy little feathers off his livery against time before going on duty in the Front Hall, sweating he’d miss some and they’d find him out ...
“A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Wantage,” said Mrs. Winter sweetly.
“Dead Sea Fruit, Maggie,” he answered hollowly.
He hadn’t called her “Maggie” for years! Mrs. Winter lifted both white plump hands slightly from her lap, fitting the tips of the fingers together and contemplating them in silence. Then:
“Times have certainly changed,” she said.
Mr. Wantage closed his eyes.
Suddenly he opened them again: Polly was climbing into his lap. Polly was the only person in the whole house Front Stairs as well as Back who dared wander informally into the sacred “Room” like that. “I’ve come!” she said unnecessarily, and added: “That Jimmy’s got a crown!”
“Careful, Duck,” said Mr. Wantage: “Mind my poor leg.”
“What’s the matter with it?” she asked.
“Got a bone in it!” he answered dramatically. “Minta’ll be looking for you,” he went on, with quite a wicked look in his bulging eyes.
“Yes she will!” said Polly, equally delighted: “Looking everywhere!”
“Hunting all over!” echoed Mr. Wantage: “You won’t half cop it if she finds you here!”
But he knew, and she knew, that this was a sanctuary where even Minta’d never dare.
Mrs. Winter’s thoughts were browsing very gently on the visitor, Mr. Augustine. For a brother and sister, how unlike in their ways he and the Mistress were! And yet, so fond. A pity to see him willfully living so strange: no good could come of it, you can’t cut loose from your Station, no one can ... yet he had proved the soul of kindness about Nellie’s Gwilym’s old mother—took endless pains to find her somewhere on his own property, now that the birthplace she’d hankered back to was become a waterworks. Mr. Augustine was better than he’d let himself be, there were some like that ...
Then Mrs. Winter’s stomach rumbled, and she looked at the clock. But that very moment came the expected knock and the door opened, briefly releasing into the “Room” a distant merry burst of young west-country voices and wild laughter with even a snapshot through it of “that Jimmy,” ham-frill for crown and sceptered with toasting-fork, prancing in the midst of a veritable bevy of “all those girls.”
It was Lily, the fifteen-year-old scullery-maid, who had just come in, with her cheeks flushed and her eyes still flashing. Lily had brought their tea, of course, with hot buttered scones straight from the oven, and cherrycake:
“Like a nice slice of cake, Love?” Mrs. Winter asked Polly. Even the glacé cherries in it were Mellton-grown and of her own candying. But Polly shook her head. Her cold had spoiled her appetite. Instead she begun plunging her hand in each of Mr. Wantage’s pockets in turn to see what she could find. Gently he began to prise open her fingers to rescue his spectacles; but she insisted on placing them on his nose.
Mrs. Winter also was putting on her spectacles, for the tea-tray bore her usual weekly letter
from her younger sister Nellie ... Poor Nellie! The clever one of the family—and the one Life had treated hardest.—Still, Nellie had Little Rachel to comfort her ...
“Mrs.” Winter’s own title only marked professional status, like “Dr.” or “Rev.”; but Nellie had married, and married young. She had married a budding minister, a Welsh boy out of the mines. Clever as paint—but not strong, though, ever. Nellie was wed as soon as the young man got his first Call, to a chapel in the Rhondda Valley.
When the War came, being a minister of religion he didn’t have to go—and how thankful Nellie had been! But her Portion of Trouble was coming to her just the same. 1915—three years married, the first baby at last and born big-headed! Water, of course ... Six months he died, the second already on the way.
Wasn’t it anxiety enough for Nellie, wondering after that how the new one would turn out? Yet Gwilym (that was the father’s outlandish name) must needs add to it. He took on now in a crazy fashion. He reckoned some sin of his had made the first one born that way: he must expiate his sin or the second would be the same.
Not to sit comfortable preaching the word in the Valleys to the ticking Chapel clock while other men died! That’s how the notion took him. But the Army wouldn’t have him for a chaplain: so he said he’d go for a stretcher-bearer, in the Medical Corps. It was for the unborn baby’s sake he’d got to go, so he couldn’t even wait for little Rachel-to-be to be born. Nellie couldn’t hold him.
Nor could his angry deacons either: they were of a very pacifist turn, and counted stretchering nearly as bad as downright shooting—they’d never have him back after, not once he’d put on any kind or shape of army uniform! When he still went, they turned Nellie out of the Chapel house; for they’d have no soldier’s brat born there.
Once Rachel was weaned, Nellie got a war-job teaching infant school in Gloucester.