Crampton Hodnet (3 page)

Miss Doggett sailed majestically into the shabby, comfortable drawing-room. That chintz has faded, she thought with satisfaction; I knew it would. But it’s no use telling Margaret anything, she won’t listen.

‘Margaret,’ she said, addressing Mrs. Cleveland, ‘who was that young man who went just now?’

‘Oh, that was Simon Beddoes,’ said Mrs. Cleveland casually. ‘His father used to be British Ambassador in Warsaw, or something like that.’

‘Really?’ Miss Doggett looked interested and thoughtful. She glanced at Anthea, who seemed a little confused when her father asked her what Simon had thought of the first editions. ‘Then he must be the son of Sir Lyall Beddoes, who died a year or two ago,’ said Miss Doggett. ‘I believe he left a considerable fortune. He was a kinsman on his mother’s side of Lord Timberscombe… .’ Miss Doggett wandered on happily. She had a good deal of information from
Debrett
and
Who’s Who
tucked away in her head. ‘I don’t remember who Lady Beddoes was before her marriage. Nobody distinguished, I think. She lives in Chester Square.’

‘Well, he seemed to be a very nice boy,’ said Mrs. Cleveland, as if this was hardly to be expected of young men whose mothers lived in Belgravia.

‘He’s third year, reading History,’ said Anthea, feeling that something was expected of her.

‘The vicar and Mrs. Wardell,’ announced Ellen, opening the door. ‘And Miss Morrow,’ she added, as an afterthought.

The Reverend Benjamin Wardell, vicar of St. Botolph’s, came into the room, followed by his wife, Agnes. He was a short, jolly-looking man, while Mrs. Wardell was tall and thin, with a vague expression, and clothes which were untidy through absentmindedness, rather than from any other cause. She was wearing a smocklike garment of flowered shantung over a blue skirt. On her feet were heavy shoes, the heels caked with mud.

‘Margaret, my dear,’ she said, looking down at them. ‘I’ve just realised that I’ve come in my gardening shoes.’

‘Were you gardening on a Sunday?’ asked Francis Cleveland, in tones of mock disapproval.

‘On a Sunday?’ repeated Miss Doggett, in a different tone.

‘Yes. Do you think it wrong to garden on a Sunday?’

‘Well, if your conscience allows you to,’ said Miss Doggett gravely.

‘My conscience?’ Mrs. Wardell laughed. ‘My husband or his parishioners are far more likely to stop me than my conscience.’

‘You are lucky, Mrs. Wardell, in having a husband who is something more than just a husband,’ said Francis Cleveland.

‘I think it’s really quite enough for a husband to be just that,’ said Mrs. Wardell. ‘It’s certainly a whole-time job, isn’t it, Ben?’

‘Supper’s ready,’ said Mrs. Cleveland.

‘I forgot to put out the beetroot,’ said Anthea, hurrying from the room.

‘And what would Sunday supper be without beetroot?’ said Miss Morrow brightly.

‘Ah, Miss Morrow, I didn’t notice you,’ said Miss Doggett, ‘I see that you are here.’

‘She can hardly deny that,’ said the vicar, chortling with laughter, as he always did at his own jokes.

‘I might,’ said Miss Morrow. ‘A companion is looked upon as a piece of furniture. She is hardly a person at all.’

They went into the dining-room and sat down. Mrs. Cleveland carved the cold beef at the sideboard. Mr. Cleveland sat staring down at the tablecloth, while Anthea passed round beetroot and potatoes in their jackets.

‘I’ve let Ellen go out,’ said Mrs. Cleveland apologetically. ‘Another of her cousins has come down from Manchester. Why is it always Manchester, I wonder?’

But the others were talking about the new curate.

‘His name’s Stephen Latimer, and he’s got red hair,’ said Mrs. Wardell. ‘I think he’s awfully good-looking, don’t you, Ben?’

‘I can’t say that I really noticed,’ said her husband. ‘He seems an able young man. Quite cultured too, I should think.’

‘Where’s he going to live?’ asked Anthea.

‘Ah, that’s the point. “Ay, there’s the rub”, I might say.’ Mr. Wardell’s eyes brightened and he looked rather mysterious. ‘He tells me that he doesn’t want to be in lodgings but would prefer to live with a family in the parish.’

‘I can understand that a cultured young man would wish to live with people of his own class,’ said Miss Doggett.

‘I don’t know if we could have a curate here,’ said Mr. Cleveland doubtfully, as if it were some strange kind of animal.

‘As a matter of fact I was thinking that perhaps, that is just
perhaps
, Miss Doggett might like to have him,’ said the vicar, bringing out the words with a rush.

Everyone looked at Miss Doggett doubtfully, but to their surprise she seemed very much taken with the idea.

‘Of course I don’t pretend to be a young woman,’ she declared in a measured tone. ‘I don’t think I could spend my time running up and down stairs with glasses of hot milk and poached eggs.’

‘Oh, I would do that,’ broke in Miss Morrow eagerly.

‘Well, I hardly think it would be
necessary
,’ said the vicar seriously.

‘Oh, Ben, you know it wouldn’t be necessary,’ said his wife, ‘but it always happens with curates. Don’t you remember Willie Bell?’ she added, referring to a former curate who had lodged with a widow and eventually married her.

The vicar looked rather embarrassed. ‘I hardly think that this is the same sort of thing,’ he said hastily.

‘No, Mr. Wardell, it is not. Mr. Latimer would be quite safe in
my
house,’ declared Miss Doggett.

‘There are no widows in Leamington Lodge,’ said the vicar, in a hearty tone.

‘But there are two spinsters,’ whispered Anthea to Miss Morrow. ‘Surely that’s just as dangerous?’

‘Won’t the poor young man be fussed over at all?’ said Mrs. Wardell regretfully.

‘I can see to his material welfare,’ said Miss Doggett, ‘and I believe he will find the atmosphere of my house an extremely cultured one.’

Miss Morrow thought of the dining-room on a wet Sunday afternoon, with the rain dripping off the dark branches of the monkey-puzzle, and the bright, jangling music from Luxembourg.

‘And,’ continued Miss Doggett, ‘I shall be able to keep an eye on him—insofar as that is necessary in one of his profession.’

The Reverend Stephen Latimer’s first sight of Leamington Lodge was on an October evening. Preparations were already being made for the Fifth of November, and there was a smell of fireworks in the air. Ever afterwards this smell reminded him of his arrival in Oxford. The street lamps were already lit, and the Victorian-Gothic house looked mysterious and romantic in the misty half-light. Its ugliness was softened and the monkey-puzzle and the dingy laurels were blurred masses of darkness.

Miss Morrow heard the scrunch of feet on the red gravel but took no notice of it. Mr. Latimer was not expected until seven. Miss Doggett, who had gone out to tea, was coming back at six. It was now only half past five.

Miss Morrow was in her bedroom putting rouge on her cheeks. She was experimenting. She had read that if you put the rouge far out on the cheek-bones, and smoothed it in carefully so that no hard line showed, it gave roundness to a thin face. A touch on the chin was another trick, but it didn’t say what that gave. She had got as far as putting on some lipstick, and two large dabs of rouge on her cheeks and a smaller one on her chin, when Florence tapped at the door.

‘Please, Miss Morrow, I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she said, ‘but Mr. Latimer is here.’

‘Mr. Latimer here,
now
?’ echoed Miss Morrow incredulously. She spoke with her back turned, so that Florence should not see her face. ‘Well, tell him I’ll be down in a minute. Miss Doggett wasn’t expecting him till seven.’

‘No, miss, but the sheets are on the bed,’ said Florence virtuously. ‘I’ll tell him what you say.’

I don’t suppose he’ll want to go to bed at half past five, thought Miss Morrow, who was now in a flurry of agitation. There was no time to change her dress, but she washed her hands and sprinkled herself lavishly with Parma Violet, as if to make up for it. Then, with her handkerchief, she scrubbed at her lips and cheeks, but the cosmetics she had used were of an indelible brand, and while the scrubbing took some of it off, it by no means removed all of it. This was especially noticeable with the lips. Miss Morrow thought, with sudden shame but also with some amusement, of the advertisement on the little card to which the lipstick had been fixed. Something about your lips never having looked so tempting. How humiliating it was to be caught out in such folly! She assured herself that nothing had been further from her mind than the idea of tempting anyone. The very possibility of Jessie Morrow’s tempting anyone was so ludicrous that it made her feel like blushing.

At last, when she had ruined a white linen handkerchief and removed what seemed to her nearly all the unnatural colouring, she hurried downstairs. Whatever would Miss Doggett say, she wondered, when she discovered that Mr. Latimer had arrived nearly two hours too early? Miss Morrow felt that in some inexplicable way she would be blamed for it, and so her greeting of Mr. Latimer when she entered the drawing-room lacked warmth; indeed, it was hardly a greeting at all.

‘I don’t know what Miss Doggett will say,’ she burst out in a breathless voice. ‘She isn’t here yet.’

Stephen Latimer, who had been prodding the little cactus with his finger, turned round, rather taken aback by this welcome. It was not at all what he was accustomed to. Women usually gushed with delight when they met him. He saw a thin, fair woman standing in the doorway, nervously clasping her hands. She had very bright eyes and such a high colour on her cheeks and lips that for a moment he wondered if it could be natural. But then he told himself that his suspicions were ridiculous. She didn’t look at all the sort who would use make-up. By instinct and from experience he distrusted all women under the age of fifty and some over it, for he was an attractive man with a natural charm of manner and had been much run after. Once, indeed, he had even got himself caught in the tangles of an engagement, so that before he knew what he was doing he found himself strolling with a young woman before the windows of Waring and Gillow, looking at dining-room suites. But fortunately they had not got beyond looking, although there had been some unpleasantness and nearly a breach of promise case. He turned hastily from these uncomfortable recollections and was thankful that he had chosen to live with an old lady and her companion in North Oxford, where he hoped he would be safe from the advances of designing women. He did not imagine that many such would call at Leamington Lodge.

‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said easily, ‘but I found myself catching an earlier train, and I thought I could probably leave my luggage here, even if you weren’t ready for me.’

‘Oh, we are ready, really,’ said Miss Morrow, remembering the sheets on the bed. ‘But Miss Doggett isn’t here,’ she added hopelessly. She was quite taken aback at the sight of Mr. Latimer. Mrs. Wardell had told them about his red hair, but it was auburn, really, and so thick. He was tall, too, with broad shoulders, and yet he didn’t look like the Rugger Blue type, who would preach about the Game of Life.

‘Well, as you’re here, I’d better show you your room,’ she said doubtfully, still thinking of Miss Doggett.

‘Thank you, that would be very kind.’

Miss Morrow led the way upstairs. She knew that she was doing a wicked thing, but she quieted her conscience by reminding herself that she could hardly be blamed for Mr. Latimer’s early arrival, and that she could hardly have refused to see him until Miss Doggett came back.

‘Your room faces the garden,’ she said, ‘and you can look away into the distance. It gives one such a feeling of space. The rooms are very big,’ she added hastily, ‘but you know what I mean. It takes you out of yourself, beyond all this.’ With a wave of her hand she seemed to indicate the landing, with its dark turkey carpet and indefinite oil paintings.

‘Yes, I suppose we do occasionally need taking out of ourselves,’ said Mr. Latimer thoughtfully, as if the idea had not occurred to him before.

‘I think you will find it so when you have lived here a bit,’ said Miss Morrow without elaboration.

Mr. Latimer laughed. ‘Oh, well, if I find I want it as much as all that I can always go somewhere else,’ he said.

‘Yes, of course,’ said Miss Morrow in a disappointed tone. She felt as if she had offered him a precious possession and had it thrown back at her.

They were standing in the room now.

‘This is the study and the bedroom leads out of it. I feel like a landlady doing all this,’ said Miss Morrow, anxious to make bright, normal conversation.

‘Well, it seems very comfortable,’ said Mr. Latimer, looking round at the reassuringly Victorian room with its good, solid furniture. He glanced approvingly at the hard, uninviting-looking sofa. Hardness and uninvitingness were, he felt, just those qualities which the sofa in the study of a bachelor clergyman should possess. No chance of amorous dalliance here. It was too narrow and slippery. He went over to the enormous roll-top desk. ‘I can see myself writing sermons here,’ he said. ‘The dark green walls are so restful. The curtains too’ — he touched their dull, stuffy folds — ‘so very soothing. What’s the tree growing outside the window? A monkey-puzzle?’

‘Yes,’ said Miss Morrow. ‘There’s one on the front lawn too. It shuts out the sun,’ she added in a faint voice. Surely it wasn’t natural that a good-looking young man should want to shut himself up in a prison, even if he was a clergyman? ‘The bedroom is through here,’ she said, opening a door. ‘I believe it has all the usual conveniences. Miss Doggett insisted that the largest washstand in the house should be put here. I don’t know why.’

‘There is supposed to be some connection between cleanliness and godliness,’ said Mr. Latimer, making a curately joke. ‘It’s certainly a magnificent piece of furniture. I think its presence is justified simply because of that.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Miss Morrow. 
‘ “
A thing of beauty is a joy forever”. It reminds me of the altar of Randolph College chapel. So much marble and mahogany.’