Lord Mullion's Secret (14 page)

‘The flag looks very well,' he said. ‘And what a magnificent view!'

‘Five counties, I believe. But on the east there, it's still our own land that closes the vista.' Lord Mullion's blameless self-satisfaction had increased. ‘Boosie says you can get telescopes that work like penny-in-the-slot machines; and that if we had a couple up here we'd net quite a bit extra from the visitors. There's the dower house, by the way, beyond that line of beeches. Pleasant little Georgian affair, and suits Sylvanus and his lot down to the ground. Not that I'd exactly mourn if he was a good deal further off.' Lord Mullion broke off for a moment, as if surprised at having come out with so unbrotherly a remark. But when Honeybath said nothing he went on. ‘The fact is, Charles, that Mary and I don't feel he's too good an influence on Cyprian. The home paddock not the right place to sow wild oats, eh?'

Honeybath might have said, ‘Nor the home barn, either.' But although forthright candour is the proper thing with a former schoolfellow, it doesn't extend to gossip about his close relations. He mustn't, on the other hand, suggest to Henry that he was reluctant to receive confidences.

‘Your boy seems all right to me,' he said. ‘You're not seriously worried about him, are you? If he has his fling in rather a pronounced way, you know, it's entirely your own fault.'

‘Entirely my fault?' Lord Mullion was dismayed.

‘But not in a way you can help, Henry. The mere fact of your being a peer puts him at a degree of risk well beyond – what shall I say? – the vet's son.'

‘The vet's son?' Lord Mullion was understandably bewildered. ‘I don't know that the vet–'

‘That's only a manner of speaking, and you know what I mean. Did you read what the Head Man – the new one, whom I haven't met – was saying the other day? He has to control stiffer sanctions than any other headmaster simply because he has so many arrogant and over-privileged little brutes on his hands. Those weren't exactly his words. But, again, you get the idea. You mustn't expect young Lord Wyndowe to teach Sunday School.'

‘As the vet's boy is likely to do?' This idea amused Lord Mullion, and he cheered up a bit. Yet as he and Honeybath walked back across the leads after their welcoming signal to the day's visitors he reassumed a worried look. ‘One just doesn't want scandal, does one?' he asked.

‘Well, I suppose not.' Honeybath was surprised. Having been at school with Henry Wyndowe, and being fairly well acquainted with sundry similar persons in a general way, didn't – he told himself – prevent his being occasionally quite at sea with the whole class of society they represented. Perhaps he had a vaguely Regency vision of the aristocracy, and saw them as exceptionally endowed to take scandal, family and otherwise, unregardingly and in their stride. Yet here was Henry disposed, it seemed, to lose sleep over what the neighbours would say – this in the most suburban manner. But now there came oddly into Honeybath's head that grimly reticent plaque in Mullion parish church: RUPERT WYNDOWE LORD WYNDOWE. Perhaps the Wyndowes, although they had been (to Boosie's disapproval) Cavaliers and not Roundheads, preserved a strong puritan tradition. Or merely a Victorian one. Anthony Trollope's younger Duke of Omnium, after all, had been singularly prone to distress over misdemeanours in his family.

Here was a point at which Honeybath ought to have let this particular topic lapse. But he was one who possessed a more than average share of curiosity (as artists of all sorts, indeed, are likely to do) and he saw no reason why he should not a little catechize his former fag. ‘Henry,' he said, ‘suppose I discovered that your grandfather had habitually cheated at cards. And suppose I published the fact in some rubbishy biography or volume of memoirs. Would you be tremendously upset?'

‘I don't think I'd come after you with a horsewhip.' Lord Mullion's agreeable capacity for amusement prevailed over any sense of shock he may have felt at this
outré
question. ‘But it might be a long time before I next offered you a square meal.'

‘But if it was your great-great-grandfather. And if I were a professional historian, and felt the information to be relevant in assessing the character of, say, an eminent statesman–'

‘My dear Charles, we've never gone in for eminent statesmen, although I suppose we damned well ought to have. So it all doesn't apply – and you can shut up, old boy. If you ever have to find a new way to the day's bread and cheese, you might get a job as one of those fellows who do probing interviews for the BBC.'

There had been a touch of asperity about this – as well as unexpected evidence of a power of freakish repartee on Lord Mullion's part. But at least he wasn't remotely offended, and the two gentlemen descended into the castle as well pleased with one another as before. Honeybath, however, came to feel that he
had
been probing. It had not, indeed, been about any specific situations or episodes which might have been giving Henry uneasiness over his son and heir – or, for that matter, over his daughters either. But Honeybath did wonder how Henry would have received the information that Lady Patience Wyndowe was giving serious thought to the problem of misalliance as it might bob up within a noble family. He was himself in the dark as to what could have lain behind that peculiar nocturnal colloquy with Patty. But on this – as it happened, and in a peculiar manner – a perfectly clear light was to be shed quite soon.

There was now a good deal of bustle in the castle: more than enough to make Honeybath feel that his own professional business there was unlikely to be advanced that day. He realized that his hosts were not in the position of grandees owning so vast a mansion that they could live spaciously in a quarter of it and run the rest as a museum. The tourists who could pay up and enter the castle (twice weekly, if they cared to) at ten o'clock in the morning were authentically viewing apartments from which the Mullions had scurried five minutes before. It was an extraordinary state of affairs for any quietly disposed family to put up with, and Honeybath could only suppose that the takings at the till were essential to the Mullions if they were to hang on to this place in which they had lived for centuries. No doubt turning the castle into a business concern carried other financial advantages or easements well understood by accountants and solicitors. But Honeybath, who would have found quite intolerable holding on to his small Chelsea studio on any sort of analogous terms, judged it a rum go, all the same.

As he and Lord Mullion returned from their aerial mission they were met by Savine, who was in what was presumably a customary Wednesday and Saturday state of gloom.

‘One of the outside men has been asking for you, my lord,' he said glumly. ‘I told him it was a most inconvenient time. He said he'd wait and see.'

‘The devil he did! Wait and see what?'

‘Yourself, my lord. Or that appeared to be the implication.'

‘Who is he, Savine?'

‘Gore appears to be the name, my lord. One of Mr Pring's men.'

‘Then why doesn't he see Pring? And do you mean this young man is still around?'

‘Yes, indeed. By “waiting” he meant taking a seat in the servants' hall. It was something of a liberty. But I have your lordship's instructions to maintain good relations with the outdoor staff at all times.'

‘Well, well – he's a very decent lad. Send him into my office, Savine, and I'll have a word with him at once. Charles, I'll just go and see what this is about. You'll find Mary somewhere around, doing the flowers. She'll dig you out a lurking-hole for the day.' With this semi-serious remark Lord Mullion departed for whatever it was that he chose to call his office. Savine, having done his duty, departed too. Honeybath himself lingered for some minutes in the great hall of the castle, where a couple of servants were already arranging a long table with various wares to be peddled to the visitors: guidebooks, picture postcards, a range of mysteriously ‘home-made' preserves, and bits and pieces of pottery emblazoned with this and that. Having gone in for this sort of effort, the Mullions, very properly, didn't do things by halves.

It has to be observed at this point that Honeybath, although a man of keen observation of what was going on around him, was at present quite without certain of the gentle reader's advantages. So what now came into his head he had to account a very bizarre notion indeed. He had not ceased to think from time to time of Swithin Gore, his rescuer of the previous day. But he thought of him not only as his rescuer but also as the young man whom he had so unjustly aspersed outside the barn later in the afternoon. What he remembered in particular, and still with keen discomfort, was the strength and quality of Swithin's reaction to the inference that he had been misconducting himself amid the hay with some compliant village girl. It was the reaction – Honeybath now told himself – of a youth who is accused of some piece of casual carnality when it so happens that he is rather seriously in love.

This line of thought was sensible enough. But now a wild leap of the imagination befell Honeybath. It was in the direction, needless to say, of Lady Patience Wyndowe. Here was what that strange conversation had really been about. The gardener's boy was in love with Patty, and Patty was not at all sure that she wasn't in love with him.

This, again, only seemed extravagant. It was, as we happen to know, the truth. But now Honeybath's mind went sailing on. Swithin Gore had established himself in his mind as a very forthright and purposeful young man. He might be good at having flowers grow under his fingers, but wouldn't be disposed to let the grass grow under his feet. He had come to an understanding with his employer's daughter. And the interview now taking place he had sought for the purpose of asking his employer for her hand.

Possessed of this astonishing vision, Honeybath felt very rightly appalled. Only a singularly romantic turn of mind would see the likelihood of anything other than misfortune and even disaster in such an entanglement. He had spoken sagely to Patty about unequal marriages, but now felt that he had been far from speaking strongly enough. Such love-affairs happen, and no doubt they sometimes turn out well. But at the start the love involved can only be eye-love and nothing else: a matter of sudden overwhelming physical attraction unsupported by any of those compatibilities and next to instinctive assumptions in the field of manners and conduct and interests which constitute the stabilizing element in marriage. Honeybath, as a sensible man of the world, knew this very well. It was true that his heart spoke to him otherwise. Moreover he was himself commanded, as an artist has to be, by his eye. With the outward eye he had never seen Lady Patience Wyndowe and Swithin Gore together. But with his inward eye he could do so perfectly. And they were as beautiful as Ferdinand and Miranda – or, for that matter, as Florizel and Perdita. You could take your choice.

Having thus let his fancy run away with him, Charles Honeybath was greatly troubled. Henry, he felt sure, would be completely bewildered. Henry, in an easy-going and unreflective way, was the most liberal-minded of men. If Dr Atlay's grand principle of subordination were proposed to him he would merely make fun of it. But this would be because no intimate challenge to the general idea of it had ever come his way. Henry would be confounded. It would be on Mary that there fell the task of sorting things out.

As Honeybath told himself this, Lady Mullion appeared in the hall. She was carrying a mass of white roses.

‘That admirable Swithin Gore,' she said, ‘has persuaded Pring to let me have all these Mermaids. Of course they keep on coming and coming, but the old man is absurdly jealous of them. Have you seen Patty anywhere, Charles? She must help me with them at once.'

‘No, I've been with Henry hoisting the flag.' Honeybath glanced around, and saw that he was now alone with Patty's mother. ‘Mary,' he said, ‘I've something rather difficult to tell you.'

‘Difficult?' Lady Mullion put down the roses, and was serious at once. ‘Whatever it is, do say.'

‘I really don't know–' Honeybath, moments too late, had come to his senses. If his conjecture was correct, it was for Henry to break the news to his wife. If he had got the thing wholly wrong, then he would be making a hopeless fool of himself. In this wretched quandary, precipitated by over-impulsive speech, he fumbled about in his mind and found what reflection would have suggested to him as a more than dubious way out. ‘It's about the Hilliards,' he said.

‘The Hilliards?' Lady Mullion was bewildered. ‘Is there anything wrong with them? Are they fakes?'

‘No, not exactly that. But something very unaccountable has happened, and last night I hesitated to worry Henry about it. It seemed to me that – well, that there might be some obscure family explanation.'

‘I see.' Lady Mullion looked at Honeybath (Honeybath felt) much as if he had made a lucid and intelligent observation. ‘But just what has happened?'

‘One of the three miniatures – according to Dr Atlay, of an unidentified male member of the Wyndowe family – has been removed, and a reproduction of another miniature substituted.'

‘Martin Atlay noticed this?'

‘Oddly enough, he didn't. He was discoursing on the things, but not really looking at them. It was only I who noticed what must have happened, and I decided for the moment to say nothing.'

‘You may have been very wise.' Lady Mullion had picked up one of the Mermaid roses, and was studying it with apparent care. ‘Just what do you make of it all, Charles?'

‘The most obvious explanation is that a thief devised a method of making away with one of the miniatures and contriving that the fact should be undetected for some time.'

‘You don't think, Charles, that you may have something to do' with it?'

‘My dear Mary!'