Lord Mullion's Secret (6 page)

Honeybath obediently studied Nollekens' blubbering brats. He had seen plenty of them before, and was rather fond of them. He read a long inscription enumerating the astounding virtues of the nobleman and his ‘afflicted and disconsolate' wife. Then, guided by the vicar, he moved more or less systematically round the church. A Chinese gentleman, he reflected, unacquainted with the principles of the Christian religion or the purposes for which it built edifices like this one within which he found himself, would conjecture that here was a family mausoleum erected for the entombment of a line of persons who had richly merited a far more resplendent resting-place – and this less because of their inherited rank than of their unfailing eminence as models and exemplars to society as a whole. The Tudors in quaint verses, the Augustans in balanced and cadenced prose, and between these the Elizabethan lords of language and their intricately conceited Jacobean successors: all these celebrated, in words incised in marble, sundry Wyndowes as very paragons, marks, and cynosures of their time. Even the present earl's grandfather, who had lived on into the year 1906, was described as having been solicitous for the welfare of the deserving poor; and his successor, Sylvanus Wyndowe, Lord Mullion, was commemorated not only as a Lord Lieutenant and a Knight of the Garter but also as a conscientious Chairman of the Mullion and Little Lintel Rural District Council. And then, after all this Rococo twiddliness and verbal orotundity, Honeybath noticed a small plaque which read simply: RUPERT WYNDOWE LORD WYNDOWE, followed by two dates from which it was to be inferred that Rupert Wyndowe Lord Wyndowe had survived only into his thirty-sixth year. He was that uncle of Henry's, Honeybath recalled, who would have succeeded to the earldom had he not predeceased his father.

‘Rupert's memorial,' he said to Dr Atlay, ‘is surely on the reticent side?'

‘Indeed, yes. He might have been a mere vicar of the parish.'

‘Dear me! Did he, in fact, take holy orders?'

‘No. It was decidedly not a course of life that would have entered Rupert Wyndowe's head. And that, perhaps, was just as well. It may have been injudicious of the late earl to commemorate his elder brother so ostentatiously sparely – if the expression is a permissible one. But Rupert's short life had been far from uniformly edifying, I am sorry to say. The family would not, at the time, have regarded it as at all suitable for – as one might express it – window-dressing.' Dr Atlay frowned, as if conscious that the lure of this somewhat laboured witticism (which had nothing classical about it) had led him into a minor impropriety. Rupert Wyndowe, after all, had been a close relative of the present earl, and ought not to be exhibited as a bad hat to a stranger only just encountered. It was true that Lord Mullion had not yet been born at the time of his uncle's untimely decease; and, further, that this distinguished portrait painter had apparently some claim to be Lord Mullion's intimate friend. But a gossiping approach to family history had been indelicate, all the same.

Charles Honeybath, unfortunately, seemed to be unaware of this regard for the higher seemliness of things. He continued to look thoughtfully at Rupert Wyndowe's commemorative tablet.

‘Perhaps,' he said, ‘it may be considered only as an interim measure or holding operation? Black sheep are often brought back into family esteem after no more than a couple of generations – their shabby tricks taking on a patina of endearing foible. Unspeakable reprobates are in a different category, so that a couple of centuries may pass before their descendants start taking pride in them. And I imagine this Rupert Wyndowe to have been of the former sort.'

‘Oh, entirely so.' The vicar was clearly not going to be tempted into further disclosures about the obscurely unsatisfactory uncle of the present Earl of Mullion. ‘I take it, Mr Honeybath, that most of the family as now constituted is known to you fairly well?'

‘Far from it. Mullion and I have been in the habit of meeting from time to time – but more on the strength of past associations, which were extremely agreeable, than of common interests now. And of course I have made the acquaintance of his wife. But the rest of the people down here are strangers to me.'

‘You will at least find them not so numerous as to be confusing. It is to be regretted that there are no younger sons. There ought always, to my mind, to be younger sons in any family of consequence.'

‘No doubt. But I imagine that the more one feels oneself to be of consequence the more of a problem may younger sons present. You can't set them to the plough-tail, even if that would be their natural mark.' Even as he uttered this small acerbity Honeybath was a little ashamed of it. His wife had died childless long ago, and he had done nothing to provide himself with children since. Yet he would have liked to have a son, and had this been granted to him he would at least have brought up the boy not to suppose himself the owner of any consequence he hadn't earned. But he mustn't, he told himself, be irked by Dr Atlay, who had been his Good Samaritan in a sense, and whose devotion to what used to be called the landed interest had at least no vice to it. Honeybath, moreover, made most of his living out of people of consequence. So it wasn't for him to quarrel with the traditional set-up of English society – or even, if it came to a pinch, with what Atlay described as the grand principle of subordination. ‘I gather,' he said, ‘that Mullion is troubled only by one younger brother, the Sylvanus of the present generation.' In talking to this cleric, who doubtless regarded himself as primarily a kind of domestic chaplain to the Wyndowes, Honeybath seemed to have settled for ‘Mullion' – which was less formal than ‘Lord Mullion' but less intimate than ‘Henry'. Nothing, he thought, is more tricky in an entirely trivial way than this particular area of nomenclature. For example, he was presumably going to be introduced to a lady whom Henry would casually name ‘my Great-aunt Camilla'. But was she ‘Lady Camilla Wyndowe', or ‘the Hon. Camilla Wyndowe' (which one would have to know if one was going to address a letter to her), or just plain ‘Miss'? It was a question not answerable until one had worked it out that she was the daughter of a younger son of an earl, and even then some complicating factor might have provided her with a handle to her name. Honeybath was about to make an inquiry about Camilla when he recalled Lord Mullion as having said something to the effect that this aged kinswoman was off her head. So he stuck to Sylvanus instead. ‘I've gathered,' he said, ‘that Mullion's brother lives in the dower house. Is he a married man?'

‘Yes, indeed – and with three daughters. Sylvanus Wyndowe came out of the army several years ago, and is now our local MFH. A very jolly fellow. One can scarcely glance at him without thinking of beef and ale.'

‘Dear me!'

‘“Ruddy” would he the first word to occur to me were I endeavouring to describe the outward man. And he goes in for roaring.'

‘Roaring?'

‘Just that. A squirearchal type of the old school. One would scarcely associate him with the higher nobility. There is perhaps a touch of affectation about it. But he is a most agreeable fellow, and you will enjoy his company.'

Honeybath wished he could feel assured of this. He judged that he might prove rather allergic to being roared at. But as the thought crossed his mind something not totally dissimilar happened to him in the form of a loud summons from what he recognized as the horn of his own motor car.

‘Bless my soul!' he exclaimed. ‘It must be that young man.' And without much ceremony he hurried to the church door and pulled it open. The rain was still falling – but there, only a dozen yards away, was Swithin Gore with his car. Swithin, perhaps exhilarated by his position at its wheel, seemed unconscious that there had been anything peremptory about his behaviour.

‘Here you are, sir!' he now shouted. ‘I guessed you might have dodged in there. So come along, and you may still be in time for the soup.'

Honeybath, who was far from taking umbrage at this brisk behaviour, signalled his acquiescence, renewed his expressions of gratitude to Dr Atlay, and then ran for the car. It was a new car, and in acquiring it he had for some reason treated himself to a vehicle of a distinctly superior order. It obviously pleased Swithin very much, so Honeybath insisted that Swithin should continue to drive.

Swithin drove far from rashly, and they were through the castle gates and inside the park before he relaxed sufficiently to speak.

‘Didn't you know,' he asked wonderingly, ‘that there's a reserve tank?'

‘A reserve tank?'

‘Didn't you see that little red light? It's off again now, but it must have been on for quite a long time. It tells you the main tank is emptying.'

‘It was most unobservant of me, I fear.' Honeybath might have been disconcerted, or even offended, by this ruthless exposure of his incompetence. But Swithin's pleasure, imperfectly dissimulated, in his own superior knowledge was infectious rather than irritating.

‘What you have to do is flick down that switch.' Swithin took a hand briefly from the wheel the more certainly to elucidate this mystery.

‘Then the red light goes off, and the green one above it comes on as it is now. It's to continue to remind you that you're now on the reserve tank. And that's a gallon and a half.'

‘I see. Thank you very much.'

‘You won't forget?' Swithin asked seriously.

‘No, I promise not to forget.'

‘No use having those superior gadgets, sir, if you don't master them.'

‘Perfectly true.'

It was thus that a chastened Charles Honeybath arrived, chauffeur-driven, at Mullion Castle.

 

 

Swithin's hope was fulfilled, and Honeybath was in time for the soup. He suspected, indeed, that it had been put back for half an hour in the continued expectation of his arrival. And it was pretty well all that
had
been put back, since the Mullions' luncheon, although attended by several servants, consisted of an unassuming
potage du jour
followed by bread and cheese.

‘I'm sure you won't mind falling in with our ways, Charles,' Lord Mullion said by way of commenting on this. ‘On wholly domestic occasions, that's to say. The fact is that when one's getting on what one comes to appreciate is a single slap-up meal in the day.'

‘I quite agree,' Honeybath said. ‘As the perspectives shorten, one doesn't want to spend one's afternoons half-asleep.'

‘No, indeed,' Lady Mullion said briskly. And her glance upon her guest and prospective portraitist was, for the first time, definitely approving.

‘So we dine,' Lord Mullion pursued with a hint of apology, ‘in what you might call an almost formal way. Black tie, Charles, if it isn't too much of a bore.'

‘Not at all. Every wise man still carries such a thing around.'

‘A damned funny thing.' Cyprian Wyndowe interjected at this point. ‘A chap at King's – an up-and-coming prole – got an invitation from the Provost's wife or somebody saying “Black tie”. He hadn't a notion it meant a dinner-jacket–'

‘And why should he?' Boosie Wyndowe interrupted. ‘It's a perfectly idiotic expression.'

‘And he probably didn't own such a thing, anyway. So he turned up in an imitation London suit, and an enormous sailor's knot black tie, as if the wretched woman's dinner party was a funeral.'

‘And now we all laugh,' Boosie said. ‘O God, O Montreal!'

Lord and Lady Mullion, unfamiliar with the poetry of the second Samuel Butler, looked perplexed. They must have been conscious, too, Honeybath supposed, of a certain callow quality in their son and heir's notion of an entertaining anecdote. But Lord Mullion pursued his theme unruffled.

‘After all,' he said, ‘one must wash. And if one washes one might as well change. So I've no quarrel with a black tie. And Camilla usually comes down to dine with us, you know, and she likes it. Or I'm not sure that she does.
White
ties every night would be her thing. At least we've got away from all that, except at those big vulgar does. Great-aunt Camilla is Victorian to the core.'

‘With the justification, I imagine, of having been born in that reign?' Honeybath said.

‘I rather think not quite. Mary, would that be right?'

‘It's almost impossible to say – at least if one believes what
she
says.' Lady Mullion spoke on a note of affectionate amusement. ‘She claims to have been born on the day the Old Queen died. But it's not a point I've checked up on – as I've had to do so often with so many of you Wyndowes.'

‘Perhaps the ancient creature fancies herself as a prompt reincarnation of that tough old Teuton,' Cyprian said, and paused as if to have this sally admired. Nothing of the sort happening he added. ‘I'd have supposed her a good deal older, as a matter of fact.'

‘Splendidly ageless, really,' Lady Patience Wyndowe said. ‘But I do think of her as belonging to a time quite out of mind.'

‘As at your age, my dear Patty, you may well do.' Lord Mullion paused while digging a spoon vigorously into a Stilton. ‘But nothing of the kind. I believe our worthy vicar, for example, could give her ten years or thereabout. Did Martin Atlay entertain you to any family history, Charles?'

‘Very moderately. We did a short round of the Wyndowe monuments.'

‘He'd know all about them. And he knows all about us. If puzzled, Charles, ask Atlay. He's a historically minded chap.'

‘I might have heard more if the young man hadn't turned up so smartly with my car.' Honeybath recalled his resolution to be emphatically commendatory about the young man. ‘He was quite uncommonly efficient and friendly.'

‘Glad to hear it, Charles. Was it Gore, did you say? A promising lad, I believe, and certainly not morose like so many of them. Willing, if not particularly bright, I imagine.'