Overture to Death

CHAPTER ONE They Meet at Pen Cuckoo

i

Jocelyn Jernigham was a good name. The seventh Jocelyn thought so as he stood at his study window and looked down the vale of Pen Cuckoo towards that precise spot where the spire of Salisbury Cathedral could be seen through field-glasses on a clear day.

“Here I stand,” he said, without turning his head, “and here my forebears have stood, generation after generation, and looked over their own tilth and tillage. Seven Jocelyn Jernighams.”

“I’m never quite sure,” said his son Henry Jocelyn, “what tilth and tillage are. What precisely, father, is a tilth?”

“There’s no feeling for that sort of thing,” said Jocelyn, angrily, “among the present generation. Cheap sneers and clever talk that mean nothing.”

“But I assure you I like words to mean something. That is why I ask you to define a tilth. And you say, ‘the present generation.’ You mean my generation, don’t you? But I’m twenty-three. There is a newer generation than mine. If I marry Dinah — ”

“You quibble deliberately in order to lead our conversation back to this absurd suggestion. If I had known — ”

Henry uttered an impatient noise and moved away from the fireplace. He joined his father in the window and he too looked down into the darkling vale of Pen Cuckoo. He saw an austere landscape, adamant beneath drifts of winter mist. The naked trees slept soundly, the fields were dumb with cold; the few stone cottages, with their comfortable signals of blue smoke, were the only waking things in all the valley.

“I too love Pen Cuckoo,” said Henry, and he added, with that tinge of irony which Jocelyn, who did not understand it, found so irritating: “I have all the pride of prospective ownership. But I refuse to be bully-ragged by Pen Cuckoo. I refuse to play the part of a Victorian young gentleman with a touch of Cophetua thrown in. I refuse to allow this conversation to run along the lines of ancient lineage. The proud father and self-willed heir stuff simply doesn’t fit. We are not discussing a possible misalliance. Dinah is not a blushing maid of inferior station. She is part of the country, rooted equally with us. If we are going to talk about her in county terms, I can strike a suitable attitude and say there have been Copelands at the rectory for as many generations as there have been Jernighams at Pen Cuckoo.”

“You are both much too young — ” began Jocelyn.

“No, really, sir, that won’t do. What you mean is that Dinah is too poor. If it had been somebody smarter and richer, you and my dear cousin Eleanor wouldn’t have talked about youth. Don’t let’s pretend.”

“And don’t you talk to me like a damned sententious young puppy, Henry, because I won’t have it.”

“I’m sorry,” said Henry, “I know I’m being tiresome.”

“You’re being extremely tiresome. Very well, I’ll speak as plainly as you like. Pen Cuckoo means more to me and should mean more to you, than anything else is life. You know as well as I do that we’re damned hard up. There are all sorts of things that should be done to the place. Those cottages up at Cloudyfold! Winton! Rumbold tells me that Winton’ll leak like a basket if we don’t fix up the roof. The point is — ”

“I can’t afford to make a poor marriage?”

“If you choose to put it like that”

“How else can one put it?”

“Very well, then.”

“Well, since we must speak in terms of hard cash, which I assure you I don’t enjoy, Dinah won’t always be the poor parson’s one ewe lamb.”

“What d’you mean?” asked Jocelyn, uneasily, but with a certain air of pricking up his ears.

“I thought everybody knew Miss Campanula has left all her filthy lucre, or most of it, to the rector. Don’t pretend, father; you must have heard that piece of gossip. The cook and housemaid witnessed the will and the housemaid overheard Miss C. bawling about it to her lawyer. Dinah doesn’t want the money and nor do I— much — but that’s what’ll happen to it eventually.”

“Servant’s gossip,” muttered the squire. “Most distasteful. Anyway, it may not — she may change her mind. It’s now we’re so damned hard-up.”

“Let me find a job of work,” Henry said.

“Your job of work is here.”

“What! with a perfectly good agent who looks upon me as a sort of impediment in his agricultural speech?”

“Nonsense!”

“Look here, father,” said Henry gently, “how much of this has been inspired by Eleanor?”

“Eleanor is as anxious as I am that you shouldn’t make a bloody fool of yourself. If your mother had been alive — ”

“No, no,” cried Henry, “let us not put ideas into the minds of the dead. That is so grossly unfair. Let’s recognise Eleanor’s hand in this. Eleanor has been too clever by half. I didn’t mean to tell you about Dinah until I was sure that she loved me. I am not sure. The scene, which Eleanor so conveniently overheard yesterday at the rectory, was purely tentative.” He broke off, turned away from his father, and pressed his cheek against the window pane.

“It is intolerable,” said Henry, “that Eleanor should have spoilt the memory of my first — my first approach to Dinah. To stand in the hall, as she must have done, and to listen! To come clucking back to you like a vulgar hen, agog with her news! As if Dinah was a housemaid with a follower. No, it’s too much!”

“You’ve never been fair to Eleanor. She’s done her best to take your mother’s place.”

“For God’s sake,” said Henry violently, “don’t use that detestable phrase! Cousin Eleanor has never taken my mother’s place. She is an aging spinster cousin of the worst type. It was not particularly kind of her to come to Pen Cuckoo. Indeed, it was her golden opportunity. She left the Cromwell Road for the glories of ‘county.’ It was the great moment of her life. She’s a vulgarian.”

“On her mother’s side,” said Jocelyn, “she’s a Jernigham.”

“Oh, my dear father!” said Henry, and burst out laughing.

Jocelyn glared at his son, turned purple in the face, and began to stammer.

“You may laugh, but Eleanor — Eleanor — in bringing this information — unavoidably overheard — no question of eavesdropping — only doing what she believed to be her duty.”

“I’m sure she told you that.”

“She did and I agreed with her. I am most strongly opposed to this affair with Dinah, and I am most relieved to hear that so far it is, as you put it, purely tentative.”

“If Dinah loves me,” said Henry, setting the Jernigham jaw, “I shall marry her. And that’s flat. If Eleanor wasn’t here to jog at your pride, father, you would at least try to see my side. But Eleanor won’t let you. She dramatises herself as the first lady of the district. The squiress. The chatelaine of Pen Cuckoo. She sees Dinah as a sort of rival. What’s more, I believe she’s genuinely jealous of Dinah. It’s the jealousy of a woman of her age and disposition, a jealousy rooted in sex.”

“Disgusting balderdash!” said Jocelyn, angrily, but he looked uncomfortable.

“No!” cried Henry. “No, it’s not. I’m not talking highbrow pornography. You must have seen what Eleanor is. She’s an avid woman. She was in love with you until she found it was a hopeless proposition. Now she and her girl friend the Campanula are rivals for the rector. Dinah says all old maids always fall in love with her father. Everybody sees it. It’s a recognised phenomenon with women of Eleanor’s and Idris Campanula’s type. Have you heard her on the subject of Dr. Templett and Selia Ross? She’s nosed out a scandal there. The next thing that happens will be Eleanor feeling it her duty to warn poor Mrs. Templett that her husband is too fond of the widow. That is, if Idris Campanula doesn’t get in first. Women like Eleanor and Miss Campanula are pathological. Dinah says — ”

“Do you and Dinah discuss my cousin’s attachment, which I don’t admit, for the rector? If you do, I consider it shows an extraordinary lack of manners and taste.”

“Dinah and I,” said Henry, “discuss everything.”

“And this is modern love-making!”

“Don’t let’s start abusing each other’s generations, Father. We’ve never done that. You’ve been so extraordinarily understanding in so many ways. It’s Eleanor!” said Henry. “It’s Eleanor, Eleanor, Eleanor who is to blame for this!”

The door at the far end of the room was opened and against the lamplit hall beyond appeared a woman’s figure.

“Did I hear you call me, Henry?” asked a quiet voice.

ii

Miss Eleanor Prentice came into the room. She reached out a thin hand and switched on the lights.

“It’s past five o’clock,” said Miss Prentice. “Almost time for our little meeting. I asked them all for half-past five.”

She walked with small mimbling steps towards the cherrywood table which, Henry noticed, had been moved from the wall into the centre of the study. Miss Prentice began to place pencils and sheets of paper at intervals round the table. As she did this she produced, from between her thin closed lips, a dreary flat humming which irritated Henry almost beyond endurance. More to stop this noise than because he wanted to know the answer, Henry asked:

“What meeting, Cousin Eleanor?”

“Have you forgotten, dear? The entertainment committee. The rector and Dinah, Dr. Templett, Idris Campanula, and ourselves. We are counting on you. And on Dinah, of course.”

She uttered this last phrase with additional sweetness. Henry thought, “She knows we’ve been talking about Dinah.” As she fiddled with her pieces of paper Henry watched her with that peculiar intensity that people sometimes lavish on a particularly loathed individual.

Eleanor Prentice was a thin, colourless woman of perhaps forty-nine years. She disseminated the odour of sanctity to an extent that Henry found intolerable. Her perpetual half-smile suggested that she was of a gentle and sweet disposition. This faint smile caused many people to overlook the strength of her face, and that was a mistake, for its strength was considerable. Miss Prentice was indeed a Jernigham. Henry suddenly thought that it was rather hard on Jocelyn that both his cousin and his son should look so much more like the family portraits than he did. Henry and Eleanor had each got the nose and jaw proper to the family. The squire had inherited his mother’s round chin and indeterminate nose. Miss Prentice’s prominent grey eyes stared coldly upon the world through rimless pince-nez. The squire’s blue eyes, even when inspired by his frequent twists of ineffectual temper, looked vulnerable and slightly surprised. Henry, still watching her, thought it strange that he himself should resemble this women whom he disliked so cordially. Without a taste in common, with violently opposed views on almost all ethical issues, and with a profound mutual distrust, they yet shared a certain hard determination which each recognised in the other. In Henry this quality was tempered by courtesy and by a generous mind. She was merely polite and long-suffering. It was typical of her that although she had evidently overheard Henry’s angry reiteration of her name, she accepted his silence and did not ask again why he had called her. Probably, he thought, because she had stood outside the door listening. She now began to pull forward the chairs.

“I think we must give the rector your arm-chair, Jocelyn,” she said. “Henry, dear, would you mind? It’s rather heavy.”

Henry and Jocelyn helped her with the chair and, at her instruction, threw more logs of wood on the fire. These arrangements completed, Miss Prentice settled herself at the table.

“I think your study is almost my favourite corner of Pen Cuckoo, Jocelyn,” she said brightly.

The squire muttered something, and Henry said, “But you are very fond of every corner of the house, aren’t you, Cousin Eleanor?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Ever since my childhood days when I used to spend my holidays here (you remember, Jocelyn?) I’ve loved the dear old home.”

“Estate agents,” Henry said, “have cast a permanent opprobrium on the word ‘home.’ It has come to mean nothing. It is a pity that when I marry, Cousin Eleanor, I shall not be able to take my wife to Winton. I can’t afford to mend the roof, you know.”

Jocelyn cleared his throat, darted an angry glance at his son, and returned to the window.

“Winton is the dower-house, of course,” murmured Miss Prentice.

“As you already know,” Henry continued, “I have begun to pay my addresses to Dinah Copeland. From what you overheard at the rectory do you think it likely that she will accept me?”

He saw her eyes narrow but she smiled a little more widely, showing her prominent and unlovely teeth. “She’s like a French Caricature of an English spinster,” thought Henry.

“I’m quite sure, dear,” said Miss Prentice, “that you do not think I willingly overheard your little talk with Dinah. Far from it. I was very distressed when I caught the few words that — ”

“That you repeated to father? I’m sure you were.”

“I thought it my duty to speak to your father, Henry.”

“Why?”

“Because I think, dear, that you two young people are in need of a little wise guidance.”

“Do you like Dinah?” asked Henry abruptly.

“She has many excellent qualities, I am sure,” said Miss Prentice.

“I asked you if you liked her, Cousin Eleanor.”

“I like her for those qualities. I am afraid, dear, that I think it better not to go any further just at the moment.”

“I agree,” said Jocelyn from the window. “Henry, I won’t have any more of this. These people will be here in a moment. There’s the rectory car, now, coming round Cloudyfold bend. They’ll be here in five minutes. You’d better tell us what it’s all about, Eleanon”

Miss Prentice seated herself at the foot of the table.

“It’s the Y.P.F.C,” she said. “We badly want funds and the rector suggested that perhaps we might get up a little play. You remember, Jocelyn. It was the night we dined there.”

“I remember something about it,” said the squire.

“Just among ourselves,” continued Miss Prentice, “I know you’ve always loved acting, Jocelyn, and you’re so good at it. So natural. Do you remember Ici on Parle Français in the old days? I’ve talked it all over with the rector and he agrees it’s a splendid idea. Dr. Templett is very good at theatricals, especially in funny parts, and dear Idris Campanula, of course, is all enthusiasm.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated Henry and his father together.

“What on earth is she going to do in the play?” asked Jocelyn.

“Now, Jocelyn, we mustn’t be uncharitable,” said Miss Prentice, with a cold glint of satisfaction in her eye. “I dare say poor Idris would make quite a success of a small part.”

“I’m too old,” said Jocelyn.

“What nonsense, dear. Of course you’re not. We’ll find something that suits you.”

“I’m damned if I’ll make love to the Campanula,” said the squire, ungallantly. Eleanor assumed her usual expression for the reception of bad language, but it was coloured by that glint of complacency.

“Please, Jocelyn,” she said.

“What’s Dinah going to do?” asked Henry.

“Well, as dear Dinah is almost a professional—”

“She is a professional,” said Henry.

“Such a pity, yes,” said. Miss Prentice.

“Why?”

“I’m old-fashioned enough to think that the stage is not a very nice profession for a gentlewoman, Henry. But of course Dinah must act in our little piece. If she isn’t too grand for such humble efforts.”

Henry opened his mouth and shut it again. The squire said, “Here they are.”

There was the sound of a car pulling up on the gravel drive outside, and two cheerful toots on an out-of-date klaxon.

“I’ll go and bring them in,” offered Henry.

iii

Henry went out through the hall. When he opened the great front door the upland air laid its cold hand on his face. He smelt frost, dank earth, and dead leaves. The light from the house showed him three figures climbing out of a small car. The rector, his daughter Dinah, and a tall woman in a shapeless fur coat — Idris Campanula. Henry produced the right welcoming noises and ushered them into the house. Taylor, the butler, appeared, and laid expert hands on the rector’s shabby overcoat. Henry, his eyes on Dinah, dealt with Miss Campanula’s furs. The hall rang with Miss Campanula’s conversation. She was a large arrogant spinster with a firm bust, a high-coloured complexion, coarse grey hair, and enormous bony hands. Her clothes were hideous but expensive, for Miss Campanula was extremely wealthy. She was supposed to be Eleanor Prentice’s great friend. Their alliance was based on mutual antipathies and interests. Each adored scandal and each cloaked her passion in a mantle of conscious rectitude. Neither trusted the other an inch, but there was no doubt that they enjoyed each other’s company. In conversation their technique varied widely. Eleanor never relinquished her air of charity and when she struck, the blow always fell obliquely. But Idris was one of those women who pride themselves on their outspokenness. Repeatedly did she announce that she was a downright sort of person. She was particularly fond of saying that she called a spade a spade, and in her more daring moments would add that her cousin, General Campanula, had once told her that she went further than that and called it a “B. shovel.” She cultivated an air of bluff forthrightness that should have deceived nobody, but actually passed as true currency among the simpler of her acquaintances. The truth was that she reserved to herself the right of broad speech, but would have been livid with rage if anybody had replied in kind.

The rector, a widower whose classic handsomeness made him the prey of such women, was, so Dinah had told Henry, secretly terrified of both these ladies who loomed so large in parochial affairs. Eleanor Prentice had a sort of coy bedside manner with the rector. She spoke to him in a dove-smooth voice and frequently uttered little musical laughs. Idris Campanula was bluff and proprietary, called him “my dear man” and watched him with an intensity that made him blink, and aroused in his daughter a conflicting fury of disgust and compassion.

Henry laid aside the fur coat and hurried to Dinah. He had known Dinah all his life, but while he was at Oxford and later, when he did a course with a volunteer air-reserve unit, he had seen little of her. When he returned to Pen Cuckoo, Dinah had finished her dramatic course, and had managed to get into the tail end of a small repertory company where she remained for six weeks. The small repertory company then fell to pieces and Dinah returned home, an actress. Three weeks ago he had met her unexpectedly on the hills above Cloudyfold, and with that encounter came love. He had felt as if he saw her for the first time. The bewildering rapture of discovery was still upon him. To meet her gaze, to speak to her, to stand near her, launched him upon a flood of bliss. His sleep was tinged with the colour of his love and when he woke he found her already waiting in his thought. “She is my whole desire,” he said to himself. And, because he was not quite certain that she loved him in return, he had been afraid to declare himself until yesterday, in the shabby, charming old drawing-room at the rectory, when Dinah had looked so transparently into his eyes that he began to speak of love. And then, through the open door, he had seen Eleanor, a still figure, in the dark hall beyond. Dinah saw Eleanor a moment later and, without a word to Henry, went out and welcomed her. Henry himself had rushed out of the rectory and driven home to Pen Cuckoo in a white rage. He had not spoken to Dinah since then, and now he looked anxiously at her. Her wide grey eyes smiled at him.

“Dinah?”

“Henry?”

“When can I see you?”

“You see me now,” said Dinah.

“Alone. Please?”

“I don’t know. Is anything wrong?”

“Eleanor.”

“Oh, Lord!” said Dinah.

“I must talk to you. Above Cloudyfold where we met that morning? To-morrow, before breakfast. Dinah, will you?”

“All right,” said Dinah. “If I can.”

Idris Campanula’s conversation flowed in upon their consciousness. Henry was suddenly aware that she had asked him some sort of question.

“I’m so sorry,” he began. “I’m afraid I — ”

“Now, Henry,” she interrupted, “where are we to go? You’re forgetting your duties, gossiping there with Dinah.” And she laughed her loud rocketting bray.

“The study, please,” said Henry. “Will you lead the way?”

She marched into the study, shook hands with Jocelyn and exchanged pecks with Eleanor Prentice.

“Where’s Dr. Templett?” she asked.

“He hasn’t arrived yet,” answered Miss Prentice. “We must always make allowances for our medical men, mustn’t we?”

“He’s up beyond Cloudyfold,” said the rector. “Old Mrs. Thrinne is much worse. The third Cain boy has managed to run a nail through his big toe. I met Templett in the village and he told me. He said I was to ask you not to wait.”

“Beyond Cloudyfold?” asked Miss Prentice sweetly. Henry saw her exchange a glance with Miss Campanula.

“Mrs. Ross doesn’t have tea till five,” said Miss Campanula, “which I consider a silly ostentation. We certainly will not wait for Dr. Templett. Ha!”

“Templett didn’t say anything about going to Mrs. Ross’s,” said the rector, innocently, “though to be sure it is on his way.”

“My dear good man,” said Miss Campanula, “if you weren’t a saint — however! I only hope he doesn’t try and get her into our play.”

“Idris dear,” said Miss Prentice. “May I?”

She collected their attention and then said very quietly:

“I think we are all agreed, aren’t we, that this little experiment is to be just among ourselves? I have got several little plays here for five and six people and I fancy Dinah has found some too.”

“Six,” said Miss Campanula very firmly. “Five characters won’t do, Eleanor. We’ve three ladies and three men. And if the rector — ”

“No,” said the rector, “I shall not appear. If there’s any help I can give behind the scenes, I shall be only too delighted, but I really don’t want to appear.”

“Three ladies and three men, then,” said Miss Campanula. “Six.”

“Certainly no more,” said Miss Prentice.

“Well,” said the squire, “if Mrs. Ross is very good at acting, and I must say she’s an uncommonly attractive little thing — ”

“No, Jocelyn,” said Miss Prentice.

“She is very attractive,” said Henry.

“She’s got a good figure,” said Dinah. “Has she had any experience?”

“My dear child,” said Miss Campanula loudly, “she’s as common as dirt and we certainly don’t want her. I may say that I myself have seen Eleanor’s plays and I fully approve of Simple Susan. There are six characters: three men and three ladies. There is no change of scene, and the theme is suitable.”

“It’s rather old,” said Dinah dubiously.

“My dear child,” repeated Miss Campanula, “if you think we’re going to do one of your modern questionable problem-plays you’re very greatly mistaken.”

“I think some of the modern pieces are really not quite suitable,” agreed Miss Prentice gently.

Henry and Dinah smiled.

“And as for Mrs. Selia Ross,” said Miss Campanula, “I believe in calling a spade a spade and I have no hesitation in saying I think we’ll be doing a Christian service to poor Mrs. Templett, who we all know is too much an invalid to look after herself, if we give Dr. Templett something to think about besides — ”

“Come,” said the rector desperately, “aren’t we jumping our fences before we meet them? We haven’t appointed a chairman yet and so far nobody has suggested that Mrs. Ross be asked to take part.”

“They’d better not,” said Miss Campanula.

The door was thrown open by Taylor, who announced:

“Mrs. Ross and Dr. Templett, sir.”

“What!” exclaimed the squire involuntarily.

An extremely well-dressed woman and a short rubicund man walked into the room.

“Hullo! Hullo!” shouted Dr. Templett. “I’ve brought Mrs. Ross along by sheer force. She’s a perfectly magnificent actress and I tell her she’s got to come off her high horse and show us all how to set about it. I know you’ll be delighted.”