Scales of Justice

CHAPTER I Swevenings

Nurse Kettle pushed her bicycle to the top of Watt’s Hill and there paused. Sweating lightly, she looked down on the village of Swevenings. Smoke rose in cosy plumes from one or two chimneys; roofs cuddled into surrounding greenery. The Chyne, a trout stream, meandered through meadow and coppice and slid blamelessly under two bridges. It was a circumspect landscape. Not a faux-pas, architectural or horticultural, marred the seemliness of the prospect.

“Really,” Nurse Kettle thought with satisfaction, “it is as pretty as a picture,” and she remembered all the pretty pictures Lady Lacklander had made in irresolute water-colour, some from this very spot. She was reminded, too, of those illustrated maps that one finds in the Underground with houses, trees and occupational figures amusingly dotted about them. Seen from above like this, Swevenings resembled such a map. Nurse Kettle looked down at the orderly pattern of field, hedge, stream and land, and fancifully imposed upon it the curling labels and carefully naïve figures that are proper to picture-maps.

From Watt’s Hill, Watt’s Lane ran steeply and obliquely into the valley. Between the lane and the Chyne was contained a hillside divided into three stripes, each garnished with trees, gardens and a house of considerable age. These properties belonged to three of the principal householders of Swevenings: Mr. Danberry-Phinn, Commander Syce and Colonel Cartarette.

Nurse Kettle’s map, she reflected, would have a little picture of Mr. Danberry-Phinn at Jacob’s Cottage surrounded by his cats, and one of Commander Syce at Uplands, shooting off his bow and arrow. Next door at Hammer Farm (only it wasn’t a farm now but had been much converted) it would show Mrs. Cartarette in a garden chair with a cocktail-shaker, and Rose Cartarette, her stepdaughter, gracefully weeding. Her attention sharpened. There, in point of fact, deep down in the actual landscape, was Colonel Cartarette himself, a Lilliputian figure, moving along his rented stretch of the Chyne, east of Bottom Bridge, and followed at a respectful distance by his spaniel Skip. His creel was slung over his shoulder and his rod was in his hand.

“The evening rise,” Nurse Kettle reflected; “he’s after the Old ’Un,” and she added to her imaginary map the picture of an enormous trout lurking near Bottom Bridge with a curly label above it bearing a legend: “The Old ’Un.”

On the far side of the valley on the private golf course at Nunspardon Manor there would be Mr. George Lacklander, doing a solitary round with a glance (thought the gossip-loving Nurse Kettle) across the valley at Mrs. Cartarette. Lacklander’s son, Dr. Mark, would be shown with his black bag in his hand and a stork, perhaps, quaintly flying overhead. And to complete, as it were, the gentry, there would be old Lady Lacklander, bog-bottomed on a sketching stool, and her husband, Sir Harold, on a bed of sickness, alas, in his great room, the roof of which, after the manner of pictorial maps, had been removed to display him.

In the map it would be demonstrated how Watt’s Lane, wandering to the right and bending back again, neatly divided the gentry from what Nurse Kettle called the “ordinary folk.” To the west lay the Danberry-Phinn, the Syce, the Cartarette and above all the Lacklander demesnes. Neatly disposed along the east margin of Watt’s Lane were five conscientiously preserved thatched cottages, the village shop and across Monk’s Bridge, the church and rectory and the Boy and Donkey.

And that was all. No Pulls-In for Carmen, no Olde Bunne Shoppes (which Nurse Kettle had learned to despise), no spurious half-timbering marred the perfection of Swevenings. Nurse Kettle, bringing her panting friends up to the top of Watt’s Hill, would point with her little finger at the valley and observe triumphantly, “ ‘Where every prospect pleases,’ ” without completing the quotation, because in Swevenings not even Man was Vile.

With a look of pleasure on her shining and kindly face she mounted her bicycle and began to coast down Watt’s Lane. Hedges and trees flew by. The road surface improved and on her left appeared the quickset hedge of Jacob’s Cottage. From the far side came the voice of Mr. Octavius Danberry-Phinn.

“Adorable!” Mr. Danberry-Phinn was saying. “Queen of Delight! Fish!” He was answered by the trill of feline voices.

Nurse Kettle turned to the footpath, dexterously backpedalled, wobbled uncouthly and brought herself to anchor at Mr. Danberry-Phinn’s gate.

“Good evening,” she said, clinging to the gate and retaining her seat. She looked through the entrance cut in the deep hedge. There was Mr. Danberry-Phinn in his Elizabethan garden giving supper to his cats. In Swevenings, Mr. Phinn (he allowed his nearer acquaintances to neglect the hyphen) waS generally considered to be more than a little eccentric, but Nurse Kettle was used to him and didn’t find him at all disconcerting. He wore a smoking cap, tasselled, embroidered with beads and falling to pieces. On top of this was perched a pair of ready-made reading glasses, which he now removed and gaily waved at her.

“You appear,” he said, “like some exotic deity mounted on an engine quaintly devised by Inigo Jones. Good evening to you, Nurse Kettle. Pray, what has become of your automobile?”

“She’s having a spot of beauty treatment and a minor op’.” Mr. Phinn flinched at this relentless breeziness, but Nurse Kettle, unaware of his reaction, carried heartily on, “And how’s the world treating you? Feeding your kitties, I see.”

“The Persons of the House,” Mr. Phinn acquiesced, “now, as you observe, sup. Fatima,” he cried, squatting on his plump haunches, “Femme fatale. Miss Paddy-Paws! A morsel more of haddock? Eat up, my heavenly felines.” Eight cats of varying kinds responded but slightly to these overtures, being occupied with eight dishes of haddock. The ninth, a mother cat, had completed her meal and was at hter toilet. She blinked once at Mr. Phinn and with a tender and gentle expression stretched herself out for the accommodation of her three fat kittens.

“The celestial milk-bar is now open,” Mr. Phinn pointed out with a wave of his hand.

Nurse Kettle chuckled obligingly. “No nonsense about her, at least,” she said. “Pity some human mums I could name haven’t got the same idea,” she added with an air of professional candour. “Clever pussy!”

“The name,” Mr. Phinn corrected tartly, “is Thomasina Twitchett, Thomasina modulating from Thomas and arising out of the usual mistake and Twitchett…” He bared his crazy-looking head. “Hommage à la Divine Potter. The boy-children are Ptolemy and Alexis. The girl-child who suffers from a marked mother-fixation is Edie.”

“Edie?” Nurse Kettle repeated doubtfully.

“Edie Puss, of course,” Mr. Phinn rejoined and looked fixedly at her.

Nurse Kettle, who knew that one must cry out against puns, ejaculated, “How you dare! Honestly!”

Mr. Phinn gave a short cackle of laughter and changed the subject.

“What errand of therapeutic mercy,” he asked, “has set you darkling in the saddle? What pain and anguish wring which brow?”

“Well, I’ve one or two calls,” said Nurse Kettle, “but the long and the short of me is that I’m on my way to spend the night at the big house. Relieving with the old gentleman, you know.”

She looked across the valley to Nunspardon Manor.

“Ah, yes,” said Mr. Phinn softly. “Dear me! May one enquire…? Is Sir Harold…?”

“He’s seventy-five,” said Nurse Kettle briskly, “and he’s very tired. Still, you never know with cardiacs. He may perk up again.”

“Indeed?”

“Oh, yes. We’ve got a day-nurse for him but there’s no night-nurse to be had anywhere so I’m stop-gapping. To help Dr. Mark out, really.”

“Dr. Mark Lacklander is attending his grandfather?”

“Yes. He had a second opinion but more for his own satisfaction than anything else. But there! Talking out of school! I’m ashamed of you, Kettle.”

“I’m very discreet,” said Mr. Phinn.

“So’m I, really. Well, I suppose I had better go on me way rejoicing.”

Nurse Kettle did a tentative back-pedal and started to wriggle her foot out of the interstices in Mr. Phinn’s garden gate. He disenagaged a sated kitten from its mother and rubbed it against his ill-shaven cheek.

“Is he conscious?” he asked.

“Off and on. Bit confused. There now! Gossiping again! Talking of gossip,” said Nurse Kettle with a twinkle, “I see the Colonel’s out for the evening rise.”

An extraordinary change at once took place in Mr. Phinn. His face became suffused with purple, his eyes glittered and he bared his teeth in a canine grin.

“A hideous curse upon his sport,” he said. “Where is he?”

“Just below the bridge.”

“Let him venture a handspan above it and I’ll report him to the authorities. What fly has he mounted? Has he caught anything?”

“I couldn’t see,” said Nurse Kettle, already regretting her part in the conversation, “from the top of Watt’s Hill.”

Mr. Phinn replaced the kitten.

“It is a dreadful thing to say about a fellow-creature,” he said, “a shocking thing. But I do say advisedly and deliberately that I suspect Colonel Cartarette of having recourse to improper practices.”

It was Nurse Kettle’s turn to blush.

“I am sure I don’t know to what you refer,” she said.

“Bread! Worms!” said Mr. Phinn, spreading his arms. “Anything! Tickling, even! I’d put it as low as that.”

“I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

“It is not my habit, Miss Kettle, to mistake the wanton extravagances of infatuated humankind. Look, if you will, at Cartarette’s associates. Look, if your stomach is strong enough to sustain the experience, at Commander Syce.”

“Good gracious me, what has the poor Commander done!”

“That man,” Mr. Phinn said, turning pale and pointing with one hand to the mother-cat and with the other in the direction of the valley, “that intemperate filibuster, who divides his leisure between alcohol and the idiotic pursuit of archery, that wardroom cupid, my God, murdered the mother of Thomasina Twitchett.”

“Not deliberately, I’m sure.”

“How can you be sure?”

Mr. Phinn leant over his garden gate and grasped the handlebars of Nurse Kettle’s bicycle. The tassel of his smoking cap fell over his face and he blew it impatiently aside. His voice began to trace the pattern of a much-repeated, highly relished narrative.

“In the cool of the evening Madame Thoms, for such was her name, was wont to promenade in the bottom meadow. Being great with kit, she presented a considerable target. Syce, flushed no doubt with wine, and flattering himself he cut the devil of a figure, is to be pictured upon his archery lawn. The instrument of destruction, a bow with the drawing-power, I am told, of sixty pounds, is in his grip and the lust of blood in his heart. He shot an arrow in the air,” Mr. Phinn concluded, “and if you tell me that it fell to earth he knew not where, I shall flatly refuse to believe you. His target, his deliberate mark, I am persuaded, was my exquisite cat. Thomasina, my fur of furs, I am speaking of your mama.”

The mother-cat blinked at Mr. Phinn and so did Nurse Kettle.

“I must say,” she thought, “he really is a little off,” and since she had a kind heart, she was filled with a vague pity for him.

“Living alone,” she thought, “with only those cats. It’s not to be wondered at, really.”

She gave him her brightest professional smile and one of her standard valedictions.

“Ah, well,” said Nurse Kettle, letting go her anchorage on the gate, “be good, and if you can’t be good, be careful.”

“Care,” Mr. Danberry-Phinn countered with a look of real intemperance in his eye, “killed the cat. I am not likely to forget it. Good evening to you, Nurse Kettle.”

Mr. Phinn was a widower, but Commander Syce was a bachelor. He lived next to Mr. Phinn in a Georgian house called Uplands, small and yet too big for Commander Syce, who had inherited it from an uncle. He was looked after by an ex-naval rating and his wife. The greater part of the grounds had been allowed to run to seed, but the kitchen-garden was kept up by the married couple and the archery lawn by Commander Syce himself. It overlooked the valley of the Chyne and was, apparently, his only interest. At one end in fine weather, stood a target on an easel, and at the other on summer evenings, from as far away as Nunspardon, Commander Syce could be observed, in the classic pose, shooting a round from his sixty-pound bow. He was reputed to be a fine marksman, and it was noticed that however much his gait might waver, his stance, once he had opened his chest and stretched his bow, was that of a rock. He lived a solitary and aimless life. People would have inclined to be sorry for him if he had made any sign that he would welcome their sympathy. He did not do so and indeed at the smallest attempt at friendliness would sheer off, go about and make away as fast as possible. Although never seen in the bar, Commander Syce was a heroic supporter of the pub. Indeed, as Nurse Kettle pedalled up his overgrown drive, she encountered the lad from the Boy and Donkey pedalling down it with his bottle-carrier empty before him.

“There’s the Boy,” thought Nurse Kettle, rather pleased with herself for putting it that way, “and I’m very much afraid he’s just paid a visit to the Donkey.”

She, herself, had a bottle for Commander Syce, but it came from the chemist at Chyning. As she approached the house, she heard the sound of steps on the gravel and saw him limping away round the far end, his bow in his hand and his quiver girt about his waist. Nurse Kettle pedalled after him.

“Hi!” she called out brightly. “Good evening, Commander!”

Her bicycle wobbled and she dismounted.

Syce turned, hesitated for a moment and then came towards her.

He was a fairish, sunburned man who had run to seed. He still reeked of the navy and, as Nurse Kettle noticed when he drew nearer, of whisky. His eyes, blue and bewildered, stared into hers.

“Sorry,” he said rapidly. “Good evening. I beg your pardon.”

“Dr. Mark,” she said, “asked me to drop in while I was passing and leave your prescription for you. There we are. The mixture as before.”

He took it from her with a darting movement of his hand. “Most awfully kind,” he said. “Frightfully sorry. Nothing urgent.”

“No bother at all,” Nurse Kettle rejoined, noticing the tremor of his hand. “I see you’re going to have a shoot.”

“Oh, yes. Yes,” he said loudly, and backed away from her. “Well thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“I’m calling in at Hammer. Perhaps you won’t mind my trespassing. There’s a footpath down to the right-of-way, isn’t there?”

“Of course. Please do. Allow me.”

He thrust his medicine into a pocket of his coat, took hold of her bicycle and laid his bow along the saddle and handlebars.

“Now I’m being the nuisance,” said Nurse Kettle cheerfully. “Shall I carry your bow?”

He shied away from her and began to wheel the bicycle round the end of the house. She followed him, carrying the bow and talking in the comfortable voice she used for nervous patients. They came out on the archery lawn and upon a surprising and lovely view over the little valley of the Chyne. The trout stream shone like pewter in the evening light, meadows lay as rich as velvet on either side, the trees looked like pincushions, and a sort of heraldic glow turned the whole landscape into the semblance of an illuminated illustration to some forgotten romance. There was Major Cartarette winding in his line below Bottom Bridge and there up the hill on the Nunspardon golf course were old Lady Lacklander and her elderly son George, taking a postprandial stroll.

“What a clear evening,” Nurse Kettle exclaimed with pleasure. “And how close everything looks. Do tell me, Commander,” she went on, noticing that he seemed to flinch at this form of address, “with this bow of yours could you shoot an arrow into Lady Lacklander?”

Syce darted a look at the almost square figure across the little valley. He muttered something about a clout at two hundred and forty yards and limped on. Nurse Kettle, chagrined by his manner, thought, “What you need, my dear, is a bit of gingering up.”

He pushed her bicycle down an untidy path through an overgrown shrubbery and she stumped after him.

“I have been told,” she said, “that once upon a time you hit a mark you didn’t bargain for, down there.”

Syce stopped dead. She saw that beads of sweat had formed on the back of his neck. “Alcoholic,” she thought. “Flabby. Shame. He must have been a fine man when he looked after himself.”

“Great grief!” Syce cried out, thumping his fist on the seat of her bicycle. “You mean the bloody cat!”

“Well!”

“Great grief, it was an accident. I’ve told the old perisher! An accident! I like cats.”

He swung round and faced her. His eyes were misted and his lips trembled. “I like cats,” he repeated.

“We all make mistakes,” said Nurse Kettle, comfortably.

He held his hand out for the bow and pointed to a little gate at the end of the path.

“There’s the gate into Hammer,” he said, and added with exquisite awkwardness, “I beg your pardon; I’m very poor company as you see. Thank you for bringing the stuff. Thank you, thank you.”

She gave him the bow and took charge of her bicycle. “Dr. Mark Lacklander may be very young,” she said bluffly, “but he’s as capable a G.P. as I’ve come across in thirty years’ nursing. If I were you, Commander, I’d have a good down-to-earth chinwag with him. Much obliged for the assistance. Good evening to you.”

She pushed her bicycle through the gate into the well-tended coppice belonging to Hammer Farm and along a path that ran between herbaceous borders. As she made her way towards the house, she heard behind her at Uplands the twang of a bowstring and the “tock” of an arrow in a target.

“Poor chap,” Nurse Kettle muttered, partly in a huff and partly compassionate. “Poor chap! Nothing to keep him out of mischief,” and with a sense of vague uneasiness she wheeled her bicycle in the direction of.the Cartarettes’ rose garden, where she could hear the snip of garden secateurs and a woman’s voice quietly singing.

“That’ll be either Mrs.” thought Nurse Kettle, “or the stepdaughter. Pretty tune.”

A man’s voice joined in, making a second part.

The words, thought Nurse Kettle, were a trifle morbid, but the general effect was nice. The rose garden was enclosed behind quickset hedges and hidden from her, but the path she had taken led into it, and she must continue if she was to reach the house. Her rubber-shod feet made little sound on the flagstones, and the bicycle discreetly clicked along beside her. She had an odd feeling that she was about to break in on a scene of exquisite intimacy. She approached a green, archway, and as she did so, the woman’s voice broke off from its song and said, “That’s my favourite of all.”

“Strange,” said a man’s voice that fetched Nurse Kettle up with a jolt, “strange, isn’t it, in a comedy, to make the love songs so sad! Don’t you think so, Rose? Rose… Darling…”

Nurse Kettle tinkled her bicycle bell, passed through the green archway and looked to her right. She discovered Miss Rose Cartarette and Dr. Mark Lacklander gazing into each other’s eyes with unmistakable significance.

Miss Cartarette had been cutting roses and laying them in the basket held by Dr. Lacklander. Dr. Lacklander blushed to the roots of his hair and said, “Good God! Good heavens! Good evening,” and Miss Cartarette said, “Oh, hullo, Nurse. Good evening.” She, too, blushed, but more delicately than Dr. Lacklander.

Nurse Kettle said, “Good evening, Miss Rose. Good evening, Doctor. Hope it’s all right my taking the short cut.” She glanced with decorum at Dr. Lacklander. “The child with the abscess,” she said, in explanation of her own appearance.

“Ah, yes,” Dr. Lacklander said. “I’ve had a look at her. It’s your gardener’s little girl, Rose.”

They both began to talk to Nurse Kettle, who listened with an expression of good humour. She was a romantic woman and took pleasure in the look of excitement on Dr. Lacklander’s face and of shyness on Rose’s.

“Nurse Kettle,” Dr. Lacklander said rapidly, “like a perfect angel, is going to look after my grandfather tonight. I don’t know what we should have done without her.”

“And by that same token,” Nurse Kettle added, “I’d better go on me way rejoicing or I shall be late on duty.”

They smiled and nodded at her. She squared her shoulders, glanced in a jocular manner at her bicycle and stumped off with it through the rose garden.

“Well,” she thought, “if that’s not a case, I’ve never seen young love before. Blow me down flat, but I never guessed! Fancy!”

As much refreshed by this incident as she would have been by a good strong cup of tea, she made her way to the gardener’s cottage, her last port of call before going up to Nunspardon.

When her figure, stoutly clad in her District Nurse’s uniform, had bobbed its way out of the enclosed garden, Rose Cartarette and Mark Lacklander looked at each other and laughed nervously.

Lacklander said, “She’s a fantastically good sort, old Kettle, but at that particular moment I could have done without her. I mustn’t stay, I suppose.”

“Don’t you want to see my papa?”

“Yes. But I shouldn’t wait. Not that one can do anything much for the grandparent, but they like me to be there.”

“I’ll tell Daddy as soon as he comes in. He’ll go up at once, of course.”

“We’d be very grateful. Grandfather sets great store by his coming.”

Mark Lacklander looked at Rose over the basket he carried and said unsteadily, “Darling.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Honestly; don’t.”

“No? Are you warning me off, Rose? Is it all a dead loss?”

She made a small ineloquent gesture, tried to speak and said nothing.

“Well,” Lacklander said, “I may as well tell you that I was going to ask if you’d marry me. I love you very dearly, and I thought we seemed to sort of suit. Was I wrong about that?”

“No,” Rose said.

“Well, I know I wasn’t. Obviously, we suit. So for pity’s sake what’s up? Don’t tell me you love me like a brother, because I can’t believe it.”

“You needn’t try to.”

“Well, then?”

“I can’t think of getting engaged, much less married.”

“Ah!” Lacklander ejaculated. “Now, we’re coming to it! This is going to be what I suspected. O, for God’s sake let me get rid of this bloody basket! Here. Come over to the bench. I’m not going till I’ve cleared this up.”

She followed him and they sat down together on a garden seat with the basket of roses at their feet. He took her by the wrist and stripped the heavy glove off her hand. “Now, tell me,” he demanded, “do you love me?”

“You needn’t bellow it at me like that. Yes, I do.”

“Rose, darling! I was so panicked you’d say you didn’t.”

“Please listen, Mark. You’re not going to agree with a syllable of this, but please listen.”

“All right. I know what it’s going to be but… all right.”

“You can see what it’s like here. I mean the domestic set-up. You must have seen for yourself how much difference it makes to Daddy my being on tap.”

“You are so funny when you use colloquialisms… a little girl shutting her eyes and firing off a pop-gun. All right; your father likes to have you about. So he well might and so he still would if we married. We’d probably live half our time at Nunspardon.”

“It’s much more than that.” Rose hesitated. She had drawn away from him and sat with her hands pressed together between her knees. She wore a long house-dress. Her hair was drawn back into a knot at the base of her neck, but a single fine strand had escaped and shone on her forehead. She used very little make-up and could afford this economy for she was a beautiful girl.

She said, “It’s simply that his second marriage hasn’t been a success. If I left him now he’d really and truly have nothing to live for. Really.”

“Nonsense,” Mark said uneasily.

“He’s never been able to do without me. Even when I was little. Nanny and I and my governess all following the drum. So many countries and journeys. And then after the war when he was given all those special jobs-Vienna and Rome and Paris. I never went to school, because he hated the idea of separation.”

“All wrong, of course. Only half a life.”

“No, no, no, that’s not true, honestly. It was a wonderfully rich life. I saw and heard and learnt all sorts of splendid things other girls miss.”

“All the same…”

“No, honestly, it was grand.”

“You should have been allowed to get under your own steam.”

“It wasn’t a case of being allowed! I was allowed almost anything I wanted. And when I did get under my own steam just see what happened! He was sent with that mission to Singapore and I stayed in Grenoble and took a course at the university. He was delayed and delayed… and I found out afterwards that he was wretchedly at a loose end. And then… it was while he was there… he met Kitty.”

Lacklander closed his well-kept doctor’s hand over the lower half of his face and behind it made an indeterminate sound.

“Well,” Rose said, “it turned out as badly as it possibly could, and it goes on getting worse, and if I’d been there I don’t think it would have happened.”

“Why not? He’d have been just as likely to meet her. And even if he hadn’t, my heavenly and darling Rose, you cannot be allowed to think of yourself as a twister of the tail of fate.”

“If I’d been there…”

“Now look here!” said Lacklander. “Look at it like this. If you removed yourself to Nunspardon as my wife, he and your stepmother might get together in a quick come-back.”

“O, no,” Rose said. “No, Mark. There’s not a chance of that.”

“How do you know? Listen. We’re in love. I love you so desperately much it’s almost more than I can endure. I know I shall never meet anybody else who could make me so happy and, incredible though it may seem, I don’t believe you will either. I won’t be put off, Rose. You shall marry me and if your father’s life here is too unsatisfactory, well, we’ll find some way of improving it. Perhaps if they part company he could come to us.”

“Never! Don’t you see! He couldn’t bear it. He’d feel sort of extraneous.”

“I’m going to talk to him. I shall tell him I want to marry you.”

“No, Mark, darling! No… please…”

His hand closed momentarily over hers. Then he was on his feet and had taken up the basket of roses. “Good evening, Mrs. Cartarette,” he said. “We’re robbing your garden for my grandmother. You’re very much ahead of us at Hammer with your roses.”

Kitty Cartarette had turned in by the green archway and was looking thoughtfully at them.

The second Mrs. Cartarette did not match her Edwardian name. She did not look like a Kitty. She was so fair that without her make-up she would have seemed bleached. Her figure was well disciplined and her face had been skilfully drawn up into a beautifully cared-for mask. Her greatest asset was her acquired inscrutability. This, of itself, made a femme fatale of Kitty Cartarette. She had, as it were, been manipulated into a menace. She was dressed with some elaboration and, presumably because she was in the garden, she wore gloves.

“How nice to see you, Mark,” she said. “I thought I heard your voices. Is this a professional call?”

Mark said, “Partly so at least. I ran down with a message for Colonel Cartarette, and I had a look at your gardener’s small girl.”

“How too kind,” she said, glancing from Mark to her stepdaughter. She moved up to him and with her gloved hand took a dark rose from the basket and held it against her mouth.

“What a smell!” she said. “Almost improper, it’s so strong. Maurice is not in, he won’t be long. Shall we go up?”

She led the way to the house. Exotic wafts of something that was not roses drifted in her wake. She kept her torso rigid as she walked and slightly swayed her hips. “Very expensive,” Mark Lacklander thought, “but not entirely exclusive. Why on earth did he marry her?”

Mrs. Cartarette’s pin heels tapped along the flagstone path to a group of garden furniture heaped with cushions. A tray with a decanter and brandy glasses was set out on a white iron table. She let herself down on a swinging seat, put up her feet, and arranged herself for Mark to look at.

“Poorest Rose,” she said, glancing at her stepdaughter, “you’re wearing such suitable gloves. Do cope with your scratchy namesakes for Mark. A box perhaps.”

“Please don’t bother,” Mark said. “I’ll take them as they are.”

“We can’t allow that,” Mrs. Cartarette murmured. “You doctors mustn’t scratch your lovely hands, you know.”

Rose took the basket from him. He watched her go into the house and turned abruptly at the sound of Mrs. Cartarette’s voice.

“Let’s have a little drink, shall we?” she said. “That’s Maurice’s pet brandy and meant to be too wonderful. Give me an infinitesimal drop and yourself a nice big one. I really prefer crème de menthe, but Maurice and Rose think it a common taste, so I have to restrain my carnal appetite.”

Mark gave her the brandy. “I won’t, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I’m by way of being on duty.”

“Really? Who are you going to hover over, apart from the gardener’s child?”

“My grandfather,” Mark said.

“How awful of me not to realize,” she rejoined with the utmost composure. “How is Sir Harold?”

“Not so well this evening, I’m afraid. In fact I must get back. If I go by the river path, perhaps I’ll meet the Colonel.”

“Almost sure to I should think,” she agreed indifferently, “unless he’s poaching for that fable fish on Mr. Phinn’s preserves, which, of course, he’s much too county to think of doing, whatever the old boy may say to the contrary.”

Mark said formally, “I’ll go that way, then, and hope to see him.”

She waved her rose at him in dismissal and held out her left hand in a gesture that he found distressingly second-rate. He took it with his own left and shook it crisply.

“Will you give your father a message from me?” she said. “I know how worried he must be about your grandfather. Do tell him I wish so much one could help.”

The hand inside the glove gave his a sharp little squeeze and was withdrawn. “Don’t forget,” she said.

Rose came back with the flowers in a box. Mark thought, “I can’t leave her like this, half-way through a proposal, damn it.” He said coolly, “Come and meet your father. You don’t take enough exercise.”

“I live in a state of almost perpetual motion,” she rejoined, “and I’m not suitably shod or dressed for the river path.”

Mrs. Cartarette gave a little laugh. “Poor Mark!” she murmured. “But in any case, Rose, here comes your father.”

Colonel Cartarette had emerged from a spinney half-way down the hill and was climbing up through the rough grass below the lawn. He was followed by his spaniel Skip, an old, obedient dog. The evening light had faded to a bleached greyness. Stivered grass, trees, lawns, flowers and the mildly curving thread of the shadowed trout stream joined in an announcement of oncoming night. Through this setting Colonel Cartarette moved as if he were an expression both of its substance and its spirit. It was as if from the remote past, through a quiet progression of dusks, his figure had come up from the valley of the Chyne.

When he saw the group by the lawn he lifted his hand in greeting. Mark went down to meet him. Rose, aware of her stepmother’s heightened curiosity, watched him with profound misgiving.

Colonel Cartarette was a native of Swevenings. His instincts were those of a countryman and he had never quite lost his air of belonging to the soil. His tastes, however, were for the arts and his talents for the conduct of government services in foreign places. This odd assortment of elements had set no particular mark upon their host. It was not until he spoke that something of his personality appeared.

“Good evening, Mark,” he called as soon as they were within comfortable earshot of each other. “My dear chap, what do you think! I’ve damned near bagged the Old ’Un.”

“No!” Mark shouted with appropriate enthusiasm.

“I assure you! The old ’Un! below the bridge in his ustial lurk, you know. I could see him.…”

And as he panted up the hill, the Colonel completed his classic tale of a magnificent strike, a Homeric struggle and a broken cast. Mark, in spite of his own preoccupations, listened with interest. The Old ’Un was famous in Swevenings: a trout of magnitude and cunning, the despair and desire of every rod in the district.

“…so I lost him,” the Colonel ended, opening his eyes very wide and at the same time grinning for sympathy at Mark. “What a thing! By Jove, if I’d got him I really believe old Phinn would have murdered me.”

“Are you still at war, sir?”

“Afraid so. The chap’s impossible, you know. Good God, he’s accused me in so many words of poaching. Mad! How’s your grandfather?”

Mark said, “He’s failing pretty rapidly, I’m afraid. There’s nothing we can do. It’s on his account I’m here, sir.” And he delivered his message.

“I’ll come at once,” the Colonel said. “Better drive round. Just give me a minute or two to clean up. Come round with me, won’t you?”

But Mark felt suddenly that he could not face another encounter with Rose and said he would go home at once by the river path and would prepare his grandfather for the Colonel’s arrival.

He stood for a moment looking back through the dusk towards the house. He saw Rose gather up the full skirt of her house-coat and run across the lawn, and he saw her father set down his creel and rod, take off his hat and wait for her, his bald head gleaming. She joined her hands behind his neck and kissed him. They went on towards the house arm-in-arm. Mrs. Cartarette’s hammock had begun to swing to and fro.

Mark turned away and walked quickly down into the valley and across Bottom Bridge.

The Old ’Un, with Colonel Cartarette’s cast in his jaw, lurked tranquilly under the bridge.