Edward accordingly had been invited and now, sensibly deciding to mix business with pleasure, he stood beside Harriet, dressed for the country and holding his butterfly-net, a strong canvas sweep-net for those insects which preferred to hop or crawl along the ground, and a khaki haversack containing his pooter, his killing bottle and his tins.
The omnibus arrived; rugs, parasols and hampers of food were loaded on. Miss Transom climbed aboard and began to heave her aged, cantankerous mother on to the step. Eugenia Crowley, twitching with responsibility, and Millicent Braithwaite — a deeply muscular figure in a magenta two-piece and kid boots — performed a neat pincer movement, placing themselves one in front of and one behind the seat which contained Edward and Harriet — and the bus set off.
Harriet had not wanted to come; she could imagine nothing less enjoyable than trailing round a great house in the company of the Tea Circle ladies, and Edward’s presence was an added burden for present always in her mind was the dread that one day she would be driven to yield — to accept, if it came, his offer of marriage. If she married Edward, she could have a garden in which flowers actually grew; a dog; a pond with goldfish. She could sit in the sun and read and have her friends. But at this point always she stopped her thoughts, for somewhere in this imagined garden there was a pram with a gurgling baby: her baby, soft and warm.
But not only hers. And as so often before Harriet gave thanks for Maisie, the melancholy and eccentric housemaid who had given her, when she was six years old, such a comprehensive and unadorned account of what people did to bring babies into the world. Harriet had lain awake in her attic for many nights trying to comprehend the complicated unpleasantness of what she had heard, but now she was glad of Maisie’s detailed crudity. Too easy otherwise, when she read of Dante’s sublime passion for his Beatrice or (in melting and mellifluous Greek) of the innocent Daphnis’s pursuit of Chloe, to imagine love as some glorious upsurge of the human spirit. It was of course, but not only, and now as she gently drew away her arm from Edward’s — which was growing warm in the crowded bus — she knew that that way out was barred.
But what way was open? Her father, the night after the dinner-party, had himself gone to Madame Lavarre and stopped her dancing lessons once and for all. There was nothing left now: nothing.
Only I must not despair, thought Harriet. Despair was a sin, she knew that: turning one’s face away from the created world. And resolutely she forced herself not just to look at, but really to see the greening hedges, the glistening buttercups, the absurd new lambs — setting herself, as unhappy people do, a kind of pastoral litany.
And presently she succeeded, for the gentle peaceful countryside under the light wide sky was truly lovely and it was spring and there had to be a future somewhere, even for her. So that when Edward said, ‘This is very pleasant, Harriet, is it not?’ she was able to turn to him, pushing back her loose hair behind her ears, and smile and agree.
But when at last the bus turned in between the stone lions on the gate-posts and they drove down Stavely’s famous double avenue of beeches towards the house, Harriet’s soft ‘Oh!’ of pleasure owed nothing to the deliberate exercise of will. She had expected grandeur, ostentation, pomp… and found instead an unequivocal and awe-inspiring beauty.
Stavely was long and low, built of a warm and rosy brick: a house which had no truck with fortifications and moats and battlements, but proclaimed itself joyously as a place for living in — for music and banquets and the raising of fine children. Sheltered by a low wooded hill, the Hall faced serenely south into the sun and with its stone quoins, mullioned windows and graceful chimneys most gloriously avowed the principles of the Tudor Renaissance; ‘Commoditie, Fitnesse and Delight’.
‘Out we get, girls!’ cried Mrs Belper. ‘We have just ten minutes to stretch our legs and then we meet at the front door at twelve o’clock sharp for a tour of the house.’
The ‘girls’ got out. Mrs Transom was lowered down and tottered away on the arm of her daughter, while — followed at a discreet distance by their conscientious chaperones — Edward and Harriet made their way through the gatehouse arch towards the formal gardens.
If Harriet’s first impression of Stavely had been of overwhelming beauty, her second was of neglect. The fine trees of the beech avenue were indestructible, as was the parkland where clumps of cattle moved slowly over a sea of grass. But here, close to the house, where everything depended on a careful husbandry, it was clear that something was wrong. Weeds straggled over the gravel paths; the yews in the topiary, the formal lines of the knot-garden were blurred for want of trimming. This was a sleeping house, its decline masked by the tenderness of the green creeper hiding a garden door, by the young leaves of an unpruned rose laying its tendrils across a window. A house awaiting the kiss of a prince — a rich prince, Harriet corrected herself, guessing at the multitude of gardeners and groundsmen that would be needed to succour Stavely’s loveliness.
‘Was it like this when you used to come here, Edward?’ asked Harriet. ‘So overgrown and neglected?’
‘No, I don’t think so. But remember I was very small and after Colonel Brandon died we never came again. His son — the present owner — was not at all friendly to Mama.’
By the main door where all the ladies were now assembled, a disappointment awaited them. Although Aunt Louisa, who acted as the Circle’s secretary, had specifically mentioned Edward Finch-Dutton’s presence in the party in her confirmatory letter, there was no sign of Mrs Brandon. Instead a gloomy, ancient and cadaverous-looking individual with a bald and liver-spotted pate introduced himself as Mr Grunthorpe, the family butler, and leading them into a huge, panelled room he immediately began his patter.
‘The room we now find ourselves in is known as the Great Hall. You will please observe the outstanding examples of Elizabethan plasterwork and panelling. Above the archway we see a carving of the twelve apostles…’
‘Very fine,’ said Mrs Belper.
‘Note also the chimney-piece surmounted by the Brandon arms impaling those of Henrietta Verney, who was united to the family by marriage in the year 1633,’ droned the patently uninterested Mr Grunthorpe.
Harriet noted them… but noted too the dust that lay on the backs of the carved chairs, noted the dull streakiness of the long refectory table… the cold creeping through the room as though it was years since a fire had burned in that splendid grate.
They moved on down a corridor and into the Drawing-Room — a delightful room filled with Hepplewhite furniture — but here too was the same neglect. One yellow damask curtain was half-drawn across the window as though the effort of pulling it back had been too much for some indifferent housemaid. The fender was unpolished, the crystal chandelier lacklustre and dull.
In the Dining-Room, with its walls of dark Cordoba leather, there was an unfortunate diversion.
‘I want to go to the lavatory,’ announced the ancient Mrs Transom in a surprisingly loud, firm voice.
‘No, you don’t, Mother,’ hissed her daughter. ‘Not now, you don’t — you’ve been.’