“Oh, yours won't be the only one!” said the Major, chuckling a little. “Eh, Drybeck?”
“No, you're quite mistaken, Major. Warrenby will cross Mr. Drybeck's threshold by a ruse. He will simulate a fit at his gate, or beg to be allowed to come in to recover from an attack of giddiness, and Mr. Drybeck will be too polite to refuse him. That's the worst of having been born in the last century: you're always being frustrated by your upbringing.”
“I trust,” said Mr. Drybeck frostily, “that I should not refuse admittance to anyone in such need of assistance as you indicate.”
“You mean you trust you won't be at home when it happens, because your fear of appearing to the rest of us to be callous might prove stronger than your disinclination to render the least assistance to Warrenby.”
“Really, Plenmeller, that borders on the offensive!” protested the Major, perceiving that Mr. Drybeck had taken umbrage at it.
“Not at all. It was merely the truth. You aren't suggesting, are you, that Mr. Drybeck lived for long enough in the last century to think the truth something too indecent to be acknowledged? That seems to me very offensive.”
The Major was nonplussed by this, and could think of nothing say. Mr. Drybeck gave a laugh that indicated annoyance rather than amusement, and said: “You will forgive me, Plenmeller, if I say that the truth in this instance is that Warrenby's presence in our midst does not—though I think it hardly adds to the amenities of Thornden—occupy my mind as it seems to occupy yours. I am sorry to be obliged to tamper with the dramatic picture you have painted, but honesty compels me to say that my feeling in the matter is one of indifference.”
The Major turned his eyes apprehensively towards Gavin, fearing that it could scarcely have escaped his acute perception that Mr. Drybeck's loathing of his professional rival and social neighbour was fast approaching the proportions of monomania. But Gavin only said, with a flicker of his unkind smile: “Oh, I do so much admire that attitude! I should adopt it myself, if I thought I could carry it off. I couldn't, of course: you would have to be a Victorian for that.”
“Now, now, that's enough about Victorians!” interposed the Major. “Next, you'll be calling me a Victorian!”
“No, you have never laid claim to the distinction.”
“I am not ashamed of it,” stated Mr. Drybeck.
“How should you be? The Squire isn't. By what means, do you suppose, did Warrenby obtain a foothold in Old Place? The Ainstables do receive him, you know. I find that so surprising: I'm sure they wouldn't receive me if I weren't a Plenmeller. Do you think Sampson Warrenby employed devilish wiles to induce the Squire to include him on his visiting list, or are we all equal, seen from the Olympian heights of Old Place? What a coruscating suspicion! I can hardly bear it.”
The Major could only be thankful that they had by this time reached the front gates of The Cedars.
Chapter Two
Mr. Henry Haswell, who had bought The Cedars from Sir James Brotherlee, was one of the more affluent members of the county. His grandfather had founded a small estate agent's business in Bellingham, which had succeeded well enough to enable him to send his heir to a minor public school. Not having himself enjoyed the advantages of such an education, he regarded them with a reverence soon justified by the rapid expansion of the business under the management of his son. William Haswell made the firm important, and himself a force to be reckoned with in civic affairs; penetrated high society which his father did not doubt was out of his own reach; contracted an advantageous marriage; and presently sent his own son to Winchester, and to New College. Sticklers who looked askance at William accepted Henry as a matter of course. He knew the right people, wore the right clothes, and held the right beliefs; and since he was an unaffected person, he did not pretend to despise the prosperous business which had made it possible for him to acquire all these advantages. He threw a large part of his energy into the task of expanding it still further, but always found time to promote charitable schemes, sit on the board of the local hospital, and hunt at least once a week. He sent his only son to Winchester and Oxford, not because he hoped for his social advancement, but because it was the natural thing to do; and although he would not have opposed any desire on Charles's part to abandon estate agency for one of the more exalted professions he would have felt a good deal of secret disappointment had Charles not wished to succeed him. But Charles, born into an age of dwindling capitals and vanishing social distinctions, never expressed any such desire: he knew himself to be fortunate to have a sound business to step into, and felt a good deal of pride in its high standing. He had just been made a full partner in the firm, and his mother had begun to tell her friends, but without conviction, that it was time he was thinking of getting married.
Henry Haswell had bought The Cedars in a dilapidated condition from the last surviving member of a very old County family; and to such persons as Thaddeus Drybeck it was ironic and faintly displeasing that he should have set it in order, and done away with all the hideous anachronisms (including a conservatory built to lead out of the drawing-room, and chocolate-painted lincrusta walton lining the hall and staircase) with which the Brotherlees had disfigured it. It was now a house of quiet distinction, furnished in excellent taste, and set in a garden which had become, thanks to Mrs. Haswell's fanatical and tireless efforts, one of the loveliest in the County.
As the three men entered the gates, and walked up the drive towards the house, they saw her approaching from the direction of the tennis-courts, a single salmon-pink poppy in her hand. She at once came to meet them, saying: “How nice! Now I can arrange a second four! How do you do, Major? How are you, Gavin? I was just thinking of you, Mr. Drybeck: how right you are not to keep cats! I don't know why it is that one can train dogs to keep off the flowerbeds, but never cats. Just look at this! The wretched creature must have lain on the plant, I should think. Isn't it a shame? Do you mind coming through the house? Then I can put this poor thing in water.”
Talking all the way, in her gently amiable fashion, she led them into the cool, square hall. She was a stout woman, with grey hair, and clothes of indeterminate style and colour, betraying no sign in her person of the unerring taste she showed in house-decoration, and the arrangement of herbaceous borders. Inserting the broken poppy into a bowl of flowers in a seemingly haphazard manner which yet in no way impaired the symmetry of the bowl, she passed on into a sunny drawing-room, where, cut in the side-wall, a glass-panelled door gave access to the rose-garden. “Of course, we ought to have had this door bricked up,” she remarked. “Only I do rather like being able to step out of the room into the garden, and you don't see it from the front of the house. The Brotherlees used to have a conservatory beyond it, you remember.”
“One of my more treasured childhood's memories,” said Gavin. “It had a warm, nostalgic smell, and spiky green things. I loved it!”
“Cacti,” supplied Mrs. Haswell. “Children always love the most dreadful things. I remember despairing of Elizabeth when she was three years old, and went into raptures over a bed of scarlet geraniums and blue lobelias. She outgrew it, of course. She and her husband have just moved into a house in Chelsea. I hope they won't turn it damp, but she's done wonders with her window-boxes. Charles and Abigail Dearham are playing the Lindales, but the Vicar, and Mavis Warrenby have arrived, so we shall be able to get up a second set.”
“Splendid!” said the Major.
Mr. Drybeck said nothing. He foresaw that it would fall to his lot to have Mavis Warrenby for his partner, since he was a better player than the Vicar or the Major, and the prospect depressed him.
“Your husband not playing, Mrs. Haswell?” asked the Major.