“My name is Seal. I came about your advertisement in the Courier.”
“Our advertisement. Ah yes,” said Mr. Harkness vaguely. “It was just an idea we had. We felt a little ashamed here, with so much space and beauty; the place is a little large for our requirements these days. We did think that perhaps if we heard of a few people like ourselves the same simple tastes we might, er, join forces as it were during the present difficult times. As a matter of fact we have one newcomer with us already. I don’t think we really want to take anyone else, do we, Agnes?”
“It was just an idle thought,” said Mrs. Harkness. “A green thought in a green place.”
“This is not a Guest House, you know. We take in paying guests. Quite a different thing.”
Basil understood their difficulties with a keenness of perception that was rare to him. “It’s not for myself that I was enquiring,” he said.
“Ah, that’s different. I daresay we might take in one or two more if they were, if they were really…”
Mrs. Harkness helped him out. “If we were sure they were the kind of people who would be happy here.”
“Exactly. It is essentially a happy house.”
(It was like his housemaster at school. “We are essentially a keen House, Seal. We may not win many cups but at least we try.”)
“I can see it is,” he said gallantly.
“I expect you’d like to look round. It looks quite a little place from the road but is surprisingly large, really, when you come to count up the rooms.”
A hundred years ago the pastures round North Grappling had all been corn-growing land and the mill had served a wide area. Long before the Harknesses’ time it had fallen into disuse and, in the eighties, had been turned into a dwelling house by a disciple of William Morris. The stream had been diverted, the old mill pool drained and levelled and made into a sunken garden. The rooms that had held the grindstones and machinery, and the long lofts where the grain had been stored, had been tactfully floored and plastered and partitioned. Mrs. Harkness pointed out all the features with maternal pride.
“Are your friends who were thinking of coming here artistic people?”
“No, I don’t think you could call them that.”
“They don’t write?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ve always thought this would be an ideal place for someone who wanted to write. May I ask, what are your friends?”
“Well, I suppose you might call them evacuees.”
Mr. and Mrs. Harkness laughed pleasantly at the little joke. “Townsfolk in search of sanctuary, eh?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, they will find it here, eh, Agnes?”
They were back in the living-room. Mrs. Harkness laid her hand on the gilded neck of the harp and looked out across the sunken garden with a dreamy look in her large grey eyes. Thus she had looked out across the Malaya golf course, dreaming of home.
“I like to think of this beautiful old house still being of use in the world. After all it was built for use. Hundreds of years ago it gave bread to the people. Then with the change of the times it was left forlorn and derelict. Then it became a home, but it was still out of the world, shut off from the life of the people. And now at last it comes into its own again. Fulfilling a need. You may think me fanciful,” she said, remote and whimsical, “but in the last few weeks I feel sometimes I can see the old house smiling to itself and hear the old timbers whispering, ‘They thought we were no use. They thought we were old stickin-the-muds. But they can’t get on without us, all these busy go-ahead people. They come back to us when they’re in trouble.’”
“Agnes was always a poet,” said Mr. Harkness. “I have had to be the practical housewife. You saw our terms in the advertisement?”
“Yes.”
“They may have seemed to you a little heavy, but you must understand that our guests live exactly as we do ourselves. We live simply but we like our comfort. Fires,” he said, backing slightly from the belch of aromatic smoke which issued into the room as he spoke. “The garden,” he said, indicating the frozen and buried enclosure outside the windows. “In the summer we take our meals under the old mulberry tree. Music. Every week we have chamber music. There are certain imponderabilia at the Old Mill which, to be crude, have their market value. I don’t think,” he said coyly, “I don’t think that in the circumstances” and the circumstances, Basil felt, surely were meant to include a good fat slice of Mrs. Harkness’s poetic imagination “six guineas is too much to ask,”
The moment for which Basil had been waiting was come. This was the time for the grenade he had been nursing ever since he opened the little, wrought-iron gate and put his hand to the wrought-iron bell-pull. “We pay eight shillings and sixpence a week,” he said. That was the safety pin; the lever flew up, the spring struck home; within the serrated metal shell the primer spat and, invisibly, flame crept up the finger’s-length of fuse. Count seven slowly, then throw. One, two, three, four …
“Eight shillings?” said Mr. Harkness. “I’m afraid there’s been some misunderstanding.”
Five, six, seven. Here it comes. Bang! “Perhaps I should have told you at once. I am the billeting officer. I’ve three children for you in the car outside.”
It was magnificent. It was war. Basil was something of a specialist in shocks. He could not recall a better.
After the first tremendous silence there were three stages of Harkness reaction: the indignant appeal to reason and justice, then the humble appeal to mercy, then the frigid and dignified acceptance of the inevitable.
First:
“I shall telephone to Mrs. Sothill…I shall go and see the County authorities…I shall write to the Board of Education and the Lord Lieutenant. This is perfectly ridiculous; there must be a hundred cottagers who would be glad to take these children in.”
“Not these children,” said Basil. “Besides, you know, this is a war for democracy. It looks awfully bad if the rich seem to be shirking their responsibilities.”
“Rich. It’s only because we find it so hard to make both ends meet that we take paying guests at all.”
“Besides this is a most unsuitable place for children. They might fall into the stream and be drowned. There’s no school within four miles…”
Second:
“We’re not as young as we were. After living so long in the East the English winter is very difficult. Any additional burden …”
“Mr. Seal, you’ve seen for yourself this lovely old house and the kind of life we live here. Don’t you feel that there is something different here, something precious that could so easily be killed?”
“It’s just this kind of influence these children need,” said Basil cheerfully. “They’re rather short on culture at the moment.”
Third:
A hostility as cold as the winter hillside above the village. Basil led the Connollies up the flagged path, through the apple-green door, into the passage which smelled of peat smoke and pot-pourri. “I’m afraid they haven’t any luggage,” he said. “This is Doris, this is Micky, and that that is little Marlene. I expect after a day or two you’ll wonder how you ever got on without them. We meet that over and over again in our work; people who are a little shy of children to begin with, and soon want to adopt them permanently. Good-bye, kids, have a good time. Good-bye,
Mrs. Harkness. We shall drop in from time to time just to see that everything is all right.”
And Basil drove back through the naked lanes with a deep interior warmth which defied the gathering blizzard.
That night there was an enormous fall of snow, telephone wires were down, the lane to North Grappling became impassable, and for eight days the Old Mill was cut off physically, as for so long it had been cut in spirit, from all contact with the modern world.