She would have kept him at a distance: but she admitted that other women would have chased him. Her niece was showing reasonable taste. As for her niece, Lady Boscastle had a pitying affection.
She speculated on what was happening that night. “There’s thunder in the air,” she said. She looked at me enquiringly.
“I know nothing,” I said.
“Of course, he’s breaking away,” said Lady Boscastle. “That jumps to the eye. And it’s making her more infatuated every minute. No doubt she feels obliged to put all her cards on the table. Poor Joan, she would do that. She’s rather unoblique.”
Lady Boscastle went on: “And he feels insanely irritable, naturally. It’s very odd, my dear Lewis, how being loved brings out the worst in comparatively amiable people. One sees these worthy creatures lying at one’s feet and protesting their supreme devotion. And it’s a great strain to treat them with even moderate civility. I doubt whether anyone is nice enough to receive absolutely defenceless love.
“Love affairs,” said Lady Boscastle, “are not intriguing unless both of you have a second string. Never go lovemaking, my dear boy, unless you have someone to fall back upon in case of accidents. I remember — ah! I’ve told you already.” She smiled with a reminiscence, affectionate, sub-acid and amused. “But our dear Joan would never equip herself with a reserve. She’ll never be rusée. She’s rather undevious for this pastime.”
“It’s a pity,” I said.
“Poor Joan.” There was contempt, pity, triumph in Lady Boscastle’s tone. “Of course it’s she who’s taken him out tonight. It’s she who wants to get things straight. You saw that, of course. She has insisted on meeting him after dinner tonight. I suppose she’s making a scene at this minute. She couldn’t wait another day before having it out. I expect that is how she welcomed Master Roy this morning. Poor Joan. She ought to know it’s fatal. If a love affair has come to the point when one needs to get things straight, then” — she smiled at me — “it’s time to think a little about the next.”
23: A Cry in the Evening
The next day was fine, and the rooms of Boscastle stood lofty and deserted in the sunshine. I had breakfast alone, in the parlour, which was the image of the “painted room” but on the south side of the house, away from the sea. The Boscastles breakfasted in their rooms, and there was no sign of Joan or Roy. Lady Muriel had been up two hours before, and was — so I gathered from whispered messages which a footman kept bringing to the butler — issuing her final orders for the picnic.
The papers had not yet arrived, and I drank my tea watching the motes dance in a beam of sunshine. It was a warm, hushed, shimmering morning.
The butler came and spoke to me. His tone was hushed, but not at all sleepy. He looked harassed and overburdened.
“Her ladyship sends her compliments, sir, and asks you to make your own way to the picnic site during the morning.”
“I haven’t any idea where the site is,” I said.
“I think I can show you, sir, from the front entrance. It is just inside the grounds, where the wall goes nearest to the sea.”
“Inside the grounds? We’re having this picnic inside the grounds?”
“Yes, sir. Her ladyship’s picnics have always been inside the grounds. It makes it impossible for the party to be observed.”
I walked into the village to buy some cigarettes. At the shop I overheard some gossip about the new vicar. Apparently a young lady had arrived the night before at one of the hotels. She had gone to the vicarage that morning. They were wondering suspiciously whether he intended to get married.
On my way to the site I wondered casually to myself who it might be. The thought of Rosalind crossed my mind, and then I dismissed it. I went into the grounds, through the side gates which opened on to the cliff road, down through the valley by the brook. It was not hard to find the site, for it was marked by a large flag. Lady Muriel was already sitting beside it on a shooting stick, looking as isolated as Amundsen at the South Pole. The ground beside her was arrayed with plates, glasses, dishes, siphons, bottles of wine. She called out to me with unexpected geniality.
“Good morning. You’re the first. I’m glad to see someone put in an appearance. We couldn’t have been luckier in the weather, could we?”
From the site there was no view, except for the brook and trees and wall, unless one looked north: there one got a magnificent sight of the house of Boscastle: the classical front, about a mile away, took in the whole foreground. It was a crowning stroke, I thought, to have chosen a site with that particular view.
But Lady Muriel was on holiday.
“I consider that all the arrangements are in hand,” she said. “Perhaps you would like me to show you some things?”
She led me up some steps in the wall, which brought us to a small plateau. From the plateau we clambered down across the road over to a headland. Below the headland the sea was slumberously rolling against the cliffs. There was a milky spume fringing the dark rocks: and further out the water lay a translucent green in the warm, misty morning.
“We used to have picnics here in the old days,” said Lady Muriel. “Before I decided it was unnecessary to go outside our grounds.”
She looked towards the mansion on its hill. It moved her to see it reposing there, the lawns bright, the house with the sun behind it. She was as inarticulate as ever.
“We’re lucky to have such an excellent day.” Then she did manage to say: “I have always been fond of our house.”
She tried to trace the coast line for me, but it was hidden in the mist.
“Well,” she said briskly, in a moment, “we must be getting back to our picnic. All the arrangements are in order, of course. I have never found it difficult to make arrangements. I did not find them irksome in the Lodge. I have found it strange not to have to make them — since my husband’s death.”
She missed them, of course, and she was happy that morning. We had begun to leave the headland, with Lady Muriel telling me of how she used to climb the rocks when she was a girl. Then, in the distance along the road, I saw a woman walking. I thought I recognised the walk. It was not stately, it was not poised, it was hurried, quick-footed and loose. As she came nearer, I saw that I was right. It was Rosalind. She was wearing a very smart tweed suit, much too smart by the Boscastles’ standards. And she was twirling a stick.
I hoped that she might not notice us. But she looked up, started, broke into a smile open-eyed, ill-used, pathetic and brazen. She gave a cheerful, defiant wave. I waved back. Lady Muriel did not stir a muscle.
When we saw Rosalind’s back, Lady Muriel enquired in an ominous tone: “Is that the young woman who used to throw her cap so abominably at Roy?”
“Yes,” I said.
“What is she doing here?”
“She is a friend of Ralph Udal’s,” I said. “She must be visiting him.” To myself I could think of no other explanation. So far as I knew, she had given up the pursuit of Roy. In any case, she could not have known that he was staying at Boscastle that week. It was a singular coincidence.