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  ‘Are we to have the pleasure of seeing you at The Cedars, Miss Patterdale?’ asked the Major, breaking an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘No, my dear man, you are not. I don’t play tennis – never did! – and if there’s one thing I bar it’s watching country-house games. Besides, someone’s got to milk the goats.’

  ‘It’s a curious thing,’ said the Major, ‘but try as I will I can’t like goats’ milk. My wife occasionally used it during the War-years, but I never acquired a liking for it.’

  ‘It would have been more curious if you had. Filthy stuff!’ said Miss Patterdale candidly. ‘The villagers think it’s good for their children: that’s why I keep the brutes. Oh, well! There’s a lot of nonsense talked about children nowadays: the truth is that they thrive on any muck.’

  Upon which trenchant remark she favoured them with another of her curt nods, screwed her monocle more securely into place, and strode off down the street.

  ‘Remarkable woman, that,’ observed the Major.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ responded Mr Drybeck unenthusiastically.

  ‘Extraordinarily pretty girl, that niece of hers. Not a bit like her, is she?’

  ‘Her mother – Fanny Patterdale that was – was always considered the better-looking of the sisters,’ said Mr Drybeck repressively. ‘I fancy you were not acquainted with her.’

  ‘No, before my time,’ agreed the Major, realising that he had been put in his place by the Second Oldest Inhabitant, and submitting to it. ‘I’m a comparative newcomer, of course.’

  ‘Hardly that, Midgeholme,’ said Mr Drybeck, rewarding this humility as it deserved. ‘Compared to the Squire and me, and, I suppose I should add, Plenmeller, perhaps you might be considered a newcomer. But the place has seen many changes of late years.’

  ‘And not all of them for the better,’ said the Major. ‘Tempora mores, eh?’

  Mr Drybeck winced slightly, and said in a pensive voice, as though to himself: ‘O tempora, O mores! Perhaps one would rather say tempora mutantur.’

  The Major, prevented by circumstance from expressing any such preference, attempted no response. Mr Drybeck said: ‘One is tempted to finish the tag, but I do not feel that I for one have changed very much with the times. It is sometimes difficult to repress a wish that our little community had not altered so sadly. I find myself remembering the days when the Brotherlees owned The Cedars – not that I have anything to say in disparagement of the Haswells, very estimable people, I am sure, but not, it must be owned, quite like the Brotherlees.’

  ‘Not at all, no,’ said the Major, in all sincerity. ‘Well, for one thing, the Brotherlees never entertained, did they? I must say, I think the Haswells are a distinct acquisition to Thornden. Nice to see that fine old house put into good order again, too. But if you’re thinking of the present owner of Fox House, why, there I’m with you! A very poor exchange for the Churnsikes, I’ve always held – and I’m not the only one of that opinion.’

  Mr Drybeck looked pleased, but only said, in a mild voice: ‘Rather a fish out of water, poor Warrenby.’

  ‘I can’t think what induced him to move out of the town,’ said the Major. ‘I should have said he was a good deal more in his element in the Melkinton Road than he’ll ever be at Fox House. Not by any means a pukka sahib, as we used to say in the good old days. Ah, well! It takes all sorts to make a world, I suppose.’

  Mr Drybeck agreed to this, but as though he found it a regrettable thing; and the two gentlemen walked on in meditative silence. As they reached the corner of Wood Lane, Gavin Plenmeller came out of the gate set in the wall of Thornden House, and limped across the road towards them. He was a slight, dark young man, a little under thirty, with a quick, lively countenance, and a contraction in one leg, which had been caused by his having suffered from hip-disease in his childhood.

  It had precluded him from taking any very active part in the War, and was held, by the charitable, to account for the frequent acidity of his conversation. He had inherited Thornden House, together with what remained, after excessive taxation, of a moderate fortune, from his half-brother rather more than a year previously, and was not felt to be a newcomer to the district. He had been used to living in London, supplementing a small patrimony by writing detective stories; but he had visited Thornden at frequent intervals, generally remaining under his brother’s roof until the combination of his mocking tongue and Walter’s nerve-racked irritability resulted in an inevitable quarrel – if a situation could be called a quarrel in which one man exploded with exasperation, and the other laughed, and shrugged his thin shoulders. Walter had taken an all-too active part in the War, and had emerged from it in a condition nearly resembling a mental and physical wreck, his temper uncertain, and his strength no more than would allow him to pursue, in a spasmodic way, his old, passionate hobbies of entomology and bird-watching. After each rift with Gavin he had sworn never to have the young waster in the house again; but when Gavin, wholly impervious to insult, once more arrived on his doorstep he invariably admitted him, and even, for several days, enjoyed his companionship. His indifferent health made him disinclined to see society, and when he died, and Gavin succeeded to his place, even persons of all-embracing charity, such as Mavis Warrenby, could scarcely regret the change. Gavin was not popular, for he took no trouble to conceal his conviction that he was cleverer than his neighbours; but he was less disliked than his brother had been.

  The two elder men waited for him to come up with them. ‘Coming to The Cedars?’ the Major asked.

  ‘Yes, do you think it odd of me? I expect I shall play croquet. Mrs Haswell is sure to ask me to: she has such a kind disposition!’

  ‘A game of considerable skill,’ remarked Mr Drybeck. ‘It has gone out of fashion of late years, but in my young days it was very popular. I remember my grandmother telling me, however, that when it first came in it was frowned on as being fast, and leading to flirtation. Amusing!’

  ‘I can’t flirt with Mrs Haswell: she regards me with a motherly eye. Or with Mavis: her eyes glisten, and she knows I don’t mean the dreadful things I say. Besides, her uncle might take it to mean encouragement of himself, and that would never do. He would force his way into my house, and I’m resolved that it shall be the one threshold he can’t cross. My brother used to say that to me, but he didn’t mean it. The likeness between us was only skin-deep, after all.’

  ‘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 to 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 fee
ling 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 corruscating 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.

  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 into 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’ 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 find 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.

  ‘No, so unfortunate! Henry has had to go over to Woodhall,’ replied Mrs Haswell.

  Mr Drybeck’s depression became tinged by a slight feeling of affront. Henry Haswell was the only tennis-player in Thornden whom he considered worthy of his steel, and he had been looking forward to a game with him.

  They had by this time come within sight of the two hard-courts which Mrs Haswell had insisted must be placed where they would not mar the beauty of her garden. They had been laid out, accordingly, at some distance from the house, and they backed on to the wall which shut the grounds of The Cedars off from the footpath running from the northern, Hawkshead, road, past the Squire’s plantations, directly south to Fox Lane, separated from it by a stile. At this point, the path, skirting the spinney belonging to The Cedars, turned sharply westward until it met Wood Lane immediately south of The Cedars’ front gates. A gate set in the wall close to the tennis-courts gave access to the footpath. It was through this gate that the Lindales, who lived on the Hawkshead–Bellingham road, had come to the party. Miss Warrenby and Miss Dearham had also used it, none of these persons being so punctilious in the use of front entrances as Mr Drybeck.

  When Mrs Haswell led the three men up to the courts only one was being used. A cheerful and hard-fought set was in progress between the son of the house and Miss Patterdale’s niece on the one side, and the Lindales, a young married couple, on the other; while the Vicar, a tall, bony man with a gentle countenance and grizzled hair receding from a broad brow, engaged Mavis Warrenby in desultory conversation, on a garden-seat behind the court.

  ‘Well, I don’t have to introduce any of you,’ said Mrs Haswell, smiling generally upon her guests. ‘Or ask you what sort of games you play, which is such a comfort, because no one ever answers truthfully. Mavis, I think you and Mr Drybeck ought to take on the Vicar and Major Midgeholme.’

  ‘I’m not nearly go
od enough to play with Mr Drybeck,’ protested Mavis, with what that gentleman privately considered perfect truth. ‘I shall be dreadfully nervous. I’m sure they’d much rather have a men’s four.’

  ‘Not, I imagine, if you are suggesting I should make the fourth,’ interpolated Gavin, throwing her into confusion, and watching the result with the eye of a connoisseur.

  ‘They will be able to make up a men’s four later,’ said Mrs Haswell, quite unperturbed. ‘I’m sure you’ll play very nicely, my dear. It’s a pity your uncle couldn’t come.’

  ‘Yes, he was so very sorry,’ said Mavis, her face still suffused with colour. ‘But some papers have come in which he said he simply must deal with. So he made me come alone, and make his excuses. I don’t feel I ought really to be here.’

  ‘Yes, dear, you told me,’ said her hostess kindly. ‘We’re all very glad you have come.’

  Miss Warrenby looked grateful, but said: ‘I don’t like leaving Uncle to get his own tea. Saturday is Gladys’ half-day, you know, so he’s alone in the house. But he wouldn’t hear of letting me stay at home to look after him, so I just put the tray ready, and the kettle on the stove, and ran off to enjoy myself. But I do feel a little bit guilty, because Uncle hates having to do those sort of things for himself. However, he said he didn’t mind for once in a way, so here I am. It was really awfully kind of him.’