Mr. Thaddeus Drybeck, stepping from the neat gravel drive leading from his house on to the road, found his further progress challenged, and, indeed, impeded, by the sudden onrush of several Pekinese dogs, who bounced and barked asthmatically about his feet. Repressing a desire to sweep them from his path with the tennis-racquet he was carrying, he used this instead to guard his ankles, for one of Mrs. Midgeholme's Pekes was known to bite.
“Shoo!” said Mr. Drybeck testily. “Get away!”
The Pekes, maddened to frenzy by this form of address, bounced and barked more than ever; and one of them made a dart at Mr. Drybeck's racquet.
“Peekies, Peekies!” trilled a new voice, in loving reproach. “Naughty! Come to Mother at once! It's only their play, Mr. Drybeck.”
Three of the Pekes, feeling that the possibilities of the situation had been exhausted, abandoned their prey; the fourth, standing foursquare before Mr. Drybeck, continued to bark and growl at him until snatched up into the arms of her owner, who dealt her a fond slap, and said: “Isn't she a pet? This is Mother's eldest little girl, aren't you, my treasure? Now, say you're sorry to poor Mr. Drybeck!”
Mr. Drybeck, perceiving that the animal was being thrust towards him, recoiled.
“Oh, you've hurt her feelings!” said Mrs. Midgeholme, kissing the top of the Peke's head. “Wouldn't he shake hands with you, Ursula? Never mind!”
The expression in Ursula's indignantly bulging eyes appeared to be one of loathing rather than of hurt, but this reflection Mr. Drybeck kept to himself, merely saying in his precise way: “I fear I am not fond of dogs.”
“I'm sure you are really,” said Mrs. Midgeholme, unwilling to think ill of a fellow-creature. Her eyes, which, from their slight protuberance, bore a resemblance to those of her dogs, ran over him appraisingly. “I expect you're off to the Haswells',” she said sapiently. “You're a great tennis-player, aren't you?”
Mr. Drybeck disclaimed, but felt the description to be just. In his youth he had spent his every summer holiday competing in tournaments, and to his frequent success the row of trophies upon the mantelshelf in his dining-room bore testimony. His style of play was old-fashioned, like everything else about him, but the young men who considered him a desiccated exponent of pat-ball nevertheless found him a difficult adversary to beat. He was by profession a solicitor, the last surviving member of a firm long-established in the neighbouring town of Bellingham. He had never married, was extremely precise in all his ways, and disliked nearly every form of modern progress: a circumstance which possibly accounted for the sadly diminishing numbers of his clients. The older members of the community amongst which he had lived all his life remained faithful to him, but the younger men seemed to prefer the methods employed by his rival and bete noire, Mr. Sampson Warrenby, an upstart of no more than fifteen years' standing in the district. Sampson Warrenby's rapidly expanding business, at first a small thorn in Mr. Drybeck's flesh, was fast assuming the proportions of a menace; and since the day, just after the War ended, when he had had the bad taste to move his private residence from Bellingham to the hitherto select village of Thornden, it had become impossible for the indignant Mr. Drybeck to continue to be socially unaware of his existence. He had bought a house in the lane which debouched on to the main Bellingham road at a point almost opposite Mr. Drybeck's small but ancestral home.
“Alas, my, tennis days are over!” proclaimed Mrs. Midgeholme. “But you'll meet my Lion.”
Mr. Drybeck was unalarmed. Major Midgeholme, who had been given the name of Lionel by optimistic parents, was a shy man of retiring habits, quite cast into the shade by his kind-hearted but somewhat overpowering wife.
“I'll walk with you as far as the corner,” pursued Mrs. Midgeholme, tucking Ursula under her arm. “Unless you mean to go by way of the lane?”
The lane which served the little house rented by Miss Patterdale, at the corner, and, farther down and facing the common, Mr. Warrenby's residence, led, by way of a stile, to the footpath which flanked the Haswells' large garden, and ran on beside the Squire's eastern plantations to join the northern and secondary road to Bellingham. There was a gate at the bottom of the Haswells' garden, but although this would certainly have been Mr. Drybeck's shortest route he would have thought it very improper to have presented himself at the house by way of a private back-gate. So he politely fell into step beside Mrs. Midgeholme, and accompanied her down the road to where the main village street intersected it. Since the Pekes had to be continually admonished, conversation was of a desultory nature. Mr. Drybeck, wincing at his companion's frequent shrieks to Umbrella, Umberto, and Uppish, was forced to remind himself, not for the first time, that Flora Midgeholme was good-natured and a plucky woman, who bore uncomplainingly the hardships of a straitened income, eked it out by dispensing with the services of a maid and by breeding dogs, and always presented to the world the part of a woman well-satisfied with her lot. Only he did wish that she wouldn't call her dogs such absurd names.
But this was unavoidable. On his retirement from the army, Major Midgeholme had built a bungalow in Thornden, at the end of the village street, where the tarred road ended and a mere cart-track led across the fields to a small farm. Mrs. Midgeholme had conceived the pretty idea of calling the bungalow Ultima Thule; and when, in course of time, she began to breed Pekes Ultima had seemed to her the only possible patronymic to bestow upon them. Ultima Ulysses and Ultima Una, the progenitors of a long and lucrative line, received their alliterative names in a moment of impulsive inspiration. Ursula, Urban, and Urania had followed, and by that time the custom of alliteration had been established, and the supply of proper names was running out. Umberto, Uriah, and Ulrica exhausted it, and succeeding generations of puppies received their names from the pages of a dictionary. “But, after all,” said Mrs. Midgeholme, looking on the bright side, “they are rather quaint, aren't they? And Unready won two first and two seconds at Cruft's.”
In the intervals of summoning Umberto, Umbrella, and Uppish out of other people's gardens, Mrs. Midgeholme confided to her companion that although she had been invited to The Cedars to watch the tennis, and to take tea, she had been obliged to refuse. “For I don't mind telling you, Mr. Drybeck, that I doubt if I could trust myself.”
“Dear me!” said Mr. Drybeck, startled.
“Not,” said Mrs. Midgeholme, her eye kindling, “if I am expected to speak to Mr. Warrenby. And if he's there, which of course he will be, nothing would stop me giving him a piece of my mind! So I'm not going.”
“I am exceedingly sorry. I was unaware that there was any—ah—estrangement between you and Warrenby.”
“No, well, it only happened yesterday. Not but that I never have liked the man, and between you and me and the gatepost his behaviour to Lion during the War, when Lion was absolutely running the Home Guard, finished him for me! But that he could be cruel to dumb animals I did not suspect.”
“Dear, dear!” said Mr. Drybeck. “One of your dogs?”
“Ulysses!” said Mrs. Midgeholme. “Ulysses! I popped in to speak to that unfortunate niece of Mr. Warrenby's about the Conservative Whist Drive, and took the dear old fellow with me. That brutal man kicked him!”
“Good gracious!” said Mr. Drybeck. “You don't mean it?”
“I do mean it. He actually boasted of it! Had the effrontery to tell me, when I demanded to know why my angel had yelped, and come limping into the house, that he had kicked him off one of the flowerbeds. I fairly exploded!”
Mr. Drybeck could believe it. The mere recollection of the outrage caused Mrs. Midgeholme's ample bosom to swell, and her rather florid complexion to assume an alarmingly high colour. He made soothing noises.
“I should have said a great deal more than I did if I hadn't been sorry for poor little Mavis!” declared Mrs. Midgeholme. “It wasn't her fault; though, if you were to ask me, I should say that she's a perfect fool not to put her foot down! However, if she likes to make a doormat of herself it's no concern of mine. But when it comes to ill-treating one of my Peekies it's a very different matter! Not one word will I speak to him until he's apologised, and so I told him. And if I were to go to The Cedars and find him there I should tell him exactly what I think of him, which would make things uncomfortable for Mrs. Haswell. So I'm not going.” She gave Ursula a hitch, tucking her more securely under her arm, and added: “What's more, it will serve him right if Mavis runs off with that Pole—not that I think she would, and I hope very much she won't do anything silly, because he hasn't got any prospects that I know of, besides being a foreigner. But there it is!”
“Pole?” repeated Mr. Drybeck blankly.
“Oh, don't you know him? He works at Bebside's, and lives in one of the row of cottages beyond you,” said Mrs. Midgeholme. “At least, he lodges there. Old Mrs. Dockray,” she added, for his further enlightenment.
“I fancy I have not met the young man,” said Mr. Drybeck, in a tone that gave little indication of his wishing to do so.
“Well, I daresay you wouldn't have. He hasn't been here long, and though I believe he's quite all right—I mean, his father is supposed to have had estates in Poland, and that sort of thing—one never knows with foreigners, does one? Actually, I met him at the Lindales', but, of course, he isn't generally received. I don't know how Mavis came to know him, but I'm sure I don't grudge her a little fun, for it's not much she gets. He's very attractive. So good-looking, and such lovely manners! I'm not surprised poor Mavis is a bit smitten.”
“Are you perhaps referring to a dark youth who rides a particularly noisy motor-bicycle?” enquired Mr. Drybeck, in repulsive accents.
“Yes, that's the one. Ladislas Zama-something-or-other: I never can get my tongue round it. There's Lion! Look who's coming, Peekies! Run and meet Father!”
They had by this time reached the cross-road. To the left could be seen the unimpressive figure of Major Midgeholme, trying to preserve his white flannels from the excited advances of the Ultimas, who were barking and jumping at him; to the right the village street led, past the Church and the Vicarage, to the lane winding up to the front drive of The Cedars. Beyond this lane, the street continued serving a few small shops and picturesque cottages, and Mr. Gavin Plenmeller's Queen Anne house, which was set back from it in a walled garden. It then ran between hedges through open country until it came to an end at the imposing, though sadly worn gates of Old Place, the Squire's home.
Thornden could boast of no village green, or ancient stocks, but it contained, in addition to several houses built in more elegant ages, which any house-agent would have described as gentlemen's residences, a good many half-timbered cottages of honest antiquity, and a Perpendicular Church with a Jacobean rood screen, photographs of which had been reproduced in at least three books on Ecclesiastical Architecture. The Vicarage was of Victorian date, and had apparently been designed to accommodate a large family; but besides Old Place, which had all the charm of a house built in the sixteenth century and enlarged by succeeding generations, there was Gavin Plenmeller's rose-red gem in the High Street; Mr. Henry Haswell's solid Georgian mansion at the end of Wood Lane; the rather older but less important house inhabited by Sampson Warrenby, in Fox Lane; and Mr. Drybeck's unpretentious but seemly residence on the Trindale-Bellingham road. The village, which included Old Place, with its wide domain, lay in the broad half of the triangle of the roads connecting Bellingham with Trindale, on the south, and Hawkshead, on the north, the narrow part of the triangle being occupied by common-land, which was, in fact intersected by the northern road. Miss Patterdale's old-world and extremely inconvenient cottage faced on to his; and also Mr. Warrenby's Fox House. It was a gravel common, with one or two pits, and a great many gorse-bushes; and it provided the youth of the village with football grounds and cricket pitches, and Miss Patterdale with grazing for her two goats.
Major Midgeholme, having repelled the Pekes, joined his helpmate and Mr. Drybeck, as they stood together at the corner of the street. He was a slight man of medium height, with grizzled hair, and a toothbrush moustache. It was tacitly assumed, since he had been retired with the rank of Major, that his military career had been undistinguished, but when the Local Defence Volunteer organisation had been formed in the second year of the War he had surprised his neighbours by disclosing unsuspected talents. As the only military man in the district who was not of fighting age it had fallen to him to raise and train the first recruits. This he had done with conspicuous success, even inducing the two most noted poachers in the neighbourhood not only to join the force, but to present themselves occasionally at drill-parades. There was no doubt that he had been in his element, and had enjoyed the War very much. With the peace he had sunk back into the position of playing second fiddle to his wife, who, ironically enough, never ceased to regale her acquaintance with tales of his military efficiency, sage civil judgement, and general competence to deal brilliantly with any situation that might arise.
She greeted him now with bright affection. “Well met, Lion! Just going to The Cedars? Give my love to Mrs. Haswell. Any news?”
This question was uttered rather tensely. The Major, bestowing a nod and a small, perfunctory smile upon Mr. Drybeck, replied undramatically: “No, I don't think so.”
“Thank God!” uttered Mrs. Midgeholme, supplying all that was lurking in her husband's tone. “I was of two minds about leaving the house, for I thought she seemed the wee-est bit restless.” She directed a conspiratorial smile at Mr. Drybeck, and admitted him into the mystery, saying archly: “A Happy Event! My treasured Ullapool's first litter!”
Mr. Drybeck could think of nothing better to say than: “Indeed!” and the Major, whose consciousness of his wife's absurdities impelled him to do what he could to justify them, said apologetically: “Delicate little beggars, you know!”
“No, Lion! Not delicate!” said Mrs. Midgeholme. “But with a first litter one can't be too careful. Ullapool will be looking for Mother to come and hold her paw. I must away! Play well, both of you! Come, Peekies! Come to Mother!”
With these words, and a wave of one hand, she set off down the street, leaving the two men to proceed in the opposite direction, towards Wood Lane.
“Extraordinarily intelligent, those Pekes,” said the Major, in a confidential tone. “Sporting, too. You wouldn't think it to look at them, but if you take them on the common they're down every rabbit-hole.”
Mr. Drybeck, schooling his features to an expression of spurious interest, said: “Really?” and tried unavailingly to think of something to add to this unencouraging response. Fortunately, they had reached the first of the shops, which combined groceries with haberdashery and stationery, and also harboured the Post Office, and a diversion was created by the emergence from its portals of Miss Miriam Patterdale, vigorously affixing a stamp to a postcard. She accorded them a curt nod, and thrust the card into the letter-box, saying cryptically: “That's to the laundry! We shall see what excuse they can think up this time. I suppose you're going to the Haswells'? You'll find Abby there. I'm told she plays quite a good game.”
“Very creditable indeed,” agreed Mr. Drybeck. “A strong backhand, unusual in one of her sex.”
“Nonsense!” said Miss Patterdale, disposing of this without compunction. “Time you stopped talking like an Edwardian, Thaddeus. No patience with it!”
“I fear” said Mr. Drybeck, with a thin smile, “that I am quite an old fogy.”
“Nothing to be proud of in that,” said Miss Patterdale, correctly divining his attitude.
Mr. Drybeck was silenced. He had known Miss Patterdale for a number of years, but she had never lost her power to intimidate him. She was a weather-beaten spinster of angular outline and sharp features. She invariably wore suits of severe cut, cropped her grey locks extremely short, and screwed a monocle into one eye. But this was misleading: her sight really was irregular. She was the older daughter of the late Vicar of the parish, and upon his death, some ten years previously, she had removed from the Vicarage to the cottage at the corner of Fox Lane, from which humble abode she still exercised a ruthless but beneficent tyranny over the present incumbent's parishioners. Since the Reverend Anthony Cliburn's wife was of a shy and a retiring nature, only too thankful to have her responsibilities wrested from her by a more forceful hand, not the smallest unpleasantness had ever arisen between the ladies. Mrs. Cliburn was frequently heard to say that she didn't know what any of them would do without Miriam; and Miss Patterdale, responding to this tribute, asserted in a very handsome spirit, that although Edith hadn't an ounce of common sense or moral courage she did her best, and always meant well.
“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 think 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 Mils 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. “ Tempera 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 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.