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.
“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 good 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's 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.”
Her pale grey eyes hopefully scanned the circle, but this recorded instance of Sampson Warrenby's consideration for his niece failed to elicit comment from anyone but Mrs. Haswell, who merely said: “It won't hurt your uncle to get his own tea. I shouldn't worry about him, if I were you.”
She then handed Mr. Drybeck a box of tennis-balls, saw all four players pass through the wire gate on to the court, and sat down on the garden-seat, inviting Gavin to join her there. “It's, a pity Mrs. Cliburn is late,” she observed. “If she were here they could have proper mixed doubles, and it would make a more even game. However, it can't be helped. I'm glad Sampson Warrenby didn't come.”
“You said you were not.”
“Yes, of course: one does say that sort of thing. I had to ask him, because it would have looked so pointed if I'd left him out. You can't leave people out in a small community: it makes things awkward, as I told Henry.”
“Oh, is that why he went to Woodhall?” asked Gavin, interested.
“And if I left Mr. Warrenby out,” pursued Mrs. Haswell, apparently deaf to this interruption, “I should be obliged to leave Mavis out too, which I should be sorry to do.”
“I wish you had left him out.”
“She leads a wretched enough life without being ostracised,” said Mrs. Haswell, still deaf. “And you never hear her say an unkind word about him.”
“I never hear her say an unkind word about anyone. There is no affinity between us.”
“I wonder what is keeping the Ainstables?”
“Possibly the fear that nothing has kept Warrenby.”
“I'm sure I said half-past three. I hope Rosamund hasn't had another of her bad turns. There, now! the young people have finished their set, and the others have only just begun theirs; I wanted to arrange it so that Mr. Drybeck should play with the good ones! . . . Well, how did it end, my dears? Who won?”
“Oh, the children!” said Kenelm Lindale, with the flash of a rueful smile. “Delia and I were run off our feet!”
“You are a liar!” remarked Abigail Dearham, propping her racquet against a chair, and picking up a scarlet cardigan. “We should be still at it, if it hadn't been for Charles's almighty fluke.”
“Less of it!” recommended the son of the house, walking over to a table which bore a phalanx of tumblers, and several kinds of liquid refreshment. “A brilliantly conceived shot, executed with true delicacy of touch. What'll you have, Delia? We can offer you lemonade, orangeade, beer, ginger-beer and Mother's Ruin. You have only to give it a name.”
Mrs. Lindale, having given it a name, sat down in a chair beside her hostess, her coat draped across her shoulders, and surreptitiously glanced at her wristwatch. She was a thin young woman, with pale hair, aquiline features, and ice-blue eyes that never seemed quite to settle on any object. She gave the impression of being strung up on wires, her mind always reaching forward to some care a little beyond present. Since her husband had abandoned a career on the Stock Exchange to attempt the precarious feat of farming, it was generally felt that she had every reason to look anxious. They had not been settled for very long at Rushyford Farm, which lay to the north of Thornden, on the Hawkshead road; and those who knew most about the hazards of farming in England wondered for how long they would remain. Both were energetic, but neither was accustomed to country life; and for Delia at least the difficulties were enhanced by the existence of a year-old infant, on whom she lavished what older and more prosaic parents felt to be an inordinate amount of care and adoration. Those who noticed her quick glance at her watch knew that she was wondering whether the woman who helped her in the house had remembered to carry out the minute instructions she had left for the care of the infant, or whether Rose-Veronica might not have been left to scream unheard in her pram. Her husband knew it too, and, catching her eye, smiled, at once comfortingly and teasingly. He was a handsome, dark man, some few years her senior. He had the ready laughter that often accompanies a quick temper, a pair of warm brown eyes, and a lower lip that supported the upper in a way that gave a good deal of resolution to his face. He and Delia were recognised as a devoted couple. His attitude towards her was protective; she, without seeming to be mentally dependent upon him, was so passionately absorbed in him that she could never give all her attention of anyone else if he were present.
Mrs. Haswell, who had seen her glance at her watch, gave her hand a pat, and said, smiling: “Now, I'm not going to have you worrying over your baby, my dear! Mrs. Murton will look after her perfectly well.”
Delia flushed, and gave an uncertain laugh. “I'm sorry! I didn't mean—I was only wondering.”
Abigail Dearham, a very pretty girl, with a mop of chestnut curls, and wide-open grey eyes, looked at her with the interest she accorded to everyone who came in her way. “Have you got a baby?” she asked.
“Yes, a little girl. But I really wasn't worrying about her. That is to say—”
“Do you look after her yourself? Is it an awful sweat?”
“Oh, no! Of course, it does tie one, but I love doing it.”
“You ought to get out more, dear,” said Mrs. Haswell.
“I expect it's fun, having a baby,” said Abby, giving the matter her serious consideration. “I shouldn't like to be tied down, though.”
“Yes, you would. You don't mind being tied down by your own Inky,” said Charles.
“That's different. I have set hours with him.”
“Not much you don't!” said Charles rudely. “You're always being kept on after hours because he's in the middle of a chapter, or wants you to manage one of his beastly parties!”
His mother, not betraying the fact that she had received sudden enlightenment, said in an easy tone: “Abby is Geoffrey Silloth's secretary, Delia. So interesting!”
“No, by Jove, are you really?” said Kenelm. “What's he like?”
“Oh, quite a toot!” replied Abby cheerfully. “He's gone off to Antibes for a fortnight, which is why I've got a holiday.”
This description of a distinguished man of letters was received with equanimity by Mrs. Haswell, accustomed to the phraseology of youth; with complete understanding by Charles, and the Lindales; and with patent nausea by Gavin Plenmeller, who asked in silken accents to have the term explained to him.
“Ah, here come Mrs. Cliburn and the Squire!” said Mrs. Haswell, rising to greet these timely arrivals. “Edith, how nice! But, Bernard, isn't Rosamund coming?”
The Squire, a squarely built man who looked older than his sixty years, shook hands, saying: “One of her heads. She told me to make her apologies, and say she'd be along to tea, if she feels up to it. I don't think there's much hope of it, but I left the car for her, just in case.”
“Oh, dear, I am sorry! You know Mrs. Lindale, don't you? And her husband, of course.”
“Yes, indeed. Glad to see you, Mrs. Lindale! And you, Lindale.” His deep-set eyes travelled to the tennis-courts. “Warrenby not here? Good opportunity for the rest of us to talk over this business about the River Board. Where's Henry, Adelaide?”
“Well, I expect he'll be back before you leave.” replied Mrs. Haswell. “Though if it's about this tiresome River Board affair, I do wish— However, it's not my business, so you'd better talk to Henry. I must say, it does seem a lot of fuss about very little.”
“One does so want to avoid unpleasantness,” said Mrs. Cliburn. “Of course, it isn't anything to do with us either, but Tony and I can't help feeling that it would be a shame to appoint anyone but Mr. Drybeck to act for this new River Board. I mean, he always did when it was the Catchment Board, didn't he? And he'd be bound to feel very badly about it, particularly if Mr. Warrenby was appointed instead of him. But I oughtn't to give my opinion,” she added hastily.
“Well, well, it isn't such a great matter, after all!” said the Squire. “We must see what Haswell thinks.”
“Dad won't support Warrenby, sir,” interpolated Charles. “I know that. For one thing, he's dead against hurting poor old Drybeck's feelings.”
“Charles!” said his mother, with a warning glance towards the tennis-court.
“All right, Mum: they can't hear us. And, for another, he's just about had Warrenby, muscling into every damned thing here!”
“Nor is he alone in his surfeit,” said Gavin. “I too shall oppose Warrenby. I feel sure Walter would have: he always opposed people.”
The Squire threw him a frowning look, but said nothing. Kenelm Lindale, lighting a cigarette, and carefully pressing the spent match into the ground, said: “Well, I don't want to hurt Drybeck's feelings either, but, to tell you the truth, I don't really know much about this River Board.”
“And you a riparian owner!” said Charles, shocked. “There used to be one Catchment Board for the Rushy, here, and another one for the Crail, which for your better information is—”
“All right!” said Kenelm, grinning at him. “I know where the Crail runs! I also know that two old Catchment Boards have become one new River Board. What I meant was, what about the Crail half of the Board? Haven't they got a candidate for the solicitor's job?”
“The man who used to look after their interests has retired,” said the Squire shortly. “You'd better read the correspondence. I'll show it to you, if you like to— No, now I come to think of it, I sent it on to you, Gavin. I wish you'd let me have it back.”
He turned away, and began to talk to his hostess. Another game was soon arranged, he and Mrs. Cliburn taking the places of Charles and Abigail, who went off with Gavin and Mrs. Haswell to engage in a light-hearted game of Crazy Croquet, which Charles insisted was the only sort of croquet he understood.
Tea was served under the elm tree on the lawn to the east of the house, the tennis-players joining the party when their respective sets ended, and hailing with acclaim the discovery that Mrs. Haswell, always a perfect hostess, had provided iced coffee for their refreshment.
Mrs. Ainstable arrived at about half-past five, leaving her car in the drive, and walking through the rose-covered archway that led to the eastern lawn. Mrs. Haswell rose at once, and went to meet her; and she said, in her rather high-pitched inconsequent voice: “I do apologise! Don't say I'm too late to be given tea: I should burst into tears. Isn't it hot? How lovely the garden's looking! We've got greenfly.”
“My dear, you don't look fit to be out!” said Mrs. Haswell, taking her hand, and looking at her in a concerned way. “Are you sure you're all right?”
“Oh, yes! Just one of my wretched heads. Better now. Don't say anything about it: Bernard worries so about me!”
This was seen to be true. The Squire had come up to them, and was anxiously scanning his wife's face. “My dear, is this wise of you? I hoped you'd have a sleep.”
“I did have a sleep, Bernard, and it did me so much good that I couldn't bear to stay away from Adelaide's party. Now, don't fuss, darling, please!”
He shook his head, but said no more. Mrs. Haswell could not think it wonderful that he should be worried. Rosamund Ainstable, though more than ten years his junior, was a woman who, without having any organic disease, had never enjoyed good health. Her constitution was delicate; any exertion out of the way was apt to prostrate her; and she was the victim of sick headaches whose cause had consistently baffled her many medical advisers. She had ceased to try to discover it, saying, with a rueful laugh, that having worked her way expensively up Harley Street, she had neither the means nor the stamina to work her way down it. In the popular phrase, she lived on her nerves, which were ill-adapted to bear the strain. She had endured two world wars, dying a thousand vicarious deaths in the first, when she had known that every telegram delivered to her must contain the news that her husband had been killed in action; and losing her only child in the second. Her friends had prophesied that she would not recover from this blow; but she had recovered, exerting herself to support and to comfort the Squire, whose pride and hope were buried somewhere in the North African Desert. It might have been expected that he and she, with their heir dead, would have ceased to struggle to maintain an estate impoverished by the financial demands of one war, and brought almost to penury by those of a second, but, as the Squire's legal adviser, Thaddeus Drybeck, loftily pointed out to his acquaintance, Blood Told, and the Squire continued to plan and contrive as though he believed he would be succeeded by the son he had adored, and not by a nephew whom he scarcely knew, and did not much like.
Mrs. Haswell, installing her friend in a comfortable chair and supplying her with the tea for which she said she craved, was tactful not to betray her realisation that this was one of poor Rosamund's bad days. There was a glitter in those restless eyes, too high a colour in those thin cheeks, an artificial gaiety in the high-pitched voice, which she could not like, and hoped the Squire would not notice. Whether he did or not it was impossible to guess: by tradition and temperament he was a man who concealed his thoughts and his feelings.
When all the strawberries had been eaten and all the iced coffee drunk, the Vicar solved a problem which had been exercising Mrs. Haswell's mind for some time. He said that much as he would like to engage on further Homeric struggles duty called him, and he must away, to pay a parochial visit on a sick parishioner. This left only nine potential tennis-players to be accommodated on two courts, and no one could doubt, as Gavin Plenmeller informed Kenelm Lindale under his breath that Miss Warrenby would honestly prefer to watch. He was quite right, but judging by his expression, had scarcely foreseen the immediate sequel to this act of self-abnegation. When polite opposition had been overborne, Mrs. Haswell said: “You and Gavin must keep one another company, then, dear. Rosamund, I'm going to take you into the house: it's far too hot for you to be sitting outside.”
“Good God!” uttered Gavin, for Kenelm's ear. “This is where I must think fast! None of you who pity me for my disability have the least conception of the horrors to which I am subjected. I will not bear that afflictive girl company. Quick, what does one do?”
“You can't do anything,” said Kenelm, rather amused.
“You betray your ignorance of my character.”
Kenelm laughed, but soon found that he had underrated Mr. Plenmeller's bland ingenuity, and had certainly been ignorant of the ruthlessness which led that gentleman to implicate him in his plan of escape. He now learned that owing to his own importunity Gavin was about to return to his home to fetch for his perusal the River Board correspondence; and he began to perceive why it was that Gavin was not popular with his neighbours.
“Oh, I'm sure you ought not to!” exclaimed Mavis, glancing reproachfully at Kenelm.
“But I am sure I ought. You could see the Squire was displeased with me. He felt I shouldn't have forgotten to return the papers, and I have a dreadful premonition that I shall go on forgetting.”
“You needn't fetch them for my sake,” interrupted Kenelm maliciously.
“No, for my own!” retorted Gavin, not in the least discomfited. “Something accomplished will earn me a night's repose. I rarely accomplish anything, and never suffer from insomnia, but Miss Warrenby has often told me what an excellent maxim that is.”
“Oh, yes, but all that way just for a few papers! Couldn't someone else go for you?” said Mavis. “I'm sure I'd love to, if you think I could find them.”
Kenelm, who guessed that Gavin's mocking references to his lameness masked his loathing of it, was not surprised that this well-meant piece of tactlessness met with the treatment he privately thought it deserved.
“Does it seem to you a long way to my house? I thought it was only half a mile. Or are you thinking that my short leg pains me? Do let me set your mind at rest! It doesn't. You have been misled by my ungainliness.”
He turned away, and went, with his uneven gait, to where his hostess was standing. Mavis said, sighing: “I often think it does hurt him, you know.”
“He has told you that it doesn't,” replied Kenelm, rather shortly.
She brought her eyes to bear on his face. “He's so plucky, isn't he? People don't realise what it must mean to him, or make allowances.”
Kenelm felt that he was being reproved for insensibility, and obeyed, with relief, a summons from Mrs. Haswell.