Cluny Brown (15 page)

For some reason Andrew remembered Cluny's complaint about not being allowed a dog.

“It is altogether admirable,” said Belinski.

Sir Henry considered this remark showed uncommon sense for a foreigner, but as his wife was training him not to give such thoughts utterance, he merely grunted again and slightly increased his pace. He did not really want company. In a few minutes Andrew and Belinski found themselves left behind; they halted, and watched Sir Henry ride off with very similar expressions.

“Old English,” said the Professor suddenly. “I know that is very banal, but I cannot help it. It is what comes into my mind every time I see your father.”

“Nothing would please him better,” said Andrew. There was a rather long pause. “Do you think I ought to imitate him?”

“Could you?”

“No,” said Andrew honestly. “He's good. I don't believe he's ever had a mean thought, or told a lie, or taken advantage of any one, in all his life. On the other hand, his life's been pretty easy. He's had literally everything he wanted. But now he'd like me to come home and live down here and take over, and he's a bit puzzled and worried because I don't.”

They were standing by the entrance to a field, where the green verge broadened into a small bay of worn turf, that under the hedge on either side grew long and thick, mixed with primrose clumps and a few late-flowering violets. Belinski sat down on the grass like a tripper and hooked his hands round his knees.

“It is very nice here,” he said amiably.

“That grass is probably damp. The point is, my father's idea of taking over is … getting back. He still thinks that hunting four days a week is a sufficient occupation. Possibly he thinks I could take in the home farm again. And if you tell him all that finished a hundred years ago, he can't believe it, because he's always managed to keep a hundred years out of date himself.”

Belinski sighed. The soft air was as usual making him feel sleepy; he did not want to talk sense. But Andrew continued to stand over him, with a stern impatient face, until he pulled himself together.

“I think that if you stayed here long, you would find that sort of life very agreeable. After all, it is your national ideal—since you do not care for women.”

“I don't see the connection,” said Andrew, disconcerted.

“But surely it is obvious? I have so often thought how in all English art the place of women is taken by landscape. Your poetry is full of it, you are a nation of landscape painters. In other countries a man spends his fortune on a mistress; here you marry a fortune to save your estates.
En revanche,
the ladies have their flower-gardens. You yourself have travelled abroad, you take an interest in politics and so on, you feel yourself one of the new restless generation; but you are fighting against the landscape all the time.”

There was enough truth in this to make it difficult for Andrew to reply. He said, rather pedantically:—

“What about the industrial revolution?”

“Oh, that!” Belinski shrugged. “That was real life, that was business. But when a business-man has made money, what does he do with it? He buys a place in the country. That is what you all want. You cannot escape it. Your green grass is as strong as the creepers of a jungle, with the additional advantage that you are able to play games on it. Or lie on it …”

As though in demonstration, Belinski unclasped his hands and let himself drop back. Andrew looked at his crooked wrist, outflung on the green, and said abruptly:—

“You of all people—you of all people can't advise me to bury my head in the past. In the grass, if you like. You know what's coming.”

“You mean the war?”

“Yes.”

Belinski sighed again.

“I remember being taken to see the new Post Office at Gdynia. It is a nice Post Office, but they wanted me to write in all the European papers about it. I mean, if you are a Pole, you are expected to be violently nationalist. I am not. I am a sort of
lusus naturœ
. Like all artists. I don't think about the war because it would stop me working. But if the war is really on your mind, join your Air Force.” Belinski yawned. “This air!” he said. “It is like milk!”

For a moment Andrew stood very still. Then he said:—

“Do you mean that?”

“That the air is like milk? Have you not noticed?”

“Do you think I should join the Air Force now?”

“But naturally. If you are serious. If you are simply brave, you will no doubt wait till war comes—that again is the national habit. But as an artist, and therefore a serious man, I should think you would be more use if you were trained.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Andrew stiffly, “when I was at Cambridge, I belonged to the University Air Squadron.”

Belinski grinned.

“That must have been quite a rag.”

“I don't understand,” said Andrew, more stiffly still.

“Nor did I. I had heard of it, you see, I was interested. I met a young man who belonged to it, a rich young man a little like yourself. He said it was quite a rag.”

With that Belinski rolled over on his face and apparently went to sleep. Andrew stood beside him a few moments longer, and then walked off.

II

Sir Henry rode gently on, not thinking much, absorbed in an almost physical pleasure of recognition. Every least landmark, every turning, gate and tree, was as familiar to him as the lines on his hand, and all that he saw he loved. It was a love free from the desire to possess; much of the land over which he rode had belonged to his father, more to his grandfather; time and taxes had shorn the Carmel estates. Sir Henry for himself hardly regretted their passing; land was a great trouble, always had been; never would he forget the struggles he went through, between 1914 and 1918, with the Ministry of Agriculture. (“Ignorant fellers,” thought Sir Henry automatically.) But if Andrew wanted to take in the home farm again, it could no doubt be managed; let the lad try his hand, thought Sir Henry. Though there was nothing in Andrew's education or tastes to fit him for such a project, Sir Henry had come to think of the home farm, in connection with his son, as a sort of lure. “For he's not an idle chap like me,” reflected Sir Henry simply. “He wants to be doing.…”

Smoothly Golden Boy carried Sir Henry on, the choice of road as much his as his master's. Whenever they passed a labourer in the fields the man would stop working, and straighten his back, and stare—the elder among them touching their caps and waiting while Sir Henry plunged into his memory for their names. They were pleased to have seen him. A farmer's wife came to her door to watch Sir Henry go by, and afterwards told her husband of it. A couple of intellectual hikers stopped him and asked the way, for the mere pleasure of conversing with such a piece of local colour. The postman saw him, and carried the news on his rounds. By the time Sir Henry turned his horse's head for home the whole neighbourhood knew that the Squire had been out, and in the Artichoke at Friars Carmel wagers were being laid as to the age of Golden Boy.

Among the most interested observers of this progress were Cluny and Mr. Wilson.

III

They had met at the foot of the Gorge, Cluny accompanied by Roddy, who with tactful enthusiasm leapt up at the chemist, leaving large smears of mud on his raincoat. But Mr. Wilson fended him off most good-naturedly, and said he was a handsome beast.

“I take him for company,” explained Cluny. She threw an apologetic glance at Roderick as she spoke—but there was something about Mr. Wilson that always made her feel orphanish.

“To-day, if you like, you can have mine,” said Mr. Wilson. He spoke rather as one conferring a favour, but since Cluny also saw it in this light, no harm was done. She was only surprised.

“But you don't shut on Wednesdays?”

“I do now,” said Mr. Wilson. “I have decided that it would be beneficial to the village to have one shop open on a Thursday noon.”

Cluny was quite overwhelmed. For though the change might benefit Friars Carmel—and would certainly do business no harm—she did not believe that this was Mr. Wilson's sole reason for making it. He had made it in order to be free to come for walks with herself. (To walk out with her, in fact.) It was the greatest compliment she had ever received, and she turned upon the chemist such grateful, such fervent and startled eyes, as to leave no doubt of her emotions.

“Puir lonely lass!” said Mr. Wilson—almost affectionately; and then, as though afraid of going too fast, as indeed he was, for one of his temperament, quickly remarked that there was a fine prospect from the brow of the lane. Cluny willingly fell into step beside him, and with Roddy ranging ahead they began to mount the Gorge. As once before, Cluny's heels rang on paving-stones, and with a delightful sense of confidence she asked Mr. Wilson why.

He did not fail her.

“It used to be an old road for pack-horses. You'll observe it's just wide enough to take a pack, or pannier, on either side.”

“What a lot you know!”

“I naturally interest myself in my surroundings. If you like, I'll lend you a book on the subject.”

“Thank you very much,” said Cluny.

They walked up to the crest, and it was from thence, looking down over the Carmel road, that they saw Sir Henry pass below. Like the men in the fields, like the farmer's wife, they' instinctively stood to watch him.

“Now, there's a sight I like to see,” said Mr. Wilson suddenly, “and yet I couldn't tell you why.”

“It's Sir Henry,” said Cluny. “I didn't know he went riding.”

“You'll rarely see him, for he's almost given it up. Yet they say at one time it was his whole life.”

“He's very fond of Lady Carmel,” said Cluny, defending him.

“I've no doubt of it, for he's a good body—although a do-nothing. I've a sympathy for a man who sticks as he has to his home-soil.”

Cluny hesitated.

“Mr. Wilson,” she said cautiously, “have you ever thought that if you don't always live in the same place, the whole universe is to let?”

“What's that you say?” asked Mr. Wilson, with a frown.

“I mean”—instinctively Cluny toned down the flamboyance of the phrase—“if you're not quite settled, you can choose where to live.”

“That is perfectly true. Where there are children, for example, it is necessary to be near a good school. But as for the whole universe, all the countries of the world—I do not see how one could form a sound judgement. Surely it would be necessary to visit them all first.”

“I suppose so,” admitted Cluny.

“It would be a fine project for a Methusaleh,” said the chemist, smiling at her. “The average man does better to stick where he's born.”

“I suppose he does,” agreed Cluny.

They agreed more and more. Not that Cluny, on this walk or on the walks that followed, ever suppressed even her flightiest fancies: only Mr. Wilson examined them all so reasonably, and with such good humour, that she always came round to his point of view. When Cluny said (for instance) she wished she were a Golden Labrador like Roddy, with no house work to do and no stockings to mend, Mr. Wilson reminded her of Roddy's indignant howls when tied up outside the shop: a collar and chain, he said, were the true fundamentals of a dog's life. When Cluny said she wished she
had
a Labrador, Mr. Wilson pointed out that so long as domestic service survived, the convenience of the employer naturally came first. Whether Cluny would have learnt these lessons so readily from any one but a tragic bachelor, is open to doubt; as it was she tasted for the first time in her life the pleasures of discipleship, and it would have been hard to say which of the two, pupil or pedagogue, enjoyed these conversations more.

“Well?” said Mrs. Maile kindly, when Cluny came in at seven o'clock. “Did you have a nice walk?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Cluny. “With Mr. Wilson.”

The housekeeper looked surprised.

“On a Wednesday, my dear?”

“He's changed his early closing,” said Cluny calmly.

She said no more, and there was no need; the implication was enough. Cluny went upstairs with a demure yet conceited step, happy in the knowledge that Mrs. Maile could have been knocked down with a feather.

IV

Dear Uncle Arn,

The weather is still very fine, and how I wish you could see the lambs, also the primroses and other flowers, how they have the nerve to charge what they do in Paddington beats me. Mr. Wilson says it is transport. He is the chemist in Friars Carmel and very well-educated, Mrs. Maile says we are lucky to have such a chemist in a place like this. Mr. Andrew is home again, another room to do. Life here is as hard as ever, but I suppose so long as domestic service survives the convenience of the employer naturally comes first. I suppose you wouldn't like a Golden Labrador puppy. If you would, I think I can get you one for nothing, it would be company now you haven't got me. I think of you often and hope the plumbing goes O.K., not too many calls at night or when you are tired. I told Mr. Wilson I had an uncle who was a plumber, he said it was a very necessary calling. Tell Aunt Addie I am sick and tired of sending love when she never sends so much as a post card back
.

Your affectionate neice,

C
LUNY
B
ROWN

Chapter 15

I

The affairs of both Andrew and Cluny were at this time in a very interesting state. For each events were impending that would change the course of their lives, and though Andrew far more than Cluny was still a free agent, both were momentarily held in suspense. It was not disagreeable, for they both, also, felt peculiarly important, as though Fate had put all other interests aside to concentrate on them alone. How wrong they were! Fate was indeed hovering hawklike over Friars Carmel, but when it struck it swooped not upon Andrew, not upon Cluny, but upon the Professor.