Stop Press (42 page)

Belinda nodded. ‘And the tower really is a triumph. A single wall supporting an impending mass of masonry. Actually it’s an affair of steel girders anchored in the bowels of the earth.’

‘But the Collection’ – Mr Eliot broke in as if to defend his daughter’s association with all this wantonness – ‘must be quite without extravagance. The Shoon Catalogues are recognized by scholars everywhere.’

So there, thought Appleby, was another link. Archie and Shoon; perhaps it was Archie who was behind the present expedition. ‘Will Sir Archibald’, he asked, ‘be fit to come over today?’

Mr Eliot shook his head. ‘I think not. Chown declares the wound to be not serious, but he advises rest. I am really rather anxious–’

A hoot – the discreet but commanding hoot of a well-considered siren – drowned the rest of the sentence. Patricia drew to the side; a cream car even larger than that in which they were travelling drew level and passed; the figure at the wheel with grave courtesy took off his hat and displayed a profusely bandaged head; beside him could be glimpsed the unengaging grin of Rupert Eliot; amid a huddle of forms behind were Miss Cavey and Wedge. Loudly above the purr of their own engine Timmy sighed. ‘Who could say’, he asked, ‘that Eliots don’t stick together? The whole lot of us on each other’s heels.’

It was an overstatement. And Appleby was to remember the sense of cloudy illumination with which he noted the fact.

‘By the way,’ said Belinda, ‘the guns and bombs are taboo. Jasper doesn’t like them brought up. Merchant, he says, are a useful and respectable class of men, but he doesn’t care to be thought of in that light. He is just a
curioso
– and, of course, a
virtuoso
too.’

Mr Eliot nodded sympathetically. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘John will agree with me that it is nice to get away from the atmosphere of one’s profession when one can.’ He smiled cheerfully at the appositeness of this reflection. ‘And armament people particularly must find their job weighing on them at times. There is so much public opprobrium. They are condemned even by many who still support the traditional view that the soldier’s is the most honourable of callings. I have never quite satisfied myself that it is fair. We don’t, after all, approve surgeons and condemn instrument-makers.’ Mr Eliot – this time that determinedly liberal Mr Eliot who insisted on what capital fellows Rupert and Archie really were – looked about him for support and received none. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘I know that these people sometimes foment trouble for the sake of profits. But I am sure that a person with Shoon’s scholarly interests would not do that.’ He sighed, appeared to make some reluctant reference to the book of human nature as it was known to him. ‘
Or almost sure
… Patricia, my dear, there is somebody signalling to us.’

It was Dr Bussenschutt. Surprisingly dressed in knickerbockers and an ancient leather-trimmed shooting jacket, he was gesturing with mingled affability and command from a tump of grass by the roadside. As the car drew to a halt he advanced and removed a tweed cap in which were entangled several dry-fly of a type popular, a connoisseur would have remarked, in the eighteen-nineties. His face, massively benevolent, thrust itself through a window. There are those’, said Dr Bussenschutt – and his speech had the too-considered tempo of something which has been framed seconds before – ‘who delight in the flying wheels, the supercharged engine, and the Olympian dust. But I’ – he gestured vaguely in the direction from which he had come – ‘have loved the rural walk through ways of grassy swarth.’

Mr Eliot was delighted. ‘I am myself’, he said, ‘a devotee of Cowper. And now Horace and he go hand and hand in song.’

As Mr Eliot had thus contrived at once to identify Bussenschutt’s quotations and to say so in a single line of Pope’s it might be supposed, Appleby felt, that the honours of this wantonly belletristic engagement were all with him. It was a pity that Archie was not present to cap them both, and well might the lot of them be gravitating round the
virtuoso
and
curioso
of Shoon Abbey. Timmy, Belinda, and Patricia alone looked severe; what are graces to one generation will always appear slightly shameful inanities to the next. But Bussenschutt’s speech now revealed itself as not without design; having offered some further
facetiae
on the theme of automobilism and pedestrianism he proceeded to solicit converts; those who had a nose for what is in November air should dismount and walk back to the Abbey with himself. He was particularly sure that Winter would be eager to do this.

This evidences of Winter’s eagerness were tenuous. He looked at Bussenschutt, it seemed to Appleby, with the economical wariness of one familiar with an antagonist’s points and calculting on what hand attack will come.

‘Moreover,’ said Bussenschutt, ‘I have intelligence with which to beguile the way. Intelligence of our colleague Benton.’ Bussenschutt, although his remarks were directed to Winter, here beamed with particular geniality on Timmy, as if whimsically admitting this young man to a glimpse of the innocent gossiping of senior common-rooms. ‘I fear’, he continued, ‘that nobody else will be interested’ – his glance fell fleetingly on Appleby – ‘but perhaps we can raise a third hiker’ – he paused to let everyone admire this bold colloquialism – ‘all the same.’ He opened a door at the back of the car – a masterly stroke the social indecency of which he contrived to cloak by appearing to aim at readier communication with Mrs Moule. ‘I trust, my dear lady, that you have good news of your brother in his magnificent diocese? How much, at Oxford, the Bishop of Udonga is missed by all!’ And at this display of his own superb staff work – as well perhaps as at the sight of Winter and Appleby scrambling from the car – the learned Bussenschutt horridly and triumphantly beamed. ‘
Au revoir
,’ he cried, ‘
arrivederci, auf wiedersehen
!’ He stood with his fishy cap held stiffly in the air – Appleby incongruously saw a uniformed Dethleps demanding cheers for royalty – until the car had swept round a bend.

Like one who thinks to get over what is not well begun, Winter made for a stile and field-path across the road. ‘About three miles to go,’ he said. ‘Time even for you, Master, to communicate an item of intelligence.’

‘I have had’, said Bussenschutt consequentially, ‘an adventure.’

The victims of his rape looked at him expectantly.

‘But what’, asked Bussenschutt theoretically – and he carefully negotiated a cowpat – ‘do we imply by adventure? And may we not pause to inquire whether the idea – the idea of the adventure
per se
– is not something new, and a symptom indeed of our modern malady?’

Appleby saw the point of Winter’s last remark. There was too much reason to apprehend that in the art of gentle talk the younger don was but an imperfect pupil of the elder.

‘And this thought’, pursued Bussenschutt, ‘is suggested to me by the Benton affair. Adventure of the mind too – the intellectual curiosity on which we pride ourselves: what is this but a product of our inability to live richly in the common context, to seize and exploit the moment that naturally comes? That satisfaction lies away ahead or far round the corner: this conviction, surely, is a sign of our poverty here and now, our ineptitude’ – he waved at the landscape rather as a blind man might gesture round a picture gallery – ‘in face of the streaming present… Dear me, I fear I have forgotten by what this interesting train of thought was occasioned.’

‘Benton,’ said Winter gloomily.

‘To be sure, Benton. My point is that the mystery intrigues us because it is something at which we peer from a distance. Solve it – as, by the way, I have done – and one immediately asks; was the effort worth while? One becomes aware, as our friend Eliot must so acutely do in fabricating his romances, that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.’

Appleby felt disposed to award Bussenschutt the higher mark. In this infuriating accomplishment he had an altogether superior command of tenterhooks.

‘You have solved’, Winter was saying cautiously, ‘a mystery connected with Benton? You are sure you haven’t invented it?’

Bussenschutt ignored this. ‘I take it, Mr Appleby, that you are not acquainted with Horace Benton?’

‘He is a scholar’, said Appleby discreetly, ‘with whose name I am familiar.’

‘Ah, yes; the Codex, no doubt. An unhappy business. But the little problem on which I have been engaged will explain itself to you sufficiently in the solution. Winter, would the solution be of interest to you?… Ah, here we are.’

They had attained a slight eminence from which they now looked down upon Shoon Abbey. Mr Jasper Shoon, as his numerous benefactions emphasized, was a lover of sacred antiquity – and of all that is comprehended in the term it was the eighteenth century, the century of
virtuosi
and
curiosi
, that he loved best. And this dictated the form of the imposing seat the contemplation of which had interrrupted Bussenschutt’s proposed revelation.

Shoon Abbey was instinct of the eighteenth century – not the Nabob, purse-proud eighteenth century of Palladian façades and broad terraces bespattered with classical statuary
à la mode Winckelmann
, but the polite and lettered eighteenth century of the nascent romantic revival. The enormously costly ruins, the great house with its learned confusion of periods composing a sort of dream-Gothic, the Gardens of Idea – gloomy groves, murmuring streams, sequestered grots, root-houses, urns, dells, denes, dingles – all these revealed themselves from this height in one extensive, costly, and subtle statement: a yearning after a past age which had yearned after a past age. Bussenschutt’s companions surveyed it with an absorbed if somewhat depressed astonishment.

‘How much’, said Winter – and it was almost the first time Appleby had heard him say a simple thing, ‘one prefers Rust.’ His gaze settled on Sir Archibald Eliot’s great west tower. ‘Lord,’ he said, adopting the idiom of Rust, ‘lord, lord,
lord
.’ He turned to Bussenschutt in a gloom which seemed to dispose him to some annihilating stroke. ‘You were about to reveal, when Shoon’s Folly interrupted us, your startling discovery that Benton used to traffic in arms.’

The stroke wholly miscarried of its effect. ‘Arms?’ murmured Bussenschutt; ‘dear me, no. My discovery concerns nothing of that sort.’

‘Then’, said Winter with something of the appearance of capitulation, ‘what
does
it concern?’

‘It is really very subtle.’ Bussenschutt paused and once more his companions waited in suspense. He raised his arm and pointed; it became clear that he was referring to the architectural monstrosity before them. ‘Antiquarianism within antiquarianism, like Chinese boxes – not an easy thing to achieve. Shoon tells me that he had great difficulty with the architect. The architect
knew
about Gothic. He was reluctant to shed his knowledge and return to the ignorant enthusiasm of the pioneers. But Shoon insistent. And so we have before us a
mélange
of Early English and Perpendicular, of monastic, ecclesiastical, and domestic… Let me see, was not I about to tell you of my discovery with regard to Benton?’

This time Winter strode forward in resolute silence. Appleby kept pace – entertained, but with diminishing hopes of instruction.

‘The solution’, announced Bussenschutt abruptly, ‘is Warter, Wing, Little Limber, Snug.’

Winter stared. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘To the approximate rectangle thus demarcated the thing may with fair confidence be pinned down. To narrow it further seems not possible on the purely phonological evidences. But this is very satisfactory. The truth, as you know, has eluded me for years.’ Bussenschutt turned in genial explanation to Appleby. ‘My concern has been with this Benton’s origins. He has a peculiar accent. On Friday I detected almost identical articulations – unglossed, of course, by a spurious refinement – in a local cab-driver. Subsequent investigation has confirmed me in my conviction. We are tramping Benton’s native soil now. But, as I have earlier confessed, the elucidation of mysteries of this sort leaves one a little flat… Stay a moment, gentlemen. I fear we have missed the path.’

There was no need to invite Winter to stay; he had stopped dead in his tracks. ‘And is this’, he demanded, ‘the discovery about Benton with which you undertook to beguile this muddy and boring perambulation?’

Bussenschutt opened eyes of bland astonishment. ‘My dear fellow, what other discovery could there be?’

Appleby, meditating the implications of this academic hide-and-seek, again surveyed the scene. They had descended almost to the level of the park and the Abbey was presenting itself, according to the best prescriptions of the Picturesque, in a series of calculated glimpes variously framed. Now to the left was an ornamental water half-circled by an elegant balustrade, with the portico of a little Doric temple nestling in greenery beyond. To the right a waterfall tumbled over a miniature precipice into a deep brown pool; and faintly in the air was the throb of the petrol engine which did the necessary pumping. In the foreground a single gnarled oak had been preserved as a
repoussoir
to the composition beyond; beneath was a crumbling druidic altar with an inscription deeply engraved; a rustic seat was provided for those who wished to pause and read. Bussenschutt sat down. ‘We are certainly somewhat out of our way. That’ – he pointed to the altar – ‘is an effect wholly unfamiliar to me.’

They read:

THIS SPOT WAS OFTEN

DIGNIFIED BY THE PRESENCE OF

SAMUEL JOHNSON

LL. D.

WHOSE WRITINGS

EXACTLY CONFORMABLE TO THE NICEST

TENETS OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

GAVE ARDOUR TO VIRTUE AND

CONFIDENCE TO TRUTH

‘And sure th’Eternal Master found

The many talents well employed.’

‘The last line’, said Bussenschutt encyclopedically, ‘is an adaptation. But one really doubts the propriety of carrying such reconstructions of a past age so far. The altar has so evidently been quarried within the last decade. One would not care to hint anything of the sort to Shoon, but there is undeniably a suggestion of extravagance about the whole conception of his Abbey. It does not altogether join with his scholarly professions.’ He stood up, moved on a few paces, leant over the balustrade. ‘And you will agree with me that scholarship and extravagance singularly ill accord.’