Celia's House (25 page)

“We can't. They're all doing war work. I don't really mind it very much,” said Deb, smiling at him. “I've gotten quite used to it now, and the odd thing is I've become even more fond of dear old Dunnian since I started doing the housework. I know it so much better—every corner of it. I know every piece of furniture too, and I like polishing things and seeing them shining.”

“It's too much for you,” Mark said. “Dunnian is far too big—”

“Yes, that's true, of course. Too big and too disconnected—it isn't a labor-saving sort of house. When Dunnian was planned you could get as much help as you wanted. That's the whole trouble really.”

“What about shutting it up and moving into a small house?”

“We thought of that, but small houses aren't to be had; besides, your father would be so unhappy if we had to leave Dunnian.” There was another reason too, but Deb did not mention it: she wanted Mark's son to be born in Dunnian House.

“The other rooms seem to be shut up,” said Mark. “I looked in and they were all full of furniture.”

“Yes. You see Sharme was taken over by the War Office and Edith and Douglas had a week to clear out—so they sent most of their furniture here. It was Celia's idea and rather a brain wave really. They were at their wits' end what to do with the stuff. There's furniture from Hastley Dean too; all the drawing room furniture and carpets and things. They've gotten evacuees in the drawing room.”

Mark listened to all this in amazement. He had had letters from home, of course, but somehow the letters had not given him the slightest idea of what was happening in the country. It was not so much the changes that amazed him; it was the attitude of Deb and Celia that he found so remarkable.

“Will they take Dunnian?” he asked.

“No. They looked at it, of course, but there isn't enough water. It would mean putting in a new pipeline or something. We haven't got evacuees either, because it's too far from the school. There were soldiers billeted here for a bit, but now they've found billets nearer Ryddelton.”

“You never told me about it in your letters.”

“Didn't I?” she asked. “Oh, well, it all happened gradually. I suppose I didn't realize it properly. It was no good bothering you—”

“You didn't tell me about it when I saw you in London.”

“It was such a rush, wasn't it,” said Deb. “We had lots of other things to talk about.” She rose as she spoke and added, “I must go help Celia to bring in the breakfast. I shan't be long.”

Deb had scarcely gone when Humphrey walked in, looking very clean and tidy, though perhaps a trifle shabbier than usual. His brown tweed suit was faded and darned at the elbows; his shoes were old but exquisitely polished.

“Mark!” he exclaimed in surprise and delight. “What good wind has brought you home! This is grand! How are you, my boy! You're looking the picture of health!”

“Is everything all right, Dad?” Mark asked, smiling at this reversal of the usual question.

“Everything's fine, my lad,” replied Humphrey. “Those girls are bricks. You ought to be proud of your wife and your sister; they're keeping the home fires burning.” He began to move about the room as he spoke, opening a drawer and taking out a cloth and spreading it on the table near the window. It was the table at which Mark used to study his medical books—how long ago it seemed!

Mark went to his aid, but Humphrey waved him away. “This is one of my jobs,” he explained. “I'm good at it too. You'll only muddle me if you interfere. Knives and forks…” continued Humphrey, opening another drawer. “And spoons, of course…and cruets…”

“Wouldn't it be easier in a smaller house, Dad?”

“Easier, perhaps,” agreed Humphrey. “But I don't want to leave Dunnian, and that monster of iniquity isn't going to drive me out of my home if I can help it. For one thing I promised Aunt Celia that the place shouldn't be shut up and, for another, I prefer to be here to look after it. Dunnian might be burned to the ground if someone wasn't here…it's full of other people's furniture too.”

“I don't know how you manage—”

Humphrey nodded. “We manage all right. The girls run the house. I do all the shoes, of course, and any little odd jobs that I can. We have plenty of fresh vegetables from the garden and I've started keeping hens. I didn't like them at first, but I'm getting quite fond of the creatures. If we left Dunnian we wouldn't have that, of course, and we would need more meat—”

Breakfast was a cheerful meal and Mark began to feel less concern for his family. Obviously they had enough to eat and, although they were all thinner, they seemed well and happy.

There were changes outside the house as well as inside (Mark found). A good deal of ground had been put into potatoes, and the remainder, which was laid out in vegetables, was looked after by Humphrey and old Johnson and a village lad. They were lucky to have Johnson, for although he was over eighty he was still able for light work such as pruning and staking and tying up the peas. Old Johnson was the “head gardener” and Humphrey took orders from him cheerfully, for Johnson knew exactly what must be done and what could be left undone with impunity. The paths were weedy and the hedges needed thinning and the greenhouses looked as if they would be the better of a coat of paint, but the place was by no means derelict.

“We've got to have every bit of ground under cultivation,” old Johnson explained. “That's how I see it, Mr. Mark. It doesn't matter about the looks of the place—not till we've got Hitler where we want him.”

There were several large brown patches on the lawn. Mark pointed them out to his father and asked what had caused them.

“A pity, isn't it?” said Humphrey. “We'll have to rake those up and sow them when we have time. It was firebombs—incendiaries—they made a tremendous blaze. We had a shower of them here. Two fell on the roof, but they rolled off without doing any damage. Dunnian roof is as strong as armor plating. I was ready for them, of course,” Humphrey said complacently. “We'd practiced firefighting, the girls and I, and we had the stirrup pump ready in a twinkling and buckets and everything—”

Mark had a feeling Humphrey was quite sorry that his preparations had been needless. “What on earth were they doing here?” he asked. “What induced them to drop incendiaries on Dunnian?”

“It was a single plane—lost itself, I suppose—but as a matter of fact there are very few places, even in the depths of the country, that have never seen a bomb. You know Walkers' cottage away up the glen?”

“Yes, of course. Mrs. Walker used to give us a glass of milk when we were fishing there.”

“They bombed the Walkers' cottage,” said Humphrey. “Mrs. Walker ran out of the cottage when the bomb fell and the Hun came down and picked her off with a machine gun.”

“Dad!”

“My blood boils when I think of it,” declared Humphrey. “My blood boils…if only I could get at them, Mark, if only I could do something! If only I were thirty years younger!” He was silent for a moment and then he continued. “It's a horrible world, Mark. The whole foundation of society is rocking; everything is in the melting pot. I wish Celia had someone to look after her when I'm gone.”

“Deb and I—”

“Oh, I know,” said Humphrey, “but it isn't the same. The other girls are married. They've got their husbands to look after them. I wish to goodness Aunt Celia hadn't made that ridiculous will. I wish Dunnian was to be yours; if you and Deb were to be here when I've gone, I wouldn't mind so much…” He was silent for a moment and then he sighed and added, “Celia and Dunnian—who will look after them when I'm gone?”

“I wonder why Celia hasn't married.”

“It isn't for want of asking,” said Humphrey, smiling. “Celia doesn't like any of them—says they're dull and stupid, says they're all turned out of the same mold.”

“Andrew Raeworth—” Mark began.

“I know. Nice fellow, Andrew, and crazy about Celia, but she won't look at him.”

“What does she say?”

“Says nothing—just smiles—doesn't even get angry when I tell her she'll be an old maid. One day when I pressed her she said she was ‘waiting.'”

Mark laughed at his father's disgusted expression.

“You may laugh,” said Humphrey. “It seems to me she's waiting for an angel straight from heaven.”

“An angel wouldn't suit Celia at all,” Mark declared.

Humphrey emerged from Dunnian House and set off toward the gate. He did this every morning at exactly ten fifty and Deb sometimes set her watch as she saw the slight upright figure of her father-in-law walking smartly down the drive. It was part of Humphrey's “war work” to meet the postman at the side gate and save him the extra time and trouble of delivering the letters at Dunnian House.

Humphrey had had a pretty hard time in the last war, but he found this war a good deal harder to bear. Inactivity was hard to bear. Sometimes he felt cross and impatient. Why couldn't he do something? It was horrible having to potter about in the garden when other men were fighting and dying all over the world. They wouldn't even have him in the Home Guard—he was too old. Seventy-two sounded old, of course, but Humphrey was as strong and fit as any man of sixty, and men of sixty were accepted by the Home Guard. He could shoot Germans as well as anyone—and, by heaven, he would shoot Germans if they showed their faces here!

Humphrey straightened his back and marched on, swinging his stick as he went. He noted that the trees and bushes needed trimming. They were encroaching on the drive, and the gravel was full of weeds, but it was no good worrying about that; there were other, more important things to be done. Once the war was over and the men came back, they would soon get the old place shipshape.

At eleven oh five precisely, Humphrey reached the small side gate that led onto the main road, and a few moments later, the postman appeared. He got off his bicycle and greeted Humphrey with a naval salute, for he was an old sailor and had served in the last war.

“Good morning, Finlay,” said Humphrey.

“Good morning, sir. Looks like rain.”

“I don't think so, Finlay,” replied Humphrey, looking at the sky, which was cloudy and gray. “There's too much wind in the upper strata. If the clouds break it will be a very warm day.”

“They don't look like breaking to me.”

“I wouldn't bet on it,” Humphrey said gravely.

They discussed the weather every morning and usually exchanged views on the progress of the war. Finlay's son was in the navy; he was serving on the same ship as Billy Dunne—so the two fathers had a good deal in common.

Presently the letters changed hands and Finlay mounted his bicycle and rode away, but Humphrey did not return to the house at once. He leaned on the little gate and ruminated sadly on his age, on the stupidity of the government in not making use of fit and hearty men—and like matters.

He was roused from his reverie by the sound of footsteps on the road, and, looking up, he saw a man coming toward him…a youngish officer in uniform, marching along in the very middle of the road with his head well up and his arms swinging smartly. He looked as if he ought to be leading a regiment, but he was quite alone. The young man was singing as he marched, singing in a very pleasant baritone; he was singing something about Santander and the Mexico Plains—the tune and the words were, alike, strange to Humphrey. His uniform was strange too; it was khaki but slightly different from the usual pattern, and he had a slightly foreign air…yet, as he came nearer, Humphrey had an odd feeling that he had seen the man before…

“Good morning,” said Humphrey.

The young man saw Humphrey and stopped. “Good morning,” he replied, smiling in a friendly manner.

Humphrey looked at him in approval. He was very nice to look at, well set up, strong and virile, with a suntanned face and bright brown eyes. Seen at close quarters there was still that oddness about him: he was at the same time strange and familiar…
Why, of course: he's an American
, thought Humphrey suddenly.
That accounts for the difference in the uniform!

“Are you chaps coming to this neighborhood?” Humphrey asked with interest.

“No, sir,” replied the young man. “I believe I'm right in saying I'm the only American citizen within two hundred miles of this place. I'm spending a few days at Ryddelton, that's all.”

Humphrey took out his cigarette case and offered it. They both lit up.

“How d'you like being here?” Humphrey inquired.

“It's fine. I like it. The coloring gets me—the greenness of the grass. There's a funny kind of feeling about Scotland. It's strange and yet it's not strange. I thought I was coming to the war,” he added with a smile that disclosed a row of extremely fine white teeth.

“It's peaceful enough here.”

“It's the most peaceful place I ever struck—and the people are peaceful. There's peace in their eyes. I got you all wrong at first,” he continued. “I thought you folk were a bit halfhearted about the war, but I soon found my mistake. You don't talk about it much. You've gotten past that. You've just settled down to win it.”

“How did you find that out?” asked Humphrey.

“Various ways. I'll tell you one of them. I met a girl in the train—a smart girl and as pretty as a picture. She was going to London to meet her brother and have a good time. I felt a bit envious of her brother,” he added with a smile.

“Well, what about her?” Humphrey asked with an answering grin. “What was there about this girl that made you open your eyes?”

“I talked to her,” he replied. “I said to her, ‘The war doesn't bother you much, does it?' She didn't answer—not in words—but she took off her gloves and showed me her hands. I'd expected to see white soft hands manicured with red enamel—she looked that sort of girl—and I got a bit of a shock when I looked at them. They were stained with chemicals and scarred with burns. ‘You needn't look like that,' she said, laughing. ‘I'm proud of them.' She was working at munitions—something special, it was, but she didn't tell me exactly. She was getting what she called ‘danger money.' What do you make of that?”

“Pretty good,” said Humphrey.

He sighed. “Well, sir, I don't know,” he said doubtfully. “It's good and it's bad.”

“What else have you found out about us?” asked Humphrey.

“The food question bothers me. We get our own food, so it doesn't affect me personally, but it seems to me you folk aren't getting enough.”

“Plenty to keep us fit,” Humphrey said quickly.

“Well, it looks that way,” admitted the American. “I haven't seen any signs of malnutrition, but they wouldn't like your rations where I come from. Two ounces of butter a week per person and eight ounces of sugar, and not a drop of cream…I've seen our cook put more butter in a cake than you get here in a month.”

There was a short silence.

“Are you a regular officer?” asked Humphrey.

“West Point,” replied the American, smiling. “It's the same as your Sandhurst.”

“I know,” said Humphrey, returning the smile. Humphrey was used to judging men (to summing them up quickly) and he had taken a fancy to this one.
He's all right
, Humphrey decided, and this was the highest possible praise.

“What part of America do you come from?” Humphrey asked. “I know parts of New England…”

“Virginia,” said the young man. He hesitated and then, seeing that this very nice-looking old gentleman seemed interested in him, he decided to elaborate his answer a bit. “I lived with my grandfather,” he said. “It happened like this: my father died and my mother married again, so I was sent to Glenway, my grandfather's place near Raleigh, Virginia. My grandfather brought me up. He died last fall and the place was sold. It was a bit of a shock, for it had always been my home. It gives you a funny feeling to have no home.”

“Yes,” agreed Humphrey. He reflected that it would give him a very funny feeling if he had not an anchorage at Dunnian. “Was Glenway a family place?” asked Humphrey.

“It belonged to my grandmother's people. Grandfather belonged to Pennsylvania. He had land there, but he sold it up when he married.”

Humphrey nodded understandingly. It was interesting to get a glimpse of the boy's background. He would have liked to know more, but he was afraid of being thought inquisitive. “What made you come to Ryddelton for your leave?” Humphrey asked.

“That's quite a story. My great-grandmother came from this part of the country and I thought I'd like to have a look at the place. I thought maybe the people in the house would let me look around.”

“Your great-grandmother,” Humphrey said thoughtfully.

“Yes. I never saw the old lady—she died before I was born—but Grandfather used to talk about it a lot. About Ryddelton, I mean. And I came across a bundle of letters one day—it was after the old man died and I was clearing up. Letters written to my great-grandmother by her sister. Seems an old story, but I like old stories,” said the young man, smiling apologetically.

“You're Dale!” Humphrey exclaimed with sudden excitement.

The American looked at him in surprise.

“You are, aren't you?” urged Humphrey. “Good heavens, of course you are! I've been wondering all the time why you seemed familiar. It's because you're a Dunne! You're Mary Dunne's great-grandson!”

“Gee, if that doesn't beat everything! Courtney Dale is my name. I was called after my great-grandfather—”

“I knew it!” cried Humphrey, seizing his hand and shaking it cordially. “I knew it! We're cousins. I'm Humphrey Dunne.”

“Cousins!”

“Yes, cousins—”

“Then this is Dunnian!”

“Yes, of course, my dear fellow!” cried Humphrey, patting him on the back. “I can't tell you how glad I am. It's simply splendid. Go in and see the place. We must find Celia and tell her all about it.”

“This is wonderful,” Courtney Dale began in a dazed sort of voice. “I never thought there might be Dunnes living here. It's—it's—wonderful—”

“It's marvelous,” agreed Humphrey, laughing excitedly. “I've always wondered what had become of Mary Dunne's family. Why did you disappear into thin air? But never mind that now; you're here and that's all that matters. I knew, the moment I saw you, that you weren't a stranger. It's because you have a look of old Humphrey, that's why.”

“Old Humphrey!”

“The old chap who built Dunnian House. I'll show you his picture—”

“You're like my grandfather,” declared Courtney Dale, looking at Humphrey and smiling. “I guess that's why I liked you the very first moment I saw you at the gate…”

“You can always tell a Dunne,” replied Humphrey. “It's the shape of the face—something about the forehead—but, come along, don't stand there in the road. Come see Dunnian. You'll come stay here, of course, for the rest of your leave. We shall be delighted to have you.”

“It's very good of you, but I'm quite comfortable at the hotel—”

“At the Black Bull!” said Humphrey, laughing incredulously. “No, no, my boy, you'll come to Dunnian. We can make you a great deal more comfortable here.”

“I'm sure of that—but what about food?” said young Dale, hanging back. “It's very, very good of you and I appreciate it a lot, but I know it's difficult having guests—”

“You aren't a guest,” declared Humphrey, taking his arm. “There will be food for you, war or no war. We'll manage all right. Good Lord, do you think I'd let you stay at the Black Bull! Come along, come in. I'll send a man down to the village for your bag…”

Courtney Dale made no further objections. He was quite as pleased and excited as this newfound cousin, though not quite so voluble. It had been a most extraordinary experience and he was still a trifle dazed from the effects of it. There he was, walking along a strange road in an absolutely strange country and feeling—if the truth were told—just a trifle homesick for his own land…and suddenly he had been hailed by an extremely pleasant and personable old gentleman, whom he had never seen before, and called by name and accepted as one of the family, welcomed into the bosom of the family as a sort of prodigal son. If that didn't beat everything, Courtney Dale did not know what would!

They walked up the avenue together talking and laughing; Humphrey was trying to explain the exact relationship that existed between them, but he was too excited to do it very well.

“My grandfather and your grandmother were brothers—I mean, brother and sister—no, it was your great-grandmother, of course—so you're my second cousin once removed. Is that right? Well, it's quite
near
enough anyway. Wait until I show you the tree—”

“A genealogical tree?”

“Yes. I must put you in. You can give me the details of your branch. I've always wanted to complete your branch of the family.”

Dale was looking about him with interest. “The Dunnes have always lived here, haven't they?” he asked.

“Yes, there have been Dunnes here for centuries—long before Dunnian House was built. You must see the Peel. Celia will show it to you.”

“Celia was the name of the old lady who wrote the letters,” began Courtney Dale. “The letters to my great-grandmother—”

Humphrey nodded. “Of course. My daughter, Celia, was called after her, just as you were called after your great-grandfather. It's odd—” Humphrey began and then he stopped. Perhaps later, when he knew young Dale better, he would tell him about Aunt Celia's romance, or perhaps he would never tell him. Humphrey was not quite sure.

As they came around a bend in the avenue, they halted and Courtney Dale saw Dunnian for the first time. He looked at the old house in silence, for he felt a strange surge of emotion in beholding it. He had expected a good deal, and it was not quite as he had expected, not quite so big and imposing, but for all that, it satisfied him. Dunnian was beautiful and symmetrical. It was part of the landscape; it seemed to belong to the ground, to spring from the ground as naturally as a tree.