It Was the Nightingale (35 page)

He stopped, to be sure that his voice was steady.

“I think, with cousin Willie—for whom I always had the greatest respect—that the future of the world lies in the coming generation. I wish that all children could be brought back to Nature, to absorb, in the impressionable years, the beauty of the countryside. I think that farming is the ideal life for a man. Father, in the old days of our Sunday walks into Kent—or Kent that was—used to tell us children about his old home, and the downland country in which his father’s family was brought up. So in a way this has always been ‘the real country’ to me.”

Hilary was surprised: this was a new Phillip to him.

“My fear is that I may not be worthy of such a position, which, of course, should have been cousin Willie’s. Now I propose to drink the health of my parents, with that of Uncle Hilary and Uncle John, Aunt Belle, Aunt Dora, and also Aunt Victoria. Lucy joins me in this. By the way, it is just as well that you cannot drink your own healths, by custom, because the bottle is empty!” He raised his glass, held it towards Lucy, emptied it and sat down.

“Well spoken, Boy!” said Dora.

When the women had gone into the other room Richard said, “Well, I must see how my plants are getting on,” and opening
the french windows, gave Hilary an opportunity to talk to Phillip alone.

Hilary waited for Phillip to broach the subject. He had written a letter to his nephew, but had had no reply. The wine had given Phillip a certain confidence, so that the usual feeling of being partly suppressed when in the company of Uncle Hilary was, for the moment, gone.

“It’s jolly good of you, Uncle, to give me this chance. I hope you will forgive me for not replying at once——By the way, I wonder why in some of Shakespeare’s plays they used the word ‘Nuncle’? Was it a sort of joke?”

“What makes you ask the question?”

“Well, I read Shakespeare quite a lot, and all that, you know. Yes, ‘nuncle’ is a sort of happy greeting, usually by the Fool.”

“Oh. Well, you won’t be able to give a lot of time to reading when you’re farming, you know, Phillip. It’s about the hardest and most demanding work there is. The daily paper for half an hour or so before bed, just to get the news, is about all the average farmer can expend on reading. By the way, what newspaper do you usually take?”

“
The Daily Crusader
.”

“Well, at least it’s better than
The
Herald,
but even so, its news is not reliable.”

“Little so-called news is, I suppose, really—except perhaps in
The Times
.”

“Why do you take the
Crusader
, anyway? It’s a rag.”

“I know the Literary Editor, Brex. He gave me a guinea and a half a week for a couple of months, for a small weekly piece about the country. That kept me going when first I went down to Devon.”

“But as a newspaper it’s not reliable, Phillip. I happened to see a copy one morning, and it gave as the main item of news for the day what the
Trident
gave only a small space to. And that was on an inside page.”

“But only on occasions of really big news do newspapers happen to have the same ‘splash’, Uncle. Such as the outbreak of war, or the death of a king or someone equally prominent.”

“Well, I don’t want to argue, Phillip. I was merely giving reasons why
The
Daily
Trident
is a more reliable medium for news than the sensation-mongering
Crusader
.”

“What was the
Crusader
‘splash’, can you remember?”

“I remember very well. C. B. Cochran was proposing to mix coloured players with white players on the stage, and there was naturally some opposition. So he gave a supper party for his coloured players, and invited various actors and actresses—‘Bea’ Lillie and Tallulah Bankhead, I remember, were among them.
The
Crusader
made a fuss about the two parties sitting at different tables.”

“But the country edition of the
Crusader
also had only a ‘stick’, uncle. I remember it. The London edition is printed in the small hours of the morning, the country editions much earlier.”

“Well, it’s not my idea of how a newspaper should be conducted.” Hilary’s tone until then had been persuasive; now he looked at his watch.

“Before I go, I would like to make certain that you really
do
want to spend your life as a farmer!”

“Yes, Uncle, I think I would.”

“To make a proper go of it, you’ll have to chuck this writing, you know! At least for a few years.”

“Couldn’t I write at night?”

“If you do, you’ll fall between two stools. It’s fatal to try and do two jobs at once, of different natures. I know what I’m talking about. I had to give up either the sea or my Australian farming interests, and so sold my land there.”

“But Rider Haggard wrote and farmed——”

“Yes, and incidentally lost a lot of capital in the process! Now look here, Phillip! During the first years you’ll have to put your back into it! You’ll have to break yourself in to muck-carting and spreading, to hoeing roots, to cutting and carting hay, to corn-carrying—ploughing—cultivating—making a rick—everything! You can’t expect to know how much a man can do and how he should do it unless you’ve first learned to do it yourself.”

“I understand that, of course.”

“Good. Well, now you know my terms. I am prepared to pay into your bank twenty-one pounds a month for the first year. You will live rent free, and have your own milk and butter. If you keep a pig you’ll have your own bacon and hams. You’ll shoot as my guest, and also fish by invitation. But you’ll have to put your back into it, and make it your life. When the year is up, we can decide on the next step. Now what I want from you is
the answer to one question—Are you prepared to accept my offer, and all it entails?”

“Yes, Uncle. And thank you very much.”

“You’ve discussed it with Lucy, of course?”

“Yes. She likes the idea.”

“I am glad, Phillip. I wish you success—which can come only through your own efforts, remember!” They shook hands. “Skirr farmhouse will be ready for you at midsummer. That will give you time to settle in before the corn harvest.”

“Will it matter if we come at Michaelmas, Uncle?”

“Any particular reason for the delay? The sooner you get your teeth into it the better, you know. Also, you’ll be starting during the easiest part of the year, between haysel and harvest. Well, why do you demur? Better to speak out now, you know, than later on!”

“Lucy and I thought we would like one summer by the sea, in Devon.”

“Very well; but if you should want to change your mind, let me know.” He gave Phillip a frank look. “You want to feed up, you’re much too thin, you know. How’s your general health?”

“Oh, I’m quite fit now, thanks.”

“By the way, I’ve got the option on another five hundred acres from Tofield, the fellow who bought the land from your grandfather. His only son’s a bit of a waster, I hear. When you go to Rookhurst, keep clear of him—after the initial courtesy calls, of course. When do you intend to return to Devon?”

“In two days’ time, Uncle.”

“I might run down and see you.”

“Do. You know my address—Speering Folliot?”

“Yes. Now I must give thanks to your mother——”

When Hilary had left, it was Dora’s turn with her nephew. After repeating more or less what her brother had told Phillip, she said, “What do you
really
want to do with your life, Boy?”

She looked with sympathy at one, to her, hardly more than a child, who still bore the traces of having been the unhappiest small boy she had ever known. Could one ever outgrow the effects of such a marked childhood? Would the strains of farming—and with markets fallen as they had—be too much for him? He was still exhausted from the war, she thought. Too much had been asked of his generation; the survivors still bore the mental weight
of what it had gone through. He looked frail; and the way he had drunk the wine, nearly a whole bottle, so quickly, had grieved her. Would he have done that if the love of his life had not died? Lucy was a dear girl, tender and kind; but had she the strength which that other had possessed in her own right? Was she imaginative enough to cope with
un
poète
manqué,
as Phillip appeared to be? How would Phillip get on with Hilary? The two were worlds apart. A dear brother, yes, simple and straightforward, but congenitally unable to understand ideas outside his own scope, and so tending to dismiss what he did not understand as having no reality. Whereas the true world was the world of the Imagination, as Keats declared.

“If you have a nervous tummy still, Boy, you should try fasting for a couple of weeks. I have found fasting to be of great value in the past; now, with my Babies constantly to look after, I can seldom undertake that way of purification. Do you remember my Babies? The blind one is now partly paralysed, while her sister has delusions, and thinks sometimes that I am trying to poison both her and her sister.”

“How old are they, Aunt Dora?”

“One is turned seventy-eight, and her sister is a year younger, Boy. You must bring Lucy to Lynmouth to see them, when you are settled in your new life. I am afraid I shall not be able to put you up. Now tell me, what are you writing at the moment?”

“Nothing, Aunt Dora.”

*

Phillip felt that he would not be able to pay the high prices of his war-time tailor, Mr. Kerr of Cundit Street, so he went to a tailor in the City to be measured for his ‘glad rags’, thinking that they would be about half the price of a West-end tailor. It was not done, of course, to ask about prices of one’s tailor. He was measured, and arranged to come up later on for a fitting. There was no time to go to a hatter’s, as he was to meet Lucy for lunch and then take her to a matinée in the Strand. The next day they were returning to Dorset, staying for the night with some of her relations in Hampshire, Aunt and Uncle Kimmy, said Lucy.

They arrived after a seventy-mile journey at what turned out to be a country house. Lucy’s aunt, after greeting them, enquired in a voice holding incredulity as she looked at the motor-bicycle, “But is this
all
you have come on?” as though inferring surprise that such a vehicle could have any existence.

A maid showed Phillip to his bedroom. “Her ladyship will be in the garden, sir.”

When he was alone with Lucy he said, “You didn’t tell me that your aunt was Lady Kilmeston. I called her Mrs.! Is your uncle a knight, like Hilary?”

Lucy flushed with shame. “I’m awfully sorry, dear, but I forgot to tell you. He’s Lord Kilmeston. We’ve always called her Aunt Kimmy, she’s Pa’s youngest sister.”

“Are we supposed to dress for dinner?”

“Oh no, they don’t bother!”

In the garden he met Uncle Kimmy wearing a Norfolk jacket and knickerbockers. At dinner it was black trousers and velvet smoking jacket, while the women wore evening frocks and long white kid gloves to the elbow. Phillip thought this glove-business rather strange. It was a simple meal, the men ate asparagus with the fingers, while the ladies, still wearing gloves—Lucy had been lent a pair—ate with forks. This was followed by grilled trout with mayonnaise,
and
new potatoes and peas—an odd mixture, he thought. There were no fish knives, they ate with a fork, with a piece of bread used as a pusher.

Bridge for threepence a hundred followed in the drawing-room.

In the morning he was wondering whether he, as guest, was expected to help Lucy and himself to breakfast from the dishes on the sideboard, for the others stood there, when a sudden entry of servants in rapid step passed them, to form up along one side of
the table and kneel down. He had read of this happening in books, and so knew what was coming. The family knelt down on the opposite side, while his Lordship read prayers, followed by a text for the day from the Bible. On rising the servants curtsied or bowed, the women, picking up their long skirts to leave immediately, while the two footmen removed covers of silver dishes above spirit-stoves on the sideboard, revealing eggs scrambled and poached, grilled kidneys, tomatoes, fried mushrooms and bacon.

It was, like dinner the previous night, a reserved meal. One of Lucy’s cousins was a tall girl with intellectual face who had been at Girton, where she had read the Russian language. He spoke to her about Dostoevski and Tourgenieff but made no headway. It was a relief to be on the open road once more, making for the Dorset hills along the south coast to Dorchester, and so to Lyme Regis and the coast road through Seaton to Sidmouth, where they were to stay the night with other cousins who were to be the bridesmaids, whose mother—“Aunt Dolly married Mother’s younger brother, Matty”—was to help in the choosing and fitting of the bridal gown made locally by her “little woman”.

These cousins were as open and jolly as the others had been reserved; delightful creatures, he thought, one eighteen and the other still at school. They were fairly poor, Lucy had told him.; after a supper of kippers and cocoa, when he helped to clear the plates into the kitchen, he saw Mrs. Matthew Chychester picking pieces of half-eaten kipper and putting them on a saucer—not for a cat, as he supposed, but to help make bloater paste.

“Where’s your Uncle Matty?” he asked Lucy; regretting that he had shown curiosity when she replied, “Oh, he went away long ago, after being sent to prison. He was so nice, too!”

“I shouldn’t have asked!”

“Why not? You’re almost one of the family now!”

The girls prepared coffee after the washing up, and Lucy’s Aunt Dolly said to Phillip, in a tone of voice suggesting the intimacy of an established friendship, “Shall we smoke a cigarette in the sitting-room, and you can tell me what Lucy’s brothers are up to!” with the air of one who was only too ready to enjoy a real gossip.

“Coffee will be here in a moment, now tell me all about Tim! I hear that he is engaged to a gel in the shop where they buy their cigarettes?”

“Yes, I think he is, Mrs. Chychester.”

“Do you think it will come to anything?”

“I really don’t know!”

“Rather a pity, don’t you think, that Adrian shuts himself up so? How can the boys meet anyone of their own kind, with a recluse for a father? Now tell me what this gel is like!” she said winningly.

“Oh, she’s quite a nice sort of gel, quiet and rather shy. Tim seems to be quietly happy with her—but then I’ve only seen them together on one occasion.”

“But a shop gel——!”

“Well—I suppose that Tim, as a working engineer, will sooner or later need a wife, to fit in with that sort of—er, work, don’t you know.” He felt like ‘Mister’ for a moment, and tried to shake off the imposture.

“What about Ernest and Fiennes?”

“Oh, Ernest is a very clever draughtsman, as well as a sound engineer. Fiennes, on the other hand, is in charge of the office of the—of the Dogstar Works——”

“Dogstar Works? What an odd name? Where did they get that from?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, it was my suggestion, Mrs. Chychester—a trade mark for the flash-lamp batteries they’re going to make when they get everything going.”

“How clever of you to think of a name like that! Now tell me, what is a dog-star?”

“It’s a heavenly body, in the constellation of Orion, a big flashing winter star, technically known as Sirius.”

“How jolly! I shall buy one when it comes out. Ah, here are the gels with the coffee! It’s only ‘Bivouac’, I’m afraid. Do you mind?”

*

Was ever a walk in the twilight so beautiful with the darkening hues of the sea along the promenade shattered by a great storm of the previous winter, when it had been feared that the entire length of water-front houses would be swept away by the waves? All was peaceful now, like his life among these pleasant people. Lamplight on table, a game of rummy, cocoa and bread-and-butter before going to bed; and on the morrow a journey to North Devon to see the rector of Speering Folliot about reading the
banns. The only cloud on the horizon was cousin Arthur; would he reply to the letter almost begging him to see that the misunderstanding had arisen over the old Norton because Arthur had conceived an unmentioned, one-sided, and therefore fancied arrangement which did not exist other than in his own mind? It was doubtful. Ah well, he was like his father, a little man after all.

Who else might he ask to be groomsman? All his other cousins had been killed in the war.

The next day Phillip prepared to set off alone, to leave Lucy to be fitted for the wedding dress with her cousins—delightful creatures, he thought as he kissed them on the cheek before pushing off and turning to wave his hand; then up the hills to the north-east, through narrow village streets and winding lanes to Exeter and the road to the north, and so to Speering Folliot, and the inevitable buzzing questions of the Mules’.

*

Some days later he returned to take Lucy home. Then they went to see Billy; and while she was helping Zillah to give him his bath, he beckoned Mrs. Mules into the closed post-office room and confided to her the news of his forthcoming marriage.

“You are one of my good friends, Mrs. Mules, with John and Zillah, so you shall be the first in the village to be told.”

Mrs. Mules threw up her hands. “My dear zoul, us knowed what was comin’ along months agone! Yew can’t tell us nought about that! And what about they banns? And you nivver go to church! Supposin’ pass’n won’t allow they banns? What wull ’ee dew then, hey?”

“Do you think he’ll refuse?”

“Tidden nought to do wi’ me, better go and tell’n now, and ask him to read’m out for ’ee. And you’d better be in church when ’a readeth they banns just in case there be objections!”

“Mrs Mules, how can anyone possibly object?”

“Well you never knaw what might happen, now that they’m all talking about Mr. Beausire’s buke!”

“I thought no one read books in Speering Folliot!”

“Git out! Us’v all read’n, of course us have!” Mrs. Mules was beginning to be short of breath. “Whativver be you about, allowin’ such a man to come yurrabouts and tell all they lies about us yurr in the parish! And with that young woman he pretended to be his wife! Mules be proper upset, I can tell ’ee, how Mr. Beausire has
put him in th’ buke! Tidden true, you know. Tidden true about they cold prunes, neither! ’Twas only because us nivver knowed when ’a was comin’! And you’m made out to be a proper ole moucher, I can tell’ee, a proper rough man you’m made out to be! And you can tell Mr. Beausire from me that if ’a cometh yurr again, I’ll tell he what I think about’m to’s face, I wull!”

“Tes all lies in the book!” cried Zillah, coming into the room. “Come now, Mis’r Mass’n, tell the truth and shame the devil!”

“Oh, he doesn’t get much chance, with all his work in Fleet Street, to write any other kind of book.”

“I don’t think it’s very nice for you either, Miss Copleston! I suppose you’ve seen the book, haven’t you?”

“Well, parts of it,” replied Lucy. “I don’t think Mr. Beausire meant it to be taken seriously.”

“Us will miss Billy, you know, when you’m gone away!”

“Oh, but Phillip is keeping on the cottage. Mayn’t we still come and see you? Billy is so fond of you all, I am sure.”

“Aiy,” murmured the grave-digger, coming in on rubber-tipped heels, removed from an old pair of the parson’s shoes saved from the heap of rubbish for burning in the crypt furnace. “Aiy, that be so. Dear li’l babby. Dear li’l babby he be. A proper boy he be, as proper a li’l boy as ever trod ground,” as Billy tried to stand upright, but sat down again immediately.

*

Calling at the Rectory, Phillip learned to his dismay that a copy of his birth certificate was required before the rector could publish the banns of marriage on three consecutive Sundays. Also he would require assurance that Phillip had been baptised, and thereby show qualification for membership of the Church of England.

After taking Lucy home Phillip went on to London to get the copy, and be fitted for morning coat, vest, and trousers. On the way up he wondered if he could ask Anders Norse to be his groomsman? Or should he write to give him a chance to refuse without embarrassment? Would Anders want to come all the way to Dorset? The sky was clear and the wind from the west as he fled along smoothly at fifty miles an hour, the engine almost inaudible, so sweet was its power now that it was run-in.

After the fitting he called at his agent’s office, to be told by an alert new secretary that Anders was seeing a publisher in York Buildings, in the lower Adelphi. Thither Phillip went, and while
waiting in the dingy little office, with its window view of a smoke-bricked wall rising to the unseen sky, he heard in an upper room a voice protesting loudly, and footfalls passing to and fro on a boarded floor. Could that be Anders? No, said the very young girl clerk in the next room, that was the Office of
The
New
Horizon,
and it sounded like Mr. Wallington Christie arguing with one of his contributors, whom she called ‘Kot’.

“They’re always arguing about something or other!”

“Wallington Christie? I’ve always hoped to meet him, ever since reading his essays in the old days—particularly those on Charles Sorley, and Wilfred Owen! Do you think he would see me?”

“You can but try!”

Phillip had sent to
The
New
Horizon
an essay on
Wild
Birds
in
London
: it had been returned with a note saying that the editor would like to use it, but unfortunately he had not the space. He wrote a letter back to say that there was plenty of space if only the pages were not filled by analyses of God instead of poetry. He thought of sending to Christie a copy of Willie’s
The
German
Concentration
Graveyard
at
Le
Labyrinthe
in
Artois,
but dread of having it returned had stilled the impulse. Then he had wondered if he should send it to Austin Harrison for
The
English
Review.
Had not John Masefield filled an entire number with
The
Everlasting
Mercy
in 1911?

But the letter was not posted. He put it with the essay by Willie back in the drawer with other relicts of his dead cousin which Uncle John had handed over to him.

*

In the pages of
The
New
Horizon
at that time were appearing essays by H. M. Tomlinson, far and away more quickening than anything else in its pages: shimmering descriptions of sun and wind upon the wave-beaten shore of the Two Rivers estuary, Crow Spit, the Santon Burrows, the port of Appledore, the summer mirage along the sands to Down End. There were essays by D. H. Lawrence, too, but they had not the clarity of Tomlinson, though under the strain and the bars of brass that bound him, there was genius in Lawrence. Christie had been good, too, before his wife had died.

Now, as Phillip hesitated outside the office door, the old feeling of diffidence possessed him. Christie might think him pretentious, Christie who was the friend of the great—of Proust, Hardy, Bridges,
Bennett, Shaw, Lawrence, and other famous writers. What visible authority had he to claim for Willie entry into the circle of the elect? In twenty years’ time, perhaps, when coffin and frame had slept away in the chalk of Rookhurst——

But there was a deeper reason for Phillip’s hesitation to declare himself: deeper than his former desire to see
The
German
Concentration
Graveyard
printed in
The
New
Horizon.
The reason was inherent in one of the old essays reprinted in Christie’s
Insights
of
Literature,
called
The
Phoenix.
He had read Christie’s essay in
The
New
Horizon
in the public library in Wakenham, soon after the war, and immediately had thought to himself, I shall write the book which Christie foretells: I am that phoenix, and through me my generation shall arise into life again. After that tremendous self-assumption he had not dared to think more about it, much less confide it to anyone, even to Aunt Dora.