Lord Mullion's Secret (19 page)

‘You ought to paint–' Here Swithin checked himself. ‘You ought to paint Lady Patience and Lady Lucy as well.'

‘So I should – or all three together in what's called a conversation piece.' Honeybath wondered just how near Swithin had come to burning the boats of his secret. ‘But there's something of a standstill in the castle at the moment. Miss Camilla Wyndowe has had a sudden severe illness.'

‘So I–' Again Swithin had to break off abruptly. Anybody in the village could know by this time about Miss Wyndowe's condition, but he was being cautious, all the same. ‘The crazed old lady,' he said, ‘used to have me to look after her donkey cart. But she never had much to say to me. I doubt whether she even knew whose grandchild I was.'

‘Is that so?' This feeble rhetorical question was all that Honeybath could manage, since there had come upon him the irrational conviction that some moment of astonishing revelation was imminent. By now (and in this like the reader) he had only to glance at Swithin Gore to know that he had been born a Wyndowe – no matter precisely on what wrong side of a blanket. It was true that in Swithin the family likeness was by no means writ large; he was better looking, for one thing, than any other male Wyndowe that Honeybath knew. But to an informed eye it was absolutely and hauntingly there – as it had been upon the odd occasion of Honeybath's first encountering Mr Pring's assistant.

But if Honeybath expected to receive a revelation Swithin himself afforded not the slightest impression of being about to make one. There had been nothing that could be called in the least degree meaningful about his last remark. He had no particular interest in the crazed old lady. and now he changed the subject in the most unaffected way.

‘I'll Just call down to Charlie Dew.' he said, ‘and tell him to make us a brew, he doesn't do it badly, and his kettle's always on the hob.'

Honeybath hastened to express his satisfaction at this proposal, since its hospitable nature evidently reflected what Swithin judged proper behaviour in one to whom a handsome apology has just been offered. So Swithin hauled up the trapdoor and gave his instructions – this with a certain air of authority – to the old creature below.

‘And bang,' he concluded briefly, as he let the trapdoor down again. ‘How do you like my room?' he then asked.

‘Very much.' Honeybath had judged this question remarkable in its small way. Swithin wasn't being challenging. He had simply discerned that Honeybath was rather curious to look about him in an inquiring manner, and had devised a means whereby he could do so freely and with perfect civility. So Honeybath got up and strolled around. The motorcycle magazine, he saw, didn't reflect what could he called a major note. Swithin Gore was at least so far distinguished from the unassuming class to which he belonged that to him a hook was a hook and not a popular illustrated journal. The whole Patty business would of course be inconceivable if something of the sort were not true. Swithin's hooks, which were numerous, were in fact much like Patty's own, since they were in the main instructive rather than recreative in character. But his was perhaps the more structured and purposive collection: a fact most strikingly attested by a formidable array of mathematical and scientific text-books. There is much to he said for the pursuit of mathematics in particular by persons of simple breeding and irregular education. Provided you have the right sort of mind, you are on a level here with anybody else. But this sage reflection didn't long detain Honeybath, since he was now much more aware of something else.

Swithin Gore was interested in foreign parts. The low walls of this attic room, when not occupied by windows and improvised book shelves, were covered with pictures of distant places. Some were in elaborate if battered frames; some were simply pinned up without mounts; there were old steel engravings, modern colour prints. photographs, pencil drawings, and watercolour sketches. It looked as if Swithin had formed the habit of picking up such things at small auction sales. Honeybath was about to ask ‘Have you travelled much?' when he realized that this would be a foolish question. Swithin was not of a generation that had seen National Service, and he was still too young to have been even briefly in and out of the army. Swithin was simply possessed with a measure of
Wanderlust
which he had been without the means to satisfy.

Confronted by these evidences– which, after all, he had been invited to inspect – Honeybath ventured a remark or two about identifiable scenes and edifices. Swithin, who showed no sign of regarding this particular hobby of his as anything out of the way, produced unremarkable replies, and then Mr Dew banged on the trapdoor and mugs of tea were served. The brew was a little strong for Honeybath's taste, but good of its kind. Honeybath, however, paid not much attention to it. For a surprising revelation had happened, after all. And its implications he resolved to tackle at once.

‘I'm interested in this one,' he said, moving towards the wall. ‘Do you know anything about it?'

‘Nothing at all.' Swithin, too, came up and glanced at one of the watercolours. ‘I've wondered whether perhaps it's Bath.'

‘Bath?'

‘All those massive ruins. It might be what was left long after the Romans had left the place. The Anglo-Saxons could make nothing of it, and thought it might be the ancient work of giants.'

‘Is that so?' Honeybath didn't pause on this respectable show of erudition. ‘It's the Forum in Rome,' he said.

‘Well, I might have thought of that. It's rather nice, isn't it? You can see it's one of the ones done by hand.'

‘It is, indeed. And the hand, Swithin, was Miss Camilla Wyndowe's.'

‘Then that explains it.' Swithin, bewilderingly, seemed not much impressed or surprised by this information. ‘It must have come from Grandmother Pipton, that one.'

‘Pipton?' The name rang some vague but recent bell in Honeybath's head.

‘My grandmother was Miss Wyndowe's maid at one time,' Swithin said. ‘She travelled with her on the continent, I've heard. And I suppose she was given this.' For the first time, Swithin spoke a shade stiffly and shortly. He was a young man for whom Honeybath was coming to have a considerable respect. But he could not be immune from the pressures of society, and he was in love with a girl in whose family his grandmother had been a maid-servant. The thought was not quite comfortable to him.

It wasn't quite comfortable to Honeybath either – and rather the less so because of what he now took to be the plain fact of Swithin's blood-relationship with the Wyndowes. And it was a fact – he was now equally certain – that Swithin himself knew nothing about. Whatever the secret of Swithin's birth might be, Swithin had never been let in on it.

For a moment it was Honeybath's strong impulse to blow this ignorance sky-high there and then. But he saw that this, even if desirable, was not really feasible – if only because the present evidence was too absurdly thin. Swithin Gore must have studied himself in his looking-glass often enough, even if nowadays it was only for the purpose of shaving. If he had never glimpsed what Honeybath had clearly seen there was no good in inviting him to repeat the exercise now. There was of course the much more mysterious fact that Swithin had inherited not merely a Wyndowe nose or chin but certain impalpable endowments as well. This too seemed to Honeybath a plain truth. But most people would regard any notions of this sort as mere superstition, and Swithin himself might well be among them.

But at least Swithin, just because he was completely unaware of any mystery attending his birth, could be questioned a little further without any more present awkwardness than that small one of the menial condition of Grandmother Pipton. So Honeybath ventured on this now.

‘And what happened to your grandmother Pipton,' he asked, ‘after she had gone travelling with Miss Wyndowe?'

‘She came back to Mullion and married my grandfather, Abel Gore. Almost at once, I think. My father, Ammon Gore, was their only child. He didn't live long after my birth. And my mother didn't, either. In fact, I don't remember her.' Swithin paused for a moment on this. ‘She was a servant at the castle, too,' he said. ‘A housemaid.'

‘So that's your family history.' Honeybath said – and tried to convey by his tone that he had no wish to continue what might seem an impertinent inquisition.

‘Yes, that's it. The short and simple annals of the poor.' Swithin's own tone had changed, and for the first time hinted something very like dejection. ‘It's a medieval set-up, and you can't get away from it. We're in real life – aren't we? – and not in some stupid fairy-tale. The young hero goes out into the world, makes a fortune, and comes back again with everybody applauding like mad. That's not me. I don't want a fortune. There are just some things I want to know about and be effective at, apart from coping with begonias. And one thing I want very much.'

Honeybath got to his feet, prompted by an obscure feeling that the moment hadn't yet quite come for further confidential talk with Swithin Gore.

‘I don't much care for begonias myself,' he said. And then, on a sudden impulse, he added, ‘But I'm all for good luck with wallflowers, Swithin.'

For a moment Swithin made no reply. He had been startled, but now he gave Honeybath his long straight look.

‘It was nice of you to come,' he then said. And he yanked up the trapdoor and offered Honeybath a hand down. It was rather like the business, Honeybath thought, of getting Miss Wyndowe in or out of her lift.

 

 

Dr Hinkstone, being a medical practitioner of the old school, called on his patient twice a day, sat at the bedside feeling her pulse for five minutes on end, and then put in further time writing out prescriptions rather in the meditative and pausing way of a poet tackling a difficult stanzaic form: the effect of this being an impression that something deeply innovatory in this branch of treatment was in hand. When these rituals had been performed he would proceed to the drawing-room, report his latest conclusions to whatever member of the family was waiting to receive them, and accept a cup of coffee or a glass of sherry according to the hour of the day. On the present occasion Honeybath, having returned to the castle and donned his black tie and its accessories, found him thus closeted with Lady Mullion and Cyprian. Over the sherry there hung a slight air of illicit consumption. The mice, in fact, were at play, the cat being confined to her bedchamber.

Dr Hinkstone had every appearance of being a hale and hearty octogenarian. He carried around with him (at least among the upper classes) a graceful but easy professional manner; and like the vicar he had the air of one content to take his well-merited ease in agreeable society at the close of his day's labours.

‘Camilla is holding on famously,' he was saying – and this mode of reference obliged Honeybath to conclude that he had been the aged patient's medical attendant virtually in her childhood. ‘With a bit of luck – for there's always luck in the matter, you know, as well as the right nostrums – she'll be thrown neither at this fence nor the next one. She's as tough as I recall her father to have been. And nobody was tougher than Sylvanus.'

‘Sylvanus?' Cyprian repeated. ‘That must be the antique Sylvanus.'

‘The antique Sylvanus if you like, my boy. And why don't you get married, by the way? Nothing builds up a sound constitution in a man more surely than early marriage. Impress that on your son, my dear Lady Mullion.'

‘I don't consider Cyprian's constitution much at risk, Dr Hinkstone.' The Countess of Mullion, being no Wyndowe, had seemingly to be formally addressed. ‘But there's no doubt much to be said for settling those things early. I certainly hope to see Cyprian's heir.'

‘So do I, and to have the circumcising of him, if need be. If a lad holds his fire too long, you know, he may never bring down his bird at all. Things may go wrong with him. Just think of your Great-uncle Rupert, Cyprian.'

‘We never think of my Great-uncle Rupert, Doctor. It's not encouraged, and I don't believe my mother knows anything more about him than I do. He's treated as the black sheep of the family – which is unfair, if you ask me. If he hadn't held his fire, as you call it, he'd have picked up a wife and kids before he died, and none of us would be perched in Mullion Castle now. My father would be plain Mr Wyndowe, picking up a living in some office in the city. We ought all to be grateful to whatever disreputable courses Rupert took to. And what were they, anyway? Was he gay, or something like that?'

‘Cyprian, dear,' Lady Mullion said.

‘Oh, come off it, mama. I'm sure Dr Hinkstone knows, and can come clean about it after all this time, without any rot about violating professional confidence, and all that.'

‘That's as may be, Cyprian.' Dr Hinkstone was comfortably amused by the turn the conversation had taken. ‘But I scarcely attended your great-uncle, and possess no secrets about him whatever. It's certainly no secret that he was without the sexual inclination you suggest. It was very distinctly otherwise with him.'

‘He was more of the current Sylvanus' sort, was he?' As he asked this question Cyprian glanced wickedly at Honeybath. It was clear that he took pleasure in airing these improper curiosities before a stray guest in the castle. But Lady Mullion was now definitely displeased, and Dr Hinkstone responded to a perception of this at once.

‘I've really nothing to tell you about him, Cyprian. Try Atlay, if you must be so curious. As I said, Rupert Wyndowe scarcely came my way. He was virtually an expatriate, you know. He spent almost all his adult days abroad. In Italy for the most part, I believe.'

Nobody familiar with the mental constitution of Charles Honeybath will be surprised to learn that at this juncture a splendidly amazing idea came to him. It was less an idea, indeed, than a perception – and a perception that almost instantly gained the status of a conviction. The young Camilla Wyndowe, sketchbook in hand, had not been overthrown (whether literally or otherwise) by a
contadino
disguised as a demigod in a vineyard. She had been seduced by her own first cousin, Rupert Wyndowe, son and heir of the head of their family, the then Earl of Mullion. And since the thus sullied virgin had taken up a permanent residence in Mullion Castle long before the present earl's children were born, it was unsurprising that these children, Cyprian included, had never been told of so scandalous a piece of family history. But what of Lady Mullion? It seemed almost certain to Honeybath that she had not been dissimulating her better knowledge when she had expressed herself as owning no more than a vague sense of some mysterious element in Camilla's history.