room, but she was not yet asleep.
"Why didn't you come down to the garden with us?" Mary asked.
"I fell down and twisted my ankle. Denis helped me home."
Mary was full of sympathy. Inwardly, too, she was relieved to find
Anne's non-appearance so simply accounted for. She had been vaguely
suspicious, down there in the garden--suspicious of what, she hardly knew;
but there had seemed to be something a little louche in the way she had
suddenly found herself alone with Ivor. Not that she minded, of course; far
from it. But she didn't like the idea that perhaps she was the victim of a
put-up job.
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"I do hope you'll be better to-morrow," she said, and she commiserated
with Anne on all she had missed--the garden, the stars, the scent of flowers,
the meteorites through whose summer shower the earth was now passing,
the rising moon and its gibbosity. And then they had had such interesting
conversation. What about? About almost everything. Nature, art,
science, poetry, the stars, spiritualism, the relations of the sexes, music,
religion. Ivor, she thought, had an interesting mind.
The two young ladies parted affectionately.
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CHAPTER XVIII.
The nearest Roman Catholic church was upwards of twenty miles
away. Ivor, who was punctilious in his devotions, came down early to
breakfast and had his car at the door, ready to start, by a quarter to ten. It
was a smart, expensive-looking machine, enamelled a pure lemon yellow
and upholstered in emerald green leather. There were two seats--three if
you squeezed tightly enough--and their occupants were protected from
wind, dust, and weather by a glazed sedan that rose, an elegant eighteenth-
century hump, from the midst of the body of the car.
Mary had never been to a Roman Catholic service, thought it would be
an interesting experience, and, when the car moved off through the great
gates of the courtyard, she was occupying the spare seat in the sedan.
The sea-lion horn roared, faintlier, faintlier, and they were gone.
In the parish church of Crome Mr. Bodiham preached on 1 Kings vi.
18: "And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops"--a
sermon of immediately local interest. For the past two years the problem
of the War Memorial had exercised the minds of all those in Crome who
had enough leisure, or mental energy, or party spirit to think of such things.
Henry Wimbush was all for a library--a library of local literature, stocked
with county histories, old maps of the district, monographs on the local
antiquities, dialect dictionaries, handbooks of the local geology and
natural history. He liked to think of the villagers, inspired by such
reading, making up parties of a Sunday afternoon to look for fossils and
flint arrow-heads. The villagers themselves favoured the idea of a
memorial reservoir and water supply. But the busiest and most articulate
party followed Mr. Bodiham in demanding something religious in
character--a second lich-gate, for example, a stained-glass window, a
monument of marble, or, if possible, all three. So far, however, nothing
had been done, partly because the memorial committee had never been
able to agree, partly for the more cogent reason that too little money had
been subscribed to carry out any of the proposed schemes. Every three
or four months Mr. Bodiham preached a sermon on the subject. His last
had been delivered in March; it was high time that his congregation had a
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fresh reminder.
"And the cedar of the house within was carved with knops."
Mr. Bodiham touched lightly on Solomon's temple. From thence he
passed to temples and churches in general. What were the characteristics
of these buildings dedicated to God? Obviously, the fact of their, from a
human point of view, complete uselessness. They were unpractical
buildings "carved with knops." Solomon might have built a library-indeed,
what could be more to the taste of the world's wisest man? He
might have dug a reservoir--what more useful in a parched city like
Jerusalem? He did neither; he built a house all carved with knops,
useless and unpractical. Why? Because he was dedicating the work to
God. There had been much talk in Crome about the proposed War
Memorial. A War Memorial was, in its very nature, a work dedicated to
God. It was a token of thankfulness that the first stage in the culminating
world-war had been crowned by the triumph of righteousness; it was at the
same time a visibly embodied supplication that God might not long delay
the Advent which alone could bring the final peace. A library, a reservoir?
Mr. Bodiham scornfully and indignantly condemned the idea. These
were works dedicated to man, not to God. As a War Memorial they were
totally unsuitable. A lich-gate had been suggested. This was an object
which answered perfectly to the definition of a War Memorial: a useless
work dedicated to God and carved with knops. One lich-gate, it was true,
already existed. But nothing would be easier than to make a second
entrance into the churchyard; and a second entrance would need a second
gate. Other suggestions had been made. Stained-glass windows, a
monument of marble. Both these were admirable, especially the latter. It
was high time that the War Memorial was erected. It might soon be too
late. At any moment, like a thief in the night, God might come.
Meanwhile a difficulty stood in the way. Funds were inadequate. All
should subscribe according to their means. Those who had lost relations
in the war might reasonably be expected to subscribe a sum equal to that
which they would have had to pay in funeral expenses if the relative had
died while at home. Further delay was disastrous. The War Memorial
must be built at once. He appealed to the patriotism and the Christian
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sentiments of all his hearers.
Henry Wimbush walked home thinking of the books he would present
to the War Memorial Library, if ever it came into existence. He took the
path through the fields; it was pleasanter than the road. At the first stile a
group of village boys, loutish young fellows all dressed in the hideous ill-
fitting black which makes a funeral of every English Sunday and holiday,
were assembled, drearily guffawing as they smoked their cigarettes.
They made way for Henry Wimbush, touching their caps as he passed.
He returned their salute; his bowler and face were one in their unruffled
gravity.
In Sir Ferdinando's time, he reflected, in the time of his son, Sir Julius,
these young men would have had their Sunday diversions even at Crome,
remote and rustic Crome. There would have been archery, skittles,
dancing--social amusements in which they would have partaken as
members of a conscious community. Now they had nothing, nothing
except Mr. Bodiham's forbidding Boys' Club and the rare dances and
concerts organised by himself. Boredom or the urban pleasures of the
county metropolis were the alternatives that presented themselves to these
poor youths. Country pleasures were no more; they had been stamped out
by the Puritans.
In Manningham's Diary for 1600 there was a queer passage, he
remembered, a very queer passage. Certain magistrates in Berkshire,
Puritan magistrates, had had wind of a scandal. One moonlit summer
night they had ridden out with their posse and there, among the hills, they
had come upon a company of men and women, dancing, stark naked,
among the sheepcotes. The magistrates and their men had ridden their
horses into the crowd. How self-conscious the poor people must suddenly
have felt, how helpless without their clothes against armed and booted
horsemen! The dancers were arrested, whipped, gaoled, set in the stocks;
the moonlight dance is never danced again. What old, earthy, Panic rite
came to extinction here? he wondered. Who knows?-- perhaps their
ancestors had danced like this in the moonlight ages before Adam and Eve
were so much as thought of. He liked to think so. And now it was no
more. These weary young men, if they wanted to dance, would have to
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bicycle six miles to the town. The country was desolate, without life of
its own, without indigenous pleasures. The pious magistrates had
snuffed out for ever a little happy flame that had burned from the
beginning of time.
"And as on Tullia's tomb one lamp burned clear, Unchanged for fifteen
hundred year..."
He repeated the lines to himself, and was desolated to think of all the
murdered past.
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CHAPTER XIX.
Henry Wimbush's long cigar burned aromatically. The "History of
Crome" lay on his knee; slowly he turned over the pages.
"I can't decide what episode to read you to-night," he said thoughtfully.
"Sir Ferdinando's voyages are not without interest. Then, of course,
there's his son, Sir Julius. It was he who suffered from the delusion that
his perspiration engendered flies; it drove him finally to suicide. Or
there's Sir Cyprian." He turned the pages more rapidly. "Or Sir Henry.
Or Sir George...No, I'm inclined to think I won't read about any of these."
"But you must read something," insisted Mr. Scogan, taking his pipe
out of his mouth.
"I think I shall read about my grandfather," said Henry Wimbush, "and
the events that led up to his marriage with the eldest daughter of the last
Sir Ferdinando."
"Good," said Mr. Scogan. "We are listening."
"Before I begin reading," said Henry Wimbush, looking up from the
book and taking off the pince-nez which he had just fitted to his nose-"
before their begin, I must say a few preliminary words about Sir
Ferdinando, the last of the Lapiths. At the death of the virtuous and
unfortunate Sir Hercules, Ferdinando found himself in possession of the
family fortune, not a little increased by his father's temperance and thrift;
he applied himself forthwith to the task of spending it, which he did in an
ample and jovial fashion. By the time he was forty he had eaten and,
above all, drunk and loved away about half his capital, and would
infallibly have soon got rid of the rest in the same manner, if he had not
had the good fortune to become so madly enamoured of the Rector's
daughter as to make a proposal of marriage. The young lady accepted
him, and in less than a year had become the absolute mistress of Crome
and her husband. An extraordinary reformation made itself apparent in
Sir Ferdinando's character. He grew regular and economical in his habits;
he even became temperate, rarely drinking more than a bottle and a half of
port at a sitting. The waning fortune of the Lapiths began once more to
wax, and that in despite of the hard times (for Sir Ferdinando married in
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1809 in the height of the Napoleonic Wars). A prosperous and dignified
old age, cheered by the spectacle of his children's growth and happiness-for
Lady Lapith had already borne him three daughters, and there seemed
no good reason why she should not bear many more of them, and sons as
well--a patriarchal decline into the family vault, seemed now to be Sir
Ferdinando's enviable destiny. But Providence willed otherwise. To
Napoleon, cause already of such infinite mischief, was due, though
perhaps indirectly, the untimely and violent death which put a period to
this reformed existence.
"Sir Ferdinando, who was above all things a patriot, had adopted, from
the earliest days of the conflict with the French, his own peculiar method
of celebrating our victories. When the happy news reached London, it
was his custom to purchase immediately a large store of liquor and, taking
a place on whichever of the outgoing coaches he happened to light on first,
to drive through the country proclaiming the good news to all he met on
the road and dispensing it, along with the liquor, at every stopping-place to
all who cared to listen or drink. Thus, after the Nile, he had driven as far
as Edinburgh; and later, when the coaches, wreathed with laurel for
triumph, with cypress for mourning, were setting out with the news of
Nelson's victory and death, he sat through all a chilly October night on the
box of the Norwich "Meteor" with a nautical keg of rum on his knees and
two cases of old brandy under the seat. This genial custom was one of
the many habits which he abandoned on his marriage. The victories in
the Peninsula, the retreat from Moscow, Leipzig, and the abdication of the
tyrant all went uncelebrated. It so happened, however, that in the
summer of 1815 Sir Ferdinando was staying for a few weeks in the capital.
There had been a succession of anxious, doubtful days; then came the
glorious news of Waterloo. It was too much for Sir Ferdinando; his joyous
youth awoke again within him. He hurried to his wine merchant and
bought a dozen bottles of 1760 brandy. The Bath coach was on the point
of starting; he bribed his way on to the box and, seated in glory beside the
driver, proclaimed aloud the downfall of the Corsican bandit and passed
about the warm liquid joy. They clattered through Uxbridge, Slough,
Maidenhead. Sleeping Reading was awakened by the great news. At
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Didcot one of the ostlers was so much overcome by patriotic emotions and
the 1760 brandy that he found it impossible to do up the buckles of the
harness. The night began to grow chilly, and Sir Ferdinando found that it
was not enough to take a nip at every stage: to keep up his vital warmth
he was compelled to drink between the stages as well. They were
approaching Swindon. The coach was travelling at a dizzy speed--six
miles in the last half-hour--when, without having manifested the slightest
premonitory symptom of unsteadiness, Sir Ferdinando suddenly toppled
sideways off his seat and fell, head foremost, into the road. An
unpleasant jolt awakened the slumbering passengers. The coach was
