§ 5
At Conster Manor dinner was always eaten in state. Lady Alard took hers apart in her sitting-room, and sometimes Doris had it with her. On his “bad days” Sir John was wont to find Doris a convenient butt, and as she was incapable either of warding off or receiving gracefully the arrows of his wrathful wit, she preserved her dignity by a totally unappreciated devotion to her mother. Tonight, however, she could hardly be absent, in view of Peter’s return, and could only hope that the presence of the heir would distract her father from his obvious facilities.
George and Rose had stayed to dinner in honour of the occasion or rather had come back from a visit to Leasan Vicarage for the purpose of changing their clothes. Rose always resented having to wear evening dress when “just dining with the family.” At the Rectory she wore last year’s summer gown, and it seemed a wicked waste to have to put on one of her only two dance frocks when invited to Conster. But it was a subject on which Sir John had decided views.
“Got a cold in your chest, Rose?” he had inquired, when once she came in her parsonage voile and fichu, and on another occasion had coarsely remarked: “I like to see a woman’s shoulders. Why don’t you show your shoulders, Rose? In my young days every woman showed her shoulders if she’d got any she wasn’t ashamed of. But nowadays the women run either to bone or muscle—so perhaps you’re right.”
Most of the Alard silver was on the table—ribbed, ponderous stuff of eighteenth century date, later than the last of the lost causes in which so much had been melted down. Some fine Georgian and Queen Anne glass and a Spode dinner-service completed the magnificence, which did not, however, extend to the dinner itself. Good cooks were hard to find and ruinously expensive, requiring also their acolytes; so the soup in the Spode tureen might have appeared on the dinner-table of a seaside boarding-house, the fish was represented by greasily fried plaice, followed by a leg of one of the Conster lambs, reduced by the black magic of the kitchen to the flavour and consistency of the worst New Zealand mutton.
Peter noted that things had “gone down,” and had evidently been down for a considerable time, judging by the placidity with which (barring a few grumbles from Sir John) the dinner was received and eaten. The wine, however, was good—evidently the pre-war cellar existed. He began to wonder for the hundredth time what he had better do to tighten the Alard finances—eating bad dinners off costly plate seemed a poor economy. Also why were a butler and two footmen necessary to wait on the family party? The latter were hard-breathing young men, recently promoted from the plough, and probably cheap enough, but why should his people keep up this useless and shoddy state when their dear lands were in danger? Suppose that in order to keep their footmen and their silver and their flowers they had to sell Ellenwhorne or Glasseye—or, perhaps, even Starvecrow....
After the dessert of apples from Conster orchard and a dish of ancient nuts which had remained untasted and unchanged since the last dinner-party, the women and Gervase left the table for the drawing-room. Gervase had never sought to emphasise his man’s estate by sitting over his wine—he always went out like this with the women, and evidently meant to go on doing so now he had left school. George on the other hand remained, though he rather aggressively drank nothing but water.
“It’s not that I consider there is anything wrong in drinking wine,” he explained broad-mindedly to Sir John and Peter, “but I feel I must set an example.”
“To whom?” thundered Sir John.
“To my parishioners.”
“Well, then, since you’re not setting it to us, you can clear out and join the ladies. I won’t see you sit there despising my port—which is the only good port there’s been in the Rye division since ’16—besides I want a private talk with Peter.”
The big clergyman rose obediently and left the room, his feelings finding only a moment’s expression at the door, when he turned round and tried (not very successfully) to tell Peter by a look that Sir John must not be allowed to drink too much port in his gouty condition.
“He’s a fool,” said his father just before he had shut the door. “I don’t know what the church is coming to. In my young days the Parson drank his bottle with the best of ’em. He didn’t go about being an example. Bah! who’s going to follow Georgie’s example?”
“Who, indeed?” said Peter, who had two separate contempts for parsons and his brother George, now strengthened by combination.
“Well, pass me the port anyhow. Look here, I want to talk to you—first time I’ve got you alone. What are you going to do now you’re back?”
“I don’t know, Sir. I’ve scarcely had time to think.”
“You’re the heir now, remember. I’d rather you stayed here. You weren’t thinking of going back into Lightfoot’s, were you?”
“I don’t see myself in the city again. Anyhow I’d sooner be at Conster.”
“That’s right. That’s your place now. How would you like to be Agent?”
“I’d like it very much, Sir. But can it be done? What about Greening?”
“He’s an old fool, and has been muddling things badly the last year or two. He doesn’t want to stay. I’ve been talking to him about putting you in, and he seemed glad.”
“I’d be glad too, Sir.”
“You ought to know more about the estate than you do. It’ll be yours before long—I’m seventy-five, you know. When Hugh was alive I thought perhaps a business career was best for you, so kept you out of things. You’ll have to learn a lot.”
“I love the place, Sir—I’m dead keen.”
“Yes, I remember you always wanted.... Of course I’ll put you into Starvecrow.”
“Starvecrow!”
“Don’t repeat my words. The Agent has always lived at Starvecrow, and there are quite enough of us here in the house. Besides there’s another thing. How old are you?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Time you married, ain’t it?”
“I suppose it is.”
“I was thirty, myself, when I married, but thirty-six is rather late. How is it you haven’t married earlier?”
“Oh, I dunno—the war I suppose.”
“The war seems to have had the opposite effect on most people. But my children don’t seem a marrying lot. Doris ... Hugh ... there’s Mary, of course, and George, but I don’t congratulate either of ’em. Julian’s a mean blackguard, and Rose——” Sir John defined Rose in terms most unsuitable to a clergyman’s wife.
“You really must think about it now,” he continued—“you’re the heir; and of course you know—we want money.”
Peter did not speak.
“We want money abominably,” said Sir John, “in fact I don’t know how we’re to carry on much longer without it. I don’t want to have to sell land—indeed, it’s practically impossible, all trussed up as we are. Starvecrow could go, of course, but it’s useful for grazing and timber.”
“You’re not thinking of selling Starvecrow?”
“I don’t want to—we’ve had it nearly two hundred years; it was the first farm that Giles Alard bought. But it’s also the only farm we’ve got in this district that isn’t tied—there’s a mortgage on the grazings down by the stream, but the house is free, with seventy acres.”
“It would be a shame to let it go.”
Peter was digging into the salt-cellar with his dessert knife.
“Well, I rely on you to help me keep it. Manage the estate well and marry money.”
“You’re damn cynical, Sir. Got any especial—er—money in your mind?”
“No, no—of course not. But you ought to get married at your age, and you might as well marry for the family’s advantage as well as your own.”
Peter was silent.
“Oh, I know there’s a lot to be said against getting married, but in your position—heir to a title and a big estate—it’s really a duty. I married directly my father died. But don’t you wait for that—you’re getting on.”
“But who am I to marry? There’s not such a lot of rich girls round here.”
“You’ll soon find one if you make up your mind to it. My plan is first make up your mind to get married and then look for the girl—not the other way round, which is what most men do, and leads to all kinds of trouble. Of course I know it isn’t always convenient. But what’s your special objection? Any entanglement? Don’t be afraid to tell me. I know there’s often a little woman in the way.”
Peter squirmed at his father’s Victorian ideas of dissipation with their “little women.” He’d be talking of “French dancers” next....
“I haven’t any entanglement, Sir.”
“Then you take my words to heart. I don’t ask you to marry for money, but marry where money is, as Shakespeare or somebody said.”