‘And capital shooting,’ added Gundred. ‘Such nice moors, they tell me, Isabel. We will go up and have lunch with the guns as often as we can—yes?’
‘Yes, the moors are gorgeous,’ said Kingston. ‘I don’t shoot myself; I have given it up. But the moors are certainly gorgeous. One can lose one’s self on them for hours, and probably fall into potholes and things.’
‘Oh, you must take up your shooting again, dear,’ protested Gundred, who had the usual tender-hearted woman’s ambition that her husband should destroy innocent lives as lavishly and enthusiastically and successfully as fashion demands. ‘You must certainly take it up again. I do think it such a good thing for a man to have some interest in life, don’t you, Isabel—something for him to do in the country—yes?’
Isabel abruptly let this uninteresting development of the conversation lapse unanswered.
‘The country does sound attractive,’ she conceded, turning eager eyes on Kingston. ‘And you talk of it as if you belonged there. But you don’t, of course.’
‘No, but my dear mother has spent so many years pretending to that the pretence is second nature by now. Dear mother! it used to be the funniest thing in the world to see her playing at the Old Established Family. It was her great ambition, and she drilled my poor father day and night into acting the squire. By now I verily believe she has persuaded herself that we have been settled at Ivescar for half a dozen centuries at least. She goes about among the tenants with the most splendid air of having known them all, and all their families, since the days of Edward the Confessor. There’s nothing so genuine as a good imitation—except that the good imitation is generally too good, and overdoes itself.’
‘Well,’ said Isabel, ‘you have fired me with a longing for the mountains and the caves and waterfalls. But what is the house itself like?’
At this point Gundred caught them up again. She had dropped out of the dialogue in a twinge of decorous annoyance at the cavalier way in which Isabel had ignored her opening on sport and shelved the conversation.
‘A very nice house, Kingston tells me,’ she put in. ‘Built about a hundred years ago. Very comfortable and convenient.’
‘Ah, I know,’ interrupted Isabel. ‘That tells me everything. All of the best Early-Victorian Tudor. Everything solid and handsome and expensive, with a picture of your husband’s father in the hall, life-size, carrying a gun and a dead rabbit. I can imagine Ivescar—just a house—just a thing with doors and roofs and windows—simply a place to live in. Now, this, this’—she waved her hands comprehensively—‘this isn’t a place to live in. It’s a place that lives on people. Here it’s the people that are subordinate to the building. At Ivescar nobody cares about the house except for the people. The house only exists to keep their feet warm, and send them up their dinner all cosy and hot from the kitchen. Yes, Ivescar is a place to live in, and this is a place to die in. One can’t imagine one’s self dying in an ordinary house. Death is too big a thing to come under its nice squatty ceilings. One feels the whole thing would fly in flinders; Death would lift the roof off, and burst the walls, if he came in. He is so large. But one could die here, and the setting would not be a bit mean or unsuited to the drama. Any nice, carpety, cushiony building does to live in; one wants a really-truly house to die in—a place where one can receive the Great Visitor without feeling cramped or undignified or cheap. Imagine dying in a chintz bedroom, with enamelled tin baths and foot-pans and hot-water cans.’