The Link

Front matter

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* ey

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Chapter One

I suppose I must have spent the best part of a week, when I had made up my mind to write this book, thinking out what was the best point to start from. I tried going right back to the beginning of things, and found that that would have meant taking about a million words to tell the story. I have tried the old in medias res but found that I got so tied up after a very short time that neither I nor anybody else could ever have made out what it was all about; and then | put the thing away. I was a bit hopeless about it. And then it suddenly dawned on me that there was only one place to begin, and that was the day—it was the 23d August 193—when something happened in Samsford for the first time since King Charles didn’t hide in the big tree behind The Moon.

The more I think about it the more I realize that that day—it was a Friday—might have been arranged by an | expert playwright. From my point of view, that is. Because I have only got to start and tell what I did on that day to introduce all the important characters, give a very good idea of local feelings, above-water and under-current, and finish up by getting any reader right in at the death.

You remember that August. The hottest English summer I ever knew, and actually, or so the papers said, the hottest for fifty-five years. I waked—or rather got up, because it had been too hot to go to sleep properly—about seven. I hoped, without much faith, that it wasn’t going to be a busy day. I was only halfway through shaving when to be a busy day it began. Telephone. Mrs. Willington’s cocker bitch seemed to have gone mad. Could I go at once? What was Mrs. Willington’s cocker bitch doing? Mrs. Willington’s cocker bitch was lying down in the coach house and wouldn’t come out, not for nobody. How did Mrs. Willington’s cocker bitch look? Mrs. Willington’s cocker bitch looked queer-like. Panting at all? Running round in circles? Shrieking? Drooling at the mouth? No, none of these things. All right, I would go round and see Mrs. Willington’s cocker bitch as soon as I could manage; that would be at approximately nine-thirty. In the meantime Mrs. Willington’s cocker bitch had better be left alone.

I finished shaving, and had got half my trousers on when the telephone rang again. Message from Mr. Stubbs —Mr. Thomas, not Mr. Giles—please could Mr. Lawless come sometime in the morning and see one of the new Jerseys which had torn its leg on some barbed wire? Mr. Lawless might, but was Mr. Stubbs sure that he wanted Mr. Lawless? Mr. Stubbs, Mr. Lawless thought, generally had Mr. Clayton from Havering for cows. .. . Oh, Mr. Clayton was unable to come? All right.

Mrs. Yule didn’t give me much breakfast that morning. Very wise of her. I was halfway through my third grapefruit, when again the telephone.

“Is that Mr. Lawless? Please, sir, Father sez could you possibly slip down and see the pony? Father thinks he didn’t ought to work him to-day, ’e’s that ’ot in one of ’is front feet.”

After I had finished breakfast and had a couple of cigarettes I went out for that one. It only meant three hundred yards down the hill to The Moon, and I rather liked old Dinwater. As I got to the gate Yule came running after me. Telephone again. I said:

“Tell ’em I’m out.”

The old man shifted his straw to the other corner of his mouth, twitched at the forelock which he must have lost at least forty years ago, and ambled off. But I caught him, thank the Lord, before he reached the porch. I had just remembered whom that call might be from. Might be, but almost certainly wasn’t... . .

Yet it was. For once it was. And it wasn’t a message. She spoke to me herself. One of the hunters—the black mare which was out at grass—had slipped its leg through a sheep hurdle, got cast, and seemed to have a very bad » sprain. I said:

“Tl come up at once—if that’ll be all right?”

I had a bit of a job to keep my voice straight, but I managed it all right. She seemed to hesitate at that; she said: .

“Oh—thank you. Yes... er a

“I could manage any other time, if now isn’t convenient.”” I said that very quickly. I remember wondering whether it wasn’t too quickly, even as the words came out.

She seemed relieved. “‘Half-past eleven, I was thinking,” she said, “if you’re sure you a

“Perfectly sure. As a matter of fact it’ll fit in- very conveniently.”” My mouth had gone all dry. I had to make two shots at the next words, but I got them out all right.

“At the house,” she answered them. “If you wouldn’t mind. Then I could come with you.”

I went down the hill after that at a good five miles an hour, instead of the wheezy three most people were using that summer. I didn’t even remember it was hot; at least, not until I got into the hutch that Dinwater called a stable. Dinwater wasn’t there himself, but his girl, Mary, held the pony’s head while I investigated.

We went out into the yard when Id finished. It was cooler in the sun than in that place. I did a bit of mopping.

“You're that hot,” Mary said. ““Would you like——” She let her eyes flicker a glance toward Dinwater’s back door.

“Would I /ike!’’ I said. I roamed off in her wake with that guilty prickling between my shoulder blades which I believe every Englishman feels whenever he is going to break a law. |

Mary set her hand to the latch of the door and pushed. There was a muffled grunt from inside. It seemed that I wasn’t the only law-breaker. We had to squeeze in past the thickness of Aviss, the American who had taken Lady - Sibart’s little white house every summer for the past four years.

I quite liked Aviss. Although he was rather truculently American, he didn’t seem to suffer from the illusion, by no means confined to foreigners, that a vet. is necessarily rather a bad smell which you blow away as soon as Fido’s tummyache’s got better, and I also liked Aviss, not because I knew him, but because although he seemed to be a rich man he was an inveterate pub user, and there is always something more likeable about the men who use pubs than about those who don’t.

He was drinking bitter out of one of Dinwater’s special quart pots. He wanted Mary to get one for me, but I boggled. I said:

“Tt isn’t that I wouldn’t like it, but I’ve got what looks like a sticky day in front of me. Dunno what it is about hot weather, but all the animals, except the two-legged ones, seem to go down.”

I had a half with Aviss, and then another while I stood him what must have been his third quart that morning. I remember, as I walked out into the yard again, seeing his huge face with those perpetual horn-rimmed spectacles like two dark-rimmed moons across it, looking out after me round the corner of the door.

I went back up the hill again, much slower than I had come down. I tried not to keep looking at my watch; I tried to forget all about eleven-thirty so that when it came half-past eleven would be a marvellous surprise, but of course I couldn’t. I got back to my place again, and managed to waste another twenty minutes watching Yule saddle Daisy. It was a quarter to eleven as I mounted her.

I yelled at Yule to take some embrocation down to The Moon and to tell his wife that the more drink and less food she put out at lunchtime the better I should like it. And then I let Daisy make her own pace up the hill and round over the Freeland to Mother Willington’s.

I turned in at the big gate and rode round the drive and into the stable yard. Nobody seemed to hear Daisy’s hooves and nobody seemed to hear when I whistled. J dismounted and hitched the mare to a ring outside the harness room. From inside the coach house I could hear a whining which I assumed must be the cocker bitch, J walked across and put my hand to the latch, but I had barely tauched the thing before the door shot open “and nearly took my nose off. Mrs. Willington herself. I hadn’t seen her for a year and somehow she was even more like a dog than ever. She said, biting her words off in that way she has which is rather like a Cairn barking:

“So it’s you, is it. Mornin’! What the devil they were ringin’ you up for I don’t know. Nothing the matter with the bitch at all. Simply that fat-head Mulliner. No animal’ll do anything he wants ’em to. Don’t blame ’em. Damn’ fool! Only thing the matter with Dido is that she’s going to pup. Quite right! Like to see her?”

I had been trying to get a word in edgeways all this time, but now that I had a chance to speak I didn’t feel like it. I smiled and nodded. I remember feeling rather disappointed that there wasn’t anything the matter with the dog. Made half-past eleven seem all the further away. I followed the Willington into the coach house and found Belton there.

Belton was the Canadian who was very friendly—or seemed very friendly—at the Hall. I’d never liked him much. Pleasant-mannered chap, forty-ish, with too much money and one of those good tailors who seem too economical with their cloth. The Willington said:

“Know each other? This is Mr. Lawless, Mr. Belton, our vet. <5

Belton took her up. “Oh, Lawless and I know each other all right,” he said. “Don’t we?”

I nodded.

The Willington snapped her fingers and let out a shriek. “Dido! Dido!” The cocker came running up to me, wagging her tail, her ears flopping. I knelt down and had a look at her. Barring a trace of fever she seemed quite all right.

“Nothing the matter with that, eh, Lawless?” Belton always talked round a cigar, generally one that wasn’t lighted. You could always hear everything he said, but it gave his words a sort of droning sound I never liked. I said:

“Nothing much.”

“Anything at all?’ The Willmgton cocked her ears at once.

“Looks as fit as a flea to me,” Belton said. He had a trick of using perfectly English idioms and yet making them sound like Bowery slang. It always annoyed me.

“Definitely off-colour.” I didn’t look at him.

“Any fever?” The Willington knelt down beside me. I saw that she was wearing heavy box-cloth gaiters below her tweed skirt, and the temperature was at least ninety

_ in the shade! I shrugged. I fished out a thermometer and

_ we took the thing’s temperature. Two points above

~ normal.

The Willington was worried. She always is if the slightest thing goes wrong with any of her dogs. If all the human household died I don’t think she’d lose a moment’s sleep. I wrote out a prescription and soothed her down, told her it was nothing to be worried about. I couldn’t resist a smack at Belton though. I finished up:

“It’s always as well to take care of them this weather, especially these heavy-coated ones. Mr. Aviss has been having trouble with his two, but I must say he’s been very sensible about ’em.”

I felt the Willington’s bony elbow dig into my ribs and gave her a shrug of apology entirely hypocritical. I’d had my smack at Belton and that was all I cared about. The very name of Aviss was anathema to that chap, and any praise of him, even a footling little remark like mine, practically unbearable. He choked and dropped his cigar and started to say something, but old Willington charged in like a sheep dog after a stray ewe. I don’t know what she said but she said it so loud and so hard that. it was impossible for anybody else to get a word in.

I left her the prescription and went back to where Daisy was tethered, feeling just a bit ashamed of myself. Mrs. Willington came out and said good-bye to me and then walked off toward the house saying something over her shoulder to Belton about amusing himself. till lunchtime. I took up Daisy’s girths a hole and was just going to mount when Belton came up behind me. His cigar was back in his mouth and he was all smooth again. He said:

“See much of that Aviss, Mister Lawless?’ He said the “Mister” like that, drawing it out. I was very edgy that:

morning, what with the heat and this fellow’s personality and waiting for half-past eleven and everything. I said:

“Not so much as I'd like. I’ve always thought he seemed not only very pleasant but extremely interesting. . Good-morning!”

I swung on to Daisy and she clattered rather indignantly out of the yard. As we turned into the road I got a glimpse of Belton standing where I had left him, chewing the end of his cigar to bits.

I looked at my watch—to feel, almost immediately, gratitude to the man I had been baiting. Only ten minutes to go and eight minutes’ ride. I let Daisy walk again and deliberately, to keep from anticipation which might be withered, made myself think about the extraordinary enmity between Belton and Aviss. There was never much to talk about in and about Samsford except other people, so that for the last three years Aviss and Belton had been a godsend. Always they came for the summer, always they took the same houses, grounds adjoining, always they were meeting as they must at other people’s houses, and unfailingly, overtly and covertly, did they scrap. If you mentioned Belton to Aviss that huge moon of a face seemed to change in a minute from a benevolent turnip to a rather awkward piece of rock, and the face’s owner would turn the subject. If you mentioned Aviss to Belton you either had to be rude to Belton or were in for a thirty-minute discourse on the general unpleasingness of Aviss. The general opinion was that it was “partly to do with Mr. Belton’s being a Canadian and Mr. Aviss an American—you know, my dear, the two lots can’t bear each other. I remember my sister, you know she’s lived in New York for years, once telling me...” and partly something much bigger, like hate at first sight.

i Daisy broke into her long easy trot as we left the road and swung left through the white gate of the West Lodge.

_ It was very cool under the horse-chestnuts and I pushed the old girl into a canter. Twenty-three minutes past eleven. I should be at the house in four—twenty-seven minutes after, that would be. Three minutes early. Quite excusable.

Daisy’s canter turned into a hand gallop. I don’t think I induced it physically, but she’s of a most receptive mentality, that mare. I let her gallop. Straight down the rough grass strip which edges the drive we went. I remember the delicious sensation of feeling a breeze again after all those airless, stifling days.

I pulled her down through all her paces to a walk just as we reached the gravelled sweep which leads to the front of the great mass, hideous and yet kindly, of the Hall.

T left the bulk of the house on my right and came, through the arches, into the stables. Grimstock, the stud groom, touched his hat as I dismounted.

“Her leddyship,” he said, “give orders we was to let her know when you came, sir. She’d like to see the mare with you.” He turned and shouted something and a stable boy went off at the double.

An odd thing happened to me then. I answered the man, but didn’t know I’d so much as opened my mouth. Shows what condition I was in. He said:

“No, sir. We didn’t bring the mare up. Leddyship’s orders.”’ His tone was noncommittal. ‘‘ Fearsome hot, this weather!”

As he said that, I realized that I was cold. Sweating as I was, I was cold. Cold with that altogether damnable interior chilliness a child gets when it’s waiting for a tremendous something which may at the last moment be withheld. I couldn’t speak. I bent down and fiddled with

Io THE LINK the garter strap on my right boot. . . . And then Sheila’s voice from behind me... .

I think she only said ‘‘Good-morning,” but to this day I couldn’t tell you. Not that it matters. What mattered was that she was there; there in front of me—herself and not that lovely wraith in my mind I’d had to be satisfied with for this past month of days like decades.

I raised my cap. Still I couldn’t speak. For a moment she looked at me; her eyes—those faint, oddly and delightfully straight brows lifted a little above them—made my head swim.

She turned and I walked beside her. As we went, through the stable yard, across the exercise paddock, and out past the ring where the jumps were, I believe I managed to seem as if I were paying attention to my job and listening to what she was telling me about the injured mare. But really I didn’t hear one word in five. For my eyes were busy, when they could be, with the loveliness of her, and my ears were busy not with her words but with the soft, deep notes of her voice, and the rest of me was busy bathing in the happiness of being beside her.

Very simply she was dressed. A frock of some cool blue stuff which [ believe was linen; a wide hat of soft straw, turned up enchantingly at one side. Her walk, unhurriedseeming, free and graceful and strong, took us along at a pace too fast for me, counting those moments when we were together.

We passed through into the second paddock, which slopes down to the willows fringing the best trout stream for sixty miles. I turned to latch the gate I’d held open for her. And she stumbled a little and put out a hand and caught at my coat. Her fingers, long, slim, cool fingers, were there, on the lapel of my coat. My head went down ... to this day I can’t believe that action was dictated

THE LINK II - to my muscles by my brain. I mean I didn’t will it; it happened.

‘The fingers were taken from my lips; the hand left my

_ coat. It fell to her side. She stood without movement, look-

_ ing at me. The quaint straight brows were drawn together now; but under the frown the gray eyes looked at me, and they weren’t angry, thank God. They were saying something, though—something I couldn’t understand at once; while I was still trying, she turned them away. She said:

“You mustn’t; you mustn’t!” and began to walk again.

I was beside her in a stride. By the way she’d said those words I knew they’d not meant the obvious. I said, after two attempts to make the sounds come:

““Mustn’t what? What d’you mean?”

She stopped, and turned to face me. The gray eyes looked at me again.

“Hurt yourself so!’ she said.

She walked on. I suppose I did, too. Anyhow, I found myself at last beside the rails of the third paddock, looking over them at the black mare standing dejected, a visible swelling of the near hind making her rest only the toe fe that shoe upon the ground.

If that mare had been a dog or a human or perhaps even anyone else’s horse, I’m afraid I’'d’ve done my job badly if at all. But it was her horse, and a very, very good sort of horse at that, and, for the moment at least, I really believe that I forgot my own feelings. ...

There was a head collar on the post of the fence. Sheila said:

“They left that this morning. If you'll slip it on, I’ll hold her while you go over her.”

The mare rammed her nose into my coat; then let me slip the leather over her ears and muzzle.-A very kind horse— wonderfully so considering her sex and blood. It didn’t take me long to find out what was wrong with her. Severe strain and a torn ligament. I straightened my back and reported. T said at the end: ee

““You’d better get her in and I’ll give you some stuff that you can get Grimstock to rub well in three times a day. It’ll touch her up a bit but that doesn’t matter.”

The gray eyes looked at me. “She will . . . she wil

“Of course,’’ I said, ‘“‘and soon enough for you to get her fit for cubbing.”

All she said was: “Oh, I am glad!” but her look seemed to imply that in some way it was due to me that the injury hadn’t been far worse. Quite foolish of course—I had only done what her own grooms could have—but to me quite wonderful. I said:

*‘Like me to lead her back now?”’

She shook her head. “‘No, I'll send them down for her when we get back.”

We went back along the way we had come. Thank the Lord, she didn’t walk so fast this time. It even crossed my mind that perhaps, by some magic, she was like myself trying to spin out these minutes, and I had only just stopped scoffing at myself in my mind at this swollen-headedmess when she spoke. And she said:

“It’s terribly hot, isn’t it? I think I must sit down.” We were close by the trout stream and she chose an old twisted willow and she sat down underneath it, resting her back against it. I—well, I didn’t quite know what to do and I finished up by sort of standing about. But she took a cigarette from me and somehow after I had lighted it for her I was sitting down too. :

I was so full of the things that I wanted to say and couldn’t that I couldn’t make myself get out anything else, so I was silent, and she was, too, until she had finished the cigarette. She flicked the stub away from her and it went up and out in a little arc and died, hissing, i in the stream.

_ She said, suddenly and without turning her head toward me:

“TI can never bear horses to be hurt, but I think I’d ae have had that happen to any of them except Grizelda.”

I wondered why she had said that. When I thought of a possible reason I could hardly breathe, but I managed to say, trying to make it sound offhand:

““Nice thing, certainly. Not really so good as that big chestnut, though; at least that’s a more valuable horse, I should say.’

She did turn and look at me ches Her eyes were somehow both angry and amused.

“T didn’t mean that at all,’’ she said. “I think you know that.”

And then—as she spoke or perhaps just after—I got one of those sudden fits of courage which come to a man when he’s so frightened that to face something is a relief. I said:

“‘Are you trying to tell me that you value that mare more because it was through that toss you took off her that we got to know each other?”’ Mind you, I was terrified after I’d said that, but having said it I thought Pd. stick to it, so I didn’t look away.

**That’s more like you,” she said surprisingly. “‘Now E think we’ll go.” I put out a hand to help her up; but no» good. She was up before I was and now she began to walk: as quickly as she had when we were coming. We were halfway across the second paddock before either of us spoke again and then it was I. I made that lame, inane remark which I suppose ninety men out of a hundred have used in similar circumstances at some time or another in their lives. I said:

“You do like me, then?”

She turned her head and looked at me as if I had said something original. Sheila never answers you as you expect her to. She said: %

“Of course... . That’s why I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

“But I like it,” I said, ‘‘or rather, I don’t like it, but I can’t help it.’’ I stopped; honestly, d’you know, I don’t think I could have walked another step just then. She halted, too, a few paces in front of me, but she only half turned. I said:

“‘Look here, there’s something ... I must... It’s no good, I...I must... When could I... see you alone?.. .” The words were coming out all right but even to me they didn’t sound as if they were in my own voice. “Even if it was only five minutes. . .. Anywhere. ... Not now.... I must tell you something. . . .”

She turned completely now, so that once more she was looking at me. I don’t think that at that moment I was conscious of anything but her; not of the sun blazing down on us, or the hot grass under our feet, or that almost brassy sky. Or who she was or I.

There was a silence. She put her hand out and touched my arm. She said, very low:

“Don’t look so white. ... Do something for me.”

I didn’t say anything. I only looked at her. She said:

“It’s a lot to ask. Don’t say anything else. Come back now and go round the stables. [’II—I’ll think about what you said.”

She shot one glance over her shoulder and suddenly I became conscious of where we were and how we weré standing. ‘‘Her ladyship and that Lawless.” I managed to pull myself together. When we got back to the stables and went round with Grimstock I think I had my party manners on again. After we'd finished I found myself walking

THE LINK TS beside Sheila, not toward the box where I knew Daisy was, but under the eastern archway and into the Hall itself. She crossed it and ran up a flight of steps by one of the aS doors. I halted at the bottom. She turned sharply and said:

“Stay to lunch.” I don’t quite know how to punctuate that. It wasn’t a question, it wasn’t an order, and it wasn’t a statement. Like everything she said, even the most ordinary things, the little sentence seemed to have an elusive individuality.

I looked down at my boots and breeches, but before I could speak she said:

“Don’t be so silly!’ That was all.

I followed her down the flagged passage which came out into the square hall. It was very dim in that passage, almost dark after the sunlight and very cool. I could hardly see her, but something—perhaps it was a faint, faint scent—got hold of me so that just this walking behind her seemed something even more intimate, more wonderful than that miraculous ten minutes in the sunshine.

I think I must have been a bit dazed when we came out. The next thing I remember is shaking hands with Grenville. He was always very particular about shaking hands with me. He didn’t like me and didn’t pretend to, but I will say for him that he always went out of his way to try and hide this from other people.

There was quite a bunch there, and with the exception of old Felix Grand—the worst doctor and best door-step hanger in the whole of the County—no one that I knew. Sheila:introduced me all round, but whether my head was still buzzing or that low voice of hers for some reason had momentarily lost its clarity, I didn’t get a single one of their names. One, a fat old boy with a Madras complexion and white moustaches, seemed to have a handle to his name, and I placed—quite wrongly as I found afterward— the handsome old lady in lavender as his wife. Then there were two girls, one chocolate-box, the other with a face like the back of a hansom, and a tall fellow in light gray clothes with a dark sardonic sort of face and a very odd pair of eyes. He seemed to be a colonel or something; not a bit like a colonel, I thought.

It was a nightmare for me, that luncheon. Even before the meal began I was wishing I hadn’t stayed. I wanted so much to look at her that it seemed dangerous to do so. I wanted more to talk to her, but wasn’t given the chance. I wanted most of all just to be near her—as near as I had been in that cool dim corridor—but instead was so separated from her that, as I couldn’t look, it was only the occasional sound of her voice or her name used by other people that let me know she really was there.

Nobody knew me; nobody wanted to, any more than I wanted to know them. Except old Grand of course. I don’t think I’d ever shown it but I disliked the old man intensely and he seemed to feel that way about me. Somebody must once have told him that as well as being M.R.C.V.S. I was also L.R.C.P. and M.R.C.S., and as he was only a very doubtful physician, he never could get over it. Whenever we met it always seemed to crop up somehow. Even at this lunch it did. He was sitting opposite me, next the girl with the face like the hansom. She’d obviously been asking him something and then there came one of those sudden lulls you get at a table, and his wheezing old voice was saying: