Here Comes a Chopper (3 page)

‘I hardly ever take advice. I get too much from my people.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ll take mine, but I do happen to know just this one thing, or I wouldn’t inflict it on you. Have you had a row with this bloke?’

‘I don’t see why you ask that, and it isn’t your business.’

‘Well, girls won’t admit it, of course, but, when you come to analyse it, rows are always—or almost always—their fault.’

‘Really! I like that! If you only knew——’

‘But, my dear child, I do know. Don’t forget that I’m three years older than you! Three and a half years, actually. Further to that, I am a man, out in the world, earning my own living——’

‘Two terms teaching little boys at a prep. school! I know, because Bob told me! He said you were bad at it, too!’

‘Look here!’ They glowered at one another until Dorothy lay back and laughed. Roger, bending over her, took her suddenly in his arms, held her very close and kissed her. The girl submitted to the kisses but did not return them.

‘Look out, silly! There’s somebody coming,’ she said, when she could speak.

‘Oh, damn!’ said Roger, letting her go, sitting up and trying to straighten his tie. Two women, appearing from nowhere, were coming behind him up the path. He did not turn his head, but could hear them talking. ‘Oh,
damn!
Do you think they could see us?’

‘Yes, of course they could! Who could help it? But perhaps they can tell us where we are.’

‘I should hardly think so.’ He looked austerely at the women as they passed. ‘Still, I can ask them, if you like.’

‘Well,
we
don’t know where we are, and—I want my tea.’

‘You poor kid!’ He leapt to his feet and went running after the women. He came back looking gloomy, and sat down again. ‘They’re employed at some big house at the foot of the hill. Apart from this house, which is miles from the nearest
bus route and even more miles from a station, we are completely marooned. The best way, they say, is to keep on over the common until we see the spire of a church. We’re to keep the spire on our right—that’s if they know right from left, which I somewhat doubt—and in the end we shall come to the railway station. They say it’s a very long way, but I think we’ll have to try it, unless we go back by the way we’ve come. It might be the better plan, of course.’

‘I’d hate that. I hate going back.’

‘Good. So do I. Where’s the map?’

They studied it closely, Roger pointing out landmarks with the aid of a stem of long grass.

‘Here we are, I suppose,’ said he. ‘This is the pub, and this is our track, and that’s where we gathered the violets. These contours must be that steep slope—you know, where we saw the cowslips—and this place here is the farm. Now where’s this church they mentioned? Here we are. We’re to keep it on our right, and—where’s the station? Oh, yes. It does seem a good long way. I make it——’ He measured.

‘Seven miles,’ said Dorothy, watching.

‘A conservative estimate, and only as the crow flies, at that. I’d say a lot nearer ten!’

‘Oh, no, I don’t think so. Come along.’

‘Yes, we’d better get a move on.’ He put away the map and hauled her up. ‘How would you like to borrow my ashplant for a bit?’

‘Not at all, thank you. I’m very much happier without it.’

‘Just as you like. Hullo!’

There was the sound of hoofs again, and this time the boy they had previously seen went by like a Cyclops, his horse, on a loose rein, thundering. Of the man and the red-haired woman there was no sign. The boy did not pass very close. He galloped away across the common in the direction they intended to take, but, a hazel wood opening to leave a broad avenue of turf, he turned his horse towards it, and was soon out of sight and out of hearing.

Roger and Dorothy stepped out briskly in his wake, and, pausing only to look at a rabbit which was sunning itself in the clearing—for the early evening had turned mellow—they took the broad path through the hazels and climbed rapidly up the slope to the top of the hill.

‘We shan’t be long now,’ said Dorothy. Roger, shifting the rucksack upon his shoulders, glanced at her but said nothing. ‘Well, do you think so?’ she asked.

‘I think we shall have had enough of it by the time we get to that station,’ he replied.

J
OHN
F
LETCHER
,
The Dead Host’s Welcome
(possibly Shirley or Massinger)

FROM THE TOP
of the hill they could see the spire of the church. Obedient to the counsel of the women, they kept it resolutely on their right, and walked for some time on level turf, for the top of the hill proved to be a grassy plateau with a very fine view to the south.

Woods then bordered the track which they were following, and the sun, which had come out only at the approach of evening, slanted through the trees in a red-gold glow. Roger discovered that he
was holding Dorothy’s hand, but, having made the discovery, he kept it to himself, and they walked on, having the church in view, until the woods ended on a common and the track petered out on to grass and was discoverable only as rabbit-runs among the low-growing gorse. In trying to pick it out again, they came upon a burnt-out car.

‘A relic of the war,’ said Roger, inspecting it. ‘The army had all this land, I believe. I suppose they used this car for target practice. Seem to be taking it to bits now.’

Dorothy was not particularly interested, and said nothing. They walked on. The ground became uneven, and walking was difficult. There were lumps and bumps, and the church, now far to the right, and a mile or more behind them, ceased to be a landmark. The sun had almost set, and it occurred to both the walkers that the common was desolate and that they were becoming uncomfortably hungry.

‘I say, I wish I could see some sign of that station,’ said Roger. ‘Are you very tired?’

‘No. I could walk for hours longer.’

‘I don’t believe it. My legs ache, so yours must.’

‘They don’t, a bit.’

‘Can
you
see any sign of the station?’

They halted and looked around. Behind them the little lost church showed nothing but the top of its spire above the trees. To the left was the edge of the plateau, a down-dropping brownish slope, green at the foot and stretching away to the faint
pink and purple of woods and the round-backed Downs.

In front of them the broken ground began to give place to more trees, and traces of a path invited them to descend through birch and pine woods. The distances were blue and misty with evening. The sun soon set, and the sky, although flushed, was fading to the cloudy colours of night. Roger was genuinely anxious, and glanced often at his companion, but Dorothy stalked beside him like Artemis, her chin up and her mouth half-smiling, as though fatigue and anxiety were beyond her comprehension. With some suddenness he discovered that he was in love with her.

‘Look!’ he said, at last. Below them they saw a house. It stood, ghostly white, in a clearing of the woods. It had a lawn in front and bushes on either side. It was like a house in an eighteenth-century drawing. There were the severely-classical pillars and round-headed windows of the period, the squat, square door, the porch with its uncompromising, beautifully spaced supports, and, dominating all detail, the extraordinary and impeccable symmetry of a building designed for the taste of an era in which no servant problem existed, and in which a lasting civilization was (unwarrantably) taken for granted.

‘I think we must be on private land,’ said Dorothy. ‘I’ve thought so for about the last mile.’

‘I know.’ Roger looked unhappy. ‘But I think we’ll have to risk that. If those women told the truth—and I’m sure they did—we’re still some miles
from the station. I propose I ask at that house. Who knows? They might even offer us a lift, and I shouldn’t feel inclined to refuse it.’

‘I don’t think they will,’ said Dorothy, who, within the limits set by her youth, knew her world. ‘Especially if these woods are preserved. They’re more likely to set the dogs on us, 1 should say.’

‘Look here,’ said Roger, struck by a new and immensely more serious thought, ‘what are we going to do if you can’t get home?’

‘What would you and Bob have done?’

‘Oh—anything. In any case, we weren’t going home, so it wouldn’t have mattered.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter now. It might if my people were at home, but there’s only Bob, and he won’t worry, if I know him.’

‘Oh, well, that’s something,’ said Roger, not at all sure that it made much difference. ‘But, still—I say, what a glorious old house it is!’

They stopped to look at it again. Its beautiful proportions were its charm. They could now see that it had a central portico approached by a flight of broad steps, and that its four Doric columns supported an entablature and a pediment which had a wreath designed in stone. The central doorway, broadly panelled and painted white, was surmounted by a wide, square window, and the other windows of the house were similar in form, but a little narrower and longer. Only the basement windows were round-headed, and, of these, there were four to be seen.

The impression of the white stone, the
white-painted doorway and window frames, and certain enchantments lent by distance and the closing day, was of the ghost of a house, but of a ghost in the grand manner, beautiful, evocative and with nothing fugitive about it.

‘First decade of the eighteenth century; or at any rate, not a day later than 1713,’ said Roger, becoming prosaic. ‘I wonder if it’s where those two women are in service? I should think it must be. There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else.’

They began to descend the hill. In front of the house was a semi-circular lawn flanked by bushes. There was an iron railing round the lawn, pierced by wrought-iron gates. On the lawn were four archery targets, great round shields on tripods, and at the edge of the lawn was a little green-painted summer-house by the side of which some steps led up to a terrace of which very little could be seen because of the bushes that bounded it.

‘Well, here goes,’ said Roger. He pushed open one of the gates and walked up the broad, curved drive. Dorothy, after a moment of hesitation, joined him. ‘I’ll ask, if you don’t want to come,’ he said, sensing that she was nervous.

‘I don’t mind asking, but I don’t want to stay out there alone,’ she answered, with a shiver. Roger stared.

‘There’s no one about, and it isn’t late,’ he said. She smiled.

‘I know. Go along and ask.’ But she went with him up to the door. It was answered by a benevolent butler, who held the door wide open.

‘Please come in, madam,’ he said. Dorothy drew back, but the kindly man repeated his request.

‘Look here,’ said Roger, grinning, ‘this isn’t the Dover Road, is it?’

‘No, sir,’ the butler replied, ‘but you wouldn’t disappoint Master George.’

He held the door open and hypnotized the two into entering. They stood, ill at ease, in the hall.

‘If you will excuse me, madam, I will inform her ladyship that you are here. What name shall I say, madam, please?’ He stood regarding them as an angler might look upon a couple of very fine trout, that is to say, with an appraising but sparkling eye.

‘Miss Woodcote and Mr Hoskyn,’ replied Dorothy, fascinated by the butler’s expression. It reminded her of that of a cannibal king whose picture she had at home.

‘Mr
Roger
Hoskyn,’ said Roger, asserting himself in the only way that occurred to him at the moment.

‘Very good, sir.’

‘They may know my little book,’ said Roger hopefully, as the butler went away. ‘I say, though, I think they’re expecting somebody, and he thinks we’re them.’

As this seemed obvious, Dorothy made no reply, and they waited in the broad, almost tub-shaped hall, until the butler returned. But on his seraphic countenance there was not a trace of apology or surprise.

‘Will you come this way, sir, please? Shall I take your things? Will you go with Elsie, madam, please? Dinner will be served in just twenty minutes from now,’

Roger handed over his rucksack, mackintosh and ashplant, and, a neat maid appearing from the end of the hall, Dorothy, with a comical glance of despair at her now inarticulate escort, went with the maid upstairs. It was with a feeling of adventure that she took the bath drawn by the maid in a bathroom which had been converted from a Georgian ante-room. With a light-hearted, almost light-headed, swiftness she resumed her clothes, repaired her face, and gave herself a last look over in a long mirror.

The bedroom in which she had dressed adjoined the bathroom. It was large and handsome, rectangular in the proportions of two to one, and the ceiling bore a heavy decoration in plaster of roses and curling acanthus. The fireplace, small, and with a modern grate in which a cheerful little fire was crackling, had a white marble surround in the form of a broken architrave, and in the break there was a marble bust, the head of a man, on a fairly high pedestal, so that the top of the head came to where the architrave would have closed in to the point of its arch had it not, in the conceit of the time, been left unfinished.

Dorothy was still studying the bust when the maid brought back her shoes most beautifully cleaned and polished.

‘Her ladyship is so pleased, madam,’ she said,
‘and little Master George is quite excited. It would have spoilt his day, unless.’

As Dorothy was unable to find any meaning in these remarks, she smiled shyly and said that she was glad. At this moment the gong was sounded, and, the maid proposing to show her the way to the dining-room, she went down a staircase with twisted balusters, close strings and square newels, into a fine, large room lined with oak panelling in fluted Corinthian pilasters. Like the rest of the house, it was spaciously and beautifully proportioned, and had an even more ornate and heavily-plastered ceiling than the bedroom to which she had been assigned.