There Came Both Mist and Snow (4 page)

Wale open his mouth; then I saw him hesitate, his face curiously grim.

‘Seven,’ said Basil, ‘eight…’

I glanced at Lucy, preparing childishly for triumph.

‘Nine…’

Wale raised his head. ‘
This sight of death
,’ he said clearly, ‘
is as a bell That warns my old age to a sepulchre
.’

His eye went round the company and rested for a moment on Cecil, who was fiddling again with the revolver which had been occupying him earlier. Rather awkwardly Lucy said, ‘
Romeo and Juliet
– of course.’ She had hardly done speaking when Wale turned abruptly and left the room.

We stared at each other uncomfortably. Then Geoffrey Roper stirred in his seat. ‘
A bell
,’ he said, ‘
that warns his old age to a sepulchre
.’ His face lit up. ‘By God, there’s an idea for a picture in that!’

Oddly enough, dinner three hours later found everyone in excellent spirits. I say ‘oddly enough,’ and if I have succeeded in conveying something of the diffused uneasiness of the earlier meal the reader will understand me. Lucy’s game had been obscurely distressing. It had also been pedantic. I have myself, of course, the professional writer’s dislike of anything savouring of the literary competition, but I believe that the others too felt that searching one’s head for stray lines of Shakespeare was rather a wantonly cultural amusement. It is significant that Basil’s conversation at dinner, though unrelievedly learned, was far from giving any similar impression. Hyetal regions, mean annual cloudiness, co-tidal lines, cyclonic rotations, and progressive low pressure systems are not charming in themselves. But Basil was fascinated by them and made them fascinating. My own attention, so perfunctory at first that I scarcely realized that this was the vocabulary no longer of geology but of meteorology, was completely held in the end. Nothing in the world is more boring than other people’s hobbies – a proposition which I feared that revolver-shooting was amply to illustrate at Belrive. But meteorology, which must have been a mere hobby with Basil some years ago, was now plainly in another category. Basil had more than got it up; it presently emerged that he was discernibly pushing it along. He had recently formulated – and other people had proved – some theory which I understood only imperfectly but which appeared to be a contribution of some little importance to what is a rapidly developing branch of scientific enquiry.

All this was impressive and said much for Basil’s intellect. But more remarkable, and speaking for the power of personality which had made my cousin a great leader in organized mountaineering, was his ability to make this remote lore an instrument for bringing us together and raising our spirits. With the exception of Wale we were none of us scientifically inclined; we had some of us been at a dreary family loggerheads before we had spent half a day in the house. But now we listened and asked questions and understood. In a state of mild intoxication which had nothing to do with Belrive’s excellent wines we even made suggestions which we fondly supposed might help. We were under the charm of a novelty made lucid by masterly exposition and stimulating by imaginative enthusiasm. Only Wale was a little aloof. But I could see that he was following closely and that he was impressed.

But of all this so luminous talk I retain, curiously enough, only the most general impressions today. One aspect of the subject alone has stuck in my mind. Basil had a good deal to say about storm tracks, and on storm tracks I could still, I believe, write a tolerably full and accurate paragraph. There is a sort of tropical storm, it seems, which is next to unpredictable. Attempt to trace its causes and something seems to go wrong with the logic of the heavens; one is contemplating conditions which ought to lead not to storm but to calm. This alone I clearly remember, and I remember it because of its implicit irony. This talk of Basil’s had every appearance of bringing fair weather to Belrive. Actually, it was a very cradle of the tempest by which we were presently to be swept.

It was a fine night, dry under foot and frosty. After coffee I put on a great-coat and strolled out to the terrace. Cecil was at a corner, studying Cudbird’s vast sign. He turned as I approached and it struck me that even in solitude and the dark he would bend upon that fantastic spectacle a glance carefully compounded of wise tolerance and inflexible judgement. ‘One must beware,’ he said, ‘of applying to such things one’s own rather chilly standards of good taste. There is much vitality in them, after all. Shelley would have delighted in that bottle.’

If there was anybody, I reflected, at whose hypothetical reactions it was futile to guess, Shelley was the man. I made a non-committal murmur.

‘Or take Lucy’s stories,’ Cecil went on. ‘Doubtless they seem extravagant and crude enough to a disciple of Henry James.’ At this Cecil tapped me on the shoulder – an action which I must confess stirred me to obscure resentment. There is in James, heaven knows, ten times more than I could ever hope to learn: nevertheless I am beyond the age at which one relishes being pigeon-holed as the disciple of this man or that. ‘And yet, my dear Arthur, Lucy’s romances provide a great deal of innocent diversion. Moreover it is diversion with what may fairly be called an intellectual appeal, and this is an estimable thing in an age so recklessly emotional as ours.’ Cecil took off his glasses. ‘Some of us, I fear, lead sadly ill-regulated lives today.’

It was at this point that I realized that Cecil was up to something, and that Shelley, James, Lucy, and her books had served to introduce a general proposition which was in its turn to be illustrated by some particular instance. ‘Ill-regulated lives?’ I asked. Whatever the confidence might be, it might as well be got over.

Cecil took me by the arm; the action might have been described as his house-master’s grip. ‘Our walk,’ he said, ‘shall be to the ruins.’

It was half past ten when we got back and I resolved to go straight up to bed. Passing through the drawing-room I found Basil again bent over his great map. Hubert was lounging beside him, a considering eye bent not on the great square of cloth but on his brother. I stopped with the intention of discovering what quarter of the earth was under review. But something intent about both men made me pass on without disturbing them. All I heard was fragments of what appeared to be a new vocabulary that evening: the Ross Quadrant, the Victoria Quadrant, the Barrier.

The words meant nothing to my waking mind. But in sleep I knew better. I dreamt that night of a great waste of snow, of snow everywhere stretching to a remote horizon. I dreamt of Basil environed by this, absorbed, alone, his map before him on a table of ice. I dreamt of my niece Anne Grainger holding a revolver and saying in a hard voice: ‘Uncle Arthur is shot because he cheated. Uncle Arthur is shot.’

‘Shooting this morning.’

Wilfred Foxcroft, investigating the breakfast kidneys, pronounced the words with an emphasis which made me start. His brother Cecil, who was addressing himself – characteristically as I thought – to a boiled egg, looked up equally sharply. ‘Will that not keep,’ he asked, ‘till the afternoon? This is a holiday reunion, no doubt. But I have an idea that there is urgent family business to consider nevertheless.’

Wilfred shook his head. ‘Family business – particularly if it is urgent – is always better put off.’ He smiled happily at this witticism, which struck me as more salted with truth than much of Cecil’s more measured wisdom. ‘Basil and I once discussed family affairs at twenty-two thousand feet – with deplorable results.’

Everybody was startled. The party at Belrive was indeed a holiday reunion, but it was also – evidently – an occasion of reconciliation. An old quarrel, of which the cause was surely obscure to all but two of those present, was being made up. Basil and Wilfred had come together. The last thing to be expected was that one of them should now begin to air the past. We were all slightly shocked, therefore, at Wilfred’s remark; at the same time we all hoped, of course, to hear more. Ten years ago these two men, uncle and nephew, had disappeared up a mountain with a small band of porters – the two of them thick as thieves. They had come down again hazardously by different routes and with a hastily divided commissariat. A month later they had met in Darjeeling and in silence shaken hands in the presence of friends. When the breach had occurred they had been not individuals merely but climbers belonging to a famous club; they complied with a form; they did not meet again. That was the story. And now here was Wilfred seemingly prepared to babble about it.

But he was only tantalizing us. ‘The quarrelsome altitude,’ he said. ‘Another three thousand feet and one would view with only the most lackadaisical disapproval one’s dearest enemy in the world. Particularly if one were at all ahead of one’s acclimatization. I don’t know what are Wale’s views, but I believe myself that an increase in the haemoglobin of the blood–’ And Wilfred was off on one of his instructive harangues.

Basil watched him – I thought with a slightly narrowed eye – and interrupted on the first pause. ‘To go back to Cecil’s point,’ he said gravely, ‘there really is, I believe, business for some of us.’ He was choosing his words with evident care. ‘Family business may be tedious, and it is often sound doctrine to let it settle itself, no doubt. But there are times when a person is entitled to formal dealing and to expedition. I do urge that.’

Hubert Roper put down his cup. ‘Urge it?’ he said. ‘More than that. You exemplify it.’

I had an inkling of what Basil was at; I remembered my conversation with Cecil on our stroll the night before. Hubert’s words, however – or rather their tone – baffled me; they had an enigmatic quality which might have commended them to Lucy. But Lucy, I fear, though listening was not listening in the right way. It is all a matter of ear, the writing of novels.

‘Formal dealing?’ said Wilfred, taking Basil’s phrase. ‘Rather a portentous expression, surely. And I really don’t know that we need hurry. Geoffrey, I am sure you are on my side.’

Was this malice or good humour? I had to admit that I could not listen delicately enough now myself. Geoffrey, in his invariable place beside Anne, was voting for good humour – perhaps as a matter of policy. ‘Oh, certainly,’ he said. ‘Why should you hurry, after all? All that is for the young.’

‘And what interest,’ asked Anne, ‘has my guardian Wilfred in the young? None at all, I hope.’

Malice or good humour – I could not tell. My ear assured me only that Anne and Wilfred understood each other. But of how that understanding had come, or what attitudes and emotions it comprehended, I knew nothing. A struggle that was almost deadly; a tussle of wills that was finally friendly enough: either of these things might be. Cecil, of course, was a witness to the state of affairs. But that he was a reliable witness I was not convinced. Nothing was obvious except that Anne and Geoffrey were in love; that neither had a penny; and that Wilfred was implicated in their future. This, and that Basil was trying to take a hand. Why? Though actually Wilfred’s uncle, he was little in a position of seniority, and his relationship to Anne was distant – much more distant than my own. What, in the whole complexion of family affairs, could be making him specially anxious to see the young people’s future straightened out? And what, once again, had made Hubert, the heir to Belrive, say in that peculiarly charged way that in the transacting of family business Basil exemplified formal dealing and expedition? It was meditating this question that made me first really uneasy as to what was going forward at the Priory.

Sir Mervyn Wale inquired for marmalade – so smoothly that there was an immediate embarrassed recognition that this was not, after all, exclusively a family gathering. It was curious, if delicate negotiations were really on foot, that this eminent stranger should have been invited down. I remembered, without much illumination, Wilfred’s statement that Wale was here at the instance of Cecil, with whom he had struck up a close friendship. So far I had been unable to discover what interests these two had in common. Wale was a physician; Cecil was a classical scholar. I wondered if Wale was perhaps an influential governor of Cecil’s school.

At the moment family matters were abruptly dropped. Talk turned to the revolver-practice and I began to get a hang of what had happened. Somewhere in the ruins Basil had built himself a range as an outdoor amusement on winter days. I could hardly imagine why, but this was no doubt because, like Lucy, I regarded pistols as slightly sinister weapons. Basil, apparently, was something of an expert, and the sport does not require the space and elaborate precautions necessary for a rifle range. Until its novelty waned in a few days’ time the pistols were clearly to be all the go; I came to the conclusion that it would be only sociable to take an interest in them myself. There was a good deal of fun now directed at Lucy Chigwidden on the sufficiently obvious theme of her practical ignorance of fire-arms as contrasted with the prominence accorded them in her violent narratives. All this Lucy took in very good part; light on the subject of chapterization had come to her in bed and she was in equable spirits… And then Geoffrey asked his uncle if anyone was coming to the shooting from outside.

Basil regarded us with just those narrowed eyes which he had been directing on Wilfred a little before; his glance was accompanied by what was rare with him indeed: a faintly satirical smile.

‘Why, yes,’ he said. ‘Horace Cudbird is sure to come.’

There was a little pause in which one heard cups, knives, and forks being put down abruptly. Cecil was the first to speak. ‘Cudbird? Really, Basil, I should hardly have imagined…’

‘Let us study,’ said Geoffrey, ‘Cousin Cecil yielding to no one in his admiration for the British industrialist.’

‘But at the same time,’ said Anne, ‘drawing the line.’

‘Endeavouring rather,’ said Geoffrey, ‘to draw Uncle Basil’s line.’

‘Let us hope, rather, that he draws his fire.’

‘Has Uncle Basil fire? Or only ice?’