A House Of Gentlefolks

I
I arrived at Vanburgh at five to one. It was raining hard by now and the dreary little station yard was empty except for a deserted and draughty-looking taxi. They might have sent a car for me.
How far was it to Stayle? About three miles, the ticket collector told me. Which part of Stayle might I be wanting? The Duke’s? That was a good mile the other side of  the village.
They really might have sent a car.
With a little difficulty I found the driver of the taxi, a sulky and scorbutic young man who may well have been the bully of some long-forgotten school story. It was some consolation to feel that he must be getting wetter than I. It was a beastly drive.
After the crossroads at Stayle we reached what were obviously the walls of the park, interminable and dilapidated walls that stretched on past corners and curves with leafless trees dripping on to their dingy masonry. At last they were broken by lodges and gates, four gates and three lodges, and through the ironwork I could see a great sweep of ill-kept drive.
But the gates were shut and padlocked and most of the windows in the lodges were broken.
“There are some more gates further on,” said the school bully, “and beyond them, and beyond them again. I suppose they must get in and out somehow, sometimes.”
At last we found a white wooden gate and a track which led through some farm buildings into the main drive. The park land on either side was railed off and no doubt let out to pasture. One very dirty sheep had strayed on to the drive and stumbled off in alarm at our approach, continually looking over its shoulder and then starting away again until we overtook it. Last of all the house came in sight, spreading out prodigiously in all directions.
The man demanded eight shillings for the fare. I gave it to him and rang the bell.
After some delay an old man opened the door to me.
“Mr. Vaughan,” I said. “I think his Grace is expecting me to luncheon.”
“Yes; will you come in, please?” and I was just handing him my hat when he added: “I am the Duke of Vanburgh. I hope you will forgive my opening the door myself. The butler is in bed today—he suffers terribly in his back during the winter, and both my footmen have been killed in the war.” Have been killed—the words haunted me incessantly throughout the next few hours and for days to come. That desolating perfect tense, after ten years at least, probably more ... Miss Stein and the continuous present; the Duke of Vanburgh and the continuous perfect passive.....
I was unprepared for the room to which he led me. Only once before, at the age of twelve, had I been to a ducal house, and besides the fruit garden, my chief memory of  that visit was one of intense cold and of running upstairs through endless passages to get my mother a fur to wear round her shoulders after dinner. It is true that that was in Scotland, but still I was quite unprepared for the overpowering heat that met us as the Duke opened the door. The double windows were tight shut and a large coal fire burned brightly in the round Victorian grate. The air was heavy with the smell of chrysanthemums, there was a gilt clock under a glass case on the chimneypiece and everywhere in the room stiff little assemblages of china and bric-a-brac. One might expect to find such a room in Lancaster Gate or Elm Park Gardens where the widow of some provincial knight knits away her days among trusted servants. In front of the fire sat an old lady, eating an apple.
“My dear, this is Mr. Vaughan, who is going to take Stayle abroad—my sister, Lady Emily. Mr. Vaughan has just driven down from London in his motor.”
“No,” I said, “I came by train—the twelve fifty-five.”
“Wasn’t that very expensive?” said Lady Emily.
Perhaps I ought here to explain the reason for my visit. As I have said, I am not at all in the habit of moving in these exalted circles, but I have a rather grand godmother who shows a sporadic interest in my affairs. I had just come down from Oxford, and was very much at a loose end when she learned unexpectedly that the Duke of  Vanburgh was in need of a tutor to take his grandson and heir abroad—a youth called the Marquess of Stayle, eighteen years old. It had seemed a tolerable way in which to spend the next six months, and accordingly the thing had been arranged. I was here to fetch away my charge and start for the Continent with him next day.
“Did you say you came by train?” said the Duke.
“By the twelve fifty-five.”
“But you said you were coming by motor.”
“No, really, I can’t have said that. For one thing I haven’t got a motor.”
“But if you hadn’t said that, I should have sent Byng to meet you. Byng didn’t meet you, did he?”
“No,” I said, “he did not.”
“Well, there you see.”
Lady Emily put down the core of her apple and said very suddenly:
“Your father used to live over at Oakshott. I knew him quite well. Shocking bad on a horse.”
“No, that was my uncle Hugh. My father was in India almost all his life. He died there.”
“Oh, I don’t think he can have done that,” said Lady Emily; “I don’t believe he even went there—did he, Charles?”
“Who? what?”
“Hugh Vaughan never went to India, did he?”
“No, no, of course not. He sold Oakshott and went to live in Hampshire somewhere. He never went to India in his life.”
At this moment another old lady, almost indistinguishable from Lady Emily, came into the room.
“This is Mr. Vaughan, my dear. You remember his father at Oakshott, don’t you? He’s going to take Stayle abroad—my sister, Lady Gertrude.”
Lady Gertrude smiled brightly and took my hand.
“Now I knew there was someone coming to luncheon, and then I saw Byng carrying in the vegetables a quarter of an hour ago. I thought, now he ought to be at Vanburgh meeting the train.”
“No, no, dear,” said Lady Emily. “Mr. Vaughan came down by motor.”
“Oh, that’s a good thing. I thought he said he was coming by train.”
II
The Marquess of Stayle did not come in to luncheon.
“I am afraid you may find him rather shy at first,” explained the Duke. “We did not tell him about your coming until this morning. We were afraid it might unsettle him. As it is he is a little upset about it. Have you seen him since breakfast, my dear?”
“Don’t you think,” said Lady Gertrude, “that Mr. Vaughan had better know the truth about Stayle? He is bound to discover it soon.”
The Duke sighed: “The truth is, Mr. Vaughan, that my grandson is not quite right in his head. Not mad, you understand, but noticeably underdeveloped.”
I nodded. “I gathered from my godmother that he was a little backward.”
“That is largely why he never went to school. He went to a private school once for two terms, but he was very unhappy and the fees were very high; so I took him away. Since then he has had no regular education.”
“No education of any sort, dear,” said Lady Gertrude gently.
“Well, it practically amounts to that. And it is a sad state of affairs, as you will readily understand. You see, the boy will succeed me and—well, it is very unfortunate. Now there is quite a large sum of money which his mother left for the boy’s education. Nothing has been done with it—to tell you the truth, I had forgotten all about it until my lawyer reminded me of it the other day. It is about thirteen hundred pounds by now, I think. I have talked the matter over with Lady Emily and Lady Gertrude, and we came to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to send him abroad for a year with a tutor. It might make a difference. Anyway, we shall feel that we have done our duty by the boy.” (It seemed to me odd that they should feel that about it, but I said nothing.) “You will probably have to get him some clothes too. You see he has never been about much, and we have let him run wild a little, I am afraid.”
When luncheon was over they brought out a large box of peppermint creams. Lady Emily ate five.
III
Well, I had been sent down from Oxford with every circumstance of discredit, and it did not become me to be over nice; still, to spend a year conducting a lunatic nobleman about Europe was rather more than I had bargained for. I had practically made up my mind to risk my godmother’s displeasure and throw up the post while there was still time, when the young man made his appearance.
He stood at the door of the dining room surveying the four of us, acutely ill at ease but with a certain insolence. “Hullo, have you finished lunch? May I have some peppermints, Aunt Emily?”
He was not a bad-looking youth at all, slightly over middle height, and he spoke with that rather agreeable intonation that gentlepeople acquire who live among servants and farm hands. His clothes, with which he had obviously been at some pains, were unbelievable—a shiny blue suit with four buttons, much too small for him, showing several inches of wrinkled woollen sock and white flannel shirt. Above this he had put on a stiff evening collar and a very narrow tie, tied in a sailor-knot. His hair was far too long, and he had been putting water on it. But for all this he did not look mad.
“Come and say ‘How do you do?’ to your new tutor,” said Lady Gertrude, as though to a child of six. “Give him your right hand—that’s it.”
He came awkwardly towards me, holding out his hand, then put it behind him and then shot it out again suddenly, leaning his body forward as he did so. I felt a sudden shame for this poor ungraceful creature.
“How-d’you-do?” he said. “I expect they forgot to send the car for you, didn’t they? The last tutor walked out and didn’t get here until half past two. Then they said I was mad, so he went away again. Have they told you I’m mad yet?”
“No,” I said decidedly, “of course not.”
“Well, they will then. But perhaps they have already, and you didn’t like to tell me. You’re a gentleman, aren’t you? That’s what grandfather said: ‘He’s a bad hat, but at least he’s a gentleman.’ But you needn’t worry about me. They all say I’m mad.”
Anywhere else this might have caused some uneasiness, but the placid voice of Lady Gertrude broke in: “Now, you mustn’t talk like that to Mr. Vaughan. Come and have a peppermint, dear.” And she looked at me as though to say, “What did I tell you?”
Quite suddenly I decided to take on the job after all.
An hour later we were in the train. I had the Duke’s cheque for £150 preliminary expenses in my pocket; the boy’s preposterous little wicker box was in the rack over his head.
“I say,” he said, “what am I to call you?”
“Well, most of my friends call me Ernest.”
“May I really do that?”
“Yes, of course. What shall I call you?”
He looked doubtful. “Grandfather and the aunts call me Stayle; everyone else calls me ‘my Lord’ when they are about and ‘Bats’ when we are alone. It’s short for ‘Bats in the Belfry’, you know.”
“But haven’t you got a Christian name?”
He had to think before he answered. “Yes—George Theodore Verney.”
“Well, I’m going to call you George.”
“Will you really? I say, have you been to London a lot?”
“Yes, I live there usually.”
“I say. D’you know I’ve never been to London? I’ve never been away from home at all—except to that school.”
“Was that beastly?”
“It was —” He used a ploughboy’s oath. “I say, oughtn’t I to say that? Aunt Emily says I shouldn’t.”
“She’s quite right.”
“Well, she’s got some mighty queer ideas, I can tell you,” and for the rest of the journey he chatted freely. That evening he evinced a desire to go to a theatre, but remembering his clothes, I sent him to bed early and went out in search of friends. I felt that with £150 in my pocket I could afford champagne. Besides, I had a good story to tell.
We spent the next day ordering clothes. It was clear the moment I saw his luggage that we should have to stay on in London for four or five days; he had nothing that he could possibly wear. As soon as he was up I put him into one of my overcoats and took him to all the shops where I owed money. He ordered lavishly and with evident relish. By the evening the first parcels had begun to arrive and his room was a heap of cardboard and tissue paper. Mr. Phillrick, who always gives me the impression that I am the first commoner who has dared to order a suit from him, so far relaxed from his customary austerity as to call upon us at the hotel, followed by an assistant with a large suitcase full of patterns. George showed a well-bred leaning towards checks. Mr. Phillrick could get two suits finished by Thursday, the other would follow us to the Crillon. Did he know anywhere where we could get a tolerable suit of evening clothes ready made? He gave us the name of the shop where his firm  sold their misfits. He remembered his Lordship’s father well. He would call upon his Lordship for a fitting tomorrow evening. Was I sure that I had all the clothes I needed at the moment? He had some patterns just in. As for that little matter of my bill—of course, any time that was convenient to me. (His last letter had made it unmistakably clear that he must have a cheque on account before undertaking any further orders.) I ordered two suits. All of this George enjoyed enormously.
After the first morning I gave up all attempt at a tutorial attitude. We had four days to spend in London before we could start and, as George had told me, it was his first visit. He had an unbounded zeal to see everything, and, above all, to meet people; but he had also a fresh and acute critical faculty and a natural fastidiousness which shone through the country bumpkin. The first time he went to a revue he was all agog with excitement; the theatre, the orchestra, the audience all enthralled him. He insisted on being there ten minutes before the time; he insisted on leaving ten minutes before the end of the first act. He thought it vulgar and dull and ugly, and there was so much else that he was eager to see. The dreary “might-as-well-stay-here-now-we’ve-paid” attitude was unintelligible to him.
In the same way with his food, he wished to try all the dishes. If he found he did not like anything, he ordered something else. On the first evening we dined out he decided that champagne was tasteless and disagreeable and refused to drink it again. He had no patience for acquiring tastes, but most good things pleased him immediately. At the National Gallery he would look at nothing after Bellini’s “Death of Peter Martyr.”
He was an immediate success with everyone I introduced him to. He had no “manner” of any kind. He said all he thought with very little reticence and listened with the utmost interest to all he heard said. At first he would sometimes break in with rather disturbing sincerity upon the ready-made conversations with which we are mostly content, but almost at once he learned to discern what was purely mechanical and to disregard it. He would pick up tags and phrases and use them with the oddest twists, revitalizing them by his interest in their picturesqueness.
And all this happened in four days; if it had been in four months the change would have been remarkable. I could see him developing from one hour to the next.
On our last evening in London I brought out an atlas and tried to explain where we were going. The world for him was divided roughly into three hemispheres—Europe, where there had been a war; it was full of towns like Paris and Buda-Pest, all equally remote and peopled with prostitutes; the East, a place full of camels and elephants, deserts and dervishes and nodding mandarins; and America, which besides its own two continents included Australia, New Zealand, and most of the British Empire not obviously “Eastern”; somewhere, too, there were some “savages.”
“We shall have to stop the night at Brindisi,” I was saying. “Then we can get the Lloyd Trestino in the morning. What a lot you’re smoking!”
We had just returned from a tea and cocktail party. George was standing at the looking glass gazing at himself in his new clothes.
“You know, he has made this suit rather well, Ernest. It’s about the only thing I learned at home—smoking, I mean. I used to go up to the saddle room with Byng.”
“You haven’t told me what you thought of the party.”
“Ernest, why are all your friends being so sweet to me? Is it just because I’m going to be a duke?”
“I expect that makes a difference with some of them—Julia for instance. She said you looked so fugitive.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t like Julia much. No, I mean Peter and that funny Mr. Oliphant.”
“I think they like you.”
“How odd!” He looked at himself in the glass again. “D’you know, I’ll tell you something I’ve been thinking all these last few days. I don’t believe I really am mad at all. It’s only at home I feel so different from everyone else. Of course I don’t know much ... I’ve been thinking, d’you think it can be grandfather and the aunts who are mad, all the time?”
“They’re certainly getting old.”
“No, mad. I can remember some awfully dotty things they’ve done at one time or another. Last summer Aunt Gertrude swore there was a swarm of bees under her bed and had all the gardeners up with smoke and things. She refused to get out of bed until the bees were gone—and there weren’t any there. And then there was the time grandfather made a wreath of strawberry leaves and danced round the garden singing ‘Cook’s son, Dook’s son, son of a belted earl.’ It didn’t strike me at the time, but that was an odd thing to do, wasn’t it? Anyway, I shan’t see them again for months and months. Oh, Ernest, it’s too wonderful. You don’t think the sleeves are too tight, do you? Are people black in Athens?”
“Not coal black—mostly Jews and undergraduates.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, Peter’s an undergraduate. I was one until a few weeks ago.”
“I say, do you think people will take me for an undergraduate?”
IV
It seems to me sometimes that Nature, like a lazy author, will round off abruptly into a short story what she obviously intended to be the opening of a novel.
Two letters arrived for me by the post next morning. One was from my bank returning the Duke’s cheque for £150 marked “Payment Stopped”; the other from a firm of solicitors enjoining me that they, or rather one of them, would call upon me that morning in connection with the Duke of Vanburgh’s business. I took them in to George.
All he said was: “I had a sort of feeling that this was all too good to last.”
The lawyer duly arrived. He seemed displeased that neither of us was dressed. He intimated that he wished to speak to me alone.
His Grace, he said, had altered his plans for his grandson. He no longer wished him to go abroad. Of course, between ourselves we had to admit that the boy was not quite sane ... very sad ... these old families ... putting me in such a difficult position in case anything happened..... His Grace had talked it over with Lady Emily and Lady Gertrude..... It really was too dangerous an experiment ... besides, they had especially kept the boy shut away because they did not want the world to know ... discredit on a great name ... and, of course, if he went about, people were bound to talk. It was not strictly his business to discuss the wisdom of his client’s decision, but, again between ourselves, he had been very much surprised that his Grace had ever considered letting the boy leave home..... Later perhaps, but not yet ... he would always need watching. And of course there was a good deal of money coming to him. Strictly between ourselves, his Grace was a great deal better off than people supposed ... town property ... death duties ... keeping up Stayle ... and so on.
He was instructed to pay the expenses incurred up to date and to give me three months’ salary ... most generous of his Grace, no legal obligation..... As to the clothes ... we really seemed rather to have exceeded his Grace’s instructions. Still, no doubt all the things that had not been specially made could be returned to the shops. He would give instructions about that ... he was himself to take Lord Stayle back to his grandfather.
And an hour later they left.
“It’s been a marvellous four days,” said George; and then: “Anyway, I shall be twenty-one in three years and I shall have my mother’s money then. I think it’s rather a shame sending back those ties though. Don’t you think I could keep one or two?”
Five minutes later Julia rang up to ask us to luncheon.