'What was all that about the girl who chucked the dining-room clock into the sea?' asked Gavin.
'Clocks, so I understand,' said Laura's son Hamish, who was holding his baby sister in hickory-tough young arms, 'are thought, in morbid psychology, to symbolise the female cycle of...'
'Not in front of the child,' said his father, hastily. 'Chuck the brat over here. They talk about bouncing babies. Let's see if this one does.'
(2)
'Well,' said Laura, on the following afternoon, 'if Mrs. Romilly asks you to go swimming with her, find some cast-iron excuse.' They had finished lunch, the car had been ordered round to the front of the Stone House, and Dame Beatrice was about to set out for Galliard Hall.
'It is scarcely the right time of year for sea-bathing, and, in any case, I am not as fond of strenuous personal aquatics as you are,' she observed, 'so you may spare yourself all anxiety on my behalf.' She entered the car and waved her hand as it moved off down the drive; then she settled her small, spare elderly body comfortably against the upholstery, and as the car moved on to the New Forest road which linked Ringwood with Burley, she gazed out of the window at the passing scenery.
The vast stretches of Forest pasture on the common near her home gave way to woods and then to what seemed to be a limitless expanse of undulating country covered in brown bracken with a wayside edge of rough grass, broken by still and shining ponds and stretches of gorse and withered heather.
The road was a minor one until it merged, at Picket Post, with the highway between Ringwood and Romsey. The car swung off to the left, skirted most of the town and then, speeding up, made for Wimborne. Here a one-way street took a tour round the two-towered minster and then went left again at insignificant crossroads and over an ancient bridge.
Up a long and winding hill and through a long, dull village ran the road, then it dipped past a farm and alongside a tree-bowered estate until, at a major roundabout, it dropped sharply south-west to Wareham.
After Wareham, with its defensive earthworks, its Saxon church-on-the-wall, its prominent priory church of Lady St Mary, its river and its flooded, riverside meadows (for the time was late February, a few days away from March), the scenery changed. The road wound on towards the Purbecks and across the moors of Slepe, Middlebere and Creech. Corfe Castle, a stark, defiant shell, reared itself, frowning, on the mound which bridged the only gap in the range. The road skirted skittishly round it.
One stone-built village followed another, once Corfe was passed, and then, at last, there was nothing to be seen but the clean and lovely lines of the rounded hills. Suddenly, from a valley which dropped to sea-level on the south, a magnificent headland shouldered into the sky and a flat, wide, sea-lapped moorland stretched away into the distance.
The road soon divided a large, partly-timbered estate into two unequal parks, and on the lesser of these, backed and sheltered by the hills, lay, at the end of a sloping drive, an impressive, intimidating mansion.
'I think we're here, madam,' said George. They had arrived at Galliard Hall.
The house belonged to the early years of the Stuart dynasty, having been built in about the year 1610. The front entrance faced north, and two gabled wings had Jacobean bay windows with the mullions and transomes of the period. It was clear that successive owners had done little to alter the original facade. It was equally obvious that this had begun to crumble, and the whole place, including the unweeded, untended drive and the cracked and broken steps which mounted in two flights to an ornate but battered front archway, gave an overall impression of poverty, neglect and decay.
George drew up in front of the terrace. At the top of the steps an elderly man, whom Dame Beatrice took to be her host, was waiting to receive her. Behind him, and a little to one side, were another elderly man wearing a green baize apron and, in the doorway itself, a couple of youthful maidservants.
The first elderly man seized Dame Beatrice by her thin shoulders and kissed her rapidly on both cheeks. The second elderly man went gingerly down the worn steps to help George with the luggage. The maidservants stood aside, curtsied, and followed their master and the visitor into the house. Dame Beatrice found herself in the great hall, a magnificent room with windows looking towards the drive, a heavy brass chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two carved figures, two-thirds life-size, standing at either end of the mantelpiece. There was a gilt-framed Corot on the chimney-breast between them. There were other pictures around the walls. Dame Beatrice thought she recognised a Lely and a Raeburn among them.
The floor was uncarpeted and was of black and white tiles, each a foot square. At some time the floor of the room above had been cut away and a balustered gallery substituted, giving the great hall height and light appropriate to its size. It was all extremely impressive and, after the dilapidated appearance of the exterior of the house, considerably surprising, for the interior seemed beautifully kept and maintained.
'You will like to go straight to your room,' said the host. Amabel will show you the way.' The older of the two girls took Dame Beatrice up a splendid, broad, oak staircase, which had finely-carved and pierced panels in place of the usual balusters, and three flights of nine treads each. These, with right-angle turns, led to the gallery which Dame Beatrice had seen from below. From this she was shown to her room, which opened off it.
Heavy plasterwork covered the ceiling with scrolls, cupids and flowers. The bed was a magnificent four- poster and the walls were hung with tapestries depicting young men and maidens of the eighteenth-century for ever (or until the tapestry fell to pieces) at dalliance in summer woodlands. Dame Beatrice murmured a line or two from Keats and received from the maid the information that there would be tea in the drawing-room as soon as she was ready for it, and that the bathroom was two doors along to the left.
'Would that be poertry loike, as ee was sayen, m'lady?' she concluded respectfully. [No attempt made to reproduce the local dialect, but merely to suggest country speech. (Author)]
'
''Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu.''
'Oi loikes poertry. Tes a koind o' wetchcraft, Oi rackon.'
'How right you are, Amabel. It
'Yes, thank you, m'lady. Oi've put ee a can of hot water in the barthroom. There eddn't nothen laid on. You tells me what toime you warnts your barth and Oi sees to getten et for ee. Tes best in the marnen, ef that suit ee.'
