‘Yes, yes,’ shouted Rebekah, who had heard all this. ‘Is not economy to use sheets one night only. Should be three, four, five nights to make laundering pay.’
‘Now, don’t take it upon yourself to make these announcements,’ said Bernardo. ‘They don’t sound proper. People will think you live in the suburbs.’
‘I accept,’ said Rebekah, with a mighty and magnificent wave of a be-ringed and pudgy hand, ‘the sheets of the marriage bed.’
‘For goodness’ sake! You’re making me blush! Here, have a nice bit of cold pork,’ said Bernardo, offering the kind of red-herring which he knew would be irresistible to his grandmother. Her attention distracted, and screaming abuse at him, she ate kippers and buttered toast and demanded that he give her a second cup of coffee.
‘You are pig! Pig!’ she screamed. Bernardo shrugged.
‘Only half a pig,’ he said. ‘Now, to turn to baser but more important matters, what are you giving me for a wedding present?’
The argument which ensued was still being carried on when the rest of the party left the dining-room. Dame Beatrice looked out upon the lake and the park as she went up to her room, and decided upon a stroll. Accordingly, she arrayed herself in a voluminous cape, placed an improbable purple hat on her head and went downstairs and into the grounds.
The old house was built on a simple pattern so far as the state rooms were concerned. The door which led into the garden was directly opposite the front door, and the stairs were on the garden-entrance side of the screen, and so was the library. Nearly opposite the library door, but at the foot of a couple of shallow steps, was a large cupboard under the main staircase. It was known as the garden room, and it contained a water-tap and a sink and was a place in which freshly-gathered flowers from the garden could be stripped of unwanted leaves and put into vases.
Dame Beatrice descended the couple of steps and opened the door which led into the grounds. She stood on the stone-flagged terrace a moment to admire the prospect. Flower-beds flanked a beautifully-tended lawn, and, sloping down to a considerable stream, were oaks and elms, dominated, in the centre of the lawn, by an impressive cedar-of-Lebanon whose spreading branches over-shadowed a patch of bare ground.
To the left of this cedar was the lake. It was not large compared with the lake, for instance, in the near-by park of Holkham Hall, but it was calm and beautiful, its calmness marred, at the moment of Dame Beatrice’s inspection, by Florian, who was gathering small pebbles from the gravel path and hurling them vindictively into the water. A colony of ducks and a couple of coots were making a noisy retreat, and some swans had come out upon the bank and were taking cover behind the tall reeds.
Dame Beatrice left the vicinity of the house and walked towards the water. Florian swung round as he heard her footsteps on the gravel.
‘I say,’ he said, dropping a handful of pebbles and dusting his palms together, ‘I was hoping you’d come out here. Could I talk to you for a minute?’
‘I should be delighted,’ Dame Beatrice replied. ‘What a charming place this is!’
‘Yes,’ agreed Florian. ‘I don’t know who will have it when my granduncle goes. I was hoping it would come to me, but I think this wretched engagement of Binnie’s may have made a difference to all that. If, in the end, she marries that ape, bang go my chances of inheriting the property, I’m afraid. My granduncle seems insanely keen on this match, the same as he liked my aunt Maarte marrying Bernardo’s father. What do you suppose I should do? You see, after all, I do live here. Bernardo (silly name! ) doesn’t.’
‘Your sister does, though,’ Dame Beatrice pointed out. Florian (an equally silly name, Dame Beatrice thought) kicked a stone in a moody and disconsolate manner and glumly agreed.
‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I can’t see what there will be in it for Binnie. She doesn’t even
‘One can do nothing in such a case,’ observed Dame Beatrice. ‘True love is the most extraordinary thing in the world. The loved one is not infrequently terrified by the lover.’
‘True love? There can’t be anything of that sort in this particular situation, and, anyway, I don’t care to see my sister married to a mountebank,’ argued Florian.
‘Of course not. But young Mr Rose does not seem to me to belong to that category. I think he is sincerely fond of your sister (who is, you will agree, immature), and he will make her a very good husband.’
‘I can’t see that. I think Binnie’s making a fool of herself. She
They circumnavigated the lake and came to some broad, rough, shallow steps, which led downhill to the pleasant little river.
‘Well, here we are,’ said Florian gloomily. ‘Do you want to go through the gate and on to the riverside path? It isn’t bad along there.’ He produced a key and unlocked the tall iron gate. ‘Have to keep it fastened,’ he explained, ‘because, otherwise, people could get in. We had a lot of trouble a couple of years ago. It was as bad as Hyde Park in the summer.’
Dame Beatrice ignored this unlikely comparison, and asked briskly, as they threaded their way in single file along the narrow, ill-defined path which ran deviously along the right bank of the river,
‘Are you enjoying having your portrait executed? Your aunts, the Misses Colwyn-Welch, seem quite excited about it.’
‘Oh, it’s not a painting, of course, but only a bit of plaster. I’ve given a couple of sittings. That chap who calls himself Albion is doing it. Not his real name, I imagine. Anyway, he’s hellishly expensive. The aunts are paupers, of course, but I should have thought that Grandma Binnen was far too sensible to cast her Dutch guilders upon the waters. She knows jolly well that they won’t return to her after many days. In other words, I don’t think Albion’s work is going to be worth a lot in times to come, but, of course, one never knows.’
‘You do not see your grandmother’s gesture as one of affection and pride — a determination to capture a likeness which, by the time you are fifty, will have vanished for ever?’
‘No, I don’t. Oh, she thinks well enough of my youth and my appearance, I dare say, but, in my opinion, she must also be cashing in on the chance that Albion’s work is going to bring in the guilders later on, although she’s
