“I shan’t wait and see,” said Basil, “but I’ve no doubt I shall hear about it in good time.”
North Grappling was ten miles distant, a stone-built village of uneven stone-tile roofs none of which was less than a century old. It lay off the main road in a fold of the hills; a stream ran through it following the line of its single street and crossing it under two old stone bridges. At the upper end of the street stood the church, which declared by its size and rich decoration that in the centuries since it was built, while the rest of the world was growing, North Grappling had shrunk; at the lower end, below the second bridge, stood Old Mill House. It was just such a home of ancient peace as a man might dream of who was forced to earn his living under a fiercer sky. Mr. Harkness had in fact dreamed of, it, year in, year out, as he toiled in his office at Singapore, or reclined after work on the club verandah, surrounded by gross vegetation and rude colours. He bought it from his father’s legacy while on leave, when he was still a young man, meaning to retire there when the time came, and his years of waiting had been haunted by only one fear: that he would return to find the place “developed,” new red roofs among the grey and a tarmac road down the uneven streets. But modernity spared North Grappling; he returned to find the place just as he had first come upon it, on a walking tour, late in the evening with the stones still warm from the afternoon sun and the scent of the gillyflowers sweet and fresh on the breeze.
This morning, half lost in snow, the stones, which in summer seemed grey, were a golden brown; and the pleached limes, which in their leaf hid the low front of the Old Mill, now revealed the mullions and drip-stones, the sundial above the long, centre window, and the stone hood of the door carved in the shape of a scallop-shell. Basil stopped the car by the bridge.
“Jesus,” said Doris. “You aren’t going to leave us here?”
“Sit tight,” said Basil. “You’ll know soon enough.” He threw a rug over the radiator of the car, opened the little iron gate and walked up the flagged path grimly, a figure of doom. The low winter sun cast his shadow before him, ominously, against the door which Mr. Harkness had had painted apple green. The gnarled trunk of a wistaria rose from beside the door-jamb and twisted its naked length between the lines of the windows. Basil glanced once over his shoulder to see that his young passengers were invisible and then put his hand to the iron bell. He heard it ring melodiously, not far away, and presently the door was opened by a maid dressed in apple green, with an apron of sprigged muslin and a starched white cap that was in effect part Dutch, part conventual, and wholly ludicrous. This figure of fancy led Basil up a step, down a step and into a living-room where he was left long enough to observe the decorations. The floor was covered in coarse rush matting and in places by bright Balkan rugs. On the walls were Thornton’s flower prints (with the exception of his masterpiece, “The Night-Flowering Cereus”), samplers and old maps. The most prominent objects of furniture were a grand piano and a harp. There were also some tables and chairs of raw-looking beech. From an open hearth peat smoke billowed periodically into the room, causing Basil’s eyes to water. It was just such a room as Basil had imagined from the advertisement and Mr. and Mrs. Harkness were just such a couple. Mrs. Harkness wore a hand-woven woollen garment, her eyes were large and poetic, her nose long and red with the frost, her hair nondescript in colour and haphazard in arrangement. Her husband had done all that a man can to disguise the effects of twenty years of club and bungalow life in the Far East. He had grown a little pointed beard; he wore a homespun suit of knickerbockers in the style of the pioneers of bicycling; he wore a cameo ring round his loose silk tie, yet there was something in his bearing which still suggested the dapper figure in white ducks who had stood his round of pink gins, evening after evening, to other dapper white figures, and had dined twice a year at Government House.
They entered from the garden door. Basil half expected Mr. Harkness to say “take a pew” and clap his hands for the gin. Instead they stood looking at him with enquiry and some slight distaste.
“My name is Seal. I came about your advertisement in the Courier.”
“Our advertisement. Ah yes,” said Mr. Harkness vaguely. “It was just an idea we had. We felt a little ashamed here, with so much space and beauty; the place is a little large for our requirements these days. We did think that perhaps if we heard of a few people like ourselves ? the same simple tastes ? we might, er, join forces as it were during the present difficult times. As a matter of fact we have one newcomer with us already. I don’t think we really want to take anyone else, do we, Agnes?”
“It was just an idle thought,” said Mrs. Harkness. “A green thought in a green place.”
“This is not a Guest House, you know. We take in paying guests. Quite a different thing.”
Basil understood their difficulties with a keenness of perception that was rare to him. “It’s not for myself that I was enquiring,” he said.
“Ah, that’s different. I daresay we might take in one or two more if they were, if they were really…”
Mrs. Harkness helped him out. “If we were sure they were the kind of people who would be happy here.”
“Exactly. It is essentially a happy house.”
(It was like his housemaster at school. “We are essentially a keen House, Seal. We may not win many cups but at least we try.”)
“I can see it is,” he said gallantly.
“I expect you’d like to look round. It looks quite a little place from the road but is surprisingly large, really, when you come to count up the rooms.”
A hundred years ago the pastures round North Grappling had all been corn-growing land and the mill had served a wide area. Long before the Harknesses’ time it had fallen into disuse and, in the eighties, had been turned into a dwelling house by a disciple of William Morris. The stream had been diverted, the old mill pool drained and levelled and made into a sunken garden. The rooms that had held the grindstones and machinery, and the long lofts where the grain had been stored, had been tactfully floored and plastered and partitioned. Mrs. Harkness pointed out all the features with maternal pride.
“Are your friends who were thinking of coming here artistic people?”
“No, I don’t think you could call them that.”
“They don’t write?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I’ve always thought this would be an ideal place for someone who wanted to write. May I ask, what are your friends?”
“Well, I suppose you might call them evacuees.”
Mr. and Mrs. Harkness laughed pleasantly at the little joke. “Townsfolk in search of sanctuary, eh?”
“Exactly.”
