‘Of course we will,’ said Poppy. She was attracted by her cousin.
‘Union Jackshirt Aspect,’ Eugenia went on, ‘I have brought you a message from T.P.O.F. She says that your poor grandfather was one of her greatest friends and she wishes to meet you. Would it be convenient for you to take tea at Chalford House today?’
‘Perfectly convenient,’ said Jasper. ‘I accept with pleasure.’
‘Perhaps my cousin would care to come?’
‘Thank you, I should like to,’ said Poppy St Julien.
Eugenia then rather half-heartedly invited the others. She evidently hoped that they would refuse, which they did. Noel had arranged to visit Mrs Lace at tea-time; Lady Marjorie said that she must grease her face and lie down for a bit.
So the three of them set forth, with Vivian Jackson and the Reichshund trotting at their heels.
‘Is it far?’ asked Mrs St Julien.
‘Oh! no,’ Eugenia replied. Her cousin was not much reassured. Eugenia walked with effortless strides, giving the impression that twenty miles to her would be the merest stroll. Quite soon, however, they came upon the lodge gates of Chalford Park, which were large and beautiful, and surmounted by a marble arch of baroque design. The two lodges, one on each side, were small round temples. Inside the park there was an atmosphere of unreality. They advanced up an avenue of elm trees which hung in the sleepy air like large green balloons. The surface of the drive, although in perfect repair, was faintly tinged with mossy green; it was evident that wheeled traffic seldom passed that way.
‘Are we approaching the palace of the Sleeping Beauty?’ Jasper murmured.
‘You will see the house from the top of this rise,’ said Eugenia. She looked a little anxious, as though hoping so much that they would like it. She need not have worried. The house, when it appeared to view, presented the most beautiful vision that could be imagined. Built, in the Palladian style, of pale pink marble, it consisted of a central dome flanked by two smaller ones, to which it was connected by gleaming colonnades. The whole thing was raised above the level of the drive, and approached in the front by a huge twisted marble staircase. Beyond the house there lay a gleaming lake, beyond that again a formal garden of clipped yews, grass and statuary, and in the background of this picture was the pale but piercing blue of a far-distant landscape.
‘Good heavens,’ said Jasper, when the power of speech returned to him.
‘Do you think it beautiful?’ said Eugenia. ‘I do. I think it is the most beautiful house in the world, but then, of course, I have seen few others.’
‘I have never, in any country, seen one to beat it,’ said Poppy.
They began to walk slowly towards it.
‘Under the Social Unionist régime,’ said Jasper, ‘your Captain should make a law that all really beautiful houses must be preserved and occupied. It is much the most horrible feature of this age that so many are being destroyed, allowed to stand derelict, or, worst of all, handed over to the proletariat and turned into postcard counters and ice-cream booths. That is too ignoble. Beautiful houses ought to be a setting for beautiful women, their lovers, and perhaps a few frail, but exquisite little children.’
Eugenia looked at him reprovingly. ‘Under our régime,’ she said, ‘women will not have lovers. They will have husbands and great quantities of healthy Aryan children. I think you forget the teachings of our Captain, Union Jackshirt Aspect.’
Poppy St Julien said, ‘I don’t know a thing about politics, but I’m sure Hitler must be a wonderful man. Hasn’t he forbidden German women to work in offices and told them they never need worry about anything again, except arranging the flowers? How they must love him.’
‘They do,’ said Eugenia. ‘Heil Hitler! Cousin Poppy St Julien, you must be enrolled as a Union Jackshirt at once. It costs ninepence a month, the Union Jack shirt is five shillings, and sixpence for the little emblem. Here we are.’
Vivian Jackson and the Reichshund followed them up the twisted marble staircase, but when they had reached the top a word from Eugenia made them turn round and trot down it again. ‘Stay there,’ she said, over her shoulder, and ushered Poppy and Jasper into a huge domed room, so blue that it might have been a pool in some Mediterranean lagoon, and they fishes swimming in it.
Across its azure immensity sat Lady Chalford waiting to dispense tea out of a golden tea-pot of exquisite design. She looked rather like Whistler’s portrait of his mother.
6
If Lady Chalford was like a relic from a forgotten age, a museum-piece of great antiquity, it was not because her years were heavy so much as that her speech, her dress, and her outlook, had remained unaltered since before the War. Nineteen fourteen had marked the evening of her days when she should have been yet in her prime.
The world calamity, however, had little or nothing to do with this decline, having been far eclipsed in her eyes by the disastrous marriage made by her only son; while to her, his death in 1920 from wounds received the day before the Armistice, was a lesser disaster than the fact of his divorce. It made no difference in the eyes of his parents that Lord Malmains had divorced his wife; her shame was his, and theirs, and furthermore the heiress to their lands and titles had the tainted blood of an adulteress in her veins. No such thing had ever happened before in the Malmains family, throughout history no shadow of disgrace had ever fallen upon the proud ambitious heads whose likenesses now stared down from pink brocade walls in Lord Chalford’s portrait gallery.
Since the disaster Lady Chalford had never set foot outside her park gates. Lord Chalford, protected by an armour of total deafness, had, until recently laid low by a stroke, performed his duties as a legislator most
