‘That’s all right,’ said Jasper. ‘We can count on her for complete immobility during the afternoon – lend her your face cream, Miss Smith, in case she’s run out, would you? What about you then, are you falling in with my scheme?’
Poppy said that it was all rather Phillips Oppenheim, but she supposed there could be no harm in it.
They arranged, after a good deal of talk, that Jasper should wander round to Comberry Manor at about four o’clock, and pay a call on Mrs Lace.
Poppy had already promised that she would take tea with Lady Chalford in order to discuss the garden party and pageant, so she would stick to that plan. This would leave Noel to await Eugenia, who was to be at the twopenny-bar shop as usual.
‘Common sense demands that we should begin by allaying any possible suspicion until we see how the land lies,’ said Jasper. ‘For instance, if I go to Comberry Manor, they will be put off the scent as far as Noel and Mrs Lace are concerned –’
‘But there is nothing,’ Noel interrupted. ‘I mean I have only seen Mrs Lace about three times in my life.’
‘Still, you’re mad about the girl, and intend to see her a good deal more in future. By this time next week there’s no knowing what won’t have happened, eh, old boy? To continue, Miss Smith can go with the utmost propriety and visit her second cousin four times removed, or whatever it is, neither could there be any harm in Noel smoking a pipe on the village green, or in Lady Marjorie’s virginal cultivation of beauty, a pursuit in which, as everybody knows, she constantly indulges. I consider, ladies and gentlemen, that it is exceedingly important for us to find out which pole these boys are barking up. Once we know that we shall doubtless be able to thwart them at every turn.’
8
It was another day of intense heat, the sky was deep indigo, the shadows beneath the trees were black. No birds sang, and the landscape quivered slightly. Poppy, as she walked towards Chalford House, felt extremely contented. She was at her best in hot weather, it suited her and made her feel energetic. This was the first summer she had spent in England for some years, and she thought that nowhere abroad had she seen such beautiful days. The little coppice through which the drive passed just after the lodge gates was very dark, and smelt deliciously of leaf-mould, and the hot bark of trees. Chalford House itself, lying in a dancing haze of heat, looked like three enormous pink pearls upon a green velvet cushion. Eugenia now came into the picture, riding lazily upon a sleeping Vivian Jackson, and bound, no doubt, for the twopenny-bar shop.
‘T.P.O.F. is expecting you,’ she cried. ‘Hail and farewell, cousin Poppy St Julien.’
‘Hail and farewell, Eugenia,’ said Poppy smiling. A moment later she turned and shouted over her shoulder, ‘Noel is waiting for you on the village green.’
Lady Chalford received her with an almost touching cordiality. ‘Dear child,’ she cried, ‘I have been thinking of you a great deal since Thursday – it is a very happy thing for me that you have come to Chalford. Why, I have not seen one of my relations since our tragedy – sixteen years ago. You must tell me a great deal of news – first of all, how is your dear mother?’
Poppy said that her dear mother was very well. She did not mention the painful fact that they had not been on speaking terms since Poppy’s marriage to Anthony St Julien. Lady Chalford then proceeded to inquire after innumerable collaterals, mentioning aunts, uncles, and cousins, of whose existence Poppy was, in many cases, hardly herself aware.
‘Dear child,’ Lady Chalford said, when Poppy was unable to throw any light on the health, happiness, or even the whereabouts of two of her own father’s first cousins, ‘you seem to be, as a family, sadly décousu, if I may say so.’
The old lady evidently carried in her head a vast family tree; not a birth, a death, or a marriage among the remotest of her connexions seemed ever to have escaped her notice. Poppy thought it a sad thing that her extraordinary prejudice against so normal an eventuality as the fact of a divorce should have caused her to be shut away for ever from the world. She was evidently a woman who possessed an unusual capacity for affection and interest in the lives of other people.
They began to talk about the garden party, Lady Chalford producing a list of those neighbours who had been invited to her son’s coming-of-age ball in 1912. ‘I expect it must be a little out of date now,’ she said, smiling. ‘I must try and get it revised before the invitations are sent. There is no hurry really.’ She then suggested a date for the party in about three weeks’ time. ‘Will that give you long enough to get up a little pageant, dear?’
‘Oh! yes,’ said Poppy, ‘if we get to work straight away. Will you settle a subject for the pageant? As soon as that is fixed we can get on with it.’
‘I was thinking about that before you came,’ said Lady Chalford. ‘Now two monarchs, with their wives, are known to have visited Chalford, so we shall be able to repeat actual history itself. They were Charles I and Henrietta Maria, who came to the Old Manor, and George III and Queen Charlotte. They came to see Chalford House when it was finally completed, and I incline myself towards reproducing their visit, for this reason. We still have, in the stables here, George III’s own coach, and I thought it would be very interesting to use that for the scene of his arrival. Those acting
