I thought One had done pretty well. Lady Montdore was famous for never giving presents at all, either for birthdays or at Christmas, and had never even relaxed this rule in favour of the adored Polly, though Lord Montdore used to make up for that by giving her several. But she showered presents, and valuable presents too, on Cedric, snatching at the smallest excuse to do so, and I quite saw that with somebody so intensely appreciative this must be a great pleasure.
‘But I have got a surprise for you, as well as the books, something I bought in London,’ she said, looking at him fondly.
‘No!’ said Cedric. I had the feeling he knew all about that, too. ‘I shan’t have one moment’s peace until I’ve wormed it out of you – how I wish you hadn’t told me.’
‘You’ve only got to wait until tomorrow.’
‘Well, I warn you I shall wake you up for it at six. Now finish your tea, dear, and come, we ought to be getting back, I’m in a little bit of a fuss to see what Archie has been up to with all those bronzes. He’s doing the Boulle today and I have had a horrid idea – suppose he has reassembled it into a lorry by mistake? What would dearest Uncle Montdore say if he suddenly came upon a huge Boulle lorry in the middle of the Long Gallery?’
No doubt, I thought, but that both Lord and Lady Montdore would happily have got into it and been taken for a ride by Cedric. He had completely mesmerized them, and nothing that he could do ever seemed otherwise to them than perfection.
5
Cedric’s advent at Hampton naturally created quite a stir in the world outside. London society was not at first given the chance to form an opinion on him, because this was the year following the Financial Crisis – in fact, Cedric and the Crisis had arrived at about the same time, and Lady Montdore, though herself unaffected by it, thought that as there was no entertaining in London it was hardly worth while to keep Montdore House open. She had it shrouded in dust-sheets except for two rooms where Lord Montdore could put up if he wanted to go to the House of Lords.
Lady Montdore and Cedric never stayed there, they sometimes went to London, but only for the day. She no longer invited large house parties to Hampton. She said people could talk about nothing but money any more and it was too boring, but I thought there was another reason, and that she really wanted to keep Cedric to herself.
The county, however, hummed and buzzed with Cedric, and little else was talked of. I need hardly say that Uncle Matthew, after one look, found that the word sewer had become obsolete and inadequate. Scowling, growling, flashing of eyes and grinding of teeth, to a degree hitherto reserved for Boy Dougdale, were intensified a hundredfold at the mere thought of Cedric, and accompanied by swelling veins and apoplectic noises. The drawers at Alconleigh were emptied of the yellowing slips of paper on which my uncle’s hates had mouldered all these years, and each now contained a clean new slip with the name, carefully printed in black ink, Cedric Hampton. There was a terrible scene on Oxford platform one day. Cedric went to the bookstall to buy Vogue, having mislaid his own copy. Uncle Matthew, who was waiting there for a train, happened to notice that the seams of his coat were piped in a contrasting shade. This was too much for his self-control. He fell upon Cedric and began to shake him like a rat; just then, very fortunately, the train came in, whereupon my uncle, who suffered terribly from train fever, dropped Cedric and rushed to catch it. ‘You’d never think,’ as Cedric said afterwards, ‘that buying Vogue magazine could be so dangerous. It was well worth it though, lovely Spring modes.’
The children, however, were in love with Cedric and furious because I would not allow them to meet him in my house, but Aunt Sadie, who seldom took a strong line about anything, had solemnly begged me to keep them apart, and her word with me was law. Besides, from my pinnacle of sophistication as wife and mother, I also considered Cedric unsuitable company for the very young, and when I knew that he was coming to see me I took great care to shoo away any undergraduates who might happen to be sitting about in my drawing-room.
Uncle Matthew and his neighbours seldom agreed on any subject. He despised their opinions, and they in their turn found his violent likes and dislikes quite incomprehensible, taking their cue as a rule from the balanced Boreleys. Over Cedric, however, all were united. Though the Boreleys were not haters in the Uncle Matthew class, they had their own prejudices, things they ‘could not stick’, foreigners, for example, well-dressed women and the Labour Party. But the thing they could stick least in the world were ‘aesthetes – you know – those awful effeminate creatures – pansies’. When, therefore, Lady Montdore, whom anyhow they could not stick much, installed the awful effeminate pansy Cedric at Hampton, and it became borne in upon them that he was henceforth to be their neighbour for ever, quite an important one at that, the future Lord Montdore, hatred really did burgeon in their souls. At the same time they took a morbid interest in every detail of the situation, and these details were supplied to them by Norma, who got her facts, I am ashamed to say, from me. It tickled me so much to make Norma gasp and stretch her eyes with horror
