been very clever in making it comfortable without spoiling its character.'
'I'll ring up Thyrza tomorrow morning,' said Rhoda.
I must admit that I went to bed with a slight feeling of deflation.
The Pale Horse which had loomed in my mind as a symbol of something unknown and sinister had turned out to be nothing of the sort.
Unless, of course, there was another Pale Horse somewhere else?
I considered that idea until I fell asleep.
II
There was a feeling of relaxation next day, which was a Sunday. An after-the-party feeling. On the lawn the marquee and tents flapped limply in a damp breeze, awaiting removal by the caterer's men at early dawn on the morrow. On Monday we would all set to work to take stock of what damage had been done, and clear things up. Today, Rhoda had wisely decided, it would be better to go out as much as possible. We all went to church, and listened respectfully to Mr Dane Calthrop's scholarly sermon on a text taken from Isaiah which seemed to deal less with religion than with Persian history.
'We're going to lunch with Mr Venables,' explained Rhoda afterwards. 'You'll like him, Mark. He's really a most interesting man. Been everywhere and done everything. Knows all sorts of out-of-the-way things. He bought Priors Court about three years ago. And the things he's done to it must have cost him a fortune. He had polio and is semi-crippled, so he has to go about in a wheelchair. It's very sad for him because up to then he was a great traveller, I believe. Of course he's rolling in money, and, as I say, he's done up the house in a wonderful way – it was an absolute ruin, falling to pieces. It's full of the most gorgeous stuff. The sale rooms are his principal interest nowadays, I believe.'
Priors Court was only a few miles away. We drove there and our host came wheeling himself along the hall to meet us.
'Nice of you all to come,' he said heartily. 'You must be exhausted after yesterday. The whole thing was a great success, Rhoda.'
Mr Venables was a man of about fifty, with a thin hawk-like face and a beaked nose that stood out from it arrogantly. He wore an open-wing collar which gave him a faintly old-fashioned air.
Rhoda made introductions.
Venables smiled at Mrs Oliver.
'I met this lady yesterday in her professional capacity,' he said. 'Six of her books with signatures. Takes care of six presents for Christmas. Great stuff you write, Mrs Oliver. Give us more of it. Can't have too much of it.' He grinned at Ginger. 'You nearly landed me with a live duck, young woman.' Then he turned to me. 'I enjoyed your article in the Review last month,' he said.
'It was awfully good of you to come to our fete, Mr Venables,' said Rhoda. 'After that generous check you sent us, I didn't really hope that you'd turn up in person.'
'Oh, I enjoy that kind of thing. Part of English rural life, isn't it? I came home clasping a most terrible Kewpie doll from the hoopla, and had a splendid but unrealistic future prophesied me by Our Sybil, all dressed up in a tinsel turban with about a ton of fake Egyptian beads slung over her torso.'
'Good old Sybil,' said Colonel Despard. 'We're going there to tea with Thyrza this afternoon. It's an interesting old place.'
'The Pale Horse? Yes. I rather wish it had been left as an inn. I always feel that that place had had a mysterious and unusually wicked past history. It can't have been smuggling; we're not near enough to the sea for that. A resort for highwaymen, perhaps? Or rich travellers spent the night there and were never seen again. It seems, somehow, rather tame to have turned it into a desirable residence for three old maids.'
'Oh – I never think of them like that!' cried Rhoda. 'Sybil Stamfordis, perhaps, with her saris and her scarabs, and always seeing auras round people's heads – she is rather ridiculous. But there's something really awe-inspiring about Thyrza, don't you agree? You feel she knows just what you're thinking. She doesn't talk about having second sight – but everyone says that she has got it.'
'And Bella, far from being an old maid, has buried two husbands,' added Colonel Despard.
'I sincerely beg her pardon,' said Venables laughing.
'With sinister interpretations of the deaths from the neighbours,' added Despard. 'It's said they displeased her, so she just turned her eyes on them, and they slowly sickened and pined away!'
'Of course, I forgot, she is the local witch?'
'So Mrs Dane Calthrop says.'
'Interesting thing, witchcraft,' said Venables thoughtfully. 'All over the world you get variations of it – I remember when I was in East Africa -'
He talked easily, and entertainingly, on the subject He spoke of medicine men in Africa; of little known cults in Borneo. He promised that, after lunch, he would show us some West African sorcerers' masks.
'There's everything in this house,' declared Rhoda with a laugh.
'Oh, well -' he shrugged his shoulders – 'if you can't go out to everything, then everything must be made to come to you.'
Just for a moment there was a sudden bitterness in his voice. He gave a swift glance downwards towards his paralyzed legs.
''The world is so full of a number of things,'' he quoted. 'I think that's always been my undoing. There's so much I want to know about – to see! Oh, well, I haven't done too badly in my time. And even now life has its consolations.'
'Why here?' asked Mrs Oliver suddenly.
The others had been slightly ill at ease, as people become when a hint of tragedy looms in the air. Mrs Oliver alone had been unaffected. She asked because she wanted to know. And her frank curiosity restored the lighthearted atmosphere.
Venables looked towards her inquiringly.
'I mean,' said Mrs Oliver. 'Why did you come to live here, in this neighbourhood? So far away from things that are going on. Was it because you had friends here?'
'No. I chose this part of the world, since you are interested, because I had no friends here.'
A faint ironical smile touched his lips.
How deeply, I wondered, had his disability affected him? Had the loss of unfettered movement, of liberty to explore the world, bitten deep into his soul? Or had he managed to adapt himself to altered circumstances with comparative equanimity – with a real greatness of spirit.
As though Venables had read my thoughts, he said:
'In your article you questioned the meaning of the term 'greatness' – you compared the different meanings attached to it – in the East and the West. But what do we all mean nowadays, here in England, when we use the term 'a great man'?'
'Greatness of intellect, certainly,' I said, 'and surely, moral strength as well?'
He looked at me, his eyes bright and shining.
'Is there no such thing as an evil man, then, who can be described as great?' he asked.
'Of course there is,' cried Rhoda. 'Napoleon and Hitler and oh, lots of people. They were all great men.'
'Because of the effect they produced?' said Despard. 'But if one had known them personally, I wonder if one would have been impressed.'
Ginger leaned forward and ran her fingers through her carroty mop of hair.
'That's an interesting thought,' she said. 'Mightn't they, perhaps, have seemed pathetic, undersized little figures. Strutting, posturing, feeling inadequate, determined to be someone, even if they pulled the world down round them?'
'Oh, no,' said Rhoda vehemently. 'They couldn't have produced the results they did if they had been like that'
'I don't know,' said Mrs Oliver. 'After all, the stupidest child can set a house on fire quite easily.'
