“It was at Stourwater,” said Lady Walpole-Wilson. “As a matter of fact we have been asked over there on Sunday. Prince Theodoric is staying there with Sir Magnus Donners.”
I knew the castle by name, and was even aware in a vague kind of way that it had often changed hands during the previous fifty or hundred years; but I had never seen the place, nor had any idea that Sir Magnus Donners lived there.
“And I so much wanted that afternoon to see those two hound puppies Nokes is walking,” said Eleanor. “Now it turns out we are being forced to go to this ghastly luncheon-party.”
“Got to be civil to one’s neighbours, my dear,” said Sir Gavin. “Besides, Theodoric has particularly asked to see me.”
“I don’t know what you call ‘neighbours’,” said Eleanor. “Stourwater is twenty-five miles, at least.”
“Nonsense,” said Sir Gavin. “I doubt if it is twenty-three.”
His attitude towards Eleanor varied between almost doting affection and an approach most easily suggested by the phrase “making the best of a bad job.” There were times when she vexed him. Arguing with her father brought out the resemblance between the two of them, though features that, in Sir Gavin, seemed conventionalised to the point, almost, of stylisation took on a peculiar twist in his daughter. As she sat there at the table, I could recognise no similarity whatever to Barbara — of whom at times I still found myself thinking — except for their shared colouring.
“I explained to Donners that we should be quite a large party,” said Sir Gavin, “but he would not hear of anyone being left behind. In any case, there is plenty of room there, and the castle itself is well worth seeing.”
“I don’t think I shall come after all, Gavin,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson. “No one will want to see me there — least of all Prince Theodoric. Although I dare say he is too young to remember the misunderstanding that arose, when I stayed with you, regarding that remark about ‘travesty of democratic government’—and you know I never care for people with too much money.”
“Oh, come, Janet,” said Sir Gavin. “Of course they will all want to see you — the Prince especially. He is a very go-ahead fellow, everyone who has met him agrees. As a matter of fact, you know as well as I do, the old King laughed heartily when I explained the circumstance of your remark. He made a rather broad joke about it. I’ve told you a thousand times. Besides, Donners is not a bad fellow at all.”
“I can’t get on with those people — ever.”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘those people’,” said Sir Gavin, a trifle irritably. “Donners is no different from anyone else, except that he may be a bit richer. He didn’t start life barefoot — not that I for one should have the least objection if he had, more power to his elbow — but his father was an eminently solid figure. He was knighted, I believe, for what that’s worth. Donners went to some quite decent school. I think the family are of Scandinavian, or North German, extraction. No doubt very worthy people.”
“Oh, I do hope he isn’t German,” said Lady Walpole-Wilson. “I never thought of that.”
“Personally, I have a great admiration for the Germans — I do not, of course, mean the Junkers,” said her sister-in-law. “They have been hardly treated. No one of liberal opinions could think otherwise. And I certainly do not object to Sir Magnus on snobbish grounds. You know me too well for that, Gavin. I have no doubt, as you say, that he has many good points. All the same, I think I had better stay at home. I can make a start on my article about the Bosnian Moslems for the news-sheet of the Minority Problems League.”
“If Aunt Janet doesn’t go, I don’t see why I should,” said Eleanor. “I don’t in the least want to meet Prince Theodoric.”
“I do,” said Rosie Manasch. “I thought he looked too fetching at Goodwood.”
In the laugh that followed this certainly tactful expression of preference, earlier warnings of potential family difference died away. Sir Gavin began to describe, not for the first time, the occasion when, as a young secretary in some Oriental country, he had stained his face with coffee-grounds and, like Haroun-al-Raschid, “mingled” in the bazaar: with, so it appeared, useful results. The story carried dinner safely to the dessert, a stage when Pardoe brought conversation back once more to Sunday’s expedition by asking whether Sir Magnus Donners had purchased Stourwater from the family with whom Barbara was staying in Scotland, for whose house he was himself bound on leaving Hinton.
“He bought it from a relation of mine,” said Rosie Manasch. “Uncle Leopold always says he sold it — with due respect to you, Eleanor — because the hunting round here wasn’t good enough. I think it was really because it cost too much to keep up.”
“It is all very perfect now,” said Sir Gavin. “Rather too perfect for my taste. In any case, I am no medievalist.”
He looked round the table challengingly after saying this, rather as Uncle Giles was inclined to glare about him after making some more or less tendentious statement, whether because he suspected that one or other of us, in spite of this disavowal, would charge him with covert medievalism, or in momentary hesitation that, in taking so high a line on the subject of an era at once protracted and diversified, he ran risk of exposure to the impeachment of “missing something” thereby, was uncertain.
“There is the Holbein, too,” said Lady Walpole-Wilson. “You really must come, Janet, I know you like pictures.”
“The castle belongs, like Bodiam, to the later Middle Ages,” said Sir Gavin, assuming all at once the sing-song tones of a guide or lecturer. “And, like Bodiam, Stourwater possesses little or no historical interest, as such, while remaining, so far as its exterior is concerned, architecturally one of the most complete, and comparatively unaltered, fortified buildings of its period. For some reason—”
“—for some reason the defences were not dismantled—‘sleighted,’ I think you call it — at the time of the Civil Wars,” cut in Lady Walpole-Wilson, as if answering the responses in church, or completing the quotation of a well-known poem to show apreciation of its aptness. “Though subsequent owners undertook certain improvements in connection with the structural fabric of the interior, with a view to increasing Stourwater’s convenience as a private residence in more peaceful times.”
“I have already read a great deal of what you have been saying in Stourwater and Its Story, a copy of which was kindly placed by my bed,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson. “I doubt if all the information given there is very accurate.”
For some reason a curious sense of excitement rose within me at prospect of this visit. I could not explain to myself this feeling, almost of suspense, that seemed to hang over the expedition. I was curious to see the castle, certainly, hut that hardly explained an anxiety that Eleanor’s hound puppies, or Miss Walpole-Wilson’s humours, might prevent my going there. That night I lay awake thinking about Stourwater as if it had been the sole motive for my coming to Hinton: fearing all the time that some hitch would occur. However, the day came and we set out, Miss Walpole-Wilson, in spite of her earlier displeasure, finally agreeing to accompany the party, accommodated in two cars, one of them driven by Sir Gavin himself. There was perhaps a tacit suggestion that he would have liked Rosie Manasch to travel with him, but, although as a rule not unwilling to accept his company, and approval, she chose, on this occasion, the car driven by the chauffeur.