"Moke," he said at length, having completed his scrutiny, "I'll tell you something which you may or may not see fit to release to the Press. This bally place looks mouldier every time I see it."
Monica was quick to defend her childhood home.
"It might be a lot worse."
Rory considered this, chewing his cud for a while in silence.
"How?" he asked.
"I know it needs doing up, but where's the money to come from? Poor old Bill can't afford to run a castle on a cottage income."
"Why doesn't he get a job like the rest of us?"
"You needn't stick on side just because you're in trade, you old counterjumper."
"Everybody's doing it, I mean to say.
Nowadays the House of Lords is practically empty except on evenings and bank holidays."
"We Rowcesters aren't easy to place. The Rowcester men have all been lilies of the field.
Why, Uncle George didn't even put on his own boots."
"Whose boots did he put on?" asked Rory, interested.
"Ah, that's what we'd all like to know. Of course, Bill's big mistake was letting that American woman get away from him."
"What American woman would that be?"
"It was just after you and I got married. A Mrs. Bessemer. A widow. He met her in Cannes one summer. Fabulously rich and, according to Bill, unimaginably beautiful. It seemed promising for a time, but it didn't come to anything.
I suppose someone cut him out. Of course, he was plain Mr. Belfry then, not my lord Rowcester, which may have made a difference."
Rory shook his head.
"It wouldn't be that. I was plain Mr.
Carmoyle when I met you and look at the way I snaffled you in the teeth of the pick of the County."
"But then think what you were like in those days. A flick of the finger, a broken heart. And you're not so bad now, either," added Monica fondly.
"Something of the old magic remains."
"True," said Rory placidly. "In a dim light I still cast a spell. But the trouble with Bill was, I imagine, that he lacked drive ... the sort of drive you see so much of at Harrige's. The will to win, I suppose you might call it. Napoleon had it. I have it, Bill hasn't. Oh, well, there it is," said Rory philosophically. He resumed his study of Rowcester Abbey. "You know what this house wants?" he proceeded. "An atom bomb, dropped carefully on the roof of the main banqueting hall."
"It would help, wouldn't it?"
"It would be the making of the old place. Put it right in no time. Still, atom bombs cost money, so I suppose that's out of the question. What you ought to do is use your influence with Bill to persuade him to buy a lot of paraffin and some shavings and save the morning papers and lay in plenty of matches and wait till some moonless night and give the joint the works. He'd feel a different man, once the old ruin was nicely ablaze."
Monica looked mysterious.
"I can do better than that."
Rory shook his head.
"No. Arson. It's the only way. You can't beat good old arson. Those fellows down in the east end go in for it a lot. They touch a match to the shop, and it's like a week at the seaside to them."
"What would you say if I told you I was hoping to sell the house?"
Rory stared, amazed. He had a high opinion of his wife's resourcefulness, but he felt that she was attempting the impossible.
"Sell it? I don't believe you could give it away. I happen to know Bill offered it for a song to one of these charitable societies as a Home for Reclaimed Juvenile Delinquents, and they simply sneered at him. Probably thought it would give the Delinquents rheumatism. Very damp house, this."
"It is a bit moist."
"Water comes through the walls in heaping handfuls.
I suppose because it's so close to the river. I remember saying to Bill once, "Bill,"
I said, "I'll tell you something about your home surroundings. In the summer the river is at the bottom of your garden, and in the winter your garden is at the bottom of the river." Amused the old boy quite a bit. He thought it clever."
Monica regarded her husband with that cold, wifely eye which married men learn to dread.
"Very clever," she said frostily.
"Extremely droll. And I suppose the first thing you'll do is make a crack like that to Mrs.
Spottsworth."
"Eh?" It stole slowly into Rory's mind that a name had been mentioned that was strange to him.
"Who's Mrs. Spottsworth?"
"The woman I'm hoping to sell the house to.
American. Very rich. I met her when I was passing through New York on my way home.
She owns dozens of houses in America, but she's got a craving to have something old and picturesque in England."
"Romantic, eh?"
"Dripping with romance. Well, when she told me that—we were sitting next to each other at a women's lunch—I immediately thought of Bill and the Abbey, of course, and started giving her a sales talk. She seemed interested. After all, the Abbey is chock full of historical associations."
"And mice."
"She was flying to England next day, so I told her when I would be arriving and we arranged that she was to come here and have a look at the place. She should be turning up at any moment."
"Does Bill know she's coming?"
"No. I ought to have sent him a cable, but I forgot. Still, what does it matter?
He'll be only too delighted. The important thing is to keep you from putting her off with your mordant witticisms. "I often say in my amusing way, Mrs. Spottsworth, that whereas in the summer months the river is at the bottom of the garden, in the winter months—ha, ha —the garden—this is going to slay you—is at the bottom of the river, ho, ho, ho." That would just clinch the sale."
"Now would I be likely to drop a brick of that sort, old egg?"
"Extremely likely, old crumpet. The trouble with you is that, though a king among men, you have no tact."
Rory smiled. The charge tickled him.
"No tact? The boys at Harrige's would laugh if they heard that."
"Do remember that it's vital to put this deal through."
"I'll bear it in mind. I'm all for giving poor old Bill a leg-up. It's a damn shame," said Rory, who often thought rather deeply on these subjects. "Bill starts at the bottom of the ladder as a mere heir to an Earldom, and by pluck and perseverance works his way up till he becomes the Earl himself. And no sooner has he settled the coronet on his head and said to himself "Now to whoop it up!" than they pull a social revolution out of their hats like a rabbit and snitch practically every penny he's got. Ah, well!" said Rory with a sigh. "I say," he went on, changing the subject, "have you noticed, Moke, old girl, that throughout this little chat of ours—which I for one have thoroughly enjoyed—
I have been pressing the bell at frequent intervals and not a damn thing has happened? What is this joint, the palace of the sleeping beauty?
Or do you think the entire strength of the company has been wiped out by some plague or pestilence?"
"Good heavens!" said Monica, "bells at Rowcester Abbey don't ring. I don't suppose they've worked since Edward the Seventh's days. If Uncle George wished to summon the domestic staff, he just shoved his head back and howled like a prairie wolf."
"That would have been, I take it, when he wanted somebody else's boots to put on?"
"You just open the door and walk in. Which is what I am about to do now. You bring the bags in from the car."
"Depositing them where?"
"In the hall for the moment," said Monica.
"You can take them upstairs later."
She went in, and made her way to that familiar haunt, the living-room off the hall where in her childhood days most of the life of Rowcester Abbey had centred. Like other English houses of its size, the Abbey had a number of vast state apartments which were never used, a library which was used occasionally, and this living-room, the popular meeting-place. It was here that in earlier days she had sat and read the Girl's Own Paper and, until the veto had been placed on her activities by her Uncle George, whose sense of smell was acute, had kept white rabbits.