Betty’s thankfulness for the happier turn in her fortunes grew, if anything, greater during the three days left to her in town. Her relief was not merely on her own behalf. She had another worry that was no secret from her intimate friends, but unknown to the outside world. It concerned her twin brother. Roland had proved a disappointment. His acquaintances called him a ne’er-do-well, though she softened the word down into a ‘misfit’. Artistic, with charming manners and kindly in all that did not incommode himself, he was yet selfish at heart, as well as being cursed with an almost ungovernable temper. Loving excitement and unable to bear the humdrum life of a bank clerk, the inevitable happened and he lost his job. He went to Paris, which he had known well in more prosperous days, and made ends meet by acting in a troupe which did occasional turns in the lower class music halls of the metropolis. In this precarious life he had often applied to Betty for help. Idolizing him as she always had—perhaps because they were twins—she could refuse him nothing, and while she remained well-to-do she had pulled him through many a crisis. Her recent inability to help him had hurt her, but now she would be able to do this again.
Her satisfaction indeed was so great that she felt she must share her news or burst. She therefore went next day to call on her dearest friends, a couple named Barke. They had been living at Maidstone when, as John Stanton’s bride, she had gone there eight years earlier. They had met at tennis and had quickly grown intimate, and when some five years later the Barkes moved to town, the friendship was not dropped. Though Betty had not told them how serious was her predicament, they knew she was left badly off and would be delighted to hear of her good fortune.
The family consisted of husband and wife and a married daughter living in Jamaica. Charles Barke was an artist of I distinction and Director of the Crewe Gallery. A Royal Academician, ‘hung’ each year as a matter of course and, a recognized authority on matters of art, he even made art pay. In appearance he was small and sturdy, with fair hair, a round face, observant blue eyes peering out through large horn-rimmed spectacles, and a belligerent expression oddly at variance with his gentle manner and kindly disposition.
Agatha Barke was what Betty called a dear. Also small, her looks were not her best point. She was stout and usually slightly untidy. But in character she was goodness and unselfishness personified. Her joy was to make other people happy, and she felt that no day was complete unless in it some lame dog had been helped over its stile.
When Betty arrived she found her dressed for out-of-doors.
‘You provoking creature!’ Agatha cried. ‘Why didn’t you ring me up? I have to go out in ten minutes. Must go: it’s that wretched Collison exhibition and I have to open it. But look here, you come too! Then we can talk on the way.’
‘Awfully good of you, Agatha, but I can’t do that,’ Betty returned. ‘I just called for a moment to tell you of my good luck,’ and she went on to give her news.
Mrs Barke beamed.
‘My dear, I am glad,’ she cried, and the warmth of her tone was like a cordial to Betty. ‘And Charles will be delighted. You know, I get jealous sometimes, he thinks so much of you.’
‘You’re both too good to me for words,’ and Betty meant it. ‘How is Charles? I haven’t seen him for some time.’
‘First-rate. He’s in Nimes. You heard about the find there?’
‘No? What was that?’
‘Six old canvases—in a small second-hand dealer’s. They think one’s a Raphael and that all are valuable. He’s been asked to give an opinion.’
‘His own special line.’
‘Yes, he’s in demand in such cases. In fact, he gets too many commissions of that kind now. He’s been complaining that he can’t get on with his own work and that he must begin to refuse them.’
Betty laughed. ‘My goodness! Fancy refusing jobs like that! That’s the reward of climbing to the top of the tree.’
Agatha made a face at her, then smiled affectionately. ‘But you haven’t heard our news,’ she went on. ‘We’re off to America!’
‘What?’
‘America! A month’s lecturing tour and holiday, six weeks altogether. I’m so excited I don’t know whether I’m on my head or my heels.’
Betty jumped up and kissed her friend. ‘Agatha! I’m so delighted! You wanted that for a long time and I’m certain you’ll love it. When do you start?’
‘On Wednesday week. Just as soon as Charles can get away. He’s been talking about it for ages, but it was just fixed up this morning. Yes, we’ll love it. But there,’ she glanced at her watch, ‘I’m terribly sorry, but I must be off. Sure you won’t change your mind and come with me?’
Two days later at the appointed hour of three in the afternoon, Sir Geoffrey Buller, resplendent in a new Rolls Royce, drew up at her somewhat modest hotel.
‘How good of you,’ she greeted him, ‘to come for me yourself. I didn’t expect this.’
‘Unhappily,’ he told her in his high-pitched squeaky voice, ‘it’s not so good as it seems. In the first place I’ve fired the chauffeur and the new one doesn’t take over till tomorrow, and in the second I’ve just taken delivery of this car; in fact, I’ve been with a mechanic all morning learning about its inside.’
‘Lucky for me at all events. The proper way to arrive anywhere is in a Rolls.’
‘I hope you’ll like it when you do get there,’ he went on more seriously. ‘It’s a great big barrack of a place. Huge! It’s like dining in a Zepp hangar in the evenings.’
‘It’s old, I suppose?’
‘Before the Flood by the look of it. I don’t know how old it is: fifteenth century, the butler says, but I don’t suppose he knows.’
‘Charming!’
‘I’m not so sure,’ he said doubtfully. ‘It’s a bit gloomy for my taste. And it wants a terrible lot done to it. I don’t know how those people lived, my respected cousin and his crowd. You’d scarcely believe it, but there’s not a private bathroom in the entire outfit. Not one in the house! What do you think of that?’
She smiled. ‘I shouldn’t have been surprised if you had said there was only one makeshift bathroom to do the whole establishment.’
‘You’re not so far wrong,’ he agreed. ‘There are five, but they’re just what you say, makeshift. Look as if they were put in fifty years ago and not touched since.’
‘Probably exactly what has happened. Are you going to put that sort of thing right?’
‘Well, I fancy that if one’s going to live in the place it’ll have to be put into some sort of order. My heavens, those people had some funny notions. They’ve spent hundreds, thousands by the look of it, on the garden. There’s a rock garden there would do for Buckingham Palace and Kew rolled into one: the stones must have cost hundreds, let alone the plants and the water supply and all the maintenance. Thousands poured out like that—and no decent baths in the house. Can you beat it?’
‘Just the old ideas handed down from generation to generation.’
‘I don’t know why they bothered with glass in the windows or electric light: though that’s all a washout too. It’ll have to be done again from A to Z.’
‘You don’t seem altogether smitten with your new abode,’ she laughed, and though he turned it off with a joke, she believed her remark had gone home.
As they drove further she grew more certain of it. He was obviously disappointed. What he had expected, she didn’t know, but it was evident he had not found it.
Yet when they reached Ockham and turned into the gates of Forde Manor, she could see no reason for disappointment. On the contrary, first views at all events were charming. The drive curved past a little old huddled lodge—though probably without a bathroom of any kind—the overhanging timbering of which seemed scarcely able to bear the weight of wisteria and honeysuckle which clung to it. A belt of gnarled oaks screened the grounds from the road and then the drive reached open parkland. To the left were tennis courts and the extravagant gardens, the house showing as a grey mass some quarter of a mile further on. On the right the grass lawns sloped gently down to a quite decent sized lake.
‘Oh,’ cried Betty when she saw this last, ‘is the lake yours?’
‘Yes, it’s all inside the property.’
‘How delightful. That surely will make up for many bathrooms.’
‘It’s a catch, I agree,’ he returned seriously. ‘But there again there are boats and cushions and so on in the boathouse to carry a regiment of soldiers, but there’s not an outboard motor in the whole concern.’
‘They wouldn’t have liked the noise.’
‘But there are guns enough to arm the regiment. They didn’t mind that noise.’
‘Hush!’ she returned with a scandalized expression. ‘Have you forgotten that you’re an Englishman? You’re speaking lightly of sport. You may damn your government and cheat your baker and seduce your neighbour’s wife, and no one’ll think any the worse of you. But sport! My goodness, what are you thinking about?’
He laughed a little uneasily. ‘I guess that’s right,’ he returned. ‘I had forgotten about all this Test match stuff and so on till I got back and saw your papers.’
‘Your papers.’
‘Well—our papers then. It’s different, over on the other side, but I suppose I’ll get used to it again. What do you think of the house?’
They were now coming close to the front and Betty could see its entire extent. ‘Why,’ she cried, ‘it’s splendid! Magni-ficent! How can you feel disappointed about it?’
‘I didn’t say I was disappointed.’
‘No, but your manner has. Why, it’s grand.’
Though not perhaps one of the stately homes of England, Forde Manor was a really fine old pile. It was E-shaped, the main house having large projecting wings at each end, and a smaller one, the porch and probably a front hall, in the centre. It was built of old grey stone in the early perpendicular style. Its masses were admirably proportioned, the whole looking restful and dignified and ineffably secure.
The door was opened by the butler and they passed into a long hall with doors at the sides, a double staircase curving up to two surrounding balconies on first and second floor levels and a high timbered roof with central light. The walls were panelled in black oak and there was a huge open fireplace with a metal grate carried at either end on elaborate dogs. The furniture was sparse but in period, a black oak refectory table on a large rug in the centre, a few chairs, a tallboy, and some big game heads on the walls.
‘You’d like to see your room, wouldn’t you?’ Sir Geoffrey went on. ‘Then if you’ll come down we’ll have tea in this place next door,’ he nodded towards the left; ‘the blue drawing room, I believe.’
Betty was met at the first floor balcony by a superior-looking young woman who smilingly introduced herself. ‘I’m Hawes, the head housemaid, madam. You wish to see your room?’
A good type, thought Betty as she smiled back. Honest, reliable and kindly. She felt instinctively that she and Hawes would get on, and this view became strengthened as they chatted.
The ‘room’ was at the end of the corridor. Betty was surprised and delighted to find that it was really a four-roomed suite consisting of two bedrooms, a sitting-room and one of the five bathrooms, though this latter could only be reached from the corridor. The furnishing was luxurious, but old-fashioned and rather sombre. The only thing lacking was a view of the lake, the windows being at the rear of the house and looking out over shrubberies and trees.
Tea was waiting in the blue drawing-room, so called from the shade of its Chinese carpet. Sir Geoffrey talked, not uninterestingly, about his life in America, and when they had finished he suggested a look over the place.
Fine as she thought the outside of the house, she was even more delighted with its interior. From the lofty central hall a corridor ran north and south along the centre of the house, beneath those on the upper floors. Off it opened an astonishing number of rooms. Beside the blue drawing-room there was another drawing-room, larger and more ornate in decoration, also a reception-room, a dining-room, a breakfast-room, a morning-room, a gun-room, a library, a study and some half a dozen others. Behind the hall were the kitchen and service pantries, which Mrs Jessop, the cook, would show her later.
‘The two swell rooms are at the ends of the house,’ Sir Geoffrey explained, as they reached a pair of doors across the corridor. ‘They form those wings that project from the front. This one to the south is the ballroom, and the other used to be the banqueting hall and is now the picture gallery. Some room, isn’t it?’ He threw open the door.
Betty thought it was magnificent. About forty feet by eighty, it was lofty with a fine hammer-beam roof. All four walls except where the house joined on were pierced with windows, with stained glass showing idyllic or hunting scenes. Round the walls the old woodblock floor remained, but over the central area this had been replaced by a modern dancing-floor. The furniture was ordinary, but when Betty looked at the pictures she had eyes for nothing else.
‘You’ve got some magnificent stuff there,’ she cried. ‘Surely those are invaluable?’
He nodded. ‘So I’m told. I don’t know a thing about pictures myself. But the butler tells me the best are at the other end of the house in the picture gallery. Come and have a look.’
‘I promise myself a feast in here,’ she returned as she followed him out.
‘Then you’re an expert?’
‘Not I. But I’m fond of pictures and I have an artist friend, a Mr Barke, who has taught me a little. He’s an enthusiast and you couldn’t be in his company without getting enthusiastic too.’
‘I wish I knew more about things,’ Sir Geoffrey said plaintively. ‘There’s a lot of stuff in this place that’s thrown away on me. I can’t appreciate it.’
Betty almost began to like him. ‘You’ll soon learn,’ she answered with conviction. ‘You’ll find these pictures grow on you. Then you’ll wonder why you like them, and before you know where you are you’ll be a connoisseur.’
He laughed, almost for the first time. ‘I can see it happening,’ he declared. ‘This is the gallery.’
He threw open the door of the room forming the northern wing, and Betty caught her breath. The room was similar in size and construction to the ballroom, but here every available foot of wall space was occupied by canvases.
‘I should want,’ she exclaimed, as they walked slowly round, ‘at least a week in here. What a priceless collection you’ve got!’
‘I hope,’ he said gravely, ‘you’ll have a good many weeks to look at them.’
‘That’s very nice of you,’ she declared. ‘But I won’t see them now. I’ll come back later and gloat over them.’
‘Right,’ he returned, apparently relieved. ‘Care to have a walk round outside?’
‘I’d love it.’
The terrace in front of the house was laid out as a formal Dutch garden, and though Betty did not particularly admire Dutch gardens, she had to admit how admirably the design suited its setting. The view across the lawns down to the lake was more in her line, restful and charming, fringed with great trees to right and left, and in the centre showing a vista of distant country beyond the lake.
The garden to which they now walked was what Betty called a dream. But it was not very different from other gardens, and presently continuing their tour, they passed the tennis courts and, crossing the drive, walked down over the grass to the lake. With the lake Betty was enchanted. It was roughly pear-shaped, with its lower broad end open to the house and lawns, and its narrower top surrounded by what looked like the beginning of a forest. They walked round it and inspected the boathouse, which was hidden by the trees from the main building. Betty, who was fond of boating, promised herself some delightful hours on the water. Finally they returned by the back of the house, where stood the garages.
‘Lordly, aren’t they?’ Sir Geoffrey commented. ‘There’s room for twenty cars and fine space above them. Old hay lofts, I suppose. One thing I’ll get here,’ he went on, with more enthusiasm than he had yet shown, ‘in one of those lofts: a workshop. I’ve wanted one all my life, and now I’ll have it.’
‘What kind of work do you do?’ asked Betty.
‘All kinds,’ he grinned. ‘Woodwork, metal work, electrical gadgets. I’m happier at that sort of thing than at anything else.’
That night as Betty turned in, she felt that the lines had fallen to her in marvellously pleasant places. She would never, she told herself, have such a chance again. If she couldn’t make good and be happy here, it would be her own fault and she would deserve anything which might come to her. Soon she had completely settled down. She was tactful, and without interfering very much with anyone concerned, she contrived to introduce a number of improvements into the running of the house. These she would like to have discussed with Sir Geoffrey, but ten days passed before she found an opportunity. It proved gratifying in that he expressed his approval of all she had done, but unsatisfactory because she could get no hint from him as to his future intentions. During the discussion on the Nicarian he had been full of plans for entertaining: house parties as well as luncheons and dinners. Now his interest in these seemed largely to have died.
‘Just go right ahead as you are,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t know yet what I’m going to do. Time to make alterations when they become necessary.’
Betty thought this closed the discussion, but after a pause he went on. ‘That respected cousin of mine must have been the hell of a queer guy. I’ve been going into the finance of this estate, and I will say,’ his voice grew emphatic, ‘that I never could have figured anything being let get in such a mess. There just aren’t any accounts, not what you’d call accounts; no records of what was spent on various items, nothing! It just isn’t believable.’
Betty looked up interestedly. ‘I suppose the late baronet had so much that it didn’t matter,’ she suggested.
‘That may explain, but doesn’t excuse it, as Gladstone said in 1888. Well, I reckon everyone ought to know just how far he’s solvent. But that didn’t seem to have worried him.’
‘There must have been plenty of money. One can see that from the way everything has been kept up—except, of course, the bathrooms.’
‘Oh yes, that’s right enough,’ he answered unsmilingly, ‘there’s plenty of money and it hasn’t been stinted. But imagine not knowing just how you stand! Can you beat it?’
‘You’ll put that right at all events.’
He smiled at that. ‘I don’t know if that’s one below the belt,’ he returned, ‘but I certainly will. And it doesn’t stop there. What do you think of having all that valuable stuff and pictures and so on, and none of it properly insured or only for a fraction of its value? I know nothing of costs myself, but I’ve been making inquiries.’
‘I expect your predecessor took the view that as the pictures were irreplaceable, no money would make good their loss.’
‘I wondered that at first, but I don’t think so. I believe it was just slackness. Anyway, that’s a darned silly notion. If you lose a valuable possession, why shouldn’t you get its money’s worth, even if that won’t replace it?’
‘I see your point,’ she told him as she carefully fitted a cigarette into her long holder. ‘It’s just, I think, a different way of looking at things. There are two sides to every question, you know.’
‘There are to this one, at all events,’ he agreed, ‘my late cousin’s and mine.’
‘That sounds very uncompromising.’
He lit a cigarette in his turn. ‘Well, I reckon I must do something about it, and that’s why I opened the subject: to tell you what I’ve decided. I’m having the entire outfit revalued: house, furniture, pictures and everything else. Some experts are coming tomorrow. They may be here some days. I thought you’d wonder what they were doing, so that’s it.’
Next day two well-dressed, prosperous-looking men arrived and were shown over the house by Sir Geoffrey. He introduced them to Betty as Mr Merton and Mr Wilberforce, and asked her to help them in every way possible.
‘We won’t give much trouble, Mrs Stanton,’ Merton assured her. ‘Really all we want is access to the various rooms. We’re just going to have a general look round now; then in the morning we’ll start on the inventory.’
‘It will take you some time, won’t it?’ she answered.
‘There’s a good deal to be done.’
‘Ten days to a fortnight, I should imagine. But I needn’t say,’ he smiled, ‘we’ll not be longer than we can help. The pictures will take some time. What do you say, Wilberforce? Mr Wilberforce specializes on that kind of thing.’
‘Yes,’ said Wilberforce. ‘I’ve not seen the pictures here, but I’m told they’re very good.’
‘They’re magnificent, just delightful.’
Wilberforce looked at her speculatively. ‘You’re an enthusiast?’ he suggested. ‘Do you paint yourself?’
‘No, but I’m fond of pictures and I’ve picked up a little through my friend Mr Barke.’
‘Mr Charles Barke?’ asked Wilberforce with more interest.
‘Yes,’ said Betty. ‘Do you know him?’
Wilberforce nodded. ‘Rather. Mr Barke is the ultimate authority in my walk of life; the last and highest court of appeal. I’ve been present when he’s been examining canvases, deciding if they were genuine and so on, and I can tell you it’s been a pleasure to watch him.’
Rather generous, thought Betty, from one art critic of another. She smiled at Wilberforce.
‘May I come sometimes and watch you work?’ she asked, ‘or would I be too dreadfully in the way?’
He made the required reply as if he meant it, and the three men drifted on.
Next morning the two principals, each followed by retainers, arrived early and began operations. They were very thorough, going over with care everything on the estate. The work took exactly ten days, as Mr Merton had estimated.
Betty had some talk with each and found them pleasant and well informed. She was interested to learn that they were acting for the Thames & Tyne Insurance Company, with whom Sir Geoffrey was taking out a revised policy. This new one would be founded on the carefully estimated value of the actual articles insured, instead of on the round and wholly inadequate figure previously adopted.
Betty was sorry when the work was done. Though she wouldn’t admit it even to herself, she was finding life at Forde Manor a trifle lonely. Her occasional chats with the two men had been a pleasure.