3

When Pellerin returned to his room, he found his dinner jacket, shirt and black socks laid out. He gazed at them thoughtfully for a moment or two. Where were his cuff links? He hoped he hadn’t left them behind. To his relief, he saw them dangling from the cuffs of his white shirt.

It was while lying in the bath that he heard the sound of a gong crashing through the build­ing. He leapt out, seized a towel and began to rub himself vigorously. But Gayfere had dis­tinctly said that dinner was at eight o’clock, he said to himself distressfully. Or could that have been the dressing-­gong? He began to relax.

At a quarter to eight, he proceeded down­stairs. He found Gayfere in the drawing-­room, dressed for dinner, a glass in his hand.

“Good evening, my dear fellow,” he said. And with a wave of his hand, “The decanter is over there.”

Pellerin poured himself out a glass of sherry.

At eight o’clock precisely, the gong sounded again, to Pellerin’s satisfaction. Together they entered the dining-­room.

A young man-­servant placed a plate of clear soup before him.

“Mrs Shakeshaft rang up. She won’t be back till tomorrow,” said Gayfere, raising his spoon to his lips.

A silence ensued, during which Pellerin ate his dinner and gazed at the portraits and landscapes on the wall facing him. The land­scapes looked as if they had been painted by the men of the portraits, ancestors of the boy he’d come to tutor. From their vacant express­ions, Pellerin decided that the disease of his pupil, which he understood to be hereditary, had already set in at the turn of the century.

“Do you know this part of the country at all?” said Gayfere.

“I can’t say that I do,” replied Pellerin. He paused, then added, “Three years ago I came down here by car for the day to see Gwendoline Barnes.” Pellerin did not doubt that Gayfere knew who she was. He felt pleased to be able to claim acquaintance with such a distinguished woman.

Gayfere looked up from his plate. “Gwendoline Barnes?” he said, his face reflecting the effort of trying to remember where he’d heard the name before.

“Her death was reported in The Times,” said Pellerin helpfully.

“A novelist?”

“No, a Christian.” She was, he told Gayfere, the warden of a community of female contemplatives, had written about fifty pamphlets on God, and a lot of poetry.

“Oh, yes, I know who you mean,” said Gayfere. “She lived about seven miles from here. I never met her but she was once pointed out to me. She looked as if she was tied up in a sheet,” he said disdainfully.

“That was the habit she adopted—she wove the cloth herself, you know,” said Pellerin.

“Did she?” said Gayfere. He was wondering why Pellerin had come down to see this crazy old woman. “A relative of yours?” he asked.

“Oh, no.”

A pause.

“I wasn’t so much interested in her, but in another woman whom she had known in her youth,” said Pellerin.

“That must have been a long time ago,” said Gayfere. “Wasn’t she nearly a hundred when she died?”

“Yes, ninety-­eight.”

Pellerin began to tell Gayfere of Anna Kingsford, mystic, author of The Perfect Way, doctor of medicine, who had died long before he was born, but whom Miss Barnes had known, and about whom he hoped to write a long essay, a book in fact.

Wales, the butler, filled his glass. The young man-­servant handed round a dish of vegetables.

“Are you an author, then?” asked Gayfere as he munched away.

“Well,” said Pellerin cautiously, “I haven’t published anything yet, apart from a few poems here and there.”

“Why did you choose her?” said Gayfere. The subject of Pellerin’s biography was surely a clue to Pellerin’s character, for otherwise he wouldn’t have selected this subject. And Gayfere was puzzled about Pellerin’s character. His was not an easy face to interpret, and his remarks so far had hardly offered any clues.

“What does he look like?” Mrs Shakeshaft had asked him on the telephone. “Quite pre­sentable,” Gayfere had replied. “And serious.” “I don’t care if he’s serious,” she had said coolly. “Does he hunt?” “I haven’t asked him,” Gayfere had replied irritably.

Pellerin could find no reason why he had chosen to write about Anna Kingsford, mystic.

“Do you smoke?” asked Gayfere at the end of dinner.

“Yes, but not often,” said Pellerin.

“It’s a nasty habit. Give it up. It spoils the palate.”

This remark encouraged Pellerin to tell Gayfere that Anna Kingsford had been a vegetarian, as if the eating of meat was a habit as bad as smoking. Moreover, he continued, she was an anti-­vivisectionist. In fact, she had studied medicine in order to refute the views of vivisectionists.

In his enthusiasm for the work he was writing, Pellerin swept on; and Gayfere’s expression grew to one of despondency.

“You yourself don’t believe in all this, do you?” said Gayfere, unable to contain himself longer.

“Vegetarianism rather appeals to me,” said Pellerin, rather taken aback by Gayfere’s tone. “I really don’t think that all this meat eating is good for one.” He glanced down at his lamb cutlet which he’d been eating with relish.

“I think that vegetarianism is a form of madness,” said Gayfere, sopping up the gravy on his plate with a piece of bread. “It is like this modern craze which prevents magistrates from sentencing boys to a sound birching.”

“Oh?” said Pellerin. He was shocked. “Do you think that corporal punishment is a good thing?”

“A very good thing,” said Gayfere. “And not least of all for the boys.” He didn’t think that Mr Pellerin would be staying with them for long. However, there was something in what he said about anti-­vivisectionism. “I’m sure,” said Gayfere, “that Mrs Shakeshaft wouldn’t like to think of any hound being subjected to this method of pathological research: hounds are sacred to her.”

Gayfere had already made up his mind that this Anna Kingsford was one of those wretched women, the first perhaps of a long line since, who expressed absurd sentiments—against birching and about animals. He sincerely hoped that Mr Pellerin, who looked a manly enough fellow, didn’t harbour views about the “cruel nature” of blood sports. He was reminded of a local farmer who clasped an exhausted fox to his bosom, preventing the hounds getting at it. “Out of his mind,” said Gayfere aloud.

“What?” said Pellerin.

“Did you get what you wanted from that old woman, Gwendoline Barnes?” Gayfere nodded his head in the direction of the window as if she was living next door.

“I’m afraid I didn’t. I’d left it too late. She was up and about, but I found, alas, that she was gaga.”

“Awful!” exclaimed Gayfere. “These modern drugs keep people alive when they would normally be carried off by pneumonia. Medical science is a mixed blessing.”

At the end of the dinner, Gayfere knew rather more about Pellerin. Pellerin had acquired a dimension of depth, was no longer just a name and a face. Pellerin had literary ambitions; he sought out old women for information, and found them gaga (as one always finds them, thought Gayfere sombrely) and he held squeamish views on blood sports—there was no doubt about that, alas. He was, in fact, hovering on the brink of unbelief, and he was not, therefore, the right sort of person to instruct Herbert. Really, the more he thought about it, the worse it seemed. It was absurd not to have asked him before he was engaged what were his views on blood sports. Should he tell Alice about his suspicions? No, what was the good of alarming her? Besides, Herbert did not like blood sports either! (It was excusable in his case for he was an ailing boy, more to be pitied than scolded.) Ah, well, perhaps it wasn’t so bad after all. Chauncy had hunted, was an enthusiast for blood sports and a poor tutor—he fornicated with the maid, instead of attending to his duties. No wonder Herbert’s Greek was almost non­existent.

Gayfere ceased thinking on the matter, and turned his attention to the port. It was an imperfect world and growing steadily more imperfect. He wondered if Mr Pellerin was aware that he was drinking a good vintage port.

Nice old stick, thought Pellerin of Gayfere; not so dull as I’d imagined him to be.