CHAPTER TWO
English Gothic — I One
BETWEEN the villages of Hetton and Compton Last lies the extensive park of Hetton Abbey.
This, formerly one of the notable houses of the county, was entirely rebuilt in 1864 in the Gothic style and is now devoid of interest.
The grounds are open to the public daily until sunset and the house may be viewed on application by writing.
It contains some good portraits and furniture.
The terrace commands a fine view.
This passage from the county Guide Book did not cause Tony Last any serious annoyance.
Unkinder things had been said.
His aunt Frances, embittered by an upbringing of unremitting severity, remarked that the plans of the house must have been adapted by Mr. Pecksniff from one of his pupils' designs for an orphanage.
But there was not a glazed brick or encaustic tile that was not dear to Tony's heart.
In some ways, he knew, it was not convenient to run; but what big house was?
It was not altogether amenable to modern ideas of comfort; he had many small improvements in mind, which would be put into effect as soon as the death duties were paid off.
But the general aspect and atmosphere of the place; the line of its battlements against the sky; the central clock tower where quarterly chimes disturbed all but the heaviest sleepers; the ecclesiastical gloom of the great hall, its ceiling groined and painted in diapers of red and gold, supported on shafts of polished granite with carved capitals, half-lit by day through lancet windows of armorial stained glass, at night by a vast gasolier of brass and wrought iron, wired now and fitted with twenty electric bulbs; the blasts of hot air that rose suddenly at one's feet, through grills of cast-iron trefoils from the antiquated heating apparatus below, the cavernous chill of the more remote corridors where, economizing in coke, he had had the pipes shut off; the dining hall with its hammer-beam roof and pitch-pine minstrels gallery; the bedrooms with their brass bedsteads, each with a frieze of Gothic text, each named from Malory, Yseult, Elaine, Mordred and Merlin, Gawaine and Bedivere, Lancelot, Perceval, Tristram, Galahad, his own dressing room, Morgan le Fay, and Brenda's Guinevere, where the bed stood on a dais; its walls hung with tapestry, its fire-place like a tomb of the thirteenth century, from whose bay window one could count the spires of six churches — all these things with which he had grown up were a source of constant delight and exultation to Tony; things of tender memory and proud possession.
They were not in the fashion, he fully realized.
Twenty years ago people had liked half timber and old pewter; now it was urns and colonnades; but the time would come, perhaps in John Andrew's day, when opinion would reinstate Hetton in its proper place.
Already it was referred to as “amusing” and a very civil young man had asked permission to photograph it for an architectural review.
The ceiling of Morgan le Fay was not in perfect repair.
In order to make an appearance of coffered wood, moulded slats had been nailed in a chequer across the plaster.
They were painted in chevrons of blue and gold.
The squares between were decorated alternately with Tudor roses and fleur-de-lis.
But damp had penetrated into one corner, leaving a large patch where the gilt had tarnished and the colour flaked away; in another place the wooden laths had become warped and separated from the plaster.
Lying in bed, in the grave ten minutes between waking and ringing, Tony studied these defects and resolved anew to have them put right.
He wondered whether it would be easy, nowadays, to find craftsmen capable of such delicate work.
Morgan le Fay had always been his room since he left the night nursery.
He had been put there so that he would be within calling distance of his parents, inseparable in Guinevere; for until quite late in his life he was subject to nightmare.
He had taken nothing from the room since he had slept there, but every year added to its contents, so that it now formed a gallery representative of every phase of his adolescence — the framed picture of a dreadnought (a coloured supplement from Chums), all its guns spouting flame and smoke; a photographic group of his private school; a cabinet called `the Museum,' filled with a dozen desultory collections, eggs, butterflies, fossils, coins; his parents, in the leather diptych which had stood by his bed at school; Brenda, eight years ago when he had been trying to get engaged to her; Brenda with John, taken just after the christening; an aquatint of Hetton, as it had stood until his great-grandfather demolished it; some shelves of books, Bevis, Woodwork at Home, Conjuring for All, The Young Visitors, The Law of Landlord and Tenant, Farewell to Arms.
All over England people were waking up, queasy and despondent.
Tony lay for ten minutes very happily planning the renovation of his ceiling.
Then he rang the bell.
“Has her ladyship been called yet?”
“About quarter of an hour ago, sir.”
“Then I'll have breakfast in her room.”
He put on his dressing gown and slippers and went through into Guinevere.
Brenda lay on the dais.
She had insisted on a modern bed.
Her tray was beside her and the quilt was littered with envelopes, letters and the daily papers.
Her head was propped against a very small blue pillow; clean of makeup, her face was almost colourless, rose-pearl, scarcely deeper in tone than her arms and neck.
“Well?” said Tony.
“Kiss.”
He sat by the tray at the head of the bed; she leant forward to him (a nereid emerging from fathomless depths of clear water).
She turned her lips away and rubbed against his cheek like a cat.
It was a way she had.
“Anything interesting?”
He picked up some of the letters.
“No.
Mama wants nanny to send John's measurements.
She's knitting him something for Christmas.
And the mayor wants me to open something next month.
Please, needn't I?”