Laughing House, Warwick Deeping [best romance books of all time .txt] 📗

lying jig. You may get another from Peter.”

She scrambled away, sat on a tuffet and smiled at me.

“Assault and battery, Uncle? But aren’t you really a bit relieved? I’m working fit. I’m sure Peter will be relieved, poor darling.”

I shook my head at her.

“You have shocked my faith in human nature. You are a thoroughly bad girl.”

She made a move at me.

“Much better laugh, Uncle.”

As a matter of fact I believe that Peter took it far more seriously than I did. He did not laugh. He was more than a little shocked, and I gather that he talked gravely to Sybil about reporting to her old unit and confessing that both she and the doctor had made a mistake. It was not priggery in Peter, but a kind of fierce integrity, and I think it both frightened Sybil and made her respect him far more profoundly. There were wangles and wangles, some of them not to be suffered.

Maybe Sybil felt a little penitent after this dose of ethics and her clash with her young husband. She was unusually silent and subdued for some days, and almost her manner might have been described as demure, a word that is utterly out of favour. She watched Peter almost anxiously, but I gathered that she loved him all the better for being what he was. There are some lies that cannot be laughed at.

Meanwhile, Sybil worked like a Trojan up at the House. We had had some of the carpets brought in from storage, and Sybil was vetting them for moths. There was one particular fine Chinese carpet which was heavy to lift, and one morning I found them together unrolling the thing.

I slipped away. So peace was in the air, and they were learning that marriage means working together. And when I looked in again they were crawling about the carpet searching for moth damage, and I smiled over the symbolic act.

“Found any trouble?”

Sybil sat up.

“No, Uncle. No moths in our show.”

XVII

I THINK I ought to mention the fact that the sur veyor who had granted us a certificate came again to inspect the house and the work, and I too felt conscious of having indulged in a little wangling. Our basins and baths had been carried out of the way to the top floor, and Mr. Surveyor found us all” at work on carpets, curtains, and what-not. For an official he struck me as being a very human person who, when the ,job seemed justi fied, would not look too critically at details. I explained that we were not using the top floor to begifi with, and I showed him over the rest of the house, and explained how much we had had to do.

‘I saw that he was both interested and appreciative, especially so when I emphasized the fact that we were out for a form of social service. We wanted the right people, and we were not going to bleed them.

“Good business, sir. One hates to be niggardly.”

I told him that he had treated us kindly, and he rubbed his chin, and said that if we found ourselves hampered by expenses he might be able to help us further. I felt rather guilty as I thanked him.

He did not seem in a hurry to go, but looked out of windows, and at our carpets, and the softly-blurred colours on the walls.

“Going to put back the original furniture, sir?”

“Yes. The idea is a country house not merely an hotel.”

He nodded.

“Making people feel at home. I should not mind a fortnight here when you get going. My poor wife is pretty well tired out.”

“You will be very welcome. No washing-up for your wife!”

“I mean it seriously, sir. Would you let me know when you open?”

“I will. We have to obtain a licence. My manager, Mr. Nash, is seeing to that.”

“I don’t think you will have any difficulty. I might be able to help you with that.”

I strolled with him to his car, and he stood a moment looking about him. He, too, was a very tired man, with a bleached skin and lustreless hair.

“Getting the garden going again, I see.”

“Yes, bit by bit. Tennis and croquet perhaps. Our idea is to produce much of our own food.”

He opened the car door.

“I could sit for a week in a chair, and look at that wood.”

I smiled at him.

“Well, why not? We will have a deck chair ready for you next summer.”

I went back and had a word with Peter. I told him that he could put down “Mr. Surveyor” as one of our first visitors, and that we owed the gentleman conscience-consideration. I also mentioned the point that we might be helped with our licences, and Peter grinned.

“I’m seeing to all that. We want to be licenced for liquor. And I am trying for a victualler’s licence.”

I am afraid I was very ignorant on these matters, but Peter had had experience. The only thing he asked me was whether I knew any members of the Bench. I did, and he suggested that I should sound them on the subject,

“No more wangling, my lad. I have done enough wangling!”

He grinned.

“So has Sybil.”

Messrs. Thomas Brown & Co. had functioned magnificently. Tom had had two more bottles of whisky for Christmas, and I had offered him a private bonus if he could get the work finished by the spring. He had promised to do it and he was doing it; he had even contrived to rope in another elderly painter from some where. The stables and cottages were still looking shabby, and I knew that I could not get permission to deal with them, but it was Peter who suggested that he and Sybil might make some sort of amateur show there, and I wrote and asked Mr. Surveyor if there would be any objection to our doing this work ourselves. He wrote and told me that it would be in order if we supplied our own materials and labour.

I had some rather crude blue paint in stock, and we mixed brown with it and created a quite lovely greenish-blue. Not only did Sybil and Peter set to work, but I joined them, and so did old Potter, and Tom for three days. We produced a quite creditable daubing of the cottage and coach-house doors, though our windows were a little smudgy, but at the end of a fortnight the stable quarters were looking fresh and gay. Peter wanted to get up to the cupola clock and wind-vane, and paint the clock face and re-gild the arrow, but we vetoed it on account of his leg. Old Potter volunteered for the job, and we got a ladder up, and Potter did some impressionist work on the clock and vane, and from below they looked quite jocund.

I could not find anyone who would come and repair the clock.

Our day of days was marked for March.

And what a month was March, windless and sunny, iced wine at eight a.m., hot enough to sun-bathe in at noon. Wonderful weather, and I am old enough to mistrust freak weather in this island, for you can expect other and unpleasant freakishnesses to average things out. But sufficient unto the day was the joy thereof, for we were all joyful and excited. The vans were coming from Melford, and the House was to be dressed and garnished.

On that morning the three of us climbed to Beechhanger, as to some high and sacred grove where the God of the Valley could be invoked, and we stood and looked at the House. It was in the full sunlight, almost its old self, its sturdy white legs defying all misfortune. The lawns were faintly green, the drive and paths as of old, the wind-vane glittering, the pool tranquil agate. I could contemplate the newly painted orangery and glass houses, and the brilliant blue-green of some of the stable doors and windows. I had my glasses with me and I turned them on the place, and I could see the gleaming buds on the rhododendrons, and the moor hens paddling, and the first daffodils out in wild places.

Peter had his arm round Sybil, and their serious young faces seemed to reflect all this loveliness.

“Halcyon weather,” said I. “May our luck be like it.”

“It won’t be luck,” said Peter gently.

“No, my lad, hard work and imagination, pride the pride that can take infinite trouble. Luck is the fool’s gambit.”

I heard Sybil say: “You can’t do anything good with out a conscience,” and Peter laughed.

“Listen to God’s own angel. What about—”

“Shut up, darling,” said she, “if I hadn’t been married to you—”

“So man is always responsible!”

Then we saw the first van nosing its way past a bosky mass of old yews, and all three of us did a bunk down the valley meadow. Peter’s leg was ceasing to be his master, and I could do quite good going down hill, but Sybil led the race on those neat black legs of hers, and she looked cheekily round at us.

“What about it? Women can be good.”

“Damned good,” said I, “at—”

“Now, now, Uncle! Keep off it.”

We reached the house just as the men were lowering the tail-board. I had a look inside, and saw that the first van contained bedroom furniture. Good staff work this. That which had. to be carried upstairs should arrive first. Since I knew the house and its gear I played the part of supervisor, but we all gave a hand, including Potter and Tom.

What a day we had! We were to have thrpe days of it. We sweated and laughed and joked, and I felt the old house laughing with us. We had a picnic lunch, plus beer, in the library. Some puckish incidents stick in my mind, such as a solemn old fellow with a beard carrying something under his apron, and meeting Sybil on the stairs.

“What’s that?”

“Er—a convenience, Miss.”

He was concealing a jerry!

Potter and old Tom got stuck with a chest of drawers and had to be rescued.

Peter tried erecting beds, and was beaten by a spring mattress.

I conducted myself rather like a French clown, buzzing about and giving directions, and showing great activity while doing damn-all.

But our pride and pleasure were to be in garnishing the lower rooms. The great Chinese carpet was spread in the drawingroom, with dust-sheets laid to save footmarks, and when all its old familiar furniture, including Sibilla’s piano, were in place, I sat down on the Jacobean settee with its French tapestry and felt suddenly sad. I wanted Sibilla here. And yet how would she have felt about it? The young things left me alone here. Maybe they understood that I wanted to be alone with my memories.

For nearly five years I had been out of the house, and here I was back again, and seeing it as of old. Should I grudge its peace and beauty to other people? And when I had answered that question I knew how greatly I had changed, and the house with me. I had been young, and I had been old, and I was young again with a differ ence. It was not virtue, but a kind of tissue-change, and somehow I had shed a self-centred shell, and become almost what the psychologists used to call an extravert.

The young things and Ellen had a surprise for me. I found Sybil laying one of the new dining-room tables, complete with wine glasses and old silver and my painted porcelain handled French cutlery.

“Hullo, what’s this?”

“A celebration, Uncle. And we are trying out the kitchen.”

I was touched.

“Does Ellen