Poor Relations. Compton Mackenzie
knight errant's horse in the neighborhood bolted at the thought, and by the time John had reached the top of the hill and emerged upon a wide stretch of common land dotted with ancient hawthorns in full crimson berry he was very much in the present. For there on the other side of the common, flanked by shelving woods of oak and beech and backed by rising downs on which a milky sky ruffled its breast like a huge swan lazily floating, stood Ambles, a solitary, deep-hued, Elizabethan house with dreaming chimney-stacks and tumbled mossy roofs and garden walls rising from the heaped amethysts of innumerable Michaelmas daisies.
"My house," John murmured in a paroxysm of ownership.
The noise of the approaching fly had drawn expectant figures to the gate; John, who had gratified affection, curiosity and ostentation by sending a wireless message from the Murmania, a telegram from Liverpool yesterday, and another from Euston last night to announce his swift arrival, had therefore only himself to thank for perceiving in the group the black figure of his brother-in-law, the Reverend Laurence Armitage. He drove away the scarcely formed feeling of depression by supposing that Edith could not by herself have trundled the barrel-shaped vicarage pony all the way from Newton Candover to Ambles, and, finding that the left-hand door of the fly was unexpectedly susceptible to the prompting of its handle, he alighted with such rapidity that not one of his smiling relations could have had any impression but that he was bounding to greet them. The two sisters were so conscious of their rich unmarried brother's impulsive advance that each incited her own child to responsive bounds so that they might meet him half-way along the path to the front door, in the harborage of which Grandma (whose morning nap had been interrupted by a sudden immersion in two shawls, and a rapid swim with Emily, the maid from London, acting as lifebuoy down the billowy passages and stairs of the old house) rocked in breathless anticipation of the filial salute.
"Welcome back, my dear Johnnie," the old lady panted.
"How are you, mother? What, another new cap?"
Old Mrs. Touchwood patted her head complacently. "We bought it at Threadgale's in Galton. The ribbons are the new hollyhock red."
"Delightful!" John exclaimed. "And who helped you to choose it? Little Frida here?"
"Nobody helped me, Johnnie. Hilda accompanied me into Galton; but she wanted to buy a sardine-opener for the house."
John had not for a moment imagined that his mother had wanted any advice about a cap; but inasmuch as Frida, in what was intended to be a demonstrative welcome, prompted by her mother, was rubbing her head against his ribs like a calf against a fence, he had felt he ought to hook her to the conversation somehow. John's concern about Frida was solved by the others' gathering round him for greetings.
First Hilda offered her sallow cheek, patting while he kissed it her brother on the back with one hand, and with the other manipulating Harold in such a way as to give John the impression that his nephew was being forced into his waistcoat pocket.
"He feels you're his father now," whispered Hilda with a look that was meant to express the tender resignation of widowhood, but which only succeeded in suggesting a covetous maternity. John doubted if Harold felt anything but a desire to escape from being sandwiched between his mother's crape and his uncle's watch chain, and he turned to embrace Edith, whose cheeks, soft and pink as a toy balloon, were floating tremulously expectant upon the glinting autumn air.
"We've been so anxious about you," Edith murmured. "And Laurence has such a lot to talk over with you."
John, with a slight sinking that was not altogether due to its being past his usual luncheon hour, turned to be welcomed by his brother-in-law.
The vicar of Newton Candover's serenity if he had not been a tall and handsome man might have been mistaken for smugness; as it was, his personality enveloped the scene with a ceremonious dignity that was not less than archidiaconal, and except for his comparative youthfulness (he was the same age as John) might well have been considered archiepiscopal.
"Edith has been anxious about you. Indeed, we have all been anxious about you," he intoned, offering his hand to John, for whom the sweet damp odors of autumn became a whiff of pious women's veils, while the leaves fluttering gently down from the tulip tree in the middle of the lawn lisped like the India-paper of prayer-books.
"I've got an air-gun, Uncle John," ejaculated Harold, who having for some time been inhaling the necessary breath now expelled the sentence in a burst as if he had been an air-gun himself. John hailed the announcement almost effusively; it reached him with the kind of relief with which in childhood he had heard the number of the final hymn announced; and a robin piping his delicate tune from the garden wall was welcome as birdsong in a churchyard had been after service on Sundays handicapped by the litany.
"Would you like to see me shoot at something?" Harold went on, hastily cramming his mouth with slugs.
"Not now, dear," said Hilda, hastily. "Uncle John is tired. And don't eat sweets just before lunch."
"Well, it wouldn't tire him to see me shoot at something. And I'm not eating sweets. I'm getting ready to load."
"Let the poor child shoot if he wants to," Grandma put in.
Harold beamed ferociously through his spectacles, took a slug from his mouth, fitted it into the air-gun, and fired, bringing down two leaves from an espalier pear. Everybody applauded him, because everybody felt glad that it had not been a window or perhaps even himself; the robin cocked his tail contemptuously and flew away.
"And now I must go and get ready for lunch," said John, who thought a second shot might be less innocuous, and was moreover really hungry. His bedroom, dimity draped, had a pleasant rustic simplicity, but he decided that it wanted living in: the atmosphere at present was too much that of a well-recommended country inn.
"Yes, it wants living in," said John to himself. "I shall put in a good month here and break the back of Joan of Arc."
"What skin is this, Uncle John?" a serious voice at his elbow inquired. John started; he had not observed Harold's scout-like entrance.
"What skin is that, my boy?" he repeated in what he thought was the right tone of avuncular jocularity and looking down at Harold, who was examining with myopic intensity the dressing-case. "That is the skin of a white elephant."
"But it's brown," Harold objected.
John rashly decided to extend his facetiousness.
"Yes, well, white elephants turn brown when they're shot, just as lobsters turn red when they're boiled."
"Who shot it?"
"Oh, I don't know—probably some friend of the gentleman who keeps the shop where I bought it."
"When?"
"Well, I can't exactly say when—but probably about three years ago."
"Father used to shoot elephants, didn't he?"
"Yes, my boy, your father used to shoot elephants."
"Perhaps he shot this one."
"Perhaps he did."
"Was he a friend of the gentleman who keeps the shop where you bought it?"
"I shouldn't be surprised," said John.
"Wouldn't you?" said Harold, skeptically. "My father was an asplorer. When I'm big I'm going to be an asplorer, too; but I sha'n't be friends with shopkeepers."
"Confounded little snob," John thought, and began to look for his nailbrush, the address of whose palatial residence of pigskin only Maud knew.
"What are you looking for, Uncle John?" Harold asked.
"I'm looking for my nailbrush, Harold."
"Why?"
"To clean my nails."
"Are they dirty?"
"Well, they're just a little grubby after the railway journey."
"Mine