Ngaio Marsh - Overture to Death

“For as long as there have been Jernighams at Pen Cuckoo,” said Miss Campanula. “But, of course, you wouldn’t know that.”

This was an oblique hit. It reminded Miss Prentice that she was a new-comer and not, strictly speaking, a Jernigham of Pen Cuckoo. Miss Campanula followed it up by saying, “I suppose in your position you could do nothing but receive her; but I must say I was astonished that you leapt at her play as you did.”

“I did not leap, Idris,” said Miss Prentice. “I hope I took the dignified course. It was obvious that everybody but you and me was in favour of her play.”

“Well, it’s a jolly good play,” said Dinah.

“So we have been told,” said Miss Campanula. “Repeatedly.”

“I was helpless,” continued Miss Prentice. “What could I do? One can do nothing against sheer common persistence. Of course she has triumphed.”

“She’s gone off now, taking every man in the room with her,” said Miss Campanula. “Ha!”

“Ah, well,” added Miss Prentice, “I suppose it’s always the case when one deals with people who are not quite . Did you hear what she said about our not calling?”

“I was within an ace of telling her that I understood she received men only.”

“But, Miss Campanula,” said Dinah, “we don’t know there’s anything more than friendship between them, do we? And even if there is, it’s their business.”

“Dinah, dear !” said Miss Prentice.

“As a priest’s daughter, Dinah — ” began Miss Campanula.

“As a priest’s daughter,” said Dinah, “I’ve got a sort of idea charity is supposed to be a virtue. And, anyway, I think when you talk about a parson’s family it’s better not to call him a priest. It sounds so scandalous, somehow.”

There was a dead silence. At last Miss Campanula rose to her feet.

“I fancy my car is waiting for me, Eleanor,” she said. “So I shall make my adieux. I am afraid we are neither of us intelligent enough to appreciate modern humour. Good-night.”

“Aren’t we driving you home?” asked Dinah.

“Thank you, Dinah, no. I ordered my car for six, and it is already half-past. Good-night”

i

The next morning was fine. Henry woke at six and looked out of his window at a clear, cold sky with paling stars. In another hour it would begin to get light. Henry, wide awake, his mind sharp with anticipation, leapt back into bed and sat with the blankets caught between his chin and his knees, hugging himself. A fine winter’s dawn with a light frost and then the thin, pale sunlight. Down in the stables they would soon be moving about with lanthorns to the sound of clanking pails, shrill whistling, and boots on cobblestones. Hounds met up at Moorton Park to-day, and Jocelyn’s two mounts would be taken over by his groom to wait for his arrival by car. Henry spared a moment to regret his own decision to give up hunting. He had loved it so much: the sound, the smell, the sight of the hunt. It had all seemed so perfectly splendid until one day, quite suddenly as if a new pair of eyes had been put into his head, he had seen a mob of well-fed expensive people, with red faces, astraddle shiny quadrupeds, all whooping ceremoniously after a very small creature which later on was torn to pieces while the lucky ones sat on their horses and looked on, well satisfied. To his violent annoyance, he had found that he could not rid himself of this unlovely picture and, as it made him feel slightly sick, he had given up everything but drag-hunting. Jocelyn had been greatly upset and had instantly accused Henry of pacifism. Henry had just left off being a pacifist, however, and assured his father that if England was invaded he would strike a shrewd blow before he would see Cousin Eleanor raped by a foreign mercenary. Hugging his knees, he chuckled at the memory of Jocelyn’s face. Then he gave himself four minutes to revise the conversation he had planned to have with Dinah. He found that the thought of Dinah sent his heart pounding, just as it used to pound in the old days before he took his first fence. “I suppose I’m hunting again,” he thought, and this primitive idea gave him a curiously exalted sensation. He jumped out of bed, bathed, shaved and dressed by lamplight, then he stole downstairs out into the dawn.

It’s a fine thing to be abroad on Dorset hills on a clear winter’s dawn. Henry went round the west wing of Pen Cuckoo. The gravel crunched under his shoes and the dim box-borders smelt friendly in a garden that was oddly remote. Familiar things seemed mysterious as if the experience of the night had made strangers of them. The field was rimed with silver, the spinney on the far side was a company of naked trees locked in a deep sleep from which the sound of footsteps among the dead leaves and twigs could not awaken them. The hillside smelt of cold earth and frosty stones. As Henry climbed steeply upwards, it was as if he left the night behind him down in Pen Cuckoo. On Cloudyfold, the dim shapes took on some resolute form and became rocks, bushes and posts, expectant of the day. The clamour of far-away cock-crows rose vaguely from the valley like the overlapping echoes of dreams, and with this sound came the human smell of woodsmoke.

Henry reached the top of Cloudyfold and looked down the vale of Pen Cuckoo. His breath made a small cold mist in front of his face, his fingers were cold and his eyes watered, but he felt like a god as he surveyed his own little world. Half-way down, and almost sheer beneath him, was the house he had left. He looked down into the chimney-tops, already wreathed in thin drifts of blue. The servants were up and about. Farther down, and still drenched in shadow, were the roofs of Winton. Henry wondered if they really leaked badly and if he and Dinah could ever afford to repair them.

Beyond Winton his father’s land spread out into low hills and came to an end at Selwood Brook. Here, half-screened by trees, he could see the stone façade of Chippingwood which Dr. Templett had inherited from his elder brother who had died in the Great War. And separated from Chippingwood by the hamlet of Chipping was Miss Campanula’s Georgian mansion, on the skirts of the village but not of it. Farther away, and only just visible over the downlands that separated it from the Vale, was Great Chipping, the largest town in that part of Dorset. Half-way up the slope, below Winton and Pen Cuckoo, was the church, Winton St. Giles, with the rectory hidden behind it. Dinah would strike straight through their home copse and come up the ridge of Cloudyfold. If she came! Please God, make it happen, said Henry’s thoughts as they used to do when he was a little boy. He crossed the brow of the hill. Below him, on the far side, was Moorton Park Road and Cloudyfold Village, and there, tucked into a bend in the road, Duck Cottage, with its scarlet door and window frames, newly done up by Mrs. Ross. Henry wondered why Selia Ross had decided to live in a place like Cloudyfold. She seemed to him so thoroughly urban. For a minute or two he thought of her, still snugly asleep in her renovated cottage, dreaming perhaps of Dr. Templett. Farther away over the brow of a hill was the Cain’s farm, where Dr. Templett must drive to minister to the youngest Cain’s big toe.

“They’re all down there,” thought Henry, “tucked up in their warm houses, fast asleep; and none of them knows I’m up here in the cold dawn waiting for Dinah Copeland.”

He felt a faint warmth on the back of his neck. The stivered grass was washed with colour, and before him his own attenuated shadow appeared. He turned- to the east and saw the sun. Quite near at hand he heard his name called, and there, coming over the brow of Cloudyfold, was Dinah, dressed in blue with a scarlet handkerchief round her neck.