A Buyers Market - Anthony Powell [79]
“There is the Holbein, too,” said Lady Walpole-Wilson. “You really must come, Janet, I know you like pictures.”
“The castle belongs, like Bodiam, to the later Middle Ages,” said Sir Gavin, assuming all at once the sing-song tones of a guide or lecturer. “And, like Bodiam, Stourwater possesses little or no historical interest, as such, while remaining, so far as its exterior is concerned, architecturally one of the most complete, and comparatively unaltered, fortified buildings of its period. For some reason—”
“—for some reason the defences were not dismantled—‘sleighted,’ I think you call it—at the time of the Civil Wars,” cut in Lady Walpole-Wilson, as if answering the responses in church, or completing the quotation of a well-known poem to show apreciation of its aptness. “Though subsequent owners undertook certain improvements in connection with the structural fabric of the interior, with a view to increasing Stourwater’s convenience as a private residence in more peaceful times.”
“I have already read a great deal of what you have been saying in Stourwater and Its Story, a copy of which was kindly placed by my bed,” said Miss Walpole-Wilson. “I doubt if all the information given there is very accurate.”
For some reason a curious sense of excitement rose within me at prospect of this visit. I could not explain to myself this feeling, almost of suspense, that seemed to hang over the expedition. I was curious to see the castle, certainly, hut that hardly explained an anxiety that Eleanor’s hound puppies, or Miss Walpole-Wilson’s humours, might prevent my going there. That night I lay awake thinking about Stourwater as if it had been the sole motive for my coming to Hinton: fearing all the time that some hitch would occur. However, the day came and we set out, Miss Walpole-Wilson, in spite of her earlier displeasure, finally agreeing to accompany the party, accommodated in two cars, one of them driven by Sir Gavin himself. There was perhaps a tacit suggestion that he would have liked Rosie Manasch to travel with him, but, although as a rule not unwilling to accept his company, and approval, she chose, on this occasion, the car driven by the chauffeur.
When we came to Stourwater that Sunday morning, the first sight was impressive. Set among oaks and beeches in a green hollow of the land, the castle was approached by a causeway crossing the remains of a moat, a broad expanse of water through which, with great deliberation, a pair of black swans, their passage sending ripples through the pond weed, glided between rushes swaying gently in the warm September air. Here was the Middle Age, from the pages of Tennyson, or Scott, at its most elegant: all sordid and painful elements subtly removed. Some such thought must have struck Sir Gavin too, for I heard him murmuring at the wheel:
“‘And sometimes thro’ the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two ...”
There was, in fact, no one about at all; neither knights nor hinds, this absence of human life increasing a sense of unreality, as if we were travelling in a dream. The cars passed under the portcullis, and across a cobbled quadrangle. Beyond this open space, reached by another archway, was a courtyard of even larger dimensions, in the centre of which a sunken lawn had been laid out, with a fountain at the centre, and carved stone flower-pots, shaped like urns, at each of the four corners. The whole effect was not, perhaps, altogether in keeping with the rest of the place. Through a vaulted gateway on one side could be seen the high yew hedges of the garden. Steps led up to the main entrance of the castle’s domestic wing, at which the cars drew up.
Mounted effigies in Gothic armour guarded either side of