The Complete Short Stories of Evelyn Waugh - Evelyn Waugh [69]
There was half an hour before tea; Manchu was asleep on the hearth rug, before the fireless grate; the sun streamed in through the blinds, casting long strips of light on the Aubusson carpet. Lady Amelia fixed her eyes on the embroidered, heraldic firescreen; and proceeded dreamily. “I suppose it would not do. You couldn’t write about the things which actually happen. People are so used to novels that they would not believe them. The poor writers are constantly at pains to make the truth seem probable. Dear me, I often think, as you sit, so kindly, reading to me, ‘If one was just to write down quite simply the events of a few years in any household one knows . . . No one would believe it.’ I can hear you yourself, dear Miss Myers, saying, ‘Perhaps these things do happen, very occasionally, once in a century, in terrible homes’; instead of which they are constantly happening, every day, all round us—or at least, they were in my young days.
“Take for example the extremely ironic circumstances of the succession of the present Lord Cornphillip:
“I used to know the Cornphillips very well in the old days,” said Lady Amelia—“Etty was a cousin of my mother’s—and when we were first married my husband and I used to stay there every autumn for the pheasant shooting. Billy Cornphillip was a very dull man—very dull indeed. He was in my husband’s regiment. I used to know a great many dull people at the time when I was first married, but Billy Cornphillip was notorious for dullness even among my husband’s friends. Their place is in Wiltshire. I see the boy is trying to sell it now. I am not surprised. It was very ugly and very unhealthy. I used to dread our visits there.
“Etty was entirely different, a lively little thing with very nice eyes. People thought her fast. Of course it was a very good match for her; she was one of seven sisters and her father was a younger son, poor dear. Billy was twelve years older. She had been after him for years. I remember crying with pleasure when I received her letter telling me of the engagement . . . It was at the breakfast table . . . she used a very artistic kind of writing paper with pale blue edges and bows of blue ribbon at the corner . . .
“Poor Etty was always being artistic; she tried to do something with the house—put up peacocks’ feathers and painted tambourines and some very modern stencil work—but the result was always depressing. She made a little garden for herself at some distance from the house, with a high wall and a padlocked door, where she used to retire to think—or so she said—for hours at a time. She called it the Garden of Her Thoughts. I went in with her once, as a great privilege, after one of her quarrels with Billy. Nothing grew very well there—because of the high walls, I suppose, and her doing it all herself. There was a mossy seat in the middle. I suppose she used to sit on it while she thought. The whole place had a nasty dank smell . . .
“Well we were all delighted at Etty’s luck and I think she quite liked Billy at first and was prepared to behave well to him, in spite of his dullness. You see it came just when we had all despaired. Billy had been the friend of Lady Instow for a long time and we were all afraid she would never let him marry but they had a quarrel at Cowes that year and Billy went up to Scotland in a bad temper and little Etty was staying in the house; so everything was arranged and I was one of her bridesmaids.
“The only person who was not pleased was Ralph Bland. You see he was Billy’s nearest relative and would inherit if Billy died without children and he had got very hopeful as time went on.
“He came to a very sad end—in fact I don’t know what became of him—but at the time of which I am speaking he was extremely popular,