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Mrs St Vincent laid down her pen and looked up sharply.
‘Here?’ she exclaimed.
‘Well, we can’t ask him to dinner at the Ritz very well,’ sneered Barbara.
Her mother looked unhappy. Again she looked round the room with innate distaste.
‘You’re right,’ said Barbara. ‘It’s a disgusting place. Genteel poverty! Sounds all right – a white-washed cottage, in the country, shabby chintzes of good design, bowls of roses, crown Derby tea service that you wash up yourself. That’s what it’s like in books. In real life, with a son starting on the bottom rung of office life, it means London. Frowsy landladies, dirty children on the stairs, fellow-lodgers who always seem to be half-castes, haddocks for breakfasts that aren’t quite – quite and so on.’
‘If only –’ began Mrs St Vincent. ‘But, really, I’m beginning to be afraid we can’t afford even this room much longer.’
‘That means a bed-sitting room – horror! – for you and me,’ said Barbara. ‘And a cupboard under the tiles for Rupert. And when Jim comes to call, I’ll receive him in that dreadful room downstairs with tabbies all round the walls knitting, and staring at us, and coughing that dreadful kind of gulping cough they have!’
There was a pause.
‘Barbara,’ said Mrs St Vincent at last. ‘Do you – I mean – would you –?’
She stopped, flushing a little.
‘You needn’t be delicate, Mother,’ said Barbara. ‘Nobody is nowadays. Marry Jim, I suppose you mean? I would like a shot if he asked me. But I’m so awfully afraid he won’t.’
‘Oh, Barbara, dear.’
‘Well, it’s one thing seeing me out there with Cousin Amy, moving (as they say in novelettes) in the best society. He did take a fancy to me. Now he’ll come here and see me in this! And he’s a funny creature, you know, fastidious and old-fashioned. I – I rather like him for that. It reminds me of Ansteys and the village – everything a hundred years behind the times, but so – so – oh! I don’t know – so fragrant. Like lavender!’
She laughed, half-ashamed of her eagerness. Mrs St Vincent spoke with a kind of earnest simplicity.
‘I should like you to marry Jim Masterton,’ she said. ‘He is – one of us. He is very well off, also, but that I don’t mind about so much.’
‘I do,’ said Barbara. ‘I’m sick of being hard up.’
‘But, Barbara, it isn’t –’
‘Only for that? No. I do really. I – oh! Mother, can’t you see I do?’
Mrs St Vincent looked very unhappy.
‘I wish he could see you in your proper setting, darling,’ she said wistfully.
‘Oh, well!’ said Barbara. ‘Why worry? We might as well try and be cheerful about things. Sorry I’ve had such a grouch. Cheer up, darling.’
She bent over her mother, kissed her forehead lightly, and went out. Mrs St Vincent, relinquishing all attempts at finance, sat down on the uncomfortable sofa. Her thoughts ran round in circles like squirrels in a cage.
‘One may say what one likes, appearances do put a man off. Not later – not if they were really engaged. He’d know then what a sweet, dear girl she is. But it’s so easy for young people to take the tone of their surroundings. Rupert, now, he’s quite different from what he used to be. Not that I want my children to be stuck up. That’s not it a bit. But I should hate it if Rupert got engaged to that dreadful girl in the tobacconist’s. I daresay she may be a very nice girl, really. But she’s not our kind. It’s all so difficult. Poor little Babs. If I could do anything – anything. But where’s the money to come from? We’ve sold everything to give Rupert his start. We really can’t even afford this.’
To distract herself Mrs St Vincent picked up the Morning Post, and glanced down the advertisements on the front page. Most of them she knew by heart. People who wanted capital, people who had capital and were anxious to dispose of it on note of hand alone, people who wanted to buy teeth (she always wondered why), people who wanted to sell furs and gowns and who had optimistic ideas on the subject of price.
Suddenly she stiffened to attention. Again and again she read the printed words.
‘To gentle people only. Small house in Westminster, exquisitely furnished, offered to those who would really care for it. Rent purely nominal. No agents.’
A very ordinary advertisement. She had read many the same or – well, nearly the same. Nominal rent, that was where the trap lay.
Yet, since she was restless and anxious to escape from her thoughts she put on her hat straight away, and took a convenient bus to the address given in the advertisement.
It proved to be that of a firm of house-agents. Not a new bustling firm – a rather decrepit, old-fashioned place. Rather timidly she produced the advertisement, which she had torn out, and asked for particulars.
The white-haired old gentleman who was attending to her stroked his chin thoughtfully.
‘Perfectly. Yes, perfectly, madam. That house, the house mentioned in the advertisement is No 7 Cheviot Place. You would like an order?’
‘I should like to know the rent first?’ said Mrs St Vincent.
‘Ah! the rent. The exact figure is not settled, but I can assure you that it is purely nominal.’
‘Ideas of what is purely nominal can vary,’ said Mrs St Vincent.
The old gentleman permitted himself to chuckle a little. ‘Yes, that’s an old trick – an old trick. But you can take my word for it, it isn’t so in this case. Two or three guineas a week, perhaps, not more.’
Mrs St Vincent decided to have the order. Not, of course, that there was any real likelihood of her being able to afford the place. But, after all, she might just see it. There must be some grave disadvantage attaching to it, to be offered at such a price.
But her heart gave a little throb as she looked up at the outside of 7 Cheviot Place. A gem of a house. Queen Anne, and in perfect condition! A butler answered the door, he had grey hair and little side-whiskers, and the meditative calm of an archbishop. A kindly archbishop, Mrs St Vincent thought.
He accepted the order with a benevolent air.
‘Certainly, madam. I will show you over. The house is ready for occupation.’
He went before her, opening doors, announcing rooms.
‘The drawing-room, the white study, a powder closet through here, madam.’
It was perfect – a dream. The furniture all of the period, each piece with signs of wear, but polished with loving care. The loose rugs were of beautiful dim old colours. In each room were bowls of fresh flowers. The back of the house looked over the Green Park. The whole place radiated an old-world charm.
The tears came into Mrs St Vincent’s eyes, and she fought them back with difficulty. So had Ansteys looked – Ansteys . . .
She wondered whether the butler had noticed her emotion. If so, he was too much the perfectly trained servant to show it. She liked these old servants, one felt safe with them, at ease. They were like friends.
‘It is a beautiful house,’ she said softly. ‘Very beautiful. I am glad to have seen it.’
‘Is it for yourself alone, madam?’
‘For myself and my son and daughter. But I’m afraid –’
She broke off. She wanted it so dreadfully – so dreadfully.
She felt instinctively that the butler understood. He did not look at her
, as he said in a detached impersonal way:
‘I happen to be aware, madam, that the owner requires above all, suitable tenants. The rent is of no importance to him. He wants the house to be tenanted by someone who will really care for and appreciate it.’
‘I should appreciate it,’ said Mrs St Vincent in a low voice.
She turned to go.
‘Thank you for showing me over,’ she said courteously.
‘Not at all, madam.’
He stood in the doorway, very correct and upright as she walked away down the street. She thought to herself: ‘He knows. He’s sorry for me. He’s one of the old lot too. He’d like me to have it – not a labour member, or a button manufacturer! We’re dying out, our sort, but we band together.’
In the end she decided not to go back to the agents. What was the good? She could afford the rent – but there were servants to be considered. There would have to be servants in a house like that.
The next morning a letter lay by her plate. It was from the house-agents. It offered her the tenancy of 7 Cheviot Place for six months at two guineas a week, and went on: ‘You have, I presume, taken into consideration the fact that the servants are remaining at the landlord’s expense? It is really a unique offer.’
It was. So startled was she by it, that she read the letter out. A fire of questions followed and she described her visit of yesterday.
‘Secretive little Mums!’ cried Barbara. ‘Is it really so lovely?’
Rupert cleared his throat, and began a judicial cross-questioning.
‘There’s something behind all this. It’s fishy if you ask me. Decidedly fishy.’
‘So’s my egg,’ said Barbara wrinkling her nose. ‘Ugh! Why should there be something behind it? That’s just like you, Rupert, always making mysteries out of nothing. It’s those dreadful detective stories you’re always reading.’
‘The rent’s a joke,’ said Rupert. ‘In the city,’ he added importantly, ‘one gets wise to all sorts of queer things. I tell you, there’s something very fishy about this business.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Barbara. ‘House belongs to a man with lots of money, he’s fond of it, and he wants it lived in by decent people whilst he’s away. Something of that kind. Money’s probably no object to him.’
