Honeybath's Haven by Michael Innes Read Free Book Online Page B

dwarfs now cowering in attic hutches when not performing the menial duties required of them. And indeed the architect had probably had in mind social dispositions not altogether remote from this fantasy.
    So much for 1702. Slightly later generations had built on, in the same classical taste, sundry wings, pavilion, and the like, some of them free-standing except for sweeping connective colonnades, designed for the better conduct of balls and banquets or the large-scale cultivation of exotic plants. What the whole effect didn’t at all suggest was the possibility of tucking away in the interior adequately congruous but necessarily miniaturized accommodation for some two score of affluent persons resolved to carry gracious living along with them to the grave. Much of the original set-up must have been gutted and rebuilt in the interest of this intrepid proposal.
    Honeybath drove up, still accompanied by the inmate Gaunt, in a conveyance which had been waiting for them in the station yard. He wondered whether he would be charged for this trip in a Rolls-Royce, or whether it would prove to be on the house. They had, after all, a good deal of his money already, and it must be earning interest for somebody. It was even possible that, in an indirect way, he had contributed to the cost of Lady Munden’s saline pool and Colonel Dacre’s rifle-range. These were doubtless unworthy thoughts, such as well-affected inmates would scorn to entertain. Not for the first time, he felt that he had perhaps made a mistake about Hanwell Court. Had he been corrupted by the assumptions of that class of society many of whose choicest ornaments he had for some years been contributing generously-interpreted likenesses of to the walls of Burlington House? It was a sombre thought.
    It was also a thought prompting Honeybath to defer for a little longer his renewed encounter with the management of the place. So on descending from the Rolls he murmured to Mr Gaunt that he was a little early for the appointment he had made, and that he proposed to fill in the time by taking a short stroll in the grounds. Whereupon Mr Gaunt, having expressed the hope of seeing his new acquaintance in permanent residence very soon, departed into the house, followed by the chauffeur lugging the weighty suitcase.
    Perhaps because it was a remarkably fine spring day, the precincts and policies of Hanwell were less dispeopled than on the occasion of Honeybath’s previous visit. In the first of the formal gardens immediately below the terrace a lady in the soft and flowing garments held to become old age was snipping expertly at some sort of small flowering shrub. She was kind enough to pause in this occupation and bow to Honeybath as he went past. Honeybath swept off his hat in proper form. It was probably the convention that the inmates acknowledged one another’s existence upon every fleeting encounter, and the lady had at once observed that he was not the sort of man who comes in to wind the clocks. At the corner of the terrace itself another elderly lady was seated in a comfortable chair, engaged in making a watercolour sketch of a spray of early roses trained against the mellow masonry of the house. Salutations were again exchanged, and Honeybath wondered whether it would be proper for him to pause and offer some quasi-professional comment on the work of art in hand. He decided that this would be a liberty, and might even involve him in having to explain that the lady’s impromptu interlocutor was nothing less than a Royal Academician. So he walked on. It seemed to be worth noting, he told himself, that both these appropriately occupied females seemed entirely sane. But as neither of them had uttered, there could be no positive certainty on the point.
    He descended to a lawn which had been laid out as that sort of putting green which has a dozen holes scattered over it, each marked by a little tin flag. It was the kind of recreational resource which one