‘I am reminded of what Clare Clairemont said to Byron: "I shall always remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of your countenance."’

‘No, Harriet-I mean that.’

‘Your brother married his own cousin. Your sister married a commoner and her children are all right. You wouldn’t be doing it all yourself, you know-I’m common enough. What’s wrong with me?’

‘Nothing, Harriet. That’s true. By God, that’s true. The fact is, I’m a coward about responsibility and always have been. My dear-if you want it and are ready to take the risk-’

‘I don’t believe it’s such a risk as all that.’

‘Very well. I leave it to you. If you will and when you will. When I asked you, I rather expected you to say. No.’

‘But you had a horrible fear I might say, “Yes, of course!”‘

‘Well, perhaps. I didn’t expect what you did say. It’s embarrassing to be taken seriously-as a person.’

‘But, Peter, putting aside my own feelings and your morbid visions of twin gorgons or nine-headed hydras or whatever it is you look forward to-would you like children?’

She had been amused by the conflict in his self-conscious face. ‘Egotistical idiot that I am,’ he had said finally, ‘yes. Yes. I should. Heaven knows why. Why does one? To prove one can do it? For the fun of boasting about “my boy at Eton”? Or because-?’

‘Peter! When Mr Murbles drew up that monstrous great long will for you, after we were engaged-’

‘Oh, Harriet!’

‘How did you leave your property? I mean, the real estate?’

‘All right,’ he said, with a groan, ‘the murder’s out. Entailed-I admit it. But Murbles expects that every man-damn it, don’t laugh like that, I couldn’t argue the point with Murbles-and every contingency was provided for.’

A town, with a wide stone bridge, and lights reflected in the river-taking memory no further back than that morning. The Dowager’s closed car, with the Dowager discreetly seated beside the chauffeur; herself in cloth of gold and a soft fur cloak, and Peter, absurdly upright in morning dress, with a gardenia in his lapel, balancing a silk hat on his knee. ‘Well, Harriet, we’ve passed the Rubicon. Any qualms?’

‘No more than when we went up the Cherwell that night and moored on the far bank, and you asked the same question.’

‘Thank God! Stick to it, sweetheart. Only one more river.’

‘And that’s the river of Jordan.’

‘If I kiss you now I shall lose my head and something irreparable will happen to this accursed hat. Let us be very strange and well bred-as if we were not married at all.’

One more river.

‘Are we getting anywhere near?’

‘Yes-this is Great Pagford, where we used to live. Look! that’s our old house with the three steps up to the door-there’s a doctor there still, you can see the surgery lamp… After two miles you take the right hand turn for Pagford Parva, and sharp left by a big barn and straight on up the lane.

When she was quite small, Dr Vane had had a dogcart-just like doctors in old-fashioned books. She had gone along this road, ever so many times, sitting beside him, sometimes allowed to pretend to hold the reins. Later on, it had been a car-a small and noisy one, very unlike this smooth, long-bonneted monster. The doctor had had to start on his rounds in good time, so as to leave a margin for break-downs. The second car had been more reliable-a pre-war Ford. She had learnt to drive that one. If her father had lived, he would be getting on for seventy-his strange new son-in-law would have been calling him ‘sir’. An odd way, this, to be coming home, and not home. This was Paggleham, where the old woman lived who had such terrible rheumatism in her hands-old Mrs, Mrs, Mrs Warner, that was it-she must have gone long ago.

‘That’s the barn, Peter.’

‘Right you are. Is that the house?’

The house where the Batesons had lived-a dear old couple, a pleasantly tottering Darby and Joan pair, always ready to welcome little Miss Vane and give her strawberries and seedy-cake. Yes-the house-a huddle of black gables, with two piled chimney-stacks blotting out the stars. One would open the door and step straight in, through the sanded entry into the big kitchen with its wooden settles and its great oak rafters, hung with home-cured hams. Only, Darby and Joan were dead by now, and Noakes (she vaguely remembered him-a hard-faced, grasping man who hired out bicycles) would be waiting to receive them. But-there was no light in any of the windows at Talboys. ‘We’re a bit late,’ said Harriet, nervously; ‘he may have given us up.’

‘Then we shall firmly hand ourselves back to him,’ said Peter cheerfully. ‘People like you and me are not so easily got rid of. I told him, any time after eight o’clock. This looks like the gate.’

Bunter climbed out and approached the gate in eloquent silence. He had known it; he had felt it in his bones; the arrangements had fallen through. At whatever cost, even if he had had to strangle pressmen with his bare hands, he ought to have come ahead to see to things. In the glare of the headlights a patch of white paper showed clearly on the top bar of the gate; he looked suspiciously at it, removed, with careful fingers, the tin-tack that secured it to the wood and brought it, still without a word, to his master.

‘NO BREAD AND MILK’ (it said) ‘TILL FURTHER NOTISE’.

‘Hmm!’ said Peter. ‘The occupier, I gather, has already taken his departure. This has been up for several days, by the look of it.’

‘He’s got to be there to let us in,’ said Harriet.

‘He’s probably deputed somebody else. He didn’t write this himself-he can spell “notice” in his letter to us. The “somebody” is a little lacking in thought not to realise that we might want bread and milk. However, we can remedy the matter.’

He reversed the paper, wrote in pencil on the back ‘bread and milk, please’, and restored it to Bunter, who tin-tacked it back and gloomily opened the gate. The car moved slowly past him, up a short and muddy approach on either side of which were flower-beds, carefully tended and filled with chrysanthemums and dahlias, while behind them rose the dark outlines of some sheltering bushes.

‘A load of gravel would have done them no harm,’ observed Bunter to himself, as he picked a disdainful way through the mud. When he reached the door-massive and uncompromising, within an oaken porch having seats on either side-his lordship was already performing a brisk fantasia upon the horn. There was no reply; nothing stirred in the house; no candle darted its beams; no casement was thrown open; no shrill voice demanded to know their business; only, in the near distance, a dog barked irritably.

Mr Bunter, gloomily self-restrained, grasped the heavy knocker and let its summons thunder through the night. The dog barked again. He tried the handle, but the door was fast.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Harriet. This, she felt, was her fault. Her idea in the first place. Her house. Her honeymoon. Her-and this was the incalculable factor in the thing-her husband. (A repressive word that, when you came to think of it, compounded of a grumble and a thump.) The man in possession. The man with rights, including the right not to be made a fool of by his belonging! The dashboard light was switched off, and she could not see his face; but she felt his body turn and his left arm move along the back of the seat as he leaned to call across her: ‘Try the back!’-and something in his assured tone reminded her that he had been brought up in the country and knew well enough that farm-houses were more readily assailable in the rear. ‘If you can’t find anybody there, make for the place where the dog is.’

He tootled on the horn again, the dog responded with a volley of yelps, and the shadowy bulk that was Bunter moved round the side of the building.