In Pale Battalions by Robert Goddard Page B

minutes later, we wheeled off the lane between open wrought-iron gates and up a curving drive through patches of sunlight and shade, then emerged from the trees and crossed open parkland towards the house itself.
    “Welcome to Meongate,” Gladwin muttered. “Hope you like the place as much as I do. Between you and me, it’s why I let my daughter marry into the family.”
    It was easy to see what he meant. Meongate stood gracefully in its park, well proportioned without being grandiose, an L-shaped structure of brick and flint, the drive leading past the main frontage of the house whilst a cross-wing at the far end ran away behind the building to form an angle enclosing an ornamental garden. Halfway along the roof of the wing, standing as high as its tall, slender-stacked chimneys, was a single glazed turret supporting a weather-vane. Sun caught the vane’s gilded figure, warmed the brickwork of the house and lit the ivy-framed windows. Here were all the comforting English rural virtues cast in stone and leaf; here—little knowing what awaited me—I came home in Hallows’s place.
    We drew up before the open front door and Gladwin heaved himself down with a great shudder of the trap. A man appeared from the porch to take my bag and Gladwin bellowed good-naturedly at him.
     

I N P A L E B A T T A L I O N S
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    “Not bad, eh, Fergus?” He flipped open a fob-watch. “There and back in just over the half-hour.”
    “You’ve been driving her too hard,” Fergus muttered as he went in with my bag.
    “You’re an old woman,” Gladwin boomed after him. He winked at me as I climbed down and Fergus reappeared. “Lucy likes a run—which is more than you do.”
    This time, Fergus only grunted as he led the pony away. We turned towards the house, where a woman was now standing in the doorway to greet us.
    “Brace yourself,” Gladwin said to me from the corner of his mouth. “It’s her Ladyship.”
    “Her Ladyship?”
    “The second Lady Powerstock. The painted lantern of his Lordship’s later life.”
    As in everything, Gladwin exaggerated. The woman I was looking at was an elegant, Italianate beauty not many years past her peak, dark hair drawn up from a classical, high-cheeked face, a floral-patterned dress with a hint of silk shaping itself to a figure that conceded nothing to what I took to be her age. Was there, withal, something—something in the icy edge of her smile—to warn me? I cannot say.
    “Lieutenant Franklin,” she said, holding out her hand in a way that made me bow as I took it. “How wonderful to meet you.” Even while I was saying how pleased I was to be there, she was glancing towards Gladwin and hardening her tone. “I understood that Fergus was to meet you.” The old man did not respond directly. He grunted and looked at me. “I’ll not come in with you, Franklin. One or two things to attend to. Olivia will look after you. We’ll meet again later.” He plodded away, hands defiantly grasping his lapels and head tossed haughtily back.
    As soon as he was gone, Lady Powerstock led me through the porch into the hall, suddenly dark after the daylight and heavy with the polished wood of a vast, decorated fireplace. A broad split stairway led to a circular landing, from where sunlight seeped down and played in shifting patches on richly patterned carpets and wall-hung oriental rugs: touches of exoticism amid the stillness of a slowly ticking clock.
     
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R O B E R T G O D D A R D
    “I’ll have your bag taken up to your room, Lieutenant,” she said. “Unless you want to go straight up yourself, I’m sure my husband would like to meet you.”
    “As I would him.”
    “Then please come with me. He’ll be in his study at this time.”
    We made our way along a passage leading from the hall towards the wing of the house. I attempted some light conversation.
    “Your house seems a million miles from the war.”
    She smiled. “You’re not the first to say that.”
    “No?”
    “Thanks