Читать книгу Miss Bunting - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 3

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The great Duke of Omnium, as is well known, not only disliked railways but refused to acknowledge their existence. After the death of the old Duke’s successor, formerly Mr. Plantagenet Palliser, the next Duke found it necessary to come into line with the times and even to sell land, but by this time the network of railway that connects the outlying parts of the far-flung county of Barset was finished, the contractors had made their fortunes, been knighted and died of drink, the Irish navvies had gone back to Ireland to die of drink themselves till their wages were spent, and Parliament was not interested in more railway bills. This state of things lasted into the new century, when a branch line was constructed which leaves the main line just outside High Rising, links the parts of Barsetshire that lie outside the Omnium estate and runs within five miles of the Castle. With Gatherum Castle itself we shall not be concerned and we are happy to say that the Duke and Duchess can still afford to live there and that although all three sons are in the Army they are so far safe and there are several grandsons, while Lady Glencora and Lady Arabella, who both married well, have flourishing nurseries, besides doing valiant work in the Red Cross and W.V.S.

Among the villages or small towns on this line is Hallbury. It is on the Omnium property, but as the estate is now for the most part a limited company, it does not have with the Castle the friendly feudal relations of former days. Until the coming of the railway it had remained almost untouched by progress; a street of little dignified stone houses and equally dignified red brick, living its own life, viewing from the gentle eminence on which it stands mile upon mile of pasture land, a certain amount of arable and the downs in the distance. It was the rising land that saved it from the degrading suburbs that so often accompany the march of progress. The railway, with one angry look at the town, kept on its course across the level, avoiding the river Rising, here no more than a stream, and pursued its way to Silverbridge and so into foreign parts. In course of time some marshy land was drained and the local speculators began to build. Tradesmen and small business people from Barchester began to settle there, followed by people from London, who wanted to walk or fish at the weekend and were well served by the excellent trains before the war. The roads were prettily laid out and planted with flowering trees and shrubs, the architecture was just what we might expect, for Pattern and Son, the builder and estate agent, had what he called Ideas, which included every style of building from half-timbered and pebble-dash to Mixo-Totalitarian with semicircular ends and windows that rushed round corners. So far the foundations (not that there were any because Old Pattern, now succeeded by Son, said it stood to reason where you’d got a space under a house you got rats) had endured, and the present Mr. Pattern was always ready to rehang a door that a warped jamb was causing to stick, or push a window-frame gradually extruded by the pressure of sagging brickwork back into place, or even to poke at a blocked waste-pipe with a mysterious upward bend.

As may be imagined, the town on the hill did not mix with the town beyond the railway, and society fell tacitly into two groups: the Old Town, consisting of the original inhabitants of the stone houses and the aboriginal cottagers and work-people, and the New Town, the status of whose citizens was almost indefinable, but may be expressed in the words of Engineer-Admiral Palliser at Hallbury House who, inarticulately conscious of a house at least five hundred years old in parts, held by his family since the Commodore Palliser who did so well in the matter of prize-money under Lord Howe, remarked that those houses on the railway line were always changing hands, and so dismissed the whole affair.

Admiral Palliser, a distant connection of the Duke of Omnium, was a widower. Deeply attached to the wife from whom the sea had separated him so often and so long, he sincerely mourned her and as sincerely believed that the best he could do for her, as she was now probably able to see from wherever she was exactly what he was doing and even know what he was thinking, was to carry on; to think as well of his neighbours as human nature would allow; to do all for them that a certain amount of money and a certain local influence could ensure. Both his sons were in the Navy, both daughters married to naval men. The elder daughter lived in Sussex and could rarely leave her young family. Lieutenant Francis Gresham, the husband of the younger daughter, had been missing since the loss of our battleships in the Far East, so Jane Gresham with her little boy Frank had come to live with her father. She would have liked to drown her sorrows in a factory or in the Wrens, but her father needed care, her little boy needed a mother, and she probably felt, as inarticulately as her father, that her mother, being rather unfairly in a position to know all that was being done or thought, would like to see that Admiral Palliser was being properly looked after and the old servants kept up to the mark.

It was not an amusing life for her. She loved her father and Hallbury, but all was changed. Her father was as often as not in Barchester where he was on the board of a large engineering works, or in London on business connected with it. Nearly all her contemporaries were away on various war jobs. The girls came home on leave from time to time, the young men more and more rarely as their duties called them overseas. The houses formerly of friendly leisure in the Old Town, were mostly servantless and packed with relatives or paying guests, there was no point in going to Barchester as there was nothing in the shops and it was impossible to get lunch anywhere unless before 11.30 or after 2.30, she did not like to go to London and leave her little Frank, and to take him with her would have been foolish. So she stayed in her father’s home, glad of its shelter, always waiting to get away, and blaming herself for feeling depressed. And deeper than all these griefs was the knowledge, for she did not willingly deceive even herself, that the longer Francis Gresham was missing the less she minded. It was not that she didn’t love him, or that the dull ache at the heart, the dreary waking from dream to real life every morning grew any less; but the whole thing seemed so infinitely far away, and the longer he was absent the more difficult it would be, she feared, to begin their life again—if ever he came back. Sometimes she almost prayed to hear that he was dead. Then she blamed herself bitterly and knew she would die of joy if the door suddenly opened and he were there. But of course none of these things happened, and she sank into an almost painless monotony of life and always thanked charmingly the people who asked if there was any news of her husband.

“There’s something you could do for me, Jane,” said her father at breakfast one morning. “You know Adams.”

Jane Gresham had often heard of Mr. Adams, founder and proprietor of the big rolling mills and engineering shops at Hogglestock. Her father took a great interest in his work on the board and usually told her what he was doing, for she liked to hear about what she called “real things” and had even made one or two very intelligent suggestions, but she had never met the director.

“It seems he wants a house outside Barchester for the summer holidays,” said the Admiral, “not for himself, but his girl is going up to Cambridge in the autumn, and he wants a place where she can get some extra coaching. Apparently he has found a woman coach for her, but he says if she stays in Barchester she will be in and out of the works all day. He asked my advice so I said I would speak to you. He is a good enough fellow,” said the Admiral, by which his daughter perfectly understood that Mr. Adams was, not to put too fine a point upon it, by no means a gentleman, “and I’ve a great respect for his business methods. What do you think?”

Jane Gresham thought and gave it as her opinion that there was not a house to be had in Hallbury, and probably not even room for any more paying guests, but that she would go to Pattern and inquire.

“He will pay anything so long as he gets value for his money,” said the Admiral, getting up and taking the Times with him to read in the train, which always irritated his daughter, because more often than not he forgot to bring it back with him. And then he kissed her and went down to the station.

It was an unpleasant morning in July, though no more unpleasant than most, for Providence in its inscrutable incompetency had altogether given up the question of summer for the duration of the war. A winter of much wind and no rain had been succeeded by a windy and arid spring, followed in its turn by a chill summer of grey skies and drought, with the weary sound of wind still flapping aimlessly about. The rivers were low, many springs were dry; overworked and understaffed farms were having to water the cows and horses and sheep. At Grumper’s End over near Pomfret Madrigal water was being carted, and Sir Edmund Pridham, the local magnate, had had violent passages at arms with the Barsetshire County Council and the Water Company. No prayers had been offered for rain, for most people felt it was really safer not to interfere with Powers who had obviously let everything get out of their control. So gardens and fields lay cold and untidy, and everyone’s temper was daily exacerbated.

But not the temper of Master Frank Gresham, aged eight and a half, who had a snub nose, a wide grin and the best opinion of himself and the world, so that whenever his mother looked at him she felt that things weren’t so bad after all, and what a good thing it was that he didn’t remember his father well enough to miss him; for four years is a long gap out of eight and a half. In the autumn he was to go to the preparatory school at Southbridge, and at present attended a small class at the Rectory every day, coming home for lunch.

When she had done her share of the housework and talked with the elderly cook and parlourmaid, Jane Gresham took her shopping-basket and went out to do the shopping. No sooner had she closed the front door behind her and gone down the garden path into the street than a buffet of wind drove down on her, whirled her hair into confusion, tossed a few bits of paper and straw into her face and blustered itself away, thus setting the key for what she felt sure would be a difficult morning. Her one comfort was that she had admitted defeat at the very beginning of the day and put on a woollen skirt and cardigan instead of the washed-out summer frock that most of the other shoppers were wearing, so she would at least be warm.

The fish was visited, also the grocer, the little linen-draper and all-sorts shop, and the stationer. The fish after some fifteen minutes’ wait produced an anonymous piece of stiff whitish slipperiness called fillets, the grocer at last had in stock a little washing soda for which she had been waiting three weeks, the linen-draper’s had just got in its quota of non-elastic elastic and was able to let her have a yard, the stationer had one copy of the month’s local bus and train guide.

Her luck being for the moment in, she decided to begin her search for lodgings and went straight to the office of Pattern and Son.

The late Mr. Pattern, founder of the firm, had always been, or so he said, one for practising what he preached. As no one knew what he preached, the accuracy of his practice was a matter for speculation, but he undoubtedly built as he would be built by. His office, for which he had been designer and contractor, was erected on a corner where some very picturesque cottages had stood. The cottages, it is true, were below ground level, insanitary, a home for rats and bugs, the thatch a mass of decaying vegetation, and it was high time they went. But while the gentry were beginning to talk of doing something, Mr. Pattern, who though not exactly on the Council had a good many friends there, had got in first, bought the cottages and erected a stately pleasure dome to his own heart’s desire. And when we say pleasure dome it is not poetical licence, for the crowning feature of his resurrection-pie architecture was a pepper-box turret, precariously attached to the corner of the building, with a small wooden dome which he caused to be painted to look like verdigris’d copper.

Though the late Mr. Pattern had built a great many houses in the New Town and owned many of them, he had never left the Old Town, preferring to live over the shop, thus earning the reputation of being one of the old school, though of what school no one quite knew. Young Mr. Pattern, having married slightly above him into a bank manager’s family, preferred to live in the New Town and had let the upper part of the house at an excessive rent to various mid-European refugees who mysteriously always had plenty of money and got very good jobs, replacing local men and women who had been called up. Young Mr. Pattern’s ambition was to build what are known to the trade as Californian bungalows on the banks of the Rising, and to make what is almost universally called a Lye-do, and it was only by the special intervention of the German Chancellor that his plan came to nothing. For in 1937, scenting trouble ahead, the Duke of Omnium’s agent Mr. Fothergill had persuaded his employer to make over two mile of the River Rising with a wide strip of land on each side to the National Trust, and it was said that old Mr. Pattern’s death was hastened by this deliberate waste of building land.

Often had young Mr. Pattern cast a longing eye upon Admiral Palliser’s property, comprising a large garden, a small paddock for horses, and a field beyond, usually let for grazing to a farmer. But the Admiral was pretty well off, had no occasion to sell and would probably have been very short with anyone who had suggested it. So Mr. Pattern continued to regard him with admiration as an old buffer who knew his own mind and with contempt as one who kept good money locked up in land. He would also dearly have liked Mrs. Francis Gresham to become acquainted with his wife, but though the war had mingled all races and creeds, it had not as yet mingled Old Town and New. Why the Old Town butcher’s wife, Mrs. Wandle, should attend working parties and committees at Hallbury House and the Rectory, while Mrs. Pattern (as he called his wife) was never invited, he could not understand. Nor will he ever understand. We perhaps may.

After exchanging a few genteel commonplaces, Jane Gresham asked Mr. Pattern if he knew of any house of a moderate size to let in Old Town, New Town or the neighbourhood, from the end of July for two or three months. After making a great show of running through the pages of a large book, during which Jane felt sure she heard him say: “Mrs. Aggs, Mrs. Baggs, Mrs. Caggs, Mrs. Daggs, Mrs. Faggs, Mrs. Gaggs and Mrs. Gresham,” he looked up with a fevered brow and said there was simply not a house to be had.

“I know there isn’t,” said Jane. “There never is now. But what I want to know is if there is one.”

This request Mr. Pattern appeared to find quite in order.

“Well, there is The Cote,” said Mr. Pattern, “and I dare say The Cedars might consider a let.”

“I don’t think they would for a moment,” said Jane. “They’ve got three ex-Land Girls each with a baby and her husband abroad, so things are quite comfortable. And The Cote is far too large. The friend who wants a house only wants it for his daughter and a governess, and he might come down at week-ends himself.”

“Well, there is Mrs. Foster’s house, Mrs. Gresham,” said Mr. Pattern, warming to the game, as he always did. “Quite a small nest but cosy. She might be thinking of going to her sister at Torquay for the summer.”

“That wouldn’t do a bit,” said Jane. “You know there are only two bedrooms and an attic where no servant would sleep even if you had one. Well, I’ll have to try Barchester.”

“Just one moment, Mrs. Gresham,” said Mr. Pattern. “Slow and sure wins the day as they say. I suppose your friend wouldn’t care to try the New Town, or further afield?”

As Jane had already mentioned both Old and New Towns, not to speak of the neighbourhood, she only said she thought he would. Mr. Pattern, with damped forefinger, then made an excursion through various large books and loose-leaf holders, while Jane wondered if a woman would do it better, and came to the conclusion that she would probably do it far more quickly and efficiently, but would also wreck herself in the process, and this Mr. Pattern was quite obviously, and perhaps rightly, determined not to do. So, being quite used to waiting for nothing to happen, she waited.

“Ah!” said Mr. Pattern, shutting a large book with a lordly gesture, but keeping his finger in the place he wanted, “here we are, Number 28 De Courcy Crescent, three bed, one large sit. with alcove dining, kitchen and usual offices. Bath is in kitchen, Mrs. Gresham, but it’s a luxury bath, with a splendid cover that your friend could use for an ironing-table or for the sewing-machine.”

Jane said she didn’t think her friend would want to iron or use the sewing-machine as he was in Barchester all day, and she was sorry Mr. Pattern had nothing suitable. Besides, she added, De Courcy Crescent had the railway on one side and the gasometer on the other, and everyone knew the smuts were dreadful, especially when the washing was out.

“Of course if I’d known the gentleman wished to wash at home,” said Mr. Pattern, sibilantly and pityingly.

“Well, thank you so much, and you’ll let me know if you hear of anything,” said Jane, getting up.

“Now, just one moment, Mrs. Gresham,” said Mr. Pattern, who was enjoying to the full the age-old conventions of bartering. “There’s a house just come in this morning in Riverside Close.”

Abstracting her mind from an unbidden vision of a peripatetic house—perhaps on chicken’s legs like Baba Yaga’s—Jane said she would look in another time.

“Three bed., two sit., lounge hall, lock-up garage, constant hot water, fridge, tiled bath and ekcetera,” said Mr. Pattern with a resolute display of his fine uppers.

“I can’t wait now,” said Jane. “But if you’ll give me the address again I might look at it. Is there anyone there or shall I take the key?”

“Well, Mrs. Gresham, there is someone there,” said Mr. Pattern. “I don’t think I made it quite clear that it’s not to let, Mrs. Gresham, at least, not as a house if you see what I mean. The owner, Mrs. Merivale, takes paying guests. She is a widow and she always makes everyone very comfortable. Canon Banister’s mother was with her for some months before she died, and I know some of Mrs. Crawley’s daughters have been there with their children during the war.”

The mention of Canon Banister and the Dean’s wife, both old Barchester friends, made the whole affair seem much more possible. Jane took the address, thanked Mr. Pattern and, for much time had gone in shops and at the house agent’s, had to hurry to the Rectory to fetch Frank home to lunch. This was not really necessary, for Frank had taken himself to and from school unaccompanied since he was quite small, but it was a pleasant diversion for her before lunch, and as Frank had not yet reached the stage of being ashamed of her, she profited by his tolerance.

Hallbury Rectory was a modern building by Hallbury standards, certainly not earlier than 1688. The original Rectory, which stood on the north side of the church and almost against it, naturally got no sun from the south. Owing to a thick screen of clerical vegetation such as dark conifers, ilex, a kind of cypress and high laurel hedges, it got little or no light from the east or west, and on the north looked across a wall on to a large barn. As there was also a well in the cellar, fed mostly by the town drainage, the incumbents and their wives and families had died off like flies until a lucky fire one Guy Fawkes Day had reduced it to a blackened shell. The Rectory was then moved to a commodious brick and stone house and produced quantities of valuable children, among whom was the Augustus Palliser who had served under Lord Howe and bought Hallbury House. As a thank-offering for this mercy the special prayers for Guy Fawkes Day were regularly read on the Sunday nearest to November the Fifth, and though, owing to a deplorable access of broadmindedness, the Rev. the Hon. Reginald de Courcy had suppressed them in the eighteen-thirties, many of the old prayer books still had them, and Admiral Palliser always made a point of reading them to himself with some ostentation during the sermon on the appointed day.

The church, one of the many beautiful and unpretentious stone churches of these parts, with a tower and battlements, was called St. Hall Friars. The origin of this name was rather obscure. Early local antiquarians with simple enthusiasm had decided that Saint here stood for Holy or Blessed, and referred to a supposititious hall or lodging house for monks from the great abbey at Brandon, now utterly lost. As there was known to have been a church on that spot in one form or another since the conversion of Wessex, and no indication of the monks from Brandon Abbey having ever lodged there or anywhere but in their own house and in any case monks are not friars, this theory was held up to ridicule in the Barchester Mercury (one of England’s oldest provincial papers, now incorporated with the Barchester Chronicle) in about 1793 by a notorious freethinker, Horatio Porter, Esq., who subsequently died of a stroke while having a debauch in his kitchen with his cook. Such was Mr. Porter’s profligacy, and such the weakness of the owner of the Mercury who was heavily in his debt over cards, that his letter was printed entire, with an ingenious suggestion that for Hall Friars, Hell-Fire should be read. Mr. Porter’s death (accompanied by a violent thunderstorm and the birth of a calf with six legs at Brandon Abbas) so shocked the public that the whole matter dropped until a disciple of John Keble, digging among old papers in the Bishop’s library at Barchester, found that a certain rude Saxon swineherd named Ælla had been slain by the bailiff of the monastery to which he was attached for refusing to drive the pigs afield during Lent, owing to which saintly action, most of the pigs (six weeks being a long period) had died of hunger and thirst, while the swineherd was in due time canonized. As there was no corroboration of any kind for this story it obtained great credence and even caused a weak-minded young gentleman of good family to draw back from Rome. Under the influence of Bishop Stubbs a variety of further research was made, leading nowhere at all, and there the matter rests. It is true that the Hallbury branch of the Barsetshire Mothers’ Union has a banner heavily embroidered in gold representing St. Ælla in mauve and green robes with a shepherd’s crook, but the present Rector, Dr. Dale, is rather ashamed of it and keeps it reverently in tissue paper in case the gold should tarnish.

When Jane Gresham got to the Rectory she passed the front door and went through a gate in the wall into the old stable yard. Here what used to be a stable with grooms’ quarters above had been converted into a light and airy two-story building with a furnace to heat it, and from it came a chirruping of young voices, high above which Jane, with mingled love and irritation, could hear that of her son. She looked cautiously through an end window, but her caution was not necessary, for the whole school of seven or eight little boys was tightly clustered round a young man who was showing them something. She sat down on a stone mounting-block and looked about her. A deceptive gleam of sunshine lit the stable yard, though with no warmth in it; the smell of horses and leather still lingered in the air, she could almost hear the rustle of straw, the pleasant jingle of harness, the steady champing of oats, almost hear the clank and splash of buckets being filled at a pump and the hissing of the grooms at work. Then the half-hour after noon sounded from St. Hall’s tower. The babel inside was suddenly stilled, a little boy ran out and began to pull the wrought-iron handle of the yard bell and out came the whole class, nearly tripping up their master.

“Hullo, Robin,” said Jane Gresham.

“Hullo, Jane,” said the young man, and sat down on the horse-block beside her.

“What was all the noise?” said Jane.

“I promised I’d show the boys how my foot fastens on,” said the young man, “and now I can’t get the foul thing fixed again. Do you mind?”

Without ostentation he pulled up his right trouser leg and busied himself with his artificial foot. Having accomplished the job at last to his satisfaction, he smoothed the crease in his trousers.

“Ass,” she said. “One day you’ll do it once too often. Anyway, they’ve all seen your foot about a hundred times.”

“I know,” said the young man. “I expect it’s showing off. It isn’t everyone who has a foot like mine. I remember when I was little I had a book called Otto of the Silver Hand, with illustrations, woodcuts I think, rather grim and frightening, and always wished I had one. I didn’t think of a foot. But a silver one would be a bit heavy.”

Jane Gresham looked at him. Robin Dale whom she had known all her life, the Rector’s only son by a late marriage, had been a junior classical master at Southbridge School just before the war. Then he had gone into the Barsetshire Yeomanry, got a commission, fought all through Africa and Sicily, and finally had his right foot so badly shattered in the Anzio landing that it had to be amputated, and he had been discharged. Southbridge School would willingly have taken him back, but he still felt too crippled and self-conscious to face the school life. His father, a widower for many years, living alone, wanted Robin to stay at home for a time. Robin had done his best to be valiant, but he moped sadly till Admiral Palliser, who did not like to see people mope and found work a cure for most evils, suggested that he should give little Frank some tutoring before he went to Southbridge. The tutoring was a success, other little boys in the Old Town joined the class. The Rector, who had private means, managed to get the stables altered and the furnace installed, and Frank Gresham was the first pupil. When we say that the horses’ racks and the original narrow box staircase to the grooms’ quarters had been left untouched, as had the rather terrifying kind of gallows over which sacks of oats and bales of straw were hauled up to the loft, the reader will realize what an unusual and delightful school Frank and his fellow scholars had.

“I think a silver foot would be horrid,” said Jane. “You’d have to keep it clean and if there’s anything I loathe it’s the feeling of plate polish on my hands.”

“There was Götz with the Iron Hand,” said Robin, entering enthusiastically into the subject, “but I daresay it got rusty and anyway it wasn’t a foot. And Nez-de-cuir; but that was his nose, so it’s different. I never heard of a Leather Foot.”

“No,” said Jane, thoughtfully. “There was Leather Stocking, but he had a leg inside. And there are leather-jackets in the garden, beastly things. Oh, Robin, I do wish it hadn’t happened.”

“However much you wish it, I wish it more,” said Robin. “Any news of Francis?”

Very few people asked Jane this question now. Partly they thought it might wake painful thoughts (“thinking of the old ’un,” she said sardonically to herself), partly they had honestly forgotten about it, for the whirligig of time has so bruised and stunned us all that yesterday is swallowed in oblivion almost before to-day has dawned. Jane did not want inquiries, nor did she resent them. Her surface self responded pleasantly to the kindly and sympathetic and was unmoved by the forgetters. As for her inner self she did not quite know what it thought, and sometimes wondered if it knew itself. A sense of duty made her say to Frank from time to time that they would do this and that when father came home: and what this meant to him she did not know and had no means of knowing. And as he was very cheerful and ate enormously and slept like a dormouse, she saw no reason to delve deeper.

“No, no news,” she said. “But I don’t expect any. It will come some day. Or else it won’t.”

At this moment Master Gresham came up, bursting with suppressed giggles.

“I say, mother,” he began, “do you know this poem?

‘It was the miller’s daughter,

Her father kept a mill,

There were otters in the water,

But she was ’otter still.’

Tom Watson told it me. There are a lot more verses. Shall I tell them you?”

Horrified at the resurgence of this hoary and vapid echo of early Edwardian humour, Jane said they must hurry up or they would be late for lunch.

“But, mother, isn’t it funny,” said Frank, dancing from one foot to another.

“I know a much better one,” said his mother, “in Latin.”

“You don’t know Latin, do you, mother?” said Master Gresham, obviously incredulous.

“Not as well as Robin, but much better than you,” said Jane, manfully. “Can you read this?”

She took a pencil out of her bag and wrote something on the back of an envelope.

“Caesar adsum jam forte,” Frank read. “That’s not Latin, mother. I mean it doesn’t mean anything. Sir,” he added, appealing to his master, “it doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

“If your mother says it does, it does,” said Robin not wishing to commit himself.

“Mother, it’s nonsense, isn’t it?” said Frank. “It is nonsense, isn’t it, mother?”

“What you tell me two times is true,” said his mother enigmatically to her son. “I’ll say it to you. ‘Caesar had some jam for tea!’ ”

It touched and amused her to see her son’s round face, temporarily serious, his soft brow puckered, his eyes remote, till the light of reason began to dawn and he broke into a joyful smile with a toothless gap at one side of it.

“Oh, mother,” he shrieked. “I’ll tell Tom in afternoon school. I’ll bet him I know Latin better than he does. Oh, mother! Is there any more, mother?”

“Quite a lot,” said Jane, “but I don’t remember it all. I expect Robin knows it, because he knows Latin properly.”

“I’m ashamed to say I’d forgotten that one,” said Robin. “But there’s another awfully good one that I can’t quite remember too; something about ‘here’s a go, forty buses in a row’—how does it go, Jane?”

“Lord! I had quite forgotten it too,” said Jane. “The boys used to teach me odd bits in the holidays. Didn’t it go on something about trux, As quot sinem: pes an dux?”

Frank looked perplexed.

“But that’s English,” he said.

“Well, come along now,” said his mother, feeling herself out of depth, “or we’ll be later for lunch than ever. And it’s fried fish with lots of fried parsley.”

Robin went back to the Rectory while Jane and her son walked home. And when we say walked, Master Gresham’s mode of progression was rather in the nature of a hop, skip and a jump, hanging on his mother’s arm the while, highly fatiguing to the hung-upon.

Lunch which was also new potatoes and early peas from the garden and a summer pudding having been despatched, Frank went back to afternoon school, and Jane, having no particular job that afternoon, thought she might as well pursue her inquiries about a house for Mr. Adams, so that she might have something to tell her father when he came back that evening. So she rang up Mrs. Merivale and asked if she might come and see her, being authorized thereto by Mr. Pattern, and a pleasant voice said yes, adding that the house was three houses down Riverside Close from where it branched off from Rising Crescent and the name was on the gate, Valimere, and anyone would tell her.

Accordingly Jane, after picking some strawberries for supper and doing some ironing and mending some places where the laundry had wrenched or hacked holes in sheets and pillowcases, went down the hill, crossed the railway by the footbridge and entered the New Town. Rising Crescent was about ten minutes’ walk from the station and near its farther end she found Riverside Close, so called for no reason at all as it was neither. Owing to the ravages of war many of the names on the garden gates were almost effaced and she thought she must have heard the instructions wrongly, but on retracing her steps she found the name, Valimere, almost invisible, on a gate which had sagged away from its gatepost and could never be shut again. As she walked up the little path she noticed that the garden, though bright with flowers, was also quite out of hand and the hedges running riot. The house was just like a hundred other New Town houses of so many styles that it had no character at all.

She rang the bell. The door was opened by a plumpish woman of about fifty who must have been very pretty and still looked very agreeable, with a kind expression, rather anxious eyes, and grey hair which curled becomingly round her face.

“Mrs. Merivale?” said Jane. “I am Mrs. Gresham. It was very kind of you to let me come.”

“Oh, how do you do?” said Mrs. Merivale, and shook hands. “Please do come in. We can talk more cosily in the lounge.”

Owing to Mrs. Merivale’s great politeness, Jane found it quite difficult to squeeze past her in the narrow hall, but by dint of a kind of sidling high and disposedly the difficult passage to what Mrs. Merivale had called the lounge was effected. This was a good-sized room at the side of the house, full of sun and looking into the tangled garden. It was furnished with two hideous elephantine chairs covered with sham leather, a hideous cupboard with some ugly silver on it, two more hideous bulky chairs with a kind of plush covering, a tottering little bookcase of two shelves with some magazines on them, and a couple of what Jane could only think of as occasional tables. There were a few water-colours obviously of “abroad” hung very high on the walls, and over the fireplace was a flight of wild ducks in china, being as it were Elle-ducks with a bulgy side for the public and a flat side which only the wall could see. They were of various sizes and Jane felt that they were of great value to their owner.

As Mrs. Merivale, though obviously friendly, was twisting her hands together in a demented way and quite speechless, Jane thought she had better break the ice and said she had heard that some of Mrs. Crawley’s married daughters had been with her.

Mrs. Merivale said, “Yes.”

“And Canon Banister’s mother,” said Jane.

Mrs. Merivale, wrenching her fingers nearly out of their sockets, said “Yes.”

A friend of her father, Admiral Palliser, said Jane, had asked if they would find some lodgings for his daughter and governess during the summer holidays, and would like to be able to come down himself at week-ends. Could Mrs. Merivale consider that kind of let?

“Well, I suppose you’d like to see the rooms,” said Mrs. Merivale after a choked silence and looking desperately about her.

“Please, if I may,” said Jane. “And may I say how much I was struck by those flying ducks. I have never seen anything quite like them before.”

Mrs. Merivale twisted one foot round the other in agony but appeared gratified.

“This is the lounge,” said Mrs. Merivale as if she were saying a lesson.

“And what a lovely view of the garden,” said Jane, feeling herself getting sillier and sillier.

“It is pretty,” said Mrs. Merivale, and untwisting her feet she stood up. “And if you look through the glass door you’ll see we’ve a nice lodger.”

Jane also got up and looking through the glass door at the far end saw that there was a little veranda where one could sit enjoying the view, but the lodger was not visible.

“This makes a nice room for a gentleman, or a party,” said Mrs. Merivale in desperation.

Jane said yes, of course it was and how nice, especially the little green china hearts let into the back of the sideboard.

“And this,” Mrs. Merivale continued, opening another door, “is the dining-room, it’s all fumed oak, you see; and this would be the sitting-room, with a nice view.”

“And what a lovely vase of flowers,” said Jane gazing awestruck upon another Elle-figure, this time the face of a rather depraved girl, its flat back glued and hooked to the wall, a bunch of floppy yellow roses in an opening in the top of its head.

Mrs. Merivale said it always made her think of the Lady of Shalott and Jane, to her horror, found herself saying that it was quite out of the common.

After another minute of politeness, the ladies got to the first floor where Jane was shown three light, airy bedrooms each with fixed basin and gas-fires; also a good bathroom. Mrs. Merivale insisted on her looking at the mattresses, which Jane’s expert hand and eye admitted to be excellent.

“There’s another room, the one we just call the Other Room,” said Mrs. Merivale, showing Jane a slip of a room with a bed in it and otherwise occupied by a table and sewing-machine. “If your friend wanted a spare room at any time he could have this. It’s really Annie’s room, that’s my girl in the A.T.S., but she’s abroad now.”

Jane thanked her, and so genuine had she been in her praise of the obvious good points of the rooms that Mrs. Merivale further unbent and asked if she would like to see the top floor. So they went up a very steep stair.

“This,” said Mrs. Merivale, opening the door of a kind of superior attic, “is Elsie’s room, that’s my girl in the Waafs, but she’s overseas now. And this little room next hers,” she continued, showing Jane a smaller attic, “is Peggie’s, that’s my girl that’s in the Wrens, but she’s at Gibraltar. If they bring a friend home we can put a mattress on the floor and they talk all night. We’ve had as many as seven sleeping here, Mrs. Gresham, not counting myself. That was the time Evie was at home, that’s my girl in the Foreign Office, but she’s in Washington now.”

“Where did Evie sleep?” Jane asked, deeply interested in this life of doubling up, unknown to her.

“Oh, she came in with me,” said Mrs. Merivale. “We’ve got a little camp bed. The girls laughed all the time and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. We’ve got our own bathroom up here.”

She opened the last door and disclosed to the visitor a room evidently scooped out of one of the gables that were a feature of most New Town houses. A large cistern occupied most of it and a very small bath was squashed into a corner. On the sloping wall beside it was a notice saying, “mind your head,” below which was a rough drawing of a head banging a beam with stars and exclamation marks radiating from it.

“Evie did that,” said Mrs. Merivale. “She’s the artistic one. Peggie’s the musical one, she’s got some lovely records.”

“Are the others artistic, too?” said Jane.

“I suppose you would say so,” said Mrs. Merivale. “Elsie was studying dancing in Barchester with Miss Milner before the war and Annie isn’t exactly artistic, but she crochets shawls and doileys and things quite beautifully and used to make quite a lot of pocket-money.”

As she spoke she was leading the way downstairs again, and in the most friendly way offered to show Jane the kitchen, which was quite the nicest room in the house, spotlessly clean, with gay yellow paint, bright curtains, a dresser with pretty china, a long old-fashioned sofa under the window, and a cooker with an open-fire front, before which a large cat was dozing. Jane expressed her admiration and Mrs. Merivale beamed.

“I quite agree with you, Mrs. Gresham,” she said. “It is so cosy here and if I’m tired after getting the supper I just put my feet up on the couch and turn on the wireless and write a letter to one of the girls. And when any of them are at home we have such fun in the evenings that I have to say: ‘Hush, girls, or you’ll disturb the guests!’ ”

Rather humbled before such capacity for cheerful gratitude under such cramped and hardworking conditions, yet extremely thankful that she was not called upon to show gratitude for that particular form of enjoyment, Jane felt she really must inquire about terms and so bring her talk to an end. Thanking Mrs. Merivale for letting her see the house she said she thought her friends would be very glad to hear of it and what would they pay for the rooms.

Mrs. Merivale became dumb and began to twist her hands again in a most distressing way.

“I’m so frightfully sorry,” she said, in a tearful voice, “but when people ask me how much I charge I could kill them.”

Jane looked at her with some alarm.

“I know I’m horrid,” said Mrs. Merivale, “but it’s so awful talking about money. I’d rather let the rooms for nothing if I could afford it.”

This, though highly creditable to human nature, was hardly helpful and indeed rather silly. Jane, who really did not know what to suggest, stood silent.

“Would three guineas be too much, do you think?” said Mrs. Merivale, nervously.

Jane at once said it would be far too little, especially if the boarders were to have a dining-room and sitting-room to themselves, not to speak of the lounge, and begged Mrs. Merivale to name a higher figure. But as that lady would do nothing but repeat that she knew she was horrid but it seemed so unkind to ask people for money, Jane had to say that she would tell Mr. Adams how nice the rooms were, and probably he would come and settle everything himself, to which Mrs. Merivale agreed. As they went towards the front door Jane paused to look through the glass door of the lounge into the garden.

“It is nice to have a lodger,” said Mrs. Merivale. “Especially on a summer evening.”

It seemed a curious preference, but there is no accounting for tastes. At the front gate Jane said good-bye.

“It was very good of you to let me take up so much of your time,” she said. “I’m sorry I was late, but I missed your house and went right to the end of the road. What a pretty name Valimere is,” she added, untruthfully.

“Thereby hangs a tale, Mrs. Gresham,” said Mrs. Merivale.

Seeing that she wished to be encouraged, Jane encouraged her.

“When Mr. Merivale bought this house, Mrs. Gresham,” said Mrs. Merivale, earnestly, “we didn’t like the name. It was called Lindisfarne.”

She paused. Jane said it was certainly a horrid name for a house, and was ashamed of herself for time-serving.

“That’s what Mr. Merivale felt,” said his relict. “So we talked it over thoroughly, till we were quite at our wits’ end. But Mr. Merivale said not to worry and I went to stay with Mother for a few days for her eightieth birthday, poor old soul, and when I came back the name was on the gate.”

“How very nice,” said Jane, feeling this a distinct anti-climax.

“You see it’s Merivale, only the letters all mixed like the crosswords,” said Mrs. Merivale. “It seemed so original. The girls love it and Elsie, she’s my baby, the one that’s in the Waafs, sometimes calls me Mrs. Valimere, just in fun, and we all thoroughly enjoy it.”

Jane then managed to get away. As she walked home, she pondered on the niceness of Mrs. Merivale; also upon her exhaustingness. What her father’s Mr. Adams would think of it she could not guess, but she knew he was rich and wanted accommodation, and hoped that Mrs. Merivale and her daughters might benefit. All she could do was to give a good report of the rooms and hope for the best.

When she got back she found Master Gresham and his friend Tom Watson having their tea in the garden. Beside them was a large iron dipper containing a quantity of snails frothing themselves to death in salt and water.

“How disgusting,” she said, unsympathetically.

“Well, mother, you don’t want the snails to eat the vegetables,” said Frank, reproachfully. “Oh, mother, I told Tom about Caesar adsum jam forte, but he’s only just begun Latin so he didn’t laugh.”

“I don’t think it’s kerzackerly funny,” said Master Watson, who had perhaps inherited from his father, the Hallbury solicitor, a habit of thinking before he spoke and speaking with rather ponderous authority.

“Never mind, Tom, when you know Latin properly you’ll laugh like anything,” said Master Gresham, with a kindly patronizing manner which his mother found intolerable, but which Master Watson appeared to take gratefully. “Oh, mother, Mrs. Morland rang you up. She’s going to ring you up again. She says Uncle Tony is fighting in a canal. Mother, Tom got twenty-eight snails and I got thirty-three. Oh, mother, can we pick lettuces?”

“I don’t think we want any to-day,” said his mother, answering his last remark first.

“I don’t mean us; I mean for Tom’s rabbits, mother. Tom’s cook told him the gardener had sold all the lettuces so Tom said he’d get some of ours. Can we, mother?”

Jane found this vicarious generosity rather embarrassing. The lettuces were not Frank’s, they were not hers. They belonged in theory to Admiral Palliser, in usage to the cook and the gardener. There had already been words about them, the cook accusing the gardener of neglecting to bring any in, so that she had to take a basket and go down the garden just as she was if the Admiral was to get his dinner that night, the gardener maintaining that in the gardens he’d been in the cook never set foot in the kitchen garden and he’d rather not bring the vegetables up to the house if it was going to make unpleasantness. To which the cook had replied, if kitchen garden meant kitchen garden, it was for growing kitchen stuff and she’d put the gardener’s elevenses in the wash-house. All this Jane, unfortunately for her own peace of mind, had heard from the bathroom window, as she was washing Frank’s vest and stockings.

“I think they are grandpapa’s lettuces, Frank,” she said, trying to sound as if she knew her own mind. “But if Tom’s rabbits really need some, we’ll go to the kitchen garden after Chaffinch has gone home, and see if there are some very tall ones. Cook won’t want them.”

On hearing this joyful news the little boys fought each other with bears’ hugs and the snail-pot was upset.

“Come on, Tom,” said Frank to his friend, “we’ll pretend the snails are Japs and put them on a stone and scrunch them.”

“I don’t like Japs,” said Tom stolidly.

“All right. Yours can be Germans and mine can be Japs,” said Frank. “Come on. I bet I’ll scrunch more than you.”

Leaving the little boys to their war-time avocations, Jane went back to the house, wondering if children ought to be allowed to hate enemies. Being pretty truthful with herself, she came to the conclusion that if enemies were not only unspeakably horrible, but highly dangerous, it was just as well for everyone to hate them. And if hating them meant being un-Christian, she was jolly well going to be un-Christian. And if she saw a real Japanese she hoped she would be brave enough to hit him with the first sharp and heavy object she could find, or throw him down the bricked-up well in the churchyard. Full of these reasonable thoughts she telephoned to several people about the camouflage netting work-party, and was answering some letters when Mrs. Morland rang up.

That well-known but quite unillusioned novelist was an old friend of the Pallisers and though she was really old enough to be Jane’s mother, the two had always been very intimate and Mrs. Morland’s youngest boy, Tony, had adopted himself as an uncle to the small Frank, who thought him the cleverest and most delightful person in the world and copied faithfully all mannerisms least suitable for a boy of eight. What Mrs. Morland wanted to say, in her usual circumlocutory manner, was that the Fieldings had asked her to dinner and spend the night next Wednesday, and would Jane and her father be there. Jane said they would.

“I’ll tell you everything at dinner,” said Mrs. Morland, “or at least after dinner, unless it’s the kind of war dinner party where we sit next to a woman because of not enough men, which is very restful but not exactly what a dinner party is for. Not that there’s anything to tell. There never is. At least not here.”

“Sadly true,” said Jane. “Nor here either.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mrs. Morland, who understood by this that Jane had no news of her husband, just as well as Jane had understood that Mrs. Morland was asking if she had heard of Francis. “Oh, Jane, do you know anything about a Mr. Adams? Mrs. Tebben’s son Richard has been turned out of the army, I don’t mean for cowardice or drink or anything, but some tropical disease I think, though nothing that shows,” she added, in case Jane envisaged a hideous leper or an acute case of elephantiasis, “and I saw her in Barchester, and she says he has been offered a job at this man Adams’s works who is immensely rich and Richard has had very good experience before the war in some kind of business and can talk Argentine, or whatever they talk in Argentina which seems to me a most disloyal place, and Mr. Adams is going to have a branch there and it sounds very suitable, but Mrs. Tebben wondered if it was all right.”

When Jane was quite certain that Mrs. Morland had said all she had to say for the time being, she was able to reply that she had never met Mr. Adams, though her father was on his board, but that she believed he was coming to Hallbury for part of the summer and she would tell her what he was like.

“Oh, if your father is on the board it is quite all right,” said Mrs. Morland, “and I’ll tell Mrs. Tebben. I’ll see you on Wednesday then.”

Jane would have liked to ask after Mrs. Morland’s boys, but as this would have meant at least ten minutes’ monologue she said good-bye.

Then she took the little boys to the kitchen garden where she gave Master Watson four lettuces that had run to seed and sent him home. The evening was as cold and blustery as the day. As she gave Frank his bath she thought with unpatriotic dislike of Double Summer Time. All very well in peace when summer was summer, she thought crossly. But in wartime when the weather was always beastly and we had hours of grey north daylight after dinner and it was too cold to garden or sit out, it was a horrid infliction and what was more it kept Frank awake and while he was awake he talked and sometimes if he talked once more she thought she would burst. But when she saw him clean and pink in his pyjamas, she knew she wouldn’t really mind if he talked from now till Doomsday, as indeed he showed every sign of doing.

It was Admiral Palliser’s habit after doing his business in Barchester to go to the County Club and then take the 6.20 to Hallbury. Before the war he had got home well before seven, but now the train did not get to Hallbury till 7.10, an unconscionably long journey, so that by the time the train had been held up en route and the Admiral had walked up the hill, often with Sir Robert Fielding, it was dinner-time. Frank, being eight years old and going to real boarding-school after Christmas, and the evenings being so light, was allowed to sit at the table in his dressing-gown and eat his supper with the grown-ups, with the proviso that he must go to bed at eight exactly or never come down again. It is probable that if left to himself his doting grandfather would have given in to his pleadings for another five minutes, but his mother had determined that she would have the leavings of the day to herself, and steadfastly resisted all attempts on grandfather’s and grandson’s part to modify her rule.

Supper was enlivened by a classical discussion between grandfather and grandson. Frank, who had been learning Latin under Robin Dale since the preceding autumn, for Robin believed in catching them young, was rather uppish about his knowledge, and certainly Robin had found him, with his quick mind and retentive memory, a very promising pupil. Which was just as well, for Southbridge School under old Mr. Lorimer and later under Philip Winter, now a colonel in the Barsetshires, had attained a very high level of scholarship, Percy Hacker, m.a., senior classical tutor at Lazarus, winner in his time of the Hertford and the Craven, being their high-water mark. So Master Gresham, finding it necessary to be a snob about something, as indeed we all do and perhaps bird snobs are the worst, did boast quite odiously about deponent verbs and gerunds, finding an appreciative audience in the kitchen, where the old cook, Mrs. Tory, said to hear Master Frank (for to the effete and capittleist title of Master she grovellingly clung) say all his dictation and stuff (which was, we think, a portmanteau word for conjugation and declension) was as good as chapel; though the Reverend (by courtesy) Enoch Arden, Mrs. Tory’s pastor, who believed in direct inspiration and that Greek and Latin were works of the devil, would have denounced this belief with fervour.

Frank, who had spent half an hour in the kitchen treating Mrs. Tory and the old parlourmaid Freeman to the first line of Caesar adsum jam, with a promise of the rest when his schoolmaster could remember it, was bursting to try it upon a more widely educated audience. So as soon as the Admiral had begun his dinner Frank, pushing a large mouthful of biscuit into one cheek with his tongue, said, rather thickly:

“Grandpapa, did you do Caesar at school?”

“I did,” said the Admiral. “And if I didn’t do my work properly I was caned.”

“Mr. Dale doesn’t cane people much,” said Frank apologetically, “but when one of the boys threw the ink at Tom and it went on the wall instead, he gave him three good ones.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said the Admiral. “Have you been caned yet, young man?”

“Not quite,” said Frank, feeling that he was wanting in the manlier qualities. “But Mr. Dale said if I gave him the vocative of filius as filie again he’d kill me.”

He looked hopefully at his grandfather.

“And are you doing Caesar?” said the Admiral.

“Not quite, grandpapa,” said Frank. “But mother told me a poem about him. Oh, grandpapa, do you know the poem about Caesar had some jam?”

“Caesar had some——? Oh, yes, of course I do,” said the Admiral, and gravely repeated that short but admirable lyric. “And what’s more both your uncles know it.”

“The boys taught it to me one holiday,” said Jane, going back to her childhood. “And I told Frank the first line, but I couldn’t remember the rest.”

“Do you suppose, grandpapa, that Caesar did have jam for tea?” said Frank, anxiously. “I mean did Romans have jam?”

“I couldn’t say for certain,” said the Admiral, “but they did have honey. When you get to Southbridge you’ll learn Vergil, and he will tell you all about bees and honey.”

“Will it be funny?” asked Frank.

“No,” said his grandfather, decidedly. “Even better than funny. But if you like funny Latin,” he continued, noticing that it was nearly eight o’clock, “I can tell you a good poem. It begins:

Patres conscripti

Took a boat and went to Philippi....”

Frank listened gravely to the end.

“I don’t think it’s funny, grandpapa,” he said, “it’s more what I’d call schoolboyish. I think Tom would like it when he knows Latin better.”

“Touché,” said the Admiral to his daughter; and the clock melodiously struck eight and the bells of St. Hall Friars sounded from the battlemented tower through the chill July evening.

“Grandpapa,” said Frank, quickly. “Mr. Dale said the Romans had water clocks. Have you ever seen a water clock, grandpapa?”

“Bed, Frank,” said his mother.

“Oh, mother, can’t I just wait? Grandpapa hasn’t had time to say if he saw a water clock. Did you ever see one, grandpapa? I should think it would make rather a mess. Tom’s mother has a sand-glass, grandpapa, that tells you how long it takes to preach a sermon. Did you ever go to church where the clergyman had a sand-glass, grandpapa. Tom preached a sermon when Mrs. Watson was out, but the sand-glass took much too long and he couldn’t think of anything more to say. He said——”

“Bed, Frank,” said his grandfather.

“Yes, grandpapa,” said Frank. “And Tom said: ‘Oh, people be good and you will go to heaven, but if you are not good you will go to a far worse place.’ Do you think that was——”

“Bed,” said his mother and grandfather in one breath, and this time Frank recognized the voice of doom. Getting down from his chair he pressed his face with careless violence against his grandfather’s naval beard and his mother’s cheek, left the dining-room door ajar, came back in answer to his mother’s call, shut it just as Freeman was going in with the coffee, and went upstairs clinging to the outer side of the banisters, as he had frequently been forbidden to do.

Left to themselves Admiral Palliser and his daughter drank their coffee in peace. Jane told her father about her visit to Mrs. Merivale; the Admiral engaged to speak to Mr. Adams on the following day. Then they did a little chilly gardening and so the evening passed.