Читать книгу The Duke's Daughter - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 4

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We need hardly say that the news of an Adams baby almost ousted in county conversation the misdoings of Them, and there was a kind of silent struggle between the clergymen of West Barsetshire for the privilege of what our formerly lively neighbors the Gauls are pleased to call holding a child over the fonts; though why plural we shall never know, but they must please themselves. Correctly speaking it is perhaps the god-parents who do the holding, but the principle is the same. The Dean as acknowledged leader of the clerical party (for no one even considered the Bishop for a moment) was held to have as it were first pick, but he disappointed his backers by withdrawing almost at once, feeling, we think, that his supreme triumph in christening Mrs. Robin Dale’s twin girls could not be surpassed and that he was now hors concours. An ill-judged attempt was made by the Rev. Enoch Arden whose chapel of ease Mr. Adams had formerly attended to claim the future baby as one of his flock, but Mr. Adams who had left him on account of his Communist doctrine that Jack was as good as his master, which, said Mr. Adams, didn’t make sense seeing that then his master would be as good as Jack when everyone knew he was a sight better or he wouldn’t be where he was, refused to see him when he called at the Works and told his secretary Miss Pickthorn to give him a cheque for his League of Christian Soviet Endeavour and make it payable to bearer as he looked half starved poor beggar. Mr. Miller of St. Ewold’s said to his wife that indeed, indeed, a christening, if it were not irreverent to say so, was the most beautiful and moving of the Church’s rites, but being very modest took no further steps. The Archdeacon at Plumstead said he waived all claim, and as he had no claim at all we think he showed his usual good sense. Father Fewling at Northbridge thought wistfully that a baby had perhaps a better chance with a little incense and then blamed himself severely, because babies bring everything with them and have no real need of anything except the words of acceptance, as properly appointed.

But none of these gentlemen made any public mention of their feelings, nor would it have made the faintest difference if they had; for Mr. Adams like a wise and provident man of business had engaged Mr. Grantly almost before it was decent to do so.

It was on a bright, chill March morning that Miss Adams, very red in the face, rent the air with loud yells, than which no more beautiful sound had ever been heard; or so her parents thought. Her father, finding himself for the first time in his life unable to concentrate, summoned Miss Pickthorn from the Works, who at once took command of the secretarial department and enjoyed herself frantically on the telephone. Mr. Adams had been a little afraid that two such outstanding characters as Miss Pickthorn and Miss Hoggett might clash, but owing to Miss Pickthorn’s supreme tact in asking Miss Hoggett’s advice about everything and saying how the one thing she really wanted was a nice cup of tea, that grim guardian relaxed her vigilance and went so far as to tell Sister Chiffinch, who was in command upstairs, that Miss Pickthorn reminded her of the late Lady Dumbello’s secretary who was an Admiral’s daughter and quite the lady.

We need hardly say that Mrs. Marling (who of course had known all along that Lucy would die in giving birth to triplets and she would have to bring them up, which is a well-known nightmare of grandmothers and seldom if ever realized) was on the spot as soon as Ed Pollett the handyman could be got to drive her over in the clanking old car.

“Oh, Miss Hoggett, how thankful I am!” she said to that faithful retainer who opened the door. “Can I go up? Or perhaps we’d better ask Sister Chiffinch first. Oh dear! It is all so sudden,” which considering that she had known about the baby ever since it was humanly possible to know, was perhaps an overstatement.

“I’m sure you’re upset, madam,” said Miss Hoggett, playing up violently. “Would you like to see Mr. Adams, madam? He’s in the library. And shall I bring in some tea, madam?”

“Oh yes, do,” said Mrs. Marling.

“And I’ll tell Sister Chiffinch,” said Miss Hoggett and went upstairs.

Mrs. Marling opened the library door and there, among the books he had lavishly but judiciously bought at various times, aided by such authorities as the Dean, Mr. Carton of Paul’s College, and Mrs. Morland the well-known writer of thrillers, sat her son-in-law, creator of the great Hogglestock Iron Works, employer of hundreds of men and women, consulted increasingly in county activities, as wealthy as They will allow one to be, and looking as if he had been up all night (which he had not) and been drunk ever since (which he most certainly had not been).

“Oh! Sam!” said Mrs. Marling.

“Well, it’s the first time you’ve called me that,” said Mr. Adams, getting up to meet his mother-in-law. “And may I say I’d as soon do my biggest casting with an air raid on than go through this again,” and to Mrs. Marling’s surprise—except that by now nothing was surprising—he clasped her in his strong arms and knocked her hat on one side, to which Mrs. Marling responded with equal fervour.

“Dear Sam, we are so happy,” said Mrs. Marling, beginning to cry. “William is getting up the last of his Uncle Fitzherbert’s port and we want you to come and help us to drink it. It is so delightful that it is a girl. Not but what a boy would have been just as nice, but after all Lucy is a girl and—” upon which exceedingly muddled reasoning Mrs. Marling began to cry again from sheer joy, and as her son-in-law was not much better it was a good thing that Miss Hoggett came in with tea, which calming beverage did them a lot of good and before long kind Sister Chiffinch came down.

“Now isn’t this a lovely surprise,” said Sister Chiffinch. “Who’d have thought of a dear wee mite being born in this really quite antique house though if the truth were known,” said Sister Chiffinch archly, as if Mr. Adams and Mrs. Marling were in some way responsible for the baby (as indeed they were), “I daresay many a Happy Event has occurred here in the Olden Times. Such a pet she is, Mrs. Marling. Eight pounds, and as I said to Mrs. Adams when I put her on the scales, for a first it is a very good weight.”

“I hope Lucy had a fairly good time, Sister,” said Mrs. Marling, straightening her hat and trying to look sane.

“As easy as falling off a tree,” said Sister Chiffinch, though the comparison even to Mrs. Marling’s slightly dazed wits seemed peculiar. “We just had a wee spot of trouble and then a little stranger began to use her lungs. She ought to be called Melba. And, as I was saying to Miss Hoggett, such a dear considerate little lady. Daddy knew nothing till we were all washed and comfy in the cot and I went in to tell him, luckily in an ever so sweet dressing-gown that Mrs. Admiral Hornby gave me when I was up at Aberdeathly for her third, for Matron at Knight’s, where I trained, always made it a great point that a nurse should have a nice appearance in the sick-room. Not of course that it exactly applies in this case because Mrs. Adams is as well as possible so we really cannot call it a sick-room for she has eaten a nice breakfast and is longing to see her Mummy,” at which word, never used in the Marling family, Mrs. Marling blenched. “Or Granny I should say,” Sister Chiffinch continued, “but really, Mrs. Marling, no one would take you for a grandmother.”

“But I am,” said Mrs. Marling, who had a strong snobisme de grand’mère. “I have four grandchildren in Yorkshire and three in Camberley.”

“So our little Poppet makes eight,” said Sister Chiffinch brightly. “And now will you come up, Mrs. Marling? Daddy has been up already and when Mrs. Adams has seen you, Mrs. Marling, we must close the curtains and try to have a little nap,” and so, having tanked right over her patient’s husband and mother, she took Mrs. Marling upstairs.

Lucy looked very handsome, her mother thought, and wrapped in a kind of golden content. Miss Adams had a very cross red face, fingers and toes of exquisite delicacy, and a light fluff on her head. As for her eyes, which Sister Chiffinch and Lucy said were the most beautiful they had ever seen, they were so tightly shut that only the tips of her lashes appeared among the rolls of fat.

“I’m awfully glad she’s a girl, Mother,” said Lucy. “I mean I’d have been just as glad if she had been a boy but as she’s a girl I like it best. Is Father pleased?”

Her mother said he was delighted and getting up some of the last of his port to drink the baby’s health and they wanted Mr. Adams to dine with them if Lucy could spare him. For though Mrs. Marling was sincerely attached to her son-in-law, she still found it easier to call him Mr. Adams unless under the strain of great emotion. And really there was no reason why she shouldn’t.

“Have you thought of a name for her?” said Mrs. Marling.

“Well, Sam’s mother was Hilda and his wife was Rose,” said Lucy, and if Mrs. Marling felt any disappointment that her own name was not mentioned, she did not show it.

“That’s why Heather’s called Heather,” said Lucy. “I mean her mother wanted to call her after a flower like herself, so she chose Heather. We didn’t like Hilda much and it might sound as if we were calling her after Miss Sowerby, so we thought Rose Amabel, or Amabel Rose. Which do you like?”

If ever humility was rewarded (which it mostly isn’t) it was at that moment, for Mrs. Marling had hardly dared to hope that Lucy’s child should bear her name.

“I rather thought Amabel Rose,” said Lucy. “A.R.A. would be nice initials—wouldn’t they, my sweet,” she added to her daughter, in a voice that her own mother had never heard and which nearly made her cry all over again.

“Tell Father and Oliver to come and see me soon,” said Lucy, “and Emmy. I want to know about the new cowsheds,” and even as she spoke she was half asleep. Her mother put a swansdown kiss on Amabel Rose’s gossamer-jelly cheek and tiptoed away.

Lucy woke for a drowsy lunch and slept again till four o’clock when Heather Pilward came to call on her step-mother and her new half-sister. As for her father, to whom she was truly devoted, she would have torn him to pieces in a Bacchanalian frenzy sooner than forgo a delightful gossiping talk with Lucy.

“Let’s see,” said Heather. “Edward Belton is my son and Daddy’s grandson and your step-grandson. So I suppose Amabel Rose will be my step-granddaughter. No, that’s wrong. Step-grandmother. No. What on earth is she?”

“I’ve been thinking very hard when I wasn’t asleep,” said Lucy, “and I think it’s—I mean she’s your half-sister. If she had a father and mother that weren’t your father and mother she’d be your step-sister.”

“No she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t be any relation at all. I’ll tell you what. If you had a daughter before you married Daddy, she’d be my step-sister.”

“But I couldn’t,” said Lucy, “because I wouldn’t have been married.”

“Well, could Edward Belton marry Amabel Rose?” said Heather.

“If it was cows he could but I don’t think people,” said Lucy cautiously. “No of course he couldn’t, because he’s Sam’s grandson and she’s his daughter.”

“Daddy’s your husband and my father,” said Heather, her face as intent as if she were working a problem in higher mathematics. “So Amabel Rose is his daughter and Edward is his grandson. Is there any law against daughters marrying grandsons?”

“Well, I couldn’t marry any of Father’s grandsons,” said Lucy, “because they are at school. And anyway Father only married once. Let’s get the prayer-book. It’s on the shelf by the window.”

“Right,” said Heather, sitting down again. “Shall we do A Man mayn’t Marry or A Woman mayn’t Marry?”

Lucy said as Edward was a man they might start with him and check it with the woman ones.

“Well, he mayn’t marry his Grandfather’s Wife—that’s you,” said Heather, “but he wouldn’t want to anyway. Let’s see, he mayn’t marry his Mother’s—no that won’t do. They don’t seem to have thought about it properly.”

“Well, look here,” said Lucy, slightly flushed. “If I were really Sam’s wife—I mean if I were your mother—you would be Amabel Rose’s sister. Where does that get us?”

Heather said, almost pettishly for her, nowhere.

“But there was the woman who married seven husbands one after the other,” said Lucy, knitting her brows. “Only she didn’t have any children. I wonder why,” she added thoughtfully.

“Well, listen,” said Heather. “Can Daddy’s daughter marry his grandson? Because that’s what it is.”

“Well, it’s not there,” said Lucy.

And luckily at about this point Sister Chiffinch came in and said Amabel Rose must go to bed, which as she was already in bed and had been there ever since early morning and was likely to remain there for a long time, seemed a work of supererogation. So Heather kissed Lucy and Amabel Rose and went away.

At tea-time Mr. Adams was allowed, nay encouraged, by Sister Chiffinch to have tea with his wife and younger daughter. That kind creature Sister Chiffinch poured out tea for them and made bright conversation, largely about her friends Wardy and Heathy that she shared the flat with and how Wardy had painted the living-room walls a really sweetly pretty shade of pink and Heathy had bought some new lampshades.

“And when I tell you,” said Sister Chiffinch, “that they are made of real antique parchment with people’s wills or something on them, we really feel we are quite in Ye Olden Times.”

Mr. Adams said it sounded very nice and comfortable and if she and her friends smoked he would like to give them a set of stainless steel ash trays, to which Sister Chiffinch replied archly that she must confess to just a whiff now and then, but never, of course when on duty because the mere idea of cigarette ash falling on a wee baby was quite unpleasant. Matron at Knight’s, she said, had always told the probationers that what they did outside the hospital was their own affair, but inside was inside.

“But she wasn’t above turning a deaf eye to things,” said Sister Chiffinch. “She really understood human nature and if you understand that you understand probationers, because a lot of us used to have a cigarette outside if we had a moment off and some of the young medicals happened to come along occasionally, and Matron came sailing past us one day and believe it or not she looked just straight in front of her as if we weren’t there at all. It taught we nurses tact, Mr. Adams. She’s retired now and lives at Folkestone with a friend and she’s on the Town Council. And now, Mr. Adams, you mustn’t think me a spoilsport but our patient must be quiet. So say Au Revoir but not Good-bye.”

We think this was the first time in Mr. Adams’s hard-working life that he had been completely taken aback. Obedient, even cowed, he kissed the top of Amabel Rose’s head and laid his wife’s hand against his cheek and with one last look at her went away.

“A real Sir Lancelot,” said Sister Chiffinch, and though the application is obscure we think we know what she meant.

When Mr. Adams got to Marling he found his host in a mild delirium, looking at nursery garden catalogues. At the sight of his son-in-law he got up slowly (for in the winter when he could not get out much he was always stiffer in the joints) and came towards him with both hands out. “Well, my boy,” he said, “I don’t know when I have been happier. Didn’t quite take to you at first you know, but it was Lucy’s affair and she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“That’s all right, Squire,” said Mr. Adams, who knew Mr. Marling liked this pleasant outmoded manner of address. “And Lucy’s all right and so is the baby. She sent you her love and wants to know when you are coming over to see her,” upon which Mr. Marling suddenly became a doddering centenerian and said he didn’t suppose he’d ever get over to Edgewood again.

“I’m gettin’ stiff in my old age and I don’t like these long drives,” he said. “I’ll have to get Ed Pollett to drive me over. The car’s fallin’ to pieces but it will last my time, I daresay. Time I was dead and buried.”

“Nonsense, Squire,” said Mr. Adams.

“All very well for a young man like you to say nonsense,” said Mr. Marling, “but I know what I’m talkin’ about. Threescore years and ten it says, and that’s good enough for me. I ought to have been dead years ago if I’d paid attention to the Bible,” to which Mr. Adams replied that doubtless his father-in-law was right, but he mustn’t think of dying till he had seen Lucy and the baby.

“I’m glad it’s a girl,” said Mr. Marling. “There’s not much chance for boys now. Schools are damn expensive and then you get another war and when they come back they’re unsettled and the stay-at-homes have got the jobs. War isn’t what it was in my young days, Adams. I was in the Boer War myself; volunteered with the Barsetshire Yeomanry, and look at me now. But these modern wars, they’re killing our boys. Better for some of them if they were killed outright than come back with their nerves all to bits and walk the streets looking for a job. There’s that feller Harvey. He and his sister were in the village one winter. Fine handsome woman she was and a damned bore—thought she’d caught Oliver at the time. Harvey went to France in 1939 with the Red Cross,” said Mr. Marling in a voice of intense scorn though not directed against that noble body, “and by the beginning of ’40 he was back in his government job, wax candles or something. Indispensable!” And he made a noise of deep contempt.

“That’s right, Squire,” said Mr. Adams cheerfully. “I’m a bit of a shirker myself. But if I’d left the Works God knows what those damned fools would have done. Half of them didn’t know pig iron from chromium steel. Let’s forget it. And if I can ever help a good returned man to a job, well I will, and everyone knows Sam Adams’s word—” and here his voice died away. But his father-in-law had not noticed, being like the elderly, and indeed like most of us, more interested in his own thoughts. Then Mrs. Marling came in with Oliver, just back from London, and they sat down to dinner, which was a good deal interrupted by telephone calls from the county to ask about Lucy and congratulate her parents.

“Oh, not again,” said Oliver when for the eighth time a summons came. “I’ll go, mother,” at which his father remarked with a slightly senile leer at his son’s departing back that Oliver thought it might be little Jessica, and then they talked about Miss Amabel Rose and how beautiful, accomplished, and sweetly mannered she was and how extraordinary was her likeness to Mrs. Marling’s father and Mr. Marling’s mother and Bill Marling when he was at Eton and Mr. Adams’s own mother. And as Mr. Adams had never known the late Lord Nutfield nor the late Mrs. Marling nor known Bill at Eton, and his host had never seen the late Mrs. Adams, dead these thirty-odd years, they agreed unanimously.

“Well, my boy, how’s little Jessica?” said his father when Oliver came back.

Oliver said, with ostentatious forbearance, that he had not seen her lately, and as his father, enlivened by claret, was obviously going to ask Who’s your Lady Friend, though perhaps not quite in those words, he prevented (in the Biblical sense) such goings on by saying it was Isabel Silverbridge to congratulate Mr. and Mrs. Marling and send her love.

“Dear Isabel, how nice of her,” said Mrs. Marling, for during the preceding year she had become very fond of the wife of the Duke of Omnium’s heir and only surviving son. And we may say at this juncture that owing to a reprehensible laxness on the part of Mr. Trollope, the official historian of the Omnium family, we are in some doubt as to whether the eldest son of the family was a Marquess (or Marquis), or a mere Earl. If the College of Heralds can offer a definite ruling in this subject we shall be grateful, failing which we shall treat Lord and Lady Silverbridge as Earl and Countess, Lest all, as the poet Cowper remarks, Should think that we were proud.

Presently the port was put upon the table and Mr. Marling terrified everyone by insisting on filling the glasses himself in a rather tottery way. A large drop fell on the white tablecloth near Oliver who at once put salt on it, which made his father look at him ferociously and mutter something about Old Maids.

“Not a bit, Squire,” said Mr. Adams. “My old mother was in good service at Hartletop Priory before she married my old Dad, and if Dad spilt his beer, as he was apt to do when he’d had a glass too much at the pub and then another glass at home, she always said the third footman at the Priory told her salt on port stopped it iron-moulding. She was walking out with him till Dad came along, which was the worst day’s work she ever did in her life, poor soul,” to which Mrs. Marling very prettily replied that it was the best day’s work in the world for Lucy, and then Miss Amabel Rose’s health was drunk and even Oliver felt slightly affected.

“I hope you don’t mind, mother,” he said, “but Geoffrey Harvey is coming in after supper. We are doing some work for him at the office and he wanted to see me,” and of course his mother said she would be delighted.

“Poisonous feller,” said Mr. Marling. “Sister looks like an educated rocking-horse,” which was so near the truth that no one could keep from laughing. Then Mrs. Marling went away, wishing she had a daughter or even a secretary to keep her company, for she had become very fond of the present Lady Silverbridge when she was Isabel Dale and had lived with her for a time. But most of us, especially as the world is now, will have to learn to be lonely and never perhaps was there a time when so many people, in spite of overcrowding everywhere, felt such loneliness of the spirit; and more in the winter than in the summer when you live in the country. Nor was her loneliness diminished by the arrival of Geoffrey Harvey. She did not in the least wish to entertain him, but it would obviously have been cruel to inflict him upon the men downstairs who were having a peaceful family talk, so she called over the banisters to Mrs. Pardon the gardener’s wife who was obliging and asked for coffee upstairs.

“And tell Mr. Marling, will you, Mrs. Pardon,” she added.

“He won’t come, madam,” said Mrs. Pardon. “If you’ll pardon my mentioning it he’s telling the other gentleman about the Bor Wor,” which Mrs. Marling rightly interpreted as her husband’s very dull reminiscences of the Boer War, during which he had been in charge of remounts most of the time and heartily bored. Though not so much as he had bored other people about his exploits afterwards, she lovingly thought.

“Black, or white for you, Mr. Harvey?” said Mrs. Marling when the coffee had come.

“Black if I may, because I know how good your coffee must be,” said Mr. Harvey. “Most people’s is absolute Mud. And pray not Mr. Harvey, considering how long we have known each other. You know, I always think of you as Amabel. Such a delightful name. The Heir of Redclyffe.”

“And Miss Lee,” said Mrs. Marling, rather crossly.

Mr. Harvey looked perplexed.

“Ah! the literary touch!” he said, with a sympathetic smile for which his hostess could willingly have put the poker down his throat.

“And sugar, Mr. Harvey?” said Mrs. Marling, so firmly that Mr. Harvey said no more about Christian names, and inquired tenderly after the little grandson.

“My little granddaughter is doing very nicely,” said Mrs. Marling. “My son-in-law is here and they will be up in a few moments. How is your sister?”

“Riding the whirlwind and directing the storm as usual,” said Mr. Harvey. “She is Head of E. and P. at the Ministry of General Interference, you know, at the special branch at Gatherum.”

Mrs. Marling, hardly able, though kind and courteous by nature, to repress her boredom, asked what E. and P. was.

“Department of Efficiency and Purging,” said Mr. Harvey. “You see there are bound to be misfits in every government department and Frances has to conduct a kind of Secret Service through the G.I.P.S.S.”

“The what?” said Mrs. Marling.

“Forgive me, dear lady,” said Mr. Harvey with a diplomatic laugh, which sounded to Mrs. Marling like a nasty spiteful giggle. “We poor civil servants get into the shocking habit of initials. The General Interference Personnel Secret Seeding. Rather like Wimbledon shall we say? Only on a different plane of course. To squeeze out the Undesirables. Sometimes we have no valid, I should say no apparently valid reason for getting rid of one of the personnel, and then we fall back on the G.I.P.S.S. In my own case, of course, on the R.T. and S.W.S.S., and that of course is the Red Tape and Sealing Wax Secret Seeding. It works marvellously. No one can appeal against it and no one of us is personally implicated. The undesirable clerk, or secretary, or whatever he may be is quietly jettisoned.”

“Spurlos versenkt,” said Mrs. Marling, trying to keep her feelings out of her voice.

“Exactly, dear lady,” said Mr. Harvey, with such complacence that Mrs. Marling nearly said what she felt. But luckily the men came up and though Mr. Marling and Mr. Adams were not particularly pleased to see Mr. Harvey he was Oliver’s guest and must be treated accordingly. Presently Oliver took him away to discuss whatever it was they were going to discuss, for what it was we neither know nor care, nor are we going to put ourselves out to invent it. Mr. Marling went to sleep sitting bolt upright and looking very distinguished, while Mrs. Marling and her son-in-law had perhaps the most intimate talk they had ever had, founded on their common dislike of Geoffrey Harvey, their deep love of Lucy, and their besotted admiration of Miss Amabel Rose. And before he left he said that if she didn’t think it would annoy her husband, he would send his car over tomorrow afternoon to fetch him, and after tea with Lucy the car should take him back, for which Mrs. Marling was deeply thankful, as their own little clanking car in the cold spring weather did her husband no good at all.

This chapter cannot be properly finished unless we give Miss Amabel Rose the space she deserves. For a baby who does nothing but eat and sleep and occasionally opens wide-set blue eyes, smiles a secret smile which as Sister Chiffinch indignantly said was not wind, and goes headlong into sleep again besides, as her mother said, smelling of heaven, deserves every attention.

On the following day her grandfather came to see her, though it was really more to see Lucy, for whose well-being he had been deeply and silently concerned. To do honour to the occasion he had dressed for the part, looking rather like something out of Bracebridge Hall, including a kind of flat-topped grey bowler still affected by himself and Lord Stoke. When his son-in-law’s car had come to fetch him he insisted on sitting beside the chauffeur and giving him odds and ends of agricultural information such as: “Nice bit of corn land that used to be. All council houses now,” or: “All that was under grass when I was a boy and now it’s beet,” or again: “All this talk of Siberian wheat. Barsetshire wheat was good enough for us and bread was bread then; not husks and alum.” To all of which the chauffeur, who was a born mechanic and was never happy except when driving, or preferably taking a car down with loving, greasy fingers, made no reply but “Yes, sir.” For Mr. Adams, having been well brought up by his mother in the old tradition, quite rightly insisted on good professional manners from anyone he employed professionally.

We do not quite know whom Mr. Marling expected to find on his arrival, but whatever his preconceived ideas they were rudely though not unpleasantly shattered by Sister Chiffinch who, summoned by Miss Hoggett’s underling, came crackling and rustling down to meet him and wafted him upstairs.

In the bedroom, lit by the cold afterglow of the March sunset and the whispering flames of a good coal fire, he found his daughter sitting up in bed and in her arms Miss Amabel Rose grossly replete with her second tea (or her first supper, we cannot be positive which) in a kind of warm abandoned swoon; to whom he immediately and for ever lost his heart.

“Hullo, Father,” said Lucy, reaching to kiss him over the baby’s fat comfortable form. “Isn’t she divine?”

“Nice young lady,” said her father, who was not going to commit himself, though in spirit prostrate at the baby’s rose-petal feet. “Glad it’s all over, my dear. She’s a fine specimen. Wish my old mother could have seen her,” which as old Mrs. Marling had died some thirty years previously was hardly reasonable. “Your mother rang up Lettice and Bill so I daresay you’ll be hearing from them,” said Mr. Marling, alluding to his elder son and his elder daughter who lived at Camberley and in Yorkshire respectively. “Well, I’m not long for this world, but I’m glad I’ve seen your child, Lucy. Didn’t want to see you an old maid. I had an idea you might like that feller Harvey at one time.”

“Geoffrey Harvey?” said Lucy. “I’d as soon have married the Bishop. How could you, father?” and then she made very businesslike inquiries about various cows and fields that had formerly been under her supervision and was on the whole pleased with her father’s reports, till Sister Chiffinch made herself visible and took Mr. Marling downstairs with such archness that he wondered if he ought to pinch her; but most luckily didn’t.

While Lucy was still happily in her bedroom—that haven which one so unwillingly leaves for the rough world—her brother Oliver came to see her. It was not his fault that he had not come sooner, for his parents had the first right, Sister Chiffinch had rationed visits to one a day, and he was in London through the week. But on the following Saturday he came down by an early train and took the bus over to Edgewood. Nieces were no novelty to him, for his elder brother and his sister Lettice both had girls, but his feeling for Lucy’s baby was a very special one. They were the two unmarried children of the house, loving their home deeply, always with the knowledge that this could not be their abiding place, that when their father died all would be changed. Lucy had loved her brother Oliver partly for himself, partly for his weaknesses, while he had loved her because she was Lucy, without ever seeing her full worth. Now they met again, each with an arrière pensée, because Oliver was thinking that Lucy as wife and mother was perhaps not quite so sympathetic as she used to be, while Lucy was wondering if Oliver would ever get over dramatizing and pitying himself; though she did not put it in those words.

“Isn’t she divine?” said Lucy. “Say ‘Uncle Oliver,’ darling,” but Miss Amabel Rose was asleep and took no notice.

“Indeed she is,” said Oliver and laid his little finger in one tiny hand which even in sleep closed upon it with a grip of iron, so he sat down by the cot and waited patiently for his release while he and Lucy talked about Marling and his work in London and the book he was writing about the seventeenth-century poet Thos. Bohun, Canon of Barchester. As he had been writing it for nearly ten years his friends had either forgotten it or were sick of hearing about it, but Lucy had always listened and never criticized and for this he missed her. Perhaps for other things too, but as he did not speak of them we do not know.

Miss Isabel Dale, staying at Marling as a kind of friend-secretary before Lucy’s wedding, had typed it for him in triplicate and given him very sensible advice to try to make it a little longer or it wouldn’t be a book at all, only an opuscule, which word had rather comforted Oliver. But now Isabel was Lady Silverbridge and would in time be a duchess and Oliver felt a certain diffidence about approaching her for advice, all of which he poured out to his sister Lucy till Sister Chiffinch came in and said he must say au revoir for the present, upon which he took offence, concealing it so well that Lucy apologized to Sister Chiffinch when she came back and said Oliver was writing a book.

“I thought there must be a Something,” said Sister Chiffinch. “When I was nursing Mrs. Adrian Coates with her first it was at her father Mr. George Knox’s house at Low Rising, you know, the one that writes books—well he was just writing a book then, really my memory is quite failing for I know Wardy got it from the libery and Heathy and I read it from cover to cover. Well, as I was saying—”

“You weren’t,” said Lucy rebelliously, but Sister Chiffinch did not hear and tanked on—“when Mr. Knox was writing a book he could be quite savage. But he always apologized afterwards and he gave me the sweetest souvenir when I left, a photo of himself and Mrs. Coates and her husband and the baby in a lovely silver frame and signed in his own writing. A gentleman like Mr. Oliver ought to get married.”

“We thought he would,” said Lucy, who like most of us found the warm comfortable intimacy of her quiet life highly conducive to gossip. “We thought of lots of people like Frances Harvey and Isabel Dale that’s Lady Silverbridge now, or Susan Dean, or perhaps Eleanor Grantly, but they all got married to someone else.”

Sister Chiffinch said a little bird had told her that young Mr. Marling was quite an admirer of Jessica Dean and really it was not to be surprised at, she was so sweetly pretty and such a clever actress. To which Lucy disloyally replied that Oliver couldn’t help being in love with Jessica but he couldn’t possibly have afforded to marry her even if she hadn’t married Aubrey Clover. Lucy thought of the day of Mr. Adams’s housewarming or rather garden-warming party when Jessica had told Oliver that she had married Aubrey Clover and she remembered his stricken face. He had recovered since then and had become l’ami de la maison in the Clovers’ flat, but still there was no sign of a wife for him and his hair was receding rapidly from a rather knobby and shiny forehead. Lucy in her secure happiness as wife and mother longed for her dear Oliver to have an equal bliss, but so far no nymph of suitable age and condition had arisen and if she did, Lucy felt she would need to be very patient and strong-minded as well. Presently Sister Chiffinch shut out the chill green evening sky and the bedroom was given over to domesticity. And here for the present we may leave Lucy as secure as anyone can be in such treacherous days. But for the moment all is well and we feel that it will continue to be well.

At Rushwater the latest news of Lucy and the baby was brought back by Emmy Graham who had been over to Edgewood, not so much to see the baby as to discuss with Lucy the merits of a new artificial manure called Growalot, which some held to surpass Washington’s Vimphos and Corbett’s Bono-Vitasang and Holman’s Phospho-Manuro; but as they were all controlled by the same man and that man nominally Mr. Holman though Mr. Adams had bought a working majority of his shares at his own figure, we do not think there was a penny to choose between them.

Martin Leslie and his wife Sylvia were sitting in what was still called the Morning Room at Rushwater because it had been called that for so many years. But now with its shabby curtains and worn chair-coverings, with agricultural literature of all kinds scattered about and a roaring wood fire, it was merely a comfortable meeting-place for its owners who after hard work in the open air were inclined to do nothing in the evening till Martin Leslie roused himself and went off, still limping a little from his war wounds, to the estate office in the stable yard. In the first year or two when they lived there old Mr. Macpherson the agent used to come over to dinner two or three times a week and help Martin in the office, but he now found the evenings too much for him and one of the family visited him nearly every day; sometimes Martin; sometimes his golden wife Sylvia with her two children; sometimes Emmy Graham who lived at Rushwater and was considered to know as much about cows as anyone in West Barsetshire, besides a complete understanding of bulls which put the old cowmen to shame; sometimes Tom Grantly who, as we know, was thinking of leaving Rushwater for the Red Tape and Sealing Wax Office.

This evening old Mr. Macpherson was to come to dinner, because it was his birthday, and then be carefully wrapped up and taken back by one of the party. Tom Grantly had gone to fetch him and Martin and Sylvia were feeling sleepy and comfortably tired.

“I must say Grandpapa was a brick to put down so much wine,” said Martin as he poured out sherry. “If I died it would practically pay the death duties.”

“Then don’t, darling,” said Sylvia, “Not till Georgy is old enough to manage the place,” for Miss Eleanor Leslie, whom our readers may remember in her perambulator on the occasion of old Lady Emily Leslie’s eightieth birthday, now had a brother and quite possibly might be acquiring something else of the sort before long. Martin looked adoringly at his wife whose natural sweetness and good sense and patience charmed him every day anew, and wondered what a fellow like himself with a gammy leg had done to deserve such happiness.

A loud noise then resolved itself into Emmy, just back from her visit to the Old Bank House at Edgewood. She flumped down in a chair where she sat most inelegantly with her knees wide apart and a hole in the knee of her stocking.

“Oh bother!” she said as she caught sight of it. “I thought that would happen. It was when I put the car away and there was a roll of barbed wire at the back of the garage. Never mind, they’re only old cotton ones. I did have some nylons, but they’re no good. You only have to touch them and they run from top to bottom.”

“It’s an awful nuisance,” said Sylvia sympathetically. “It’s the turning them inside out when you wash them that’s the trouble. There always seems to be something spiky in one’s hands. A bit of nail or rough skin or something. It’s no good putting grease on your hands at night or wearing gloves in bed or anything, because the minute you begin working it’s as bad as ever.”

Martin reached across and took his wife’s hand, looked at it searchingly, kissed it and restored it to her.

“Darling,” he said and Sylvia felt that she was well repaid for everything, with full measure pressed down and running over.

Emmy looked at them with the curiosity of the savage who first sees the palefaces, but made no comment and then Tom Grantly came in with Mr. Macpherson.

The old agent now showed his age far too visibly. His clothes looked as if they were hung on a skeleton, so loosely did they fit; his hands were marked with the brown blotches that come to some of us with advancing years and the veins stood out like mountain ranges on a map. His blue eyes were not so clear as formerly and when he sat, letting himself slowly down into a chair, his knees looked as if they would pierce his trousers. He still did a day’s work. That is to say he managed to get about and gave orders to the men, but Martin had to oversee his overseer. It was tiring and difficult work to gather what he let fall, but Martin had accepted it as part of his heritage from a long line of landholders and only wished his leg would let him forget it more often; for the lighthearted Italians whom he was supposed to be liberating at Anzio had damaged the leg past remedy with a machine-gun.

“Many happy returns of the day, Macpherson,” said Martin, raising his glass of sherry. “It’s eighty-three, isn’t it?”

“About that,” said Mr. Macpherson cautiously. “And her leddyship would have been the same age. I was a young callant of thirty when I first came here, thinking I knew everything, and her leddyship was— Well, Martin, you mind your grandmother well and what like she was. Eyes like a hawk’s that just looked through you and a smile that wrung your heart. Clarissa is the most like her, but there’s not one of the family can touch her. Aweel, aweel,” and he looked at the fire and fell silent till Deanna, a young lady from the village who unaccountably preferred working at Rushwater to going into an office or a factory, put her head in, said: “It’s ready,” and went away.

To an outsider the birthday dinner would probably have seemed very dull. A working landowner and his wife; a female cousin with a mop of fair hair and a tanned skin who was practically never seen out of breeches and knew bulls inside out; a young man out of the army learning to farm, and an old estate agent; and splitting one bottle of champagne to drink the old agent’s health. But to anyone who knew Barsetshire it was the county in miniature with its tradition of work, its acceptance of the immutable law that practically all those who depended on one were in their different way lazy, incompetent, untruthful, grasping; but none the less their children to be helped while young and allowed when old to go on living at a very low rent or none at all in cottages that could have been let for enormous sums to outsiders. And their lives were devoted to Rushwater, which would use them, as it had used Mr. Macpherson, till their eyes were dim and their clothes hung loosely on the skeletons that lurked in them. And plenty of good looks among them too.

With the dessert (for when the kitchen gardens and fruit trees were leased to Amalgamated Vedge Ltd. Martin had reserved the right of keeping what was wanted for the house) the champagne was broached and Martin, raising his glass, wished health and happiness to Mr. Macpherson and offered the thanks of Rushwater and the Leslies for all he had done for the place.

Mr. Macpherson, moved beyond his wont, made to stand up and speak, but Sylvia gently pulled him down again.

“You’re right, Mistress Leslie,” he said, going back to his native Doric as he did when moved, in spite of fifty-three years’ absence. “I’m no very fit to stand now. Fifty-three years have I worked for Rushwater—and for her leddyship—and the grasshopper is a burden. The zeal of her house hath eaten me up; see Psalms, sixty-nine, the ninth verse. But it was Her house—Her house. I thank the Lord for all His mercies. And I thank you too.”

His hearers, all more moved than they liked to admit, found a curious mist before their eyes and Martin thought he had heard the old man say “my bairns” before he had resumed his seat, but only spoke of this afterwards, to his golden Sylvia.

“And now,” said the old agent when the ladies (Emmy unwillingly counting as one) had retired and Martin had poured a libation from his grandfather’s port, “what have you to say, Tom, about your idea of leaving us? That Red Tape and Sealing Wax Department will be a poor change from Rushwater.”

“I daresay it will be,” said Tom Grantly, nervous but standing his ground. “But I’m not doing enough here, Mr. Macpherson. I mean I’ve simply loved it all and I can’t say thank you enough for all you’ve taught me—and Martin and Sylvia and Emmy too—but after all I don’t really belong here.”

“And where do you belong?” said Mr. Macpherson.

“I—I don’t really know,” said Tom, looking nervously at the two other men and finding interest, but not the sympathy he wanted. “I mean I do feel I ought to be really doing something.”

“Well, what have you been doing?” said Martin. “Certainly not nothing and therefore, as sure as two negatives make an affirmative, something. Rushwater will miss you. And we shall miss you.”

“It’s awfully good of you, Martin,” said Tom, digging holes in the tablecloth with a fork as he spoke, “and I do love it, but it isn’t going to get me anywhere. I mean it’s awfully nice to work with you and Emmy, but—” and his voice trailed away, as uncertain as his thoughts.

The old agent leaned across and took the fork from him, saying as he did so: “It was Her tablecloth. I mind her leddyship showing me the initials on it when first I came here,” and raising a corner of the cloth he showed the monogram of H.E.L. “Henry and Emily Leslie,” he said. “All embroidered by hand and she had twenty-four of them.”

“And this is the last,” said Martin and a silence fell, full of memories to Martin and Mr. Macpherson, highly embarrassing to Tom.

“Well, Tom, if you’ve made up your mind you must do as you feel best,” said Martin. “We shall all miss you. And if Red Tape doesn’t work, come back. We’ve plenty of work for you here. Good luck.”

He raised his glass, as did Mr. Macpherson, and they drank to Tom.

“Thanks most awfully,” said Tom. “I feel a most awful heel, leaving you like this. But I feel I ought to be earning my living. I mean a career with a future in it.”

It does the greatest credit to Martin and his agent that neither of them showed any outward feeling at this extremely ill-advised remark. Martin inquired about the prospects of getting a standpipe and trough in the Five Corner Field. Mr. Macpherson said it would require consideration.

“Excuse me butting in, sir,” said Tom, “but I think we can do it with gravity from Wooden Spring. It would mean a hundred yards of piping but we could run it over ground.”

“And this callant is leaving us to serve the Mammon of Unrighteousness!” said Mr. Macpherson.

“Come, come, Macpherson, it’s not so bad as that,” said Martin kindly, as Tom was redfaced and almost in tears.

“Who will the lad be working for?” said Mr. Macpherson. “This Government. And whatna Government is that? Ane Monstrous Regiment. And you will be changing Rushwater for that, you poor misguided lad. Well, may the Lord protect you, for I doubt you’ll be needing it.”

As Mr. Macpherson was looking like the Major Prophets all rolled into one, Tom kept silent.

“I wonder why it’s called Wooden Spring,” said Martin. “It never occurred to me before.”

Tom, with some diffidence, said perhaps Odin or Woden.

“Prætorium here, Prætorium there,” said Mr. Macpherson who found in Scott something applicable to every situation in life, “I mind the naming o’t. It used to be called Booker’s Spring till your grandfather, Martin, when he came into the place, put a wooden trough below it for the cattle and a kind of wooden arch above it and the name stuck like a flea on the wall.”

“And who was Booker?” said Tom, yearning to reinstate himself by a show of intelligence.

“Look at the beechwoods up younder,” said Mr. Macpherson with slight impatience. “Beaconsfield, Buchenwald, Bukovina, you get the name all over Europe. And now, Martin, I shall go and sit with your good leddy for a while and then this lad will take me home,” at which words Tom felt he was forgiven, but a sense of guilt, of desertion, remained with him all the same.

In the shabby comfortable morning-room Sylvia and Emmy, by a blazing fire, were having an agreeable relaxation from bulls and cows by discussing the cottages at Hacker’s Corner which were let, as they always had been, at a totally uneconomic rent to tenants who took it all as their right and expected their landlord to do all repairs, outside and in, even to the refurnishing of old Cruncher’s bedroom when he had deliberately put a lot of straw on the fire to make a nice blaze and the Barchester engines had to be summoned to deal with the result. Talk was on familiar subjects of farm and field and stock. Everyone was comfortably relaxed and Emmy yawned to an extent that threatened dislocation till Mr. Macpherson said he must be going home and was not above leaning on Martin’s arm as they walked to the stable yard.

“I’ll drive him,” said Tom, who had followed them, and Martin thanked him with one of his rare smiles. The old agent hoisted himself stiffly into the car and in a few moments they were at the gate of Mr. Macpherson’s delightful little Regency house which had very improbable stucco battlements, a small church porch, an elegant veranda, and was enclosed by an iron fence except where a well-kept lawn was bounded by a ha-ha. Mr. Macpherson thanked Tom and took Tom’s young strong hand in his own thin gnarled hand as he wished him well and then went into his house. Tom drove back with mixed feelings of gratitude to the old agent, hopefulness about his own future with the Red Tape and Sealing Wax Department, and a quite unaccountable sick and sinking feeling in his heart; and as everyone had gone upstairs when he got back he had to carry his anxious heart to bed with him.