Читать книгу The Duke's Daughter - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 5

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Among the many friends interested in Miss Amabel Rose Adams was Mrs. Belton over at Harefield. In the dark days of the war, when the Hosiers’ Girls’ Foundation School occupied Harefield Park, the Beltons had moved to Arcot House in the village of Harefield. To their house Heather Adams, then a boarder at Harefield Park, had been brought frightened and dripping after having fallen through the ice on the lake entirely through her own disobedience. Her father’s gratitude to Mrs. Belton (and to her son Freddy, then a Commander in the Royal Navy, who had picked Heather out of the lake and brought her to his parents’ house) had been deep and lasting and a sincere friendship had grown between them with excellent results. Mr. Adams had been able to do Mr. Belton a good turn with the War Agricultural Committee who wanted to plough a piece of his grassland for wheat, which land was well known to produce the finest crop of weeds and stones in the county. Mrs. Belton had taken Heather Adams in hand and helped her to become the sensible self-possessed and quite good-looking young woman she now was. She had also been consulted by Mr. Adams about the Old Bank House at Edgewood and helped him with her excellent taste and knowledge to give it the curtains and furniture that it needed. And now Mr. Adams had married into the county and had a baby, and Mrs. Belton felt her work for him had not been in vain. That his wife was Lucy, also her own name, rather pleased her, and there was some distant connection between Mrs. Belton’s own family the Thornes of Ullathorne and Lucy’s maternal grandfather Lord Nutfield, whose pride in his old barony had been alloyed by the arrival in the Lords of a later peer, indistinguishable from him except by one letter.

When the Beltons’ elder son Captain Frederick Belton, R.N., he who had pulled Heather Adams out of the lake, married Susan Dean, elder sister of Jessica Dean the actress, his mother had made a flat in Arcot House for the young couple and their first child (not that there was yet a second, but it seemed improbable that they would stop at one). But life with a baby on an upper floor has its disadvantages and most luckily Dowlah Cottage had fallen vacant through the death of Mrs. Hoare, widow of a former agent of the Pomfret estate, and as Mr. Belton still owned it and several other houses in Harefield he was able to let the Freddy Beltons have it.

During the lifetime of the late tenant it had been almost impossible to see the house at all, so full was it of Jacobean dressers, Cromwellian chairs, Spanish leather screens, Moorish fretwork arches, heavy velvet portières embroidered with sunflowers under the influence of the æsthetic movement, grandfather clocks, étagères, and some very doubtful Dutch Old Masters with at least an eighth of an inch of dirt and varnish on them; all legacies from relations of Mrs. Hoare and her late husband. But when these had been removed to continue their career as legacies with new owners, Dowlah Cottage was revealed as a very pleasant two-story dwelling with a wide passage running from the front door right through the house and a nice garden which, like all the gardens on that side of the High Street, had a back door into a lane.

Here Captain Belton and his wife and their gifted and unusual baby boy who had been christened Frederick but was usually called Baby (to prevent confusion with his father and grandfather though the probability of one being taken for the other seemed so remote as to be negligible) were living in great happiness and we are glad to be able to add comfort, for Susan Belton’s father was a wealthy consulting engineer and had dowered all his daughters handsomely, partly from parental affection and sense of duty, partly from a wish to get the better of Them while the going was good. Though how long They will allow parents to leave anything to their children, with or without death duties, we cannot say.

In Dowlah Cottage, on a nasty, chill Monday morning in June, were Mrs. Freddy (as she was usually called in the village), her mother-in-law, and her brother-in-law Charles Belton who was a master at the Priory School over at Lambton and spending the half-term at home. The owner of the Priory, Sir Harry Waring, had died during the past winter and his wife, probably because she had no particular wish to live, had died not long afterwards.

“It’s time I was gone,” she had said to her niece Leslie Winter, whose husband was owner and headmaster of the very successful Priory School. “Harry always needed me and I am quite sure he is needing me still. And I have always wondered if we should see George again,” to which Leslie Winter had no answer, for George Waring had been killed in 1918, just before the Armistice, and one can only guess about a future life, hoping and trying to believe that those responsible for it will make it possible to meet people one has loved, and that the lads who will never be old will be able to recognize the parents and friends whom the years between have aged and changed.

“I think George will be pleased to see us,” Lady Waring had said to Leslie, the day before she died. “And if on thinking it over he doesn’t want to see too much of us, we shall quite understand, bless him. And I am sure there will be something useful that one can do,” and Leslie said afterwards to her husband Philip Winter that heaven would be no heaven for Uncle Harry and Aunt Harriet unless they could do unpaid work for other people. And as these were almost Lady Waring’s last words, they may be her epitaph.

And now their nephew was Commander Sir Cecil Waring, because his childless uncle’s title was one of those rare Baronetcies which can go sideways and so had come to Cecil Waring, brother of the Headmaster’s wife. And what was more he was not so badly off even when They had confiscated everything They could lay hands on, having inherited through his mother a considerable fortune at an early age and invested much of it in good farming land round the Priory.

“Do bring Cecil over next time you come, if he isn’t too busy,” said Mrs. Belton to her son Charles. “I expect he would like to see Arcot House,” for it is well know that anyone who has what is called “a House” likes nothing better than seeing other Houses, and poking into the servants’ (if any) bedrooms and comparing notes about converting the old kitchens into a Boys’ Club with two ping-pong tables in the old scullery and darts in the game larder.

Charles said he was sure Cecil Waring would love to come, but what he really adored was sailing, and the only thing he had against the Priory (apart from its extreme hideousness and inconvenience) was that there was no water handy and it was a good hour’s run and more to the sea.

“What a pity the lake isn’t bigger,” said Mrs. Belton, hospitably inclined.

“Or deeper,” said Charles. “Do you remember when that ghastly Heather Adams crashed through the ice, Mother? Lord! what a sight she must have been when Freddy brought her up to the house. Fancy anyone marrying her,” to which his adoring mother replied that anyway no one had seen fit to marry Charles as yet, so he needn’t talk.

“Oh, well,” said Charles and his mother was pretty sure he was thinking of Lady Graham’s second daughter Clarissa, with whom he had what his mother called an understanding. “But Cecil has a couple of collapsible dinghies, Mother, like the one the Mertons have, you know, you can fold them up like a deck chair—”

Here his sister-in-law interrupted to say that she had never yet succeeded in folding a deck chair properly at the first go.

“Nor unfolding them neither,” said Charles, with memories of himself as a small boy squashing his fingers (not badly) in a deck chair and then being smacked by Nanny Wheeler for doing it. “But why shouldn’t we bring them over and have a punting race on the lake. Upstream, twice round the island and then whoosh! up the straight to the home end. I’d like to see Cecil getting his pole stuck in the mud.”

His mother and his sister-in-law thought this an excellent plan and then Dr. Perry the old friend and physician of the Belton family looked in; not professionally, but to satisfy his insatiable curiosity about things in general and hear about the new owner of the Priory; also to talk about himself. Mrs. Belton asked after his wife and the boys.

“I ought to say the distinguished young men,” she said, “but I can’t help thinking of them all as boys.”

“Nor can I,” said their father. “But boys or men, one of them has decided to chuck the hospital and go into partnership with me.

“Thank God!” said Mrs. Belton, with a fervour that quite alarmed the family. “I mean we have always been so afraid of what might happen when you retired, Dr. Perry, if you ever did. Suppose we had Dr. Morgan,” and she paled almost visibly at the thought.

“That female!” said Dr. Perry. “Psychoanalysis for the cottages when what they need—and what’s more they expect it—is a good dose of salts. Have you heard the latest about her?”

His hearers hadn’t and waited in rapt expectation.

“She’s got a job at the Ministry of Nutritional Hygiene,” said Dr. Perry, rubbing his hands and chuckling.

“Well, bad luck to her wherever she is,” said Charles cheerfully. “Who’s she psyching there?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Dr. Perry, “but her chief is Dr. Mothersill and there’ll be wigs on the green.”

“And no idea of how to dress, either of them,” said Mrs. Freddy Belton, who had not committed herself up till now, not from laziness or shyness, but she was not a consulting engineer’s daughter for nothing and liked to study her strains and stresses before hazarding herself.

“I’d give twopence to see their hats,” said Mrs. Belton fervently and then fell silent; for the day on which Dr. Morgan had appeared at the Hosiers’ Girls’ Foundation School breaking-up in a jaunty Robin Hood hat with a feather and a depressed veil and had met Miss Pettinger the unpopular Headmistress of Barchester High School wearing its twin, was just before the day on which Charles, concealing it from his mother till the last moment, had gone back to his regiment after a night’s leave and vanished. All was well. Charles had come back safe and sound and (apparently) not emotionally disturbed, but his mother would till her dying day remember his empty room with his clothes strewn on the chairs, the bed and the floor; and her own dumb anguish. Perhaps even beyond her dying day. Who knows?

“I’d give sixpence to see them fight,” said Dr. Perry with sad want of esprit de corps. “But who do you think is coming into partnership with me? Gus.”

Mrs. Belton, who had always found it difficult to remember which of the Perry boys was which, expressed her great delight and satisfaction, and said that was the surgeon, wasn’t it.

“No, no. That’s Jim,” said Dr. Perry. “Gus is skin diseases and he thinks a few years in the country as a G.P. will be very useful to him. Everyone’s getting queer with the food They give us. Of course the cottages have always lived on tins and now it’s worse than ever. Gus thinks we may get back to leprosy with luck and then he can study it without going to India or wherever they have lepers.”

“Well, that is delightful news,” said Mrs. Belton, alluding we think to the proposed partnership rather than the prospect of lepers with rattles up and down the High Street. “I know now. Gus is the one with the bushy eyebrows. And how is Bob?”

“So fine his old father hardly dares to look in at 208 Harley Street,” said Dr. Perry, not attempting to conceal his pride. “Five guineas for a consultation and a secretary and a parlourmaid in grey and white to open the door. Consulting physician, that’s the game. He’s going to marry soon I think. A nice young woman. She’s an Honourable and it’s a great help to a consultant. A Lady Clara would put people off, but an Honourable gives tone. It’s a funny racket, Mrs. Belton. It’ll be ten guineas in a year or two, when he’s got a family. But he keeps up his hospital work just the same. He’s a good boy,” and Mrs. Belton thought there was perhaps a faint tinge of regret in Dr. Perry’s voice for a son whose ways were parted from his ways. Of this we cannot judge. “And what does Mrs. Freddy think?” said Dr. Perry, becoming the family doctor again.

“She thinks that she is very glad none of your sons are gynecologists,” said Susan stoutly, “because I’d rather have you than all your sons in one,” which pleased Dr. Perry greatly.

“Well, I suppose I must go on my rounds,” he said. “Oh, my wife wants to know if all or any Beltons will come to tea on Saturday,” which invitation was accepted with pleasure by Mrs. Belton while Susan said she would have loved to come, but what with putting Master Belton to bed and getting supper ready for her husband, she was sorry she couldn’t. And we may say that she did not look sorry in the least. Charles, suddenly very important, said he had to ring Cecil Waring up about bringing the dinghies over to Harefield and having a regatta and having done so announced his intention of going over to the Priory and clinching matters.

“Well, if you come back too late for tea, come in and have some sherry,” said Dr. Perry, who looked upon all young men as more or less his sons. “It’s only Empire, but the boys say it’s not bad,” which invitation Charles accepted very nicely.

Plassey House, where the Perrys lived, was smaller than Arcot House and its sash windows less elegant, but it had the advantage of a beautifully carved shell-shaped projection over the front door and the largest cedar tree in the county except those in the Palace grounds. As it was half past four on an English day in high June Mrs. Belton found Mrs. Perry in her comfortable and slightly overfurnished drawing-room with French windows on the garden, lighting the fire.

“You know,” said Mrs. Belton, “I never come into your room without thinking of our working-parties in the war. What fun they were.”

“I enjoyed them immensely myself,” said Mrs. Perry. “We all felt so safe when we were knitting for the forces and Mr. Churchill taking care of us all. And really the bread and the cakes were just as nasty then as they are now, and I often wish we were back in the war again. We knew where we were then. Have you heard about Gus?”

Mrs. Belton said she was delighted that Dr. Perry was having a son for a partner and hoped she would see him soon.

“Yes, indeed, he’s here this weekend and he will be here for good in September,” said Mrs. Perry. “And I asked the Updikes. I’m afraid Ruth has taken offence, but she always does,” and then a stop was put to any private conservation by the faithful maid Ruth, who apart from being quite devoted to the Perrys had every defect of sulks, complaining, and tactlessness. As she put the tea-tray down she grudgingly acknowledged Mrs. Belton’s pleasant and not in the least condescending greeting and after looking stonily at her employer through her hideous steel-rimmed spectacles went out, hooking the door with her foot as she did so.

“There is a permanent mark where she does that,” said Mrs. Perry sadly. “We did think of having a brass door-plate put there. I don’t mean the kind that says Physician and Surgeon, but just one of the ones one has on the handle side of the door above and below the handle, only lower down,” which sentence was a fine example of how difficult it sometimes is to make a perfectly plain statement. “I don’t think we’ll wait for the Updikes. She has all the family at home for the weekend and I expect she is rather busy.”

“Has she been in trouble lately?” said Mrs. Belton, for Mrs. Updike was celebrated for pricking, scalding, bruising, cutting, burning, electrocuting, pinking, and crimping herself in more ways than seemed humanly possible, all with the gayest good humour.

“Not since Saturday as far as I know,” said Mrs. Perry. “My husband went over to Mr. Updike’s office about some law business or other and found Mrs. Updike with a lump like an egg on her forehead because a roller blind had fallen on it.”

“I’ve never known a woman so much the prey of inanimate objects,” said Mrs. Belton. “Do you remember Mr. Carton’s tea-party some time in the war when she was late and your husband brought her along with a bandaged wrist? She was trying to pickle walnuts and let the vinegar boil and nearly blinded herself and then upset the rest over her wrist. Oh dear, what happy times those were.”

“And so say all of us,” said Mrs. Perry. “Oh, have you seen Commander Waring yet? I hear he is perfectly devastating and hasn’t the least use for women, but as I haven’t a daughter it doesn’t matter.”

Mrs. Belton said she had been hearing a lot about him from Charles and told Mrs. Perry about the proposed dinghy punting race for which Mrs. Perry at once entered her son Gus and any other sons who happened to be about at the moment, and then the faithful Ruth, exuding offence from every pore, opened the door to what appeared to be a kind of Noah’s Ark procession of Updikes.

Since we last met her Mrs. Updike had seen all her brood safely established, if such a thing as safety exists now. Her elder son after rushing up the military scale to Lieutenant-Colonel had returned to the law and was, like Gus Perry, going into partnership with his father. The elder girl had gone from the WAAFs into several responsible jobs and was now head of the Barchester Public Library. The schoolboy was almost a chartered accountant and the schoolgirl had found herself a very good job in a large travel agency; so the two younger children were seldom at home. But the ex-Colonel and the ex-WAAF lived at home, keeping an indulgent eye on their mother whom they looked upon as an eccentric but lovable child of a larger growth.

“You don’t mind my bringing the chicks, do you?” said Mrs. Updike to her hostess. “They aren’t often both free on the same afternoon and it seemed a pity to waste them. We would have been here before, but I was oiling the lock of the spare-room door and somehow the key fell out of the window into one of those large rosebushes with millions of those thorns that are so small that you can’t even see to take them out with a needle,” and having made what evidently appeared to her a perfectly reasonable explanation she smiled and sat down.

Mrs. Perry said she was very sorry and it didn’t matter a bit. But how, said Mrs. Belton, had the key managed to fall out of the window when Mrs. Updike was oiling the lock.

“Oh, I suddenly remembered I had read somewhere that the best way to oil a lock, or perhaps it is to housebreak, is with a feather,” said Mrs. Updike, her pretty tired face flushing with interest in her narrative. “I knew I hadn’t a feather in the house because I did have some ostrich feathers but I gave them all to something or other, so I wondered if there were any feathers in the garden and then I could go down and get one,” at which point she paused, evidently seeing the whole incident in her mind’s eye.

“Do you often find feathers in the front garden then?” said Mrs. Belton, who wondered if Mrs. Updike hung featherbeds out of her window in the Continental fashion.

“When she forgets to shut the fowls up,” said her son.

“Which is mostly,” said her daughter, but both spoke very kindly.

“So the key was all oily and slipped through my fingers like macaroni—cooked macaroni, I mean,” said Mrs. Updike, still gazing with her blue eyes into the past. “And I must have turned the key the wrong way before I took it out to oil it, so the door was locked. So I couldn’t get out.”

“So what did you do?” said Mrs. Perry, by now as fascinated as Mrs. Belton.

“Mother screamed,” said her son. “A very fine scream,” he added with an air of appraising legally his mother’s achievements. “And I was upstairs and came rushing down.”

“And I was downstairs and came rushing up,” said his sister.

“And they rattled the door, poor darlings,” said Mrs. Updike, looking at them with pride and gratitude, “so loud that I couldn’t explain. So I leant out of the window and screamed till the postman looked up, because he had just brought the afternoon post, and he most obligingly found the key, so I was saved. Oh dear!” she added, as she took off her gloves. “I quite forgot to wash the oil off,” at which her children laughed with a kind of proud affection and Mrs. Perry firmly took Mrs. Updike away to be cleaned.

After this they had tea quite peacefully with no more startling interruption than a wasp who evidently looked upon the tea-table as a personal enemy and attacked it with sound and fury till Mrs. Updike’s son after stalking it for some time tracked it into a jam jar and with great presence of mind plugged the spoon-hole with a bit of scone which he had been kneading for some time to that end.

Presently Mr. Updike came in, rather tired as he often was but very ready for gossip, and asked Mrs. Belton if she knew about Church Meadow.

“The War Agricultural aren’t after it again, are they?” said Mrs. Belton, who vividly remembered her husband’s agitation when that body had tried to compel her husband to grow wheat on the worst bit of soil in the county. “Besides the Hosiers’ Company bought it. They talked about a school there, but nothing happened. They’ve been using it as playing fields.”

“Well, I happened to run into their solicitor in Barchester,” said Mr. Updike, “and he tells me the plans for a big new Hosiers’ Girls’ Foundation School are approved and they’ve got the permits. Probably they will be stopped halfway through, or told they can have rooms but mustn’t have doors or window frames, but anyway they are hoping to start next spring.”

“Will they have a very tall tower?” said Mrs. Belton.

“A tower?” said Mr. Updike. “I couldn’t say. I’ve not seen the plans. Why?”

“You’ll think I am foolish,” said Mrs. Belton, “but if my husband could see anything, I think he would die. He has got used to the school being at Harefield—in fact he rather likes it—and he is quite resigned to their having bought Church Meadow. But if they made the new school very high we would see the top of it over the hill and he would go mad.”

“I don’t think you are at all foolish,” said Mr. Updike. “There isn’t so much land left unspoilt in England that we can afford to lose it. But I think for you to see anything in Church Meadow from Arcot House, it would have to be at least two hundred feet high. Probably more because there’s a good dip to Church Meadow. And now perhaps you can tell me something, Mrs. Belton. What will happen to Harefield Park when the school goes?”

“I wish I could,” said Mrs. Belton, suddenly looking much older. “We can’t possibly afford to live in it, and Freddy and Susan couldn’t either. And Charles has his schoolmaster’s pay and two hundred pounds that old Aunt Mary left him and possibly enough capital to bring in another hundred when we are dead—and then They would take most of it. Even a lunatic asylum would be better than nothing.”

“Perhaps it won’t be as bad as that,” said Mr. Updike kindly but not, Mrs. Belton felt, with very much assurance. “There are bound to be big concerns looking out for property. For instance, I happen to know that Amalgamated Vedge Limited are wanting accommodation for their large staff and a nursery garden for trying new seeds,” and he paused as if waiting to see the result of his words before he said more, but Mrs. Belton looked so grey and drawn that he said perhaps they might talk about it another time and slipped into the general conversation.

It sometimes happens even under the present government that Nature having begun the day in a thoroughly bad temper is getting over it by tea-time. The wind had fallen, the grey clouds had gone with the wind, and the stone terrace outside the drawing-room was almost basking in the sun. So a move was made and they all went into the garden.

“Not a deck chair for Mother, please,” said young Updike. “She is bound to get shut up in it and squash her fingers,” but his mother had already taken a cane garden chair. Three of its legs were on the terrace, the fourth was on the very edge of the stone and as she sat down the fourth leg plunged deeply into a flowerbed.

“I think the wooden bench for Mother,” said her elder daughter to no one in particular, so Mrs. Updike was installed where (it was hoped) no further accident could pursue her, and for at least five minutes peace reigned till a very loud ringing of a bell broke into the desultory conversation.

“Oh dear; a baby I suppose. Or an abdominal,” said Mrs. Perry. “Always just at the wrong time,” but instead of a baby or an abdominal it was Ruth, her face more disapproving than ever, followed by a shamefaced Charles.

“I say, I’m most awfully sorry. I only just pulled it out and then I let it go,” he was saying to Ruth who, ignoring him, remarked: “Its Mr. Charles and the other gentleman and I suppose I can clear away now or I’ll never get my supper laid,” with which words she walked straight through Charles—or he afterwards said she had—and was heard clashing china in the drawing-room.

“I say, I’m most awfully sorry, Mrs. Perry,” said Charles, “I only just pulled it out and it slipped out of my hand and sounded like the fire engines.”

Mrs. Perry said it didn’t matter a bit as Ruth could not possibly be crosser than she was and they had offered to have an electric bell but she had said she didn’t fancy electricity and if the fellow that came to read the meter gave her any more of his cheek she’d tell him what she thought of him.

Gradually the whole company became aware that the person described by Ruth as the other gentleman, a tall, spare man with rather a hawk’s nose and piercingly light blue eyes, was looking on with a quietly amused face.

“I am so sorry,” said Mrs. Perry, getting up. “Ruth was being so difficult that I quite lost my head for a moment. You came with Charles.”

“My name is Waring,” said the newcomer. “I think you know my sister, Leslie Winter.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mrs. Perry warmly, “especially in the second half of the winter term. You must be Commander Waring.

“I am—as far as one can be humanly certain about anything now,” said the newcomer. “May I ask why you know Leslie better at one time than another?”

“Infectious diseases,” said Mrs. Perry. “It’s the worst time. The boys manage Christmas and overeating splendidly, and January isn’t too bad. But in February they all go down with measles and mumps and whooping-cough and things and send for the doctor all day long.”

“Just the same with midshipmen,” said Commander Waring. “I must apologize for coming in upon you like this, but Charles here insisted.”

“Oh, come, Cecil,” said Charles Belton. “I didn’t insist. It’s your car.”

“Possibly,” said Cecil Waring. “But you were driving it.”

“Only because you said I could,” said Charles. “She’s a beauty, Mrs. Perry. A 1949 Ocelot. I got eighty out of her easily down the Worsted Hill.”

“Then you were an idiot to do it,” said Dr. Perry, who with Gus had come across from the surgery while Charles was speaking. “Well, Waring, I’m glad to see you. Haven’t seen you since you had influenza at the Priory about thirty years ago. Your uncle and aunt always had Dr. Ford, but he was away. He and I have usually worked in with each other up there. Have you had flu again lately?” but Commander Waring had to disclaim any infectious diseases.

“And where were you last?” Dr. Perry asked, rather unfairly we think nobbling the distinguished visitor for himself, while his wife waited impatiently to make further introductions.

Cecil said out East.

“Oh, I say, sir,” said Gus Perry, who had been so obviously bursting with impatience to speak that his mother wondered, dispassionately, if people ever really had apoplexy from suppressed emotion, “did you ever have leprosy?”

“Never,” said Cecil.

“I did hope you had,” said Gus frowning with sad concentration till his dark bushy eyebrows almost met. “You see skin diseases are my line and I can’t get a leper. There were a few cases down by the docks when I was at Knight’s, but they were mostly Lascars. You don’t ever notice anything, do you, sir, like”—and he gave a scholarly and detailed description of one or two revolting symptoms, any knowledge of which Commander Waring again had to disclaim.

“Never, sir?” said Gus, unwilling to believe the worst.

“No, never,” said Cecil firmly, at which several of the company couldn’t help laughing.

“The worst of Gilbert and Sullivan now,” said Mrs. Updike unexpectedly, “is that the audiences are so awful.”

Dr. Perry said it was a democratic age, adding as a rider that as far as he was concerned anyone could have it for sixpence.

“Oh, I don’t mean that kind of awful,” said Mrs. Updike, wrinkling her forehead in an effort to make her own thoughts clear to herself. “I mean clapping everything before it’s finished and encoring everything six times. It makes one almost want to hiss,” at which words her pretty tired face flushed with enthusiasm as she pushed the bench back a little and knocked against a large tub of agapanthus, whose heads disintegrated and showered their blue flowers over her.

After this Mrs. Perry took the meeting in hand and very firmly introduced Commander Sir Cecil Waring all round, who rose gallantly to the occasion, giving a general impression to all the men that they were old messmates and to all the women that he was in love with them. After which he skilfully cut loose, made off on another tack and brought up all standing by Mrs. Belton.

“Charles tells me that you would like to take your collapsible dinghies on the lake,” said Mrs. Belton.

“Charles is a delightful fellow,” said the Commander, “but not a good Flag-Captain. What I would like, is to be allowed to ask you whether you could consider favourably Charles’s suggestion—not mine I may add—to practise punting a collapsible boat on your lake. Probably we shall all fall in.”

“We would love you to,” said Mrs. Belton. “But I must warn you that Charles has an unfair advantage, because the Noel Mertons over at Northbridge have one and he has punted it on the river there, which is much more dangerous than the lake. And you will bring your sister and her husband, I hope. And perhaps a few of the boys? They’d love it. How are you getting on at the Priory?”

“So-so,” called Cecil Waring. “It’s all rather a muddle at the moment. Leslie and her husband have done so well that they will need bigger quarters; much bigger. How people have enough money to send their boys to prep schools, let alone public schools, I don’t know.”

“They haven’t,” said Mrs. Belton. “But they go on doing it, even if they have to live in the stables. It’s so difficult for foreigners to understand. The average Englishman will pay anything to get his darling children off his hands. But can’t they overflow into your part?”

“No,” said Cecil. “And if they wanted to, which they don’t, I wouldn’t let them. Uncle Harry had let everything go about the place, poor old fellow. I want to get it on its feet again. And there are some boys I’m interested in. Sons of warrant officers and ratings who served under me. I should like to turn the School wing into a kind of home for them and try to get one or two reliable men for the estate. Uncle Harry had let the woods go absolutely to pieces. There must be thousands of pounds worth of timber rotting there.”

Mrs. Belton said that her husband had a good deal of experience with wood and woodmen on his own estate and perhaps her son-in-law Admiral Hornby who did a good bit of forestry up at Aberdeathly would like to talk to him. And then Gus Perry and Charles Belton with a tray of glasses and sherry, and a tray with a siphon and a cherished half-bottle of whisky to honour their naval visitor, put a stop to their talk for the present. Everyone refused whisky, which touched even Dr. Perry’s leathery sardonic heart, for he knew most of them would prefer it and were saying sherry from consideration for his purse. Cecil Waring, rather to the surprise of Mrs. Updike, who had expected him to ask for rum and drink the King’s health with one foot on the table, asked if he might have orange and plain water. Mrs. Perry pressed him to change his mind.

“No, thank you,” he aid. “A sundowner is a good rule and I stick to it even in summertime. And I really like orange and water, though no one but Leslie believes me. I admit that at this time of the year a sundowner is rather a misnomer, but in winter it has its points.”

Young Updike said Commander Waring ought to live at the North Pole in the winter and then he could have a sundowner all day for months and months.

“Which reminds me,” said Mrs. Updike, getting up so suddenly that the sherry slopped over the rim of the glass onto her dress, “that I left our meat ration in the oven to thaw out and I know I forgot to turn the regulator down. It must be quite burnt by now.”

“Its all right, Mother,” said young Updike. “You had turned the gas right off, so I put it to whatever it says on the thing you ought to put it to and it ought to be cooked in about half an hour.” His sister quietly squirted a little soda-water onto her handkerchief and wiped her mother’s skirt and then they took their parent away.

“What an enchanting woman,” said Cecil, looking after the Updikes. “If ever I married I should like one exactly like her,” to which Mrs. Perry replied that if Mrs. Updike were anyone else she would be quite intolerable, but being herself she was somehow perfect.

“I say, Mother,” said Charles, who had been fidgeting for some time, “we ought to get back. We’ve got to unpack the dinghies.”

“Won’t Commander Waring stay to supper?” said his mother.

“He would love to,” said that gallant officer, so after thanking the Perrys for their party they walked up to Arcot House where, in front of the door, was the 1949 Ocelot, a large shapeless bundle covered with a tarpaulin lashed to its back.

“Goody, goody,” said Charles. “Let’s get them off the car. We can put them in the shed by the lake.”

Cecil Waring said he would not like to keep Mrs. Belton waiting and looked at her in a kindly, questioning way.

“Well, that’s extremely nice of you,” said Mrs. Belton, “and as Wheeler, who was the children’s nurse and never forgets it, likes us to be punctual, perhaps it would be as well if the boats could wait,” at which Charles looked disappointed but said nothing.

“By the way,” said Mrs. Belton as they went into the drawing-room, “do you like to be Commander or Sir Cecil if one introduces you? My son-in-law is an Admiral but not a Sir, so I don’t quite know. Christopher Hornby is his name.”

“Oh, he’ll be a Sir before long,” said Cecil Waring. “I know all about him. Pray introduce me in any way you like, but may I ask you, considering how long my uncle and aunt knew you, to call me Cecil. It’s a ghastly name, but my own.”

Warmed by this echo of Touchstone Mrs. Belton said she didn’t think it was so very ghastly and why did his people call him it, and even as she spoke the words felt that the late and lamented H. W. Fowler might have criticized her style. But apparently her guest found nothing wrong with it.

“It’s a silly story,” he said. “My people didn’t know if I’d be a boy or a girl—”

Mrs. Belton said that was a thing even doctors didn’t know and what on earth was the use of pre-natal treatment if you didn’t know whom you were treating. Charles wished he could disown his mother, but Commander Waring, quite unmoved, continued: “—so they chose a name that would do for either. And as it worked, they did the same for my sister Leslie. And thank goodness there wasn’t another, as they might have called it Esme,” which made them all laugh.

“Well, well, what’s the laughing about?” said Mr. Belton, who had been in the little room behind the dining-room, a token representation of the Estate Room at Harefield.

“Nothing, Fred,” said his wife. “This is Sir Cecil Waring—Commander Waring—Sir Harry’s nephew.”

“Your uncle was an old friend of my family,” said Mr. Belton, with the grave courtesy that so well became him. “Are you settling at the Priory?”

“I hope so,” said Cecil Waring. “It’s a question of accommodation. I want the whole Priory for a scheme of my own, and my sister and her husband need bigger premises for their school but can’t find them. It all turns on that. Meanwhile we go on as we are.”

“I hope you will be able to stay at the Priory,” said Mr. Belton. “I’ve had to turn out of Harefield, you know. Couldn’t afford to live there. We like Arcot House, but I was born at Harefield and I would have liked to die there.”

“I was born in Kensington, but I wouldn’t mind dying at the Priory when the time comes,” said Cecil Waring. “The people on the estate expect it, you know,” and then talk about family places and one’s duties as a landlord went on through dinner and Mrs. Belton had secret pleasure in seeing her husband at his best.

“Then you are out of the Navy now?” she asked presently.

“Not exactly,” said Cecil Waring. “I got a bullet—or a bit of shrapnel—no one seems to know exactly what—inside me on D-Day and the Admiralty don’t like it. It doesn’t hurt, or hardly ever, but it walks about inside me. I don’t blame it for trying to get out. I would.”

Encouraged by his matter-of-fact way of speaking, Mrs. Belton asked if it was likely to work out of itself.

“None of my medical boards can agree,” he said. “It might come out at my big toe if I live long enough, or it may decide to move to a vital spot and kill me. Or it may stay where it is.”

“Like a pearl in an oyster, eh?” said Mr. Belton, which was so obviously intended for real sympathy that no one could mind it.

“If we have another war the Admiralty will have to make up their minds,” said Cecil Waring. “Meanwhile I call myself a half-pay officer. It sounds nice and eighteenth-century.”

Charles, who was too well-mannered to interrupt but broadly speaking considered every extra minute given to his parents a minute less for dealing with the boats, made a reference to them.

“A boat-race, eh?” said Mr. Belton. “When I was at Brasenose I did a bit of rowing. I rowed six in the College second boat. We were bumped on the first day, I remember. There’s not much room on the lake you know.”

Cecil Waring explained good-humouredly that what he and Charles proposed was to punt the boats, as he had been told the lake was not deep.

“That’s right,” said Mr. Belton. “If you fall in there’s plenty of mud and it’s silting up worse and worse every year and I haven’t the money or the labour to get it cleared. I used to have a couple of fellows to cut the rushes every year, but now I can’t get the young men and it’s too much for old Humble. You do as you like. I’ll show you the place before you go.”

Charles, who had meant to do the showing himself, felt aggrieved but soon forgot to keep up this attitude in the excitement of driving Cecil’s car down to the lake and unloading the boats, which he and Cecil quickly unfolded and put into the water. At that end of the lake were the remains of a building from which water used to be pumped to a small piece of artificial water higher up. It was now mostly in ruins and had formerly been a place of attractive terror to the young Beltons, who against their nurses reiterated commands had happily climbed among the wheels and beams. A part of it had been turned into a boatshed and this was in tolerable repair.

“You can keep your boats here, Waring,” said Mr. Belton when he had infuriated his son Charles by showing Cecil Waring the pumping-house at great length. “We managed to keep this shed in pretty good state. That’s the old boat the rush-cutters used,” and there was the flat-bottomed boat, which Commander Waring pronounced to be more or less seaworthy. “And you’ll find some punt poles on the wall. I had them all wrapped up in tarpaulin after they were last used, whenever that was.”

“By Jove, they aren’t in bad condition,” said Cecil Waring after examining them. “Shall we have a go, Charles?”

Not unwilling, Charles agreed and the boats were ready for use in a few minutes.

“Sorry, but we’ll have to take our shoes off,” said Charles. “I don’t think these coracle-things will stand them. We’ll have to use something with rubber soles for the real races. Come on.”

With masterly bends and swoops he sent his coracle flying across the lake followed by Cecil Waring, among the lily pads and halfway round the island, when the thick bed of rushes stopped further progress.

“We’ll have to get these cut,” Cecil Waring shouted to Charles.

“More likely have to cut them ourselves,” Charles shouted back. “Old Humble isn’t fit for it. Come on. I’ll race you up the straight.”

Cecil Waring put his whole body into this peculiar form of punting and in spite of nearly losing his punt pole in a sudden treacherous depth, drew up at the home end with a flourish.

“That’s a nasty pot-hole,” he said to Charles. “I nearly lost my pole in it.”

“Oh that. It’s a spring,” said Charles. “The water never quite freezes over it. That’s where Heather Adams fell in one year. It was all her own fault because we had put up a Danger sign and she was too cross to see it. My brother Freddy got her out and mother put her to bed. That was the day I went back to my guns. I must say the parents were awfully decent about it. I think they really minded a bit,” in saying which words, though they may sound inadequate, Charles Belton was showing unusual sympathy for the older generation who can only stand by and wait.

While the two men were on the lake Susan Belton had come down to see the sport, with her husband, Captain Belton, R.N., back from London where he was working at the Admiralty, and no sooner had the adventurers landed than the two naval men fell into shop, making Charles feel rather out of it. But he was a sweet-tempered creature and took it in good part. Mr. Belton had gone home some time ago, for the evenings in that chilly summer were no pleasure at all to anyone and there was an unspoken competition between him and his wife to grab and keep Mrs. Morland’s new Madame Koska book which Mrs. Belton had got from the county library.

“She’s dedicated it to Lisa Bedale,” said Mr. Belton who, taking we think unfair advantage of his wife, had gone up to her bedroom while she was talking to their faithful and tyrannous old maid Wheeler and stolen it from the bedside table. “Never heard of her.”

“You have,” said his wife, almost sharply. “It’s Lady Silverbridge.”

“Lady Silverbridge was a Dale,” said Mr. Belton, speaking as Messrs. Burke and Debrett rolled into one. “Bedale isn’t a Barsetshire name.”

“It isn’t a name at all,” said Mrs. Belton. “She writes under that name. I suppose we’ll have to open the grounds for the Barsetshire Archæological in August. We really ought to do something about them. It’s our turn. Perhaps Lord Silverbridge would speak. Have you their letter, Fred?”

“Whose?” said her husband, looking up with ostentatious patience from his book.

“The Archæological’s, of course,” said his wife. “I saw their envelope at breakfast yesterday.”

“Yes, my dear. I’ve got it,” said her husband in the abstracted voice of a lotus-eater. And then impelled, though unwillingly, by his innate courtesy, he got up and went to his study, with Mrs. Morland’s thriller tucked firmly under his arm.

“Thank you, Fred,” said his wife when he came back, pretending not to have noticed his Rape of the Book. “July—August—the Archæological haven’t got anything the week after Bank Holiday. The second Saturday in August would be best if it suits you. Charles will be here unless he is going abroad and we might get the rushes cut. And Elsa and the children will be down.”

“Well, my dear, you have to arrange it all, not I,” said her husband. “Dr. Ford always says a doctor has to let old people kill themselves in their own way and I daresay he’s right.”

“The second Saturday in August then,” said Mrs. Belton, ignoring his ungentlemanly remarks about old people. “Does Orchid, the lovely mannequin, get away from the private asylum?”

“I shan’t tell you,” said her husband. “But you can take it to bed. I’ve looked at the end and—”

“No,” said Mrs. Belton. “That’s cheating. I shall tell Mrs. Morland,” with which awful threat she kissed the top of her husband’s head and went upstairs.

But long before this the glacial atmosphere of a summer evening had driven the rest of the party back to Dowlah Cottage where Freddy Belton and Cecil Waring were able to continue their delightful conversation about all the places where they might have met each other during the war and didn’t, and confided to each other what they thought of Sir Joseph Porter, K.C.M.G. (grandson of the well-known First Lord of the Admiralty), Permanent Secretary of the Red Tape and Sealing Wax Department and celebrated for thwarting, burkeing and generally obstructing any friendly relations between that body and the Admiralty.

“Sorry, gents, but we’ve only beer,” said Captain Belton when his wife had gone to bed. So beer it was and then Cecil Waring and Charles went back to the Priory.

“I must say my part looks a bit gloomy,” said Cecil Waring as he looked at his hideous ancestral (for three generations) home with not a light showing on his side and then at the Priory School wing with cheerful clashings and giggles coming from the kitchen and lights in several windows.

“Is that you, Cecil?” said the voice of the Headmaster, Philip Winter.

“It is,” said his brother-in-law. “And I’ve brought your beggarly usher back with me. We’re going to have a sporting event at Harefield. Punting collapsible dinghies round a lake with a bottomless pot-hole and entirely blocked by rushes.”

“Like Mopsa the Fairy,” said Mrs. Philip Winter, she who had been Leslie Waring, and a look of amused understanding passed between her and her sailor brother.

“Too, too Jean Ingelow,” said Charles, parodying, we regret to say, his friend Clarissa Graham with whom he had what his mother had called an understanding: which we think describes it very well.

“So long as it doesn’t clash with our Parents’ Day,” said Philip, but as the Harefield Regatta was to be in August all was well.