Читать книгу The Headmistress - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 3

Table of Contents

The pretty and formerly peaceful village of Harefield lies in a valley watered by the upper reaches of the River Rising, under the downs. The Rising, here no more than a stream, flows in many silvery channels through the rushy meadows to the north of the village. The wide High Street is on a slant. The houses on the north or lower side have gardens that run down towards the water meadows. The south side, where the houses are larger and look away over the north side to the hills beyond, has gardens running gently uphill and bounded at their further end by the grounds of Harefield Park, a plain-faced Palladian house which stands connected by a covered arcade with a pavilion on each side, commanding but a little gaunt, half a mile or so away from the village. Here have lived for a hundred and fifty years or so the Belton family, pleasant undistinguished people who burst into comparative affluence with a nabob under the Honourable East India Company and have been gently declining ever since. This decline was attributed by Mr. Carton, a middle-aged Oxford don of a genealogical turn of mind who lived at Harefield out of term and liked “going into families” as he called it, to their having married more for love than for money or lands. The result had been a very happy home life, the right number of sons for Army, Navy, colonial service, law and other useful public work, and nice daughters who had usually married younger sons or clergymen, so that the Beltons were as much interrelated with the county as any other family in Barsetshire. They also owned some of the fine red-brick houses in the town and had always farmed their own land.

But gentleman-farming is no inheritance and by the time the war settled down upon the world the Beltons were living on overdrafts to an extent that even they found alarming, and two years later were unhappily making up their minds to sell a house and estate for which there would probably be no demand, when Providence kindly intervened, in the shape of the Hosiers’ Girls’ Foundation School. This old and very wealthy city company supported two excellent schools. The boys’ school had been evacuated at the beginning of the war to Southbridge, but was now back in London. The girls’ school had gone to Barchester and had a working arrangement with the Barchester High School. Their school buildings in London had been almost completely demolished in 1940, so they remained in Barchester. Their parents, who were mostly doing pretty well, were so glad to find their daughters healthy and happy that when they had also realized the great joy of only seeing them in the holidays, instead of five days in the week from half-past four in the afternoon to nine o’clock in the morning, not to speak of all Saturday and Sunday, most of them gladly agreed to their remaining as boarders.

If this decision had been made earlier in the war it would have been easier to find a house, but now, what with Government offices, insurance companies (which had an insatiable appetite for country mansions), banks, hospitals and the Forces, there was not a good house available in the district. Miss Sparling the headmistress spent all her week-ends looking at impossible places and grew more and more anxious. Not only did she wish to please her employers, with whom she was on excellent terms, but her heart sank at the thought of another year, nay even another term, in Barchester. Not that she was unpopular. The Close had taken her to its bosom and the professional families much enjoyed her company, but she was not happy. Soon after the Hosiers’ Girls came to Barchester Miss Pettinger, the headmistress of the Barchester High School, had very graciously pressed Miss Sparling to stay with her. Miss Sparling, worn out by a succession of rooms and landladies each more repellent than the last, had gratefully accepted this invitation and eternally regretted that she had done so. It was not that she was starved, or beaten, or given an iron bedstead with a thin mattress, or made to sit below the salt, but there was something about Miss Pettinger that made her whole life acutely uncomfortable. What it had meant to be at close quarters with Miss Pettinger for two years, only Miss Sparling knew, though many of Miss Pettinger’s ex-pupils could have voiced her feelings; notably Mrs. Noel Merton, now living at her old home near Northbridge, who went so far as to remark to Miss Lavinia Merton, aged six months, that if she didn’t hush her, hush her and not fret her, that old beast Pettinger would in all probability get her.

Then, one Sunday afternoon at the Deanery, the Archdeacon’s wife from Plumstead happened to mention that Lady Pomfret had told her that she heard the Beltons were going to try to let the Park. Miss Sparling, always with the welfare of her school at heart and spurred by the ever-springing hope of getting away from Miss Pettinger’s society, rang up her employers that night. Within forty-eight hours the Hosiers’ solicitor had telephoned to Mr. Belton, come down to Barchester with a surveyor in his train, extracted a car and petrol from the Old Cathedral Garage, seen Mr. Belton’s lawyer, been all over the house with Miss Sparling and the surveyor, and gone back to London. Within a fortnight the Beltons had moved into the village, workmen had been produced, the necessary alterations made, and by the beginning of the autumn term Miss Sparling was installed at Harefield Park with her staff, her girls, and a delightful little suite of her own in the West Pavilion. No longer would she have to listen to Miss Pettinger’s views on politics or her account of her motor trip in Dalmatia; no longer would she be cross-examined as to the probable results of her girls in the School Certificate examination; no longer would she have to hear herself introduced with a bright laugh as “my evacuee, but so different, quite an old friend now”; no longer—but when she came to think about it, she could not honestly say that Miss Pettinger had ever been spiteful, ungenerous or unkind in word or deed. It was only that she simply could not abide that lady; and here again Mrs. Noel Merton would have entirely agreed with her.

Most luckily Arcot House, a small but handsome house in the village belonging to Mr. Belton, fell vacant about this time, owing to the death of old Mrs. Admiral Ellangowan-Hornby. That lady, the daughter of a Scotch peer, had a taste for white walls, good furniture and ferocious cleanliness, so when her heir, a nephew who did not in the least wish to live there, suggested that the owners might like to take it furnished, very little was needed in the way of preparation, and a few days before school reassembled Mr. and Mrs. Belton, who had been living at the Nabob’s Head at the upper end of the village, walked quietly down the High Street and entered Arcot House. In the drawing-room, which commanded the village street in front and the garden with a distant view of Harefield Park at the back, a bright fire was burning, the furniture caught the gleam of the flames, Mrs. Admiral Ellangowan-Hornby’s Scotch ancestors and ancestresses looked down with immense character from the walls, and tea was laid. A tall, plain, middle-aged woman who looked like a cross between a nurse and a housekeeper, as indeed she was, came in with a kettle and set it down by the fire.

“That’s in case you wanted any more hot water, madam,” she said. “And Mr. Freddy telephoned to say he’d be here any time, and Miss Elsa telephoned to say she might turn up to-night or to-morrow morning, and Mr. Charles did ring up but I couldn’t hear what he said, but Gertie Pilson at the exchange says if he rings up again she’ll take the message herself. I’ve got all the beds ready and Hurdles says he’ll see there’s a nice bit of meat if it’s for the Commander and I was to tell you he’ll get you something nice off the ration if Miss Elsa comes and Pratt’s got some lovely kippers Mr. Charles can have for his breakfast. I lighted the fire and there’s enough coal in the old lady’s cellars to last six months and plenty of wood in the park so don’t you worry.”

Having issued these orders of the day, the woman turned on her heel and left the room, not exactly slamming the door, but shutting it with a degree of firmness which anyone unaccustomed to her ways might have taken as a sign of ill-temper. Her master and mistress (by courtesy), who were used to her ways, remained unmoved. When Mrs. Belton was engaging a nurse before the birth of her first child, a young woman had applied for the post who was so obviously the right person to rule a nursery that young Mrs. Belton had engaged her almost without inquiry. Her family was well known and respected in Harefield, her uncle Sid Wheeler being landlord of the Nabob, her cousin Bill Wheeler a first-class chimney sweep and the only person who really understood the chimneys at Pomfret Towers, and her mother an excellent laundress. Her father chiefly lived on his wife, supplemented with odd jobs, but as Harefield, like many villages, was at bottom matriarchal, no one thought much the worse of him. When asked her name the young woman had said Wheeler; and on being pressed had grudgingly admitted to S. Wheeler, adding that she was properly christened and didn’t wish to say no more, and such was her strength of character that no one had ever dared to call her by anything but her surname.

Mr. Carton, whose interest in genealogies and families boiled over in every possible direction, had given it as his opinion after spending several evenings at the Old Begum, an alehouse patronized by Mr. Wheeler père, that her dislike of her name being known, while largely based on a fine primitive feeling that by letting your name be known you gave unknown powers a handle over you, was also due to a class feeling that upper servants, such as butlers and head parlourmaids, were always called by their surname and one was not going to demean oneself before such. Therefore into the nursery she had come as Wheeler, and Wheeler she had remained. By such interfering and inquisitorial visitations as censuses and later identity cards and ration books, not to speak of her mother when she brought the personal wash up to the Park, or general conversation in the village, it had long been known that her name was Sarah, but no one had ever dared to use it. Even Charles Belton, her latest and best-loved nursling, had only once, flown with a century made for Harefield v. Pomfret Madrigal on the home ground, attempted to call her Sarah and had been so awfully set down in the tea marquee, in front of both teams, that he had never tried again.

“Why so many cups and saucers, do you suppose, Lucy?” said Mr. Belton, who had been studying the tea equipage in silence.

His wife looked at the table, where six or seven cups, saucers and plates of delicate china were set out.

“I can’t think,” she said. “But I’m very glad Wheeler is going to be our houseparlourmaid. Anyone else would break that china at once, and Mrs. Ellangowan-Hornby’s nephew might go to law about it, for we could never replace it and it’s probably worth a million pounds. Come and have your tea, Fred, and use one of them. How funny it is to be living in someone else’s house.”

“Only leasehold. My house if you come to think of it,” said Mr. Belton, who held strong views about property, though a very long-suffering landlord with his small tenants. “My house twice over if it comes to that. Property belongs to me and I’m tenant of the old lady’s nephew as well.”

“I wonder what Captain Hornby is like,” said Mrs. Belton, sitting down at Captain Hornby’s table, in his chair, and beginning to pour out tea from his teapot.

“Like?” said her husband. “Like anyone else I suppose. Where’s my saccharine? Where is my saccharine? Damn the filthy stuff. Can’t think why old What’s-his-name in Harley Street told me to take it. Partner in a saccharine factory probably. That’s the way all these doctors live.”

Mrs. Belton gently pushed towards her husband the little silver box in which his saccharine was kept. She did not answer, because she knew his gruffness was merely a screen for a wounded pride. He had been as good as gold about leaving his family home, for he had the courage to face disagreeable facts, but his wife knew how deeply he felt it that the inevitable blow had fallen in his lifetime and how, in spite of valiant efforts, he could not help feeling that he had come down in the world. For five generations the Beltons had sat in their Palladian mansion looking over their own parkland. Now the sixth Belton since the nabob was sitting in a drawing-room, a parlour, in a house in the village street, a house which, except for the lucky fact of its being up four steps from the pavement with rather terrifying barred basement windows looking on to tiny areas with a grating over them, would have had to have blinds in the front rooms to prevent passers-by looking in. Mrs. Belton was a humble creature in some ways but her pride too was wounded, for she knew she had brought her husband little dowry. A Thorne, one of the many cousins of the very old Barsetshire family at Ullathorne, she was of good blood, but no amount of blood could keep Harefield Park from turning into a girls’ school. In happier days she had hoped that in her children the family might at last come into its proper place again. Freddy was to marry a very rich delightful heiress and put proper bathrooms all over the house when his father died and he left the Navy and came into the place, Charles was to make an immense fortune in business, be a kind wealthy bachelor uncle and leave all his money to Freddy’s children, and Elsa was to marry very well, preferably the heir to a dukedom or at least a marquisate, and present Freddy’s girls at court. These things would surely come to pass with children as good-looking, gifted and charming as her own; and if Freddy and his wife wanted to live at Harefield Park, why his parents could well retire to one of their houses in the village and let the young people have their fling. But to retire in favour of a girls’ school, to confess oneself beaten by one’s own estate, to take away from one’s children the home of their childhood, the nursery where they had quarrelled, the kitchen where they had teased the cook, the disused hay lofts in the stables where they had played, the lake where they had muddily bathed in summer and dangerously (for there was a very cold spring in the middle of it) skated in winter, these were very bitter thoughts, and Mrs. Belton’s pretty, anxious face was contorted by the unbecoming grimaces one makes to show that one has no intention of crying; no, not the least idea in the world.

“What is the matter, Lucy?” said Mr. Belton, almost glad to turn upon his wife as a relief from the very similar feelings that were tearing him. “I mean, my dear, is anything really the matter?” he added in a more gentle voice.

His wife would have found it almost easier to deal with his more truculent mood, but so touched was she by his effort to be sympathetic that she gulped down all her unhappiness and said,

“I was only wondering if the children would be allowed to skate this winter if they get leave.”

“Allowed? What the devil do you mean allowed?” said Mr. Belton. “We haven’t sold the whole place, my dear, only let the house and garden. That Miss Sterling——”

“Sparling,” said his wife.

“Sparling then,” said Mr. Belton, “though it’s a name I don’t know, queer sort of name, seems a nice sort of woman. It was her idea that we should keep the East Pavilion. And to tell the truth, if I’d had to move the estate office it would have been very inconvenient. I couldn’t very well see the tenants here. And this is a good house, Lucy. Old Dr. Perry, not this man, his father, always said it was the best house in the High Street. I’m sorry, Lucy, I’m sorry.”

So noble did Mrs. Belton think her husband for confessing, or at any rate recognizing, his fit of temper that she felt more like crying than ever, when a loud peal distracted her.

“Damn that bell,” exclaimed Mr. Belton, glad of a legitimate excuse for working off his feelings. “It’s been like that for twenty years. One touch and it rings like a fire engine. The old lady complained more than once and Icken has been down to see it again and again. He’s the best estate carpenter in the county, but he couldn’t get the damned thing right. What is it, Wheeler?”

“It’s the Vicar, sir,” said Wheeler. “He says to say if you are tired he won’t come in. And Lady Graham has sent two rabbits and a basket of mushrooms by the coal man, madam, with her love and you must let her know if there’s anything she can do.”

“How kind of dear Agnes,” said Mrs. Belton. “Yes, of course we want to see Mr. Oriel, Wheeler.”

Wheeler retired and came back with the Vicar whom, quite apart from his collar and black vest, anyone would have known for a clergyman at once on account of his large and flexible Adam’s apple, which fascinated the rash beholder’s eye and had once caused Charles Belton, aged four, to ask him why he couldn’t swallow it.

“How very nice of you to come, Mr. Oriel,” said Mrs. Belton getting up. “Have you had tea?”

“But you are expecting a party,” said Mr. Oriel, looking nervously at the array of china.

“That was our faithful Wheeler,” said Mrs. Belton, “and why all that crockery I can’t think. But we aren’t expecting anyone and are so delighted to have you as our first guest.”

“I confess I am relieved,” said Mr. Oriel, shaking hands with Mr. Belton. “I saw Lady Pomfret’s lorry outside the Town Hall and made sure she would be here. Milk if you can spare it; no, no sugar thanks. I have a small bottle of saccharine tablets which I carry about in my pocket,” said the Vicar, feeling with every hand in every pocket.

“Have some of mine,” said Mr. Belton, opening the little silver box, “filthy stuff.”

“It seems ungrateful to say so, but it is,” said the Vicar, obviously relieved, “and why we take it I cannot think.”

“Instead of sugar. And a damn silly thing to do,” said Mr. Belton. “Stuff isn’t sweet, it’s bitter. And the more you put in the nastier it is.”

“I never did take sugar in my tea, or in coffee,” said the Vicar. “I have always disliked it. But I understood that by taking saccharine we were somehow assisting the war effort. There are so many ways of helping the war and one sometimes finds them a little bewildering. Now, we were told that His Majesty has only five inches of water in his bath, so of course I marked a five-inch line on the Vicarage bath—and I cannot tell you how difficult it was, for as you know there is no corner in a bath, no square corner if I make myself clear, by which you can really judge. If you put a ruler against the side of the bath it is all so round and slanting, the bath I mean, that you cannot tell exactly where the mark should come. But I had an inspiration. I filled the bath rather full and stood a ruler upright with its low end, I mean the one where it says one inch, resting on the middle of the bottom. I then pulled out the plug, and when the water had dropped to the figure five, I put it in again. While I was putting it in a little more water ran away, but this made it about fair, for as you know there is on many rulers, and on the particular ruler in question, a little bit at the beginning, or rather at each end, which is not included in the inches, which would have given me an unfair advantage.”

“Some cake,” said Mrs. Belton sympathetically.

“But now—oh, thank you,” said the Vicar, helping himself to a slice, “I am again in a quandary.”

“I don’t see why,” said Mrs. Belton. “You’ve got your five inches.”

“Yes; but here is the rub,” said the Vicar. “If, in error, I fill the bath up to the five-inch mark with boiling water, for my housekeeper keeps the water delightfully hot, is it fair to add sufficient cold water to make it bearable?”

“You’d be boiled like a lobster if you didn’t, Oriel,” said Mr. Belton. “I can’t think why we never had cake like this at home, Lucy. Reminds me of my tuck-box at my first school.”

“That is exactly what I meant,” said the Vicar, gratified that he had made himself so clear. “So, even at the risk of disloyalty, I have to add cold water, which does not of course increase my own fuel consumption, but does, so I am told, increase the fuel consumption wherever it is that the cold water has to be pumped from. And then again if I put my cold water in first——”

“Which you always ought to,” said Mrs. Belton earnestly. “That is the first thing any good nannie has to learn, or she may scald the baby when she puts it in.”

“—I may put in too much and so be obliged to fill up with so much boiling water that it comes well above the five-inch mark. How very good this cake is.”

“Well, Oriel, I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you,” said Mr. Belton. “There’s that bell again.”

Another violent peal resounded from basement to attic. Wheeler appeared.

“It’s Lady Pomfret, madam,” she said. “She says to say if you’re too busy. And I forgot to tell you, Mrs. Brandon brought the cake when she came over to see about the Land Girls. She says it is real flour she had hoarded, not this nasty healthy stuff, and if she can do anything please let her know and Mrs. Hilary’s new baby is a dear little girl.”

“But of course ask Lady Pomfret to come in,” said Mrs. Belton, for she was very fond of the young countess whose mother-in-law had been a distant Thorne cousin. So in came Lady Pomfret with Lord Mellings aged four and a half and Lady Emily Foster aged three.

“Dear Lucy, how very delightful to find you,” said Lady Pomfret. “The home farm lorry was going to Northbridge, so the children and I came in it and it is going to pick us up in half an hour. What a beautiful room, Mr. Belton. I have never been in this house before.”

“Do you know our Vicar, Mr. Oriel?” said Mrs. Belton.

“I have not had the pleasure of meeting you before, Lady Pomfret,” said Mr. Oriel, “but I knew your dear mother-in-law well. In fact we were some kind of connection, but it always puzzles me.”

“Let’s see, Lady Pomfret was a—bless my soul, what was she?” said Mr. Belton. “I know as well as I know my own name, but it is just where I can’t get at it.”

“She was Edith Thorne, Fred,” said his wife. “I didn’t know you had Thorne relations, Mr. Oriel. We must have been cousins all these years without knowing it.”

“It is hardly so near as that, I am afraid,” said Mr. Oriel smiling. “The connection is through the Greshams.”

“Wait a bit now,” said Mr. Belton, as if Mr. Oriel were trying to take an unfair advantage. “There was a bit of a scandal, wasn’t there? Something about a queer—if that bell rings again, Lucy, I’ll have Icken down to-morrow to dismantle the whole thing and have an electric one. What is it, Wheeler?”

“Mr. Carton’s called and he says if you are busy he won’t come in,” said Wheeler. “And Miss Marling brought some grapes and a brace of partridges, madam, with Mr. Marling’s love. Miss Marling was in the pony cart and said she couldn’t stop, but if you wanted a small load of manure she could tell you where to get some. Excuse me, my lady, but would his lordship and Lady Emily like to have tea with me in the pantry? We have plenty of milk.”

“I am sure they would love to,” said Lady Pomfret. “Now Ludovic, take Emily’s hand and go with Wheeler. Old Lady Lufton would insist on being a godmother,” she said apologetically as her children went away with Wheeler, “but I suppose we shall get used to it.”

Then Mr. Carton came in. And if any reader wishes to know what he was like, he was exactly like what an Oxford don nearer sixty than fifty ought to be; tall and rather untidy, with receding hair, and spectacles which he was always putting on and taking off; of precise speech, capable of vitriolic rancour in the field of scholarship, secretly very kind to his pupils, with no known ties except a mother of eighty who lived at Bognor and did a surprising amount of gardening. With Mr. Oriel he had a perpetual friendly difference of opinion about the singing in church, Mr. Carton upholding Hymns Ancient and Modern with violence, while Mr. Oriel who had High Anglican leanings rather affected a little book called Songs of Praise.

“You do know Mr. Carton, I think, Sally,” said Mrs. Belton to Lady Pomfret. “Will you have tea, Mr. Carton? You have come just at the right moment, because we can’t quite make out how Mr. Oriel and old Lady Pomfret were connected and you are so good at families.”

“My great-uncle at Greshamsbury——”

“Edith Pomfret’s mother’s cousin——”

“That girl there was a queer story about that brought all the money into the Gresham family——”

“I often heard Lady Pomfret speak of an old Dr. Thorne who married an heiress——”

Said Mr. Oriel, Mrs. Belton, Mr. Belton and young Lady Pomfret all at once.

“Stop,” said Mr. Carton. “Wait. I’ll tell you exactly how it is.”

He put his spectacles on, looked piercingly at the party over the top of them as if they were undergraduates, and putting his finger tips together, pronounced judgment.

“Your great-uncle the bishop, Oriel, married some time in the ’sixties one of Squire Gresham’s daughters whose name for the moment escapes me. His wife’s brother, Frank Gresham, the present man’s great-grandfather, married Mary Thorne who was the illegitimate niece of the Dr. Thorne who married Miss Dunstable whose money came from a patent Ointment of Lebanon. Dr. Thorne was only a distant cousin of the Ullathorne Thornes, to whom old Lady Pomfret belonged, but the connection is there all right, though I couldn’t give the precise degree.”

He then took off his spectacles, put them into their case, snapped the case shut and put it in his pocket. There was a short silence while his audience digested these facts.

“My great-uncle had fifteen children,” said Mr. Oriel thoughtfully. “His fifteen little Christians he used to call them. Dear, dear.”

There seemed to be no adequate comment on this picture of scenes from clerical life, so it was almost a relief when the bell suddenly rang again and Wheeler came in.

“It’s Dr. Perry, madam,” she announced, “and he said not to disturb you if you were engaged. And did you wish Lady Emily to have a piece of cheese with her tea, my lady? His lordship said she always did at the Towers.”

Lady Pomfret said certainly not and Ludovic was being most untruthful and would Wheeler let her know as soon as the home farm lorry came, because it was high time she took the children home, and then Dr. Perry came in, a stout jovial little man who had been the Beltons’ family physician, just as his father before him had been family doctor to the previous generation of Beltons.

“I was telling my wife, Perry, that your father always said this was the best house in the High Street,” said Mr. Belton. “You know everyone, I think.”

Mrs. Belton said she would have fresh tea in a minute but Dr. Perry refused, saying he was on his way home and had only looked in to give them his wife’s love and bring two pots of her peach jam.

“I’ve just been up at the Park,” he added. “One of the girls had a nasty boil and I had to lance it. Lots of boils going about now. We’re going to have a nasty winter among the civilian population, Mrs. Belton, mark my words. How are your young people?”

Mrs. Belton said they had all been ringing up and she hoped to see them, but one never knew till they arrived without any rations late on Saturday.

“I like the headmistress,” said Dr. Perry. “Good-looking in her own style and a lot of character I should say. A nice lot of girls too. They were arriving when I was there and they begin lessons to-morrow. I hope they won’t get measles. There’s any amount about, chicken-pox too. We only want a typhus epidemic. You know Dr. Buck has been called up, so I’m single-handed except for Dr. Morgan and I can’t abide the woman. She does well enough for half-baked highbrows, but she will talk about psychology to the cottagers and they don’t like it. Quite enough trouble with their children and their rheumatics without all this talk. And if they want a spot of libido they’ll have it all right with all these soldiers and girls about. No need to tell them about that.”

Mr. Oriel said it was most distressing and he for one was ready to marry young couples at any moment, if only for the sake of the unborn child.

“We all know that, Oriel,” said Dr. Perry, who was fond of his pastor though with no very high opinion of his worldly wisdom. “But it’s not the unmarrieds; they usually get married all right. It’s the married women with their husbands away. Mrs. Humble down near the Three Tuns has just had her second, a fine baby too. I’d like to see Morgan talk psychology to her!”

Upon which Dr. Perry laughed rather boisterously, and though all his hearers liked him and knew how good and patient he was on his professional side, it was a distinct relief when Wheeler came in to say the lorry from the Towers was there and Cook was just washing Lady Emily’s hands and face.

“And I hope, my lady, that the Honourable Giles is keeping well,” said Wheeler to Lady Pomfret.

“Splendid, thank you, Wheeler,” said Lady Pomfret. “He cut a tooth yesterday on his sixth birthday; I mean his six months old birthday. Good-bye, Lucy. Let me know if Freddy or Charles want any shooting. Poor Jenks says it isn’t like being a head keeper with no gentlemen out with their guns. His boy in the army who was in hospital is quite fit again and engaged to a nice girl in the Land Army. Come along, children.”

When the ripples of farewell had subsided, Dr. Perry said he must be going.

“Go and see that schoolmistress, Mrs. Belton,” he said. “You’ll like her and I think she will be lonely. She’s a cut above the other mistresses. You’d like her, Oriel. A good churchwoman and all that sort of thing. You’ll have to confirm her girls—no, it’s the Bishop that does that of course, though I’d as soon be confirmed by one of the Borgias myself. You’ll have to tell them what it’s all about anyway. You’d like her too, Carton. Talk about Cicero and all that sort of thing. She’s one of that classical lot. Tell your young people to let me know when they want to go to Barchester, Mrs. Belton. I’m often at the General Hospital and I can always give them a lift. And I’d like to say,” said Dr. Perry, suddenly showing signs of embarrassment, a state most uncommon with him, “that the whole village will miss you at the Park, but it will do us all a lot of good to have you down here, among us. Jove, I’ve kept my surgery waiting twenty minutes.”

Upon this he shook hands with his host and hostess, and bolted out of the house with a red face.

“A very good man,” said Mr. Oriel slowly, “though he pretends he isn’t. But I wish this new headmistress wasn’t a good churchwoman. No, I don’t mean that, but good churchwomen are so apt to want to tell one things and I’d rather not. I suppose this is cowardly though. Are you coming my way, Carton?”

“ ‘One of that classical lot’!” Mr. Carton exploded with withering scorn. “Educated women are no treat to me. Cicero indeed! She probably says Kikero. Thank God the creatures that come to Oxford now are all doing economics; they and their subject are just about fit for each other. Pah!”

Everyone secretly admired a man who could say Pah, one of those locutions more often written than spoken.

“Well, good-bye,” said Mr. Oriel, looking very hard at the high light on the nose of Raeburn’s portrait of a former Lord Ellangowan. “You know, Perry is a very sensible man. If I’d tried all day I couldn’t have put it better. About the Park I mean. As a matter of fact,” said Mr. Oriel, shifting his gaze to the raven locks of the lovely Lady Ellangowan who was carried off in a decline at twenty-five, “we all feel that the Park is Here. Arcot House will be the Park as far as the village is concerned. God bless you both.”

He then felt he had gone too far, looked wildly at the knob on the teapot, shook hands violently with the Beltons and said, “Coming, Carton?”

Mr. Carton, who had fallen into a kind of trance or dream during Mr. Oriel’s last heartfelt words, suddenly came to and uttered violently the word, “Patience.”

“We do,” said Mrs. Belton earnestly.

“Tut-tut, I don’t mean that,” said Mr. Carton, whose hearers were again filled with admiration of his vocabulary. “And when I say Patience I am wrong. I mean Beatrice. Beatrice Gresham was the girl Oriel’s great-uncle married. I knew it would come to me. Good-bye. I cannot tell you how much I look forward to seeing more of you both, if I may. In fact I have, selfishly, only one regret at your having left the Park—the library.”

“It’s locked and I’ve got the key,” said Mr. Belton. “I’ve got a duplicate. You can have it. No one else wants to go in. I don’t believe any of the children can read at all.”

Mr. Carton expressed his thanks, would have liked to say God bless you, but as Mr. Oriel had said it already, he felt it would be poaching on his clerical preserves. So he went off, carrying Mr. Oriel with him.

Wheeler than came to take away the tea-things.

“I knew you would be having callers,” she said, looking with gratification on the dirty cups. “If anyone else comes I’ll send them away. You need a lay down, madam, and if you want your bath the water’s nice and hot any time. Cook says it’s a lovely little boiler and now she can do it herself the water will be properly hot, not like that boiler up at the Park eating the coal all the time and old Humble too lazy to stoke it up properly at night. Oh, and there’s a big tin of biscuits come from Lady Norton, madam. One of the soldiers that’s billeted at Norton Park brought it over on his motor bike and she says if you want any more to let her know.”

When Wheeler had gone Mr. and Mrs. Belton sat quietly by the fire. Mrs. Belton was very tired and blamed herself for the feeling. A woman in her middle fifties, she said angrily to herself, had no business to be tired. At that age one ought to be full of horrible energy, dashing about in old but well-cut tweeds organizing everything, a jolly elder sister to one’s children, or at least a very competent grandmother romping with the grandchildren while their parents were on war work or abroad. At any rate there weren’t any grandchildren, so that was that. All three children ought to have married years ago, but they never seemed to want to. Nor did they want a jolly elder sister. All they wanted was a purveyor of beds, fires, food, such drink as there was, cigarettes; someone who could take all telephone messages accurately, never ask where they were going or had been, tireless, self-effacing. All of which she had tried to be and she knew that her husband had too, but at the end of each leave, whether it was Freddy from his ship, Elsa from her hush-hush job, or Charles from the army, she felt she had not given satisfaction. As for her tweeds, they were certainly old, but not particularly well cut, for the children’s allowances and the expenses of the house and estate did not leave much margin for a good tailor now, and her Mr. Levine in Bruton Street, who cut coats like an angel and skirts like a genius had gone up in four years from twelve guineas to thirty. What she would really like, she thought, would be to throw every single thing in her wardrobe out of the window and have everything new and to stop feeling tired and looking her age and go somewhere warm, if there was any warm place left in this horrible world now, and exercise allure, and be admired. All this made her laugh at herself, and her husband looked up, pleased to see that Lucy was happy, for much as he hated leaving his home he had dreaded the change even more for his wife.

“Dr. Perry was quite right,” said Mrs. Belton, stroking her husband’s tweed sleeve. “It is the nicest house in Harefield, and it is lovely to think we shan’t be cold this winter.”

Mr. Belton said nothing, but his heart gave a leap of thankfulness that Lucy was settling down so quickly. And everyone had been so kind. People sending presents of food—even old Lady Norton who had frightened him ever since he could remember her. The nice things Oriel and Carton had said, and Perry; and that nice little Sally Pomfret, who didn’t have too easy a time herself with her great barrack of Pomfret Towers and every committee in the county and three small children.

“I’m glad you’re pleased, my dear,” he said. “A little peace and quiet will do you good. And when you have got things straight, perhaps you’ll do something about that Miss Starling.”

“Sparling, darling. Of course I will,” said his wife. “Perhaps Mr. Oriel might marry her. Anyway I’ll go and call on her. Or ought I to write and ask if I may? A headmistress seems rather glorious. Oh, what a lovely little room this is and so extraordinarily peaceful.”

Little perhaps it was after the great rooms at Harefield Park with their finely decorated ceilings and furlongs of carpet and curtains, but large in its proportions and Mrs. Admiral Ellangowan-Hornby’s taste, breathing an ordered peace which was infinitely soothing to the shipwrecked voyagers in their temporary harbour.

This pleasant warm content was suddenly broken by a shattering noise outside the house and a violent ringing of the telephone from across the hall. Wheeler could be heard answering the telephone, the shattering noise continued, diversified by voices trying to outshout it, and after a moment the front door bell pealed through the house, followed at a very short interval by another peal equally violent. They now heard Wheeler hurrying to the front door and the well-known voice of their younger son Charles.

His parents, though they would have died rather than admit it to any outsider, to each other, or even to their secret selves, experienced a peculiar sinking of the heart, or rather of the spirits at this sound. Not but that either of them would cheerfully have gone to the scaffold for Charles, or given him the best bed, all the butter ration and the most comfortable chair; but they knew from fatal experience that whatever they did would be just wrong. They also each knew, though they had never come within miles of discussing the subject, that Charles really had much the same feelings himself; that he always came home full of the best intentions, prepared to walk round the place with his father, or accompany his mother to tea at the Perrys’, or even to discuss his own future; that even as he entered the house all those sincere feelings were overlaid by a nervousness and irritation which caused him to be on the whole selfish, graceless, cross if questioned about himself and resentful if he wasn’t. And it was much the same with Freddy and Elsa, though Freddy at twenty-nine was approximating to something human in his parents’ house. Mrs. Belton often wondered if all the other parents felt the same. It was not apparent that they did. Hermione Rivers for instance, Lord Pomfret’s cousin who wrote all those successful novels, was always boasting about her boy Julian and his painting; Mrs. Tebben at Worsted was more than boring about the devotion of her Richard; that dreadful Mrs. Grant who was some connection of Mrs. Brandon’s used to speak far too frequently of her son Hilary’s complete oneness with his madre amata. Mrs. Belton had sometimes wished she could have sons like that. But yet some inner freemasonry of mothers told her that much of this was wilful self-delusion, façade, whatever one liked to call it, even perhaps a gallant making the best of things. She had seen Mrs. Rivers, usually so arrogant and overbearing, go white and silent under one of Julian’s rebuffs; she had seen Mrs. Tebben turn her face away for a moment at some careless or exasperated stab from Richard. Mrs. Grant, it is true, had never been seen to blench, but then Hilary, at any rate till his mother was finally stranded in Calabria and he married his cousin Delia Brandon, had been rather milk-and-water. And Freddy, Elsa and Charles, thank goodness, were not milk-and-water at all. And then, with a mental shrug of her shoulders, she realized that in thanking goodness for her children being not milk-and-water she was only being exactly like all the other mothers. There seemed to be no way out.

An echo of all these thoughts may have run through Mrs. Belton’s mind while the echoes of the front door bell died away. Then the pressing present moment returned in full force as several loud bumps as of heavy parcels being thrown onto the floor sounded from the hall and Charles appeared, wearing a gigantic and dirty raincoat with a storm collar over his uniform and a very tight pale green béret.

“Twenty-four hours,” said Charles, “but a man had a motor-bike so it’ll be thirty-six. We did about seventy most of the way.”

Then catching sight of himself in a pillared and gilded mirror over the fireplace he strode up to it, settled the béret more tightly on his head and admired it.

“How do you like it?” said Charles carelessly.

Now if Mr. Belton had been a real parent, he would have said, “Take that thing off at once, my boy, and kiss your mother, and don’t let me see you wearing a hat or whatever you call it in the house again.” And if Mrs. Belton had been a truthful mother she would have said, “What a hideous colour, darling, and your face looks just like a pudding boiled in a cloth under it.”

But neither courage nor truth was uppermost in Mr. and Mrs. Belton at the moment. Mr. Belton said, “Queer colour, isn’t it,” in what he hoped was a man-of-the-world voice, while Mrs. Belton said, “It’s very nice, darling, but you look even nicer with your peaked cap.” They then realized at once that they had probably blighted the whole of Charles’s leave, if not for him, at least entirely for themselves and wished they were dead. But they were also very glad to see that Charles looked even broader, redder in the face and generally healthier, if possible, than on his previous leave.

“Do you want tea, darling?” said his mother. “Wheeler will get it in a minute.”

“No, thanks. I’ll be going round to the Nabob presently,” said Charles. “Copper and I had one coming down the street and we told them we’d look in again. So this is where we are to live, is it?”

Mr. Belton rashly asked who Copper was. In normal times Charles would have got up and walked out of the room on less provocation than this, but so tolerant had army life made him that he merely answered, “A man. The one with the bike. It’s not his name really,” after which his father knew better than to ask what his name really was.

“I’ll tell you a funny thing—where do the cigarettes live, father? Oh, never mind, I’ve got one here. I quite forgot,” he continued, extracting a battered cigarette from the bottom of a pocket, together with some cotton waste which he threw at the fender, just missing it, “that it was the last day in the old home and all that and I told Copper to take me to the Park. I got the shock of my life when I walked into the hall and found a lot of girls. My word, what a set! Talk of legs!”

“Pretty, eh?” said his father, trying to affect a roguishness quite out of keeping with his nature.

“Hideous,” said Charles briefly. “There may have been a nice pair hidden away somewhere, but most of them looked like our A.T.S. corporal, beef to the instep. And all wearing gym tunics. And then a kind of mistress came out and said did I want anything. So I said no, and it was all a mistake and my father and mother used to live there, and my name was Belton, and I suppose she thought I was dippy; she said she was sorry. So I yelled to Copper and luckily he hadn’t been able to start up the bike, so he brought me down here. I say, mother, where do I live?”

Rightly interpreting her younger son’s question as a desire to know where his bedroom was, she said on the second floor, just at the top of the stairs.

“There is a basin with hot and cold,” she said, hoping to placate him, “and a bathroom next door. Elsa’s room opens into it too.”

“Good. I’ll lock her door on the bathroom side,” said Charles. “Where’s the telephone?”

As he spoke the telephone bell sounded.

“I’ll find it,” said Charles. “I’m expecting someone to ring me up,” and shedding his béret and gloves he strode out of the room leaving the door open. His parents put up a very good show of neither seeing the mess nor feeling the draught, knowing well that any attempt to tidy the room would be taken as criticism and fuss, and resented accordingly. So they sat saying nothing, acutely conscious of the shattering noise which still burst out at intervals.

“It’s Elsa,” said Charles, reappearing. “She got a lift as far as Southbridge and can’t get on. Copper hasn’t got his bike started yet so I’ll tell him to go and fetch her.”

Before his parents could answer he had gone into the hall, flung open the front door and was shouting to the invisible Copper in a voice that dominated all other noise. The engine gave a last desperate death-rattle and the shattering noise went away towards Southbridge.

“I like this house,” said Charles, letting himself fall into a large chair. “I’ve wanted a fixed basin in my room all my life, and a bathroom next door. I wish old Mrs. E.-H. had left it to me instead of her nephew. Why haven’t I a rich aunt with fixed basins? I saw the nephew in church once—one of those black-shaving rather sad-looking naval fellows. Funny how a naval uniform shows up dirt. They need much more brushing than khaki.”

“Navy blue is the very worst colour for showing dust and fluff,” said his mother, grasping at a subject on which she could speak with authority. “When I had a maid, years ago, she used to sponge and press my blue tailor-mades every time I had worn them.”

“Well, I wish you had one now,” said Charles kindly. “I’d get her to press my trousers. But I dare say Wheeler will. Now, I think green is a jolly good colour.”

Having brought the conversation to this point he paused. His parents felt there was a clue which they ought to take up, but couldn’t quite guess what it was. His mother, looking once more at the horrid heap of clothes which she had not the courage to tell him to remove, began to talk at random, as her nervousness with her beloved child so often made her do, and said, for the second time that afternoon, that his béret was very nice colour. Instead of being offended he assumed a gratified expression, much to her relief.

“It’s all right,” he said carelessly. “Striking.”

Mr. Belton said he must have seen some like it somewhere but couldn’t exactly say where.

“You couldn’t have,” said Charles. “They’re only just out, Triple-A.”

“What is Triple-A?” said his mother, guided for once by maternal instinct to what proved to be the right remark.

“Well,” said Charles, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees thus causing both his parents to feel how very handsome his face was with the firelight on it, “all this is very secret, but everyone knows it, so I might as well tell you.”

His parents made noises expressive of readiness to die under torture before betraying a word.

“You know Tanks,” said Charles.

His mother said “Yes,” a little too eagerly and his father said “Carry on,” which was quite the wrong thing to say. But, being anxious for an audience, Charles magnanimously forgave him and continued.

“And you know anti-tanks. And of course we’ve got something that goes one better now; anti-anti-tanks they’re called. So some genius has brought out something very hush-hush that knocks out the anti-anti stuff; and that’s what I’m on now. That’s why it’s called Triple-A.”

His father nodded wisely. Charles decided to overlook this and pursued his theme.

“We are the only ones that wear the light green béret. It’s a marvellous show. I can’t tell you about it of course, but it’s going to be an absolute knock-out. Three of our fellows got themselves killed on manœuvres, which just shows.”

“Oh, Charles!” said his mother.

“Silly chumps stuck their heads out against orders,” said Charles.

“But supposing it had been you,” said Mrs. Belton.

“My dear good mother,” said her son with slight impatience, “I’m not a silly chump. At least not when it comes to looking after myself. But I can tell you one thing that isn’t generally known.”

He then, to his parents’ intense pride and interest, talked for ten minutes or so about his work, moving them deeply by his young seriousness and absorption in his deadly games and his entire unselfconsciousness. The September daylight was fading, the fire flickered on a young face full of life and vigour though more finely drawn than it used to be, and his parents wished that time would stand still. Then Wheeler came in to do the blackout, the telephone bell shrilled again, and the spell was broken.

“It’s old Freddy,” said Charles, who had rushed out to answer the telephone. “He’s got the week-end off from the Admiralty and he’s stuck at Nutfield station. He’d forgotten the bus was taken off. I told him to wait and I’ll get Copper to go over and fetch him as soon as he has brought Elsa. What time is it? Seven. He can easily get Freddy here by half-past and then we’ll all go to the Nabob.”

“Dinner’s at half-past, Mr. Charles,” said Wheeler.

“Not to-night,” said Charles. “Give Cook my love and say just to stop cooking for half an hour. Here’s Copper.”

The noise again drew up at the door. Charles went out to speak to it, there was confusion in the hall, the noise went shatteringly away again and a good-looking girl, with her father’s expression, came in and kissed her parents.

“Back in the mud hovel,” she said, and sat herself on a hassock near the fire. “Never mind, the fisherman and the fisherman’s wife look very nice. And how lovely to be home, even if it isn’t home. It’s a heavenly house, father.”

“I hope you will like it even more when you have seen it,” said Mr. Belton, very glad that his daughter approved. “Your mother and I had to decide everything so quickly we couldn’t let you all know in time to come and inspect it.”

“Oh, I’ve seen it all right,” said Elsa. “That’s why I asked you if I could have that bedroom in front with the view north.”

“When was that, darling?” said her mother. “I didn’t know you had been here before. I somehow never got to know old Mrs. Ellangowan-Hornby.”

“It wasn’t her,” said Elsa inelegantly, “it was Christopher. You know, the old lady’s nephew, the one the house belongs to now. He took me all over it.”

“You never told me,” said her mother. It was said merely as a statement, not as a reproach, and her daughter took it as such, quite in good part.

“It was when she had a stroke, mother, two years ago, and Christopher was on leave because he was at sea then and he came down to see her and I’d met him somewhere in town, so he said would I like to see the house. I simply adored it and I specially liked that bedroom in front with the bathroom next door.”

“Charles is at the back, so you’ll share the bathroom,” said Mrs. Belton.

“Then I’ll take the key out of my door or he’s sure to lock it,” said Elsa. “I’d better do it now. Oh bother, I expect he’s gone up to take it himself.”

With a scurry she jumped to her feet and fled upstairs. From the second-floor landing sounds of friendly argument conducted with stampings and shriekings drifted down. The telephone rang again several times with friendly greetings from various county neighbours and offers of home produce ranging from a young cockerel to fatten for Christmas to the offer of a mount for any young Belton who was on leave during the cubbing season. By the time all these calls had been answered Mrs. Belton was feeling that a bath before dinner was the most important thing in the world, and if dinner was to be at eight, as she supposed it now would be, she had time to go and have one. But even as she set her foot on the lowest step of the perfect staircase the shattering noise came tearing down the street and rose to a hideous climax at her front door. The door bell rang through the house, Elsa and Charles rushed downstairs like thunder, Wheeler came through the hall and opened the front door and disclosed Commander Frederick Belton, R.N., on the doorstep.

“Hullo, Freddy,” screamed his brother and sister in chorus. “Come on, we’re all going to the Nabob.”

Commander Belton, ignoring their outcries, forced his way like a strong swimmer into the hall, hugged his mother, shook hands with his father and saluted Wheeler.

“Now I’ll attend to you two,” he said to his brother and sister. “What time is dinner, mother? Eight? Very well. One quick one at the Nabob and back you both come.”

“Charles dear, what about your friend on the motor-bicycle?” said Mrs. Belton whose first instinct was to hospitality. “Won’t you bring him back to dinner?”

“Who? Oh, Copper,” said Charles. “If he stops the engine he’ll never get her going again. He’s all right, mother. Come and talk to him.”

He propelled his mother out of the door, down the front steps on to the pavement. The man on the motor-bicycle pushed back his crash helmet, revealing a pale, long-nosed face and ginger hair.

“How kind of you to go to the station for my son, and to fetch my daughter, Mr. Copper,” said Mrs. Belton. “Can’t you stop and have some dinner? It’s rather a scratch meal as we’ve only just moved in, but we would be delighted.”

Even as she spoke she became aware that the obliging Copper would not be in the least a suitable dinner guest. He grinned sheepishly, showing rather unpleasant broken teeth, and went bright red, mumbling that the officer would know.

“It’s all right, Copper,” said Charles. “It’s only my mother. I told you Copper wasn’t his real name,” he added, addressing his mother. “His name is Bobby, so he’s called Copper. He’s one of the ground staff at the aerodrome near us and he’s got leave and a motor-bike and petrol, which is more than we ever get, and he’s going home to Rickmansworth to-night, but he doesn’t want to get there till his mother-in-law has gone to bed. That’s right, isn’t it, Copper?”

The amiable Copper grinned again.

“Well, come on and we’ll see what the Nabob can do,” said Charles. “Rev. her up, Copper.”

The ginger-haired bicyclist shoved his helmet onto his forehead again, saluted and roared away up the street, followed by Elsa and Charles. Commander Belton lingered for a moment on the doorstep.

“Go and have your bath, mother,” he said. “I’ll bring the liberty men aboard at ten minutes to eight, so don’t worry. I think I like our new home very much. I’ve always wanted to go over Arcot House since I was a little boy and Mrs. Ellangowan-Hornby gave me some preserved ginger because I got her cat down out of a tree. Hornby’s a good fellow too. We must have him down here.”

He went up the street with long strides and Mr. and Mrs. Belton went back into the house. Wheeler shut the door, collected Charles’s things from the drawing-room and took them upstairs. Then she turned on Mrs. Belton’s bath.

“Oh, Wheeler,” said her mistress’s voice from her bedroom, “do you know if Mr. Charles has got the key of Miss Elsa’s door into the bathroom? They were arguing about it and I really don’t want a bear-fight over my head.”

“I’ve got the keys of both the doors, madam,” said Wheeler, “and that’s where they’ll stay. They’re just the same as they was in the nursery, always up to some mischief. There’s a bolt inside Miss Elsa’s door and that’s quite enough. Now you have your bath, madam, and I’ll get those bedrooms a bit tidy before dinner. And one of Lord Pomfret’s men came over, madam, on one of the farm horses and he brought a bottle of whisky with his lordship’s compliments and he wished it was a dozen of champagne.”

Mrs. Belton, getting with a sigh of relief into a steaming bath, felt that though she had a thousand things to be thankful for, life at this particular moment was just a little too much for her.