Читать книгу A Double Affair - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 4

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Unpleasant, not to say ominous, news from every part of the world was for a time almost entirely forgotten, or ignored, by much of Barsetshire, owing to the overriding interest in a marriage arranged, as The Thunderer puts it (though who arranges the marriages we do not know), between the Reverend Herbert Choyce, M.A., Vicar of Hatch End, and Dorothea Frances Merriman, whose Christian names had long been almost forgotten, buried in the affectionate “Merry” which all her friends and employers used. Miss Merriman had for a long time been secretary and friend to Lady Emily Leslie at Rushwater and had then been with her all through the war, in the house of her daughter Lady Graham. After her death she had presently gone to be friend and helper to Lord and Lady Pomfret at the Towers, which was in a way a home to her, for there she had formerly been secretary and friend to old Lady Pomfret for some years. Sometimes she felt a wish for an abiding place of her own, but she put her duty first and in any case had nowhere particular to go, as her parents were long since dead and her married and only sister though friendly was not interested. Then, while she was on a visit to Lady Graham, she and Mr. Choyce had become quietly and happily engaged. It was agreed by both of them that the marriage should not be hurried. Mr. Choyce had arranged a temporary exchange of pulpits with an old friend and did not wish to disturb this arrangement. The vicarage was in need of some repairing and redecorating. The one serious difficulty was Miss Merriman’s strong feeling that the Pomfrets must not be left without a good secretary, and we think the marriage might almost have fallen through had it not been for Mrs. Belton at Harefield, a connection of the Pomfrets through the old Barsetshire family of Thorne. The Harefield solicitor, Mr. Updike, had a daughter with a first-class war record, used to posts of responsibility and at the moment out of a job. Mrs. Belton had told Lady Pomfret about her. She had gone to the Towers for an interview; both sides were pleased and within a few weeks she was established almost as an old retainer.

Miss Merriman found herself absorbed again in the routine at Holdings and it seemed to the county that things might go on like this forever. But the calm was broken by The Thunderer’s paragraph in the Court Circular Column, put in and paid for by Lady Graham, who had constituted herself a Matron or Duenna of Honour while Miss Merriman, in a kind of enjoyable delirium and a feeling of “Lawk-a-mercy-on-me, This is none of I,” was carried along on the tide. The whole of Barsetshire, or at any rate West Barsetshire, was agog, and so many wedding presents were sent that Lady Graham saw she would have to turn her large drawing-room, known as The Saloon, into a show room: which, we may say, she was delighted to do.

“Now, Merry dear,” said Lady Graham, “you want a real rest. If you will unpack the wedding presents, I will arrange them. I shall have those collapsible tables put up and some of the stands from the potting sheds on them—the ones like steps.”

Miss Merriman asked why the stands.

“Because you are bound to have an enormous number of presents, Merry dear,” said her ladyship. “All your friends and all my friends and darling Mamma’s old friends and the Pomfrets’ friends and everyone in the village and a lot of the Close—oh! and the Dean wants to marry you and I thought I would ask Canon Bostock from Rushwater to be the other clergyman, because he knew darling Mamma. And of course the wedding reception will be here. How Mamma would have loved it all and how she would have interfered,” and Miss Merriman thought how Lady Graham was becoming more and more like, in many ways, her beloved mother, Lady Emily Leslie, Miss Merriman’s friend and employer for so many years.

So Miss Merriman unpacked the wedding presents and carefully kept the cards that came with them so that (a) she could write thank you letters for them all and (b) could put each card with its affectionate or friendly message on the present for exhibition. Lady Graham, whose calm was seldom ruffled, became almost excited at the number and quality of the gifts, which varied from a complete dinner set (Lord and Lady Pomfret) to an original and extremely bad drawing of Holdings by the village artist, Mr. Scatcherd, and included other gifts mostly of a high level. Sir Robert Graham had given Miss Merriman a munificent cheque for clothes, which agitated her a good deal, for she liked to dress in her own quiet (and becoming) way. He also expressed a wish, tantamount to a command, to give the bride away and, much to the joy of Hatch End, Mr. Gresham from East Barsetshire announced that he would like to be best man. No one knew why and we doubt if Mr. Gresham did, but there was a strong suspicion that Lord Crosse at Crosse Hall had something to do with it.

The universally disliked Sir Ogilvy Hibberd, now disguised as Lord Aberfordbury, a name which no one could ever remember, was luckily abroad on a mission to Mixo-Lydia and could therefore safely be invited. And as the mission was to promote good feeling between Mixo-Lydia and Slavo-Lydia, it would have taken someone far better informed than Lord Aberfordbury to disentangle the secular ill-feeling of those revolting nations, besides the fact that both countries liked nothing better than to maim each other’s cattle and burn each other’s villages and were likely to resent deeply any attempt at interference with their ancestral customs and probably would have summoned the intervening powers before one of those well-meaning bodies of irresponsible meddlers who are only known by their initials, whereas the words which the initials represent are entirely unidentified by the general public.

The wedding date was fixed for the week after Easter at the village church. Sir Robert Graham, who had come to consider himself (on no grounds at all except non-interference) as the fountain and source of the whole affair, had, as vicar’s churchwarden and even more as himself, arranged the ordering of the service with the Dean of Barchester, who had expressed his desire to perform the ceremony and was to be assisted by Canon Bostock, Vicar of Rushwater in the later years of Miss Merriman’s loved employer Lady Emily Leslie.

“Robert thought,” said Lady Graham to Miss Merriman while they were having lunch together alone, “that you would like Canon Bostock to be there because of darling Mamma. Why it takes two clergymen to make a marriage I don’t know. Robert and I had three, but that was in London because Papa had taken a house for the season, so he said we might as well have the reception there. And we must have a little talk about your wedding dress, Merry.”

This was the moment Miss Merriman had dreaded. She could not bear to seem ungrateful to Lady Graham—it would be almost like insulting the memory of Lady Emily Leslie—but to go up the aisle (and even worse down it again) dressed in white, would be more than she could bear. Indeed the thought of white sat as a spectre before her a great deal. But before she could say anything, Lady Graham went smoothly on, “I didn’t want to bother you, Merry dear, so when I was in town, I went to Madame Sartoria.”

“But she is your London dressmaker, Lady Graham,” said Miss Merriman, feeling like the hare who hears the voices of the hounds from his (or her) lair.

“She dressed Emmy and Clarissa so beautifully for Lucy Marling’s wedding to Mr. Adams,” said Lady Graham, “that I knew she would understand. I want you to give your opinion.”

While Lady Graham spoke, Miss Merriman’s heart had been sinking steadily. She was going to be dressed as a bride for her own wedding and would not only look like mutton dressed as lamb, but most certainly also feel like it. As Lady Graham had left the room on her charitable errand, Miss Merriman had a full five minutes in which to make up her mind to tell her that she could not marry under such circumstances, to tell Mr. Choyce that she loved him devotedly but could not possibly be his bride in public, and to retire to live with her sister who didn’t want her to come any more than she wanted to go. And all this depressed her so much that she hardly noticed Lady Graham’s return with an armful of something wrapped in a white sheet.

“And I hope you will like it, Merry dear,” said Lady Graham.

Much as Miss Merriman would have liked to shut her eyes, she was obliged in common courtesy to look. On her arm Lady Graham held a grey dress of most delicate material, soft yet strong, falling in lovely folds, inclining more to a pinky grey than a slaty grey, long sleeves, a high neck with a very slight V in front, and a full skirt neither too short nor too long.

“I thought you would like it,” said Lady Graham, deliberately not noticing Miss Merriman’s trembling lips. “The silk belonged to darling Mamma. She meant to wear it but never had it made up and it has been at Madame Sartoria’s all these years. She remembered it and brought it out when I went to see her. She said you wouldn’t need a fitting because you had so often come to her shop with one of the girls and I am sure you can trust her. She said: ‘Je connais par coeur le corps de Mademoiselle Mérimanne.’ It is a present to you from darling Mamma.”

At these words Miss Merriman began to cry quite openly.

“You will look delightful in it,” her ladyship went on, ignoring Miss Merriman’s tears, “and it will do beautifully for a dinner dress afterwards. There is a grey tulle veil with a little band of dull silver, and grey nylon gloves. I thought they would be better than grey suede. And the bag is grey satin, very soft, and I got you some silver shoes—not sandals.”

At these thoughtful words Miss Merriman cried again.

“Mamma would have loved to give them to you. Don’t cry,” said Lady Graham. “You must cheer up and have a drink of water.”

She was longing to suggest champagne but felt it might somehow disagree with Miss Merriman’s principles at so early an hour when, to her eternal surprise, Miss Merriman lifted a tear-blotched face and asked if she could have some brandy. This Lady Graham was delighted to supply, and after a small wineglass of the refreshing fluid Miss Merriman was herself again.

“Father didn’t like us to drink anything,” said Miss Merriman, “but I did have brandy when I was ill and I liked it. Mr. Choyce always has a bottle in the dining-room. He says he learnt to have it handy in the blitz.”

“Quite right,” said Lady Graham. “And now there is just one more thing,” and she laid a rather shabby blue velvet case on the table and opened it.

“But those are—I mean were—Lady Emily’s pearls,” said Miss Merriman. “Not her pearls for big parties. She wore them when we went abroad and her other jewels had gone to the bank. I haven’t seen them for a long time.”

“Because they were at the bank,” said Lady Graham. “They were left to me and I want to give them to you because you loved darling Mamma,” at which point both the ladies cried, most enjoyably.

“Will you put them in your room,” said Lady Graham, “for your wedding day. I have had forty acceptances so far. Of course only a small wedding.”

Miss Merriman looked puzzled. Then she realized that as Lady Graham was arranging the wedding she was, not unnaturally, asking many of her own friends. But if she, Miss Merriman, had been left to herself, how many friends of her own would she have asked? And the answer was easy: hardly any at all, for almost all the friends had come to her through the Leslies and the Grahams.

“We can manage the wedding party in the Saloon if it is wet,” said Lady Graham. “Robert likes it to be used. And while we are about it, where are you spending your honeymoon, Merry?” at which Miss Merriman had to confess that beyond a visit to Liverpool to see her husband’s former parish they had no ideas at all.

“Mrs. Morland rang me up this morning,” said Lady Graham. “She is going on a visit to Crosse Hall straight from the wedding reception and begs that you will use her house at High Rising if it suits you. Ask Mr. Choyce and let me know.”

Then, feeling that she had done quite enough for the present, she sent Miss Merriman away to rest, rang up Mr. Choyce, and told him that Miss Merriman would be dining alone that evening and it would do her good if Mr. Choyce could join her, as she was rather tired by the wedding preparations. Also that Mrs. Morland had offered the house at High Rising with her excellent cook-housekeeper and hoped that Mr. Choyce and Miss Merriman would use it for a few days’ rest before going to Liverpool. For all of which Mr. Choyce expressed his gratitude to Lady Graham and asked after his affianced. Lady Graham said As well as could be expected and was rewarded by a laugh at the other end. A very happy laugh.

There was, from Lady Graham’s point of view, only one drawback to the wedding. Her difficult Edith, who had gone on a long visit to her Pomfret cousins at the Towers, with the avowed object of attending daily an estate management college in Barchester so that she could help her father with his place, had been invited by her uncle David Leslie and his wife to visit them in America after Christmas. The Pomfrets, though quite fond of her, seemed perfectly resigned to losing her, so off she had gone by air at her Uncle David’s expense and was apparently enjoying herself enormously. Lady Graham, who still considered that no girl’s education was complete without a London Season, was rather against it, but Sir Robert said if the girl couldn’t stick to the job she had chosen she might as well go where she wished. There is no doubt that both her parents would have preferred her to go through with the course she had begun, but the youngest of a family is apt to get its way. Youth must be served: and now if it is not served it slams the door and serves itself.

An early date was fixed for Miss Merriman’s farewell visit to the Towers. Lady Pomfret would send for her and return her and Miss Merriman would also be able to give—or refrain from giving, whichever seemed the more useful—some help to the secretary, Miss Updike, about the work she was doing. The car from the Towers came punctually after lunch, and Miss Merriman was carried away.

Anyone driving up to the Towers, the hideous mid-Victorian seat of the Pomfrets, would have been pleasantly struck by the prosperous appearance of the park, and though one might deprecate the New Look of the drive, which always used to be gravelled and kept one or two men at work on the surface and the wide smooth-shaven verges throughout the year and was now covered with some sort of concrete from end to end, it was delightful to see that the trees in the park were being tactfully looked after and a number of cheerful young saplings planted and tied to sticks to replace the giants that had decayed till they had to be felled, so dangerous had they become. The large basin which traffic had to circle had been lately cleaned. The stone was white, and several of the rather uninteresting anonymous stone deities who pretended to support the great central urn from which water poured ceaselessly into the pond had new noses and fingers—still rather too clean to match their weather-beaten complexions, but time would cure that. Only one thing was missing. The jet which used to rise high from a conch, precariously supported by a poor relation of the Triton family, was not sending its silvery column aloft.

Much as Miss Merriman always missed in her mind her daily meeting with Mr. Choyce, she could not help feeling pleasure as the car stopped at the side door (for the front entrance with the great double ramp leading up to it was not used now) and there was Lady Pomfret waiting to receive her. On the previous evening Lady Pomfret, speaking with her husband about Miss Merriman’s coming visit, had said that as far as she knew no one had ever kissed Miss Merriman, although she was such an old and valued friend of the family. Not even the children, she added, though they were all very fond of her.

“One just didn’t kiss her,” said Lord Pomfret thoughtfully. “When I told her you had said you would marry me, Sally, she was so pleased that I thought she was going to kiss me. But she didn’t. Too much kissing now, don’t you think, Sally?”

Lady Pomfret was inclined to agree with him, but said that as all Ludo’s and Emily’s young friends seemed to kiss people without noticing that they were doing it, she didn’t think it would do any harm, and would probably vanish, as all fashions do. Lord Pomfret, amused, said what about Giles.

“Do you never notice your own children, darling?” said Lady Pomfret, a little reproachfully, yet with a kind of pride in everything her husband did. “He kisses all the old women in the village and they adore it, but he is terrified of girls. He’ll get over it.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Lord Pomfret. “Though I admit I did not kiss old women in cottages, or young women either. In fact no one till I met you, Sally. I don’t count Rosina.”

“And who on earth is Rosina?” said his countess, curious but quite unmoved by his confession.

“One of my best friends,” said Lord Pomfret. “She was cook and everything else in the house my father had in Italy and she looked after it when he was in England. She was rather kind to me when I was a boy. I think she was sorry for me not having a mother. She married the inn-keeper’s son and has twelve children. I believe I’m godfather to one of them, but I couldn’t get out to the christening, so the Sindaco, a sort of Mayor, took my place. I rather think he was the baby’s father.”

“Gillie! you never told me that before,” said his wife indignantly. “Did they call the baby Gillie? Or I suppose it would be Giglio.”

“Certainly not,” said Lord Pomfret. “They called it Antonio after the local poacher. I daresay he was its father too. You never know. It’s time to go to bed.”

Now Miss Merriman’s suitcase had been taken upstairs and there was Miss Merriman in the Countess’s sitting-room, looking just like herself and somehow bringing into the room a safe, comfortable ordinariness. Rosina, the Sindaco, and the local poacher were all far away while the Pomfrets asked about the preparations for the wedding and Miss Merriman asked for news of the Pomfrets’ children and whether the fox that ran to earth in Hamaker Spinney had been found, for his fame had spread as far as Holdings.

Lord Pomfret said there was no news of him, but rumour had it that he had gone over to East Barsetshire where Mr. Gresham was M.F.H. and was considered in the fox world to give a fellow a better run for his money than the West Barsetshire Hunt.

While Lord Pomfret was speaking Miss Merriman had a curious impression that he had at last grown up. Not that he had ever been a very young Young Man, for responsibilities had come to him early, but he was now speaking as a peer who was respected in the House of Lords and as a landowner who knew and accepted responsibility. In earlier days it had grieved Miss Merriman to see how his strength was always being used up to the last ounce by his zeal in everything he did. Now he was firmly in the saddle and if spared would be able to carry on the landowner’s tradition of doing the best you can for your own land and your own people and so for the county and therefore, also, for England.

Miss Merriman asked after the children, but they were all away: Lord Mellings doing well at Sandhurst, Lady Emily still at school, and the Honourable Giles Foster preparing to spend the Easter holidays at a kind of Super-Scout-Camp where his loving parents hoped he would meet his match and come home slightly less pleased with himself. And so the talk continued, about families and the estate.

“There is one thing I would like to ask,” said Miss Merriman. “Would Miss Updike like any help or suggestions from me? Is she here, by the way? And I forgot to ask about Edith. I do hope she is being good.”

Lady Pomfret said Miss Updike had gone to Barchester for the day and was looking forward to seeing Miss Merriman very much.

“I think it was tact,” said Lady Pomfret. “Miss Updike thought you might like to be alone with us for a bit as it is only for one night. She is fitting in very well,” which last words she said as carelessly as possible, lest Miss Merriman should feel a little sad that her place was so soon and competently filled. But when she heard Miss Merriman’s true and heartfelt pleasure that her successor was giving satisfaction, she felt comfortable again.

“We were sorry that Edith gave up her estate management course and went off to America,” said Lord Pomfret impartially. “What she needs is a husband who will beat her. She is pure Pomfret.”

“Which is more than you are, darling,” said his wife. “You must be what is called a sport—something the Pomfrets haven’t thrown up before.”

She may have said this in jest, but Miss Merriman wondered for a moment if it was meant for praise or blame. Then she saw the look of trustful love that passed between husband and wife and her fears vanished.

“You remember Macfadyen, Merry, the big market gardener who is one of the syndicate who have, thank God, taken the Towers off my hands,” Lord Pomfret went on, for some time previously Mr. Macfadyen, together with Mr. Adams the big iron-master and Mr. Pilward the wealthy brewer whose son had married Mr. Adams’s daughter, had formed a syndicate to take over most of the Towers and a good deal of the land, partly for office and partly for Mr. Macfadyen’s experimental work in fruit and vegetables. “You must visit them before you go, Merry. They all want to congratulate you” and Miss Merriman said quietly that she would be delighted to see them.

“When I asked just now about whether there was any way in which I could help Miss Updike, I hope that I didn’t sound intrusive,” said Miss Merriman. “But if there is anything perhaps that I left unfinished, or that needs explaining, I should be so glad to do what I can. Otherwise I certainly won’t interfere.”

“Well, there is one thing that I do feel a little diffident about,” said Lady Pomfret. “It is Nurse. Merry, you could always handle Nurse. I can’t always. Of course we shan’t have a nursery much longer now.”

Lord Pomfret said Why. They had always had nurseries at the Towers, he added indignantly.

“Yes, darling,” said his wife, “but there was more room then and certainly more rooms. We have hardly got enough rooms here, Merry, as you know. It was all very well when the children were small, but now they aren’t. We can’t make poor Ludo go on sharing with Giles in the old night-nursery forever. What we really want is to find a place for Nurse where she can have young children with someone under her. Then Ludo could have her room and Giles could have the old night nursery to himself and keep his trains there and nail the rails to the floor which he is always wanting to do. Miss Updike has the blue room. Gillie and I have our bathroom, thank goodness, but there is rather a scramble for the other one.”

Miss Merriman said she thought she remembered there were two doors to that bathroom, which always led to trouble.

Lady Pomfret said the only way would be to put those things with Engaged on them that you could turn to Disengaged.

“If I know your children, Sally,” said Lord Pomfret, rather unfairly we think, “either they will never use that gadget, or they will play with it all the time. Certainly Giles and his friends will. And what is more, they will never remember, or deliberately forget, which comes to much the same, to turn off the Engaged thing at one door if they go out of the other. I really wish we hadn’t turned that room into a bathroom now. It is simply waste of space.”

Miss Merriman then asked what was being done with the two rooms they used to call the sewing-rooms where, in old Lord Pomfret’s time, the household linen used to be looked through and mended every week.

“And before it went to the wash as well as after,” said Lord Pomfret. “I remember Uncle Giles’s housekeeper telling me that. She said The Wash couldn’t do half as much harm if the linen was in good condition when it went there. And she was right. You know, Merry, I am pretty busy one way and another and so is Sally, and Nurse isn’t as young as she was. Let’s go and look at it.”

So they all went to the old sewing-room and Lord Pomfret opened the shutters, showing it as a pleasant room with one window onto the garden and one onto the stable-yard—now deserted except for the children’s ponies and a couple of cars since Lady Pomfret had given up hunting.

“I’m going to have the rooms over the stable repaired and water laid on,” said Lord Pomfret. “Those people who play polo at Greshamsbury need more stabling. They’ll pay anything and they want rooms for two grooms to sleep.”

“If I were a boy I would love to have a room of my own there,” said Miss Merriman, looking thoughtfully across the yard. “And what a delightful bed-sitting-room this would be if one could put a bath into that sticking-out bit at the end. I think when I was here they called it the Powdering-Room.”

“They would,” said Lady Pomfret. “People never remember that The Towers wasn’t built till about the middle of last century. More likely it was a sort of dressing-room. There seems to have been a basin, so I suppose there is water—or was!”

“Good Lord! I’d forgotten,” said Lord Pomfret. “I’ll get Roddy to look at that,” for to his brother-in-law, Roddy Wicklow, he delegated any work about the house as well as an estate agent’s out-of-door business. “We might put a bath in there and make a bed-sitting-room for Emily. The room is big enough for two beds if she has a friend to stay. Then the room where she is now would be free.”

“What a good idea, darling,” said Lady Pomfret, not daring to look at Miss Merriman. “It is quite extraordinary how one doesn’t think of things.”

“But Merry does,” said Lord Pomfret, generously acknowledging her original suggestion. “I never knew her not thinking of things for other people. I hope you are going to be selfish for the rest of your life, Merry.”

Miss Merriman, more touched than she liked to show, said anyone who married Mr. Choyce would have to be selfish, because he was so unselfish, and then Lord Pomfret closed the shutters and the ladies went back to Lady Pomfret’s sitting room, Lord Pomfret saying not to wait tea for him.

“Miss Updike ought to be back soon,” Lady Pomfret said when she had poured out tea. “She went to Barchester by the bus to do some shopping.”

And sure enough, hardly had they begun their tea when Miss Updike came in.

“I don’t think you and Miss Updike have met,” said Lady Pomfret as the two ladies shook hands. Miss Updike, like the rest of her family, was tall and good-looking and had a very pleasant competent manner.

“I did meet your mother during the war,” said Miss Merriman. “I was over in Harefield one day and went into the chemist’s shop for something and your mother came in to have her arm bandaged. I think something had upset in the kitchen. She was so pretty.”

“That’s mother all right,” said Miss Updike. “Father says if he had five shillings for every time mother does something to herself he would be a rich man. She is really wonderful at it,” and Miss Merriman thought very well of Miss Updike’s pleasant and loving attitude to her ill-starred parent. “Last week she upset a whole saucepan of boiling fat over the stove. It took me about an hour to clear up and it was lucky I was at home. She was hardly scalded at all,” which last words she said with a pride that rather touched her hearers.

Then in came the tea, brought by a middle-aged woman whom Miss Merriman immediately recognized as Bertha, sister of the former boot-and-knife boy at the Towers. For there were still on the estate people misguided enough to believe that service at the Towers was better than serving behind the counter at Sheepshanks, or in the medicine and toilet preparations department of Gaiter’s Circulating Library.

When they had all made a good tea Lady Pomfret let Miss Updike talk and Miss Merriman listened. It is just possible that Miss Updike, who had seen a good deal of the world during the war and was far from unintelligent, realized that she was, as it were, being put through her paces and was not unwilling to show them in a quiet way. Presently Lord Pomfret joined them and there was much talk about old days at the Towers, during which Miss Updike quietly went away.

Lady Pomfret asked Miss Merriman if she would like to rest or to walk round the garden. Miss Merriman chose the garden and they walked slowly up the green river of close-mown grass that meandered among the wilder part, along the stream that fed the fountains and so to the place where the water bubbled up from no one quite knew where in a kind of grotto. And if Miss Merriman’s thoughts went back to happy and unhappy far-off days and things that were no more, her companion did not know it.

“And now I must go and see Nurse,” said Miss Merriman, as they went into the house.

So up to the nursery she went and found Nurse engaged, as when was she not, in mending some of her ex-nurselings’ clothes.

“May I come in, Nurse?” said Miss Merriman, as a Throne speaking to a Throne.

“Well, now, miss, this is a pleasure,” said Nurse. “Come and sit down. When her ladyship told me the news I said ‘And a good thing too. It’s time Miss Merriman had a home of her own and Mr. Choyce is a very nice gentleman.’ ” And having uttered these congratulatory words she took up her work again, rather to the relief of Miss Merriman who was quite prepared for Nurse to enquire how many children she intended to have; perhaps on the precedent of Sarah, though we have always imagined that there must be some mistake in arithmetic in her case—or perhaps a year was a good deal shorter then.

So Nurse and Miss Merriman exchanged news of families; and here intelligent people will know that we mean by this of the families connected with the Grahams and Pomfrets, which by now included a quite creditable number of the generation younger than Edith, who was herself the youngest of a large family. Miss Merriman expressed her pleasure that Lady Pomfret had Miss Updike to help her. Nurse gave a grim and qualified approval which Miss Merriman quite understood as meaning that Miss Updike came, on the whole, up to her, Nurse’s, standards and had better not deviate from them.

“As for Ludo,” said Nurse, licking a piece of sewing cotton, sharpening it with her fingers and skillfully pushing it through the eye of her needle, “he’s as nice a young gentleman as you could wish and always asks me to come and tuck him up at night when he’s here, just like when he was a little boy. And Giles is just as much of a Rory-Tory boy as ever. Mad about horses he is. Emily’s a good girl but she’s a handful. She’ll be leaving school before long. Dear, dear, they do grow up. If you’ll wait a moment, miss, I’ve something for you.”

She went to a chest of drawers and took out a fat parcel wrapped in tissue paper and tied with a glittering tinsel ribbon.

“With best wishes for all happiness, miss,” she said.

“Oh, thank you, Nurse,” said Miss Merriman.

“You can open it now if you like, miss,” said Nurse graciously, so Miss Merriman opened the parcel and found a mauve sateen nightgown-case embroidered with forget-me-nots.

“Oh, Nurse, how kind of you. You really shouldn’t have given me such a lovely present,” said Miss Merriman, comforting herself for her noble lie with the thought that Nurse would not be likely to see her bedroom at the vicarage. “And it’s not only the present. It’s the kind thought that counts,” at which Nurse assumed an expression that can only be described as self-satisfied bridling, and after a little more talk Miss Merriman went back to the sitting-room where to her great pleasure she found Lord Pomfret with his wife, for once quietly doing nothing and pleased to have her company.

“I was talking to the Dean today,” said Lord Pomfret. “He thinks very highly of Mr. Choyce and says he hopes they will get him in the Close sometime.”

Miss Merriman said there was only one thing that could please her more than the Dean thinking well of Mr. Choyce, namely that the Bishop should think poorly of him, which piece of bravado made Lord Pomfret laugh and his wife looked gratefully at Miss Merriman.

“Sally and I have a small present for you, Merry,” said Lord Pomfret. “She can tell you her half first.”

“But you gave me a dinner service,” said Miss Merriman.

“Oh, that was for show,” said Lady Pomfret. “We want you to have something to remind you of the Towers. It’s two dozen best linen sheets and pillow slips. We found a lot of linen put away when we were giving up the other end of The Towers, in perfectly good condition. I have had it all re-marked by a woman who understands white embroidery. It was what was kept for old Lady Pomfret’s bed only. You must remember it.”

“Yes. Lady Pomfret, my Lady Pomfret, had bought a good deal not long before she died,” said Miss Merriman. “How kind of you to think of me.”

“I’ll have them sent over to the vicarage later,” said Lady Pomfret. “But we want to give you something that will impress people as well, so we hope you will like this. It was Gillie’s idea,” and she handed to Miss Merriman a green morocco case with D.F.C. stamped on it in gold. Miss Merriman opened it, almost nervously. Inside lay a spray of jewelled flowers in all colours, each blossom and leaf trembling on a thin coil of gold wire.

“Lady Pomfret’s brooch!” said Miss Merriman, touching it gently. “I have seen her wear it so often. Her father gave it to her when she was married. It makes me remember—” and then she had to stop.

“I am quite sure she would like you to have it, Merry,” said Lord Pomfret, almost in his Lord Lieutenant’s voice. “And we shall like to think of you wearing it.”

“Thank you both. Oh, thank you,” said Miss Merriman. “I did love and admire her. I shall leave it to your Emily,” at which excursion into the future loud protests were made by the Pomfrets, till everyone laughed and the point of emotion was safely past.

Then in came Lady Pomfret’s brother Roddy Wicklow, the estate manager, with his pretty gentle wife, daughter of Mr. Barton the architect and his wife who wrote learned, well-documented, and slightly dull novels about the more obscure bastards of Popes and Cardinals. With them they had brought Mrs. Barton’s last book bound in blue morocco with Miss Merriman’s new initials tooled on it. Roddy, after the fashion of men, having greeted Miss Merriman at once fell into estate talk with his employer while his wife, rather shyly, asked Miss Merriman if she remembered the winter at the Towers when she, then Alice Barton, had experienced her first house-party and seen life.

“It makes me feel frightfully old,” said Mrs. Wicklow, “to remember the Towers then. It was all so different.”

“Well, that visit of yours was—let me think—nearly twenty years ago, Mrs. Wicklow,” said Miss Merriman, who had always stuck to her own unwritten rule of addressing the friends and relations of her various employers by the more formal modes. “We are all getting on.”

“I suppose we are,” said Mrs. Wicklow. “Even Roddy is getting bald on the top, but he is so tall that people don’t much notice it. I wonder why men go bald on the top and women don’t as a rule.”

Miss Merriman said she had wondered that herself and used to think it was because they wore hats that kept the air from their heads. But as the fashion of hats had almost gone out, except for occasions, it couldn’t be that.

“Oh, Miss Merriman,” said Mrs. Wicklow. “I wanted awfully to give you a wedding present and so does Roddy, but we didn’t know what you would like. You know Sally used to breed dogs before she married Lord Pomfret and I’ve got some of her Airedales. Would you like a puppy? The last litter was lovely and I’ve just one left.”

Now if there was one thing Miss Merriman did not want, it was a dog. Not but what she had always taken care of her Lady Pomfret’s King Charles Spaniels, but it was from love of her mistress, not at all as a dog-lover. She knew that to people who liked dogs they were almost sacred, but the vicarage would, she felt, never feel like home if she had to share it with a dog. Besides which there was Mr. Choyce’s cat to consider, who was almost one of the family and had a special little flap-door that he could push open when he came in late from the club.

“She’s the best of the litter,” said Mrs. Wicklow and her gentle dark eyes clouded—almost, Miss Merriman thought, a suspicion of tears. “But I’d love you to have her if you’d like it.”

Miss Merriman thought quickly. The happiness of two people was at stake; Mrs. Wicklow’s and her own. It was obvious that if Mrs. Wicklow gave her the dog—for bitch she did not say—it would leave an aching gap in her doggery—or whatever one called it. This was one of the rare cases when truth was not only right but agreeable.

“That is most kind of you,” she said, “but Mr. Choyce doesn’t really care about dogs. I think he had a dog that died—you will understand.”

“Oh, I do” said Mrs. Wicklow, her large brown eyes growing dark with feeling. “When Giulia—that was one of old Lady Pomfret’s spaniels—died, it was dreadful.”

“I remember Giulia,” said Miss Merriman, grateful for this escape. “Lady Pomfret had a stone put on her grave. But I believe all that part of the garden is vegetables now, for Mr. Macfadyen’s Amalgamated Vedge Company.”

So that danger was past and if Mr. Choyce’s dog that died was an improvisation of Miss Merriman’s we can only say that it did her credit and she was very lucky that it came off. She was delighted to have Mrs. Barton’s book and asked both the Wicklows to write their names in it, which they willingly did and then went away.

Dinner was quiet and pleasant. When it was over Lord Pomfret went to the Estate Room with Miss Merriman and Miss Updike and it became abundantly clear to Miss Merriman, listening to the talk of the two others, that Miss Updike was going to be exactly what Lord Pomfret needed. A lady, very competent, obviously strong and bursting with health, with a good minor county background. If only she didn’t go and get married at once, all would be perfect. Then she reflected that she would be getting married and deserting Lady Graham herself and had to laugh at it. But there were also the many years of devotion to her own old mistress at the Towers and she felt she had done all she could do. They all went to bed early and Miss Merriman hoped that she and Mr. Choyce were saying their prayers at the same moment, but remembering that he was dining with the Carters at the Old Manor House that evening, she laughed at herself and went comfortably to sleep.

On the following morning Lady Pomfret sent a note to Miss Merriman’s room to say that she had to go to Barchester early but would be back before lunch and would Miss Merriman do whatever she liked and she thought Mr. Adams, who was at the Towers for a couple of days, would very much like to see her.

So when she had had a very comfortable late breakfast in her room and written some letters Miss Merriman went out of the Pomfrets’ wing and walked along the front of the great house till she came to a door with a large brass plate on it, announcing the names of the various companies who now had their offices there. She pressed the bell and the door was opened by a commissionaire, who grinned.

“Nice to see you back, miss,” he said, saluting. “Had a good time?”

“A very nice time, thank you, Pollett,” said Miss Merriman, who had an almost royal memory for names and faces. “I daresay you have heard that I am going to marry Mr. Choyce, the vicar at Hatch End.”

“Well, I did hear something of the sort, miss,” said the commissionaire cautiously, “but people do say things you wouldn’t hardly credit unless you was to see them. But I’m sure I wish you all the best, miss, and the Reverend too. I had a cousin of my father’s was a verger. Funny thing, his name was Sexton. Was you wanting to see anyone in particular, miss?”

Miss Merriman said she had only come back for a night and would very much like to say good-bye to some of her friends in the office, shook hands with the commissionaire went on to a door marked Private, knocked at it and went in.

Here lived Miss Cowshay, a very efficient secretary of the Hogglestock Rolling Mills, foundation of the wealthy ironmaster Mr. Adams’s fortunes.

“Well, Miss Merriman, this is my lucky day,” said Miss Cowshay. “I didn’t know you were here. Do sit down and we’ll have some coffee,” and she pressed a buzzer on her desk and ordered two coffees. “We were all ever so sorry you hadn’t been well and I hope your visit to Lady Graham has done you good. But I needn’t ask that. I saw the notice about your engagement in The Thunderer. Mr. Adams likes me to go through the social columns for him every day. My cousin that’s on the Barchester Chronicle wrote an ever so nice piece about Mr. Choyce. I’ll send it to you. I was passing the remark to Miss Carton of the Costing Department at lunch only last week it did seem a shame you hadn’t a home of your own. Oh, I’m ever so glad. But we’ll miss you here, you know. Really, with Mr. Adams and Mr. Macfadyen and Mr. Pilward it all seems like one large family, and we’d got quite used to you being with Lady Pomfret and we shall miss you quite a lot.”

These words quite overwhelmed Miss Merriman, who had never considered herself as a person who would be missed and she said, quite truthfully, that she would miss all the people at the Towers very much.

“I’m having a very quiet wedding,” she said, suddenly thinking of the possibility of the whole staff turning up at Hatch End in charabancs. “It seemed more suitable, as Mr. Choyce and I aren’t so young as we were,” and then was smitten with compunction, thinking how much the Miss Cowshays do enjoy a wedding. So she was relieved when Miss Cowshay said if she got married she would have a quiet wedding and then throw a really good party when she got back from the honeymoon, adding, “Did you want to see Mr. Adams? I’ll phone through to him.”

Miss Cowshay then spoke on the inter-office telephone and said Mr. Adams was just come in and would like to see Miss Merriman in half an hour if she could spare the time.

“I daresay you’d like a look at the house, Miss Merriman,” she said. “We’ve got the scaffolding down in the big hall now.”

So they went up to the piano nobile, which it is difficult to describe in an English word as although it was, so to speak, the ground floor, it was really on what would be the first floor in any normal house, with a great double ramp up to the front door outside. Here the hand of Big Business had made a good many changes since last we saw Pomfret Towers. The Great Hall, as it used to be called, was divided into offices by wooden partitions. The big fireplace was blocked with plywood, and radiators were placed at intervals along the walls. As for the ceiling, it was so high that no one ever looked at it and it had been left in its pristine horror of pseudo Gothic, colonized by large spiders and their friends.

“It does look different from what it was when I first came here,” said Miss Merriman. “But that was more than twenty years ago, when old Lord Pomfret, and my Lady Pomfret were alive and the house was full of people.”

“I daresay it quite gets you down,” said Miss Cowshay sympathetically. “Mr. Macfadyen did want to leave the big fireplace, but Mr. Adams said it would mean draughts, so he had it covered up. What’s behind that wood I couldn’t say.”

“I should think,” said Miss Merriman, recalling memories of the Towers in old Lord Pomfret’s time, “that by now it is quite full of birds’ nests and twigs and a lot of loose bricks and some broken slates and possibly a bat that fell down and couldn’t get up and a few dead sparrows.”

Miss Cowshay said, with a ladylike shudder, that bats were nasty things.

“But I’m awfully glad you think it’s all right,” she added. “I mean I thought you might think it was a bit out of order to cover up an old medeeval chimney like that.”

“I don’t think it was really mediaeval,” said Miss Merriman, trying hard not to sound affected in her pronunciation of the word. “It was built about a hundred years ago.”

“Oh, well, they all say it’s medeeval,” said Miss Cowshay, on whom Miss Merriman’s gentle correction had fallen unheeded. Miss Merriman wisely gave it up.

They then visited the great yellow drawing-room, the green brocade drawing-room, the library, Lady Pomfret’s boudoir, and the small blue room, all of which Miss Merriman remembered as they once had been. But only for a moment. For there is something in us that wipes out a memory of the past, even as we look at what has replaced the past we knew. Only of our childhood do we keep a visual memory clear and strong enough to re-create the actual image of what things were, while what has replaced them seems but a shadow. When shades of the prison house of growing older begin to close about us, things of recent date are often blurred, while the forgotten past is crystal-clear. So, for Miss Merriman, it would be more difficult from now onwards to re-create the Towers as it was, for she had only known it in later years. But that did not matter. The rooms were not the rooms she knew. They were now partitioned into smaller rooms, with white paint, or plaster, or plastic everywhere, and in them people were working for enterprises which were certainly useful and would probably make life easier and more pleasant for Lord and Lady Pomfret in their endless self-imposed task of work for others.

Miss Merriman said it was all most interesting and she was sure it was being a great success. A rather vague statement, but it was the best she could do, as she had little or no idea what exactly it was that the busy staffs of the various businesses were doing.

“Do you remember the chapel?” said Miss Cowshay. “It’s kept locked and Lord Pomfret has one key and the office has one. But Mr. Adams is very particular about letting anyone use it.”

“Do you mean that no one can go in?” said Miss Merriman.

“Oh, no!” said Miss Cowshay, with great refinement of vowels. “But Mr. Adams used to be chapel and though he goes to church now he doesn’t want anyone to go in the chapel who wouldn’t appreciate it and reely, Miss Merriman, though our staff are a very nice set you couldn’t trust them.”

“Do you mean they would—” Miss Merriman began, when it occurred to her that the word brawl, which she was about to use, would probably mean nothing to Miss Cowshay, or else be taken as meaning, darkly, something much worse.

“Oh, nothing of that sort,” said Miss Cowshay in a shocked voice which made Miss Merriman want to know exactly what—if anything—Miss Cowshay had thought she meant. “But there’s some of them you can’t stop them writing their names on things. And we have to treat them all alike. I’ll get the key, Miss Merriman. Oh, and excuse me, but when I saw the advert of your engagement in Mr. Adams’s paper, I said to myself, ‘Well, the Daily Runner for little me, but The Thunderer does get the posh engagements and no mistake.’ I shan’t be a moment.”

She was as good as her word, came swiftly back with the chapel key and opened the door. Here all was peace. The patterned floor of lapis lazuli and white marble, the tall light windows, the marble columns, the seats of some light-coloured wood with their carved ends gradually acquiring the patina of age, looked as they had looked for the last hundred years, or thereabouts. Miss Merriman thought of her countess and said a silent prayer for her. Then she turned to the door. Lord and Lady Pomfret had asked if she would like to have the chapel for her wedding, but her allegiance was now to Hatch End and Mr. Choyce’s church.

“That was most kind of you, Miss Cowshay,” she said. “And when I am being married I shall think of the chapel. Now I must go back to Lady Pomfret.”

So they went into the hall, where a quietly dressed man who was waiting for them introduced himself as Mr. Adams’s private secretary and said if Miss Merriman weren’t in a hurry Mr. Adams would be very glad to see her in his office.

“Well, I’ll hie me back to my room,” said Miss Cowshay. “I’ve all those reports to get out. Well, all good wishes, Miss Merriman,” and she went back to her office while the secretary led Miss Merriman to the far end of the building, knocked at the door with a ground-glass top, and held it open for her to go in.

“Well, Miss Merriman, this is an unexpected pleasure,” said Mr. Adams, coming forward. “If I’d known you were coming we’d have had the flags out. I haven’t been so pleased since I don’t know when. Sit down,” and he pulled forward a gigantic leather armchair suitable for a hippopotamus. “When I saw your engagement in the paper, I was as pleased as Punch. I didn’t ever meet Lady Emily Leslie that you used to live with but the once, and a very great lady she was, and when I saw your engagement I said to myself, ‘If there’s one thing would please Lady Emily, it would be this.’ Well, there’s no knowing and I daresay she is pleased.”

“I hope so,” said Miss Merriman, feeling almost a pricking of tears behind her eyes. “Only I think she must be a little disappointed that she can’t arrange the wedding. She did love to arrange things. And how is Lucy? You must forgive me, but I can’t think of her as Mrs. Adams after knowing her so long as Lucy Marling.”

“Well, nor can I,” said Mr. Adams. “Sometimes I say to myself, ‘It’s all too good to be true, Sam Adams,’ and then I say ‘But it’s all true and it’s good too.’ I do sincerely hope, Miss Merriman, that you and Mr. Choyce will be as happy as Lucy and I are, and more I can’t say. And Lucy said we must give you something for the vicarage, and we thought perhaps a carpet might fill the bill. A real Oriental one.”

Miss Merriman, though secretly rather taken aback, was not the woman to flinch.

“I can’t think of anything we would like more,” she said. “The carpet in Herbert’s study is a disgrace—and we shall mostly be sitting there. About twelve by eight the old one is. And it doesn’t really matter what colours. All the good Oriental ones are pleasant. It is most kind of you.”

“Very kind of you to accept it,” said Mr. Adams, evidently with genuine feeling. “I said to my Heth—my girl, Mrs. Pilward Junior that is, though I don’t think she’ll be Junior long, her father-in-law’s in a poor way—well, as I was saying, I said to my Heth, ‘Miss Merriman is one of the best and she deserves the best that Mr. and Mrs. Sam Adams can give her.’ ”

Slightly exhausted by this speech which had the effect—as some of Mr. Adams’s remarks not uncommonly did—of making his hearers feel as if they were in a telephone box and couldn’t get out, Miss Merriman thanked him again. Mr. Adams asked if she would like to go up to the first floor and see the new offices there and the big restaurant and kitchens on the floor above, so that the smell of cooking never came into the rest of the house, but by this time she was rather tired and said she must get back to Lady Pomfret.

“I’ll let you out the garden way then,” said Mr. Adams, and he took her into the next room, which had a French window opening onto the terrace.

“Let me know when it will suit you to have the carpet, Miss Merriman,” said Mr. Adams, “and I’ll get them to send a man along to lay it all proper and a good piece of felt to go underneath it. Those Oriental carpets, they’re used to being treated well,” he went on meditatively, “and they don’t want to be trodden to death. And by the way, Miss Merriman, if your room gets the afternoon sun, don’t let it shine on the carpet too much.”

“Well, that room does get rather a lot of sun,” said Miss Merriman, “ever since Herbert got some men with a tractor who were mending the road to put a chain round the dreadful monkey-puzzle tree and pull it down,” at which Mr. Adams laughed loudly and said Mr. Choyce ought to stand for the County Council and keep things going.

“And one thing more, Miss Merriman,” said Mr. Adams. “I’ve only met Mr. Choyce once or twice, but I took a liking to him and I’d like to give him something for his church. It wouldn’t seem so personal, that way. Would he feel offended if I asked him to accept a cheque for the church as a wedding present?”

Miss Merriman, in all her life of thinking of others, had never had this particular problem of the rich benefactor to face, but her intelligence made her realize that Mr. Adams’s time—of which he had been generous—was also money and that the truest economy lay in accepting at once, without question, what was offered.

“We have a hand for preparing and improving the church,” she said. “Things like a better heating system and some improvements in the vestry. I know Herbert will be most grateful—for the church and his parishioners and himself. Thank you very much.”

“Then if you will give it to him yourself that will make it all nice and comfortable,” said Mr. Adams and he went back to his desk, wrote a cheque, put it into an envelope, and handed it to Miss Merriman.

“Hadn’t you better lick it up, Mr. Adams?” she said.

“You’d be bound to want to open it if I did,” said Mr. Adams, though not ungallantly. “It’s for you both,” and he held the door open for her to go out onto the terrace.

“Oh, one thing, Mr. Adams,” said Miss Merriman. “What has happened to the jet of water on the top of the fountain in the drive? It always used to work all right.”

“That’s just what we’ve all been asking,” said Mr. Adams. “My engineers have had a go at it and I’ve had a go myself and it’s got us completely beat. No one knows where that water comes from and we can’t trace it. It’s a different supply from the pond.”

“Oh, but that comes from the Grotto, Mr. Adams,” said Miss Merriman. “You know, that little stream at the far end of the garden where the water comes bubbling up through the sand under a kind of arch. I remember old Lord Pomfret talking about it.”

“Well, we live and learn,” said Mr. Adams. “I’ll get a man onto that next week. Thank you, Miss Merriman.”

When Miss Merriman reached the far end of the terrace, she found Lady Pomfret on her knees weeding.

“Well, did you enjoy yourself, Merry? I got my business over sooner than I expected so I came back early,” said Lady Pomfret.

“Very much,” said Miss Merriman. “Miss Cowshay showed me all the office rooms and the chapel. Then I was summoned to see Mr. Adams. He is giving us an Oriental carpet for the study.”

“Well done, Mr. Adams,” said Lady Pomfret. “The more I see of that man the more I like him. And his wife too, even if she is a bit hearty at times. But her people are good Barsetshire—much older than we are probably.”

“Yes—her mother is connected with the Thornes, a very old Barsetshire family. My Lady Pomfret was a Thorne,” said Miss Merriman, who though an outsider had come to know her Barsetshire families pretty thoroughly. “Blood does tell.” A very true remark, for blood remains responsible for much good and much evil in families, and as for its permutations and combinations of virtues and vices, or good looks and ugliness (in which case the ugly ones are far more conceited than the good-looking ones, boasting loudly of being just like Great-Uncle-Algy whose ears stuck out more than any other ears in the county, or the spitting image of Old Cousin Marcia who had the largest lump—only just short of a wen—on her face with three large black hairs growing on it in East Barsetshire) they almost need a book to themselves.

“And he gave me a cheque for the church, but he didn’t lick up the envelope,” said Miss Merriman, looking at it.

“Then it won’t matter if you look at it now,” said Lady Pomfret, consumed with a vulgar and natural longing to know what he had sprung.

“Well—as he didn’t lick it up—” said Miss Merriman. She firmly took the cheque from its envelope and looked at it.

“Anything wrong, Merry?” said Lady Pomfret, for expressions were changing in Miss Merriman’s face as swiftly as cloud shadows over a meadow.

“It’s a hundred pounds!” said Miss Merriman. “Do you think he meant it, Lady Pomfret?”

“Of course he did,” said Lady Pomfret, who felt that Miss Merriman might try to return it, thinking that he had made a mistake. “He wanted to help Mr. Choyce and this is a charming way of doing it. How pleased Mr. Choyce will be,” she added, which judicious words at once—as she had rather hoped—restored Miss Merriman to her wonted calm.

“I have suddenly remembered something,” she said.

Lady Pomfret begged for further information.

“It’s only when I first met Miss Cowshay. It was when I was with Lady Emily at Holdings in the war—before Mr. Leslie died—and Miss Cowshay was in the cashier’s desk at Pilchard’s Stores. I often used to shop there or cash small cheques for Lady Emily. Of course she wasn’t so blonde then. And then she was in the Regional Commissioner’s Office. Mr. John Leslie took a party of us there. It all feels extraordinarily far away.”

“It’s more than ten years since the end of the war,” said Lady Pomfret, and both were silent, thinking of the passage of Time and the passionless sweep of his scythe.

Lady Pomfret got up, shook her apron, put her gardening gloves and tools into their basket and they went indoors to lunch. Lord Pomfret was in the sitting-room, reading letters.

“Good-morning, Merry,” he said. “I’ve some news for you.”

As—apart from the sudden death of Mr. Choyce—there was no one whose fate could particularly affect Miss Merriman, she said with her usual calm that she would like to help if she could.

“It’s from Edith,” said Lord Pomfret. “She has been having a wonderful time in America with David and Rose—lucky girl and I wish I could too. They want her to stay on a bit and then they will all fly over for your wedding. I expect Lady Graham will be hearing from her about it.”

Miss Merriman expressed pleasure.

“Come now, Merry, what are you thinking about?” said Lord Pomfret. “You are the wisest of us all.”

“I do often wonder,” said Miss Merriman, “what Edith will do. She has never settled to anything since she was born. Lady Graham did think that her plan of learning estate management at that place in Barchester and being with you might steady her. I wasn’t very sure. Then she gave it up and went to America. I rather give it all up myself.”

“What that girl needs,” said Lord Pomfret, without animus, “is a husband who will beat her. Well, there it is, and I’m glad they are all coming over. Come in to lunch.”

But the talk about Edith went on, almost uninterruptedly, all through lunch though coming to no kind of conclusion.

Then Lady Pomfret drove Miss Merriman with her fresh harvest of wedding presents back to Holdings. As Lady Graham would doubtless want to talk with Lady Pomfret about family matters, Miss Merriman decided to go down to the village and see how everything was getting on. For life in a village is far more interesting than life in a large town in that everything is happening under one’s nose and is freely if ignorantly discussed by everyone, whereas in London you may live in the same house for years and know practically nothing about your next door neighbours, or even the house opposite.

Ever since her engagement Miss Merriman’s walks down to the village had been not unlike John Baptist-Cavalletto’s progress through Bleeding Heart Yard. Not that the housewives rushed out at her with domestic implements, saying “Flour dredger, Miss Merriman,” but they were too apt to stop her and ask after one or another of the family, notably in the case of Mrs. Panter at 6, Clarence Cottages, wife of George Halliday’s carter and mother of Lady Graham’s kitchen maid Odeena, so called as a tribute to the Barchester Odeon where Mrs. Panter had sat every Saturday during a long courtship, holding Mr. Panter’s hand. And sure enough Mrs. Panter was plucking a fowl at her front door, so Miss Merriman stopped to talk with her.

“Well, miss, they do say wonders will never cease,” said Mrs. Panter. “I’m sure I’m ever so glad you and Mr. Choyce are getting married. It’s much the best way,” which made Miss Merriman wonder whether Mrs. Panter was trying to warn her against living in sin. “Panter’s as pleased as anything. He says if you want your boxes and things moving to the vicarage he’ll be pleased to take them for you in one of Mr. George’s carts.”

This generous invitation at George Halliday’s expense nearly made Miss Merriman laugh and she felt, as she had often felt before, how powerful the village was under its calm easy-going appearance. There would never, one hoped, be a Jacquerie in England, but the tyranny of the people, though kindly exercised, could be very great. So she thanked Mrs. Panter, asked after the rest of her family, and continued her progress to The Shop, kept by Mrs. Hubback, mother of the Halliday’s elderly maid at Hatch House and reputed to be ninety-one. Here one could buy pretty well anything except the one thing one wanted at the moment and here Vidler’s fish cart left its parcels of fish for regular customers.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Miss Merriman,” said Mrs. Hubback. “I saw the piece about your engagement. I was wrapping some fish because Vidler he’s a stingy old man and won’t put enough paper round his parcels and there was your name and Mr. Choyce’s staring at me as bold as brass. I said to Vidler, ‘Look here, Vidler,’ I said, ‘Miss Merriman’s going to be married to the Vicar.’ ”

“I hope he was pleased,” said Miss Merriman, finding nothing else to say.

“Pleased is as pleased does,” said Mrs. Hubback oracularly, “but when he said ‘One marriage always brings on another, Mrs. Hubback,’ I slapped his face with a nice bit of cod’s tail. At my age too!”

“I’m sure he deserved it,” said Miss Merriman and walked on towards the Mellings Arms where Mr. Geo. Panter, licensed to sell beer and spirits to be consumed on or off the premises, was sitting on the bench before his inn, doing his pools.

“Well, miss,” said Mr. Panter, getting up and holding out his hand. “All the best to you and the Reverend and if ever you want some beer out of hours, let me know.”

Miss Merriman, feeling that she was conniving at something unlawful, thanked him very much.

“And if you want a nice rabbit, or a hare, miss, you just let me know,” said Mr. Panter. “In season or out of season as the saying is. Trade isn’t what it was. Too much land under corn now. There’s Squire gone and ploughed up that field on the hill where a man could knock them over like ninepins if he knew the way to do it, or pick them up with a nice little snare. But I wish you all the best, miss. I’m coming to the wedding. When’s it to be?”

Miss Merriman said about Easter time, as Mr. Choyce had to be away a good deal this winter and a friend of his would be taking the services.

“That’s all right, miss,” said Mr. Panter. “I don’t never go to church anyway. A man as works as hard as me needs his Sunday morning in bed. But I’ll come to the wedding, Sunday or no Sunday, and you can tell the Reverend so.”

This appeared to be a kind of polite dismissal, so Miss Merriman turned her steps homeward again. As she had to pass the church she thought she would go in for a moment. She had gone through the lych gate and was near the porch when to her horror she saw, sitting on a camp stool among the green hillocks that marked the older and humbler graves, the far too well-known form of Mr. Scatcherd, the self-appointed village artist, his sketch book on his knees, dressed as usual in a kind of sporting outfit of belted Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers that buttoned below the knee, and a deer-stalker hat. Luckily his back was turned towards her. She felt that at the moment one more congratulation, especially from Mr. Scatcherd, who could have rivalled Prince Giglio in the length of his exordiums, would make her either scream or have the giggles, neither of which would be seemly in a churchyard not suitable to her position. So she walked quietly away, deliberately closing her ears and eyes to Mr. Scatcherd’s lordly wave of the hand inviting her to come closer, and went back to Holdings.

There would be a good deal more of this to come, she feared, but all should be borne for Herbert’s sake, and the foolish middle-aged Miss Merriman found herself saying her betrothed’s name aloud and had to laugh at herself for her own happy folly.