Читать книгу Verena in the Midst - E. V. Lucas - Страница 4
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The correspondence from which the letters in this book have been selected passed (with the exception of the last) during 1919. The last is a little later.
Mr. Richard Haven, some of whose letters are to be found in a preceding volume, The Vermilion Box, is still a bachelor and still lives in Mills Buildings, Knightsbridge, but is doubtful if he can afford it much longer.
Miss Verena Raby, the centre of this epistolary circle, is one of Mr. Haven’s oldest friends. Old Place, the ancestral home over which she now reigns, is near Kington in Herefordshire, on the borders of England and the Principality which provides us impartially with perplexities and saviours. Miss Raby is one of a family of nine, but none of the others neglect any opportunity of postponing letter-writing. Of these brothers and sisters, all save one—Lucilla, Nesta’s mother—are living, or were living when these pages went to press.
Nesta Rossiter, who is managing Old Place during Miss Raby’s illness, married Fred Rossiter, an amateur painter, and they have three children, Antoinette (or “Tony”), Lobbie and Cyril.
Emily Goodyer is the children’s nurse. She is also the fiancée of Bert Urible, greengrocer, soldier and then greengrocer again.
Theodore Raby is Verena’s brother and a widower with one daughter, Josey.
Walter Raby, another brother, is ranching in Texas.
Hazel Barrance, daughter of Clara Raby, is another of Miss Raby’s nieces. She was a V.A.D. during the War, but has now returned to Kensington routine, in a not too congenial home. Her brother Roy also finds Peace heavy on his hands but has more chances for liberty and diversion, and grasps most of them.
Evangeline Barrance, a sister still at school, is one of the youngest editors in Europe.
Mr. Horace Mun-Brown, Miss Raby’s nephew and a briefless barrister, lives in the Temple on a small income and a sanguine disposition.
Mr. Septimus Tribe, the husband of Verena’s youngest sister, Letitia, and by some years her senior, was at the Board of Trade, but is now in retirement at Tunbridge Wells.
Clemency Power is an Irish girl who managed to get out to France during the War, although under age, and was so happy and busy there that she abandoned idleness permanently. Her mother, a widow, the daughter of an Irish peer, lives with Clemency’s two younger sisters near Kenmare. Patricia, aged nineteen, is the only one who comes into this correspondence.
Miss Louisa Parrish, who was at school with Verena and looks upon that accident as an indissoluble bond, lives frugally but with no loss of social position in her late father’s house in a Berkshire village.
Nicholas Devose is a traveller and artist who came nearer marrying Verena Raby than any other man has done.
Bryan Field is a young doctor whose path crossed that of Clemency Power in France during the War.
Sir Smithfield Mark is one of the leading surgeons at Bart’s.
Sinclair Ferguson is Miss Raby’s doctor.
Lady Sandys is a neighbour of the Rossiters in Kent.
Vincent Frank is remaining in the R.A.F. although the War is over.
Mrs. Carlyon, whom we meet at once, only to lose her again, is a neighbour of Miss Raby at Kington.
E. V. L.
