“Elegant and tip-tilted,” said David sententiously. He was not sure whether she understood, but she looked pleased and blushed in a becoming way. Then the whole body of Grahams and Hallidays surrounded them. Mr. and Mrs. Halliday who were going back to Hatch House for lunch said good-bye.
“I say, David,” said Mr. Halliday, drawing David aside. “Did you understand the second lesson?”
“No, sir,” said David. He would have liked to add that it was partly because he wasn’t listening, but this might have hurt Mr. Halliday.
“Nor did I,” said Mr. Halliday. “Still, those fellows wrote in Latin or Greek or something, and it stands to reason they can’t always have known what they meant. Deuced hard work for the translators.”
“I expect it was often a case of by guess and by God,” said David sympathetically, while at the same moment he told himself he was being a hypocrite and making himself a motley to the view, simply from his great desire to be liked, and slipped away from the conversation.
The Hallidays went away towards the bridge while Lady Graham with her family and guests went down the path to the road. Just outside the lychgate Mr. Scatcherd was seated on his camp-stool, his back to the churchyard wall, busily and rather ostentatiously sketching, his head in a very old Panama hat thrown a little back and his block held at arm’s length. Dearly would Mr. Scatcherd have liked to pretend that Art had rapt him away into an empyrean where a large chattering party of church-goers seemed a mere delusion, but the younger Graham children hailed him with delight as an old friend, making such flattering comments on his work as obliged him to descend from his heights.
“Mother!” said Robert. “Mr. Scatcherd is making an admiring picture.”
Lady Graham, emerging from her normal state of placidly thinking about nothing in particular, smiled with her own peculiar charm at the artist and said, “Good morning, Mr. Scatcherd. How quick you have been.”
It was at once evident to David and Miss Merriman, respectively the quicker-witted and the most intelligent members of the party, that Lady Graham was under the impression that Mr. Scatcherd, having previously attended Divine Service, had with incredible agility sped down the churchyard and out of the gate, put up his camp-stool, opened his drawing-block and made an elaborate pencil drawing of the Mellings Arms, the whole within a period of not more than five minutes. If there had been any real danger both Miss Merriman and David would have gone to Lady Graham’s rescue, but in this case, exchanging a glance of sympathetic amusement, they left her ladyship to get out of the muddle as best she could.
“I have been working on this little sketch for some days, Lady Graham,” said Mr. Scatcherd. “Only a sketch, of course, but it has what you might call an idea behind it.”
“Oh, I thought,” said Lady Graham, a shade of disappointment in her voice, “that you had done it all since you came out of church.”
This was a very unwise remark, for Mr. Scatcherd was an avowed agnostic and only too ready to be boring about it, though no one took the slightest interest for he was a foreigner from Northbridge and foreigners are well known to be peculiar.
“I was not in church this morning,” said Mr. Scatcherd, with the proud fervour of those who know that England is, as far as church-going is concerned, still a free country and that the vicar is only too anxious to be broad-minded.
“The evening service is very nice too,” said Lady Graham, “but we all like the morning service, don’t we, my darlings?”
At this point Mr. Scatcherd would undoubtedly have burst in his zealous desire to explain to Lady Graham his conviction that organised religion of any sort was a mere mummery, had not his niece come up.
“WELL, uncle!” said Miss Scatcherd, “as if it wasn’t trying enough for me your being rude to the Vicar and never setting foot in the church but you must sit in the road like a gypsy and bother her ladyship come along now because I left the dinner in the oven and I’m not going to waste my meat ration getting it burnt and if you’re going to be late I’m not good GRACIOUS what will her ladyship think of you sitting there all morning with your pencils and rubbish on a Sunday too I never DID.”
At the first sound of his niece’s voice Mr. Scatcherd had begun to huddle his sketching materials together, assisted by Robert, while Edith folded the camp-stool and Clarissa picked some long grasses and made an elegant bunch which she gave to Miss Scatcherd.
“THERE uncle,” said Miss Scatcherd, finding any subject a good approach for scolding Mr. Scatcherd, “look what Miss Clarissa has given me and all you do is to stand there when the dinner’s frizzling up in the oven what her ladyship must be thinking I’d really rather not know it isn’t even as if you went to chapel like Nurse but just sitting about outside the church when everyone’s coming out good GRACIOUS will you never be ready.”
The unfortunate Mr. Scatcherd as well as being hustled by his masterful niece suddenly became conscious of a deadly chill which was Nurse’s showing deep though silent disapproval of the mention of her name, and dropped his sketching-block. David, wishing to end a scene which he now found excessively boring, picked up the block and handed it to the artist, who stuffed it into one of his large pockets, raised the Panama and hurried off after his niece. The Holdings party then walked back to lunch without any further delay.
During Lady Graham’s absence at church, Lady Emily had made a number of plans for the seating of the lunch party, but as they were chiefly concerned with trying to sit next to the two Hallidays, Anne Fielding and her adored David all at once, Miss Merriman had bided her time and arranged the table just as she, in her wisdom, knew would be best. David, conscious of Sylvia Halliday’s golden looks thought it might be amusing to sit next to her; also to sit next to that Fielding girl who had sung like a bird; but Miss Merriman, who though fond of David in a dispassionate way, saw no reason to spoil him, had him seated between his mother and Clarissa before he could make any protest, so David amiably set himself to please; not a difficult job.
“Mamma,” said Lady Graham across the table. “Robert said something you would love this morning. “Poor Mr. Scatcherd was sitting outside the church drawing the Mellings Arms and Robert said it was an admiring picture.”
“I suppose he meant admirable,” said George Halliday, delighted to get into conversation with his hostess.
“Oh no, George,” said Lady Graham, turning reproachful dove’s eyes upon him. “He meant admiring. It is quite different. Robert has always been so good at words, hasn’t he, mamma?”
“I think an admiring picture is perfect,” said Lady Emily. “Clarissa used to have some nice words. Do you remember the poem she made about the thrush that died, Merry?”
Miss Merriman did not.
“I remember them, mamma,” said David.
“‘See our thrush doth now arise
And to heaven he quickly flies.’
I can’t think why I remember them,” he added thoughtfully.
Lady Emily and Agnes, ignoring their young guests, began to quote several other instances of genius in the young Grahams. David, hoping to find someone to share his boredom, tried to catch Miss Merriman’s eye, but that lady was talking to Sylvia Halliday about borrowing a broody hen.
“How could you, Uncle David?” said a low, indignant voice at his side.
He turned to his niece Clarissa, whose cheeks were pink, whose eyes were suspiciously bright.
“I don’t know how I could in the least,” said David, “especially as I don’t know what it is I could. What’s the matter, Clarissa?”
His niece blinked her eyes violently, and gave them a quick violent dab with her handkerchief.
“My dear! Too tactless,” she said, smiling brilliantly. “Let us talk about something else.”
Seldom had David Leslie found himself at a loss, especially where the gentler sex was concerned, and never had any shadow come between him and his own family. Clarissa’s sudden attack of rage, or embarrassment, or was it both, made him feel acutely uneasy, a feel
ing unusual to him and rather mortifying. Lady Emily had turned to Anne Fielding and was according to her custom asking a number of piercing questions which from anyone else would have been maddening curiosity but in Lady Emily were only a sign of real interest and goodwill. Beyond Clarissa the visit of the broody hen was being arranged by an elaborate system of relays and houses of call, so David felt safe to tackle his niece. To see anyone unhappy or annoyed was a thing he hated; partly from a naturally kind nature, even more because the unhappiness or annoyance might disturb him. In most cases one could slip away from such uncomfortable positions; one could say a few charming words with all temporary sincerity and take one’s leave, forgetting very quickly the difficult moments. Possibly, as the war went on, it had become more difficult to skate over social ice that was thin or cracking, but David’s confidence in his own immunity had never received so shattering a blow as his niece Clarissa’s sudden change from a little girl to a young woman who spoke to him as an equal, and indeed with such grown-up and almost offhand words as made David conscious that he had received a snub and perhaps a well-merited snub.
“Look here, Clarissa,” he said, annoyed to find himself treating her as a contemporary and almost appealing for her forgiveness. “I’m awfully sorry about the Thrush poem.”
“Rather childish, don’t you think, Uncle David?” said the new grown-up voice of this new grown-up niece, who was smiling at him as prettily as ever, only the smile had a diamond-bright quality he did not like. And what was even more disconcerting, he wasn’t sure to which of them the word childish was meant to apply.
“If you mean the poem was childish, after all you were only a child when you made it,” said David.
“Quite,” said Clarissa, very politely, the smile a little less sparkling; or so he ventured to hope.
“If you mean I was childish to repeat it,” said David in a low voice and almost desperately, “I am quite really and truly and repentingly apologetic. You know, your mother does always repeat all your poems and words; she always has, bless her, though she has less sense of the suitable occasion than any woman I know. Do you suppose Robert minded her telling everyone about the admiring picture?”
“Oh, no,” said Clarissa, the hardness almost entirely gone from her voice. “Robert won’t ever mind things. Of course I adore mother, but I can’t help growing up. If only the war would go on I’d go into the W.A.A.F.S. like Sylvia, but it doesn’t look as if I’d have much luck. I am going to tell father I must go to boarding-school for a couple of years and perhaps I’ll get a scholarship for Cambridge and do engineering draughtsmanship.”
In such a calm and conversational manner was this bomb dropped and so good were David’s table manners, that no one could have guessed how his whole world had turned upside down in a few moments. Clarissa, the fat baby Clarissa, was nearly fifteen, knew what she wanted, would probably get it and was a woman to be reckoned with. And for the first time in his life David suddenly realised that his sister Agnes’s divine imbecility might be extremely trying for some of her children. Emmy, as we know, had so far broken away from her family as to become a Land Girl with the ultimate view of breeding bulls with her cousin Martin Leslie. Now Clarissa wanted to try her wings. The boys’ feelings did not matter so much. School was setting them free in turn. As for Edith, that stout and enchanting young woman would probably go through life taking it exactly as she found it. Looking across the table at his sister who was telling George Halliday how well her eldest son James was doing at Eton and how much he loved birds, David wondered with a sudden anxiety if she would ever realise that her children were growing up and the safe family circle, which even the war had not greatly changed, spreading and widening in a new strange world. He would have liked to discuss this matter with his niece Clarissa in the light of the confidence she had just reposed in him, but the lunch table was not the place and at any moment his mother with one of her piercing intuitions might pounce upon their conversation and insist upon discussing the whole matter before the Hallidays and that Fielding girl; so that when she turned to him, at that very instant, he almost jumped.
“I have made a delightful plan with Anne,” said Lady Emily, her eyes sparkling with a pleasurable anticipation which David at once diagnosed to be his beloved mother in one of her most meddling moods. “You know that house in the Close where old Canon Robarts used to live, David. I have always wondered what the servants’ bedrooms were like, so when you drive Anne back to Barchester after we have had tea at Rushwater I will come too and Anne is going to show me the whole of the top floor, because most luckily Lady Fielding’s, cook is having her Sunday out. I am going to have my afternoon rest at Rushwater,” said her ladyship, letting her table-napkin, her bag, and her spectacles slip from her lap to the floor as she got up, and flashing one of her mischievous defiant smiles at her daughter and her secretary, “so we will start as soon as I am ready. Come to my room, Agnes, and look at that piece of embroidery I found. I think it will do for your Bring and Buy Sale. And David, you must amuse Anne.”
But David had already determined not to be landed with another very young girl. Clarissa with her unexpected and shattering confidences had been quite enough for one day and the Fielding girl would very likely be dull. So he dutifully picked up his mother’s scatterings and managed to detach the Hallidays from the lunch table so that they could all three talk Army and Air Force shop in the garden. At the same time Clarissa slipped away with the younger children, so that Anne was suddenly deserted. Miss Merriman, who missed very little, came quietly to the rescue.
“Miss Bunting was with you, I think,” she said. “She came over here once with the Marlings and I had a great respect for her.”
Anne at once felt at home with Miss Merriman who had liked the old governess and talked in a confiding way that Miss Merriman found slightly touching, until it was time for the Rushwater party to start.
CHAPTER 4
SUNDAY dinner at Everard Carter’s House had run its course, or to be correct its two courses which were roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding and cabbage, followed by plum tart and custard. This has a specious sound of being a good Sunday mid-day meal, though in most cases it would have consisted of beef substitute, flannel Yorkshire pudding made with dried eggs, tough potatoes, damp greens, a pie with a leather crust and watery custard powder mess. But under Kate Carter’s sway the butcher mysteriously produced Scotch beef earlier in the week so that it would thaw out nicely, the potatoes were soft inside and crisp outside, the cabbage attractive, the plums all home-bottled, the pastry well made and the custard, as well as the Yorkshire pudding, made for a Sunday treat with real eggs. For Mrs. Carter had kept hens ever since 1914 and what with laying hens and laid-down eggs, all the boys in her husband’s house were very well fed.
Robin Dale, feeling rather replete and that a chair and a book would be more attractive than an expedition to Rushwater, told himself not to be lazy and rounded up the two Leslie boys, nice boys, but a little dull, as were their parents, John and Mary Leslie. It was already quite obvious to Everard Carter, Robin Dale and Mr. Birkett the Headmaster who knew a great deal more about his boys than they bargained for, that Leslie major and Leslie minor would go through school and later life in a golden mediocrity as good citizens with the right careers, wives and children. It was with more resignation than enthusiasm that Everard Carter put in their yearly reports that they were an excellent influence in the House, and he sometimes wished they would do at least one dashing and disreputable deed a term. Robin had no fault to find with their classics, which would always satisfy the examiners, and noted with some amusement that Leslie major rather ostentatiously took a Greek Testament to church and followed the Second Lesson in it: quite suitable to the outcome of a race of educated landowners.
Robin and his charges arrived at Rushwater Station about three o’clock, where a tall young man with a melancholy face and a slight limp was strolling up and down the platform. The Leslies with restrained joy greeted the
ir Uncle Martin and introduced their classical master to him.
“I’ve got the car,” said Martin Leslie, leading them to a shameful old Ford.
“Oh, Uncle Martin, can I drive?” said Leslie major.
“Certainly not,” said Martin. “You both get in behind. You can drive the car inside the park, but not on the road. We’ve got a new policeman who wants promotion. Do you mind coming in front with me Dale?”
Robin had no objection and they clanked through the little village into the park, where Martin stopped.
“Here, you boys can take her up to the house,” he said. “Shall we walk, Dale? It will be better for our nerves, and the park is looking nice.”
Robin was quite agreeable, the boys drove off, Leslie major taking first turn at the wheel.
“Extraordinarily competent boys my nephews are,” said Martin, “but lord! how uninteresting compared with my Aunt Agnes’s children.”
“Is that Lady Graham?” Robin asked.
“That’s the one,” said Martin. “She’s coming over this afternoon with some young people, so we may get some decent tennis. Her eldest girl Emmy is staying here to study cattle-breeding. She’s a character too. I expect you are pretty good at tennis.”
“I hate boasting,” said Robin, “but I’ve got a gammy foot, so I always ask for thirty to start with.”
He had said this in his own way, mocking his loss and hoping he wasn’t overdoing it; and then as so often happened, he felt ashamed and told himself for the thousandth time that the less he said about his foot the less he would bore people. But to his surprise Martin’s melancholy face suddenly lighted up and he produced an extremely agreeable smile.
“Good,” he said. “I’ll play against you and neither of us need ask for thirty. You may have noticed that I have an obvious kind of limp, which I grossly exaggerate when I want to impress newcomers.”
Robin said he had noticed it and he was so sorry and was it a strain.
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