“I will get the Dean and Mrs. Crawley to dinner,” said Lord Crosse. “Perhaps you would come too, Mrs. Morland. Aberfordbury is really intolerable. These new lords!”
“Come, come, father, you’re only third baron yourself,” said Mr. Crosse, which Lord Crosse took very good-humouredly and said unless his son married and did his duty by the country he would be the fourth and last baron, after which remark that side of the table laughed a good deal and the other side wanted to know why, and the noise was so loud that Peters, standing in the pantry like the Turk with his doxies around (except that by no stretch of the imagination could the village helpers be considered as such), said it reminded him of the parties His Former Lordship used to have at the Towers in the hunting season while Her Ladyship was in Italy, and if the ladies liked to finish that last bottle of champagne he was sure his lordship would have no objection, and The Boy could have just a taste, seeing as he’d never had champagne before.
“But mind you don’t tell your mother, my lad,” said Peters, to which words of wisdom the boy, such is the effect of the Demon Drink, said You betcher life I won’t Mr. Peters, sir and all the women said There now, wasn’t he a one. But we are glad to say that the boy, his soul as set on pleasing his superior and so raising himself from the ranks as was Sir Galahad’s on the Holy Grail, never said a word about it to either of his parents, nor did he boast about it among his young companions; from which we confidently predict a good future for that boy whether in service or in any other walk of life.
By this time Mrs. Carter had withdrawn her ladies to go up and see her babies asleep in their cots, all the devil in them drowned in the angel, with petal-soft warm cheeks, hair slightly damp with the exertion of sleeping and small starfish hands on the coverings, or thrown up above the head—and only mothers know how long it is before a baby’s ridiculous macaroni arms can meet above its ridiculously out-size head—bless them.
So the men now were able, if they wished, to se debrailler (Lord Crosse, who had for a short time been in the diplomatic service and prided himself upon his French), or Use Oaths, or Talk Lightly of Women, or lose a thousand pounds at ecarte, pledge their family plate, their equipages and even their French cook and win it all back in a throw of the dice. But if we are to be truthful, they drank a glass of port each and discussed (a) Mr. Macfadyen’s new vegetable marrow crossed with a pumpkin and (b) what the profits of Mr. Adams’s great engineering works at Hogglestock were likely to be, and as none of them knew any definite facts about either of these subjects they got on very well.
“I say, father,” said Mr. Crosse, “Edith wants to read that book of Mrs. Morland’s that’s out of print and she can’t get a copy. I said you’d lend her yours.”
“Well, you were the more deceived,” said Lord Crosse. “I will give a book—if I have a duplicate—but lend: Never. Lending books breaks more old friendships than I would like to mention. There is a copy in the Barchester Free Library, because I gave them one. You can get it out for Edith if she can’t get it out for herself.”
Mr. Crosse thought of taking offence for a moment, but he was a good son and said All Right and then the three other men took up the same tale, Everard Carter being particularly fierce about the books which—in spite of all rules— were yearly missing from the school library, though he must say if he was to be fair (which he evidently did not wish to be) that the staff were on the whole much more careless than the boys, and Matron had kept a book of Mrs. Morland’s for three months before it was run to earth.
It was of course almost inevitable that the three younger men, George Halliday, Mr. Crosse, and his brother-in-law Mr. Carter should get together over war reminiscences and when it was discovered that Mr. Carter, who was artillery, had been within ten miles of Vache-en-Étable a month after the other two had left it, they became rather noisy brothers-in-arms.
“I say, George,” said Mr. Crosse, “do you remember that Australian medical bloke, Major Something, when the diggers lost the A.P.M. in the canal? He was a hard case. I wonder what happened to him?”
George Halliday said he had forgotten that one, but did John-Arthur remember the English Colonel who wore his eye-glass even when he was asleep and—at which point Mr. Carter said he didn’t want to interrupt, but would anyone like to see the children in bed before going to the drawing-room.
This is an invitation which is always difficult to refuse unless one has a really lame leg and cannot easily get upstairs. The gentler sex—by which we mean women—are always ready to go up two or three pair of stairs to worship, though we doubt whether the Rest really want to. But Mr. Carter was still a young parent, his wife was delightful, the food and drink had been good, the company amusing and friendly, so up they trooped, to be received by nurse with a fine mixture of condescension as from a Worker to the Idle Classes and proper pride that Her babies should be properly appreciated by a Lord (even if Lord Crosse was but Poor Granpa in nurse’s estimation), the heir to a barony (to be known henceforth as Uncle John), a Headmaster, and The Young Squire, for so the elder villagers still called George Halliday. As for Daddy, by which name Mr. Carter was now doomed to be known though he much disliked that particular form of his name, he stood low in the list, being only the children’s father.
For the honour of grandparents—being seven ourself so to speak—it must be said that Lord Crosse behaved magnificently, speaking with just the right mixture of lordly arrogance and servile respect to nurse and remembering both children’s ages; but as he had had a rehearsal not so long ago this was perhaps not quite fair. Everard Carter as a father of three and in loco parentis to a number of older boys was graciously approved by nurse who said she was sure Our Young Gentleman would like to go to a nice school. But as O.Y.G. was fathoms deep in slumber with one flushed cheek visible and the downy curls on his head damp with the exertion of going to sleep, he could not speak for himself; not that he could have said much to the point if awake. As for Everard he disliked the idea of touting for school-fodder and parried nurse’s hints with considerable skill.
“I always feel an awful fool with babies,” said George Halliday to Mr. Crosse as they came downstairs. “I don’t mind my sister’s, that’s Martin Leslie’s wife, because—oh well after all they’re hers. But I don’t really want to see even hers when they’re small. They’re quite jolly later on,” to which Mr. Crosse cordially agreed and so they joined the ladies who had been enjoying their segregation vastly, discussing such really interesting subjects as whether Mrs. Macfadyen, formerly Margot Phelps, daughter of the Admiral at Southbridge, was likely to have a baby or not, thus leading to an ill-informed discussion as to the ultimate age at which one could expect a baby, till Edith instanced Sarah who, to her own great surprise, had a child at a highly advanced age. But this was not received with favour by the rest of the party and in any case, said Mrs. Morland, one never knew what people’s ages really were in the Old Testament and perhaps the word that was translated year was really only month, or perhaps something like three months, which would of course make it all much easier. Lady Graham then instanced Methuselah, but as no one could remember how many years old the Bible said he was, it was not much good trying to reckon how old he might have been if the years had been months.
Mrs. Morland, with a feeling that Edith was not quite at her ease, presently got her onto a large sofa with kind Kate Carter where the talk could be on the level of everyday’s most quiet need by sun and candlelight and they enjoyed themselves very much while Lady Graham and Mrs. Carter talked village, a talk that like the Midgard Worm has its tail in its mouth, so that you can go on for ever.
“Mrs. Morland,” said Edith, “did you ever want to have a job when you were young. I mean—”
“When I wasn’t as old as I am now, you mean,” said Mrs. Morland kindly. “No. I can’t say that I did. Then I got married and had four boys which was quite enough job for anyone. And then my husband died so I had to write books. No, I don’t think I ever wanted a job.”
> “I really wouldn’t have had time for a job,” said Kate Carter, “I did so much for mother at home. I did do some secretarying for the Dean and Mrs. Crawley, but then I got married which was much nicer.”
“But you both did do jobs, even if you didn’t have jobs,” said Edith, sticking to her idea with all her mother’s gentle tenacity of purpose. “I do want to have a job. Something about managing places. Not all cows like Emmy, or schoolboys like Clarissa—”
Mrs. Morland interrupted to ask if Clarissa Belton was teaching at Harefield House School.
“Oh no, not teaching,” said Edith, “but she and Charles have a House now and Clarissa runs it all. It’s twenty boys but Clarissa says she could easily do thirty if they had one more bathroom—they’ve only three. It sounds lovely,” which words made Mrs. Morland think. Both Grahams and Leslies were managers. Lady Emily Leslie, that enchanting, wayward, loving, maddening creature, had managed everyone and everything that came within her orbit. Sir Robert Graham was a leader of men and affairs. Perhaps Edith had it in her too. She would have liked to talk with Miss Merri-man about it, but this could wait. As a mother of boys only she did not know girls very well and though she was fond of Edith and found her a very agreeable companion, she did not feel that she knew what was going on inside.
Kate Carter, appealed to by their hostess for information about the Friends of Barchester Hospital, went over to sit with her and Lady Graham, leaving Mrs. Morland and Edith alone.
“Can I tell you something, Mrs. Morland?” said Edith.
“Of course you can,” said Mrs. Morland, “and I can listen. But don’t expect me to be able to help you much. I am not in the least practical.”
“It isn’t practical,” said Edith. “At least perhaps it is. You know Emmy always loved the Home Farm and she went to live at Rushwater with our cousin Martin Leslie and do cows when she left school and then when she got married to Tom Grantly she went on living there and Tom says she can judge stock as well as Lord Stoke. And Clarissa wanted dreadfully to go to college, so she did, and then she got married to Charles Belton, and—” at which she stopped.
“And you dreadfully want to do something?” said Mrs. Morland kindly, feeling at the same time pretty sure that Edith would also wish to leave the nest.
“Yes. Don’t think it’s awfully silly,” said Edith, “but I want to do a course in Estate Management and help father. I was talking to Mr. Carter about it,” she added in a grown-up voice. “I got that stupid thing one has to get when one leaves school, but I don’t want to go to college like Clarissa. I’d rather learn about managing a place. I’ll help father with Holdings and when I’m married I’ll know how to run my husband’s place.”
Mrs. Morland marvelled, as all we elders marvel, forgetting that we too were once young and confident in our power to tackle anything, that this spoilt baby of the Graham family should be so sure of herself. Yet she envied it. So had not all her own generation been sure, except that they nearly all expected to marry and most of them did. But to tackle a professional training in estate management and be prepared to take on one’s father’s place under present conditions was an undertaking that almost frightened her.
“I expect you will,” she said. “I never learnt to do anything, so I just had four sons and got them educated with writing books and now I go on writing books to help to educate my grandchildren.”
“But that is what is so depressing,” said Edith. “You did everything on your own and I don’t see how I can ever do things on my own. Emmy did cows on her own, but Tom does the estate part. And Clarissa just helps Charles. But I’ve no one to help me.”
From some girls this might have been taken as an almost Victorian “I’m a poor helpless little thing and you are a Great Big Man” attitude, but Mrs. Morland felt that this was not so, that Edith was rather blindly trying to justify her existence. As if such a darling girl needed justifying, said Mrs. Morland indignantly to herself. But that was life now. And though Edith had said no word about her parents, Mrs. Morland wondered if perhaps Lady Graham was coddling this last duck of her brood, keeping her young too long, without realizing what she was doing. Hardly a case where an outsider could interfere.
But now with the men coming in all this was put aside and the talk became general and quite interesting about county affairs and particularly about the contemplated chapel to Canon Bohun and the necessity for a strong lay party to support the Dean and Canon Joram who were already active in the anti-Bohun party.
“If,” said Mr. Carter thoughtfully, “it were possible to get the Bishopess to read those poems of Bohun’s that Oliver Marling edited, I think even she would be shocked.”
Lord Crosse, a loyal supporter of the anti-Palace faction, said he doubted whether the Bishopess could read. He knew, he said, from his secretary at the office, who got her books from Messrs. Gaiters, that she and the Bishopess were both served by Miss Black, who had told his secretary that really, the books the Palace had you wouldn’t hardly credit. All that Russian stuff and worse, his secretary had said darkly, and that really not quite nice book of Mrs. Rivers’s about the Decameron in modern life, all about people going on, well, one wouldn’t like to credit such things could happen, not a bit like the home life of Our Dear Royal Family, at which words nearly everyone felt the faint mist in the eyes and slight constriction of the throat that the thought of Majesty brings to us.
Then this subject died and other matters for interest or amusement came up and presently, to everyone’s surprise, it was eleven o’clock and Lady Graham began to say good-bye to her hostess, with plans to see more of her and catch her for even more village matters.
Mrs. Morland said she must be going.
“Would you think me interfering if I asked if I could drive you home, Mrs. Morland?” said Lord Crosse. “I hear that the road is up over in your direction.”
“Well, that is very kind of you,” said Mrs. Morland, “but I saw just where it was up when I came over and it can’t be upper. I mean no one will be working on it now. Besides if you drive me home in my car you won’t get home and if you drive me in your car, how shall I get my car over from Hatch End to High Rising?”
“Quite simple,” said Lord Crosse, noticing with faint disapproval that his daughter and his son were listening. “If I may drive you home in my car Peters can follow with your car to High Rising and then I shall drive him back to Hatch End where he will pick up my other car.”
“But what about your boy?” said Mrs. Morland. “I saw him through the service door drinking the dregs of the glasses.”
“He can come with Peters,” said Lord Crosse firmly. “But how good of you to think of him. I only hope he hasn’t been a nuisance to my daughter’s staff.”
So after good-byes Lord Crosse helped Mrs. Morland into his car and drove her home, followed by Peters with her car. And we can only hope that the fact of driving the well-known novelist was its own reward, for Mrs. Morland, who was not often out late, was so sleepy that she almost needed shaking up from time to time like Mrs. Smallweed, and could only say Good-night in a very dazed way to her kind admirer. When the front door had closed, and Peters had put Mrs. Morland’s car into the garage, he got into the back of Lord Crosse’s car and they went back to Hatch End. Here the Boy, who had been fast asleep in cook’s arm-chair in the servants’ sitting-room, was more or less roused and bundled into the small car by Peters who took him home, told his mother he had been a good lad and he could have his sleep out tomorrow, which condescension so impressed the Boy’s mother that she darned his socks before she went to bed, it being now well on midnight. By this time Lord Crosse was in bed, reading one of Mrs. Morland’s earlier novels and thinking of his wife and how she would have enjoyed the evening. And we think she would, for she was very fond of him and would have liked of all things to see him happy.
The rest of the party quickly dispersed, Lady Graham and Edith, who was yawning like anything, to Holdings and bed; the Carters to Southbridge, and George H
alliday across the river to his home and his duties. To his relief the house was dark, so he drove round by the back entrance, left the car in the yard and went quietly upstairs, grateful for silence. He did not lie long awake with star-defeated sighs, for he was very tired. He remembered suddenly what that kind Mrs. Carter had said about a nurse who liked elderly invalids and understood the difficulties of staff and housekeeping in these days. That might be the answer if it came off. More rest and more leisure for his mother. A kind, competent hand firmly upon his father. And for himself some respite from having to tell an ill man every day about the farm, knowing that his father hardly understood now who or where he was except for his dependence on his wife; for George had realized some time ago that the time and work and patience he gave to the place meant nothing, now, to his father. But work must go on and day follow the escape of night. He went to sleep with the light still on and did not wake till late next morning—or late for him. His first thought was of Sister Heath, but he told himself to be patient and his self was fairly obedient.
CHAPTER 7
Mrs. Everard Carter was not one to let grass grow under her feet when a kindness could be done. Next morning she rang up her sister Lady Merton at Northbridge and told her about the Hallidays’ plight. Lydia, who possessed the strong benevolence of soul attributed by Pope to General Oglethorpe, at once flew from Pole to Pole, or in other words drove down to Punshions, an old stone cottage formerly the cold uncomfortable home of the Provencal scholar Miss Pemberton and her co-worker on the great Biographical Dictionary of Provence, Mr. Downing. Mr. Downing was now happily married to Mrs. Turner, a delightful widow with a comfortable house and some money and Punshions had been taken, after Miss Pemberton’s death, by Miss Heath a very nice and capable retired nursing sister and her friend Miss Ward, also an ex-nurse with some private means. And here the two ladies led a very happy life, putting thick carpets over the stone floor of the living-room and the far too slippery shiny wooden staircase, painting the depressing original and very crooked beams and rafters a nice shade of cream, fixing draught excluders (or whatever their name is) to the bottoms of the ill-fitting old doors and installing gas-radiators all over the place. They also had the large open fireplace in the living-room safely shut up with matchboard-ing painted pink and a nice gas fire put in so that all their friends said it was too cosy for words. As indeed it was, but better be cosy than cold at any time. Miss Ward had quoted the words “the clartier the cosier” more than once with great satisfaction and as neither she, nor Miss Heath, nor any of their local friends were well acquainted with the Lowland Doric, the description gave great satisfaction, making one think, as Mrs. Downing had said, of a Nicht wi’ Burns. Luckily her husband had not heard these words which would have troubled his accurate scholarly mind: but even if he had heard them we think he would have overlooked them as one of the many inexplicable and much-loved barbarisms of his much-loved and very loving wife. Those who knew Mr. Downing best from his academic days were wont to say with his old Oxford friend Mr. Fanshawe, now Master of Paul’s College, that a man who could marry a wife called Poppy was, as M. de Voltaire so truly remarked about the prophet Habakkuk, capable de tout. But as no one in Northbridge except the Rector knew the allusion and we doubt whether any of them had ever seriously attempted to read the work in question, although one of the four shortest prophetic books, the matter had gone no further.
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