“And only stands by itself, madam,” said Mr. Scatcherd, forgetting the artist’s status and harking back to his early life in the grocery business when Politeness to Customers was still the rule in good business. “Drink hasn’t a leg to stand on compared with food. But to go back to the subject under discussion—”
“What was it exactly?” said Mrs. Carter who was not only beginning to feel mad but, even worse, a little bored.
“Ah, that is the Crux,” said Mr. Scatcherd.
“Well, I must be going on,” said Mrs. Carter. “I shall show your picture to my husband. I think that tall bulrush in the background is so effective. It seems to pull the whole thing together” and if she had been in a comic strip a balloon would have been issuing from her mouth with the words: “Thinks: I have said quite the right thing.”
But far from appearing gratified by her appreciation of his card, Mr. Scatcherd swelled visibly with the Wounded Pride of an Artist.
“If it is to the Spire of the Cathedral you are reluding to, madam,” said he, with (in his opinion) the courtesy that is more biting than downright discourtesy, “I regret that you are in Error. It is my impression—and, mind you, I only say my impression —of Our Spire.”
Mrs. Carter nearly had the giggles, but she was not the daughter of a very intelligent man of affairs for nothing.
“Oh, not the Spire,” she said. “I meant the bulrush in the foreground. It gives that extra touch.”
“That indeed alters the case,” said Mr. Scatcherd, unbending. “The bulrush to which you relude, madam, was put there by Me for that very reason as you said. When I looked at the sketch—for it is only a sketch,” he went on, implying that the finished picture would be about twelve feet wide by seven high, in oils and a heavily gilt frame, “I said to myself in the very same identical words as you said, I said It Needs The Extra Touch.”
“Well, that is delightful,” said Mrs. Carter. “Good-bye” and before Mr. Scatcherd could even open his mouth she was away at a quick pace to The Shop where she ordered some groceries, left her shopping basket to be called for later and walked over the long narrow bridge which carried high on stone arches spanned the water meadows and the Rising above the reach of floods: even above the level of the great flood of 1863 when a jackass had been carried down for seven miles and subsequently was found unhurt in a willow tree, from which four men were needed to get it down.
At the farther end, facing the river, was Hatch House, the home of Hallidays for many generations; a square red brick house with well proportioned sash windows and a small front lawn which is embanked by a high wall above the old road to Barchester. So far it had kept up its appearance of the Squire’s House, though how long that would go on it was impossible to say. As so often was the case, Mrs. Halli-day was on her knees by a flower bed, a hessian apron with large pockets tied round her waist and wearing an old pair of her husband’s riding gloves.
“May I come in?” said Mrs. Carter from the gate.
Mrs. Halliday turned her head, recognized her caller and got up with a welcoming face.
“I thought I’d come over,” said Mrs. Carter “in case the telephone disturbed your husband.”
“How kind of you,” said Mrs. Halliday. “He sometimes thinks he hears the telephone when it isn’t really ringing so one gets rather confused when it really does. Shall we sit in the summer-house?” and she took her guest to a small shelter facing the river where three or four people could sit and talk, or watch birds through field-glasses, or take a book to read and go to sleep while the book lay open, sprawling face downwards on the floor, unable to scream for help.
“If Leonard wakes up and hears people talking in the house he always comes to see who it is,” said Mrs. Halliday, “so it is easier to talk here,” which she said in a quiet, tired voice, as one making a simple statement. But to Mrs. Carter there was a good deal more behind her words and her kind nature felt sorry for her hostess. “Your nice Miss Heath rang me up later,” Mrs. Halliday went on, “and she is coming this afternoon. I ought to have told you, but I forget everything now.”
“So do I,” said Mrs. Carter, hoping to cheer her hostess. “I often go down from the nursery to telephone and when I get downstairs I can’t remember who I wanted to telephone to and then I have to go up to the top of the house again to remember who it was,” at which graphic description of the kind of mental woolliness to which we have been reduced by the war, the years after the war, the rising cost of everything essential (for the luxuries we have mostly relegated to the luxury class where they belong), the increasing apprehension of more troubles at home and abroad to come and the way that a Pound means about two and elevenpence three farthings, Mrs. Halliday had to laugh. And as the laugh was not only on account of Mrs. Carter’s words but also a little against herself and her own worries, she felt all the better for it.
“By the way, I must explain why I rang off so quickly just now,” said Mrs. Halliday. “I don’t want to bore you with my troubles, but Leonard—my husband—always seems to hear the telephone in spite of being rather deaf now and he is apt to think it is someone important who wants to talk to him and comes to answer it and wants to know everything. Not that there is anything to hide, goodness knows,” she went on, talking in her tired voice almost to herself, “but if he had known it was you on the telephone I should have had to explain again who you are and—oh well,” and she looked away over the water-meadows to the line of the downs, unchanged in shape through centuries, ever changing in colour with the seasons, the sun, the rain, the pasture land and the cornland with cloud-shadows sailing across them. Mrs. Carter did not speak. She thought Mrs. Halliday wanted to tell her something and was finding it difficult and that the kindest thing to do would be to say nothing.
“You see his mind is going,” said Mrs. Halliday and smiled.
Mrs. Carter was for a moment quite at a loss, a thing which we think had never before occurred in her happy, well-regulated life.
“And that,” Mrs. Halliday went on, “is why I hope Miss Heath may be a success. She ought to be here at any moment now. Shall we go in? Leonard would like to see you,” and she got up, looked once more away across the river to the village and the church and took Mrs. Carter into the house.
“I won’t do much introducing or explaining,” she said to Mrs. Carter. “It only confuses him. And if he thinks you are someone else you won’t mind?” to which Mrs. Carter could only reply, with great truth, that she would like to be anyone that Mr. Halliday wanted her to be, and so they went into the drawing-room.
As Mrs. Carter had not yet seen Mr. Halliday she very naturally did not know what to expect. Mrs. Halliday’s words had rather prepared her for a gibbering dotard so it was with distinct relief that she saw what was certainly a rather invalidish-looking person but otherwise just like a lot of other elderly men she had known. He was reading a book and did not at first notice their entrance, but when his wife said, “Leonard, I have brought a friend to see you” he looked up. For a moment he seemed perplexed and then he saw his wife and the look of worry was banished.
“It is Mrs. Carter, Leonard,” said Mrs. Halliday in a most matter-of-fact ordinary voice (though how hard she had worked to make it ordinary we do not quite know). “She and her husband are living in the Old Manor House. Her father is Lord Crosse.”
“Yes. I know Lord Crosse,” said Mr. Halliday, “but this isn’t Lord Crosse, Eleanor. He is in London.”
Mrs. Carter, who had a good deal of courage, decided that one might as well do any nettle-grasping that had to be done at once. So she held out her hand and said very kindly—but not too kindly—that Lord Crosse couldn’t come today but he would come soon.
“And I am his daughter,” she said, “so I came to see you.”
“Then you are Enid,” said Mr. Halliday.
Mrs. Carter saw a look of almost despair on her hostess’s face.
“He thinks you are your mother,” said Mrs. Halliday quietly.
“So
I am, if he likes it” said Mrs. Carter, also quietly, and then she sat down by Mr. Halliday and began to tell him how nice it was to be back in Barsetshire and how glad she was to see him.
“And we are living in that lovely Old Manor House,” she said, in a very ordinary voice, at which point Mrs. Halliday went away: not in annoyance, but with a feeling that this nice daughter of Lord Crosse’s was dealing very competently with a situation that had got quite beyond her control. In the hall her faithful old maid Hubback—sister, aunt, female cousin, to half the village—was waiting for her.
“Miss Heath’s come,” she said. “I’ve taken her suitcase up.”
Mrs. Halliday asked where Miss Heath was, feeling that Hubback in some unexplained access of feudal loyalty might have pushed her into the larder and locked the door pending further enquiry.
“I took her up to her room,” said Hubback, who in private chose to dispense with all outward forms of courtesy though none could announce a visitor more high and disposedly when she liked. “I expect she’d like to unpack and then she can come down. I’ll bring tea as soon as she comes” and so went away to the kitchen and tried to smother the anxiety she felt by getting tea ready. For however well people face things there is always a chink and Hubback knew, with the sure instinct of her class, that once a trained Nurse got into the house, someone went out feet foremost, a belief very firmly held in those parts on no grounds at all.
So Mrs. Halliday went upstairs and found the bedroom door open and a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman in a neat suit putting her belongings into various drawers and cupboards.
“Miss Heath? I am so glad to see you,” she said, shaking hands. “I do hope Hubback, that’s our old maid, has been kind to you.”
“Very kind indeed,” said Miss Heath, “and quite a character. What a charming room and such a lovely view. I always think a view is quite an important part of a bedroom. When I was with Lady Norton—old Lady Norton it was, not her daughter-in-law—her bedroom looked out over the rose-garden to the church.”
As Mrs. Halliday was uncertain whether this was to the bedroom’s credit or discredit, she pretended to be straightening a picture.
“I always think,” said Miss Heath, “that a churchyard is so peaceful. Some people find the church clock chiming keeps them awake. I am a splendid sleeper when I’m off duty but if I do hear a church clock strike I always say to myself, Well, there’s someone awake as well as yourself and then I usually go right off almost at once. I have brought my uniform in case it is wanted, Mrs. Halliday, but I thought just to start with I’d come just as an ordinary visitor if you see what I mean,”
Mrs. Halliday said, rather weakly, what a kind thought and tea would be ready almost at once.
“This was my daughter’s room—Mrs. Martin Leslie—before she married,” said Mrs. Halliday. “The furniture is rather old, but the bed has a proper mattress—the old one was like a sack of potatoes. There is a large cupboard here and all the drawers are empty. The bathroom is just across the passage and no one else will be using it except George— my son. He runs the farm now. If you want anything, please ring,” and she pointed to a rather tattered bell-pull of linen embroidered with art-nouveau tulips. “Tea will be ready as soon as you come down. And do please ring if you need anything. Hubback loves looking after our guests,” and she went down again to the drawing-room where Mr. Halliday was talking to Mrs. Carter about the ball where they had first met and Mrs. Carter was most obligingly pretending to be her mother which, as Mr. Halliday wanted to talk and not to listen, was not difficult. And under his talk Mrs. Halliday told Mrs. Carter that the nurse had come, so Mrs. Carter found she had to get back to her children, said her good-byes and went away.
Meanwhile Miss Heath had unpacked her suitcase with swift proficiency, looked at herself in the glass, thought what a good thing it was she got her hair re-permed last week, and then went downstairs.
“How quick you have been,” said Mrs. Halliday to her guest. “Leonard, this is Miss Heath. She is a friend of Lady Merton’s and has come for a little visit.”
“I am very glad to see you,” said Mr. Halliday and began to make the motions of getting up but Miss Heath was so swift in her movement that she was beside him before he had levered himself up from his arm-chair, and shook hands with a kind of gentle firmness that made him sit down again in his place.
“You are a friend of Lady Merton,” he said. “I don’t think I know her. Do I, Ellie?”
Mrs. Halliday, much relieved at being able to speak the truth which she could rarely do now with her husband, said she didn’t think he had met Lady Merton, but he would remember her people, the Keiths, who lived at Northbridge. With his usual courtesy Mr. Halliday tried to remember if he could remember them, but the effort was painful, which being observed by Miss Heath she said what a nice bedroom Mrs. Halliday had given her and such a nice bit of embroidery on the bell-pull.
“My grandmother embroidered it,” said Mr. Halliday. “She did a lot of embroidery. Ellie, we must show—” and he stopped and looked confused. “Do I know you?” he said to Miss Heath, not—much to his wife’s relief—with any apparent embarrassment, but a kind of trust that she would tell him the truth.
“No, it’s the first time I’ve been here, Mr. Halliday,” said Miss Heath. “But I have met Mrs. Halliday and heard so much about your lovely house that it’s quite a pleasure to see it. What a lovely garden you have in front.”
“My wife does it all” said Mr. Halliday, looking at her with such affectionate admiration that Miss Heath, whom years of experienced nursing had inured to every peculiarity of invalids, suddenly felt rather like crying. “My mother loves gardening too. Ellie, did Caxton rake the gravel in front today? My mother likes it to be raked.”
Mrs. Halliday, with perfect self-command, said the gravel had been raked and his mother would be delighted. There would have to be explanations and she hoped Miss Heath would understand. At this moment Hubback brought in the tea-things.
Mrs. Halliday had rather wondered how Hubback would take the arrival of what she would at once have recognized to be a nurse in disguise if she had not been warned. But Hubback was not for nothing a servant of the old school. Nurses, in her opinion, were a nuisance, whether it was for the children when they were young or for anyone in bed— except of course in the case of a monthly nurse who was a necessary evil and must be endured with resignation—but if Mr. Halliday was ill and Mrs. Halliday wearing and worrying herself to death and Mr. George working and worrying his self to death (which, we may say, was quite untrue of both of them, for though they were anxious they were extremely sane) then a nurse it must be. And Hubback had—we regret to say—only waited for Sister Heath to go down to the drawing-room to run up to her room and discreetly look at her belongings. Everything she saw gave satisfaction. Miss Heath’s ordinary clothes were neatly hung in the large wardrobe; her underwear, with to Hubback’s mind just the right amount of elegance without fuss and good material too and some nice nylons, neatly laid in a drawer; and in another drawer her professional uniform, neatly laid out ready for immediate use in any emergency. Also Miss Heath had a quite revolting nightdress case of mauve satin embroidered with pansies in purple and yellow silk with a frill of ekroo lace (better known perhaps as écru, though equally disliked) which gave Hubback great satisfaction and she went to the linen cupboard and got out two of the really big bath towels which as a rule she would not allow guests to have and two of the best real linen face towels, beautifully marked in embroidery by Mr. Halliday’s mother and now almost as fine as lawn, though more comfortably absorbent, and put them in Miss Heath’s room. Only one thing was wanting. Nurses, she had observed, often had to be up in the night even if the patient wasn’t really ill. So she went down to the kitchen and collected an electric kettle, a tin of mixed biscuits with a very tight-fitting lid, and the general paraphernalia for tea-making in the night watches. These she carried upstairs on a tray and put in the guest’s room which had a proper hole
— or rather a triangle of holes—to plug the electric into, filled the kettle, and stood back to survey her handiwork. One more thing was wanting: flowers. It wasn’t like Mrs. Halliday to forget flowers for the spare room but being so worried about the Squire, well it wasn’t to be surprised at, so down she went again, picked a large, tight bunch of various flowers, crammed them ruthlessly into a mauve vase with a picture of a rustic cottage on it (her own private possession, much valued), and put it on the dressing-table. Then she looked at all she had done and, behold, it was very good, so she went downstairs and got the drawing-room tea.
Apart from a slight gentility which Mrs. Halliday felt she could easily get used to with anyone who was kind to her husband, tea went very well. Sister Heath, studying the ground, let Mr. Halliday do most of the talking and showed what Mrs. Halliday gratefully felt to be great tact in sheering off any subject that seemed likely to perplex or annoy her host. Presently, through the window that looked out at the back of the room, over towards the downs, came a loud clanking noise.
“That is my son coming back with the tractor,” said Mrs. Halliday to her guest. “They are working up on the top field.”
“I told George turnips would do no good in that field,” said Mr. Halliday, who was making a very good tea for an invalid and his wife’s spirits sank, for though George was very good and patient in letting his father give him instructions which, owing to their entire unsuitability he had not the faintest intention of carrying out, he was sometimes hard put to it to keep his temper under paternal questioning and criticism.
“I really must pass a remark,” said Sister Heath to her host, “about that cup of yours, Mr. Halliday. It’s the Eddystone Lighthouse isn’t it?”
“My old nurse gave it to me when I was quite small,” said Mr. Halliday, pleased by the guest’s attention. “Yes, that side has the Eddystone Lighthouse. The other side has Rule Britannia,” and he turned the cup so that she might the better admire it.
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