Lydia asked who Jasper was.
“He’s the old keeper,” said Leslie. “He is nearly as old as Uncle Harry. And anyway there’s enough dead wood to burn for years. If you like we’ll take the pony-cart and collect some to-morrow. It saves Jasper and he has a lot to do.”
She stopped suddenly and lay back in her chair.
“I’d love to,” said Lydia, who was arranging bottles, brushes, combs and such small fry neatly on the dressing-table, “what sort of pony is it?” and she pushed the less reputable toilet accessories into a drawer. There was no answer. She looked round and saw Leslie, rather like a deserted marionette, limp in the chair.
“I say, you look rotten,” said Lydia. “I am so sorry. I thought you didn’t look very fit downstairs. Shall I tell Lady Waring?”
“Please not,” said Leslie. “It’s all right, but I get these stupid fits since I was ill. If you could just take no notice——”
But Lydia, who believed in taking on any job that came in her way, was not to be put off by such evasion. True, she did not, as Lydia Keith would have done, sit down with her knees wide apart and her toes turned in and lay down the law, but she did plant herself before the fire in a rather gentlemanly way and looking down with kind firmness at Leslie, asked her exactly what the matter was.
“I’ve done all my Red Cross exams,” she said, “and I’m frightfully strong, so if I can do anything for you, do let me know.”
Leslie was so struck by Mrs. Merton’s air of competence and benevolence that she thawed a little more, and haltingly at first, but gaining confidence by the delightful method of talking about herself, told Lydia how she had been secretary of a large naval organization for several years, which had meant a great deal of hard work and two visits to America, after the second of which she had been ill and just couldn’t get better.
“But don’t say anything to Aunt Harriet, please,” she said. “She would worry and then I’d get cross. I am really doing my best, but the weather is a bit against me, and then there’s Cecil.”
Lydia, divining that Miss Waring was relieving some strain by talking to her, looked down with kindly interest and asked who Cecil was.
“My brother,” said Leslie. “He’s in the Navy and this place will go to him when Uncle Harry dies, which I hope he never will, because Cecil adores the Navy and doesn’t a bit want to do death duties and things and take an interest in the crops and the shooting. If only there were the sea here and he could have a sailing boat he wouldn’t mind so much, but there’s no water at all, only the Dipping Ponds. I haven’t heard from him for six weeks, which is really quite short, but one does imagine things at night and I expect I’ll get a letter or a cable any day. It’s awfully good of you to listen to this.”
“I think it’s extremely reasonable of you to be ill when you haven’t heard from your brother,” said Lydia, in measured but vehement tones. “My brother Colin, who is really the nicest person in the world except Noel—that’s my husband—is in the Army, and I go quite mad sometimes when I don’t hear. But what one has got to get into one’s head,” said Lydia earnestly, “is that if they were killed or anything the War Office—I mean the Admiralty for your brother—would let one know. So the longer you don’t get any news the safer they are, in a way.”
Leslie was so grateful for Lydia’s bracing sympathy that she accepted this rather specious reasoning, and declaring that she now felt quite well got up and put her hair straight.
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Merton,” she said. “I must go and rest before dinner, which is a hideous thing I have to do, but I’m afraid it does me good. And I wish you’d say Leslie.”
“Of course, and I’m Lydia,” said Mrs. Merton. “And what’s more,” she added proudly, “no one, not even Noel or Colin, has ever called me anything else, not Lyddy or anything.”
“I should think not,” said Leslie, with meaningless but flattering indignation. “Oh, by the way,” she added, “who is Colonel Winter?”
“Colonel—oh, Philip,” said Lydia. “He was a master at Southbridge School where my brother-in-law is a housemaster and he was engaged to the headmaster’s daughter but she broke it off and then he went into the Army, at least he was a Territorial, so he was there anyway, and he was at Dunkirk and I’m frightfully pleased he is near here.”
Leslie went down the corridor, thinking how horrid the headmaster’s daughter must be. As she turned to go up the stair that led to the little room next to Selina where she was sleeping, she saw Major Merton, escorted by Sir Harry who was showing him Lydia’s room. Major Merton knocked and went in. Leslie, pausing at the foot of the stairs, heard a confused noise which she guessed rightly to be Lydia, pouring out her day’s adventures to Noel, giving him a rapid account of the Carters, rejoicing with him that Philip would be their neighbour.
“I’d hate to marry anyone,” said Leslie to herself as she went upstairs, “but if I had someone to talk to about Cecil, I wouldn’t even mind his being my husband.”
CHAPTER IV
NEXT day, being Sunday, Lady Waring asked the Mertons at breakfast if they would like to go to church. As Noel’s work very kindly didn’t want him on Sundays, the Warings and their guests walked across the chill, misty park to the church, which was at the Priory end of the village. An angry elderly clergyman hustled them through the service with such vigour that they emerged breathless but glowing with virtue at five minutes past twelve. Sir Harry, who was a church-warden, stopped to talk to the verger, while the others walked on.
“We haven’t got a proper Vicar at present,” said Lady Waring. “Our dear old Vicar died in October, and Canon Tempest, who has really given up active work, kindly takes the service on Sundays. He has been staying near here with a niece, but he is very anxious to get away to Devonshire, as the winter is too much for him. The living is in my husband’s gift, but it is so difficult to find the right man,” said Lady Waring with a sigh. “And we can’t even offer a Vicarage at the moment, as our dear old Vicar’s sister lived with him and we don’t feel we can turn her out the minute her brother is dead. It is such a nice little house. Harry’s father built it because the old Vicarage was so large and expensive. This is it.”
The Vicarage was indeed a delightful little abode, more like a particularly nice cottage, built of Barsetshire stone which mellows quickly.
“It is like something in a novel,” said Noel admiringly. “Home paddock and well-stocked kitchen garden if my eyes do not deceive me.”
“And there was a shrubbery to walk in on wet days,” said Lady Waring, “but we cut it down, because it simply ate up the garden and no one ever walked in it.”
“I wish I were a Vicar,” said Noel with undisguised envy, “and then I would ask to be inducted, if that is the right expression, at once. But I don’t think the Army would quite like it.”
“I wish you were, too,” said Lady Waring. “It would be a very nice temporary home for you and Mrs. Merton. When we shall find a suitable incumbent I don’t know. You see, the people here have their likes and dislikes, and they don’t want a good preacher, because they say they can get that at the chapel. And they so much prefer one of the gentry. There was a most zealous young man called Moxon, who was curate at Worsted under Dr. Thomas, who wanted this living, but he used to be Christian, in the social sense, in the Woolpack at Worsted and play darts, and the village didn’t like it at all. But I am thankful to say he has gone abroad. He writes a cheery letter for the parish magazine every month.”
“If I see a nice clergyman I will let you know at once,” said Noel earnestly. “The Dean of Barchester is rather a friend of mine. Unless of course your parish prefers someone from the Palace.”
“What’s that about the Palace, Merton?” said Sir Harry, joining them.
On hearing that Major Merton had been inquiring whether Lambton would consider an incumbent approved by the Bishop of Barchester, Sir Harry asked his wife in an audible aside whether he was a Bishop’s man.
“No, Har
ry, Major Merton stays at the Deanery,” said Lady Waring, so Sir Harry was able to pour his dislike of the Bishop into the sympathetic ears of his guests.
“Octavia Crawley is engaged to a very nice clergyman called Tommy Needham,” said Lydia. “He’s in Africa, or you might have had him.”
“Harry, we really ought to go and see Nannie,” said Lady Waring. “We haven’t been for two Sundays. Nannie Allen,” she explained to her guests, “was our boy George’s nurse—he was killed in 1918.”
“I expect,” said Sir Harry, “Major and Mrs. Merton would find it rather dull. There is a very pretty way home, Merton, if you take that stile beyond the Vicarage and keep left, leaving the old kennels on your right. Only don’t go through the second gate, because it leads nowhere. Take a little path that goes a bit up and a bit down, only not past the pond; turn left again just before it and keep slanting across the field to a bridle path on the far side, and just beyond it you will see a shed and a track going downhill. It is rather muddy at the bottom and you must be careful of the plank bridge over the stream, because it has broken twice lately and we haven’t a man to put in it at present. And at the other side of the marshy ground you will see Jasper’s cottage and then it is only a quarter of an hour to the Priory.”
Lady Waring saw interest, bewilderment and stupefaction succeed each other rapidly on her guests’ faces, and came to the rescue, suggesting that the men should walk home by the woods and she and Lydia should visit Nannie. Sir Harry looked relieved and took Noel off towards the stile.
“I do hope,” said Lady Waring as she and Lydia walked down the village street, “that it won’t bore you. Nannie is a most faithful old friend, and she does miss it when we don’t pay her a call on Sundays.”
To which Lydia replied that she liked Nannies very much and her family had an ex-Nannie themselves, who married the gardener and took lodgers.
“Nannie Allen has lodgers too,” said Lady Waring. “In fact I was thinking of her for you, but she is keeping her rooms for one of Lady Graham’s boys who is in quarantine. And may I say that I am glad of this, as it gives us the opportunity of getting to know you and your husband.”
“Oh, thank you most awfully,” said Lydia. “If it really isn’t a bother, Noel and I will be so grateful to you for having us. I’d nearly forgotten what a real house is like. And if you don’t mind, could we settle soon how much we may pay you, because it is so much more comfortable. We are really quite well off, if it isn’t boastful,” she added.
She had thought of asking Lady Waring not to say Mrs. Merton, but an instinct told her that Lady Waring, though she did not look elderly or behave as if she were, belonged to a generation which did not expect its juniors to take the lead. So she wisely left this question for the moment. Lady Waring, still thinking of Lydia, though in a most friendly way, as Mrs. Merton, the wife of Major Merton, was amused by Lydia’s eager honesty about payment and rather liked her for it.
At No. 1 Ladysmith Cottages Nannie Allen was to be seen seated at her window with an uncompromising countenance, which did not relax as she grimly watched her visitors come up the little gravel path.
“Nannie is offended,” said Lady Waring, “because we didn’t come last Sunday.”
With what Lydia considered superhuman courage she opened the door and went in. The little oilclothed passage smelt of cleanness and Sunday dinner. The sitting-room door was shut. Lady Waring behaved with the courage of a General’s wife. Opening the door boldly, she walked in, followed by Lydia, and advanced to the window. Lydia carefully shut the door.
“Well, Nannie,” said Lady Waring, “how are you? I’ve brought a lady to see you.”
“How do you do,” said Lydia, shaking Nannie’s unresponsive hand.
“You’ll excuse my getting up, miss,” said Nannie, sketching a pantomime of arthritic knees, trembling ankles and twisted feet. “This weather is very hard on me and no one takes any notice of me, not even my own daughter.”
“She was down here only the day before yesterday, Nannie,” said Lady Waring, “helping you to turn out the bedroom.”
“That’s how I got my rheumatism so bad,” said Nannie. “I didn’t expect you to-day, my lady. When you and Sir Harry didn’t come last week, I said to myself, It’s the weather that keeps them. They won’t want to come and see me now.”
“Now, Nannie, that’s nonsense,” said Lady Waring. “Sir Harry sent you his love and I’ve brought this lady to see your house. She is staying with me.”
“It’s a pity you never had a daughter, my lady,” said Nannie. “Someone like this young lady. But they’re all alike. Selina never comes near me now.”
“Is that your daughter that unpacked my things?” said Lydia. “She is nice, and so pretty.”
“They used to say she took after her father,” said Nannie, a shade less grimly.
“Well, I think she is awfully like you,” said Lydia.
Nannie said beggars couldn’t be choosers, but it was so evident that she said this merely because she couldn’t think of anything else depressing to say, that her guests were much cheered.
“And she’s awfully kind,” said Lydia. “The lock of one of my suitcases has been broken for weeks because one simply can’t get anything mended now, especially if you’re moving about, but she said Sergeant Hopkins would do it for me.”
“That’s why she doesn’t come and see her old mother,” said Nannie. “Sergeants and privates, that’s all she thinks about.”
“But you aren’t a bit old,” said Lydia.
“I’ve got my old-age pension, miss,” said Nannie relapsing.
“Well, that’s sixty now,” said Lydia cheerfully.
“It’s Mrs. Merton, Nannie,” said Lady Waring.
“I thought the young lady was married, my lady, as soon as she came in,” said Nannie untruthfully, “but you didn’t say. How long have you been married, madam?”
This question from a complete stranger might have appeared to betoken a wish to pry, but such was Nannie’s authority that Lydia, without hesitation, said, “Two years and a bit. It was after Dunkirk,” and almost looked at her hands to see if they were clean.
“Major and Mrs. Merton have been moved about a good deal and haven’t a home at present,” said Lady Waring, rather wanting to get this stage of the conversation over. “Major Merton is at the Camp, and I am glad to say they will stay at the Priory till they can find a house. You remember, Nannie, that I spoke to you about your rooms,” said Lady Waring, not betraying her impatience.
“Yes, my lady,” said Nannie, looking abstractedly at and through Lydia. “It was at the end of 1900 that I came to the Priory when Master George was still on bottles, and you were married in the June of ’99, my lady, because the silver wedding was in 1924. I was with young Lady Lufton then, taking the new baby from the month. She married his lordship in ’21 and little Lucy was just two when the baby came. Just a nice interval between them, we used to say, and little Lucy was so pleased with the little baby sister.”
Lady Waring raised her eyes to heaven in despair. Nannie was an old dear, but one never knew what mood one would find her in. Quite obviously to-day she was in the mood when the thought of nannie-fodder bulked very large in her mind. Some sixth sense had told her that the Mertons had as yet no family and it was more than likely that she would ask Mrs. Merton why before the visit was out. But most luckily Lydia, whose attention had been wandering to the photographs on the mantelpiece, gave an exclamation and got up.
“I say, there’s Octavia,” she said, pointing to a photograph of Mrs. Crawley with her eighth child on her knee in a condition of sulks. “Do you know her?”
Nannie said she was at the Deanery as temporary when Miss Octavia was nine months old and the trouble she had to make that child eat her greens no one would ever know, and milk-pudding the same.
“That’s funny,” said Lydia. “Octavia simply loathes cabbage, and rice-pudding too. Was she really like that, Nannie? She’s a great friend o
f mine.”
When addressed by her nursery name, Nannie had been known to blight people by saying, “Mrs. Allen is my name, madam, if convenient.” But whether it was professional interest in Lydia, or the fact that she was a friend of one of her ex-babies, Nannie replied that Miss Octavia was a nice baby though with quite a will of her own, and getting up with no visible pain or distress, extracted from the sideboard or chiffonier an album bound in red plush with a brass filigree lock that didn’t work, and treated Lydia to a Private View of some of her old babies, from the period when they were photographed by a time exposure face downwards on a fur rug with nothing on, to the large blurred faces of mother and child pressed together of the illustrated weekly. Lydia was enchanted and showed such intelligent admiration of the gallery that Nannie offered to take her upstairs to see some more. But Lady Waring said they must go home for lunch, and Nannie must come up to tea some day soon.
“Miss Leslie shall come and fetch you in the pony-cart, Nannie,” she said.
“I’ll write and tell Octavia all about you,” said Lydia. “She’s engaged to an awfully nice clergyman called Tommy Needham, but they don’t mean to get married till the war is over.”
Nannie said she had no patience with that sort of nonsense, but when informed by Lydia that Mr. Needham was in Africa, relented and said she supposed what couldn’t be cured must be endured, and to give Miss Octavia her love and to remember her respectfully to Mrs. Crawley.
“How good you were with Nannie,” said Lady Waring as they walked quickly homewards by the short way.
Lydia said she liked her awfully and it was great fun.
“It’s lucky that we did not get onto the subject of Leslie,” said Lady Waring. “I think she was Nannie’s pet baby—next to George, of course—and she would do anything for her.”
“If it’s not interfering, could you tell me about Leslie,” said Lydia. “I mean she isn’t well, is she? and if I could do anything, or if there is anything I oughtn’t to do, I would be so glad if you would tell me. She looked so ill in my room last night that I thought she would faint. I’m pretty good at nursing and I know what to do, but she asked me to leave her alone. It was a kind of breakdown, she said.”
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