“Well, good-bye,” said Lydia, not wishing to leave her host without a farewell, and not knowing whether she ought to call him Jasper or Mr. Margett, “and I won’t forget.”
Jasper gave her one of his quick sidelong looks, but must have thought she was in earnest, for he said in a low voice, “Have you seen that Sillina?”
Lydia said she had, and how very nice she was.
“Silly by name and silly by nature,” said Jasper, who had been storing this witticism in his mind for future use. “But you’re right, miss. She’s nice, that old Sillina.”
Lydia felt a certain Barkis-like flavour creeping into their conversation and wondered if he was going to ask her to tell Selina that he was willing, but Crumpet began to dance and the cavalcade moved off. As they went up the lane they came into the last light of sunset of which Lydia was glad, for the hollow behind them, though Leslie had called it Golden Valley, was a little sinister in the fading light.
“Jasper saw his grandmother last night, Uncle Harry,” said Leslie. “She was in the wood down by the big Dipping Pond.”
“A cold place for an old lady,” said Noel.
Sir Harry laughed.
“His grandmother was supposed to be a witch,” he said. “I can just remember her when I was a boy. She was a white witch and lived down in Pear Tree Cottage, where you were this afternoon. She was supposed to turn into a black hare on moonlight nights. I sometimes wonder if it wasn’t true. All the old people round here believe that she walks. Jasper believes that if he can shoot her she will be laid, but somehow he has never got that hare.”
Lydia was undergoing a violent inward conflict. Ought she or ought she not to tell her host about the silver button? Down in Jasper’s cottage it had seemed reasonable enough. Looked at now, in daylight or what was left of it, it seemed foolish. And what the etiquette was about witches she did not quite know. If the witch was on Sir Harry’s property and had been his tenant in her lifetime, it would perhaps be discourteous, or against the Game Laws, for outsiders to interfere.
“Some people say you can’t shoot them unless you have a silver button,” said Sir Harry, with a tone of scientific detachment.
Lydia’s innate honesty got the better of her.
“Oh, Sir Harry, I do hope you won’t mind,” she said, “but I told your keeper I would give him a silver button if I can find one.”
Sir Harry was for a moment taken aback. To have been personally acquainted with a witch is one thing; to find other people sharing your belief is another. They might be laughing at you, they might be taking you too seriously and bringing up the question of folk dancing. In either case you would courteously retire into yourself. But either Lydia’s face, or her voice, or both, combined with the good impression he already had of her, gave him a sense of security.
“It’s very queer about these things,” he said judicially. “Mind, I won’t commit myself one way or another, but there always might be something in it. Look at the Witch of Endor, eh?”
This appeal to Holy Writ appeared to have settled the question. Crumpet stepped out, the three walkers had to quicken their pace, and before the frozen sea of pale gold and green in the west had faded, they were safely back at the Priory. Sir Harry sent his niece indoors to get warm and took the pony-cart round to the stables, accompanied by Lydia, who had become a fast friend of Crumpet. Noel, who confessed without shame that harness was as much a mystery to him as the internal combustion engine, went in with Leslie and found Lady Waring in the sitting-room and Selina bringing in tea.
Lady Waring asked what they had done that afternoon, looked searchingly at Leslie, and decided that her niece was none the worse for her chilly drive; in fact, rather the better, which she attributed partly to Mrs. Merton’s company and felt grateful to her guest.
“We won’t wait for the others,” she said to Noel. “My husband will be so delighted to have someone to talk to about the stables that he will probably keep your wife out till dark. I hope she won’t be bored.”
Noel said, with truth, that he had never known Lydia bored in his life. Then he and Lady Waring discovered common friends in London and were able to give each other news of births, deaths and marriages, while Leslie listened, a little too tired to talk, but with a pleasant relaxed tiredness such as she had not known for a long time, a state of things which her aunt discerned with the corner of her eye but made no comment on it.
“How is it that we have never met before?” said Lady Waring. “You must have been in these parts a good deal.”
“I really belong to them,” said Noel. “My father was a solicitor in Barchester, but I was at school and Oxford and reading law and then practising and had lots of friends and wasn’t much at home. I only began to know this country again when I first visited the Keiths, from which moment I never looked back.”
Lady Waring asked about Northbridge Manor, the Keiths’ old home.
“When Mr. Keith died his son Robert had it,” said Noel, “a very good fellow, another Barchester solicitor, but he couldn’t live there and he has let it to a business firm. They are quite good tenants, but the estate is the trouble. Lydia ran it when the bailiff rejoined the Navy, and she has run it ever since, though I’m afraid marrying me and moving about England and Scotland rather cramped her style, not to speak of her land work and her nursing. But we hear that the bailiff may be invalided out of the Navy and if so we hope he will come back. Then Lydia will probably get a whole-time job. I know she wants to.”
“What are your own feelings?” said Lady Waring.
“To be quite truthful, I should like my wife simply to be my wife and be there to welcome me every evening with a well-cooked repast and darn my socks,” said Noel, “without prejudice, of course, to a very well paid war job that called for no exertion. Of course when I am sent abroad——” He did not finish the sentence.
“My brother Cecil is like that,” said Leslie from her chair by the fire. “He says if he were the government he would conscript the women to live at home and look nice for when he came back. He hates me doing my job.”
“I like Cecil,” said Noel. “But the awful thing is that people like you and Lydia do your jobs so well. Lydia was practically offered a hundred pounds a minute to stay at the hospital where she worked when we were in Yorkshire, and I know the farm where she was all last year when we were in Scotland would have given her free food and lodging and every rationed luxury for the rest of her life.”
“I think it is frightening,” said Leslie. “Most of the women I had under me were incredibly efficient and I don’t think they were any more trying than the men. But it’s all upside down. It is quite horrid not to be able to feel that men are superior beings. I’d much rather I did.”
Lady Waring looked as if she did not quite like the turn the conversation was taking and said this was one of the ways in which war upset everything and when it was over she hoped we would settle down.
“But that’s just the awful part, Aunt Harriet,” said Leslie, sitting up and speaking with an energy she had not shown since she came. “Most of the women in my department don’t want to settle down. They want to go on living with lots of other women like the Fifth Form at St. Ethelburga’s and having all their fun in crowds. That’s why such a lot of girls don’t want commissions. They really like cocoa suppers in the dormitory.”
“It is a very sad prospect for the men when the Army is demobilized,” said Lady Waring, who as an old soldier’s wife was apt to forget that we have other defenders.
“There won’t be so very many, Aunt Harriet,” said Leslie sadly. “There were too many of us before the war and there will be millions more too many afterwards. No; it frightens me.”
In spite of her affection for her niece and her genuine wish to sympathize with younger people’s point of view, Lady Waring was liking the argument less and less. Noel, sensitive to this, asked Lady Waring whether the convalescent home was keeping the Priory in good repair.
“They could not have
behaved better,” said Lady Waring. “If we can ever afford to live in our house again, it will be very much more comfortable. And Matron encourages the men to keep the drive tidy and work in the kitchen garden. We are very lucky—what is it, Selina?”
“Matron rang up, my lady,” said Selina, “and she’s so upset she couldn’t get over before, but they had a visiting specialist down. She is coming over now, my lady, and says not to keep tea for her.”
“I had quite forgotten she was coming,” said Lady Waring, conscience-stricken by the appalling gulf between her precept and her practice, her heartfelt praise of Matron and her entire want of interest in that estimable woman. “Bring some fresh tea as soon as you can, Selina.”
Selina collected the teapot and hot water-jug. In a few minutes she came back with fresh tea, announced Matron and retired.
“Now, you have had fresh tea made for me, Lady Waring, and you shouldn’t,” said Matron. “What would our good Lord Woolton say? But I shall throw patriotism to the winds and have a refreshing cup if you will let me. Sir Abel Fillgrave talked till I thought he would never go, all most interesting about his experiences with shell-shock in the last war, but as I said to Nurse Poulter, what we really want to know is if Private Jenks will have to be operated on again. No; no sugar, Lady Waring, thank you; I have my saccharine. I always say one of a nurse’s temptations is to forget how all you kind folk are rationed and nibble at your little store.”
Lady Waring, who had long ago made a principle of not protesting against other people’s economies, did not explain that fresh tea would have been needed for Sir Harry and Mrs. Merton in any case, and introduced Noel.
“My niece you have met before, when she was down here,” she said. “She has not been well and is on leave, which is very nice for us.”
A gleam came into Matron’s eye and she was obviously about to ask the most pressing questions as to Leslie’s illness and the ordering of her convalescence, when Sir Harry and Lydia came in.
“Well, well, Matron, men all right and all that?” said Sir Harry. “This young lady, my dear,” he continued, sitting down near hs wife, “knows nearly as much about the place as I do. Put Crumpet in his stall like a groom, gave me some good tips about the compost heap and helped me to saw some logs like a Trojan. And she is hand in glove with Jasper already.”
“Harry! you haven’t been making Mrs. Merton saw wood!” said Lady Waring.
“I loved it,” said Lydia. “One doesn’t often get a chance to work with a two-handed saw.”
She then applied herself to her tea with the same energy that she brought to everything she undertook.
“By the way, Matron,” said Sir Harry, “one of your men was in the backyard as I came in. I told him he could go and have a shot at some rabbits whenever the keeper is with him. Can’t remember his name. The man that shot your cat. How is the new kitten?”
“Well, fancy your remembering kitty,” said Matron, much gratified. “Winston we call him. He is quite a little favourite with the men. But really now, it is quite a coincidence your mentioning Private Jenks, because Sir Abel Fillgrave was here to-day and it seems he will have to be operated again.”
Sir Harry said he didn’t know people could have their appendix out twice.
Matron said Sir Harry would have his joke, but it wasn’t appendix that Private Jenks was to be operated for this time. It was, she said, something More Serious, which made Sir Harry wish he had not spoken. “It does seem a shame,” Matron continued, “just when we were so pleased with him, and I consider that the Barchester General ought never to have sent him to a convalescent home. What is the use of the War Office taking over the hospital if they send men out when they aren’t fit? As I was saying to Nurse Poulter, it is in and out, in and out, all the time.”
“He seems to be in and out of the backyard pretty often,” said Sir Harry, who was apt to use the back entrance if his boots were muddy, or as a short cut to the home farm.
“I think he was a typewriter mechanic,” said Leslie, who knew about people on the place almost as well as her uncle and often sooner than he did, “at least he mended my typewriter the day before yesterday when the carriage stuck. And Selina says he is mending her sewing-machine.”
“He’s too young for Selina,” said Sir Harry. “Quite unsuitable. But it’s not my business.”
“Really, Harry!” said his wife. “You might as well suspect Jasper.”
Lydia remembered Jasper’s lover-like words about that old Sillina and decided to keep them to herself.
As was inevitable when Matron was there, the conversation now centred on the hospital. No one had yet discovered any other subject, apart from pussies and the Royal Family, in which she took any interest. Yet she must have seen much of the world and of life, the service ribbons on her uniform were enough proof of that. But whether she did not like to speak of her work in the last war, or whether such parts of Europe as she had nursed in had merely meant so many cases to her, no one knew. Sir Harry and Lydia discussed the care of greenhouses when they could not be heated, while Lady Waring, supported by Noel, showed the appropriate emotions and made the appropriate exclamations to Matron’s chronicle of her nurses and convalescents.
“And one thing I specially wanted to ask you about, Lady Waring,” said Matron. “You know those nice lectures we have on Thursday afternoons for the boys.”
Lady Waring said she did.
“I have enjoyed them all thoroughly,” said Matron, “and so do the boys. We are going to have one by Lord Stoke on Viking remains in a field near Rising Castle, and I believe the remains were found in a field called Bloody Meadow. Now I know the boys will give his lordship a good laugh if he mentions the name, but that isn’t quite the spirit for a lecture on human remains, so I wondered if you or Sir Harry could just say a word to him before the lecture. It is often a little point like that, that just makes the success or otherwise of a lecture.”
Lady Waring said she quite saw Matron’s point and would try to explain to Lord Stoke, but he was now almost stone-deaf besides being very obstinate.
“You know I really felt quite ashamed of the boys when Lord Bond was kind enough to lecture on the Reconstruction of Europe,” said Matron, “and they commenced to whistle, so I thought I’d just mention it. Well, I must be getting back. We are short-handed at present and really where to turn for nurses or V.A.D.’s one hardly knows in these days. I wonder if your guests would like to see over the hospital some time, Lady Waring? Mrs. Tebben came over from Worsted last week to see a man in her son’s regiment, and brought us an art repoussé copper jar for the sitting-room and Sergeant Hopkins has kept it filled with foliage and it really gives quite an effect.”
Noel said he was unfortunately at the camp all day, but his wife would be much interested, he knew, as she had done a good deal of nursing herself. Lydia, hearing her name mentioned, turned towards Matron, who graciously inquired which hospital she had trained at.
“Oh, I’m not a proper nurse,” said Lydia, “only V.A.D. But I’d most awfully like to see your hospital if I may.”
Matron said she had known some very good V.A.D.’s. Miss Crawley, the daughter of the Dean of Barchester, had been a most enthusiastic and helpful nurse when she, Matron, was at the Barsetshire General in the early months of the war.
“Octavia, you mean,” said Lydia. “She’s a friend of mine. She’s frightfully keen on nursing. She wants to train properly and go in for facial surgery or else frightfully difficult baby cases. Did you know Nurse Chiffinch?”
It appeared that Matron not only knew Nurse Chiffinch but, with reservations as to her own perfect superiority, considered her an excellent nurse. She and Lydia plunged into hospital talk, but though Lydia was genuinely interested, her enthusiasm was kept within bounds and her voice did not dominate the conversation as it did in former days.
Matron then said again that she must be going and bade a gracious farewell. “Oh, and one more thing, Lady Waring,” she said at the door.
“We need a lecturer for one of our Thursdays. The Army Education People are finding it difficult to send lecturers every week and have asked us to collaborate. I believe you know Mrs. Morland that writes those lovely books. Could you ask her if she would come and give a talk to the boys about her books? They are all great readers and would thoroughly enjoy it. We had Mr. George Knox for a literary talk once. I couldn’t be there, unfortunately, but the boys seem to have thoroughly enjoyed it. About the Inquisition it was, and Sergeant Hopkins said it gave them some good ideas to try out on the Germans. So if you will be so very kind as to ask Mrs. Morland——”
“I will do my best,” said Lady Waring, almost interrupting Matron, though as she afterwards explained it was because she knew Matron was going to say the boys would thoroughly enjoy it, and she could not bear it again.
When she had crackled away everyone said what a nice woman she was, after which effort they all relapsed into Sunday coma, even Lady Waring, so rarely idle, looking at the fire and apparently thinking of nothing, though as a matter of fact she was arranging in her own mind a short speech which would effectively crush Lady Bond at the next Red Cross meeting at Winter Overcotes. Sir Harry read the lower and more interesting of the Sunday papers which the kitchen kindly allowed him to have after tea on Sundays, and called Lydia’s attention to various points of interest. While they were looking for the days on which they would be lucky in love or business, Noel talked to Leslie. Partly by nature, partly because it belonged to his profession in peace-time, he had the art of making people talk about their own subjects, and of taking an interest which was quite unforced, for in his experience most people could tell you something which was of use one way or another, at some time or another. Leslie did not as a rule like talking about herself or her work. Her thoughts about herself she poured out to her brother when he was on leave and in long letters when he was at sea, and did not wish to share them with any other person. As for her work, she preferred to keep it away from her private life and during the last three years there had been many things it was advisable not to mention at all. Even with her uncle and aunt, of whom she was very fond, she found it better to keep her own counsel. She trusted their discretion, but she felt that a good many people of their age still looked on the war work of the younger generation as a kind of amiable hobby.
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