No one contradicted her.
Mr. Keith said he could bear anything, even the Income Tax, if only The Times would stop fiddling about with the Crossword Puzzle and put it in its proper place, down in the right-hand corner of page three or possibly page five. And as for putting it in that small print, he would take in the Daily Telegraph if it went on. One must have something to cling to in this world of shifting values, he said, and the Crossword appeared to him to be essential. In this he was heartily supported by the company, with the exception of Mrs. Keith who had never yet succeeded in grasping the principle of the crossword.
At about ten o’clock Lydia said she was going to bed if no one minded, as she had to go round the farm next morning before she went to Barchester to a Red Cross Meeting and then on to lunch with Mrs. Brandon at Pomfret Madrigal about a sewing party. Noel escorted her to the drawing-room door.
‘I just wanted to ask you,’ said Lydia, ‘if you’ve got everything you want. I’ve got some spare toothbrushes if you didn’t bring one. I don’t suppose I’ll see you again if you are going up with Colin as I shall have my breakfast early.’
‘I have got a toothbrush, though Palmer thinks poorly of it,’ said Noel, ‘and has hidden it behind my sponge instead of planting it bravely in the toothbrush vase, or whatever it is called. But thank you all the same. You are as good as Kate at making people comfortable.’
‘I couldn’t be,’ said Lydia, genuinely surprised.
‘Well you are,’ said Noel, but did not add and a great deal more amusing, because he knew that Lydia’s loyalty to Kate would resent such a remark. ‘And I’ll come down to your early breakfast if you’ll tell me when.’
‘No, honestly don’t,’ said Lydia. ‘I never know how early I’ll be and you ought to sleep. Let us know next time you get leave.’
Noel promised that he would and furthermore pledged his word not to leave England without coming in person to say good-bye. Lydia hesitated and then said:
‘Would you mind if I asked you one more thing, Noel?’
‘Not a bit,’ said Noel.
‘When you said about sending letters to your chambers to be forwarded, you didn’t mean because you thought I’d tell anyone where you were if it’s a secret, or be a Traitor, did you?’ said Lydia earnestly.
‘If I am allowed to tell my address to one single person you shall be the one,’ said Noel. ‘Even my clerk doesn’t know. He only sends them on to a mystic address at the War Office.’
Lydia wrung his hand violently and went upstairs.
‘And Lydia,’ Noel called after her, ‘do give Mrs. Brandon messages from me. That woman is the joy of my heart.’
‘All right,’ shouted Lydia and continued her journey upstairs. In the intervals of having her bath and getting into bed she thought with some pride of the compliment Noel had paid her. That it was untrue she well knew, for no one could make a home as really comfortable as Kate did, and Lydia was only too conscious of how far she fell short of that ideal, but that Noel should even pretend that she was as good as Kate made her heart feel comfortably warm. The thought of a heart suddenly roused some slightly unpleasant echo. She got into bed and opened Wuthering Heights in which she was at present indulging, but the echo teased her so much that she shut her book and turned out the light.
To-morrow she must get round the farm by ten o’clock. She would take her car and go straight on to Barchester getting there before eleven and then take Pomfret Madrigal on the way home. The echo sounded again. A heart. The joy of a heart. She knew that Noel and Mrs. Brandon, who were both quite grown-up, talked in a way that she did not quite understand though she looked with tolerance upon their childishness. But suddenly because of a word Noel had said, a light word she knew, spoken with his customary exaggeration, she felt far more like a child herself than was pleasant. She liked Mrs. Brandon very much and admired her looks and ways without the slightest wish to imitate them, and to envy her had never for a moment crossed her mind. So she decided not to envy her. After all Noel had promised to tell her and her alone what his address was, if he was allowed to tell, and on this comforting thought she fell asleep.
CHAPTER VII
MRS. BRANDON AGAIN
LYDIA, after a good night’s sleep, had her breakfast early, went round the farm, spoke severely about a cow and a hedge, and pursued her way to Barchester. The Red Cross meeting was at the Deanery, so she drove into the Close and parked her car. In the drawing-room she found Mrs. Crawley sorting a number of papers in a very efficient way.
‘Good morning, Lydia,’ said Mrs. Crawley. ‘You are the first. Octavia is so sorry she won’t see you. She is on night duty at present and has just come off and had her breakfast and gone to bed.’
‘Can I go up and see her?’ asked Lydia.
Mrs. Crawley rather unwillingly gave permission, and Lydia went upstairs. The Deanery, a fine early Georgian house, was as inconvenient as it was beautiful. The low rooms on the ground floor made excellent libraries and offices for the Dean’s work, and the lofty white panelled rooms on the first floor with their tall sash windows overlooking the Close were perfect for entertaining, but after that the house split up into so many staircases and corridors and small bedrooms carved out of large bedrooms, and bathrooms carved out of nowhere, that many of the inferior clergy who hadn’t a sense of direction and were afraid to ask the servants had wretched memories of a night under the Dean’s hospitable roof, unable to find a bathroom and late for dinner. Until the middle of the nineteenth century the Deanery had been little changed. The Arabins it is true had put in a bathroom about the year 1876, but this was a massive affair in a heavy mahogany surround with a battery of taps called Sitz, Douche, Plunge and other ominous names, hitting the unwary visitor full in the tenderer parts of his (for no lady visitor ever used it) anatomy with jets of water sometimes scalding, sometimes ice cold. It was set up in a large dressing-room (for there were then no small ones) thus making it impossible to put a married couple into the West Room and wasting a very good brass double bedstead with a good feather mattress on single members of the Church of England, though not on professed celibates for such Dean Arabin did not tolerate, broadminded as he was in other ways.
This state of things continued till the beginning of the twentieth century when a bachelor Dean, ex-Master of an Oxford college, angrily had the bath removed on the ground that a flat tin bath was good enough for him and hence for anyone else. After his death the new Dean, who had married a grand-daughter of old Mr. Frank Gresham, who used to be Member for East Barsetshire, with a fine fortune, had modernised the house as above described and after a running fight with the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, conducted with great spirit on both sides, had got his own way at his own expense, and so cut the bedrooms up that four bathrooms and a servants’ bathroom had been extracted from the existing rooms.
The present Dean and Mrs. Crawley, who were comfortably off for their station, left things much as they were and loved the house so much, though it was expensive to keep up, that they never repined. Indeed they often had cause to bless their predecessor for making something of a rabbit warren, as otherwise their eight children would have had to sleep several in a bed. All these children were grown-up and most of them married, and Octavia, the only one left at home, was able to have the biggish room on the second floor looking into the garden and down the river for her own, with easy access to the third best bathroom.
Here Lydia found her fellow bridesmaid in dressing-gown and pyjamas, looking out of the window with a pair of opera glasses.
‘Hullo,’ said Lydia. ‘Your mother said you were in bed.’
Octavia turned round and explained that she was looking across the river at the Hospital.
‘I should have thought you saw enough of it,’ said Lydia. ‘Have you any patients?’
‘Three,’ said Octavia proudly, ‘and two of them are in my ward. They were on anti-aircraft and fell over a pig in the dark and one got a broken wrist and one had shock; shell-s
hock it would be if the pig had been a shell.’
Lydia said that was better than nothing, or even than one patient.
‘Yes, but the snag is,’ said Octavia, ‘that Matron who is the Limit, is putting one of my patients into D. Ward and Geraldine will get him. Sister is furious and so is Delia. I can’t see the sense in a war if there aren’t any casualties. I wish my people had let me drive an ambulance. Ambulances quite often run over people in the black-out.’
Lydia looked admiringly at her single-hearted friend, though she could not feel her enthusiasm, and asked what Octavia wanted to look through opera glasses for.
‘Delia promised she’d wave a swab out of the window at eleven o’clock if Matron really takes our patient away,’ she said, ‘and I was waiting. Have a look. It’s the fourth window from the left on the top floor.’
Lydia adjusted the glasses and looked earnestly at the Hospital. The cathedral bell boomed eleven times.
‘There’s something waving,’ she said, handing the glasses to Octavia, ‘but it’s bigger than a swab.’
‘It’s probably a draw-sheet then,’ said Octavia without interest, and drawing the curtains she got into bed. ‘I wish I could get a first-aid job in a munitions factory. People get blown up or caught in the machinery there.’
‘Well I must go to the meeting,’ said Lydia, and went down again.
In the drawing-room she found nine or ten ladies already seated in a kind of semi-circle in front of Mrs. Crawley’s writing-table at which Mrs. Crawley, the convener of the meeting, was sitting. Among the audience Lydia recognised young Mrs. Roddy Wicklow whose husband was Mrs. Foster’s brother, the Archdeacon’s daughter from Plumstead, and some friends of her mother’s of great worthiness and dullness. At the far end of the semi-circle were Mrs. Birkett and Mrs. Morland, and to them Lydia betook herself.
‘Are we all here?’ said Mrs. Crawley.
Everyone looked at everyone else.
‘Well, I am not really here,’ said Mrs. Morland, ‘but as I am staying at Southbridge, Mrs. Birkett thought it would be all right.’
Mrs. Birkett explained that her friend Mrs. Morland was staying with her for the present and was helping her with the Red Cross in Southbridge, so she was sure Mrs. Morland would be a welcome addition to the committee.
Mrs. Roddy Wicklow turned her large dark timid eyes upon Mrs. Morland and asked in a whisper if it was THE Mrs. Morland.
One of the dull worthy ladies said with a laugh that none of them would dare to read Mrs. Morland’s next book as she was sure Mrs. Morland would have a scene about a Red Cross Committee. Mrs. Morland, who detested being recognised in her professional capacity more than anything, tried to smile. Another dull worthy lady said she had been asking for Mrs. Morland’s new book at Gaiters’ Library ever since the beginning of September but it was always out and she felt sure Mrs. Morland would be pleased to know how popular her books were. Mrs. Morland again tried to smile, though nothing is more annoying than to be told that people can’t get your book because Messrs. Gaiters or P. B. Baker & Son, Ltd. will not buy a few more copies. The second dull lady, leaning across the Archdeacon’s daughter, said to the first dull lady, Whom do you think she had seen in the Close as she came along but Canon Banister, at which the first dull lady laughed and the Archdeacon’s daughter said Well now they would be hearing what really did happen at the funeral. All the Barchester ladies then talked at once till Mrs. Crawley, who had finished writing some notes, said that they were delighted to welcome Mrs. Morland and all remarks must be addressed to the Chair.
During the brief silence that followed, the minutes of the last meeting were taken as read.
‘And now,’ said Mrs. Crawley, ‘I have to put before you a special appeal for books from the Barchester Hospital.’
A lady got up and said she was so very sorry she must be going, but she had a teacher billeted on her who had to have lunch at twelve and she must get home as she couldn’t manage separate lunches. Another lady said she was afraid she must go too, as her three evacuees also had to have lunch at twelve to attend afternoon school and she didn’t like to leave it to her one maid. Two more hostesses had to leave at the same time, one to take her evacuee boy to the doctor because she felt sure it was impetigo whatever anyone might say and such a nice bright little fellow, the other to receive an angry father and mother from Dalston who threatened to remove their girl because the mother was expecting to have another baby and wanted Janice to look after the house as she wouldn’t leave her husband and such a nice bright little girl it seemed really a pity, but what can you do. The first dull lady said that time alone would show whether evacuation had been a wise move. The second dull lady said that whatever the wisdom of the scheme there would be no two opinions as to the importance of removing young children and more particularly expectant mothers from danger areas. It was well known, she said, that many people were now a mass of nerves because they had been born during the last War after the air raids had begun.
‘I must say,’ said Mrs. Morland, following as usual a personal line of thought, ‘that I have a very poor opinion of prenatal influence. Two of my boys were born in London during the War and are not nervous in the least, though I was, at least of the noise our own anti-aircraft guns made in Hyde Park, far far more frightening than any bombs exploding though I never heard one. But, on the other hand,’ she added impressively in her deepest voice, ‘a friend of mine who was perfectly sane and so was her husband had a baby which was born in 1913 and turned out a hopeless idiot, and is still alive, but of course in a home, where it will probably live for ever at great expense like people that are left annuities.’
Mrs. Roddy Wicklow, who was very kind, said it seemed dreadful about idiots but what was one to do, and as it was now twelve o’clock the meeting broke up and Mrs. Crawley said she would see about the books herself.
‘Do come and see us soon, Lydia,’ said Mrs. Birkett as she and Mrs. Morland took their leave.
‘I’d love to,’ said Lydia, ‘but I don’t know how the petrol ration will work out. I’ve put in for extra on account of Red Cross and working parties, but I mayn’t get it. Anyway Sanders, our chauffeur, has a huge secret hoard somewhere.’
As Lydia went through the hall Mr. Needham the Dean’s secretary came out of the small study, so obviously waylaying her that she stopped.
‘I’m awfully sorry, Miss Keith,’ he said, ‘I don’t suppose you remember me at Miss Birkett’s wedding, but Mrs. Crawley mentioned at breakfast that you were going on to Mrs. Brandon’s, so I wondered if you would mind taking me, as the Dean has gone to Courcy Castle in the car and my motor bicycle is being repaired where I ran into the market cross at High Rising in the black-out. Mrs. Brandon, whom I don’t know, has very kindly asked me to lunch to meet the Vicar, Mr. Miller, who is an old friend of my father’s, and his wife, and I can get a train back but there isn’t any train before lunch except the 11.12.’
Lydia said of course.
‘You know Miss Pettinger, don’t you, Miss Keith?’ said Mr. Needham.
Lydia said if you called a person being one’s Headmistress knowing them, she supposed she did.
‘She will ask me to come in to social evenings after dinner,’ said Mr. Needham plaintively, ‘to meet Miss Sparling, the Headmistress of the Hosiers’ Girls Foundation School, who is an extraordinarily nice person, and then she is rude to her and I feel so uncomfortable. I suppose one oughtn’t to say one’s hostess is rude, but she really is.’
‘She’s always been like that,’ said Lydia, ‘and I expect if I kept a High School I would be too. But why do you go? Can’t you say the Dean wants you?’
‘I would, even if it wasn’t true,’ said Mr. Needham, ‘but she finds out from Octavia, who seems to like her, what evenings the Dean is out.’
‘Of course Octavia was potty about Miss Pettinger at school,’ said Lydia scornfully, ‘and I must say she isn’t much better now, only it’s the Hospital.’
‘I think the way Oc
tavia has taken her war work is magnificent,’ said Mr. Needham firmly. ‘Sitting in the Hospital day after day with nothing to do. I almost find myself praying for a few casualties for her on Sunday.’
Lydia felt privately that Mr. Needham was much nicer when he didn’t have a clergy-voice and that anyone who thought Octavia magnificent was potty too, but where a few years ago she would have expounded those views with the utmost frankness, she now merely accelerated and took the hill at Little Misfit at quite an alarming pace.
Stories, Mrs. Brandon’s charming Georgian house, was looking its best in the peaceful late September sunshine. When Lydia stopped the car there was no sound. At least no natural sound, for something like the voices of children came from the house, and as Mrs. Brandon’s son and daughter were unmarried there seemed to be no particular reason for it. Lydia, who was at home with Stories, opened the front door and was going into the drawing-room when Rose the parlourmaid appeared and taking up a Catherine Barlass attitude before the door said Mrs. Brandon was in her sitting-room. The babble of children was quite clear behind the door. Lydia, followed by Mr. Needham, went into the sitting-room. Here Mrs. Brandon was established on a sofa with a great bag of embroidery silks beside her. At the sight of her visitors she took off her large spectacles and got up, dropping her work all over the floor.
‘Lydia!’ she said, folding her guest in a warm, scented, unemotional embrace, ‘I am so glad to see you. And Mr. Needham? You were going to bring him with you. At least Mrs. Crawley rang up just now to say that you were.’
‘He’s on the floor,’ said Lydia.
Mr. Needham, who had chivalrously been picking up the profusion of scissors, needlecases, thimbles and material that his hostess had let fall, got up and shook hands.
‘It is such a pleasure to have any friend of Mr. Miller’s here,’ said Mrs. Brandon, gazing into Mr. Needham’s eyes.
Mr. Needham said he didn’t exactly know Mr. Miller because he had never seen him, but his father had known him at college and he hoped Mrs. Brandon didn’t mind. It was quite evident to Lydia that Mrs. Brandon was having her usual unconscious but quite inevitable effect upon Mr. Needham and she wished Delia were there, so that she could share the pleasure.
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