‘Over next summer?’ said Mr Knox to Jane. ‘Speaking as a historian which I am not, for biographies of historical persons do, do not, I say, constitute history as I, alas, am the first to confess; speaking, I say, as a historian however unworthy, I say to myself: what is the lesson history has taught us?’
He glared at Jane, defying her to guess the riddle.
‘Nothing, I should think,’ said Jane. ‘If it had, people would have a bit more sense.’
‘The lesson of history?’ said Mr Middleton coming up on the other side of her, much to Mr Knox’s annoyance. ‘Had you, Mrs Gresham, walked as I have over the fields of Waterloo, and Quatre Bras and Ligny too —’
‘And died at Trafalgar,’ said Jane, and then wished she hadn’t, for it was but too evident that Mr Middleton did not recognize the allusion and she feared he would want it explained. Luckily, however, as she afterwards told Robin Dale, he tanked right over her without so much as noticing her she said.
‘— you would realize,’ Mr Middleton continued, holding his cup in one hand and pouring all the tea that had slopped over his saucer into an empty cup that the secretary had just put down, ‘that history has no lesson at all.’
‘Nay, Middleton,’ said Mr Knox, attracting by this striking and unusual opening the attention of all those near him, ‘nay,’ he repeated, pleased with his success, ‘there I join issue with you. Wait though. May I,’ he said thrusting his cup across the table to Mrs Freeman, ‘crave another cup of this excellent tea?’
With a smile of pitying toleration for the peculiarities of the gentry, Mrs Freeman served him, carrying on the while an animated conversation with the Mothers’ Union secretary about 2-ply navy wool without coupons at the Barchester Co-op.
Mrs Middleton approached, saw her husband re-plunge into the fray, smiled abstractedly and moved towards the door seeking fresh air, for the room was hot with humanity. Jane, who had always liked and admired Mrs Middleton but did not know her very well, followed her, said a few words about the day’s entertainment, and hoped she was not tired.
‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘I don’t get tired, or hardly ever. One can’t afford to when my husband is about. He needs all the tiredness for himself.’
Jane could not decide whether this was simplicity or sarcasm and hardly liked to ask. Mrs Middleton remained silent, looking over the garden, apparently quite content and not at all embarrassed by the silence; which Jane found somehow reassuring, as if there were suddenly a strong arm to lean on.
‘Good-day Mrs Middleton,’ said Lord Stoke, whose perambulation of the room had brought him to this point. ‘We don’t often meet nowadays. Do you remember that famous meeting at your house about Pooker’s Piece, when that bounder Hibberd was trying to buy it and enclose it?’
Mrs Middleton smiled, always with her look of seeing a little farther than the place where she was, and said she did remember it, and how old Lord Pomfret had bought the land and given it to the county.
‘Poisonous fellow,’ said Lord Stoke. ‘Well, he’s a Liberal MP now and poor Pomfret’s dead. And what’s happened to that young man that played the piano. Lanky young fellow with a face like nutcrackers.’
‘Oh, Denis Stonor, Jack’s nephew,’ said Mrs Middleton, ‘at least Jack’s sister’s first husband’s son: no relation of ours at all. He is in America I think.’
‘Ballet dancer or something, wasn’t he?’ said Lord Stoke.
‘Not exactly a dancer, Lord Stoke,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘He wrote music for ballets and Lord Bond very kindly lent him some money to finance a new company and it was a success and then he went to America and was caught by the war. I believe his music is played a good deal.’
‘America in wartime, eh?’ said Lord Stoke, with less than his usual good-humoured tolerance. ‘Thought they rounded all the fellows up.’
‘Not SHIRKING,’ said Mrs Middleton raising her voice. ‘He had a weak HEART and was always rather an INVALID and the army wouldn’t LOOK AT HIM.’
‘Poor young man,’ said Lord Stoke. ‘Is he married?’
Jane idly thought that Mrs Middleton’s distant gaze was directed upon something unattainable which for a moment had come nearer to her. Mrs Middleton shook her head, possibly exhausted by the effort of shouting.
‘Ah well, perhaps it’s a good thing,’ said Lord Stoke. ‘Doesn’t do to have a family if you’re an invalid. Bad for the stock.’ He then inquired after Mr Middleton’s three cows and went off in search of more gossip.
It had never before struck Jane that Mrs Middleton was particularly good-looking, but whether it was the sun falling through the leaves of a large walnut tree, or some thought or quiet vision that transfigured her, Jane suddenly saw her as an enchanting woman.
‘Mr Stonor must want to get back to England sometimes,’ she said, just to say something.
‘Perhaps,’ said Mrs Middleton abstractedly. ‘But sometimes it is better if people don’t come back.’
This she appeared to say for herself alone, but her words struck an unreasonable chill to Jane’s heart as she thought how she had sometimes wished for the certainty that Francis would never return rather than the relentless uncertainty and anxiety that underlay her daily life. As Mrs Middleton continued to gaze upon this unknown point beyond the horizon, Jane pulled herself together and finding the secretary disengaged introduced herself and congratulated him on the delightful afternoon.
At this the young clerk was delighted, for the Archaeological Society was his method of escape, not only from being in a solicitor’s office when he would rather have been a Death’s Head Hussar, but from his mother who knew him through and through (or so she said) and never stopped trying to know more.
‘Do tell me,’ she said with an interest that would only have deceived a mother-ridden young man, ‘what the result of the meeting really was. I had to keep an eye on my little boy and a friend of his and couldn’t hear all the speeches.’
‘Well, Mrs Gresham, that is difficult to say,’ said the secretary. ‘Our speakers differed considerably, but if you ask me, some of these old gentlemen haven’t really studied the subject; not what you’d call studied,’ he added.
Jane said she didn’t suppose any of them were exactly experts, but they did know a lot about the county. Lord Stoke, for instance, had lived at High Rising all his life, as his forebears had since about 1400, and knew everyone and every inch of the country.
‘Ad-mitted, Mrs Gresham,’ said the secretary. ‘But to know a bit of Roman brickwork takes more than that. I may seem a bit dogmatic to you, Mrs Gresham, but it happens to be quite a hobby of mine. We lawyers must have our little hobbies you know, or we get quite dissected as you might say.’
Jane felt she might more probably say desiccated, but smiled and said ‘Yes, of course.’
‘But there was one unfortunate occurrence,’ said the secretary, getting nearer Jane and lowering his voice, ‘which I wouldn’t mention, except to you Mrs Gresham, because we lawyers have to be careful what we say.’
Jane said perhaps he had better not tell her then.
‘A lady like you,’ said the secretary gallantly, ‘is as safe as well I won’t say houses for tempora have mutantur, but as safe as,’ he continued, obviously searching his mind for something stable in this world of flux, ‘well, as safe as anything.’
‘Rather double-edged,’ said Jane and then wished she hadn’t, for the secretary mistaking her meaning, said he was sure he hadn’t meant it in that spirit and was obviously prepared to take offence.
‘And what was it?’ said Jane with frenzied eagerness.
‘Well,’ said the secretary relenting, ‘it was this, Mrs Gresham. I had looked at all the samples of brickwork myself and labelled them as the man brought them up from the well, and there was one that, in my poor opinion for what it’s worth, absolutely clenched the matter. Now I labelled that bit myself and put it on the side of the well just as Lord Stoke came up. I was going to put it on the tray with other specimens, but Lor
d Stoke had some little boys with him —’
‘One of them was mine,’ said Jane, that the secretary might be forearmed against indiscretion.
‘— oh really, a fine little fellow,’ said the secretary with no enthusiasm at all, ‘– and when he turned round to speak and I looked on the parapet of the well, the sample had gone.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Jane.
‘Mind you, I do not say those boys done it,’ said the secretary, his grammar rather affected by his enthusiasm. ‘They weren’t that sort. But I have my strong suspicions, Mrs Gresham, that one of our members, I won’t say who, deliberately took that specimen, Mrs Gresham, while my eye was off it. Preferring not to make unpleasantness, I said nothing, and I name no names, but I am morally convicted that a certain person not a hundred miles from here deliberately pocketed that sample.’
Jane asked why.
‘Ah, well you may say why, Mrs Gresham,’ said the secretary, edging Jane up against the table till she thought she would fall over backwards into the teacups. ‘That person, whose name I would prefer not to mention, may have wished to withhold valuable evidence, or he may, you’ll observe I only say he may, propose to put it as an exhibit in his local museum and say he dug it up.’
Jane said it was a really shocking story, repeated how grateful they were to the secretary for arranging such a delightful afternoon, and continued her progress.
Pausing before the little table where Frank and his friend were still hard at work, she asked if they were having a nice time.
‘Yes, please,’ said Master Watson with his mouth full.
‘I liked the well best, mother,’ said Frank, pushing a large mouthful into one cheek with his tongue. ‘Mother, did you know I threw a stone down and it took about ten minutes to plop in the water. Ed says there’s a stinking cat down there. I expect the cat stinked like anything when my stone fell on it.’
‘It wasn’t a stone,’ said Master Watson, in the brief pause necessary between finishing the cake he had in his mouth and taking a fresh one. ‘It was a brick. I saw it with a bit of paper on it.’
‘Well, get on with your tea,’ said Jane, only thankful that the secretary of the Archaeological Society had not overheard the conversation.
Now at intervals during the afternoon, when not entertaining guests or keeping an eye on the little boys, Jane had vaguely wondered if the Adams family were coming. It hardly seemed a treat that would interest them, but she remembered Miss Holly saying something about it and felt that she would miss no opportunity of improving her young charge’s general information. In the turmoil of tea and talk all this had entirely gone out of her mind and it was with almost a start that she suddenly found herself face to face with Mr Adams.
‘I dare say,’ said Mr Adams, holding out a hand to be shaken, ‘you were wondering why Heth and I weren’t here. Well, the answer is I was kept.’
Jane, stifling an intense desire to say ‘Pleased to meet you,’ shook the proffered hand, and said she was sorry he and Heather had missed the discussion.
‘About some brickwork, wasn’t it?’ said Mr Adams. ‘Not much in my line nor Heth’s. If it had been about chromium steel now, or high mathematics, me and Heth would have had a word to say. But we can’t all be interested in the same things, and that’s a fact.’
Jane said it was and rather wished Mr Adams would go away, for her duty was to the company in general and she had a sensation of being forcibly monopolized. But it was very easy to offend the Adamses of this world and Jane hated unpleasantness, so she asked after Miss Holly.
‘Remarkably fine woman, Miss Holly,’ said Mr Adams, ‘with no nonsense about her,’ at which Jane looked quickly at him. But the borrowing was obviously unconscious, and he went on, ‘Heth and she came to the meeting and went back to Mrs Merivale for tea. But I dare say you are wondering why I was kept.’
There was no way of expressing how little she wondered or indeed cared, so Jane said not bad news she hoped.
‘I wouldn’t like to say,’ said Mr Adams. ‘No, not bad news exactly. More what you would call uncertain news. It might be bad, it might be good.’
So peculiar was his rather ill-assured way of speaking, so unlike his usual confident self, that Jane wondered for a moment if he had been drinking. As far as she knew he was remarkably abstemious and there were certainly no signs of drink about him. So she felt slightly uneasy.
‘Now, I don’t want to upset you, Mrs Gresham,’ said Mr Adams, ‘But I’ve got a pal who is pretty high up in the Red Cross and goes to meet all those repatriation ships.’
‘Jane dear,’ said Mrs Morland at her side. ‘I am dreadfully sorry but I must say goodbye. The Tebbens are going in Lord Stoke’s brougham and will drop me at the station. Here they are.’
‘Do you know Mr Adams?’ said Jane, introducing him to Mrs Morland and the Tebbens.
‘Is it the Mrs Morland that writes the books?’ said Mr Adams, much to Jane’s surprise.
‘How very nice of you to ask,’ said Mrs Morland, dropping a glove which Mr Adams gallantly rescued for her. ‘Do you like them?’
‘Well, Mrs Morland, I’m not a reading man,’ said Mr Adams, ‘but I like a good book now and then. There was one by you my little girl brought back from the libery this summer – Heather, that’s her name; Heth I call her – about a lady dressmaker that gets trapped in a foundry by the German spy. Now, I’ve some works at Hogglestock, and I do some pretty big castings myself, and I must say the scene where the villain is going to throw her in the furnace and the hero comes along in the overhead crane with the big magnet and picks her up by the steel chain the villain has wrapped round her – well, it was hardly credible it could really happen, but I thought, “Whoever thought that up wasn’t a fool.”’
Mrs Morland, always the most modest of creatures about her own works, pushed a hairpin into herself and knocked her hat rather on one side before expressing her great pleasure that Mr Adams had enjoyed the book.
‘Enjoyed I wouldn’t hardly say,’ said Mr Adams, ‘for that’s not the way I look at books. But there’s not one in a thousand, I said to myself, would think up a thing like that, and a thing that is, making allowances for everything, quite feasible. If ever you want to know anything about the shops or the foundry for a book, Mrs Morland, just you ring my sekertary and I’ll tell her to see you get all the information you want. Now, don’t forget; for Sam Adams won’t forget.’
Before Mrs Morland could thank him properly, Mrs Tebben had burst to the front and shaking Mr Adams by the hand said that as a mother she must thank him for having been so wonderful to Richard.
‘Well, madam,’ said Mr Adams, puzzled but master of himself, ‘I don’t know who it is you are reluding to, but I always do my best to give everyone a fair do.’
Mrs Tebben was about to explain that her son Richard was a difficult character but wonderful when you came to know him, when her husband said Lord Stoke’s horse would catch cold if it waited and Mrs Morland would miss her train, upon which Mrs Tebben, with a long hand-shake and earnest gaze, intended to exhibit to Mr Adams the depth of a mother’s love and the brilliance of her son Richard’s qualities all in one breath, hurried her party away.
‘More people know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows,’ said Mr Adams philosophically. ‘But now, Mrs Gresham, you will be wondering what it was my pal had to say.’
Then the Birketts came to bid goodbye to Jane and had to be introduced to Mr Adams, and other friends came up one after the other as the party dispersed. And all the time they were talking Jane half wondered what Mr Adams’s pal had to say and half wished he would go away and not bother her. And all the time she was impressed, against her will, by the calm and almost masterful way in which Mr Adams took the County and the Close; how he did not try to appear their equal, but was obviously well seated in the position he had made for himself. She also noticed how almost everyone, from Mrs Morland (who was neither Close nor real County) to the Dean and Lord Stoke, who represented both, had points
of contact, usually of a useful and civic kind, with Mr Adams, and that he appeared quite often to be in a position to do some small favour, to help them over some small difficulty. What all the wives thought she did not know, but her impression was that Mr Adams was what is called a man’s man.
There was no reason why she should stay in his neighbourhood, except indeed that when people began to say goodbye and leave the hall they would naturally come to speak to her. And if where she was standing happened to be in the neighbourhood of Mr Adams, it could not be helped.
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