Private Enterprise

CHAPTER 1Mrs. Noel Merton looked out of the dining-room window with considerable displeasure. It was mid-May and for at least the one hundred and thirty-fifth time that year the day was beginning with cold grey sulks accompanied by a highly unsympathetic wind. Every tree looked as if it had been blown inside out, the grass was as leaden as the sky, the river at the bottom of the garden looked like a cross between mud flats and dirty pewter. A few melancholy birds, their tails blown almost over their heads, their breast feathers untidily ruffled, were lounging aimlessly on the terrace. Not as it used to be, thought Mrs. Merton; a thought which was in the minds of all her elders and most of her contemporaries by day and by night. Since the glorious summer which marked the days of Dunkirk warmth and light had been withdrawn from England, and the peace, which certainly passed everyone’s understanding, had not had the faintest influence on the weather which had got the bit well between its teeth and was rapidly heading for the ice age. Mr. Noel Merton, who had been out of the army for more than a year and was back at the bar doing extremely well, came into the room and put an arm round his wife’s shoulders. “It’s like Horace,” said Lydia, rubbing her face against her husband’s coat. “I’m sure it is,” said Noel. “But why?” “You remember that summer you came home when I was at the Barchester High School,” said Lydia, “and that beast Pettinger set us some odes of Horace to do in the holidays and Everard helped me. I suddenly remembered it.” “If you could explain yourself a little better, my precious love,” said Noel, “I might begin to have some idea what you are talking about. What is like Horace?” “Well, I can’t remember any of the words,” said Lydia, “but it was something about everything being pretty awful and everything being much awfuller than it used to be but it will be much awfuller presently. You know what I mean.” Noel said he did. Though why, he added, Lydia should think she was much worse than her parents and expect her progeny to be yet more corrupt than herself, he could not see. “It isn’t so much the children,” said Lydia, at once up in arms to defend her young. “Lavinia does scream sometimes, but she is an angel, and I don’t know how anyone could say that Harry is corrupt. He has got two teeth. At least it was a tooth and a half last night and I am sure it is through this morning.” “I am glad I am not likely to have to cross-examine you,” said Noel. “Come and have breakfast.” So Lydia sat where her mother used to sit, behind what used to be called the breakfast equipage, and poured out her husband’s coffee. But Noel did not sit opposite her at the other end of the handsome mahogany table where old Mr. Keith used to sit, for he did not approve of a table coming between him and his wife, preferring to be near her and have his back to the wood fire which an English spring made so necessary. “Another of the horrid things is the post not coming till after breakfast,” said Lydia, “and even when it does come it usually brings horrid letters. It was almost nicer when you and Colin and everyone were fighting, because we did get letters.” “Well, if you really want another war,” said Noel, “doubtless someone will oblige soon. Only in the next war I shall be a red-tabbed Colonel at the War Office instead of a dashing Major in a hush-hush job. And where is Colin, by the way?” Lydia looked at her brother’s empty chair and not seeing him very sensibly said she supposed he wasn’t down yet. “It is very nice to have Colin here for Whitsun,” she said earnestly. “But I can’t help thinking what fun it was that Whitsun you and Everard were here and Colin was a master at Southbridge and it was sunny. It’s all different now.” “We will try to go back if you like,” said Noel, always willing to oblige his Lydia, “but it might be a bit hard on Colin. He likes being a barrister much better than schoolmastering. And Everard mightn’t like it much now that he is to be headmaster next year, and he wouldn’t be married to Kate. And come to that, you wouldn’t be married to me or have Lavinia and Harry.” “And there would be Dunkirk,” said Lydia, her eyes darkening as she remembered the long vigil till news of Noel’s safety reached her. “Sorry, Noel. I simply adore everything as it is. Only I do wish we could sometimes be warm.” And this modest wish was but the echo of millions of men and women who could have forgiven an all-wise and all-merciful Creator, also all-bounteous and all-seeing if all that was said were true, for all their hells and purgatories, if only he had allowed the sun to shine as of old. “Yes, it’s the ice hell of Pitz-Palu all right,” said Noel, referring to a pre-war film in which a man became frozen to death with great nobility because the hero had tried to climb an Alp with no guide and no previous experience and the heroine had gone to his rescue without her pullover. “Never mind, my precious love. We’ll saw some wood this morning. And thank God the hens are laying.” He then applied himself to a boiled egg and began to discuss with Lydia the thousand interesting jobs to be done about Northbridge Manor. “Buying this place back from your brother Robert was the best thing we ever did,” said Noel. “I still can’t think why he parted with it.” “I don’t think he wanted to very much,” said Lydia, “but Edith never liked it. She thought the children might be drowned and this isn’t the right side of Barchester. She likes the Omnium Castle side. Hullo, Colin.” And in came Colin Keith with a bundle of letters and newspapers. “I went down to Twicker’s cottage before breakfast to talk about these new apple-trees,” said Colin, who spent a good deal of his spare time at his parents’ old home and knew nearly as much about its working as his sister Lydia, “and I met the post and the papers so I brought them in. I thought you’d like to have them for breakfast.” The three breakfasters then disembowelled their letters, or prised them open with the handle of a spoon, or very neatly slit them with a small knife, according to the temperament of each. Noel, who never had a large post in the country as his letters waited for him in his chambers and were sorted by his clerk, had finished his first and idly ate bread and their own honey, speculating without much interest upon his wife’s and his brother-in-law’s expressions. “If I didn’t know you better, Lydia,” he said, “I should suspect you of having run up a monstrous bill at your mantua-maker’s or lost prodigiously at cards, and having pawned your diamonds or your honour to meet your creditors. What is it?” “It’s from Kate,” said Lydia, laying down her elder sister’s letter. “They have got mumps in the House and she hopes the children won’t get it. Do you think I ought to go over and see, Noel?” “Certainly not,” said her husband. “Kate is a very good mother and she has a very good nurse and if you go into the mump-house you’ll give them to Lavinia and Harry. Besides they probably won’t get them. Anything else?” “Only Lavinia Brandon,” said Lydia. “Francis is out of the army and is back at work in Barchester and she is having a party for him on Monday. It will be rather fun to go to a party, only one’s hands are so horrid.” “So are everyone’s,” said Noel. “It is a shocking sign of these degenerate times, but whenever I see a woman with very clean, elegant hands I find myself saying automatically, ‘What did you do in the Great War, Mummy?’ ” “Some of those evacuated teachers in the war had such awfully clean hands that one felt quite ashamed,” said Lydia thoughtfully. “Of them or of yourself?” said Noel. “First of them,” said truthful Lydia, “because it did seem horrid to have clean hands when everyone else was dirty—I don’t mean dirty really, but not being able to get the dirt off however hard one washed—and then of oneself for thinking such beastly thoughts. And I expect they had special orders that they weren’t to do anything that would dirty them. I often think I’ll stop washing altogether,” said Lydia, gazing ruefully upon her capable, well-shaped hands, indelibly marked by every kind of war and peace work, by hospitals, by farms, by machinery, by the continual round of house and garden. “I like them,” said Noel, who to his own amusement and deep pleasure became more fond of his Lydia with every day of his life. “Anything in your post, Colin?” “Nothing particular,” said Colin in a voice so off-hand as to rouse even Lydia’s suspicions. “Just the ordinary kind of things. Oh, there is one that might interest you,” he added, making a pretence of looking among his correspondence in a way that deceived nobody. “It’s from Mrs. Arbuthnot—I don’t think you know her. She is looking for a house. Oh yes, here is the letter. She says do I know any nice small house in a village or a small town within reach of Barchester.” Lydia asked who Mrs. Arbuthnot was. “You’d like her very much,” said Colin. “Her husband was with an Indian regiment.” This hardly seemed to Lydia sufficient ground for liking the unknown Mrs. Arbuthnot, but her fondness for Colin made her ready to accept any friend of his, so she asked what kind of house the Arbuthnots wanted. “Arbuthnot was killed,” said Colin rather impatiently, “in the East. She was extraordinarily brave about it. She wants a small house, because she isn’t very well off. I think Arbuthnot had some money and ran through it, though of course she never told me about it. She isn’t that sort. So I said I’d look round when I came down here and let her know.” So much were Noel and Lydia one in mind that they did not even look at each other, but each knew that the other was having the same thought. Colin Keith, the ex-schoolmaster, the lawyer, the soldier, and now again the lawyer, immersed in his profession, his chief recreation to visit his sister Lydia at their old home, by no means a hermit, dining out a good deal in London where he had a comfortable flat; this Colin, who as far as either of them knew had never felt Love’s wound apart from a few trifling irregularities such as wishing to marry his mother’s hideous under-housemaid when he was seven and being in love with a little girl with a gold band round her front teeth at the dancing-class when he was nine; this Colin, marked by heaven as a bachelor uncle, had evidently been smitten by the charms of this Mrs. Arbuthnot. Lydia did not mind. Much as she loved her favourite brother, or perhaps because she loved him so much and was herself so happily married, she had always hoped that he would present her with a very nice sister-in-law. And now perhaps this Mrs. Arbuthnot was to be she. If so, by all means let Mrs. Arbuthnot come to Barsetshire and have a small house to be not very well off in. And if she were nice enough for Colin, then Lydia would forward their affairs by all means in her power. Noel, knowing his Lydia well and having already had much the same thoughts, caught her eye and exchanged an amusing conspirator’s glance. “We must find some nice houses,” said Mrs. Noel Merton, putting her elbows on the table and twining a leg round each of the front legs of her chair, much as Miss Lydia Keith used to do. “Isn’t the Hollies to let?” said Noel, thinking of the pleasant stone Georgian house in Northbridge High Street where Mrs. Turner and her nieces used to live. “It was when Mrs. Turner went to live in Norfolk with her niece Betty Topham,” said Lydia. “But it got taken a few weeks ago by some people from the new aerodrome. Mrs. Villars told me when I went to tea at the Rectory. Besides it’s not small. What about that cottage down at the Ferry next to old Bunce’s? “My dear girl,” said Noel, “it’s out of the question. If only it were on Pomfret’s property one might get it put into order, but you know as well as I do that the Duke, or the Duke’s agent, will not do a thing about repairs. One might try Pomfret Madrigal.”