Private Enterprise

CHAPTER 1-6

There was a brief silence while each of the party tried to think of a rhyme, in silent but fruitless emulation.

“Oh!” said Lydia suddenly. “Arbuthnot.”

“Darling, Lydia, ’tis a pity, You have lost your wits, my pretty,” said Noel. “Spell it as you may, it does not rhyme with Arbuthnot.”

“Well, Mr. Villars said scurrilous lampoons, so of course I thought of Pope. Not that I’ve read him, except a bit we had to do for that foul School Certificate and that beast Pettinger made us learn it by heart,” said Lydia vengefully, “but Arbuthnot was a doctor or something. Anyway Pope or someone wrote about him. So it reminded me about the cottage, Colin, and I thought you might ask Mrs. Villars.”

No single member of the party had been able to grapple with Lydia’s speech as a whole, though several of them had thought they understood parts of it. Colin, realizing that his sister was thinking about the little house that Mrs. Arbuthnot wanted, threw her a grateful look and said to Mrs. Villars that he was looking for a little house for the widow of an army friend of his, a Captain Arbuthnot, and would be very grateful if she knew of anything suitable.

“I do wish I did,” said Mrs. Villars, quite truthfully, for she had a high standard for the duty of a Rector’s wife and felt herself mildly responsible towards anyone who needed help. “I am afraid little houses are very difficult to find.”

“Or a cottage,” said Colin. “She’s not very well off.”

Mrs. Villars nearly said Don’t be silly, for very few people were well off and the difference between a cottage, at any rate the kind of cottage Colin meant, and a little house existed entirely in the imagination.

“I know that Mrs. Dunsford, the General’s widow, you know, sometimes lets the first floor of Hovis House, with service. But perhaps Mrs. Arbuthnot would find the stairs too much.”

“Mrs. Arbuthnot,” said Colin, goaded beyond patience, “is quite young and I’m sure you’d like her. And she is awfully good-looking,” he added, coming out into the open.

Noel and Lydia almost winked at each other. Mrs. Villars apologized for her mistake. Ever since that idiotic poster of a widow wearing a hat and weeds that no self-respecting woman would be seen dead in had been stuck up everywhere to stop people walking straight into buses and cars as they always will, one had been apt to think of widows as being at least fifty, she said. Of course if Mrs. Arbuthnot could do her own housework and cooking it would be easier to find a home for her, and she would certainly make every possible inquiry and let Colin know.

“As a matter of fact,” said the Rector, “that very over-dressed woman in the poster never cared about her husband in the least. She is looking like that because she voted Labour and suddenly saw what she had done.”

The guests looked at Mr. Villars with a respect they had not hitherto felt. Immersed in his own work and in learned articles on patristic literature, the Rector seemed to most of his acquaintances rather aloof and unconcerned with daily life. But he had been taking notice all the time and had just offered a valuable contribution to—well, no one could say exactly to what, but they all felt it had helped to clarify things in general.

Colin then thanked Mrs. Villars for her offer of help and the party broke up. Mr. Villars said he would walk down to the river with them, which made Colin have to confess that he had pocketed the boathouse key.

“Quite right,” said the Rector. “Some friends who came from Southbridge left their boat tied up with some soft cushions in it. They were all stolen by the school children who sold them in the village. I met several of the cushions in various cottages where I was visiting, but the police couldn’t or wouldn’t take action although the children were boasting openly about the money they had got for them. It was quite useless to preach a sermon about it, for none of them go to church, nor do their fathers and mothers. One often thinks of Herod with sympathetic understanding.”

“And of Elisha,” said Noel. “Even one she-bear would be a help; she would account for twenty-one of them.”

The Rector, pleased to find the brilliant lawyer so well brought up, fell into conversation with him about their favourite characters in Holy Writ. Noel said that after a long day in court he often wished he was the Tachmonite that sat in the seat, and was delighted that his pastor could not immediately place the reference.

When they got back Lydia went upstairs to assist at the baths and suppers of her offspring, while Noel and Colin split some wood for kindling and discussed in all its bearings an incredibly dull case of company law. Dinner was chicken and vegetables and fruit, all grown on the place. Then they read newspapers and were comfortably silent till the telephone bell rang.

“It’s for you, Colin,” said Lydia, who was nearest to the instrument. “I’ll switch you through to the pantry.”

Colin was absent for a considerable time and came back with the air of one who had just stepped out to look at the sky and see what the weather was like. Noel and Lydia, half-asleep in their chairs, very naturally made no comment and no inquiries.

“Sorry I was so long,” said Colin, with an expression that an ill-wisher might have called fatuous.

“That’s all right,” said Noel lazily. “The other end pays.”

“Oh,” said Colin, “I told them to charge it to this end. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” said Lydia. “I’m going to bed.”

Colin, apparently hurt by his sister’s want of interest, said he didn’t suppose she wanted to know who it was.

“It wasn’t to say Kate’s children had got the mumps, was it?” said Lydia, suddenly alert.

“Good Lord, no,” said her brother. “It was only Peggy ringing up to ask if I’d got anything. It was awfully nice of her to ring up so late.”

“Thank God it wasn’t any later,” said Noel, “or Lydia would have jumped to the conclusion that all the young Carters had swelled and died. Well, good-night.”

He turned out his reading-lamp and got up. Lydia did the same.

“It doesn’t matter of course, but I thought you might just care who it was,” said Colin.

“You said it was Peggy, darling,” said Lydia. “Good-night.”

“How did you know her name was Peggy?” said Colin suspiciously.

“What on earth are you talking about?” said Noel. “Come along, Lydia. See that the lights are out when you come up, Colin, like a good chap.”

“I only thought,” said Colin with the patient articulation of a gentleman suffering from drink or the tender passion, “that you’d be pleased that Peggy Arbuthnot rang up. She was awfully grateful that you are going to find a house for her. I wanted her to wait and talk to you, but she rang off. You’d have liked her voice awfully.”

“I am sure we would,” said Lydia and quickly shut the drawing-room door upon her brother. She and Noel looked at each other and laughed, though carefully, for they didn’t wish to seem unsympathetic.

“Poor lamb,” said Lydia, suddenly feeling a great deal older and more worldly than her elder brother. “It’s the first time as far as I know. I do hope she is nice. But even if she isn’t I shall like her very much so long as she is nice to Colin. I must say though that I think Peggy is a dull sort of name.”

Noel said that Lydia appeared to him to be distinctly the name of a cat and upon this they went upstairs to bed.