it any good. I deny myself sugar and potatoes and everything that is said
to foster it, but to no purpose. I fear it is so deep-seated that I shall
be a martyr to it all my life, but there is this consolation that they
say that people who have rheumatism seldom have anything else. In this
world we can’t expect to be too happy.
We have been in great trouble lately through want of maids. I don’t know
what has come over the servant class, but they don’t seem to value a
good place at all any more. Maid after maid has been here and has left.
Whether it is that we haven’t a cinema near, or what, I don’t know, but
they won’t stay. And the wages they ask are terrible. It seems to me that
the world has gone mad. The wonderful thing is that they can always find
some one to carry their boxes, and they get away so quickly. Not that
we have ever missed anything, but they seem to decide to go all of a
sudden, and no kind of consideration for us, and me with my rheumatism,
ever stops them. How different from my young days when old Martha our
cook went on for ever at I am sure not more than twenty pounds a year,
and Arthur the butler never dreamed of leaving or asking for a rise. But
since the War everybody is wild for excitement and change. I must stop
now as the Doctor is waiting downstairs.—Your sincerely loving friend,
LOUISA
_P.S._—I re-open this, later, to say that I have just heard that my poor
cousin Lady Smythe is to undergo an operation.
XLIX
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
VERENA, my dear, _apropos_ of the newspapers and your dread of all
their alarms and excursions, don’t believe everything you read. Fleet
Street has to live, and it can do so only by selling its papers, which
have first to be filled. Take, as an example of exaggeration, the outcry
against Departmental inefficiency as if it were a new thing. It has
always been the same, only the scale was larger during the War and after
it. There have always been round pegs in square holes, and disregard of
public money, and, as I happen to know, improper destruction of documents.
You say you want a story now and then. Well, here is one from my own
experience, gathered as it happens in the very country the violation of
which brought us into the struggle, and bearing upon official cynicism
too.
Some years ago, I was travelling by a small cross-country railway in
Belgium. It was a bad train at all times, but on this occasion it behaved
with alarming eccentricity: at one time tearing along by leaps and
bounds, and then becoming snailier than the snailiest, until at last,
just outside a station, it stopped altogether. We waited and waited;
nothing happened; and so first one passenger and then another alighted
to see what was the matter, until gradually every one of us was on the
line. Why the train did not immediately rush on and leave us all behind
I cannot say; but, as you will agree, it might easily have done so, for
when we reached the engine it was discovered that both the driver and
stoker were gloriously and wildly drunk.
There are never lacking leaders on such occasions as these—and we
quickly had several, equally noisy; but by degrees some kind of
policy was agreed upon, and we all marched in a foolish procession to
the station behind the group of three gentlemen who led us, and who
walked (and stumbled over the sleepers) abreast, either sideways or
backwards as they thought of new words and new gestures to apply to
the outrage. At the station we were met by the station-master, and a
battle of explanations and protests and repetitions set in and was waged
terrifically, the issue of which was the production of a large sheet of
paper on which we all, one by one, signed our names beneath a record of
the offence, with the date and place carefully noted. By the time this
was done the station-master had managed to find a new and sober driver
and stoker, and the train could resume its journey.
I—perhaps because I was English, and there was nothing to gain—happened
to be the last to sign, and therefore the last to rejoin the train. As
I was getting into it I found that I had left my pipe in the office,
and I hurried back to recapture it. I was just in time to see the
station-master placing the last of the pieces of the torn-up manifesto on
the fire.
After that I feel that you must have something more than usually
beautiful in the way of a short poem. Try this:—
Here lies a most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she;
I think she was the most beautiful lady
That ever was in West Country.
But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
However rare—rare it be;
And when I crumble, who will remember
This lady of the West Country?
Having copied that out it occurs to me that it is almost too personal and
memento-mori-ish. Let me hasten to say that the part of the West Country
indicated is not Herefordshire but, let us say, Gloucestershire. How
careful one always has to be—and isn’t!
R. H.
L
HORACE MUN-BROWN TO VERENA RABY
MY DEAR AUNT,—I had anticipated your objection to the marriage of
first-cousins, which is one of your arguments against my courtship of
Hazel. An acquaintance of mine who is connected with a statistical
laboratory has long been making enquiries into the whole matter
of consanguinity, and the results are surprising. The children of
first-cousins are by no means doomed to imbecility or decadence. But even
if they were that should not necessarily deter me, for the union of Hazel
and myself might prove to be childless, although none the less happy for
that, and it would be grievous and tragic to permit a superstition to
keep us sundered.
But I am letting the whole matter rest for a while and endeavouring
to soothe my fever by concentrating once again on financial schemes.
For without money I have no home to offer any wife. You will remember
my project, in which I still believe implicitly, for establishing a
Cinema in the City? Well, it has fallen through. The reply from the only
churchwarden who has been polite enough to answer my very courteous
letter is unsatisfactory. He displays an antiquated reluctance to come
into line with the march of progress. And as the price of ordinary
building land in the neighbourhood of Cheapside is prohibitive I must
reluctantly abandon the notion either as unripe or as unsuited to my
hands. But I am sure I was on the right track.
I now have a new and more practical scheme to unfold. While walking
down the Strand yesterday I made a curious discovery in which I am sure
you will be interested. I noticed that in the whole street there is no
shop devoted to woman’s dress—not even a milliner’s. Considering that
the Strand is always too full of people of both sexes and that it is
largely a pleasure street—I mean that the people have time to look about
and money to spend—this is a very strange thing and I am sure there
would be big profits in remedying it. My idea is to find the capital
for an emporium to be established somewhere in the neighbourhood of the
Beaver Hut, where men and women are passing the whole time; visitors to
London—staying at the Savoy and other great hotels—many of them very
wealthy Americans;—people arriving at Charing Cross from Kent (one of the
richest counties); and so on. How natural for the men to wish to give
the women something pretty to wear!—to say nothing of the women’s own
constant desire for new clothes and hats.
All that is needed is a certain amount of capital to build and stock
with, and the services of a first-class man from one of the big Oxford
Street places to act as manager. If you are sufficiently interested in
the scheme to invest in it, please let me know the amount.
I hope you are better. I have one of my bad attacks of nasal
catarrh.—Yours sincerely,
HORACE MUN-BROWN
LI
ROY BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY
DEAR AUNT VERENA,—I am broken-hearted and turn first to you for sympathy
as you are always so kind and all my pals are out of town. The fact is,
Trixie and I have parted for ever. I can’t explain how it happened,
because my brain is all in a whirl about it, and really I don’t know,
but somehow I offended her and it is all off. My life is a blank and
all the plans I had made are mockeries. I had even begun to look in
furniture-shop windows. And then it all went wrong, and when I got to
the Jazzle Ball a little bit late, which I couldn’t help, I found that
she had given every dance away to other men, one of whom is an officer
bounder whom I had most carefully warned her against: a regular T.G.
(Temporary Gentleman) of the worst type.
I wish you were better so that I might come and talk to you about it
all. I could tell you in words so much more than I can write, especially
with the mouldy pens at this Club. The only satisfactory part is that
I had not bought the engagement ring, not having enough money for it.
I don’t mean that I should regret the money but that I should hate to
receive the blighted thing back. As it is I had not given her anything
but chocolates, and of course we exchanged cigarette cases: but I don’t
intend to use hers any more. I could not enjoy a cigarette from a case so
fraught with memories.
If I were a little more independent I should try to forget my sorrows in
travel, but I can’t. And dancing has ceased to interest me. In fact, I
believe it is this dancing that is very largely the matter with England.
If we danced less and worked more I am sure we should be “winning the
Peace” more thoroughly. If you have any ideas for me of a strenuous
kind I should like to hear of them, for I am all for toil now. I have
frittered my time away too long.—Your affectionate nephew,
ROY
_P.S._—If you are writing to Hazel or any one at home please don’t
mention my tragedy as they did not know I was engaged.
LII
BRYAN FIELD TO SIR SMITHFIELD MARK
DEAR SIR SMITHFIELD,—You have always been so kind in giving me advice,
and now and then a hand, that I am following the natural course of
gratitude and coming to trouble you again.
The hospital in France is just closing and I shall be on the loose. I
shall look out for a practice, but, meanwhile, I wondered if any rural
friend of your own might be in need of a locum: I say rural because the
desire to be in old England again is very strong, after so many months
of this foreign land, which, however beautiful in effects of light and
space, never quite catches the right country feeling. I wonder if you
know any one in, say, Herefordshire, who wants a change? Of course a
Bart’s man.—I am, yours sincerely,
BRYAN FIELD
LIII
JOSEY RABY TO VINCENT FRANK
DARLING VIN,—It is dreadful, but father won’t hear of an engagement.
He is so absurdly old-fashioned and does not realize that everything
has changed. No doubt when he was your age, long ago in the
eighteen-nineties, people could wait for each other; but why should we?
I don’t suppose that then they even knew how to kiss. He says the most
ridiculous things. He says that a girl ought to know a man at least for a
year and that twenty-one is the earliest age at which she should marry.
Why, Juliet was only about fourteen when she was betrothed to Romeo,
and lots of Indian girls are widows before our hair is up. And what is
the sense of love at first sight if you have to wait? Father also says
that aviation is not a desirable profession for a son-in-law, entirely
forgetting that half the fun of our marriage will be the flying honeymoon.
I think you had better call on father boldly and have it out with
him.—Your own
J.
LIV
THEODORE RABY TO VERENA RABY
DEAR OLD V.,—If Josey writes to you for sympathy in her struggle with a
stern and heartless parent, please oblige me and help the little idiot
(bless her, all the same!) by supporting me.
These are the cold facts. She is eighteen and has been frivolling far
too much, largely because she has no mother and I have been too much
occupied to attend to her properly. Also because the War made frivolling
too easy by fledging so many infants at lightning speed. Among the
acquaintances that she has picked up at this and that _thé dansant_ is
a flying boy, and, just because other boys and girls have married in
haste, she must needs insist on marrying in haste too. No doubt she
thinks herself in love and no doubt also he does, although I shouldn’t be
surprised to find that he is more pursued than pursuing, as is so often
the case now; but the whole thing is derivative really, and I can’t have
my one little Precious thrown away on an experiment in imitation.
The bore is that—to such a pass has the world come!—she might at any
moment perform the Gretna Green act. Self-restraint, you see, is a little
out of fashion up here: we all live for ourselves now, to the great
detriment of the Human Family which peace was to consolidate. To forbid
her to see the boy seems to me a mistake. If you were well I should ask
you to invite her to the country, but you are not well, my poor dear,
and she wouldn’t go even if you were—not so long as her warrior is
accessible. And he seems to be always in town, the exceptional perils of
the air being, it appears, compensated for by exceptional opportunities
of leave.
So far as I can gather he is a decent young fellow and he may be on my
side—but he doesn’t come and see me and it seems rather absurd to go to
see him. The new soldier, and especially when he flies, is not to be
found at home too easily! This one seems to be the usual enfranchised
public-school boy—to whom the wonders and mysteries of life are either
top-hole or incomprehensible, or both, and an eclipse of the sun would be
merely a “solar stunt.”
Even if Josey had her foolish way I don’t suppose that the end of the
world would arrive, but it would be sad and disappointing and I am
certain that she would very quickly regret her impetuosity.—Yours as ever,
THEO.
_P.S._—All this about me and mine and nothing of your trouble. Dear old
V. I do so hope that you are mending. I must come and see you and the old
home soon. It will be a dreadful thought some day—how one postpones these
necessary acts!
LV
NESTA ROSSITER TO RICHARD HAVEN
DEAR “UNCLE” RICHARD,—I wonder if you could possibly come down, if only
for a night, to see Aunt Verena. She really needs a good talk with some
one sensible and frank. We all do our best but we are not sufficient. It
is very bad, I am sure, for a naturally active woman such as she is to
be forced to lie still in this way. She has even begun to talk about the
extent to which complete invalidism should be endured, how fair it is to
the community to be a deadweight, and so on. So if you could manage even
a flying visit it would be a great relief to us all and a great comfort
to her.—I am, yours sincerely,
NESTA
LVI
RICHARD HAVEN TO NESTA ROSSITER
DEAR NESTA, it is impossible, I fear, for a week or so. But I will come
then, although only for a night.—Yours,
R. H.
LVII
VERENA RABY TO RICHARD HAVEN
DEAR RICHARD,—I am very unhappy. I do not get any better and I am a
deadweight. I want to arrange my affairs and I have no adviser but you.
I cannot bear to be an imposition on others, even when they assume
the burden so smilingly. The kindness of people to people is far more
extraordinary than their unkindness, I think. If I were to take an
overdose, should I also be “of unsound mind?”—Your very dependent and
despondent
V.
LVIII
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
[_Telegram_]
Coming by 2.35 for night.
R. H.
LIX
VERENA RABY TO RICHARD HAVEN
[_By hand_]
DEAREST RICHARD—Just a line to say goodbye and to thank you for coming
down. It is monstrous to ask you to come so far for such a short time. I
feel much more serene and shall now be brave again. I hope you will have
an easy journey.
I have been wondering most of the night if it was not very unfair to
force so much thinking upon you, when you are, I am sure, busy enough.
And I don’t want to be unfair. If I did, I should just leave all my money
to you, with an intimation that you were my Grand Almoner, and die in
peace. But I can’t do that, partly because you might die too and there is
no one in the world but you who is really to be trusted. Do believe I am
truly grateful for your daily letters and your persistence in what must
often be an irksome task.—Yours always,
V.
LX
RICHARD HAVEN TO VERENA RABY
MY POOR DEAR, “irksome” be d—d! There is nothing irksome in talking to
you on paper for a little while every day. Indeed, a lot of it is pure
luxurious pleasure, because I can indulge in the rapture of (so to speak)
hearing my own platitudinous cocksure voice.
It was a long journey, but I am safely back. It was splendid to find you
looking so little pulled down and to see all those nice faces round you.
I pride myself on being able to pick a Reader against any man!
While the train was stopping—much too long—just outside some country
station, I watched three farm-labourers hoeing, and all three were
smoking cigarettes. Now, before the War you never saw a farm-labourer
with a cigarette and you rarely saw him smoking during work. I am quite
certain also that you can’t smoke a cigarette and hoe without doing
injustice either to the tobacco or to the crop. No farmer to-day would,
however, I am sure, have the courage to protest.
“But,” I said to a man the other week when he was blaming one of his
messengers for an unpardonable delay, “if he behaves like that, it is
your business as an employer to sack him.”
“Sack him!” he replied blankly. “Employers don’t give the sack any more;
they get it.”
And this is true.
But a change must come, and the interesting thing to see will be how
complete that change is. One thing is certain, and that is that Capital
and Labour will never resume their old relations; Labour has tasted too
much blood. And you can’t put servants into khaki and tell them they are
our saviours and then expect them to return to the status of servitude—at
any rate not the same ones. The process of grinding the working classes
back to their old position of subjection is going to be impossible; and
the statesmen will find that reconstruction must be based on foundations
which are set on a higher level than the old.
A man in the train gave me a new definition of the extreme of meanness:
Saving a rose from Queen Alexandra’s Day for use again next year.
Here is the poem:—
Since all that I can ever do for thee
Is to do nothing, this my prayer must be:
That thou may’st never guess nor ever see
The all-endured this nothing-done costs me.
Good night.
R. H.
LXI
VERENA RABY TO HER BROTHER WALTER IN TEXAS
MY DEAR WALTER,—It is far too long since I wrote to you, but now I have
only too much time for letters, as an accident hurt my back and I have to
lie up with too little to do.
I wonder so often how you are, and you never send a line, nor does
Sally. You are the only one of our family of whom no one ever hears. Do
make a great effort and answer this and tell me all about yourself and
your life on the ranch. It must be so very different from ours. If you
have a camera, couldn’t you send some photographs? Remember I have never
seen Sally. I don’t even know if there are any children.
The garden to-day looks lovely from my window. The old place has not
changed much since our childish days, but the trees are higher. I have
done very little to it beyond keeping it in repair and installing
electric light, which is made by an oil engine, and a few modern things
like that. There are more bath-rooms, for instance. One of them has been
made out of that funny little bedroom where the rat came down the chimney
and you brought up one of your young terriers to kill it and the dog was
afraid and it nearly broke your heart. You haven’t forgotten that?
The big playroom at the top I have not touched. It has the same
wall-paper. Whenever any of the others—I mean the girls—come to see me
and we go up there we always have a good cry. The screen with the _Punch_
drawings, the big doll’s house, the rocking horse: they are still there.
Little Lobbie, Nesta’s second child (Nesta is Lucilla’s daughter, who
married an artist), plays there now. Nesta is staying here to keep me
company while I am ill. I don’t have any pain; I merely have to lie still
and give the spine a chance.
Kington has grown very little. There are new houses near the station
and we have a municipal park! That is about all. But it isn’t what it
was—probably no English town is since the motor car came into being. Some
may be better, but I think that Kington has deteriorated and very few of
our friends remain. Mr. and Mrs. Grace are still living at the Tower,
but alone and very old; all the family has dispersed. One thing that has
not changed is the temperature of the church; which is still cold. But
there is a long—too long—Roll of Honour in the porch. How you must have
regretted that lameness of yours when the War broke out!
I manage to keep in touch with most of us, chiefly through their
children. Letitia I never see. I should like to, but she is not strong,
and Tunbridge Wells is a long way off, and it is impossible to detach her
from her husband, whom we rather avoid. I am afraid she is not happy, but
I can do very little to help. Clara’s son and daughter—Roy and Hazel—are
very lively correspondents, and Evangeline, their youngest, seems a
thoughtful child; but I fear that Hector Barrance can be rather difficult
at times. Theodore’s only girl is just eighteen. Anna’s boy Horace is a
rather serious young man at the Bar. Lionel is still unmarried; he was
made a C.B.E. in the War. Ronald is also unmarried and I hear from him
now and then, but his duties keep him very close in Edinburgh. Every one
is very kind to me in my illness, Richard Haven—you remember him?—writing
every day. He is fixed in London. Nellie Sandley, whom you were so sweet
upon that summer at Lyme Regis, died last week, poor girl, of pneumonia.
I wonder if all this interests you in the least, or if your new life in
your new country is all-absorbing. It would be delightful to see you
again. But at any rate do write and send some photographs if you can.
Write directly you get this and then a longer letter later.—Your loving
sister,
VERENA
_P.S._—I often wonder if you would not like the series of hunting scenes
by Alken that used to be in the dining-room. Let me know and I will send
them.
LXII
VERENA RABY TO THEODORE RABY
MY DEAR THEO,—How very delightful to hear from you—even though it is
such a tale of woe. I don’t want you to have more of such perplexities,
but I do want to have another letter. It was odd too because I was just
beginning a long one to Walter asking for his news and telling him mine.
If Josey writes to me, you may be sure I will be on your side—but can’t
you get her something to do? It is idleness and enough money to buy new
frocks that lead to these problems. I should like her to come here, but,
as you say, she wouldn’t accept just now.—Your very loving
V.
LXIII
EVANGELINE BARRANCE TO VERENA RABY
DEAR AUNT VERENA,—I hope you are better. I told you some time ago that
we were preparing a great surprise for you to cheer you up on your bed
of sickness and pain. Well, it is now ready and I send the first number.
If you get well quickly there will never be another. It is called _The
Beguiler_ and has been written for you chiefly by the girls here. I am
the editor. My great friend Mabel Beresford copied it all out. Doesn’t
she write beautifully? I hope you will like it. Roy has read it and he
says it ought to deliver the goods.—Your loving
EVANGELINE
No. 1. May, 1919
THE BEGUILER
OR
THE INVALID’S FRIEND
_A Miscellany_
COMPILED BY
EVANGELINE BARRANCE
ASSISTED BY A BUNCH OF FLOWERS
PEOPLE WHO REALLY DESERVE THE O.B.E.
I. COOK
If ever there was a heroine in real life it is Cook. She has to be all
the time in the kitchen even when the sun shines and the birds are
singing. The kitchen must be hot or the things wouldn’t be properly done
for dinner.
She is always cooking things for other people and she doesn’t get
anything to eat till they have finished, although of course she can taste
as she goes along. This is a delicious thing to do, and when she is in a
good humour she lets us dip our fingers in, but usually she says “Don’t
stop here hindering me.”
She never goes out except to see if there is another egg or to pick mint
or parsley or to talk to the butcher’s boy, who is terrified of her.
Sometimes she has to catch a chicken and kill it and afterwards she has
to pluck it.
Our cook is very fat and when she goes upstairs she holds her side and
pants. On Sundays she doesn’t go to Church but to Chapel and she wears
very bright colours. She had a lover once but he died. His portrait is in
her bedroom with his funeral card under it. She says that her troth is in
the tomb with him and never can she marry another. She also says that the
talk about cooks and policemen having a natural attraction for each other
is nonsense.