Peace Breaks Out Read online

He led them through a door at the further end of the sitting-room into what was obviously a back kitchen, with a sink under the window and a door into the garden. Upon a large kitchen table were evidences of the tenant’s profession, such as a drawing block, inks of several colours, a pen tray and some pencils.

  “And here you see the atterleer,” said Mr. Scatcherd, who had not been to Boulogne for nothing. “Where I work out my idea. I’ll call Hettie. I expect she’s in the kitchen or in her room. She sleeps in the front room, to keep a look out.”

  Sylvia, much interested in houses, asked Mr. Scatcherd where he slept.

  “I have my sanctum upstairs,” said Mr. Scatcherd. “There’s only the one room upstairs, at the back. The windows at the front are what the French call Tromperloil and I may say, speaking as one who knows a bit about art, remarkably well done. It has a nice dormer window with a view over the chapel burying ground. You’d be surprised how many postcards of that view I’ve sold. Excuse me.”

  He opened the door into the garden and shouted “Hettie.”

  “It’s a funny thing,” said Mr. Scatcherd, coming in again and shutting the door, “how the man that built this house didn’t put more doors in. Still, Hettie and me living here as we do, I daresay it’s for the best. For you have no idea at all how people do talk.”

  As he spoke Miss Scatcherd passed the window and came in by the door. She was a middle-aged woman and if she had not cut her hair short with the kitchen scissors and refused to visit the dentist owing to some religious confusion about graven images, would not have been ill-looking. Both the young Hallidays were rather frightened of her, partly because they had heard their nurses say something about people that kept themselves to themselves in a mysterious voice, partly because George, when very small, had been taken to chapel by the under-nurse of the moment and been horribly frightened by a hymn with a rollicking refrain of,

  We’ll all be as one in the Mighty I AM,

  When we’ve washed off our sin in the Blood of the Lamb, which religious canticle had made small George wake screaming for most of the Christmas Holidays.

  “Well REALLY Uncle that’s a nice way to bring people to the house all among your rubbish and things when you knew I’ll be turning the room out to-morrow and everything will be nice and tidy and there’s the best room that I turned out yesterday all ready but of course you wouldn’t think of that and really what Mr. George and Miss Sylvia will think I can’t imagine and just as I’m getting my things on the line and of course it’s beginning to rain,” said Hettie, all in one sentence.

  “I say, I’m awfully sorry—” George began.

  “It’s not your fault Mr. George it’s Uncle I’m at,” said Hettie. “And there you go Uncle leaving your things all over the room when there’s a nice hook behind the door can’t you ask Mr. George and Miss Sylvia to sit down it isn’t as if we hadn’t any chairs.”

  With which words she picked up Mr. Scatcherd’s Inverness cape from a chair and hung it violently on a hook. The loop broke and the cape fell down.

  “There,” said Hetty, picking it up. “I’ve been telling Uncle these three days that loop’s on its last legs I told him and what must he do but go and hang it up by it knowing as well as I do that I’ll mend it as soon as I get a moment to spare and there’s my things out on the line and the rain coming down and Lady Graham’s in the village and happening to meet her in The Shop she said she was coming here about some sketches or something good GRACIOUS do you expect me to have fourteen pairs of hands?”

  She then rushed out of the door into the garden, where the Hallidays could see her tearing damp flapping objects off the line and cramming them into a basket. The visitors felt uncomfortable and wished they had never come, the more so that their host looked very depressed and had apparently forgotten all about the parsnip wine. Just as they were wondering if they could escape without giving offence, there was a sound of footsteps coming round the side of the house. A small procession of two ladies and three children appeared on the little back verandah and walked into the studio.

  “Oh, Lady Graham, it’s me and George,” said Sylvia. “George is on leave.”

  “Darling Sylvia,” said Lady Graham, giving Sylvia a soft scented embrace. “And dear George. And here is Miss Merriman and Clarissa—darling Clarissa, say how do you do to Sylvia—and Robert and Edith. We have all come to see Mr. Scatcherd’s lovely pictures, haven’t we, Merry? Clarissa draws beautifully. She gave Mamma a picture of a dove on her birthday, and Robert made a frame and it all fell to bits, didn’t it, Robert darling, and Merry glued it together again. You can turn over the pictures, darlings, but don’t touch anything.

  Her offspring, who appeared to understand these peculiar instructions, at once began to turn over the pen and ink drawings on the table, but with such neat elegant fingers that as Mr. Scatcherd said afterwards you would think it was the pixies.

  “Let me give you a seat, Lady Graham,” said Mr. Scatcherd, hastily removing drawing materials from the chairs.

  “Robert goes back to school to-morrow,” said Lady Graham, who took no notice of Mr. Scratcherd’s efforts at hospitality. “He is at Eton now and so happy in dear Mr. Manhole’s house. James is there too. And John goes back to his school the day after to-morrow, so we shall be quite sad, shan’t we, Clarissa darling?”

  Her ladyship then picked up Mr. Scatcherd’s cloak, examined it with great interest, sat down upon the one chair which Mr. Scatchard had not yet cleared, and draped the cloak very becomingly round her, while Miss Merriman, who had known the Hallidays for some years, talked to Sylvia.

  “WELL Uncle,” said Hettie, putting her basket of damp clothes just outside the door and coming in with a rush. “Letting her ladyship sit on that old chair and hold your cape what her ladyship must think I can’t think.”

  “But it’s a lovely cape,” said Lady Graham. “I would like to get one like it for darling Mamma. She is not very well, but she had a very happy birthday and we all gave her presents, didn’t we, darlings? And now we want to see Mr. Scatcherd’s lovely pictures. I am going to have a Bring and Buy Sale at Holdings in the summer and we thought people would love to buy Mr. Scatcherd’s pictures and we are going to have a kind of auction. Miss Merriman knows all about it, don’t you, Merry? I would always much rather buy a thing, but such a lot of people like to see a thing getting more and more expensive till they feel equal to buying it. Still, it is all for the Barsetshire Regiment Comfort Fund, so if Mr. Scatcherd can spare some of his lovely drawings, it will be quite perfect.”

  “Mr. Scatcherd was making a new sketch in the water meadows this morning,” said Sylvia. “Do show it, Mr. Scatcherd.”

  The artist, gratified, began to unpack his suit case.

  “Now Uncle don’t you bother her ladyship with your rubbishing sketches and things,” said his unappreciative niece. “I’ll get up some of my parsnip wine your ladyship and I’m sure your young ladies and young gentleman and Miss Merriman will enjoy it it won’t do them the least harm why can’t you clear the table a bit Uncle not stand there doing nothing and get some of the glasses out of the best room and why you keep Miss Merriman standing all this time I don’t know but as I always say I’ve only the one pair of hands and can’t do everyone’s work not if I was paid to which goodness knows I’m not in this house.”

  Having thus made most of her guests feel acutely uncomfortable and distinctly addled in the intellect, she hustled herself onto the verandah, picked up her washing basket and disappeared into the kitchen. Mr. Scatcherd brought glasses from the front room, Miss Merriman talked to George about the possibility of county cricket that year and Lady Graham gave Sylvia a great deal of information about her eldest daughter Emmy, now eighteen, who suddenly wished to go to an agricultural college and breed bulls.

  “I suppose it is a kind of inheritance,” said Lady Graham sighing, “because darling Papa used to love breeding bulls. Emmy is spending this summer at Rushwater which belongs to my nephew Martin since darling
Papa died, and of course it would be most convenient, because our old agent Mr. Macpherson is devoted to her and would do anything.”

  Miss Merriman, who had not lived under Lady Graham’s roof all through the war without observing her kindly and closely, quite realised the cloud of imbecility in which that delightful creature’s talk was apt to engulf her hearers, and came to Sylvia’s rescue. Lady Graham relapsed into her usual state of admiring her family and thinking of absolutely nothing at all, and then Hettie came back with a jug of cloudy parsnip wine and some biscuits.

  “Biscuits, my darlings,” said Lady Graham. “How lovely. We can’t get any in Little Misfit this month.”

  “WELL if I’d known that your ladyship,” said Hettie, shocked, “I’d have told Father he would always keep some for your ladyship and I get the broken ones only two points a pound and just as fresh as the whole ones and they do seem to go further and just as well for really with Uncle wanting lunches and things to take out with him I really don’t know which way to turn sometimes.”

  “Merry, we must get some broken biscuits,” said Lady Graham.

  “We usually do,” said Miss Merriman, who since she came to Holdings as friend and secretary to Lady Emily Leslie, Lady Graham’s mother, had gradually taken over most of the housekeeping. “We get a large tin of broken biscuits from the Barchester Stores. It is after twelve, Lady Graham, and perhaps we ought to be getting back.”

  On hearing this Lady Graham fell into a frenzy of business-likeness, and rapidly chose several dozen reproductions of Mr. Scatcherd’s art. So overcome was the artist by his visitor’s charm that he wished to present them to the Bring and Buy, but Lady Graham, ably seconded by Hettie, took no notice of him at all and paid the usual price.

  “But before I go, Mr. Scatcherd,” said Lady Graham, with a radiant smile less brilliant than her mother’s but most upsetting to the artist’s emotions, “you must show me the picture you were doing this morning.”

  “It’s not really polished yet, Lady Graham,” said Mr. Scatcherd. “But if you insist—”

  He nervously sorted the drawings in his suit-case, while Miss Merriman, mistress of herself as always, watchful of the family whose protectress she had in a way become during the last six years, thought how like Lady Graham was becoming to her mother. Lady Emily, that wind-blown sparkling fountain, mingling deep love, intense interest, mockery; adorable, impractical and maddening in a breath, could never be repeated. In Agnes the gift of loving (though often widening to a general mush of amiability), the great interest in other people (though mostly deceptive), were renewed. Mockery she neither had nor recognised, and for all her helpless appearance was extremely practical. But her exquisite unruffled face, as the years passed, had begun to show a little of her mother’s hawk glance, a curving of the lips in piercing sweetness; and, as Miss Merriman had just noticed and not for the first time, she had the gift of never losing track of a subject however her conversation might have divagated from it. Miss Merriman sighed; she did not quite know why. But a secretary-friend-companion is not paid to sigh, and Miss Merriman knew where she stood to a hair’s breadth and let no one enter her private world, so the sigh was unheard and Mr. Scatcherd, enraptured by Lady Graham’s request, had now found the new drawing.

  “Come and look, darlings,” said Lady Graham.

  The three children at once grouped themselves round their mother with such grace that George Halliday suddenly felt that Motherhood was the most beautiful thing in the world.

  “It is so delightful to see a real picture before it is finished,” said Lady Graham, “and then afterwards when it is really finished one can see what it is. Do tell us all about it, Mr. Scatcherd.

  “Mother, it’s the river,” said Clarissa.

  “I see the bulrushes,” said Robert.

  “I see the biggest bulrush,” said Edith.

  Lady Graham raised her lovely eyes, expressing mutely to the company in general her admiration of her gifted offspring.

  “That little lady,” said Mr. Scatcherd, who was then assailed by a torturing doubt as to the propriety of such a mode of address, “has hit upon the focal point. Hit it in one. I needn’t tell you, Lady Graham, what it is. It may,” he continued, screwing up his eyes and looking at the drawing as if it were forty yards away, “give the impression of a bulrush, but that is not to the point. It is the concentration of the observer’s interest that is the important thing, and the little critic has hit it in one.”

  He then wondered if little critic was even less suitable than little lady and fell into a kind of swoon, through which he heard Lady Graham’s cooing voice uttering idiotic platitudes, till Miss Merriman said firmly that they would all be late for lunch if they didn’t go at once.

  Roused by a vision of her children starving, Lady Graham got up.

  “When that picture is finished, Mr. Scatcherd,” she said, “will you let me buy it for the Bring and Buy Sale? And we will make everyone pay a shilling to guess what it is, and the one that guesses right will get it.”

  “Suppose no one guesses right,” said George Halliday.

  “Then we’ll make everyone pay to guess again,” said Lady Graham. “Now, darlings, we must go. Come and see us before you go back to Germany, George; and Sylvia too.”

  “It’s not Germany, it’s Italy,” said George.

  “Then you must know the Strelsas,” said Lady Graham, with what for her was considerable animation. “They are cousins of ours, you know, and had a lovely villa outside Florence.”

  George, feeling a hideous boor, said he hadn’t been in Florence at all.

  “And, Sylvia, you must come over soon,” Lady Graham continued. “My brother David is getting leave from the Air Force on Thursday and will be with us for a few weeks except that with David you never know. He would adore you.”

  She then wrapped Mr. Scatcherd’s Inverness cape round her and prepared to go.

  “That is Mr. Scatcherd’s cape, Lady Graham,” said Miss Merriman.

  “How stupid of me,” said Agnes, letting Miss Merriman remove the cape and give it to Hettie. “Say good-bye, darlings.”

  In a soft chorus of good-byes the Graham family left the house, and a few moments later the trot of a pony’s feet could be heard as they drove back to Holdings. To the rest of the company life suddenly felt rather drab. The church clock chimed twelve.

  “George! the fish!” said Sylvia. “Oh, Miss Scatcherd, do you know if Vidler’s van has been yet?”

  Hettie said she couldn’t rightly say but Mrs. Panter down the road would know for sure as she had got her washing in early and was ironing in the kitchen and never missed a thing and if Mr. George and Miss Sylvia would come with her they’d soon know.

  “It’s very kind of you, Miss Scatcherd,” said Sylvia.

  “Pleasure,” said Hettie briefly. “Matter of fact I want some fish myself but it’s no good telling Uncle when everything goes right through his head like a bit of butter or I’d have told him to keep a look out when he was doing his sketching and things and nothing to think about this way Miss Sylvia.”

  The young Hallidays were so confused by Hettie’s comparison of butter to a boring agent that they almost forgot to say good-bye to Mr. Scatcherd, who was putting away his sketching materials in a kind of artistic trance, seeing in his mind’s eye the heads of the three youngest children in pen and ink on a postcard, reproduced by the thousand and sold all over the country under the title “Angel Faces,” which he somehow felt he had seen somewhere.

  “You’d better let me have that Uncle,” said Hettie, sweeping the notes and silver that Lady Graham had left on the table into her basket. “You’ll only be spending it and it might as well go into the bank we’re told we ought to save and I’m sure if anyone saves I do though no one thanks me for it.”

  Mr. Scatcherd looked rather dashed. Sylvia and George felt sorry for him, but there was nothing they could do, so they said good-bye and followed Hettie round the house, out of the front gate and acr
oss the road to No. 6, Clarence Cottages, where Mrs. Panter, the wife of Mr. Halliday’s carter, was plainly visible at her ironing, just inside the front door.

  “Good-morning, Mrs. Panter,” said Hettie. “Has that Vidler been up yet?”

  “Good-morning, Miss Sylvia and Master George,” said Mrs. Panter, putting her iron on its end on the stone floor, wiping her hands on her apron, and taking no notice of Miss Scatcherd at all. “Panter told me you were on leave, Master George, so I said, ‘I’ll be seeing Master George here before long.’”

  Sylvia and George shook hands, both secretly wondering if Miss Scatcherd would mind being ignored. But Hettie, although from foreign parts and the more urban civilisation of Northbridge, quite understood that the gentry must come first and surveyed the scene with an impartial eye.

  “Vidler went up to The Shop a quarter of an hour ago,” said Mrs. Panter to the young Hallidays. “I saw you go up with Hettie’s Uncle, so I said to Vidler’s young man, ‘Mind you keep something for Hatch House.’ I’ve got your fish here, Hettie. You can take it, it’s on the dresser.”

  She picked up her iron, licked her finger, touched the iron, listened disapprovingly, put the iron back on the stove, took another from the stove, licked her finger, listened with approval to the hiss, rubbed the fresh iron on an old piece of blanket and went on ironing one of Panter’s shirts.

  The audience was obviously at an end. George and Sylvia thanked Mrs. Panter, thanked Hettie very much for her parsnip wine, and went to The Shop. Here Mrs. Hubback had a reeking parcel of fish waiting for them and an untidy bundle of washing for her daughter. They then pursued their way, not very hopefully, to the Mellings Arms where Mr. Geo. Panter—the carter’s cousin—was licensed to sell beer and spirits to be consumed on or off the premises. The little bar was warm with humanity, a warmth very welcome on so horrid a spring day, and the young Hallidays thought hopefully of beer or even cider.

  “Not a drop of anything, Miss Sylvia,” said Mr. Geo. Panter regretfully. “Not on the premises nor off. Pilward’s have promised me some before the end of the week. Come in on Friday and I’ll see what I can do.”