Meriel looked genuinely horrified.

‘Oh, no – she would never do that!’

‘How do you know?’

Meriel’s face changed. One moment it had been registering everything it could, the next it had closed down and was as blank as a whitewashed wall. She said,

‘Of course nobody knows, so what is the good of talking about it? I must go. It’s rather a mockery to say good-night – but perhaps you sleep-’

‘Oh, yes.’

Meriel said, ‘How fortunate you are!’ She gathered up her crimson shawl and trailed out of the room.

Chapter Twelve

Adriana sent out invitations right and left. There were to be people to lunch, and people to dine. There was to be a cocktail party – ‘Frightful, but everyone accepts and it gets things going. Meriel, you can ring up all the people on that list. And for the Lord’s sake don’t use the sort of voice which will make them think they’re being invited to my funeral! It will be quite a shock to some of them to realize that I’m not dead and buried, so you had better try and put some pep into it, or half of them will be turning up in black. Mabel Preston will be here. She is due for her autumn visit, and she looks forward to it as much as she does to anything, so I can’t put her off, and she will be quite enough of a death’s head at the feast without tragedy airs from anyone else.’

Ninian looked up from the envelopes he was addressing at top speed in a hand which resembled cuneiform.

‘Darling, not that old Mabel! You can’t!’

Adriana nodded.

‘Of course I can! She’ll love every minute, though she would die before she admitted it. So I couldn’t possibly put her off.’

Meriel said in a fretful voice,

‘I can’t think why you bother with her. It isn’t even as if she was grateful. She just comes here and complains about everything.’

Adriana’s fine brows rose.

‘She happens to be a very old friend. And if it makes her any happier to complain, I’m sure she’s welcome. If I’d had her life I’d probably do a bit of complaining myself.’

Ninian kissed the tips of his fingers to her.

‘You wouldn’t. But we’ll let that go. Mabel shall come and enjoy herself to the top of her bent. Relays of guests provided to listen to her woes, and a constant supply of clean pocket-handkerchiefs to catch the frequent tear!’

Mrs Preston arrived next day. Her visits to Ford House were the only breaks in the dullest of dull lives. She inhabited two furnished rooms in one of the cheaper suburbs, and she had very few friends. People had troubles of their own and were disinclined to listen to endless stories of how badly she had been treated by practically everyone with whom she had come in contact. Four times a year she went down to Ford House and poured out the old grievances. Adriana, not given to suffering incompetence gladly, was surprisingly patient under the infliction, but towards the close of the visit the patience was apt to wear thin and she would speak her mind, thereby adding an up-to-date grievance to the old mouldering ones with which poor Mabel Preston’s mind was cluttered. After which she would say she was sorry and forget the whole thing.

Ninian was despatched to meet the 11.45 at Ledbury. He came to the nursery, looking for Janet, and found her sorting through Stella’s clothes.

‘Darling, you’ve got to save my life. If I meet Mabel alone, I don’t suppose I shall survive it. Snatch a coat and come too!’

‘I’ve got to fetch Stella from the Vicarage.’

‘And you know, and I know, and so does everyone else, that she won’t be ready till half past twelve. There’s oodles of time.’

‘Well, I’m sorting these clothes.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve just had a cable from Star. She wants to know a whole string of things.’

‘Why didn’t she find them out before she went?’

‘It doesn’t seem to have occurred to her. She says the children’s frocks are entrancing, and she wants to send some over for Stella. I’m to cable measurements.’

‘I suppose she knows what she’ll have to pay in the customs?’

‘I don’t suppose it has crossed her mind. And she won’t have to pay it – Adriana will. I’ve just been breaking it to her.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Laughed and said she had been getting a good many clothes herself, it was only fair that Stella should have some too. She seems to be fond of Star.’

‘Everyone is. Even your chilly heart contrives a little warmth.’

‘I have not got a chilly heart.’

He shook his head.

‘ “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” – “Deeds before words”, and all the rest of it.’ He began to recite in a melancholy voice:

‘ “A man of words and not of deeds

Is like a garden full of weeds,

And when the weeds begin to grow

It’s like a garden full of snow.”

There you have it to a T. And later on there’s a line about “It’s like a penknife in your heart”, only I can’t remember how you get there. Look here, snatch that coat and come, or we’ll be late for the train, and that will give Mabel something to talk about for the rest of her visit. Honestly, darling, I can’t face her alone. I’d do a lot for Adriana, but there are limits. And we’ll go down the back stairs in case Meriel has one of her bright ideas about three being company.’

Janet found herself caught up in what felt extraordinarily like one of their old games of hide-and-seek with the grown-ups. They crept out by the back door, skirted the stable yard, and got away to an exhilarating sense of escape. The car was an old Daimler, the faithful servant of many seasons. It ate petrol, but it went on year in, year out, and it took them to Ledbury station with a good five minutes to spare.

Mrs Preston got out of a third-class carriage and came drooping towards them. She was a tall, thin woman with a desiccated look. Everything she had on had once been Adriana’s, only instead of the effect being dashing there was a general air of having come down in the world and not liking it. The grey checked coat and skirt hung loosely and dipped at the back. The short moleskin coat was rubbed. And nothing could have been less becoming than the hat in a bright emerald shade and the magenta scarf wound twice about a stringy neck. She shook hands and said in what Meeson called her moaning voice,

‘Such a dull journey – nothing to look at the whole way down, and no one in the carriage to talk to. Really, English people are most unfriendly! There was quite a nice-looking man with two papers, but did he offer me one? Oh, dear no! Didn’t think me grand enough to be noticed, I suppose. But that’s the way wherever you go – if you’re not in the swim you might as well be dead. Or better!’

Janet had to give Ninian marks for the way he handled her. He listened in a sympathetic manner with an occasional murmur of assent, and she responded with mournful satisfaction. Her restricted quarters, her landlady’s temper, the rise in the cost of living, the incivility in shops, the indifference and neglect of a once enthusiastic public – the stream of complaint flowed on with hardly a pause for breath.

Janet, dropped at the Vicarage gate, could hear the sound of it above the hum of the departing car. She looked at her watch and found that Stella would not be out for another ten minutes. The morning had been hazy, but the sky had cleared, and now the sun was warm. She walked back past the Vicarage to the row of cottages beyond, their gardens gay with autumn flowers. There really was nothing so pretty as an English village. The first cottage belonged to the sexton. His great-grandfather had lived in it and done the same office. It was he who had begun to shape the holly hedge into cock-yolly birds and an arch. The birds sat one on either side of the arch now, very stiff and shiny, and a hundred years old. Mr Bury was extremely proud of them. Old Mrs Street next door had a fine show of zinnias, snapdragons, and dahlias. She had a son in the gardening line and he kept her in plants, but she didn’t hold with all these things he got out of books. What she planted grew, and you couldn’t say better than that.