Love Among The Ruins – Angela Thirkell

“Hullo, Sally,” said Lucy Marling, who was dressed for the oc- casion in a linen coat and skirt which she wore with a cavalry- man’s stride and swagger. “How’s Gillie?” “He is better in the warm weather,” said the countess, her ever watchful maternal eye on her husband. “At least it makes him very tired, but he doesn’t have the horrid cough and he sleeps better. Dr. Ford says he ought to get abroad, but everything is so uncom- fortable and he would worry if he weren’t here for the Conservative Rally.

How are your Young Conservatives?” for Lucy, whose unbounded energy perpetually required fresh worlds to conquer, had recently established a Young Conservative Party in Marling and Melicent Halt and had been giving instruction to its members according to her own lights. “Pretty putrid,” said Lucy. “They’ll turn up if it’s a dance in the Village Hall or a whist drive, but when I got Sir Edmund to speak about local government hardly anybody turned up.

I suppose it’s because nearly everyone’s a Conservative here so they think they needn’t bother. Do you think Gillie would give us a talk about the House of Lords? If it’s an earl speaking, the people who voted Labour last election will come too. None of them know they voted red, and most of them won’t admit they did.”

“No, Lucy,” said Lady Pomfret. “If Gillie makes one more en- gagement before Christmas I shall take him to Cap Martin whether he likes it or not. We still have old Lord Pomfret’s villa there. But Pll tell you what,” she added, falling unconsciously as so many of Lucy Marling’s friends did into that excellent creature’s way of speaking, “we may be having a guest at the Towers for the Con- servative Rally.

I can’t say who it is, or whether that guest will come, but if things go as I hope, your Young Conservatives will see something to remember at Staple Park. I hope the opening today won’t take long, because Gillie has to get back for a committee in Barchester.”

Copyright 1948 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America.

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION S53 b> CHAPTER 1 v Betrers Priory, as all East Barsetshire knows, is a very large and unmitigatedly hideous house, the property of Sir Harry Waring. During the war it had been a military hospital while Sir Harry and Lady Waring retired to the servants’ wing, finding themselves there far more warm and comfortable than they could ever be in the main house. So when the blight of peace descended upon Barset- shire they decided to stay where they were and to hand over the unwieldy mansion, which just fell short in the county’s estimation of being a seat, to their niece Leslie and her husband, Philip Win- ter, who wished to start a preparatory school for little boys.

To this end they had waited till Leslie s brother, Lieutenant Cecil Waring, R.N., was on leave, and summoned him for a week-end, an invitation which the gallant lieutenant accepted with great re- luctance. Not that he disliked his uncle and aunt, but as his pro- fessional life was spent at sea he naturally counted every moment of leave wasted that was not spent at a very uncomfortable angle in a small sail-boat, or cooking sausages and coffee on an oil stove with waves bursting over it.

Still, he was his uncle’s heir, and a Nelson- like sense of duty made him feel that he must go and sec what the old man wanted, so he left the friends with whom he was spending his leave at Bosham and drove at a mostly illegal speed across coun- try to Beliers. Here his uncle and aunt received him with the af- fection that always embarrassed him because, as he said to his sister Leslie Winter, it stood to reason that if your only son had been killed in 1918 you couldn’t really feel as loving as all that to a nephew who was standing in a dead man’s shoes; to which his sister Leslie merely replied not to be so silly.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

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