Читать книгу Miss Bunting онлайн

2 страница из 93

Among the villages or small towns on this line is Hallbury. It is on the Omnium property, but as the estate is now for the most part a limited company, it does not have with the Castle the friendly feudal relations of former days. Until the coming of the railway it had remained almost untouched by progress; a street of little dignified stone houses and equally dignified red brick, living its own life, viewing from the gentle eminence on which it stands mile upon mile of pasture land, a certain amount of arable and the downs in the distance. It was the rising land that saved it from the degrading suburbs that so often accompany the march of progress. The railway, with one angry look at the town, kept on its course across the level, avoiding the river Rising, here no more than a stream, and pursued its way to Silverbridge and so into foreign parts. In course of time some marshy land was drained and the local speculators began to build. Tradesmen and small business people from Barchester began to settle there, followed by people from London, who wanted to walk or fish at the weekend and were well served by the excellent trains before the war. The roads were prettily laid out and planted with flowering trees and shrubs, the architecture was just what we might expect, for Pattern and Son, the builder and estate agent, had what he called Ideas, which included every style of building from half-timbered and pebble-dash to Mixo-Totalitarian with semicircular ends and windows that rushed round corners. So far the foundations (not that there were any because Old Pattern, now succeeded by Son, said it stood to reason where you'd got a space under a house you got rats) had endured, and the present Mr. Pattern was always ready to rehang a door that a warped jamb was causing to stick, or push a window-frame gradually extruded by the pressure of sagging brickwork back into place, or even to poke at a blocked waste-pipe with a mysterious upward bend.