Leslie, with great cunning, said that she was sure Mr. Needham, being engaged to Miss Crawley, wouldn’t want to fight anyone, besides being a clergyman.
“Well, I suppose I’ll have to say yes,” said Nannie. “It’s a mercy I got the new rod and those curtains up. Poor gentleman, I expect he feels quite strange without his arm. I wonder how he manages.”
“You’ll be able to help him a bit, Mrs. Allen,” said Philip, who had been listening with amusement.
Nannie said she’d always wondered how them collars did do up and now perhaps she’d know, which was rightly interpreted by Leslie as an enthusiastic reception of the plan. Although it was barely black-out time the darkness was gathering fast under the leaden sky and Leslie, with Crumpet on her mind, said they must be going and kissed her old nurse.
“Good-bye and thank you so much for your tea-party,” said Lydia. “I hope you don’t mind me calling you Nannie, like Leslie? I’ve got an old Nannie at home, Mrs. Twitcher is her name.”
Nannie, smiling grimly, said she didn’t suppose it would be any use saying no, but Lydia could see that she was not displeased by the familiarity.
Matron insisted on having just a wee peep into the kitchen, was loud in praise of everything and profuse in thanks. As they were all putting on coats in the passage Selina and her escort came down, rather squashed together on the narrow staircase.
“If you’ve finished, you can go along,” said Nannie. “I’m tired and want to rest. Marigold’s coming in at six to cook my supper. Don’t you forget to come in on Sunday, Selina. I hope you young fellows left everything tidy upstairs. Don’t keep me standing in a draught.”
Taking this as a general invitation to be gone, the whole party left the house. Sergeant Hopkins and Private Jenks were having a friendly dispute as to which of them should walk back with Selina, who turned her brown eyes on each in turn imploringly, so Philip said he would fetch Crumpet and bring him to the gate as he had a torch. But even as he stepped out of the front garden, a trit-trot of little hoofs was heard and round the corner came Crumpet and cart, produced by an unknown agency, the little lamps discreetly shining in front and a red light behind.
“I knew you’d have tied up old Crumpet in the shed, Miss Leslie,” said the voice of Jasper, “and I was down here in the village so I thought I’d bring him along. He’s ready to go home, aren’t you, old Crumpet?”
He had got out while he was speaking and gone to the pony’s head. “Old Crumpet he says ‘yes,’” he reported.
“It’s that nice keeper,” said Matron, which caused Jasper to confide in Crumpet exactly what he felt about some women, “and now if you are really giving me a lift, Miss Waring, shall I mount the barouche? Oh dear!” she said as she began to get in, “it seems to be quite full.”
“It’s all right,” said Leslie. “Just one moment, Matron. I’ll get in first and shift the parcels a bit.”
“But you are going to walk up with me, aren’t you?” said Philip quietly at her elbow.
“Oh,” said Leslie, hesitating.
“Lydia, you’ll take care of Matron, won’t you?” said Philip “I’m going to walk up with Miss Waring. My legs are bent nearly double with doing office work all the time.”
Lydia was perfectly agreeable. She got in, arranged the spiky parcel and the bulky bag as well as she could, and invited Matron to come along.
“There’s an old rug there,” said Jasper. “I brought it down in case you ladies was cold. Brought it the same as I brought down them old lamps, because I know’d you’d forget.”
Matron said again what a nice man and so good to Private Jenks. Having thus thoroughly embarrassed them both she said this was quite like ye olden times. Philip slammed the little back door and Crumpet dashed away at full tilt, suddenly remembering his stable.
“Now, you boys,” said the voice of Selina, trembling to a very attractive half-sob, “don’t you quarrel. Why not both see me home? We’re all going the same way.”
“That old Sheep’s Head opens at six,” said the voice of Jasper. “You young fellows’ll be wanting a drink. I’ll take Mrs. Crockett home.”
Selina’s voice was heard protesting that she would be upset if there was any unpleasantness.
“There won’t be none,” said Jasper’s voice. “You come along, my girl.”
There was a coquettish shriek and the shadowy forms of Jasper and Selina melted into the darkness towards the Priory.
“What’s the time?” said the voice of Private Jenks.
“Just after the half-hour when we left the house,” said the voice of Sergeant Hopkins.
“Left good and proper, that’s what we are,” said Private Jenks. “Well, come on, sergeant.”
Their shadowy forms melted into the darkness to await the opening of the Sheep’s Head.
“Oh, love, love, love,” Philip remarked.
“Dear me,” said Leslie, “I thought I was the only one that knew Tennyson.”
“I got him in a prize at school,” said Philip. “It was for physics, a subject I could never understand, but I cheated. Not much, but just enough to make the difference. Shall we walk?”
Without answering Leslie turned towards the church and moved forward. Philip dropped into step with her. As they passed the vicarage, Leslie wondered how the late vicar’s old sister was.
“What do you think about old people dying?” she asked Philip. “I mean people like old Miss Horniman, who are deaf and half blind and mostly don’t even know where they are, and use up lives and strength and money.”
“For the life of me I can’t tell,” said Philip. “What frightens me is the way most of them talk as if they were going to live for ever, and the more decayed they are the more they grab at life. However, they’ll be in a majority soon, so it won’t matter what we think. We shall be dead, killed, worn out, and all the paralyseds and paralytics and gagas will be able to dance on our tombstones.”
They had now reached the lodge, and the drive began to wind uphill.
“Do you mind if we don’t walk so fast?” said Philip. “Partly for my pleasure because it will make the walk longer for me, partly because it is bad for you to walk fast uphill.”
“Oh, how did you know?” said Leslie, standing still.
“Eyes in my head,” said Philip. “Or as it is dark, let us say that it’s part of a schoolmaster’s job to see if the young are overdoing themselves. Mind and body are our jobs if we do it properly.”
“As a matter of fact,” said Leslie, moving on again, “Dr. Ford says my heart is as fit as ever, but he did say to take things easily and not go about like a tank. It’s a bit mortifying when you are a good walker.”
“I know,” said Philip quietly. “And as another matter of fact I will tell you that more people do themselves harm by being snobbish about walking than you can imagine. They dash along at four and a half miles an hour and boast about it. Then they wonder why they look haggard.”
“I know I look haggard,” said Leslie, enjoying this self-abasement.
“As a third matter of fact you don’t,” said Philip. “You look much better than when I first saw you. But if you pound up hills, you will. I expect you pound at your work.”
“Well, I’m a woman,” said Leslie on a half-sigh.
“Yes, fortunately or unfortunately,” said Philip. “But being one, do make the best of it. I can’t tell you what pleasure it gives me to see you so much better.”
“It’s a good deal Lydia,” said Leslie. “It’s Noel a bit too, because to do a bit of work for him interests me and keeps me from squirrelling.”
“Squirrelling?” said Philip.
“Yes. Thinking round and round about Cecil, about my brother. But it’s Lydia more. It’s fun to have her to do things with.”
“Lydia is a remarkably good girl,” said Philip, slackening his pace. “I’ve seldom known a better and I’ve known her as long as Noel has. She has stood up to everything good and bad like a Trojan.”
“She doesn’t look as if she’d had much bad,” said Leslie, with a faint twinge of envy.
“Nothing spectacular,” said Philip. “Her father died, you know, and she ran her mother and the place. Then she married Noel and he was at Dunkirk. Then her old home was commandeered. She did a year’s voluntary work on a farm in Scotland to be near Noel; real five-in-the-morning-to-nine-at-night kind of work. Then Noel was moved to Yorkshire and she wanted to join the Land Army there, but she couldn’t because of some regulation about previous employment, so she got into a hospital as a full-time V.A.D. She was very ill up there for a time, but she took it all as part of the job and thank goodness she is as fit as ever, and would be quite happy except that Colin has gone. And now she tells me she is going to do full-time V.A.D. work again—here, I hope.”
They had walked more and more slowly as Philip spoke, till now they were at a standstill. Leslie felt rather like a whirlpool in her mind. All she heard about Lydia made her like and admire her more. All that Philip said about Lydia made her feel how very nice and comforting it would be if he could say things like that about her. But she had to confess that it would be difficult. She knew that she had done her job well, extremely well, she said, looking at it with detachment, but she also knew that it was stereotyping her into the careerist woman. Gradually her interests had narrowed to her work, hardly including her colleagues except as part of her well-running machine. Even when her beloved Cecil had been on leave she knew she had been almost impatient with him once or twice for making demands upon her time, and bored by the girls he wanted her to meet. She had been ill too, but she suddenly wondered whether in Colonel Winter’s words she had taken it as part of the job. She knew she had not; that she had been moody for long spells and more than a little irritable with her uncle and aunt, who did their round of unexciting duties so patiently and uncomplainingly with nothing particular to look forward to.
Suddenly she said out of the darkness, “Colonel Winter, I do kick against the pricks.”
Philip was again conscious, as he had been on the night she spoke to him about her brother, that he was being asked for help, and was overcome by a sense of guilt in having perhaps appeared to criticize this girl who was asking him to lighten her troubles. He rather wished he could put a British warm arm round her as he would with Lydia and give her a hug, but this obviously would not do.
“Oh, well, I suppose we’d better go on,” said her voice, flat and tired.
“You wouldn’t care to take my arm, would you?” he asked, almost diffidently. “I oughtn’t to have asked you to walk back.”
“I liked walking,” said her voice. “And I will be rather glad of an arm.”
She slipped her arm into his and they covered the rest of the distance in silence. Skirting the hospital they came round to the Warings’ wing. At the door she withdrew her arm.
“I will try to be good,” she said. “Good lord,” she added, “how affected I am.”
Her ingenuous surprise at this discovery touched and amused Philip so much that he began to laugh. Leslie, after a second, began to laugh too, though we very much doubt whether either of them really knew what it was that made them laugh.
“Thank you,” said Leslie. “I enjoyed my walk.”
“But it isn’t the first time we have walked up the drive together at night,” said Philip. “I hope you don’t forget that I was the mysterious unknown who carried your suitcase up from the station. But I didn’t know who you were then.”
“I didn’t know who you were, either,” said Leslie.
CHAPTER VIII
PHILIP WINTER, looking back during the next few days upon his black-out walk with Leslie Waring, would dearly have liked to know if he had offended her past bearing. His true desire to help her appeared to him in the unfriendly light of self-tormenting retrospect very near meddling, and the advice he gave her little less than priggish. These thoughts stung him the more that he had lost one love (though relieved beyond measure to lose her) by his same meddling, priggish ways. Lovely Rose Birkett, so suited to amusement and laughter, such a complete nitwit, so quickly dashed by his efforts to improve her a little; never had she flung her arms carelessly round his neck with such affection as after she had thrown her engagement ring into the water. All she had wanted was admiration and a good time; all he had given her, apart from his heart’s devotion, was moodiness and a temper which if not bad was far too earnest, and her relief at her freedom was such that he had for a moment feared she might get engaged to him again from pure gratitude.
Not that there was any suggestion of his being engaged to Leslie Waring. They had not even got past Miss Waring and Colonel Winter. Though it was inevitable that Christian names should be used, and almost surprising that they had not been used already, he felt a fastidious pleasure in the slight formality between them. Having always felt a distaste for very competent young women and a certain amount of fear of them, he was troubled at finding this woman with a first-class organizing brain so very unsure of herself; so unexpectedly ready to listen to his advice, yet always a little aloof like a wild creature. Doubtless the illness of which Lydia had told him was largely accountable for her overstrung state of mind; that and the anxiety for her brother. A girl who had been torpedoed and two days in a boat had every right to be shaken nervously, though he felt certain that his Lydia would have as it were defied herself not to recover and won her challenge; as she had so valiantly done when illness stopped her activities for a time. Still, he said to himself, veering from point to point, in spite of his little panegyric on Lydia she had done no more than thousands of other women, married or unmarried. Why had he held her up as an example to Leslie Waring? Just because he was so fond of his Lydia, he supposed, and had watched her career from the violent, untidy schoolgirl to the product of her own self-discipline and Noel’s influence, never with the faintest approach to love, but with solid and increasing affection. Still, there was no reason to praise one young woman to another so outspokenly, and he wondered, with a sudden clutch at his heart, if he had made Leslie hate both Lydia and himself.
But these considerations were not going to help him to do his work, so he put the remembrance of his darkling walk with Leslie out of his mind and looked forward very much to their next meeting. Twice when he was free he telephoned, but once Leslie was in town, having been allowed by Dr. Ford to go up on parole and see how the office was getting on, and the second time she was doing a piece of work for Noel against time and had to put him off. Always forgetting that anyone who works is not his or her own master, that he would find it just as difficult to make a sudden appointment or to keep it, he gave himself some quite unnecessary annoyance by thinking that to work for Noel, whom he liked very much, would be much more interesting than to have a colonel whom one hardly knew to tea. Not that he for a moment suspected Leslie and Noel of having more than the most ordinary liking for each other: he knew Noel’s feelings for Lydia too well. But Noel was on the spot, he was more a man of the world than Philip, had more amusing friends, was in Intelligence, and being happily married could afford to be charming to women without danger. So he decided not to ring up again.
It had been a disappointment for Leslie that she was really busy each time Philip rang up. Her day in London had been successful and she was not unduly tired; her work for Noel was interesting and she liked him; but behind both her day in London and her work at home had been a slight feeling of irritation that Colonel Winter must choose that particular time to invite himself to the Priory. Of course, she said to herself, he really came to see Lydia, an old friend whom he was obviously very fond of, and if people liked Lydia better than they liked her it was, she had to confess, only natural. So she decided to wait and see if he would ring up again.
This state of things might have gone on for ever, or at any rate till Philip was next asked to dinner, had not a small temporary crisis occurred at the Priory in the shape of a burst pipe in the kitchen which meant a day’s joyful saturnalia of the staff, Mrs. P
hipps, and any convalescent soldiers who felt inclined, and the absence, if possible, of the family. Luckily the Warings both had to be in town that day, so Leslie and Lydia, refusing offers of a meal on a tray, decided to lunch at the Sheep’s Head, which still managed to serve an eatable meal if it was given notice.
Mrs. George Pollett, wife of the Sheep’s Head, was renowned far and wide for her fried fish and her steak-and-kidney puddings, which, alas, were now but beautiful memories. Yet even under the peculiar arrangements for fish known as zoning, a word accepted placidly by the population of England and with their genius for misinterpretation at once reduced to a synonym of total disappearance, Mrs. Pollett managed to do wonders with an occasional bit of frozen cod, and her meat ration always went twice as far as anyone else’s. Owing to these virtues and to the agreeable atmosphere of the bar, the officers at the Dower House had arranged with the hostess for a kind of informal mess on a small scale, and every day three or four of them might be found there rather than at the canteen, where English-speaking food was supplied by a number of A.T.S. of various sizes and shapes.
In the dining-room, which looked out on a cheerful stable yard now housing army equipment of various kinds, a large round table was kept for the officers, and two small tables, pushed away against a wall, for stray visitors. One of these Leslie had booked by telephone earlier in the day, the other was already occupied by two commercial nondescripts.
Lydia knew that Noel would not be coming, but otherwise had no guess as to who might or might not be there. It was no pleasure to her and Leslie when they came into the dining-room to find Captain Hooper straddling like Apollyon right across the fireplace; however there was nothing for it but to say good morning, which they did. Captain Hooper, continuing to straddle, said seas between them braid had roared since they last met and how were things. Leslie, with her best secretary’s manner, said things were doing very well and with Lydia sat down at one of the little tables. The captain had already expressed a gallant wish that the ladies would join their little party, when a couple of officers came in and Captain Hooper had quite enough to do in standing them drinks for which he had no intention of paying if he could help it. These were followed by Philip.
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