by E. H. Young
“Yes,” Flora said doubtfully.
“H’m, no enthusiasm anywhere, except from Mary,” Mr. Blackett said, looking from one face to the other. “Then perhaps it’s just as well that I can’t plan anything definitely. I thought I was going to delight you all and specially you, Flora.”
“It would be lovely,” Flora said feebly, “only—”
“Only what?”
She took a short breath, lifting her finely pencilled eyebrows, parting her lips, and for a moment, in the full realization of her prettiness increased by her embarrassment, he forgot that he was awaiting her answer. Hers was not the fashionable prettiness of that girl next door; it had a character of its own. She was different from other people, as he was himself, with her sleek, dark hair plaited round her neat head and her big greenish eyes, again like his own though his were smaller and, fortunately, he had not her feminine lashes. He saw, too, with less pleasure, what his wife had meant in calling her attractive and he said more sharply, “Only what?”
“I know,” said Mary, nodding her head importantly. “It’s the war.”
“The war?” Mr. Blackett asked suavely. It might have been a new word to him and it was one he much disliked.
“Because there may be one,” Mary went on. “She told me and what a shame it would be if James got his face spoilt like poor Cousin Piers, when he’s so handsome.”
“I didn’t say he was handsome,” Flora exclaimed, unwisely showing her anger.
“Well, anyhow, you said he had a lovely face.”
“They are both very nice-looking boys, I think,” Mrs. Blackett said smoothly.
“May I,” Mr. Blackett asked politely, “be told about whom you are all talking and by his Christian name?”
“Mrs. Fraser’s sons,” said Mrs. Blackett, and she earned Flora’s gratitude and immediately changed the nature of their relationship by trailing to her and saying, “I don’t know which I think more charming. Sometimes one and sometimes the other.”
“Yes,” Flora said quickly.
“But James is the one she likes best,” Mary said.
“I know him best,” was Flora’s ready answer and, under her mother’s protection, she jerked her head back in a gesture of gay self-confidence.
“I haven’t the pleasure of the young man’s acquaintance,” Mr. Blackett said slowly, “or of the other charming gentleman’s but do assure either or both of them, those of you who are on such easy terms with them, that wounds are not altogether a disadvantage. For one thing, they carry a comfortable pension with them and a disfigured face has extra compensations. It gives distinction to what it may have lacked before and assures its owner of admiration, solicitous and probably unwarranted admiration.”
Without turning her head, Rhoda turned the eyes which had been watching her father towards her mother and intercepted the glance Mr. Blackett did not see and in the very short time it lasted, Rhoda saw in it a concentration of emotions which she could not analyse and which half frightened her. There was a cold anger in it, but she thought there was a kind of pleasure in it too.
“And as for war,” Mr. Blackett said, doing finger exercises on the table, “this great country will not be led into that enormity through the foolish stubbornness of an unimportant small one. Don’t let us have any talk of war.”
Yet he had meant to hint at it himself, under a less definite name, when he spoke of his uncertainty about holiday plans. Flora’s lack of enthusiasm had quite another cause. How could she leave Upper Radstowe now? This very evening and for the first time, James had kissed her. They had taken an omnibus to the Downs and suddenly, breaking away from his own words, he had kissed her under the shelter of a hawthorn tree. Flora was no judge of kisses, but it seemed to her that he had set the seal of perfection on this one by making it short and hard and calmly continuing his conversation. Lingering over that kiss, repeating it, would have spoilt it, she thought, and she had the wit to accept it in his manner though she was drowsed with joy and the sweet smell of the blossom. They had parted as usual, by common, unspoken consent, before they reached the Square. James was as anxious to avoid Miss Spanner’s eye as Flora to avoid her father’s. And now she was threatened with being taken from him, hundreds of miles away for what would seem like hundreds of years, to places she had always longed to see but were less desirable to her to-day than the meanest corner of Upper Radstowe. Perhaps, though the chance was poor, her father, after this evening’s reception of his proposal, would decide to go off by himself. Nothing would suit her better than that, after Mary’s indiscretion. It had been foolish to talk to her of James. She had simply felt an imperative need to hear herself speaking of him to someone else and the only possible someone had been Mary. But her mother had helped her and Flora tried to thank her with her good-night kiss.
“Good night, my child,” said Mrs. Blackett, looking at her with the tiniest glint of amusement on her calm face, a new look for Flora that sent her happily to bed. Her mother, she decided, was not quite the person she had always imagined her to be.
The same thought kept Rhoda awake, not happily, a little bewildered. Of course it was right for her mother to be angry at that hint of her father’s about Cousin Piers; he was always unkind about him, but there had been more in her mother’s look than honest anger and what it was Rhoda did not understand. She knew she would meet obstacles on the broad road of life she saw stretching before her, dangers too, and she was not afraid of them, but she had not expected to come upon dark narrow passages, crossing each other, in which one could get lost, a kind of maze, and she wished it were the morning when things might be clear and simple again. As for the talk of war, she would ask Cousin Piers about that. He would tell her the truth; so would Miss Spanner. She had made friends with Miss Spanner and this might give her another chance to see that strange bedroom of hers, like a clean secondhand shop.
Chapter V
Mrs. Blackett went to bed in expectation of having to hear a good deal about Flora and the young man across the road, but Mr. Blackett proved to be in a sentimental mood which she found much more disagreeable and, as she reflected later, when after his usual spell of lying on his back, his beard like the ace of spades against the sheet, he turned on to his side and the gentle whistling through his nose had ceased, he seldom attacked when he was alone with her. Most of his darts, and there were not many of them, were loosed in the presence of the family. Was that, she wondered, because he knew she would be loyal and refrain from a retort and he would have the final, unchallenged word? This evening, she had made her uncontrollable silent comment and she hoped Rhoda had not seen it. Flora certainly had not; her eyes had been elsewhere and Mrs. Blackett smiled towards the window through which she could see a light still burning in Mrs. Fraser’s bedroom. How pleasant, she thought, gently moving nearer to her edge of the bed, to have a bedroom, even a bed, of one’s own, to be able to toss and turn, to put on the light and read, to know there was a whole night in front of you in which to be alone. Trying to multiply three hundred and sixty-five by twenty and then doing some subtraction but not much, Mrs. Blackett calculated, with difficulty and probably with error, the number of nights she had spent in that bed with Mr. Blackett. There might be just as many more to come and she felt very envious of Mrs. Fraser in her solitude. But at this hour Rosamund was not often alone. It was the happiest time in Miss Spanner’s day when the young Frasers were finally shut into their bedrooms and she could seek Rosamund in hers and she would emerge, though still cautiously, in her modest dressing-gown, her hair hanging in two lank plaits, and find her friend propped up in bed and waiting for her.
Nobody knew how much Miss Spanner, casting disapproving eyes on Rosamund’s bare neck and arms, enjoyed the sight of her. Very early, she had discovered for herself the beauty there could be in words; it was Rosamund, in her teens, who first gave her consciousness of beauty through her eyes. This was when, walking s
lowly up the Avenue with her mother, she had descried Rosamund on her bicycle, free-wheeling down the hill, her hair a dark halo for her glowing face, her skirt above her knees, a hand waved gaily at her less fortunate friend who saw beauty and freedom and happiness expressed in that flying figure. And Agnes stood still to watch her while Mrs. Spanner, with a disparaging little cough, walked on, taking short, hard steps to emphasize her opinion of this exhibition. And afterwards, as though some film had been peeled off her eyes, Agnes saw beauty elsewhere, too, and there was much of it close at hand, but she still found the best of it in Rosamund for it was bound up with the deep, concealed affection she had felt for her since they first went out to tea at each other’s houses, and if Mrs. Blackett had known these two were together now, she might have envied their companionship as much as Rosamund’s solitude.
“What’s the matter?” Miss Spanner asked, taking her usual seat.
“Nothing,” Rosamund said.
“All right. Don’t tell me. I’m not curious.”
“No, not a bit,” Rosamund agreed effusively.
“I suppose it’s about Chloe.”
“Chloe?” Rosamund said.
“She hasn’t come home yet, has she?”
“Considering you sleep at the back of the house, you don’t miss much of what goes on at the front or, in this case, what doesn’t go on, do you?”
“I have very sharp ears,” Miss Spanner said complacently. “Sharp eyes, too.”
“I know. You can see through a brick wall. You can see things that aren’t there.”
“I wish I could see Chloe,” Miss Spanner said gloomily, folding her arms across her flat chest.
“About something special?”
“Now don’t try to be clever,” said Miss Spanner. “You know you’re worrying about her too. It’s very late.”
“I knew she was going to be late.”
“Oh,” Miss Spanner said. She tried another line of attack. “She isn’t looking very well.”
“Not enough fresh air,” Rosamund said.
“H’m,” said Miss Spanner. She would not readily believe an explanation as simple as that, and though this might be another of the brick walls, she would see through it in time.
Rosamund picked up her knitting. She knew Agnes had not nearly finished yet and she could go on with her work and her own thoughts while she waited for another suggestive remark.
“I don’t think Mrs. Blackett’s very happy,” Miss Spanner said at last.
“Very? I shouldn’t think she’s happy at all. How could she be?”
“There’s no accounting for tastes,” Miss Spanner said. “I mean not as happy as she was when she came here first.”
“I don’t see any difference. She always looks to me like a photograph of my grandmother, complete with bustle. I can never quite believe that she isn’t really wearing a bustle and a bonnet. That’s the impression she gives, married, submissive and settled for life.”
“I should hope so,” Miss Spanner said severely.
“And she can’t be any older than I am, she’s probably younger. I’m beginning to think it’s a mistake to marry as young as she and I did.”
“I told you so at the time.”
“Yes, for your own silly reasons, not for mine.”
“And what may yours be?”
“Well, here I am with a full-grown family and I’m really at exactly the right age for marrying for the first time. At least that’s how I feel.”
Miss Spanner’s right eye took a sudden dart towards her nose. “And what are you going to do about it?”
“Go on darning socks, I suppose, and making puddings and trying to keep out of debt. I don’t know what I should have done if my nice father hadn’t saved as he did for me and he would have saved much more if your nasty one hadn’t saved so much himself. But I’m getting some of it back. You pay me far too much and we both know it, so I keep my head above water. And I believe Fergus has sent me another cheque. I’ve got a letter from him, under my pillow.”
“And you haven’t read it?”
“Not yet. I found it here when I came to bed. Sandra must have seen it on the mat and brought it up. I expect she thought I’d hate the whole family to turn it over. And now, of course, she’ll be lying awake and worrying about what’s in it. I wish she wouldn’t worry so much.”
“Then,” said Miss Spanner cunningly, “why don’t you read it and find out if there’s something nice to tell her?”
“And if there isn’t? It has the same French postmark. Strange to be getting letters from France again. I used to get so many. I hope he isn’t going hungry.”
“Living on the fat of the land, I expect, and gambling too, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“The only time he ever came near gambling,” Rosamund said indignantly, “was when he gave most of his capital to those raw-boned sisters of his to start an hotel. Perhaps it’s paying dividends at last, but I’m sure they’ll keep them back if they think I’ll get any of them. I wish you wouldn’t talk as though he’s a wastrel when really he’s so decent.”
“H’m,” said Miss Spanner, a favourite sound with her. “I don’t call it decent to go off and leave his children to fend for themselves.”
“It was the best thing he ever did for them, poor lamb, except giving them some of his good looks. Peace, perfect peace! And as for fending for themselves, that’s ridiculous. How much of it have they had to do? And, though you won’t believe it, he had a sense of duty. You needn’t snort. When he left one job it was only because he thought he’d make more money for us in another.”
“You told me yourself he was sick of trying to sell motor cars. People don’t leave their work because they’re sick of it,” Miss Spanner said virtuously.
“The more fools they. Life isn’t meant to be sick in. And he wanted to write.”
“It’s a common complaint,” said Miss Spanner, “but the rash doesn’t always develop satisfactorily. And the complaint is often an excuse for staying in bed, speaking metaphorically, if you know what that means.”
“You’re a spiteful old devil,” Rosamund said, “and you might remember he has a head wound as well as a few others here and there. People’s memories are very short. Don’t we owe him something, you and I?” she asked with heat. “My own memory was too short. I didn’t make allowances enough.”
“In fact,” said Miss Spanner, “he’s a perfect character.”
And in that suggestion, Rosamund thought, lay the chief part of the trouble, perhaps the whole of it. He was not perfect, he knew he was not, but, through some mental or moral twist, he expected other people to find him so, in spite of his tempers which Rosamund herself took lightly for, between him and her, there was no real divergence. But he would not brook fault finding or criticism. That was why he did not put his own name to the stories he had begun to write with some success—he would acknowledge nothing but the best—and why he sneered at his own efforts, forestalling sneers from anybody else and not aiming too high lest he should have to confess to failure. But he could not use a pseudonym in the home: his faults and his tempers had to be his own; his children, as they grew older, were his critics. He had been charming with them when they were little and not jealous as she had feared he might be though she had given him little cause. It was when they began to develop their own personalities and wills that he grew irritable, when he saw them weighing him up and suspected that they found him wanting. Then he allowed arguments, often reasonable enough, to develop into quarrels, and Felix, too, had a temper which seemed to indicate that Fergus had not only his wound to blame, though Rosamund had laid stress on this, hoping, too optimistically, for tolerance from the young. And at last Rosamund who had been placatory, who was always convinced troubles would pass, intervened too late and much too emphatically, and watched his astonishment at this disloyalty turn to rage, not the hot an
ger that burnt itself out and soon turned, with her, to laughter, but a cold one she had not seen before; his love, and he had never ceased to love her, turning to what must be hatred. It frightened her but it did something else more lasting. It made him more formidable but, oddly, smaller than she had believed him and cast a little shadow of befoolment on the memory of the days when he really had seemed faultless, when, and for long afterwards, she had first seen him, marching round the Green with his men, arrogantly swinging his kilt and almost stopping dead when he saw her smiling from the pavement. She had always smiled at the soldiers when they passed; it was all she could do for them; but her smile faded at the sight of Fergus. It was like seeing Fate go by and the look he gave her assured her that this was how he saw her too.
“No, not perfect,” she said now, “but he used to make me laugh. We did a lot of laughing, even when those awful chickens died. Nothing serious seemed to matter. It was good to be young.”
“Very Heaven,” said Miss Spanner.
“Yes,” Rosamund said, surprised. “What made you say that?”
“Just a quotation. You wouldn’t know it. Not,” she added grimly, “my personal experience. Still,” she said, after a moment, “what you lose on the swings you gain on the roundabouts. I’ve had my books and while you’ve concentrated on six people, six ordinary people,” she said, and paused for contradiction but Rosamund, as usual, disappointed her and nodded pleasantly, “while you’ve only had them, I’ve made hundreds of friends, yes hundreds of them, good and bad and all interesting. They can’t possibly die before I do. I’m sure of them for as long as I want them and when. There’s somebody for every mood and though they don’t go off in tempers,” she said, giving Rosamund one of her meaning looks, “and leave you in the lurch, you can send them away when you’ve had enough of them, as you’d do with me now if you weren’t afraid of hurting my feelings. You’re waiting till I go to read that letter.”
