by E. H. Young
To-night Agnes was stiffer than usual in disapproval of Mr. Lindsay’s visit, but she was a woman and not an old one and, half ashamed to confess it, she wished she could make some contribution of beauty to the scene as these others did, beauty of feature or voice or pose or that transfiguring anxiety for other people’s happiness which made Sandra’s sharp little face as vivid as her hair, and as she cut away the cobbles Rosamund had made in the boys’ socks and filled the gaps with the fine darning she had learnt under her mother’s sharp eye, she was deeply resentful of her physical imperfections and, in rebellion against them, she lost consciousness of her surroundings in what was almost a determination to send her clothes to a rummage sale, put her head into the hands of a good hairdresser and the rest of her body into those of Chloe and Miss Pringle. The processes would be humiliating and uncomfortable and in the end she would not be beautiful but perhaps it was her duty to try and she might, at least, be elegant and distinguished looking and these words had no sooner passed through her mind than she came to herself and let out a short bark of laughter, and at that the conversation, which had been a shelter for her thoughts, immediately ceased and seven pairs of eyes looked at her with astonishment.
She patted her throat. “Just a sudden choke,” she said and several pairs of eyes looked at her with sceptical amusement.
“Shall I get you some water?’ Sandra asked with tender malice.
“For a moment,” Felix remarked gravely, “I was afraid you were laughing at the masculine futility of our conversation.”
“Not at all,” said Miss Spanner. “Most interesting.” She patted her throat again and nodded reassuringly and Paul, between a squeak and a grunt, picked up the talk where it had been dropped.
They were talking, she discovered, about cricket. Cricket! she thought, and to her, who had been brought up in a world where games were considered a waste of time, this seemed a strange subject to be discussing now, but while terms and names were bandied to and fro, much less familiar to her than those of European statesmen and trouble-makers, she took heart at the remembrance that Drake played bowls and in the belief that the young men of to-day, in spite of disillusionment and apparent indifference to matters more serious in her view than cricket, would still be true to their breed. It was the old ones she distrusted. And what a lot there was to say about a game and how meekly the women kept silence under a topic they seemed to consider sacred, as in truth to some extent they did, and how impatient and scornful the men would be, Miss Spanner thought, if she and Rosamund and Chloe started a discussion about cooking, a skilful occupation of much more real concern to men than cricket was to women. “But they always get the best of it,” she grumbled to herself and at once she added “And they deserve it,” for it was not she who had one leg a little shorter than the other and her face was not disfigured though that, in her case, would not have made much difference, indeed, it might have been an advantage. She would have had three faces and people would have found in her the fascination she found in Mr. Lindsay as the faces came and went, the normal profile giving way to a comic ruefulness and then to a strained and almost tragic aspect.
It was the normal profile she saw as he rose and said he must go and see his cousins before he fetched his car. George was usually able to deal with its vagaries but this time he had failed and it had been necessary to take it to an expert. So that, Miss Spanner thought with satisfaction and Rosamund with none, accounted for this visit, but Miss Spanner’s satisfaction was tempered with disappointment. After all, he had not come on foot to spare Mrs. Blackett’s feelings and Miss Spanner, anxious for propriety in the household with which she was connected, could not willingly relinquish her determination that there should be a three-cornered drama across the road, complicated by an abortive one here. It had to be abortive here, for personal contact with such an affair would be inconvenient and somewhat sordid but, at a little distance, like some thrilling story of crime, it would be transmuted into romance by the skill of the artist who, in this case, was Miss Spanner herself.
“But if you go now,” Sandra said, “you won’t hear the news.”
“George will be listening. He’ll tell me all about it,” he said, and Rosamund felt an unreasoning enmity for George. He seemed to be a universal provider.
“And do you know anything about knots?” James asked.
“Knots?”
“Yes, for ropes. Climbing ropes,” he added.
It was rather pathetic, Rosamund thought, that eagerness of a reserved person to speak about his holiday now that he was assured of it. Like a child, he had been impelled to make an opportunity for introducing the subject and it was something of a reproach to her who ought, she supposed, to have divined a longing he had chivalrously concealed.
“I did do a little climbing, once,” Lindsay said. He seemed to be amused by the recollection and then, as he turned his head; to be distressed by it.
“Didn’t you care about it?”
“Yes, very much but I’d only just begun. I was having my first climbing holiday when the war started. I only had three days of it and after that I’d have been rather a nuisance on a rope so I didn’t try again. But I can’t imagine anything better,” he said, remembering the dusty smell of heather on an August morning, the gritty warmth of the rocks, the blue arch of the sky and the sheep calling, the perfect peace but for that sound and the rasp of nails on the rock and an occasional word from the man in front of him. But that peace had suddenly become ironical when, at the top of the little mountain, the climb over, some inferior being who had walked up and was scattering orange peel, gave them the news and, chiefly because of the orange peel, they had made no comment beyond a grunt. What unfriendly snobs they had been! They had coiled up the rope and hurried down by the quickest way to the little farmhouse lying now with an air of unreality in its security at the foot of the mountain. They had gone down through thick heather, still saying nothing, but when they reached the stream threading the valley they had stopped with one accord and stripped and bathed in water like iced silk. Though none of them would have acknowledged the feeling, it was as though, now that they were more accessible, they could afford themselves a little leisure before they packed their sacks and tramped to the nearest station. The smells and sights and sounds of that day were pungent and clear to him now. There could never have been a bluer sky or a brighter green than that of the moss bordering the stream: it was a cushion of softness too, and the sounds of the water, trickling here and gushing there, making a lovely, callous song, and still doing it no doubt, was the best music he had ever heard, though his real youth ended by its banks.
All this passed through his mind in the few seconds before he spoke again. “But that was a very long time ago,” he said, and had a momentary impression of constraint in the room.
It was Paul who explained it. “And it’ll be funny if the same thing happens when Felix and James go climbing in September.”
“Oh Paul!” Rosamund said softly, in protest against this embarrassment of a visitor.
It was never safe, Lindsay thought, to mention that old war. You met the smile of incredulity or impatience, you seemed to boast—and perhaps that reference to his injuries had seemed like boasting—and when the whole thing was not discredited you touched somebody on a tender spot. And now there was this new danger of uttering omens.
“But it might easily happen,” Paul persisted, not without hope.
“Yes, we know,” his mother said.
“And if we only get three days, like you,” James said, “it will be something.”
“It will be a great deal,” Lindsay said.
“And Drake played bowls,” said Miss Spanner. She was glad she had remembered that. “And I wish you’d play them too, instead of these monkey tricks you’re after. What was good enough for him ought to be good enough for you.”
“But he got his adventures in other ways,” Felix said.
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“And you’ll get plenty when you’re a pilot,” Paul assured him.
“Oh, shut up!” Felix said, looking like his father.
But Paul was accidentally wiser than the others. Nobody was afraid of the subject, but everyone thought someone else might be and Rosamund decided it was time to put an end to all this delicacy.
“I wish you could have your holiday now, at once,” she said. “I do so want you to have it.”
“Smithers can’t go any sooner.”
“Bother Smithers! Well, perhaps it will be all right,” she said, and, while a derisive sound came from Miss Spanner, she looked at Lindsay, hoping for a comforting word. She would not have believed it but she would have liked to hear it and she liked him all the better for not saying it.
“Nice man,” said Felix, coming back from seeing him off.
“But dull,” Chloe said.
“And very lonely, I should think,” Sandra said.
“Now don’t be sorry for him.” Rosamund spoke a little sharply. “It’s a kind of self-indulgence and I’m sure there’s not the slightest need for it. That George of his seems to be a complete family as well as a cook and a handyman and if necessary, no doubt, a nurse too.”
“But he isn’t a real family,” Sandra said, “and that’s what everybody ought to have.”
Chapter XVI
Mrs. Blackett had done her best to brighten Connie’s cavernous kitchen. With walls painted yellow and curtains and table cover to match there was an effect of sunshine under the electric light and blessed, as it was, with the added comfort of a cushioned expanding chair, Mr. Blackett could not understand why Connie was not content to stay there until a reasonable hour in the evening instead of going to bed as soon as her work was done and leaving some member of the family to answer the front door bell. It was very seldom rung at such a time and Mr. Blackett, unwilling to admit her right to go to bed when she chose and never sure whether she had gone or not, had failed to appoint a definite substitute for this task. The result, this evening, with Piers Lindsay on the doorstep, as he could see from his window, was a pause for the sound of Connie mounting the basement stairs and then a rush from various parts of the house and what Mr. Blackett considered a most unnecessary gathering in the hall to greet the visitor and one likely to give him quite a wrong impression. Mrs. Blackett was there smiling serenely; Flora, hoping for the arrival of a different visitor, and Rhoda with her faith in Cousin Piers restored. After all, he had not come on foot in a sort of secrecy as Miss Spanner, too, had suspected and, although it was a pity he had wasted any time on the Frasers, she did not grudge him to Miss Spanner and he had not, as her father suggested, altogether exchanged old friends for new.
“And Mary, I suppose, is in bed,” Mr. Blackett said from the background, using the most urbane notes of his voice in comment on this gathering and Flora, in disappointment, gave him a sympathetic smile with a little lift of her shoulders. She felt just as he did about this enthusiasm and almost recovered the credit she had lost with her father. She had been smirched in his eyes by her physical contact with that young man: it was impossible for his imagination to halt at a handclasp and he had avoided looking at a daughter who had provoked him to such unpleasant thoughts, yet there could not be anything seriously wrong with a girl who took his meaning so swiftly and shared his feelings and he smiled back, acknowledging her as his own again.
This little episode was not noticed by the others. “I saw you,” Rhoda said, “but I was afraid you wouldn’t be coming.”
“Of course I was coming,” he answered, wondering why she should care, seeing a faint likeness in her pleasure to Bertha’s in the old days when they met after a parting, a little startled by this evidence that, stumbling through life and going rather blindly, it was possible to pick up treasure as well as miss it and he was warmed by the discovery that, as was fitting, Bertha’s child had a liking for him and he thought the lack of reason for it was its chief charm. But there was a formality in Mrs. Blackett’s pale drawing-room in strong contrast to the friendly ease in the Frasers’ house. Rhoda’s now sullen face made him doubt whether, a few minutes ago, he had read it truly, while Mr. Blackett, wearing a politely receptive expression, seemed to await some explanation of this visit. Flora, following his lead, looked faintly amused and Mrs. Blackett never had much to say, but she did her best with the weather and inquiries after his crops and he responded with inquiries about her garden and went to the door to look down on it from the top of the little staircase.
“Let’s go down and see it properly,” Rhoda said.
“No, no, it’s beginning to get dark,” her father objected.
“That’s when a garden looks nicest.”
“And those steps are dangerous, as we know to our cost. To my very considerable cost,” he added. “Now, be careful, Bertha,” he said as she followed the other two and he watched her to the bottom. “Your cousin,” he said, turning back to Flora, “is agile enough when he chooses. There are occasions when he forgets to limp. Well, I think we’ve done our duty by him and he, no doubt, thinks he is doing his duty by us. A sense of duty can be very misleading, Flora. Modesty ought to accompany it and I can honestly say that I do not value myself enough to believe I should be doing my duty in paying a call on a single soul I know, and especially not at this time of night.”
“But he’s a cousin,” Flora said, “and Mother’s very fond of him.”
Mr. Blackett laughed a little. “Fond?” he said. “Your mother is very loyal and very courteous, two great qualities,” he said, and he went back to the door to take a look at her.
They were all at the farther end of the garden; he could hear the murmuring of their voices and as the three figures moved through the dusk in their absurdly concentrated scrutiny of the flower beds, he saw his wife slip a hand under Lindsay’s arm and check their pacing to look up at him and laugh, clearly and happily. He stepped back at once in instinctive horror of eavesdropping, but why, he asked himself the next minute, should it seem like eavesdropping to hear his wife’s laughter? He did not answer the question. He blinked away the memory of the confidence with which she had put her hand under Lindsay’s arm and his resentment turned more safely to Rhoda’s remark about her mother’s newspaper. He would have to look into that matter for it seemed to be vaguely connected with everything else that puzzled him. And he remembered again how she had laughed at him last night, not clearly and not happily. Moreover, she had repulsed him to-night and for a second or two he felt as Rhoda had felt a short time ago. He saw life as a more complicated journey than he had believed, much more complicated than any journey he undertook ought to be, and when, with difficulty, he turned from this unpleasing prospect it was to find Flora looking at him with curiosity.
“Don’t you feel well?” she asked.
“I always feel well,” he replied, taking all the credit for his excellent health.
“Because you looked rather funny,” Flora said.
Mr. Blackett gave his quiet little frown. “I’m glad I amuse you,” he said, and though she hastened to tell him that her remark was not intended in that sense, he found some relief to his irritation by asking her smilingly how she was getting on with her agricultural studies.
Adroitly, she answered him with a little grimace. He liked that: it was reassuring, yet he hardly knew how to reconcile it with that scene in the Avenue, in fact, he thought, shutting himself up in his study, nothing was quite what it seemed or what it ought to be. He did not share Rhoda’s relief at the candour of Lindsay’s behaviour. It did not fit the situation as he wanted it and he was enraged at the man’s freedom to be frank, to come and go as he chose and, worst of all, Bertha was not herself and what with her newspaper and her laughter and her cousin, the annoyance of having to allow the son of that woman next door into his house and the thought of that woman, coolly in command of herself and of him as they s
tood on the hill, there was turmoil in his mind though, just for a moment, he admitted the pettiness of his affairs, the little he had to complain of and his own insignificance in comparison with more horrible tumults and unhappiness much greater than he was likely to know.
