by E. H. Young
“Like a ripe plum on a wall,” she added. It was what he had thought himself.
“Waiting to be picked,” he said harshly.
“Yes. We had them in the Vicarage garden,” Mrs. Blackett went on quietly. “They seemed to fit and fill one’s hand.”
“Or someone else’s,” he said between his teeth, but he gathered himself together, “So now, Bertha,” he said suavely, “you will understand why I may have seemed prejudiced against Mrs. Fraser.”
“Yes, I understand that, too,” she said, “and yet you haven’t told me anything about her.”
He hesitated. From anyone else he would have thought that remark a little cryptic, but it was Bertha who had made it, who was giving him her candid gaze, and he said, “There is no need to go into details. You must trust me. And you will remember?”
“Oh yes,” she answered solemnly, but when he had shut the door behind him she laughed silently. Then she stood up and taking, with both hands, first one and then the other water-colour by its gilt frame, she held it firmly and possessively. No, they were not good pictures, but their value was increased by his scorn of them and they were dear to her through association, through her sympathy for their pretty, gracious failure, her conviction that behind the trees that would be uprooted by a light wind, the haystack that was no credit to the farmer, the shaky legs of the cart horses and the bonelessness of the recumbent cows, there was much more than the painter had been able to express and she imagined that, as these pictures appeared to other eyes than her own, so she herself appeared to most of those who knew her, a little dim, harmless, not unpleasing, and deliberately she had informed Mrs. Fraser that though her execution might be feeble, it did not represent the impulses behind it.
She dropped her hands, thinking now of that woman who, less enviable than she had been, had become more interesting. She was not impressed by Mr. Blackett’s hints; she knew their origin, but, if what he had tried to indicate were true, she did not care. There was more than one kind of virtue and Mrs. Fraser had the kind she liked.
At that moment, Mr. Blackett reappeared. “Not a word of all that to your cousin,” he warned her. He smiled. “The age of chivalry is not quite dead,” he said and, without waiting for a word of compliance, he went away.
When they met, a little later, at the supper table, he was surprised, a little vexed, to see her serenity unruffled. Was she, as he sometimes fancied, a little stupid? Had he not been explicit enough? It was true that he had made no definite accusation. Whatever he might choose to think or to suggest, he did not care to make, in speech, assertions he could not prove. He had respect for the spoken truth and he had been tender towards her innocence, but he would have been gratified by a few shy questions, a shrinking from the neighbourhood of impropriety: he would have borne patiently with the reminder that it was not she who had chosen to live in the Square, and he would have reassured and comforted her, adopting the air of a man of the world who had often encountered doubtful situations. But she did not gratify him, even when, sitting over their coffee, they saw Flora quickly pass the study window and Mr. Blackett jumped up to see and to report angrily that she was on the Frasers’ doorstep.
“Is she?” Mrs. Blackett said calmly.
“And you don’t mind?”
“Not at all. Why should I?” she asked, and he told himself that her simplicity did sometimes verge on stupidity. His delicacy had been wasted on her and then, as he told himself he was not altogether sorry, his certainty was pricked by a sharp little doubt as he heard her saying gently, “But I am sure you would like to go and rescue her.”
Chapter XXVIII
Flora would have been quite pleased to be rescued. She found her visit very dull with Mrs. Fraser and Miss Spanner sewing at one end of the long room and Paul and Sandra doing their homework at the other, and though Sandra left hers and joined the little group, she did not improve matters for Flora who was not interested in Rhoda’s contemporary. She had not expected much amusement. She had seen Felix leave the house and, though she hoped for his return, she had called to prove to herself, but chiefly to show everybody else, that James had not been the only attraction there, that the family in general was what she liked. And James, in retrospect, had really been rather wearisome with his endless talk about farming, endured for the sake of the rare moments when he became conscious of her as something more than an attentive ear. She was worth more homage than that and already the little episode was like something that had happened long ago when she was young and ignorant. She had profited by it but she would forget it and though it was not very exciting to talk to two middle-aged women and a schoolgirl, she went away well pleased with herself, for Mrs. Fraser had been very nice and she was halfway across the road before Miss Spanner let out a long, low grunt which would have been a groan if there had not been a certain amount of pleasure in it.
“That means Miss Spanner doesn’t like her,” said Paul.
“And perhaps,” said Miss Spanner, “it expresses my regret that you and all the rest of you are not as charming.”
“But it doesn’t. I know all your noises by this time. That means you think she’s a fool and so do I.”
“Keep your opinions to yourself,” Miss Spanner said.
“Why should I?”
“Because at your age you haven’t any worth hearing.”
“But what,” he asked, “about the mouths of babes and sucklings?”
“I’m surprised you’ve ever heard of them. You haven’t been brought up to read your Bible as I was.”
“And whose fault’s that?”
“Ah,” said Miss Spanner, “that’s not for me to say, but times have changed. The very day I was born my father bought one for me.”
“You must have been pleased,” said Paul, but Miss Spanner was not to be ruffled. She seemed in particularly good spirits, Rosamund thought suspiciously, though she always enjoyed her arguments with Paul. “And it’s upstairs now with my name inside, in his beautiful handwriting, and the date.”
“That’s no proof he bought it the day you were born,” Rosamund said.
“No, but when I was old enough, I was told about it.”
“No doubt. So were a lot of other people, I’m sure. And how lucky the shops were still open. I can’t think why he didn’t buy the Bible beforehand, but then, what a waste it would have been if anything had gone wrong! And it wouldn’t have made such a good little story. I like this one, Agnes. It’s one of your best.”
“D’you mean she’s making it all up?” Paul asked. “I can’t see anything funny in it.”
“It’s not meant to be funny. Just interesting. But you didn’t know Agnes’s parents as I did. I never tire of hearing about them and now that they are dead I get a lot of pleasure from remembering them.”
“So do I,” said Miss Spanner with a squint.
But Paul was not interested in the old Spanners. He went to bed and when Rosamund returned from saying good night to him and Sandra she heard about the wireless set and understood Agnes’s good humour. She was never happier than when she thought she had made a discovery of a distressing nature and, particularly, when she hoped it would distress her friend, and Rosamund, lying in bed, listening for Felix’s step, remembering how, not so long ago, she had persuaded herself it was Fergus’s she would hear, wondering how she would feel now if it were his indeed, pondered on this peculiarity in Agnes, existing as it did with love and loyalty. No doubt a psychologist could find an explanation of it; she could invent quite a good one herself; but as there was no evident reason, she supposed there must be a subtle one, why they should be friends at all. That was the best, the safety, of it. They had nothing in common except a part of their past; their tastes were different, though their opinions often coincided; they seldom, as Agnes pretended to complain, had a straightforward conversation; they were perpetually sparring and never bore each o
ther any malice and nothing either of them could say or do really affected their detached yet close relationship. Marriage ought to be like that, Rosamund thought, but it never could be. The bond was too obvious, the demands were inevitable, and the bond sometimes chafed and the demands were not satisfied. On the other hand, she thought with amusement, Agnes could not give her a moment’s contentment of flesh and spirit. That, though it might dwindle to a memory, remained a bond. She would never be quite free of Fergus, never lose some sense of responsibility for him, she thought, as she heard footsteps approaching and, temporarily faithless to the lover across the river, waited for a quick, light step on the stairs or the fulfilment of that old threat to climb on to her balcony. But no one entered by the French window, the feet on the stairs were cautiously slow, and Fergus had never looked as grave as did this young man who had so great a physical likeness to him. They seemed to have named Felix wrongly, she thought, as she looked at him. They had labelled him with their own happiness, regardless of what the future might have in store for him, and he looked now as though it had nothing he did not dislike.
“What’s the matter?” she asked a little sharply, for suddenly she felt irritated by his serious air, suggesting that he had some fault to find but meant to be kind and tolerant, and at once, with a quick frown, he became still more like Fergus, ready to take offence, more like himself when his father was at home and he was in constant expectation of a snub or a gibe.
“I saw your light,” he said, “and I wanted to talk to you but of course any other time will do.”
“No time like the present,” Rosamund said flippantly. “One of those silly sayings. It’s often better to sleep on it.”
“As you will,” he said wearily, and she recognized the air she had resented as one of difficult self-control. His hard stare was not directed against her; it came of his determination to keep up the eyelids that would have drooped.
“What is it?” she asked gently, putting out a hand he did not take.
“The future,” he said.
“Oh, the future!”
“Yes, I know.” He sat down in the chair near her bed. “But I suppose we must behave as though there is one.”
In the long mirror opposite her bed she could see herself and, level with her shoulder, she had a glimpse of Felix’s red head, and she told herself this was another thing she must remember, like those happy moments in the sunny garden when James had greased his climbing boots. With him there had been an easy sense of companionship; here there was one of strain, but at least Felix had brought it to her. She would remember that and she hoped she would be able to remember that she had done all she could for him.
“Yes, let’s behave like that,” she agreed.
“It’s the financial situation,” he said.
“Is it difficult?” she asked, trying to speak lightly, thinking it would be just the queer way of things if this serious young man had plunged himself into debt.
“That’s what I want to know,” he said.
“Oh, it’s just as usual. I pay my way. Agnes is a great help, of course. I shall have to raise some money to equip Chloe decently and I’ve always reckoned on letting you and James have a little capital when you need it. But it will be very little, just about as much as I shall spend on her. There are still Sandra and Paul to think of. But I don’t owe anyone a penny. I often wonder what my father denied himself for my sake and I have less scruple in being overpaid by Agnes when I think of the profits her stingy old father pocketed. Pious old brute! Your grandfather ought to have insisted on having more but he wasn’t that kind of man. Instead, he stinted himself for me.”
“He must have been very far seeing,” Felix said acidly.
Rosamund shut her eyes. The justice of this remark did not make it more palatable and she felt a hot little worm of anger wriggling, like a live thing, in her breast. She had to control it and she did not open her eyes, and they seemed to be shut for a long time before the wriggling ceased.
“It’s only fair to tell you,” she said quickly, “that your father does send me money when he can.”
“Thoughtful!” Felix said, and the worm became very active again.
“Listen, Felix,” she said after another struggle. “Don’t judge him. You don’t know enough.”
“I know he made Hell here.”
“Oh,” she said, “if that’s all Hell is, no one need fear it very much. And he isn’t here now. I know,” she conceded, “what’s the good of pretending?—that he was often terribly tiresome!”
In derision of this understatement, Felix gave a hard laugh. “And we mustn’t forget his wounds,” he sneered.
This time, anger did take charge of her. “Indeed you mustn’t!” she cried, lifting herself straighter against her pillows. “How dare you talk like that? You don’t know what he did for you, for all of us, but you ought to know!” And again she shut her eyes, this time squeezing them tight, not trying to shut out those years of mud and slaughter when, horrible as they were, this present cynicism had not fallen like a blight on the world which tried to discredit even man’s unbelievable courage and endurance, but concentrating on them in tribute, taking again what share she could of foul discomfort and fear and agony.
“I’ve never actually seen a really nasty sight in my life,” she said slowly, “legs blown off and faces pulped and bits of a friend scraped together in a shovel. And neither have you. Who are you to judge?”
“Well, perhaps my time’s coming,” Felix said sullenly, and at once she softened towards him, for indeed his time might be coming and she turned to look at him, to get his face off by heart before it vanished for ever or was spoilt.
“And anyhow,” Felix went on, “he isn’t the only one. Look at Lindsay. He’s sane enough, with a face wound like that, too.”
“Yes, but then,” she said, looking at him slyly, “Mr. Lindsay hasn’t got red hair.”
“What on earth has that to do with it?”
She laughed. “Danger signal. Didn’t you know? Nearly always. Sandra seems to be an exception but you are true to type. Irritable—how would you contend with five children?—Impulsive—yes, though you may not think so. Sometimes,” she said this at a venture, taking a risk that seemed to be justified by the desperately tired look that had settled on his face again, “sometimes acting too quickly and being too proud to retreat or, perhaps, too conscientious. And conscience can be the devil, quoting Scripture for his purpose. One has to keep a careful watch on conscience,” she ended lightly.
She had given him his chance to tell her what troubled him, but he would not take it, and she was shrivelled by the coldly amused look he gave her though she knew it was given in self-defence.
“All that’s very interesting,” he said, “but we’ve wandered rather far from the financial situation.”
“So we have. There’s nothing more to tell you but I can let you have some money now if you want it.”
“Of course I don’t want it,” he said angrily. “Do you think I’ve come begging?”
“Oh, don’t talk like that,” she said. “How could you?”
“Yes,” he said with difficulty. “I’m sorry.”
“I mean how could you beg from me? There’s no thine and mine between us.”
But these words did not seem to comfort him. “Soon,” he said slowly, “I shall be getting a salary.” And then, with a rush, he said, “What I really wanted to know was whether you were reckoning on it.”
“No, I wasn’t counting on it. I should expect you to contribute something, though, if you lived here still.”
“But not unless.”
“Certainly not. Why should I? I’ve always realized that you might want to go away and then you’d have all you could do to keep yourself at first.”
“Well, that’s all,” he said. He went to the door. “I just wanted to know,” he muttered, as thoug
h to himself.
She called him back as he turned the handle.
“Oh yes, good night,” he said.
“No.” That was not what she wanted. “Come here and take this little pill,” she said. “It will make you sleep.”
“A drug,” he said with disapproval.
“It’s quite harmless. I often have one.”
“Do you?” he said, and his face softened for the first time, for here, he seemed to realize, was another troubled human being who sometimes lay awake.
“Yes, I’ll take it,” he said as he bent down to kiss her.
“And soon you’ll be having your holiday,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he said, lifting his eyebrows and giving her a rather wavering smile. He kissed her again. “Thank you very much,” he said, and she knew he thanked her for the help he would not take.
Chapter XXIX
The harmless little pills were all too harmless for Rosamund that night and she wondered that she had ever lain awake before. Fergus’s desertion, the sense of her own failure, the constant though not acute worry about him and what silly, impetuous things he might be doing, a certain amount of jealousy for the conditions he found so congenial to his work, the complicated happiness of loving again and being loved, all these which had often kept her wakeful seemed now quite soporific compared with this helpless anxiety for Felix. While things went well with the children she had been able to preserve her attitude of non-interference in deed and, to a great extent, in thought. It was, as Agnes had once told her, a sort of affectation. Nevertheless, she believed it was a good one. But how absurdly she had prided herself on what had been so easy, natural to her in the first place and favoured by circumstances in the second. They had always been extraordinarily nice children but no amount of niceness could guarantee a parent against trouble when a child came to man’s estate and to that Felix had undoubtedly come with a strength against which a refined vowel had no power. He was not in debt, she could take his word for that, not, at least, of a monetary kind, but he might feel he was in debt of another; or, too well disciplined to have involved himself like that, he might feel impelled to a life-long commitment, knowing it was a mad one, for the satisfaction of a moment, exquisite but as frail as the thistledown to which Agnes had compared that girl. And that it was that girl or someone like her, someone whom he was ashamed to bring home or who refused to be brought, Rosamund became convinced and whether from duty after desire fulfilled or unfilled desire urging him pitilessly, he must mean to marry her. That, of course, was why he had wanted information about the financial situation, that was why his face was white and drawn. She knew the signs when she saw them. She knew that if her fleshly envelope had enwrapped a woman alien, even antagonistic, to Fergus in thought and upbringing and speech, he would still, defying his folly, have married her unless she had been one of those who could be bought. And then, surprisingly, for inevitably she had pictured the girl as a minx and was unfairly willing to believe in the hard as nails theory, it occurred to her that the girl too might be engaged in the same sort of conflict between sense and passion. She might be a very nice girl, in spite of the vowels, and Felix was an easy person to love, a little forbidding at times, an attraction in itself, and as charming as his father when he chose. But it might not be that girl at all. Why should it not be someone in her own semi-detached condition? And she felt a great distaste for that condition, a longing for everything to be clear and simple—an exorbitant demand to make of life—and at the same time she knew that Piers was the one person who could comfort her because there was no one else to whom she could take a trouble she could not name. All she knew for certain was that Felix was unhappy and though this was a common enough experience for youth, she deeply resented it for her son.
