by E. H. Young
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said. “I’ll ask Lindsay if I can go and help him until term, or anything else, begins. I meant to have a go at the garden but someone has done that already.”
“Oh, that’s Rhoda. She loves a garden.”
“But she wants to be a farmer.”
“Does she? Who told you?”
“She did, of course. I’ve got some photographs of the farm to show her. Cows, chiefly. She likes cows.”
“You’d better go across now instead of coming with me.”
James shook his head. “The less I see of Flora, the better I’m pleased.”
“I’m not surprised and no doubt she feels like that about you.”
“I hope so. In her own way, you know, she’s really very pretty, but utterly and completely unattractive. She tries too hard.”
“You ought to have discovered that a little sooner.”
“I know. But I never really liked her much and what’s a kiss or two anyway?”
“A great deal sometimes, when they’re the first ones,” Rosamund said. She could not help a passing thought of Rhoda and fancied he suspected her of it, but she was not mentioned. Rosamund would not have cared to suggest and James would have disgustedly denied the possibility of any such tampering with her young integrity.
“The tradesmen,” Rosamund said as they set out, “will be so full of optimism that I’m afraid I shan’t manage to be pleasant and then I shan’t get as well served as usual.”
“You can say we must hope for the best.”
“Yes, without knowing what it is. But we never know that. We never can. Not here. I do wonder what’s on the other side of the grave, don’t you?”
“Certainly not,” James said. “I’m too much interested in this side of it.”
“Oh, I’m interested in it too. I feel sometimes that I’d like to live for ever, but naturally one wants to know the result of an examination.”
“But if it lasts a lifetime it’s not reasonable to expect the result to be very good. The strain’s too great.”
“No doubt the examiners make allowances for that, but it’s not my own marks I really care about What I want to know are the right answers. I’m sure a great many of them will be surprising.”
“Well, that’s something to look forward to,” James said dryly.
She was not sure that this remark was made in reference to himself but that she should be forced to hear it in that sense filled her with helpless rage. It seemed as though a comparatively small quantity of evil, if it were determined enough, could overwhelm a far greater quantity of good which, by its nature, was more passive and, with a maternal passion she seldom allowed to run riot, she looked at her son as he adjusted his long stride to hers, the empty basket swinging from his hand, and thought how thoroughly decent he was, kind and humorous and tolerant. Why should his life be at the mercy of this evil? And these characteristics of his were those of his countrymen as a whole, of the policeman on point duty who gave her his special, smiling salute, of the butcher and the fishmonger and the errand boys who whistled gaily as they kept their customers anxiously waiting for their goods and she unknowingly quoted Mr. Blackett who had used the words in another connection, when she said, under her breath, “A kindly people.”
“What?” James asked, bending towards her.
“Nice people,” she said with a little inclusive gesture.
“But far too many of them,” James said, his mind still among the hills where the voices were the melancholy, protesting ones of sheep and the many different voices of water, the gay, the desperately hurried, the chuckling, the serene and, most poignant in his memory, the slow drip of it, high up on the cliffs where its reservoir was some giant sponge of moss, brilliantly green. Every few seconds there was a drop and then a tiny splash on the rocks below. That dripping and the crying of the sheep were mournful sounds and he knew that to anyone alone and lost up there in a mountain mist the water’s voice would be slyly sinister and the sheep’s calls would have fear in them, but for him they had all the romance of an unhappiness he did not feel, like the charm of sorrow put into lovely verse.
“And what are they, what are we all doing?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I often wonder,” Rosamund said.
Stationary or moving cars and carts almost filled the broad street; people entered shops and left them, stared at the goods displayed in the windows, met acquaintances and formed chattering obstacles on the pavements and a great part of this activity was caused by the necessity to live or die. And the activity did not end in the streets; it was prolonged in innumerable kitchens and began again to-morrow. It seemed a strange use of existence, she thought again but, as Miss Spanner would have said, it was probably one of the more merciful of Providence’s dispensations. Many people found their happiness in it, comparatively few could have spent their time to any other purpose, she was glad herself, as she had been glad before, to be thus occupied and she knew that out of this mass of mediocrity, and so redeeming it, there sprang, occasionally, those rare human beings who, fed materially by others, were able, in their turn, to feed hungry eyes and ears and minds.
“The fact is,” she said, “and I’m afraid I’m repeating myself, we never really know what we’re doing, but if we didn’t behave as though we did, why, there’d be no standards. We shouldn’t have the satisfaction of judging other people and I’m not going to give up that privilege in a hurry. And there are standards, there must be,” she continued to herself, realizing that James was not listening. “The other side of them may be different from what we think, but we must abide by the side we see,” and she went unwillingly but dutifully into the red and yellow horror of the butcher’s shop.
Chapter XLII
Mrs. Blackett could be envious of all sorts of people and all sorts of qualities, for her spirit was humble and she seldom had the pleasure of making comparisons in favour of herself. She was envious of Mrs. Fraser’s looks, of the way in which she wore her clothes, of the freedom in her household, of that look Piers Lindsay had given her and, most of all, her lack of a resident husband, but jealousy of all this was another matter. Jealousy finds it hard to contain its own pain and must scatter its poison where it will do most hurt, while envy need not have any bitterness in it. There was none in hers and jealousy was a feeling so alien to her nature that, in spite of her long study of her husband, the idea that he might suspect her of it had not once entered her mind and she was slightly puzzled when he bade her good-bye that morning and gave her a smiling, quizzical look instead of the customary kiss. She did notice that he looked more human, less unattractive than usual, but this might only have been because he kept his distance instead of approaching her with the tacit reminder that he was setting out, in all tenderness, on her service. Then, as, roused to curiosity, she stood at the dining-room window to see him go, light broke upon her, making her cry out, as though a fierce flash of lightning had startled her, but this sound had ugly laughter in it. She had been as stupid as he was. She had thought him angered by her retort; she had merely raised his self-esteem, if that, too, were possible, and, strangely, she was at first almost more vexed on Mrs. Fraser’s account than on her own; as though, she thought indignantly, the woman whom Piers loved could find any attraction in Herbert Blackett! And while she was ashamed of having married a man Mrs. Fraser must despise, she discovered that the sillier he was, the more completely she could feel detached from him. This was a better state to be in than one half loving, half ashamed, emphatic about his virtues to the inevitable accentuation of his faults. There were faults Mrs. Blackett could have borne with patiently, opposed frankly and even liked but, search as she might, she could not find either faults or virtues in Mr. Blackett which were human or lovable.
“He isn’t real,” she muttered, sitting down in the nearest chair, anger and grief churning together in her breast.
He had been manufactured and set going by some kind of clockwork which his own particular energy sustained but, though he could tick with precision and regularity, it was with definite limitations of feeling and action. But she must be wrong. No one could be as hopelessly mechanical as that and she blamed herself again, awed by the responsibility of human beings towards each other, yet aware of the danger of exercising it.
She looked up as Rhoda came into the room and though her mouth was set in its naturally sweet curves, her widely opened eyes seemed half blind and Rhoda, ready to defend, cried anxiously, “What’s the matter?”
Mrs. Blackett lifted and dropped her clasped hands. “I felt as though I couldn’t go on,” she said. “I suppose I’m tired. But I shall telegraph to Connie this morning,” she said more briskly, “and when she comes there won’t be so much to do.”
“Has he been nasty to you?” was Rhoda’s disconcerting reply. “You weren’t tired when we were alone and you could walk for miles and miles.”
“He is never nasty to me, Rhoda,” Mrs. Blackett said with truth, “or to anyone.”
“He is to me, but I don’t care. I’m rather glad, and if he wasn’t to you, you’re miserable because he’s just—well, just nasty. I can’t see a single nice thing in him.”
“Oh Rhoda,” it was what she had been thinking herself, “your father has always done his very best for you.”
“Then I don’t think much of it. And Flora’s the image of him. She’ll be perfectly horrid when she’s older, she’s bad enough already, unless she gets turned inside out. How happy we were, weren’t we? It’s so easy to be happy, really. And I hate being done good to. What’s nice is to like people. It doesn’t matter so much about being liked, though,” she added, “that must be nice too.”
“Then we ought to do our very best to like everybody.”
“Do you do that?”
Mrs. Blackett hesitated for a moment and then said, “No,” but in the straight look she gave her daughter there was something that asked for mercy from more questioning, an appeal which was not really necessary: they understood each other but when Rhoda said, “I don’t know how you manage to be so good,” Mrs. Blackett was abashed by praise altogether undeserved and it was impossible, it would have been wickeder than the thing itself, to tell her how this appearance of goodness had been maintained. She did say, however, “Manners are important, Rhoda. They’re like—they’re rather like a garden roller. You use it and it’s hard work but you find, as you push it, that you are treading on much smoother ground.”
“Do you?” Rhoda said. It was a metaphor she could understand; it was also a reminder. “I meant to roll the Frasers’ grass to-day but now I don’t think I shall.”
“Why not?”
“It’s different, now they are all at home.”
“You can slip in through the basement. No one will take any notice of you.”
“Except Flora,” Rhoda said. “I wish she had her bedroom at the back and I wish you could have the study for your drawing-room.”
“I’m afraid you would meet with serious opposition to both those plans,” Mrs. Blackett said demurely.
“And I know it’s silly of me to care, but Flora spoils things.”
“I don’t think she’ll follow you this morning. I’ll send her on an errand of some kind.”
“All right. I’ll go when we’ve done the dusting,” Rhoda said, but it was not Flora’s company she feared: it was her thoughts, now very distantly nearer to the truth than they had been before and Rhoda hated the apparent likeness in her own situation to what Flora’s had been a little while ago. She wanted to see James and he did not want to see her, but she did not want this in Flora’s way and she was sure James’s indifference was no more than the natural one of a man towards a betwixt-and-between nobody like herself. How could it be anything else? She was not important enough to be avoided, and she wished everything could be as it was before he went away and while he was away, before he had been forced to listen so gravely to the news, with so grown-up an air that she was half afraid of him. Everything was horrid, her father at home again, her mother unhappy, Miss Spanner prophesying disgrace and the happy freedom of the Frasers’ house and garden gone.
It was not decreed, however, that this youthful pessimism should have time enough to harden on her like a crust and it gave way, because it was youthful, under a fairer prospect for herself. She went in by the area door and met Paul in the passage.
“I’ve come to roll the grass,” she said, and he was at once eager to do a job he would have grumbled at being asked to undertake.
“But I rather wanted to,” Rhoda said.
“No, let him,” Sandra said, from the kitchen stairs. “He doesn’t know what to do with himself.”
“But,” Rhoda said, “that’s why I came. I mean—well, all right. I suppose I’d better go back.”
“But I was just coming to fetch you. You went away so quickly last night and James wanted you.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, and I shouted but you didn’t hear.”
“No, I didn’t hear,” Rhoda said.
“So now you must wait till he comes back. Let’s go into the garden.”
“Yes, I don’t suppose Paul will do the rolling properly.”
He had not even fetched the roller from its corner. He was flicking pellets of earth at a cat which sat on the wall and, despising his marksmanship, yawned at him impudently, and then settled itself more comfortably for sleep. So Rhoda fetched and propelled the roller after all, careless of her red, hot face and the strands of damp hair sticking to it. She was full of energy in the knowledge that she had not lost a friend.
“The ground’s too hard, really, but I like doing it,” she said.
“You’ll get over-heated,” said Miss Spanner from her bedroom window. Paul managed to hit the cat on the exact spot he had chosen as his target and went away; Sandra said, “Do stop and I’ll get you something cool to drink”; then James appeared and sat beside her on the roller.
Afterwards she wondered anxiously whether she had been unpleasantly hot and decided that, as he did not move away, it must have been all right. At the time, she was too much interested to think about herself at all, hardly to think of him except as a particularly nice source of information. They sat with their backs to the house and the sounds from within reached her vaguely. Someone was calling to Chloe, telling her there was a telegram for her and the boy was waiting and later Miss Spanner’s voice was heard again. “What else do you want?” she asked sharply, and Chloe answered, “I like people to stick to their guns.”
“You’re never satisfied,” said Miss Spanner, but when at last Rhoda realized that it was time to go home and she met Chloe in the hall, she remembered Miss Spanner’s words and thought Chloe looked more than satisfied and she was glad because she was happy again herself.
In the hall of her own home she encountered Flora who laughed in an unpleasant way. “Do look at yourself in the glass,” she said.
“Why should I? I don’t want to.”
“I’m not surprised. Your hair’s in streaks and your blouse is outside your belt.”
“Only a bit of it,” Rhoda said cheerfully and tucked it in. “I’ve been rolling the grass.”
“And you ought to have been helping Mother with the cooking.”
“Oh, mind your own business,” Rhoda said.
“And it’s rather funny that the grass needed rolling to-day.”
“It didn’t really,” Rhoda admitted.
“Any excuse will do, I suppose,” Flora said. “And anybody will do for James Fraser to talk to about his silly old farming. I hope you realize that. You needn’t look so angry. I’m telling you for your good.”
“No, you’re not. You’re telling me for your own,” Rhoda retorted, but she checked the rest of the words which were ready to tum
ble from her lips. The preservation of everything that was simple and friendly in her relationship with James in her own mind seemed to her much more important than saying nasty things to Flora and with a great effort and disgust for the necessity of this deception, she said good-humouredly, “Well, I don’t mind listening to him. I expect his family gets tired of the subject. And Sandra made some lemonade and we had it in the garden.”
“So long as you understand,” Flora said kindly, “but I think Father’s quite right, you know.”
“What about?”
“He’s never liked them, the Frasers, has he? And since I’ve seen a little more of the world and met such very different kinds of people, they do seem to be very ordinary, almost common, always talking to their friends on their doorstep and things like that. And very funny friends, some of them. And Mrs. Fraser hardly ever wears a hat. Of course,” she added hastily, “that’s all right abroad where everybody’s unconventional, but not when you’re middle-aged and living in Upper Radstowe. It’s rather showing off, I think. And then there’s that awful Miss Spanner.”
Here Rhoda had to keep her arms close to her sides to prevent herself from smacking Flora’s face, but her feelings for Miss Spanner, too, must be concealed. She knew a declared affection was a vulnerable spot and Flora would be very glad to know of it.
“Still,” Flora ended magnanimously, “it doesn’t really matter to me, one way or the other. Why should it?”
“No, I don’t see why it should,” Rhoda said, surprising herself with just the right accent of agreeable indifference.
“But of course,” Flora said, “we must be neighbourly and as we are not allowed to have a wireless of our own, it’s very convenient to be able to hear theirs.”
Chapter XLIII
“I wonder,” said Mr. Blackett that evening at the meal which Rhoda always dreaded and at which, though she had a hearty appetite, she never properly enjoyed her food, “I wonder, Mary, how much you can remember about the interesting places Flora and I saw when we were in France.”
