by E. H. Young
“Not so bad under the stairs,” he said, “but I think Blackett ought to have an expert up to look. Your own idea, of course.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Blackett said. “Have you looked at Mrs. Fraser’s basement too?”
“Some time ago,” he said with a little lack of tact.
“So you think it’s coming?”
“It looks like it. It looks as though we’ve done our worst without success, yet who knows?” he said with mock hopefulness, “we may still find something worse to do.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Of course you don’t! You wouldn’t be you if you did,” he said, and kissed her but, while she was proud of these words and touched by this reward, she knew that in other circumstances, married to a man with whom it was her pleasure to agree, she might have been able to arrange matters in her mind to suit his views. It would not have been easy, for though she was not a politically minded woman she would have had to subdue her instinctive convictions in favour of what looked like expediency. It happened to be her pleasure to agree with her cousin and he had taken the agreement for granted because he believed in her, a tribute quite unlike any she had ever had from her husband who, in praising her, always seemed indirectly to applaud himself, and she would have felt quite gay if gaiety had been possible in such an hour.
“Is Mrs. Fraser very anxious, do you think?” she asked.
“She didn’t look it, did she?”
“No. It was a nice little wedding.”
“I don’t know much about weddings. I believe this is the first I’ve been to since I was at yours.”
In the darkness of the basement Mrs. Blackett shut her eyes but she was no more blind than she had been on her wedding day; indeed she saw too much, too clearly, with them shut and she opened them quickly and said, “I haven’t been to many myself, but do you know what I do? I’m rather ashamed of it and always hope no one will recognize me when I join the crowd at a church door and wait to see the bride come out. I suppose it’s the same sort of fascination as there would be in watching someone gambling for high stakes.”
“But the dice box is still over the dice,” he said.
“Yes, but the gambler’s face is interesting. Chloe looked quite confident of her luck.”
“So did you,” Lindsay said, starting up the stairs.
And so she had been, but the difference between her and Chloe, she was sure, was that between ignorance and knowledge.
“And it was some time before I forgave you,” he said.
“Really, Piers?” He could see her face clearly now and she did not conceal her pleasure.
“I suppose I was in a sentimental mood, just back from war, and found my pretty cousin stolen.”
“Only a mood? And some time doesn’t sound very long,” she said.
“It wasn’t very long. You’re sorry about that, aren’t you? What brutes women are in matters of love! You’d like me to be suffering still, wouldn’t you?”
“It would be very nice for me,” she owned with conscious demureness.
“So I thought but, to be rude and honest, I wasn’t long in recovering and I still love you, like a brother.”
“Yes,” she smiled and sighed together, “very much like a brother and a reserved one, but perhaps brothers always are. Perhaps those boys across the road don’t tell their sisters much.”
“The difficulty about telling is that it so often involves telling about someone else.”
“Otherwise you might?”
“I’d trust you with anything. Good-bye.”
He kissed her again and she said solemnly, “This is one of the best days I’ve ever had,” and its goodness was increased when she saw a slight contraction of his face and knew it expressed sorrow or anger for her: she knew too that though sorrow might be, anger was not justified. If her husband searched his conscience he would find no reproaches in it except for those errant thoughts he had not and never would turn into actions, and if she had been asked what complaints she had against him, she could only have replied that it was the man himself, irritating her to a frenzy she had turned into a vicious pleasure. He had not wronged her beyond giving her a character to meet his needs, yet it was a big wrong, condemning him and, to some extent, excusing her.
She watched Piers Lindsay go and without bitterness saw him glance down at the kitchen and then up at the balcony. He had loved her mildly for a little while; given the opportunity, he might have loved her for much longer, but she thought it possible that she was happier in imagining what might have been than in the chance of putting it to the proof.
Chapter XLIX
When Mr. Blackett turned into the Square that evening, walking with the quick, hard step of his indignation with events, he slackened his pace suddenly at the sight of Mrs. Fraser and Rhoda talking together on the pavement, Mrs. Fraser leaning on the long handle of a broom she clasped. Both turned their heads at the sound of his approach and Rhoda ran across the road and disappeared down the area steps, but Mrs. Fraser, as he expected, lingered—and this was to his surprise—took a few paces towards him, an attention which made some amends for his daughter’s conduct. Rhoda, he thought, might have had the decency to wait for him; it looked very bad to run away like that but her manners, her carelessness of appearances, were always deplorable. He was, in truth, glad to be free of her cool scrutiny. He had not, however, to meet Mrs. Fraser’s usual amused and inviting eyes. She hardly smiled as she greeted him; the little lines round her eyes seemed to be more deeply graved, to be the effect of time and not of laughter.
“Wait just a minute, Mr. Blackett,” she said. “Stay there. I want to sweep the pavement,” and turning from him and pushing the broom in front of her, she cleared away the coloured shreds of flowers he had not noticed, most of them already flattened into a mosaic. “There,” she said. “Now you can pass,” and he said in a puzzled tone, “This is very kind, but surely it wasn’t necessary.”
“I thought it was. A sort of Sir Walter Raleigh act, but he laid down a cloak and I removed the obstruction.”
“A very pretty obstruction,” he said.
“Yes, we’ve had a wedding.”
“Indeed?” said Mr. Blackett. “Not a very happy occasion for a wedding I’m afraid.”
“Not a happy occasion for anything,” said Mrs. Fraser, knocking the head of her broom against the kerb and going into the house. “Were you watching?” she asked Miss Spanner. “I hoped you would be. When I saw him coming I simply couldn’t bear to let him tread on what’s left of Chloe’s flowers.”
“He must have thought you were crazy.”
“He doesn’t know what to think but it won’t be that.”
“I wonder how he’ll like the surprise he’ll find at home,” Miss Spanner said.
The distance to his own door was all too short for Mr. Blackett. He wanted time for consideration. That was an extraordinary thing to do, to stop him and clear a way for him, as though he would have noticed those faded petals unless, indeed, he had chanced to slip on them. That was a possible explanation of Mrs. Fraser’s action, but why had she referred to the historic incident? he asked himself, taking a long time to find his latchkey. It was almost, to put it mildly, a declaration of special respect; he fancied there must be something symbolic in it; and she had not laughed. She had looked older but more charming in this serious mood and possibly this was the true one, revealed to him at last but these thoughts, on which he meant to dwell in the solitude of his study, were swept from his mind as soon as he opened the door. The neat, narrow hall did not look like itself. A pair of soiled gloves lay on the little table, there was a basket on the floor beside it, a coat had been flung over the banisters and a shabby suitcase seemed to be awaiting transport upstairs and he was staring at these objects and conscious of a low, continuous sound, when Mrs. Blackett appeared from the passage between t
he sitting-rooms. She was laughing, silently, as he had seen her do before and, remembering that night, he asked severely, “What is causing you this amusement? What,” he pointed to the disorder in the hall, “does all this mean?”
“Hush! Come into the study. One of the horrors of war,” she said, and frowning at this untimely joke, he followed her. “It’s your sister Maude,” she said.
“Maude!” he exclaimed, and forgave her flippant description of their guest’s arrival. “Maude! And you can laugh! Well, she talked her husband to death and now, I suppose, she is going to kill me.”
“She was afraid of being killed herself, by bombs.”
Mr. Blackett’s lifted eyebrows expressed surprise that his sister should think this mattered. “Most inconsiderate,” he said. “And where,” he inquired, “is she going to sleep?”
“I’ve arranged about her bed. She must have Flora’s room.”
“And Flora?”
“Flora will sleep with Mary. Mrs. Fraser is kindly letting Rhoda have Chloe’s empty bed.”
Mr. Blackett did not speak for a moment and it seemed to her that he had to remember to look annoyed before he muttered, “I suppose it can’t be helped. But for how long?” he asked desperately, “for how long?”
“We could hire a room for her somewhere in the Square.”
“No, no,” Mr. Blackett said hastily.
“Then we must just live from day to day.”
“A most unsatisfactory way of living,” he said.
“Is it? It’s what I’ve been doing for nearly twenty years.”
“Yes.” He smiled. “I can believe that. You have always had someone to do the planning and thinking for you. Well, I suppose I must go and see her. But what a thing to do! And without warning!”
“It would have been worse, longer, with a warning,” Mrs. Blackett said.
“Yet you could laugh!”
“Yes, she hasn’t the faintest idea that we’re not delighted to see her. I thought that was funny. Is it a family peculiarity, that sort of obtuseness? Flora has it too.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Bertha. You are very unfair to Flora, lately. You will be saying next that I have it myself,” and when Mrs. Blackett laughed again he thought that, this time, she was quite right.
Flora, escaping from the drawing-room and the ceaseless flow of her aunt’s voice, went upstairs to help her mother in preparing the visitor’s room. “Why should Rhoda go to the Frasers?” she asked. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“You wouldn’t like to share a room with Sandra, would you?”
“It wouldn’t be any worse than sharing one with Mary.”
“But you hardly know Sandra and don’t seem to want to. And what about Sandra herself?”
“Well, what about her?”
“She might not like it.”
“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” Flora said, and Mrs. Blackett had no doubt about an inherited family failing.
“I never get a proper chance,” Flora complained.
“A chance? What for?” Mrs. Blackett asked, and Flora did not reply.
To Rhoda, her mother said privately, “Don’t look too pleased.”
“I wasn’t going to. I’d thought of that already. He might easily make me sleep on the drawing-room sofa.”
“He?” Mrs. Blackett said reproachfully. “It was Flora I was thinking of.”
“I don’t care about her a bit. I don’t care about him, I mean Father, either. I only mind about being stopped and I half wish I could be because I’ve never stayed in anybody’s house before and perhaps I shall do wrong things. And I do hope, for your sake, that Aunt Maude likes going to bed early.”
“She’ll find I like going very early,” Mrs. Blackett said. “In fact I intend to be something of an invalid.”
“And she’ll turn you into one if she stays for long,” Rhoda said gloomily.
Aunt Maude, however, created an extraordinary unanimity of feeling round the supper table that evening and Mrs. Blackett actually met and responded to her husband’s occasional glances of despair, but she tempered these unwilling signs of sympathy by finding a strong physical likeness between the brother and sister and enjoying the enforced silence at the head of the table. In a pause, for somehow Aunt Maude ate a hearty meal, Mr. Blackett did get in a sentence.
“Rhoda,” he said, “don’t go across the road without me.”
“But,” Rhoda said, raising her voice above the renewed accompaniment, “it’s only a few yards.”
“That’s not the point.” He, too, raised his voice. “In the circumstances I think it would be the proper thing to hand you over formally, as it were.”
“Every night?” said Rhoda, and Mr. Blackett blenched at the horrid portent in these words.
“I can eat no more,” he said, pushing his plate aside and glaring at his sister, and as he went towards his study, Rhoda said, “I want to be there in time for the news.”
“One mechanical noise is no worse than another,” he snapped back and slammed the door.
“Nearly human,” Rhoda murmured to her mother, but she did not know how long this approximation would last; she hoped he would leave her on the doorstep and knew, when she saw him gallantly pick up her little bag, that her hope was vain. He would not have carried the bag unless he had meant to be seen with it and as he meant to be seen, she was glad he was carrying it. She wanted to feel proud of him and while she distrusted his motive in accompanying her and doubted whether he would make a favourable impression, though she knew he would try, there came into her mind one of those fancies which disappear with youth but are sturdy enough while they last to defy unlikelihood. In those few seconds while they crossed the road and stood at the Frasers’ door, she thought this might be the beginning of a new relationship with him. He might, all the time, have wanted to be friends with her and with her friends, and had decided to show his good intentions and she gave him a wide, encouraging smile as she rang the bell, but Mr. Blackett hardly noticed it, preoccupied as he was, like an actor standing in the wings and nervous about his entrance.
“Generally I just walk in,” Rhoda said. “They’re that kind of family.”
“So I have always imagined,” Mr. Blackett said, and his tone convinced her that he had only come to emphasize his good manners and to have an excuse for escaping from Aunt Maude. He did not know himself why he had come. Another second’s delay before Sandra opened the door might have sent him back but, changing her look of surprise into one of welcome, she took him into the sitting-room where he said to Mrs. Fraser with grave playfulness, “I have come to deliver my daughter into your hands,” and suddenly he remembered how once he had told her he disapproved of another daughter’s friendship with her son and it seemed to him that there was a flash of remembrance, without amusement, in Mrs. Fraser’s eyes. Sandra and Rhoda had gone upstairs and he was alone with her, as he had been then, but now four walls enclosed them and she looked strangely defenceless: more strangely still, she seemed willing to be in that state now and, with a lift of the heart, he saw that he was right and that all the other moods she had shown him were the protection she could keep up no longer. Here was the real woman, controlled but betraying herself in the sad eyes which had grown much darker, and while this was a triumph it was one that frightened him and his unacknowledged relief was great when this swift, silent communion was broken by the sound of footsteps in the hall and the opening of the door.
Mrs. Fraser’s two tall sons, and at the moment they looked to him rather like policemen, entered the room and she failed in the adroitness it was hardly fair to expect. She gave no light explanation of his presence but said, “It must be nearly nine o’clock,” and one of the young men turned on the news.
Sandra and Paul and Rhoda came in quietly and everybody sat down, Mrs. Fraser picked up her knitting and Mr. Blackett, an unwilling neophyte
at this ceremony, prepared himself to hear the worst, to behave, on hearing it, as a strong man should, but, as the news proceeded, he found there was no need for strength, only for relief and hope and, glancing about him joyfully, he was astonished to see no sign of relief or joy on any of the other faces. Then, with a peculiarly sharp click the news was turned off and Mr. Blackett, wanting to spring to his feet and shout as, so they had just heard, hundreds of other men had done at this tidings, found himself compelled, by some force he did not understand, to remain where he was and to be silent. He saw Mrs. Fraser’s lips compressed at the corners and her eyebrows raised and one of the young men—Mr. Blackett always pretended he did not know which was which—said quietly, “I should think that’s going to settle it.”
“I think so too,” Mr. Blackett said gladly, but this remark passed unnoticed and no one turned to him for mature masculine comment. The other young man was giving his mother a queer look. He was frowning, yet he seemed to be holding back his breath. Then the door was opened and Miss Spanner, unbecomingly hatted, popped her head round it.
“What’s the news?” she said.
“Another interview has been graciously granted,” said Mrs. Fraser.
Miss Spanner gave one of her alarming hoots of laughter, then smiled laboriously. “Now I call that very kind,” she said. “And I suppose I’ve been wasting my time. Oh, good evening, Mr. Blackett. But it was interesting. Civil defence,” she informed him, “but how monstrous, how obscene, that human beings should have come to a pass when they’ve got to fit enormous snouts on to their faces and look like a pig’s nightmare! It’s degrading!”
“I think,” said Mr. Blackett, making himself heard at last, “we are mercifully to be spared that degradation.”
“And what other kind are we going to exchange for it? And how far does the mercy extend, I wonder?” she said, and her remarks which she had no right to make and her appearance which was an offence, roused Mr. Blackett to a state of irritation which Rhoda recognized and no one else seemed to notice, and he carried it away with him after he had given and received somewhat distracted good nights.
