I'll Never Marry!

by Juliet Armstrong

  Remembering the children’s fits of giggles about Miss Dewney’s dislike of cows Catherine, sternly repressing a slight quiver of the lips, decided that she would have something to say to Miss Ruth later.

  “The children are no more nervous of cows than they are of cats,” she said shortly. “In any case there was nothing but a bunch of young heifers in that field. As for a bull—!” Then, seeing Hilda’s eyes flash, she went on hurriedly, and in a more pacific manner: “The main point is the damage to a hedge. Did the children really scramble through a gap? If so, it was very naughty of them. They know better than that, after all this time in the country.”

  “They did as they were told.” It was with difficulty that Hilda was keeping her temper in check. “Some of them tried to argue about it, but I’m not like you; they have to be obedient when they are put with me. There was plenty of room for them to squeeze through, and if they broke a few twigs and branches here and there, what did it matter?”

  “A thing like that does matter,” Catherine insisted. “If you had lived all your life in the country, as I have, instead of in a town, you’d know that!”

  “You country bumpkins lead such narrow little lives you think far too much of trifles,” was Hilda’s retort, as she got up from her chair. “Personally I refuse to take the matter seriously; I shan’t give it another thought.”

  “If that was the attitude you took over Mr. Playdle’s former complaint, I don’t wonder he’s furious now.” Catherine, too, got up, and her heart was beating fast. “I shall have to report his visit to Matron, of course; but beyond that, the thing is no concern of mine.”

  “You are going to tell Matron?” Hilda stared at her incredulously.

  “Of course I must,” Catherine returned crisply. “It was an official complaint, made to me as the person supposedly responsible, and we shall certainly have to offer to pay for the damage.”

  “If Mr. Playdle is in need of half a crown, I’ll send it to him,” Hilda exclaimed contemptuously.

  “It won’t be a question of half a crown, nor yet half a guinea,” Catherine told her darkly. “Anyway, what about coming along with me to Matron now, and explaining the whole thing to her?”

  “Sheer waste of time, as Matron will probably tell you,” Hilda grumbled. “She hates being bothered about trifles.”

  Realizing that nothing she could say would impress Hilda with the seriousness of the business, Catherine relapsed into silence, and the two girls made their way together to Matron’s office, and found her surrounded, as usual, with a pile of mending.

  “You had better let me do the talking,” Hilda had said outside the door, and once inside the room she sat down and gave Matron her account of the whole matter—an account perfectly straightforward, but biased by her obvious certainty that Andrew was making a fuss over nothing because he was “that sort of man.”

  Matron listened quietly, then after a few brief questions to both girls, she turned to Catherine. “You had no alternative but to report Mr. Playdle’s complaint,” she said steadily. “I shall take it up with him at once. Now I won’t keep you any longer; but perhaps Hilda will stay a few minutes, and go through some accounts with me.”

  Her matter-of-fact and pleasant manner took any sting out of this rather abrupt dismissal, and Catherine came away feeling that if anyone could smooth Andrew down, and settle the whole tiresome business satisfactorily, it would be Matron. She was generous enough, too, to rejoice whole-heartedly that the older woman had not found fault with Hilda in her presence. She would have something to say to her no doubt when she had her to herself; but a quiet and dignified reproof, given in private, was a very different matter from scolding anyone in front of a colleague.

  She was not surprised, however, that Hilda came away from that interview flushed, and with her head in the air. Like most people capable in their own line, she did not take kindly to criticism, and she had, besides, the quick temper that went with her flaming hair.

  “It won’t be long before she calms down, and sees that Matron was right,” Catherine thought philosophically, and resolved to behave as though nothing had happened. And by evening; it seemed as though her unruffled amiability was beginning to take effect. But unfortunately Geoffrey Barbin looked in after supper, and managed to upset the apple-cart altogether.

  The main purpose of his call was to mention that some of the senior children from the school were coming to his holding the next two or three evenings to help with fruit-picking, and to ask if any of the “bigger kids” from the Home would like to join in, and earn a little extra pocket-money, too.

  “If I know anything about my children, they’ll be glad to do it for nothing,” Matron began, with that smile which so irradiated her weather-beaten and almost homely features. “They’re always wishing they could make up to you in some way for all the presents you bring them—strawberries, and goodness knows what else.”

  Geoffrey shook his fair, untidy head. “Oh, no! I pay all the children the same money—the regular rates and a bit over for luck. I can’t take more than three of your youngsters, though, and if it suits you, I’d suggest the three eldest.”

  Matron nodded, and went off to spread the good news, and Geoffrey turned to Catherine, who was clearing the supper table.

  “Miss Emberley,” he said, with shy friendliness, “I’ve been wondering if your home village, Hilliton, is anywhere near a little place called Fanbridge?”

  Catherine’s face lit up. “But, of course! I know it quite well. It’s only a few miles away.”

  “Then maybe you know my uncle,” Geoffrey went on, warming up a little. “His name is Felde, and he’s a blacksmith.”

  “I should say so.” There was no’ mistaking the interest and enthusiasm in Catherine’s voice. “He’s known for miles and miles around—in fact, all over the country—for his wrought-iron work. His father was a wonderful, craftsman, too. Dad is always talking about ‘the Felde tradition’.”

  Geoffrey beamed. “I thought perhaps you’d have heard of the family.”

  “Oh, but I know your uncle personally,” Catherine assured him. “He’s not only an artist in iron— he can do more with a car than anyone I’ve ever met. Why, our old Morris—”

  And then Hilda, who had been bustling round the cosy kitchen, trying not to look offended at being left out of the conversation, could contain herself no longer.

  “Excuse my interrupting you, Catherine,” she said coldly, “but if you don’t get the breakfast porridge on now, you’re sure to forget it. You know what ages it takes, on top of the boiler.”

  “There now, I’m holding everything up.” Geoffrey, good-humored as ever, moved towards the. door. But at the threshold he paused and, with the idea of obliterating Hilda’s obvious feeling of being left out, he asked her pleasantly how Saturday’s picnic had gone off.

  “Picnic! It’s the last time I take any of our children over to the Playdle’s, I can tell you.” Geoffrey’s innocent question had stirred up the embers of Hilda’s resentment, and her tone was furious. “Characteristically, Mr. Playdle had to come over here with a complaint about the children’s behavior—all because they got through a gap in the hedge, and broke a few bits of branches.”

  Geoffrey’s expression altered at once.

  “If they’ve really damaged a hedge, I don’t wonder Mr. Playdle is wild,” he observed crisply. “They ought to know better than that. Still, I bet you’ve scolded them well, for all your sticking-up for them, and that it won’t happen again.” And with a quick “Goodnight” to both girls, he went off, oblivious, apparently—though Catherine was not quite certain on this point—of the inappropriateness of his final remark and of the anger with which Hilda received it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Whether Geoffrey’s comment was made innocently, or as a would-be gentle hint that he thought her in the wrong, it had a most unfortunate effect on Hilda’s temper, upsetting her far more, for some reason, than Matron’s reproof.

  To do her
justice, she tried hard, during the next few days, to control her ill-humor, and her success, so far as her dealings with the children were concerned, was most praiseworthy. But her resentment was so strong, and the effort to conceal it took so much out of her that when alone with Catherine she was apt to let herself go, and to show herself snappy and sullen by turns.

  Nothing that Catherine did pleased her, but her main complaint against her assistant was that she was “no disciplinarian” and that she simply did not know “what time meant.”

  Catherine’s way of giving the older children a few moments’ grace to finish what they were doing, instead of sending them off to bed on the stroke of the hour, caused Hilda particular annoyance. She could not see that to make Nicola jump up from the piano in the middle of a phrase of music, or to insist on Winnie putting aside her embroidery when a few stitches would have completed the spray on which she was working, was to give the children a sense of frustration. And on fine evenings when, as sometimes happened, Catherine took a bunch of youngsters into the garden to look at the stars and learn the names of the constellations, she was in a perfect ferment lest they should be ten minutes late for bed. All this laxity, she was certain, would lead to unpunctuality at school and at meals, and to confusion, generally; and though this failed to happen, she continued to prophesy the worst.

  She considered, too, that Catherine spoiled the children in other ways. When, for instance, Ruth, who had a school-friend coming to tea, pleaded to be allowed to make some scones for the occasion, and ruined them by getting the dough too wet, she should, in Hilda’s view, have been scolded, not comforted. And on Catherine’s pointing out that Ruth had been nearly in tears over the disaster, and that her job was to be a mother, not a martinet, Hilda’s retort was that silly mothers, of whom there were all too many about, were the cause of endless trouble.

  Backed up by Matron’s constant reminder that Garsford House was a home, and not a boarding-school, Catherine mentally shrugged her shoulders over Hilda’s carping and continued, as far as possible, to work along her own lines.

  Truth to tell, she had something else to occupy her thoughts, and this was Andrew’s rudeness and injustice.

  “He is blaming me for something which he knows is not my fault,” she told herself indignantly. “A man like that isn’t worth thinking about.” And she was all the more incensed against him because, try as she might, she could not succeed in banishing his coppery head and keen blue eyes from her mind.

  For several days she saw nothing of him, but one afternoon, when she was taking Maureen and Ruth to the village shop to choose knitting wool for new cardigans, she ran straight into him, right in the middle of the High Street which, as always at this hour, was practically deserted.

  She expected him to pass on with a formal “Good afternoon,” but instead he stopped, made some quite inapt remark about the weather, then turning to the children asked them with a sudden display of anxiety if they had seen anything of his dog.

  “She was with me a minute ago,” he said, looking very puzzled, “but goodness knows where she’s got to.”

  “I guess she’s in the butcher’s,” Ruth ventured, with a timidity quite unusual to her, and which Catherine attributed instantly, to a conscience not quite easy on the subject of that unlucky picnic.

  “Well, I wonder if you two would run and look for her,” he went on lightly; “that is, if Miss Emberley doesn’t mind. Your legs are younger than mine.” The absurdity of this subterfuge missed the children completely, and they dashed off without waiting for the permission they felt sure would be forthcoming. Catherine, however, colored with embarrassment; such high-handed methods had not come her way before, and she did not know how to deal with them. When he spoke, however, she could not but relent, for he explained at once with a half-humorous, half-pleading smile, that he had stopped her, and got rid of the children for a moment, because he wanted to take the opportunity of apologizing to her for his ill-temper and rudeness.

  “I had a very charming letter from Matron,” he went on, “and feel sure that the children will be careful not to do any more damage. I realize, too, that had they been with you, the whole wretched episode would never have occurred. All the same,” and his tone suddenly took on a note of almost schoolboyish resentment, “I do think you might have come to the party instead of going off gallivanting to Great Garsford.”

  “Gallivanting!” She stared at him in amazement. “Whatever put that into your head?”

  He hesitated, and it was his turn now to look somewhat out of countenance. “Oh, I happened to see you going into that new cafe,” he said in a would-be off-hand manner. “I had business in the town, round about four o’clock—”

  “And I had business in the town, too,” Catherine told him coldly. “Maureen, who has just retrieved your dog, apparently, and who will be here in a minute, had an abscess in a tooth, and at the last minute I had to rush her in to the dentist to have it pulled.”

  “I should have thought Miss Dewney could have done that,” he grumbled, watching from a corner of his eye the two children approaching in triumph.

  “It seemed wiser to go by car, as the child wasn’t very well, and I was the only one competent to drive,” was her brief response; and then she added, very nonchalantly: “We happened by pure chance to run into Mr. Alldyke, who was buying a cake for his aunt.”

  His face cleared at that, but the children had arrived now, with Sally in tow, and all opportunity for private conversation was over.

  “Mr. Gabball was awfully surprised at your being worried over Sally,” Maureen announced in her clear little voice. “He says she always goes in there, when you come down the village, just to see if there’s a tit-bit going.”

  “She never stays more than a minute or two,” Ruth added seriously. “She would have caught you up, if we hadn’t gone to look for her. He couldn’t understand at all—”

  “I dare say not,” was Andrew’s airy reply. Then, looking down at Ruth, he asked genially: “Is it true, or only a rumor, that a certain young lady of the name of Ruth is clamoring to have a dog at Garsford House?”

  Ruth’s brown eyes lit up. “I’m always wishing we had one,” she confessed. “Most of us, are, I think.”

  “Well, Sally had some puppies a few weeks ago: rather nice ones. Would one of her offspring suit you?”

  “O-oh!” The exclamation came simultaneously from both children. Then, quite suddenly, Ruth’s expression of delight faded, and she said, stumbling over her words: “But I forgot. I don’t think I ought to take one from you—not, at least, without explaining something.”

  Andrew stared at her in complete mystification; but Catherine—and Maureen, too, it seemed—guessed what was coming, and showed no surprise when the child went on in a rush: “We all know about the fuss there’s been over your hedge—and we’re all terribly sorry. But I think you ought to know that it was mostly my fault.” She hesitated, shifting from one foot to the other, then continued: “Miss Dewney’s ever so nervous of cows, and I couldn’t resist pulling her leg, and pretending that those heifers were dangerous, and that I thought I could see a bull in the distance. Afterwards I tried to convince her I was only joking, but it wasn’t any good; she made us go a roundabout way, and then it was ‘through the gap, and no more arguing’.”

  “You’re a very bad girl!” His voice was severe, but there was a twinkle in his blue eyes. “However, I suggest we drop that subject—thorny in more ways than one—for good and all, and that Miss Emberley brings you two over to tea one afternoon to choose a puppy. A Sunday suits me best. I’m busy most other days, at this time of year.”

  Ruth said nothing; her rosy, smiling face expressed her gratitude and pleasure. But Maureen, dancing about excitedly, exclaimed: “It’s your afternoon off next Sunday, Miss Emberley! Can’t we go then?”

  Catherine raised her eyes to Andrew’s. He was looking, she observed, decidedly amused.

  “Would that be too soon?” she asked, with as much
composure as she could muster. “We shall have to ask Matron for permission, of course.”

  “Any Sunday will do,” he assured her, adding with a faint smile: “My only stipulation is that you shall bring the children yourself. No excuse to be offered for none will be taken.” And whistling to Sally, who was receiving a great petting from the children, he strode off, a giant of a man in his open-necked blue shirt, and shabby flannel trousers.

  The children’s spirits were high, as they went about their errands in the village, and so, too, though she tried to preserve an appearance of calm decorum, were Catherine’s.

  Andrew’s frank apology would in itself have made it easy for her to forget his ill-temper and rudeness; but the knowledge that he had felt sore and disappointed at her failure to put in an appearance at the picnic, and had actually experienced a twinge of jealousy on seeing her going into the cafe at Great Garsford in Roland Alldyke’s company, gave her a queer little thrill.

  It was the first time, to her knowledge, that she had ever been the cause of masculine jealousy; but though she told herself sternly that the odd sense of satisfaction which it brought was due to foolish feminine vanity, she knew in her heart that this was not the whole story.

  She was pleased at his evident liking for her because, despite his brusqueness and quick temper, she liked him so much herself—not in any sentimental way, but because she found his irony amusing and his company a stimulus.

  Rather to her relief, she was spared the necessity of giving Matron the first news of the invitation, and of the offer of a puppy. She had the notion that Matron’s serenely smiling eyes sometimes saw rather more than they were meant too, and was not certain that she could have broached the subject with quite the bland composure which the occasion demanded.

  Ruth and Maureen were in the kitchen pouring out the story of Andrew’s kindness to Matron before she herself was through the front gate, and in the chatter and laughter her slight confusion passed unnoticed.