A pretty pink colour came into Emmeline’s cheeks.
“But Arnold, he will stay with me. Of course. I have never thought of anything else, and nor has he-at least-”
“That is a pity.”
“Oh, no!”
Arnold had remained standing. He walked now to the window. Another of those accursed cats lay stretched among the cushions of the low, broad seat-a yellow one this time, and probably shedding its hairs all over the place. Even if he had felt any slight weakening-and Emmeline’s eyes had done some heart-melting in their time-the sight would have stiffened him. The place was positively insanitary! He turned and said coldly,
“I am afraid I must ask both you and Edward to make other plans.”
She gazed at him.
“Other plans?”
“Yes. I do not wish to inconvenience you in any way, but Fullerby is quite past his work. It has been obvious for a long time, and I have now given him notice. The gardener whom I am going to engage has a family, and will have to be provided with a cottage. James was only able to offer you this lodge because Fullerby owned his own house in the village.”
Emmeline looked quite bewildered.
“But, Arnold, I’ve been here for sixteen years. I never thought-”
“Perhaps you will do so now. If you are in any doubt about the legal position, let me reassure you. You had no agreement about the lodge, I believe, and you have never paid any rent for it.”
“No,” said Emmeline. Then, after a little pause, “James was a very kind brother.”
He remained where he was, silhouetted against the sunny garden.
“You had no agreement, and you paid no rent. The furniture, such as it is, was, I believe, put into the house and lent to you by James.”
“Some of the things are my own.”
“No doubt. But you cannot claim an unfurnished tenancy. You cannot, in fact, claim a tenancy at all. James allowed you to reside here because he did not require the house for a gardener. I do.”
Emmeline’s hands had remained folded in the lap of her blue smock. Her eyes maintained the wide puzzled look which he found so absurd in a woman of her age. It was almost as if she did not understand what he was saying. He raised his voice.
“As I said, I have no desire to inconvenience you. You will probably want to look round before you settle again. I would suggest that you go into rooms in Embank or anywhere else that may suit you-” He stopped because she was shaking her head.
“No, I should not care about that.”
“Well, of course I have no wish to dictate.”
She looked at him very directly and said,
“It is not because of Fullerby and the new gardener-is it, Arnold? It is because of Edward. You do not like Edward to be here.”
“I do not think it at all suitable that he should be here.”
“It has always been his home, Arnold. It would still be his home if James had not believed that he was dead.”
His cold composure broke.
“Burlingham has given him this agency for the express purpose of making things unpleasant for me! It is, I suppose, his vulgar idea of a joke! Take the black sheep of the family and set him down at your neighbour’s gate! One doesn’t expect anything from a pig but a grunt, but I must say, Emmeline, I am surprised that you should lend yourself to such a discreditable manoeuvre! Since you appear to have an affection for Edward, you ought to be able to see that you are doing him a great disservice by pushing him into the limelight and raking up a lot of things which would be much better forgotten. If you really care for him you would do better to persuade him to go elsewhere.”
She maintained her gaze.
“And if he did?”
“It would be a great deal better for him. If he goes where nobody knows him he can make a fresh start, and there will be no interest in where he has been or what he has done during the last five years. Whereas here-” He threw up his head with a movement which brought his profile into relief. “Why should he come back here, where every second person has some fresh scandalous theory to account for the time he was away? Burlingham’s motive is plain enough. He knows what I think of him, and in his own vulgar parlance, he would like to score me off. But what is Edward’s motive-and what is yours? I tell you, I won’t have it, and if he comes here, you must go!”
The last word was almost shouted. To anyone who did not know him very well indeed the scene would have been a surprising one. Emmeline was not surprised. This slipping of control-she had seen it happen before. Quite suddenly, as it had happened now-when a dog with which he was playing had snapped-when a horse had put his foot in a hole and let him down-when he had done something which he did not care to have known and was confronted with the consequences. She had always known that under an appearance of coolness and reserve there was something in Arnold that was unstable, something which under pressure was liable to slip. She sat looking at him now, and wondered what the pressure might be.
For his part, Arnold was aghast. The interview had got completely out of hand. He was saying all the things he had not meant to say. They burned at the back of his mind, but he had not meant to give them words. He had intended to be calm, reasonable, and dignified. He was engaging a new gardener, he required the lodge, he was reluctantly compelled to ask Emmeline to make other arrangements. There was not to have been the most distant allusion to Edward. Impossible now to revert to the calmly ordered plan.
Emmeline looked at him, her eyes very blue above the faded cotton smock, and said,
“Why are you afraid of Edward coming here?”
CHAPTER VII
Susan walked back from the shop with her postcards and a present of tomatoes for Emmeline. “My own growing,” Mrs. Alexander had told her. “And I don’t know that I ought to say so, but the plants come from Mr. Fullerby. Wonderful successful he have always been with the tomatoes up at the Hall- won all the prizes with them at the Embank Shows. Pity he’s leaving.”
“Oh, is he?”
“Well, you won’t say I said so, but I did hear tell as he was. Seems he and Mr. Arnold don’t rightly get on together. And maybe he won’t be sorry. He’s got his house, and there’ll be the old age pension, and if he wants to do a bit of jobbing work, there’s Miss Blake and Dr. Croft, both of them would be glad enough to have him in by the day. It’s Mr. Arnold will be finding out as he’s made a mistake to my way of thinking. But that’s just between you and me.”
Susan picked up the bag of tomatoes, but Mrs. Alexander had by no means done.
“That William Jackson will be leaving too, Miss Susan-I don’t know whether you’ve heard. Got his notice yesterday, so 1 heard tell. I always did say he’d go too far one day. In the Lamb or over at Embark every night till closing time, and getting to work late in the morning. A dreadful time Annie has with him, poor thing. And what she wanted to take him for, goodness knows. Twenty years she was, with your Aunt Lucy -went to her at fourteen. And then to go and marry a good-for-nothing like William Jackson that was after her savings and the money Miss Lucy left her! Ten years younger than her if he was a day!”
Susan remembered William Jackson very well-one of the under gardeners at the Hall. She remembered him as a boy, red-haired and ferrety-faced. She had never liked him very much. Annie had been a fool to marry him. Aunt Lucy would never have let her do it. She hoped things were not as bad as Mrs. Alexander made out, but when she said so there was a shake of the head.
“Oh, my dear, no! Poor Annie, she’s nothing but a wreck. And stuck away in that lonely cottage on the other side of the splash! No wonder they got it cheap! Downright dangerous going over those stepping-stones after dark or when it rains heavy. There did ought to be a bridge, but look what everything costs these days. Pity it didn’t get seen to when labour was a penny a day back in Queen Elizabeth’s time.”
Susan laughed.
“A penny a day bought as much as a good many shillings do now. It paid the rent of a cottage and fed and clothed a family.”
“And a pity is isn’t like that now!” said Mrs. Alexander.
As Susan went back she wasn’t thinking about the deterioration in the value of money, or about Fullerby, or William Jackson, or even about poor Annie. She had two pictures in her mind, and do what she would, she couldn’t blot them out. In one of them she was standing in the dusty lane between Embank and Greenings with her suit-case at her feet and her hands stretched out to Edward Random. In the other Clarice Dean was doing practically the same thing in the middle of the village street. This picture was a great deal brighter and more distinct than the other. Clarice was a great deal brighter and prettier than the rather shadowy figure of Susan Wayne. She had a humiliated sense of having been outdone. Ridiculous, but there it was. She had felt warm and friendly towards Edward. She had showed it with nothing at all in her mind except that friendly warmth. And then Clarice had to do practically the same thing and do it a great deal better. There had been a sparkle-a glow of colour-
She came into the lodge, and found Emmeline in the back room lying flat on the floor trying to scoop the kitten out from under the tallboy with a dusting-brush, whilst Amina wailed from the kitchen. With every tiny claw the kitten clung to the carpet.
“Perhaps if we took the drawers out-”
“These old things are generally solid right through.” They took out the bottom drawer, which was immensely heavy because it was full of photograph albums. As Susan had feared, the bottom of the tallboy was solid oak, but right in the middle where the heaviest album had been the boards had parted and there was a definite crack. After about half an hour of the most exhausting and exhaustive pressing, poking, and levering with a chisel they had almost reached the point of deciding that there was nothing to be done that way, when the kitten, who had probably begun to feel hungry, came crawling out on its belly like a little black snake, fixed them with a reproachful stare, and yawned in Emmeline’s face.
It was not until the back room had resumed its usual littered appearance, most of the things which Emmeline had intended to throw away having been reprieved, that she said to Susan in quite her ordinary voice,
“ Arnold has been here this morning. He wants to turn me out. But I don’t think we will tell Edward just for the present. I am afraid it would worry him.”
CHAPTER VIII
Edward stayed late with Mr. Barr. It was just short of ten o’clock and black dark when he came down to the water-splash and got out a pocket torch to see him over the stepping-stones, though for the matter of that his feet would have found them easily enough with no more than memory to guide. There had been heavy rain in the night, and the stream was full. The stones were slippery and the big flat one half way across had a film of water over it. He took them with a run and a jump, and was aware of being relaxed, and freer than he had been during the five arid years which lay behind him. It was not raining now-it had not rained all day-but the air was damp, and soft, and very mild. “East, west, home’s best.” The words rang in his mind. There wasn’t any place like the one where the world had come alive to you, where you knew every stick and stone, every man, woman and child, where you could look around you and know that the men of your blood had had their part in the shaping of things for three hundred years.
He came up the slope from the splash and saw the church tower black against the sky. A faint glow showed the tracery in the window by the organ loft. The still air carried the sound of music.
Everything in Edward stiffened. After all, there was one familiar thing which had slipped from his mind. It was Friday, and on a Friday night from nine to ten Arnold would be in the church practising for Sunday. The Hall made its own electric light, and its supply extended to the church. The days when a village child panted over the bellows were gone. The organ was a fine one, and Arnold could take his fill of music. The village was proud of his playing. On a summer evening the musically inclined would stand and listen for ten minutes or so before going on their way with the remark that Mr. Arnold did play lovely.
Edward felt no urge to stand and listen. His softened mood was gone. He frowned in the dark, lengthened his stride, and nearly collided with someone making a wavering course from the village. He said sharply, “Hold up, man!” and lent a hand to the process. The fellow had been drinking. He swayed where he stood and said, “Beg pardon, sir.” Edward turned the torch on him. Reddish hair and a dead white face. If it hadn’t been for that unnatural pallor, he might not have known him, but wet or fine, boy or man, sun, wind or rain, William Jackson’s skin had never tanned. “Colour of cream cheese,” Edward could remember old Fullerby saying. “And no more the matter with him than with you nor with me, Mr. Edward.” It was William Jackson all right, and quite a bit the worse for wear. Edward spoke his name, and William straightened up.
“That’s right, Mr. Edward-going home-that’s me-just going home-”
“Well, you’d better be careful over the stones. They’re slippery.”
There was an unsteady laugh.
“I’m all right-couldn’t slip if I tried to. Nails in my boots, that’s what does it-and over those stones four times a day reg’lar. Got the old cottage at the turn, Annie and me have. That’s since your time. Matter of two years we been married- Annie Parker that used to work for Miss Lucy Wayne. Left her a nice little bit, Miss Lucy did, so we bought the cottage and I put up the banns.”
The drink was more in his legs than in his tongue, but he was in a mood to stand talking, and Edward was not. He said briskly,
“Well, you’d better be getting along-and mind your step.”
William Jackson swayed. He could stand all right if he wanted to-stand as steady as any of them. The trouble was, he didn’t know whether he wanted to be coming or going. There was Mr. Arnold up there in the church, and what did he have that last pint for if it wasn’t to get him so he could stand his ground and say the piece he planned to say? But there was Mr. Edward here-suppose he was to say his piece to Mr. Edward. There was the two of them in it-Mr. Arnold up at the church, and Mr. Edward here in the lane. He didn’t rightly know-he didn’t ought to have had that last pint- He said in a doubtful voice,
“Mr. Edward-”
But Edward had already passed him.
“Good-night, Willy,” he said, and was gone.
There was the sound of his footsteps getting less, very quick and firm, the same as he always walked from the time they were boys together. Perhaps he did ought to have talked to Mr. Edward-but it was the other one that had the cash. He shook his head, standing there all by himself in the damp lane. Then he turned and went up through the black yew tunnel to the church.
CHAPTER IX
The sewing-party at the Vicarage was breaking up. It had been started rather humbly and tentatively by Mrs. Ball, who was interested in the Save the Children movement, but it had proved quite a success. Friday evening found most of the available women in the neighborhood plying a charitable needle in the Vicarage drawing-room. It was a magnificent opportunity for the exchange of news and views, and every woman nourished the hope that to her, and to her alone, there would some day be imparted the secret of the really delicious cake which always made its appearance at half past nine. The hope was a vain one. Unassuming and obliging as Mrs. Ball had proved herself, neither hints, compliments, nor the offer of a fair exchange had achieved anything but a smiling shake of the head and a perfectly amiable “Oh, I wish I could, but it is a family secret, and I had to promise not to tell before my Aunt Annabel would let me have it.” Mrs. Pomfret, whose husband farmed his own land to the east of Greenings, had offered the real eighteenth-century recipe for frumenty, Miss Sims had tried to drive a bargain against an infallible way of keeping potatoes new until Christmas time, Miss Blake had put forward her great-grandmother’s crême brulée, said to be superior to the famous Oxford variety, but without result. After each overture Mrs. Ball would at some time during the following evening heave a deep sigh and inform the Vicar that she really did feel terribly mean-“Only s
he did make me promise, John, and she said she would haunt me if I let it go out of the family.” At which Mr. Ball had the barbarity to laugh and say that from what he had heard about her aunt, he would prefer not to have her as a permanent guest.
Just before ten o’clock everyone was getting ready to go. Mrs. Alexander was heard to catch herself up in the middle of her good-nights and say,
“If I didn’t nearly forget! That poor Annie Jackson was in early in the afternoon and she’s wanting work, so I said I’d mention it. Seems her husband has lost his job, and there won’t be anything coming in.”
Miss Blake sniffed.
“Well, she would marry him, and look what has come of it! I said to her at the time, ‘You’ll only regret it once, Annie, and that will be for the rest of your life.’ I’d known her all the years with Lucy Wayne, and I wasn’t going to hold my tongue. And what do you think she said? ‘We’ve all got our lives to lead, and this is mine.’ And look where it’s brought her! I never did like William Jackson-I don’t know anyone who does! And he’s been going steadily downhill ever since he got his hands on Annie’s savings!”
Mrs. Ball said,
“It must be very hard for her.”
Mildred Blake tossed her head.
“Oh, she’s brought it on herself! If people won’t be warned they must put up with the consequences! Well, good-night, Mrs. Ball. I can hear Arnold Random practising in the church, so I’ll just step over and have a word with him about Sunday week, because if I’m to play I must have plenty of notice. He can’t expect me just to sit down and rattle off two chants, three hymns and a couple of voluntaries as if I was in the way of doing it every day.”
The Watersplash Page 4
