Unnerved by open defiance, Mr. Guerdon looked round the room. But Macafee was wriggling into his shabby coat and gave him no help. Mr. Guerdon clung to the formula with which his position had supplied him.
'There being no further business, the meeting is now adjourned,' he said.
§2
Caroline breathed hard as she climbed the stairs. They always seemed to grow steeper while she was at the office. She sat down for a minute on the bottom step of the third flight.
From the basement came the shrill tuneless voice of Mrs. Hales singing 'The Church's One Foundation.' Caroline shivered. She wondered why she had ever thought of Mrs. Hales as a nice woman. Why she had even left her something in her will! But then you could never really trust any one in that class. Not really. In the old days in Yorkshire, of course, it had been different. She remembered Martha Whiting, who had been with her mother's family for twenty-nine years, a really faithful soul. People used to have faithful souls. Nowadays they watched instead to see how they could take advantage of you.
Her old friends were dead. Whoever said that old age was a happy time? Death and sickness lay in wait, not for oneself, but for one's whole generation. The 'Deaths' column in The Times became like a casualty list. One never knew who would fall next in the long-drawn war with Time. The only security lay in young friends - like Father Mortimer.
The thought of Father Mortimer lent her strength, so that she climbed the last steps quite quickly and entered her room. Once inside she looked round suspiciously. She was sure that Mrs. Hales had been there, spying on her, reading her papers, and perhaps trying on the hats that the girls had sent her from Marshington. Breathing heavily, she crossed to her desk, and looked to see whether the paper-weight she had placed over her letters had been moved. When she left that morning, she had set it down with the words 'A Present from Bridlington' towards the bed. Now they faced the fireplace. Mrs. Hales had been upstairs, then, spying and ferreting. 'She wants to know about my will, I expect,' Caroline muttered. The thought of her landlady's curiosity exasperated her.
She ought to look for other rooms.
'I mustn't allow this to get on my mind,' Caroline told herself. It was absurd to let one's landlady become a terror. 'Oh, Lord, make us all charitable to one another, and give me a sense of humour, even about Mrs. Hales,' she prayed. Still, that paper-weight had been a good idea. It was as well to know where you were.
The evenings were growing milder. It was really extravagant to light the fire. And now that she was not paying for service and had to tidy the grate for herself in the morning, that was a consideration. Besides, she loathed having to carry down the ashes through Mrs. Hales's kitchen. It was humiliating, after having been on such different terms as a lady lodger.
She slowly removed her heavy feathered hat, and fluffed out the curls along her forehead. There always seemed to be much to do when she came in at night. She took off her coat and stretched it carefully on a hanger behind the door.
She unfolded her scarf and replaced her shoes by bedroom slippers. She set the kettle to boil, and produced from the cupboard a loaf, a jagged lump of margarine in a smeared saucer, a small pot of pinkish chicken-and-ham paste, and a small slice of stale Madeira cake, saved from a sixpenny tea for which she had reluctantly paid at a recent meeting. It had seemed a pity to waste the cake. After a nice cup of tea, she would feel less tired.
All the time she made her preparations and spread her paste across the bread and margarine, she held back by a desperate effort of will-power the memory of the Board meeting. She would not think about the company. When she had eaten and rested she would turn to face her future. Just now, she must rest, she must be tranquil.
It was the time of day she usually liked best. After an hour's rest she would pull herself together and go to her desk and mark the names of possible shareholders in a re-port sent her by the Evangelical Reform Association. But now she could sit and dream. She could think about her Friend.
The knowledge of his existence provided her with a constant solace and occupation. Whenever she had nothing else to think about she could re-live the memory of their last meeting, embellishing it with small added joys invented by her fancy. That time she went to see him in hospital, for instance, and he had come swinging down the long ward on his crutches, he had looked so happy, so young, just like a boy with his rebellious hair and his flapping blue dressing-gown. She had brought him a twopenny bunch of violets, and he had seemed so delightfully pleased. He was a person easily pleased by little things. He told her that his foot was out of plaster of Paris and that he was to be allowed to walk with a stick next day, and on Easter Eve he could go back to the Clergy House to help Father Lasseter on Easter Day.
They were friends. She had said to him: 'I wish I could do something to help you, Father, as you've helped me,' and he had suddenly looked so strange, as though he were happy and excited and yet in some way sorrowful, and said, 'Why, you have helped me, Miss Denton-Smyth. You've given me a lovely thing.' So that was what he thought of her. She had given him a lovely thing. She was getting old, but her spirit was still young. Age, after all, affected matter, not spirit. In spirit they belonged to the same generation. He realized that. Did he ever dream of her as she dreamed of him? Abélard and Héloise were lovers. They too were parted by fate's cruelty, yet from her nunnery Héloise cried out to Abelard. She, Caroline, was trapped in the nunnery of old age, and he, like Abelard, was a priest bound by his duty; yet they could give each other lovely things.
She hurried over the thought that what he actually had given her was a little wad of four ten-shilling notes screwed together. She had not meant to ask for money, but somehow, finding herself confronted by his sympathy, she could not help telling him about Mrs. Hales, and the lack of imagination displayed by her Marshington relatives, and the increasing parsimony of Eleanor, who had even asked her why she did not draw a salary from the C.C.C., Eleanor was
efficient, but rather hard. She believed in competence and order and asking for one's rights. It had been a comfort to tell Father Mortimer all about her. Even the most charitable Christians had to relieve their feelings sometimes.
Of course it did not matter accepting an occasional small loan from Father Mortimer, because one day she was going to make him rich. For each pound that he had lent her, she could repay him back a hundredfold. He would be a bishop, perhaps an archbishop, before she had finished with him. How wonderful he would look in lawn sleeves with a swinging gold cross and an episcopal ring.
But even before then, she would make him happy. He loved beautiful things. She took pride in her discernment of his tastes. No wonder he was attracted by Rome, she thought, when he found such pleasure in deep rich colours, and heavy fabrics, and stately rooms. She would take a house for him in Little College Street. She knew the house exactly, an old house with high, beautifully proportioned rooms and an uneven roof.
She had found a new occupation. On her wanderings through the City she house-hunted for her friend. She knew of a labour-saving flat at Kensington, looking across the open spaces of Holland Park. He should have a study there warmed by central heating, and a drawing-room where he could give her tea - China tea, in delicate Crown Derby cups, with bread and butter, thin as wafers.
He should have chambers in the Temple, up queer creaking wooden stairs, with a double door on which former tenants had carved their initials, and oak panelling round an oval sitting-room. There would be deep window-seats in his study, on which one could sit among piles of crimson cushions, looking out to Fountain Court, watching the sparrows scattering water from their wings, and spring coming up the green gardens behind.
Sometimes she chose for him a country cottage. An old number of Country Life had given her splendid pleasure. She found Tudor Cottages and Elizabethan Farm Houses, Old Timber, Walled Gardens, and excellent Trout Fishing. She was not certain if he liked trout fishing, but the sport was at least suitable for the dignity of a priest. She would have walled gardens where W
illiam pears could grow. Her father had said that to eat a William pear properly you ought to sit all night to catch it at the moment of its perfect flavour. She could go down to visit him there, and there would be bees blundering among the hollyhocks and clarkia and lupins, and a rock garden, frothing with white arabus. She rocked backwards and forwards in her creaking chair, picturing the garden of his country cottage.
She must have fallen asleep, because she heard as though from very far away the tap-tap-tapping that might have been a woodpecker in the plantation at the end of the garden, but which was really Eleanor at the door.
She woke up with a shock of dismay to find the girl standing looking down at her.
'Hullo, Cousin Caroline,' cried Eleanor. 'Can I come in?'
Eleanor seemed younger and prettier than Caroline had ever seen her look before. Into the lapel of her tweed coat were pinned three perfect, slender, tightly rolled pink rosebuds. Her cheeks were flushed to match her flowers, and her breath, coming a little fast after her run upstairs, increased her appearance of youth and eagerness.
Caroline did not want to see her. In a day or two, she felt, she would not mind answering questions; later she could endure the unflinching catechism of efficient youth. Just now, she could not bear it. She had not yet taught herself to face the situation. How could she bear its exposure to Eleanor's bright, candid gaze?
'How are you, dear? I haven't seen you for quite a long time, though I'm sure I expect you're very busy even now that you have finished with the college, haven't you?'
'Well, yes. That was partly what I wanted to see you about.'
'Oh, yes. Well, now, let me see, have you had tea?'
'No, not yet. Can you give me a cup? I brought a cake along. I generally descend upon you like a ravening wolf and eat you out of house and home. But to-day I did remember.'
She produced the cake from a box in her dispatch-case. It was a handsome object, spangled with currants. Caroline looked at it with wistful disapproval.
'Thank you, my dear. I've had tea myself, in fact I was just going to clear up and sit down to some work I brought back from the office.'
'When I interrupted you? What a shame." But the girl's eyes were twinkling, because she had seen Caroline asleep. Caroline's discomfort grew to positive dislike. Eleanor was begging her to have another cup, moving deftly and neatly from the table to the cupboard, cutting the cake, finding a second cup and saucer. She could see the piles of unwashed crockery on the shelf. She could see the disorder of the room. Caroline hated untidiness as much as anyone. She did not like to leave her cups unwashed and crumbs on her cupboard shelf. But there were days when she felt too tired to do anything but eat her meal and lie down on her bed, mornings when 'doing the room' became an intolerable burden. A business director, with heavy public responsibilities, should not have to wash up her own dinner and clean her fireplace.
'I was sorry you couldn't come to that concert last week,' said Eleanor, pouring fresh water into the teapot.
'Well, dear, it was Passion week, you see, and though I'm not so strict as I should like to be, there are some things one likes to do, aren't there? And a secular concert in Lent isn't quite the thing, is it?'
'Oh, Lent,' repeated the girl carelessly. 'I'd forgotten.'
Caroline felt a sudden anger against such light indifference.
'I know, dear, that you don't believe in the Seasons of the Church, but to us who do, there is something very beautiful and strengthening in the ordered procession of the year. Life can be so very disordered and troublesome, but if we submit to the pattern and discipline that the Church has designed as an eternal order -' She was groping for words spoken in a sermon by Father Mortimer, and because she tried to quote her Friend's opinion, her colour rose and her pulses fluttered.
'Oh, yes, I know all that,' said the girl. 'But I don't like external order imposed on me arbitrarily from outside. I like to make my own order.'
'You're very young and undisciplined, my dear.'
'Perhaps I am.' Eleanor paused, busy with the teapot. 'You will have another cup now it is here, won't you? Then I'll wash up for both of us.'
'Oh, well, as it is there.' She did not want to give way to the girl, but the hot tea steamed enticingly from the pot and the cake allured her. 'Just half a cup, then - and ever such a small slice.'
'You know,' Eleanor apologized, 'I'm sorry I upset you about Lent. I didn't mean to sneer or anything. I think sneering's beastly. But I can't help finding all that sort of thing somehow unreal. The seasons of the churches and the consecration of Bishops, and all these quarrels between Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics, seem somehow so irrelevant - artificially created difficulties. I can understand the worship of Absolute Perfection - if it exists - and the desire to make reality in the noblest and strongest and loveliest possible form. But I can't see what this has to do with transubstantiation and the creeds and - I can't even see that the belief in immortality matters very much. I used to think about that desperately. But somehow -just lately - I seem to have passed right through that desire and come out on the other side. I don't even want anyone to go on living after they are dead. I don't want any more than this life.'
'You don't want this, and you don't want that,' flared Caroline. 'And you expect to find the universe and all eternity and God Himself arranged just to suit what you do want. I lose patience with you, Eleanor, I do indeed, and you a B.Sc. or nearly, and a very clever young woman, no doubt.'
It was terrible to grow excited like this about nothing. She must be calm. She must be tolerant. Eleanor had always called herself an agnostic, poor Eleanor. One must be sorry for agnostics and for all these poor young puzzled boys and girls who did not realize what they were missing. Father Lasseter and Father Mortimer would be patient. She sighed and looked across the table at Eleanor, who was crumbling her cake on to her plate and eating nothing. The girl looked less happy now. The flush had faded from her cheeks, and Caroline noticed, as she had not noticed before, the shadows under her eyes.
Caroline made an effort, coughed, and broke abruptly into another subject.
'Well, and what are you doing now, dear?' she asked.
The girl looked up almost gratefully, as though aware that she had been let off lightly.
'Well, you know the course at the college came to an end at Easter? We did an exam and apparently I didn't do so badly. I should have been a fool if I did. It was easy stuff. And I got Hugh to write me a letter to say I could do the laboratory work quite decently, and what with one thing and another, they're probably going to give me a chance at Perrin's - you know, they're the big people who work over here connected with Brooks in the States - and there's a chance - there's even a chance - that I might go to America with Hugh. Hugh's trying to wangle it, and it would be the most marvellous experience. And I should see Jan, my brother. He's in Pennsylvania now - and I could study all the American cinema and talkie processes. It would be perfect. And then I could come back here and - Oh, Cousin Caroline, wouldn't it be fun -fun, if I could one day be a big Business Magnate, like Brooks? There aren't nearly enough women in big industrial positions. I must be rich by the time I'm fifty - and then I'd go in for politics and really get what I want - with money and power and authority behind me. I don't mind starting at the beginning, but I must be a company director some day.'
That brought Caroline to the point. She leant forward.
'My dear," she said. 'You can be a company director without waiting all those years and going to America.'
Eleanor shook her head. 'I wish I could. I'm horribly impatient. But it can't as a rule be done. One must begin at the bottom.'
'That's all you know!' cried Caroline happily. She was triumphant again, feeling herself in her rightful place, a distributor of largesse, a benefactress to youth. 'But supposing I offered you now - now, when you are only an inexperienced girl straight from a business college, what if I offered you now a directorship in an important company - a cinema company?'
'Why,'
laughed the girl. 'I'd snap it up. You bet.'
'Well, my dear, you once did me a good turn, I'll admit it. Your investment of three thousand pounds helped to extricate me from a delicate - I won't say an awkward - but a delicate position. And now I am fortunate in being able to recompense you by giving you your heart's desire.' Why was the girl's expression so remote and puzzled? Caroline smiled in the sure knowledge of her triumphant benefaction. 'I asked the Board of the Christian Cinema Company to-day — only to-day, mark you — if they would approve of the appointment of two new directors — Father Mortimer, my dear, and yourself.'
She sat back in her chair and awaited Eleanor's thanks. She watched for the girl's confused and inarticulate delight. But instead of crying out with gratitude, Eleanor stared at her with something like dismay.
'The Christian Cinema Company?' she repeated. 'Father Mortimer - and me?'
Poor Caroline Page 24
