‘Don’t let him do that, old boy,’ said Mr Talavera, shaking hands with him again. ‘If we let him do that, the day’s lost. Nora my pet, what are we having for lunch?’
‘There’s a pork pie,’ said Nora. She glanced towards Guy, benign invitation in her eyes. ‘And pickles. Do you like pickles, Mr Elderbrook?’
‘I … well, yes, I do quite like them.’ Big business had no terrors for Guy, but he was socially inexperienced and these sudden hospitalities unnerved him.
‘Shall we say one o’clock then?’ said Mr Talavera.
‘Awfully kind of you. But I’m afraid I don’t get my lunch-hour till one-thirty.’
‘Splendid. We’ll make it one-thirty. Good-bye till then, Mr …’
‘Elderbrook,’ said Nora. She smiled maternally, shaking her head. ‘Poor Jimmie!’
His brain buzzing with thoughts, Guy walked slowly back to the office. Friendly people: you couldn’t help liking them. But that was neither here nor there. Was Jimmie Talavera as simple as he seemed? And as shrewd? Never before had Guy encountered so odd a mixture of the two elements. Excited though he was, tingling with a sense of crisis, he was in no danger of losing his balance. He had played for time and won it. He had time to think things out. Not much time, but enough. There was a chance and there was a risk: the one must be weighed against the other and the consequences duly considered. His plan, as yet, was far from clear to him. One thing only was certain: he had not the least intention of sharing poor Jimmie’s secret with Mr Baker.
§ 5
STANTON WOLD was a region of undulating heath and woodland punctuated by occasional small holdings and farmsteads. From a high level, say from the ridge of the Beacon, these rectangles of coloured cultivation made a bright unfinished pattern amid the surrounding wildness. Not that the wildness itself went entirely unchecked. The forest was nowhere dense. There were deep culverts, and places where a man could live and die unseen if he were so minded, but the ways through were well-defined and comparatively open. It was a leafy, fragrant, earth-smelling, sun-freckled path that Felix found himself following in the company of Aunt Ellen. He carried an easel and a large portfolio; the campstool, and the rest of her impedimenta, she insisted on carrying for herself. Squiring Miss Winter was the last thing Felix had expected to be doing. He had been pitchforked into the part by Mrs Meldreth, whose incorrigible benignity sometimes took the form of arranging your day for you as though you had been three years old and assuring you with a smile of irresistible sweetness that you were going to enjoy it very much. ‘Now, Ellen my dear, you really must paint me one of your nice water-colours. There are some splendid little bits about here. Felix will show you where to find them. You’ll like that, won’t you, Felix?’ Felix said: ‘Of course, Mrs Meldreth.’ What else could he say? And Mrs Meldreth had remarked, with adorable complacency: ‘And he’ll carry your things for you, Ellen dear. That will be a help, won’t it? Shall I have some lunch packed for you both?’ But Miss Winter had elected to come back for lunch: there was a limit to her complaisance.
It was impossible to be cross with Mrs Meldreth. Besides, what did it matter? He had no plan; Tom had taken himself off; and he was consequently at a loose end and open to any not-too-unreasonable suggestion. He might indeed have joined Tom in an equestrian expedition across country, had not Tom confessed, or rather boasted, that there was a wench at journey’s end, the buxom daughter (Felix gathered) of a village beerhouse. Tom seemed confident of having (in his own phrase) some fun; he had nothing of Felix’s callow diffidence and finedrawn scruples; and Felix, divided between curiosity and repulsion, did his best not to disapprove. And so, averting his mind from the problem, he had ‘drifted’ in his usual direction and was now condemned to do the polite thing by Miss Winter. He was neither ready nor reluctant for the office; and the faint brief smile, the hint of amused irony, with which Miss Winter acceded to her hostess’s proposal suggested that his indifference was matched by her own.
This shared indifference was itself a sort of bond, or at least the precondition of one, since it gave place, imperceptibly, to a small fellow-feeling, each having the generosity to concede, silently, that it wasn’t the other one’s fault that had thrown them willy-nilly together. A more positive element in the sense of ease that soon sprang up between them was their unspoken amused appreciation of Mrs Meldreth. They had acquiesced in the plan because she had given them no chance to do otherwise, and they were going through with it for the sake of giving her the pleasure of thinking how nicely she had arranged things for them. They were united in a conspiracy to indulge her.
They paused, at frequent intervals, to admire their surroundings. Ancient beeches, crowned with young greenness, each silken sunlit leaf delicately veined, stood round them in a living and almost personal quietness, their tall columns seeming to sustain the blue and green roof of this wide room. The ground underfoot was both firm and soft, rich sediment of a hundred seasons. Felix felt an impulse to touch the trees, to take the smooth trunks between the palms of his hands, so that the secret of their being might enter him.
But he said, lightly enough: ‘It’s funny I should be showing you round.’
She turned her dark eyes towards him, with raised brows and a half-smile: ‘Are you showing me round?’
‘Well, it’s what I was told to do.’
She made a small, amused sound. ‘I’m sure you’ll do as you’re told.’
‘By Mrs Meldreth, yes,’ he said. ‘I always do.’ He gave his companion a straight, challenging look. ‘I suspect you do too.’
She gave a smile and a shrug. ‘Everybody does. That’s her special trick.’
‘Trick?’ He jumped on the word, ready to resent disloyalty.
‘I mean her way,’ she translated, ‘her quality, her effect. I didn’t mean trick in the sense of trickery.’
‘Of course not,’ said Felix, trying to look as if such a thought had never entered his head.
‘Of course not!’ There was a mocking irony in the echo. ‘You’re very fond of her, aren’t you, Mr Elderbrook?’
‘Of Mrs Meldreth? Why, yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose I am, since you mention it.’
‘But not,’ she admonished him, ‘more than I am. See?’
‘Good,’ said Felix. ‘Now we know where we are. But I insist,’ he said, hurrying past a slightly awkward moment, ‘on finishing my sentence. I was saying it’s funny I should be showing you round, because you probably know the place much better than I do.’
‘I’ve never been just here before. It’s beautiful.’
‘Do you see anything you … fancy?’ he asked, remembering his mission. ‘Shall I set up the easel?’
‘Please do,’ said Miss Winter. ‘I’m sure you’ll be glad to be rid of it.’
Felix flushed. ‘I didn’t mean that.’
She looked at him with patient exasperation. ‘I know you didn’t. Don’t be anxious.’
‘Anxious?’ He was prepared to argue the word, but thought better of it. ‘Where would you like this thing fixed?’ he asked, looking round in search of her prospective picture.
Having set up the easel he sauntered off, wisely assuming that she would not care to begin work until he was out of the way. He was in a pleasantly idle mood, his mind untroubled, his senses awake and responsive. As he sauntered, so did his thoughts, without plan or urgency. The air was fresh with the intoxicating smell of wet woods. He heard at intervals a bird calling, the same bird persistently calling, and stopped to listen, wondering what it could be. Since a week ago, when he had last walked into the woods, spring had advanced quickly, excitingly. New flowers were appearing, new welcome weeds, though not yet the primrose, not yet the cow-parsley, summer’s first clear blazon; and the extent of new green among the trees was visibly greater. So strong was his sense of the life about him, of an alien yet not quite alien energy pulsing in the leaves and grasses and in the rustling lives they concealed, that the rhythm of growth and change, while he stood and stared, was an almost palpable process.
In his fancy the budded leaves were visibly unfolding, and the moss at the spreading bases of the trees was renewing its greenness even as he watched. He walked slowly on till the woods gave way to a broad white road, upon the other side of which a further stretch of woodland invited him. At the back of his mind was the consciousness that he was supposed to be in attendance on Miss Winter, but he decided that she could not have finished her picture yet and would be glad of her own company for a while longer. She was an odd young woman, not quite ordinary in spite of her unexciting looks and unremarkable conversation. There was something about her, whether in her face, or her voice or the way she moved, that he could not quite get the hang of: it haunted him like an exasperatingly elusive memory, a scent, a tune, a fragment of lost dream. Whatever it might be, this oddness, he was by no means sure that he liked it; but he did, on the whole, like her; or at any rate he liked her well enough this morning to be not discontented with the obligation to escort her civilly home to lunch.
When he got back to the place where he had left her she was not there. He had been absent longer than he knew. He was disconcerted, vexed with himself, stung in his social conscience. What would she think of him? And what would Mrs Meldreth think of him? To wander off and forget her was unforgivable. In five seconds anxiety waxed fat, nourished by half-remembered imaginary terrors centring in the legendary madman of Longbarrow Wood: he half-expected, in that childish moment, to come upon her murdered body hidden in the undergrowth. Shaking off the fancy he called her by name, at first tentatively, feeling a trifle foolish, and then with more volume and vigour. No answer. Still no answer. He began making his way back towards the house, retracing the path he had followed with her. His mood had unaccountably changed. Though still feeling at fault for his desertion of Miss Winter he felt sure he would presently overtake her, as in fact he did scarcely ten minutes later. Seeing her just ahead he wondered why he had made so much fuss within himself, but at the same time his contrition re-awoke.
He hurried forward, calling as he came. She half turned, saw him, and waved an unembarrassed greeting with the camps tool.
‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ he began. Then, her manner making it clear to him that apologies were not expected, he lightened his tone. ‘We have had a sociable morning, haven’t we? Do let me have some of that stuff.’ With the burdens redistributed he said: ‘Did you finish your picture?’
‘In a fashion, yes.’
‘You were very quick. May I see it?’
As she surrendered the sketchbook, which she did without fuss and apparently without much interest, it occurred to him that there was a change in her. She was even more silent than usual, but her silence had a subtly different quality, and her self-composure a hint of precariousness. It was the merest hint, but it made her seem younger: younger than he, who was her junior, and far younger than herself of an hour or two ago. The distance in her eyes, wide windows encircled by dusk, seemed limitless.
He stared at her picture in surprise.
‘You prefer to work without a model?’ he suggested.
The picture was swift and strange, like herself. He thought it well done. In its technical character it had the unexpectedness he was beginning to expect of her. But what surprised his ingenuousness was that its subject bore no resemblance to the scene he had left her with. Whether good or not good, and he confessed himself no judge of that, this was a picture which she might as easily have painted in Mrs Meldreth’s drawing-room.
She acknowledged his remark with no more than a faint smile. ‘I like it awfully,’ he said, sincerely enough. ‘And so will Mrs Meldreth, I’m sure.’
‘Well, that’s the main thing, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say quite that. The main thing, I should have thought,’ he somewhat nervously ventured, ‘is that it’s most awfully good.’
She took the book from his hand and shut it up with an air of closing the whole subject. He first wondered if she were mysteriously offended with him, and then instantly knew that she was not. He knew too, without knowing how, that he himself scarcely figured in her thoughts.
‘It’s not good,’ she said serenely, ‘and it’s not bad. It’s just nothing. The usual young-ladylike performance.’
That’s precisely what it isn’t, he thought. But he did not contradict her, and the conversation, as they made their leisurely way through the woods, turned on less personal matters. Once or twice he found himself, surprisedly, almost thinking aloud, so little was he now troubled by Miss Winter’s remoteness and his own shortcomings as a squire of dames. He reverted, haltingly but unembarrassed, to the vaguely pantheistic feeling that had visited him earlier in the morning, in that moment when the natural world had seemed not only alive but personal, and not only personal but intimately and unfathomably related to himself.
‘Do you know what I mean?’ he asked lamely.
‘Yes,’ she said. The bleak monosyllable had the effect of a sigh. For a moment he was chilled, but after a thoughtful silence she said: ‘It’s not always … convenient.’
‘Convenient?’ He was puzzled. ‘It’s marvellous.’
‘Marvellous, yes. Well, of course. But sometimes, I don’t know … one can hardly bear it.’
‘Hardly bear it?’ He was reduced to playing echo.
‘Hardly bear the greatness of it, the … power and the glory. The beat of the world’s heart.’ She made a quick, deprecating gesture. ‘It’s too difficult. I can’t explain.’ As if to change the conversation she suddenly said: ‘I killed a squirrel just now.’
He stared at her, startled and unbelieving.
‘A stoat had been at him,’ she said, distastefully.
‘A stoat? Do stoats go for squirrels?’ he stupidly asked.
He wished the question unsaid, knowing now that the death of the squirrel, and the manner of it, had been with her ever since it had happened.
To cover up his blunder he said quickly: ‘What did you do?’
‘I did it as best I could. With the campstool. He was horribly injured by … by whatever had injured him. Perhaps our arrival interrupted the kill. Someone,’ she said, half-defensively, ‘had to finish the job.’
‘Of course.’ He again felt guilty for having left her alone. ‘How beastly for you!’
‘Oh well!’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Even then,’ she said presently, ‘the poor thing didn’t want to die. I suppose one doesn’t.’
‘I suppose not,’ said Felix.
‘The way he looked at me——’
‘I know,’ said Felix, feeling a faraway prick of memory. ‘It was like a person looking at you. It was like … you yourself.’
She looked at him in quick wonder. ‘How did you know?’ But she did not wait for an answer. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It was just that.’
§ 6
ARRIVED back at the Bank, after his talk with Jimmie Talavera, Guy tapped on the door of the Manager’s sanctum and went in.
‘What is it, Mr Elderbrook?’
The ‘Mr’ might have been taken as a mild rebuke, for the Manager did not always observe that formality with his staff. Guy, however, was in no mood to concern himself with niceties of behaviour, and he stood in no awe of this red-faced, tubby, self-important, but not ill-natured little potentate. Mr Baker was a worldling who for lack of resolution would never be anything worse. He was redeemed by his trivial vices. Had he been as greedy for power as he was for food and drink, had he been not so decidedly a man-about-town and less easily inflamed by the curve of a silk stocking, he might have become a respected figure in the world and a great nuisance to his fellow-men. As things were he was comparatively harmless, so long as you knew how to handle him. And Guy did.
‘I took your message to Mr Talavera, sir. We had quite a little talk.’
‘Oh, you did?’ Mr Baker’s small eyes bulged a little. It had the effect of glaring, but it meant no more than that Mr Baker was taking an intelligent interest.
‘He hopes to put things straight this afternoo
n.’
‘Hopes, eh? You made it quite clear that the cheque will go back if he doesn’t?’
‘Crystal clear,’ said Guy.
‘And without offending him too much, I hope. Did he make a fuss?’
‘Not a bit. He was very friendly. A little tact, if I may say so, goes a long way.’
Mr Baker looked slightly affronted. Perhaps it crossed his mind that this young man was trying to teach him his business.
‘I mentioned Head Office, sir. In fact, I said exactly what you told me to say.’
Mr Baker’s brow cleared.
‘It worked like magic,’ said Guy.
Mr Baker smiled knowingly.
‘It did, did it? I rather thought it would. No point in losing the account. It may develop.’ He cocked a shrewd small eye at this possibility, then turned back to the documents on his desk. ‘Very well, Elderbrook.’
He nodded dismissal, but Guy said easily: ‘Would you mind if I took a little extra time for lunch today? I’m meeting my brother.’
Raising no objection, Mr Baker equally showed no interest in the fictitious project, so that Guy was spared the trouble of deciding which of his brothers had made the unnecessary improbable journey to London. Neither would have been very welcome, for until he could cut a more dazzling figure in their eyes he had no wish to share London with any of the family. Nor could he easily picture them there, though the favoured Felix had of course had a passing glimpse of the great city, on his way between Mercester and Cambridge. The only one of his kith he would have been positively glad to see, provided he need not be seen with her by anyone that mattered, was— of all people—Aunt Dolly. She, good soul, not only doted on him, and sent him a handsome cheque every birthday, but knew him as perhaps no one else did, thought him hard done by (or had once thought so), and had a sharp intuitive understanding of his unappeasable itch, though it was never discussed between them. She was now prodigiously old; it was an easy guess that he figured prominently in her last will and testament; but because an obscure instinct told him, contradicting his customary simple logic, that he must lose more by her death than he could gain, he looked to the event without eagerness.
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