“Not a young man, Father; Gustav is older than I am,” said Miss Fielding without displeasure. She had changed her pink dress for a becoming blue one, a fact which her father’s sharp eyes noticed at once. “He should be in any moment now; he said he would be back to tea.”
“I remember your speaking of him when I was here before. Didn’t he write Little Shamus and the Leprechaun of Peace? I remember the title very well; you were all rehearsing it at Christmas.”
“Little Frimdl and the Peace Reindeer,” his daughter corrected him, “Little Shamus was another of his that we did at the time of the Irish troubles in the ’twenties, Father. I knew and admired Gustav’s work long before I actually met him.”
“Ah. Has he got any money?”
“Really, Father, I don’t know. I have never heard him mention money.”
“Probably has plenty, then,” said Mr. Fielding in a satisfied tone. “Yes, I knew it was Little Somebody and the Something. And he’s a bachelor, you say?”
“A widower, Father. Mrs. Stocke died last year.” Miss Fielding, seeing that an embarrassing train of thought was revolving in her parent’s mind, sought to change the subject, but before she could do so, Miss Burton looked up from her task with a flushed face and exclaimed archly:
“Guess who is engaged, Uncle Eustace!”
“Constance!” cried Mr. Fielding, with a cheerful laugh, and Miss Fielding looked pained, but not so pained as she would have two months ago and Miss Burton thought that she detected some complacency.
“Alicia Arkwright—you remember her?—to Richard Marten,” continued Miss Burton.
“Betty’s boy? No! Why, when I was here before he couldn’t look at anybody but little whosit—the girl you had helping in the house. Where is she, by the way?”
“Oh, she has left; refugees never stay long anywhere,” said Miss Fielding carelessly. “They are going to be married at the end of April.”
“Good thing; very good thing,” said Mr. Fielding, filling his mouth with hot scone. “Two young things like that—how old is he—twenty-six? and she can’t be much more—settle down together like a couple of puppies in the same basket; their bones are still soft, you see, and they’ll find it easy to fit into each other’s ways. Now when people in their forties and fifties start getting married, that’s a very different matter. They’re set in their ways and they want the basket to themselves! Another scone, please, Frances,” and he darted a sparkling glance at the conscious face of his daughter. It’s too bad of Uncle Eustace, thought Miss Burton. Father is not chastened, thought Miss Fielding. Ah, thank goodness, there is Gustav’s knock.
It was one of Dr. Stocke’s merits—if such a quality can be regarded as a merit—that he was hardly ever discomposed. He had a cast-iron social manner that could deal with any eventuality or human type and he was never surprised. Miss Fielding had been slightly uneasy at the prospect of his meeting her eccentric and erring father, but she soon found that she need not have worried. Dr. Stocke came in looking enormous and exuding a breath of cold spring air from his excellent American clothes, bowed with exactly the right mixture of attentive courtesy to an old gentleman and flattering interest in a new social acquaintance; and in a few minutes they were talking animatedly about America, a country which both knew well, while Dr. Stocke cleared the scone dish. Miss Burton took out one of her hopeless pieces of knitting and Miss Fielding her embroidery, and both worked in pleasant silence and listened to the gentlemen until it was time, alas, to begin cooking dinner.
In the kitchen garden, Kenneth was wandering up and down in the rain and making an absent-minded inspection of the broccoli sown last year and the turnip tops. He had returned from the office unobserved, for he did not feel like conversation, and was now doing what he had been looking forward to doing all day. But the garden was not having its usual soothing effect, for the work was much behindhand owing to his absence in London, and the beds, to his experienced eye, looked idle and desolate. The jobbing gardener whom he sometimes employed had dug and prepared them for the busy gardening months of March and April, but he had not planted much, for his employer had hoped to be back in time to do most of the work himself; and Kenneth knew that if he wanted the garden to produce as much this year as it usually did, he would have to work exceedingly hard for the next six weeks. Usually such a prospect would have exhilarated him, but this evening it only made him feel tired and depressed. He had a touch of rheumatism in one shoulder and he could not give his full attention to the garden because of his distress about Vartouhi. Until he came home and found her gone he had not realized how much he had been looking forward to seeing her. In his case he had a necklace of gilt shells, the sort of gay trinket she loved, and he had wanted to see her fasten it round her neck and hear her excited thanks. The house seemed desolate without her; and apart from his own disappointment, he felt so sorry for the poor little girl, going off without any tea into the rain. Suppose she had lost her temper and spat? Shocking, of course, but she was only a child and a foreign child at that, alone in a strange country. Anything might have happened to her.
He went across the garden and opened the door of the old greenhouse. Rain was streaming down its glass panes and in one or two places dripping steadily onto the floor. A faint smell of mould and moss hung in the air. But it was warmer, as usual, in there than it was outside, and Kenneth sat down on a bench and began to pack his pipe. He glanced across at an outsize flowerpot, turned upside down, which stood immediately opposite the bench. It was still covered by the sack he had put there for her to sit on during their last conversation in the greenhouse a month ago. He could remember her quaint remarks and particularly a long account of the appearance and temperament of “my nice, Medora,” who was a favourite with her aunt; and the memory of the little figure sitting there was so painfully vivid that he stopped packing his pipe for a while, and sat staring at the ground and feeling unhappier than he had felt for years.
CHAPTER 32
HE INTENDED TO go up to London the next day and make further inquiries at Tekla House and also to find the headquarters of the League of Free Bairamians in Great Britain and try to trace her through them. But on the Friday morning his father awoke feverish and weak and the doctor had to be sent for, and when Kenneth got to the office, much later than was his habit, he found Mr. Gaunt anxious to secure his full attention for a complicated case presented by some wealthy clients whose affairs had been in the firm’s hands since his grandfather’s day. It was clearly impossible to go to London; and it remained impossible for the rest of the week; and by the end of the week, although he still missed Vartouhi and fully intended to go to London to make inquiries at the earliest opportunity, his sense of loss and his intention of finding her had both receded a little into the background of his life. Habit is so strong in middle-aged people, and so soothing; it works hand in hand with Time in the task of softening grief and helping them to endure the pain which their ageing systems are ill-fitted to support; it is terribly powerful, and the young do well to mistrust it until their own nerves and feelings are ready for the anodyne it can supply. Miss Burton reminded Kenneth at intervals that it was now ten days—a fortnight—three weeks—since Vartouhi had gone, and there had been no word from her, and at each reminder he felt a pang and answered impatiently, because he was unhappy. But old Mr. Fielding was slow to recover from the heavy cold which succeeded his illness and demanded much of his son’s time and attention, and the case of Masterman v. Burtwright, Sampson and Company continued to present delicate problems and to require his constant presence at the office; and the days slipped past, and still he did not go to London to look for Vartouhi.
So far as he was concerned, life at Sunglades became more bearable with the departure of Dr. Stocke a week after Kenneth’s own return. The good doctor went off as cheerful and busy as ever, having warmly thanked the Fieldings for their hospitality and assured Miss Fielding how deeply he felt the parting from her and how much he would miss their long talks, and prom
ised that he would write a journal of his Argentinian travels for her which should reach her (U-boats permitting) every few weeks. She said good-bye to him with loud expressions of regret and vowed more than once that the house would be an intellectual desert without him. He made her promise that she would keep up the study of his native tongue which she had begun under his instruction, and said playfully that in six weeks he would write her a letter in it, and she must swear to read it without the help of a dictionary.
“Oh dear, how tantalizing—I’m sure I shan’t be able to!” said Miss Fielding despondently; she felt extremely low and made no attempt to conceal her feelings.
“You will find the gramophone records most helpful,” said Dr. Stocke.
“It will not be the same as having you to practise with.”
“Naturally; but you will make progress, Constance, and when we next meet I shall be able to talk fluently with you in my own tongue. It will be very pleasant.”
“Yes; well, I hope so, Gustav. Have you your thermos? I saw it last on the hall table.”
“I have everything, thank you. And now, good-bye, my dear friend,” and he took her two hands in his and shook them firmly, ending up with a kiss on her forehead. Then he hurried into the taxi and was driven away.
Miss Fielding turned back to the house, her mood a mixture of maidenly confusion and exaltation. No man had ever kissed her on the forehead before; no man, in fact, had ever dared (or wanted) to kiss her at all since the occasion when that horrid Bargle boy had forgotten himself beneath the mistletoe. A kiss on the forehead! What a beautiful symbol of their lofty friendship. She was so moved that she was not annoyed by hearing Kenneth whistling with unusual loudness and cheerfulness on his way to the vegetable garden.
Old Mr. Fielding was sitting by the drawing-room fire with the Tatler and regretting that Dr. Stocke had gone. If a man could talk cheerfully and had a store of anecdotes about interesting places and people, Mr. Fielding did not notice if his personality were oppressive and his perceptions limited; and he thought that the house would be noticeably duller without Dr. Stocke, who had beguiled the evenings for him during the last week. Mr. Fielding had been relying on Betty for conversation and entertainment, after the slight embarrassment of their first meeting had worn off, but in fact he saw very little of her. Every evening she had some engagement or business on hand to help Richard and Alicia with their approaching marriage, and she did not return to Sunglades until late at night.
There is always a vast amount of pleasant business and buying and fuss involved in getting married in peacetime, but it is nothing compared with the amount of exhausting business and failure to buy because there isn’t anything to be had, and fuss, bound up with a marriage in war-time. But Richard and Alicia were fortunate: the five weeks of their engagement were not spoiled by fretting about cups and carpets and leases. Richard’s mother had been married in war-time and known the happiest days of her life in two cheaply furnished rooms, and hence she concentrated on the realities rather than the inessentials of the married state, and her mood and that of the engaged pair harmonized perfectly. Richard and Alicia both disliked fuss. Richard avoided it because it wasted his precious energy, and Alicia avoided it because it was a bore.
So Richard brought his many books and his telescope out of store, and Alicia asked her father if she might have the contents of her bedroom as a wedding present, and on this, with a few additions, they proposed to set up house. Poor Mr. Arkwright had been looking forward to a “do,” with as elaborate a breakfast as the times would permit, and a huge cheque for the bride, and was so sadly disappointed that Alicia gave way and said that he was a lamb and she would adore a reception and that he might buy them a table to have their meals on.
Richard forbade her to accept the huge cheque. She might accept fifty pounds if she liked; they must not be cranky, and unkind to her father; and they would put it into a nest-egg for emergencies such as illness or a baby. But five hundred pounds would throw the sparse elegant pattern that they had drawn up for their early married life all out of proportion. He would have his salary from the European Reconstruction Council and she would have her wages from the factory and her hundred pounds a year, and as a concession to his bride he permitted himself to take fifty pounds a year from the income left to him by his aunt. Altogether they would have about eight pounds a week. “Riches!” said Richard decidedly, when Betty had found them two small sunny rooms with the bath in the tiny kitchen in a pre-Regency house in St. Alberics. The rent, owing to another stroke of luck which need not be detailed here, was only thirty shillings a week, a bargain in a Home Counties town in war-time.
The house was clean and the little rooms were decorated in blue-green distemper. Alicia found it difficult to concentrate on her work at the factory because her thoughts were busy with a colour scheme of white and blue-green and dark raspberry red. They bought two little gilt antique cups and saucers smothered in delicate blue and pink flowers; and a white utility teapot which was a good shape although it did drip, and when Richard took it back and courteously requested another one which did not drip, he was given one. Alicia was clever at sewing and she made white net curtains and two pairs of dark red ones out of the brocade ones in her room, which also provided a tiny dark red cushion each for herself and Richard. It was a happy and exciting time for them both, as the two little rooms and the kitchen-bathroom began to look elegant and homelike and the weeks passed.
“When you start the baby, darling, you won’t be able to get into the kitchen,” said Richard.
“I shan’t take up more room than the telescope,” retorted his bride. “But all that brass looks heaven against the bluey-green walls. Need we have any pictures?”
He shook his head.
“I’m good at doing flowers,” she murmured. “This summer we’ll have white peonies. I adore them.”
Richard put his head out of the window into the sunny evening and surveyed the busy square below and murmured, “All this is very pleasant. Aren’t you glad I caught you?”
“Oh Rick, I am. Only——”
“What?” He turned his head to look at her, still with his hands on the window-sill.
“It’s just a little feeling.”
“Well—what?”
”It’s about my asking you to live with me.”
“Well?” he said again, beginning to smile and taking his hands from the sill.
“I wish—I don’t know. I either wish I hadn’t asked you or you hadn’t said ‘no’—I feel——”
He waited, leaning against the window and watching her. She was standing by the little basket-shaped grate, into which she had temporarily put a bunch of jonquils that she was taking home. The double white flowers against the jet-black ironwork matched her clothes, for she wore a black skirt and an elegant plain white blouse. Late sunshine covered all this black and white with a golden light.
He went over to her and put his arms round her.
“Well—you did ask me and I did say no, so we can’t get over that. But do you know why I said no?”
She shook her head.
“The conventional situation is reversed in our case, you see. I am more anxious to marry you than you are to marry me.”
“Rick!”
“It’s true; you think it over. Who’s the frightened one? Who said Marriage is so permanent? who talked about their freedom? Not me. I am ready and eager to settle down.”
As usual, he was making her laugh, although she also looked a little ashamed.
“But you do really want to belong to me, don’t you?” he went on.
“Of course, angel birdbrain!”
“Well, suppose you belonged to me before we were married and then you got a fit of fright about getting married and rushed off, where should I be?”
“Yes—I see——” she said, thinking this over. “You want to be sure of having me for keeps?”
He nodded, smiling.
“And the only way I can be sure of getting you f
or keeps is to make you marry me first.”
“I think it’s awful!” burst out Alicia. “You make me sound like some old Victorian rake!” and she struggled to get away from him but the explanation ended in uproarious laughter and many kisses.
But secretly she thought it sweet that he should want her “for keeps” so strongly that he could submit her to some humiliation and himself to self-denial. It deepened her love for him and made her feel less afraid of the responsibilities she was undertaking. She found out other things about him, of course, during the next five weeks; that he disliked obvious care being taken about his health but appreciated it if the care were unobtrusive; that his dislike of admitting himself to be in the wrong was so strong that a real effort of will was necessary every time he did so. On his side he found out that she was literally unable to get through her day efficiently without some alcohol, and that she did not care whether she was in a poor place or an expensive one so long as she was enjoying the occasion, and she enjoyed easily. This seemed to him as good a characteristic as the necessity for alcohol seemed a bad one. The latter, he decided, would have to be cured by very gradual degrees. He saw nothing unusual, of course, in people drinking alcohol several times a day but it seemed to him serious when anyone, a man or a woman, could not get through their day’s work properly without it. She smoked very little because she disliked the smell lingering in her hair and clothes. Her elegance and coolness was a never-failing refreshment to him. He told her that it was like being engaged to a water-iris. Their friendship, apart from their love, grew stronger with each day, and to Miss Burton, who took great pleasure in seeing them together, it seemed that they were fortunate enough to be “attracted by the indefinable essence, apart from all qualities, that constitutes the self,” as Charlotte Yonge admirably wrote of two other lovers who were dissimilar in tastes and habits: such unions are the most lasting known to earth.
Richard sometimes thought of Vartouhi in the weeks preceding his marriage; and it slightly shocked him that he did not care what had become of her. She had made him suffer as painfully as a well-balanced and rational young man could, and there was nothing left in his feelings towards her but resentment and dislike. There was also a little fear, but he was not conscious of that, although he should have been warned of it by his hope that he and she would never meet again.
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