Shabby Summer

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Shabby Summer Page 26

by Warwick Deeping


  “I doubt whether you can.”

  “I’ll try. Where?”

  “Just here.”

  But the stuff was too stout for her, and holding on to the wire with one hand, he took the cutters in the other, and cut the wire while she held it. More tension, two turns taken round the tree, and the free end fastened, and the thing was done. Ghent had some stout twine in his other pocket, and forcing the taut wire on to the tops of the chestnut posts, he lashed it in place. Then he spread the rick-cover on the ground, and each taking a corner they lifted it on to the wire and drew it over, and driving in the pegs, ran lengths of line through the eyelet holes and hitched the cover to the pegs.

  She stood up, looking flushed.

  “That’s lovely. I could stand any sort of deluge now.”

  But Ghent had not yet completed the job. He took the spade and dug a small drainage trench along the edge of the rick-cover so that any water that spilled off it should be carried away.

  “All ready for habitation. By the way, have you anything to put under your mattress?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I believe I’ve got an old ground-sheet somewhere. Sarah says the bedding is quite dry. We had better fetch it across.”

  “Oh, I can do that. I have taken up such a lot of your time.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yes. Besides, it’s such fun doing things. Like being a kid again.”

  He smiled at her happily.

  “Life’s pretty good when you can feel like that.”

  * * *

  Lady Melissa, having looked into the bland eyes of the morning, was moved to wonder how Folly Island had withstood the night. It was a refreshed and sparkling world upon which she gazed, and as she looked down upon the river and Ghent’s nursery, she smiled to herself and remembered a letter that she had received that morning. But if her sympathy was enlisted on the side of youth, it was an active virtue and did not merely stand and stare.

  Crossing the terrace and entering the house by the french window of the library, she rang for Sanderson, and sat down to answer Sir Gavin Marwood’s letter. Here was opportunity. Oh, very much so, if Sir Gavin liked as she wished him to like, for she believed that the good things of life should go by liking. Why fructify the prig or the cub or the Crabtree? To Sanderson, who came to answer the bell, she gave the morning’s orders.

  “Oh, Sanderson, tell Thomson I shall want the punt in half an hour. And the car this afternoon at three. I am going in to Loddon.”

  “Yes, your ladyship.”

  “And Sanderson, I want a basket of raspberries and a bottle of the old Marsala.”

  The combination may have seemed a strange one to Sanderson, but he repeated the order as though responding in church, “A basket of raspberries and a bottle of old Marsala. Very good, your ladyship.”

  “In the punt, Sanderson, not in the car.”

  “Very good, your ladyship.”

  The Temple Manor boat-house was a mere thatched affair, housing a punt and a skiff, and Lady Melissa, looking across the water as Thomson poled out the punt had a full view of the Crabtree boat-house sitting like a large white hen upon a whole clutch of boats. This river kiosk had been one of Crabtree’s ideas, inspired by a Mediterranean cruise and glimpses of the Bosphorus. Yes, he was a man of ideas, hence this large white kidney of a river-house, with its mock minaret, and dome of bright green tiles, and windows full of coloured glass. Mr. Crabtree even had planted a row of cypresses along the water’s edge.

  He had been very proud of this inspiration.

  “What do you think of that, Mother?”

  Mary Crabtree had not been able to think anything of it at all, save that it must have cost a great deal of money.

  “Bit Byzantine, what!”

  Had Mr. Crabtree been to Egypt, the result might have been a miniature Luxor dumped by the river. The Crabtree family and its bright young friends made great fun of the Byzantine boat-house. “Say, what’s the idea? Does the old man keep his harem here?” Which was a gross slander on Mr. Roger Crabtree, for the place housed only one motor-boat, an electric launch, three punts, and a skiff.

  Lady Melissa, looking across the river, acknowledged a preference for St. Sophia. Even a high-powered motor-boat which scorned all river regulations as to speed, was less disturbing than a stunting aeroplane. She noticed some activity across the water. The motor-boat had been brought out and was lying at the landing stage below the large concrete coffins full of red geraniums. The Union Jack had been hoisted on the white flagstaff above the green tiled dome. Mr. Crabtree was always patriotic, save when paying his surtax. Lady Melissa could remember a deplorable evening at Loddon when Mr. Crabtree had risen on a political platform and delivered an oration on the woes of the surtax-payer.

  The Temple Manor punt passed down stream to take the bank under the willows of Folly Island. Thomson, having moored the punt, was told to disembark and discover whether Mrs. Strangeways was at home. She was. She came to the top of the bank, and welcomed her visitor.

  “May I come ashore?”

  Mrs. Strangeways laughed.

  “On your own island! Oh, please do.”

  Lady Melissa, assisted up the bank by Thomson, remembered the raspberries and the Marsala.

  “Bring those up, please, Thomson.”

  “Very good, your ladyship.”

  “A little fruit, my dear, and a bottle of wine. Well, and how did you survive last night’s deluge?”

  “I didn’t. I’ll tell you the story, later. Oh, thank you so very much. I’m a perfect pig about raspberries.”

  Mrs. Strangeways took the wine and the fruit from Thomson and, placing basket and bottle under cover, arranged the deck-chair for Lady Vandeleur. Thomson was told to take the punt down to Marplot and deliver a letter there, and to return in half an hour. Presumably, there were things that Thomson was not designed to hear.

  “Now, why not be a perfect pig, my dear? There’s no fruit like fresh fruit.”

  Mrs. Strangeways, recovering the basket and a cushion, and sitting at Lady Melissa’s feet, both in the spirit and the flesh, proceeded to pop raspberries into her mouth. They were dead-ripe and full of natural sugar, and her enjoyment of them was that of a healthy and charming child.

  Lady Melissa was interested in the camping site. The tent within the tent struck her as being an ingenious idea, and its erection beyond the powers of woman. Someone had come to the rescue of Folly Island, but when and how should not be discovered by a direct approach.

  “Won’t you have some too?”

  “I’d love to, but fresh fruit of the pipped variety gives me rheumatism. Well, we had our rain.”

  Mrs. Strangeways, with the basket in her lap, smiled at a raspberry as she trapped it between finger and thumb.

  “Yes, I should have had, I suppose. I mean, rheumatism. The poor tent split, just over my bed.”

  “What malice!”

  “But I wasn’t in it. Mrs. Maintenance took me in. I’m afraid her kitchen was nothing but wet mattress, etc. In a way, there was no alternative.”

  “One should never apologize for the inevitable.”

  Mrs. Strangeways’s face looked bothered.

  “I’m not. One doesn’t worry about one’s reputation when there are other things. And, you see, Peter’s so different. One can trust him. If I hadn’t let them be so terribly kind, I should have felt——”

  “That someone wasn’t trusted?”

  “Yes, how you do understand! And this morning, Peter rigged this up for me. You don’t mind?”

  “I think it was an inspiration. Are you sure your things are quite dry?”

  “Oh, quite. But I wish I could have an inspiration. You see, he’s so up against things, poor lamb. And so good about it.”

  She picked up a raspberry, and with immense solemnity slipped it between her lips. Her little face was turned to Lady Melissa. It seemed to float in its wreath of hair like some pale and poignant flower, emitting emotion as it m
ight have exhaled perfume. She was not at all conscious of her self, of how she looked, or of what her pose should be, and Lady Melissa, observing her, felt that this face was without a shadow.

  “The battle of Crécy. But that conveys nothing to you, I expect?”

  Mrs. Strangeways picked up a raspberry, and sat considering it as though she held a precious stone.

  “My history is a little passé. No, I’m afraid I don’t see the point.”

  “No matter. Heads bloody but unbowed. Leopards of England, is not that Mr. Roger Crabtree’s motor-boat?”

  The fluidity went out of Mrs. Strangeways’s figure. Her slim back straightened.

  “Yes. I knows its yap. He can’t be stopping here.”

  “I know of no reason for such self-restraint.”

  “I was terribly rude to him.”

  “Even sandpaper, my dear, has no effect on some skins.”

  Mrs. Strangeways sat listening. She heard the boat’s engine shut off, and the prattle of water among the water-weeds.

  “He is——”

  She looked at Lady Melissa with startled eyes, for Lady Melissa was taking off her hat.

  “Give me a cushion, my dear.”

  And suddenly, Mrs. Strangeways understood. She grabbed a cushion from the tent, and passed it to Lady Vandeleur, who tucked it under her head, and posed herself with serene languor.

  “Your back to the river, my dear.”

  Mrs. Strangeways relapsed upon her cushion, eyes asparkle, her little nose crinkling with mischief.

  “Ah, yes,” said her visitor in deliberate tones, watching the top of the bank, “we were discussing Crécy. If you remember, our good King Edward had posted himself on a hill. I believe there was a windmill on the hill.”

  “Yes, I seem to remember something about a windmill.”

  Lady Melissa, lying well back in her chair, saw the crown of a Panama hat top the green bank. It was a somewhat professorial hat, suggestive of nets and butterflies, but the face that followed it was not academic. Lady Melissa, suddenly silent, observed that face with an air of serene yet unwelcoming displeasure. Had she used lorgnettes, the effect could not have been more pointed or chilling.

  Mr. Crabtree’s ascent was arrested. The line of the bank bisected his figure at the level of his watch-chain, leaving his thick and common little legs unseen. For the matter of some seconds he stood there and stared, as though suspended in space. For a man of ideas his intelligent reactions appeared negligible. He did not even clutch at his hat and joggle it. Lady Melissa continued to observe him with dispassionate detachment, and suddenly he made a kind of gurgling sound, which, rendered into human speech, passed for the salutation, “Company, I see. Won’t intrude. Good morning.”

  He disappeared. The engine of the motor-boat resumed its chatter, and Mrs. Strangeways, sitting devoutly at my lady’s feet, was moved to gentle laughter.

  XXIV

  That thunder shower was followed by a fortnight’s dry and windy weather, and again the soil became as dry and as hard as brick. Even the willow-trees seemed to feel the melancholy unrest of this shabby summer, for their leaves were grey with the wind, and the river itself fretful and unhappy. Ghent, beating the plantations for a marauding rabbit, with his gun at cock, was moved to question the wisdom of the prophets. “Gaze upon the loveliness of the lily, and possess your soul in peace.” Yes, comforting counsel if you possessed a balance at the bank, and no love-dream clamouring for consummation. That very morning he had received a letter from the manager of his Loddon bank. It had suggested, a little peremptorily, that when Ghent was next in Loddon the manager would like to interview him.

  Was the gentleman growing windy? Had some central authority ordered the curtailing of overdrafts? Ghent’s overdraft had become very much a reality, with a tax of eight per cent added to it. No doubt the manager was not deaf to local opinion, and had heard those significant rumours that cause your cautious financier to call for security. Ghent, in whom the beauty of things and the baulking bitterness of them were clasped in conflict, made his way to the boundary fence to discover whether some hole in the wire had given admittance to the destructive coney.

  Slipping through the rhododendrons he heard a sound that caused him to uncock his gun and stand still. It was a metallic sound, the click-click-click of wire-cutters, and when Ghent was satisfied as to the nature and the direction of the sound, he put his gun down, and parting the rhododendron foliage, peered through this squint-hole. He saw, on the other side of the wire, amid the thistles and ragwort, a hat and a pair of shoulders. Someone was bending down, snipping at the wire fence. Ghent’s face went grim. Surely he had enough to contend with, without the incredible malice of an evil old man being inflicted upon him? That it was old Crabtree who was using those metal-shears he had no doubt at all. Well, he would give the old scoundrel a lesson. He recovered his gun, backed noiselessly through and away from the hedge, keeping his eyes on a point beyond which the spoiler was functioning. He still could hear the snip-snip of the shears, but the man who was using them appeared to have heard nothing. Man, indeed! This was the act of a malignant little urchin. Ghent raised his gun and pointing it at a place about five yards up the hedge, he let both barrels blaze.

  Silence. The snipping of wire had ceased. Nor was there any angry bellow from beyond the hedge. Ghent, keeping up the by-play, shouted to an imaginary dog.

  “Find him, Bunter, rabbits, find him.”

  He pushed tumultuously through the hedge as though in pursuit of a wounded rabbit, and he was in time to see a little, squat figure legging it up the hill, to vanish behind a tangle of birch and bramble. Ghent had flushed his bird, old Crabtree himself, and ejecting the spent cartridges from his gun, he wished that the Law allowed you to pepper the rumps of such mischievous old louts.

  He saw no more of Temple Towers, and walking along the wire, he came to the place where Mr. Crabtree had been so busy. A strip nine inches wide had been cut out of the netting, and lay turned back upon the rough grass. Ghent put his gun down, and kneeling and taking some twine and a knife out of his pocket, he lashed the tongue of wire back over the bolt-hole.

  Well, well, old Crabtree was not likely to repeat that sort of trick.

  But the malice of it, the petty, malignant littleness of the thing!

  Assuredly, man could be a strange creature, both god and fraudulent ape.

  * * *

  Mrs. Strangeways had heard the reports of Ghent’s gun. She was sitting in her deck-chair under the shelter of the green rick-cover, for a chilly breeze was blowing down the river. The pendant foliage of the willows waved to and fro over water that was like ruffled lead. The sky was a melancholy grey smudge. Nor was her mood much happier than the sky. She and her affairs were feeling the drought, oh, very much so. Her petty cash had shrunk to the sum of two pounds, seven shillings and threepence. She had no rent to pay, but milk and eggs and tea and bread and butter did not fall like manna from the skies. Mrs. Maintenance took in these necessaries for her from the baker, the grocer, and the milkman, and daily she ferried across to collect her supplies and to pay for them.

  What did you do in such a crisis? Pawn something, or sell something, if you had anything to sell, or walk the streets and solicit? How quaint life was! Had she consented to the seduction of Temple Towers, all sorts of favours might have been forthcoming. But what a nasty business! Well, what was she to do? Take a third-class ticket to London, and sell some of her jewellery, and be fobbed off with a quarter of its value? What a pity that she was such a useless creature. She could not cook; she knew nothing about children, in fact, she disliked other people’s children; she was a somewhat inefficient typist, and knew no shorthand. In the old days she might have attached herself to some old lady as a companion, and taken the dog out, and read the paper and Marie Corelli to a patroness in a shawl and cap.

  If only Peter——?

  And then she saw him walking back beside the river with his gun over his shoulder. How near they we
re in the essentials, and yet how far apart! He had become strangely inarticulate during the last ten days, and so like a good child trying not to look at the forbidden cake. He was so sensitive about things. He suffered from too much integrity. Yes, obviously, he was not going to ask a woman to share possible disaster, and all its small and sordid implications. Or, was it that he was shy of her self-imposed aloofness, her plea of “Touch me not”, and still saw Folly Island as her sanctuary?

  Dear, beloved simpleton! Did he not know that she would throw herself into the river if he were to ask for that sacrifice, or strip off her frocks and burn them, or go down on her knees and scrub floors, or grub up weeds in his precious nursery? Was she being sentimental? Not at all. It was just that she loved him more than she loved herself, because he was just what he was. She could be both mistress and mother. She wanted to take his head in her lap and say: “My darling, don’t worry. What does anything matter? We’ll make things come right somehow. I don’t mind what I do, or where I live or what I wear. All that I know is that I love you.”

  She stood up and waved to him.

  “I am coming across to see Sarah.”

  A moment later she was in the punt, and Ghent stood and watched her, and remembered that he had to tell her that John Lynwood had asked for the return of the rick-cover. She was poling the punt towards his boat-house, and he followed it along the bank, a man made more shy by his sense of frustration. Putting his gun down he caught the nose of the punt as it slid in, and held the boat against the stage.

  “Did you shoot anything?”

  She shipped the pole, and putting a hand on his shoulder, stepped out.

  “I nearly shot old Crabtree.”

  “No!”

  “He was cutting a hole in my wire fence.”

  “What on earth for?”

  “To let rabbits into my place.”

  With her hand still on his shoulder, she stood looking down at him.

  “Just out of spite?”

  “Yes.”

  “But how incredible!”

 

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