“I think not. My clothes are old but very thick and warm.”
“You never bother about them, do you?”
“I have them cleaned,” he answered mildly. “I buy his old suits from the Earl of Swanage, actually.”
“It’s a pity he doesn’t go to a better tailor, Richard,” said Alicia, who had heard of the eccentric young peer.
“He economizes on cut rather than on cloth, Alicia.”
She drove on through the darkness. The windscreen wiper ticked steadily and their shoulders became covered with fine snow; the dim roads were white.
“I’m sure you’ll get a cold,” she said presently.
“I may, of course. But I am very fond of walking in the snow, and if this lasts I shall walk to Blentley on Sunday. Will you come too?”
The simplicity and sweetness of this request completely bowled Alicia over and she just prevented herself from exclaiming “Will I not!” by answering pleasantly, “I’d love to—if I don’t have to work. I like walking in snow, too, and I badly need some air.”
Arrangements for the excursion were made and they parted amiably at the gates of Sunglades without having touched again upon serious subjects. Richard limped away into the blackness with his books protected under his coat, and Alicia drove home thinking—My beaver boots and the green suit and my beaver coat and cap. Oh, boy! Communism my foot. But much of this was bravado.
Bravado for which there was no need, for on Saturday Mrs. Marten telephoned to say that Richard would be unable to walk on Sunday as arranged because he had influenza and a temperature of a hundred and four. Her voice sounded worried, and it took a definite effort of will on Alicia’s part to confess that she was responsible for his illness because she had not put up the car’s hood against the snow. “I always seem to be doing things to him,” she concluded ruefully. Betty assured her that she was not to blame: Richard never took normal precautions against the weather and he always had influenza just before Christmas anyway. And she promised (without being asked and rather to Alicia’s embarrassment) to ring up again in a day or two and let her know how he was.
Well, she certainly isn’t like most young men’s mothers, thought Alicia, sighing as she replaced the receiver. But I’m thoroughly browned off.
However, London was full of men eager to be amused and to spend money on an attractive young woman, and there were even unattached men in St. Alberics, Canadians and Free Frenchmen and boys in the R.A.F., and for the weeks before Christmas she managed to have her customary good time with dances and parties and pub-crawls and did not consciously think much about Richard. But underneath her usual half-bitter, half-good-natured acceptance of anything that turned up, the thought of him was always there, and she was pleased when his mother rang up in a few days to say that his temperature was down and that he was feeling better.
Alicia expressed a polite relief and did not suggest that she should go round to see him with something to read. For she had, in addition to a natural talent for getting on with men, strict rules governing her relations with them which she had drawn up for herself ever since her earliest affairs. She never made scenes or asked awkward questions or suggested that she should meet a man; she did not write long explanatory or demanding letters, or discuss her admirers with her few women friends. And she contrived that her orderly feminine life, with its war-work and appointments for shopping or hairdressing, should go on in apparent tranquillity whether she was having a love affair or not; and this was another attraction to her men friends. The little dears are always intrigued by someone who isn’t in a mess, she thought, and they aren’t satisfied until they’ve made you into one. And then they aren’t satisfied.
Because she liked men and had always behaved beautifully towards her own, like an expert fencer or dancing partner, Alicia still felt bitterly towards H., who had broken down her rules with his passion and drawn from her emotion and suffering and then decided that he did not want to spend the rest of his life with her. She felt that she had not deserved such treatment from luck or Fate or whatever it was. She, who had taken such care to behave within her code! who had “used her loaf” as the Army says, and never clamoured or whined! It was not fair; and she was still sore with H., though not so sore as she had been before she met Richard.
In the dark icy days before Christmas, Richard lay in bed recovering from influenza and feeling so weak that he could only concentrate upon the necessary reading for his lectures for a short time in the morning and evening. He was much alone, for Miss Fielding said that the atmosphere of a sick room depressed her and darkened her constructive powers, Miss Burton was merely afraid of catching the influenza, and his mother was of course out all day, while Vartouhi hurried in and out with his meals, calling him “Poor Richard!” in a tone that gave him no pleasure, and could never be persuaded to linger for a moment.
One afternoon, when he had been lying for an hour or more watching the dark trees moving ceaselessly against the lowering sky, and thinking of Occupied Europe and his friends who had been killed in Spain, she came in with the tea, turning on lights and drawing the curtains and awakening the dull room to warmth and comfort. As she put the tray by his bed and gave him a fleeting smile, he suddenly caught at her hand, muttering:
“Vartouhi—be kind to me. I love you.”
She snatched her hand away and put it behind her back.
“Oh, you love me! You are ill, you are always ill!” she said scornfully. “You get well varry quick and then I have no more carry these trays to you!”
“Is that what you really feel? Aren’t you sorry for me at all?” he asked, pain and anger forgotten in sheer scientific curiosity to find out if she were really as monstrously unkind as she seemed.
“Not at all, not at all,” said Vartouhi, vigorously shaking her head. “Rich-ard, I hate the rain in England, I like the sun all day, I like to ride on horses up in the mountains, I like to go asleep all in little red flowers, and I hate ill people.”
“Go on about the red flowers,” he said in a low voice, watching her face.
“Little red flowers and white flowers in the mountains in my country.” She lingered for a moment by the bed, and although she was looking down at him he knew that she was seeing a picture, far away. “I go with my sisters on horses. We climb all day, and go asleep there in the afternoon. We see the sea, a long way off. So blue.”
“Go on.”
“First manny white flowers, then manny red flowers, then the sea, a long way off. And the varry hot sun. That is what I like. Not ill people, Rich-ard.”
“I know, Vartouhi. I shouldn’t have bothered you. I’m sorry.”
“Oh yas, you are sorry, I know! Soon you try to touch my hand again.”
“No, I won’t. I promise. What do you wear—what dress?—when you ride up in the mountains with your sisters?”
“White, white, all white, with boots,” she said impatiently, hurrying away, “and yellow on the top, varry pratty, here,” and she touched the collar of her overall. “And there is bells on the horses that ring all the time in the hot sun,” she ended, and shut the door.
I suppose (he thought, as he lay there with his eyes shut) if an Englishwoman told a Bairamian that she lived in a country where there were green meadows with rivers where blue and yellow flowers grew, and stone churches a thousand years old whose bells rang above black trees, that would seem as romantic to him as Bairamia does to me. I can’t stand much more of this; I must get a room in Blentley as soon as I’m up again; and meanwhile a counter-irritant is strongly indicated. He drank some tea and wrote a note to Alicia Arkwright suggesting that she should come to see him on the following Saturday afternoon, if she were not working, and bring him something to read—“the newest whodunit complete with maps and quotations from Plotinus, and the ‘New Yorker’ and ‘Esquire’ and ‘Vogue’ Not the ‘Tatler,’ please, although I know that you read it.”
She is an attractive girl, and I like her, he thought as he stamped the letter, and what
I need right now is some civilized feminine society.
It was the hour of the afternoon post. Vartouhi saw the letters come through the box as she ran downstairs; and took them into the drawing-room where Miss Fielding was sitting bolt upright in front of the fire and severely reading.
“Ah, letters!” exclaimed Miss Fielding, slamming down her book. “Nearly time for black-out, too,” and she glanced out at the darkening garden where dead leaves were blowing along the stone paths. “We’ll have tea, Vartouhi,” and she began to open her correspondence.
Some time later Miss Burton, who was just about to put out the stove in her room and descend to the drawing-room for tea, was surprised to see her door open and Miss Fielding come in. She looked mysterious and disturbed, and in one hand she held a letter.
“Constance! What is the matter?” said Miss Burton, anxiously, going towards her. “Is it bad news?”
“The worst,” answered Miss Fielding sepulchrally, and handed her the letter. Miss Burton read it hastily, exclaiming: “Good gracious!” and “T’t, T’t!” at intervals, then gave it back to her cousin, saying:
“Oh dear, Constance, whatever shall we do?”
“We can do nothing. We are Helpless,” said Miss Fielding, sitting down upon the bed. “I cannot refuse him house-room. It is my duty to let him come and I must.”
“Oh, dear, it will be so uncomfortable!”
“And stay as long as he likes.”
“Oh, Constance! And he has no money, he says.”
“Yes, that is something new. It is very ominous, I feel.”
“Let me see—how long is it since he was here?”
“It must be twenty years—at least. I saw him last in London three years ago, and he said then that he had not been here for twenty years.”
“Oh, dear, there will be such a lot to do … where will he sleep?”
Miss Fielding shut her eyes. “He must have Richard’s room; it used to be his.”
“But poor Richard—what will he do? He’s ill.”
“He must get well at once and find a room somewhere else,” said Miss Fielding decisively, getting up, “and I may have to ask Betty to go too.”
“Oh dear, why? I’m so fond of Betty. Doesn’t he get on with her?”
“Too well,” said Miss Fielding. “That is what I am afraid of. And taking other circumstances into consideration, it is just as well that she should go. Oh dear, oh dear,” she went on in a sort of hushed lament as she tramped downstairs followed by the dejected Miss Burton, “what crime have I committed in another life that I should have this burden thrust upon me? When I opened that letter this afternoon, Frances, I could not help wondering why, when so many better and older souls have Passed Over, he should still be with us, a cause of disappointment and grief to us all. Promoting night clubs! At his age!”
“Night clubs——” murmured Miss Burton.
“Yes. Didn’t you read the letter?” sharply.
“Oh yes, of course, but I was so confused and upset, I hardly took it in properly. Night clubs!”
“Go along, Pony, now you know you are not allowed in the drawing-room,” said Miss Fielding crossly to the enormous cat who was stalking across the hall. He stopped short at the drawing-room door and gave her one look, then slowly retreated to the kitchen.
“We can’t have you in here to-day, Vartouhi,” Miss Fielding went on as she sat down in front of the tea tray, “Miss Burton and I want to talk private business.”
“Yas, Miss Fielding,” said Vartouhi cheerfully, and went into the kitchen with Pony, where they sat on the table and ate margarine and toast together while staring out at the wintry garden.
1 Ouida.
CHAPTER 17
AFTER HER TALK with Miss Burton, Miss Fielding wrote a letter to London and posted it without telling Kenneth or any other member of the household except Miss Burton what she had done. Kenneth is such a fool, she thought, as she tramped through the cold windy night to the posting-box down the road, flashing her torch to light her way. He would have wanted to send a wire saying, “Come at once, delighted.” Now we’ll see what will happen; I hope this will keep him off for a while, at any rate.
Despite this disturbance of the usual pleasant calm of her existence, and her increasing worry about Kenneth and Betty, Miss Fielding did her Christmas shopping as usual. She refused to abandon her custom of giving handsome presents to her friends and acquaintances because of the war, and she went up to London in a day or two with her handbag full of notes and returned in a discontented mood laden with leather blotters, book-ends made like elephants, and gilt fir cone posies. She said that the choice in the shops was very poor and everything was shockingly expensive and it all seemed so senseless, while the difficulty of obtaining the customary attractive wrappings and tyings kept her on the grumble until the very eve of the holyday. Kenneth’s presents were all bottles, filled with scent or whisky.
Miss Burton was having an austerity Christmas and making bedroom slippers, traycloths and needle-cases of scraps of silk and brocade from her piece bag. She did not concentrate on one gift at a time but darted feverishly from one to another and became progressively more exhausted as time went on and none were finished. Betty bought book tokens for everybody, for she was so overworked at the Ministry that she could not spare the time to hunt for other presents in the denuded shops and she was glad to take this easy way out. She had been dowered with that best of Heaven’s gifts, a happy nature, and did not usually worry, but just now she was worried both by the slowness of Richard’s recovery from influenza and by his passion for Vartouhi, which he had been too ill to hide from his mother. It was the first time that she had ever been troubled about one of his love affairs. She had always taken them as gaily as he took them masterfully and felt that he could look after himself and, as for the girls, he was too kind and good to hurt a girl badly. But this affair was different. She had seen the passion and pain in his face when he heard Vartouhi’s voice in the distance and had felt helpless and grieved for him. That was why she had telephoned to Alicia, as the nearest civilized attractive girl to hand, and one (Betty thought), who was herself attracted to Richard. Anything to take his mind off that little goblin, thought Betty as she replaced the receiver, being less than just to Vartouhi because she was annoyed with her.
Meanwhile, unmoved by everybody else’s worries, Vartouhi climbed the stairs to Miss Burton’s rooms whenever she had a spare moment and placidly worked at the beautiful bedspread. Miss Fielding had of course lost no time in asking her what she did up there every evening but had indulgently consented to ask no more questions on being told that something beautiful was being made, for she assumed it to be a present for herself.
One silent night when the countryside was hidden beneath an icy mist, Vartouhi was up there working. She sat on the floor in front of the stove with one cheek flushed by its heat and Miss Burton sat in her low chair cobbling away at a slipper. The room was warm and quiet and scented by some white and purple hyacinths blooming in a bowl on the table; and, although she was bothered by the lopsidedness of her slipper, Miss Burton had been thinking what good company Vartouhi was; how cheerful and kind, and brave (for after all she may never see her family again, thought Miss Burton) and how pleasant it was to sit thus and work together. She stole an affectionate glance at the head crowned with the fair braids, and wished that Miss Fielding would not presently break up the party by roaring for Ovaltine. Really, thought Miss Burton, this war has brought home to one the pleasure in quiet pastimes. Oh dear, this slipper.
“Miss Burton.”
“Yes, Vartouhi?”
“I want ask you something.”
“Well?”
“In Mr. Fielding bedroom I see a picture of soldiers.”
“Oh yes? That would be some of Mr. Fielding’s regiment in the last war, the 47th London Territorials, I expect. What about them?”
“I count them. Eleven soldiers. And at the end of soldiers on a chair is a young man.”
“Yes?” The Usurper, always ready for mischief, suddenly glanced with a gleam out of Miss Burton’s eyes.
“Is Mr. Fielding, Miss Burton?” demanded Vartouhi, looking up from the bedspread with her needle poised. “Is Mr. Fielding, that young man?”
The Usurper nodded, smiling.
“Yes, Vartouhi. That is Mr. Fielding as a young man of twenty-five.”
“But so han’some!” breathed Vartouhi, still with the needle poised. “And so big too also! I look at that picture because I am liking look at soldiers always and there are none pictures of soldiers in this house, and I say, No, no, it is not Mr. Fielding. But now you say, Yas, yas.”
“Certainly I do. That is Mr. Fielding, as he looked when he was a soldier fighting in the Great War.”
“He is fight?” cried Vartouhi, jabbing the needle into her work and edging herself along the floor closer to Miss Burton while she gazed excitedly up into her face. “He is killing wicked Germans?”
“Oh, yes. He was in France for four years, and saw a great deal of action—he fought a lot, I mean.”
The Usurper was beginning to enjoy herself. The conviction that his sister had interfered with Kenneth’s affairs of the heart was always strong in Miss Burton’s mind, and whereas she herself, alone, might have had scruples about encouraging Vartouhi’s interest in his war record, The Usurper had none. She went on mysteriously, leaning closer to Vartouhi—
“And he has two medals!”
“Two medals? Mrs. Archer’s George have only one!”
“Yes; the Distinguished Service Order and the Military Cross.”
“What for does he have them, Miss Burton? You tell me all about it!”
The Usurper’s sparkling mischievous eyes were looking teasingly down into Vartouhi’s ardent questioning ones, and to Miss Burton the quiet hyacinth-scented room seemed to echo with the ghostly music of There’s a Long, Long Trail a-winding. Her lips were parted to begin on a story of twenty-five-year-old battles and the half-forgotten bravery of the men of 1914 when a distant shout, winging its way up from the hall below, broke the spell.