There was no more talk of his going away again. In the middle of January he spent a day in London and came back very pleased with himself and assured Kenneth that his loan was in a fair way to be repaid very shortly with interest, and he brought chocolates for Vartouhi and an enormous bunch of sweet pale violets for Betty and a large cake for Miss Fielding and Miss Burton. The latter was touched, and her heart was won. He’s a dear old man, she thought, as she sat at the piano playing My Love had a Silver Ring in the firelight, and I like having him here. How disagreeable Connie is, always trying to stop people from enjoying life and having an easy time if they want to. Heaven knows there’s enough misery in the world—and what does it matter if he does propose to Betty? I’m sure she won’t have him.
And she went into the next room to take a refreshing peep at Vartouhi’s beautiful bedspread, which was half-finished and by now very beautiful indeed; gorgeously, dazzlingly so. Vartouhi still came up for two or three evenings in the week to work at it. She had been slightly subdued ever since Christmas, and Miss Burton was amused, but rather disturbed, to learn that she found the house duller now that Richard had gone away.
“You’re like ‘Barbara Allan,’” said Miss Burton disapprovingly.
“Who is that, Miss Burton, please?”
“Oh, a girl in an old song. First she let the young man die for love of her and then when he was dead she made a dreadful fuss and ended by dying herself from remorse.”
“What is re-morse, please?”
“Being sorry you’ve been naughty.”
“I am not sorry, Miss Burton, because I have not been naughty to Rich-ard.”
“Well, I think you were, very unkind and naughty, but never mind that now. I thought you’d miss him when once he had gone.”
“Is no one to look at me with love now, Miss Burton.”
The Usurper laughed.
“Is a nice feeling to have a man want marry you, Miss Burton. Though you say ‘no, no,’ is a nice feeling.”
“I quite agree, Vartouhi.”
“I think I will go and see Rich-ard in his new house?” She glanced up innocently at Miss Burton, who looked as severe as she could.
“Now you don’t want to do that, Vartouhi!—digging him up just when he’s probably getting over it.”
“Is a kind thing to do,” said Vartouhi, embroidering busily. “He is lonely, perhaps.”
“Not at all,” said Miss Burton vigorously. “His mother saw him yesterday and she says he seems perfectly comfortable in his lodgings and likes the work very much.”
“He has forget me, all,” said Vartouhi, and giggled.
“A very good thing too.”
“All the same, Miss Burton, perhaps I shall go,” said Vartouhi, and smilingly fingered her necklace.
Miss Burton, who had definite plans of her own for Vartouhi’s future, hoped sincerely that she would not go, but was powerless to stop her if she meant to, except by giving advice. She was most anxious that Vartouhi should not see Richard alone in doubtless comfortless lodgings; the girl’s charm would glow with more than its usual power in such surroundings and was almost certain to revive his passion for her, while she would see him, pale and moved and an exile for her sake, and perhaps her heart would be touched at last. And then what becomes of all my fine schemes? thought Miss Burton. What a wicked little thing she can be!—but only where men are concerned. She is a good, loyal, kind little girl to me and Betty and even to Connie.
Oh dear, I do hope she won’t go.
But on a Saturday morning towards the end of January, a mild wet day when the country seemed as colourless as it could be, Vartouhi walked to Blentley and knocked at the door of the bungalow where Richard lived. One of her three hats, a brown one with a feather, was arranged right on the back of her head like the hat of a lady she had seen in a woman’s paper brought into the house by Betty, and she wore her necklace outside her old tweed coat and had bare legs and heavy shoes. Richard’s landlady opened the door and looked at her with mild interrogation on her small face.
“Is Mr. Marten live here?” asked Vartouhi with her most sparkling smile. (What a small house! and so brown!)
“Yes,” said the woman, staring. She was fascinated by this visitor, who would have looked striking even in conventional clothes and was doubly so in the blend of shabby garments with surprising hats and jewellery that her circumstances and taste compelled her to adopt.
“He is in the house?”
“Oh yes. But he’s just going out. Did you want to see him?”
“Yas, please.”
“I’ll just go and tell him, if you’ll step inside.”
Vartouhi did so, looking with lively scorn at the furniture and walls. Brown, all brown! Is like the inside of a parcel.
She heard voices, and Richard’s tones sounding surprised, and a moment later his tall form came out into the hall, stooping towards her. He was in his overcoat and was evidently just going out.
“Oh——” he said, stopping short, “it’s you—Vartouhi, I mean. This is—this is a surprise,” he ended, very coldly. “I thought it might be Miss Arkwright. I’m meeting her in town. Er—won’t you come in?”
He stood aside, and she sauntered past him into the room. To her it seemed all brown, like the rest of this stuffy little house, and quiet and chilly, with not much light in it from the small windows. Papers and books were scattered on a table.
Vartouhi turned to smile at him as he followed her into the room. There was silence for a moment.
“Er—have you a message from my mother or Miss Fielding?” he asked courteously, looking down on the odd enchanting little figure from his great height. All his pain revived at the sight of her. He recognized with resignation that he was not so healed as he had hoped.
“Oh no, Rich-ard. I come to see you. I am thinking you are lonely perhaps so I am coming to see you and cheer you up, too also.”
“That’s very kind of you,” he answered with perfect gentleness and no trace of irony; all the same, Vartouhi knew that she was most deeply unwelcome. She smiled impudently and moved her shoulders but just for a moment she could not think of anything to say. She had hoped that he would look at her with that pleading which had so often pleased her vanity at Sunglades, but his eyes were only friendly and calm.
“You do not want marry me any more?” suddenly demanded Vartouhi, sitting down on a chair and gazing up at hint while clutching at her hat, which nearly fell off the back of her head with the abruptness of. the movement.
He shook his head. He simply could not think of words in which to answer her. Had she come to say that she would have him after all? God forbid! and yet——
“You sure, Rich-ard, you do not want marry me any more?” she repeated, looking at him with narrowed eyes.
He found his voice.
“I’ve decided it wouldn’t do, Vartouhi, even if you would have me.”
“I thought you do not want any more, Rich-ard. When I see how you look at me, I thought it.” He could not tell from her tone what she was feeling, but he hoped that she was wounded by his apparent indifference. He said still more calmly:
“Why do you ask? You didn’t—come to tell me you’ve changed your mind, did you?”
“No, no, Rich-ard!” cried Vartouhi, bursting into giggles. “But I like to have a man want marry me, though I say I will not marry him, no. So I come to see if you still want.”
“Typical,” murmured Richard, gazing at her pensively and thinking how a less intelligent young man than himself might have sneered something about “making sure the moth was still on the pin.”
“Please?”
“It’s all right—nothing. Well, I’m still in love with you, even if I don’t want to marry you. Does that make up at all for the disappointment?”
“You still are loving me, Rich-ard?”
He nodded, looking down at her.
“Is a good thing,” said Vartouhi cheerfully, getting up from her chair and rearranging the hat. ?
??You are going to London now?”
“Yes—and I must go or I shall miss the bus.”
“To see Miss Arkwright?”
“Yes.”
“You like her?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Is a horrid girl,” said Vartouhi vehemently. “She has two fur coat. Is bad in war-time.”
He burst out laughing and made his shepherding movement of driving her out of the room. “Go on with you—you’re hopeless. The Barbarian in Our Midst. Miss Arkwright is charming and you’re jealous.”
“I am not—I am not! I do not care you see her at all!”
“Oh, not jealous of me, jealous of the two fur coats.”
“Is a bad wicked thing in war-time,” she said obstinately, going in front of him down the hall.
He shut the front door behind them.
“Is my day off,” explained Vartouhi sunnily, walking beside him down the road, “so I come in the bus with you—so far as St. Alberics.”
“That will be delightful; thank you,” he said with irony.
He had expected to be a little embarrassed in the bus by the attention which Vartouhi’s unusual appearance and queer English would inevitably attract, but he was surprised—and his passion for her was increased—by the sober air she at once assumed, which eclipsed her personality and presented only a faintly smiling courteous mask to her fellow passengers. It was the first time he had ever been with her in a public place and he found the experience interesting as well as painfully delightful. Of course, he thought, watching her as she sat opposite to him gazing politely out of the window, she comes of a race famous for concealing their feelings under their good manners. It’s only because she has got to feel familiar with me by living under the same roof with me for six months that she tells me the truth—how polite she was to me that first day, when she carried my rucksack! If only she had been really like that! courteous, gay, with a heart growing steadily sweeter as it unfolded. But it makes no difference, blast it. Have I only been in love with her for six months? It feels like six years.
“Good-bye, Rich-ard,” said Vartouhi, as they parted at the bus stop in St. Alberics. “I go to eat lunch in the Fedora Café and then I go to the Fedora Pictures to see some Germans and some Italians and some Japanese all blown up. Is a varry good thing. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Richard.
CHAPTER 23
ROUND ABOUT TWELVE o’clock on the same Saturday morning Betty was sitting in her room at the Ministry of Applications, working.
The Ministry, it may be recalled, was housed in the large buildings of a girls’ school that had been evacuated to Cornwall, and though at first there had been room for it, it had grown considerably in three years and had recently overflowed into a network of small rooms made from patent boarding erected in the school grounds. Although the rooms were painted in pleasant white and green and attempts had been made by hardy individualists to brighten them up with vases of flowers and calendars and even on some of the more important desks with photographs, they continued to give to sensitive minds an unpleasant suggestion of cells, and although any ordinarily robust person could have kicked her way out through them in ten minutes, some of the clerks had a faint but permanent claustrophobia when the doors were shut.
But Betty’s cheerful temperament made the best of her little cell, appreciating the bright cold light of the northern Home Counties that poured in through the well-designed windows, and the tiny electric stove provided by a benevolent Government, with the warning that it must not be used between certain dates when, it was assumed, the weather would be warm. Of course it never was, but you cannot run a country at all unless you ignore some of its peculiarities.
This morning the little stove was at half-pressure and the room was too hot and the windows could not be opened because when they were the fine rain drove in all over Betty’s chief’s desk. He had been out all the morning at a conference and had left her in charge. She had Mr. Fielding’s violets in a white vase on her desk and was sorting letters from applicants.
Precisely at twelve o’clock, an old gentleman in a beautiful grey tweed overcoat and grey felt hat presented himself at the little hut which guarded the entrance to the school grounds, and inquired of the porter if he might see Mrs. Marten? Having filled up a form with his name, his address, and the nature of his business (Personal), he waited while the porter communicated with Betty by telephone. On hearing that she would see him at once, he looked gratified, and waited while his pass was stamped with a little circle representing a clock set at twelve-five, the hour he entered the building; he watching this ritual with his head on one side and the indulgent smile of one who murmurs Bless their little hearts! Finally, holding his pass airily between finger and thumb, with his hat in the other hand and his bright blue eyes glancing amusedly from side to side as he went, he traversed the corridors between the numbered doors until he came to Room 87.
“Come in!” called Betty, sitting back in her chair and gazing at the door with an expectant smile, though she felt apprehensive.
“Well!” she said, as Mr. Fielding came in all smiles, “this is a surprise! Have you come to take me out to lunch? because——”
“Delighted; nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he said promptly, “but first of all——”
“Because I’m terribly sorry but I can’t manage to-day; my chief is out at a conference and I’m going to have something sent in from the canteen,” she interrupted dexterously, “I’m in charge, you see.”
“Charming!” cried Mr. Fielding, gazing at her in delight. “It’s delightful to see you with your typewriters and your files and your telephones, pretending to be a business woman! And so you’re ‘in charge’! Well, no office could have a prettier guardian,” and he put his hat down on the table and glanced about him for somewhere to sit down.
You maddening old man, you ceased to think somewhere round about 1908, thought Betty, but you’re rather a pet too. Is that how you talk to the cabaret girls?—charming, charming, how delightful to see you pretending to wear nothing but a scarf, with your lipstick and mascara, you playful puss. “Oh, do sit down on our Applicant’s Chair,” she said, and opened a cupboard and out fell its solitary occupant; a folding chair of intimidatingly utilitarian design which nevertheless wobbled.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Fielding, and sat down so carefully that they both laughed.
“You see your violets,” said Betty quickly; she was so nervous that she made this dangerous remark without thinking where it might lead. “Don’t they smell delicious?” and she put her dark head down to the fading flowers.
“They remind me of you,” said Mr. Fielding, folding his hands on the crook of his umbrella and looking at her with his head on one side.
Oh dear, thought Betty.
She smiled at him and sat down at her desk again. There was a little embarrassing pause. She moved some letters about.
“Won’t you——” she was beginning.
“You must know what I came here to say to you, my dear,” interrupted Mr. Fielding suddenly, bending towards her with, as the old saying has it, his heart in his eyes. “I’m never sure of getting you alone in that place” (he meant Sunglades) “so that’s why I came here, in the hope——”
“I wish—oh dear—I’d really rather——” began Betty, looking down at the typewriter in distress. And then she added that last request of the soft-hearted when driven into a corner and very afraid of giving pain to the person who has driven them there—“Please don’t.”
But he did.
Alicia arrived at their rendezvous at the same moment as Richard did, and he gave her a good mark, for he himself, though absent-minded, was by no means chronically unpunctual. She was dressed in elegant rain-clothes and had an oiled silk umbrella.
“Hullo, Richard. Nice to see you.”
“Nice to see you too, Alicia. Shall we go and lunch at once? I thought we’d see Casablanca. Do you approve?”
“Gran
d. I adore Humphry Bogart.”
“And I admire Ingrid Bergman, so we shall both be happy.”
They walked away past the ruins of the Café de Paris, livid under the lowering grey sky. Rain danced lightly on the dark stagnant water of the reservoir and drifted in their faces as they moved along the crowded streets. Men were selling bunches of snowdrops outside the big cinemas.
Alicia would have liked a drink. Her usual meetings with her friends always began with a drink or two. But she decided not to suggest going in for one because she knew that Richard had not much money and drinks were very expensive nowadays, and she did not want to suggest paying for herself.
“Look here,” she said lightly, as they stepped in at the almost hidden entrance of an obscure little restaurant near the National Gallery, “we’re going Dutch to-day, aren’t we?”
He shook his head.