“Soon, perhaps, Vartouhi,” said Kenneth, wishing that he were twenty-five again to sail with that new crusaders’ fleet.
“Is a good thing!” was all Vartouhi would answer, reading the letter over and over again. He thought, as he looked down at her little face which was unwontedly soft with love for her family, and with happiness that they were safe, that Con and Betty and Frankie were all wrong when they said she was a hard-hearted child. She was only unawakened. Her heart was tender and true; and she’ll make a wonderful wife one day, for some oily Bairamian, thought Kenneth with an unconscious sigh.
Alicia had not seen Richard for a month, and that seemed to her too long. She liked her friendships with men to progress, or to finish. But she followed her usual procedure and neither telephoned to him at Cobbett Hall nor wrote to him at his lodgings. More than once (even while in the arms of the man from the three-day party, who had come back to London) she thought, “I believe he and I had something there, if only things had gone on.” But she did nothing about it. She had had a most bitter lesson, and never again was she going to lower her defences to a man nor advance one step towards him until he advanced, and probably not then.
So when she got Miss Fielding’s post card announcing that the next rehearsal of Little Frimdl would take place on March the 12th, she was actually pleased and her first thought was, “I shall see Richard again.”
She wanted to talk to him. There were so many problems she wanted his opinion on; problems that had vaguely bothered her ever since she was a child, which everyone in her family and social circle had always been too busy to answer, on the rare occasions when she had broken through her reserve and asked. She thought she would like to sit up all night talking to Richard and hearing what he thought about this and that. And then she thought, well, perhaps not all night, and smiled to herself, as she tilted the gun-barrel into a new position and watched the blue figures below settle busily onto it with their tools. She wrote to Miss Fielding promising to be there.
Richard’s letter announcing that under no circumstances could he take a part in Little Frimdl rather had its thunder stolen by another letter, in a typed envelope with an American stamp, which arrived for Miss Fielding by the same post. The household was at breakfast
“From Dr. Stocke,” said Miss Fielding in a tone of satisfaction, opening the letter with the American stamp. Betty saw the one in Richard’s handwriting with a sinking heart: she could almost guess the words in which his refusal would be phrased.
“He always finds time to write to you, Connie, in spite of being such a busy man,” she said, partly from the wish to put Miss Fielding into a good humour but partly from her instinct to give pleasure.
“We are old friends,” replied Miss Fielding, absently, for she was reading, but with complacency. Suddenly she gave a faint exclamation.
“Bad news?” inquired Miss Burton, rather hoping that it was, and the tiresomely peripatetic and efficient Stocke for once up a gum-tree.
“Oh no—no—quite the reverse. He is coming to England!”
There was a pause, which Miss Fielding was too busy reading to notice.
“Oh—er—good!” said Kenneth loudly and heartily at last. Betty and Miss Burton could not for the life of them refrain from exchanging a glance. Everyone hung on Miss Fielding’s next words.
“In about three weeks!” she exclaimed, hastily turning the pages of the letter. “He will fly of course, by way of Lisbon—hopes to see something of our plans for reconstruction—(how like him! ever forward-looking, even in the midst of Armageddon!) and will give some talks on the social services in his own country to the European Reconstruction Council—why, aren’t those the people Richard is working with, Betty?—and would be gla——”
Miss Fielding ceased abruptly. Everyone gazed at her in surprise. She rustled the pages of the letter about, coughed, and then resumed in a voice strangely different from her usual confident tones:
“Would be glad if we could offer him hospitality for a while. But of course! How splendid!”
There was another pause. Miss Fielding continued to read the letter to its end. It is not too much to say that into the hearts of the remainder of the breakfast party there came a feeling very like despair. Each had always pictured Dr. Stocke as an Arch-bore, a Grand Master and Adept in that ancient Lodge and Hierarchy, who would never stop talking in an exhausting foreign accent about social evils and their remedies, and insist on everybody else talking as well, so that they could neither go secretly to sleep nor crawl away under cover of an inconspicuous silence. More; he was the author of Little Frimdl; the creator of the Very Old Man and all those Spirits and Entities and those interminable speeches about the Rice-lands and the Cornlands. And the first thought of everybody (except Vartouhi, who was eating porridge and staring out of the window) was: He will take the rehearsals himself.
“Well!” said Miss Fielding briskly at last, laying down the letter and glancing round at the faces of her housemates; “isn’t that splendid news? He has not visited England for nearly ten years. He will find great changes.”
“Nothing to eat, for a start,” said Kenneth, who now seemed in a bad temper, “or drink.”
“Oh, that won’t trouble Gustav Stocke!” cried his sister joyously. “He is a total abstainer and while there is a glass of cold water left in England, he will fare royally!”
“The water usually tastes filthy, nowadays,” said Kenneth, determined that Dr. Stocke should not enjoy himself. He was thinking angrily how different the reception of his father had been; what long faces, how grudging the hospitality. Why should this foreigner be taken in with open arms?
“I will write this morning and say we shall be delighted to give him bread and salt for as long as he wishes,” said Miss Fielding very firmly, observing signs of rebellion in Kenneth’s manner. She began to roll up her napkin. Kenneth said nothing. His silence and his sullen look were embarrassing.
“Is it really ten years since you have seen him?” asked Betty, breaking what threatened to grow into an awkward silence.
“Oh quite that. It must be nearer eleven years.”
“I wonder if you will find him much changed?”
“I think not. I feel, somehow, that I shall not.”
Miss Fielding’s manner had become even brisker and more confident than usual since reading Dr. Stocke’s letter. Miss Burton looked at her idly, and The Usurper wondered if she were quite as brisk and confident as she appeared. Both Miss Burton and The Usurper could remember days when the non-arrival of a letter from Dr. Stocke had made Miss Fielding very low indeed; really cast down, as she used to be in her teens when she had suffered for a time from religious doubts. When a man was the sole masculine interest in a woman’s life, and when the woman had not seen the man for ten years, surely the natural attitude on hearing that she was going to see him again was one of slight apprehension? And even Connie had her weaknesses. There was that Christmas party—in 1905, was it?—when the Bargle boy kissed her under the mistletoe and she cried for an hour, mused Miss Burton, eating toast with her head on one side. Well, it will be a great bore having him here, but if he succeeds in humanizing Connie it will be almost worth it.
“Con——” said Kenneth, opening the door of his sister’s little morning-room half an hour later, as she sat writing letters, “can you spare ten minutes?”
Miss Fielding looked up in a patient way and removed her glasses and sat expectant.
“It’s about this chap coming here,” he went on, advancing into the room, “look here, have you thought what a deuce of a lot of extra work it’s going to make?”
Miss Fielding shut her eyes. Then she opened them again and fixed them severely upon her brother’s ill-tempered face.
“I have taken all the difficulties into consideration, Kenneth. You may be sure of that.”
“Oh—er—good. I thought you mightn’t have realized, that’s all.”
“I fully realize.”
“He’s over here
in an official position, or semi-official, you know, and that means he’ll be out at all hours seeing people and going over places and——”
“Dr. Stocke’s investigations are those of a private individual interested in peaceful international relationships,” interrupted Miss Fielding. “He has no official support from his Government.”
“I see. If he gets his face pushed in, that’s his funeral,” muttered Kenneth. “Very convenient for his Government.”
“He has greater freedom of action and speech as a private individual. Naturally, his Government approves of his activities.”
“Yes, well, that’s all right, but all I meant was, he’ll be wanting meals at all sorts of odd hours and that’ll make a damned lot of extra work for Vartouhi,” burst out Kenneth very irritably indeed.
“Has Vartouhi been complaining?” Miss Fielding’s voice was as sharp as his own.
“She’s never said a word. But I can see what’s it’s going to mean.”
Miss Fielding replaced her spectacles and turned again to her correspondence.
“I have eight letters to write before luncheon, Kenneth. You may be quite sure that everything will be properly organized and that Vartouhi will not be given any more to do than she is capable of doing. Bairamians are a hardy race.”
“She’ll need to be,” he muttered. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, he broke out again with:
“And another thing, I’m not at all sure I want him here. Foreigners all over the place…. There are too many of them in the country now, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. A neutral, too!”
“Most mercifully, yes,” said Miss Fielding, not looking up and scribbling away like mad.
“I don’t like neutrals coming over here and poking their noses into our war and eating our carrots.”
Miss Fielding flung down her pen. She sat upright. Her eyes blazed. She glared at her brother.
“Kenneth!” she said very loudly. “I will hear no more! You are the essence of selfishness! I seem to hear the voice of the Evil Principle itself! An old and valued friend, who knew Our Mother, an ardent worker for peace, asks bread and salt of us and you would have me refuse! I regard it as a sacred duty to offer hospitality to Gustav Stocke. It is a form of peace-work; the first I have been able to do for months. He is a messenger from a saner world than ours, a true emissary of civilization, and were I to refuse his request I should feel ashamed to my dying day both for myself and for you. Besides, I haven’t seen him for ten years and I want him to come here and he shall!” suddenly concluded Miss Fielding with a stamp of her foot on the floor. “Now let us regard the matter as settled: I feel the Evil Principle all about me and my vibrations are disturbed; please go away at once, before worse things happen.”
Kenneth, who detested and dreaded scenes, hastily went. He had not succeeded in getting in a word about Father and the way he had been received. Might as well have kept my mouth shut, he thought gloomily, Con always gets the best of it.
This was not the end of the matter, however. Vartouhi was unusually silent throughout lunch and clashed plates about while she helped Mrs. Archer to wash up. When Miss Fielding was settled in the drawing-room with The Times, Miss Burton having gone upstairs to take her afternoon rest, there was a tap at the door. In response to Miss Fielding’s “Come in,” Vartouhi entered, looking extremely polite.
“What is it, Vartouhi?” demanded Miss Fielding, looking at her over her spectacles.
Vartouhi marched up to her employer’s chair and stood looking down at her with hands behind her back.
“Miss Fielding, I want talk to you.”
“Very well then, Vartouhi, but don’t be long about it, please.” In spite of her crisp tone Miss Fielding’s heart sank. She had retired to the drawing-room for an hour or so in solitude, to think over the forthcoming visit of Dr. Stocke, about which her usually concise thoughts were somewhat confused. Was that visit to be marred by domestic rebellion?
“A man friend of you is coming to stay here,” announced Vartouhi abruptly.
Miss Fielding inclined her head in dignified assent, overlooking the colloquial form of this statement.
“There will be much for me to work at. Much, much.”
“Who told you that Dr. Stocke is coming to stay here?” demanded Miss Fielding, suspecting Kenneth and very annoyed.
“I hear you say so, Miss Fielding, at breakfast.”
“Indeed.” Miss Fielding gave what in vulgar circles would be described as a nasty laugh. “I did not think you were listening. You were looking out of the window.”
“I look out of the window and listen too also.”
“I am afraid you often do, Vartouhi. You are a sly little girl, I am very sorry to say.”
“No I am not. In the pictures I sit with an American soldier and he said I am not. He said the British are all frozen up except me. So I am not, Miss Fielding.”
“I said SLY, Vartouhi, not SHY,” explained Miss Fielding with commendable patience. “Sly means deceitful, hiding your real thoughts. Shy means——”
“Averybody hides their real thoughts.”
“Yes, well, never mind that now. We seem to have wandered from the point. By the way, Vartouhi, though of course you must be polite and pleasant to any foreign soldiers—poor misguided men!—who have come to England, you must be careful—er—not to be too friendly in your manner.”
“Why, Miss Fielding, please?”
“Because your mother would not like it!” Miss Fielding, who did seem unlike her efficient usual self to-day, lost her temper for the second time. “Now that’s enough; hurry up and tell me what you were going to say and run away.”
“There will be too much work for me when this man he comes.”
“Dr. Stocke, Vartouhi; not ‘this man’; that is a rude way to talk.”
“Dr. Stocke, Miss Fielding.”
“Now, Vartouhi, understand this for once and for all; there will not be a lot of extra work for you to do when Dr. Stocke comes. There will be no more for you to do than when Mr. Marten and my father, Mr. Fielding, were here; not so much, in fact, because they were two and he is only one. And I know for a fact that Dr. Stocke makes a habit of helping with the work when he stays in the houses of his friends. So——”
“Is varry good and kind.”
“Yes. Yes, he is good and kind.” Miss Fielding suddenly stifled a sigh. How long it seemed since she had enjoyed a really interesting, fruitful talk about her work with anyone! I live in a spiritual desert, she thought; Ruth in tears amid the alien corn. “Now, is all that quite clear to you now, Vartouhi?” smiling mechanically at her and taking up The Times.
“Yas, thank you, Miss Fielding. Dr. Stocke is varry good and kind and he will help me with the work.”
“Er—yes. Perhaps not quite that. We shall have to see when he comes. But he will certainly do his share of the household tasks, that I know. Now run away, Vartouhi; I am busy.”
Vartouhi curtsied and smiled and went.
Alone once more, Miss Fielding let The Times fall upon her lap, and gazed into the fire with an expression which gradually became thoughtful. Thought, that wears and hollows the face to which it is habitual as water erodes the bed of a stream, had left no marks on her face, with its habitual decisive expression. Now it lay across her stubborn rosy features like a shade. She began by thinking how long it was since she had seen Dr. Stocke, and went on to an effort to recall the details of his appearance, and to wondering if they would be much changed by the passage of eleven years, and then to wondering whether he would find much change in her. My hair is greying now, of course, she thought, lifting one hand to it; and then her thoughts (softened perhaps by pleasant memories of many a splendid long talk with Dr. Stocke about Peace and International Goodwill and the League of Nations, and by the firelight dancing dreamily over the bowls of delicate spring flowers), imperceptibly took a more personal and frivolous turn; and an hour or so later when she was presiding over the tea tray with Miss Burton
she suddenly observed, after a longish silence, that she thought she would go up to town and buy a new dress.
“Something light,” said Miss Fielding, crunching her firm white teeth on a piece of toast, “and springlike.”
CHAPTER 27
SO IT HAPPENED that some three weeks later, as Richard was sitting at luncheon in the long dining-room of Cobbett Hall, he was disturbed to see Miss Fielding sweeping in through its double doors, plainly in search of provender and supported, rather than followed, by an enormously tall, broad handsome man in the middle fifties, with Nordic eyes and hair and a Presence.
The long windows revealed the uncertain blue sky of March and the wonderfully clear light shone down on the dark faces, the scholarly or worn or foreign faces, of the members of the Council and their trainees, who were patiently, and in most cases absently, moving past the service counter, carrying their own cutlery and plates. There were long trestle tables covered with white cloths washed and bleached in the great laundry and drying-ground of the mansion, and vases filled with wild daffodils and early purple orchids from the woods on the estate. The long room was piercingly cold and most of the people in it wore their overcoats.
Richard was hoping fervently that Miss Fielding and her friend would not see him, when they did. Miss Fielding, who had a pink dress under her fur coat and had done something to her hair, made a remark to her companion and waved. The big man at once turned his full attention upon Richard with courteous concentration. It was like being focused by a searchlight. Richard gazed vaguely at the two through his glasses and pulled his book closer to his plate; but Miss Fielding, with plates and cutlery in one hand, waved again, so Richard stood up and bowed: such is not the casual manner of the day, but the Council and the trainees were used to handshakes at odd times and clickings of heels and kissings of hands and no one took any notice.
I am not going to be branded as an unwashed Leftist with bad manners, thought Richard, as he sat down again.