“I would let it perish,” said Miss Fielding grandly, “and I am surprised at you, Frances, and disappointed too, I must say. What do you suppose Gustav can say to his Government—all so very awkward—and the German Embassy in the capital is bound to make inquiries—his son is well known there—and the boy’s father on a visit to England—it all looks so suspicious—the German Embassy will think——”
“Oh let it!” cried Miss Burton. “Really, Connie! Who cares what they think, the—the—the dirty dogs? I think it’s glorious!”
And Miss Burton swept away to her own quarters, leaving Miss Fielding—between sympathy with Dr. Stocke and disappointment at his absence and fear lest he should after all not return on the morrow—in a bad temper.
Nothing happened as the day wore on to improve that temper. Vartouhi was unusually late in getting back from St. Alberics and when she was reproved she only laughed and cheerfully displayed some of Kenneth’s favourite biscuits for which she had stood in a queue. “Will put them in a tin for his tea when he comes home,” said Vartouhi with satisfaction, and went into the kitchen swinging her cap and whistling, leaving Miss Fielding in the hall quite breathless with annoyance. The wind continued to moan drearily round the house, occasionally rising in force to an angry shriek, and Miss Burton complained of neuralgia.
After lunch a hush settled down on Sunglades. Miss Burton retired to her bedroom with a hot-water bottle and a book, and Vartouhi vanished on her own affairs. Miss Fielding sat alone in the drawing-room, which was even darker than usual to-day because of the lowering sky, and glanced disconsolately over The Times. Then she took up some embroidery and worked for a little while; but then she laid it down again, and glanced out at the desolate garden—the more desolate because the spring flowers with their promise of warmth and loveliness were shrivelling under the freezing wind—and sighed. It was impossible to settle to anything. The house seemed so dreary without Gustav. Usually if he were away for a few hours she had the pleasant anticipation of his shortly returning to a meal, but to-night there would be no firm knock at the front door, no manly tread across the hall, no cheerful tones greeting her as she turned to smile at him from her favourite fireside chair; and in her present gloomy mood she thought it unlikely that he would return to-morrow either. It is all the fault of that wretched boy, she reflected, angrily pulling her silk through the material. How selfish young people are. No thought for his father. I don’t see what good Gustav can do by going to London, though I suppose—bother this silk! And she stuck the needle viciously in and folded the work up and shoved it away. I will write some letters, she thought, and remembered that one concerning some repairs to the house which had to be answered was upstairs in the old desk which Kenneth kept in his bedroom.
She went upstairs to get it.
The house was very silent. As she mounted the stairs she could see the red glow of the stove through the half-open kitchen door, with the great cat Pony lying asleep before it. Half-way up, there was a long window in which stood a bowl of spring flowers beautifully grouped by Miss Burton, and she paused to rearrange one or two that had been disturbed by the violence of the gale flinging itself against the window panes. She glanced out across the garden, brown and green with its freshly cut lawns and dark beds of earth under the low grey sky. Gustav will have had a cold journey, she thought, and went on.
She crossed the landing and opened the door of Kenneth’s room and then stopped on the threshold, with her mouth open in amazement at the sight that confronted her.
Kenneth’s room was furnished with a soldierly plainness that contrasted with the prettiness of the rest of Sun glades. There were faded photographs of rowing groups and his regimental mess on the brown walls and the furniture consisted of some slightly shabby pieces brought from their old home in St. Alberics where the family had lived before the three younger members had come into their inheritance. A worn green carpet completed the sober effect.
All was as usual—but the bed! The bed, which was habitually covered by a green quilt and eiderdown! The bed was transformed!
Eiderdown and quilt were lying anyhow on the floor, as if the perpetrator of this outrage—who stood in the middle of the room admiring her work—had flung them there in her eagerness to replace them with the object that now concealed the whole of the large bed and hung in stiff folds down to the very floor.
It was a bedspread, truly, but what a bedspread! It blazed with brilliant yellow, blue, crimson, green, black, and white; it was stiff with massy open flowers and pink silky buds coiling away among their brown leaves in a deep border round its edge. Queer little stiff soldiers in purple turbans marched across its middle towards a rose-like blossom that made the centre; a white-and-yellow flower with elongated thorns of scarlet silk. On the other side of the great blossom was another army of fair-haired warriors in white tunics who carried black spears. And all about the rose were green trees heavy with glowing pink and yellow peaches and apricots, swelling and fruiting upon the white background where every available space was filled by a tiny red or blue flower.
At the foot of the bed Vartouhi stood, with her head on one side, smiling with pleasure at the pretty thing she had made. All the grey light of the March afternoon could not dim the marvellous glow of colours on the coverlet or make less the life that danced in her eyes. In spite of her plain dress, she and her bedspread looked like two sudden visitors from the gorgeous East; she might have sailed into this sober English bedroom on the magic carpet that now covered the bed, and so exotic was the picture that all Miss Fielding’s ill-temper and anxiety and apprehension burst at once into a blaze of rage. Vartouhi—in her brother’s bedroom—and disarranging his bed!
“Vartouhi!” she exclaimed, so loudly that it was almost a shout. “What are you doing here? How dare you come into Mr. Fielding’s bedroom and put your rubbish on his bed? Take it off at once!”
Vartouhi stood quite still. But her eyes, sparkling and suddenly angry, slid sideways to look at Miss Fielding like those of a little wild, animal. She began to smile politely.
“You are angry, Miss Fielding,” she said softly.
“Yes, I am angry, and I should think so, indeed. Throwing bedclothes on the floor! When you know how everything has to be taken care of nowadays! and wasting time and wool and silk on that gaudy fancywork when you know perfectly well the Red Cross are crying out for materials! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”
She paused, literally for breath. Her face was red and her heart was beating fast. Outrageous, outrageous, was the word that repeated itself again and again in her head, mingled with angry memories of Vartouhi’s insolent words about Dr. Stocke that morning. And there was something in the opulent colours and strange, bold, easy design of Vartouhi’s work that struck at her deepest convictions. Propriety, common sense, prettiness—all were nullified by the gorgeous barbarity before her. She felt actually frightened. What idea was in the girl’s head—flinging a thing like that across a man’s bed? It was really disgusting! The foundations on which Sunglades stood were being attacked.
“Take it away, this minute!” commanded Miss Fielding.
But Vartouhi did not move.
“Is a prasent for Mr. Kenneth,” she said, still softly and politely. “I gave him no prasent at Christmas, so now I make him one.”
“Mr. Kenneth doesn’t want presents from a silly little girl and it’s very impertinent of you to offer it. Take it away, now at once! or I will!” said Miss Fielding, growing angrier every minute.
“Will not!” Vartouhi suddenly said in a low tone that trembled with rage. “Is a beautiful thing I made for Mr. Kenneth to cheer him up when he comes home sad to this miserable house. Will not!”
Miss Fielding wasted no more words. Before Vartouhi could guess what she was about to do, she had twitched the coverlet from the bed and held its considerable weight, stiff with silk and padded flowers, in her arms.
“There!” she said with a nod, her eyes blazing triumphantly, “now it’
s going on the kitchen fire!”
The absurdity of this threat struck neither of them. Vartouhi sprang forward and, taking her by surprise, managed to snatch the quilt from her arms and, turning, darted towards the open door. She was half-way across the landing, with Miss Fielding in pursuit, when she bumped into Miss Burton, who was coming down the stairs with an alarmed look on her small face.
“Oh! Vartouhi! Whatever is the matter?” cried Miss Burton, just managing to recover her balance. “Connie—have you both gone mad?”
Vartouhi and Miss Fielding paused in their flight and Miss Burton stood between them, a bewildered figure in a housecoat, glancing from one to the other.
“Why, it’s your bedspread, Vartouhi! What’s the matter, Constance—don’t you like it?” demanded Miss Burton.
“Like it? a vulgar hideous thing like that? I think it’s—it’s disgusting. And she was putting it on Kenneth’s bed!—with the eiderdown all over the floor!”
“Kenneth’s bed? Why were you doing that, Vartouhi?”
“Is a prasent for him,” said Vartouhi sullenly, standing at the head of the stairs with the gorgeous massive folds gathered up in her slight hands and sweeping opulently to her feet.
“A present for Kenneth? Why, I thought it was for you, Constance!” cried Miss Burton, hastily saying the thing she thought safest.
Her remark did not have the soothing effect she expected. Vartouhi, drawing the breath in through her dilated nostrils, spat on the floor at Miss Fielding’s feet.
“For her?” she shouted, “I make a prasent for her—the wicked woman who rules her brother’s house and sends her ancient honoured father to be ill away in London? In my country we would cut the hair off such a woman! Mr. Kenneth is varry sad in his heart and he has no joy in his house because of her. And she say he does not want my prasent! Is a wicked lie. I put it on his bed to make him happy when he come home—oh yas, oh yas, is a varry nice house, varry comfortful, but is nothing pratty in this house!” shouted Vartouhi, stamping her foot and glaring at the silent English ladies and speaking in a tone of savage sarcasm. “Is so nice here—is no laughing, no dancing, no children, no singing! Is all talk talk talk and read read read all day, sometimes I think I will burst like the thing on my bicycle!”
She paused for breath, and drew the back of her hand across her moist mouth. Both ladies were still silent, staring at her.
“So now?” taunted Vartouhi, advancing upon them with the bedspread defiantly clasped to her bosom, “so now you will be varry angry with me, Miss Fielding, and Miss Burton too also, who I like, because she is look like a varry old nun I know in my own country? You will punish me, Miss Fielding, yas, I think so.”
“Vartouhi, you’re a very naughty——” began the counterpart of the very old nun, feebly. Her voice died away.
“I shall certainly punish you,” said Miss Fielding icily, after a long pause. “You are a wicked, uncontrolled little savage, not fit to associate with civilized people. You must go away from here this afternoon, at once, and never come back.”
“All-right,” said Vartouhi contemptuously, shrugging her shoulders. Miss Fielding quelled a protesting murmur from Miss Burton with one look.
“And I shall not give you a reference.”
“I do not care at all.”
“You will find it hard to obtain another post without one.” (“Oh, Connie——” murmured Miss Burton.)
“Still I do not care, too also.”
“And I shall not give you a month’s salary,” snapped Miss Fielding, still angrier at being unable to awe the culprit.
“Still I do not care, too also! I have some pound. Mr. Fielding the old honoured one give me three of those pound money notes at Christmas and I save five shilling a week and I sell a little hat I make for some shilling to a girl I talk to in a tea place in St. Alberic. So I shall be all-right, Miss Fielding, you wicked woman.”
“I am sure I hope so,” said Miss Fielding, recovering some of her grave reproving dignity. “Now go at once and pack up your things. I do not wish to see you again before you go.”
“I wish not see you, Miss Fielding. At the café at Portsbourne there was a wicked sailor call Mrs. Marshall a bish but I shall not call you a bish because is a bad wicked name, Mrs. Marshall say, and the nuns say I must naver call names. So good-bye, Miss Fielding,” and Vartouhi made an elaborate sarcastic curtsy which Miss Fielding did not see because she was already half-way down the stairs.
Vartouhi gathered up the bedspread once more and turned to Miss Burton, who had seated herself despondently upon the lowest stair.
“Oh Vartouhi, dear,” said Miss Burton sadly, looking up at her.
“I go to pack away my clothe,” announced Vartouhi, ignoring the remark and pushing past her. The bedspread trailed its exotic pattern behind her as she went.
Miss Burton got up, and followed her into the pretty room where she had said a prayer of gratitude to God eight months ago. The rainy light poured in between the dark leaves of the jasmine creeper as it shook in the wind. All Vartouhi’s possessions were already strewn on the bed; her one thin dress, the trousers she had bought secondhand in St. Alberics, her little woollen cap and some exceedingly worn and sketchy undergarments. Kenneth’s bottle of scent was there, and Richard’s bracelet, and one or two other trinkets and pretty things that Miss Burton had not seen before. She now guessed that they were presents from Kenneth. He loved this crazy child. Even if he did not know it, he loved her; and what would he feel, poor Ken, when he came back and found her gone?
“Vartouhi,” Miss Burton said urgently, leaning across the bed, “you will write to us—to me or Mr. Kenneth—the moment you get settled somewhere, won’t you?”
Vartouhi set her lips as she buckled a strap on her rucksack, and shook her head. “Oh no, Miss Burton.”
“But why not? Vartouhi, don’t be so silly! We shall all want to know how you are getting on, and I’m sure Mr. Kenneth will make Miss Fielding have you back again.”
“Is no use, Miss Burton. I hate you all now. I would not come.”
“Oh, Vartouhi! How can you be so silly!”
“Is not silly. You like me, I like you. You hate me, I hate you.”
“I don’t hate you, I’m very fond of you, and so is Mr. Kenneth, I’m sure; very, very fond, Vartouhi.”
“Well, so perhaps I am fond of you and him too also, Miss Burton,” said Vartouhi, buckling another strap. Miss Burton’s anxious eyes could detect no trace of grief on her face. She looked absorbed in her task, determined and even gay. “But is all ended now. Is a pity.”
“Yes, it is a pity, Vartouhi. If only you hadn’t—er——”
“This,” said Vartouhi, and mimicked her spitting with a spiteful smile.
“Yes—that was really dreadful, you know; I don’t wonder Miss Fielding was angry.”
“Is a bad wicked thing, that,” said Vartouhi indifferently, glancing about the room to see if she had overlooked anything. The rucksack was nearly full.
“Vartouhi, do write to us, please.”
“I will see, I will see,” said Vartouhi cheerfully, tying on another of her extraordinary little caps; a mackintosh one this time, that had belonged to Mrs. Archer’s little grandson.
“Is raining now,” she added, looking out of the window as she put on a shabby old trench coat that was too big for her. She had no stockings. She swung the heavy rucksack onto her back and adjusted it.
“Vartouhi, you can’t go like this, my dear—just walking out into the rain. You’ve had no tea——”
“Miss Burton,” said Vartouhi, pausing at the door and looking into the older woman’s eyes with her own long, sparkling, un-Western ones, “I am young, you are old. All the English are old, I think. So manny, manny things in their house, so manny clothe, so much to eat. I come from a place where all is stone or made of wood, and not much clothe. We do not mind to get wet in the rain or not eat much. We do not have manny things; no, not manny things. We have our stone ho
use and our family and we like to dance and sing and grow the fruit. I can be all-right, Miss Burton. I am not a English girl, I am a Bairamian girl. Perhaps I go to New York to see Yania, my sister; yas, perhaps. Good-bye, Miss Burton. Give to Mr. Fielding the pratty thing I made for him and say to him I like him, he is very good and kind, too also. Good-bye!”
And she ran downstairs with the heavy rucksack bumping against her shoulders. Presently Miss Burton heard a distant shout of “Good-bye, you wicked woman!” and then the front door slammed. She had gone.
Miss Burton, bewildered by the suddenness of events, hurried across to the window and, opening it, leant out into the rain. The wet leaves of the jasmine brushed her hair. In a moment she saw Vartouhi come out into the drive and hurry away, with head bent against the driving rain. She went out through the gates and turned into the lane and Miss Burton lost sight of her. She had not once looked back.
CHAPTER 30
“WHATEVER HAS BEEN happening?” asked Betty, hurrying into Miss Burton’s room soon after she got home that evening. “All I can get out of Connie is that Vartouhi did something dreadful and she sacked her. She’s in an awful temper and snapped my head off. Has Vartouhi really gone?”
“Oh yes, unfortunately.” Miss Burton was sitting by her fire and looked depressed. “I’m afraid Constance is very annoyed with me too, but I can’t help that; I really had to say what I thought for once. And getting rid of a splendid little worker like that—however does she think we shall get anyone else? And what Ken will say I really don’t know.”
“Whatever happened? It all seems so sudden; I can’t believe it.” Betty sat down and offered her cigarette case to Miss Burton who accepted with a heavy sigh and proceeded to relate what had occurred, Betty listening with the deepest interest. When the bedspread came into the story, and Miss Burton fetched it from the cupboard where she had hidden it, Betty exclaimed aloud with astonishment and admiration.