The two were apparently taking no notice of the weather, and there was something about the scene—the loneliness, the sweep of rain through the darkening air, the silent ruins still vibrating with memories of terrible violence—that affected Kenneth very unpleasantly. Nobody should have been there at all, in pouring rain with the black-out coming down; it was not natural. If it is Vartouhi, and she comes in wet through, he thought, I shall give her a real talking to.
Suddenly he heard her voice, clear and indignant, coming up through the twilight. He could not help smiling grimly. She was at her old tricks! ticking the fellow off. She wasn’t afraid of anybody or anything. The man stood still, watching her, and she put her hand across her mouth once more as if she were laughing. Then she turned away and ran past him, past the wall surrounding the reservoir, and out of sight. He made no move to follow her. For a little while he stood there looking towards the black cellars; then he turned away and slowly moved off towards the reservoir. Kenneth watched him until he turned the corner that led into the street and disappeared.
It was almost dark. He drew back into the room once more and shut the window and as he did so he heard sudden excited exclamations on the landing below, and recognized Vartouhi’s voice. He drew himself up and stood waiting. He heard someone running up the stairs, and the next minute the door was flung open and she stood there, smiling and exclaiming in a voice that rang with delight:
“Is Mr. Kenneth!” and holding out her hands to him.
He took them both in his. She had no gloves on, and for the moment all he could say rather gruffly was:
“Well, Vartouhi! Good heavens, how cold your hands are!”
“No, no, I am quite warm. Oh, Mr. Kenneth, is a varry good thing to see you! How I am glad!” and she gave his hands a gay little swing.
“I’m glad to see you, too, Vartouhi—only I can’t see you properly,” and he laughed shortly and peered at her through the dimness.
“How are you? Quite well? and—happy, and all that sort of thing, eh?”
“Am varry well, Mr. Kenneth, and I am live in this house with good kind people give me a lot to eat and I have a job, too also,” said Vartouhi promptly, and sat down on the chair with no seat and gazed up at him with a beaming smile. He could see the gleam of her white teeth.
“Look here——” he said, glancing round the room, and speaking fussily to conceal his happiness, “can’t we get a light? Doesn’t this place rise to a black-out?”
“Is a black-out.” She got up and made some adjustments at the window and the room became quite dark. He heard matches rattling and then a light slowly grew, shining on the smiling face she turned on him. She lit a candle and set it down on the chest of drawers. The feeble yet solemn radiance gave the wretched furnishings of the little room a romantic cast, with odd, quaint shadows, and a mild illumination of quilt and curtain that hid their grime.
“Your clothes are wet,” said Kenneth, severely and anxiously. He had not taken his eyes off her. He thought that she was prettier than ever.
“Is my coat, Mr. Kenneth. I am not wet at all. I take him off,” and she did, revealing the familiar costume and white blouse and the red necklace that had been his present. “You sit down, Mr. Kenneth,” she went on. “Is a chair with no seat but is all right. I sit here on the bed.”
When he had sat down, he felt a little embarrassed. He was acutely conscious of Mr. and Mrs. Perzetti eating their kippers downstairs with, so to speak, both eyes on the clock. But he did not expect Vartouhi to feel embarrassed because he did not believe that she was capable of that sensation. That was one of the reasons why he, a reserved and conventional man, found her attractive.
“Is your ancient and honoured father well once more?” inquired Vartouhi politely, holding out to him a paper bag. “Is my sweet ration. Fruit toffee. Is no fruit inside them; is a wicked lie; but you eat them, Mr. Kenneth.”
“No, thank you, you eat them, Vartouhi. Yes; my father has been ill again with a bad cold but he is nearly well again now.”
“And that wicked woman, your sister, Mr. Kenneth? Oh, how I hope she is been ill! Always I am hoping that!”
Kenneth struggled with his duty for an instant, and then gave way to a shout of laughter. Vartouhi continued to smile and eat fruit toffee, watching him sympathetically.
“You think I say a funny joke, Mr. Kenneth, but is true. She send me away because I make you a beautiful prasent. You have seen?”
“Oh, yes—indeed I have, Vartouhi. It’s a wonderful present, and you’re a dear little girl to think of me. Why, it’s—when Miss Burton first showed it to me, I could hardly believe it was real—you must have worked very hard.”
He spoke to her as he always did; as if she were a child. It was only when they laughed together that he felt their ages were more akin, and then his delight was so intense that he simply ignored it; he felt it, but he refused to admit what it must mean.
“Is a pratty thing,” said Vartouhi complacently. “At first I am making it a prasent for Miss Burton because she give me three hat. Then I think I make it a prasent for him, to cheer him up in this house where his sister rules. So I make it for you, Mr. Kenneth.”
“Oh,” said Kenneth, blankly. The pretty picture which he had painted to himself of Vartouhi planning his present and diligently executing it in maiden secrecy was not the true one. He had been the recipient of something originally intended for Miss Burton. He felt acutely disappointed.
“Yas,” went on Vartouhi, in a meditative tone, “Miss Burton tell me about your three medal. Is a very brave thing, Mr. Kenneth,” suddenly lifting her eyes to his. “You are a brave man, as well as good and kind too also. In Bairamia all girls who are not married make bed covers for the brave soldiers. Is a very old thing we do. Is called a djan.”
“I see,” said Kenneth, his disappointment replaced by pleasure. So long as none of his family or acquaintances ever found out that he had been honoured in this antique Bairamian fashion, he could enjoy the sensation to the full.
“I do not tell Miss Fielding that,” said Vartouhi, “because I think she would be angry. But she is angry when I do not tell her. So one day I think perhaps I tell her and make her more angry. Yas, I think so I will.”
“Vartouhi——” he interrupted eagerly, leaning towards her and forcing himself to break a dreamy, unreal sensation that was stealing over him because of the gentle light of the candle and the happiness of being with her again—“that’s what I came here to ask you. Will you come back with me to Sunglades?”
“Oh no, Mr. Kenneth,” answered Vartouhi, cheerfully and without hesitation. “Is a wicked thing your sister did to me and I can not, no, I can not. I am angry at you all.”
“Not angry with me, I hope? I haven’t done anything. When I got back and found you had gone I was very angry, I can tell you. I told my sister so, and I said I was going to do my very best to get you back again.”
Vartouhi considered this, looking at him with her head on one side. It was an odd sensation to be studied by such a volatile creature and he wondered very much what she was thinking. At last she said:
“I am not angry at you, Mr. Kenneth. And am not angry at Miss Burton. Is a kind good woman. But I am angry at Miss Fielding and am angry at the house. Is a grand rich house, Mr. Kenneth, but is old.”
“Old?”
“Yas. Is comfortful but is all old. No funny jokes, no dan-cing, at Sun-glades House. Here in this house is all dirty and not comfortful but is a lot of funny jokes and a manny, manny children in this street making much noise. And I go dan-cing with Raoul.”
(Ah! the fellow’s name at last! Now for it.)
“Raoul? Is that your—friend—your boy friend?”
“Is not my friend. Is a bad wicked man,” said Vartouhi haughtily. “Is always angry at me and does not laugh or say funny jokes.”
“Then why on earth,” said Kenneth emphatically and severely, “do you go about with him?”
“Takes me to dan-cing at the
U-ni-ted Na-tions Dance Club,” said Vartouhi, sliding her eyes round so demurely that he had to smile. “And give me——” She held out her wrist, and jingled a bracelet made of tiny enamelled flags.
“Belonged once to another girl,” explained Vartouhi, “but he does not love her anny more. She is dad, he says.”
Kenneth could only shake his head. But he was convinced that she was not changed; she was exactly the same as she had been at Sunglades. He was deeply thankful; and he then and there made up his mind not to return to Hertfordshire without her, if it took a month to persuade her to go with him.
“Surely you can’t enjoy going about with a fellow who’s always sulking?” he exclaimed.
She shook her head. “Is sad for me at first but when we go dan-cing I am glad because he dance varry nice—so light, so soft. And he likes hold me in his arm, he tells me so.”
Kenneth said nothing. He was bitterly jealous.
“How long have you known him?” he muttered.
“Two week,” she answered. “I see him one day in the milk bar and he comes home after me. All the girl there are afraid of him, but I laugh. Is so funny! Creep, creep along the street!”
Kenneth did not find it funny. The more he heard the more anxious he became. The room was silent except for the sound of her young voice and he hated the black-out pressing silently against the windows. It was a black veil under which dreadful things could happen. A man who would give a girl a dead girl’s bracelet must be an extra ordinary sort of customer, capable of anything.
“This is a beastly neighbourhood for you to be in, Vartouhi,” he said, abruptly. He hesitated, then added, “You’re not going to marry this fellow, are you?”
“Oh no, Mr. Kenneth,” she said cheerfully. “Is a bad wicked man and has no money too also.”
“But you told the newspaper that you were!”
“No, no. I say, ‘Is my boy-friend’ (is what all the girl at the milk bar call their man) but the man from the paper said, ‘No, no, you must say you are going marry him or what will all the reader think?’ So I say, ‘Oh, well, say I am,’ and so he say it.”
“I see.” He believed what she said, and although he became more determined every moment to get her out of all this, his heart was lighter. She did not care a hang for this chap. That was the main thing.
He glanced round the room. The candle had settled into a steady burning, with its blue and yellow flame so still that it looked as if it were painted on the dusk.
“Vartouhi, let’s talk it over—your coming back to Sunglades, I mean. Can you come out to dinner with me?”
“Oh yas, Mr. Kenneth!” She was instantly all delight and smiles, and stood up as if ready to set out that moment.
“Somewhere with lots of lights and a band?” he said, smiling in sympathy.
“Would be so nice, Mr. Kenneth. Lyon Corner House?”
“Oh—well—I think we can find somewhere better than that. And perhaps we’d better go somewhere quiet too, if we want to talk. You—er—change those wet shoes and I’ll go down and see if Mr. Perzetti can do anything about a taxi.”
Mr. Perzetti was most helpful, and expressed regrets that he could not drive them himself. With his assistance and a visit by Kenneth to the telephone box on the corner, a taxi was obtained, and in a short time Kenneth and Vartouhi were on their way to the West End.
CHAPTER 35
HE TOOK HER to a restaurant run by an ex-Paris hotelier, with fresh narcissi on the tables and the soft pink lights that are eternally romantic. There was no band, and the place had added the expense of war-time to its habitual expensiveness, but every table was taken; for men (most of them in uniform) and women wanted a place where they could sit for an hour or so and look into one another’s eyes and talk in murmurs, or be silent and forget.
“Will this do?” he inquired. Their table was in a corner and he had made her sit where she could see the long, softly coloured, subduedly lit room with its quiet guests.
“Is varry pratty,” she said, her voice a little subdued by the general luxury and dimness.
“There’s no band. You don’t mind?” he smiled.
She shook her head. Her long eyes moved with interest from one table to another, then came back and rested on his face, with a smile slowly growing on her own.
“All these people,” she said almost in a whisper, “are lov-ers.”
“Well—yes, I suppose they are, Vartouhi. It’s—it’s a very happy thing to be, you know, even now, when so many of them will have to part later on and won’t see each other again for a long time—perhaps never. But we don’t want to remember sad things this evening, do we? We’re going to enjoy our dinner, and then we’re going to arrange about your coming back with me to-morrow to Sunglades.”
The first course had arrived and she was tasting it with childish interest and pleasure and she only smiled in answer, and began to tell him about her job. She earned twenty-five shillings a week and the milk bar supplied her lunches and teas. The Perzettis were very kind, she said, and let her have supper with them almost every evening, and on Sundays Mrs. Perzetti would cook sausages for her and had more than once let her share their tiny, precious joint. And when Raoul had leave (he was stationed at Mill Hill, less than an hour’s journey from London) he sometimes took her out to supper.
“In places where bad girl are,” confided Vartouhi. “Manny soldiers too. These girls are varry nicely painted on their face but in the ladyroom I am hearing them,” she leant across the table and lowered her voice, “say bish.”
Kenneth did not know whether to laugh or swear himself. With every moment she was growing dearer to him, and with every moment he realized that she was not unhappy in her new life and that if he tried to persuade her to go back, it would be because he so badly wanted her to.
Yet she was helpless, too; like a child who did not know its own danger. Taking the long view, thought Kenneth, I ought to get her back for her own good. What’s to happen to her if she gets ill or loses her job?
“Vartouhi,” he said suddenly, as they were drinking their coffee and she brought out her battered turquoise and silver cigarette case, “have you thought about the future at all? What’s to happen to you, I mean?”
“Oh yas, Mr. Fielding,” she answered. Smoke was wreathing faintly all about her face. “I shall go to my sister Yania in America when this war is end.”
“That will cost money. Where will you get it from?” he asked, hating himself for what seemed to him his brutality.
“My sister Yania will send me some, Mr. Kenneth. Is going to marry a rich American man.”
“Oh,” he said, and was silent. The news was disagreeable to him and he had to compel himself to add conventionally, “I’m glad. Er—when is she getting married?”
“When summer begin in May she is getting married. Is a varry good thing.”
Both were silent for a little while. Vartouhi smoked with a dreamy look and he gazed frowningly at the table while his cigar smouldered away. In addition to the news about her sister he remembered that her father was a comparatively wealthy man. If ever she became desperate for money that fact might be of great help to her. It certainly made her less finally dependent upon his, or anyone else’s, charity, although for the time being she might not be able to get at her sources of supply. He glanced up at her under his eyebrows. How dear and familiar her face was! and yet he knew next to nothing about the circumstances in which her first twenty years had been spent.
“Why did you come to England?” he asked suddenly.
“My father is hearing the Italians are coming, and I am his favourite one. So he is sending me away to England to live with a English family and learn to speak English varry well and be safe. The Mother at the Convent arrange it all. But when I get to England the father of the family is died and they are all upset and do not want me and then I hear that the Italians have come, so I cannot go back. Is a varry sad thing. So I go and work in a café. Always I am working in cafés. Then I stic
k the knife in that sailor’s lag, like I am telling you, and so I am sent away. And then I come to you at Sunglades, Mr. Kenneth,” and she ended the story with a smile that was full of affection.
“So you were only sixteen when you first came to England?”
She nodded.
“Poor little girl,” he said. “You’ve had a rough time, haven’t you?”
“Oh no—no,” said Vartouhi eagerly. “Was all varry nice. Is so manny house and people here, is all so new. I like it. Only I do not like to sleep in a bed with English girl and I do not like men to touch me and prasently I begin to want my father and mother and sisters and my nice Medora. But is all varry nice, really, Mr. Kenneth. I enjoy.”
Insecurity, loneliness, poverty, hard work, exile—she did not notice them. It was of no use offering her safety and comfort; she did not want them. What her youth delighted in were struggle and change; the rough brilliance of life itself. She enjoyed. The two words struck him as if she had dashed a rose across his eyes, all sweetness and sting. I must seem a damned dull fellow to her, he thought; and there began to creep over him a profound loneliness.
It was half-past nine. He glanced at his watch, comparing it with the clock on the wall, and adjusted it a little. Then he said heavily:
“Well, we haven’t decided what you’re going to do yet, have we? How about it, Vartouhi? You will come home with me to-morrow, won’t you?”
She shook her head.
“No, Mr. Kenneth. I am too angry still.”
“But my sister’s very sorry. I’m sure she is. She’ll tell you so. You know she’s got a quick temper and says things she doesn’t mean.”