“I am varry strong!” she answered proudly, and indeed he could feel, in the easy way she had lifted his relaxed arm, that she was. The unexpectedness of this added to her charm, and he was not grateful to Miss Fielding when she bore down upon them and upon Kenneth, who was waiting to see what they were going to do, exclaiming authoritatively:
“No, no, Vartouhi, you will strain yourself. See, I will help Mr. Marten” (in the voice of one about to demonstrate their watch-spring to a three-year-old), and she grabbed Richard’s arm and festooned it about her neck. “There! That is right. Now—up we go!”
Bother, thought Richard, who conserved much energy by never swearing even in thought, but she’s right, the little love with the plaits would only have strained herself. And he made a moderately comfortable journey up the stairs with an arm about each of the broad Fieldings.
Betty followed them, and Alicia went into the drawing-room after Miss Burton, whom of course she knew slightly. It was by now nearly six o’clock, and she hoped that there might be a drink, which she felt she deserved.
The drawing-room was one of those long, dark rooms with a low ceiling and diamond window panes and much sombre wood panelling which are found in houses of the pseudo-Tudor type, such as Sunglades was. Miss Fielding had not been able to indulge her belief in light walls here, and she had refrained from having the panels painted over because it had been Our Mother’s favourite room, but she had done her best with curtains of yellow glazed chintz patterned with large birds in claret and turquoise, and the latter colour was repeated in the beautiful Chinese carpet on a rust ground. There were some flower paintings and one or two portraits, including one of Our Mother in grey chiffon and pearls above the mantelpiece, and many Chinese bowls and vases which were always kept filled, even in January and February, with large handsome flowers. The windows overlooked the terrace where Miss Fielding and Miss Burton liked to drink their tea in fine weather, and immediately beyond it was the bed of amber and red chrysanthemums now glowing in the light of a stormy sunset. It was remarkable, considering how many beautiful objects were assembled in the drawing-room and that a pleasing outlook from its windows was included, that the complete picture made by room and garden was not beautiful, but Richard supposed he was the only person who had ever noticed the fact and he explained it to himself, when musing upon his dislike of the room, by the one word Proportions; and recalled a room in a house of 1780 at Regent’s Park which was furnished with undistinguished objects, and yet was beautiful.
“I think there is some sherry!” said Miss Burton brightly to Alicia. “Do sit down. You must be quite worn out; such a horrid experience for you.”
“Oh, no, I’m not, thanks,” said Alicia, sitting down before the fire and taking out her case and lighting up. “I’m all right.” What a lot of old things there were about, she reflected. Almost everywhere you went that wasn’t a bar or a factory absolutely crept with them, and they would talk.
“Kenneth will be down in a minute and then we can have our sherry,” pursued Miss Burton, from whom The Usurper was absent this evening, and who therefore could not convey to Alicia her interest in her as the heroine of a scandal; even such a heroine as Miss Burton had been in 1908, but of course a less innocent one. Alicia wondered why they had to sit with their tongues hanging out waiting for Kenneth to descend and dispense the sherry; and at that moment Betty came in, followed by Miss Fielding.
“We all want some sherry,” announced Miss Fielding, sitting down all over a large chair, “but we will wait until Kenneth comes down; he won’t be long. He is getting Richard into bed.”
Why will we wait? thought Alicia. Hell, why should we wait? And she thought with some envy of Kenneth’s task; she was susceptible to masculine attractions, as men were to her own, and Richard, despite his shabbiness, had for some reason passed her rather exacting standards. The trouble is, she thought, there are too many old things about; talking, and waiting for their sherry.
“I feel quite limp,” went on Miss Fielding. “It is strange how exhausting the spectacle of another’s suffering is to some natures.”
“Vartouhi’s getting Richard some tea,” said Betty, resting her dark head with its one lock of silver hair against the brilliant birds and flowers of a cushion.
“There will be some sherry in a minute,” murmured Miss Burton.
I don’t believe it, you’re having me on, thought Alicia.
“We must hear all about it presently, Betty,” said Miss Fielding. “I took in nothing on the telephone, but nothing. I never do on these occasions; nothing except the bare Fact.”
While Betty and Alicia were taking this hint and putting their separate versions together to make a story out of the afternoon’s events, Kenneth came in. Something appeared to have irritated him and he splashed out sherry and busied himself with filling glasses and handing cigarettes in silence.
“—So as Miss Arkwright happened to be going in to St. Alberics she very kindly offered to give me a lift and meet Richard and drive us both back,” explained Betty. “I was sure he would have lost your instructions, anyway, Connie.”
Miss Fielding, drinking her sherry in a manner not conveyable in words, which seemed to make it sort of solid like soup, shook her head indulgently as if to say, “Youth will be served,” and Betty went on with her story, appealing every now and then to Alicia for confirmation.
She’s pretty, but they aren’t in the least alike to look at, thought Alicia, staring at her. The sherry was soothing, and she suddenly remembered a rather pleasant afternoon, on another Sunday, that she had passed in this room seven years or so ago: some young foreigners had been staying with Miss Fielding and she had invited the young English people of the neighbourhood to meet them and play tennis. There had been no unusual attractions or events during that afternoon of broken English and laughter and polite conversation, but there had been a young Norwegian who had obviously liked Alicia and whom she had liked in return, and her dress had been unusually becoming, and at the end of the afternoon the long summer months, and her whole future life, had seemed to stretch before her, full of gaiety and promise. She had been twenty years old. On this autumn evening seven years later she was again sitting in the Fieldings’ drawing-room, and thinking about a young man who mildly attracted her: and the contrast between her mood now and the mood of her twenty-year-old self was painful.
I’m getting into a sourpuss, she thought. I wasn’t a bad kid, seven years ago. If Mother hadn’t gone off; and then H.—oh, well. By the time I’m forty (she was still watching Betty), if I go on as I am now, I shan’t be like that.
Upstairs, Richard was lying on his side and watching the sunset reflected on the windows, while muttering over to himself a poem of Dylan Thomas’s in the hope that it might act as counter-irritant to the agony in his ankle. At the same time his mind was busy in an idle feverish way with how he should approach Vartouhi, whose exotic name, even as spoken by Miss Fielding’s unlovely voice, had added another strand to the net of charm in which he was caught. When he recalled the frankness of the smile she had given him downstairs he was inclined to think that a completely straightforward “You are very lovely and I want to kiss you” would be the best method.
The room was already beginning to settle into the dusk of evening and was illuminated only by the glow from the stove, and the house, the large gardens surrounding it and the autumnal countryside spreading away to the low hills were all silent. Richard could just hear the faint sound of voices downstairs, and by a certain sustained impersonal note which shortly intruded itself he thought that the six o’clock news was being listened to. He was nearly asleep, in spite of the pain, when there was a slight sound at the door, and he opened his eyes languidly and saw Vartouhi coming in, with the last light of the fading sunset illuminating her face and hair.
“I bring you tea,” she announced, smiling and setting down a tray on the bedside table, “with toast, too also.”
“Thank you,” he answered quietly.
I could
never get tired of looking at her, he thought, watching as she poured out the tea. How strange it is (he moved restlessly, for he felt very hot and the pain was increasing), one’s read about this sort of thing so often in Proust and other people’s novels; Albertine asleep, and Maurice Guest watching Louise at the piano, and it’s never happened to me before, and now it has. I suppose one just happens to be allergic to certain concatenations of colour and shape and the proportions between bone and bone, and when one finds them all in one face——
“Is it bad, dear?” asked his mother, standing beside his bed and remembering as she looked down at him how she had had to suffer the anxiety of his baby illnesses alone, because his father had been killed in France.
“It is rather but I’m divinely comfortable here,” he answered, thinking, she’s gone out of the room.
She had, shutting the door after her with another polite curtsy that he had not seen because he was taking care to keep his eyes on his mother’s face. He suddenly felt very ill and wretched.
“I’ll feed you,” said his mother, taking up the cup and a piece of toast.
Absurd, a little thing like that trying to help a man upstairs, thought Kenneth irritably, leaning against the mantelpiece and silently listening to the talk of the women as he drank his sherry. Might have injured herself for life. Good thing Connie stepped in when she did.
CHAPTER 10
MOST OF RICHARD Marten’s friends had that dislike of their fellow creatures which accompanies the reformer’s temperament, but he himself had inherited his mother’s pleasure in company and talk; even ordinary company and commonplace talk was to him better than isolation (unless he was thinking out some problem to a conclusion) for both fed his appetite for the social history always unfolding beneath his eyes: he was a natural, as well as a trained Mass Observer. On the fifth day after his accident, therefore, he suggested that he should come downstairs and lie on a couch “somewhere.” It would save stairwork (and Vartouhi would pop in and out oftener).
Miss Fielding agreed without argument. He must be her guest until Christmas at least, the surgeon said, and letters had been exchanged which severed his connection with the Dove Players, and the arrangement would certainly mean less work. So one morning before breakfast Kenneth helped him down to a couch in a small room opening off the hall which had been Mrs. Fielding’s work room, and he lay there reading the newspaper and thinking how deplorable it was, and how necessary a free press was, and eating his breakfast and half-listening to the talk going on in the dining-room across the hall, whose door was ajar.
He heard Miss Fielding give a pleased exclamation.
“How delightful! Dr. Stocke has sent me a copy of Little Frimdl and the Peace Reindeer from New York!” followed by much rustling of wrappings.
“Is it a fairy story?” inquired Miss Burton languidly.
“Not a story; a fairy play with a message of international peace.”
I obscenity in the milk of Little Frimdl and in the milk of the Peace Reindeer too also, thought Richard, putting down his paper and looking across at the drawing-room door. He could just see Kenneth eating bacon; Vartouhi was out of sight.
“How nice of him. How is he?” asked Betty.
“He is fairly well, but his digestion is troubling him; American food is too rich for him,” answered Miss Fielding, evidently reading a letter, “but he says his work is so singularly worth-while that he does not allow himself to become discouraged by trifles.”
“With real cream, ha! ha! May I have some more tea, Connie, when you’re ready?” from Kenneth.
“—And he hopes I may see my way to having some readings from Little Frimdl and the Peace Reindeer here, and asking anyone who might be interested. But what a splendid idea! And why only readings? Why not the play itself?” Miss Fielding rustled the letter with excitement and Richard guessed that she was looking round the table at the faces of her household, and could imagine the expression on every face but Vartouhi’s, who would not realize all the implications of what had just been said.
“Splendid idea,” said Kenneth loyally at last, “but isn’t it going to be a bit difficult, in the circumstances?”
“Difficulties are only Put Here for us to deal with them! We won’t admit there are difficulties! We will brush them away!” cried Miss Fielding, gaily making brushing movements. “Betty, don’t you think it’s a splendid idea? You can bring some young people from the office to be Spirits of Mutual Mistrust, can’t you?”
“Well, Constance, I’d love to, only it’s the black-out. Their mothers do hate them being out in it in the winter. And there would have to be rehearsals——”
“We will wait till there is a moooon!” promised Miss Fielding in a luring tone. “There are the Spirits of Mutual Co-operation too, and a Very Old Man who afterwards turns out to be History.”
Richard, listening with his mouth full of toast, shook his head. He was more of a realist than the other Dove Players, and had a truer sense of the theatre, and although he continued to believe that the ordinary public ought to like plays of the Little Frimdl type, experience had taught him that what they did like, especially in the middle of a war, was jokes, religion, sentiment, beauty and legs. He doubted if Little Frimdl, with a text well decontaminated of all these ingredients, would have much box office appeal. No doubt the Spirits will chant, too, he thought; and sure enough in a moment Miss Fielding, who had apparently been studying the play, exclaimed again:
“Oh yes! we must do it. It’s such fun—it ends with the Spirits of Mutual Co-operation and the Spirits of Mutual Mistrust grouped together at the back of the stage, chanting a Hymn to Peace while History (the Very Old Man, you know, he turns out to be History; Dr. Stocke’s plays always have a sly little joke in them, he has a great sense of fun), the Very Old Man writes down their names and records in a Big Book. Oh, yes, we must do it!”
“I do really think it’s rather an ambitious scheme, in the circumstances, Connie, as Kenneth says,” said Betty, gathering her strength to crush the infant idea at once. “Everybody’s so appallingly busy just now, it’s almost impossible to get hold of people to do anything. And with the winter coming on and everything——”
“It will mean so much extra work for Vartouhi, too,” put in Miss Burton, smiling kindly towards Vartouhi, who was placidly eating porridge with her eyes fixed on the bowl and taking no part or interest in the discussion.
“Nonsense, we can get Mrs. Archer in to help, she will love it,” said Miss Fielding optimistically. “And she has a small grandson, too; he could do Little Frimdl. Now who else is there? Frimdl’s Father—you could do that, Kenneth, unless you’d rather do the Very Old Man; Frimdl’s Mother, that will do for you, Betty, and then there’s the Spirit of Peace, she only has a very small part, I could fit that in. With all the producing as well, I’d better not undertake too much——”
“We’re going to be very busy round about Christmas in the Home Guard, Connie,” said Kenneth, desperately but without conviction. “I really don’t see how I can fit it in, honestly. And I don’t think people will want to see a play about peace, either. It isn’t quite the moment, if you see what I mean.”
“I think no, too also!” suddenly said Vartouhi, looking up from her porridge, and causing Richard to start. “I think no one will come.”
“How can you possibly know anything about it, Vartouhi?” Miss Fielding’s tone was impatient rather than cross. “There is a deep-seated longing for peace in every heart and this play will call to that hidden longing.”
“If it doesn’t call to good old 18B,” muttered Kenneth. “No, really, Constance, if you insist on doing it, I do think you’d be wiser to just call it ‘Little So-and-so and the Reindeer,’ and then everybody’ll think it’s a play for children. Don’t want to get up people’s noses, you know.”
Miss Fielding shut her eyes for a moment.
“Very well, Kenneth, if you make such a point of it,” she said at last, opening them again, “we will have
the posters printed——”
“Goodness, are we going to have posters?” said Betty faintly.
“Oh yes, Constance always does these things in style,” said Miss Burton, who was offended at being left out of the casting. “And what am I to be, Connie? The reindeer?”
Everyone laughed, which restored her good humour.
“Oh, we will hire a reindeer-mask from Clarkson’s——”
“I thought Clarkson’s was blitzed?” put in Betty.
“Well, from Hamley’s, then—there are lots of places,” said Miss Fielding impatiently. “No, Frankie, you can be one of the Spirits, if you like. I propose to make each Spirit represent a Nation—perhaps you would like to be Greece?”
“Yes, indeed I would,” answered Miss Burton heartily; her cheque book and her thoughts were very often at the disposal of that country.
“And I shall ask Alicia Arkwright to be in it,” pursued Miss Fielding, “and of course Richard! Richard with his stage experience will be a great help to us!”
“Excuse if I go to see if Mr. Marten wants more to eat,” said Vartouhi at this point, and a minute later she came into the room where Richard lay.
“What are they all talking about?” he asked her, smiling.
“A plaaay,” she said, smiling teasingly back at him. “Someone send a plaaay to Miss Fielding from America and she is going to plaaay it, with them all.”
“Are you going to be in it?”
She moved her shoulders. “If I am ask. You want more toas, Mr. Marten?”
“No, thank you. Do you want to be in it?”
She made the same movement of her shoulders.
“If I am ask, I shall.” A change of expression came over her face but he could not tell of what she was thinking, as he watched her. Her fingers moved absently towards her throat, and then she frowned.
“No, you haven’t got your little badge on this morning. What is it? The League of Free Bairamians in England?”
She nodded. “I forget it when I dress in a hurry.”