“I am afraid the damage is serious.”
“Oh dear.”
“It’s too bad,” burst out Mr. Waite, wiping his face. “I use the car every day and all day—I don’t know what I shall do—it may take weeks to mend. And how am I to get you home?”
“She didn’t mean—at least—she wasn’t——” said Jean awkwardly. But she knew that Nancy had run into his car on purpose. She liked smashing things.
“All the worse,” he retorted, slamming the door and peering closely in order to insert the key. “I could see that you didn’t like being with your friend in that state, and I was glad of it.”
“She isn’t really a friend, she’s only an acquaintance. She was at school with Alda—Mrs. Lucie-Browne—and me.”
“It’s a dreadful sight, a lady in that state,” he said, sighing and dusting his hands. “I can never get used to it, never.”
“She’s had an awful life,” said Jean, standing upright and taking her hands out of her pockets. She shivered slightly; she felt a little chilled but her headache had vanished.
“That’s no excuse,” said Mr. Waite severely. “A great many people have had hard lives; I have myself, but I haven’t taken to drink. It’s a good thing she didn’t drive you home, there might have been a dreadful accident.”
“When she was sixteen she was simply lovely,” said Jean absently. “Poor Nancy.”
Mr. Waite ignored this, for sounds from the passage leading to the yard now indicated that some patrons were coming out. He said quickly: “I am sorry, but we shall have to walk home. Do you feel equal to it?” She nodded, and he went on quietly:
“Please take my arm,” and she was so surprised that she did so without comment.
She was afraid of seeing the white face, the huge eyes, looking out at her from the door of the saloon bar; she only wanted to get home as quickly as possible, and he also seemed to fear an encounter. They walked quickly out of the yard and across the road.
She found that her step fell in comfortably with his and that his height matched well with her own; there was no bobbing or bumping or apologising; they walked on easily together through the spring dusk, along the dim road bordered by shadowy trees in bud. Unnoticed, the moon in its second quarter had risen over the dark fields and was now shining behind the elms and casting their shadows upon the road. The mildness, the gentleness and freshness of the air and scene soothed Jean’s senses, and she was trusting that they had done the same for him when he said, so explosively that he made her start:
“Yes! That’s what I must do. Telephone Fred Lowe (he keeps the garage on the London road and does my repairs) to pick up the car to-night. I can do that from the farm, they won’t mind, it isn’t late.”
“I’m giving you a lot of trouble, I’m afraid, Mr. Waite. I’m so sorry. I could have gone home by myself——”
“That would have been quite impossible,” he answered firmly. “You have had an unpleasant experience and I am happy to have been of any help.”
He suppressed a sigh: he was still very angry, and he wanted to be quiet to think about the car: the probable amount of damage, what the repairs would cost, whether he should send the bill to this Mrs. Peers, and so on. But to walk with Miss Hardcastle arm-in-arm in silence would be embarrassing to them both; besides, he wished to distract her attention from the evening’s disagreeable events, and he began determinedly:
“Do you drive, Miss Hardcastle?”
“I used to, but I never was much good. I——”
She suppressed the confession that she had several times run into things (not people), and concluded not quite truthfully:
“I never could get the knack, somehow.”
“Ladies seldom can,” replied Mr. Waite, feeling better disposed towards her and glancing down at the gilt, turbaned head level with his shoulder, “and yet it is perfectly simple. I don’t suppose you fully understand the principle upon which the combustion engine is constructed, do you?”
“Not quite, I’m afraid. I’m not bright about that sort of thing.”
Mr. Waite was now at ease (or nearly so; he completely relaxed only in company with Mother and the Girls) and he at once began.
On they walked, at a pace neither irritatingly slow nor tiringly fast, and myriads of clouds, in hue a bright, tender grey and in shape curved like shells, gradually covered the sky and veiled the moon, and the only sound was the pacing of their feet upon the road and Mr. Waite’s slightly harsh but not unpleasing voice explaining the combustion engine. His earnest wish to make all perfectly clear to her added a gentler note to its usual dictatorial or disapproving tones, and Jean, glancing from time to time at his regular profile, wondered why she was not thrilled about him, for he was better-looking than Captain Ottley and far, far kinder than Mr. Potter. Still, it was pleasant to walk peacefully thus, enjoying the night, and comprehending not one word of what he was saying.
She glanced again at Mr. Waite. He was without charm, he was narrow-minded and not always polite; he fussed; he was always taking thought for the morrow and he never even glanced at the lilies of the field, but no one could deny that he had been exceedingly kind. He had shown no especial desire for her company, no personal concern for her (and that was not flattering) but he had rendered, through her, homage to that remote, gracious Goddess of Womanhood enthroned in his mind. Jean wondered whence he got his ideals about Ladies. Not from his mothers and sisters, she felt sure, for he had dropped remarks which indicated that they were bustling, practical, active women, making Christmas presents in July with one hand and nursing sick cousins with the other. Perhaps some Sunday School teacher or elegant young stranger seen at a party had set the standard years ago when he was a boy. Women were no longer like Mr. Waite’s Ideal Lady; perhaps they never had been; but there was a lingering irritating fascination about her charms and her code.
They had now passed the camp and in a little while they would be home. Mr. Waite broke a silence by hoping that she was not tired.
“Oh no, not a bit, thanks. But I am wondering if I’ve had it so far as Nancy is concerned. She’s very touchy.”
“Alcohol has that effect upon people, in time,” said Mr. Waite in his stiffest voice. “Your friend has no right to be annoyed with you; you only did what was right. I hope it will make her ashamed of herself.”
Jean gave a tiny shake of her head, unseen in the dim moonlight. Mr. Waite did indeed live in a world of his own.
“Where is her husband? Not demobilised yet?” he went on. “I heard from the milkman that she is not a widow.”
“Er—he doesn’t—they aren’t together any more. He is her third husband, as a matter of fact.”
Mr. Waite gave a movement of the head, a compression of the lips, that Alda would have called pussyish.
“Married for her money, I suppose. She seems to have plenty.”
Jean gently withdrew her arm from his in order to make an unnecessary adjustment to her turban.
“I don’t know about that. She’s always been very attractive to men.”
“But the money helped them to make up their minds,” with a little laugh.
“I expect so,” answered Jean, and then she was silent. She was remembering that the solicitors had assured her of an income of three thousand pounds a year clear, after death duties had been paid and annual income tax met, from her father’s business. Mr. Waite’s little laugh, combined with the knowledge of her own wealth, had started an unpleasing train of thought and one which was unfamiliar to her, for she had always been so blinded by her romantic longing for marriage that it had actually never occurred to her that it might be possible to buy it.
Unfortunately Mr. Waite seemed in a moralising mood, and went on to deplore Mrs. Peers’s frequent marriages, pointing out that the more often you were married the more were the opportunities for failure. Some people, of course, were sensible enough to avoid marriage completely.
“Like me,” concluded Mr. Waite, with another laugh. “No, Miss Hardc
astle, I’ve seen too much of married life to want to tie myself down; I’ve had married friends; I’ve seen them worried almost into their graves over school bills and rent and doctors’ bills and holidays, no peace, no opportunity to put a little bit by for that rainy day we’re always hearing about (it’s been raining for the last thirty years, it seems to me) no time to realise the Highest in your Self; no thank you, I’m not having any.”
This was not pleasant hearing; it never is, even if you are not in love with the man who says it, but Jean’s spirits did not sink as they would have if Mr. Potter or the Blakewell boy had uttered such words. She only thought Poor Mr. Waite, and answered cheerfully:
“Oh, I think you’re so right. I shan’t marry, either.”
Indeed, the only thought in her head at the moment was Thank goodness I haven’t got to marry, what with poor Nancy’s example and Mr. Waite being so depressing.
But Mr. Waite at once became grave; he shook his head, he turned to look down at the face smiling up into his own, and he said:
“I don’t like to hear a lady say that, Miss Hardcastle. You’re doing some poor chap out of a happy home.”
She laughed, but the laugh covered some exasperation. She was tempted to exclaim, “And they call women illogical!” but refrained. His speech was illogical, but it was also pretty, and she believed that he meant it. I like him, she decided.
A light shone in the window of Pine Cottage and it was only nine o’clock, but Mr. Waite, halting at a distance of some two hundred yards from the gate, declined Jean’s invitation to come in and have a cup of tea. She said she was sorry that it would only be tea, and he replied austerely that surely they had seen enough that evening of what alcohol could do? standing, as he said it, with his hat in his hand and his eyes carefully not wandering towards the light in the window. He then explained that he had a letter to write to the Egg Board, cut short her thanks, said good night and walked quickly away.
Alda was listening to a snarling voice telling her how awful everything was in America. She switched it off when Jean entered, and sat upright, eager for all the news, and listened with great interest to her account of the evening’s events. When at last she heard of the moonlit walk home, her face sparkled with approval; she cast an anxious eye over her friend to see how she must have appeared to Mr. Waite by that transforming light, then nodded approvingly, and was not at all dismayed when Jean repeated his views on marriage, assuring her that men always talked like this when they were attracted by that particular subject, and adding firmly, “It’s like moths.”
She told Jean that everything between herself and Mr. Waite was going well: he had rescued her, he had taken her arm, and he had begun to fulminate against marriage. She ended by reminding her again that down here there was no competition for his interest, but Jean, who had emptied her handbag on to the table and was tearing up bills and bus tickets and rearranging her purse, a cigarette case, a lipstick, and a tiny New Testament, thought to herself that there was Competition, only it did not know that it was competing.
The personal excitement, the sensation of herself as heroine, which had always accompanied these discussions with Alda like a chorus of violins, had ceased: the violins were silent and she felt only weariness and some distaste, but Alda seemed to enjoy her own part as much as ever.
The next morning Nancy’s car drew up at the crossroads as usual to take up Jenny and Louise, but the driver was a pale girl in bright clothes, with that oversweet manner which, as Miss Berta Ruck has wisely observed, invariably conceals bad temper. She informed Alda that Mrs. Peers had suddenly got sick of the country and gone to a hotel in town, leaving herself in charge of the place and darling Egg. Alda received this information with relief, and when at the end of two days Jenny and Louise announced their intention of walking to and from school “because it’s fine weather now and Magda is so beastly to us,” she gladly agreed.
In what precise way Magda was beastly, she never found out; questions only drew forth the answer “Oh—I don’t know—she’s so unkind,” and she was content to leave it at that, knowing that while a child is still a child, kindness is the only quality which it finds irresistible: wit, authority, imagination, personal beauty, even a real love of children, are nowhere beside a simple, even a stupid, person who is unfailingly kind. In a week the convent heard that Eglantine had been whisked away to join her mother; the unkind Magda vanished too; and the Peers incident was over.
But it had served the purpose of making Mr. Waite feel that Alda and Jean were ladies permanently in distress and in need of his protection, and he made this clear to them, in a reserved manner, whenever the two households met, which was more frequently now that full spring, with bluebells and may, had arrived. Once or twice they even found five eggs sitting upon the cottage doorstep; large, unallocated, unstamped eggs whose smooth brown countenances were so different from the pallid visages (blurred with purple letters and smeared, like hopeless tears, with heaven-knew-what) of the allocated eggs that they seemed to belong to another egg-world: eggs of a primal vigour and bloom; eggs before the Fall.
This gesture impressed Alda and Jean with a sense of his growing goodwill towards them the more strongly because, ever since their first days at the cottage, the Hoadleys had indicated that it was no use hoping for presents of stray eggs from Mr. Waite; what the Egg Board did not demand as a natural right, he himself needed for his private customers, among whom the family at Pine Cottage was not included. After these warnings of course, they would all have bitten their tongues out before hinting about the eggs, admiring the eggs, or even mentioning the eggs (though Meg had sometimes turned large-eyed looks upon her mother when they met Mr. Waite crossing the meadow carrying two baskets filled to the brim with them). In these circumstances, they felt that the eggs upon the doorstep were profoundly significant.
21
JUST AS ALDA had promised the children in December, life at the cottage now became pleasant, for it was possible to spend hours in the open air. Two or three times a week she and Jean met Jenny and Louise at the convent gates with Meg in her pram and high tea packed in a basket, and off they would go to the nearest wood and settle themselves under the rosy foliage of young oaks, exclaiming at the profusion of primroses (now beginning to retire, rather than fade, so gentle was their decline down into their leafy cradles before the advance of the bluebells) and the occasional drifts of dying violets and the bluebells themselves; gentle, limp and cool, with their heavenly odour wherein water and wine seem blended and their dim, thick purple-blue petals.
Long after tea was over, and the children were beginning to ask what there was for supper, they would linger on, while day radiantly declined behind trees not yet fully leafed enough to break the light into rays but revealing it as one glory, and Jenny perhaps told some story of a little boy stricken with leprosy and declining intercession for his recovery on the part of his confessor because he longed to go to Heaven, which had that day been related to the children at the convent. Louise listened in silence, and if she joined in the laughter which followed, it was constrainedly and with a troubled look. Alda noticed this, though she made no comment. Ronald would be home on leave again in a week or so and she was determined to have a long talk with him about Louise and the Roman Catholic Church.
On one of her free afternoons Sylvia accompanied them on a picnic and at first added to everybody’s pleasure by her own pleasure in the sights and sounds and scents of the woods; she loudly declared, more than once, that she must come here again, she must bring Mum, and so forth; and she helped Jenny and Louise to light a fire to boil water for tea (for it transpired that she had once been a Brownie).
But when she wanted to turn the fire into a bonfire, casting excited and covetous glances at the young branches hanging low enough to tear down and burn, and imploring Alda to go home with Meg and let the kiddies stay on with her until the moon came up and have a real gipsy-fire and a sing-song, Alda firmly said no, and then Sylvia turned sulky. The afterno
on was not spoiled, for she soon became good-tempered again, but the kiddies themselves were disappointed because they had been excited by her suggestion, and the next time there was a picnic they seemed to find the woods, lacking Sylvia’s shrieks and her thirsty quest for thrills and her stories about murders and vampires and zombies, rather dull.
Jean and Alda agreed with some amusement that she would have felt herself deeply insulted if they had compared her with the “ignorant nursegirl,” the “skivvy,” of papers and magazines published fifty years ago, for she was a Communist, an ex-dramatic student, and heir to the Humanism of four hundred years. Yet here she was, coming from the same class as the skivvy of the ’90’s and over-exciting and frightening the gentry’s children exactly as the skivvy used to do whenever she got the chance, and lacking the skivvy’s unanswerable excuse of ignorance.
Alda was not one of those people who excuse every human fault, from rudeness to murder, by saying that the offender has been badly brought up, and she told the children that Sylvia was stupid and vulgar and had not made the most of her advantages. But as Jenny, Louise and Meg now had a passion for Sylvia as a source of excitement and fun, these remarks made no effect.
Alda herself could not refrain from asking her a teasing question or so about Fabrio, to which Sylvia replied that he had gone all haughty again and was always coming the old acid over her, and that she was getting browned off with him. She added that she supposed he had just made a convenience of her to learn English off of, and now he could speak and read it a bit he thought he could drop her. “And that suits me, so we’re both happy,” she ended, with her ploughboy grin.
Indeed, she drew a gleeful, malicious pleasure from his imploring looks, instantly withdrawn when she glanced towards him, his miserable silences, his sullenness under the jokes of Emilio; all this amused and delighted her and fed her vanity. It made a good story to tell the girls down at the Linga-Longa, where she had quickly found company greatly to her taste: three or four girls who had managed to evade the Services and the factories on pleas of old mothers or delicate health, who now earned a scanty but more or less cheerful living as waitresses.