“Of course not, idiot. It’s just something I’ve got to collect.”
“At the station? I’ll come too.”
“No, Alda. I’d rather you didn’t. You’ll see what it is—them, I mean—all in good time,” and she began to laugh, “only I don’t know how on earth I’m going to bring them home!” and still laughing she hurried down the stairs and out into the sunny morning.
“Meg will go for a walk,” observed a determined voice. Alda glanced down and saw that Meg had crept up unobserved and was now standing just below her in the steep shadowy well of the stairs, bending forward with plump hands supporting her weight upon the tread, her plain, cheerful little face lifted to her mother’s.
“All right, Megsie, we’ll go down and meet Jean. She’s gone to fetch a surprise.”
There was nothing to do in the cottage, so they went.
When we say “there was nothing to do,” of course we know that there is always some necessary and pithering work to do in a house, but Alda bothered herself little with such details in Pine Cottage, because it was such a dark, cross, dusty cottage, always managing to look, even in the midst of a Sussex meadow, as though it lived in Pimlico. We must confess that neither she nor Jean did much; but there was always the mending, and it is a fact that days in the country do glide past with a mysterious ease and calm; there always seems plenty of work to be done yet there is never a feeling of haste; something of the endlessness of childhood’s days returns to the grown woman and she can delight in it without a sensation of guilt. And as every woman in England nowadays is overworked, we thought it would do no harm to present a picture of two who were not.
When Alda and Meg had strolled perhaps half-way to the station, they heard voices and laughter approaching and then, round a curve in the road came—first, Jean, wheeling a new bicycle that spun and glittered in the sunlight; next, Mr. Waite, also wheeling a new bicycle that flashed in silver and scarlet; after him, Emilio and Fabrio in that order, each guiding a smaller bicycle of the same shiny newness and, last of all, came one-of-the-little-Dodders, belonging to an enormous family, reputed to be half-witted, which lived in extreme poverty, dirt and smiliness in a capacious cottage at the lonelier end of the Froggatt road.
The sex of this particular little Dodder was at first not clear, as it was very pretty but wore tattered knickerbockers, and it was wheeling a charming little tricycle.
Upon seeing Alda, everybody except Mr. Waite broke into exclamations and laughter, and they all stopped short and waited for her to come up. She herself had coloured deeply; with excitement and pleasure and resentment. What a present! They must have cost a small fortune! No one but Jean would have done such a thing; so lavish, so kind, so certain to be welcomed, such a store of pleasure for months—years—ahead! Nevertheless, Alda preferred to give presents rather than to receive them. It is the commonest human failing and the one by which Man fell.
Emilio was smiling, the little Dodder was smiling (without one trace of envy, for when your toys are pebbles and sticks you cannot imagine owning a top, much less a tricycle), even Fabrio’s pale face was alight with admiration for these beautiful shining new machines. Only Mr. Waite was not smiling, for Mr. Waite saw in this action of Miss Hardcastle’s yet another example of how casual she was with her money, and he was thinking how very much she needed a man to look after her and prevent her from spending her late father’s hard-earned fortune so lavishly. And now Mrs. Lucie-Browne would go flying down the lanes, attracting attention and perhaps falling off.
“I’ve been expecting them for weeks, darling; I went up to town and ordered them right back in January, I’m so glad you like them, they do look rather smashing, don’t they?” Jean was saying, while Alda brought out her warm and slightly embarrassed thanks. “I thought I’d better get a trike for Megsy,” she added in a lower tone, as the cortège moved on, Mr. Waite walking beside the ladies, “because she really is too small to come out for rides with us yet. Oh, it will be fun, won’t it!”
“Can the elder girls ride?” inquired Mr. Waite, not in a damping tone. It was impossible to sound damp while looking at the women’s happy faces, and while he was sure that those two Italians (who had happened to be at the station fetching a crate of ducks that had not arrived) ought to be at work, that was Hoadley’s affair, not his. As for the little Dodder, it was a disgrace, but apparently harmless.
“Jenny used to, but I expect she’s forgotten,” Alda answered, turning her smiling face to him. “Why? Will you teach them?”
“There’s that bit of flat road by the crossroads. I was thinking, I’ve got an hour to spare after tea. I might give them a lesson this evening—if you like.”
“That is kind of you! I should be grateful, because it really needs a man to hold them up. For some reason, everybody feels twice as heavy on a bicycle.”
“All right, then. If you’re there by six o’clock I’ll try and come along.” He hesitated. “Do you ride?” he asked.
“Oh yes, thank you, and so does Jean,” she answered laughing, and he looked relieved.
While Emilio and Fabrio were discussing the bicycles in their own language, Meg and the little Dodder had walked along in silence, Meg keeping one hand jealously upon the seat of the tricycle while the little Dodder wheeled it. Suddenly the little Dodder, who had been glancing smilingly down at her out of beautiful slanting brown eyes, remarked huskily:
“Goinridin.”
“I beg your pardon, I din’ hear what you said,” answered Meg, ceremoniously.
“Goinridin. Onna bike, I says.”
“It’s mine,” replied Meg softly. “Jean gabe it me. It’s a pwesent,” and she stroked the glossy leather seat.
The little Dodder’s smile became wide.
“Name’s Evie,” she remarked presently. “Wass yours?”
“Alda Meg Lucie-Bwowne. I were cwisten Meg, not Margarwet.”
The little Dodder did not understand, but she smiled even more widely and presently she put out a dirty hand, red and chapped from helping Mum with the washing which she took in, and gently pulled Meg’s plait. Her own short hair was the rich colour of dead leaves and dull with dust.
When they came to a gap in the hedge she made off through it, and her broken rubber boots and torn knickerbockers were seen no more. Mr. Waite remarked that Those Dodders Are a Disgrace, but everybody was busy talking about the bicycles and no one answered him. Soon the opening leading to the farm was reached, and the Italians and Mr. Waite, having wheeled the machines to the cottage gate, went off in pursuit of their various duties.
Alda thought it her duty to reprove Jean for her extravagance but only very briefly, for she felt that strong protest would have been ungracious. Meg was already proudly pedalling up and down in the garden, and Alda herself riding in imagination along lanes canopied with blossoming may.
In the middle of lunch a telegram arrived. Ronald would be home by tea-time on the following day, and Marion’s public-spirited letter was thrust into Alda’s handbag and forgotten.
22
JENNY EMERGED AT ten minutes past four with a fiery, stained face as the result of a sharp battle with one of the Sisters.
She was surrounded by a sympathetic circle, comforting her and anathematising her accuser, for she had made a large circle of friends at the hated convent and in spite of her loathing of the Sisters, the lessons, the rules and the food, she eagerly looked forward to going there every day. There were others who said they loathed it too, and it was fun to loathe things with a lot of other people: all her friendliness, her liveliness and her deftness at games were finding eager expression.
Louise walked slightly apart, with her one best friend. She took no notice of Jenny and her group: it had been Jenny’s fault; it always was; and she would hear quite enough about it when they got home.
But when they did get home every word about Jenny’s misfortune was forgotten in the amazing sight of the bicycles propped against the porch. Tea was forgotten; homework was f
orgotten; even the news that father would be home to-morrow was for the time forgotten in the glorious surprise, as Alda and Jean and Meg hurried out, and there were cries of rapture and exclamations of delight and Jean was almost stifled by embraces. Alda watched them with a smile of pleasure; she could not help wishing that the bicycles had been her own present, but the children’s delight gave her so much delight that all envy was swept away.
After tea they all went down to the crossroads for the first lesson. The evening was calm and the setting sun changed the colour of the fresh leaves to gold: the weather was not yet hot enough to draw up scents from the earth as evening came on and only coolness, scented with new grass, pervaded the air; buttercups and daisies were beginning to bud but glittering celandines still covered the ditch-banks and shone out in the meadows. The gaze wandered on, beyond coppices and spinneys that had not yet attained the full opulence of summer and still showed the brown shades and angularities of early leafage, past distant hillside meadows of emerald wheat and those low jewel-blue summits in which all horizons in this part of Sussex seem to end, but always it returned to one point: Chanctonbury Ring, beckoning the imagination towards its woody shades, high and far off in the clear air, against the rosy sky.
The children marched along, wheeling their bicycles and chattering, while Alda walked with Jean, who she was pleased to note looked particularly well that evening. She hoped to hear her friend and Mr. Waite upon Christian name terms by the end of the bicycling lesson.
Suddenly she exclaimed in dismay. Sylvia was coming towards them wearing her civilian clothes, with her hair loosened, and looking pleased and excited. She hailed them and proposed to join the party: Emilio had told her about the bicycles, and he and Fabrio (worse luck, added Sylvia) were also coming to see the fun.
“The more the merrier,” said Jean, as Alda said nothing. “But I thought those boys had to be back at the camp by half-past six?”
“Emilio says they’ve got a late pass this evening, Miss Hardcastle. Oo, I do wish Fabrio wasn’t coming, he gives me the willies.”
“Has he proposed to you yet?” demanded Alda.
“Mrs. Lucie-Browne! He hardly ever utters, since that time he got fresh with me in the train.”
“What will you say when he does?” teasingly.
“Mrs. Lucie-Browne! What a question! He comes from ever such a poor home, you know, no electric light or running water or anything like that; I asked him; and his sisters, well! They don’t seem to be much better than you-know-whats. He was always shooting a line at first about the ancestral mansion and its extensive grounds (ahem!) but I soon found out it isn’t much bigger than a dog kennel. Probably looks like one, too. Of course,” she ended, recollecting her politics, “the Italian peasant has been ruthlessly exploited, hasn’t he?”
“Has he? I wouldn’t know,” and Alda came to a halt, for here was the crossroads and there was Mr. Waite, looking unusually athletic in an old sweater and grey bags. He wore an earnest look as if about to go into training for a welterweight championship and Alda and Jean were slightly dismayed at the sight: would he get irritable with the children if their progress were slow? Alda rather wished that she had left their first lesson to their father.
But he proved to be a painstaking teacher, and if he were annoyed by Louise’s clumsiness and Jenny’s impatience, he controlled himself. Up and down he went in the failing light, while the sunrays faded off the hedges and the air grew chill. An old horse gazed over the edge and the two Italians strolled up and lolled on a gate to watch; and presently Emilio was instructing Louise, leaving Jenny to Mr. Waite, but Fabrio leant his arms on the gate in silence.
A last beam of sunlight shone between the leaves and touched his cheek and his russet hair; his blue eyes sternly, sadly gazed anywhere but at Sylvia. She, of course, was soon riding unsteadily on Alda’s bicycle, screaming with laughter and clutching at anyone who happened to provide support, and presently (for she had ridden before and was only a little out of practice) she sailed away down the road, and her exclamations of pleasure died off into the evening hush.
Fabrio at last let his eyes follow the young figure in the black dress with gold hair flowing free. From a distance, now that he could no longer hear her voice, she was again Sylvia, his kind love, and he could send his passion flying after her in one long, thirsty gaze.
The evening was so quiet and beautiful that it seemed to him made for love, but no one here thought so: the English signoras, the children, that man whose face always made him think of the taste of lemons, even Emilio (who–was an Italian and should therefore have known better), they all treated this budding, flowering, dreaming twilight as an opportunity for running up and down on bicycles and loudly laughing. A bicycle-lesson provided opportunities for embraces, but none of them seemed to be taking advantage of this fact: all was hearty, rough and bustling as a game of footaballa in the camp. Fabrio turned his comely head away and sighed, resting his cheek against the ancient wood of the gate as if against a comforting shoulder.
Back came Sylvia, hair flying, eyes sparkling, round young legs pedalling like mad, white teeth glimmering between her red lips. She darted a glance at him as she went by and it proved fatal: her machine swerved, she shrieked and lost control, and it fell sideways, sending her sprawling in the road.
Before she could pick herself up, while she was still crouching there lamenting, “My stockings! I bet they’ve had it!”, before the wheels of the bicycle had ceased to spin, two big hands, strong yet gentle in their touch, encircled her and drew her to her feet, and Fabrio, kneeling, was tenderly dusting her skirt, keeping his head bent so that he need not meet her eyes.
All the other riders glanced in their direction with anxious cries of inquiry, and Alda, strolling up to see if her bicycle had been damaged, found Sylvia laughing ruefully over her ruined stockings.
“What happened?” Alda asked, glancing from one to the other. “Sylvia, you don’t seem very experienced! Fabrio had better give you a lesson.” For Fabrio’s pallor quite went to her heart.
Sylvia tossed her head and said that she was perfectly all right but he could if he liked, and presently Alda had the satisfaction of seeing them set off down the road; Sylvia now much quieter, and Fabrio resting his hand upon the carrier of the machine with the lightest of guiding touches and a good three feet between himself and the shapely back of the rider. Not a word had he said while Sylvia was uttering all her impatient requests and comments, but the expression of pain had gone from about his mouth, and Alda congratulated herself.
I wish she’d mind her own business, thought Sylvia. I don’t want to be friends, if he doesn’t. But he was ever so nice, helping me up like that, I can’t make him out. Oh dear, it is a shame about my stockings.
My love, thought Fabrio, my love with shining hair like chestnuts in the woods at home. We would have a little house together and go on Sundays to Mass with all the bambini and you in your black dress. My Sylvia, I love you.
Suddenly she called in a friendly voice:
“Fabrio, my knee’s hurting where I grazed it. I’m going to get down,” and she cautiously did so. “There!” shaking back her hair and smiling at him. “Thanks for your help, Fabrio. Let’s walk back, shall we?”
He nodded gravely, still without a word, and they began to retrace their steps. Occasionally he glanced at her, and once she met his glance with a smile that was kinder, perhaps, than she intended, for his graveness embarrassed and even frightened her a little and she felt that she must placate him. And gradually he began to feel happier. He praised the bicycles and she eagerly agreed; he remarked upon the fineness of the evening and she expressed the hope that there would be a good harvest; soon they were talking together, still with some reserve, but as they had not talked for weeks. No reference was made to the unfortunate excursion to Amberley nor to Fabrio’s sin in the train; even the English lessons were felt by both to be a dangerous subject and were therefore avoided, but when Sylvia and Fabrio rejoined the
rest of the party both were smiling.
During all this time, Meg had been steadily riding up and down a miniature lane leading off into nowhere which she had found for herself. She was now actually drowsing as she rode, but would have gone on until she fell off the saddle fast asleep, had not her mother suddenly exclaimed, “Megsy! Just look at that child! It’s nearly eight o’clock. We must go home at once!”
The Italians said good night and went off to the camp, and Mr. Waite rolled down his sleeves and held the bicycle for Louise to dismount, telling her encouragingly that she had done well for a first lesson. Then Alda picked up Meg and they set off across the dusky, dewy fields under the rising moon. Not a cloud was in the darkening sky and all was still; the last blackbird had ended his song and gone to roost. The children’s voices as they chattered with Sylvia sounded very clear in the hush.
“Careful,” said Mr. Waite, putting his hand upon Jean’s arm to guide her. They were walking a little behind the others.
“It was a mole heap, I think, I can’t see.”
“I am sorry I can’t offer you my arm.”
“That’s all right. Isn’t this fun?”
Mr. Waite gave a short laugh and said that nothing was worse for rheumatism than dew. He added irritably:
“May I use your Christian name? Hardcastle is such a mouthful.”
Well—! thought Jean.
“Oh, please do!” she answered pleasantly. “And may I use yours?”
“It’s Phillip,” he said stiffly, “but my mother and sisters call me Pip.”
“I like Phillip best, but that’s rather a mouthful, too, so I’ll call you Phil.”
She glanced up at the face a little above her own in the dusk; it looked dark, rigid and disapproving. But I shall think of you as Mr. Darcy, she decided; you’re almost as rude.
She knew now why he had never stayed long in one job and why he lived this lonely life of drudgery, for during their recent casual encounters he had let fall some facts about his past life. He had been formed by Nature and by his own expectations to step into the shoes of an older man who had founded and developed a successful business: he would have been admirably fitted to carry on old traditions or cautiously expand them to the needs of a new age; to give orders, yet to rely upon a background built up by one more decisive, more courageous, than himself. He could not take orders: he was independent without being ambitious, and when the career for which his character and upbringing alike had fitted him was snatched away from him, it had meant that there could never be a successful or contented career for him. That was why he preferred to live this poor and lonely, yet orderly and independent, life as a chicken farmer. He took orders from no one except the Egg Board, and his battles with that gave zest to his days; while the chickens (at least in theory) took orders from him.