Jean was relieved to see them go. Ronald had insisted upon the same old creature who slaved for Mr. Waite coming in three times a week to clean Pine Cottage, and Jean felt it tiresome that at this time, just when she wanted to take a detached view of Mr. Waite, she should have to listen to a highly undetached running commentary upon him from old Miss Dodder (no relation, as she was careful to explain, to the feckless half-wit Dodders before mentioned); the trouble he took with they birds, up half the night with they; his kindness to Miss Dodder herself, paying her half-wages when she had the sciatica; so pleased with anything you done for him; so well-spoken; not like some people; and so on. Even so, thought Jean, did Mrs. Reynolds, the housekeeper at Pemberley, praise Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth Bennet, but the latter knew (or thought she knew) just where she stood: she did not have to make up her mind whether to accept the man or not, for she had already refused him.
Jean’s own indecision had the effect of presenting Mr. Waite to her in a more romantic light: she now coloured when she saw his tall form at a distance digging in the rough vegetable plot surrounding his cottage, or coming down in the lane to give the children their evening’s lesson, and sometimes a glance from him or his casual touch would cause her heart to flutter.
Mr. Waite observed the colour and suspected the flutter, and was pleased. He had started upon his courtship, and as the days went by he made his intentions plain; he did not intend that she should misunderstand him. He sought her out at unexpected times with a present of four eggs or a colossal cabbage; he waylaid her as she was crossing the meadows with her basket of small purchases and offered her In Touch with the Transcendent, which she had not the courage to decline, and more than once after the children were in bed he strolled across on some pretext of lending a newspaper or returning an electric torch and lingered by the gate (too careful of her reputation to enter the house) chatting with her and smoking a manly pipe and looking, in his rough country clothes and tall boots, an attractive figure.
If only his nature had been warmed by laughter and rashness! if only he had not been so solemn, so careful, so disapproving, so conventional, so stiff, how easily she could have loved him! But she was a little afraid of him. In what kind of a house would she have to settle down with him if she accepted him? What orderly, trim, organised establishment in which no one ever thumped on the piano or sprawled or rearranged the furniture? She felt like a small sheep being rounded up by a large, handsome, purposeful sheepdog.
He, for his part, found it easier to pay her attentions because he was not in love. He had never, to his knowledge, been in love, but throughout his forty-odd years there had been certain women of whom he had strongly disapproved, and when he thought of these women, who all belonged to the same type, he always congratulated himself upon having avoided “getting caught,” and that was as far as his thoughts ever carried him. Mr. Waite, in short, was a Sleeping Beauty: upon such sleepers of both sexes the awakening kiss often has unexpected results.
He was relieved that Major and Mrs. Lucie-Browne were away just now, for he preferred to carry out his courtship as far as was possible in private. And it was progressing favourably: she showed emotion at his presence and yet she welcomed him; she had returned In Touch with the Transcendent with the assurance that it was a marvellous book, and she was suitably grateful for the cabbages and the eggs. It did occur to him once or twice to invite her out, but there was nowhere in the neighbourhood that suited his own solid yet rich tastes, formed in a wealthy provincial town during the boom years of the ’2O’s; the pictures he scorned, Brighton considered sordid and flashy and he did not choose to spend several pounds on taking her to dine at a roadhouse. Such an action would have seemed to his standard of behaviour slightly insulting; like bribery, like scattering grain before a chicken to lure it into the run. No; she must accept him as his everyday self; and then no one would be able to say afterwards that he deceived her or made out that he was richer or gayer or livelier than he was.
He took the same attitude about compliments. He had always told himself that what he approved in a woman’s appearance was Neatness and No Paint, and he certainly was not going to praise in Jean what he did not approve. He sought about for some part of her to praise; she was always neat; yes, he could truthfully praise that, and so the first compliment he paid her was a grave: “You need not do that; you are always perfectly tidy,” uttered one evening as she glanced in her handbag mirror. A few days later he remarked, in a slightly uncertain tone, that her hair was a pretty colour.
“Gosh, that isn’t its real colour,” answered Miss Hardcastle cheerfully, suppressing a slight impulse to ba-a-a, “it’s brown, really.”
“To match your eyes,” keeping his own fixed steadily upon her. “Why dye it?”
“For fun,” she retorted firmly, determined, on her side, that he should not be completely deceived as to her true nature. “Don’t you ever feel you’d like to dye yours?”
She was relieved to hear him give his short laugh, but she knew, as well as if he had told her, that if she married him she would have to give up dyeing her hair.
And all this—her lack of ease with him, her suspicion that he might be proposing to her for her money—was unimportant compared with the fact that he did not come first in her feelings. There, Mr. Potter lingered.
Easter fell while Ronald and Alda were still away. Jean bicycled in with the children to Sillingham church on the morning of Easter Sunday, with Meg seated upon a little carrier at the back of her own machine. Their ride was a joyful progress along roads white with the dust of a week’s sunshine, through the radiant light of full spring, and on every side such companies and troops of flowers!
The ride began a period of some sixty hours, during which her imagination was invaded by all the blossoms of spring and her nostrils were never empty of their confused exquisite scent, while their curved or hollowed or pointed petals and their stems, supporting round hearts packed with seed, presented themselves in her mind’s eye just before she fell asleep in patterns and single devices of marvellous beauty.
In the afternoon she went out with the children to pick flowers. They roamed across the meadows and entered the woods that covered the low hills; the sunlit slopes left bare by the soldiers who had felled the trees were now high in young bracken, and they pulled up a few stiff fronds, but mostly they picked bluebells and windflowers and daffodils; their hands became stained with saps and juices from the leaves and roots; they picked white and dark violets and tied them in little bunches and tucked them in amidst the bunches of larger flowers, and Meg filled a miniature basket, made for her by Emilio, with orchids and celandines on a bed of dark moss tipped with gold.
They strayed for hours, it seemed, through the woods and by the hedges under the cloudless blue, and when they got home, intoxicated with fresh air and freedom, the sun had set and the fields were growing dim. On the doorstep, staring stolidly at the rising moon, sat a perfectly enormous cabbage. Oh bother, thought Jean, stepping round it, we haven’t got through the last one yet.
On the following day the two elder children were invited to tea by a school friend living near while Meg had been asked to spend the afternoon at the farm, because Mrs. Hoadley, with Joyanna in mind, thought that she would like to see how a baby girl behaved. She went off hand in hand with Sylvia, politely replying to the latter’s condescending questions and plainly forgetting Jean the minute the garden gate had closed upon herself and her guide.
An hour later Jean was coasting down a hilly road towards the village of Sedley, whose square church tower she had seen long since among the trees. Her cheeks were already burning with sun and the warm wind, the sleeves of her white blouse were rolled up, her jacket was off, and a bunch of wilting flowers trembled on the carrier. Each time the thought of Mr. Waite came into her mind she thrust it away, for she did not want to think about anything except the warm lazy beauty of this first day of summer.
The church stood on a little hill and looked across water meadow
s to Chanctonbury Ring, fifteen good miles nearer here, and no longer dark and mysterious. It was so near that she could see the bloom of young green upon its trees, and the hill blowing with summer grass. The church was very small, with a low square tower bursting out in tufts of wallflowers and some thick silvery plant she took to be houseleek; the porch was of oak, so ancient that its very lines and seams were shrunken, and of the same ghostly grey as the plant waving from the stone roof. The list of vicars (beautifully written, and adorned with gold and crimson capitals) began in 1145. She padlocked her bicycle to a stout oak bench, tied a scarf about her head because, in spite of the Bishops’ permission, she never felt quite comfortable in church with an uncovered head, and pushed open the massive door.
She expected dimness, silence, chill. But the church was filled with colour and light. The walls were distempered in apricot, and against them the unpainted leaden pipes of the organ looked a heavy blue green. There was barely room for the seats, the altar and pulpit and lectern; all the space seemed filled by the glowing amber curves of the low, sturdy, Norman arches whose heavy shoulders upheld the stone roof and above it the stone tower, and which were dashed with gleams and melting rays from the lustrous red, blue and amber glass in two minute lancet windows. The other windows were clear, and let in the burning sunlight. And the altar, the altar steps, the pulpit, the lectern, the font, were smothered in flowers from hothouse and garden and meadow; white lilies, amber lilies, yellow lilies; rows of humble glass pots supporting the dove-like heads of white violets mingled with crimson-tipped daisies; bowls spilling over with orange primroses; and winding among all this white and golden splendour, dark trails of ivy like traces of tears. Delicious fragrance floated across to her, drawn out by the heat and freshened by the cold ancient walls, but she saw that all these flowers were just, and only just, past their prime: on Easter Day they had been offered to God and soon they would be thrown on to the huge healthy heap of leaves, sweepings, mown grass, that she had noticed at the back of the church.
Entranced, she stood perfectly still, letting the joyful silence fill her ears. The impression of light and colour and happiness was so powerful that the stonework seemed transparent and all the heavy, ancient little building, sunk into its hillock for eight hundred years of time, nothing but a shell filled with light and sounding with praise. The sweet sacramental scents filled her nostrils and all at once she felt a longing, the strongest desire she had felt in all her life, to love and serve God.
The colours and light struck with fresh joy upon her senses. She went over to the lectern and mounted its little steps; she felt an obedient pleasure in being here, a delight in lingering in God’s house and examining all its furnishings. Slowly she turned the stiff pages of the old Bible, so thick that they seemed to retain some of the heaviness of the wood from which they originally came. She paused at the last chapter of Saint John the Evangelist:
15. So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my lambs.
16. He saith unto him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
17. He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep.
She shut the book gently, and covered her face with her hands and stood for a moment in silence. Oh dear God, she prayed earnestly and humbly, I don’t know whether I love You, I long to love You but I don’t know if I can, but, oh dear, dear God, I will feed Your sheep.
That is a thing I can do, she thought, stepping down from the lectern and slowly walking across the cool hallowed flagstones to the door, and I’ll begin to-morrow with those Dodders on the Froggatt road.
On the ride home she was still slightly dazed; and the joyful silence, the light, in the church returned again and again, each time with a cooling breath, into her spirit. She rode on in a kind of trance, avoiding the crown of the road by instinct and keeping well in to the hedge, and fortunately the byways by which she went were not much frequented, as everyone with a car had on this lovely day gone roaring into Worthing. Her mind was occupied with plans for equipping the little Dodders with undergarments and opening their small souls to the Christian faith.
She was so busy with all this that she was nearly at the gap in the hedge leading across the pastures to the cottage, when Mr. Waite came out through it with a chicken under each arm. She put the brake on just in time, but he fatally wavered from side to side, his grasp upon the chickens loosened, and they at once squawked and fluttered away into liberty. He uttered an exclamation of annoyance and gripped the bicycle, causing her to dismount hastily and almost on top of him.
“I’m awfully sorry,” she gasped, looking up at him confusedly. “I didn’t see you, I was thinking.”
“It’s all right. I am sorry, too; I startled you, I’m afraid.”
They were standing so close together that she caught a breath of some severe and nameless unguent with which he dragooned his hair. She became uncomfortable, and (as his expression slowly became purposeful) very anxious to escape.
“I’m longing for some tea,” she said bluntly, making a movement as if to pass him, “or I’d stay and help you catch the chickens.”
The chickens, wild with unaccustomed freedom, were now legging it down the lane as hard as they could go, amid peals of hysterical chicken-laughter. But he ignored them. His face slowly deepened in colour and became embarrassed, but he also looked determined, as his well-shaped lips parted, and he said firmly:
“Don’t go yet, I have something to say to you.”
The two pairs of brown eyes, the light ones still filled with lingering joy from Heaven and the dark that had gained their bitterness from looking on Earth, gazed questioningly at one another, but Jean’s only wish was to get away from him, to be once more alone with her happy thoughts.
“For some weeks now, since the last time I had the pleasure of having tea with you, I have meant to ask you to marry me,” he began, “and I—I think we should get on together. I think you need a husband to look after you, and—and to help you manage your late father’s business. I am not in the habit of saying what I don’t mean,” he went on gloomily, “and I admire you. You are almost my ideal of what a—a woman should be. I don’t know exactly what your feelings about me are, but I have given you every opportunity to show if you disliked me, and I am sure you don’t, do you?”
“Oh no,” said Jean—faintly, hanging her head and wishing wildly that she were running away with the chickens, whose maniacal cackles now sounded faintly round the curve in the lane.
“Then, that being so, I suggest that we should become engaged at once,” he said decidedly, looking relieved, and put his hand in his pocket and brought out a plump, heart-shaped case of worn red leather. He pressed the gilt fastening, and then and there displayed to her despairing eyes a ring of pale Victorian gold, carrying a heart of fine garnets. She gave a sigh of dismay. Poor little old-fashioned ring! It was the last straw. How could she refuse him now?
“It was my Aunt Janet’s,” he said, regarding it with satisfaction. “She always intended it for my wife. I wrote to my mother for it last Wednesday.”
And he took it from its bed of faded rosy velvet and held it out to her. She swallowed, and forced her dry lips to say faintly:
“But I haven’t said anything yet!”
The words came out in a protesting squeak.
He immediately looked dismayed. The garnet heart withdrew an inch or so and he frowned.
“You said that you—didn’t dislike me?” he said, and suddenly Jean understood that, by her admission, she had implied love to this extraordinary man.
Violent agitation
now confused her. She remembered her disappointments in love—so many, so fruitless, so painful! How lonely she had been—how lonely she was! Her complete happiness of an hour ago was forgotten. She only saw, in the dark face gazing down at her, a companion for life, and a home, and perhaps children as lovable as Alda’s children. Alda’s advice—every word that Alda had ever said to her upon the desirability of the married state—sounded in her ears. She told herself that romance did not matter. She told herself not to be a fool, and she wanted to take away the puzzled and slightly hurt expression from his face. She held out her hand, saying in a low tone:
“Yes. Yes, I did. I do like you, Phil. I think we should get on together too, and I’m very glad you asked me. Please put it on.”
The garnet heart fitted perfectly upon the third finger of her left hand, that finger upon which she had so often been tempted to slip a ring in order to provoke Mr. Potter to ask leading questions. She held out her hand, gazing at it. It looked unexpectedly well; quiet yet romantic, generous in colour, graceful and elegant in shape. Yes, she liked her engagement ring. But did she like her betrothed?
After he too had looked at the ring for a little while, he suddenly took a step forward and clumsily bunched her into his arms. The kiss he gave her was determined rather than ecstatic. Still, she thought, at least I didn’t shudder, like people in Victorian novels (no one ever shudders in modern novels, or if they do they only enjoy it, her thoughts went on irrelevantly).
She glanced up at him inquiringly. Now would he insist on coming back to tea with her? The thought of the cool dark cottage and a cup of tea and a book in solitude amidst the bowls of silent flowers was so attractive that she could hardly refrain from going off at once to enjoy them. Oh, if only he would not want to come too!
But she forgot that he had a bachelor’s habits. He said nothing about coming to share her tea. He drew out the large silver hunter whose chain was looped across his middle and announced that he would go home and have some tea and change his clothes and look in at the cottage for an hour about seven o’clock.