“Oh yes, do,” said Jean amiably, thinking That’s nearly two hours to myself—hooray.
“I must go after those birds!” he exclaimed suddenly. “I’d forgotten all about them—they must be half-way to Horsham by this time. When you get home, Jean, run cold water on your wrists for three minutes, and make your tea a little stronger than usual. You look as if you’d got a little overheated riding—that’ll cool you down and act as a slight stimulant. (Not too strong, the tea, mind you.) And keep your jacket on in the house until you are cool; otherwise you may catch a chill. Good-bye, I’ll be over about seven.”
And he pulled his hat over his eyes and hurried after his chickens without another glance at his betrothed.
Jean wheeled her bicycle slowly homewards. Rings and Dodders and kisses and Alda and Phillip went round and round exhaustingly in her head. She tried to recall that breath of coolness and peace from another world, but in vain; only the memory, not the breath itself, remained. She continued to tell herself that she was engaged, but she could not believe it, and when she looked down at her ring it did not help her to realise the fact.
Meg was sitting placidly upon the doorstep as she came up the path, playing with three ants and a cockleshell from the garden border. Beside her lay a letter.
“Hullo, darling, had a nice time?” Jean asked, stooping down to her. “Who’s this for?” picking up the letter.
“Mrs. Holey did gib Meg a special cakie for her tea. It’s for you, Sylbia said.” And she went back to her game of scooping the wretched ants into the cockleshell.
Jean was staring at the letter. She knew that writing. The stamps were South African. It had been forwarded on from her parents’ flat in London. Her heart beat as it had not beaten for Phillip’s kiss as she tore open the envelope.
The letter expressed sympathy at her father’s death; it said that the writer would be in England again in three weeks’ time; that one of the first things he would do then would be to call her up and arrange a meeting; it breathed warmth, kindness, and affectionate concern for her welfare, and it was signed hers always Oliver Potter.
24
ALDA AND RONALD returned on the following day, and heard of their friend’s engagement with somewhat absent interest and pleasure, for arrangements were nearly completed for the acquisition of the house in Ironborough and they could think of little else. It was a small double-fronted house covered in ivy, with large light rooms and a garden and orchard, standing on the outskirts of the city but not inconveniently far from the university, where Ronald would resume his duties after being demobilised. Alda was very sensible of their good fortune in securing it. This was due to the fact that house and land were owned by the university, which preferred to see its property occupied by a member of its Faculty. She and Ronald talked of furniture and wallpapers and hot-water systems and permits, and neither of them noticed that Jean lacked the radiance of a newly betrothed young woman. They asked Mr. Waite in to share the liqueur which Ronald had brought from Germany, and Ronald observed after he had gone that he seemed to possess excellent solid qualities, at which Alda made a face, and they both wondered how soon the wedding would be, and then returned happily to their staircoverings.
Jean had often read of letters lying in people’s bosoms like serpents. Now she knew what it felt like. Mr. Potter’s letter lay in her handbag like a serpent, and every time she opened the bag to take out a cigarette it crackled at her as if it were hissing. She had not dared to tell Alda about it, because she feared a command to ignore it, or a sharp reminder that Mr. Potter meant nothing to her now because she was engaged, or something of that sort. And she had not answered it, because feverish calculations upon her fingers had showed her that Mr. Potter would arrive in England any day now; indeed, she lived in almost hourly expectation of a wire from him or even his appearance at the cottage door. Between these apprehensions and settling herself into her new part as an engaged girl she soon became confused and troubled and not very happy.
Romantic love can make the choosing of a gas cooker into a romantic ceremony but Mr. Waite was not romantically in love and nor was Jean. He discussed what type of soil their house should stand on, and whether they should have a geyser or an Aga cooker or one of those electric things you put into the water tank; there was even an exposition upon the desirability of little mats at the foot of the stairs, while his fancy plodded, as if upon a treadmill, round and round the coal cellar and the bathroom and the kitchen.
Every evening they met for a walk along the lanes, or drove in to Sillingham for a drink (he advised her to drink only ginger ale and she did) and at ten o’clock she would come wearily up the path to the cottage door with her shoulders drooping and her simple fifteen-guinea hat swinging in her hand. The murmur of voices would be floating out on the warm twilight, discussing types of gas cookers.
It was now difficult to remember the time when she had not been engaged. Her happiest moment came at the evening’s end, when her betrothed abruptly kissed her “Good night”. He did not linger over these moments and she was relieved to have it so.
But he was happier than he had been for twenty years. He delighted in the discussion and planning of practical details, and hitherto the days had held half an hour here, an hour there, which it was not possible to fill up with arrangements about the chickens or the garden or the eggs and which had too often been haunted by a certain troubling, charming image. But the planning and buying of a home provided endless details to be discussed; they went on for ever; there were—if such a state of affairs could be possible—almost too many of them; far too many to be settled before the date of the wedding.
He had decided to sell the chicken farm, and after the sale accompany Jean to Daleham where she would meet his mother and sisters, and stay with one of his numerous connections while she collected her trousseau. Later on he proposed to enter the firm of J. Hardcastle and Company, Ltd., at first as a learner but later on as manager. He was confident that he had the ability to do this; and Jean wished him to. It would be the dignified, the correct, thing for her husband to have a full-time occupation, and also he would be out of the house all day.
The wedding was fixed for the twenty-eighth of June, and she had done nothing about it except inquire through a friend in the trade about buying thirty yards of white crêpe-de-Chine without coupons. She casually confided this to her betrothed, and received such a lecture that she was amazed and sore (though she said hardly one word in her own defence) for days afterwards.
She had never seriously thought about the rights or wrongs of buying through the Black Market. In her world, everyone had done it. In Mr. Waite’s world, hardly anyone did, and he made her feel ashamed. She had never experienced shame before and she disliked the feeling intensely. She thought how Mr. Potter would have received such a piece of news; with a smile and either a “Good for you” or a “Naughty, naughty,” according to his fascinating mood of the moment, and, try as she would, she could not help feeling, many times a day, how much more Mr. Potter was in accord with her upbringing and outlook and temperament than was Mr. Waite.
Ronald had now returned to Germany and Alda had time to turn her attention to her friend’s engagement. She observed the couple for a day or two, and decided that they were a pair of old things, though not yet old in years, and that they were inclined to be dim and would grow dimmer as they grew older but at least they were both dim, and would suit one another. She congratulated herself upon having introduced them, and forwarded the match in every way that she could, and she thought that if Jean did not appear radiantly happy, that was because she was taking the practical rather than the romantic view.
Alda felt herself particularly fitted to advise upon the practical view because she herself had declined half a dozen men with higher incomes and better prospects than Ronald in order to marry him, on his modest salary, from passionate love.
As for the Dodders, they had soon been disposed of. Jean had called there upon a very hot day. The elder c
hildren were out in the meadows, but there were several who could barely walk crawling and tottering about the low, dirty, cluttered kitchen, their velvety faces not much larger than the satiny ones of some peonies in a jam jar. Mrs. Dodder, who was still very pretty, received her smilingly; smilingly accepted a large bundle of clothes, and in reply to a timid question, smilingly assured her that all the children was confirmed and went to church and Sunday School regular (Jean tried not to glance at the babies, who were all sitting still and staring at her; their combined ages totalled perhaps five years and it was difficult to believe that they had all been confirmed). She said no more. She went away, after a last helpless glance round the room filled with old rags and babies and wilting cottage flowers, and was glad to get its sickeningly sour-sweet odour out of her nose. It was not possible to ask those tiny velvet faces, that sweet vacant smile, if they loved God. Saint Francis of Assisi, who understood non-human languages, would have been the one to deal with them.
When she told Phillip about her visit, he observed that those Dodders were a Disgrace and strongly advised her not to go there again for fear of Catching Something. She was relieved that he took it for granted her visit was charitable rather than evangelical, for once more she could postpone that discussion which she dreaded: her religion.
She had never discussed it with a living soul, and she was eager to keep it entirely to herself until her dying day, but her conscience told her that she ought not to marry a man without first finding out if he were, or were not, a Christian. His occasional references to Christianity were merely patronising. She might find herself like Saint Monica, married for many years to a pagan, and, unlike the saint, fail to convert him in the end. Worse still, she felt no wish to convert him. She only wanted to continue peacefully in her own faith and leave him to flounder about in his. The question embarrassed her, adding to the increasing doubts which she felt about her engagement.
She was sitting in the parlour one Saturday morning, writing to Mrs. Waite to announce the date of her forthcoming visit, when a shadow fell across the door, which stood open to admit air and sunlight into the room’s dimness, and she glanced up and there, smiling down upon her, stood Mr. Potter.
Mr. Potter, handsomer, more debonair, than ever; in a loose tweed coat, and bronzed by South African suns, hatless and terribly, alarmingly welcome. At the sight of him she dropped the pen and her heart stood still.
“Hullo, my dear,” said Mr. Potter, coming into the room, and as she stood up tremblingly to welcome him, he slipped his arm about her and gave her an easy kiss; alas, a delicious kiss.
At once, while they were exchanging the first sentences of greeting and welcome, she began to play with her engagement ring, according to the nervous habit she had lately fallen into, and in a moment, telling herself that she would break her news to him presently, she slipped it off her finger and into her pocket.
She was still glowing with delight from that casual kiss, and so confused, so overcome with happiness at the sight of him and so alarmed at discovering the strength and nature of her own feelings, that she scarcely heard what he was saying or knew what she said in reply, but presently she realised that he was suggesting they should drive into Brighton for lunch.
She hesitated, for it had been arranged that she and Mr. Waite should drive into Horsham that afternoon to place the advertisement for the sale of the chicken farm with the local paper, and do some shopping and take tea at The Myrtle Bough, and she was to meet him at half-past two—but the entrance of Alda and the children gave her a moment’s grace.
While introductions were being made, and Alda was welcoming Mr. Potter and explaining away the cottage’s deficiencies (over which Mr. Potter had already cast an incredulous eye) with frank laughter, Jean decided that she would go. She could not resist the temptation. Alda must explain to Mr. Waite—and think what she chose. So must he.
“Now, how about it?” Mr. Potter demanded agreeably, turning to her. He was seated upon the dreadful little pink chair with its hairy inside coming out, looking very out of place in his light raglan overcoat and elegant grey suit amidst the Victorian fubsinesses of the parlour.
“Oh—yes—thank you, that would be wizard,” Jean answered nervously. “Alda,” turning to her friend, “Mr. Potter’s asked me in to Brighton to lunch, darling.”
Alda’s eyes brightened, grew wider, became mischievous.
“What a good idea!” she said, “but how about your shopping in Horsham this afternoon?”
“Oh—be an angel and explain for me, will you? You can say it’s business. I’ll just get my coat—shan’t be a minute,” and she shook back her hair and hurried out of the room.
Mr. Potter sat in easy silence with his legs crossed. He smilingly declined Alda’s offer of a cigarette (they were Woodbines, all that Sillingham had been able to offer, and Mr. Potter always had his cigarettes made in America with Oliver Potter stamped upon each one). The children had quietly taken up their usual indoor occupations and were stealing glances at him. Presently Louise asked shyly:
“Did you see any hippopotamuses in South Africa?”
“No, not on this trip,” turning his wide smile and mellow chuckling voice upon her. He was not accustomed to addressing children, and therefore spoke to her as if she were grown-up. “I was in the Cape. The big game is all up in the National Parks and Game Reserves.”
“Oh, please, what is a Game Reserve?”
Mr. Potter explained, with an attention to detail and a lack of impatience at her eager questions which caused her afterwards to declare fervently that he was the nicest man she had ever met. Jenny also listened with rapt interest but Meg had slipped outside to harry the ants with her cockleshell. Alda had taken up her knitting and was studying Mr. Potter over the top of it. Perhaps it would be better if J. married him instead, she thought. At least he isn’t poor, and he isn’t dim, either, and she could soon learn to be his type. He would never have asked her to lunch if he hadn’t been intrigued.
For Alda knew the world from which Mr. Potter came, and had guessed his opinion of the setting in which he had discovered Miss Hardcastle. He had not troubled to conceal completely what he felt; a look in the eye and a curl of the lip betrayed him. She was sure that he had never before in his life entered such a room, and only his good nature prevented his manner from being downright rude. But what charm in those green eyes, that big nose, that broad smile! He looked as if he would be ready at any moment to make a gay plan for everybody’s pleasure, and he was now showing the little girls an especially ingenious type of propelling pencil; there was something especial about his wristwatch too, which made it worthy of display, and after this his lighter and cigarette case must come out and go through their paces.
Alda, watching, decided that he was what Ronald called a Gadget Man, with a taste for expensive little dodgems that were always going wrong and taking weeks to be mended; which had to be described and shown to everybody, and which made him uneasy unless he had them all deposited over his person in perfect working order. She thought of Ronald, who carried no gadgets except the fine antique French watch that he wore looped across his slender stomach in time of peace (Mr. Potter was inclined to a manly portliness, though he was not yet thirty-five) and the base metal lighter given to him by his batman on the day the latter was killed; and she decided that if Mr. Potter did not find her glamorous, she certainly did not find him so. But she could see why Jean did.
Here Jean reappeared, wearing a beautiful dress of blue silk printed with large white flowers under a coat of pale wool, and the finest of stockings. Mr. Potter immediately looked relieved, and stood up in readiness for departure. He was afraid I’d pawned all her clothes to buy food for the children, thought Alda, pleasantly accompanying them to the door.
Meg was busily employed with her ants upon the doorstep and (as Jean paused to exchange a word or two with Alda and Mr. Potter courteously waited for her) she glanced up at him to secure his attention, then pointed with a fat forefinger a
t an ant hurrying along by her foot and observed conversationally, “His name is Gilbert,” but Mr. Potter, assuming that his ears had misled him, gave no reply beyond a vague smile.
Alda had not yet thought precisely what explanation she was going to give to Mr. Waite about his betrothed’s non-appearance, but when Jean lifted her hand to wave good-bye as they went down the path, and Alda saw that she no longer wore her engagement ring, she did experience a slight shock; and when she set out after lunch to meet him, she already thought of her friend as lured away and lost, and had got so far as wondering whether Mr. Waite would sue her for breach of promise.
“Hullo!” she called cheerfully, waving and smiling as he drove up, and getting in her opening speech before the surprise dawning upon his face could express itself in a question, “I’ve got a message from Jean. She’s awfully sorry, she can’t come this afternoon. An old friend of her father’s came down unexpectedly and she’s gone into Brighton with him.”
She intended this remark to have a flavour of family-solicitors-and-boring-papers-to-be-signed but, uttered as it was by a pretty woman in a cotton dress with her hair stirred by the wind, it sounded fatally runaway and festive: it chimed with the robust mirth of elderly stockbrokers and the clinking of glasses in secret bars.
“Oh,” he said, after a long, suspicious look, and said no more. He appeared to meditate, staring down at the wheel of the car. He is much better-looking than Mr. P. but has no charm at all, thought Mrs. Lucie-Browne, who had now made up her mind to get Jean married to Mr. Potter. Mr. Potter was more Jean’s type; Mr. Potter had some money and would fit more easily into Lucie-Browne parties; and, after all, the poor pet had always fancied Mr. Potter. Well, Mr. Potter she should have.