“Now that’s enough, all this dust is making everybody cough, it’s enough to choke us,” announced Mrs. Hoadley, coughing herself to give point to her words. “Emilio’s got Mr. Hoadley’s accordion, and he’s going to give us all a tune. Gather round, everybody,” clapping her hands to attract attention, “and we’ll have a sing-song.”
This announcement was not received by the company with unmixed pleasure; the children were delighted, and Emilio was all smiles as he bent over the accordion and experimentally squeezed it in and out between his dirty yellow fingers, but Mr. Waite was looking sober, and the two elderly men exchanged glances of despair, for they had hoped to get away to their usual haunt, the Wheatsheaf on the outskirts of Horsham, as soon as the supper was over. But Sylvia at once seized Mary Parkes by the arm and drew Louise to her other side to form a circle, and Mr. Hoadley looked relieved; he had not liked all that dust and the Italians hopping about with their arms round the girls. Soon there was an animated circle seated about Emilio, who played a few cautious notes, then dashed with immense brio into Teresa.
In a moment Louise whispered under cover of the singing:
“Mother, what’s the matter with Fabrio?”
Alda glanced at the door. He was still standing there, with arms folded and his back to the lighted, crowded, noisy room.
“I don’t know, lovey, perhaps he doesn’t feel well or he’s tired,” she answered.
But she thought impatiently that that idiot of a girl must have upset him again, and badly this time, to give him that look. Surely she had not been fool enough to turn him down finally? I certainly will speak to her the minute all this is over, Alda thought.
Louise turned, and studied Fabrio with one long, curious gaze before joining again in the singing. She was not deceived: she knew that he was miserable because Sylvia had been unkind to him. It made her feel uncomfortable. Grown-up people ought not to be miserable; it was frightening. They were there to comfort children, and how could they do that if they too got miserable when people were beastly to them? She suddenly pushed herself closer to her mother and took her hand.
The voices rose and fell in pleasing harmony. They sang rounds; Great Tom is Cast and Joan Glover and White Sand and Grey Sand, but Three Blind Mice was the most popular and successful. Emilio proved an expert player, hearing a tune and trying it over only once before mastering it well enough to satisfy an uncritical audience, and they went on from one old favourite to another, each member of the party eagerly making suggestions. Mr. Hoadley called for Roll Out the Barrel and Mrs. Hoadley for The Temple Bells are Ringing (this was not among the more successful attempts, and the spectacle of Mr. Waite doggedly proclaiming that he lay hidden in the grass was nearly too much for Alda and Jenny). Mr. Waite himself, when his turn came to choose, surprised everybody by coming out with Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes in a severe throaty baritone. They had Lily of Laguna (bashfully put forward by the man Spray, who had abandoned all hope of reaching the Wheatsheaf and was now enjoying the occasion) and The More We Are Together and John Peel, a suggestion from Alda, who knew that Jenny and Louise enjoyed making alleged hunting noises in the chorus.
Presently everyone paused for a rest and a drink, and Sylvia took the opportunity to suggest that they should sing some solos. She was not at all nervous, she said with an angry laugh (she was very conscious of the silent figure now seated on the moonlit threshold, still with its back to the room and tactfully ignored by the company) and she would begin with Night and Day. She was not trained, she explained to her dismayed audience; hers was a natural voice, more like a crooner’s.
So Emilio, with an expression that proved his kinship with the race that bred Juvenal, cocked his eye upon her and kept it there throughout his playing of Night and Day, which she duly crooned.
After the polite applause, Mary Parkes was persuaded with some difficulty to sing I’ll Walk beside You, which she did very prettily, and then Mr. Hoadley thundered his way through two verses of Drake’s Drum in an enormous mellow bass which shook the lamp glasses but ceased abruptly in the first line or the third verse, because he had forgotten the rest. He was unperturbed, and smilingly refused the entreaties of the children to “sing some more,” but took a very large drink of cider and wiped his forehead, for singing was warm work.
During the last song, Emilio had been glancing from time to time at the figure of his friend in the doorway. He now squeezed a note or two from the accordion, and suddenly called in Italian:
“What’s the matter, my brother? Has La Scimmia turned you down?”
“Shut up, you, and go to Hell,” answered Fabrio, without turning round.
A musical language does not confine its music to educated voices. The unfamiliar sounds lilted down the room, and everyone felt a little stir of curiosity and pleasure in their ring. What were they saying, these foreigners, one of whom had no self-control? No one knew enough Italian to make a guess, but everyone assumed that Emilio was attempting rough comfort on his friend, and everyone (except Louise, who frankly stared) tactfully busied themselves with their cigarettes and drinks and chatter.
“Ah, you don’t want to worry. Cheer up—” and here, Emilio’s consolatory words became gaily gross (though he took care not to say anything gross about La Scimmia herself).
Fabrio did not answer, and his back continued to look utterly wretched. Everyone was sorry for him except Mr. Hoadley, who thought that he was making a fine fool of himself but spared him a reproof because of the occasion, and Sylvia. As he continued silent, Emilio began such a gay tune that everyone looked up in pleased surprise.
“A song-a of Napoli. I sing-a it to you,” said Emilio confidently, his narrow eyes twinkling with malice as he glanced from face to face, and he burst into a high-pitched ditty with a catchy chorus that set every foot tapping. No one ventured to ask what it meant; indeed, there was a silent agreement among the elders not to, as, judging by the singer’s expression, the words were lively as the tune, but after the last long note had quavered away and the applause broke out, Emilio volunteered the information that it was about a lovely lovely girl who say she will kiss her boy friend much much when her old dad he is gone away out.
Then he squeezed a few more notes out of the accordion, and again called something in Italian.
Again Fabrio answered without turning his head. His tone was low and savage. Mrs. Hoadley pursed her lips and shook her head at Emilio.
“Best leave him alone,” she said.
But Emilio called to his friend yet again.
“I ask him sing,” he explained to the company, “He sing verra nice, you like-a hear him.”
“Not if he doesn’t feel like it,” said Mary Parkes in such a quiet voice that hardly anyone heard her. “P’raps he’s tired.”
“No, no, he like-a singa,” persisted Emilio, “you like-a hear him. Oh, come on, don’t be a fool, show her you don’t give a damn for her,” he went on in their own tongue. “All the time you sit there like a” (untranslatable) “she’s laughing at you. Come on—show her!”
Suddenly Fabrio got up, and came down the room towards them. He was very pale, his eyes glittered as if with fever, and his nostrils were dilated. He came slowly, swaggeringly, with hands in his pockets, and more than one female quailed as he came. Even Alda, the confident matron, felt that she would not like to be responsible for putting that expression on a man’s face, while Mr. Hoadley experienced the familiar twitching at the toe of his right boot. Mr. Waite thought that the chap was making an exhibition of himself. The two hired men hoped that there was going to be a row. Jenny and Louise were struggling to conceal their overpowering drowsiness; Sylvia stared at her finger-nails.
“All right,” said Fabrio in Italian, standing by his friend. He had not looked at Sylvia.
Emilio glanced grinningly up at him and said something; Fabrio nodded, and immediately he struck up an air twice as impudent as the previous one. It was lively but sneering; in it the sun shone too hotly and there was a
breath off the back streets of Genoa. Or perhaps it was not the tune itself that conveyed all this, but the expression on the faces of the two young men, but whatever it was, nobody liked the tune much, and Mr. Hoadley was just about to say sharply, “That’s enough, let’s have something else,” when Fabrio began to sing.
His audience had been expecting a shock, and it got one. He looked straight at Sylvia; he never took his blazing eyes from her crimson, downcast face while he swiftly sang his gutter-song. It was very short and it was plainly brimming with insult. Emilio was laughing as he pressed the melody in brief sonorous bursts from the accordion and as he finished on a high, quick note like a snarl, Fabrio was laughing too, but now, to the extreme embarrassment, not to say horror, of his audience, his eyes were thickly filled with tears. They spilled over and rolled down his face as he passed, almost without pause, into the song he had sung to Emilio in the winter woods, the song of the fishermen, sailing home at dawn into San Angelo.
The simple air was so beautiful, and his voice now so full of yearning, that outraged feelings were partly soothed, and his audience listened in silent pleasure while visions of assuagement and peace drifted before their minds’ eyes. All but Mr. Hoadley; he was not fond of music and both toes of his boots were by now almost out of control. Sulking, and singing dirty foreign tunes, and blubbering in public! Where did this Wop think he was, and who? Mr. Hoadley was only waiting until the departure of the ladies and children to give Mr. Fabrio a piece of his mind which he would never forget.
The song ended on a long note that softly died away. All the females at once broke into hearty applause, except Sylvia.
She sat in a deliberately casual attitude and played with her bracelet as though bored, but she could not look up. She dared not meet his eyes, or even see his face. The first song had filled her with fury and bewildered shame, affronting her modesty although she did not know why, but the fishermen’s song had done worse; it had brought a lump to her throat and stinging tears, and now she was hoping passionately that no one, especially not Alda, would stare at her while those two tears were drying upon her burning cheeks. She did not dare to use her handkerchief. She would not let him see his triumph. He would think that she was crying because she was sorry for him, but she was not: she hated him and would never speak to him again; never, never, never. It was only that his voice was so smashing, and music always did something to her. It was such a corny song, too. Round and round went the cheap bracelet on the brown arm, and she stared down at it while the tears slowly, how slowly, dried in the heat of anger.
“Now let’s have something a bit more cheerful,” Mr. Hoadley was saying, not deigning to cast a glance at the two offenders, who were now sitting silently side by side and giving a distinct impression of Snakes at Bay. “What about Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree?”
“Yes, that’s a nice English song,” was Mrs. Hoadley’s helpful contribution; and Emilio, looking bored, picked out the tune and soon everybody was singing as cheerfully as though nothing embarrassing had happened.
When shortly afterwards the evening came to an end with God Save the King (only played by Emilio after one enormous shrug of his shoulders to convey his utter indifference to the British Monarchy—a gesture which all the English very properly ignored) and everyone was thanking Mr. and Mrs. Hoadley, Louise wandered to the door.
The moon was still shining, but a cool wind blew on her upturned face and the western sky was covered in cloud.
“Just in time; there’ll be rain to-morrow,” said Mary Parkes, coming behind her and putting both hands on her shoulders.
Mr. Waite was deciding that he would not offer to accompany Alda home. It was bright moonlight and she would be there in seven minutes; besides, she might try to find out things on the way. He had no intention of giving her the opportunity. He felt very strongly indeed that he did not want to hear her comments or her congratulations or anything; he only wanted to avoid her.
So he bowed slightly and said “Good night” to her with a slightly less distant manner than of late, but he walked off at once towards Meadow Cottage, and as he strode through the dry warm grass he was whistling.
Mr. Hoadley intended to speak to Fabrio immediately the last visitor had gone and was looking sharply about for him among the busy figures folding tablecloths and stacking chairs when his wife came up with a livestock problem that had arisen during the evening and had just been reported by Sylvia, who had slipped outside to cool her hot face. Then the two men had to be paid off and sent home, and arrangements made about his own early start for Brighton the next morning, and when all this was done, the disappearance of the moon behind thick motionless black clouds led to some revision of plans already made, in case the morning should bring heavy rain.
It was not until after eleven that he again remembered Fabrio’s outrageous behaviour, and then he was sitting on his bed taking off his boots. He would almost have gone up then and there and pulled Fabrio out of bed to listen to him, had not Mrs. Hoadley, who was resignedly wide awake, dissuaded him. He knew just what he was going to say to Fabrio and a few hours made no difference. He fell asleep at once.
Sylvia cried for some time before she went to sleep, although she did not know why. She longed vaguely for some kind and sensible person in whom to confide, yet when Mary Parkes tapped on the wall and asked what was the matter she robustly answered that everything was O.K., she had only had a bad dream. If she had confided in Mary, she could only have said that she was “upset.” She was miserable, but presently she told herself that it would all come out in the wash, and all be the same a hundred years hence and so forth, and gradually her natural good spirits reasserted themselves. Eros retreated before the philosophy held by the cinema queue, and before Sylvia fell asleep, she had decided that Fabrio, in asking her to share his low peasant existence, had been downright insulting.
At three o’clock the first drops of rain fell in the lowering dawn, and by the time the farmhouse party came down at five to begin the day’s work, a wet day had set in.
31
THE STOOKS LOOKED autumnally bronze against the grey sky, for the rain was heavy and continuous and had darkened their colour, but the sight of them cheered the workers as they went about their morning tasks and they exchanged congratulations upon having completed the harvest yesterday. It was difficult to realise that the shorn expanses of dripping stubble were the hot golden fields of twenty-four hours ago, and those sodden white twists in the hedge the bindweed flowers that had waved against the blue sky. After breakfast Alda glanced out of the window and saw a familiar figure making its way across the fields under an umbrella. Where was Mr. Waite going to, in his best suit, at this hour in the morning? But she had plenty to do, for the children had all slept late and were tired and cross and dismayed at the rain, and she forgot him at once.
It was eleven o’clock and she was making the beds with Jenny’s help when there came a rap at the front door. Jenny ran down, and presently Alda heard her coming up again.
“It’s Mary, Mother. I say! gosh, what do you think? Fabrio’s run away! Isn’t it super? I expect that’s because Sylvia was so beastly to him last night.”
Alda ran down to the door.
“I’m awfully sorry to bother you, Mrs. Lucie-Browne,” said Mary prettily, standing in the porch with a clean sack arranged over her head in a hood, “Mrs. Hoadley asked me to come over and ask you if you’d seen anything of Fabrio this morning. He isn’t at the farm.”
“Are you sure?” asked Alda, staring.
“Quite sure. We didn’t notice he was missing until Mr. Hoadley had gone off to Brighton in the car just before eight, and we’ve looked everywhere since and we can’t find him.”
“I haven’t seen anyone this morning, except Mr. Waite in the distance. Perhaps he’s gone back to the camp?”
“That’s what I said, but Emilio says no. He says they had a permit to stay here for four days, and Fabrio would never go back to camp before his time was up; he hat
es it.”
Mary looked as neat and sensible as usual, but Alda believed that she detected anxiety.
“You aren’t worried, are you?” she asked.
“I’m not,” with a touch of hauteur, “but Mrs. Hoadley is. She’s working herself up into quite a state, and she oughtn’t to.”
“She’s quite different since that baby started; she used to be so efficient and managing. It is a bore for you all, isn’t it? Shall I come over after lunch and cheer her up?”
“Oh, I wish you would, Mrs. Lucie-Browne. She’s made up her mind he’s hung himself.”
“Ass,” said Alda crisply. “Because of last night, do you mean?”
“Yes. She says Italians are so uncontrolled.”
“They aren’t the only ones,” Alda muttered. “What did happen anyway? Did he propose to Sylvia?”
“Yes. She’s just told us. She’s crying.” Mary’s tone was less kind than usual. “She thinks he’s drowned himself.”
“I expect she’s enjoying the excitement,” said Alda, but then a surprised glance made her slightly ashamed of herself. “And she turned him down?”
Mary nodded. “She seems to think it was a—a sort of insult.” She paused, then said with feeling—“Asking someone to marry you—well, that is quite something, isn’t it? I mean, I know girls—I’m not speaking personally—who would give anything for the chance to get married. I’m older than Sylvia, and you get over all those silly ideas.”
“Age will make no difference to Sylvia, my dear Mary, because what my husband calls ‘the seeds of growth’ aren’t in her. I’d get back to the farm now, if I were you,” for Mary looked as if the last remark were rather above her head, “and tell Mrs. H. that he’s probably gone off to sulk in the woods. I’ll come over after lunch and have a word with her.”