Nightingale Wood

  ‘You see, Miss Hetty, it’s Mr Spring. He likes to know every single thing as goes in, Mr Spring does.’

  ‘Yes, I know he does, but surely he’d never notice one more cherry-tree among all the others.’

  ‘He’d be sure to see me puttin’ her in, Miss Hetty. ’Sides, it ’ud take me off my reg’lar wuck. Proper lot to do there is, here.’

  ‘I could put it in,’ she said eagerly.

  ‘Not right, you couldn’t, if you’ll excuse me a-sayin’ soo, Miss Hetty. Why, even a doddy tree like that un here,’ he pointed to a little cherry close by, ‘her takes time to put in, an’ it moost be done right. If she ain’t done right, her might die, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?’

  His young voice, in which the colourless vowels taught to him at school were gradually being replaced by the natural broad ones of his county, was soft and kind as though he spoke to a child, but it was also amused. Miss Hetty certainly didn’t goo on like most young ladies, and her differences were funny.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t,’ she answered shortly, turning her head quickly away to look at the fairy cloud of flowers. Her small blue eyes were deeply set and slightly misty from too much reading. They had a resentful look which never left them except when she saw a book or the name of a writer.

  ‘You see, Heyrick,’ she began again, after a pause, then stopped. Then went on, ‘Do you like music?’

  ‘Don’t know much about it, Miss Hetty.’

  ‘Well, do you know a song called In Summertime on Bredon?’

  ‘Like this, does it goo?’ and Heyrick broke into beautiful whistle, strong as a blackbird’s.

  ‘That’s it – that’s it! How on earth did you come to know it?’

  ‘On the wireless last night, Miss Hetty. Proper good ’un, that is.’

  ‘And the words – do you remember the words?’

  He grinned widely. ‘Count I never noticed ’em, Miss Hetty.’

  ‘Well, never mind, only they’re very beautiful and the man who wrote them has just died. That’s why I want to plant the cherry-tree, you see. In his memory, sort of.’

  Heyrick nodded, his amused look deepening.

  ‘He was a writer – a poet,’ she explained, hugging her knees and staring up at the starry white waterfall (The pear stood high and snowed). ‘A very true poet.’

  ‘Same as Kipling? We larned a piece by Kipling at school. If, it were called. Count I’ve forgotten most of it now.’

  ‘Not a bit like Kipling,’ corrected Hetty, ‘though Kipling’s a marvel. Only he’s out of fashion, they say (dunderheads). Oh well,’ scrambling up ungracefully and dusting her skirt, ‘thanks, Heyrick. It doesn’t matter. It’s not worth the fuss there’d be. Only I thought as a wild cherry, full standard, only costs seven and sixpence, I could just buy one and stick it in somewhere. I might have known I couldn’t … though there’s room enough.’

  ‘There is soo, Miss Hetty,’ said Heyrick with feeling; he was a little lazy.

  Hetty grimly pulled her hat over her resentful eves, and was bending to pick up her expensive handbag from the ground when little Merionethshire came breathlessly round the water-butt.

  ‘Please, Miss Hetty, Madam says will you go in. She wants you.’

  ‘Did she send you out here?’

  Hetty’s tone was alarmed. The water-butt, in the only untidy corner at Grassmere, was her poetry-reading place.

  ‘Indeed no, Miss Hetty, she said to go up to your room, only I thought as you’d most likely be out here, seeing it’s a nice morning and Heyrick said—’

  ‘All right. Thanks,’ Hetty interrupted the flow of lilting Welsh. ‘Don’t tell anyone I come here, will you, please, Davies? It’s nice to be quiet sometimes.’

  ‘Indeed and I won’t, Miss Hetty,’ promised Merionethshire with a trace of condescension but willingly enough, and meant what she said. A secret was a secret, even if it wasn’t about Boys. Any secret was better than none.

  ‘Poor Miss Hetty,’ said Merionethshire when Hetty had gone, turning a flower-like effect of carnation lips, peony cheeks and pansy-dark eyes on Heyrick. ‘She did ought to get married, I think.’

  ‘Count she ain’t the only one,’ and Heyrick loomed down upon little Merionethshire, who disappeared against the corduroys and bast in a storm of squeaks.

  ‘Where did you get to, Hetty?’ fretfully inquired Mrs Spring, pulling on her gloves. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t sneak off like that just when I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Sorry, Aunt Edna.’

  They took their places in the car, which moved off as Mrs Spring began to talk about the day’s programme.

  Hetty sat silent, in the smart coat and skirt chosen by her aunt, which she wore badly. She was a plump girl of a little over twenty, with dark hair worn in an untidy knob, a bad complexion and small, well-formed features that were unexpectedly attractive.

  She was the only daughter of Mrs Spring’s only sister; her father and mother were dead, and she had lived, since she was five, with her aunt and her cousin Victor. She had some hundred pounds a year of her own left to her by her mother, but Mrs Spring did not consider this pittance enough for a girl to live on in virtue and comfort, and had insisted upon carrying Hetty off.

  Mrs Spring had loved her sister very dearly; their affection had been the deepest experience in her unimaginative life, and she had hoped that Hetty, as that sister’s daughter, would be like Winnie come back again.

  But Hetty had taken after her father’s side; the unsuccessful (that is, poor) Franklins who were all teachers and parsons and librarians, and as dull as ditch-water, with their noses in books, their socks in holes and their finances in muddles. Hetty was a disappointment. All that Mrs Spring could do with Hetty was to let Victor see that her investments did not go down, while she herself chose her clothes and tried to marry her off.

  Not that Mrs Spring was a fanatic about girls getting married; a lot of rubbish was talked about marriage, and nowadays a girl could have a really good time (dances riding, shows, flying, parties, yachting and golf) without marriage, especially if she had money.

  But Hetty had no money. Mrs Spring did not look upon one hundred pounds a year as money: she would have agreed with those gangsters who refer contemptuously to small amounts as chicken feed. Hetty was also a discontented, queer girl whom nothing pleased but rubbishy books by immoral highbrow authors. So the sooner Hetty married, the better.

  As for Hetty, she had not the courage to say so, but she considered the life led at Grassmere to be tedious, futile and coarse. (She was always wondering what Doctor Johnson would have said about it, and inventing Imaginary Conversations with him about the people who came down for weekends – ‘Sir, Mr So and So is a fool, and twice a fool, for he is not aware of his folly.’) Her aunt’s interests bored her, and she found her cousin Victor’s lack of imagination unattractive.

  What was the use of a man’s being handsome if he were also stupid?

  She could talk to no one at Grassmere about books.

  At Grassmere no one read books. They occasionally read a thriller from the Boots in Chesterbourne, but more often they looked at the Tatler, Vogue, the Sunday Pictorial, Homes and Gardens, and journals about cars and outboards. These periodicals had to compete with the wireless, the pianola, the telephone, visitors, gossip and the dogs. Usually they were defeated.

  Hetty’s passion for poetry (the word, usually too strong for the taste it describes, here falls short of her feelings) had been discovered by her at school, and fostered there. Now it must be indulged in secret; or her aunt and cousin laughed, then spoke sharply. They did not like young girls to be brainy and different. Brainy, different girls, who were yet not brainy enough to have a career, were misfits. When, like Hetty, they were bad at parties, riding, tennis, skiing, flying, yachting and golf, they were a trial, thorns in the Spring flesh.

  Hetty turned to stare at The Eagles as the car passed; she always liked to look at that tall dark grey house in which lived Mr Wither and h
is sad-looking daughter. Hetty had never spoken to any of the Withers, but she liked to muse about the inside of their house and their life; she imagined it full of strange psychological complexities, like a very modern novel.

  The house, with its dreary flowerless shrubs and darkly curtained windows, was as full of romance to her as a mansion in a story by Chekov. It was so different from Grassmere, where everything was beastly new.

  I wish I could get away, thought Hetty wistfully as the car swung into the station yard, and live in a house like The Eagles, where it’s peaceful, and life is full of a muted, melancholy beauty.

  ‘Hetty! Your handbag!’ exclaimed Mrs Spring.

  The chauffeur bent and carefully picked it from the gutter.

  CHAPTER IV

  When Viola had been at The Eagles four days, Mr Wither made another attempt to bring off the little talk, and this time he succeeded.

  His den commanded a view of the little library across the hall, and by sitting with the door half-open in a ghastly draught he had discovered that Viola went to the library every day after lunch to choose a book.

  She made no attempt to organize her days at The Eagles; she went about bored and miserable, and half the time Mr Wither (whose own days were well organized in prowling after his money and bothering Major-General Breis-Cumwitt and wondering how much money other people had and how it was getting on and organizing his wife and daughters and seeing that nothing was wasted) did not know what she did with herself. But for three days now he had seen her go to the library and stand for some time flicking over the pages of books and sometimes making a scornful little face which affronted Mr Wither very much, because it implied that the books in his library were not worth reading.

  On the fourth day Mr Wither gave her five minutes to get settled at her flicking and face-making, then he quietly got up from his chair and scuttled across the hall.

  ‘Oh!’ cried Viola, dropping My Dogs and Me by Millie Countess of Scatterby. ‘Oh, Mr Wither, how you made me jump!’

  ‘Choosing a book?’ inquired Mr Wither, with the smile he used when he wanted to lure people into doing something that they would dislike. ‘Well, there’s plenty of choice, plenty of choice. Getting along quite comfortably, eh? Settling down, and feeling quite at home?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr Wither,’ muttered Viola, staring at him and desperately remembering how Shirley had warned her not to let Old Therm get her down. Stand up to him, the old heel, had been Shirley’s advice.

  ‘Then how about our little talk?’ suggested he, moving temptingly towards the door, even as Pan, with one eye on a nervous nymph, might have waved invitingly at the distant woods.

  She gulped, muttered something, and followed him.

  She had never been in his den. It was frighteningly small, especially after Mr Wither had shut the door. He patted the gloomy arm-chair and apologized for the absence of the hellish one, ‘But it was such a warm day that a fire was hardly necessary, was it?’

  Viola nodded. To give herself courage she lolled back in the armchair, and this annoyed Mr Wither, because no one sprawling like that could possibly give proper attention to what he was going to say.

  ‘I am sure you know what I want to talk to you about,’ began Mr Wither in what was meant to be a cheerful tone but which only gave an alarmingly unnatural colour to his voice as though a fit were pending; at the same time he creaked forward and gazed at her with a fixed smile. ‘Money.’ He spoke the word reverently. ‘A little word, but a very important one.’

  Viola made a faint sound, gulped, and at last brought out, with her drowsy grey eyes wide as a kitten’s with alarm, ‘I can pay for myself.’

  ‘Ha! Ha!’ cried Mr Wither, patting her knee and shaking his head (though, in fact, why shouldn’t she? She ate far too much butter; and he was relieved to learn that she could pay for herself. But that could be gone into later.)

  ‘No, no. Of course, there is always a little difference in the housekeeping books when another mouth comes into an establishment, especially when that mouth is a young mouth, ha! ha! But the situation is not serious yet, Viola, ha, ha! No (though what you suggest is not at all a bad idea, and we might bear it in mind for the future), I did not want to talk to you about that. It is about your money. Theodore’s money.’ He lowered his voice and gazed glassily at her, as though at a sacred image. ‘How much have you, my dear?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I haven’t anything,’ giggled Viola, pulling out a Woolworth handkerchief and blowing her nose, while her suddenly brilliant grey eyes laughed at him above the coloured cotton.

  She was very frightened: but how Shirley would roar when she heard this story!

  ‘You haven’t anything?’

  Mr Wither was stunned. He gazed at her with his mouth open.

  ‘Yes. No, I mean. Well, I’ve got—’

  ‘Then what do you mean by saying that you could pay for yourself?’ interrupted Mr Wither. Perhaps she was playing a joke; a wicked, senseless joke, but still, a joke. People did, he knew.

  ‘Well, I was going to say that I could pay for myself for a bit.’

  ‘For a bit?’ muttered Mr Wither, shaking his head dazedly. ‘What bit? What do you mean?’

  ‘For a little while, I mean. Just for a bit. I’ve got twelve pounds.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I’ve got twelve pounds,’ she repeated, rather sulkily, staring into the huge black grate.

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where is it?’ demanded Mr Wither, for even twelve pounds was something, and it ought to be properly taken care of. A girl like Viola might have left it lying about – in the bathroom, the car, anywhere.

  ‘Upstairs.’

  ‘Where?’

  A tiny pause.

  ‘In my bag.’

  Mr Wither opened his lips, then pressed them tightly together. Then opened them.

  ‘Do you mean to tell me that twelve pounds is all the money you have left, out of the sum left to you by your father?’

  She nodded, still sulkily.

  ‘Yes, but he didn’t leave me much’

  ‘How much?’

  A longer pause.

  ‘How much did your father leave you, Viola? Come, you must tell me, you know. This is very serious.’

  ‘Fifty pounds.’

  ‘A year, you mean? Fifty pounds a year?’

  ‘No, just fifty pounds.’

  ‘But the – the establishment – the shop,’ cried Mr Wither. ‘I understood from my son that your father was part proprietor.’

  ‘Oh well, he did used to be, only he sold it to Mr Burgess. You see,’ her eyes filled with tears, ‘Dad was absolutely mad on amateur theatricals, and he did a lot for the Chesterbourne Players, putting in new lights and all kinds of things he did for them like that, and that’s how his money went. It took a long time, of course. Years. When I was a kid we were all right. I went to the High School; I stayed there till I was sixteen. Only I don’t think Dad had much head for business, he ought to have gone on the stage, we always said, and Mr Burgess is an old beast, everybody says so. Hard as they make them, Miss Catty – everybody says. And if you ask my opinion, I think he just cheated Dad.’

  She wiped her eyes, trembling.

  Mr Wither said nothing for a little while. Her tears embarrassed him, but he felt that they were only proper; he gave her time to recover her composure. This concession did not prevent him from being very seriously annoyed with her, and dismayed as well.

  Still, there was Teddy’s money; he had not yet heard about Teddy’s money. All might yet be well. The omens were not good, but Mr Wither thrust the omens from his mind. She might have meant only twelve pounds in cash.

  Presently he said,

  ‘And Theodore’s money? How much did my son leave you?’

  ‘Ninety pounds,’ she sighed.

  ‘A year, that is? Ninety pounds a year?’

  ‘No. In the bank, I mean.’

  ‘Is th
at all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But,’ cried Mr Wither in anguish, ‘for twenty years Theodore never earned less than five pounds a week, and I myself, for the past year, allowed him an additional eighty pounds a year! For the last year of his life, when he married you, he was earning seven pounds a week.’

  ‘Did he earn seven pounds a week?’ she asked. After a pause, ‘I used to wonder how much it was, but I never thought it was as much as that.’

  Mr Wither had nothing to say to this: he thought it quite proper that a wife should not know how much her husband earned.

  ‘But where did it all go?’ he cried, creaking forward and gazing at her with popping eyes. ‘What did he spend it on? He ought to have been able to save a hundred pounds a year. He never went anywhere. He was not gay, or wild. Surely you must know where it all went?’

  ‘Well, there was the rent, that was twenty-eight and sixpence a week, and he gave me thirty shillings for housekeeping, and there was the charwoman, and I had five shillings a week pocket money—’

  Too much, thought Mr Wither. Unnecessary.

  ‘… and there were his fares and lunches and hair tonics …’

  ‘Hair tonics?’ exclaimed Mr Wither. Were all his children insane on the subject of hair? Tina was always complaining about her hair and wanting to spend money on it, and now Theodore had apparently spent about four pounds a week on his.

  ‘Well, lotions, you know, and Rowland’s Macassar Oil and things. His hair was …’

  She stopped. Sometimes she was schoolgirlishly loyal to her husband’s memory, and such a scruple had overcome her now. It made her feel very sorry to remember that poor Teddy had worried about going bald (though she used to laugh about it with Shirley) and she did not see why his horrid old father should know everything. She was quite serious now; and did not feel like laughing any more.