With deep sympathy his eyes met those of Faithful. . . . Faithful, poor fellow, was doubtless enduring his first Spring Wash, but, poor fellow, were he to perpetrate matrimony he would doubtless have to endure many more. . . . “These little upsets occur at this time,” he told him soothingly. “Have you any idea what started it?”
“It seems that Joyeuce has spoilt Grace’s best petticoat,” said Faithful miserably. “But something much more dreadful must surely have happened to cause all this terrible lamentation.”
“Probably not,” said Canon Leigh. “Well, Grace? You have my permission to speak.”
Grace would have spoken with or without his permission; she was boiling over with indignant speech. “I told Joyeuce to leave the ironing to me,” she burst out. “She has no gift for ironing. She is so dreamy, so absent-minded, that she cannot keep her attention upon the matter in hand. She lets the iron get too hot. She neglects to test it. Yet when I came in from the garden with the towels from Romulus and Remus I found that Joyeuce had already embarked upon the ironing and ruined my best petticoat.”
“That will do, Grace,” said her father sternly. “Come with me to my study. And you, Faithful, may come too.”
He led the way back to his study, placed the cane in a corner with a sigh of thankfulness that it had after all not been necessary to apply any Christian discipline, and sat down in his chair, motioning the two to stand before him. He had, as yet, made no effort to deal with the domestic situation revealed to him by Nicolas, but he had been waiting for his opportunity, and now it was here.
Grace was crying now. The words “come to my study,” reviving as they did painful memories of early youth, were always enough to start her off. And she was sorry that she had made Joyeuce cry. She loved Joyeuce, even though her incompetence drove her distracted. And she was afraid her father had discovered about her and Faithful and was about to forbid the banns. She drew nearer to Faithful, clutching him with one hand while with the other she tried to stem the cascade of tears that rolled down her rosy cheeks.
What a couple of children, thought Canon Leigh, and yet how mature they had lately become. Faithful was looking at him unflinchingly, his face wearing that strange expression of peace that was his special beauty. Canon Leigh remembered that he had behind him a record of experience and endurance that was not possessed by many men twice his age; he had already been tested and not found wanting. And Grace, though she cried like a child, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes and sniffing dolorously, had already the figure of a woman and the competence of an experienced housewife. What had they found in each other, he wondered, that had made them indispensable each to the other? That was a question, he knew, that could not be answered. Not even lovers themselves can tell you why the one particular person is the only person in the world.
“And so you want to be married?” he asked quietly.
Faithful nodded his huge head like a top-heavy owl and Grace whispered childishly, “Yes, please.”
“It grieved me,” said Canon Leigh, “to hear of your hopes from Nicolas de Worde and not from yourselves.”
Faithful explained. They had been afraid to anger him. They had been afraid he would not realize that they were old enough to contemplate such things.
“I quite realize your maturity,” their father assured them solemnly, but with a suppressed twinkle. “You are now fourteen and fifteen, a man and woman grown and of marriageable age; though of course,” he added with relief, “it will be many years before you are able to marry. But I gather that you are willing to wait. I gather that Grace feels more than equal to taking Joyeuce’s place should she decide to marry and leave us.”
But at this Grace showed that she too, beneath her surface confidence, had a portion of the Leigh humility. Her tears, that had been checked by delight at her father’s unexpected reasonableness, brimmed over again and she hung her head. “I can never take Joyeuce’s place,” she whispered. “I can cook and wash and iron better than Joyeuce, but you and the children will never love me as you love her.”
Her father stretched out an arm and pulled her upon his knee. “Dear little Grace, we shall,” he assured her. “You are your mother’s daughter. You have her lovely competence, as Joyeuce has her gift of insight. As the years go on Joyeuce will grow more practical and you will grow in sympathy, until both of you reach the full stature of the perfect woman that your mother was.”
But Grace, shaking her head dolefully, had her doubts. One was born a certain sort of person, she thought, and though by ceaseless struggle one might become as nice as that sort of person ever is, one could never become as nice as a nicer sort of person. Never, she knew, would she attain to that sensitiveness of mind and spirit that people loved in Joyeuce, and never, never, she was quite sure, would Joyeuce be the slightest use at ironing. . . . At the thought of her burned petticoat she wept afresh.
This new outbreak of grief in the beloved was too much for Faithful. Though it was not considered correct to be demonstrative before parents he could not contain himself. He took her hand and kissed it, holding it against his cheek. “No girl has ever been loved as I love you,” he told her solemnly. “I don’t know how to say it, but if I did know how to say it I should not love you so much.”
Grace raised her head from her father’s shoulder and looked at her inarticulate lover. Her father intercepted their look, a look of such profound trust that he was humbled by it. They would be an undemonstrative couple, these two, and they would always seem rather comical to others, but he thought they had as great a chance of happiness as any couple he had ever known. “Kneel down, children,” he commanded them. “I have not yet given you my blessing.”
2.
He continued to deal with the havoc created by the Spring Wash. Having blessed Grace and Faithful he made his way to the kitchen. Here he found Dorothy Goatley and the twins reviving themselves with large slices of plum cake and a draught of ale. Their eyes and noses were still red but they were chartering happily. He perceived that food for the body had proved so restorative that spiritual comfort was not now required. . . . In his experience it was often so. . . . He paused but to inquire the whereabouts of Joyeuce and left them to find her in the garden.
She was sitting on the grassy bank by the apple trees, the little boys cuddled up one on each side of her, gazing mournfully at the family underclothes that still fluttered in the spring wind.
“Still grieving for that petticoat, Joyeuce?” he asked her, sitting down beside her and lifting Joseph on to his lap.
“Not for the petticoat,” said Joyeuce with trembling lips, “Grace has heaps of petticoats, but that she should treat me so. She is always like that now. Always trying to push me out.”
“Not trying to push you out, Joyeuce,” said her father, “but trying to grow up. She cannot help herself, for her domestic competence seems to me so excessive that it must surely be a gift of God, and not allowed full use it is turning sour within her and proving slightly inconvenient to ourselves.” He pointed to the snowdrops at their feet, spearing their way up through the winter earth. “Look how they are shooting up. Once they were bulbs hidden in the earth, now they must be leaves and flowers. They cannot help themselves. Always we must push on.”
“But not with unkindness,” murmured Joyeuce.
“That cannot always be helped. If one hesitates to pass on the other who comes behind to take her place must knock into her. That’s unavoidable. Is it not time, Joyeuce, that you yourself passed on?”
Joyeuce gazed at him with astonished, wide-open eyes that were the color of rain because she was so unhappy. “I—pass on?” she asked stupidly.
“Do you not want a lover, Joyeuce? I loved your mother, and born of love as you were it is natural that you should travel towards love again. You would make a good wife, above all to a gay and prosperous man who needs your perception of invisible things to be, as it were, the unseen life o
f his happy attributes that will give to them eternal value. What did such a one say to me? ‘Her love is to me what light is to the sun and perfume to the rose; I am valueless without it.’ I have so often wished, Joyeuce,” lied her father blandly, “that you could marry Nicolas de Worde.”
Joyeuce looked at him again, and gasped. She perceived that he knew all about it. Then she shyly stroked his sleeve, looking down at little Joseph curled up sleepily in his lap, and at Diccon who had run away from her and was pulling Pippit the unfortunate little greyhound round and round an apple tree by his tail. Her father understood what she would have said had humility not silenced her.
“I shall miss you unspeakably,” he told her. “No other daughter can ever take your place, no other sister will ever be to the little boys what you have been. But you will not be lost to us, Joyeuce. You will not be going to the land beyond the sunset; you will only be going to Gloucestershire; I will visit you and you will visit me. I think it right that you should pass on. It is a rule of life.”
She gave a shuddering sigh, half of happiness and half of pain, and sat looking down at her hands clasped in her lap. “So it was all for nothing,” she whispered.
Canon Leigh looked down at Joseph, who was now asleep in his arms, his fair head fitting into the hollow of his father’s shoulder as though it had always been there. “Your sacrifice? I don’t think so. I have never yet heard of a death to self that was not followed sooner or later by a re-birth. I seem to remember Nicolas saying, on Christmas Eve, that he had gone to the Crosse Inn because he was unhappy. If you had not made him unhappy would he ever have found Joseph?”
No more words were needed. They sat together in a companionable silence and understanding more satisfying than any they had ever known; until an outbreak of yelps, barks, roars and shrieks down among the apple trees told them that Diccon, this time, had gone a bit too far with Pippit, and they must fly to the rescue before murder was done.
3.
When Canon Leigh returned to his study the Spring Wash was once more in full swing, but progressing this time in a spirit of such amity and politeness that he murmured to himself the wise words of Master Richard Edwardes, “Now have I found the proverb true to prove, the falling out of faithful friends is the renewing of love.”
He picked up his book, sank thankfully into his chair and would once more have slipped from literature to peaceful contemplation and repose had not a murmur of voices beyond his window disturbed him. . . . The College this time. . . . “Perdition take the College!” was his unbecoming thought as he opened his eyes and looked out.
The Dean and Nicolas stood together in the sunshine and judging by the tones of their voices, the Dean’s sharp with reproof and Nicolas’s honey-sweet and pathetic in the frank acknowledgment of guilt, the Dean during a visit of inquiry into Nicolas’s intellectual progress had met with very little satisfaction. But Canon Leigh was happy to see that the attitude of his future son in-law was all that could be wished; his comely head was bent in true humility and his broad shoulders drooped under the burden of his shame. . . . But the fingers that held a book behind his back were pattering upon it as though practicing the notes of some merry tune.
The interview ended and the Dean strode back towards the Deanery, the swirl of his black gown expressing outrage and the set of his shoulders registering extreme annoyance. Nicolas remained where he was, but now he held his book in front of him as though it were a musical instrument and performed a difficult trill very diligently with the fingers of his right hand.
Canon Leigh thrust his head out of the window. “Nicolas!” he commanded.
Nicolas swung round, bowed and smiled with the utmost charm, and presented himself beneath the window.
“And for what purpose,” demanded Canon Leigh with some asperity, “did you conceive that books were created?”
“They serve so many purposes, sir,” said Nicolas with a most disarming grin. “I have been writing a song to sing to Joyeuce and just at that moment I was trying to set it to music.”
Canon Leigh was partly mollified. “Well, well,” he sighed. “You will now, Nicolas, find your Joyeuce in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.” At this such a light of joy broke over Nicolas’s face that he was instantly completely mollified. “Come in now, my son,” he cried cordially. “You will find her in the kitchen.”
“Propose to her in the kitchen, amongst the family wash? By cock and pie, no!” cried Nicolas in powerful indignation. “That would not please Joyeuce at all. She is romantic. I know a better way than that.”
“Find your own way,” said Canon Leigh. “Doubtless you know best.” And he withdrew from the window in that humble frame of mind which, in these days, he was becoming more and more convinced was the right one for age to adopt when confronted with all-conquering youth.
4.
What with emotion and the Spring Wash Joyeuce was utterly worn out by the time she went to bed. Yet when she had slipped into her place in the four-poster, and lain down beside the sleeping little boys, who lay as always curled up together like two puppies, with Baa clasped in Joseph’s arms and Tinker festooned over Diccon’s feet, she knew that she was not going to sleep. She was too tired—tired as only the Spring Wash could make her—almost too tired to realize that in just ten minutes’ talk with her father the whole direction of her life had been changed. I ought to be gloriously happy, she told herself, turning over on her right side to ease her aching back. Why am I not gloriously happy? So often, she thought, turning over on to her left side because the right one had proved quite unsatisfactory, the moments that we had expected to be joy-giving are not, while those of whom nothing is expected suddenly present us with some heavenly gift. I am going to marry Nicolas, she whispered dolefully, and flopped over on to her back because lying on her side was giving her the stomach-ache. But was she? Did he still love her? Since that day in the Meadows he had been a gay and a good friend to her, as she had asked him to be, but he had said no word of love. Had she done what she had then tried to do, and killed it in him? At the thought that what she had tried to bring about might really have come about desolation swept over her in a sickening flood. Surely it was one of the greatest misfortunes of human nature that what one wanted to happen, by the time it did happen, one didn’t want to happen any more. If Nicolas did not now want her after all she thought she would die of grief. She began to sob, the trickling tears making stiff wet tracks from the corners of her eyes to her ears, her hands clasped childishly on the place where the pain was, biting her lips that she might not cry out loud and wake the children. It is nothing but the Spring Wash, she whispered, as she felt herself sucked down and down into an abyss of misery. There is nothing the matter with me but the Spring Wash. It is because I am so tired that I feel so dreadful. In the morning it will all be different.
But faced with a night of pain and sleeplessness, with every problem looming up in the darkness at three times its normal size, it is hard to realize that the dawn will ever come. She turned over again on to her face, lying on the pain to discourage it. When will it be morning? she whispered, and fell to thinking how stupid it was that one had to work so hard just to keep the human body clothed, clean and fed. . . . Sewing. Washing. . . . Cooking. . . . By the time they were finished with, one was too tired to live. It was very silly. She began to sob afresh.
There was a soft rustling of the bushes under her window, those bushes where the buds were already showing faint little tongues of green, thrust forth to taste the air, and then some soft faint notes of music. Whatever bird was that? Surely it was a most peculiar bird. Joyeuce raised her face from her sodden pillow and listened. The faint bird notes sorted themselves and became a tune, sounding for all the world as though a troubadour thrummed very softly on the strings of a viol, and Joyeuce twisted right round and sat bolt upright, her tears stemmed as though a tap had been turned off and her pain as utterly forgotten as though her stomach
had vanished into thin air; so prompt and beneficial in its working is the medicine of a stimulated mind.
She crept to the bottom of the bed, parted the curtains and peeped out into the room. There was moonlight and starlight tonight and it lay bathed in a lovely soft radiance. She could see the flowers and trees in the tapestries, that in the moonlight had the mysterious color of flowers blooming in a dream, and the dark floor stretching before her full of shifting lights and inky shadows like a fairy tarn at midnight. Surely it had been the rustling of those flowers and trees, and the lapping of that water, that she had heard, and not the bushes beneath the window? She smiled, because just for the moment the fancy had seemed reality, and like a light flashing suddenly into her tired mind came the thought that the most ordinary things, seen from a new angle, can take on all the colors of romance; they have many facets, and some people have the power to turn them about and see the one that reflects the laughter of God. . . . As Nicolas could do.
A voice singing drove all thought from her mind and pulled it back into fairyland, where there is no speculation but only a lovely wonder. Who was singing, and was it to her he sang? The lovely voice, not very strong but crystal clear in tone and articulation, reached her effortlessly and seemed to come from the trees in the tapestry. What fairy lover was hiding behind them? She sat back and listened, greedily gathering in every word to store in her memory as though from the trees gold pieces were flung to her to catch. . . . For never before had a fairy lover sung to her in the moonlight. . . . Now she was rich indeed.