Four Days' Wonder

by A. A. Milne

  Cook and Hilda and Alice were explaining vociferously. They had nothing to explain, save the fact that Miss Jenny had said she would be out to lunch, and had never come back again. For, like Mr. Watterson, they had read no papers.

  ‘Hubert,’ said Mrs. Watterson, ‘are you listening? Jenny went out yesterday morning and hasn’t come back.’

  Mr. Watterson was not listening. The name Auburn Lodge had called to him from the page opposite the leading articles, and he was reading about the death of Jane Latour . . .

  ‘Hubert!’

  ‘Yes, dear, I know.’ He went to his study.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Ring up the police.’

  He shut the door behind him. Alice’s triumphant eye caught Cook’s reluctant one. ‘What,’ said Alice’s eye, ‘did I tell you?’

  IV

  Mr. Archibald Fenton lunched, as usual, at his club. After luncheon he found himself involved in one of those unending literary discussions, whose like he had set rolling so often and so happily in the past. Now he found them embarrassing. A man with a Fentonian reputation, particularly if he be still an occasional critic, has to be careful. As a novelist he could have afforded, and would have preferred, to be generous; to leave behind him those who would say to each other: ‘What I like about Fenton is that he’s always so enthusiastic about other novelists.’ As an occasional critic in the monthlies his one care was not to commit himself in private to anything which might be said more cleverly in public. For instance, Blair Sturge’s name was mentioned. Awkward. Sturge’s book was coming out next month, and Fenton had not yet decided what he was going to say about it. It depended upon certain unknown quantities, one of them being, of course, the actual quality of the book. He might use that phrase, which had come into his mind the other day, about ‘the pen of a highly certificated governess who had just learnt the facts of sex’— supposing, of course, that the new book was sufficiently like the previous one to justify it. On the other hand, Sturge and Ramsbotham were bosom friends—which made it all very difficult . . .

  He temporized. He temporized so successfully that it was teatime before the discussion died out. The others thereupon ordered tea. Fenton felt that it was up to him, as one who had brought the smell of hops back to the English novel, to do something hearty with a tankard of beer. Never having liked beer very much, he felt depressed afterwards. London was a beastly place. Where was he dining to-night? He looked at his engagement book, and found that he wasn’t. Hell!

  He turned over a page or two, and saw that he had a blank week in front of him, except for next Tuesday when he was dining with the Moberleys. Oh God, he had forgotten all about that!

  It was at a cocktail-party. Well, what did people do at cocktail-parties? How many hundred books had he read—well, reviewed— about cocktail-parties, in which people—— And Good Heavens, it was only a kiss at most, and where else could you put your hand? Really, for a modern young girl and an art-student at that . . . And she had been absolutely all over him until that moment.

  Damn Cynthia Moberley!

  He tried to think of one or two good things for a short, stout man to say to a girl who had slapped his face the last time they’d met . . . There weren’t any.

  He tried to think of one or two good things for a man to say, who was reviewing a novel in which a young girl slapped a man’s face just because he had kissed her . . . He thought of several. Delightfully contemptuous, ironical things . . .

  It looked as if life were too many-sided to be pinned down to any however realistic novel. Face-slapping in the nineteen-thirties! Who would have guessed it?

  No, he couldn’t dine with the Moberleys. That was certain.

  He had a renewed internal awareness of what had once been a tankard of beer, and decided again that London was beastly. Why not leave it, and go down to the cottage? And really get on with the book? Authors were allowed these sudden decisions, and they always made a good paragraph for one’s publishers. He would write to Mrs. Moberley. He would get away from London this evening . . .

  It was then that Mr. Archibald Fenton remembered about the watch. Oh well, that was all right. He would pawn it now on the way home, and send the money on to Miss Fairbrother, and tell her to take a fortnight’s holiday. He took out his pocket-book. Luckily, for the bank would be shut by now, he had enough. Two five-pound notes, and three ten in addition. And of course, if he sent Nancy a cheque, he would have the watch money.

  He went off to find a pawnbroker, well pleased with himself as a man of sudden moods; a man also, when necessary, of decision. He returned to the house in Bloomsbury, rang up his housekeeper at the cottage, and wrote three letters.

  To Fanny at Bognor Regis he wrote:

  ‘Dear Fanny, Hope you all arrived safely. Chapter Five is sticking rather, and I’m just off to the cottage for a fortnight to get it cleared up.

  Archie.’

  He read the letter through and added: ‘Love to you all.’

  Fanny read the letter and said to herself: ‘I wonder what that means.’ And then aloud: ‘No, darling, not marmalade and jam.’

  To Mrs. Andrew Moberley in Seymour Street he wrote:

  ‘Dear Mrs. Moberley, Will you ever forgive me? Well, yes, I am encouraged to think that you might, because you too have the artistic temperament, and know what slaves it makes of us. I have got to get down to the country, away from everybody, and wrestle with the new book in solitude. It is now or never. You know how that can be, as few women would know. Am I wrong in putting my work first, even above courtesy to one who has shown so much kindness to me? Somehow I feel that I am not; and that you will understand why, very regretfully, I ask you to excuse me from your so charmingly hospitable table on Tuesday.

  ‘Yours most sincerely,

  ‘Archibald Fenton.’

  He read the letter through, and regretted the unfortunate assonance of ‘hospitable table’. But he was damned if he would write the thing out again.

  Mrs. Moberley read the letter and passed it to her daughter. Cynthia read it and said: ‘Oh well, as long as he doesn’t wrestle with me in solitude, I don’t mind.’

  Mr. Fenton began his third letter. To Miss Nancy Fairbrother in Elm Park Mansions he wrote:

  ‘Dear Miss Fairbrother, I must get away into the country and work on that chapter by myself. It is really the crucial chapter of the book. I enclose a cheque for £15 10s.—i.e. £12 10s. for your sister’s watch, plus a week’s salary. I suggest that you take a fortnight’s holiday, on half-salary (as you have had no time to arrange anything) and perhaps in these circumstances you wouldn’t mind attending to my letters, which I shall send on to you, say twice a week, with instructions. I had a job to get the £12 10s. and I doubt if anybody else would have got more than a tenner, so I hope Joyce will be properly grateful to you. You can tell her from me to be more careful in the future! Look after Miss Nancy Fairbrother while I am away, and don’t let her get into mischief!

  ‘Yours, A. F.’

  He read the letter through and added: ‘P.S. I sold the watch outright, as you said you wanted this.’

  Nancy read the letter, and said: ‘Thank the Lord he’s out of the way. Now I can really do something.’

  Chapter Nine

  Arrival of Naomi Fenton

  I

  Jenny had never slept out before, but she knew all about it. Lady Barbara, escaping in the guise of a boy from an unwelcome marriage, had spent many a night in a hay-stack; so had Ned Tregellis, escaping from an unwelcome prison in the guise of a girl. Both of them had spoken enthusiastically of the experience. ‘By’r lady,’ had said young Tregellis, ‘but it shall go ill with me if ever again I spend the night within the confines of four walls’; and (on other occasion) Lady Barbara had declared: ‘An I cannot pass the night beneath God’s canopy, I vow I will not bed me at all.’ It would have been convenient, th
is being so, if they had married each other, but unfortunately they were in different books. Jenny, who had been kept awake by a night-jar who went to bed at two, and, when at last she fell asleep, woken up by a blue-bottle who started the day at four, was not so enthusiastic. Long before the farmer thought of getting up, she was down from her haystack, feeling uncomfortable and unrefreshed, and telling herself that she supposed one got used to it.

  Still she had done it. She had slept out— alone. How many girls could say that? And here she was, by the side of her river again, a new day beginning. However tickly and wriggly she felt, she had this confidence in herself to sustain her. She was doing a very exciting thing.

  Dare she bathe? She would never feel comfortable again unless she did. Here was a little bay in the stream where the banks went steeply down to a gravelled floor. Nobody would be up so early, nobody was about. Should she? She looked all round her. She was alone. She scrambled down the bank and took off her knapsack, shoes and dress; put the towel ready. Now she was in her pyjamas, and people often went about in pyjamas. She washed. Now for it. She hurried up the bank and took a last look round. All safe. Down again. One, two, three—go! . . . She was down on her back in the water, the water was playing round her and over her, the sun was coming through the alders at her, birds were singing above her—By’r lady, but it shall go ill with me, an ever I lave myself again within the confines of a porcelain bath.

  She lay there, exulting in the fact that it was she, the authentic Jenny, who had so escaped from Miss Windell and the world. But it was cold. She let the water go right over her head, and sat up with a gasp, and came out. In a little while she was dried and dressed. She sat on the bank in the sun, munching chocolate happily. Now she was comfortable, inside and out, and ready for anything. Oh, Hussar, isn’t it fun? Aren’t I different? Soon she was walking on again and wondering about breakfast.

  It must still have been an hour before her usual breakfast-time when she met the Painter.

  ‘Oh!’ said Jenny to herself, ‘somebody sketching.’

  She would have passed behind him with perhaps a ‘Good-morning’, but he spoke to her, and his voice was nicer than the Tramp’s.

  He said, without looking up: ‘Are you an artist’s model, by any chance?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ said Jenny, and stopped for a moment.

  ‘Dear, dear, how very unlucky one is.’

  ‘Did you want an artist’s model?’ said Jenny, an idea suddenly coming to her.

  ‘Well, I did rather.’

  ‘What for? I mean what as?’ She would have to earn money somehow, soon.

  ‘A nymph or water-sprite. I suppose you wouldn’t care to be a nymph or water-sprite? In other words a naiad?’

  ‘What do they wear?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the Painter.

  ‘Oh, then I’m afraid I couldn’t,’ said Jenny reluctantly.

  ‘I thought you probably couldn’t.’

  ‘Would an artist’s model?’

  ‘I think so. If I asked her nicely.’

  ‘It seems funny,’ mused Jenny. And then in explanation: ‘I suppose you get used to it.’

  ‘That’s it. We both get used to it.’

  ‘How funny.’

  ‘Well, looking at it in another way, clothes are funny.’

  ‘Well, it depends how you look at it.’

  ‘That’, said the Painter, ‘is really what I mean.’

  Jenny was silent for a little, and then said: ‘I couldn’t possibly, could I?’

  ‘No,’ said the Painter, ‘not possibly.’

  ‘All the same, it seems different in the open air somehow. I mean it’s like saying “Will you marry me?” and you say “Oh, I don’t think I could,” and it’s quite all right asking, and it’s quite all right saying “No,” only it just happens you can’t.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I’m so sorry. Do you mind if I sit down and watch you?’

  ‘Not a bit. Do you know anything about painting?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  He went on painting, and Jenny went on watching him.

  ‘What a lot of things one doesn’t know anything about,’ she said.

  ‘Practically everything.’

  ‘Do you live near here?’

  He dabbed with his brush over a shoulder.

  ‘I’m at the farm there. A mile or two back.’

  ‘Oh! How funny!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I slept on their haystack last night. Do you think they’d mind?’

  ‘I am sure they would have been delighted, if they had known about it.’

  ‘I thought perhaps they wouldn’t mind.’

  The Painter, looking in a depressed sort of way from his canvas to the river, and back again, said: ‘Is that how you live?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘On haystacks.’

  ‘Oh, no! I’m hiking,’ said Jenny proudly.

  ‘Just how does one do that? I’ve often wondered.’

  ‘Well, you walk about with a knapsack——’

  ‘What we used to call walking?’

  ‘Well, yes. And you sleep in haystacks and things——’

  ‘What we used to call sleeping out?’

  ‘Yes. Well—well, that’s about all, I suppose.’

  ‘I see . . . I’m glad I know at last. And you’re doing all this entirely by yourself?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s rather fun.’

  ‘It must be. What do you call yourself when you talk to yourself?’

  ‘Do you mean, what is my name?’

  ‘Well, it comes to that, I suppose.’

  Jenny stopped herself from saying ‘Jenny Windell’ just in time.

  ‘Gloria Harris,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t seriously want to be called Miss Harris,’ said the Painter, after considering this for a little.

  ‘Oh no!’ agreed Jenny eagerly.

  ‘I thought not. If it comes to that, I’m not so set on Gloria as some.’

  ‘Isn’t it funny,’ said Jenny, ‘I used to think it was a lovely name, and now it seems rather silly.’

  ‘What did they call you at school?’

  ‘I never went to school.’

  ‘A pity. That might have given us a wider choice.’

  Suddenly Jenny remembered that she had two handkerchiefs with ‘N’ on them. Supposing she dropped one!

  ‘Gloria Harris isn’t the whole name,’ she said.

  ‘I thought it couldn’t be.’

  ‘It’s Gloria Naomi Harris. I’m really Naomi. I mean to special friends.’

  ‘That’s much better. And now,’ said the Painter, ‘although you have expressed no interest in the subject whatever, I shall tell you my name.’

  ‘Oh, I do want to know. Really I do,’ said Jenny earnestly. ‘What is it, please?’

  ‘Derek Fenton.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Jenny.

  ‘Quite so.’

  ‘Are you related to Archibald Fenton?’

  ‘No. He’s related to me.’

  ‘I mean——’

  ‘It so happens that we are brothers. I’, explained the Painter, ‘am the nice one.’

  ‘How funny.’

  ‘Not if you’ve seen Archibald,’ said the Painter.

  ‘I mean it’s funny because——’ Jenny stopped. She couldn’t be sure whether Gloria Naomi Harris knew Nancy Fairbrother or not. Perhaps safer not. ‘I mean, well, everybody knows Archibald Fenton. I mean A Flock of Sheep, and everything.’

  ‘Have you read A Flock of Sheep, asked Derek.

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  ‘You must tell me about it.’

  ‘You mean you haven’t read it?’
said Jenny, in astonishment.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, but oughtn’t you to have?’

  ‘Well, he hasn’t seen this picture,’ Derek pointed out.

  ‘It’s funny,’ said Jenny. ‘Two of the people in the bus were talking about it only yesterday.’

  ‘About this picture?’ asked Derek, surprised.

  ‘Oh, no, I mean about the book.’

  ‘This picture’, said Derek impressively, ‘will be talked about in taxi-cabs.’

  It was funny, thought Jenny, that they hadn’t really seen each other yet. She had been going to pass behind him; she had sat down behind him; and never once had he turned round to her. She was looking now at the back of his sunburnt neck; he was looking from the picture to the river, from the river to the picture, to the palette, to the picture, to the river again; throwing remarks to her, as it were, over his shoulder. Occasionally she saw the line of his jaw, brown and hard. His hair was very short at the back—not at all what you expect of a painter, but perhaps he wasn’t a very good painter—and it went to a point in what was really rather a fascinating way. It was funny to have lived all these years—eighteen—and never to have seen the way a man’s hair went at the back before.

  ‘You’re much younger than your brother, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t you ever read his books?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘In case I might like them.’

  ‘But—but—that’s a reason for reading them, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, you see, I don’t like Archibald.’

  ‘Oh!’ She thought this over for a little, and then said ‘Why?’ It seemed so funny not to like your brother.

  ‘Well, there are a lot of people in the world, and you can’t like them all. So I . . . don’t like Archibald.’

  Jenny tried to think of any other brothers she had known who hadn’t liked each other. She could only think of Jacob and Esau.

  ‘Did he rob you of your inheritance?’’ she asked.

  ‘Well, I suppose he did in a way.’

  ‘How? Or don’t you like talking about it?’