by E. H. Young
This was her first experience of the kind. Without brothers, with parents who, for their different reasons, did not encourage social exchanges, she had been almost as segregated as a nun and her feelings, abnormal only in their suddenness and consequent intensity, gave her a sense of guilt, secret and delightful. She began to find her father very dull and the animation he was accustomed to seeing and still saw in her face as she listened, now came of an almost spiteful amusement at his innocence. Did he really think she cared about his views of Pope as a poet, illustrated by extracts read in the special, sonorous voice he assumed for verse? She hardly heard what he said. She was sure her mother was not listening, either, and her father addressed what was practically an empty room. But he must not know it. She thanked him and slipped away as though reluctantly. She had work to do.
“This place suits Flora very well,” Mr. Blackett announced. “I was told we should find the climate enervating, but I have never seen her look better.”
“She is growing quite attractive,” Mrs. Blackett said, looking down at the sewing with which her plump, pretty hands were busy.
“Attractive?” Mr. Blackett got up and looked into the Square and then Mrs. Blackett looked at him, silhouetted against the light. He did not like that word; he did not like its implications. He had an unacknowledged but profound distaste for any thought of Flora involved in courtship and marriage. There was a sort of indecency in it and, in connection with this repugnance, he had set himself against her first ambition to be a doctor. He would not hear of it. It was an unsuitable profession for a woman. She must take her degree and qualify as an almoner. So she would use all her best qualities and be a truly useful member of society. And now, when all arrangements had been made for her to go to Radstowe University, he began to wonder whether it was wise. It was that word which had upset him and the sight of two young men going past his window pointed his indecision. If they had been walking quickly, with purpose, as he always walked himself, he might not have noticed them. It was the leisurely swing of their movements, their loose tweed jackets, their bare heads, much, from a different angle, of what Flora saw in them, that made him turn to his wife, half angrily, as though she were responsible for their appearance but, before he could speak, she said quietly, looking down again, “She is very much like you.”
This remark astonished him. It was of a personal kind so unusual from her that he did not know what to do with it. It made him momentarily uneasy; then he laughed and said, “Well, Bertha, I think that is the first compliment you have paid me since you did me the honour of marrying me. Do you mean that Flora is like me in appearance?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you! And in character?”
Now she dropped her work and faced him fairly. She seldom did that. She was almost as shy as when he married her, still, it seemed to him, a little abashed by so much intimacy, and he found a recurring piquancy in a relationship for which he gave some credit to his own skill.
“In character?” he repeated hopefully.
“More than she realizes,” was Mrs. Blackett’s odd reply.
He did not know what to do with that remark either and he did not speak of his doubts about the University. He shrank from giving them expression; indeed, he had to put them from his mind. His plans for Flora were not changed and what, he asked himself soon afterwards, would have been the sense in changing them? Here, almost on his doorstep were just such people as he wished her, the whole family, to avoid and Bertha had been to blame for breaking the crust of politeness which was more than enough to offer them.
He liked to take a walk on a Saturday afternoon with Flora for his companion, across the bridge, pausing there to look leftwards at the spreading city far below, the tangled waterways, the warehouses, the ships, the medley of houses and trees lifted to the heights of Upper Radstowe, and on the right where the gorge narrowed, to see the river sluggishly making for the Channel between banks of glistening mud on which was reflected, now and then, the white swoop of the gulls; or, at high tide, to hear the hooting of a siren and watch the ship coming slowly round the bend. It was a scene of which he did not tire for it was never twice alike. The form, the opaqueness, the colour or absence of clouds had their way with it, darkening or lightening the trees on the farther cliff and the splashes of red and yellow rock on the nearer one. And his pleasure in all this was increased because he had won it for himself by his energy, by subjugating his inclinations to necessity where many another man would have found an easy excuse for failure. Then, stepping off the bridge, he found himself in another county where the air was changed, still soft but with a secret wildness in it even before he had left the houses and found himself in open country. Rosamund Fraser could have told him that he had farther to go to reach it than she had needed to travel in her young days. There were wire fences now, and warnings against trespassers, barring the fields where once she had walked freely. The wide, rough track edged with brambles and bracken from which she had seen the Channel and the pale hills of Wales had been smoothed into a road and there were houses instead of open country where she and her father had often eaten their picnic lunch on summer Sundays. But Mr. Blackett was very well pleased with what he found. This was better than a park in a London suburb and, humbly, he carried in his pocket three small volumes from which he might fill the gaps in his knowledge of birds and trees and flowers. Hitherto, his walks had been for exercise, for the sake of his slim figure; now he had the opportunity for new, delightful interests too and he was anxious for his children to get them earlier than had been possible for him. But on this particular Saturday, Flora flagged.
They cut their walk short and returned to find a shabby car outside their house and confusion within, Mrs. Blackett on the drawing-room sofa with a wrenched ankle—she had tripped on the iron staircase that led into the garden—attended by Mrs. Fraser and Miss Spanner, who had been fetched by Rhoda Blackett,—and a man at the sight of whom Mr. Blackett halted in his solicitous stride towards his wife.
“Did you notice that?” Miss Spanner said afterwards to Rosamund. “There was something queer there.”
“There’s something queer wherever you look,” Rosamund retorted. “It must be that cast in your eye.”
There had certainly been no pleasure in Mr. Blackett’s surprise. He did not like his wife’s cousin, a man entirely dependent for attention on his limp and his showy facial wound. He must have been amazingly inconspicuous before he was thus labelled as a hero and the label was flagrant and most disfiguring. The wound had barely healed when, just out of hospital, he had appeared at the Vicarage the very day before Mr. Blackett’s wedding. This, of course, was a great opportunity for display, but it was not fair to the bride who vexed Mr. Blackett for the first and, he hoped, the last time, by the tenderness and care she lavished on Piers Lindsay. He must have the most comfortable chair, he must go to bed early, a special place must be kept for him in church. If he had been the bridegroom she could hardly have been more affectionate, and Mr. Blackett did not properly recover from his annoyance until he and Bertha were in Florence whence Flora got her name and where she had been conceived. Mr. Blackett had seen Lindsay again at the funeral of Bertha’s father. He had actually been in the Vicarage for a week, waiting with Bertha for his old uncle’s death, but Mr. Blackett had not been aware of this. He had simply noted Lindsay’s liking for appearing at ceremonies and since then he had never heard and rarely thought of him. And here he was—and Mr. Blackett could not imagine where he came from—with spectators again provided in the shape of Mrs. Fraser and Miss Spanner. These two had slipped away, however, before Mr. Blackett could put his surprise into words and his displeasure into his smile. It was difficult to distinguish Lindsay’s own smile from a grimace of pain. The left side of his face was drawn up by a scar running to his temple, his right profile was normal with half a firm mouth and a straight nose, while, seen in full face, he looked like the true clown, with humour overcomin
g sadness. Thus he seemed to have three faces, to be disconcertingly three men who constantly changed places.
“It was fortunate for me but unlucky for Piers that he should arrive just now,” Mrs. Blackett said from the sofa.
“And Rhoda’s fetching a doctor,” said Mary. She was twelve years old, the youngest of Mr. Blackett’s daughters and, knowing he liked to think of her as his baby, she drew down her mouth piteously. “Because perhaps Mother’s leg’s broken,” she said, ready to cry.
“Nonsense!” Lindsay said briskly, displaying, Mr. Blackett thought, an undue familiarity with his wife’s ankle. “Nothing broken, but a nasty wrench.”
“Are you in pain, Bertha?” Mr. Blackett remembered to ask. “And what doctor?”
Mrs. Fraser, it appeared, had recommended her own and after he had been and gone and the family sat down to a belated tea, Piers Lindsay had still offered no explanation of his presence. He was remarkably sure of his welcome, Mr. Blackett thought, and not in the least embarrassed, rather pleased, by Mary’s fascinated gaze and Rhoda’s steady stare.
“I thought you were in the Midlands somewhere,” Mr. Blackett said at last, unable to control his curiosity any longer. “Farming, isn’t it?”
“Hardly that. One cow ana a few pigs and fowls and fruit and vegetables.”
“Ah, a sort of hobby,” Mr. Blackett suggested.
“We manage to make both ends meet,” Lindsay said cheerfully.
“Then you have a partner?”
“No, there’s just George and me. He’s my servant and a very good cook and then there’s odd help now and then—all we need.”
“And now you are having a holiday,” Mr. Blackett told him.
“No, I’ve just moved into Somerset, not far away, a few miles across the bridge. A nice cottage and good land. I’d have been here sooner but it took me some time to settle in.”
“Did it hurt?” Mary asked suddenly.
“What? Settling in?”
“I meant your face.”
“Oh, I’ve forgotten all about that long ago,” he said.
Mr. Blackett was doing finger exercises on the tablecloth. “I think your cousin’s cup is empty, Flora,” he said.
Rhoda opened her mouth to speak and shut it again. She had not seen this cousin of hers before but she had heard about him. She had heard too about the batman who had dragged Piers Lindsay into safety and been wounded himself in doing so. George must be that man, she thought, but something warned her not to ask. There would be other opportunities and her cousin departed with genial invitations to them all to visit him. He would come and fetch them in the car. He was hoping to get a regular house to house sale for his vegetables in Upper Radstowe and one day, when he finished early, he would take them to the cottage and they could try George’s cakes.
“How perfectly awful!” Flora exclaimed when he had limped into the car, waved a hand and rattled off.
“What?” Rhoda asked.
“His face,” said Mary, “but I like it.”
“No. Selling vegetables,” Flora said. “It’s not very pleasant for us, is it?”
“Pooh!” said Rhoda. “Who cares?”
Mr. Blackett had gone into the drawing-room where his wife still lay on the sofa. “I think I had better help you up to bed,” he said, “now that our visitor has gone at last. He made himself very much at home. Were you aware of his having moved into Somerset?”
“Oh yes,” Mrs. Blackett said. “Of course.”
“Of course? But you didn’t tell me.”
“Didn’t I?” She seemed to search her memory. “How stupid of me.”
“It’s not of the slightest importance,” Mr. Blackett said loftily and put out his arms to raise her.
“No, Herbert, I can manage very well myself with the help of a chair and I can get up the stairs by sitting on them,” she said and, in his irritation, it pleased him to see her, who usually moved with an old-fashioned swaying grace, compelled to so ungainly an ascent.
Chapter IV
Nearly a year had passed since that unfortunate Saturday afternoon and Mr. Blackett had graver matters for worry than the friendly communications established with the Frasers and the proximity of his wife’s cousin. And he had seen very little of him. Saturday afternoon, one of the likeliest times for selling vegetables, was not one of those Piers Lindsay chose for driving into Upper Radstowe, a fact which had not escaped Miss Spanner’s notice. After living vicariously for so long in books she was finding a new pleasure in the study of the immediate human scene and supplying herself with her own fiction which might or might not be less strange than the truth. And she had not let slip the acquaintance she and Rosamund had made with him in Mrs. Blackett’s garden when he had appeared just in time to help them to get her into the house and all formalities were dropped in the general amusement, shared by Mrs. Blackett, as they tried different methods of reaching the drawing-room sofa. Since then, when Miss Spanner saw him in the Square she always discovered that the household was in need of vegetables and he always insisted on carrying them down the area steps and into the kitchen where he was quite willing to linger and sometimes lingered so long before he went into the Blacketts’ house that the construction of Miss Spanner’s plot was endangered.
Of his comings and goings Mr. Blackett heard very little. Mary, who was garrulous, was the only member of his family who ever mentioned Lindsay. Flora’s anxiety about the social aspect of a cousin who hawked greenstuff vanished when she found he was on friendly terms with the Frasers, the only people who mattered at the moment, and Rhoda followed her mother’s silent lead. Then the winter had closed down and by the time Mr. Blackett reached home his curtains were drawn against his other annoyance. He did not see the young men from next door; he was spared the irritation of watching Mrs. Fraser pass his window as she went to the pillar box at the corner of the Square, always with that air of happiness to which he considered she had no right and moving with the ease of good health and the certainty of her pleasant appearance. In his opinion she wore her skirts too short and he particularly disliked the little ornaments in her ears, small turquoises or gold filigree in an intricate pattern. In the winter he rarely saw her. It was in the summer that the Frasers became evident, strolling about the Square, talking to their friends outside the house, behaving, in fact, as though the place were theirs, but the winter enabled Flora to see more of her neighbours than her father would have cared for. She could walk home from the University with James Fraser and loiter with him on the pavement in the sheltering darkness and when he chose to wheel his bicycle beside her instead of hastening home on it, she felt a happiness she had only dreamed of a few months ago. But she was careful with it and with him. She let him do all the talking, though sometimes they were both silent, and that was very romantic, as they turned from the busy streets, the omnibuses and the shops into the quiet roads of Upper Radstowe where in James’s company, every sight and sound was dimmed or sharpened into beauty.
She had soon realized the strategic importance of her father’s study window; it raked the front door and the top of the area steps as well, but not when the curtains were drawn and, as it was the orderly habit of the young Blacketts to leave and enter the house by the basement where they put on and off their outdoor shoes, it was easy for Flora to slip in and out, easier than to leave by the front door which she could not open again without the key she did not possess. Besides, her father might have heard her. Why he should object to the Frasers she did not know. He took every opportunity of uttering or looking slight, half humorous disparagement, as though they amused him while they were hardly worth his notice, and she rebelled against the absurdity of having to do by stealth what other people could do openly. Why should her home be treated like a castle and everybody else like besiegers who must be repulsed? Sometimes Flora felt very lonely. Her father had always been her friend but now all
her young impulses stood between him and her and in her mother’s unvarying kindness she felt a hint of effort, as though she had to remember to be loving. She was different with Rhoda, less careful in her gentleness. Rhoda was her mother’s daughter as Flora was her father’s and she was at a stage most unsympathetic to Flora. Moreover, she always showed a faint antagonism towards her father, staring at him with studious calculation while he talked, rousing all Flora’s loyalty to him and putting another barrier between the sisters. There was no one she could talk to about her own concerns, no one she could laugh with and it was when these necessities were strongest on her and she was supposed to be working in her bedroom that she would run out and ring the Frasers’ bell. And this, which was adventure to her, was the ordinary, natural thing to them and though she might find no one but Mrs. Fraser and Miss Spanner and Sandra and Paul at home, she would stay in the long, rather untidy living-room, for a little while, before she tiptoed back again, wondering, to her shame, whether the Frasers’ house felt so free because there was no father in it. Yet her own was not an ogre. He expected people to be happy in his own way, not in theirs, that was all, and his way was certainly not across the road or walking home under the flowering trees, on pavements strewn with fallen petals. His way proved, at the moment, to be much farther afield.
“This is the year,” he said one evening, “when I had planned to take you all abroad.”
“Me too?” Mary cried, jigging up and down.
“Yes, you too,” he said benignly. “We haven’t been abroad since we were in Florence, have we, Bertha? How would you like to go there again?”
“Oh,” Mrs. Blackett said, growing pink. “Oh no!”
“No?” he said, smiling teasingly at her across the table. He liked to see that blush, evoked by memories to which she never referred but evidently did not want to have overlaid by new experiences. “Well, perhaps not,” he agreed, looking for a shy glance he did not get. “I had thought, too, of the Loire country. What about that, Flora?”