by E. H. Young
“I’ve fallen in love,” she announced, “and at first sight.”
“Oh Chloe, are you sure?” It was what she had done herself.
“Quite sure. Weren’t you?”
“Absolutely certain.”
“Well then—” Chloe said with a little gesture of finality and, the next moment, Rosamund realized that she must be looking much as her own father had looked in similar circumstances, grave and anxious, for Chloe leaned forward to take her hands and cry, “Don’t worry. It’s all right. It’s the conscientious accountant! Funny, isn’t it?”
Rosamund let out a sigh of relief. She liked the conscientious accountant and if anyone was ever safe, Chloe would be safe with him. “But,” she said, “at first sight?”
“Yes. Don’t you think you see a person for the first time when, for the first time, he doesn’t know you’re looking at him, when he doesn’t know you’re within miles of him? I saw him, by chance, like that to-day, separate from me, probably not thinking of me, self-sufficient and dignified, though he has always been dignified, at his worst, so to speak. I couldn’t stand anything else. And so nice. And good,” Chloe said, frowning in apology for this remark. “And I fell in love properly, then and there, and I was terrified he might have fallen out of it.”
“And had he?”
“No. Wasn’t it lucky? He’s coming to see you to-morrow about getting married very soon. I didn’t want him to come in to-night.”
“May I tell Agnes?”
“The whole world,” Chloe said gaily, and at the door she paused to add, “I’m so thankful you’re not the kind of mother one has to dodge for fear of being clasped to her bosom.”
“And wept over,” Rosamund said. “But what a good day I’m having. James too expressed some approval of me this afternoon. Chloe, do you mind telling me what time of day it was when you made this pleasant discovery?”
“In the lunch hour. Why?”
“I was just wondering what I was doing then.”
“Did you have a telepathic communication?”
“No, but I was feeling happy.”
“Then it must have been some sort of communication,” Chloe said, and Rosamund let it go at that, thinking it was strange, and would seem ludicrous to Chloe, that they should have been having something of the same experience at somewhere about the same hour. There was no one to whom she could speak of her own, no one to whom she wished to speak of it, but if James had been the lawyer instead of Felix, she might have told him about Fergus and asked how best she could carry out his wishes. James would be tolerant towards his father; Felix had too many of his qualities mixed with a startling sense of propriety, in regard to his parents if not to himself, and she was determined not to have Fergus abused or misunderstood. She must find a lawyer who was a stranger to him and to her and as Fergus seemed to be in no hurry and had not answered her last letter, the affair might be delayed at least until Chloe was married and preparations for the wedding need not be contemporaneous with those for the final separation of her parents. It was entirely reasonable for people to part when living together meant unhappiness for both or either, but it was an unsavoury business, not necessarily for those concerned, who alone could judge it, but tainted for them by association and by the demands made by the law.
She sighed, wondering whether Piers too was propped up in bed and thinking of her or asleep already and whether he lay on his right side or his left, with his ordinary profile uppermost or the other. And Agnes was a long time coming. Little had been seen of her since her health had been drunk and she had retired in protesting confusion. No doubt Sandra was right, as usual, and Agnes had seen more mockery than kindness in the tribute, so, thinking there could hardly be a more solitary person in the world, Rosamund slipped out of bed and went bare-footed to Miss Spanner’s door. There was a light under it and she knocked and went in.
Wearing the drab dressing-gown on which her lank plaits made two dark streaks, Miss Spanner was sitting in the midst of her possessions, like an unhappy child who had been sent for punishment to the lumber room and so forlorn that, for the first time, Rosamund thought of the future as it might affect her. She had been persuaded out of the gloomy house on the Green, she had been promised a home and had found one and now, though she might overcome the scruples of her ingrained respectability, what was to happen to her later? And it seemed to Rosamund quite impossible to desert her, to be warmed by happiness when she had stripped this poorly clad creature nearly naked. Life was very complicated. The simplest action seemed to develop a resentful personality to pay you back for having created it but, at the moment, there was nothing to be done about it except to be kind to Agnes.
“What are you doing?” she asked gently.
“Sitting,” said Miss Spanner.
“So I see. And I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Why?” Miss Spanner asked mournfully.
“Because I love you, my dear old idiot, and as you didn’t come to me I’ve come to you. What’s the matter? Felix didn’t upset you, did he? He really meant it all, you know.”
“H’m,” said Miss Spanner sceptically. “And if he did, he’s wrong.”
“Well, get into bed and don’t think any more about it.”
“I haven’t wasted a moment over it. Is it likely?”
“Goodness knows,” Rosamund said. “We’re all unaccountable to each other. I should never have dreamt you’d react as you did last night.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Miss Spanner said bitterly. What did Rosamund know about loneliness, its blessed cessation and the threat of its return?
“But why spoil everything now?” Rosamund said. “Let’s go on as though I hadn’t told you. And I’m still quite respectable. I’m not divorced yet,” she said, and at that Miss Spanner very forcibly uttered the only expletive of her life.
“I don’t care a damn about divorce,” she said.
“Oh Agnes!” Rosamund dropped to her knees and put her arms round Miss Spanner’s narrow waist and her face against the dressing-gown. “I’m hugging you for the language as well as for the sentiment,” she said. “How I wish your dear parents could have heard them both! Let’s hope they’re listening. I shan’t begrudge them Heaven if they’re allowed to do a little eavesdropping.” Then, jerked by convulsive movements in Miss Spanner’s chest which might have been caused by laughter, she sat back on her heels to enjoy this wholesome manifestation.
But Miss Spanner was not laughing. With tiny, very rapid agitations she shook her head. “You don’t know everything,” she hiccupped.
“And I don’t want to. If there’s anything I hate it’s the way women think they can’t be friends without pouring out the inmost secrets of their hearts. Keep your secrets to yourself, Agnes, and your sins, and I’ll keep mine and for Heaven’s sake get into bed.”
Chapter XXIV
“I suppose I must go and say good-bye to my young lady,” James said to his mother in the morning. “It will be a long parting. I shan’t come back, you know, before the holidays. I’m going to meet Felix and Smithers somewhere on the way. So I’m taking my boots.” He was greasing them as he sat outside the garden room and she was touched by the contented lines of his mouth and his earnestness as he rubbed.
“They’ll be useful on the farm, I expect,” she said.
He looked at her with pity. “And blunt these lovely nails?” he said. “I thought better of you.”
“Yes, that was stupid,” she agreed. “And by the way, did Chloe tell you she’s engaged?”
“No. Is she? To Stephens? Good. You’ll be getting us all off your hands soon. You’ll be quite rich! I shouldn’t be surprised if they take Felix into partnership before long.”
“You’re optimistic. Suppose he hasn’t passed his final?”
“Of course he has.”
“And perhaps he�
�ll want to start somewhere else.”
“Not yet,” said James, wiping his hands on the grass.
That was a remark that might mean a good deal or nothing at all. She ignored it, but she wished James were not going away. They had always been on easy though not confidential terms and quite suddenly these seemed to have developed into a closer relationship. The schoolboy who had looked to her, as Paul did, for the material things of life, was left far behind: the youth not sure of himself and jealous of his freedom was gaining confidence; and happiness, the simple happiness of being able to look forward to the holiday he had always wanted, had loosened his tongue and enlarged his sympathies. Sorrow was supposed to strengthen human nature; she was sure happiness enriched it and, though she had a dozen household tasks to do, she lingered in the garden, pulling up a weed here and there while James finished his pipe, his arms round his knees, his eyes sometimes on the deep blue of the sky, sometimes on her, but oftenest on the boots, like shining black armoured barges, side by side on the grass. It would be something to remember, she thought, this little pause under the sunshine, this feeling of content and companionship.
“I must remember to get some dubbin,” he said at last, telling her where his thoughts had been.
“And I must do some shopping. I don’t know what on earth to give Chloe’s young man for supper.”
“Is he coming? Pity the salmon wasn’t postponed.”
“No, that would have looked too much like an effort. He’ll have to get used to the shepherd’s pie and suet pudding standard.”
“Good enough for anybody,” James said.
After tea he went across the road to say good-bye to Flora. He thought this was a good time to choose. Mr. Blackett would not be there and with a guest in prospect and his packing to do, he would have to hurry back again. He found, however, to his half-annoyed relief, that there would be no difficulty in escaping. They were all in the garden, just finishing their tea there and when he had helped to carry the remains into the kitchen and done his share in a not very animated conversation, Flora looked at her watch and said she must get back to work.
“Good Lord! I haven’t done a stroke since term ended,” James said.
“Perhaps you don’t need to,” she said dryly, “but I have regular hours and I stick to them.”
“And you are starting the practical side of your work to-morrow,” Mrs. Blackett said kindly. “That will be hard work, too.”
“Yes, but easy, if you know what I mean. Just doing what I’m told.”
“Well good-bye,” Flora said. “I hope you’ll enjoy it.”
“I’m sure I shall. But you ought to have a holiday, you know,” he said, escorting her to the kitchen door, and Rhoda muttered through her down-turned lips, “She’ll start having one to-morrow.”
Mrs. Blackett caught the words and repressed a smile. It was just what she had been thinking. Neither she nor Rhoda was deceived by the long hours Flora spent in her bedroom. The little variations in her hair-dressing and the alterations to her clothes were proof of other occupations than her studies, and the poor girl, dealing coldly with this young man, out of pride or in the hope of making him want what he could not get, had given him a fine exhibition of priggishness.
When he came back to the group on the little lawn he seemed more at ease and he did not hurry away. Very few people are anxious to break off a conversation about their own concerns and though Mrs. Blackett fetched her hoe and busied herself at the flower beds, Rhoda had endless questions to ask and only the imminence of Mr. Blackett’s return got James out of his deck-chair. And she asked the questions because she wanted to know the answers. Miss Spanner was quite right; she was the best of the lot, much the best, he decided, when she ran after him into the road with the book he had lent to Flora.
“She forgot to give you this and you may want it. I’ve read it,” she said, and with loyal untruthfulness she added, “too.”
“Have you?”
“Yes. I like that kind of thing. I suppose you couldn’t lend me another, could you?”
“Yes, rather. Come across now and I’ll find something.”
“Shall I?”
“Yes. Come on.”
“In here,” he said, opening his bedroom door. “It’s in rather a mess because I’m packing. How about this one? It’s a bit stodgy, though.”
“Nothing’s stodgy when you like it,” Rhoda said.
“No, it isn’t, is it?”
“But I read rather slowly.”
“That doesn’t matter. You can keep it till I come back.”
“Oh thank you,” Rhoda said. “I’ll take great care of it.”
She was gone before he had time to take her to the door and, when he followed, it was only to see her popping down the area steps like a rabbit into its hole. Funny little thing but sensible, he thought, both in her tastes and the quickness of her disappearance and it was to his credit that he did not think of looking towards Flora’s window to see whether she had witnessed this little episode. But she had seen it and, unable to control her angry pain, she went at once in search of Rhoda.
“Why did you run after Mr. Fraser?” she demanded.
“Is that what you call him?”
“Yes, to you.”
“How silly! He’s only a boy.”
The whole of Flora’s inside seemed to tremble with humiliation and anger. James was still very nearly the young god he had been when she first saw him, he was faithless but hardly less desirable, and to hear him described disparagingly by this clumsy schoolgirl was almost more than she could bear, but she had to bear it or betray what Rhoda’s sharp eyes had seen long ago.
“He may not be much more than a boy,” she said, “but I’m quite sure he thinks of you as quite a little girl. That’s why he was so kind.”
“Was he kind?” Rhoda asked.
“How do I know?” Flora said impatiently.
“You don’t. He was just ordinary,” Rhoda said, insulting the god again but stilling some of Flora’s inward trembling. “And I returned the book he lent you.”
“But I haven’t finished it.”
“Or begun it,” said Rhoda, and Flora, obliged to drop her dignity, asked anxiously, “Did you tell him that?”
“He didn’t ask.”
“That’s no answer.”
“Yes it is—from me,” Rhoda said. “You might know I wouldn’t bother to tell him, or be so mean.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t have minded, but he’s so enthusiastic he thinks everybody else must be, too. He does seem rather boyish in that way,” she conceded. Rhoda’s words were having an effect. If he seemed like a boy to her, how much more boyish he should seem to her elder. Moreover, in self-defence she had to change the god who neglected her into the boy she could neglect, but she had not quite succeeded in doing this when she saw a thick book lying on Rhoda’s bed. She picked it up. “And I see he’s lent you another,” she said with amusement.
And now Rhoda had to protect James. “Because I asked him for it.”
“You asked for it?”
“Yes, I want to read it.”
Flora laughed again, turning the pages. “It’s all about fertilizers and chemicals,” she said. “You won’t understand a word of it. He must know very well why you borrowed it.”
“Of course he does.”
“And he won’t think any the more of you. It’s really very silly, at your age, to be running after him like that.”
“Oh, he’s quite used to it from this family,” Rhoda said, and at that the book left Flora’s hands to strike Rhoda on the shoulder and land with a heavy thud on the floor.
Rhoda’s first care was for the book. It was a heavy one and might have suffered but it was not hurt and in the meantime Flora had gone. It was Rhoda who was hurt, not on the shoulder but in her mind. She had been a little shy and self-consci
ous with James at first because she thought he would despise her for her youth and lack of prettiness but, in their common interest, she had forgotten that. She hoped he liked her as she hoped Miss Spanner did, but she made little efforts to please Miss Spanner she would not have troubled to make with James, not knowing this omission was an unconscious resistance to nature’s claims.
Consciously, she agreed with Flora. It was silly, she thought, it was rather common, for schoolgirls to be preoccupied with boys. It was bad enough at Flora’s age; it was infuriating to be accused of it at hers. She was glad he was going away. She would be able to visit Miss Spanner without sneers and horrid hints from Flora. James was a nice person, she was sure of that, and the chief part of his niceness lay in the fact that he wanted to be a farmer. James studying medicine or anything else would have had quite a different aspect for her, as remote as the other Frasers, as most of the people she knew and among whom she pushed her way as she might have passed through a flock of sheep, though she would probably have found the sheep more interesting. But, hating this spiteful quarrel with her sister, she did cast a thought at the sisters across the road and wonder if they were friends. Then she became happily absorbed in the fertilizers, reading very slowly and neglecting her homework for them.
And Flora, on the other side of the landing, had a good cry. With it she washed away all thoughts of James except resentful ones. He cared nothing for her and she would not care for him. She had been very silly and simple, she admitted that. She ought not to have let him kiss her; she had not realized how unimportant an action it was to him. That was the fault of her sheltered upbringing; she would be wiser another time and she had always really thought Felix was more attractive. Then she bathed her eyes and did her hair again and peered into her looking-glass. There was no sign of her tears except for a greater gloss on her eyelashes and, pleased with her reflection, she was able to pity James for his stupidity.
Chapter XXV