by E. H. Young
“Yes,” Rhoda said, thinking it was lucky Miss Spanner was so thin for, while there was more space for the ornaments there was decidedly less for her. “We haven’t got one,” she said, “or a telephone either.”
“Your father doesn’t like these modern inventions, is that it?”
“I suppose so.”
“H’m. I wonder you don’t go to bed by candle-light. Not that I care about all of them myself. Now electricity,” she glanced at the lamp by her bed, “I do appreciate, though I wouldn’t have a telephone as a gift. But at a time like this I like to get all the news I can.”
“What sort of time do you think it is?” Rhoda asked.
“Serious,” said Miss Spanner.
“Tell me why,” Rhoda said, and Miss Spanner told her. “But I expect you have heard all that before, from your father, perhaps,” and as Rhoda made no reply, she added, “or from Mr. Lindsay. You see a lot of him, don’t you?”
“He nearly always comes when I’m at school,” Rhoda complained.
“Oh, that’s unfortunate,” said Miss Spanner, delighted with this piece of information but a little ashamed of having procured it.
“Yes,” said Rhoda, “and I don’t know why nice people are always so hard to get at.”
“Because other people think they are nice too,” Miss Spanner said with a startling squint. Then the wandering eye accompanied the other to look at Rhoda. “And as I’m easy to get at I’m afraid I can’t be nice,” she said.
“Oh, you are!” Rhoda exclaimed, “but not very easy. I mean,” she said and then she stopped. She had to be loyal even where she disliked. She could not speak of the watchful curiosity and disparaging tricks of her father, but she felt the need, once expressed by James, of doors which did not open on to the Square. “Besides,” she said, “I’ve been working harder lately.”
“Quite right. Good girl,” said Miss Spanner.
“I always seemed to be sort of asleep at school,” Rhoda said. “Or like not quite knowing where I was going in a fog. Breaking rules without meaning to, you know. And then I began to wake up. I suppose I was rather young for my age,” she said thoughtfully.
“Storing up energy, that’s what you’ve been doing,” said Miss Spanner.
“Do you think that was it? I was afraid I must be extra stupid.”
“Certainly not!” said Miss Spanner. There was no stupidity in a girl who sought her company and while Rhoda still employed the steady stare so irritating to her father, there was a new alertness in her appearance.
“And,” she said, getting up to go and considering what route she could take with least danger to Miss Spanner’s ornaments, “James says—”
“James?” said Miss Spanner.
“Yes, your James. The one who lives here. I’ve had a letter and he says I can have a red book about farming on the bottom shelf of his bookcase beside the door. Do you think you could get it for me, now I’m here?”
“Yes,” said Miss Spanner, “I’ll get it now.”
“It’s the only red one,” Rhoda said, following her down the stairs, and waiting outside the bedroom door.
“Well, there you are. This must be the one,” said Miss Spanner, and patting her shoulder, she saw her out.
Though she was surprised, she had not asked a single question; she did not ask one of herself as she went upstairs. Rhoda’s simplicity must not be sullied even in Miss Spanner’s mind. Around that girl in the shop, round anyone already a little world-worn, she felt herself free to weave her unlikely plots, but not round Rhoda, Miss Spanner swore to herself as, sentimentally, she compared the girl to a daisy still hardly higher than its leaves, sturdy, round eyed and candid. She was sure that what she described as nonsense had never entered the child’s head and she was determined to keep it out of her own, but Flora had already done what Miss Spanner would not do. Rhoda had tried to cast out the idea; she did not want it. It was Flora’s invention and she could keep it. Flora was like that, Rhoda thought with scorn and she was glad she had found James’s letter before anyone else could see it. Now she was careful to enter the house by the area door and conceal the book until she could safely carry it upstairs; the letter was already hidden there. It was a great possession. Very few letters arrived at the Blacketts’ house. On birthdays and at Christmas there were messages from relatives, but this was the first really unnecessary one Rhoda had ever had. She rather wondered why James had written it. Probably James would have wondered too if he had thought about it at all. It was natural to write from a farm to a girl who was interested in farming, to tell her, with male egoism, what he was doing, to find a sympathetic outlet for his enthusiasm and while Rhoda accepted it in that way, it gave her a warm, happy feeling, a livelier continuation of the one she had when he lent her the first book and Flora had tried to spoil that simple kindness. He was another of the few nice people she knew, he was her friend. Before she began to know him she had avoided him self-consciously, thinking he would despise her for her clumsy, unattractive youth, but now she did not give a thought to the effect her appearance might have on him because it did not occur to her that it would affect him at all. They liked the same things and through them they liked each other and the details he gave about the farm were almost as valuable as the writing of them. She did not look, and she would have looked in vain, for any sign of interest in herself and she was well satisfied with the assurance that he was hers sincerely, James Fraser.
She scrawled a reply without premeditation, under the cover of one of her exercise books. “Dear James,” she wrote, “thank you for your letter and for saying I could have that book. It looks easier than the one about fertilizers. I didn’t understand all that. I do wish I was on a farm too, but Miss Spanner says she thinks there’ll be a war and then I might be able to. She gave it to me this afternoon. Yours sincerely, Rhoda Blackett.”
Her marks for English composition had always been very low.
Chapter XXXI
Flora was bored. Term was over and the acquaintances she had made at the University, pleasant enough when they met there, showed no anxiety to seek her now. Some of them had gone away on holiday; others, who lived elsewhere, had returned there, and what entertainment could she offer any of those who remained if she asked them to her home? Her father had three manners for young visitors—the playful, the instructive and the disapproving; her mother was sweet but dull; the presence of Rhoda and Mary would persuade the guests they had been asked to a children’s party and anyhow there was nothing to do. Other people could have lawn-tennis parties, they had brothers who brought young men to the house and, only yesterday, she had seen a little group of students of her own year, men and girls she knew, pedalling across the Green on some sort of excursion. They had looked very gay, all bare-headed, some of them bare-kneed, the wind filling their shirts and blouses, turning them into sails and, as the small procession passed her and stopped pedalling to freewheel down the road sloping to the bridge, the humdrum bicycles had the effect of tiny ships setting off for an adventure, and she went sadly homewards, taking with her the memory of lightly ruffled hair, red, smiling lips and laughter, the quick turn of a girl’s head as she spoke to the youth beside her, the way he lifted his hands and dropped them again on to the handle-bars to emphasize what he said, the whole a picture of happiness and easy comradeship. And she had not been asked to join them. Perhaps, she hoped, that was only because they knew she had no bicycle. And why had she no bicycle? Why had she nothing she wanted, no fun, no friends, no chance of any amusement or excitement during the dreary months ahead of her? The Square was a desert. Old ladies toddled round it with dogs on leads, harassed-looking women, carrying baskets, emerged from basements to fetch food for their lodgers, the lodgers popped in and out, and the Oval was always empty. Its railings needed paint, the evergreens themselves lacked polish and except for that one corner where the Frasers’ house met the Blacke
tts’, the whole place was shabby and neglected, a fit refuge for impoverished old ladies and for the young men who, wearing stiff collars and dark suits, and always with cigarettes hanging from their lips, left early and returned late, to blaze out in their bright sports clothes at the week-end. Even Flora could not interest herself in them. She was disgusted at having to share the Square with people of that kind and her Cousin Piers did nothing to improve matters with his trailer full of vegetables and some of those landladies for customers. Yet, though James had gone and Felix went in and out with the speed of the lodgers and a preoccupied air, there were certain hours when Flora still liked to be at her window and one of these was when Chloe Fraser came home, sometimes alone, sometimes with the man she was to marry. When she returned alone a car was almost sure to follow a little later and stand outside the house until the drawing-room lights went out and then Flora, picturing those two as they went down the stairs and said their farewells in the hall, was filled with vivid envy. But she was never as lucky as her father had been when he saw Chloe’s mother embraced on the pavement. She might catch a glimpse of Chloe’s pale frock but that was all and, having learnt very little from James and his casual kisses, she had to get her information on such matters from the pictures she saw at the cinema where she sometimes went, unknown to her father. The more immediate knowledge she was always hoping for would have to be unknown to him too. She was like him; she had his impulses and through them she divined, though she did not understand, the horror he felt for love-making and marriage in connection with his children. She guessed, correctly, that when she was approaching middle age he would not altogether set his face against a decorous union; it seemed strange that he should have married anyone himself and she surprised her mother by asking her what he was like as a young man.
Mrs. Blackett did not answer for a moment. Then, “Just like he is now,” she said.
“Not young at all, then.”
“I shouldn’t say that. He is still very young in some ways.”
“What ways?”
“I don’t think I can quite explain,” she said gently, She could not tell his daughter that he still saw things first and always as they affected himself, that like most young people he found himself the most interesting person in the world and that, in middle age, he was aggrieved when others did not share this view and estimated his fellows largely by their estimate of him and the coincidence of their opinions with his own. She could not judge him in his business but it seemed to her that, in his home, everything said and done bounced against him as a pleasant little tap or an offensive blow, but she could not tell Flora that.
“You see,” she said, “you are growing younger and so, to you, he seems older than he did. You used to be a very grave young person. You did not criticize him then.”
“I’m grave still,” Flora said angrily. “I have to be. I don’t get a chance to be anything else. And I don’t care what you say, he can’t ever have been young properly, having fun and doing jolly things and going to parties and, oh, all the nice silly things like that. And I wish I wasn’t growing younger. What’s the good? I was much happier when I thought I ought to be serious all the time. And now it’s just dull and horrid.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Blackett said, and this unexpected answer caused Flora to ask with interest, “Are you dull too?”
“No, I’m not dull. I have my own ways of amusing myself.”
“Just looking after the house and sitting here and sewing?”
“We all have to find our own way,” Mrs. Blackett said.
“But that’s so lonely!” Flora exclaimed, and again Mrs. Blackett said, “Yes.”
“And not even a summer holiday,” Flora went on. “Father said he might take us abroad but of course nothing’s happened.”
“I thought you were not very anxious to go.”
“Well, I am, now,” Flora said, flushing a little. “There’s nothing to do here. I don’t suppose it would be much fun, but it would be different.”
“Ask him to take you.”
“Just him and me!” Flora cried. “Oh no! You won’t suggest that, will you?”
“I did,” Mrs. Blackett confessed, “sometime ago, but I won’t do it again,” she promised with a friendly smile.
Flora muttered an awkward “Thank you,” because she did not know how to be gracious and natural with a mother from whom she had expected mild reproaches for speaking disrespectfully of her father, a little good advice and some perfectly useless suggestions, like polishing the furniture or learning to cook. She had become, for Flora, a much more important person than she had been, quite different from the one who took their temperatures when they were ill, saw that they were well fed and made sure the household wheels ran smoothly, but still only different in relation to Flora herself. She was her father’s daughter and her interest stopped there, but this talk had made her a little happier, a little less discontented, when she went into the dining-room and asked Rhoda and Mary to clear away their books. She wanted to lay the supper table. It was Connie’s evening out; it was also the evening when Rhoda wrote her letter and she was prepared to be amiable too, especially as Flora was not wearing her important elder sister’s air. In an obliging hurry she gathered her things together and after removing one of the exercise books and putting it under her arm, she flung the rest on to a side table and went away. There was time to do a little gardening before supper.
Flora, who was neat, stacked up the books and with faint amusement for Rhoda’s lack of scholarship, ruffled the pages of an exercise book and idly glanced at the notes in them, written in Rhoda’s legible but ungainly hand. A loose sheet slipped out and as she put it back she read it, by accident at first and then deliberately, with so much blood in her head that her feet seemed to rest on nothing. It was a harmless, childish little letter but that there should be one at all, that she should be thanking James for one, was an insult to herself who had once loved him, who had once thought he loved her. Anybody would do for him, that was evident, and she had been one of the anybodys. Her anger was too great for rough handling of the letter. She put it back very gently, hating to touch it. Then she ran upstairs to Rhoda’s bedroom and looked out of the window. Rhoda was in the garden, safely occupied. But where was James’s letter? Lacking a lock to a drawer, where would she herself have put it? She found it at once under the lining paper and read it without a scruple, but when she had finished this dull report on crops and cows, she found herself weeping bitterly. She did not know why; she told herself she had nothing to cry for; she would have hated to get such a letter; there had been no need to hide it, but the very simplicity of both letters touched her to a new kind of angry envy, and because this one had been hidden she knew it must be precious to Rhoda, who was thus richer than she was herself, Rhoda, who had nothing to offer anyone in the way of beauty or intelligence or charm!
Dabbing her eyes, Flora looked down again at this unattractive sister and felt still angrier because the discovery of the letters could not be used against her. It would have been pleasant to take them to her father, but while he would have been satisfyingly vexed with Rhoda, she would have humiliated and betrayed herself. She had to find what comfort she could in hoping that Rhoda, too, would have a bitter lesson to learn though, Flora looked at herself in the glass, with less excuse.
Facing her sister at the supper table, however, seeing her face more animated than usual and wondering whether James had had the bad taste to kiss it, she found it impossible to restrain herself. She had to do something to discomfort Rhoda and leaning forward, she asked, “Why does Miss Spanner say there’s going to be a war?” And she could see Rhoda puzzled by this question and suspicious of it, but the attack was intended to be an oblique one and, before Rhoda could answer, Mr. Blackett spoke.
“And who may this mistaken Miss Spanner be?” he asked, blandly ignorant of such a person’s existence.
“The funny old thing who
lives with the Frasers of course,” Flora said, and Rhoda retorted hotly, unwisely, as she knew, but with her loyalty stronger than her caution, “She isn’t very old and she isn’t a bit funny, except on purpose.”
“And how,” asked Mr. Blackett, still ominously bland, “are you able to give us this interesting information, Rhoda?”
“Oh, she’s Rhoda’s friend. You often go over to see her, don’t you, Rhoda?”
“Yes,” Rhoda said stoutly. “She’s my friend. She’s very nice and she knows a lot and she tells the truth.”
Mr. Blackett raised his eyebrows until they were almost out of sight. These were his own qualities and he spoke with the coldness of his indignation. “I should hardly have thought you needed to cross the road for those benefits,” he said. “Indeed, it seems to me a most unlikely place in which to find them.” Then, flooded by his consciousness of the endless irritation, in one way or the other, these people caused him, from Mrs. Fraser who had over-much femininity to the plain spinster who offended him by her complete lack of it, the dam of his self-control was broken and his words poured out against Rhoda who could not be content at home and must seek the company of people he distrusted; against those who spoke of war and thus helped to create it; against the ignorance of women in general and of Miss Spanner in particular. He spoke of his faith in the leaders of the country and the good qualities of the people who were being maligned. He knew there were some sections of the community who wickedly wanted war for their own profit, but what an obscure creature like this Miss Spanner hoped to get out of it he could not imagine. It was pure mischief making, the frivolous occupation of an empty mind.
This was a long speech and only Rhoda continued to eat her supper. The others had lost their appetites or thought it rude to display any in the circumstances, but the ordeal was nearly over.
“And to prove I believe what I say,” said Mr. Blackett, inspired by his own eloquence to get the better of his discretion, “I intend to go abroad next month and to take Flora with me.”