by E. H. Young
“Wouldn’t he be vexed!” she exclaimed gleefully, as she alighted where her mother stood to watch, and at the sight of her happy face Mrs. Blackett had not the heart to reprove her for speaking so unceremoniously of her father. And Mrs. Blackett herself was doing what would have vexed him. She was sometimes discovered in the Frasers’ house, listening to the broadcast news. With great diffidence at first she had accepted the invitation to come in when she chose, but it was impossible to remain awkward or shy with the Frasers. They seemed to take her presence for granted. This was another privilege she cherished and it would not last much longer.
“Yes,” she said, “we can ask Cousin Piers if we can go there when he comes to-day.”
“And go to-morrow?”
“If we can.”
Rhoda, waiting for him, saw him draw up his car in front of the Frasers’ door and mount the shallow steps. “Bother!” she exclaimed. Judging from her own feelings, he would be there for some time, but she had her consolation. The postman who had just brought a letter from her father had also brought a picture postcard for her. Miss Spanner had been as good as her word. The picture was of a mountain with three peaks and though she gave this due attention, she was more interested in the message on the other side. “Rather lean kine,” it said. “Poor pasture. Back soon.” It was signed “James” without the surname and that pleased her. It was nice of Miss Spanner to have remembered, nice of James to write, nice to be friends with Sandra and to ride a bicycle and, best of all, because these nicenesses depended on his absence, to have her father far away. “I shan’t even try to look pleased when he comes back,” she said to herself. She knew it would be no use. She had never been able to twist her features into the expression of anything she did not feel and she was to learn that this particular effort was not necessary.
Rosamund Fraser had seldom found it necessary to look happier than she was and her face, when she opened the door to Piers Lindsay, would have been instructive for Miss Spanner if she had not happened to miss this opportunity. A delicate moment in her stitching, her pathetic desire to make things pretty for Chloe and her pride in her own work had prevented her from leaping up at the sound of the brake and she did not arrive at the top of the staircase before Rosamund, putting out both hands, had said, “Thank God!”
He took her hands but dropped them quickly, saying calmly, “What’s the matter?”
“Just starvation,” Rosamund said, speaking lightly but feeling a violent love for him because, almost too easily, he was able to keep their compact.
“Not yet,” said Miss Spanner, descending upon them remorselessly. “Have you brought us some fresh news?”
“Only fresh vegetables,” he said. “I’ve really come to look at the basement.”
“It’s a flimsy old house,” Rosamund said.
“Yes, you’d be safer with me. I expect I could tuck you all away somewhere.”
“I’m not going to leave my property,” said Rosamund. “You could go, Agnes. Sandra would chaperone you.”
“Me?” Miss Spanner said. “I shall be on duty. Yes,” she said a little grandly. “I offered my services to the city in the spring.”
“And I never thought of it!” Rosamund exclaimed and then, inevitably, she said, “I wonder how they’ll dress you up.”
“Even at a time like this!” Miss Spanner sighed and, not with tact, for she did not know it was necessary, but with the dignity befitting a potential heroine, she went into the sitting-room and left the others to go downstairs alone.
“She’s a wonderful person,” Rosamund said.
“I think you’d be safest under the stairs,” he said. “And there’s the door in the garden room and the area door as well.”
“You think it’s coming then?”
“No, but if it does start and they have any sense, they’ll send their bombers over at once. There are three chances. They give way, we give way, or neither of us does. Which do you think’s most likely?”
“The worst,” Rosamund said. “And yet, when I think of the boys, I suppose that’s what I ought to pray for.”
“They’re not back yet?”
“They’ll come if it’s necessary,” she said in quick defence.
“Of course,” he said, following her into the garden room and standing with her in its doorway.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked.
“Things I haven’t smelt or seen or heard for many a long day,” he said.
“Nasty noises? Nasty smells?”
“No, no, not those. All good. What Felix and James are getting now.” He was thinking of the dusty smell of heather and the smell of wet earth, the gurgling of hidden water, the tinkling of little stones dislodged by sheep, the scratching of nails on rock and plump cushions of damp moss under bare feet. Twenty-four years ago he had been called away from all that. “And they may be scratching the very same places on the rocks that I scratched,” he said.
Further similarity of circumstances needed no more expression than the look she gave him and though it was steady and there was no appeal in it, he found himself obliged to say, “My poor love!” with all the tenderness she had been wanting.
She gave him a little nod of thanks. “Oh, that’s something to be going on with,” she said.
“You haven’t heard from Fergus?”
“Just to tell me there’s no hurry.”
Controlling his anger, he lifted and dropped his shoulders. This was no time for pressing his own claims. “Any vegetables?” he asked.
“Ask Agnes. I’m going to stay here for a little while. I’m not going to spoil what you’ve just said with vegetables.”
“I could easily say a good deal more.”
“I know, but it was all there. Agnes will like the chance to talk to you.”
“I’m not particularly anxious to talk to her.”
“You needn’t. Just grunt now and then. She’ll interpret that according to her taste.”
He went away but he paused in the passage and she heard him knocking here and there, testing the strength of the defences they might need and she wondered whether Fergus had any thought for their safety—he would have none for his own—and again she pictured him as she had first seen him, his arrogance arrested by the sight of her, and she asked herself which of these two men she would have chosen if Piers had been marching there too. She knew it would have been Fergus and she would have been right then as she was sure she was right now. Yet, if Fergus had not left her, she would have done no more than consider Piers with the speculative eye of a woman who instinctively looked at men in their possible relation to herself and in another twenty years’ time, she thought with amusement, if Piers ran away in his turn, she might find her true lover in some greybeard ready to fill the gap. But even if he tired of her, Piers would not run away. He would make the best of the situation, he would be kind and patient, but she would take good care that he need not exercise those qualities. Life could not be lived quite naturally with success. It had to be dealt with as an art and that was what she had had to learn.
She was roused from these reflections by the clatter of footsteps on the stairs. “Have you come to do some gardening?” she asked as Rhoda appeared.
“No. To ask you to Cousin Piers’s party.”
“Is he having one?”
“Yes. I really thought of it, but he’s quite pleased. The day after to-morrow.”
“The day after to-morrow. That will be the sixteenth.”
“Yes. That will give George time to make the cakes.”
“Are you inviting the guests?”
“Well, Sandra wanted to come and I thought Miss Spanner would like it and he said I could ask everybody. Do come, Mrs. Fraser. You see, Mother’s going to have a car. We couldn’t let Cousin Piers fetch us and bring us back and if you come there won’t be room for all of us.”
&
nbsp; “Then I suppose I’d better stay at home.”
“But I don’t want to go in the car. I want to fill it up with people and then Sandra and I can go on bicycles and I can hire one. Mother doesn’t think I ride well enough, so I want a good excuse.”
“Then of course I must come.”
“And Chloe?”
“No, Chloe will be in Wellsborough.”
“Well, there’ll be Mother and you and Mary and Miss Spanner. That’s heaps. I wish we were going to-morrow, though.”
“It’s nice to look forward to things.”
“When you’re sure of them,” Rhoda said grimly and, returning to her mother, she said, “We’ll have to go, whatever happens. We can’t give all that trouble for nothing.”
“No,” Mrs. Blackett said, and she read again the letter she had just received. “We may begin our return journey in a day or two,” Mr. Blackett wrote. “I want Flora to have a glimpse of Paris, so be prepared—as though you would not be!—for our arrival any day after you get this letter.”
“Of course you must go,” she said, “but if I know when they are coming, I must be at home to meet them.”
Like Rhoda, she did not know how she was going to do it and, at that moment, in spite of the memories she had stored, memories of broad brown hills overlooking the Channel, the west front of the cathedral in the valley below, the worn stairway there like fallen leaves and the added sense of freedom the hills had given her, she almost wished Herbert had never gone away. She would have to try to get used to him all over again.
Chapter XXXVII
People to whom travelling is a new adventure are much more conscious of the interest they expect to evoke on their return than of their own pleasure in reunion with those they left at home and Mr. Blackett and Flora, who for three weeks had been living in perfect comfort and safety in a friendly country, had the pleasant conviction that they looked different from the other passengers who alighted at Radstowe station and anticipated a sort of awed excitement when they arrived in the Square. Flora leant forward in the cab as they went through the streets, like a royal personage anxious to let the people see her and hoping some acquaintance would catch a glimpse of her, the hat she had bought in Paris and might as easily have found in Radstowe, and the unaccustomed touch of red on lips that did not need it. A faint aroma of jauntiness still hung about Mr. Blackett. He leant back as though he still lounged in a deck-chair and there were no newspaper placards trying to force themselves on his attention. He was not returning in a hurry. He had, in fact, outstayed the limit he had set himself and he had the satisfaction of knowing that wherever he had been and in whatever company, he had set an example either of a gay courage or of calm common sense. It had been a little hard on Bertha, perhaps, to stay away for so long, but he hoped for the greater welcome and he felt that a slight flavour of resentment in it would not come amiss.
“I think it’s a good thing we’ve come back,” said Flora who was not ignoring the placards.
“Oh yes,” Mr. Blackett said lightly, “one feels quite glad to be back. There’s no place like home,” he added, smilingly putting this remark into inverted commas.
“And nice to have a real English tea with bread and butter.”
They had reached the top of the Slope and turned from the main road into another where the trees, drooping over the pavement, showed here and there a yellow leaf and, almost at once, they were skirting the Green where children were playing on the grass and nursemaids, barricaded by perambulators, occupied the seats under the trees.
“It all looks extremely shabby,” said Mr. Blackett with disapproval as he sat up and straightened his coat.
“Yes, very,” Flora agreed, making sure her hat was at the right angle, for already the car was turning into the Square and, a moment later, it had stopped, but the front door was not opened, all the lower windows were shut and the house had an unmistakable appearance of being empty. The cab was driven away and the suitcases stood on the pavement while Mr. Blackett, after fumbling fruitlessly in his pockets, was forced to the indignity of ringing his own bell and feeling that every eye in the Square, and especially one eye, was delightedly on his back. He heard the buzzing of the bell within the house but no answering footsteps and he turned, stiff with anger, to see Flora mounting the area steps.
“That door’s locked too,” she said, and they both glanced across the road where the windows on to the balcony were all wide open and a westerly breeze gently stirred the curtains. It was a difficult moment for Mr. Blackett. He could not give way to the rage urging him to stamp and shout and snap his fingers in a frenzy and after considering the possibility of forcing his study window and climbing in, he gave up that idea for fear of failure, yet outside the house, what seemly attitude could he adopt?
“Oh, isn’t it horrid of them!” Flora cried. There were no younger sisters to notice the new hat, her air of experience and the little changes she had made in her appearance: there was no kind mother to ask if she were tired and other interested questions while she hastened to feed the travellers and Flora was deprived of the only pleasures she had foreseen in coming home. “But perhaps something dreadful’s happened,” she said, and as she anxiously made this suggestion she saw more of her father’s red lips than he usually showed and much more of his teeth through which he assured her he had no doubt about that. “Then what can we do?” Flora asked stupidly.
“Remove the suitcases,” Mr. Blackett said, and he picked up two of them and carried them down the area steps. “And as there is nowhere else to sit, I shall sit here,” he announced.
“I suppose,” said Flora, realizing that the dreadful happening was simply the family’s absence, “I suppose we really ought to have sent a telegram.”
“Nonsense!” Mr. Blackett said sharply.
“Well,” said Flora, after taking a critical look at him, “how would it be—you wouldn’t mind would you—if I went across to the Frasers? They must know something I should think.”
“You can do as you like about that,” said Mr. Blackett, taking a seat on the more solid of the suitcases.
In that sunken retreat he was out of eyeshot and anyone who had seen his discomfiture could enjoy it no longer, but he was acutely conscious of what his appearance must be, seated on the shallow suitcase, his knees almost touching his chin, his head level with a notice written in Bertha’s hand and pinned to the door, informing the baker no bread was needed. This notice added to his disgust. Where was Connie? Surely she had had holiday enough. Only a milk jug with a plate on it would have been more vulgar than this correspondence with the baker and he felt passionately that he, of all people, should be spared this kind of thing and he knew his acquaintance of the last week or two would be horrified, perhaps disillusioned, if she could see him now.
He stood up at the sound of footsteps, but they were only those of Flora who came to tell him she could get no answer at the Frasers’ house. “But I’m sure we could get through here,” she said, indicating the window which did its best to lighten Connie’s cavern; but Mr. Blackett was determined to suffer. He sat down again. He had reached the point when the longer he was kept outside the house the better he would be pleased.
“Then we might as well go and have tea somewhere,” Flora suggested.
“And leave the luggage?”
“We needn’t go together.”
Mr. Blackett’s reply was to take a book from the unoccupied suitcase and arrange his expression into one suitable for the perusal of good literature, but he did not turn a page. He was, in fact, almost giddy with the anger he outwardly controlled. He had pictured Bertha in a state of excited anticipation, preventing her from leaving the house lest, absent on the shortest of errands, she might miss the happy moment of his arrival, and she had gone, they had all gone, leaving a message for the baker and none for him though, indeed, that would have been an added insult.
It would have acknowledged the likelihood of his return and now it was just possible to believe that his last letter had not been received. But whither and why, Mr. Blackett asked the page he was not reading, had they all disappeared? It was quite impossible for him to imagine any attraction greater than waiting for him in the home he had provided and, to do Bertha justice, that had hitherto seemed to content her well enough. Yet this was the day she had chosen for leaving it and he was obliged to sit, cramped, outside the kitchen door, in order to conceal his humiliation and to shame her when she appeared. And when would that be? Already, though only a few minutes had passed, he foresaw a limit to his endurance and Mr. Blackett told himself with conviction that, at any other time, this desertion could have been forgiven, but now, with the whole world holding its breath—and for his own purposes he momentarily admitted that it might well do so—Bertha was revealing a heartlessness and a frivolity which deeply pained him. A natural anxiety for him and Flora ought to have kept her at home: a fear of impending catastrophe ought to have made pleasure seeking impossible. And the companion of his travels seemed to have deserted him too. Wondering what Flora was doing, Mr. Blackett raised himself hastily and his grey felt hat came into somewhat sharp contact with the underside of the front-door steps. On these Flora had disposed herself with what she felt was a continental out-of-doors ease and she was fortunate in her position for, just as Mr. Blackett knocked his head and almost as soon as he heard a heavy tramp of feet, two young men appeared on the Frasers’ side of the Square, marching in step with packs on their backs. Nothing could have been better than to be discovered there, in her new hat, with a new air of unconventionality and just returned from the possible imminence of danger, and yet, for a moment, Flora forgot herself and the impression she hoped to make. She forgot that one of these young men was James with whom she had fancied herself in love and the other was Felix who, like every young man she saw, might fall in love with her. She saw them as symbols of millions of other young men, keeping step and carrying packs, and in spite of all her father’s assurances, she saw them as sacrifices to the folly and wickedness of mankind and her face was as grave as theirs when, having no hats to remove, they lifted their hands in greeting and turned to their own door, then, as it did not open, felt vaguely, like Mr. Blackett, in their pockets.