Logie hesitated. “It seems rather beastly to sell Mummy’s brooch—”
“She wouldn’t mind. It isn’t one she wore much. She only took it out on state occasions. You’ve got other things that meant far more to her—her workbox and her fountain pen, her cut-glass powder bowl—things she used constantly. I’m certain she would be delighted to feel her brooch had given you things you need so badly now.” And so new clothes were hanging now in Logie’s cupboard, ready to be packed to take to Sherry’s home. There was a suit of herringbone tweed in brown and turquoise, a brown cashmere pullover to go with it on chilly country days, a blouse of turquoise crepe for formal wear. There was a dinner dress of love-in-a-mist crepe, the pockets of its jacket edged with silver sequins—a jacket whose removal would transform the outfit into a dance frock that had silver sequined shoulder straps in place of sleeves. A camel-hair coat, a couple of nightdresses, a pair of neat calf walking shoes—Logie was going to be well equipped, with what she already owned, considering the difficulties imposed by coupons! She and Jane had gone off to the beach this morning looking charming in frocks Alison had contrived from a couple of checked dust-sheets—Logie’s blue and white, Jane’s red and white, made with tight bodices and full dirndl skirts. Too much contriving could grow wearisome, reflected Alison, but it was not without advantages—Logie would enjoy being able to afford good clothes far more than if she had been wealthy all her life.
She made a rueful grimace as a voice outside the window called up: “May I come up and have a little talk?... You’d tell me truly if you were busy, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, do come up!” she answered pleasantly, although it was the third time in the week that Lucia Brill had dropped in.
Up came Miss Brill, and for an hour held forth with never a pretence of wanting to hear anything that Alison might have to say. She talked, as always, of the Brandons and in particular of Melanie, harping on her younger sister’s devotion to her and implying that Hugh had taken second place in his young wife’s affections. “I suppose it was quite natural, really, that I should come first with her. I’d brought her up, you see, since she was eight. She couldn’t bear to be away from me—she never went to boarding-school. John’s going to be just the same, poor little chap!” Her voice was maddeningly complacent.
Poor little chap, indeed! thought Alison. She felt sorry for his father, too, having a shrewd suspicion that he was uneasy about Miss Brill’s influence on his small son. He had asked Alison on their expedition to find the swans whether she knew of any reliable girl to keep an eye on John under the supervision of capable Mrs. MacNeish. “Then when she was settled in, my sister-in-law would be free to go back to London. She must miss her bridge club and all that sort of thing. It’s very good of her to help me out.”
Alison had felt a faint shock of surprise at her own pleasure that Miss Brill would, after all, be leaving here before long. She had told Hugh of a girl who was, she thought, just what he wanted—the milkman’s daughter, Jenny Wright. She was a rosy, smiling girl who had been under-nurse with wealthy people who had gone to live in Wiltshire. Jenny’s parents had not wanted her to go so far from home, so she was looking for another place. Hugh had gone the next day to see the girl and her mother, had approved them both, and engaged Jenny to look after John. Unluckily, the day that she arrived Mrs. MacNeish was summoned to the bedside of her dying sister, and though the daily help, Mrs. Moffat, rose splendidly to the occasion, presumably Dr. Brandon had felt it inadvisable for Miss Brill to leave until the housekeeper’s return, for she was still at Swan House and had made no mention to Alison of going away, though Mrs. MacNeish would be returning the day after to-morrow. What was she saying now? Her voice was so monotonous that Alison found her thoughts were apt to wander from the monologue.
“Alison—I may call you Alison, mayn’t I?—I want you to come in and have a drink with us one evening. How would to-morrow suit you?”
“That’s very kind of you. But to-morrow is Wednesday, isn’t it? And at crack of dawn on Thursday Logie and her fiancé are starting out by road for Yorkshire. So I think I’d better be at her disposal. Going away from home is rather an event for us!”
Miss Brill smiled condescendingly. “I expect small events loom large in quiet lives! Then would you care to come on Thursday? About six o’clock?”
“Thank you, I’d like to, very much.”
Lucia Brill went back to Swan House well pleased with her morning’s work. Events of the last week had caused her to reverse her previous favourable impression of the Hamilton girl, who had turned out to be by no means the quiet little country nonentity she had at first supposed her. Several times she had gone out with Hugh and John; John’s chatter later, when she was putting him to bed, revealed that she had taken them to see swans and a fox-earth and to a farm where there were baby pigs—obviously pretending interest in such matters (as though any young woman could possibly be interested in foxes or pigs!) merely as a pretext for having an outing in the car.
And John was getting far too fond of her. He was continually slipping off to Fantails and coming back to meals with tales of what they did in the pokey little place over the stables.
“Alison was making pastry and she made me a little pastry man with currants for eyes!” “Jane was teaching the kittens how to drink out of a saucer and she let me help her.” “Alison says she’ll take me in a boat if Daddy lets me.”
The fiancé of the engaged girl had a car in which they had taken John to the sea; she had demurred, but Hugh had most annoyingly given it his approval, and John had come back irritatingly none the worse for having bathed, though she would have joyfully denounced the merest sniffle as a streaming cold.
The association was making him far too independent of herself. Once, after he had trotted off to Fantails when she had decreed that he must go shopping with her, she had said that if he were unkind to her she would go back to London—and then what would become of him? To which he had replied, “Alison would look after me. She likes boys!” Alison this, Alison that—Lucia was sick of the sound of her name.
Hugh had begun to quote her, too. “Miss Hamilton tells me one can buy first-rate plums and peaches from the gardens at the Hall. I’ll drop in there this morning when I’m passing.” “Miss Hamilton tells me there’s a man at Crundle who sells honey in the comb. I like it better than that drained stuff. She’s going to order us two dozen combs.” “Alison tells me Admiral Southey has a couple of grandchildren staying with him, about John’s age. She’s going to ask them along to meet him. Good for him to have companions of his own age.”
“So you call her Alison now, do you?”
Hugh looked faintly surprised. “I suppose I do. Caught it from John. Nobody stays on formal terms long nowadays!”
When Alison had found Jenny Wright for Hugh, Lucia had decided that something must be done to counteract the influence she was undoubtedly beginning to acquire. Although, of course, it was unthinkable that Hugh should marry a second time, it was extremely undesirable that this young woman, or any other for that matter, should have a finger in the pie of his affairs, even in such minor matters as the ordering of honey or the engaging of a maid. Reliance on her advice and help might cause him to rely less on that of his sister-in-law. Already he had said that he was sure she would be glad when Jenny was established at Swan House and she was free to go back to her life in London. Mrs. MacNeish’s sudden departure to her sister had been providential, giving her time to find a card she could play, and would if on the housekeeper’s return Hugh again suggested that she should leave. The longer she could stay here, the more likely was it that Hugh and John would gradually regard her as a permanency in their lives—a necessary permanency. It would be folly to run the risk of an outsider putting a spoke in her wheel, insidiously gaining John’s affection and Hugh’s confidence! Hugh must be made without delay to see Alison’s limitations; Alison must be shown the extent of her own influence over him.
“I’ve asked the Hamilto
n girl to come on Thursday evening for a drink,” she said to Hugh at dinner that evening. “I do hope you can manage to be back by six? Poor little thing—I expect it will be quite an event for her!”
Hugh raised his eyebrows. “An event? Why?”
“Well, in the position of housekeeper to her cousins, I don’t suppose she is invited out very much. People are far more narrow-minded in the country than in London about that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?”
“Social position. Personally I don’t think it matters in the least. Living in Town, one learns to be broad-minded.”
Hugh answered drily that he scarcely thought the inhabitants of even the most remote and tiny village would send a girl to Coventry because she’d had the decency to take on bringing up her three penurious cousins. He had no doubt that Alison was on the best of terms with all her neighbours and had as many invitations as were going in these restricted times.
Lucia, aware that she had blundered, changed the subject with bright and clumsy tact. “We must ask some of your friends down for a week-end. That charming surgeon and his wife—Shardley? Shardwell? Or Sir Lucius Bromwell-Fairfax? You must miss sharpening your mind with others of your own calibre, buried among all these country mice! I do my best, but John takes up so much of my time and thought, the precious. I do hope he’ll get stronger in this country air, with careful supervision.”
“We must ask some of your friends!” Hugh felt himself prickling all over with irritation, and answered shortly that if he wanted any of his friends to stay, he’d ask them. Then, ashamed of his brusquerie—for poor old Lucia meant well, no doubt of that, despite her maddening ways!—he forced himself to ask her pleasantly how she had spent the day.
“I took John to have tea at that nice little cafe in the High Street in the afternoon. I’d meant to have him with me all the morning, but he had gone to Fantails. You know, Hugh, I feel we’ll have to break him, tactfully, of course, of going there too much. It’s so much better for a child to have a regular routine. And he’s so sensitive and intelligent that I do feel he should spend his time with someone who understands child psychology. Don’t you?” She had asked Hugh to give her names of books on the subject and had read them—which was not quite the same thing as understanding them.
“Frankly, I don’t,” said Hugh. “I think what John wants now is to run wild. Do as he pleases when he pleases, like any other young animal.”
“ ‘Animal’!” Lucia laughed artificially. “What a thing to call your son and heir! Another cup of coffee? No? Then I’ll just pop up and see if he’s asleep, if you’ll excuse me. He’s so apt to throw off the bedclothes, and we mustn’t let him get a chill.”
Hugh lit a cigarette and strolled through the french window into the garden. It was just as he had feared. Lucia was going to take the same possessive line with John that had so nearly ruined Melanie’s life—jealous of his other contacts, resentful of his liking for anyone save herself. Already, for the most specious of reasons, she was planning to end his little visits on his own to Fantails. She was as tenacious as ivy and as gradually dangerous to the individual about whom she twined the tentacles of her “love,” sapping all individuality, shaping the budding growth according to her own desires, stifling initiative, strangling character. She must leave, and soon too! It would hurt her, hurt her badly, and he was sorry for it, but there was no alternative. It would have been unwise to leave John in the care of a young girl strange to him, and the daily woman, a good soul, left before lunch. But when Mrs. MacNeish returned to-morrow or the next day from burying her sister, he would have to find the kindest way of telling Lucia her visit must end.
Strolling to the far end of the garden, he saw Alison, a kitten in each hand, entering the coach-house. Seeing him she paused, smiling. “These little horrors have been leading me a dance! We shut them up at night, but they were quicksilver this evening.”
Hugh leaned over the gate, holding a finger towards the kittens, who patted at it enquiringly.
“We’ve been wondering, Jane and I, if you’d allow John to have one of them for his own?” Alison asked. “Only I waited to ask you when he wasn’t there in case you’d rather he didn’t.”
“How nice of you! He’ll be tickled to death. Good for a child to be brought up with animals. I’d had a vague idea of getting rabbits.”
“If you want rabbits for him, I expect Jane could get some for you. That is, if you haven’t any special place of your own?”
Hugh said he hadn’t, and would be most grateful if Jane could tell him where to find a couple and a hutch. Jane was summoned by calling up to her window, and was charmed to be consulted—as we all are. Having discoursed upon the various merits of English Butterflies, Belgian hares, and Dutch, it was agreed that she should buy a pair of blue Dutch babies, eight weeks old, belonging to a friend of hers, and that the Swan House gardener, Weir, should make a hutch. “For he’s an absolutely wizard carpenter, and keen on rabbits too!” Jane assured Hugh earnestly.
When she had gone back to the letter she was writing to Andrew, Hugh lingered by the gate with Alison, discussing whether he should install half a dozen hens at Swan House. “Come and sit down, won’t you?” he presently suggested. She joined him in the garden, and when they had admired the dahlias that were the pride of Weir’s heart, they sat side by side in deck-chairs on the lawn, screened from the windows of the house by a herbaceous border. The smell of ripening plums and pears and apples blended with the fragrance of the roses’ second blooming. Coloured flowers were fading with the daylight, but white ones, insignificant by day, came at this hour into their own, luminous in the gathering dusk, phloxes, gladioli, roses, hydrangeas like silver clots of foam.
They spoke of gardening and books and music. Hugh told Alison a little of his boyhood on the coast of Dorset. Alison told him something of her childhood in the Border country. They discovered a mutual affection for John Buchan, both as an author and for what they knew of him from his books as a human being. Presently silence fell; the silence of companionship, creating not a barrier but a bond.
“This is the way to live!” Hugh said at last. “All the conveniences of a country town on the one hand. Plumber, post office, fishmonger within five minutes’ walk. And on the other side of that wall, river and marsh and woods and fields and farms.”
“I love it. And you like it now, having known it for a week or two in the summer. But if you had to live your life here, wouldn’t you feel terribly cut off from the companionship of your own kind? Clever people who can talk to you of your own interests?”
Hugh turned his head to look at her. His sudden brilliant smile made him look ten years younger. “ ‘Clever’? I wonder what you mean by that? There are so many sorts of ‘clever’! Most of us are inclined to belittle our own brand of it and to admire some other kind. A reputation for cleverness is often acquired simply on the strength of a good memory, which is quite another matter. You may be impressed by my knowledge of the machinery of the human body. I, on the other hand, admire your gift for making people happy.”
“My gift for— Oh!” She felt her face grow hot. “What a nice thing to say!”
“It’s true,” he said, still looking at her. “I have no use for insincerities. You create an atmosphere—” he broke off, as though he felt he was becoming too personal. “As for my interests, they’re not at all out of the ordinary—books, birds, gardens, music, poking about in antique shops, exploring country places off the beaten track. Things you and I have often talked of. My work does matter to me tremendously, of course, and naturally I like discussing the problems that arise out of it with those who share and understand them. But to live my life out surrounded by my own profession would bore me to distraction! ... I’m seriously considering buying a practice in a country town. This one would suit me well if Sinclair stays on in America.”
“But you’d be wasted in a little place like this.”
“Wasted? Don’t you believe it! Human bein
gs in Market Blyburgh and its countryside have no less need of a physician’s skill when they fall sick than those in Battersea or Mayfair. As for—”
“Oh, there you are! I couldn’t think what had become of you!” said Lucia’s voice—untruthfully, since she had been listening for the last half hour with straining ears and growing irritation to the murmur of their voices from her bedroom window. Her first impulse had been to join them, but she had kept hoping against hope to overhear something that might be of interest. At last she had come out, her mind made up to be all charm and sweetness to Alison, disarming Hugh of any notion of her unfriendliness he might have gathered from her remark—which had been ill advised, she realised that now—that Alison’s social standing was not their own. It would be time enough on Thursday to lead on Alison to reveal her shortcomings. So, unheard by either of them, she had come padding over the grass.
Hugh rose, his face expressionless. “Take my chair. I’ll get another.” The spell was broken. Though Lucia was charming and for the next ten minutes their friendly talk was pleasant, formality had ousted intimacy. Alison was glad when Jane’s voice called her from her bedroom window. “Alison! Are you down there? You asked me to remind you that they’re coming early for the laundry, but I quite forgot!”—giving her an excuse to say good night and leave them.
She had enjoyed the interlude with Hugh, although the last part had been an anticlimax. Although she would be sorry, very sorry indeed, if the Sinclairs did not come back here from America, it would be extremely pleasant if Hugh Brandon stayed on at Swan House. She couldn’t imagine a more delightful neighbour. He was the sort of man to whom one could take any problem, knowing he would try to solve it; any trouble, knowing he would understand and sympathise.
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