“Gone to London,” she answered lightly at last. “She sent you her love and——”
“I saw her,” he interrupted. “She passed me on the road only ten minutes ago. She was with a man in a car.” Then he stood perfectly still, hat in hand, looking down at her, and waiting. The muscles round his jaw were white.
“Oh yes. That would be Mr. Potter,” said Alda—brightly, this time, and she shook out her knitting. “He’s driving her up. The fact is, she’s been feeling run down for some time, and the hot weather and everything, and she thought she’d get some of her things in town——”
“What things?”
“Oh—clothes.” She gazed at him innocently. She had on a large old hat of rusty black straw like a Welshwoman’s that she kept for garden wear; under its shade her lovely hazel eyes shone like gold water. Her hair was tucked behind her ears and she was paler than usual but only from the heat; she was not at all afraid of Mr. Waite; she had never been afraid of a man in her life and now she was rather enjoying the situation.
He is angry, she thought, as he kept silence but continued to fix upon her his brooding, condemnatory eyes. There must be more in him than I imagined. I like him better than J.’s Mr. P., bore though he is. If he belonged to me I could make something out of him.
She settled the hat further over her eyes.
“She’s going to write to you,” she added, giving him a little nod.
“Breaking off our engagement, I presume.”
“Well—yes—I’m afraid—as a matter of fact. The fact is——” His stare, his almost unbroken silence, were beginning to disturb her slightly and she did not like being looked at in that way. There was more in his expression than he himself knew. She had hurt him; hurt him more than Jean had, and as he gazed at her his eyes betrayed the wound.
“It’s best to get it over, really,” she went on hurriedly, “and I do know as much about J.’s affairs as anyone. I may as well tell you. She’s always been fond of Oliver Potter and now he’s turned up again I’m afraid——”
“It’s you I blame,” he interrupted, in a voice so harsh that it startled her. “You deliberately misled me about this man, didn’t you?”
“I did? Nonsense!” and she laughed but colour began to come up under her warm white skin.
“Yes, you did. And that isn’t all you’ve done. You encouraged Jean to get engaged to me when she didn’t really want to and you knew it, and now you’ve encouraged her to go off with someone else who you’ve known about all along. I think it was a—a dirty trick, and I think you ought to be——
“And I think you’re talking rubbish and being extremely rude into the bargain,” she interrupted sharply; she was not going to hear him tell her that she should be ashamed of herself. “Of course I wanted to see Jean happily married; one always wants that for one’s friends if one’s happy oneself; but to say that I ‘encouraged’ her to get engaged to you, when I knew she didn’t want to, just isn’t true. She was very keen to get engaged to you.”
He heard this in silence.
“She likes and respects you,” Alda went on, taking up her knitting, “and I think if Oliver Potter hadn’t come along you and she might have been happy. It’s just bad luck that he did. But you can’t expect a girl to marry someone she doesn’t love when the man she does love asks her to marry him.”
“But how could he do such a thing when he knew she was engaged to me? Or perhaps,” bitterly, “she didn’t trouble to tell him?”
“That’s exactly what did happen,” said Alda, thinking that this confession would at least prove how uncontrollably Jean was in love with Mr. P. “She never told him. She even took off her ring.”
At this he swore, and she lowered her eyes, in embarrassment at such depth of feeling, such angry shame, on a man’s face. But she had never thought so well of him, and she became more and more convinced that Jean had chosen the lesser man.
Mr. Waite was thinking how mean Aunt Janet’s ring would look compared with the enormous diamond set in platinum which this Potter fellow would buy for Jean. Suddenly, for the first time, he missed his Jean; gentle, cheerful, submissive Jean, who—dammit! who had been in love with Potter all the time!
At this point he became aware that something was pulling at his jacket. He glanced down and met the insistent gaze of Meg, who had been trying to attract his attention for some minutes. She was holding up a jam jar containing some leaves and four ants.
“His name is Gilbert,” she announced in a loud, threatening voice, pushing the jar at him.
He stared down at her, frowning, hardly hearing.
“His name is Gilbert,” she repeated, beginning to swell ominously in voice and countenance.
“What—the ants?” glancing angrily at Alda, who was laughing. “How can ants possibly be called Gilbert? Run away now and don’t be silly, there’s a good girl. I’m talking to your mother.”
“‘Name is GILBERT!” roared Meg, bursting into tears, and Louise came flying out of the cottage.
“All right, Megsy. Come with Weez and we’ll give Gilbert a lovely picnic, shall we? Come along,” and she bore her away, already consoled and clasping the jar, of ants to her chest.
“It’s her name for her pet ant; of course it’s never the same one but she thinks it is,” said Alda. “We’re all going for a picnic on our bicycles presently; it’s such a lovely day.”
Then she hoped that he would not suggest coming too; a whole day of him in the woods, lowering at her and accusing her, was more than she could endure.
He now looked slightly bewildered.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said abruptly. “This has upset all my plans. I must write to my mother and sisters, I suppose. It will be a shock to them. I don’t know what to say.”
Alda uttered a sympathetic noise. Then she said kindly:
“Won’t you wait until you’ve heard from Jean? Don’t write to them at once.”
“Why? Is there a chance of her changing her mind again?” with ferocious sarcasm.
“Absolutely none, I’m afraid. But do give yourself a day or two to get calmed down.”
“Calmed down! It will take me more than a day or two, I assure you, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, to do that.”
“Yes, I’m afraid it will,” she murmured. She was relieved to see that his anger with herself seemed to have abated. But he continued to stare at her with his handsome, gloomy, sorrowful eyes. It had been an increasingly pleasant relationship between the two cottages in the meadows, and it might have ended, but for Mr. Potter, in a contented marriage. She and Jean had brought the pleasures of feminine society into Mr. Waite’s dismal and orderly life; and now Jean had gone, and there would be no marriage for Mr. Waite, and in a month or so she herself and the children would be gone too, and he would continue to live among his tyrannical chickens, with what Jean called his spooks for company, almost as if the family at Pine Cottage had never been. He has no sense of humour and he is what Ronald calls a dead bore but I like him better than I ever did, and he has certainly had a raw deal, Alda thought, folding up her work and preparing to go into the house. Her own part in the raw deal she refused to admit.
She glanced at him. He was standing as if uncertain, frowning at the ground, and turning his hat in his hands. She was struck by his pallor and his drawn appearance. His feelings must be very strong; stronger than perhaps he knew. Then she wondered how much of his sufferings were due to the loss of Jean’s fortune.
He looked up, and caught her glance.
“You think I’m only browned-off about the money and the business, don’t you?” he said with a sudden North Country bluntness.
“I’m sure you’re not,” she replied, with the gentleness that sometimes made her irresistible. “You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t regret that part of it but I believe you’re miserable about Jean, too.”
“You’re right; I am,” he said, and quickly turned away and walked off. He did not look back.
Thank goodness th
at’s over, thought Alda, and she snatched off the Welsh hat and sent it spinning into the air. The very day seemed brighter.
“Has the All Clear gone?” cried Jenny in a conspiratorial voice, peering out of the parlour window with Meg in her arms.
“Yes. Now we can get off. Is the food ready? Come along!”
Twenty minutes later they were riding down a lane under the leafage of June. They passed a delightful day in the woods and the name of Mr. Waite was not mentioned between them, but that night it was added to the already lengthy list in Jenny’s prayers.
He strode across the meadows in a black rage, full of bitter disgust with the pair of them. He felt that they had made a fool of him and that was the one situation he could not endure. They had more money than he had, they still lived in that world which he had left at the age of twenty-one and to which he had never been able to return, and now, between them, they had robbed him of his chance of returning. And he would never have such a chance again. He would stay on in this cursed hole, and he would get old and die, and that would be the end of it.
He roughly pushed open a gate (remembering with a country-dweller’s habit, in spite of his rage, to shut it behind him) and trudged on.
He entered a meadow that was within a month of being cut for hay, and moon daisies and sorrel and slender purple and pewter-coloured grasses dragged about his knees as he walked. It was already very warm and still. He took off his hat and wiped his forehead and paused for a moment. A lark was singing above his head, bird and song rising and falling together in the hazy blue. Then another sound began upon the morning calm; the church bell from the village ringing over the fields. Of course, it’s Sunday, he thought, and his thoughts went to Daleham, where Mother and the Girls would now be walking down Swanton Street to Saint James’s Church.
At the sound, there descended upon him (like a severe old parson accompanied by a slightly soulful angel) memories of that creed of practical Christian duties and sober church-going in which his mother had brought him up, and thoughts of those Great Teachers who so irresistibly attracted him. Together, in the midst of that field of warm silver grass, they took him in hand. He wiped his forehead once more; he glanced about him and sighed. His rage began to ebb. He was still very angry with Jean and Alda and when he thought of Mr. Potter in his luxurious car a vein in his forehead actually throbbed, but he ceased to lash himself towards wilder fury yet, and presently, when he had lit his pipe and was walking slowly on, it began to occur to him that some of all this might be his own fault.
He remembered what it was that he had meant to confess to Jean when he decided to propose to her: that he did not love her. But he had not confessed, though he had had a suspicion at the time that he was, in some way, cheating her. In his home circle a marriage of convenience would not be regarded as shocking. It would belong to the world of Business, from which sentiment was excluded. But at least a pretence of love—romance—whatever you liked to call it—would have been put up; and Buddha—Jesus—all those Great Teachers—what would they have said to a marriage without love? He himself had always, since his first youth, feared love and avoided it, but he knew that they would have condemned a loveless marriage of convenience very severely indeed.
Then he defended himself by recalling that during the last few days, before this chap Potter arrived, he had been getting fond of Jean. He had looked forward to seeing her, and had missed her when she was not there, and her hair and the perfume she used and the silly tinkle of those five silver bracelets she wore had been growing less irritating to him. And now, as he pushed open the gate of his garden and sought about for some useful occupation to fill the hours before it was time to begin preparing his solitary dinner, his anger had almost entirely disappeared and he only felt dreary and sore and disappointed; and what he would have liked to do (if only it were not impossible because of her disgraceful behaviour) was to go back to Pine Cottage and talk over the situation with Alda—with Mrs. Lucie-Browne.
26
FABRIO’S DECISION TO ask Sylvia to be his wife had lightened his spirits. Now he had an object to work for and look forward to. He ceased to buy cigarettes, so that the money might go into Mr. Hoadley’s care and by the end of June he had saved two pounds, which seemed to him a little fortune.
He did not pay more attention to Sylvia than he had formerly done, for he was afraid that she would suspect his intention, and he did not want her to suspect until he was ready, with money and a gay confident heart, to ask her to share this with him. He dreamed of her by day and by night in a fond, protective, silent way, building an image in his fancy which he would not allow any roughness or crude behaviour of hers to disturb. Sometimes he even believed that she loved him. Her eyes smiled so kindly when they met his own! She praised his voice so warmly! There came a day, an always-to-be-remembered day, when she said, there before them all while they were sitting at tea in the farmhouse kitchen, “Sing, Fabrio. I love to hear you sing; your voice does something to me.”
And so, while he was carrying away the cups to be washed, he sang, and Mrs. Hoadley tapped in time with her foot, where she sat languidly by the window open to the summer afternoon.
There had been a noticeable relaxation in the atmosphere of the farmhouse during the last month, for the mistress could ho longer dart about all over the farm, crisply shutting doors and whisking objects into cupboards and detecting the livestock in misdemeanours. She kept usually to the cool pleasant kitchen, where she moved slowly about cooking the meals for which the Italians and Mr. Hoadley and Sylvia came in ravenously hungry three times a day, or stayed in her bedroom, where she sat resignedly knitting and turning over an immense mound of pale pink knitted garments threaded with white ribbon. These had poured in from every corner of Great Britain, where seemingly Mrs. Hoadley had an old school friend or a cousin or a someone-we-used-to-know, and all her correspondents were so taken by the name Joyanna that gradually she herself began to feel more placid and as time went on she even began to look forward a little to Joyanna’s birth.
Privileges crept into the daily routine. One pouring wet afternoon when the Italians could not get on with cutting hay in the Big Meadow, and everyone was hanging about looking serious because if this weather lasted overnight and into to-morrow the hay would be spoilt, Mrs. Hoadley invited them into the kitchen to eat hot cakes and drink tea, where Sylvia presently joined them. There was a good deal of laughter, and Mrs. Hoadley presided, knitting as usual, and occasionally giving the stifled gasp with her lips pressed together which was her version of a hearty laugh. Mr. Hoadley came into a late tea and was not displeased to find all this going on. His wife had been easier to get on with lately (contrary to his anticipations), less finicky, less nervous. Even the arrival of four yards of exceedingly thick and “felted” flannel, yellow with age and rather whiffy, from old Mrs. Hoadley at the Wild Brooks had only provoked a pitying “Poor old thing—nobody uses those binders nowadays”—and the flannel had been cut up for polishers and ironholders.
Mr. Hoadley decided that he would ask the Camp authorities if the Italians might sleep at the farm during the harvest; Naylor’s possessed only one large field, a six-acre which was sown in a crop rotation suitable to the soil of this part of Sussex, and this year it was sown with wheat, as was the Small Meadow and both fields must be reaped in August. All the farm work grew heavier as the summer drew on, and he would need all the help that the two men and Sylvia could give him.
As the strength of the sun increased, so did Fabrio’s energy and gaiety. His chestnut hair took on a sheen from exposure to the rays, though he was not mad enough, like an Englishman, to expose it all day, wearying himself and giving himself a headache. No; in the granary, high up among the cobwebbed beams, he had spied a big straw hat, the property of some forgotten farmhand now perhaps an old man. It was ragged at the brim, it had a rat-hole in its tall crown; never mind. Fabrio, who had studied it while lying on his back during the winter, one day climbed leisurely and expertly up the side o
f the granary, and brought down the hat. It was grey with dust, but he blew that off, and underneath was the sheen of sound straw. Good, thought Fabrio, and put it on his head and went out into the sunlight. Beneath its brim his eyes felt at home; they could move slowly, observantly, within their little cave of cool shadow. He had just such another hat at home in San Angelo. He settled it more jauntily upon his head and went off to show himself to Sylvia.
She thought he looked a guy but did not tell him so. For years her idea of an attractive man had been a huge square creature in squarer American clothes, so naturally a graceful male of middle height wearing a hat that was a comic poem did not attract her; indeed, no one who was not conventionally smart could hope to, but she smiled at him and told him the hat was smashing (“So it is—so it is,” he agreed, putting his finger through the hole, “all the time it is being se-mashed”) and they loitered in the sun for a little while, chatting while she rested her sunburnt arms upon the warm wood of the gate leading out to the Big Meadow. Gusts of soft wind wandered by, lifting her hair and blowing coolly upon his half-uncovered breast: the wheat stood green and high, and overhead in the elm the hidden pigeons cooed.
“It’s nice and peaceful here—for five minutes,” she murmured, gazing off towards the Downs veiled in summer haze. “Fabrio,” turning to him, “don’t you like it better here in the summer?”
“Yes, it is better, Sylvia, much better. But,” his nostrils dilated slightly, while he did not meet her eyes, “all the time I am think to go home, to my home in San Angelo.”
“Any chance of it?” she asked lazily, swinging on the gate.
He shrugged. “Perhaps. I do not know. In the autumn, they say in the campo. But I do not know.” He did not dare to look at her, for if he did he could not control his words of love; he stared down at his boots.
“What’ll you do, when you do get home, Fabrio?”
He shrugged again, and was silent. The pigeon began again on his monotonous love song; roo-coo-coo—then broke off abruptly. Fabrio looked into her eyes and smiled and said confidently:
The Matchmaker Page 33