“Why not say—‘I’ve a great respect for your sister, my dear Foster?’ ”
“Well—I have.”
“Good lord! Rachel’s a——”
“Look here, you shut up. You haven’t the mind to appreciate a decent woman.”
“You call Rachel decent to her face, and just see——”
“Perhaps I shall.”
Christmas Day should have inspired them. There had been a slight frost, and the day was thin gold, keen and clear and still. Snaith, going the round of the houses, found half the mash hoppers empty. It was Foster’s feeding week, and Foster had a mind that postponed things till to-morrow. Snaith flared. He did not notice that the sky was blue and the oaks in their wood shining like goblin trees. He stalked back to the barn, and found Jack sitting on one of the meal bins and lighting a cigarette.
“Half the hoppers empty again.”
“Really!”
“Why don’t you try to do your job?”
“Dear, dear, peevish as usual.”
Jack got off the bin and opened the lid, and reached for the bowl that was used as a scoop.
“What’s the use of trying to work with a fool like you?”
“What about your temper, old dear?”
“I’m just about fed up with your rotten slackness.”
“Well, try that.”
Foster had filled the scoop with meal, and with a quick turn of the body, and a sweep of the arm he flung the meal at Snaith. It smothered him, head, face and chest. He was such a figure of fun that Jack burst out laughing.
“Hallo, old Dusty Miller!”
But Snaith’s anger raged from words into action. He swung a fist and knocked Jack backwards over the bin, and then closed with him. The fat was completely in the fire, and Jack as much a mad dog as Andrew. Half submerged in the bin he struck out, but Snaith’s hands were at his throat. They struggled together with blind ferocity, the suppressed hatred of weeks boiling up in them. Snaith had Foster pinned down inside the bin, and Jack’s writhing legs were trying to get a purchase round Snaith’s body.
Fortunately for both of them their madness was challenged by a sudden voice.
“Jack—Andrew——!”
Snaith recovered himself and drew back as though something had stung him. Rachel was standing in the doorway of the barn.
“Hallo. Sorry, Rachel. We——”
She glanced from his meal smothered figure to Jack who was heaving himself out of the bin. He, too, was powdered white, but his face was bloody.
She turned on Snaith.
“You beast.”
He looked abashed, crestfallen.
“Awfully sorry, Rachel.”
“Fighting. What do you mean by it? Perfectly disgusting. Jack, your mouth’s bleeding.”
Jack looked sullen.
“He knocked me into the bin.”
“And what had you done?”
“Just chucked some meal over him.”
They were a sorry couple, both ridiculous and pathetic, like a couple of dogs whom someone had drenched with a pail of water. It was Rachel’s turn to be angry. And yet they were so like a pair of sulky, silly boys conscious of being in complete disgrace.
She said—“What’s the matter with you two? Seems to me I’ve got to give you both a licking. I’ve been in the house. It’s a disgrace, an absolute piggery. I come down here on Christmas morning and find squalor and fighting. What’s it all mean? You, Andrew, tell me.”
Snaith looked at her rather helplessly.
“Oh—I suppose I’ve got a beastly temper. And things have gone all wrong—somehow. I’m sorry. I’ll apologize to Jack.”
She turned on her brother.
“And you?”
He smiled a little sulky smile.
“Oh—I’m fed up. It’s no life for a civilized creature. And old Andrew there always has a pain in his tummy.”
“Who did the cooking?”
“I did.”
She had to restrain her laughter, for they were so crestfallen and pathetic.
“Well, you had better go and clean up. And then we’ll clear up that filthy house. Nice Christmas Day—for all of us.”
Andrew spoke humbly.
“Jack was going into Brighton for a show. I don’t mind him having some fun. I’ll turn to.”
“A girl, Jack?”
“What’s that to do with it?”
“Well, you’d better go. You’ll have to tell her some nice fib about your mouth.”
Coolly she took control of the situation. Both those sheepish males slunk off to the house and in their respective bedrooms changed their mealy clothes and cleansed themselves. Meanwhile, Rachel, surveying a pile of dirty crockery in the kitchen, attended to a dying fire and prepared for the production of much hot water. Being more modern than the moderns she had passed through a course of Domestic Economy, and when the two men came downstairs she took them in hand.
“Jack, what time’s your dance?”
“I said I’d be there for tea.”
“Righto. Plenty of time. We’ll get busy. Were you proposing to produce anything in the way of a Christmas dinner?”
“No, not exactly.”
“All right. We’ll have a Christmas festival. Andrew, you can help me with the washing up. Jack, take those rugs up.”
“Which rugs?”
“You might well ask. Those things that look like dirty sacks. Take ’em outside and beat them, and then you can scrub the floor.”
She kept those two tamed men at it all through the morning. They washed and they scrubbed and they dusted, while she mysteriously busy in the kitchen, forbade them to enter it, but looked in on them from time to time. A savoury smell began to permeate the house. It challenged the nostrils of both those shamefaced men.
Said Jack to Andrew—“What’s Rachel at?”
Snaith sniffed the air.
“Smells like something—roasting. I say, she has made us look pretty silly. I’m sorry, old man—I——”
“My fault, Andie. I shouldn’t have chucked that stuff over you. Fact is—I don’t think I’m cut out for this sort of job. Too temperamental.”
At one o’clock they were still busy upstairs when she called them down. “Come on, you boys.” She had laid the table, and produced from a hamper that she had brought with her in the car mince pies and crackers and dessert. The savoury smell disclosed its origin, a roast duck.
Andrew looked at Jack. He said—“Rachel has scourged us with scorpions. But this is——”
Jack’s face had recovered its cheerful, boyish colour.
“I say, Rache, you are a bit of a marvel.”
“Now—behave. Somebody say grace. You, Andrew.”
Solemnly he stood behind his chair.
“For what we have received and are about to receive—may we be grateful—to Rachel.”
Later she sent her brother off to Brighton. She still controlled the situation. She said—“I want to have a talk to Andrew. I’ll stay for tea and then buzz home. Yes—I’ve got a show on to-morrow. Run away to your fairy, Jacko.”
It was a most perfect afternoon and she announced to Andrew that she would like to walk round the farm, and in some mysterious way “Journey’s End” seemed to have taken to itself a new temper. The winter sunlight touched the world gently. The downs silvered the distance. The old Scotch firs warmed their throats in the sunlight. The place had recovered its beauty.
They walked down to the wood where last year’s bracken was the colour of red rust.
“It’s a lovely spot, Andie.”
He had an air of surprise, as though he had lost some precious possession and had suddenly rediscovered it.
“Yes—I suppose it is.”
“For you.”
“Why—for me?”
She stood leaning against the gate and looking at the sunlit spaces of the winter wood.
“Oh, you seem to fit here, somehow. But Jack doesn’t. Jack’s Threadneedle Street and t
he Brompton Road. As a matter of fact the pater had heard of a billet for him. I think he ought to slip into it.”
Snaith glanced at her pleasant, clean, capable face. She was the sort of girl who, with all the superficial attributes of smartness, contradicted all that was garish and topical in a particular cult.
“Yes—I don’t think Jack’s made for this life. Fact is, Rachel, two men shouldn’t live alone together. They rub each other raw. They don’t mix.”
“Probably. What shall you do?”
He turned and looked at the farm-house and its clump of firs.
“Oh—I suppose I shall stick on here, and worry through. There’s something in the soil that gets me.”
“Pretty lonely.”
“It’s better to be alone—unless the one inevitable partner comes along, but how could you expect any modern girl to put up with a life like this?”
Her smile was whimsical.
“Andrew, what is the modern girl?”
“The modern girl.”
“Yes. Explain her. Define her. I suppose you’d begin with her complexion and its requirements.”
He met her eyes and saw in them something that made the soul of him straighten and marvel. Good heavens, was it possible? And he had not dared——!
“Sorry, Rachel. Talking newspaper stuff. But do you really think a girl could take on a job like this?”
“Why not?”
“Well—the life’s pretty rough. You don’t make much money, if you make any money at all. Of course—I do believe—that with work and some ideas—and enterprise—one could make the place pay. And one is free—in a sense. You have the sky over your head and the earth at your feet.”
She smiled.
“Andrew, may not a girl—even a modern girl—sometimes feel like that too? After all, it’s nature.”
He looked at her with a kind of wonder.
“You—Rache?”
“Yes.”
He leaned upon the gate with his chin between his two fists.
“By God—I never thought it possible. My dear, be careful. It would mean—it does mean—such a terrible lot to me.”
She leaned with him against the gate, her shoulder close to his.
“What about the dinner, Andie?”
“Marvellous.”
“I’m quite a decent cook.”
“You’re marvellous.”
OUT OF THE SEA
Mr. Miller was looking out of the office window at the royal blue of the Royal Hotel bus as it swung in between the two stone pillars of the main gate. Mr. Miller had managed the Royal Hotel at Seabourne for ten-and-a-half years. He had found it in a state of respectable and dyspeptic stuffiness and by gradual persuasion and with the enthusiasm of one who loved his job, he had made of it the most successful and luxurious hotel on the south coast.
The blue bus drew up under the porte-cochère. Corcoran, the head porter, was there ready to receive its occupants, but on this afternoon in September the bus deposited one solitary male.
“Mr. Brown, sir?”
Corcoran extracted a golf-bag from the bus.
“Yes. I have a room booked.”
“We were expecting you, sir.”
It had taken Mr. Miller three years to collect and train a staff and to educate the hotel to behave to the new arrival as though he or she were welcome and not some anonymous package pushed in by a casual postman. Mr. Brown was getting out of the bus. He had the appearance of the ordinary well-to-do, hard-bitten, game-playing Englishman. He was dressed in grey, and wore a grey felt hat, and his brown boots were perfectly polished.
“All the luggage here, sir?”
“Yes.”
“You are in No. 47, sir.”
Mr. Brown had turned towards the hotel doorway, and Mr. Miller saw his face. It was ruddy and round and hard. The blue eyes were very blue, the hogged moustache faintly red and definitely aggressive. It suggested the face of a military man, and Mr. Miller, who had proposed to walk out and meet the visitor in the vestibule, suddenly refrained.
For something had happened to Mr. Miller. The stranger’s face had associated itself with some vague and unpleasant memory, no definite memory, but all the more baffling on that account. It was sinister. It produced in Mr. Miller’s mind the effect of a sudden shadow, fear, a dread of something he knew not what.
He remained by the window, turning over the money and the keys in his trouser pockets.
“Now—where the devil——?”
Probably, Mr. Miller had as clean a balance sheet as any hotelier in the kingdom. He was a solid, sturdy, kindly little man, and few people knew or remembered that he was Swiss. He had married an English wife and had three very English children, and was himself so English that he too had forgotten that he had been christened Otto Friedrich. When the Union Jack was hoisted above the Royal Hotel it was very much the flag of Friedrich Miller, and not the emblem of that Otto Friedrich Müller who had come to England with one shabby trunk in the days before the war.
Now, Mr. Miller, in spite of his air of solidity, was more sensitive than he appeared. There was a boyishness about him. There were moments when he would rush off to his wife to be reassured and have his head patted. All artists are creatures of temperament and Mr. Miller was very much an artist in all the details connected with an hotel. He was a connoisseur of wines, food and cigars. A flat entrée or bad coffee could produce in him both physical and spiritual nausea. His hotel had a soul.
Mr. Miller walked out of the office and down the private passage leading into the garden. He and his wife and family occupied a little house in a quiet corner of the hotel grounds. He walked rapidly, with his head bent, his hands still in his trouser pockets. Mary Miller, sitting at an open window, saw him coming and was aware of his hunched shoulders and air of solid haste. Something had upset her husband. She was wise as to his characteristic postures.
Mary Miller was one of those large, fair women who suggest the shape and the colour of a yellow rose. She was a wide-eyed, tranquil, consoling creature with a leisurely, deep voice. Nothing ever seemed to fluster her, and she had all the strength of a wise tranquillity.
She rose and put her work away. The table was laid for tea, and when her husband entered the room she was sitting at the table.
“Tea’s just coming, Fred.”
Admirable woman! His eyes lit up as he looked at her. She never fussed a man or asked him unnecessary questions. For years she had helped him unostentatiously in his work. She knew that a hotel produces discords, and that to control a family that consists of five porters, a dozen or so chambermaids, fifteen waiters, and a kitchen staff, is no light matter. Perhaps the chef was in love, or a waiter had been hectored by the maître d’hôtel? Or Florrie of the third floor had had words with the housekeeper? Mr. Miller had to please two different sections of a large community. Visitors might complain. There are certain people who cannot help complaining. There is too much noise in their corridor, or the lounge is not properly ventilated, so they ventilate a grievance.
Mr. Miller sat down.
“Kids out?”
“Yes, on the sands.”
A small maid appeared with the teapot. There were cucumber sandwiches on the table, and Mr. Miller loved cucumber sandwiches. He grabbed three.
“Mary, it’s quite absurd, but I have seen a ghost.”
His wife passed him his teacup.
“What kind of ghost, Fred?”
“It got out of the hotel bus.”
Mary Miller was filling her own cup. She was not a woman who looked at her husband with glances that said—“Don’t be silly.” Moreover, Mr. Miller was absolutely no fool. He might be just a little emotional and excitable on occasions, but his worries were tangible realities.
“A visitor, Fred?”
Her husband was munching sandwiches. His face was the face of a man who was trying to remember some important fact.
“Yes. Man named Brown.”
“Sounds very English, Fred.”
“Absolutely. Golf clubs, grey suit, red face; looks army.”
Mary Miller smiled faintly.
“Well—Fred?”
“Don’t laugh, my dear. Directly I saw his face—I felt—well—a kind of shock. I felt that I had met him before—somewhere—and under circumstances——”
“Unpleasant circumstances?”
“Yes.”
“Has he been here before?”
“I don’t think so. He wrote from the ‘Majestic’ in town to book a room.”
“Are you sure he hasn’t been here before? He didn’t welsh you?”
Mr. Miller frowned at the teapot.
“I can’t remember him—and yet—somewhere—years ago—I must have met him.”
Mary Miller was not worried about her husband’s hypothetical past. She had been married to him for eight years, and there was no skeleton in their cupboard. Her faith in Otto Friedrich was founded upon eight years of mutual faith; theirs had been a very happy and successful marriage.
“Well—I shouldn’t worry, Fred. What can the man mean to you? You have never had any trouble?”
“No.”
And then Mr. Miller qualified that negative.
“O, well, nothing to be ashamed of. There was a certain incident—before we were married. No, nothing to do with a woman.”
“Something to do with a man?”
“Men.”
“You’ve never told me.”
“O, that’s all dead and buried like the war. I’ve never told anybody, and I never shall. Besides——”
And then he laughed.
“No—I did not have lobster for lunch, my dear. I suppose it’s some silly complex or other, like one’s loathing for vinegar or a woman with pale eyelashes. Do you ever feel like that?”
“Oh, often, Fred, but one doesn’t talk about it.”
“No. Well, we won’t say anything more about Mr. Brown.”
The Royal Hotel was what is known as a de luxe hotel. Its prices were beyond the pockets of ordinary people. It had an air, though it did not always sound its h’s. Nor do de luxe incomes invariably attach themselves to de luxe breeding. The Royal Hotel housed both cabinet ministers and successful butchers. Its Rolls Royces, and they were many, were not wholly the property of gentlemen of distinction. Mr. Miller was a man of the world. He understood the various cliques into which his clientele segregated. He could adapt himself to varying atmospheres.
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