It’s utter nonsense, she thought vigorously, as she let herself into the hushed, dimly lit, warm house, while Kenneth was putting the car away. The presences of the three elderly inmates (though they had presumably retired to rest) could be felt therein as disapproving entities.
What has it got to do with Connie and Frances if Mr. Fielding proposes to me? thought Betty. It isn’t even as if he lived at home and his remarrying would upset their lives. No; it’s because they live in such a backwater that they have an exaggerated sense of the importance of their own affairs; and Connie has this absurd notion about no one in the family marrying. Heaven alone knows why, for she isn’t in the least morbid or neurotic. She’s just selfish to the bone, and she would fight to the last ditch to keep her life running along in the smooth easy comfortable way it always has. I suppose (she smiled guiltily to herself as she went upstairs) in a way she and I agree; we both think strong feelings are a nuisance. But I don’t go so far as to want other people not to marry! I wish Rick would marry somebody civilized and sensible who’d know the right way to look after him. He looked desolate to-night, poor pet, though he is so sensible about it all; and she gave a little sigh.
She opened her bedroom door, and then stopped short, for there was a light in the room and the stove was burning. By it, clad in a silk dressing-gown inappropriately embroidered with the calm and lovely water-lily, sat Miss Fielding.
“Ah, there you are,” said Miss Fielding, quite unabashed and in a severe voice. “No doubt you are surprised to see me here.”
“No, not very,” answered Betty and went over to the dressing-table and dropped her hat on it and glanced at herself in the glass.
Miss Fielding nodded.
“I felt sure that you must have suspected from my manner earlier in the evening that I intended to have a talk with you,” she went on.
Betty sat down on the bed and opened her cigarette case. She was more tired and depressed than angry, and she glanced surreptitiously at the clock. It was half-past ten. She held out her case to Miss Fielding with an inquiring look.
Miss Fielding surprised her by accepting one; she seldom smoked. She lit it from a spill at the stove, and then went on, between the ungraceful puffs of the rare smoker:
“Have you anything to tell me, Betty?” in a sepulchral voice which Betty found so absurd that she was unable to repress a giggle. Miss Fielding raised her eyebrows. I know what it is, thought Betty, staring at her fascinatedly, she’s never grown out of being the Straightest Girl at St. Agatha’s. Right now, she’s tackling the Senior Prefect who’s been caught using scent, and she’s smoking herself to put the Senior Pre. at her ease. Poor old Con. But really, it’s too much; I can’t play.
“Only that your father asked me to marry him to-day and I said ‘no,’” she answered, with disarming mildness.
“So I suspected,” said Miss Fielding, compressing her lips and nodding.
“Suspected I’d said no?”
“Yes. Father has been so strange in his manner all the afternoon that I Guessed.”
“Oh. Well. That’s all right, then, isn’t it,” said Betty, hiding a small yawn. “I’m very sorry if he’s upset, of course, Connie. I felt bad about it. But it really isn’t my fault—”
“Yes, Betty, it is your fault,” interrupted Miss Fielding, in a deliberate tone. “Both Frances and I consider that this undignified and painfully embarrassing situation would never have arisen if you had not encouraged Father.”
“Oh, don’t be so silly!” cried Betty, losing her temper and standing up. “I never did a thing! If you and Frances think I enjoyed having him stringing along wherever I went, you couldn’t be more wrong.”
“A woman should be humbled by a man’s devotion,” said Miss Fielding, in a reproving tone and with maddening illogicality, “and grateful. After all, it is the greatest honour a man can pay a woman.”
Though she deplored the situation which had arisen, she was not going to let Betty deprecate the value of Mr. Fielding’s devotion, for Mr. Fielding was her father, and as such, however deprecatable his own qualities might be, he was to be highly valued.
“I am grateful! Of course I am. But it was not my fault.”
“Your manner was thoughtless, Betty. You laughed and joked with him more than was necessary. Frances and Kenneth and I all remarked on it.”
“Oh, nonsense,” said Betty, violently, for her, “I don’t want to be catty, Connie, but if you put a susceptible man down in a houseful of women and three of them sit on him and the other one doesn’t, what do you expect to happen?”
“I was not aware that I ‘sat on’ my father, Betty. Nor, I am sure, did Frances intend to do so. And as for Vartouhi——”
“She took her tone from you and was off-hand with him.”
“Better off-hand, Betty, than flirtatious. As a matter of fact, bearing Father’s and Kenneth’s unfortunate weakness in mind, I dropped a word of warning to Vartouhi.”
“I thought you must have. She isn’t usually rude to anyone,” said Betty with a little bitterness, “except Richard.”
“I told her to avoid lingering in conversation with Father as in England it was not considered respectful for the young to monopolize the attention of the old. But that is beside the point. As you are such an old friend—and I speak from my heart, Betty, when I say that I hope you will remain one—I can say things to you that I could not say to a stranger. I am sure you will agree with me that in the circumstances it would be far better if you left us, at least for a little while.”
“Of course,” said Betty, sitting down on the bed again. “I’d been thinking that, too.”
“It will save embarrassment for everybody,” said Miss Fielding, looking relieved and relaxing the severity of her facial muscles.
“It will be an awful bore, though, Connie,” sighed Betty, delicately ruffling her hair. “I wish I needn’t.” Her anger, always as short-lived as a starry firework, had gone out.
“It will be better in the long run. We must take the Long View,” said Miss Fielding.
“I’ve been so marvellously comfortable here.”
“Sunglades is comfortable.” Miss Fielding’s tone was a little softer with housewifely pride as she glanced about the pretty bedroom. “And the old simple virtue of hospitality is very dear to me. As you know, I would never refuse anyone bread and salt.”
“Oh, I know,” murmured Betty.
“It grieves me very much to have to make this suggestion to you. I know that it would have grieved Our Mother too. Although things are sadly changed here since the war, we still know how to make life pleasant at Sunglades.”
“Yes, indeed.” Another murmur.
“And now for the time being your sojourn with us is over,” said Miss Fielding, rising from her seat and swaddling herself in the water lilies, while a look of playful affection replaced her former disapproval. She could afford to be playful. To-morrow she would tackle Father, and if she did not persuade him that it was best that he also should leave them, her name was not Constance Fielding. “But we shall see you often, I hope, and of course I will leave no stone unturned to find you some ‘digs’ in the town.”
“I don’t want to live under a stone,” muttered Betty frivolously, beginning to unbutton her dress as a gentle hint.
“It will be so much better for us all,” Miss Fielding promised her, moving towards the door. “Father will become his old self again, and I shall get over this little feeling of resentment I have against you, you naughty girl! and you will have an easier journey to work.”
“And there will be less for Vartouhi to do,” murmured Betty, from under the cloud of dark hair she was brushing over her eyes. “Such a comfort.”
“Yes, indeed! Oh, it will be a better plan all round!” cried Miss Fielding blithely. “We will talk it over properly in the morning. Good night, old girl!”
“Good night,” said Betty pleasantly; and as the door closed upon the victor she added, “old beast.”
> Miss Fielding went along the landing as if tramping upon air. How easy it was to deal with people if only you knew your own mind and stuck to your guns! She had always done that; and hence she had what some military correspondent has called the habit of victory.
As she approached her father’s bedroom door a thought struck her. Why not begin to work upon Father this very night? She would not say anything very definite or tell him that Betty was going to leave them, but she would sound him as to his future plans and drop a hint or two about the amount of work that his presence there made for Vartouhi, and make a casual reference or so to her own failing health and that of Frances. It could do no harm; it would prepare the ground for future attacks; and she believed in acting while her vibrations were in harmony and she was charged with energy, as she was to-night.
Without pausing to think further, she knocked briskly upon his bedroom door.
There was no answer.
After waiting for a moment Miss Fielding opened the door a few inches. The room was in darkness, but she could just make out the smooth empty bed. Curious! She had certainly seen him go upstairs an hour ago, looking dejected and pleading tiredness (which deceived nobody) as an excuse for his early retirement. Tiresome old man, he must have gone downstairs again to speak to Kenneth, or perhaps he was still monopolizing the best bathroom.
Miss Fielding swept downstairs.
The house was quiet. It was a quarter to eleven; the chimes struck musically from the clock as she crossed the hall.
Kenneth was sitting by the drawing-room fire with the evening paper and glanced up as she opened the drawing-room door.
“Hallo, Con. Thought you were asleep long ago.”
“Have you seen Father, Kenneth?”
“Not since before I went out. Isn’t he in bed?”
“No, he isn’t!” Miss Fielding, tying the water-lilies tightly round herself as if taking action stations, gazed at her brother with dawning surprise.
“Oh well, he’s probably in the bathroom or the——” Miss Fielding frowned loftily, so he ended, “I shouldn’t worry, anyway,” and returned to his paper.
Miss Fielding retorted, “I am not worrying, Kenneth,” and moved about for a minute or two, fiddling with various objects, in an aimless way; then she went out of the room.
The kitchen was dark, and she supposed Vartouhi must be in bed. But as she crossed the hall, glancing keenly about her (“for no reason that I could name, Frances, it was pure instinct—and how thankful I am that I did”), her gaze happened to linger on the kitchen door, and suddenly her heart gave an uncomfortable jump, for slowly it began to open.
Miss Fielding stood quite still for a second. Then (for she was no coward) she strode silently forward, laid her fingers upon the handle, and gave the door a good push.
There was a gasp and a cry of pain and Vartouhi stood revealed by the light from the hall, with her hand up to her nose.
CHAPTER 25
“VARTOUHI!” TRUMPETED MISS Fielding. “What on earth are you doing?”
“You hurt my nose, Miss Fielding!”
“Serves you right, you silly child. What do you mean by creeping about like that? I thought you were a burglar.”
“It bleed—it bleed!” Vartouhi held up a crimson finger, but Miss Fielding ignored the blood and concentrated upon something else. As her eyes became accustomed to the dusk she saw that Vartouhi wore her coat and cap and that both were sparkling with raindrops.
“You have been out,” proclaimed Miss Fielding, in a voice solemn with anticipation of the revelations that she felt must be to come. “Vartouhi, where have you been?”
At that moment, Kenneth came out into the hall clutching his newspaper:
“What on earth’s the matter?” he demanded. “You’ll wake up everybody in the house.”
“Miss Fielding make my nose bleed!”
“Vartouhi came creeping out of the kitchen in the dark and I naturally thought it was a burglar and pushed the door onto her.”
“It bleed—it bleed!” repeated Vartouhi, very angrily.
“Vartouhi has been Out, at This Time of Night, in The Rain,” continued Miss Fielding, switching on the lights and sweeping into the kitchen, “and I think I have a right to know Where She Has Been. Vartouhi! Take your fingers away so that I can see—there, that’s better.”
She stooped slightly and peered at the swollen little nose and so did Kenneth, and the two middle-aged faces, tired at the end of the day and showing all their wrinkles, were thrust forward into the angry young one as they earnestly surveyed the damage. Vartouhi’s eyes sparkled furiously. No pain is so maddening as that from a bumped nose.
“It’s very swollen. I’ll get some boracic——” muttered Kenneth and hurried away to the little cloakroom opening off the hall where the First Aid box was kept.
“My handkerchief is all blood,” hissed Vartouhi, flinging it on the floor.
“I will give you mine, though you don’t deserve it, you naughty deceitful little girl,” snapped Miss Fielding, pulling out a large snowy one from the depths of the water-lilies. “We’ll get you tidied up first, and then I intend to know exactly what has been going on.”
She was convinced that it was Canadians.
Kenneth came back with a basin and some cottonwool and made Vartouhi sit down at the kitchen table and bathe her nose over the boracic and water. Miss Fielding stood impatiently by while this was going on, wishing to heaven Kenneth had been in bed when it had happened. To see the fuss he made anybody would think there was nothing queer about the incident and all that mattered was the tiresome little thing’s nose.
“Is better,” announced Vartouhi at last, coldly. She had not shed a tear. “It stop bleeding.”
“Ah-ha! Just the job!”
“To-morrow I wash your handkerchief, Miss Fielding,” said Vartouhi. “Oh, how kind and good you are to lend me!” and she held it out to Miss Fielding with a look of the purest spite.
“Keep it, and return it to me when it is clean,” said Miss Fielding, icily.
There was an awkward pause.
“I go to bed,” said Vartouhi sunnily, switching on her national smile. “Good night, Miss Fielding; good night, Mr. Fielding,” and she curtsied first to one and then to the other, which she had not done for some time.
“No, Vartouhi,” Miss Fielding stayed her with an authoritative hand. “You are not going to bed until you have told us where you have been this evening. It is not your free evening, and you did not ask me for permission to go out, and while you are in my employ I stand in relation to you as your father and mother would do. And I am sure that they would not like you to be out late at night in the rain without permission. Now, come along, please. Where had you been?”
“Down to the corner of the road, yas, Miss Fielding,” replied Vartouhi with a promptitude that took her employer considerably aback.
“Oh. Well, that’s truthful, at any rate. Er—what were you doing there?” pursued Miss Fielding, approaching the hypothetical Canadians with a faint hesitation.
“I shine a torch,” said Vartouhi at once.
“Shine a torch! Don’t you know you might be arrested for doing that? How very silly and thoughtless of you, Vartouhi! Whatever for?”
“So there could be light.”
“Well, of course.” Miss Fielding’s voice was the more impatient because she detected out of the corner of her eye a faint smile on Kenneth’s mouth. “But why else did you do it? What was your reason for doing it?”
“So that someone could see with their bags.”
“With their——?” Miss Fielding glanced reprovingly at her brother, who instantly straightened his face. “What on earth do you mean, Vartouhi? Now, you will just tell me everything at once, please, as plainly as possible. Your English is quite good enough now to make yourself perfectly clear. Who—er—who was down there with you, and—er—what were you doing?” A mutter from Kenneth which sounded like “I say, Con, steady on, you know” was ignore
d by Miss Fielding.
“Mr. Fielding is down with me, Miss Fielding,” answered Vartouhi, putting her hands behind her back and speaking with polite patience. “He carry his bags down there to meet the car and I carry the torch so he can see not to fall in the mud. Would be a pity.”
“Mr. Fielding? My father?” exclaimed Miss Fielding, turning in bewilderment to Kenneth, who now looked as surprised as she did. “What car? How did he come to be there?”
“After dinner,” began Vartouhi in a cosy voice, evidently warming to the possibilities of her subject and glancing dramatically about the kitchen, “I am in Mr. Fielding bedroom with his hot-water bottle, and he is there too and he is very sad. So I said to him, ‘Mr. Fielding, you are so sad,’ and he said, ‘Yas.’ So I said, ‘I am sorry,’ and he said, ‘You are kind little girl. More kind than some.’ And I think that he has been ask Mrs. Marten to marry him and she said ‘No, no,’ like I said to her son. Then I remember that you say it is not the custom here in England for young people to talk much to old ones, so I am going away, but he said to me, ‘I wish I could go away, away on this very night here now this minute.’ So I said, ‘Yas, Mr. Fielding, would be a good thing.’ So he said, ‘When is there a train?’ and I said to him, ‘I do not know.’ (You are in the bath and Mr. Kenneth is out with Mrs. Mar-ten, Miss Fielding.) So he go and make a telephone and then he said to me, Vartouhi, Vartouhi, if I could get a car I could just make the nine-forty-five.’ Yas, the nine-forty-five. Is a train, I think. So he makes another telephone but no car will come, no taxi, no bus. Is nothing. He is varry sad because he has packed all his two bags with me to help. So he then said, ‘Ah! the Arkwright girl!’ and he make another telephone and Miss Arkwright is away in London but her father said he will come because he is just home with his car, and it is not in its bed yet, too also. (Mr. Fielding tell me all this.) So Mr. Fielding was varry please and he told me to come with him and carry the torch and he carried the bags and we found Mr. Arkwright dressed like a soldier in his car and he said, ‘Ah Fielding, in you get.’ So Mr. Fielding got in Mr. Arkwright car and he was driven away to the station and I came home but he told me not to tell anyone until to-morrow; so that is why I come in quietly, Miss Fielding,” ended Vartouhi reproachfully, but smiling still.
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