‘Oh, no, of course not,’ snapped Dolly. ‘I’m only going to climb trees in the garden.’
‘You’re very clever, aren’t you?’
He was beginning to get riled.
‘Well, what do you want to ask such a silly question for? Was I going in. Couldn’t you see I was?’
‘What’s taking you in, anyway?’
‘Haven’t you eyes? It’s wrote large enough.’ She pointed to a bill on the paling executed in Miss Barrington’s best poster writing. It said:
CLEWER VILLAGE INSTITUTE
June Session, 1914.
On Friday next, at 6 p.m.
Mr HUBERT ERVINE will lecture on:
‘DANTE, THE GREAT ITALIAN POET.’
Free to all. Come early.
‘Dant the Eyetalian Poit!’ read Mr Hopkins. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’
‘Well, you are a Mr Ignorance and no mistake. You didn’t ought to say Dant, Duurty! That’s the proper way to say it.’
Thus Dolly, who had heard all about Dunty from Miss Barrington.
‘Well, but what d’you want to bother your head about him for? That’s what I want to know.’
‘Curiosity killed the cat. Good-bye, Mr Hopkins.’
Too much incensed to answer, he strode on and left her.
The Clewer Village Institute was a dreary place. A lending library of an instructive nature, carefully chosen by Marian, lined the walls. All the books were uniformly clad in drab holland covers. The baize table near the stove was littered with old newspapers of a strictly Tory nature and some pamphlets issued by the Primrose League. Two Union Jacks, draped between the windows, testified to the patriotism of the village of Lyndon.
As Dolly shook out her mackintosh she wondered anxiously how long James would wait in the rain. She trusted that he would soon give her up. It was so very wet and he had not got on his Burberry. She wished she could have made him put it on without sacrificing any of her hard-won aloofness. The room was empty, but this did not surprise her, for she knew she was early. With the patience of a well-disciplined nature she settled herself to tranquil inactivity on a bench at the very back of the room. Divested of her mackintosh she was revealed, supple and sturdy, in a navy coat and skirt of indifferent fit. Her best black hat, abob with cherries, hid the apricot meshes of her hair.
She was flushed with the routing of Mr Hopkins, though the suppression of followers was an art in which she was much practised. She had many, but she detested them all and was determined never to marry. Her young intelligence had been dreadfully haunted by the shadow of that maniac stepfather who had made life so frightful for her mother. It was a memory which still terrified her and distorted her ideas; the risks of marriage, its possible disasters, seemed to her insurmountable. Nor was it likely that she would meet a man who could inspire her to face these difficulties; strength and weakness alike antagonized her, since the one stirred her to revolt against possible domination and the other roused her ridicule. An affectionate, intuitive creature, built for womanly ends, she was likely to remain single.
The rain drummed on the roof and the large clock over the door ticked loudly. She began to grow nervous, wishing that somebody else would turn up. Suddenly she had a perfect horrible apprehension. Suppose that she were all the audience! It might well be. She would never have come herself, on such a nasty evening, if she had not been obliged. But it would be awkward if she were the only one. Of course there would be the party from ‘the house.’ But Dolly knew that it was for herself and her likes that this lecture was given. It was meant to elevate her. She did not mind being elevated along with other proletarians, but she barred the notion of enduring it quite by herself. If nobody from the village put in an appearance she would have to sit marooned on the benches designed for the commonalty. A semicircle of her betters, installed in arm-chairs behind the lecturer’s back, would confront her for at least an hour. Every time she looked up she would face a battery of aristocratic eyes. She was a brave girl, but she quailed at the idea. She would have withdrawn had she dared; but, with old Lady Clewer coming, flight was impossible. Old Lady Clewer saw everything, except perhaps the way Miss Cynthia was carrying on with that Sir Thomas. But then Miss Cynthia was very deep.
She strained her ears to catch the approach of the station car which would bring the family. It was surely time they arrived. The clatter of boots and a great scraping in the porch relieved her. She was, it seemed, to have at least one companion.
But her heart sank again when James appeared.
‘Hello, Dolly!’ he exclaimed. ‘I thought you couldn’t be coming. I waited by the back gate for you.’
Dolly grew pink.
‘I went out by the shrubberies, sir,’ she observed.
‘Well, why didn’t you tell me?’ he persisted. ‘I wanted to walk with you.’
‘I’m sure I’m very sorry, sir.’
‘But why didn’t you? Are you angry about anything? What is the matter with you? Why are you so different? Because if you are angry I wish you’d tell me why,’ he complained.
After all there was no great need to be shy of him, for she had known him all her life. Now that they were alone together she had much better speak plainly to him.
‘I’m not angry. It’s only this. Now we are grown up it’s quite different to being little. We can’t be friends like we used to be. Our stations in life is so different.’
‘I don’t mind about our stations in life.’
‘Ah, but I do. A girl like me can’t be friends with a gentleman without people thinking things.’
‘They always do,’ he argued. ‘It’s no use to worry about what people think. I never do. I used to. But when I saw that they’d really rather think wrong than right I gave it up.’
‘Yes. You can. But I can’t. I got my living to earn.’
He digested this and grew grave.
‘It’s very hard, that is,’ he said at last.
‘It can’t be helped,’ quoth Dolly. ‘We didn’t make the world. If we had, it would have been different, I daresay.’
‘It would,’ agreed James feelingly.
Dolly remembered with dismay that she had not called him ‘sir’ for at least two minutes. This was always happening to her. Also she was inclined to relapse, insensibly, from the refined grammar and diction with which she usually addressed her employers. It seemed more natural, somehow, to converse with him in the rough and ready speech of her own caste.
‘This sort of thing is maddening,’ he declared. ‘I like you better than anyone I know. I always have. I don’t suppose I shall ever find anyone I like better. It isn’t only the people here … I used to think that it would be different if I got away and went to Paris. But it wasn’t. Paris was all right for working in. I learnt a lot. But I felt just as out of it there as here. I never knew what to say to them. And they all laughed at me, like they do here. Even the ones who liked my work did.’
‘Well, you know, sir, you act a bit queer sometimes,’
‘I can’t help it. Do you see anything very serious the matter with me, Dolly?’
‘I don’t see there’s much wrong with you, I don’t. And Auntie doesn’t neither.’
‘But you are the only ones. And isn’t it hard …?’
‘Everyone has their troubles,’ interrupted Dolly.
‘I know. But why? I don’t want my station in life. Who gave it to me, anyway?’
‘Almighty God,’ she told him austerely.
‘Well, I suppose so,’ he assented.
She was overjoyed to hear at least two people in the porch, but wished that he would move from his pleading posture at her side. The newcomers turned out to be Mr Blair and Jimmy Pyewacket, the boy who weeded the garden. She was distressed to think that Mr Blair was a visitor at the house, but consoled herself with the reflection that he was a born gentleman and wouldn’t get thinking things, even if James’s attitude did look a little odd. This was a great compliment to Mr Blair, for Dolly’s standards wer
e cruelly high, and very few of the Lyndon guests were allowed by her to be born gentlemen.
James, with the air of a man of the world, immediately effected an introduction.
‘Miss Kell, Mr Blair. But you ought to know her, for she brings your shaving water in the morning, doesn’t she?’
His triumphant glance told Dolly that he believed himself to have done exactly the right thing upon this occasion. Let her retract her statement that he acted a bit queer!
Mr Blair was looking a little puzzled and she set them right.
‘Not me, sir. Mr Peters waits on gentlemen staying in the house.’
‘That explains it,’ said Mr Blair. ‘I though you must have changed very much since this morning. Are we all the audience?’
Dolly looked round for Jimmy Pyewacket and saw him edging away towards the door. She made a dash at him and detained him.
‘Now then, young Jimmy! You don’t! Do stay, there’s a little love! I don’t want to have to sit on these benches all by myself.’
‘These gents’ll sit with you,’ said Jimmy, poised for flight.
‘No they won’t. They have to sit on the platform with the family.’
‘Shall we?’ exclaimed the gents, and Mr Blair added: ‘We won’t. We’d much rather sit on the benches. What’s the point of sitting behind the lecturer’s back?’
‘There won’t be any family,’ observed James. ‘We are all that’s coming. So we can sit where we like, I should think.’
‘Nobody coming!’ cried Dolly. ‘Not Lady Clewer nor Miss Lois?’
‘Not they. It’s raining and their car is out of order.’
Dolly cursed her fate. If she had only known this she would have absconded herself.
‘You mustn’t go, you know,’ went on Mr Blair, attacking Jimmy in his turn. ‘Think of the wretched lecturer! Four are better than three.’
‘It’s so cold,’ objected Jimmy, shivering at the damp odour of the place. ‘The stove ought to of been lighted.’
‘It’s laid,’ said James, inspecting it. ‘Shall I light it?’
‘Will you stay if we do?’ pleaded Mr Blair of Jimmy, who nodded graciously.
‘I don’t see why we shouldn’t,’ Dolly encouraged them.
So they lit the stove and the four students of Dante gathered round the crackling sticks. Dolly could not digest the idea that no one else was coming from the house.
‘But isn’t Miss Barrington coming?’ she asked. ‘She always does.’
‘He,’ James indicated Mr Blair, ‘wouldn’t let her. She has a very sneezy cold. And when we were all in the hall after tea he told her to go to bed. You should have heard him, Dolly! It was like Mamma and God and a magistrate all at once. She went rather quickly!’
‘My most effective professional manner,’ murmured Mr Blair. ‘She wasn’t fit to be up at all.’
There was a great snorting and tooting outside as a little car bustled up to the gate. The lecturer, nervously grasping a roll of MS., sidled into the room. He glanced around, prepared for the beefy stare of innumerable rustics, all the simple village folk who would be so disappointed if he did not brighten their lives. He beheld empty benches. The group round the stove rose to receive him in sympathetic solemnity.
‘I’m afraid most of your audience has been frightened by the weather,’ observed Gerald Blair.
Jimmy Pyewacket said hopefully:
‘The rain’s stopping. P’raps some more will come.’
Hubert clutched at this.
‘Yes, they might,’ he said. ‘Shall we wait a bit in case they do?’
There was a pause and Dolly said encouragingly:
‘Just as you like, sir.’
So they all sat down again and the warming stove drew clouds of steam from their wet boots. A few minutes of uneasy silence passed. At last Hubert thought fit to ask Dolly if she liked poetry.
‘Some poetry I like,’ she said. ‘There was one piece I read. I saw it on the pictures first and it was beautiful. So I read the book. “Evangeline” it was called. All about the olden times.’
‘Ah … Longfellow!’
‘That’s right.’
‘You like his works, then?’
‘Yes, sir. I think it’s beautiful.’
‘And what,’ asked Hubert, ‘do you think of Dante?’
Dolly was nonplussed and said she didn’t know much about him.
‘But you read that little book … er … The Florentine and His Age?’
‘Pat and his Ape!’ muttered James, with such concentration of scorn that Dolly stifled a giggle.
‘I read a bit of it, sir,’ she replied.
‘And what did you make of it?’
‘It was a very nice book I’m sure,’ she said politely.
She had no wish to hear more of Dante. What she had read in The Florentine and His Age had been quite enough. The fellow was, apparently, a foreigner, an idolatrous Roman Catholic, a blasphemer and a bad husband. A shiftless creature, moreover, incapable of supporting himself and very rude about the steep stairs of the kind gentleman who patronized him. His picture in the frontispiece had not been pretty. And his poem, all about Hell, revolted her. Her stepfather, whose mania had a religious turn in it, had talked a good deal about Hell, with all the gusto of a cruel and perverted imagination. She thought the Florentine must have been a little like him.
A few minutes elapsed and nobody could think of anything further to say. At length another car was heard to arrive. Agatha, sumptuous in furs and veils, slipped noiselessly through the door as though desirous not to disturb a lecture which she imagined to be in full swing. She also looked at the empty benches with a surprised air and then at the people round the stove. Taking them in she became mirthful.
‘Now, Mr Ervine,’ she commanded, when she had heard the facts. ‘Tell the truth! You’d much rather not read that lecture at all, wouldn’t you?’
‘Much rather,’ said Hubert earnestly.
‘Well?’ she looked round her with a question in her eye. ‘What about it? Shall we let him off?’
Everyone fidgeted. At length someone mentioned the dowager.
‘We won’t tell,’ laughed the mistress of Lyndon. ‘Burn it, and we’ll all vow it was the best lecture we ever heard.’
With jubilant thankfulness Hubert thrust his lecture into the stove. He sent a benediction with it, however, for it had secured him an afternoon with his love. Agatha sat down in one of the most comfortable of the arm-chairs and stretched a silken ankle towards the blazing manuscript. ‘We must wait here for a bit,’ she said, ‘to give him time to deliver his lecture. What shall we do? I wish we could roast chestnuts.’
‘I got pea-nuts,’ volunteered Jimmy, producing a dirty paper bag.
‘What are pea-nuts?’ asked Lady Clewer, peering. ‘Can one roast them? Are they nice?’
Jimmy said that they were very nice and was commanded to superintend the roasting. Agatha looked round the room.
‘This is fun,’ she said. ‘It’s the first time I’ve enjoyed myself in this place. What shall we play at? Consequences? No!’ She glanced at Hubert. ‘It’s a risky game. Too risky. Shall we tell ghost stories?’
‘Ah! Ghost stories!’ said Hubert at once. ‘That reminds me of something I heard in Morocco….’
If ghost stories were to be told, he had better demonstrate how it should be done. He had a horror of the amateur narrator. As a matter of fact he was really rather good at it and enthralled them for half an hour with one startling anecdote after another. Jimmy’s eyes opened wider and wider and he edged closer to Dolly’s protecting skirts. And she, as the rainy dusk drew in, thought nervously of the lonely walk through the park. It would be very difficult to refuse James’s company.
At last Agatha decided that enough time had elapsed and they might return in safety. Jimmy scooted off into the twilight as though all the demons of Morocco were at his heels. The others paused uncertainly in the porch until Agatha declared that nobody must walk home in this rai
n. The little two-seater was nowhere in sight but she insisted that they could all pack somehow into the landaulette. Hubert was put in front with the chauffeur and the four others climbed in behind. The roof was too low for anyone to stand in comfort and the only way for them all to get in was for the men to sit with the ladies perched on their knees. Dolly would have preferred Mr Blair’s knee, but she was given to James. She vaguely understood why Mr Ervine had been put in front; he would not have supported this intimacy at all well. As it was, she felt that the barriers raised against James were sensibly weakened by this enforced proximity. The car, turning into the drive, swayed them all backwards and forwards so that she nearly fell off his knee. He put an arm about her to keep her steady. She looked at his hand as it lay in her lap. It was a broad, muscular hand, not over clean, and stained with paint; a working hand, like her own. Behind her shoulder, through the thin cloth of her coat, she could feel the strong beating of his heart. Consciously she checked an impulse of tenderness and comprehension. She tried to sit on his knee in a distant and respectful manner. Lady Clewer might think it very forward in her to allow him to put his arm round her waist. She glanced nervously at the others.
She need not have disturbed herself. Lady Clewer was secure in the arm of her cousin. She also was staring pensively at the hand of the man who held her. Dolly was struck for the first time by her employer’s youthfulness; not more than twenty-one, so they said. You’d never think it, she had such a stately way with her. But it wasn’t really very stately for a married lady to sit in the lap of a strange gentleman, cousin or no cousin. And she was looking as if she enjoyed it too.
Arrived at Lyndon, Dolly ran round to the back door and upstairs to change her dress. Later in the evening she was sent with a tray of invalid delicacies to Miss Barrington, whose cold was very much worse. In the sick-room she encountered the dowager, who was determined that her secretary should be competently nursed.
‘Well, Kell,’ said she, ‘and how did you enjoy the lecture?’
‘Very much indeed, thank you, my lady,’ replied Dolly, mindful of instructions.
‘And was Mr Ervine very interesting?’
Ladies of Lyndon Page 10