“Shall we analyse motives!”
“He’s just a nasty old man. Started taking her strawberries.”
“Won’t you allow him even a paternal interest, Peter?”
His young face looked fierce.
“No. An old man like that brings tarnish. And she’s not wanting that. I mean—— Oh, if you would call on her, I think you would understand.”
“Yes, my dear, I think I understand.”
Suddenly, he flushed up and blurted the words at her.
“She’s coming to tea with me this afternoon.”
“Yes, my dear, I understand.”
XIV
Mrs. Maintenance sat up and took notice.
Mrs. Strangeways was coming to tea, and Mr. Peter had returned by way of Loddon, bringing with him two small cardboard cartons containing scones and fancy cakes. Mr. Peter had apologized to her for the cakes. He was never one to hurt your feelings. “I thought it would save you trouble, Sarah. Rather sudden, too.” It most certainly was. He was keeping on his best suit, the suit he had gone to Temple Manor in, and he had had his hair cut in Loddon. Even Bunter knew that by the smell. Well, well! Mrs. Maintenance and Jane had, of course, indulged in confidential gossip, and Jane had given Mrs. Maintenance to understand that Mrs. Strangeways was a pretty little lady.
Ghent did no work that afternoon, beyond consulting with Bob and George as to the digging of a shallow well about ten yards from the river bank. Fanshaw was convinced that they would strike water, and plenty of it, at ten feet. They could line the excavation with rough boards and strut it, and build a concealed stage for the pump. The men were eloquent on the subject of Mr. Crabtree.
“I guess I got him one,” said George. “Better than a sock on the jaw.”
“There’s only one place I’d like to see the old blighter in.”
“What’s that, Bob?”
“His coffin.”
“Covered with gold nobs and velvet. Suppose we’d better spread the soil we take out somewhere, sir, or old Nosey Parker will think we’re digging for diamonds!”
Ghent did not think that such caution was necessary.
A happy restlessness possessed him. He spent half an hour in the little office, entering up two or three orders that had come in, and at a quarter to four he went across to the cottage. The Marplot parlour was a masculine room, and Ghent spent ten minutes shaking up the cushions, and hiding one of them under the sofa, for its flock was proposing to protrude. He tidied up mantelpiece and bookshelves, put his pipes away in the corner-cupboard, and found a mat that would cover the hole in the carpet in front of the fireplace. At four o’clock Mrs. Maintenance came in to lay tea on the gate-legged table. Normally, it lived with only one flap in action, for the swing-gate of the other was shaky.
“Better leave it like that, Sarah.”
“It does look a little lopsided, sir, doesn’t it?”
“Never mind. Safety first.”
Four o’clock! The solemn, gold-faced grandfather in the hall sang four deep, vibrant notes. She was coming at a quarter past four. Ghent strolled out into the cottage garden where a grass path ran from porch to gate between cottage borders backed by old fruit trees. He walked to the gate and back, not feeling the sun-scorched turf under his feet. In one border he had been trying out a selection of new delphiniums raised from his own seed taken from a particular plant, and the tall spires were in bloom. The raising of delphiniums is a glorious adventure, and these young plants had thrown up some splendid spikes of every shade of blue and mauve and violet, white-eyed and bee-eyed, the flowers set close upon the stem. Ghent had been giving them names, fanciful titles, “Blue Splendour,” “Isoult,” and to one “Salisbury” because of its immense, grey-blue spire. A fresh plant had just opened its first petals, cobalt blue and mauve, and Ghent stepped into the border to examine it more closely. Yes, this was an exquisite thing, and suddenly he knew that he wanted to call it after her. Sybil Strangeways. Should he ask her to honour——?
And then he heard the click of the gate-latch, and stood still, with a strange feeling of breathlessness, as though that little sound was more mysterious than the hum of the bees that were visiting the blue spikes of the flowers. She had come. He saw her in the gateway. She was wearing something grey that had a tinge of blue in it.
He stepped out of the border, and wondered why it was that he had nothing to say to her, nothing, save those few significant words that he did not dare to utter.
“I hope I’m not late.”
It was like some conventional opening on life’s chessboard, but when she saw those sheaves of colour, her face became mystical.
“How lovely!”
That too was conventional in its language, but not in the way she spoke the words.
“Yes, some new hybrids.”
“Did you raise them yourself?”
“Yes. You never know what you are going to get. One plant gave me all these.”
“How lucky! Do you give them names?”
“Everybody does. That’s why our language is becoming like that of the Tower of Babel. Yes, I call that one Salisbury. Do you see?”
“Of course. The cathedral spire.”
“And that is Pale Hands.”
“But do delphiniums grow beside the Shalimar?”
He laughed, and watched her face.
“Perhaps. I haven’t a name for this one yet. Just opening up.”
“Yes, I think that is one of the loveliest. Look at the shading of the blues and mauves and violets.”
“Do you think you could paint it?”
“I could try.”
“I’ll send you the spike.”
“Oh, you mustn’t do that. Let it have its life.”
“Do you feel like that about things?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder if you would let me use your name? Sybil Strangeways.”
Her lashes flickered. Had he gone too far?
“Yes. If you——”
“Thank you. I’ll label it presently.”
Mrs. Maintenance possessed an old pack-horse bell which she rang when a meal was ready, and Mr. Peter had to be brought in from the nursery, and Bunter’s barking and the ringing of the bell were mingled. The dog came trotting out, one ear up and one ear down, to make his bow to the lady, for Bunter had nice manners, and was a connoisseur of human perfumes. He wagged, smiled, and smelt Mrs. Strangeways’s shoes and skirt, and evidently he approved of her. When she bent down to pat him, with her face close to his hairy head, he got in what Mrs. Maintenance described as “A quick one,” his tongue making contact with the tip of her pretty, blunt nose.
She laughed.
“My dear, that was sudden of you.”
Ghent gave Bunter a playful push with the toe of his shoe.
“Forward fellow!”
They went in to tea.
* * *
That funny old parlour of his intrigued her. She had seen nothing quite like it before. You stepped down into it from the passage, and saw the long, low latticed window with its faded yellow curtains full of the sunlight and green leaves and flowers. A sweet-water vine made a pattern about it. Mrs. Maintenance had spread a white cloth on the oak table. The china was blue Willow Pattern. Peter’s plate of confectionery cakes looked like a little dish of flowers. Would she pour out? Yes, he rather preferred nursery tea. She sat down in a rush-bottomed chair placed where her knees were free under the flap that could be relied upon in the matter of stability. Ghent took the other chair, with his legs tucked sideways against the lowered leaf.
She had her back to the light. He was facing it. It shone on her hair, but left her face in the shadow.
“Is it sugar?”
“Please. Two lumps.”
He watched the movements of her hands. Hands could be so mysterious, and yet so indicative. She was wearing no rings, and to him they were virginal hands.
“I see Mrs. Maintenance has given us jam. Do you——?”
“Is it raspberry?”
/>
“Yes, and home made.”
“I used to be quite a pig about raspberry jam.”
He passed her the dish and a spoon.
“I can’t imagine you being a pig about anything.”
“All small girls are pigs.”
“Are they? Well, let’s call it human. Pig better than prig. I wonder how it is that one grows——?”
“What?”
“Fastidious.”
She bent her head over that word, and cutting a scone in half, buttered it and added jam.
“Yes, I know. If one can afford to be. Of course, one always ought to insist on being able to afford—— I do like your old lady’s name.”
“Maintenance.”
“Yes, so Tudor. She ought to wear a cap.”
He laughed.
“She doesn’t. Besides, it would have to be rather formidable.”
“Is she that?”
“Oh, no. Feels frightfully responsible about things.”
“I like that too. One should be. What’s her other name?”
“Sarah.”
“Like Sarah Siddons. That always makes me feel——”
She paused and the word slipped from him.
“Tragic.”
Her face seemed to darken a little under her hair. He saw her hand go to her cup, and then withdraw itself. There was a sense of frustration in the gesture.
“Perhaps.”
* * *
He had a piano in the parlour. He had suddenly remembered that he had forgotten to buy cigarettes, for being a pipe-smoker he had no use for those effeminacies, and getting up to hunt in the corner-cupboard for some forgotten box of straight-cuts, he was aware of her rising and going to the piano. It was not a good piano. In fact, it could be described as a farmhouse parlour piano, long and yellow in the tooth, and its voice cracking with age. She raised the lid of the keyboard, and touched a note, and a queer, husky thrill came from the wire.
“Terribly sorry. I’ve no cigarettes.”
“Please don’t bother. I don’t want to smoke.”
“And I’m afraid the piano is no good. That’s one of the tired notes.”
“Do you play?”
“No. Strum a bit. And you?”
“I used to be rather keen. Debussy, and Percy Grainger. Not the very very modern.”
“I won’t ask you to play on that. I’m awfully sorry about the cigarettes. Mrs. Maintenance is no use in such a crisis.”
“Really, I’m off smoking.”
“Do you mind if I——? No, I won’t.”
“Oh, yes, please do, especially a pipe.”
“Object to cigarettes?”
She had closed the keyboard and returned to her chair.
“Somehow, yes. Modernity seems to smell of cigarettes, and to have got its fingers stained with them.”
“Symbolical. Like the women who don’t seem able to drive a car without a cigarette stuck in their hard, bold faces.”
She turned to look out of the window.
“Yes, shallow faces. Like the new little houses, very sanitary and efficient.”
“But somehow horrible. By the way, Lady Vandeleur is coming to call on you.”
He saw her head go up. She was startled.
“Is she? I don’t know that I’m exactly in her world.”
He was lighting his pipe, and he paused.
“Oh, her world is Debussy and Keats, and Butterflies in The Rain, with a touch of Queen Elizabeth thrown in when people are nasty. You’ll like her awfully.”
He saw her hand go to her hair.
“I’m rather frightened, you know, of the people who can be themselves. I’m only just beginning. When are you going to show me your trees?”
“Now, if you like.”
“Yes, I’m not afraid of trees.”
* * *
If she had said that she was only just beginning to be herself, she asked to be shown the life of a tree, how it began, what its babyhood was like, how it was bred and nurtured. So, Ghent took her first to that sheltered corner where hundreds of baby trees stood in frames, or sheltered by boards or wattles. And she was fascinated by these pygmy trees, sequoias, cedars, cypresses and junipers in miniature, glossy little creatures of every shade of green and gold and greyish blue. She bent down and touched them, stroked their soft pelts as she would have stroked a dog.
“Dear, funny little things. And yet, so dignified.”
He was looking down at her, very conscious of those gentle gestures, and of the way her face had lit up. Bunter was with them, and the dog looked at his master, and then at the lady, and suddenly wagged a propitiatory tail. Ghent bent down and patted him.
“Isn’t it strange that they should be so different.”
Ghent smiled.
“Yes, that’s the eternal mystery. Like music and poetry, it puts the cut-and-dried clever people in a corner to invent a new word that sounds marvellous and means nothing. But why, and how?”
She straightened and stood contemplating the young trees.
“Yes, it’s all a mystery. And how tall does that one grow?”
“You mean that little fellow?”
“Yes.”
“That’s Mr. Sequoia, and he can run up to two hundred feet.”
“And those little glossy green dears?”
“Thuya Lobii. Not quite so lofty. A hundred or more when grown as specimens.”
“And what’s that exquisite bluey thing?”
“Cupressus arizonica conica. Something of a novelty.”
“Will it grow up to its name?”
“I’m short of information on that point.”
When she saw the great, weeping beech tree, she had to creep inside it and look up into the green cupola, while the dim light made her face very soft and pale. It seemed to Ghent that her eyes became larger and almost black, for the pupils were dilated in the shadow.
“What a place for a hot day.”
He said that it was always cool here, and that on Sundays in summer he went to sleep in a deck-chair.
She stood, head up, listening.
“How still! That’s the weir I can hear?”
“Yes, it never stops. I suppose I hardly notice it.”
“Nature sounds don’t matter. They just fit in.”
But when he took her down the Green Way with its parched turf, she grew more silent, for even to her inexperienced eyes the devastations of the drought were manifest. Everywhere, a tarnished or a rusty tree betrayed the touch of death, and the thing saddened her, not only because death among trees moved her to pity, but because they were his trees, and the loss of them meant much to him.
“Won’t they recover?”
“No. Good for the bonfire, that’s all. You see, in a nursery one has to move trees every two or three years.”
“Why?”
“To persuade them to make good root-balls, and so that they can be sold safely for transplanting. But in an abnormal year like this, one’s bound to have losses.”
“You have to take the risk?”
“Yes.”
She seemed to reflect upon that.
“Like life. Not easy to transplant yourself. Of course, you can’t water all these thousands of trees.”
“Not unless one was a very rich man, like our old friend.”
Her face hardened.
“Old beast! And he wants to stop you doing what you can.”
“Well, he wants my ground. Naboth’s Vineyard. If I break, he thinks——”
“But you won’t.”
“I’ll try not to. But you see, it isn’t only those dead trees. It’s the ones that are partially damaged. They’re not saleable. You can’t send out a blemished tree.”
“What do you do?”
“Cut out the dead stuff, and give them a chance to bush out again. But that means a loss. Having to wait for your returns.”
They had reached the boundary fence and its hedge, and he pushed through and showed her Mr. Roger Crabtree’
s park. It had a wild and dishevelled beauty of its own with its purple polled thistles and ferns and bramble and briar-rose, but it did not owe any of its beauty to Temple Towers. And to Ghent it was sinister because of its suggestions, and the menace of weeds and conies.
“That’s Mr. Crabtree.”
Her face became elfish.
“Gone wild, or to seed!”
“I wish he would do. A few years ago those fields grew good wheat instead of docks and thistles. You see, I had to put all this wire up to keep the rabbits out. Destructive little devils.”
“Doesn’t the old man shoot them?”
“They tell me he couldn’t hit a haystack. Besides, he encourages the creatures. I have even found holes cut in my wire to let them on to my land.”
“That sounds incredible.”
“But true.”
“How utterly petty and spiteful. You wouldn’t think a rational person——”
Ghent laughed.
“Oh, we’re never quite rational, are we, even the wisest of us? And I suppose we should be rather damnable if we were. Prejudices, loves and hates, and mixed motives. I agree with Bunter when he goes berserk over a rat. Sometimes I feel like that over old Crabtree. Yes, we’re awful weathercocks. A wind hits us, and we twirl round all in a second.”
She looked up into his face.
“I don’t know. I should have said that when you got set over a thing, you stuck at it. What about those water-cans?”
He smiled down at her.
“Oh, that was partly temper. Let’s go back by the river.”
Ghent’s little monologue on the rational man might have contained elements of prophecy, and your experimenting Deity, applying some painful stimulus to a certain portion of the human anatomy, might say to his class of angel students: “Let us see how the creature will jump.”
Mr. Max Broster, when he opened and read Mrs. Strangeways’s letter at his breakfast table, was quite unexpectedly angered by it, whereas a month ago he might have been conscious of relief. To put it crudely, his vanity appeared to be falling between two stools. His attempt to arrange a reconciliation with his wife had been spoilt by too much complacency and striding sex. He had taken Irene out to dinner at the Berkeley, given her a Gin and Italian, a bottle of Pommery 1921, a brandy and black coffee, and some rather patronizing compliments, and returning with her to her flat had attempted, rather roughly and prematurely, to restore marital relations. And Irene had slapped his face. Irene had said a number of very frank and unkind things to him. Did he think she was a tart, to be taken out to dinner, primed, and then tumbled on a bed. “No, my lad, I am not quite so easy as all that.” Well, really, women were inexplicable! What business had a wife to stand upon her dignity, when you showed a desire to restore to her a proper and legalized passion? And here was Renata also turning him down. His vanity was hurt. He felt exceedingly sorry for himself. He wanted to be flattered, comforted, petted.
Shabby Summer Page 16