He patted Bunter’s head.
“Time for little dogs to go to bed. You too, Sarah, you must be tired. Yes, there’s nothing to worry about.”
“I hope not, sir. Strange goings on.”
He stood in front of her, serious yet smiling, and Mrs. Maintenance could never withstand that smile of his. If she had been a young thing, well, well!
“Life can be a strange box of tricks, Sarah. I’d rather help than find fault. It’s so easy to feel good, when one’s looked after like I am.”
Mrs. Maintenance’s bosom appeared to rise.
“Some people are easy to do for, Mr. Peter. I’m an old woman, and I was brought up——”
“I’ve always found you a good sort, Sarah. If I ever ask you to help, you’ll help, or I’m no judge of people. By the way, could you manage tea for Lady Vandeleur to-morrow?”
Mrs. Maintenance was prepared to provide tea for Lady Vandeleur on every day of the week.
“Good. She may be coming. She told me she was calling on Mrs. Strangeways at Folly Farm.”
Mrs. Maintenance’s bosom became less fluffed up. Certainly, if Temple Manor could recognize Folly Farm, the mystery could be said to be less sinister.
“Very good, sir.”
“I’m going to bed. Nighty-night, Bunter. Good night, Sarah.”
“Good night to you, sir.”
* * *
The wise men tell us that a good conscience charms sweet sleep, but it is probable that a tranquil stomach is a more admirable bed-fellow, and though Ghent might have been blessed with both, sleep played with him like a squirrel round a tree trunk. His brain was a bagful of questions which kept spilling themselves out upon his pillow. What of to-morrow? What of breakfast, what of tea? How could he recover his foundered punt without causing comment? Was the suppression of human comment possible? Well, why trouble about it when you could prognosticate an element of patronage and of malice? The impulse to blame is universal, and causes the blamer to feel superior. But that was not the pith of the problem. How could he persuade her to do, what? How could he intervene, when she had tried to make him understand that her spirit had gone into retreat, and was shrinking from human interference? If she had cut herself off from Folly Farm where did she propose to go? Had she any money? Had she any friends? If not, what the devil was to be done about it? Yes, this was an emotional problem that transcended the exigencies of a drought. You could not dip a can in the river and solve such a problem by watering it. Oh, damn money, or rather the lack of it! He himself was on the edge of the rocks. Moreover, the very thing she might resent would be a gesture that hinted at the power of the purse.
Yes, it was a subtle and delicate business, as subtle and delicate as certain ways of caring. If intervention there was to be, who could intervene? Lady Melissa? But these two women were complete strangers, and what was Folly Farm to Temple Manor? Yet, the more Ghent fumbled at the tangled skein, the more he realized that other hands than his must begin the unravelling of the problem, delicate hands, fastidious hands, fingers that could touch life lightly and with humour. If he could persuade a certain person——! No, persuasion was the wrong word. Let him suppose that two people were brought together, two sensitives who might be attracted to each other, was it not possible that the interaction might work like the interplay of light and shadow?
What if he went to Temple Manor and made a confession? The one quality that counted with Lady Vandeleur was sincerity, not the vulgar candour of crude minds, but the showing of the chequered surface of your soul. Besides, you could not fool her. Only fools think they can fool the wise. She might look into your mirror, and smile with tolerant compassion, and say, “I don’t think that sort of thing should be done.” She would give no reasons, nor indulge in ethics. All that it amounted to was that certain sensitive and fastidious creatures thought and felt and behaved in a particular way, and asked you, if you were to be of their world, to react and behave as they did. It might be in the blood; it might be in breeding, it might be in the gradual growth of self, the full flower of a beautiful maturity. Had not Temple Manor taught him that beautiful behaviour did matter; that it was artistry? And in the solving of this problem supreme artistry was needed.
XVII
Mrs. Maintenance heard him go down the stairs soon after her window curtains had changed from black to grey. She kept an alarum clock beside her bed, and she could just read on its large plain face the time of the day. Dear, dear, would the summer drought have dragged him out of bed so early? Bunter the dog had also been disturbed by his master’s early rising. Bunter slept in a round basket at the foot of Mrs. Maintenance’s bed. He whimpered, left it, went to the door and sniffed, and then turning questioning eyes upon Mrs. Maintenance, came and sprang upon her bed.
“Yes, my pet,” said she, “Mr. Peter has it badly, poor dear. Getting up at this hour of the morning! No use our getting up like that!”
Ghent went down to the river. It was grey under a grey sky, and running with a kind of glassy stealth between grey green banks and willows that were asleep. Your true countryman loves this first hour after the dawn when the world seems a more mysterious place unvexed by any human discord. The very light has a stealth of its own, and the grass may yet be drinking the dew. Distances are hazed and strange, and wild life possesses the morning. The stillness was supreme. Ghent strolled along the bank until he was opposite Folly Island, and among its willows he could see a streak of blue, the rug that covered her.
She was asleep. Two moorhens were bobbing about, in and out of the water-weeds just below where she was lying. Well, let her sleep for a while; he would go across presently when the day was a little older. And then it occurred to him that waking on that island might be a rather chilly business, and that according to Jane she had gone supperless to bed. Mrs. Maintenance heard him busy in the kitchen below her bedroom. He was lighting the kitchen fire and filling a kettle, and rummaging in the larder for a loaf of bread and butter. When he went across in the punt he would take her early morning tea, but if the teapot was to retain its heat it would need a cosy. Did such an article exist in Marplot? He failed to find one, and pondering the problem, was inspired to go upstairs and take a clean pair of rough wool socks from a drawer. They were number nines and loosely woven, and with a little ingenuity he thought that he could slip them over the teapot and remove them before the brew was served.
Mrs. Maintenance saw him going down to the river carrying that tray. Poor lad, this was supreme devotion! He stepped down delicately into the punt, placed the tray on the floor-boards, unfastened the painter and poled the boat out. It took him less than a minute to reach Folly Island, and with the punt lying close under the bank he realized that he could not see her or tell whether she was asleep or awake. A sudden shyness seized him. Did he understand that it might be churlish to wake her too abruptly, and that to surprise a woman at that raw hour might be rather blah and tactless? Would he wish to be caught with his hair tousled and a beard on his chin? There is a ritual in rising, the unsubtle infringement of which a woman might resent.
He tied up the punt, and removing the improvised tea-cosy, he took the tray in one hand, and got hold of a willow bough with the other, and carefully pulled himself up the bank. She was asleep. He dared just one glance at her, and was strangely moved. She looked such a kid, with her small face and her tumbled hair. He put the tray on the grass beside her, and in doing so, noticed a small dressing-case lying there, the sacred reliquary of Venus. Then, he scrambled back into the punt, and unfastening the mooring rope, held on to a willow bough.
“Mrs. Strangeways.”
He heard a stirring up above.
“Yes. Is it——?”
Then—silence. He could picture her sitting up, with sleep in her eyes, a little bewildered.
“I’ve put some tea by you.”
“Tea! How lovely of you. I was quite lost for a moment.”
“I’m afraid the bread and butter’s rather thick. I’ll come back pres
ently.”
He poled the punt down stream, and she sat up, and brushing back her hair, looked at the tray that he had placed on the grass beside her. Her face grew touched and tender. This was not the Broster philosophy! And she was so ready for that tea. She took the tray on her lap, and recalling those last words of his in which he had apologized for the thickness of the bread and butter, she was moved to wonder at the otherness of his manhood. Could he handle a situation as he touched a flower, and yet remain what he was, the essential man? Obviously. He had said that he would come back presently. That too contained a strange and sensitive comprehension of the things that were precious to a woman.
She drank two cups of tea and ate all the bread and butter, and then, putting the tray aside, took the dressing-case on her knees, and attended to the morning’s ritual. This had been her first night under the stars, and to her surprise she had slept restfully and deeply on the punt cushions, and covered by a rug. But her poor frock had suffered in the process, and when she had put on her shoes, she stood up and tried to smooth out the creases, only to realize that they insisted upon pathos, and that nothing but a hot iron would cure them. She took a stroll round the island. Its green aloofness pleased her, according as it did with her feeling for a retreat, and it occurred to her that since she was renouncing Folly Farm, she might find in this island a temporary sanctuary. Why shouldn’t she camp here, release and pay off Jane, bring such things as she needed to the island, and feel at peace. She needed time to draw her breath, a kind of interlude for reflection and readjustment. Her very sophistications seemed to challenge some such experience. And who would quarrel with her for camping on this island? The river was like a castle moat, and this little green world her keep.
Looking down stream she saw Ghent and the punt coming up the river, and she returned to her camping place and sat down on her cushions. How would he react to her inspiration? Would a man who brought you early morning tea appreciate the nuances of such a situation? She sat with her chin cupped in her hands, watching and considering him. Her eyes grew tender. Oh, yes, she was not going to suffer him to play the hero, unless and until she felt herself to be what she had been ten years ago. There must be an interlude, a season of self-searching. After all, he was a mere boy, and she both eighteen and as old as time.
The sun broke through as the punt came under the droop of the willows, and the water was scolloped with light. She stood up on the edge of the bank.
“I’m afraid I have eaten all the bread and butter.”
“Well, that’s splendid. If you’ll pass down the tray, I can take you both across.”
“And bring me back?”
He had been smiling up at her, and his smile died away.
“Back here?”
“Yes. I like this island. Why shouldn’t I camp here? It doesn’t smell of fresh paint.”
“No, it’s not Crabtree. Of course there’s no reason.”
“No rent to pay. I must go across and settle with Jane. If I could rig up some sort of tent.”
He said: “I could lend you a tent. It’s very small. I used to go camping. But what about the house, and all your things?”
“I can bring across what I want. Everything else goes elsewhere, if you understand.”
He looked up at her and nodded.
“I understand.”
So, apparently, did Jane, for when Ghent had unloaded the tea-tray on his own bank and ferried her across to Folly Farm, and leaving her the punt, gone back by way of the bridge to Marplot to breakfast and the work of the day, he saw Bob’s sister enter the garden gate. She went round to the back door, and two minutes later Mrs. Maintenance came in with a message.
“Jane’s come for a tent, sir.”
Mrs. Maintenance uttered the words as though the whole situation had passed beyond her understanding and could only be treated unemotionally, like the visit of the butcher or the baker.
“Oh yes, it’s in my store-room.”
He left his bacon and eggs and went to hunt up the tent, and having found it in its canvas cover, he carried it out to Jane who was waiting at the back door.
“Afraid it’s rather dusty, Jane.”
Jane’s face committed her to no comments, either upon tents and their uses, or upon a situation that to her must have been completely unusual.
“Thank you, sir. Mrs. Strangeways said that if I fetched it it would save you trouble.”
“The pegs should be in the bag, Jane.”
“Pegs, sir.”
“Yes, the tent pegs.”
“Oh, of course, sir.”
And Ghent went back to his breakfast, wondering what had passed between the two women.
* * *
Meanwhile, that sump or surface well was to be dug for the new water-supply that might cheat Mr. Roger Crabtree and his legal proclivities, and Ghent went out to confer with Bob on the place to be chosen. He found Bob standing among some trees and gazing across the river at two women loading a punt, but when he heard Ghent’s footsteps he shed all appearance of interest in these activities. His head and shoulders bent themselves to the business of hoeing.
“What about our well, Bob?”
“Want us to start on it?”
“I should say so. I have to drive up to Temple Manor, and I’ll give you a hand later.”
Fanshaw rubbed his chin.
“Well, if we’ve got to fox that ruddy old swine, we’d better get on with it. I reckon the best place would be down there by the rhodos.”
“I think we’d better spread the soil, Bob, barrow it and throw it behind those ‘Lawsons’.”
“There’ll be a lot of muck, sir.”
“Can’t be helped. If we pile it up we shall give the game away.”
“He’ll nose it out, whatever we do.”
“Never mind. And if he does spot the trick, I don’t think he can stop us. If you strike much loose gravel you had better line and strut. We should strike clay lower down.”
“Plenty o’ that. Pity old Crabtree isn’t sunk in it.”
“Yes, I know. I should be back by ten.”
As Ghent moved away he saw the punt being poled out of the boat-house, and that there were two women in it. So the good Jane was helping to establish her mistress on the island, while he was proposing to propitiate the island’s actual mistress. What should he say to Lady Vandeleur? Should he make her a complete confession? His feeling about it was that nothing but the whole-hearted truth would be satisfying to Temple Manor.
* * *
Bob and George, spading up soil into two barrows, and trundling it off to be spread behind the rows of cypresses, kept watch upon the river, for, if Mr. Crabtree could make a universal nuisance of himself, these labouring men could be stubborn in their countering of his spite. Also, both Bob and George knew that if Mr. Ghent went under they would exchange an employer whom they liked and respected, for a tyrant who would show them no consideration whatsoever, and in the rustic mind Marplot became a kind of redoubt defying this old land-grabber. But while digging the new well and removing the soil, they could not help observing those feminine activities on Folly Island. Two women were pitching a small tent amid the willows, and one of the women was Bob’s sister.
George had a merry mind and a tongue that was as quick as his temper, nor could he keep those cheeky eyes of his from being interested in other folk’s affairs. George thought Folly Farm a funny show. And was Jane going to camp with the lady? Bob, who was in his most laconic mood, said that was Jane’s business, and that George might mind his. Candour had its own class gradations.
“Well, I suppose a chap can ask a question?”
“Ah,” said Bob; “that depends on how you ask it.”
“Bloody touchy, this morning, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. What I should like to know is why we’ve got to shift two or three tons of earth because of that old——”
Bob used a very vulgar word, and George twitted him.
“Better be careful, brother
, with ladies about. Blessed if they aren’t coming back in the punt.”
They were, with Mrs. Strangeways handling the pole. They tied up at the boat-house, and began to load more gear into the craft, a garden chair, sundry pieces of crockery, bedclothes tied up in a roll, a small table, books. George could not keep his tongue from comment.
“Gosh, looks as though she was going to play Robinson Crusoe.”
Bob stuck his spade in the ground, and got hold of the barrow stilts.
“And why not?”
“Well, she hasn’t the look for it. Pretty bit of work, but not the sort——”
“Go on, get busy. It’s none of your business, anyway.”
And Fanshaw’s implacable, round-shouldered figure propelled the loaded barrow in the direction of the cypresses.
The punt was travelling up stream again to Folly Island. Its cargo was unloaded, Mrs. Strangeways passing the various objects up to Jane who stood upon the bank.
“I think I can manage now, Jane.”
“Sure, m’am?”
“Quite. You’ve been very kind, Jane. I wish——”
Jane’s eyes blinked.
“I don’t mind what I do when I like.”
“I’m afraid I have let you down, Jane. Are you sure you are satisfied?”
“I haven’t been bought, have I?”
“No, Jane, you’ve given me something better than——”
“Well, that’s as it should be. Some ladies don’t understand that a woman doesn’t want to be bought.”
“No, you’ve been my friend, Jane. I had better take you back now. What about your trunk?”
“Bob’ll see to that, m’am. A chap who can carry a sack of potatoes won’t worry about my little trunk.”
* * *
It was George who spotted the coming of the enemy, probably because George had a more roving eye and a more listening ear, and was less work absorbed than Bob Fanshaw. Jane’s brother would attack a job with the concentrated enthusiasm and the stark gloom of a fanatic, allowing himself none of those contemplative loiterings that are dear to the labouring philosopher. Other men were apt to complain that Bob tore his guts out over a job, and so inconvenienced theirs. And why all this fury for forty-two bob a week?
Shabby Summer Page 19