“Hallo, he’s coming, brother.”
“Who?”
“Old bun-head.”
George had heard, above the thunder of the weir, the sound of a motor-boat coming down the river, and as he stood leaning on his spade, the nose of the boat came poking round the curve of Temple Reach.
“Better take cover, hadn’t we?”
“What for?”
“To fox the old beast, brother.”
Bob shouldered his spade.
“He never gives anything away, nor’ll we.”
They took cover behind the rows of cypresses, and watching through the trees, saw the Temple Towers motor-boat towing a v-shaped wash behind it. The water-weeds bowed and rustled, as though saluting the great man. Scattergood was in charge. Mr. Crabtree sat in the stern-sheets, wearing a beige-coloured sports coat and a fawn felt hat with a jay’s feather tucked into the band. The boat was travelling at a medium speed, and in passing Folly Island Mr. Crabtree became aware of the little white tent, and the moored punt. Campers! Mr. Crabtree did not approve of campers. He stood up in the boat, and so was able to see a woman’s head and shoulders; she was kneeling in the grass, filling an oil-stove with paraffin. Mrs. Strangeways!
The boat swept past the island, and Mr. Crabtree sat down again and spoke to Scattergood.
“Needn’t put in at Folly Farm.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Run her in close to young Ghent’s bank. Then you can turn. And stop at the island, alongside that punt.”
Ghent had removed the pump from the pumping-stage, and when Mr. Crabtree saw that it had gone, he smirked to himself. So that letter of his had given young Ghent a fright and something to think about! Good egg! That was the way to deal with a cub like Ghent. Mr. Crabtree could not see the square hole that had been opened beyond the bank, nor the raw soil spread behind the cypresses. His ultimatum had produced its effect, and he was in a mood to enjoy the prestige of victory.
“Turn her round, Scattergood.”
Scattergood turned her round.
Mrs. Strangeways had been aware of Temple Towers’s presence upon the river, and she had remained on her knees, believing that she could not be seen by anyone in a boat, but when Scattergood shut off the engine, and the boat slid into the island, her neck and shoulders stiffened. Had the old wretch seen her? She could hear a sound of movement below the bank, the rocking of the punt, for Mr. Crabtree was a heavy man and not easy in his movements. A moment later she saw the fawn-coloured hat appear, and under it his impertinent, hard old face.
“Well, well, well! Funny place for a morning call! What, camping?”
“Yes,” said she, “camping.”
He climbed the bank, and with his fists stuffed into his trouser pockets, he appraised her and the scene. Yes, that very small tent could not be described as cover for two, and there was only one deck-chair. Mr. Crabtree became gaillard and facetious.
“Well, well, well, paddling in the dew, what! But, if you’ll excuse me, I shouldn’t have thought——”
She wanted to say, “Oh, do you think?” But she got on her feet and sat down in the one deck-chair so that he should not occupy it.
“I rather like a place like this. No visitors.”
“And what’s hubby think about it?”
Vulgar old man! She reached for a book, and the gesture should have been final, but Mr. Crabtree believed that he knew all about women, and that a chilly exterior was intended as a challenge.
“Got the old woman’s permission?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The island belongs to the Vandeleur dame.”
She lied: “Oh yes, I know. I’m expecting her to call on me to-day.”
“Calling on you, is she?”
“Yes.”
“That’s funny.”
“Why funny?”
“Because she’s a regular old stiff.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes. I’m a man of ideas. I didn’t get ’em willed to me by some decayed squire.”
“Yes, I quite appreciate that.”
She opened her book, but Mr. Crabtree persisted.
“Nobby little tent you’ve got.”
“Yes, Mr. Ghent lent it to me.”
She fixed her eyes on her book, but she could divine in the silence her visitor’s extreme displeasure. He rattled his keys and his money, stared hard at her for several seconds, and then dramatized what he considered to be a dignified departure.
“Well, well, well! I’m a busy man. Must be getting along.”
She glanced at him momentarily.
“Yes, ideas must keep you very busy, Mr. Crabtree.”
She watched him descend the bank, and heard the rocking of the punt as his bulk disturbed it, as he disturbed most things. Well, this shabby old Ulysses might not desire to regard her in the future as Mrs. Calypso of Folly Island!
XVIII
It seemed to Peter Ghent that the Temple Manor beech trees were more like a sacred grove than on any morning he could remember, stately and still, and guarding the long approach to the white house. The abrupt chattering of his old car’s engine might be topical and irreverent, like Montmartre being indecently clever in St. Cloud, but the massive foliage of the trees seemed to smother and assuage the sound, spreading beneficent green hands over it and saying: “Peace, peace, little chatterer, there is no folly so foolish as mere haste.” On the lawn where the shadows were lying Ghent saw one of my lady’s new rain-makers at work, a queer little machine on legs that tossed an arc of glittering water to and fro with a rhythmical, soothing steadfastness. Ghent watched it for a moment, but without envy. Man’s ingenuity seemed good when it was in sympathy with nature, and did not hack and tear and destroy, or rush about to foul woods and hedgerows with stuff that should have been deposited in urban dustbins.
Mr. Sanderson smiled in his whiskers. Yes, her ladyship was on the terrace, and as Ghent was led through the hall, he saw the door of a black and gold lacquer cabinet hanging open, and showing the red lacquer within. Lady Melissa kept her Zeiss glasses in a drawer of that cabinet, and she used these glasses to watch birds and trees and flowers. When your flesh began to fail, while your spirit remained young, such things as these were useful supplements. She could call them her crutches. Moreover, in contemplating the landscape through them she had focused Folly Island, and discovered among the willows a little patch of whiteness, and other unfamiliar objects. Someone was camping there, and she had not been asked or informed.
When Ghent came out on to the terrace she had her binoculars turned upon the water-fan, and was watching its spray sweeping to and fro and catching the light that filtered through the trees. The distant chug of the engine and force-pump were inaudible to her, and as she watched the man-made rain she thought that if man’s ingenuity could always function in this way, life might be less like a nursery full of little raucous egotisms. If one could smother oratory for a generation, totalitarian hysteria, and the mouthings of a smug socialism that posed as an angel and talked like poor Poll! Envy in black kid gloves and a red surplice! And then she saw Peter Ghent, and wondered whether that rain-maker of hers moved him to envy, and to the snarl of nasty class-consciousness.
“Hallo, Peter. I’m sorry.”
He smiled at her.
“For what?”
“For having rain on my grass. And yet, it is for the sake of the grass.”
“It’s rather good to watch.”
“You don’t hate me for it?”
“Hardly.”
“Thirsty things should make one sympathetic. It might even cause one to agitate, as I am doing for the poor Farley housewives. But, of course, that would be condemned as patronage. I am numbered among the old pirates who should be made to walk the plank.”
Ghent laughed.
“I think Farley would object to that.”
“I wonder! It must be terribly tempting to be offered plunder.”
Said Ghent: “Man always seems t
o be such a humbug and a fool when he gets on a platform. I think I’d always prefer my freedom, even if it were a bit shabby.”
“To mass-produced and mass-coerced dullness. Man is never a slave to circumstance, my dear, is he? How droll it all is! Give as little as possible, and get all you can. Mr. Crabtree and the Russian enthusiasts are really so alike, just painted on opposite sides of the shield. Take the glasses, and look at Folly Island for me, will you?”
Ghent took the glasses, but he did not raise them.
“That’s why I am here. To explain Folly Island, if I can.”
There were occasions when Lady Vandeleur gazed at you with the round eyes of a very young child, as though life continued to surprise her. She would look at Mr. Crabtree in this way, as she might gaze at the first wart-hog to provide her with the actual proof of its existence. With Peter Ghent her glances were sometimes maternal, or playful and oblique. There might be little crinkles of light in them, and a faint narrowing of the orbits.
“Well, explain, my dear. I seem to see a tent.”
“Yes, my tent.”
“Has Mrs. Maintenance——?”
“No, I’m not occupying the tent. I’ve lent it to Mrs. Strangeways.”
She noticed that he stood beside her chair, and turned towards the valley so that she should not look too directly into his face.
“Does she know that it is my island?”
“No. And I didn’t tell her. I wanted to explain.”
“Let me guess.”
“It might help. I feel rather——”
“Like the first confessional! Let us assume that Mrs. Strangeways has a past.”
“Yes, but——”
“Wait, my dear; I’m being intuitive, not pertly sophisticated. She has a past, yes, and a present and a future. Folly Farm is somehow associated with the past; Folly Island is very much the present.”
“Absolutely so. It’s a kind of retreat, if you know what I mean?”
“And she has left Folly Farm?”
“Yes.”
“Was she turned out?”
“In a way, yes, only she turned herself out, for reasons I——”
“A man, Peter?”
“Yes, you can call it a man.”
“I see. That sort of person. And the idea is——”
“She called it transplantation.”
“New soil, virgin, yet impoverished.”
“I believe she hasn’t a penny, and nowhere to go. That’s the sort of ruthlessness——”
“That is final. Yes, something that touches one like those fine and reckless renunciations of the young. Just how old is she?”
“I haven’t thought.”
“Thirty?”
“Very likely. It doesn’t matter.”
Lady Melissa looked at the sky.
“Well, my call will have to be made on Folly Island. I shall have to ask Sanderson to order out the punt. My third gardener is quite a good boatman.”
She saw his chin jerk round.
“Your ladyship will go?”
“I am interested.”
“Thank you most terribly. Something wants doing, and I can’t—— You see, she does not want the sort of interference a man might supply.”
“Quite, my dear. If you understand that, you’re unusual. Men are so apt to think that no voyage of discovery can be made without a pair of trousers being hoisted at the mast-head.”
Ghent let his old car free-wheel down the avenue of beeches, and with a noiselessness that was a salute to them and to their mistress. He was feeling rather happy, but unlike so many of the moderns he had no desire to advertise it by creating noise. He was telling himself what a marvellous person she was. Life came so easily to her and seemed to run like silk through her hands. And why? Because she was serene and secure? No, it was not the magic of mere money, or old Crabtree would have been a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. That was the absurd mistake the poor, scrambling crowd could not help making in its belief that inward blessedness could be created by acquiring every sort of material thing. You threw butchers’ meat and tomatoes and cream cakes, and a wireless set, and free tickets to Brighton, and a motor-bike and a jerry-built bungalow into a heap, and called it art, a study in still life. It was all very good and admirable, but its production theory failed to take into account that intangible something which used to be called soul. It did not explain the serenity seen on the faces of some old labouring men. It dished out cheap blessings and did not rate them as toys, or realize that spoilt children grow tired of toys and break them. The thing was to rediscover the divine essence of which humanity would not tire.
Yes, she was a marvellous person, perhaps because she was so serenely sure of herself and knew herself too well to suffer from poses and insincerities. Her dignity was complete because she had ceased from thinking about it. She did not envy anybody. She had no one to propitiate, no one to fool. She could behave, not as the new psychology contends because she clicked to every clockwork circumstance, but because she had climbed above circumstance. Like music and poetry she was above all the ologies, and unexplainable by them. She was a person, a work of art, and like life not reducible to a chemical formula.
Was it possible for the new social ideologies to create such personalities? Hardly, when so many of their high priests paraded with a bunch of white jasmine in one hand, and a bottle of vitriol in the other.
Ghent ran the car into the Marplot stable and went off to see how Bob and George were progressing. He found that they had sunk the shaft to a depth of five feet, and were working in a gravel bed that refused to be dealt with by a spade. Fanshaw was down the shaft, working with pick and shovel, while George filled and barrowed.
“Any water, Bob?”
“Not likely, sir. See this here stuff. Now you can see why we dry out in a season like this.”
Ghent bent down and examining the sides of the shaft, saw the crust of soil that covered this natural filter-bed.
“Yes, not much bottom, Bob, but good for a wet year.”
“God give us a few! We’ve had old Nosey Parker on the job.”
“Oh! He didn’t trespass?”
“No, came down the river in his ruddy boat, just to see, I guess, if we were still pumping.”
“Did he spot anything?”
“I guess not. Went across to call on the lady.”
“What, to Folly Island?”
“He did that. Didn’t stay long, though. Nosed off home again.”
Ghent, squatting there on the edge of the shaft, made every appearance of being interested in it and in it alone.
“Think we ought to line and strut, Bob?”
“No need, yet. This old gravel’s like a concrete wall. Besides, the timber would get in the way. Can’t work all cluttered up.”
“I wonder how thick that bed is?”
“Can’t be much more of it, sir. We want a bit of sand, and then clay. That ought to mean water.”
Ghent nodded. He was wondering whether he ought to warn Folly Island that Temple Manor was to be expected, or whether such intervention was best avoided. Also, he could make no contact with Folly Island save by hailing it across the river, and his men were too much in evidence as listeners. He would be compelled to recover his own waterlogged punt if he wished to visit her, without swimming.
George might have read his thoughts.
“The old punt’s gone, sir.”
“Yes, I know. Sank under me, the other night. Leaky old coffin.”
He took off his coat, and laid it on the grass.
“I’ll take a turn, Bob, down there.”
Fanshaw eyed him over the lip of the hole.
“Got your best trousers on, sir. Better keep to the barrow. George can take turns with me.”
But at one o’clock, when the men had knocked off and gone to their midday meal, Ghent strolled up the river, and saw her sitting on a cushion under the willows. He did not raise his voice, but spoke as though she were standing close t
o him.
“Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Things all right?”
“Oh, quite.”
He waved and turned away, deciding that Lady Melissa, the river, and Folly Island were best left to weave out the situation for themselves.
* * *
Folly Island was making tea, kneeling on the grass and holding the kettle in one hand and the teapot in the other, when it was startled by those sudden voices.
“This will do, Gibbs.”
“Can you manage, your ladyship?”
“Yes, the bank is not too steep for me. Go down to Marplot and leave this letter, and come back in three-quarters of an hour.”
Mrs. Strangeways put down the kettle and the teapot, almost like some sibyl surprised while distilling a magic infusion, and rose from her knees as Temple Manor’s black hat and white hair appeared amid the willows. Her reaction was instant, sweeping away any self-conscious inhibition.
“Oh, let me help you.”
Her quick glide to the bank with outstretched hand was met by an upward smile, and a hand that went out to hers.
“Thank you, my dear. Mrs. Strangeways, I believe?”
“Yes.”
“The formal should precede the informal, but we have reversed the process! Thank you.”
For the moment they stood looking at each other, both of them conscious of an immediate and mutual attraction, and the pause was like the opening and closing of a door upon two women who were friends without the intimate inwardness of the process being questioned.
“I was going to make tea. May I give you tea?”
“Thank you, I should love it.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I have to ask your forgiveness for trespassing. I did not know the island belonged to you.”
Shabby Summer Page 20