“On paper, it does, but I make you free of it.”
“Thank you. Do you like a deck-chair high or low?”
“A compromise. Half-way. One can compromise over chairs, but not——”
A quick look passed between them.
“Yes, but on some things, no.”
Mrs. Strangeways adjusted the chair, made sure that the supporting rail was safely in the notches, and placed a cushion in it.
“I will leave you, Lady Vandeleur, to compromise with the cushion!”
Excellent! Lady Melissa took the chair, and Mrs. Strangeways went down on her knees, and replaced the kettle on the spirit-stove, for during this interlude the kettle had ceased to steam. She knelt, watching it and watched by Lady Vandeleur, who, as a woman somewhat wise as to the texture of life in temperaments, flowers and china, was moved to declare that this kneeling figure in its straw-coloured frock was fine art. The child, for Lady Melissa thought of anyone under thirty-five as a child, had one of those exquisite, creamy skins that never show much colour. The set of the head on the sensitive, slender neck was very attractive. So was the little blunt nose, and those stag’s eyes that gave you a queer impression of wildness and fear, the eyes of a creature doomed to be hunted. Mrs. Strangeways’s hands were long and slender, her shoulders softly rounded like the shoulders of Georgian women. Despite the slightness of her figure it had no angles, but was fine and flexible and fluid. Her poise as she knelt there was perfect, without being anything of a pose.
She said, with a sudden lifting of the head: “I’m afraid I haven’t any cake.”
“I prefer bread and butter.”
“Yes, I can give you that.”
She uncovered a dish that contained six thin slices.
“I had better cut some more.”
The kettle was boiling again, and she filled the teapot, and setting it aside, reached for a tin biscuit-box in which she was keeping her bread.
“It’s such fun doing things for oneself.”
Lady Vandeleur asked a question.
“Have you, always?”
“Not recently. That makes it refreshing.”
“The privilege has been much denied me.”
“Yes, I suppose——”
“My head-gardener takes it almost as a personal reproach if I attempt to weed a border.”
She was spreading butter on the loaf, and Lady Melissa noticed that she wore no rings.
“But that’s rather touching, isn’t it? I mean, if one gets real service, affectionate service, not something that’s bought——”
“Yes, my dear, one is touched by it. So little is gained in life by shouting. I suppose that is why capable and dominant women have such cubs of sons.”
“Have they?”
“In my experience, yes. The women who sit softly on sofas seem to hold men more surely than those vigorous efficients who smack a ball and wear riding-breeches. Have you ever worn trousers?”
Mrs. Strangeways’s profile became what is described as piquant. She could crinkle up that little blunt nose of hers.
“No, as a matter of fact, I haven’t.”
“Little slops in grey flannel bags. The real inwardness of the phase has perplexed me. Do they want to look like boys?”
“Or do boyish things?”
“Perhaps. This freedom idea.”
“Which isn’t.”
“Which may be a pose.”
“Or a protest.”
They looked at each other and were pleased. Mrs. Strangeways poured out the tea, and passed Lady Melissa her cup.
“Is it sugar?”
“One lump.”
“Sometimes one must make one’s protest, don’t you think?”
“Utterly. However inconvenient and problematical——”
Mrs. Strangeways’s poise became pensive. She poured out her own tea, and forgot the sugar.
“Yes, I know. That, in a way, is why I am here. Oh, but I don’t want to bother you——”
“It doesn’t. May I have some bread and butter?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Isn’t it rather a bore——?”
“The human situation? My dear, it’s the eternal riddle of the Sphinx, Mona Lisa’s smile, the curious urge that makes us do the difficult thing when the easy thing might be so much more comfortable.”
Mrs. Strangeways helped herself to bread and butter, rolling the slice up and holding it poised. Her head drooped a little on its pretty neck, and Lady Melissa thought: “Yes, I understand how a young man like my poor Peter feels about you. But why poor Peter? And are you as innocent as you seem? Probably most of Botticelli’s angels were little sluts. But not you, somehow, unless I have lost my flair. Yes, the Tragic Muse, or the climbing plant that must have something to cling to. Nature still produces such plants, in spite of emancipation. Yes, feminine tendrils. When the man grows them he is a poor thing and marries money, or lives on women, and cultivates cacti or breeds prize guinea-pigs. The painted husband! Yes, I know he is normal in certain parts of the globe, but I don’t like him in England.”
She asked a sudden question.
“And how long are you going to camp here?”
Mrs. Strangeways came out of her droop.
“As long as you will let me.”
“I think the weather might be more unsympathetic than I should be. Any other reasons? Forgive me.”
Mrs. Strangeways looked her straight in the face.
“Oh, yes, finance and other things. You see, I can’t afford, at present, to go anywhere else.”
“Is the state temporary or permanent?”
“I suppose it will have to be temporary.”
“Yes, crises cannot last indefinitely, like the Central Europe situation. War or compromise.”
“I refuse to compromise.”
“No? Sometimes, that is very difficult.”
“Well, I tried compromise and was compromised. I’m being rather frank with you.”
“I like it. But why?”
“Just—no compromise.”
“I see. Have you any kind of job in prospect?”
“No. I’m trying to think, and I seem to be discovering that I’m a rather useless sort of person. I’m getting rather old for a mannequin, and I seem to be too ornamental to be safe for the routine jobs.”
“My dear, just how old are you?”
“Thirty-one. I would like to be twenty-one and begin all over again. That’s rather my idea.”
“Innocence. Is anyone innocent these days?”
“Let’s say untarnished.”
Lady Vandeleur held out her cup.
“May I have some more? One need never be that you know, so long as one can wash in Jordan.”
“You do believe that?”
“I do.”
She refilled Lady Vandeleur’s cup, and added milk and one lump of sugar, and turning on her knees, knelt like youth at the feet of the Eternal Mother.
“Thank you so very much. So few people seem to think that it is worth while.”
“Save some of the young and some of the old, my dear. May and September. July and August are apt to be hot and stuffy, and too full of the business of living. Never believe the man or woman who says that nothing matters. It means that they have been beaten in life and are cowards.”
“What matters?”
“Oh, certain loyalties, to oneself and others, certain cleanliness, compassion, a secret belief that the whole business is not a nasty and sanguinary joke. Oh yes, things do matter supremely, in spite of the drearies and the decadents. Ask a tree whether good growth is worth while, and I suppose it would say: ‘Well, I have to, the thing’s in me, somehow.’ And it is in us, my dear, if we don’t let it be poisoned. But I’m becoming preachy-preachy.”
Then, Mrs. Strangeways did a surprising and sudden thing. She made a quick movement, bent her head, and put her lips to Lady Melissa’s knee.
“You have given me just what I wanted. And half an hour ago we had never seen each oth
er.”
Lady Vandeleur laid a hand on Mrs. Strangeways’s head.
“Women such as we are have known each other always.”
* * *
When he had the little world of Marplot to himself, and the light was failing, Ghent went out, carrying an old blue bathing-dress and a towel, and using the weeping beech tree as a tent, changed and trotted down one of the grass paths to the river. He swam up stream past Folly Island, and turning to drift down in the dusk, made land where her punt lay. With his arms resting on the gunwale of the punt, he called to her.
“Mrs. Strangeways.”
She had been watching, and she came and sat in the grass at the top of the bank, and her face was dim to him.
“How did you like her?”
“She’s everything that you said she was, and more. She says I can stay here.”
“How long will you?”
“How long?” and her voice paused. “Oh, perhaps until it rains. If I produce rain for you——”
“That leaves me in a quandary.”
“And how?”
“If rain drives you away, am I to hope for it?”
She was silent. Then she said: “I’d rather think of that which you need most.”
“That which I need most. I’ll reflect on that. I’m going now. Good night.”
He dropped back into the water, and she, with her arms wrapped round her knees, sat and watched his dark head float down stream.
XIX
Ghent was to remember that particular morning, for at the time it promised to be indicative of what might happen afterwards. He was up at five o’clock, eager to see whether any water had seeped into the shaft, and he found it dry, and completely prohibitive. As for the day itself, it began with splendour, an absolute red sunset of a dawn, and across the water he could see the light striking upon the little white tent amid the willows, and he reflected that if weather lore was to be relied upon this fiery sky spelt rain.
Rain! Drink for his trees, and a damp depression over yonder. And if she abandoned the island she had nowhere to go.
By seven o’clock the sky had clouded over, and a fine drizzle began, sufficient to damp leaves and roofs, but not to fill gutters and set rain-pipes gurgling. Ghent went in to shave, with one eye on the mirror and the other on the window. Part of him was longing to hear a pronounced patter on the leaves, part of him feared it, for her sake. He could not persuade himself that she was of a texture to withstand much rain; she was silk, not frieze.
At eight o’clock it was still mizzling, and Ghent met Bob in the yard.
“What do you think of it?”
Bob did not think much of it. He said that this was a slut of a summer that played every sort of trick on you, and did not know its own mind.
“No water yet, Bob.”
“Well, we’ll go a bit deeper.”
“We ought to have a winch.”
“No. We can pull it out with a bucket, sir.”
As a pessimist Bob was justified. This amazing year flouted all your prognostications. By nine o’clock the sky began to clear, and the drizzle died away. By ten o’clock the sun was shining.
All three of them were at work on the well, Bob down below, and Ghent and George drawing up and emptying the buckets of soil, when Ghent saw two motor pantechnicons cross the bridge and stop at the Folly Farm gate. They were tigerish-looking vehicles, striped in yellow and black, and when Ghent saw them enter the Folly Farm lane he realized that Mr. Max Broster had not wasted much time either in losing his temper or putting the loss of it into practical shape. These gentlemen had orders to clear Folly Farm of its furniture. The gesture was final, so final that Ghent did not know whether to be sorry or glad.
Leaving the men, without saying anything to them, he walked along the bank until he was level with Folly Island. The yellow vans were visible from where he stood. Also, he could see Mrs. Strangeways sitting in her deck-chair with a book in her lap.
He hailed her.
“Have you seen your visitors?”
She had. She came down to the punt.
“Yes. I left the key in the door for them. I rather expected this to happen.”
“Have you cleared all your things?”
“Everything. Please don’t worry.”
Ghent returned to the well, to find George on his knees, peering into this open grave as though a crock of gold had been uncovered there.
“It’s coming in, sir.”
Down below, Bob, with his fist in a mass of clay that had suddenly grown sticky, was pecking with the pick at a spot on the wall where water was oozing into the shaft. Ghent knelt down beside George.
“Struck it, Bob?”
“Looks like it, sir. There’s a sort of vein in the clay here, a bit of ballast. Gosh, yes, she’s coming in all right.”
The trickle became a jet, and Bob was standing in a puddle of water.
“Better come out, Bob.”
A short ladder made of two by one deals, nailed to lengths of two by four battens, lay on the grass. George slid it down into the pit, and Fanshaw emerged, bringing his tools with him. The three of them stood and watched that spurt of water filling the bottom of their well.
“If she goes on like that, sir, it’ll come in as fast as we can pump.”
“Better get a stage in, Bob, hadn’t we? Think the walls will hold?”
Fanshaw scratched his head.
“We’ll get some struts in, and board up the gravel. The clay’ll hold all right.”
“There’s the wood from the old shed we pulled down. Good enough for that job.”
“I should say so.”
They were busy fixing a staging for the pump and boarding in the upper part of the shaft, when the nursery bell began to ring. None of them heard it, and Mrs. Maintenance was obliged to come down to the river and warn Peter that he had a visitor.
“Mr. Pelling, sir.”
“Mr. Pelling?”
“Yes. He’s waiting in the office.”
“All right. Tell him I’ll be up in half a minute.”
Ghent washed his hands in the river, put on his coat, and set off to interview Mr. Pelling. He avoided any interchange of glances between himself and his two men, for he had every reason to feel anxious, and he guessed that both Bob and George knew it. Mr. Pelling was a member of a big firm of nurserymen, a firm which bought in stock from smaller men and resold to their customers. For two years Mr. Pelling’s order had been of considerable importance to Ghent, though the trade prices were much less than the money he would have received from private buyers. Peter had been expecting a visit from Mr. Pelling, and he had been worried by the prospect of losing a large and possible order in a year when both nature and man seemed to be in league against him.
Mr. Pelling had strayed from the office. Possibly, he had taken the opportunity of exploring on his own, and Ghent found him in the Green Way, inspecting the Marplot rhododendrons. Mr. Pelling was a complete study in brown, hair, face, clothes, boots, hat. In figure he was stout, in speech and movements deliberate. His eyes were sleepy, and blue, but the actual Mr. Pelling was very much awake.
“Morning, Mr. Ghent. How are things?”
Peter smiled upon him.
“Oh, a bit stuffy, but I’m not complaining.”
“Had any rain?”
“Not much. Have you?”
Mr. Pelling had a dry wit.
“One or two passing clouds have had a cold in the head. But our soil’s pretty retentive. Rhodos won’t be budding out much.”
“No. But it’s rather early to tell.”
“Can’t send out rhodos without flower buds,” said Mr. Pelling, knowing his own mind; “people don’t like it. Can’t expect them to wait two years for a flower show. A bit of rain now, and a little drought later on would be different. I wanted some rhodos.”
Ghent kept smiling.
“I’m sorry. Anything I can show you?”
“Got any young Fletchus?”
“Yes.”<
br />
“And Allumiis? Four foot stuff. We’re short.”
Ghent’s smile faded for a moment.
“Yes. But we’ve been rather unlucky with Allumiis. Moved most of them last autumn.”
“Looking sick?”
“Yes, rather. I’ll show you.”
Mr. Pelling might be a trader of trees, but he was also a grower of them, and if those seemingly sleepy eyes of his saw what was more than plain to the expert, Mr. Pelling was a kindly person, and he did not stress the obvious. Half those particular cypresses were unmarketable, and even the moving of the survivors would entail a risk. In fact, in considering the reputation of his own firm, he knew that it would be bad business for him to touch any of Ghent’s trees this season.
“Sorry, Ghent; I’m afraid there’s too much risk.”
“Quite. I shouldn’t have sold you those trees, even if you had asked for them.”
“Yes, you have always been very straight with us. If I were you, Ghent, I wouldn’t lift a single conifer this season. Let ’em sit tight and have a chance. I know that is rather stiff advice.”
“I think it’s sound, Mr. Pelling. Our deciduous stuff will be all right, I think. Shall you want any of it?”
“I’ll see. We’re rather well-stocked ourselves in that line. I’ll let you know later.”
Peter walked back with Mr. Pelling to his waiting car, and smiled on him, as though Mr. Pelling had promised him a considerable order, though he was very sure that he would do no business with Messrs. Pelling & Co. this year. It was not to be expected that a firm with so high a reputation would sponsor doubtful trees. Mr. Pelling drove off in his smart new coupé, and Ghent went back to his work with the men, to be struck by the futility of digging that hole in the ground. What was the use? The little spurt of water the pump would throw could not save him from bankruptcy. He had not the capital to enable him to hold out for another year.
Almost, he said to the two men: “Oh, we won’t bother, Bob. We are wasting our time,” but he knew that such an order would be a confession of defeat. There was that in him which would not admit defeat, but would go on with the normal round, as in a city that will not surrender until the last sack of corn has been opened. Besides, what else was there for him to do? Bob and George had rigged up a rough staging for the pump, and they went to collect the timber for lining the upper part of the shaft. Ghent joined them. There was assuagement and comfort in using your hands when your head was bothered by a problem that seemed insoluble, and your heart felt sore. Also, he became aware of a kind of inarticulate gentleness in the attitude of these two labouring men. Neither of them referred to Mr. Pelling’s visit, or asked questions, and yet Ghent felt that they knew that no order had been forthcoming, and that he was worried. So the three of them worked together, George with cheerful quips, Bob with a laconic concentration that was characteristic of the man. Both of them knew that their own jobs were in jeopardy, and they may have felt, just as Ghent did, that they were attempting to sweep back the sea with a broom. Yet after all, you could not throw up your hands and whimper. You just went on with the job. That was what work on the land taught you. It was no use indulging in a sit-down strike against nature.
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