Nightingale Wood

by Stella Gibbons

  ‘Oh yes,’ she drawled on, not giving Mrs Wither a chance to speak, ‘he’s been unofficially engaged to Phyl for two years but they only affixed the ring (platinum, I need hardly say, and inevitably, three very large diamonds) this morning; they’ve known each other since they were at school …’

  ‘A boy-and-girl affair! How romantic!’ exclaimed Mrs Wither, feeling envious. Why did none of her children get engaged properly? Victor Spring had, as usual, done the correct thing. He would never have blundered into marrying a shopgirl.

  ‘Was that the pretty dark girl in your party at the Infernal Ball?’ inquired Tina, feeling warmly generous towards the world and showing her mood in her voice.

  ‘That would be she. She is generally admired, I believe.’ (No, she’s not going to faint, she’s going to cry; I must get her out of this; it wouldn’t be civilized to let her see Vic and Phyl with that look on her face, poor little idiot. What has he been doing to her? But how tiresome and unnecessary all these emotions are. Thank heaven for books.) ‘But I think her looks are dull,’ she ended calmly. She sometimes made these candid avowals, which went rushing off over the idle plains of gossip and returned like boomerangs to stun her aunt by their indiscreetness. (That will show her I am no friend of the immaculate Phyl’s – but heaven forbid that I should have to take sides. Nothing so tedious.)

  ‘Well, after that, I must certainly go at once and offer my congratulations,’ announced Mrs Wither. ‘Madge – Tina?’

  Everyone stood up and began to move towards the house; but though Viola got up with the others, she did so without knowing what she was doing and made no movement to follow them, but stood there, staring at the blurred colours of the crowd through thick tears, a lump aching in her throat, lost.

  ‘Would you care to come down to the river? It is quieter there. I will take you.’

  A cool plump arm came through her own and Hetty led her away.

  Down in the shrubbery on the river bank, a few chairs had been arranged for those older guests who liked shade, solitude and the smell of rhododendrons, and it was into one of these temporary bowers that Hetty steered Viola, who was now crying freely, with her head bent and sharp little gasps escaping now and again from between her bitten lips. She sat down on the very edge of the chair, upright, and cried into a pair of crumpled yellowish-white gloves, while Hetty, leaning back in the other, glanced uneasily round to make sure that no other guest was near, and wondered what on earth to say. She felt sorry for the other girl but also scornful and impatient. No one but a person without taste could be so infatuated with Victor, and only a person without courage and reserve would so display their feelings.

  How I wish that I had been anywhere but with the Withers when she heard the news, thought Hetty. And how hard she is taking it! I had a suspicion, ever since the Ball, that Victor was attracted, but I had no idea it had gone so far. And I must go and blurt out the one thing I did not mean to. Oh well. Heat-waves always rob me of intelligence.

  ‘Have you no handkerchief?’ she inquired, at last, brusquely; and when Viola shook her head, brought out an inky one of her own from the top of her stocking and worked it between the mourner’s hands.

  ‘Thank you.’ Viola’s voice was hoarse and exhausted. With bent head she scrubbed at her eyes, blew her nose, which was pink as an end-of-season gooseberry, then carefully rolled the handkerchief into a ball and stared down at her shoes.

  ‘Awfully sorry to be such an ass,’ she said at last.

  ‘That’s all right.’ Hetty was staring down between the dark leaves at the blue river where the boats swayed at anchor.

  ‘Only, you see, I had a bit of a shock. I’m all right now.’

  ‘That’s good.’ Miss Franklin’s tone was not encouraging. She relished morbid psychology; but she preferred to observe it from a distance; when it came close, it embarrassed her.

  ‘You see’ (Viola never had much reserve and now what she had was in ruins, and she was longing to pour out her misery to someone) ‘promise honour bright, you won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘My patience, yes,’ exclaimed Hetty, amused and softened by the schoolgirlish nature of Viola’s oath, ‘I only wish to mind my own business, I assure you. Pray do not tell me anything you would rather keep to yourself.’

  ‘Oh, I’d like to tell someone,’ said Viola, watering at the eyes again. ‘It’s only that – oh, I suppose I’m an ass. Only I did think He – Mr Spring – your cousin – was rather, well, a bit keen on me, you know; he did make a dead set at me, at that dance, you know, and he was going to take me out to a show in town, he promised to write to me, and I was so looking forward to it, and I was so awfully happy coming along here today and then when I – when I heard he wh – wh—’ her voice fluttered, and up went the handkerchief-ball again, ‘– was engaged, it was such a shock, I couldn’t help crying. You see, that isn’t everything – dancing with me, I mean, and saying he’d write. He – kissed me, as a matter of fact. Quite a lot.’

  ‘Never!’ cried Hetty.

  Viola’s narrow, wet grey eyes looked at her in mournful suspicion.

  ‘Do you mean he often kisses people? Like that, I mean?’

  ‘About five people a week, I should think,’ retorted Hetty, brutally. There was only one course to take: crush this infatuation at once, by any means.

  ‘Really and truly, does he? Didn’t it mean anything, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not one thing. He is a great flirt. He cannot resist any face that is not definitely Epstein-ish.’

  Viola only looked bewildered; and Hetty saw that she was unconvinced.

  ‘Honour bright,’ she finished, dryly.

  ‘Well, I don’t believe it,’ said Viola, sulkily. ‘Kissing someone like that, and saying he’d write. Why did he say he was going to, unless he was? There wouldn’t be any sense in it, would there?’

  (There is none in you, thought Miss Franklin.) She said:

  ‘Well, I have told you what he is like, and it is true. If you choose not to believe me, that is not my fault.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean you’re telling fibs or anything.’

  ‘Fibs? Oh … lies. All right. I didn’t think that you did—’ (how confusing the grammar does become in these emotional situations).

  ‘I only meant you don’t understand,’ ended Viola, gently.

  ‘Don’t understand Victor?’

  Viola shook her head bewilderedly. It ached, and her eyes smarted. She found Hetty difficult to talk to and not very comforting.

  But there was no comfort anywhere now.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Hetty, more kindly. She saw Viola’s ignorant, childish, shallow nature spread before her like a little map, and it was not fair to use irony on so much simplicity; it was in rather bad taste, she felt. One was not ironical with dogs and children.

  ‘Have you any powder?’

  Viola nodded.

  ‘Then put some on and we’ll go and congratulate the happy pair.’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t!’ It was a cry.

  ‘Nonsense, you must. You don’t want everyone to see that you’ve been crying, and notice that you didn’t congratulate them, do you? Why,’ explained Hetty, ‘everyone will guess what has happened.’

  ‘Will they?’

  ‘Of course they will, and laugh at you.’

  ‘Beasts,’ said Viola, going red, and getting out her powder. ‘All right then, I’ll come, but I don’t want to a bit and I wish I was dead.’

  ‘Well, one day you will be, and so shall I; but meanwhile we may as well behave with courage and common sense. Now come along, and do try to look more cheerful. You are prettier than Phyl, you know; she is only a type. You are an individual.’

  ‘Am I?’ murmured Viola, as they slowly walked out of the shrubbery towards the glowing lawns again.

  ‘Certainly you are. Let that be a comfort to you.’

  But as Viola was not quite sure what an individual was, she did not find it very comforting.

  Phyllis was t
horoughly enjoying her afternoon. She was the most important person there, and her dress fitted to perfection. She stood before the flower-concealed fireplace, laughing, flashing her ring, giving one man after another, as they came up to congratulate her, a mischievous look that said ‘Better luck next time!’ and feeling pleased with Victor, who not only looked very handsome in a new light suit but wore exactly the correct air of deference, smiling embarrassment, and awe at his own good fortune that ought to stamp the betrothed of Miss Barlow. Really, I think we shall make a go of it, thought Phyllis, showing her white teeth, darting smiling sparkles from her round dark eyes throughout the afternoon, and feeling pleased that everything was settled. It would be fun to be a young-married, have a smart flat, and begin to entertain.

  Towards five o’clock, as the crowd in the drawing-room lessened, there trailed in Hetty, followed by that curly-haired Wither girl in pink. Phyllis studied her with an almost kindly condescension, for there was nothing now to be feared in that quarter. She knew Vic; he would not start anything now that they were officially engaged.

  ‘I don’t think you have met, have you,’ intoned Hetty, stopping in front of Phyl. ‘Miss Barlow – Mrs Wither.’

  ‘How do you do,’ smiled Phyllis, dazzlingly, looking through Mrs Wither.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ muttered Mrs Wither, studying Phyllis’s dress and face with intensity. ‘I-hear-we-have-to-congratulate-you,’ she added, in the tone of one who quotes a proverb. Hetty had told her to say this, on their walk from the shrubbery.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ said Phyllis, sweetly. ‘Victor … here’s someone you know.’

  (Oh you double-dyed witch, thought Hetty. Can’t you leave anything alone?)

  Victor turned from the man he was talking to, with a polite, expectant smile, and looked straight into the grey eyes that had last met his own in the summer-house.

  Now they were so unhappy that he could hardly bear to meet them. He said something kind and pleasant – afterwards he could not remember what – and smiled at her, and turned away. Poor little girl, it’s a damned shame, was his thought as he took up his conversation again; and for same moments, so disturbed was he by her look, her presence, that he did not hear a word the other man said.

  But when she had gone, and the memory of her look was fading, he told himself that he had done the only possible thing. The frank pleasure with which she had returned his kisses had startled him. The next time I get that girl alone we shall lose our heads completely, he had thought. There just mustn’t be a next time. And so he had let the whole thing drop, thinking that the little Wither could look after herself and would soon find someone else to kiss (though that wasn’t such a good thought, either, as thoughts go) while he was lawfully kissing Phyl.

  Now he was wondering, as he talked, if the little Wither – Violet, that was it – was as hard-boiled as he had supposed? Her kisses had been frank, but not practised. Had he been trifling with a village maiden? How Phyl would shout at that! But he would never let Phyl get wise to this little affair or there would probably be hell.

  And anyway, I prefer kissing little Violet to Phyl, any day.

  Nice state of mind for a newly engaged man, I will admit.

  CHAPTER XVII

  After the Springs’ garden party, dullness fell upon Sible Pelden. No one invited anyone anywhere, the weather was insufferably hot and heavy; and most of the gentry shut up their houses and rushed off on holiday. The days yawned like hot caverns filled with motionless black leaves, the stream in the wood dried up and the Hermit was obliged to go to Cakers’ twice a day to fetch cans of water and tickle Mrs Caker’s neck, the birds were silent, and the young people of Chesterbourne hurried out after their day’s work to bathe in the Bourne. Viola Wither shed two pounds in weight, Tina Wither put on three and lost the hollows in her cheeks.

  Grassmere was empty save for the head gardener and his wife. The Springs, it was said, were abroad.

  Saxon’s blackbird whistle was not heard so much around the house in this hot lifeless season. He was too worried to whistle; for when he brought the roses for Tina, walking with them through the oak wood in the twilight, bruised and still full of anger and shame, he had lost the power to direct his own life: and he knew it.

  It had seemed so easy to let Tina make the running and then blackmail Mr Wither; a sensible man who knew how to look after Number One would never have hesitated, and Saxon had always taken it for granted that he was a sensible man.

  But he had calculated without his better nature; and it was just this, which with the help of his will had hauled him out of his squalid home, that now prevented him from exploiting Tina’s fondness for him.

  Her words in the kitchen that evening had moved him as deeply as his cautious nature could be moved. They embarrassed him because they were what he called creeping-jesusish, and he hated Tina being in the position to say them, but their bravery and candour had impressed him: and when he gave her the roses, he gave her his ruthlessness with them.

  Also, he wanted more than ever now to be respectable and as unlike his mother and old Falger as possible. It was certainly not respectable to seduce one of the local gentry and then blackmail her father. If I do that, thought Saxon, I’ll be as bad as those two and worse, because they’re ignorant, like animals, but I’m not. I know better.

  Besides, I don’t believe the old boy ’ud shell out all that (he had planned to ask Mr Wither for a thousand pounds) just to shut my mouth. He’d probably kick her out with me, and that would be a nice state of affairs; no reference, no job, no cash, and perhaps a kid on the way. And I shouldn’t think she’s got a bit put away, or she’d have cleared out long ago.

  Fact is, decided Saxon, it was a bloody silly idea.

  Far-fetched. Like what you see on the movies. I’ll have to think of something else. Only what? Things can’t go on like this. I’m getting fond of her, too. May as well face up to it. She’s a sweet little thing; got her head screwed on the right way, too. I shouldn’t half miss her if I left.

  His growing pleasure in her company puzzled him a little, because it never occurred to him that, before he knew Tina, he had been lonely. He had purposely made himself so by dropping his hobbledehoy friends and offending the Sible Peldenites with his standoffish ways, but that did not make the loneliness any pleasanter. He had, without knowing it, wanted the friendship of an intelligent person; and though their conversations were not highbrow, Tina supplied that want.

  He also liked being with her because she was so unlike his mother. The girls in Chesterbourne were younger and prettier, but when they were older they might get like his mother, because they were uneducated. Tina would never get dirty, loud voiced, and what Saxon (who retained that simple faith in Education which his betters have lost) thought of as Ignorant. Old educated ladies were all right; there were a lot of them round Sible Pelden, and though they bellyached a bit (or so their gardeners and chauffeurs affirmed) they bellyached in an educated way, not in an ignorant one. He felt so grateful to Tina for liking him, for her words to him in the servants’ parlour, and for being gentry, that he could not keep up his coolness towards her, and those roses made it harder still. When they met for the lesson on the morning after the fight, he was as friendly, without overdoing things, as Tina could desire.

  As the days of August passed, she seemed to hold her breath lest her delicate happiness should be spoiled. Each morning brought them into a deeper intimacy, but so gently that she could only just be sure, by pausing to think, that it was on Tuesday, and not on Wednesday, that he first put his arm round her. But he first kissed her on Saturday the 19th, when they said goodbye at the end of the lesson. She did remember that; how could she forget?

  If their embraces remained gentle, their friendship grew strong. Saxon had never talked to anyone about his ambitions, but he talked to Tina; off-handedly yet seriously, dropping a hint here and a comment there. He asked her if she would correct his grammar, and Tina, wanting to laugh and cry, said that of
course she would … if he meant what he said? and if her corrections would not offend him. Oh no, he wouldn’t be offended; he got over all that sort of thing four years ago, when he decided to better himself. ‘It’s best to have things straight, that’s what I think,’ he added, unconsciously praising the candour that he admired in her. ‘Say what you mean, right out. Then you can’t go far wrong.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tina agreed doubtfully, ‘but there’s a wrong and a right way of doing it. One doesn’t want to hurt people. Besides, it’s ill-bred to do that.’

  He nodded; but she could see the unfamiliar idea, that kindness and education were somehow connected, grinding in his head, much as the wheat had ground in his father’s mill. It gave her the keenest pleasure thus to educate him. She had not suspected, when she romantically longed to drive with Saxon along summer lanes, that some of her happiness would come from telling him not to say ‘shouldn’t half’. Her motherly instincts, her touch of pedantry, and her feelings as a woman who had been compelled to make advances to a young man, were all satisfied by gently telling Saxon not to say ‘shouldn’t half’. Love has the oddest by-products.

  She had never imagined that so much happiness existed. No wonder I used to feel half alive, she thought; I must have known, subconsciously, how much I was missing. It’s like having a brother, a child and someone to play with, all in one person.

  I suppose a happy marriage is like that.

  She refused to think about the future.

  Every morning they drove away into the hushed, lonely lanes where blackberry and honeysuckle bloomed and the dusty holly-trees looked over the hedges. Then, when she had dutifully practised reversing, changing gears, and backing out through an opened gate where cows stared with comely lowered heads, Saxon would brake, shut off the engine, push his cap to the back of his head, take out a packet of Gold Flake and silently offer her one. He would shade a match for her while she lit up, still in friendly quiet. Then they would lean back, drawing in smoke, looking dreamily at the cloudless sky. Neither spoke. One of the qualities she liked in Saxon was his silence. He never chattered, although she knew his country-boy’s eyes noticed every bird, car, and beast that they passed.