“Vartouhi! Ovaltine!”
“There’s Miss Fielding calling you; we shan’t have time this evening,” said Miss Burton hurriedly, The Usurper having retreated and left her to it. “Run along now; I’ll put this away.”
But on the following evening when they were again seated by the stove and the “beautiful thing” was growing under Vartouhi’s hands, the tale of Kenneth’s medals was taken up again and related, this time without the mischievous touch of The Usurper, from the depths of Miss Burton’s affectionate heart.
She sat with the lamplight falling on her faded face and ageing hands as she carelessly feather-stitched a needle-case in red silk, and Vartouhi sat at her feet, with the moorland colours of green and brown and purple wools and the sheen of brilliant silk skeins scattered all about her.
“It was at a place called La Bassée, in France,” began Miss Burton. “It happened in 1915 (before you were born, my child). The war had been going on for a year and the Germans had taken all Belgium and a lot of France. It was all so terrible——” she went on dreamily, letting the work fall from her hands, “this war is not half so terrible, I think. You see, we weren’t used to the idea of war, as you young people were for years before war came. One year we were all safe, playing and working and living our lives, and the next——”
“Tell about Mr. Fielding’s medal.”
“Oh—yes—of course. Well, the English were attacking. It was a very big important battle and every soldier felt he must fight as hard as he could. (Oh dear, I am telling this so badly! I wish I could make you see it all.) Well, the Germans had their guns on a little hill above one of the villages and they were shelling the village all the time and killing our men as they tried again and again to get into the village. Mr. Fielding—Captain Fielding, as he was then—ran with his company—that’s about sixty men, but there weren’t as many as that under Mr. Fielding because some had been wounded—and got right past the German guns and into the village. And they held it against the Germans until reinforcements came up. The Germans came down the hill and fought in the streets but Mr. Fielding and his men held on, and in the end they drove the Germans right out onto the guns of our reinforcements.”
“Was very brave,” said Vartouhi, who had been listening with closer attention than Miss Burton had ever seen her show.
“Yes, splendidly brave. He had always been a soldier you know, even before the other war came, and his mother and sisters used to jeer at him about it and try to get him to give it up. But when the war came, of course, he was properly trained and got made an officer very quickly.
“What is ‘jeer,’ Miss Burton, please?”
“Oh—laugh in an unkind way. Like you do at Richard,” said Miss Burton, whose sympathies had been moved on behalf of the invalid. (Richard would have been annoyed had he known how many women suspected his feelings for Vartouhi, but fortunately he did not think about this aspect of his case; he only did his best, instinctively, to conceal his feelings. But—as his Spanish friends would say—Love and a cough cannot be hidden.)
Vartouhi moved her shoulders indifferently, and went on—
“His mother and sister jeer at Mr. Fielding, you say, Miss Burton?”
“Er—well, yes, they did.” Miss Burton was wondering if she had not gone a little too far in her championship of Kenneth. After all, Miss Fielding was the girl’s employer.
“They are fools,” said Vartouhi, gathering up the silks and beginning to work again.
“Really, Vartouhi, you mustn’t say that.”
“Is true. They are fools. Is good to have a soldier in your house. Then if fighting happens, you have a soldier all ready.”
“Quite a number of people would agree with you,” said The Usurper, sparkling. “But, you see, Mrs. Fielding and her daughters believed that if you have a lot of soldiers, you make a war come.”
“That does not matter if you have planty soldiers, because then you win. These women are fools, I say so again. Tell about the other medal, please, Miss Burton.”
“The Military Cross? He got that for having been in France for the whole length of the War, from 1914 to 1918, and having seen a great deal of fighting.”
Vartouhi nodded but said no more. However, Miss Burton was sure that she was thinking about Kenneth and his medals, and once or twice during the remaining evenings before Christmas she returned to the subject and asked Miss Burton to describe the medals and to tell again the story of how Kenneth and his company held the village. Miss Burton did so, and was pleased to find that she could express more and more of the tale’s colour and drama with each repetition.
Christmas was now only a week away and Miss Fielding, one Saturday morning at breakfast, said that green boughs and holly must be brought in from the woods to decorate the house; and at once an argument arose as to the propriety of using the car for this purpose. Miss Fielding (who had exchanged a relieved glance with Miss Burton after glancing through the morning’s post and seeing that it consisted of two letters for Betty and the Spanish News Letter for Richard), saw no reason, except the war, why the car should not be taken out, and said that if they filled it sufficiently full with evergreens everybody would think they were doing it for the hospitals and there would be no unfavourable comment. “We might pinch one of those ‘Doctor’ notices to stick on the front,” murmured Betty to Kenneth, who gave a loud laugh. But Kenneth thought that a walk to the nearest wood three miles away would be jollier, and more patriotic. He and Betty would go.
“And Vartouhi and I will come too and help you carry your treasure-trove, won’t we, Vartouhi?” said Miss Fielding brightly. “It’s a lovely day; if we start immediately after lunch we shall have plenty of time to get all we want before it gets dark. I don’t suppose you’ll come, will you, Frances?”
“Oh yes, why not?” said Miss Burton, glancing out of the window at the cold green garden lit up by the low, bright winter sun. “I will wrap up warmly. I shall enjoy it.”
“On the birthday of Kemal Ataturk,” announced Vartouhi, getting up and beginning to clear away the breakfast, “we put a roll of flowers over the fron-door—red and white and yellow flowers like the colours on our flag in my country.”
“Do you, Vartouhi? How interesting!” said Miss Fielding gaily. She was growing more cheerful with every day that came and did not bring a certain letter from London. “I am sure you will enjoy taking part in our ancient English custom this afternoon. It used to be called Bringing in the Yule Log, but of course——” and Miss Fielding followed Vartouhi into the kitchen and gave her an exposition upon Christmas customs in England. Miss Burton wandered upstairs, and Kenneth and Betty were left sitting at the breakfast table with their cigarettes.
“Damn,” he said, looking across at her. She had on her silvery suit and her little ear-rings of green jade and the morning sun deepened the tea-rose tint of her skin. She giggled. It would of course have been pleasanter to walk through the winter woods alone with Kenneth, without Miss Fielding observing his every glance and Miss Burton falling into rabbit holes and tearing her stockings, but what she was really thinking about was Richard, who would have a lonely afternoon and a late tea. However, when she spoke to him about it later in the morning he seemed indifferent and said that he had plenty to read and would not want any tea at all.
In fact he was envious of the others, who would go laughing through the silent leafless woods, pulling down the bitter-smelling laurel and the holly and come home through the frosty dusk with their arms full of stiff, dark-green branches and ivy trails; and particularly did he envy Kenneth, who would only see Vartouhi as a pretty little girl in a woollen cap. Vartouhi in the woods would be wasted on Kenneth, thought Richard, and resigned himself to an afternoon of controlled suffering. He had forgotten that he had invited Alicia to tea.
After lunch the party set out, very talkative and gay with Miss Fielding walking between Kenneth and Betty; and the house was left to solitude and the invalid. He read for a while, then became sleepy
and fell into a doze.
He was aroused by something small and hard falling on the bed. He sat up and examined it. It was a pebble, and at the same instant a voice called from the garden below:
“Yoo-hoo! Richard?”
“Hallo,” he called. “Is that you, Alicia?”
“Yes. I’ve brought you something to read as per instructions but I can’t get in; everybody seems to be out.”
“The kitchen door is unlocked.”
“All right, I’ll go round.”
In a few minutes she came into the room, wearing a beaver coat and cap and carrying a bundle of books and papers which she put on the bed.
“I’ve been staying in town for the last few nights and didn’t get your letter until I got back this morning,” she said, pulling up a chair for herself and sitting down. She took off her high cap and put it on the floor and passed one white, faintly stained hand over her dark hair. “Are you better?” leaning back and looking at him.
“Not quite, thank you. I’ve still got this temperature. It was rather reckless of you to throw that pebble; it might have blinded me.”
“Rubbish.”
“And how did you know this was my room?”
“I guessed,” smiled Alicia. She was ridiculously happy to see him again. He looks like a beautiful thin wise young owl in pyjamas, she thought. “Where is everybody?” she went on.
“Gone a-maying,” said Richard rather sourly. “That is, picking evergreens for Christmas decorations, up in the woods.”
“Oh, bad luck. I should think you like that sort of thing, don’t you?”
“I do. And I am very annoyed at having to stay here—browned off, I should say—and quite glad to see you.”
“That’s big of you. Well——” glancing at the books—“I’ve brought you the latest Agatha Christie—my father happened to bring it home last night—and Vogue (though what you want that for I can’t think, and it gets sillier every month anyway) and Men Only.” Richard shut his eyes in imitation of Miss Fielding but Alicia only thought how long his lashes were; the beautiful eyelashes of the consumptive. Neither of them thought of Mr. Arkwright, who happened to be reading the latest Agatha Christie.
“—and the Sunday Express. I adore Nat Gubbins, don’t you?”
“Sally the Cat,” said Richard instantly.
“Love her,” said Alicia. “Do you know, Father got so browned off with Garvin in the Observer—you know, Now Is The Issue Joined and all the rest of it—he gave up the Observer and took to the Sunday Express because we love Believe It or Not and Gubbins, and the very week we started to take it, Garvin joined the staff. Father was fit to be tied.”
They both laughed, and Richard said, “It was a pity we didn’t get our walk.”
“Yes. The snow lasted, didn’t it? It was a lovely day that Sunday. Are you very keen on walking?”
“Very, but I usually prefer to walk alone.”
“Like Kipling’s Cat,” she murmured.
He nodded. “People will talk about themselves or their love affairs. Have you ever marvelled at the way people use the countryside and the patience of their friends as safety valves for their own passions and misfortunes? When one considers what enduring pleasure may be derived from the mere contemplation of natural objects, it seems to me so strange that people do not exert themselves to the utmost to rid themselves of personal preoccupations, in order to enjoy this delicate yet lasting pleasure to the full. Doesn’t it to you?”
“One can’t always rid oneself of them,” she said.
“One should be able to. And there should be a special punishment for people who tramp through an exquisite countryside bawling about love. Will you make us some tea?”
“Yes, of course.” She went downstairs whistling and explored the kitchen and in a little while came back with tea on a tray and some little buns.
“I thought we’d toast them,” she said.
“Excellent,” said Richard, who was staring out of the window. He’s thinking about the little number, thought Alicia, but she felt confident and calm, because she was used to getting what, and whom, she wanted and the little number seemed to her, in connection with Richard, to be what an aunt of hers used to call Most Unsuitable. She’s not his type at all, thought Alicia, gazing peacefully into the electric stove and toasting buns. She would make him wretched if they were to get married—not that I suppose he’s thinking of that for a moment. He would be wasted on her, and I like him and I don’t want to see him hurt and anyway I don’t see why she should have him.
She arranged hot buns and tea conveniently on the tray for him and then sat down by the stove with her own tea. There was a long silence. The sun was setting behind the black trees and the garden was full of cold violet shadows and brilliant yellow light. The earth of the flower-beds was purple and the grass a rich unearthly green under the frigid blue sky. Presently Richard said:
“It’s so pleasant, the way you don’t talk much.”
“Oh—is it?” She stifled a yawn, and went on, “I’m sorry, I’m sleepy. I wasn’t in bed until three this morning.” Her eyes were still shadowed and her voice slightly hoarse from a three-day party in London, which had ended in the small hours so that people could get some sleep to enable them to get through their day’s work, and then continued on the next night. At this party she had met a man who worked in the building that was also adorned by the authoritative presence of H., and had learned that the latter was known to his subordinates as Sexy William. This information, and the already fading memory of many kisses, was all that was left of the party.
“Do you like parties?” she went on.
“Some parties,” said Richard cautiously. “But the thing to bear in mind about parties is to have all you want of them, and at them, when you’re young and then you will not want them when you’re old.”
“You might get to like them so much you couldn’t do without them.”
“You might, certainly. But that is a risk that must be taken.”
“I go to a lot of parties.”
“Indeed? Is there another bun?”
She took one across to him, pleased to see him eating, and said as she put it on his plate:
“You said you were happy, the other day. I’m not.”
She felt the desire for personal conversation with him, and thought that the liking between them was now strong enough to bear it, but Richard was tormented by pictures of Vartouhi’s bright hair and dark eyes against the glossy evergreen leaves as she laughed and thrust her arms among the branches, and he never welcomed personal conversations and the last thing he wanted was one now. He answered:
“That is probably because you are not free. To be a slave to anything—an idea or a person—is repulsive. You won’t be happy until you are free.”
“No, I suppose not,” she answered indifferently, knowing she had made a blunder and feeling very annoyed with herself, “More tea?”
“No thank you. Will you smoke?”
“Are you allowed to?”
“Oh, good heavens, yes,” he said impatiently, and held out his case. As she put out her hand, he took it in his and held it for a moment.
“Beautiful,” he said, turning it palm upwards and gently pushing it back to her with a cigarette in it.
“I can’t get the stains out,” said Alicia, whose heart was beating fast.
“They only make it more beautiful, to me,” he said, and she thought: he means that, it’s because the stains make it more like a poor woman’s hand and he loves the poor. He does like me! he really does. She sat down by the fire again and suddenly began to talk very entertainingly and soon they were laughing.
In the woods, all was apparently mirth and jollity. There was plenty of holly; that is, there were plenty of berries on the holly trees, which is all that ever matters about holly, and they enjoyed themselves hooking down the branches with a walking-stick brought for that purpose. The beech leaves lay in deep copper drifts in the hollows and the dark silver tr
unks towered solemnly upwards to the cold, fading fairy light in the sky. Kenneth sliced off branches of hawthorn laden with soft dark crimson berries, and Betty cut rhododendron sprays with their pale green buds, while Miss Burton rustled through the leaves in a dream, quoting Tennyson to herself and not listening to Miss Fielding, who was explaining about Druids.
Vartouhi was excited by the stillness and the scent of dead leaves and moss, the blue gleam of the sky on a black pool, the sudden rustle of grey pigeon’s wings among the highest grey branches, and she took off her cap and ran among the trees, singing in a strong little voice. Miss Fielding, who was concentrating upon procuring the holly for which the party had come out, watched her with an indulgent eye and frequently sent her to assist Kenneth and Betty, particularly when they lingered over some bush behind the rest of the party. She enjoyed the freshness of the air and the wintry hues of the leaves and bushes, but her enjoyment was tempered by her sisterly anxieties. It was hard, she reflected, that she could not fling herself unreservedly into the pleasures of the afternoon, but this had been her cross ever since Kenneth had been of an age to make a fool of himself. They had never been on a picnic, or a water-party, or a tennis party, that she had not breathed a sigh of relief to have the pretty girls left behind and Kenneth safely seated, alone once more, opposite to her on the homeward journey.
Gradually their arms grew full of branches and sprays; trails of ivy with dark jade green leaves, the bright black berries of the honeysuckle, dim red rose-hips and the fans of the fir tree, and at last Miss Fielding said that they had enough and announced that they would go home. Darkness came down very quickly; the last light faded from the woods and they became spectral and chill with shade. As the party came out onto their homeward road the icy moon was rising and threw their shadows at their feet. The thought of tea was of course now uppermost in everybody’s mind and they walked smartly homewards, with their beautiful spoils nodding fantastic shadows on the moonlit road as the bunches moved in time to the walking. Everyone was in high spirits and Miss Burton did her best to forget that she was undoubtedly starting a cold. Miss Fielding spoke at length of Little Frimdl; how it grew upon one with each rehearsal, and how sad it was that the work of a man like Dr. Stocke should be held up by the war, and how tiresome it was that Richard’s illness should be holding up the rehearsals. Aeroplanes were active overhead while she was talking, and presently the distant sound of the Alert went faintly up into the dusky, cold rose sky. But the Raiders Passed sounded as they reached Sunglades, and Betty at once went upstairs to see how Richard was.