As this narrative proceeded, Miss Fielding’s anger found itself slowly shifting its focus from Vartouhi, who had been deceitful but no more, and concentrating upon that only too familiar target, old Mr. Fielding. What an extraordinary thing to do! Sneaking off in the middle of the night without telling anybody and treating Mr. Arkwright as if he were the station car! And now that he had gone, Betty would of course think that there was no need for her to go, and, with the deplorable object-lesson of his silly old father removed from his sight, Kenneth would become more besotted with Betty than ever. There was No End to It. It is fortunate that my vibrations are naturally harmonious, thought Miss Fielding, while gazing severely down at Vartouhi’s cheerful face, or I do not know how I should bear it. A weaker woman would have sunk beneath it all long ago.
“Did Mr. Fielding say when he was coming back or leave any address?” asked Kenneth, in a quiet sensible tone that seemed to remove much of the oddness from the situation.
“He is not ever coming back. Regent Palace Hotel,” said Vartouhi, promptly.
“Oh well, he’ll be all right; they know him well there, and I’ll run up in a day or two and see him,” said Kenneth to his sister, and as she was anxious to preserve as much as possible of the “not before the servants” attitude that she had always supported, she answered in a matter-of-fact voice:
“Yes, that would be best. Now, Vartouhi, you go off to bed. You are a silly little girl to come creeping in like that; there was no need to make such a secret of it. Mr. Fielding did not want to—er—disturb Miss Burton and me, that was all.”
“Yas. He told me, ‘Do not let them hear, Vartouhi. S’sh!’”
“Yes, well—er—that was very considerate and kind of him. Does your nose still hurt?”
Vartouhi cautiously felt it, and nodded.
“I will give you some ointment, if you will come to my room. Will you get Pony in, please? he had better not be out in this rain, we don’t want him to get another cold.”
“Is in.” Vartouhi pointed under the table, where the enormous cat sat sulkily blinking at them all.
“Yes, very well, then. Good night, Vartouhi.”
“Good night, Miss Fielding. Good night, Mr. Kenneth.”
“Good night, Vartouhi.” They went out of the kitchen together.
Alone, Vartouhi brought out from her pocket and smoothed with an admiring look, a pound-note.
“She must think it so odd,” fumed Miss Fielding as they went across the hall.
“I don’t think she does, Con. Foreigners are all slightly crazy and they don’t expect people to behave normally.”
“I’m sure she knows everything that goes on in the house, she’s as sharp as a needle underneath all those smiles and curtsies.”
He said nothing. He thought that what his sister said was true but the fact only amused him. Vartouhi had enjoyed the whole thing, like a schoolgirl. It was bad luck that Con had caught her.
“I shan’t ever feel quite the same about her,” announced Miss Fielding, pausing at the foot of the stairs. “I know now that she is sly.”
Kenneth wanted to say irritably, “Oh rot, Connie,” but he controlled the impulse and was silent. The one thing he must avoid was the arousing of his sister’s suspicions. They had been stirred by the gift of the scent at Christmas but fortunately seemed to have fallen asleep again while she had been making such a fuss about his father and Betty. He was not going to make a fool of himself like that again. Any fun he and Vartouhi had was going to be carried on under the rose, his favourite flower. There was no harm in their little secrets but he knew what Con was. To his relief, his sister showed no disposition to discuss the evening’s events any further, and he was able to go back to the drawing-room fire and his newspaper and such comfort as could be had from his thoughts.
After Miss Fielding had gone upstairs, with the obvious intention of arousing Miss Burton and telling her all about it, he sat in solitude until past midnight, dozing and reading items of news over and over again and every now and then thinking uneasily how unsettled life at home had recently become. He was not more given than the average man to dreams of tender domestic happiness; if such a state had come to him in the natural course he would have welcomed it warmly and been completely content with it, but he did not consciously sigh over his unmarried state. His straightforward, affectionate and strongly repressed nature had been steeped from his early manhood in the thought, instigated by his mother and sisters, that he was the type of good-natured old ass that girls liked but did not fall in love with, and when his first youthful passion had been killed by Betty, he had (Richard’s guess was a true one) suffered as deeply as he could suffer, and his bachelorhood was largely due to that one wound received in youth.
But his was too healthy a nature to brood over an old sorrow, and if he had been asked whether his years from twenty-five to forty-five had been happy ones he would have unhesitatingly answered “yes.” He had the never-failing interest and pleasure of his garden, his affection for his mother and sisters and his pride in their talents (Mrs. Miles, we forgot to say, painted in her spare time in a downright, between-bouts-of-active-service fashion, rather as a bustling Prime Minister might), a profession which interested him without exhausting his energies and upon which he need not rely for his ample income, and a large comfortable house in which there was always enough social activity to make the time pass pleasantly and even to keep him abreast with affairs in the great world, for Miss Fielding’s protégés had included some harmless déracinés with political contacts in their native lands.
And, besides, he had never quite known what he wanted. Few people do, and he was an average person. His desires had always been vague; if he ever thought about what he would have liked his life to be, he pictured himself as a soldier, with a foreground of active service in far-off lands and the dim figures of a pretty wife and some children in the background. But his ambitions had always been so vague, and never supported by Ambition itself, which drives the dreams of love or fame remorselessly forward until they crystallize and come true; and his home was so comfortable, the pattern of his life so uniformly pleasant, that the roots of desire for the life of a normal human being had steadily withered.
They were almost dead when Vartouhi and Betty came to live at Sunglades six months ago. Another ten years, even another five, and Habit and Comfort and Humorous Self-deprecation, the great stones that lie on such roots and bleach and dry them, would have done their work. But the two women had arrived just in time; the roots were stirring with fresh life; and Kenneth sat dejectedly before the fire on this February evening, with the snowdrops and violets and daffodils in the green Chinese bowls and vases, and thought how uncomfortable life had been lately and wondered why.
Perhaps there are too many women in the house, he thought, standing up with a sigh that ended in a yawn and folding his paper neatly for salvage; and yet it was no better when Richard and Father were here, because they were both so hard hit they were no use as ballast.
The fact is, he thought, going gloomily round tweaking the black-out close and switching off lights, this isn’t an ordinary household. (The enormity of this thought, coming from himself, never struck him, although six months ago he would have been simply incapable of thinking it. So far had the roots grown in strength.) None of us here are married or have any children (can’t count Father, he isn’t like a father anyhow and never has been), or are even engaged. A normal household, thought Kenneth as he went slowly up the stairs, a normal household has children in it or young people just growing up and falling in love and perhaps a grandmother or an aunt or something like that. Old people and young people and little boys and girls, with a man in his prime at the head of it. There’s something wrong with all of us, he thought even more gloomily, as he stalked into the bathroom. Father’s too gay by half for his time of life, and Con’s so down on everybody, and Frankie’s an old maid, and Betty’s never got over Dick’s death, and Richard’s a highbrow, and I’m an old s
tick, and Vartouhi—she’s a dear little girl but I sometimes think she’s got an eye to the main chance, like the rest of them nowadays.
He went to sleep thoroughly dissatisfied with his housemates and himself.
The following morning at breakfast Miss Fielding lightly revealed that her father had gone to London overnight and it was uncertain when he would return. The proper comments were made, in which polite regret mingled with a little surprise at the suddenness of his departure, and then the establishment almost audibly set itself in train to resume the uneventful routine that had preceded his arrival. Betty was too cautious to assume immediately that she would not now be expected to leave the house, but she did go so far as to postpone making inquiries for a room in St. Alberics, which she had proposed to do that morning, and her optimism, as the week went on, was justified, for Miss Fielding said no more about her departure and even made references to plans for the summer in which she was included.
The fact was, Miss Fielding had suddenly decided that it would be best if Betty stayed on. After all, she was an old friend, and however sensibly she had received the suggestion that she should leave, her departure was bound to leave a little unpleasantness, and that was never desirable. Now that Father was gone, the chief reason for her leaving had been removed, and although Kenneth, no doubt, would continue to make sheep’s eyes at her, that was irritating, but it meant nothing more than it ever had. And, most persuasive factor of all, on the very morning after Father had left, one of those women called with a paper wanting to know how many bedrooms there were in the house. That settled it; Miss Fielding patiently replied that there were seven, five of them permanently occupied and two likely to be reoccupied at any moment; and decided that she would say no more to Betty about the incident.
Now that Christmas was hardly a memory, and the evenings were beginning to draw out and fill with blue light, and the snowdrops to lift their delicate heads from the garden earth, Miss Fielding’s thoughts turned once more to Little Frimdl, whose presentation had been so long delayed, first by the deplorable slackness of the cast and secondly by the arrival of old Mr. Fielding and the subsequent falling in love of all the inmates (or so it seemed to her) of the house. Miss Fielding thought that it would be an excellent idea if everyone purged themselves of their recent preoccupation with the Destructive Force by starting rehearsals again.
It was with indescribable dismay that the former cast of Little Frimdl witnessed his resurrection. What! were they not harassed enough by convalescence, love and their war work and the spring weather, were not their inward sufferings from their emotions and their outward ones from colds, enough that they must once again struggle with the Spirits of Mutual Mistrust and the Very Old Man and all the rest of it? They could hardly believe what they heard. But they were weakened by months of emotional strain and the long winter nights, and also they were taken by surprise. They all found themselves enrolled again, and Betty’s feeble attempt to get Richard exempted by explaining that he had recently taken on part-time work in a rivet-sorting factory in St. Alberics was defeated by Miss Fielding’s brisk demand for his address in Blentley, so that she might write to him and get everything arranged.
When he received her letter Richard was really annoyed. He had got his emotions into order again after Vartouhi’s visit to him in January, having found satisfactory work for his mind with the European Reconstruction Council and for his hands in the rivet-sorting factory; and he was emphatically not going to risk having himself disturbed again. He wrote to Miss Fielding by return of post, saying courteously but very firmly that he was too busy to undertake a part, and wishing the play all the success it deserved. He then dismissed the matter from his mind.
There was a strong contrast between the two places where he worked, and he appreciated it. The European Reconstruction Council was housed in a mansion designed by one of the many English disciples of Palladio, standing in a small secluded park among the low hills some miles beyond St. Alberics. The long windows looked out across the stars and ovals of flower-beds which had been laid out by a Victorian owner of the house (overruling the assurances of experts that a house of that period should have a wild meadow sweeping up to its very loggia), and thence down a gentle slope to the waters of a lake surrounded by groups of stately beeches and—an exotic touch—deodars planted by another experimenting owner. The flower-beds were now planted with potatoes, and in the loggia was a long rack containing bicycles belonging to the Council, but the severe, noble lines of the house and the placid beauty of the lake with its dark sweeping trees could not be marred by such contemporary details. Richard looked forward to his first sight of the great mansion, in colour neither grey nor cream but a blending of the two, as he turned the curve of the drive in the morning and the lake and the trees and the low hill crowned by the house were first revealed. He had managed to buy a bicycle, which was extremely useful to him, as Cobbett Hall was some five miles from Blentley and it was only the senior members of the Council who had the tacit right to use the Council bus; but the man he envied was the one who rode up to the mansion twice a week on a beautiful dark grey mare and who made a picture of himself and his mount, despite his own unpicturesque person, because Cobbett Hall had been designed in the age when horses were a natural part of any picture.
Within, the delicate touches of gilding on the cornices and the sea-green or terra-cotta walls served to emphasize the strict beauty of the house’s lines, as did the shadowless light that illuminated every corner and filled the rooms. Wood, stone and plaster were so happily married here, and in the more domestic parts of the house their lines were so gently softened by two hundred years of service, that the prevailing atmosphere was one of harmony; before a chair or a picture or a flower had been put into the house, its proportions, and light, had furnished it perfectly for as long as it should stand.
The rivet-sorting factory was housed in two tall dilapidated sheds in a back street near the Cathedral, named Abbot’s Lane. The wall of an old cemetery ran along one side, and on, the other there were some squalid dark cottages, and others of the same kind stood opposite. Glimpses of machines and moving figures could be detected behind the dusty windows of the sheds, and occasionally when the doors, painted grey, were opened to let one of the two-hour shifts come out, there was a smell of hot oil. Most of these voluntary and part-time workers were women, and sometimes their children stopped on the way home from school to wait for Mother to come out from the factory, and the narrow silent little street, where the hum of the machines could faintly be heard, was disturbed by the brisk cries of marble-players and the arguing of little girls.
There was a yard at the back of the sheds with some old boxes and half a motor-car in it, and on sunny days Richard and others of the sixty workers would sit out there for half an hour and listen to Works Wonders on somebody’s portable wireless while eating their lunch. A wall kept off the wind that blew across the old cemetery with its tangled grass and neglected graves, and over the place there was the shabby peace, the comfortable obscurity, that is the favourite atmosphere of seven human beings out of ten whether they know it or not.
So Richard began to find life orderly and manageable once more.
CHAPTER 26
SUNGLADES WAS A sadder and a wiser house as the spring advanced. There was the feeling that a number of very bad rows had just been avoided; rows in which old grievances would have exploded and people would have had large jagged pieces of other people’s minds thrown at them, and this had a sobering effect upon the older members of the household who had learned to value peace. My Love had a Silver Ring echoed from Miss Burton’s rooms at the top of the house more frequently than it had for months; on the lengthening evenings of March the romantic notes floated down to the daffodils and narcissus swaying in the windy garden or sounded through long afternoons of cold spring rain. Mr. Fielding had now been in London for some five weeks, and Kenneth had had a gallant little letter from him saying that he was leaving the Regent Palace and going to
spend a week or so with some friends in town. Apparently he was still taking it hard. Kenneth was very sorry for the old boy; he knew what it was; but meanwhile he undoubtedly found the house a pleasanter place than it had been for months. It was Betty and Vartouhi who brightened it for him, now that both his rivals had departed; but Vartouhi especially. She was like sunlight in the house, he thought, with her ready smile and her topsy-turvy English and her frank delight in the secret little presents of flowers and trinkets and scent which he gave her from time to time.
She was made even more cheerful than usual towards the middle of March by a letter from her sister in New York, enclosing one from the Mother Superior at the Convent where all the five Annamatta sisters had learned to read and write. It told Yania that her father and mother and Djura and Yilg and K’ussa were alive; and that Medora was still safe with the nuns in Turkey, and that the farm had been forced to produce fruit for the enemy but was not producing very hard. The Mother had seen them all at the farm on the very day that she wrote, having obtained permission from the Italian authorities to visit an old dying lay-sister, who lived in the village nearest to the Annamattas’ home. The crop was not good this year and they had been forced to hold the Feast of the Fruit in secret; but they had held it, and they were all alive, and they trusted in God the All-Merciful who would one day set them free.