What an overwhelming young woman, but rather attractive, all the same, thought Alda. I will ask her for the same afternoon as Mr. Waite. She’s too young and crude to queer Jean’s pitch; Jean will shine by contrast.
For the next week the invalids were occupied in recovering from influenza, languidly picking at the meals prepared by Alda (who mercifully did not catch the infection) and, in the case of Jenny and Louise, looking forward with apprehension to the day upon which they would go to the convent school.
The central-heating apparatus was being inspected and the mattresses from the dormitories were being hung out of the windows to air, after the custom at the mother-convent at Rouen in Normandy. The playground was emerging from the mantle of slush beneath which it had slumbered for the past month. There was even bustle in the convent; the airy, silent corridors with their tenderly smiling, life-sized statues in brilliant robes standing in every alcove and at every corner, were as peaceful on the day before the one hundred and fifty pupils returned as on any other day of the year, but perhaps the quiet pat-pat of slippered feet down the shining parquet floors was a little more frequent, and there were more conferences between the black-robed figures—“Yes, Sister. No, Sister. That would be it, Sister. Of course, Sister. That was what we heard, Sister”—in the hall and classrooms.
Sister Alban, the directress, was a sturdy middle-aged woman whose clear light eyes behind thick glasses were shrewd and secretive. She had a manner expressing great common sense and practical ability; she liked to lead the parents of prospective pupils through the large, light classrooms with their well-spaced modern desks, and to point out the view across the little lake and the groups of lime trees that in summer would waft down gusts of delicious scent and showers of creamy-green petals on the walks of the park. True, Sister Alban did not hold out these delights as an inducement to hesitating parents; she concentrated upon the advantages of spring mattresses and the lack of overcrowding in the convent, but such parents as were foolishly imaginative and open to the siren impressions of atmosphere, were ravished by those lime groves, those gleaming silent corridors with their fresh flowers and heavy curtains draped in graceful folds, that glimpse of the chapel with its snowy lace and crimson damask, and, beyond all, by the peace: the heavenly, refreshing, soul-sustaining and comforting peace breathed forth by all these objects, combining in harmony and united by the same spirit.
Alda was C. of E., with a very slight prejudice in favour of Low observances rather than High, due to those Dissenting forebears whom we have already mentioned. She was a little lax in her personal religious observances, as people described as C. of E. are apt to be, and she had never considered what might be the rewards of sacrificing the human Will; the rebellious, self-torturing, pride-scourged Will; but had she asked what were those rewards, the spirit that brooded in the convent could have answered her. There was the sacrifice: there was the reward. Side by side they existed, eternally opposed; the one perpetually struggling and the other perpetually incarnating peace, and if everybody on this planet liked peace, the conclusion would be foregone, but hardly anyone does like peace, most people preferring excitement, cigarettes, sex, drink, noise, danger, the pride of the body and fashionable hats.
“The children must be very happy here,” Alda observed to Sister Alban, in the course of the conducted tour.
Sister Alban replied, “Yes, they are happy,” but in a voice which did not completely satisfy Alda. Her tone was not emphatic and her expression was blank; Alda received the impression that she frequently had to reply to such comments by parents and assumed this poker-face in order to conceal her sentiments. I expect she’s wondering why on earth they should be happy, or thinking that if only they’re good, they will be, thought Alda.
However, the building was spotless, the nuns’ manner was kind, the fees were low and the teaching at convent schools, she had heard, was always excellent. She therefore entered the names of Jane Margarita Lucie-Browne and Louise Eleanor Lucie-Browne as day-pupils upon the register, having first warned Sister Alban that she might have to remove her daughters at short notice if her husband succeeded in persuading the local authorities to build a prefabricated house upon the site of their ruined home in Ironborough. In that case they would all return to Warwickshire to await his demobilisation.
Sister Alban was accommodating over the problem of school uniform, saying that while of course it was desirable that all the pupils should be dressed alike, many of the mothers found this impossible, and sent them to school in any plain dark clothes, but Alda had felt that Jenny and Louise, making their first entry into a large school, must have the help which a conventional appearance could give, and had at once sent an S O S to all the children’s aunts, asking for green skirts or frocks or coats that could be converted into the necessary simple dress with plain white collar.
The Lucie-Brownes were at once pleased and dismayed when a large parcel arrived from Father’s-Only-Sister-Marion containing two outsize (Marion was outsize) green dresses of fine wool, worn but far from shabby, and enough lawn to make each schoolgirl three collars.
Lucky for you that this is a favourite colour of mine [wrote Marion]. The collars, I thought, could easily be washed and they could have a clean one three times a week. Jenny ought to have riding lessons this spring; John is getting along splendidly and is going in for a jumping competition on Bumblebee at the gymkhana here in March. I enclose a cheque to pay for twelve lessons for Jenny. I noticed how envious she looked when John and Richard were talking about Bumblebee the last time we saw you.
Alda put the cheque away in her handbag with a compression of the lips, even as did Mrs. March under similar circumstances in Little Women. She thought that she would keep the promise of riding lessons a secret for the present; for, if days became very dark at the convent, a pleasant surprise would help Jenny to support them. Louise, of course, was sure to grumble and weep and despair over her first weeks at school because she always did over any kind of novelty or change.
12
“SHE LIKES YOUR voice,” said Emilio to Fabrio, with his face alight with mockery, as the lorry carried them to work the next morning. It was eight o’clock and the sun had not yet risen, but brightness was mounting steadily into the sky over the flooded eastern meadows; black grass blades shivered in the wind across sheets of radiant water, and billows of yellow cloud were dissolving before the sun’s approach. Fabrio sat among his brown-clad companions with his face turned towards the light, singing as loudly as the rest a chorus from a popular Italian operetta, and the driver, an English soldier with a resigned expression, bumped them along over the rutted roads.
Emilio felt refreshed and lively in the morning light and ready to tease, but Fabrio did not want to talk about that girl with a monkey’s mug and shameless clothes; better not to remember her eyes wide with admiration of his singing; she made him angry; she was not like a girl at all; she was like a tall boy with a loud voice; a boy who was a little, a very little, taller than he was. So in reply to Emilio, he only nodded.
“I know something better, yes, much better, than tha-at!” he sang gaily in a moment, to the air from the operetta. “I have had a letter, yes, a letter, from who? from who do you think?”
He slipped his hand into the breast of his overcoat and brought out one of the regulation envelopes sent to Italian prisoners of war, addressed in a neat pointed hand feminine as a silk stocking.
“A girl! Does it smell sweet?” and Emilio snatched at it but Fabrio held it just out of reach, smiling at his friend, while his face caught the golden advance from the rising sun.
“From a girl, yes! a girl. Twenty years old, with beautiful—” Fabrio made an immemorial admiring gesture, “and her name is Maria.”
“Well! and now I suppose you’re happy?” said Emilio sarcastically. Emilio himself received copious letters from his wife every two or three days mostly concerned with such matters as boots, macaroni, the rent, and the misdoings and progress of the bambini, but Fabr
io had no regular correspondents, and this made him exceptional among the prisoners: the Italian soldier is the most written-to combatant in the world, judging by the letters scattered over any battlefield on which he has fought, and fallen. Very occasionally did Fabrio receive a letter, and they were always short and laboriously written in a hand so clumsy as to be almost unreadable, and Fabrio, without encouraging comment, let it be known that the writer was his elder brother Giuseppe. Emilio, who had been born in the slums of Genoa and been forced to school by the Fascisti, had used his quick wits to master reading and writing thoroughly, and those same wits had long ago told him the secret that Fabrio was so haughtily trying to conceal. But he kept it a secret, and he, who loved to jeer at all the world, did not tease Fabrio.
His enormous, quarrelsome, dirty family at home in the Port had once, for a few days, housed a dog: a pedigree red setter belonging to a wealthy old Englishman living in the fashionable quarter, which a member of the Rossi tribe had stolen in hope of obtaining a reward. The dog had fascinated the young Emilio; it was the first creature with fine blood in its veins that he had seen, and in studying its behaviour and habits he had found endless occupation and surprise. He called it Il Signor (The Gentleman) and when it had been taken off to be restored to its owner, Emilio, alone of all the family, had seen it go with passionate regret.
Fabrio reminded him of Il Signor. He had the same reserve, and the pride softened by gentleness, the same flashes of gaiety and affection, even the same shining chestnut hair. Emilio thought that in many ways both Fabrio and Il Signor, were fools; slow-witted, half-asleep; and he, the sharp one, the one who was never taken in, despised them both, but had Fabrio confided in him that he was descended from that beautiful principessa of the old days, Emilio would not have been in the least surprised, for Il Signor, the gentleman-dog (born, as his stealer swore, of a line of dog-princes) and Fabrio Caetano had the same air.
“She lives over the other side of the hills from our place,” Fabrio went on, while the chorus of another popular song soared tunefully all about him, “but she has been away working in a shop in Santa Margherita,” (here he resumed a conversational tone) “she is a friend of my sisters.”
“And of yours, no doubt, poor girl!”
“A little,” said Fabrio, and smiled.
But the smile quickly faded, as he remembered that last night before Maria had left her home to go to Santa Margherita. It had been during the grape harvest, and he and some of his brothers and sisters had walked over the hills to Maria’s village, some eight miles away, to strip the blue grapes from their nestling places amidst the green-blue leaves, and pile them, snapped vines and foliage and clusters that were transparent gold where the bloom had been brushed away, into the deep baskets. It was a little harvest but merry, as such festivals always were; they had sung until midnight and laughed much and danced to the music from the wireless that was old Amato’s pride, and then, with aching arms and hands still sticky with bloom and sap, the young ones had set out to walk home, still singing as they went, by the path that ran in and out of olive groves a hundred feet above the sea. In the warm moonlight they followed the narrow white path as it climbed or descended among the groves; the cicada hidden in the grass shrilled swiftly, and far below, between falling terraces of unstirring white leaves, moved and murmured the sea, dark between those leaves, but silver where it touched the cliffs. Now and again Fabrio’s wet shirt lifted coolly against his breast as a faint gust of wind stirred the groves and died away; his arm was about Maria’s waist and he looked down on her black head and felt her soft side warm against his own.
The lorry stopped with a jolt that flung the men forward in confusion. How wet and cold everything is! thought Fabrio, jumping down into the muddy road; even the sun feels cold in this horrible country, and in a minute I shall see her—she who has no proper feelings and does not appreciate me.
“And is little Maria going to write to you regularly?” asked Emilio as they tramped along the causeway through the marshy meadows.
“I am not quite sure what she says.” Fabrio felt in his pocket again and brought out the letter. He held it out, saying simply:
“Read it to me, my Emilio.”
Thereupon the sharp one, the one who was never taken in, Nature’s nose-tapper, read rapidly and faithfully aloud:
“Dear Fabrio,
“How surprised you will be to see the name at the end of this letter—Maria Amato! For two years I did not know where you were and your sisters did not answer my letters, and I did not go home because of my stepfather. Now he is dead, and I am at home again to look after my mother, who is ill. I walked over to San Angelo and saw your sister Gioja and she told me where you were. Now I will tell you all the news. Your father walks with a stick now. They got three barrels of wine from your harvest last year. Your nephew Antonio is very strong and fat and last week your sister Elena had a girl, a niece for you. Her name is Giulia. I will write to you every week if you would like me to. I hope you are well. Our Lady bless and keep you.
“Your friend,
“Maria Amato.”
“Thank you,” said Fabrio, who had listened with bent head to every word, when Emilio had finished. “I knew about the wine, Giuseppe told me. So I have a nephew! And Elena is married! And who to, I wonder? They never told me. And a niece, too!”
“That is nothing surprising. It is only surprising that there are not more. When once they start coming—” and Emilio spread his hands helplessly abroad. “She’s beautiful, you say, this Maria?” he went on.
“Yes. On Sundays she has a black silk dress with white lace round the neck and black silk stockings.”
“Is she little or big, eh?”
“Little; little and round.”
“Is she a blonde?” demanded Emilio; he knew that the girls in the northern mountainous regions, where Fabrio came from, often had fair hair. It is an inheritance, perhaps, from some Gothic ancestress who crossed the mountain passes with the barbarian hordes in the sixth century.
But Fabrio answered blithely:
“Yes, she is a blonde.”
“Ah, you lucky dog!” cried Emilio, looking at him with a new respect. “And a fair complexion, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Ah-ha, I can just see her! And how do you feel about her?”
Fabrio smiled but did not answer. He never spoke of his thoughts: “What an Italian thinks remains his own treasure hidden away in a safe, to the unlocking of which he alone guards the elaborate secret,”1 and to the natural secrecy of his subtle race he added the inarticulacy of a peasant.
“You’ll have to write to her, you know,” said Emilio not without malice: friendship was all very well, but now that Fabrio had a correspondent at home, and a blonde one at that, one could no longer pity him quite so much: one felt a little envy and one’s feelings would have vent. “You’d better let me do it for you.”
Fabrio shook his head.
“You’re my friend,” he said, dropping his arm for an instant round Emilio’s shoulders. “But I will ask Father Francesco to help me.”
Father Francis was incumbent of the little Roman Catholic church at Sillingham. He heard the confessions of such of the Italian prisoners as attended the services there and administered the Sacraments to them.
“You’d better stick to me,” muttered Emilio, who was not devout, and they shouldered mattocks and spades in readiness for the day’s work.
Sylvia had now determined to be friendly towards Fabrio, for her policy of international co-operation, her natural sociability, and an unconscious desire to break down his reserve all suggested the same line of behaviour. But she did not get much opportunity, because he avoided her. She would have approached him with comments on the weather and the work a dozen times a day, but he simply hid.
At first Mrs. Hoadley had kept a sharp eye on the three of them. Her own chilly nature would not have suspected Goings On had not the frequency, indeed, the inevitability, of Goings On betwee
n men and women, of all kinds, and almost all ages, been so often thrust under her fastidious nose. But within limits she was a shrewd judge of character and she quickly discovered that Sylvia was innocent in mind and body. Her boldness was a child’s boldness, and any coarseness of speech or forwardness of behaviour sprang from inexperience. There’s no harm in her, the silly great lump, decided Mrs. Hoadley.
And in Fabrio she detected sensitiveness. He was lazy, deceitful, insolent at times, but he was not gross, and she thought that he avoided Sylvia because she was “loud.”
“She gets on his nerves,” said Mrs. Hoadley to Mr. Hoadley. “Nerves!” was all Mr. Hoadley said, and moved his big boot as though the toes itched.
Emilio was quite another matter; Emilio would be up to goodness-knew-what if he got the chance, but Sylvia did not give him the chance. Had not Mrs. Hoadley herself, from an upper window, seen Sylvia give Emilio a push that sent him sprawling? That told you all you wanted to know. Quite right too; there were enough things a girl had to put up with anyway, later on, without horrible suggestions from low foreigners.
So they were lucky, she told Mr. Hoadley, to employ a straight girl like Sylvia and an Italian like Fabrio, “who didn’t care about that sort of thing and had some self-respect”; between them, Emilio’s low habits had no chance. Mr. Hoadley, who was not such a shrewd judge of character, expressed agreement and, feeling that sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof, kept his intuitions to himself.
“Dear Mr. Waite,” began a note which Mr. Waite discovered in his letter-box on returning from Horsham some days later,
I have now read all the books you kindly lent me and would like to return them to you. It would be so nice if you could come to tea on Wednesday afternoon about four o’clock. I hope that this is not an inconvenient time for you.