“I beg-a your pardon, Sylvia, you can no come in a pub. It is not nice. And——” but he checked the confession that now he had not enough money for cigarettes.
“Well, I don’t like them, as a matter of fact,” she confessed, “but I could wait for you outside.”
He shook his head. “No, no.”
“Never mind. Old Mr. Hoadley’s sure to have some, he smokes like a volcano.”
“Ah-ha! Napoli!” exclaimed Fabrio, delightedly recognising a word, and seized her arm and broke into gay lilting song, lifting his face to the sunlight that suddenly, majestically poured down through a cleft in the clouds.
“Oo—lovely and warm!” she cried, also looking upwards. “Do let’s sing—never mind all those old sourpusses!” and she glanced at the homeward-bound churchgoers. Their faces were completely wooden; nevertheless, in a moment she gently withdrew her arm from Fabrio’s, and when the Sunday hush and the dreamy peace caused his song to falter and die away she made no attempt to revive it. She felt that singing arm-in-arm with a foreigner did not suit a young lady on her way to visit a poor old couple.
At Fabrio’s request they went into the churchyard and wandered through its long grasses until they came to the walls of the castle towering above it at the end farthest from the village, but he abruptly rebuffed her suggestion that they should go into the church in case there was anything historical to be seen there.
“Why not? There’s nobody in there now; they’ve all gone home.”
“Protestante” said Fabrio, casting down his eyes.
“So what?”
They had paused beneath that part of the castle where a closed door is set in the massive wall; above their heads little green plants that had lodged themselves in the crevices waved in the light wind and now a looming cloud-shadow passed coldly over the vast worn fabric of stone and then a burst of sunlight warmed it; all about them were tombstones tilted sideways in the long deep grass.
“What!” she cried, suddenly comprehending, “you mean to say you mustn’t go in there because you’re a Roman Catholic?”
He nodded, but absently; he seemed to have lost interest, and was straying onwards.
“I never heard of such—” she was beginning violently, when the sight of her own gloved hands, flung out in protest, checked her. Their pretty neatness did not harmonise with the strong words which had been about to pour from her lips; while the clear, still air, the sombre beauty of castle and church towering above her, and the green gravestones at her feet, also hushed her vehemence. But she gave a loud, impatient sigh and tossed her head.
“Will we go in the castello?’ said Fabrio, who had turned again to gaze up at the walls. “There is the door,” and he pointed.
“We can’t. The owner won’t let us.”
“Who say so? Why not?”
“The Duke of Norfolk,1 I expect; he owns most of the land round here.”
Fabrio nodded, satisfied: of course Dukes owned land and of course they kept you out of their castellos.
“He live in there?” jerking his head at the castle.
“No; trust him, he’s got a castle in Arundel as big as half Sussex.”
“Another castello?”
“Yes, a huge one. Come along, Fabrio, it’s getting on for one o’clock and I expect the old lady will have lunch all ready, we don’t want to keep them waiting. It’s a pretty old place, we’ll have another look at it on the way home if you like.”
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled with eyes half-closed against another burst of glory from the sun.
“Now I have seen old castello I don’t want to see it again, Sylvia. I like better to look at you,” he ended in a murmur, but she had walked round that part of the churchyard wall which overlooks the village road, and did not hear.
“Quite a nasty drop,” she exclaimed, peering down. “We can’t jump it, we’ll have to go round by the gate.”
Then, as one o’clock struck from a clock in a nearby house, “We shan’t half be late!” she cried, and they hurried on.
They went down a hill enclosed by ancient cottages, and then, with the wall of the castle looming immediately above them and a row of budding willows immediately in front, she paused at a gate and pointed.
“There’s the Wild Brooks,” she said.
He saw meadows overgrown with dark coarse reeds amidst gleams of water; large ancient willows overhung the open pools, with weeping foliage now covered in light green buds, and along the far end of this expanse, which bore a trace of fainting-sweet marsh odour among its fresh scents, ran a thick barrier of willows and hazels, agitated as the fitful wind streamed along their length and looking like emanations from the silver water and green grass.
Fabrio did not like the look of this at all. Where was the comfortable little farm, the orchard of the apples or the pears, which he had expected? and the porcelli, those interesting and valuable animals about which Sylvia had laughed so much in the railway train? He had greatly looked forward to seeing the porcelli, for he had gathered from remarks made by the Hoadleys that they were animals of which every part could be eaten or sold; and this recommended any animal to Fabrio’s respectful interest. But there was no sign of a house; nothing but grass and water and that little forest of waving trees. What, then! did the rich old grandmother with the gold earrings live in a swamp?
“Where is the house?” he demanded disapprovingly.
“Over there,” pointing to that very barrier of unpromising green. “Come on, let’s get cracking, we’re late now.”
But it was not so disagreeable as he had expected, for there were continuous winding tracts of solid land over which they could make their way and Sylvia shrieked as she balanced herself between the expanses of mud trodden out by cattle and more than once he had to grasp her hand and pull her—how easily!—to safety. No, it was not so bad.
“What is this?” he asked curiously, when they came to the first of many dykes intersecting the fields, and he peered down into the brown gliding water.
“It’s something to do with draining the river off when it floods—I don’t know,” carelessly. “Do come on, I’m starving, aren’t you?”
He would have liked to linger by the dyke, puzzling out why and how it had been made, but she hurried him on; through mud, past pools fringed with the dark green marestail, by shining scatters of celandine and buttercups and yellow iris with roots in the water, until they stood below the willow forest.
“Ah-ha! Treno!” exclaimed Fabrio, startled by the surprising sight of a train leisurely making its way across this marshy wilderness.
“Yes, the railway runs right through here. Here’s the bridge—come on,” and she ran out on to a perilous projection of planks and old tree trunks which spanned the dyke.
They entered the wood of hazels and willows and made their way along a well-defined path into its heart; the ground here was higher and covered by thin bright grass and primroses and white and purple windflowers and Fabrio was reassured to see some low buildings between the trunks of the trees, with smoke issuing from a rickety tin chimney. It is like a beggar’s house, he thought, staring with all his eyes at the open glade which they now entered, where the grass and flowers were trampled down, and old rags and stained newspapers lay scattered about. The house consisted of three or four ancient huts, huddled together and joined by clumsy passages made from old doors and sheets of tin and deal planks. Some of the windows had curtains and others were stuffed with rags and one of the sheds had a porch of rotten wood before its closed door, and towards this Sylvia went. She too looked slightly dismayed, for although Mrs. Hoadley more than once had resignedly warned her that “the old people live very rough,” she had not expected anything so rough as this.
She smiled at Fabrio and lifted her eyebrows with a grimace as they stood side by side in the little porch. The noon air was silent except for the distant chattering, scattered all over the landscape like the light, of the nesting birds. Suddenly a thick contented grunting b
roke out near at hand. Fabrio’s eyes opened wider and he smiled.
“The pigg-as!” he said. Sylvia wrinkled her nose.
“I can smell them, too,” she said in the softest possible whisper. “Don’t think much of this, do you? I hope there’s some lunch,” and she raised the knocker of thick worm-eaten wood which was nailed crookedly upon the door, and knocked. There followed a silence. They gazed about them and waited.
1 Sylvia was mistaken; the owner was an elderly lady.
19
THEY WAITED A very long time, it seemed to the hungry Sylvia. The birds chirruped, the hidden pigs grunted as if they, at least, were eating their Sunday lunch, and Fabrio gazed intently through a gap in the nearest window curtain; he had caught a glint of gold in the darkness of the room. What could it be? Sylvia frowned down at some large sky-blue polyanthus and yellow wallflowers rising serenely out of a wilderness of weeds. The fineness of the flowers surprised her; she glanced round for further evidence of Mrs. Hoadley’s remark that “the old lady has got green fingers, anything will grow for her,” and saw a peony in luxuriant bud and a distant sheet of yellow flowers which she took to be wild daffodils, but there was no recognisable attempt at a garden.
They had been waiting perhaps ten minutes when a small figure in a long skirt, black jacket and flat chip hat came briskly round the corner of one of the huts, carrying a pail. It caught sight of them, and paused.
“What do ye want?” called old Mrs. Hoadley in a small voice soft with age, shading her eyes to look at them. “What are you up to?” The words “Girls and soldiers—no good, I’m sure,” followed, in a sufficiently loud, if absent, mutter, to cause Sylvia an angry blush.
“It’s me—Sylvia, Mrs. Hoadley,” she said, going forward, “and here’s Fabrio—from the farm, you know. You remember—you asked us over for the day.”
“Never did anything of de sort,” retorted Mrs. Hoadley, stooping her doll-like body to scrape the mud from her boots with a twig. “I like my Sundayses to myself, same as I do my weekdayses.”
“You did, Mrs. Hoadley,” protestingly, glancing at Fabrio, who was politely standing at attention. “We’ve got a chicken for you,” and she indicated the basket he held.
“I’m middlin’ sure I never did, but now you’re here you may as well come in. Dere’s no dinner but some cold pork, but you,” pointing a tiny brown finger with a hooked purple nail at Fabrio, “can go and pick us some wet-de-beds, and I’ve got potatoses, yes, we’ll manage. Here,” she held out her little arms in their rusty black sleeves for the chicken, which he, after a glance at Sylvia, handed to her. “Mr. Hoadley and me’ll enjoy dat for our supper.” Then she kicked against the door with her boot.
“Mr. Hoadley’s still abed with de papers, I expect,” she said, after a lengthy pause. “We’ll go round de back.”
The back proved to be hardly distinguishable from the front in its litter of yellow newspapers, shreds of rag, rusty tins, and shards of white or blue china in the young grass. The door of one shed stood open.
“Joseph, Joseph,” called Mrs. Hoadley briskly, stepping over the bricks which formed the rough threshold into a little room beyond, but to her soft ancient voice (its sound also muffled by the rags and newspapers bursting out of an old green dresser, and the trays of seeds, and pots of mouldering beans half embalmed in salt which stood about on tables and chairs and floor) there came no reply.
“Still abed. He’s just-about lazy,” she said, and set down the bucket, upon which Sylvia’s horrified gaze now became fixed—as anybody’s would be, if they saw a pig-bucket which had not been scraped out for some eighteen months. Mrs. Hoadley’s own eyes, filmed with blue over their former velvet black, followed her gaze.
“Don’t you mind dem, dey won’t hurt you,” she said soothingly, but with a mischievous cackle. “Girls are always worrying about something,” she added to Fabrio, who was staring about the room with the deepest interest. “De fresh scraps go on top of them every day and de pigs don’t never get a taste of them. It’s high time Joe cleaned it out but he’s bone lazy. Now you go out and pick me some dangylions,” to Fabrio, “and we’ll get a page of de paper off Joe and us’ll have our dinner.”
“Dang—?” he repeated inquiringly, turning to Sylvia.
“Dandelions, she means, don’t you, Mrs. Hoadley?” but Mrs. Hoadley had gone through into a smaller room, whence came a stuffy odour as if a kettle had boiled over on old rags, and was raking out the range.
“Here, I’ll come and show you, there’s some yellow flowers over by the wood, they may be dandelions,” said Sylvia, glad to get into the open air again, but Fabrio was enjoying the warmth from the oil-stove and reluctant to leave these interesting rooms.
However, the flowers were not dandelions or wild daffodils and Sylvia had never seen others like them.
“It’s an unpretentious little flower, isn’t it, but quite pretty,” she said, holding the deep yellow blossom, whose lower lip was spotted with scarlet, elegantly between her gloved fingers and twisting it about. “Look, there’s some dandelions, over there; you just pick the green leaves, not the flowers. The old girl wants them for a salad, I saw about it in one of those Ministry of Food recipes.”
He smiled in recognition when he saw the dandelions and she left him plucking the young leaves with a peasant’s ruthless closeness of touch: indeed, they were as familiar a food to him as bacon and eggs used to be to an Englishman, and many a salad of them had the Caetani enjoyed in the bright evenings of the Italian spring.
“You can do the potatoses,” announced Mrs. Hoadley as Sylvia entered the tiny kitchen, which was dark, despite the brilliant light outside, because of the rags stuffed in the windows. “Dere’s de bowl, dere’s de water, dere’s a knife, dere’s de saucepan. Dey won’t take more’n an hour. Now you get on. I’m going away.”
She nodded up at Sylvia, like a female gnome standing before some tall goose-girl whom she had enslaved but of whose docility she was not quite assured. Her mouth was firm but her eye had a gleam of doubt.
Sylvia was annoyed; she had not put on her good dress and painted her fingernails in order to peel potatoes. However, such a service was in keeping with her temporary assumption of gentleness, and as she was also as good-natured as a young carthorse, she set to work with no outward grumbles, and Mrs. Hoadley did go away. She disappeared completely into the low rooms of the tiny ruinous cottage to which the old husband had added shacks and outhouses until there was ample room for the junk which they collected and hoarded like two old magpies, and Sylvia peeled potatoes in silence unbroken even by the ticking of a clock. It must be after two, she thought despairingly, and am I hungry!
However, the kitchen was warm and peaceful, and beautified by the red and gold china of which Fabrio had caught a gleam between the curtains. There were at least forty pieces of a dinner service, arranged upon the green dresser: red grapes and golden birds twined and flew all over the generous surfaces. It must be Oriental, I bet that’s worth something, Sylvia thought, and in spite of her hunger and her unsuitable employment, she felt cheered, and decided that the old Hoadleys could not be as poor as their hovel implied. She enjoyed the thought: and a conviction that The State ought to look after all old people and that No One Ought to Have Savings and Property existed comfortably side by side with it in her half-baked little brain.
The knife which she was using was worn down to a stub and as sharp as a razor, and while she was gazing at the china, it slipped and cut her finger. She stanched the brilliant blood as best she could with the sacking apron which she had put on to protect her dress, and managed to get the potatoes on to boil without much of it dropping into the water. She was looking about for a rag to bind the cut when Fabrio came in.
“You’ve brought half the garden!” she exclaimed, surveying his fistfuls of sappy leaves. “Here, find me something to bind this up, I can’t do a thing,” and she held up her finger.
He was inclined to tease her gently rather than to show co
ncern, and they soon found a piece of comparatively clean cotton in a cupboard below the dresser, but the water had been heating on the little range while she peeled the potatoes, and they were now boiling much too fast.
“They’ll be a mash,” she said, peering at them. “Oh, give me modern amenities every time! There’s no way of slowing them down, that I can see.” Then a hand gently clasped her wrist—surprisingly gently, for it was an unusually large hand—and she turned quickly. But it was plain that he was thinking of nothing but binding up the cut; he looked compassionate and was frowning slightly as if considering the best way to begin. She stood quietly, studying the thin young face close to her. He’s got a nice face, she thought, though he isn’t exactly good-looking. Her heart did not beat faster; she felt no embarrassment. She felt towards him as she did towards her own brothers or the young animals at the farm.
Suddenly there sounded a soft cackle; the old woman had come in noiselessly behind them and now stood surveying them with her brown face screwed up in sly laughter. Sylvia quickly pulled her hand away and took the rag from him.
“Here, I’ll do it,” she said sharply, furious to feel a blush coming up into her face, and she began to wind the bandage clumsily round her finger. Fabrio looked delighted, which increased her annoyance.
“The potatoses’ll be just-about boiled to mash, tearin’ away like dat,” said Mrs. Hoadley. “Can’t you move ’em on to the cool?” and she pulled the saucepan sideways.
“Sorry. I’m not used to cooking with these old—with a coal range, Mrs. Hoadley.”
“Dey do middlin’ well; and better dan a ’lectric one when it goes on strike, and we’ve all got to learn,” darting a mischievous glance from one youthful face to the other.
Sylvia tried to look haughty but her anger vanished. The old girl was quite a character in her way. She glanced at Fabrio’s face and burst into a giggle in which he joined.
Then the old woman attended to the finger, making no comment upon it, but dragging a chair across the room and standing on it in order to reach the tall mantelshelf, where a silent clock stood among other dusty objects. She fumbled in the space behind it, and at last brought out a round thing resembling a bun. Sylvia exclaimed; it was covered in mould.