In the bustle of alighting at Martlefield and keeping her charges close to her side, she received only a vague impression that the station was very small, with one or two shabby buildings of creamy weather-boarding and some others painted a faded brown; that white and red hollyhocks were growing outside the stationmaster’s cottage at the far end of the platform, and that all was bathed in the radiant light of a cloudless summer evening, while beyond the station she caught glimpses of flat fields covered in the brilliant green of young wheat, with here and there a group of large elms. The air was full of sweet smells from warm grass and wild flowers, and as they came out of the tiny waiting-room on to the road, having exchanged greetings with the sturdy young woman who took their tickets, the first sight she saw was a field immediately opposite the station so thickly covered with buttercups that it really did look like a shining golden carpet. A placid white road wound away between the low hedges on either side of the station, and the only buildings in sight were a group of cottages at some distance along it. An aeroplane, alas, was passing overhead, but otherwise the scene was one of perfect tranquillity and she almost forgot her irritation in looking at it, while Seraphina exclaimed, ‘How heavenly!’ and Hebe silently removed her hat to let the faint breeze blow on her forehead.
They were the only passengers to alight here (indeed, the train had been getting steadily emptier for the last half-hour and had now gone ambling off into the flat green fields of Bedfordshire with apparently only the engine-driver and the guard and one or two children and old ladies aboard) and there had been no one to meet them on the platform, but now a voice exclaimed, ‘’Ullo! Evenin’, Mrs Challis,’ and they all turned to look at a smart governess-cart, drawn by a cob and driven by a large smiling boy with red hair, which was drawn up in the scanty shade afforded by the station buildings.
‘Good evening, Bertie,’ said Mrs Challis, going towards it. ‘Have you come to meet us? How nice of you. In you get, children. How is Lady Challis?’ she went on, handing up Barnabas and Emma into the trap, while Hebe took Jeremy from Margaret. ‘Quite well? That’s good. Oh – my dear,’ she added winningly, turning to Margaret and putting her hand on her arm, ‘it’s too shattering for you but I know you’ll be an angel and won’t mind waiting until the governess-cart comes back to fetch my husband, will you? You see, there isn’t room for everybody in this minute contraption. It’s about three miles to the house from here so you can’t possibly walk in this heat, but his train should be in in an hour or just over, and the trap will come back to meet it and take you along too. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Not at all – I shall rather like it,’ stammered Margaret, relieved at the prospect of some solitude and so thrilled at the prospect of a drive with Gerard Challis that she forgot that her answer might seem odd. But Mrs Challis only laughed sympathetically and, murmuring, ‘I should think so, you poor lamb,’ climbed gracefully into the now overladen vehicle, and took the wilting Emma upon her knee.
‘Aren’t you lucky!’ said Hebe, making a face at Margaret, as the boy touched the pony with the whip and they drove off.
‘I should sit on that bank if I were you – heavenly –’ called Seraphina, turning her head above Emma’s white sun-bonnet to smile at Margaret and pointing; and soon the governess-cart was getting steadily smaller and smaller, as it proceeded at a leisurely trot down the road between the bright green hedges under the blue evening sky, and presently it turned a gentle curve in the road and was lost to sight. The sturdy female ticket-collector had retired into her little office and Margaret was alone.
She crossed the road and sat down on the heavenly bank, where there were moon-daisies and buttercups growing in the long grass and a mosaic of yet flowerless green plants, ivy and ragged robin and goose-grass and many others, growing in the hedge; the main body of it appeared to be hawthorn, for there was white may-blossom showing among the rest and that faint scent, too fairylike to be completely pleasant, mingled with the scents breathed out by the other flowers and plants and just traced upon the warm air. She clasped her hands round her knees and sat in idle silence, rejoicing in the scene and the solitude, and wondering if it were possible ever to be so unhappy that such loveliness could fail to give delight. The hour passed like ten minutes, and she was almost sorry when the distant sound of a signal coming to attention, and the reappearance of the sturdy one carrying her clippers, and the arrival of an old man who was apparently going to travel by it, announced that the next train was due.
She thought it best to sit on the bank and await Gerard Challis’s arrival, so she did not move when the train came leisurely into the station, although her heart beat faster and her calm delight in the beauty all about her had quite vanished. The train began to move slowly off, and the passengers came out of the little waiting-room and gave up their tickets; and there, a striking figure in thin grey summer clothes among the squat and undistinguished forms of the other passengers and looking indeed rather like Curdie among the Goblins, was he.
He removed his hat and stood glancing discontentedly about him; taking in the flat, uninteresting landscape, the shabby little station, the large form of the ticket-collector in her unfortunate trousers, and the plain, nervous young woman sitting (absurdly, he thought) among those dusty weeds on the other side of the road. In the distance the governess-cart was making its leisurely way towards them.
‘Typical Home Counties scenery, isn’t it?’ he said abruptly, crossing the road to where Margaret sat. ‘Is this your first visit here (but of course it is, how stupid of me), and why have you been abandoned by the rest of the party?’ He stood looking down at her with a faint sarcastic smile, his long fingers gently swinging his hat and a black brief-case.
‘There wasn’t room in the governess-cart, so Mrs Challis said I had better – asked me if I would mind waiting until it came back for you,’ answered Margaret, thinking how handsome he looked, as he stood there against the deep-blue sky, and colouring as she spoke.
‘Do you mean to say that it isn’t here?’ he exclaimed. ‘Surely we aren’t expected to walk?’
‘It’s just coming, I think,’ she said, and was preparing to struggle to her feet (this is never a graceful action and she was doubly handicapped by being very nervous) when she was surprised to see a fine white hand extended, which she accepted before she realized what was happening, and with unexpected strength he pulled her upright.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Your dress will be dusty,’ he said gravely, and took out his handkerchief and held it out to her.
‘It’s all right – really – thank you,’ she stammered, crimsoning, but accepted it and lightly dusted herself and gave him back the snowy object.
‘It’s a pity to spoil such a pretty dress,’ said Mr Challis, who certainly would have won an All-Europe Championship for Philandering had such a contest existed, but this time he went too far; her dress was not pretty and she knew it, and she resented his sarcastic look, his grave tone, because she had been sitting on the grass by the roadside; she also felt a vague resentment at his obvious contempt for the landscape. You couldn’t have anything lovelier than that field of buttercups, she thought rebelliously; what does he want?
What, indeed. Hilda and Kew, but both seemed very far from him at this moment, as he stood in Martlefield with Margaret, and, as he was like a spoilt child in the strength of his whims and his resentment when he could not gratify them, he felt really despairing at the prospect of the long, noisy, dull week-end stretching before him, and said no more, but waited in sulky silence until the governess-cart unhurriedly came to a standstill before them.
‘’Ullo. Good evenin’, Mr Challis,’ smiled the red-haired boy.
‘Good evening, Bertie,’ replied Mr Challis. (‘Get in, will you,’ to Margaret, again giving her his hand.) ‘How is Lady Challis?’
Bertie, who seemed to have entered already into the Promised Land of the classless society, replied that she had seemed all right when he left and they had
n’t waited supper, and then Mr Challis got into the governess-cart and off they went.
For some time there was silence. Margaret gazed nervously at the green hedges going slowly past and noticed how flat the country was, and wondered why Mr Challis seemed so unhappy (she was too loyal to use another word) and the boy Bertie whistled and occasionally flicked the whip at the flies hovering round the cob’s neck, and Mr Challis sat with folded arms and brooded.
‘A landscape without hills,’ he suddenly pronounced, ‘is like a woman without mystery.’
There simply was not any answer to this, especially as his unhappy audience realized that whatever she said would be wrong, so she replied feebly:
‘Oh – do you think so?’
‘The monotony of an endless plain,’ continued Mr Challis, disparagingly surveying the mild meadows on every side, ‘drives men mad. It produces –’
‘Isn’t Russia flat?’ suddenly interrupted Bertie, to Margaret’s amazement and horror.
After an affronted pause, intended to give Bertie the opportunity of realizing that he had offended, Mr Challis coldly replied that the greater part of Russia was, certainly, flat.
‘Well, they’re all right, any’ow,’ said Bertie in a tone of satisfaction. ‘They know their onions. It hasn’t driven them mad, living on a plain,’ and he flicked the whip once more and whistled ‘Mairzy Doats.’
Mr Challis did not propose to tell Bertie that he had had in mind the spiritual madness of confusion which tormented Dostoievsky, so he made no answer, and Margaret wondered what on earth she should say next, and suddenly decided (being slightly light-headed with the proximity of her hero and the beauty of the evening) that she must stand up a little for the Home Counties, though Bedfordshire could not strictly be called one of them.
‘I – I rather like this country,’ she said, turning her pleading brown eyes on Mr Challis. ‘It’s so peaceful.’
‘Dull,’ he corrected her gently, with his favourite smile.
‘No,’ she persisted daringly, ‘I like all these little hedges, and the elms every now and then, and that little river over there –’
‘The Martlet,’ put in Bertie, flicking and whistling.
‘And those willow trees growing all along it.’
‘You may like it, but that does not make it less dull to people who have seen other landscapes, that ring and flash with beauty.’
‘You mean my taste is dull,’ she said, going crimson.
‘I am sure that all your taste is not dull,’ he said more kindly. ‘No one whose taste was dull could care for the music of Beethoven.’
Bertie here whistled the first four notes of the Fifth Symphony, thus proving that culture was at last reaching the masses – and observed to himself, ‘V for Victory.’
‘Everybody can’t see those landscapes,’ Margaret blundered on, feeling so foolishly, hopelessly sorry for the fields and flowers that were being dismissed by Gerard Challis, ‘and so they have to make the best of what they can see –’
‘No one should accept a second-best in beauty.’
‘But some people have to, Mr Challis!’
He only shook his head, studying her flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes. ‘Never, my child.’
‘Then if one cannot have the very best, shouldn’t one have anything at all?’ she asked, in a tone so despairing that it amused him and he gave a quite good-natured laugh, but all the same he answered firmly:
‘No – nothing. In beauty, in art, in love, in spiritual integrity – the highest and best – or nothing!’
‘That makes it very hard for some people,’ she said at last in a low tone.
‘Life is hard,’ said Mr Challis, adjusting his tie. ‘Very hard; for most people it is either a long starvation or a long surfeit upon the wrong sort of food.’
‘Granted, but that’ll all be put to rights, Mr Challis,’ said Bertie tolerantly, turning the governess-cart down another mild little winding lane with fields of broad beans on either side which were already in the grip of blackfly. ‘Give Us time, y’know. Come up, Maggie,’ to the cob.
Mr Challis darted a glance of considerable irritation at Bertie and said deliberately to Margaret:
‘I hope you have seen Kattë,’ for he suddenly, wearily, longed for a great, satisfying chunk of warm-hearted, ungrudging praise, and he did not mind who handed it to him, and this girl’s opinion of his work had always been obvious. But even as the muscles of his face relaxed to smile under the first reviving shower of enthusiasm, he was surprised to see the young woman go pale and become solemn as if under some mental distress, and not a word did she utter until a faint, ‘Oh, yes, I was there on the first night,’ which sounded chilling and guarded, came from her lips.
‘Nearly there,’ put in Bertie. ‘Come up, Maggie,’ and the cob quickened her pace to a trot.
Mr Challis turned his head away. He did not want to hear what she had to say – if she was going to say anything at all – he wished heartily that he had never asked her, for it was as plain as her face that she had not liked Kattë; did not admire it; hadn’t been moved by it. But she might have had the feminine gracefulness to pretend that she had. How he detested candid women!
‘I thought –’ faltered the miserable Margaret (oh, why did he have to mention Kattë?) ‘it was very – parts of it were beautiful –’
His vanity compelled him to say something in response, or he would be branded as a fisher for compliments, a man avid for praise, and he murmured stiffly:
‘So kind of you … I’m delighted you liked it –’ hoping that she would at least have the tact to change the subject, but she, with a pale, set face, stumbled on:
‘– but as a matter of fact I didn’t like it as much as some of the earlier ones – it didn’t seem so – I hope you won’t mind my telling the truth about it because you did say that just now about never liking the second-rate’ – she paused, horrified, with a tiny gasp – what had she said? – then rushed on, not looking at him but keeping her eyes fixed steadily, unseeingly, upon the row of cottages standing back from the lane under flowering apple trees which the governess-cart was now approaching:
‘And I know you would rather I told the truth and I’ve always loved your work so much – I mean, I didn’t mean –’
Her voice died wretchedly away as the governess-cart came to a standstill before a gate set in the wall which enclosed the row of cottages, and a tall old woman in a print overall, carrying a basket-full of cherries, opened the gate and came out to meet them. Gerard Challis had not said a word or once looked at Margaret while she was speaking, and he now opened the door of the cart and said quickly, ‘Excuse me,’ and climbed down.
‘Hullo, Gerry, dear, how are you? How nice to see you,’ said the woman with the cherries, and they exchanged a kiss.
‘How are you, Mother?’ he said, then, keeping his hand upon her arm, he turned to Margaret and said pleasantly:
‘This is Margaret; I’m afraid I only know her as Margaret, but she is a friend of Zita’s and has nobly offered to help Hebe with the children this week-end. Margaret, this is my mother.’ The kind tone, and his use of her name (which she only now discovered that he even knew), coming immediately after what she had said, proved too much for Margaret’s overladen feelings; and to her unbearable shame, as she climbed out of the governess-cart murmuring, ‘How do you do, Lady Challis,’ her eyes were brimming with tears.
‘How do you do,’ replied Lady Challis. ‘Gerry, go in and wash if you want to wash, and I’ll look after Margaret. Then you go into supper; everybody’s there and I won’t be a minute. Bertie, turn Maggie into the paddock and then come in.’
Margaret, who was feeling for her handkerchief while Lady Challis turned away to give these instructions, did not see either Mr Challis or Bertie and Maggie go; and it was only while she was blowing her nose that she became aware how quiet everything had become all at once; with the pleasant sound of voices and laughter subdued by distance coming from the houses,
and the soft movement of the evening breeze in the apple trees making the stillness seem more still.
‘Would you like your supper upstairs in the attic? There’s a sofa and plenty of books. Do you like cold rabbit pie? Good,’ said Lady Challis, standing by her side and eating cherries.
Margaret answered in a muffled voice:
‘Oh, thank you very much, but I ought to be with the children; isn’t it time they were in bed?’
‘It isn’t seven yet, and the older ones always sit up to supper down here, so don’t worry about them. Do you like beer or cider?’
‘Cider, please,’ answered Margaret, who was now following her down a path of narrow red bricks whose crevices were filled with bright green moss.
They were approaching a front door which stood open, revealing a long, low room which apparently ran the length of the five cottages and was used as a combined living- and dining-room, for as they entered Margaret heard a burst of laughter, and Seraphina’s voice called, ‘There she is, poor sweet!’ Glancing confusedly towards the sound, she saw a large party (quite fifteen people, she thought) gathered about a supper-table at the far end of the hall. She could see Hebe seated between Emma and Jeremy, and then the sight of Gerard Challis’s profile, gravely intent above a spoonful of something he was just raising to his lips, caused her to turn her eyes hastily away again, but not before she had noticed that there seemed to be a great many children of all ages in the party and a number of pretty young women who presumably were their mothers.