After My Fashion (15 page)

Richard turned paler still. He found himself stammering some quite fantastic irrelevance, about its being a literary secret.

Nelly made a quick movement and snatched the letter from his pocket. ‘You make me curious,' she said. ‘I must have just a tiny little peep.' And she made as though she were about to open it.

When he recalled later every little detail of that scene it seemed to him as if a terrible eternity elapsed between that movement of hers and what he did next. During that eternity of seconds he seemed conscious of jet-black icebergs crashing together in a darkened sea.

Then, in a desperate inspiration, he acted.

He snatched the letter from her and tore it, unopened as it was, into four thick pieces. ‘There!' he said in a husky voice. ‘Come here, Nell!'

She glanced at her father and raised her eyebrows a little.

The old man made a gesture as much as to say, ‘Go in with him, my dear, but it's a bad job!' And then she followed him into the house. ‘Here, Nell!' he called and she followed him into the kitchen.

He lifted the round iron cover of the kitchen grate, with the implement appointed for that purpose, and thrust the four torn pieces into the fire. Then he replaced the iron lid.

Grace was quick to notice by both their faces that something was amiss. ‘Lord, Miss Nelly!' she cried. ‘What be up to then? Burnin' weddin' scrips and holy promises? Lord! Mr Richard, sir – look to her now! Goodness save us! what fine cantraps and unlawful doin's is this? Miss Nelly darlin', now don't ‘ee be takin' on like that! Don't 'ee, dearie!'

And she put her stalwart arms round her mistress who had suddenly turned a deadly white and was supporting herself against the table.

Grace almost lifted her on to a chair. ‘Don't stand starin' like as
you a' seed the Devil, Mr Richard. Get the dear darlin' a drop o' water!'

He put a glass hurriedly under the tap, obeying the wench ‘meek as any dazed sheep' as Grace commented afterwards. ‘Gi'e it to I!' she cried. ‘Bless the man! it's the hot water tap 'ee's a-turnin'. Here, gi'e it to I!'

But Nelly waved away the glass. ‘I'm all right now,' she said, ‘thanks all the same Gracie dear!'

And certainly her colour began coming rapidly back.

Richard stood anxiously and wretchedly before her, twisting his fingers backwards and forwards and slowly nodding his head, as was his habit when utterly nonplussed.

She raised her eyes to his face and smiled a bitter, cruel little smile. It gratified and pleased her to see him look so entirely foolish.

Then she sprang to her feet. ‘All right now Gracie!' she said. ‘It was the heat, I suppose.'

‘Hope 'tweren't no wills nor testaments nor birth certifications you've a-throwed away like that and burned to cinders? I keeps this ‘ere stove as hot as Pharaoh's Furnace, I do, else the darned thing don't cook nothin'; but I ain't a-heatin' kitchen fires for to burn weddin' dockiments and citations!'

‘That's all right, Gracie. It was nothing. It was just a letter from a friend. It was nothing important.'

‘Well, it be ashes now, sure enough, whatever it were!' Grace returned to her cooking with a philosophical wink.

The husband and wife went back to the front of the cottage. They found the old man anxiously awaiting them in the porch.

‘Nothing serious I hope,' said he. He looked at Richard gravely. ‘Never keep letters from them. And never explain anything to them. Obey your own conscience. Go your own way. And if they want you to change your mind, just you hold your tongue and go on as you are. They'll come round all right, sooner or later. But never argue with ‘em. Do what you have to do; never hide your letters, and never argue!'

‘There's a lot in what you say, sir,' said Richard very solemnly, propitiating the old man.

When the ex-priest had returned to his own room, the husband and wife moved by common consent into the garden. They both
seemed conscious of a craving for air and sun. But the magnetism of their quarrel held them together and drew them towards each other.

‘So you still keep up with at least one of them?' said Nelly, bending down, precisely as she had done half an hour ago, to smell the phloxes.

‘Yes, I keep up with one of them,' answered Richard. ‘If to “keep up with” means to burn letters unopened.'

She lifted up her head at that, and her eyes flashed from her flushed face like two steel-blue blades. ‘Don't lie, Richard! It's not worth it. You know you've never burnt
one
of that woman's letters before! And you wouldn't have burnt that one, if you hadn't been scared of my reading it. It's no use lying. We may just as well face it. If you
must
keep these things going on, you must, I suppose. If you're made like that, well! you are. But it's rather a shock to me, my dear – just at first – you know.'

Richard had never felt so miserable, so uncomfortable, or so much of a complete fool as he did at that moment.

He did not know whether to be angry or relieved when the figure of Canyot, carrying a basket, appeared outside the gate.

Nelly gave him one quick glance – and then she waved to him and shouted: ‘Wait, Robert! Please wait! I'm coming with you.'

He waited just where he was without making a sign. He began picking the long grasses out of the hedge and sucking the sweetness from their stalks. He whistled as he did this and flicked away the flies from his forehead. He took no more notice of Richard than if the man had been one of the posts of the gate.

‘We've thought better of it, you see,' said the writer, after a moment's pause in which he gathered all his wits together to carry the thing through somehow.

Oh how he hated these tense undignified scenes!
In France
, he thought, misquoting Laurence Sterne with a miserable inward laugh,
they do these things better
.

‘I'm sailing on Saturday,' was the only response he got from Canyot, who now began nibbling the little sticky leaves of a briar rose.

Richard turned and went into the house. He knocked at the door of the room he shared with Nelly.

‘I'm just coming,' the girl called out. ‘May I come in?' Richard
pleaded, turning the handle of the door. The door was locked from the inside – for the first time!

He walked back into the garden feeling thoroughly miserable. He had hoped for one swift all-obliterating all-forgiving embrace. She had deliberately forestalled this intention. She intended to go off for the whole day with Canyot, leaving the rift between them raw and unhealed.

There was his rival, stolid and impassive, an ugly one-armed sentinel at the gate of their lost paradise. He had the end of a dockleaf in his mouth now. Would he eat up the whole hedge?

Nelly came flying past him with tripping steps. She pretended that the haste of that moment was extreme so as to avoid having to give him a farewell kiss.

She was out of the gate before he could open it for her, and instead of pausing then she ran past the young painter and up the hill-path crying as she ran, ‘Come on, Robert, we shall never get there if you're so slow. Come on! I'll race you to the top!'

Canyot picked up the picnic basket provided for him by Mrs Winsome and strode after her. About ten yards away he stopped and looked back, waving his stick at Richard. ‘Sailing on Saturday!' he shouted and turned again to pursue the girl whose light mauve dress was still visible from the garden moving rapidly among the elder bushes and furze.

Richard waited till they were out of sight and then went straight into the kitchen. ‘Grace!' he shouted, but Grace was in the rooms above and did not hear him.
I can't stand a lunch alone with the old
man
, he thought and began mechanically putting together some bread and cheese. This he crammed into his pocket along with some small cakes. ‘Grace!' he shouted again. This time she heard him and came running down, her heavy West Country tread shaking the whole cottage. ‘You must look after Mr Moreton, today, Grace,' he said, in the most offhand, easy manner he could assume. ‘We shall all be out.'

‘Nothing wrong, Mr Richard, I hope, begging your pardon? Nothing to do with burnin' any certifications or such like? 'Tis a queer world and summat of the likes of they things do bring terrible trouble on folks' heads. I knew'd 'ee and Miss Nelly had had a bit of a ruption. And what's more I could have told 'ee 'twere comin', this very mornin', if 'ee'd a listened to I. 'Twas that girl hedge pig
the Master brought in the house. I never did hold wi ‘bringin' the like of them stinking pricklies into Christian families. I knew'd it 'ud mean trouble soon as I set eyes on 'un. Master ain't as careful as 'a should be over these 'ere pick-ups.' A kind o' forgets that 'tis you and Miss Nelly's kiss-luck time, when men and maidies be growin' into married folk like, and lovin' natural and unthinkin' by night and by day. ‘A shouldn't a' done it. 'Twere a temptin' them as is Above. A girt lousy prickleback, with a snout like Satan and little squimsy eyes. Do 'ee tell 'un of it, Mr Richard, do 'ee tell 'un of it. I can't abide them stinkin' things. Sparrerhawks and flitter-mice be all very well. They be honest fellow creatures, they be; but them hedge pigs,' tisn't behavin' right to the Dear Lord to go meddlin' wi' the likes o' they!'

‘I'll do what I can, Grace,' said Richard when the woman stopped for breath. ‘But you know what Mr Moreton is. Well! you'll be able to see for yourself that he only collects lucky things today. I may be back by tea time and I may not. Goodbye, Grace.'

‘Don't 'ee go bein' sour and angered agin' our young leddy,' whispered Grace. ‘Don't 'ee get argufying with 'un. The way to manage us womenfolk is to be one thing or ‘tother. Kiss us soft and sweet or let's have it hard so us knows what's what. None of this burnin' o' dockiments and bidin' the time. Out w'it, straight and forrard; that's what I do say to my Jim.'

‘You say very well, Grace,' responded the writer. ‘I'm sure I hope you'll always be with us to keep us in the right path.'

‘And don't 'ee let Miss Nelly go gadding off with young Mr Robert. There ain't no maid nor wife in God's kingdom what's perfect sure of ‘erself when't do come to them carryin's on. We be all meanin' for the best; but girls be girls and young fellers be young fellers and ‘tis hard to be stiff as a poker on haymaking days.'

Richard looked gravely into the young woman's face as if he were on the point of asking her what she really thought about his wife's attitude to Canyot. But he turned away with a smile. ‘Well! Grace,' he said, ‘you and I must make her so happy here, that she won't be in need of any friends but us. Goodbye Grace!' And he left the house and began walking gloomily and thoughtfully in the direction of the Happy Valley.

Old Mr Moreton was not altogether pleased when he found he was destined to spend a lonely Sunday. On weekdays he never expected much society. It seemed quite natural that they should all be occupied with their own affairs. But on Sundays it was rather different, because he felt a vague tradition in the air against going on just the same with his scientific work; and it was pleasant, as a change from that, to see something more of those he lived with.

He ate the admirable meal prepared by Grace in rather melancholy silence which was not made any more cheerful by the servant's comments on the events of the morning.

‘It ain't nice of Miss Nelly and Master Richard to leave 'ee lonesome and solemn-like of a fine Zunday. It don't seem kind o' natural; and I be lorn to see 'ee so. I just out and told ‘un straight how it do seem to I. There'll be sad goin's on, present, I sez to ‘un, when the Missus and that young man get too fond like. Kiss and be friends, I sez to ‘un, and don't fall into the sin o' pride.'

‘Your mistress is in a difficult position, Grace,' said the old man; ‘and I'd rather you didn't talk about it. Mr Canyot has always been very considerate and civil. It's a difficult position for her. But the young man is going away in a few days so we shall be quieter then. We shall go on quietly and as usual then. But Mr Canyot is always very civil to me—' John Moreton sighed heavily – ‘very civil and considerate.'

When the meal was over and he was thinking of returning for his usual rest, Grace, who came to take away what was left of the gooseberry tart for her own consumption, surprised him by saying, ‘Why don't 'ee go and see Mrs Shotover, over to Furze Lodge, sir? She be an old friend of your'n I reckon and a good friend o' Miss Nelly's. Maybe she'd be able to hearten' ‘ee up a bit, in a manner of speaking.'

The old man raised his head and stared at the maid. ‘Eh? what's that, Gracie? Go to see
her
again?' He blinked with his deep-set grey eyes and knitted his shaggy eyebrows. ‘But she and Nelly have been quarrelling since she was last here. But after all,
that
doesn't matter; that's nothing to do with
me
! I go quietly on my own way whatever fuss the womenfolk make, don't I, Grace? Well perhaps I
will
walk up in Furze Lodge direction when I've rested a bit. I do feel as if I needed a little change today. One can't work seven days a week.'

Well pleased with the result of her audacity the Dorsetshire maiden retired to the kitchen.

‘'Twill do the Master a gallon o' good,' she said to herself. ‘What with one thing and another the poor old gentleman do look mighty doddery. 'Twill hearten 'im up like, to pass the time o' day with that old rappity-tappity.'

The afternoon of that June day proved hotter than Mr Moreton had anticipated. The old man found the way long and exhausting. It was most of it uphill and bare of trees; the scorching sun struck fiercely upon his lean black-coated figure.