The Matchmaker (33 page)

Mr. Hoadley continued to draw at his pipe and to show no surprise. Mrs. Hoadley was emptying the bucket into the trough and laughing at the squeaking and scurrying and gobbling.

“Come along, you give us a hand,” she called to Fabrio. “They’s just-about starving, you’d think,” and he took the bucket from her, still in bewilderment, and emptied it, then emptied another smaller one which she handed to him. Sylvia took no notice; she had wandered off towards the edge of the coppice and was staring away into its clustering green stems. A sheet of the unfamiliar yellow flowers spread itself at her feet but she did not see them, for she was so angry, so disgusted, so ashamed—she could have smashed something.

“Dey’s a pretty flower,” said the old man’s voice behind her. “Musk, dat is.” He slowly stooped, and with his trembling brown hand covered with swollen purple veins pulled up with some difficulty one of the full yellow blossoms with scarlet-spotted lip. “But dey don’t smell sweet no more, like dey did when I was a boy. I heerd on de wireless dat’s de same all over de world; de musk-flower’s given up smellin’ sweet. I lay it’s because of all de muck dey puts into de ground nowadays, all de chemists’ muck. But my son over at Hayward’s Heath, he says dat’s as good as de old stuff. Here, put it in your coat, missy,” and he held out to her the posy he had laboriously gathered.

She accepted it with sulky thanks, but she would not accept the invitation to have a cup of tea which Mrs. Hoadley casually extended to them both a little later. She insisted that they must go home, that they were expected at the farm before evening and that it was half-past four now. Fabrio did make one attempt to make her change her mind, but she turned on him so roughly that he was silenced.

So in a little while they set off, Fabrio carrying a bag of home-made
soap
, and Sylvia striding ahead of him, with a sullen look and the sun shining full upon her brazen hair.

“What’s de matter with her?” asked Mr. Hoadley, when their visitors had passed out of sight between the dazzling sunrays and the budding bushes.

Mrs. Hoadley gave her soft old laugh, and turned away, jingling the oddments in her apron pocket.

“Girls—dey’s always worryin’ about something,” was all she would answer.

The other two hurried on in silence. Fabrio kept his anxious eyes fixed upon her back as she walked ahead of him through the copse and over the plank bridge, hoping that when they came to the marshy meadows she would turn to him for help. But she did not; she made her way across the patches of drier ground swiftly and in sulky silence. What was the matter? A week ago he would have dismissed such conduct with a shrug; she was
La Scimmia
, and that explained any peculiar behaviour, but to-day—until an hour ago—she had been Sylvia, a friendly laughing girl with lovely eyes that met his own loving look without mockery; he could not feel angry with her, even now, although the terrible hair-style had returned and her very walk was different. Poor little one, he thought, something has upset her. I will ask her what is the matter. And with a few easy strides he caught up with her.

“Why are you angry, Sylvia?” he asked, trying to take her hand, and his voice sounded deeper, more musical than usual, just as a bird’s is sweeter in the mating season. “Are you angry with me?” But he did not believe that he was the cause of the trouble, for what had he done? Nothing.

“No, of course not,” she retorted, snatching her hand away with a cross smile. They had paused on a little expanse of firmer ground; the glory of the declining sun flooded the wide sky, the ancient willows in their sweeping bud veils, the pools of golden water where dark reeds were mirrored, and the distant hills, now a wise golden-green and filled with tender shadows in
their
mighty hollows. The air was growing cooler but as yet there was no feeling of approaching night. He stood in silence, with his hands in his pockets, gazing gravely at her.

“I’m hungry, I want my tea, and it’s that disgusting place—the pigs and everything,” she went on petulantly, smoothing her hair. “I expect I look a sight, too. I loathe that sort of thing—meals off of newspaper, and outside sanitation, and those old-fashioned ideas——” here she tore the dressing off her finger and tossed it into a pool. “Well, they’re disgusting, really. Of course, Fabrio,” condescendingly, beginning to move on, “you wouldn’t realise how bad it was because——”

(She checked herself; she had been going to say
You come from that sort of home
.)

“—because you haven’t seen really nice working-class homes where the people are progressive and have some self-respect,” she went on, her loud angry voice ringing across the hushed, wide, radiant meadows. “When you see that sort of place you can understand why people are Communists.”

He listened attentively, straining to understand the long, unfamiliar words and why she was so angry, with his anxious eves fixed upon her face.

“My God, it burns me up, those poor old people living in shacks without any proper amenities and the big industrialists like B.I.C. and Rank and all those other bosses, and Lord Nuffield (I’d give him
Lord
; what’s
he
done to be a Lord, except have a lot of money that other people have earned for him?), the workers ought to control the means of production
and
the raw materials, same as they do in Russia, my God, this country makes me sick!” she ended, and began to climb the gate leading out on to the road, irritably waving aside his eager offer of help. All the time she was clambering over the rails she was talking; such words as “democracy,” “industrialisation,” “nationalisation,” “freedom,” “community,” “socialism,” “fascism,” “communism” poured from her rosy mouth and utterly
bewildered
him; he began to feel cowed, beaten, ignorant, under this hail of words.

He glanced back once across the meadows. They were all one glory of gold, and the willows sat among them like wise long-fingered old Chinese men, gazing down into the water. I can’t understand, I wish she would tell me what’s really the matter, he thought; and then his unhappy eyes wandered unseeingly to some half-dismantled haystacks of last summer near at hand, their grey straw weeping down over their shapelessness, and vaguely they reminded him of something, some figure. Yes, it was the straw images that the ignorant people set in the fields at harvest time far down in the South, near Naples; the Straw God that blessed the harvest, and died and came again next year. He felt a strong need for comfort at that moment, from something older, wiser, bigger than himself, and the towering shapes of the budding elms, the willows by their pools, the shapeless harvest-figures crouching in haystack shape, all vaguely consoled him. Then his thoughts turned to Our Lady, and he uttered a silent prayer to Her. She was so beautiful, so kind, she must know what was the matter with Sylvia because She too was a woman, and perhaps She would help him.

All the way along the road through the village, across the short cut through the fields, and down the hill to the station, Sylvia went on talking, brushing aside his timid questions, turning upon him angrily when he tried to tease her out of her ill-temper, striking her clenched fist upon her palm as she told some tale of injustice to the poor or privilege of the rich, and quoting figures to prove what she was shouting.

His English was still so imperfect that he knew only one way to interrupt her—by some sharp army blasphemy or foulness: but that he could not do: for only this morning they had been so happy! the Sylvia he had loved only a few hours ago was no longer there, but she
must
be hidden inside this angry, violent girl who seemed to hate the whole world, she could not have gone for ever. This other girl wore her clothes, the modest black
coat
, the dress coloured like a
colomba
, she still wore the beautiful little brooch he had bought for her, clasping some fading flowers.

No, he could not shout bad words at
La Scimmia
, because she was still dressed like Sylvia, but he began to feel very wretched: her loud voice beat upon his ears and soon he heard references to God, to the Holy Catholic Faith, which horrified him, and he began to feel angry. By the time the station was reached and they stood waiting for the train, he had been silent for some time and his face was as sullen as her own. Our Lady had not heard his prayer; and in a little while he would be back in the
campo
.

The train came in, and they entered a carriage. It was empty; Fabrio had moved towards it with some vague instinct not to expose their mutual unhappiness to other people’s eyes, and Sylvia was absorbed in what she was saying about the Bevin Boys. He slammed the door on them, and the train moved off.

They were journeying into the sunset and the carriage was filled with blinding brilliance; they could see nothing clearly. She exclaimed pettishly, interrupting herself, “What a glare! it’s sickening, can’t you pull the blinds down or something?” He glanced at her, then obediently fumbled with the blinds and under her impatient instructions pulled them both down on the sunward side. Sylvia leant back and was silent at last; she frowned at the celandines going by, already shut against the evening chill and the dew on the shadowed banks. Presently she burst out again, turning towards him where he sat beside her with his arms folded and a heavy frown on his face:

“You can say what you like, and I daresay having been brought up in it you can’t even understand properly how other people feel about all that superstitious rubbish, it’s holding back progress, that’s what I hate about it, the Church always has, and you Roman Catholics are the worst of the lot, why, they won’t even let you read the Bible properly, of course, I don’t believe in the Bible but it is great literature, everybody’s got to admit that, and I don’t see why the working classes shouldn’t
have
the privilege of reading it, well, it’s only justice, isn’t it, the Bible is only myths from a scientific point of view but——”

Suddenly he turned towards her; his hands gripped hers, gently, but with such strength that she could not move; his bright chestnut head came down swiftly to her own, and he silenced her parted lips with a tender, voluptuous kiss.

She sat still, so astonished that she could not move. Delight sprang to meet that kiss: then she denied it, and let herself be overwhelmed with disgust and rage.

“Here, what do you think you’re doing?” she demanded furiously, thrusting him from her with all her strength. “Leave me alone. I hate you,” and she sat back in her corner, breathing fast. Her eyes sparkled with rage.

Fabrio had given way to her thrust because he loved her, not because his great strength had felt any force from her own. He said nothing, but moved over to the opposite seat and sat quite still, almost crouching, his imploring eyes fixed upon her face.

She vigorously drew her hand across her lips as if wiping his kiss away, and angrily jerked her collar, her hair, into place, then she turned away from him and stared out at the fields going leisurely by in the yellow afterglow. Presently he turned up the collar of his coat and put his hands in his pockets, for the air in the carriage was growing chill, and then he too stared out of the window and neither spoke.

His anger and misery would have kept him silent if his pride had not. All of him suffered: he felt bruised, he ached with wretchedness and baffled tenderness. He continued to feel the thrust of her arms against his breast and as he remembered the happiness of the morning, tears did come to his eyes and he kept his head turned away so that she should not see.

She was wishing only one thing: to be back in London. In London there were no ignorant old women to poke their noses into what did not concern them and make disgusting remarks; and there were the Movies, thrilling, always changing; there were the Stars, playing those parts which she knew in her secret
heart
she could play too, if she only had the chance. Oh, how she longed to be at the Movies! now, at this miserable moment, and to forget everything except the figures on the silver screen! She never cried, unless Mr. Smedley-Porter at the Dramatic Academy was imploring her to squeeze out a tear for Art’s sake; but now she turned her head away so that Fabrio might not see how much he had upset her. She had been getting to like him, but—never again, comrade. He had had it.

They alighted at Sillingham and set out on the short walk to the camp. Had they been married, Fabrio would have stalked ahead and Sylvia would have trailed after him, thus proclaiming to everybody that they had quarrelled, but the pride of unbroken youth kept them walking side by side, step in step, in a haughty silence, through the yellow dusk. Presently the thought came into Sylvia’s mind that they must look a couple of fools, and in a minute or so her lips twitched. She glanced at him, but it was very plain that the thought had not occurred to him, and she hastily glanced away again. At that moment they heard a car approaching behind them and its horn sounded. It was a large handsome open car, travelling fast; as it passed them, the women and children in it turned back and waved, and they saw their faces distinctly.

“Why, that’s Mrs. Lucie-Browne and Miss Hardcastle and the kiddies!” she exclaimed, addressing no one in particular, “I didn’t know they ran a car.”

He did not reply, and the next turn in the road brought them to the gates of the camp. The yards looked lonely in the twilight and the sentry stood outside his box, staring at an aeroplane passing across the afterglow beneath the evening star. The barbed wire enclosing the low buildings was invisible in the dimness. Fabrio sickened at the sight; he felt such a strong impulse to go on down the road at her side that he had actually to force himself towards the camp: and he wrenched himself round, turning slowly away from her.