The Young Clementina (10 page)

It was wet and mild when I arrived at Hinkleton. The trees, touched with autumn color, dripped slowly. The gray light from the gray sky turned their wet leaves to silver and copper. Garth had sent a car to meet me at the station, and I stood in the rain while the porter and the chauffeur strapped my luggage onto the grid and disposed of my various bags and bundles in the car. I loved the rain, I loved the mild air with its smell of damp earth and dripping verdure, I loved the soft gray sky spread out like a canopy above my head. Even the station yard with its brown oily puddles pleased me—it was Hinkleton, and that was all that mattered.

I asked the chauffeur to stop at the church for a moment, and I went in and looked about me. Here everything was the same, dear and familiar. The old church did not change—generations might come and go but the old gray building did not alter. At first it seemed as if a thousand years had passed since I had stood within its portals, and then it seemed that I had been here but yesterday. Almost, as I gazed up the nave, I expected to see father come out of the vestry door and walk round the front of the pulpit and up the altar steps, pausing for a moment to bend his head reverently to his God. His spirit was very near me, his arms enfolded me. I kneeled down and hid my face. Prayer did not come easily to me for I always feel that prayer is a silent thing, an opening of the heart. To ask for earthly benefits, to reel out a list of requirements and expect them to be supplied is not prayer. It is putting God in the same category as an intelligent grocer. But that day in Hinkleton Church I felt that something was listening to the speaking of my heart. The spirit of my earthly father and the Spirit of my Heavenly Father blessed me in my new life. I was sure then that the road I had chosen was the right road, and I went on my way strengthened.

As I came out of the church I paused for a few moments at my parents' grave—it was more for my conscience' sake than from any emotional feeling about the small green plot of ground. They were not here (I had felt father's nearness in the church—here I could feel nothing). I saw that the grave was well cared for; the edges were tidy and the turf smooth and free from weeds. I wondered who had seen to this, for it had never crossed my mind to make any arrangements about it.

The chauffeur was waiting for me at the gate, so I could not linger. I got into the car and we drove on through the village.

Hinkleton village had changed very little; there was nothing to change it. No new houses had been built, so there was no need for any expansion in the shops. The shops had the same names over the doors, the same heterogeneous collection of goods in the windows. Hinkleton had not moved with the times. The ironmonger's window was full of nails, hammers, spades, etc. The sweetshop still contained bottles of highly colored boiled sweets. I wondered if Miss Canning was alive. She had been a true friend in my childhood, helping me with inexhaustible patience to decide how to spend my rare pennies to the best advantage. The butcher was standing at the door of his shop gazing out at the rain. His blue and white striped apron bulged over his portly stomach, his red double chin bulged over his collar—twelve years had done very little to Mr. Hetherington, save to increase the bulges. Behind him, as usual, hung the carcasses of sheep, waiting to be dismembered. They had that strange naked look which always disgusted me as a child.

The entrance gates of Hinkleton Manor are just beyond the village. We turned in through the narrow arch and sped up the drive. I remembered every turn. It was just here that I had fallen off my bicycle—
there
was the very holly bush which had received me in its inhospitable arms and left its signature upon my body for days. Garth had been trying to teach me to ride. He came and picked me out of the holly bush and his efforts not to laugh at my plight were nobility personified. And just here one caught a glimpse of the Hinkle meandering lazily through the park—there it was, a gray shining ribbon in the vivid green turf.

Garth came to the door as the car drove up, and behind him I could see a tall, slim child in a brown frock. I had no time then to look at her intelligently—she raised a cool cheek to be kissed and moved silently away—but afterward I was to study the face with anxious care, to learn its every feature. A smooth face, it was, pale, without being delicate, with a strange, shuttered look unnatural in a child of her age. She had a high, white forehead from which her brown hair swept back in a long shallow wave to be confined in two thick plaits which hung down her back. Her ears were small and well-formed, her cheekbones were rather high, her chin was determined, her mouth straight and red. It was the face of one who kept her emotions to herself.
She
did not lay the burden of her moods upon all and sundry, she went her own way, silent and withdrawn. If Kitty were an undisciplined woman she had not given birth to an undisciplined child. Clementina was not undisciplined, for she had herself well in hand, but she would tolerate no discipline but her own. All this I learned later, not then. It was a long time before I learned to understand her and accept her reticences.

Garth's trunks were in the hall, for he was starting the following morning. There were guns there too, and wooden packing-cases, nailed and roped; and long-shaped packages sewn up in sacking. He led the way into the library where tea was laid on a small table near the fire. Clementina followed us; she took a book and sat down on a small stool near the window while we talked over a few last arrangements and had our tea. It was easy to see how she heard and saw things that a child should not. She was so quiet that one forgot she was there.

“You can work in this room, Char,” Garth said. “It gets the sun most of the day and is quiet and comfortable. Open the drawing room if you want it, of course.”

(My work was to consist of reading for Mr. Wentworth. He had been so devastated by my desertion that I had promised to read and send him criticisms of the latest travel books which he would dispatch to me weekly. And in return he had promised to keep my place open for me.)

“I should like to work here,” I replied. “The drawing room is too grand for me.” To tell the truth I did not care for the drawing room at Hinkleton Manor, it was ornate and uncomfortable. I could not imagine myself sitting in its brocade chairs in solitary state, nor view with equanimity the prospect of seeing myself constantly, at full length, in the gilt mirrors with which its walls were adorned.

“It is a flamboyant room,” Garth agreed with a curl of his lips. “Your sister had execrable taste.”

The words annoyed me. I felt my anger rise like a flood. I felt that Garth was deliberately insulting. There was no need for him to mention Kitty if he could not do so without a sneer. Heaven knows I held no brief for Kitty, but I felt bound to stand up for her against this incomprehensible man. He had ruined her, and broken her, he had cast her off like a worn garment, the least he could do was to let her memory rest in peace.

“You did not trouble to educate her taste,” I told Garth, with a flutter of fear at my heart.

Garth did not seem angry at my temerity. He glanced at the silent figure by the window and replied in a low voice, “Kitty preferred to take her education from other hands.”

We left the subject there, and passed on to discuss other matters. The financial side of the business was already fixed. Garth had been generous—too generous, I thought. He had brushed aside my objections to his generosity with the remark that I should need new clothes. It was true, of course, and I had realized before that my wardrobe was insufficient for the temporary chatelaine of the Manor, but it did not please me that he had noticed my shabbiness. We are unreasonable beings.

“What about the servants?” I inquired.

“What about them?” echoed Garth. “You will run the servants of course, and pay them. I've arranged for that at the bank. We went into that before.”

“I know. But supposing they are unsatisfactory?”

“Sack them,” he said. “Sack the lot if you like and start fresh. I don't care. Sack all the maids, and Barling, the butler—he's a fat fool and drinks my port—and Naseby, the chauffeur, you may sack him, too; and all the gardeners—lazy devils. It would do them a world of good to be sacked. The only man you mustn't sack is Sim—the head groom. He's been with me for ten years and understands my ways. I'd be sorry if I came back and found that Sim had been included in your holocaust. The stables wouldn't be the same without Sim. So, unless you find him stealing the silver or dead drunk on the harness-room floor, don't sack Sim.”

“I don't want to sack anybody,” I replied with some heat. “I hate the idea.”

“You'll soon get used to it, and you'll have a lovely time finding others.”

I suppose I looked somewhat dismayed at the prospect, for Garth laughed. “Who did you suppose was going to do it?” he inquired.

“I've had no experience.”

“You'll learn,” he said. “I'm glad I shan't be here to suffer from your mistakes.”

“I'm glad, too,” I replied with spirit. It was really unbearable that he should speak to me in that way when I had changed my whole life to look after his child. Surely he owed me civility if nothing else. I began to understand what Kitty had suffered at this man's hands.

“I suppose I shall manage,” I continued hotly. “Other women do. But it seems strange to find oneself in a position of responsibility when one is totally ignorant of the rules. Like a man being put at the head of a business when his life has been spent on a farm, or being made colonel of a regiment without the smallest knowledge of military affairs.”

“It's true,” Garth said, looking at me in surprise.

“Of course it's true,” I replied. “The whole thing is ridiculous. I shall do my best, of course, because I've taken on the job, but I'm not looking forward to it, I can assure you. I don't mind undertaking any job that I feel I can do, but this is a job I know nothing about and for which I am totally unfitted.”

“Nonsense,” Garth interrupted, but his manner was less rough than before. “Don't talk rubbish, Char. It's a woman's job to run a house, and most women undertake it with complete confidence in their own ability. If you do make mistakes at first what does it matter? Kitty made a glorious hash of it, and never learned from experience to do better, but it was never
her
fault—dear me no—always somebody else's.”

I did not answer, it was no use. He was so bitter against Kitty that he could not refrain from speaking of her, and he could not speak of her calmly. We sat in silence for a little while and I was able to study his face more closely. How changed it was! It seemed to me the saddest face I had ever seen. There were deep lines of pain about the mouth, and the eyes were dark with trouble. It was the face of a man who was tired of life, totally disillusioned, sick in soul, the face of a man who did not care what happened to him. What was he thinking about, I wondered. The expedition ahead of him or the troubles that he could not leave behind? I was very vague about the expedition upon which he was embarking, it was to penetrate the interior of Africa—that I knew—and Garth had given me a paper with the names of the places he expected to visit and approximate dates so that I might communicate with him if I wanted to do so; but after the end of December there were no places, nor dates, and I supposed that the expedition would then be completely out of touch with civilization. Would it be dangerous, I wondered, and if dangerous why, and in what way? Did the danger (if danger there were) come from men or beasts, or from climate and fevers? I had read Garth's book on big game hunting when it came out, and enjoyed it. Garth was at his best writing about the vicissitudes of travel; he was a competent writer and had the knack of making small things interesting and amusing. I had liked his descriptions of the country and his account of the game to be found.

“What is your real objective?” I said to him at last.

He turned and looked at me, and I saw that I had brought him back from a long journey. He did not know what I meant.

“The object of your expedition,” I explained.

“Oh, that,” he said slowly. “I expect to find the remnants of an ancient tribe. Perhaps it may be more truthful to say I
hope
to find them. I have not told anybody about this. For one thing nobody has asked me, and for another they would probably laugh at my credulity.”

“Why have you told me?”

“You asked, and it suddenly struck me that
somebody
ought to know, in case I never came back.” He looked across the room and added in a louder tone, “Isn't it your bedtime, Clem?”

“Nanny will come for me,” she replied, without raising her head, which was bent over her book.

“You're too old for that now,” Garth said in a light, bantering voice. “Too old to wait for Nanny to come and fetch you to bed—a great big girl of eleven!”

Clementina did not answer. The jibe—friendly and provocative—ran off her like water off a duck's back. She turned over a page and continued to read.

“After dinner,” Garth whispered, and he reached for the poker to stir the fire. It struck me then that Garth's daughter was going to be a big responsibility—just how big I did not guess. Perhaps I had been wrong to undertake the responsibility. I knew so little about children. I had no ideas upon the subject—as so many childless women have. The only child I had ever known intimately was Kitty, and I could see already that whatever experience I had had with Kitty was not going to help me to understand her daughter. I must confess, Clare, that my heart sank. I felt that I should never find the clue to Clementina. The incident was small—she had not disobeyed her father, for he had not ordered her to go to bed, but her attitude was so strange, so unchildlike. I would have been less disturbed if she had shown temper, had resented his suggestion; it was the utter indifference of her attitude that frightened me.