Mistress of the House (5 page)

“Footloose and fancy free?”

“Yes. Mother thinks it high time I looked about me. Her words. She was married and had me when she was my age, and she thinks I may get left on the shelf.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

“I don’t think she need worry about the shelf.”

Laurie laughed.

“Come along,” he said. “You’ve been very noble and self-sacrificing; but if it is any consolation to you, I’ve enjoyed it very much. And now I’ll take you along to the dance.”

She rose, and went to the fire. “I’ll get warm first,” she said, warming her cold fingers at the blaze. Max held her jacket for her and she slipped into it. He wanted to fold her and her jacket and all her desirable smallness into his arms, but he stood aside for her to precede him out of the room. He blew out the lamp, and joined her in the passage. It was quite dark.

“I’m lost,” said Laurie, not knowing which way to go.

He held out a hand and touched fur. He put his arm under hers and led her along the dark passage and into the kitchen where there was still a glow from the fire. When he would have let her go, he felt a slight pressure from her arm, holding his hand where it was. He led her across the kitchen, out into the cold night air, and across to where the car waited. Without talking, they drove down to the village, and went into the dance hall.

Laurie was conscious of a crowded place, and of the eyes of most of the occupants being suddenly focused on herself. It did not worry her at all. She waited for Max, and when he joined her, she smiled up at him, waiting for him to lead her. He soon found the corner where his mother was sitting with Diana and Jessica and several friends, and he went across the room with Laurie at his side. If it was an embarrassment to him to cross that crowded room with most eyes on the two of them, he did not show it.

The small circle of family and friends watched them coming. Mrs. Lorney thought how pretty Miss Giles was looking, and did not think of Max this time. Jessica, who had been worrying all the evening about them, wondering why they did not arrive, hated the girl in her glowing dress and her soft fur, with her hair falling in soft profusion, quite unlike its everyday tidiness.

Diana Humphries was looking at Max. ‘Poor Max. Poor darling Max,’ was the gist of her thought, as she saw his pronounced limp. She remembered other village dances, when they had all (the Lorneys, her brother Neville and herself, and other young people of the neighbourhood) descended on the village hall for these hops, in great glee. Max was always the idol of the women. He was tall and handsome, and he danced like a professional. Diana, fairly tall herself, had loved dancing with him. And it wasn’t only dancing, she thought. He had played tennis at White Lodge with a dash and power which was nice to watch. He could still ride and swim, but his tennis and dancing days were over—poor darling Max.

“Hallo, Diana,” he said, taking her hand; “it’s good to see you. You haven’t met Miss Giles yet, have you?”

“No. I tried to get back this morning in time to see you,” said Diana, smiling up at Laurie. “I was very curious, as a matter of fact, because Mother and Dad look upon you as a marvel. But I was kept by some friends.”

Laurie looked at Diana Humphries and Diana looked at Laurie. The young man sitting next to Diana gave Laurie his seat, and she sat down talking to her. She saw that Diana was lovely in a very slender, very fair, way. Chiselled and serene and somehow, spare. Max had said “coolly lovely”, and it was true. One saw at a glance that there was no nonsense about Diana. Her glance was direct and her speech was direct. Diana, looking at Laurie, saw that here was prettiness allied to intelligence and a certain poise. She wondered if Max had fallen for it, and hoped that he had not. She later discovered a frank and natural charm about Laurie.

They did not talk together for long. Both of them were in great demand for dancing. Laurie, who had not known what to expect of a village dance, was amused but attracted by its simplicity. The dancers fell into two categories, and kept rigorously in their own—the farmers, retired people and their families, the few professional people and the more prosperous tradesmen’s families, these made up one half; while the families of all the people who worked for this first group made up the second half. Everybody knew everybody else, which made for jollity. Laurie saw that Roger had been incorporated into a group of very merry and would-be sophisticated young people. She wondered which of them was his Audrey. She saw, too, that Jessica was popular with the more serious and heavy type of young man. ‘What a pity,’ she thought ‘that one of them doesn’t carry her off, and take the fly out of my ointment.”

She went back to their corner. Diana was there, talking to Max. For a strange instant, Laurie saw them completely from a detached viewpoint—as if they were a photograph of themselves, and she realized, for the first time, how very attractive Max was. Perhaps, she decided, she was seeing him with the aura that Diana had cast about him, for it was obvious to her that Diana thought the world of Max. Mrs. Lorney came up to them.

“When the supper interval comes,” she said, “you all get the little corner table by the platform. It’ll hold about seven of you, and I’ve saved some of my nice things for you.”

“Not much hope,” said Diana, “there will be an awful scramble.”

“Well, Max can go and save it for you.”

“I’ll go with him and we can talk.”

“You came here to dance,” he reminded her.

“Not really. I came here because I knew my friends, the Lorneys, would be here. We can talk as well in the supper room as here.”

So Max and Diana went into the bare room which the enthusiastic organizers of the dance had decorated with evergreens and spring flowers, and sat at the table in the corner, with its check cloth and its bentwood chairs around it Laurie, dancing with Roger, saw them go, and felt an odd sadness. Of course, it was nice for Max, but she felt that the friendliness she had felt towards him, the feeling she had had that there was something special and intimate about their friendliness, had been over-rated by herself. She had felt sorry for Max, had thought him a little lonely and unhappy, but obviously that had all been in her imagination. He was popular, and the young women still followed all his movements with their eyes, and somebody as poised and cultured as Diana Humphries went out of her way to annex him. No, she needn’t feel sorry for Max. At supper, she sat next to him.

“Enjoying it?” he asked her.

“Yes. It’s great fun.”

“I saw you dancing with my old friend, Ralph Bierman. He farms a huge place on the other side of the village.”

“He’s pretty huge himself,” laughed Laurie. “I felt swallowed up.”

“A good fellow, Ralph. What are you going to eat, Laurie?”

Jessica looked up quickly. Laurie. She glanced at Laurie to see how she would take it, but she did not even seem to notice the Christian name. Jessica frowned down at her plate. What did they do, all the earlier part of the evening? Was Laurie dressing for ages and ages? Or were she and Max talking at home together? Or doing anything else? Laurie looked very pretty. Even Jessica had to admit that. In what Jessica considered a little, helpless, stupid sort of prettiness. She would not admit that Laurie’s smallness and her good grooming and nice clothes, made herself feel awkward and large and clumsy.

Max offered to drive Diana home, but she had her own car outside, so, leaving Roger to escort his Audrey and then to walk back to the farm, the other four returned in the car.

The kitchen fire was out Mrs. Lorney, sure that they needed a last cup of coffee before they went to bed, started to put dry wood chips on to it but Max stopped her.

“There’s a fire in the sitting room,” he said. “You can make it there.”

“Oh. What made you light one in there?”

“Laurie was playing for me,” he said. He said it naturally and pleasantly, but suddenly Mrs. Lorney looked up at the girl, and Laurie blushed scarlet. There was no need for her to blush, and Mrs. Lorney thought little of it, but Jessica, whose jealousy put her on the alert for all the signs of friendliness between them, saw it and misconstrued it. Playing indeed! It was obvious what
she
was trying to do.

* * *

Next day was Sunday, and Roger, having spent an hour or two on polishing his riding boots and dressing himself suitably for Audrey, set off for the village on Betsy, his chestnut mare, and would not be seen at the farm until night. Jessica spent the morning cleaning out chicken-coops, but was going out to tea in the afternoon with her mother. They would take the car, Jessica driving, but be home in time for supper. Laurie made up her mind that she would stay at home, writing letters—in the garden, if it proved warm enough.

So that Max, coming out of the house in the afternoon, found her sitting on the low wall of the garden, writing, and immediately went to fetch her a deck chair from the shed.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Why didn’t you go with Mother and Jess?” he asked her.

“For one thing, they didn’t ask me; and for another, I don’t want them to feel that they have to include me in everything. Also, I’d much rather be here.”

“Maiden all forlorn.”

“Not forlorn, just because I’m alone. I rather like my own company.”

“I must take myself off,” said Max.

“No, no. Come back. I didn’t mean that, and you know I didn’t.”

He laughed.

“I know, but I have to do the poultry, anyway, as Jess is out.”

“Can’t I come with you, and help you do whatever you have to do?”

“Yes, if you’d like to. At least, I don’t think you ought to
do
anything. You look much too clean and immaculate for chickens. But if you like to come and talk to me while I do it, please do.”

So they went round the big field together, and Max filled the food troughs and the water troughs, and gathered the eggs. Laurie, interested in everything, begged to be allowed to do something, and was allowed to feed the broodies, sitting separately in splendid isolation on their eggs. She was not much help, but Max seemed to like to have her there, and she, for her part, found something particularly attractive in the general atmosphere of quiet and peace. There was no hurry or flurry or struggle in this life, she thought. Farm jobs were jobs over which you took your time—usually. There was leisure at the end of the day, but there was also something leisurely about the pace of the whole farm. Something steady and serene. The work was done, but without the hectic confusion of most town jobs.

So they went into the comfortable kitchen together. The kettle was singing on the dying fire, and Laurie put on wood chips to make it boil. She brought the teapot to warm it, and put in the tea, standing in front of the fire, her foot on the fender while she waited on the kettle. Max, coming in from washing his hands, smiled to see her there.

“What amuses you?”

“You, Laurie, making up the fire and making tea.”

“I know. You think I’m out of place in a farm kitchen.”

“Not so much today.”

“I think I could soon feel very much at home in this one.”

“Do you?” he asked, suddenly looking at her with a sharp glance.

“Yes,” she said, wondering why he was suddenly so wide awake. “I think it’s the nicest kitchen I ever knew. It seems to hold the key to the whole house. I mean that it has a friendly, receptive atmosphere—it’s comfortable and, oh, what’s the word I want—expansive? I expect you think I’m talking rubbish. It’s utilitarian, and yet it has time for beauty. I mean that it really is the room where nearly all the work is done, and yet there’s always time to polish the copper pans and the oak dresser and to have flowers on the window sills.”

They sat down at the table together.

“What,” he asked her as he buttered his scone, “did you think of our village dance last night? I expect it was very small fry for you.”

“Well, it’s different, of course, from town dances. Quite different Rather funny in some ways. I know you don’t mind my saying that. But I enjoyed it immensely.”

“You’re like Diana. She’s used to something very different, but she never grows away from us all the same.”

“She’s lovely, your Diana.”

“She is, but I don’t know why you call her my Diana. You said that yesterday evening.”

“But isn’t she? Jessica was telling me that you were very fond of each other.”

“Fond of each other, oh yes. We’ve always been the best of friends, but that doesn’t make her my Diana.”

“Jessica hinted that you were going to be married.”

“You must have misunderstood her. She knows as well as I do that there’s nothing of that sort.”

“Perhaps it was wishful thinking on her part?”

“I don’t see why it should be. I don’t think Jess wants to see me married. She likes things too much as they are.”

Yes, thought Laurie, that’s just the trouble. She wants things to stay as they are and that was why she told me about you and Diana—trying to put me off. That is why she hates me so, but she can’t make things stay the same. They are bound to change. As for you, Max, my dear, you’re much too nice not to be caught by somebody. She was aware of a feeling of gladness inside her, which she tracked down to the fact that Max and Diana were not thinking of marrying; but she did not go any further than that.

Max, for his part, had found it on the tip of his tongue to say that nobody would want to marry the old crock that he was now, but although he felt it sincerely, he also felt that it was currying sympathy, and asking for contradiction. He kept silence on that point, and they began to talk of other things.

By the time Max went out to the cowsheds, Reg had almost finished the milking. Laurie stood by while they finished, and watched the milk running over the cooler in the dairy, and began to feel happily a part of this workmanlike farm.

Max finished off his work in the dairy, and then turned to Laurie.

“Well,” he asked her, smiling, “what would you like to do now?”

“You mustn’t feel called upon to entertain me,” she said.

“No?” Yet you felt called upon to entertain me last night.”

“Caught,” she said. “But I’ve wasted a lot of your time today.”

“You haven’t wasted any. You came while I did the poultry, and that wasn’t wasted time. I don’t call my tea time wasted time, or the milking time. In fact, you’ve added pleasantness to the ordinary jobs of work.”

“You say some very nice things, Max.”

“I don’t believe I do, usually. There must be something in you that inspires them. Well, what would you like to do?”

“I’ve wanted several times to go up into that little wood there. Is that part of your land?”

“Yes. It’s a pleasant place. If you like, we’ll go.”

They went to the house to make up the kitchen fire, and then began to walk across the fields towards the little wood. Max would have preferred staying in the house or garden. He had worked quite hard all day, and his foot was aching a little, but he wanted to give pleasure to Laurie. There were plenty of cows in the fields, but with Max as bodyguard, she was not frightened of them. They climbed the stile on the farther side and began to walk the ride of the little wood.

It was quiet in there. The thick carpet of fallen leaves was dry and crackled a little; the breeze sighed softly in the tree-tops, but these things only seemed to add to the quiet. Primroses were blooming freely now, and windflowers lifted their white and amethyst heads from the fragile loveliness of their leaves.

They came to a fallen tree, and by mutual consent stopped and sat on it Two rabbits ran away from them, their white scuts bounding over the brambles. Laurie laughed at them.

“It’s lovely here,” she said.

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“It’s more like a perpetual holiday than work.”

“Mr. Humphries isn’t too exacting a boss?”

“I should think not I’ve worked for some awful people. Of course the whole tempo of the work is much slower, and he’s a great stickler for getting everything exactly right And he’s so wrapped up in it that he’s making me absorbed in it, too.”

“How long do you think the job will last?”

“Mr. Humphries hopes to get it finished in six months, but Mrs. Humphries was saying that it may be a good deal longer, as he’s quite likely to go over the whole thing, altering and cutting out and improving. But I’m reckoning on six months here, at least.”

“And you’ve been here one, already.”

“Yes, it’s flown past.”

“How would you like to live in a place like this, Laurie?”

“Well ... I don’t know. It’s completely different from my ordinary life. It’s lovely now, because this is spring and the air is fresh and the flowers growing everywhere. And of course, I’m lucky in living in your house. There’s always something happening and something going on. But what it would be like to be on my own all day in some little house in the wilds—well, I don’t know about that I think I should feel that life was going on without me, and that I was missing all the things I like so much.”

“Such as?”

“Dancing, dining out, going to theatres.”

“Dancing you can get here. Not always village dances, like the one we went to. Dining out, well no. Only by taking the car somewhere, and risking the food and the place. And theatres of course would be out. But how often do you go to a theatre?”

“Once a month, perhaps. Sometimes two or three times a month. Depending on the admirers, to a certain extent.”

He was silent. After a minute or two, Laurie turned to look at him.

“I suppose,” she said, “that it would depend on why I came to live in the country. If, for instance, it was because I married a countryman, and I adored that man, then I don’t suppose I should mind where I was.”

Max glanced at his watch.

“Good heavens,” he said. “It’s supper time. We shall have to be getting back.”

“Oh dear,” said Laurie, “I’ve kept you out too long. That means that Jessica is going to be cross and sulky again.”

“Jessica doesn’t upset you, does she?”

“Yes, she does. I honestly think, Max, that she is trying to drive me away. She’s always angry with me. She looks into the kitchen window, and if she sees me there alone, she goes away again until somebody else comes along. If I’m sitting in the fireside circle, she gets up and leaves it Whenever I’m typing for you in the office, she comes in on some pretext or other; and she seems to follow me round the farm with the express idea of being unpleasant. I try to ignore it, of course; but I find that, all the time, I’ve got her at the back of my mind, wondering what she will think or say about everything I do. Like being late for supper now.”

“Then you
aren’t
enjoying your stay here?”

“Yes. Very much when I’m away from Jessica. I’m sorry to say so much about your sister, but she does hate my being here.”

“We must do something about this.”

“No. You can’t do anything. You can’t make people like other people; and to comment on it makes it worse. I keep hoping she will get used to me, but she doesn’t.”

They began to walk back, Laurie hurrying in spite of herself. Max protested. He tried to make a joke of it, saying that she must leave him behind if she wanted to fly. Instantly, she slowed down.

“I’m so sorry, Max. I forget.”

“I’m glad you do.”

“Max, forgive me if I’m saying the wrong thing, but does it worry you?”

“What, my—lameness?” The slightest hesitation before the word.

“Yes.”

“Do you mean physically or mentally?”

“Well, both.”

He looked at her for a moment, about to make a light, denying answer, but he changed his mind.

“Yes,” he said. “Physically, it doesn’t hurt. It just aches when I’ve been doing too much. And it
does
ache. Mentally—well, yes to that, too.”

“Don’t let it,” she said, her face very sweet in its seriousness. “People like you immensely, and don’t even think about it.”

“Don’t you?” he asked her.

“No. Not really.”

“Come along,” he said, “or we shall be really late for supper.”

She held out her hand to him and he took it. It was very soft and small boned in his own. They walked hand in hand until they came to the fields.

Jessica was very moody and sullen all the evening. She was sure that Laurie had stayed behind all day, simply to annex Max when she and her mother went out. She was sure that Laurie had designs on Max. To Jessica, who had lived all her life on this farm and would not live anywhere else, it seemed that any girl who came from London would want to marry Max and stay here for ever. And she knew that she would hate any woman who married Max. Max was their own particular property, to love and care for. He was happy as he was (so thought Jessica) and she and her mother were happy too. She did not mind what Roger did with himself, as long as she and Max and their mother were together.

She redoubled her efforts to do everything for Max and increased her rudeness to Laurie.

A small climax was reached one day over tea, by the news that Aunt Hilda was arriving to stay a few days later. Mrs. Lorney told them casually, as she poured tea out of the big teapot, knowing that her family would not be very pleased.