THERE ARE FOUR SEASONS, page 21
Andrew stood at the side door. He looked small and shabby, his face white beneath the day’s accumulation of grime.
“Do you mind if I go now, Miss Vicky,” he said in a low toneless voice, “without finishing my time? I want to get back to the boy. Ellen’s wore out.”
“Is he worse, Andrew?” said Vicky anxiously.
He nodded, and his mouth twisted slightly.
“Yes, Miss Vicky. I’ve just had word. They say he’s goin’.”
She caught her breath sharply.
“Andrew! He’s not. I’ll come. I’ll come at once. They said Noel was going, but I pulled him round. Go to Ellen and tell her I’m coming.”
He looked at her in dull surprise.
“You can’t, Miss Vicky. Not to-night. You’re going out.”
“Of course I can. Go to Ellen, Andrew. I’ll be over there in a few minutes.”
She ran up to her bedroom and began pulling off her dress.
Philip stared at her.
“What on earth——?” he began.
“I’m sorry, Philip,” she said breathlessly. “I can’t come. I’ve got to go to Andrew. His little boy’s worse and Ellen’s done up. I must go. I shan’t be back to-night. . . . Philip, I’m sorry. I can’t help it. What else can I do? I know I can pull him through. I pulled Noel through. I won’t let him die. . . . Philip, do stop shouting like that. I’ve said I’m sorry. I can’t help it, I tell you. I can’t let Andrew’s child——” She had dragged her everyday dress over her head now. “I can’t stop to do it up. Where’s my cape?”
She flung it on, snatched up a hat, and ran out. Philip’s anger pursued her loudly down the stairs. She ran all the way to the cottage.
Chapter Eighteen
SHE swept into the cottage like a breath of new life, flung off her cape and hat without a word, and took the child from Ellen’s aching arms. She sat all night holding him on her knee, her eyes fixed on him, willing life and health back into him, and toward dawn the paroxysms grew less violent, and in the end he fell into a quiet sleep. The doctor was surprised to find him alive the next morning. In a few days he was convalescent.
When she returned home Philip was silent and sulky. Then his sulkiness left him and he became puzzled. Vicky’s relations with Andrew had puzzled him from the beginning.
“I’d understand it if you were in love with the fellow,” he said. “I’ve known lots of women who’ve fallen in love with good-looking men-servants, but God knows he’s not good-looking, and even I know you aren’t in love with him. What is it, then?”
“I don’t know,” said Vicky. “It’s just that—he’s Andrew.”
She asked Philip how the play had gone, but he would tell her nothing about it. He went to London the next day, and Vicky returned to the beloved jog-trot routine of her household.
As the children grew out of babyhood their different characters began to develop.
Lionel was the benevolent autocrat of the nursery. He was a grave silent child, thoughtful beyond his years, oppressed by an ever-present sense of responsibility towards his younger brother and sisters. He was worried by Paula’s wildness, by Noel’s timidity, and Margery’s lapses from truth. He made rules and insisted on their being kept, inflicting penalties on the transgressors. He was as strict with himself as with the others, as worried by his own failings as by theirs. They accepted his rule as a matter of course, seldom rebelling, pleased by his praise, abashed by his displeasure.
Part of the code was a passionate loyalty to Vicky.
“She’s the queen,” said Lionel, “and I’m the prime minister. You’ve got to do as I tell you and not let her be worried.”
He was good-tempered and kind, exquisitely tender to the little ones, especially to Margery, the baby.
Philip teased him as “the bookworm,” for he would spend hours reading, and loved to learn long pieces of poetry by heart even though he did not understand it. During the half-hour or so he stayed up after the others he would sit motionless at the nursery or schoolroom table, his head on his hands, his eyes fixed intently on the book. Vicky felt for him a deeper love than for any of the others. There seemed to be a strange understanding between them, and an elusive quality of protectiveness in his devotion to her set their relations apart from the ordinary relations of child and parent.
Paula was the only one who was like Vicky in appearance. She had her colouring and her spun gold hair. In temperament, however, she was more like Philip—wild and turbulent, flying into rages on the least provocation, tiring of every pursuit as soon as she had taken it up, difficult to manage, but adorable when in a good mood. She worshipped Lionel, who could quell her rages by a look, when all Vicky’s reasoning and punishment had failed.
Noel was a nervous sensitive child, obsessed by imaginary terrors, afraid of the dark, painfully shy. One of his secret fears (implanted in him, perhaps, by the nurse whom Vicky had dismissed) was that the pleasant life of nursery and schoolroom was only a dream, and that he might wake up at any minute to find himself the child of cruel parents in the slums who would ill-treat him. When the others were punished it was Noel who was distressed far more than the culprits themselves. He was deeply attached to Paula, and dreaded for her the punishments she took so lightly, putting away her things for her when she left them about, trying in every way he could to cover the traces of her frequent misdemeanours. Paula on her side despised him, feeling personally humiliated by his tendency to tears.
Margery lived in a world of her own, a world of strange excitements and odd taboos. As she ate her meals at the nursery table or took her walks with Nurse, she was a princess, a fairy, a goblin, or a king. . . . There were certain things she must or must not do—she didn’t know why—or dread results would follow—she didn’t know what. She must always go downstairs on the right-hand side of the staircase and up on the left; she must never step on one of the small red squares in the dining-room carpet; she must hop, not walk, along the paved path that enclosed the rose-garden; she must always dip the first finger of her right hand into the garden tank as she passed it. There were some things—the little statue of a faun that Philip had brought from Italy and that stood at the end of the lawn, the stump of a tree at the end of the shrubbery, the old pump just outside the kitchen door—that were hostile and had to be propitiated by a murmured spell as she passed them.
Her wildly untrue statements worried Lionel (“A witch comes in to see me every morning before the rest of you are awake.” . . . “I was out all last night in the woods. I saw the fairies dancing there.” . . . “I know the Lord Mayor of London quite well”) and he evolved a secret sign for her to give him, unknown to the others, to tell him that she was “only ’magining.” It fitted in with the spells and incantations that formed part of her secret life, and both were satisfied.
In appearance she was not unlike an elf herself, with her mop of thick red curls and her pale freckled pointed face.
The nursery was now under the nominal charge of a large kind-hearted, good-natured Irishwoman called Biddy, who looked after the children’s physical well-being meticulously, but otherwise left them pretty much to their own devices.
It was Lionel who made himself responsible for the discipline of the nursery, Lionel from whose word there was no appeal.
Andrew, of course, played an important part in their lives. They followed him about the garden, riding in the wheelbarrow, “helping” him push the mower, crowding into the greenhouse to watch him at his work, each tending a small garden under his direction.
They would run out from nursery lessons, calling “Andrew! Andrew!” till they found him.
They loved to be given little tasks and would dig with small spades in the borders, ply their small wooden carts full of grass cuttings from lawn to rubbish heap, water the plants (and themselves) with their miniature watering-cans.
“We’ve been helping Andrew,” they would say proudly at lunch.
Philip had given them a pony, and Andrew taught them all to ride. He was as silent as ever, and they were immensely proud of his rare words of commendation.
Vicky began to play her part again in the small activities of the neighbourhood. Mabs Abbot had obtained a post on the staff of a girls’ boarding-school in the North, but after one term her engagement to Walter Pearson was announced. Having decided to marry him, she decided at the same time to endow him with all the qualities of her dream lover and bored her friends and acquaintances with descriptions of his virtues and good looks, for she now apparently actually saw him with a chin and an averagesized nose. She referred to him as “distinguished-looking.”
They were married in Six Elms Church, then went to live in Devonshire, but they frequently came over to stay at the Vicarage with their little girl Elaine—a tiny creature, so delicate and fairy-like as hardly to seem real.
The Vicar had died suddenly two years ago, and the distant cousin, in whose gift the living was, had given it to Roger, then a curate in an East End parish. Roger slipped easily and naturally into his father’s rut, pottering about the garden, preparing his sermons in the shabby comfortable book-lined study. He was retiring and absent-minded—more, indeed, like a middle-aged man than a youth—but he was popular in the neighbourhood, and Vicky’s children were devoted to him, glad of any excuse to run over to the Vicarage and invade him in his study.
Mrs. Abbot had grieved sincerely for her husband’s death, but it had made little actual difference in her life, for she fussed round Roger as she had fussed round her husband, and still looked forward eagerly to all the parish functions.
Mark had, for the last few years, been “bear leading” a slightly subnormal aristocrat on the Continent, and Roger was rather worried about it. He was staying at the best hotels, learning expensive tastes, and as an employment it seemed something of a blind alley.
Mark, however, was, as usual, completely satisfied with himself, his occupation, and his way of life.
The first incident to upset the even tenor of Vicky’s life was Celia’s engagement. She had gone to stay with a school friend and had written home after a fortnight to announce her engagement to her friend’s eldest brother. He was coming home with her at the end of her visit, and she wrote to Vicky to ask if she could bring him to the Hall the next day, which would be Paula’s birthday. He was a doctor, she said, with a good practice, and they hoped to be married quite soon. . . .
Paula woke up early, ran to Vicky’s bedroom, and took a flying leap onto the bed. She would not have dared to do that, of course, if Philip had been at home, but Philip was in Egypt and not expected back for several months.
“It’s my birthday, Mummy,” she shouted. “I’m seven.”
Vicky looked up, her golden hair rumpled, her blue eyes blinking sleepily.
“Oh, darling! So it is. I’m so sleepy I can’t remember anything. Don’t sit on my tummy. I can’t breathe.”
Paula bounced up and down, and Vicky began to tickle her. The two of them tumbled about in the bed, laughing, wrestling. They looked ridiculously alike. . . .
“You haven’t said Many Happy Returns,” said Paula reproachfully.
“I’m so sorry,” said Vicky. “Many Happy Returns, darling.”
“Can I start looking now?”
“Get dressed first, then you can.”
On the children’s birthdays Vicky would hide their presents all over the house, and they had to hunt for them. It was part of the nursery tradition. Because Vicky’s own childhood had contained so little of the usual pageantry of childhood, she treasured it in the case of her children—the Easter eggs, the Christmas tree, the November fireworks and bonfire, the New Year gifts, the culminating ceremony of the Birthday. With her children Vicky seemed to relive her own childhood, remoulding it to serenity, surrounding it with love. . . . For her children she now reserved that gaiety that had once so delighted Philip. She would enter into their games as zestfully as if she had been one of them. She had little intimate jokes with each, played foolish little tricks on them and they on her. Often she would put small presents, elaborately wrapped up, under their pillows so that they should find them when they went to bed. She was the—always appreciative—audience of their nursery plays, the reading public of the nursery magazines that Lionel edited, and to which they all contributed. When they had anything serious to communicate to her they would write a note and leave it on her dressing-table. These notes were generally in the nature of ultimatums and Vicky always acceded to the demand. “Please, Mummy, we think it’s time Noel went into proper boys’ suits.”—“Please, Mummy, may we not have sago so often? We don’t like it.”—“Please, Mummy, will you send Cook away? She makes Katie [the kitchen-maid] cry.”
The last had caused great trouble, as that particular cook was the best they had ever had, and Philip was furious when he learnt why Vicky had dismissed her.
Paula ran back to her room and struggled into her garments, pulling her petticoats over her head and not bothering to button them up. The blue drill sailor suit was difficult to get into. The white front, embroidered with its dark blue anchor, had to be slipped over her head, and its tapes tied round her chest. The same had to be done with the collar, then came the cord with the whistle that went into her pocket.
The others were awake now, crowding round her and thrusting their presents upon her. Then they trooped, breathless and laughing, into the dining-room.
They had breakfast with Vicky when Philip wasn’t at home. Philip did not object to their presence at breakfast, but his uncertain temper made things difficult. He would laugh at them one morning as they wrote their names in treacle on their porridge, even inspiring the addition of dots and dashes, and the next morning be angry with them for doing it.
Paula was his favourite, and even she was afraid of him.
Most of the children of the neighbourhood had been invited to the party. Mabs happened to be staying at the Vicarage and arrived with Elaine, well wrapped in shawls and chest protector, for Mabs was a firm believer in the harmful effect of fresh air. She unwrapped her carefully before the fire like a small porcelain doll, combed out the ash-blonde hair, and arranged the large pink hair-ribbon and the elaborate pink tulle frock.
Celia swept in tumultuously, flinging off her cloak, scattering her parcels around her, snatching up Paula to kiss her, rushing at Vicky, then at all the others, picking up her parcels and thrusting them into their hands. . . . So boisterous was her entrance that for a few minutes no one noticed the man who stood in the doorway behind her, looking about him.
Then Vicky turned and their eyes met across the crowded room under the strings of paper-chains that Lionel and Andrew had put up the night before.
“Celia . . .” Vicky reminded her gently.
“Oh, darling, I’m sorry,” said Celia breathlessly, “but it’s so lovely to see them all again. This is Hubert.” She smiled at her lover. “The children might as well start calling him Uncle straight away, mightn’t they?”
The children accepted him joyfully and pulled him across the room to look at Paula’s presents, but his eyes still followed Vicky as she moved to and fro among her little guests.
Vicky, on her side, watched him with covert interest. He had a thin keen face with a good-humoured expression, and he looked much older than Celia. Vicky decided that he would be an asset to the family. He would make a pleasant brother-in-law and a delightful uncle. Already Margery was on his knee and Paula hanging over his shoulder.
“Isn’t it lovely!” said Noel earnestly. “I’ve always wanted an uncle.”
They surged into the dining-room for tea, and took their places round the table, decorated with fairy lamps and piles of crackers.
Noel threw a slightly apprehensive glance at the latter, afraid of betraying his terror of them when the moment came for the bangs. Lionel, however, always allowed him to open his own without pulling it. . . .
Vicky glanced round the table with pride. What darlings they looked—Paula and Margery in their white muslin party frocks and blue sashes, Lionel and Noel in black velvet knickers and white silk blouses! How much nicer they looked than that overdressed little doll of Mabs’!
The party was being a success. The children were laughing and chattering, and the jellies and blancmanges and iced biscuits and cakes were disappearing fast. There was a burst of laughter as “Uncle Hubert” pretended to be taken in by the “poached eggs on toast,” which were really stewed apricots and whipped cream on little squares of sponge-cake.
Celia’s eyes grew soft and dreamy as they rested on him. She was radiantly happy and in love. But, when the table was cleared and the games began—Blind-man’s-buff, Nuts in May, London Bridge is Falling Down—it was Vicky to whom the newcomer‘s eyes turned as if against their will—Vicky, her golden hair piled high on her head, her full skirt swaying from her slender waist, as she moved about, directing the games.
Celia followed his eyes, and her happiness deepened till it was almost intolerable. The two beings whom she loved best in all the world. . . . She had hoped so desperately that they would like each other, and now she knew they did.
“Let’s play Turn the Trencher,” Noel was shouting.
He hadn’t even flinched when the crackers were pulled at tea, and Lionel had thrown him a glance of approval. He was feeling brave and big and a little above himself.
Margery, too, was happy, but so quiet that Hubert whispered to Vicky, “She’s very shy, isn’t she?” and Vicky said, “No, she isn’t really shy . . .”; for Vicky knew that Margery had brought a lot of guests of her own to the party—goblins and fairies and princesses and witches—and was busy looking after them.
Paula was dancing, singing, darting about everywhere like a piece of quicksilver. She was wildly, exultantly happy. The table was covered with the presents the guests had brought her. Uncle Hubert had carried her round the room on his shoulder. Auntie Celia had chosen her in every one of the choosing games. . . . It was the loveliest birthday she had ever had in her life.
