It Was the Nightingale (29 page)

“Come in, please come in!”

“You look tired, dear,” she said gently, closing the door behind her. He longed for her to put her arms round him and clasp him to her breast. “Don’t write too long, will you? I came to say goodnight. I think I’ll go to bed, but I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“Oh no, really, you’re not disturbing me.”

“Well, goodnight, dear.”

Still standing there, he said goodnight to Lucy. She looked at him with a tremulous smile. He hoped she would kiss him; but he knew his mood was forbidding. “Goodnight,” he said, almost formally, and with another half-glance, she was gone.

It was the first evening since his return that they had not kissed each other goodnight.

*

Rusty was watching from the worn rug before the fire, and seeing Phillip take his stick from beside the door, jumped up, wagging his tail. Any time during the day or night Rusty was ready for a walk. Phillip felt like walking all night, to tire himself out, to reduce his mind to nothing. What was he doing there? What would happen to that gentle trusting girl if he married her? Had they anything in common, she and her family and himself, except a knowledge of the names of birds and some wildflowers? Would she be hurt if he went away, and stayed away for weeks, even months, to write? But would he be able to remain alone, ever again?

He went out of the hall door and down the little weedy path to the iron gate and so into the lane; and, crossing the river over the old hump-backed bridge, stared at the stars shaking in the moving waters below. He walked up the hill, and along the crest of the down, the short grass rimed and the rising moon a swelling gourd in the east. He returned by other lanes that led down to the valley, and finding direction by the moon above, reached the hump-backed bridge. It was two o’clock in the morning, the Christmas truce was over, the dull flat reports of rifles echoed over the frozen Flanders fields—all ghosts, but living close to him. After some anguished hesitation, he removed shoes and socks in the kitchen and in bare feet crept up the back stairs to Lucy’s small room. He felt his way slowly to her bedside, and whispered her name, and knew by the silence that she was asleep. After standing still for more than a minute, he moved to the bed-head and reaching down, softly stroked her head.

“It is I, Phillip.”

“Is anything the matter?” her voice from the darkness said.

“No,” he replied, and knelt by the bed, laying his cheek on the edge of her pillow, his forehead touching her cheek. A hand came from under the bedclothes and sought and held his.

“I’ve been for a long walk, Lulu.”

“How lovely! I thought I heard you closing the gate.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“What about, darling?”

He hesitated. “
Am
I your darling?”

“Of course you are. Don’t you know it?”

“You must think me an awful washout.”

“Of course you’re not!”

“But I am
really,
you know. I’m not a bit like I seem! There’s a hard, critical person inside me. I’ve tried to alter it for years, but it won’t be suppressed.”

“Only when silly people upset you. People
are
silly! I won’t let them upset you any more, see?”

“Pa doesn’t like Dick Sheppard, does he?”

“Oh that! He doesn’t know anything about him! It’s only what that silly paper said! Why, if Pa knew him, I’m sure they’d be friends at once. Don’t take any notice of what Pa says.”

“I admire Pa very much, really, you know.”

“Yes, he’s a dear, isn’t he? He and Mother were inseparable. Poor dear, when she died I think he felt his life was over. But look at him now! Reading his boys’ stories, just like Donkin in your book! It
is
such a lovely book.”

“Do you
really
think so?”

“Of course I do. Don’t you know it?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Well, don’t ever think it isn’t, for it is! Don’t worry any more, will you, darling? One day we’ll be alone, just we two, won’t we, with Billy? Then we won’t let people worry us, will we?” Her arms softly drew his head to her, she held him close, smoothing his hair with one hand, while murmuring as to a child. So they kissed goodnight, and he went outside to the chalet on a lawn crisp with frost; and undressing swiftly, got into bed and lay back thinking of the beauty of the morning star over the battlefield, years ago.

*

Some time later he was aware of footfalls on the gravel path. Looking up he saw the outline of Tim.

“Hullo,” he said, “how goes it?”

Tim came into the chalet. “I thought you might be asleep, Phil. I say, I wonder if I might ask you a question?”

“Of course, dear boy. How is Pansy?”

This was the name of a girl Tim went to see in the only shop in the hamlet, kept by the widow of a sea-captain and her elder daughter. Phillip had been told by Lucy that she was Tim’s first love.

“I was wondering, Phil, if I dare ask Pa if I might invite Pansy and her young sister to supper tomorrow night. It’s her sister’s last day, and I thought it might be a good opportunity to introduce Pansy to Pa. She’s been too nervous hitherto to come by herself. What do you think?”

“Have you asked Lucy?”

“Oh yes, she says it would be quite all right. Only Pa, as you may have noticed, is a bit old-fashioned—not that I wish to imply the slightest criticism of him, or anyone else for that matter.”

By ‘anyone else’ Tim meant ‘Mister’ and Mrs. à Court Smith. He had confided in ‘Mister’, with the result that Mrs. à Court Smith had invited him to dinner the following night, and talked to him about it, advising him not to let his friendship with the girl become serious. Tim had been too shy to tell her that he
was
serious.

‘Mister’ had confided Tim’s confidence to Phillip, taking the line that he ought to warn young Tim not to make an ass of himself.

“Oil and water won’t mix in this world, there’s no use denying that fact!”

“But human beings aren’t internal combustion engines, ‘Mister’.”

“You can make a joke of it, but I’ve known men marrying beneath them before, and it jolly well doesn’t work, old chap! I know what I’m talking about!”

“Ah!” said Phillip, noncommittally.

Tim had a secret admiration for Phillip, not only because he was so understanding, but he had fought in the war which to Tim seemed a truly terrible thing, of attacks night and day without ceasing in mud and blood, machine-guns going all the time, bombs bursting, scout planes falling in flames, little to eat and nowhere to sleep for four and a quarter years. How Phillip or anyone else had lived through it all Tim could not understand.

“Well, if Lucy says ask them up, why not ask them up? I’m sure they would enjoy themselves. What’s the sister like?”

“She’s quite different from Pansy, who is very shy. Her name’s Marigold, by the way,” breathed Tim, as though he were afraid of his own voice. “She’s a short-hand typist in Dorchester, and, Pansy says, has some experience of office work. We’ll want someone to keep the books, of course, when the Works are built.”

“When do you think you’ll get going?”

“Oh, in the spring. We’ll be able to employ several girls as well; we’ll have five thousand square feet of floor space, you know, half in the machine shop, the other half in the loft upstairs. We’re having a bench put along all one wall, with almost continuous windows to let in light. The whole place will be wired for electricity, of course. We’ll have our own batteries and engine, and by the way, the Misses Jardine in the house up the lane want electric light, too, but say they can’t afford to have a plant installed. So Ernest and I are considering a cable from our battery house, to be laid under the lane, if we can get permission to dig it up, and then under the Jardines’ garden and orchard to their house.”

“Won’t an underground cable cost a lot?”

“I haven’t yet gone into the matter deeply, but to be on the safe side we think we ought to get an inch and a quarter submarine cable, which will come to close on a hundred pounds. I hope they won’t find that prohibitive, for the two sisters weren’t left too much money when Colonel Jardine died, so I understand.” Tim was almost inaudible with sympathy for the two elderly spinsters, daughters of the late Colonel.

“Why not two overhead wires, on posts? After all, it won’t be much of a voltage from your batteries.”

“We did suggest that,” said Tim, “But they are dead against it, for their father’s sake. He loathed everything modern, I understand. In India they used to have a great many native servants, and nothing mechanical. Even two natives to work one spade, they said, one to push it into the ground, the other to pull the handle down by a string. It was a question of the caste system, I think.”

“To share out the food, I suppose, in a land of semi-starvation and over-population. I never thought of it that way before, Tim.”

“Nor did I, now I come to think of it.”

“Then we’ll be seeing the two girls tomorrow night?”

“Yes, I’ll go down first thing in the morning and tell them the good news. I am awfully grateful to you for your advice, most truly I am. Are you quite comfortable in that bed? I meant to rewire the mattress, I hope it’s all right?”

“Oh yes, I’ve got a coal-scuttle under the middle, which supports the sagging bit. I know now how a cuckoo feels in a wren’s nest.”

The two girls arrived before supper. Pansy was small and shy, her sister taller and apparently confident. The sister perched herself upon the edge of the table, while they were waiting for Pa to come down, swinging one long leg under a skirt which barely covered the other knee, and remained thus when Pa came in, holding out a hand to him when Tim introduced his father.

They sat at table. Pa held up carving knife and fork, and with a genial expression said, “Pansy, there’s rabbit pie, or brawn. Which do you prefer?”

Pansy, who had scarcely spoke so far, replied almost inaudibly, “I don’t mind what I have.”

Knife and fork still poised, Pa said, “Well, I don’t mind either! It’s for you to say.”

Perceiving her nervousness Phillip said, “Plump for rabbit pie, Rusty wants the bones afterwards!”

“Rabbit pie it is,” said Pa, after which he turned to the other guest. The name of Marigold seemed to be too much for him, so he said, “And you?” disguising his fear with a quizzical glance.

“I’ll try the brawn, if it’s all the same to you,” she replied, with a wink at Phillip, which he amiably ignored.

Three slices were meticulously detached from the mould, and handed on a cracked Wedgwood plate of terracotta and gold with the Copleston crest on the rim.

Phillip had bought a bottle of claret. “Ha! I’m in luck! Pansy, you must come to supper every night!” declared Pa.

Ernest and Fiennes ate without a word. Afterwards Lucy and the girls washed up. Tim looked happy, and the five of them went for a walk by the river. The next day, as Tim was scraping the dining-room wall—the temporary office—Phillip sitting in the next room heard Pa go to him and say, “Tim, I shall have no objection to your engagement to Pansy.”

“Oo-aa,” Phillip heard Tim reply from the top of the ladder.

Pa went away into the garden; Tim got down from the ladder and looking round the doorway said, “Am I disturbing you, Phil!” When Phillip said not at all, Tim went on, “If you can spare a moment to come with me to The Point, I have something to impart.”

They went together past the workshop to a small triangular parcel of semi-waste land which once had been a garden.

Tim, expressing himself joyfully, then continued in a style and manner acquired from reading nondescript humorous fiction.

“You see, lying before you, my dear Phil, The Point. I ask you to regard it as it is now. I think you will agree that it is a mass of weeds, and, as you will perceive if you look closely, cankered apple trees, standing among what can only be described as entirely useless blackcurrant bushes. On one side of The Point lies this lane, on the other, that deep railway cutting. From my early years this has been known as The Point; but the point about The Point is this, my dear Phil: there is every likelihood of The Point in the near future being cleared, and a new building of fabulous dimensions and floor-space arising on it!”

“I see. But—won’t it require a certain amount of capital, Tim?”

“Ah, that, my dear sir, is precisely to the point! Or should I say, The Scheme! It’s all rather wonderful, in a way, Phil. You see, one day we shall have a certain amount of money; and bearing this in mind, and moreover the pressing fact that treadle-lathe work at any time is dashed tiring, and most particularly so at night, as I know to my cost—do I not!—well, to cut a long story short, we have long considered that the sum of two hundred pounds, advanced against our future inheritance, would buy sundry long-felt wants, to wit, an oil engine and an extra lathe capable of taking much bigger work than the much-esteemed treadle lathe, of somewhat ancient pattern, let me add!”

“Very good idea, Tim, but what’s this leading up to?”

“Ah, but that is the point, my dear Phil! You see, we originally argued this way. Two hundred pounds would allow us to take more contract work for sac-machines for little men to make batteries. So we hied us to the town and went to see a certain legal luminary who has recently arrived in Shakesbury from, I am told, South Devon. The said legal luminary at once said he would make enquiries on our behalf. And lo and behold, likewise hey-presto!
we learned that we could obtain much more than the sum we originally contemplated asking for! So you see, my dear future brother-in-law, Ernest, Fiennes and I have been scheming schemes, and one of them is now about to materialise, to wit, the erection of a Works at The Point, where the wheels of industry will turn upon several thousand square feet floor-space, both up and down! There is no end to the possibilities of such a scheme, my dear Phil! Such as, in addition to the aforesaid oil engine and power lathe, the very latest pattern of milling machine, an extra
three-inch
lathe for garage work, besides other machines absolutely necessary for the firm of Copleston Brothers. A first-floor storey will of course have benches, where later on girls can make batteries. Why indeed should
we
not make batteries, as well as the sac-machines for the manufacture thereof? The whole, of course, to be lit by our own electric light, which will be extended to the house!”