The Matchmaker (28 page)

“I was just going to; it’s second nature to me by now,” she said, and began to pour out.

There was not enough to eat on the table, a fact which the children saw from their first mouthfuls and which caused Jean and Alda (who were also hungry, the one after the afternoon’s adventures and the other because of a delayed tea hour) to limit their own intake so that Jenny, Louise and Meg might have the more. Mr. Waite neither noticed what they ate nor thought about it, being too busy eating his own share—which was large—and curbing his impatience over the account, which now took place, of the events at Rush House. Alda listened with deep interest, for she had that strong interest in the discussion of everyday events, especially when they admit of some technical analysis, which is felt by practical women who lack the poetic or speculative streak; her faculty of Wonder was slightly underdeveloped. What she relished was anecdote, or information lucidly and lightly conveyed, or the shrewd entertaining dissection of people’s characters but she disliked scandal.

As soon as his guests had finished commenting upon the behaviour of the horses and their riders, Mr. Waite took advantage of their faces being temporarily buried in their cups and mugs to launch into a lecture upon the folly of ladies and kiddies trying to ride horses at all; adorned with sombre illustrations drawn from the fate of ladies known to him and his family who had attempted to ride horses in Daleham and its neighbouring districts.

His audience listened politely for a while, but at the third account of a female coming to equine disaster, Alda broke in impatiently:

“But that doesn’t prove anything. Thousands of women ride horses every day and are all right. I shan’t let this afternoon’s affair make any difference to the children’s lessons.”

“Oh Mother,
need
I learn any more?” burst out Louise imploringly. Mr. Waite fixed reproachful eyes upon Alda. There, you see, his look said.

“But, darling, it’s such fun! and later on you’ll be so glad that you started when you were quite young.”

Louise projected her lower lip and looked down at her plate. Her eyelids quivered and she was silent.

“It’s super,” said Jenny, giving her a scornful glance.

Louise muttered something that no one could hear.

“You’ll be all right, now you’ve fallen off,” said Jean, soothingly. “Everyone has to fall off once—I don’t know why,” and she giggled.

“Oh
yes
!” exclaimed Jenny, suddenly; she had been talking in lowered tones with Louise. “Bicycles,” she added, turning to her mother.

“Yes, but that’s a long way off, if we ever do get them, and you can ride every week for twelve weeks
now
,” said Alda shortly. She was annoyed with Louise at displaying her timid, over-feminine aspect before Mr. Waite (who needed no confirmation in his view of The Sex), and making herself appear as an unsympathetic mother.

“I’m not frightened of bicycles,” explained Louise, and Jenny’s mutter of “It’s a wonder you aren’t” was lost in the general laugh. Alda took advantage of this happier turn to lead the conversation on to the pleasures of bicycling and tea ended—though Mr. Waite more than once compressed his lips or shook his head—on a cheerful note.

The children ran out to see what Meg persisted in calling “those poor chickens,” and the ladies lingered over a cigarette with their host in the dark little room where one late ray had found its way through the shaded window and the primroses glimmered green and yellow out of the golden dusk.

Six o’clock from the village church chimed slowly across the fields. A silence had fallen in the casual talk: the three figures
seated
about the table looked very distinct in the soft dim light. Mr. Waite happened to be gazing at Alda.

“Blackbird!” said Jean suddenly and softly, lifting her head so that her hair slid back, and she got up and wandered over to the window and thence out into the garden. The blackbird was singing near at hand but she could not see him.

“We’ll help you wash up,” announced Alda, determined that she would leave Jean alone with him, thus employed, while she went out to find the children.

“I can’t allow that,” said Mr. Waite gallantly, but Alda was already stacking the cups.

“What beautiful things you have,” she said civilly: she could never admire any objects, except those made by God, without a slight feeling of envy.

“These are my mother’s; they come from The Old Home,” said Mr. Waite and the faithful negro servants, the porch fragrant with mint juleps, the family portraits and the Federal hordes were all contained in his tone.

“Aren’t you afraid I’ll break them?” asked Alda, giving him one backward glance as she went out of the door. It was bad of her, but she could not help it; in another minute she would have flung open a window and shrieked.

“Of course not!” he protested eagerly, hurrying after her with the milk jug. “Ladies never break things.”

“Don’t you believe it,” she muttered, looking round for a dishcloth. “I’m the world’s champion smasher.” She pushed up her sleeves and took a steaming kettle from the horrid little stove.

“Oh, I can’t believe that, you know.”

“It’s true, all the same. You know,” she continued, beginning vigorously yet carefully upon the cups with a little mop, “you have mistaken ideas about women, Mr. Waite.”

“Have I?” He was standing still, with the tablecloth in his hand, looking at her.

“Yes. You’re old-fashioned about them.”

“I prefer to be,” he answered stiffly, taking a cup and beginning to dry it.

“I daresay you do, but it isn’t fair to all the women that you know personally.” She raised her voice. “Jean! Come and give a hand with the washing up!” But Jean had wandered away into the fields.

“That business about women riding, for example,” said Alda. “If everybody had those views none of us would ever do anything at all. Women aren’t always remembering that they’re women, you know.”

“Aren’t they?” Mr. Waite held the teacloth suspended while he gazed at her.

“Of course not! I don’t go creeping about all day thinking
I’m a woman
—
I’m a woman
. Do you go round thinking
I’m a man
—
I’m a man
?”

“Well—yes, I do, on the whole, I think,” he confessed. “Quite often, anyway!”

“Well, I don’t,” said Alda emphatically, setting down the last cup on the draining board. “I’m too busy enjoying or hating things and being a
person
.”

And she wrung out the miserable little dishcloth so hard that it tore.

“Oh, you are a feminist, then?” said Mr. Waite, but more in a tone of caution than in the one of righteous horror that might have been expected.

“Indeed I’m not; I think they’re crashing bores who can’t get their own way by natural means,” and she smiled: a smile which seemed an emanation from her hair, her eyes and her delightful nose. “Besides,” she went on more vaguely, “who would
want
the things they do? Oh, there you are,” to Jean, who now strolled in with hands in her pockets, “where have you been? It’s all done.”

“Looking for the blackbird,” Jean answered. “Look,” and she held up between her white forefinger and thumb a dark spike of bluebells in bud, “Isn’t that very early? They usually
aren’t
out until late April. I say, can I help you put things away?”

It was now Alda’s turn to wander away after the children while Jean and Mr. Waite made journeys between the kitchen and a beastly little cabinet lined with dirty plush in which the cups were stored. Jean said nothing, and he too was silent at first. Once or twice, when he was not looking, she glanced at him and thought how good-looking he was: Alda would have approved of this, but not of the thoughts which accompanied the glance. He, for his part, completely approved of Miss Hardcastle; her clothes, her placid silly manner, the casque of gilt hair that slid obediently as she moved her head yet never became untidy, her lack of disturbing qualities.

He also liked the aura of money which surrounded her. He was used to this type of girl at home in Daleham; the only daughter of wealthy parents, dressed in the height, but not the extreme, of fashion, with an ingenuous manner that did not match her sophisticated clothes and hairdressing. Such had been the provincial belles with whom he had danced and motored in his early youth, before the loss of the family money, and he felt much more at ease with Miss Hardcastle than he did with Mrs. Lucie-Browne. Presently he was making a mild joke or two, to which Jean, always ready for a laugh, cheerfully responded.

“Want to see the chickens hab their tea,” announced Meg threateningly, bustling into the room. She halted, lowering at them from under her fringe.

“Little girls should ask nicely and say ‘please’,” retorted Mr. Waite, slowly rising to his full height after tucking away the last cup, and looking down gravely upon her.

“I’m afraid there won’t be time for the chickens, it’s after Meg’s bedtime now,” said Alda, and thereupon what Mr. Waite, with sudden irritation, thought of as
the whole tribe
swarmed into the parlour. “Say good-bye to Mr. Waite, children.”

Did Mr. Waite shut the door upon them and turn back into his quiet room, in which the last light now lingered, with a feeling
of
relief, or did he loiter in the porch, watching them go across the meadow until they were out of sight, and then reluctantly re-enter his lonely bachelor abode? Reader, we have to irritate you by saying that he did both; he lingered a little at the door, and yet he was satisfied to take up the morning paper and sit down in the silent room to glance over it before going out to feed the chickens. But a strong impression remained with him; a shape, a face, certain intonations in a voice, presented themselves to him over and over again, against his will, until at last he pushed the paper aside and went out to his evening’s work.

“Oh, doesn’t the fresh air smell lovely—it’s like a present!” cried Jenny, as soon as the garden gate had shut behind them.

“Be quiet, Jen, he’ll hear you,” said Louise, glancing back at the cottage. “Mum,” taking her mother’s arm, “can we have a high tea when we get back? I’m starving.”

“So am I,” called back Jenny, who had run on ahead. “Those cakes! Ugh! I bet they didn’t come from the Linga-Longa!”

“Meg could peck a bit,” remarked a cross voice from below Alda’s waist, as if to itself. Alda silently stooped and lifted her up: the intonation meant that she was overtired.

“Poor man, he did his best, he just isn’t used to women with our appetites,” said Jean.

“He isn’t used to women at all,” muttered Alda. “All right, we’ll all have sardine sandwiches for supper when we get in.”

“Jean, does your side still hurt?” she went on.

“I can feel it, thanks, but it isn’t bad.”

“Try rubbing it with that stuff of mine to-night, it’s marvellous. You probably won’t know you’ve got a side to-morrow.”

“My botty still hurts,” sighed Louise. “Mother, need I have any more riding lessons? I do hate them.” She looked pathetically, but without real apprehension, at her mother. Alda’s bark was worse than her bite and her daughters knew it.

“Well——” Alda hesitated, then glanced at Jean.

“Don’t make her learn any more if she doesn’t want to,” said Jean cheerfully.

“Oh, thank you, darling, darling mother!” cried Louise, dancing about to express her gratitude and relief.

“Now don’t go telling everybody at the convent that you were
thrown
,” said Jenny severely, but also beginning to dance. “Come on, let’s go on ahead and lay the supper ready for the sandwiches.”

The evening hush led Jean’s thoughts on towards evenings of high summer, and she remembered seeing the lights of Paris sparkling in blue-grey August mist as they glided past the windows of the train which bore herself, a child, towards the mountains: awakening in the hour before dawn and drowsily hearing, to the hollow rumbling of milk churns rolled along the platform, the far-off, sonorous voices of porters chanting, “Lyons, Lyons”: awakening again—in the ghostly light before sunrise—the hour of the Resurrection—and turning her face towards the air blowing in through the window of the carriage where she lay and feeling it cold: becoming aware of effort trembling through all the train’s length and realising that it was now climbing: creeping into the corridor through the greyness and leaning out of the window: breathing the chill air fresh with dewy scents: looking out over dim green hillocks and fields and vales under a sky clear as water, with blossoming fruit trees standing like white clouds come down to earth: rubbing her eyes as smoke from the engine drifted across them for a moment and then, when the smoke drifted away again, suddenly seeing something far off on the horizon; an unsubstantial vastness heaving itself solemnly up into the colourless sky and touched with a spectral light, something which at one glance transformed all the scale of the land over which she was gazing: oh! it must be, it was, a mountain crowned with snow.

Her parents had at least given her holidays abroad, she thought; lonely holidays spent dawdling about in French and Swiss and Italian hotels while her parents were off ski-ing or
sun-bathing
or gambling, but never dull while she could look about her, and had money to buy a Tauchnitz edition of an English novel, and could exchange shy remarks in halting, execrable French with chambermaids and waiters and concierges. Years later, when she came to read Proust, she had thought that her own holidays had been not unlike those passed at Balbec by the delicate, morbid “I” of that story; she knew it all; the evening light on the white napkins laid on empty tables awaiting the hour of dining; the sharpened sense of life and importance given to fellow guests, who would have seemed ordinary in an uncoastal setting, by the brilliance and sting of sea air and light. Oh
yes
! she had cried to herself again and again in recognition when “I” fell in love with a girl he had never spoken to or had seen once through the window of a tram: and she remembered the page boy at the Miramar, the young life-saving attendant at the Bristol, and the waiter at the Floraison, and how she had silently loved them all. I have been in love so many times since I was eleven, she thought, but now something seems to be happening to me. Of course, he (this was Mr. Waite) is good-looking and he does ride marvellously but I don’t seem to be able to get thrilled about him. Of course, I still am very thrilled with my Mr. Potter.