Part 12

He could, if he had been so inclined, have observed the process at work after dinner, when, his mother seated with knitting in an arm-chair on the one side of the fire, and he with a cigar in another arm-chair on the other side of the fire, his legs stretched out straight to the blaze, they talked intermittently, a conversation in which the future played more part than the past. Henry found that his mother had definite ideas about the future, ideas which she took for granted that he would share. He knew that he ought to say at once that he did not share them; but that would entail disappointing his mother, and this he was reluctant to do—at any rate on the first day. Poor old lady—let her be happy. What was the good of sending her to bed worried? In a day or two he would give her a hint. He remembered that she was not usually slow at taking a hint. He hoped she would not make a fuss. Really, it would be unreasonable if she made a fuss; she could not seriously expect him to spend his life in talking to Lynes! But for the present, let her keep her illusions; she seemed so greatly to enjoy telling him about her farm, and he needn’t listen; he could say “Yes,” and “Fancy,” from time to time, since that seemed to satisfy her, and, meanwhile, he could think about Isabel. He had promised Isabel that he would not be away for more than three days at the outside. He hoped he would not find it too difficult to get away back to London at the end of three days; there would be a fuss if he went, but on the other hand Isabel would make a far worse fuss if he stayed. Isabel was not as easy-going as he could have wished, though her flares of temper, when they were not so prolonged as to become inconvenient, amused him and constituted part of the attraction she had for him. He rendered to Isabel the homage that she attracted him just as much now as five years ago, before he left for the Argentine. She had even improved in the interval; improved with experience, he told himself cynically, not resenting the experience in the least; she had improved in appearance too, having found her type; and he recalled the shock of delight with which he had seen her again: the curious pale eyes, and the hard line of the clubbed black hair, cut square across her brows; certainly Isabel had attraction, and was as wild as she could be, not a woman one could neglect with impunity, if one didn’t want her to be off and away.... No. There was a flick and a spirit about Isabel; that was what he liked. How his mother would disapprove of Isabel! he sent out, to disguise a little chuckle, a long stream of smoke, and the thought of his mother’s disapproval tickled him much. His mother, rambling on about foot-and-mouth disease, and about how afraid they had been, last year, that it would come across into Gloucestershire, while Isabel, probably, was at some supper-party sitting on a table and singing to her guitar those Moorish songs in her husky, seductive voice. He was not irritated with his mother for her difference; at another moment he might have been irritated; but at present he was too comfortable, too warm, too full of a good dinner, to find her unconsciousness anything but diverting; and, as the contrast appeared to him more and more as a good joke, he encouraged her with sympathetic comments and with the compliment of his grave attention, so that she put behind her finally and entirely the disappointment she had had over the three hundred acres, and expounded to him all her dearest schemes, leaning forward tapping him on the knee with her long knitting-needle to enforce her points, enlisting his sympathy in all her difficulties with Lynes and Lynes’ obstinacy, exactly as she had planned to do, and as, up to the present, she had not secured a very good opportunity of doing. This was ideal: to sit by the fireside after dinner with Henry, long, slender, nodding gravely, his eyes on the fire intent with concentration, and to pour out to him all the little grievances of years, and the satisfactions too, for she did not believe in dwelling only upon what went wrong, but also upon that which went right.

“And so you see, dear boy, I have really been able to make both ends meet; it was a little difficult at times, I own, but now I am bound to say the farm is paying very nicely. Lynes could show you the account-books, any time; I think perhaps you ought to run your eye over them. You must have picked up a lot of useful knowledge, out there?”

“Oh yes,” said Henry, broadly.

“Well, it will all come in very useful here, won’t it? although I daresay English practice is different in many ways. I could see that Lynes very quickly discovered that you knew what you were talking about. It will be a great thing for me, Henry, a very great thing, to have your support and advice in future.”

Henry made an attempt; he said, “But if I don’t happen to be on the spot?”

“Oh, well, you won’t be very far away,” said Mrs. Martin comfortably. “Even if you do like to have rooms in London I could always get you at a moment’s notice.”

Henry found great consolation in this remark; it offered a loophole, and he readily placed his faith in loopholes. He was also relieved, because he considered, his mother having said that, there was no necessity now for him to say anything. Let her prattle about the estate, and about the use he was going to be to her; there would always be, now, those rooms in London in which he could take refuge. “Why, you suggested it yourself,” he could say, raising aggrieved eyebrows, if any discussion arose in the future. It was true that her next observations diminished the value of his loophole, but he chose to ignore that; what was said, was said. Rooms in London, Christmas with his mother, and perhaps a week-end in the summer, and a couple of days’ shooting in the autumn; he wouldn’t mind a little rough shooting, and had already ascertained from Lynes that there were a good many partridges and a few pheasants; and he could always take back some birds to Isabel. He saw himself, on the station platform, with his flat gun-case and cartridge bag, and the heavy bundle of limp game, rabbits, partridges, and pheasants tied together by the legs. He would go out to-morrow, and see what he could pick up for Isabel. His mother would never object; she would think the game was for his own use, in those rooms she, thank goodness, so conveniently visualized. And if it wasn’t for Isabel, in future years, well, no doubt it would be for somebody else.

He awoke from these plans to what his mother was saying.

“I don’t think it would be good for you to live entirely in the country. So I shall drive you away, Henry dear, whenever you show signs of becoming a vegetable. I shall be able to carry on perfectly well without you, as I have done all these years. You need never worry about that. Besides, you must go to London to look for Mrs. Henry.”

“What?” said Henry, genuinely startled.

His mother, said, smiling, that some day he would have to marry. She would like to know her grandchildren before she died. There was the long attic at the top of the house which they could have as a playroom.

“Sure there is no one?” she questioned him again, more urgently, more archly this time, and he denied it laughing, to reassure her; and suddenly the laughter which he had affected, became hearty, for he had thought of Isabel, Isabel whom he would never dream of marrying, and who would never dream of marrying him; Isabel, insolent, lackadaisical, exasperating, with the end of a cigarette—a fag, she called it—smouldering between her lips; Isabel with her hands stuck in the pockets of her velveteen jacket, and her short black hair; Isabel holding forth, perched on the corner of a table, contradicting him, getting angry, pushing him away when he tried to catch hold of her and kiss her—“Oh, you think the idea of marrying funny enough now,” said his mother sagely, hearing him laugh, “but you may be coming to me with a very different tale in a few months’ time.”

He was in a thoroughly good temper by now; he lounged deeper into his arm-chair and stirred the logs with his foot. “Good cigars these, mother,” he said, critically examining the one he took from between his teeth; “who advises you about cigars?”

“Mr. Thistlethwaite recommended those,” Mrs. Martin replied enchanted.

“Mr. Thistlethwaite? Who’s Mr. Thistlethwaite?” asked Henry.

She had an impulse to tell him, even now, the story of Mr. Thistlethwaite and the three hundred acres; to ask him whether he thought she had acted very unscrupulously; but a funny inexplicable pride held her back. She said quietly that Mr. Thistlethwaite was the local M.P. Henry, to her relief, betrayed no further interest. He continued to stir the fire absently with the toe of his shoe, and his mother, watching him, looked down a long vista of such evenings, when the lamplight would fall on to the bowl of flowers she placed so skilfully to receive it, and on the black satin head of Henry.

X

She opened her window before getting into bed, and looked out upon a clear night and the low-lying mists of autumn. It was very still; the church clock chimed, a dog barked in the distance, and the breathless silence spread once more like a lake round the ripple of those sounds. She looked towards that bit of England which was sufficient to her, milky and invisible; she thought of the ricks standing in the silent rickyard, and the sleeping beasts near by in the sheds; she, who had been brisk and practical for so many years, became a little dreamy. Then bestirring herself, she crossed the room to bed. All was in order: a glass of milk by the bed, a box of matches, a clean handkerchief, her big repeater watch. She wound it carefully, and put it away under the many pillows. She sank luxuriously into the pillows—that little pleasure which was every night renewed. She thought to herself that she was really almost too happy; such happiness was a pain; there was no means of expressing it; she could not shout and sing, so it had to be bottled up, and the compression was pain, exquisitely. For about five minutes, during which she lived, with a swimming head, through a lifetime of sensations, she lay awake; then amongst her pillows she fell asleep.

XI

Next morning she was awakened by some sound she could not at first define, but which she presently identified as the remote ringing of the telephone bell. She listened. The servants would answer it, of course, but she wondered who could be calling the house so early in the day. Feeling very wide awake she slipped into her dressing-gown and slippers and went to the top of the stairs to listen. She heard Henry’s voice, downstairs in the hall.

“Yes, yes, hullo. Yes, I’m here. Is that you, darling? Sorry to ring you up at this hour, but later on every word I said would be overheard. Yes, infernally public.” He laughed softly. “No, I don’t suppose anyone ever uses this telephone for purposes they’d rather keep to themselves. Oh, all right, thanks. Pleased to see me? Yes, I think so. Look here, things are going to be deuced awkward. Well, she expects me to spend most of my time here—Yes, an awful bore—Oh, well, it’s natural enough, I suppose. Five years, and all that, don’t you know. Well, but what am I to say? Can’t be too brutal, can one?—Oh, bored stiff in two days, of course, I simply don’t know what to do about it. Besides, I’m dying to get back to you.—Yes, silly, of course.—I wish you’d help, Isabel. Tell me what to say to the old lady.—No, she seems to take it quite for granted. Oh, all the year round, with an occasional week in London.—I can’t say I think it in the least funny.—Well, of course, if I was a downright brute....”

Mrs. Martin turned and went back into her bedroom. She shut the door very gently behind her. Presently she heard Henry come upstairs and go into his room.

THE PARROT _To H. G. N._

I

Once upon a time there was a small green parrot, with a coral-coloured head. It should have lived in Uruguay, but actually it lived in Pimlico, in a cage, a piece of apple stuck between the bars at one end of its perch, and a lump of sugar between the bars at the other. It was well-cared for; its drinking water was fresh every day, the seed in its little trough was daily renewed, and the cage stood on a table in the window to get the yellow sunlight that occasionally penetrated the muslin curtains. The room, furthermore, was well-warmed, and all cats and such dangers kept rigorously away. In spite of all this, the bird was extremely disagreeable. If anyone went to stand beside its cage, in order to admire its beautiful and brilliant colouring, it took refuge in a corner, buried its head beneath the seed-trough, and screamed on a harsh, shrill note like a pig in the shambles. Whenever it believed itself to be unobserved, it returned to the eternal and unavailing occupation of trying to get out of its cage.

In early days, it had had a cage of less substantial make: being a strong little bird it had contrived to loosen a bar and to make its escape once or twice into the room; but, consequent on this, a more adequate cage had been procured, the bars of which merely twanged like harp-strings under the assault of the beak, and yielded not at all. Nevertheless the parrot was not discouraged. It had twenty-four hours out of every day at its disposal, and three hundred and sixty-five days out of every year. It worked at the bars with its beak; it stuck its feet against the sides, and tugged at the bar. Once it discovered how to open the door, after which the door had to be secured with a piece of string. The owners of the parrot explained to it, that, should it make good its escape from the house, it would surely fall a prey to a cat, a dog, or a passing motor; and if to none of these things, then to the climate of England, which in no way resembled the climate of Uruguay. When they stood beside its cage giving those explanations, it got down into the corner, cowered, and screamed.

The parrot was looked after by the under-housemaid, a slatternly girl of eighteen, with smudges of coal on her apron, and a smear of violet eyes in a white sickly face. She used to talk to the parrot while she was cleaning out the tray at the bottom of the cage, confiding to it all her perplexities, which she could safely do without fear of being overheard, by reason of the din the parrot maintained meanwhile. In spite of its lack of response, she had for the parrot a passion which transformed it into a symbol. Its jade-green and coral seemed to give her a hint of something marvellously far removed from Pimlico. Her fifteen minutes with the parrot every morning remained the one fabulous excursion of her day; it was a journey to Bagdad, a peep into the caves of Aladdin. “Casting down their golden crowns upon a glassy sea,” she murmured, in a hotch-potch of religion and romance—for the two in her mind were plaited together into an unexplained but beautiful braid, that was a source of confusion, rapture, and a strange unhappiness.

Apart from the function of cleaning out the cage, which she performed with efficiency, she was, considered as a housemaid, a failure. Perpetually in trouble, she tried to mend her ways; would turn energetic, would scrub and polish; then, as she relapsed into day-dreams, the most important part of her work would be left forgotten. Scolding and exasperation stormed around her ears. Sometimes she appeared disheartened and indifferent; sometimes she gazed in a scared fashion at the indignant authority and set about her work with a dazed vehemence. But black-lead and Brasso remained to her, in spite of her efforts, of small significance.

Meanwhile the parrot gave up the attempt to get out of its cage, and spent its days moping upon the topmost perch.

II

Peace reigned in the house. The parrot no longer tore at its bars or screamed, and as for the under-housemaid, she was a transformed creature: punctual, orderly, competent, and unobtrusive. The cook said she didn’t know what had come over the bird and the girl. According to her ideas, the situation was now most satisfactory. The two rebels had at last fallen into line with the quiet conduct of the house, and there was no longer anything to complain of, either in the sitting-room or the basement. It would have been hypercritical to complain that the girl’s quietness was disconcerting. When her tasks were done, she retired to her bedroom, where she might be found at any moment sitting with her hands lying in her lap, the violet eyes looking out of the window. Well, if she chose so to spend her time.... The parrot sat huddled on its perch, flaunting in plumage indeed, for that was beyond its control, but irreproachable in demeanour. It appeared almost to apologize by its humility for the garishness of colour wherewith Nature had afflicted it.

One morning the cook came down as was her custom, and found the following note addressed to her, propped up on the kitchen dresser:

“Dear Mrs. White, i have gone to wear the golden crown but i have lit the stokhole and laid the brekfast.”

Very much annoyed, and wondering what tricks the girl had been up to, she climbed the stairs to the girl’s bedroom. The room had been tidied, and the slops emptied away, and the girl was lying dead upon the bed.

She flew downstairs with the news. In the sitting-room, where she collided with her mistress, she noticed the parrot on its back on the floor of the cage, its two little legs sticking stiffly up into the air.

PRINTED BY GARDEN CITY PRESS, LETCHWORTH, ENGLAND.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.