Book: The Good Comrade

U >> Una L. Silberrad >> The Good Comrade




The packing and dispatching of the box gave great pleasure to the Van
Heigens; but the receiving and unpacking gave even greater pleasure
when at last it reached Miss Snooks at White's Cottage. Julia had not
told Mijnheer why she was Miss Snooks now and he, after grave
consideration, decided that it must be because of the legacy, and in
fulfilment of some obscure English law of property. Having so decided,
he addressed the case in good faith, and advised her of its departure.

Julia and Mr. Gillat planted the things that came in the box; Julia
planted most, but Mr. Gillat enjoyed it even when he was only looking
on. There was one bulb she set when he was not there to look on, but
it did not come with the others. She chose a spot that best fulfilled
the conditions described in the directions for growing daffodils and
there, late one afternoon, she planted the bulb that she had brought
with her from the Van Heigens. Afterwards she marked the place round
and told Johnny and her father there was a choice flower there which
was not to be touched.

Julia went to the market town as she had arranged. Mr. Gillat worked
in the garden; Captain Polkington watched him for a little and then
went out, after spending, as he always did, some time getting ready.
He took a basket with him; he thought of collecting fir-cones and he
objected to the sack, though it held a vast deal more; he felt
carrying it to be derogatory to a soldier and a gentleman. It is true
he did not get fir-cones that day, but he really meant to when he
started.

Julia, in the meantime, did her shopping, and, having loaded herself
with as much as she could carry--more than most people could except
those Continental maids and mistresses who do their own marketing, she
started for home. It was a long walk--a long way to Halgrave and a
good bit beyond that to the cottage. She did not expect to reach the
village till dusk, but she thought very probably she would find her
father or Mr. Gillat there; she had suggested that one or both of them
should come to meet her and help carry the parcels the rest of the
way.

Johnny fell in with the suggestion; she saw him through the twilight
before she reached the village. Her father, she concluded, was still
sulky at her refusal to have his company earlier and so would not come
now.

"I suppose father would not come?" she said, as she and Mr. Gillat
walked on after a readjustment of the burden.

"Oh, no," Johnny answered; "it was not that; I'm sure he would have
come if he had been in when I started, but he was not back then."

"Not back?" Julia repeated. "Why, where has he gone?"

"Well," Johnny replied slowly, "he said he was going to get fir-cones,
but I'm not sure, I didn't see him go across the heath. Still, I dare
say he went--he took a basket, so I think he must have gone."

Julia apparently did not find this very conclusive evidence. "There is
not anywhere much about here where he can go," she said; much less as
if she were stating a fact than as if she were reviewing likely and
unlikely places. "There is only the one road, and that goes to
Halgrave, and there is nowhere for him there."

"No, oh, no," Johnny said; "there really is nowhere there."

"There is the 'Dog and Pheasant,'" Julia went on meditatively, "but he
would not get anything he cared about there."

"No," Mr. Gillat said decidedly; "besides he would not go there, he
would not sit in a small country public house and--er--and--sit
there--and so on--he would not think of going to such a place. It is
one thing when you are out in the country for a day's fishing or
something, to have a glass of ale and a piece of bread and cheese at
an inn, but the other is quite different; he wouldn't do that--oh, no.
To sit in a little bar and--"

"Booze," Julia concluded for him. "Johnny, you are always a wonder to
me; how you have contrived to live so long and yet to keep your belief
in man unspotted from the world beats me."

Johnny looked uncomfortable and a little puzzled. "Well, but your
father--" he began.

"My father is a man," Julia interrupted, "and I would not undertake to
say a man would not do anything--on occasions--or a woman either, for
the matter of that. There is a beast in most men, and an archangel in
lots, and a snob, and a prig, and a dormant hero, and an embryo poet.
There are great possibilities in men; you have to watch and see which
is coming out top and back that, and then half the time you are wrong.
Of course, at father's age, possibilities are getting over; one or two
things have come top and stay there."

Mr. Gillat opened the cottage door and, not answering these
distressing generalities, fell back on his one fact. "Look," he said,
pointing to an empty peg, "he must have gone after fir-cones; you see
the basket has gone; he took it with him; I am sure he would not have
taken it to the 'Dog.'"

"I believe their whisky is very bad," Julia said, and seemed to think
more of that than the argument of the basket. "I'll give him another
hour before I set out to look for him."

She gave him the hour and then, in spite of Mr. Gillat's entreaties to
be allowed to go in her place, set out for Halgrave. But she did not
have to go all the way, for she met her father coming back. And she
early discovered that, if he had not been to the "Dog and Pheasant,"
he had been somewhere else where he could get whisky. They walked home
together, and she made neither comments nor inquiries; she did not
consider that evening a suitable time. The Captain was only a little
muddled and, as has been before said, a very little alcohol was
sufficient to do that; he was quite clear enough to be a good deal
relieved by his daughter's behaviour, and even thought that she
noticed nothing amiss. Indeed, by the morning, he had himself almost
come to think there was nothing to notice.

But alas, for the Captain! He had never learnt to beware of those
deceptive people who bide their time and bring into domestic life the
diplomatic policy of speaking on suitable occasions only. He came
down-stairs that morning very well pleased with himself; he felt that
he had vindicated the rights of man yesterday; this conclusion was
arrived at by a rather circuitous route, but it was gratifying; it was
also gratifying to think that he had been able to enjoy himself
without being found out. But Julia soon set him right on this last
point; she did not reproach him or, as Mrs. Polkington would have
done, point out the disgrace he would bring upon them; she only told
him that it must not occur again. She also explained that, while he
lived in her house, she had a right to dictate in these matters and,
what was more, she was going to do so.

At this the Captain was really hurt; his feeling for dignity was very
sensitive, though given to manifesting itself in unusual ways. "Am I
to be dependent for the rest of my days?" he asked.

Julia did not answer; she thought it highly probable.

"Am I to be dictated to at every turn?" he went on.

Julia did answer. "No," she said; "I don't think there will be any
need for that."

Captain Polkington paid no attention to the answer; he was standing
before the kitchen fire, apostrophising things in general rather than
asking questions.

"Are my goings out and comings in to be limited by my daughter? Am I
to ask her permission before I accept hospitality or make friends?"

"Friends?" said Julia. "Then it was not 'The Dog and Pheasant' you
went to, yesterday? I thought not."

"Then you thought wrong," her father retorted incautiously; "I did go
there."

"To begin with," Julia suggested; "but you came across some one, and
went on--is that it?"

The Captain denied it, but he had not his wife's and daughters' gifts;
his lies were always of the cowardly and uninspired kind that seldom
serve any purpose. Julia did not believe him, and set to work cross
questioning him so that soon she knew what she wanted. It seemed that
her surmise was correct; he had met some one at the "Dog and
Pheasant"; a veterinary surgeon who had come there to doctor a horse.
They had struck up an acquaintance--the Captain had the family gift
for that--and the surgeon had asked him to come to his house on the
other side of Halgrave.

When the information reached this point Julia said suavely, but with
meaning: "Perhaps you had better not go there again."

"I shall certainly go when I choose," Captain Polkington retorted; "I
should like to know what is to prevent me and why I should not?"

Julia remembered his dignity. "Shall we say because it is too far?"
she suggested.

After that she dismissed the subject; she did not see any need to
pursue it further; her father knew her wishes--commands, perhaps, he
called them--all that was left for her to do was to see that he could
not help fulfilling them, and that was not to be done by much talking
any more than by little. So she made no further comments on his doings
and, to change the subject, told him she had bought some whisky in the
town yesterday and he had better open the bottle at dinner time.

The Captain stared for a moment, but quickly recovered from his
astonishment, though not because he recognised that a little whisky at
home was part of a judicious system. He merely thought that his
daughter was going to treat him properly after all, and in spite of
what had been lately said. This idea was a little modified when he
found that, though he drank the whisky, Julia kept the bottle under
lock and key.

It also seemed that she found a way of enforcing her wishes, or at
least preventing frequent transgressions of them, although, of course,
she was prepared for occasional mishaps. There really was nothing at
the "Dog and Pheasant" that the Captain could put up with even if he
had not been always very short of money--absurdly short even of
coppers--and Julia saw that he was short. There remained nothing for
him but the hospitality of acquaintances, and they did not abound in
Halgrave, the only place within reach; also, as he declared, they were
a stingy lot. The next time he called upon his new friend, the
veterinary surgeon, he was at a loss to understand this; it was unlike
his previous experience of the man and most disagreeably surprising;
he could not think why it should happen. But then he had not seen
Julia set out for Halgrave on the afternoon of the same day that she
explained things to him. She had on all her best clothes, even her
best boots, in spite of the bad roads. She looked trim and dainty as
a Frenchwoman, but there was something about her which suggested
business.

There are, no doubt, advantages attached to the simple life. It is
decidedly easier to deal with your drawback when you do not have to
pretend it has no existence. You can enlist help from outside if you
can go boldly to veterinary surgeons and others, and say that whisky
is your father's weakness, and would they please oblige and gratify
you by not offering him any.




CHAPTER XVII

NARCISSUS TRIANDRUS STRIATUM, THE GOOD COMRADE


The winter wore away; a very long winter, and a very cold one to those
at the cottage who were used to the mild west country. But at last
spring came; late and with bitter winds and showers of sleet, but none
the less wonderful, especially as one had to look to see the tentative
signs of its coming. March in Marbridge used to mean violets and
daffodils, tender green shoots and balmy middays. March here means
days of pale clean light and great sweeping wind which chased grey
clouds across a steely sky, and stirred the lust for fight and freedom
in men's minds and set them longing to be up and away and at battle
with the world or the elements. This restlessness, which those who
have lost it call divine, took possession of Julia that springtime,
and a dissatisfaction with the simple life and its narrow limits beset
her. Surely, she found herself asking, this was not the end of all
things--this cottage to be the limit of her life and ambitions; her
work to grow cabbages and eat them, to keep her father in the paths of
temperance and sobriety, and to make Johnny's closing days happy? The
March winds spoke vaguely of other things; they whispered of the life
she had put from her; the big, wide, moving, thinking, feeling life
which would have been living indeed. Worse, they whispered of the man
who had offered it to her, the man whom her heart told her she would
have made friend and comrade if only circumstances had allowed him to
make her wife. But she thrust these thoughts from her; she had no
choice, she never had a choice; now less if possible than before,
there was no heart-aching decision to make. The work she had taken up
could not be put down; she must go on even if voices stronger and more
real than these wind ones called her out.

One day the crocuses which Mijnheer had sent came into flower; Julia
thought she had never seen anything so beautiful as the little purple
and golden cups, partly because they had been sent in kindness of
heart, partly, no doubt, because she had grown them herself, and she
had never grown a flower which had its root in the inarticulate joy of
all things at the first flowering of dead brown earth and monotonous
lifeless days. The next event in her calendar, and Johnny's, was the
blooming of the fruit trees. She had seen hillside orchards in the
west country break into a foam of flower--a sight perhaps as beautiful
as any England has to show. But, to her mind, it did not compare with
the sparse white bloom which lay like a first hoar frost on her
crooked trees and showed cold and delicate against the pale blue sky.
After that, nearly every day, there was something fresh and
interesting for Mr. Gillat and Julia, so that the March wind was
forgotten, except in the ill-effect on Captain Polkington with whom it
had disagreed a good deal, both in health and temper.

That spring, as indeed every spring, there was a flower show in London
at the Temple Gardens. The things exhibited were principally bulb
flowers, ixias, iris, narcissus and the like; the event was
interesting to growers, both professional and amateur. Joost Van
Heigen came over from Holland to attend; he was sent by his father in
a purely business capacity, but of course he was expected, and himself
expected, to enjoy it, too; there would be many novelties exhibited
and many beautiful flowers in which he would feel the sober
appreciative pleasure of the connoisseur. He came to England some days
before the show; he had, besides attending that, to see some important
customers on business, also one or two English growers.

Now, certain districts of Norfolk are very well suited to the
cultivation of bulbs, so it is not surprising that Joost's business
took him there. And, seeing that he had a Bradshaw and a good map, and
had, moreover, six months ago addressed Julia's box of bulbs to her
nearest railway town, it is not surprising that he found the
whereabouts of the town of Halgrave. It was on Saturday night when he
found it on the map; he was sitting in the coffee-room of a temperance
hotel at the time. He had done business for the day, and, seeing that
the English do not care about working on Sundays, he would probably
have to-morrow as well as to-night free. Julia's town was close--a
short railway journey, then a walk to Halgrave, and then one would be
at her home--it would be a pleasant way of spending the morning of a
spring Sunday. He thought about it a little; he had no invitation to
go and see Julia, and he did not like going anywhere without an
invitation or an express reason. She might not want to see him, or it
might put out her domestic arrangements if he came; he knew domestic
arrangements were subject to such disturbances. He hesitated some
time, though it must be admitted that the fact that he had asked her
to marry him and been refused did not come much into his
consideration. He had not altered his mind about that proposal, and he
did not imagine she had altered hers; his devotion and her
indifference were definite settled facts which would remain as long as
either of them remained, but there was nothing embarrassing in them
to him. At last he decided that he would go, and it was the blue
daffodil which decided him.

He had never heard what Julia had done with the bulb he had given her.
It was only reasonable to think she had sold it, seeing it was for the
sake of money she had wanted it, but no whisper of any such thing had
reached him or his father. He longed to know about it, to hear the
name of the man who had his treasure; for whom, in all probability, it
was blooming now. It was some connoisseur he was nearly certain; Julia
would not have sold it to another grower. He had not lain any such
condition on her, but she would not have done that; she knew too well
what it meant to him; he never doubted her in that matter, his faith
was of too simple a kind. Still he determined to go and see her,
partly that he might hear the name of the man who bought the blue
daffodil, partly because he wanted to and remembered that Julia, in
the old days, did not seem of the kind to be upset by unexpected
visitors and similar small domestic accidents.

It was a hot-dinner Sunday at the cottage. These occurred alternately;
on the in between Sundays Julia, supported by Johnny and the Captain,
went to church. On those sacred to hot dinners she stayed at home and
did the cooking, the Captain staying with her. Mr. Gillat used to also
in the winter, but lately, during the spring, he had been induced to
teach in the Sunday school, and now went every Sunday to the village,
first to teach and afterwards to conduct his class to church.

It was Mr. Stevens, the Rector of Halgrave, who had made this
surprising suggestion to Mr. Gillat. He, good man, had in the course
of time been to see his parishioners at the remote cottage, grinding
along the deep sandy road on his heavy old tricycle; but it was not
during the visit that he thought of Johnny as a teacher; it was when
he made further acquaintance with him at Halgrave. Johnny was the
member of the party who went most often to the village shop; he liked
the expedition, it gave him a feeling of importance; he also liked
gossiping with the woman who kept the shop, and he dearly loved
meeting the village children. On one of these occasions, when Johnny
was engaged in making peace between two little girls--little girls
were his specialty--the rector met him and it was then it occurred to
him that Mr. Gillat might help in the school. It was not much of an
honour, the school was in rather a bad way just now, and boasted no
other teachers than the rector and a raspy-tempered girl of sixteen,
but Johnny was much flattered. He thought he ought to refuse; he was
quite sure he could not teach; the idea of his doing so was certainly
new and strange; he was also sure he was not virtuous enough. But in
the end he was persuaded to try; Julia told him that he might hear the
catechism with an open book, choose the Bible tales he was surest of,
to read and explain, and have his class of little girls to tea very
often. So it came about that Mr. Gillat set out Sunday after Sunday to
school, and if his reading and expounding of the Scriptures was less
in accord with modern light than the traditions that held in the
childhood of the nation, no one minded; the children at Halgrave were
not painfully sharp, and they soon got to love Mr. Gillat with a
friendly lemon-droppish love which was not critical.

Captain Polkington did not approve of the Sunday-school teaching,
especially on those days when he had to clean the knives. The Sunday
when Joost Van Heigen came was one of these. The Captain watched Mr.
Gillat's preparations with a disgusted face; at last he remarked, "I
wonder if you think you do any good by this nonsense?"

Johnny, who had got as far as the doorstep, stopped and considered
rather as if the idea had just occurred to him.

"There must be teachers," he said at length, looking round at the open
landscape; "and there aren't many about."

"You are a fine teacher!" the Captain sneered.

Mr. Gillat rubbed his finger along the edge of the Bible he carried.
"I was wild," he confessed; "yes, I was, I don't think--but then the
rector said--and Julia--"

His meaning was rather obscure, but possibly the Captain followed it
although he did cut him short by saying, "I should never have expected
it of you; if any one had told me that you, one of us, would take to
this sort of thing, I would not have believed it. I mean, if they had
told me in the old days, before things were changed and broken up,
when we were still alive and things moved at a pace--when a man knew
if he were alive or dead and whether it was night or morning."

"Yes, yes," Johnny said, but not altogether as if he regretted the
passing of those golden days; "things were different then; we didn't
think of it then."

"Teaching in the Sunday school?" the Captain asked. "Not quite! And if
we had, we shouldn't have thought of coming to it even when we had got
old and foolish."

Johnny looked uncomfortable and unhappy; then a bright idea occurred
to him. "There wasn't a Sunday school there," he said. "You remember
the hill station?"

Just then Julia called from the house, "Father, I believe we might
have a dish of turnip tops if you would get them. Johnny, you will be
late if you don't start soon."

Johnny promptly started, and the Captain, less promptly, sauntered
away to find a basket for the turnip tops, muttering the while
something about people whose religion took the form of going out and
leaving others to do the work.

But by the time Joost Van Heigen arrived, the Captain was quite
amiable again. He had had a quiet morning with nothing to do after the
turnip tops were brought in and the knives cleaned, and Johnny had had
a long tiring walk home from church in a hot sun and a high wind,
which Captain Polkington felt to be a just dispensation of Providence
to reward those who stopped at home and cleaned knives. Joost arrived
not long after Mr. Gillat; Julia heard the gate click as she was
taking the meat from before the fire.

"Who is that, Johnny?" she asked.

Johnny, who had just come down-stairs after taking off his Sunday
coat, looked out of the window.

"I don't know," he said; "a young man."

Julia, having deposited the joint on the dish, went to the kitchen
door. "Put the meat where it will keep hot," she said to Johnny; "I
expect it's some one who thinks the last people live here still;
fortunately there is enough dinner."

She pushed open the unlatched door and saw the visitor going round to
the front. "Joost!" she exclaimed. "Why, Joost, is it really you?"

She ran down the garden path after him and he, turning just before he
reached the front door, stopped.

"Good-morning, miss," he said solemnly, removing his hat with a sweep.
"I hope I see you well. I do not inconvenience you--you are perhaps
engaged?"

"Come in," Julia answered; "I am glad to see you!"

There was no mistaking the sincerity of her tone; Joost's solemn face
relaxed a little. "You are not occupied?" he said; "I do not disturb
you?"

"Yes, occupied in dishing up the dinner," Julia said, "which is just
the best of all times for you to have come. Johnny!" she called;
"Johnny, Joost is here."

Mr. Gillat, who had been carefully placing the dish where the cinders
would fall into it, came to the door.

"This is Mr. Gillat, a very old friend of mine," Julia explained, and
Joost bowed deeply, offering his hand and saying, "I hope that you are
well, sir."

Whereupon Mr. Gillat impressed, imitated him as nearly as he could,
and Julia looked away.

They had dinner in the kitchen on Sundays as well as week days, they
made no difference to-day. Joost looked round him once or twice; he
had never seen a place like this. It was the front kitchen; the
cooking and most of the house-work was done in the back one, a big
barn-like place with doors in all corners. The front one was half a
kitchen and half a sitting-room, warm-coloured, with red-tiled floor
and low ceiling, heavily cross-beamed and hung with herbs and a couple
of hams, in great contrast to the whiteness of the kitchen at the bulb
farm. There were brass and copper pots and pans such as he knew, but
they reflected an open fire, a dirty extravagance unknown to Mevrouw.
Joost glanced at the fire, and it is to be feared that he was at heart
a traitor to his native customs. Then he looked at the open window
where the sunshine streamed in--as was never permitted in Holland--and
he wondered if it really spoilt things very much, and, being a
florist, thought it certainly would spoil the tulips in the mug that
stood on the wide sill.

During dinner they spoke English for the sake of the Captain and Mr.
Gillat; Joost spoke well, if slowly, with a careful and accurate
precision. He also observed much, both of outside things, as the fact
that Johnny and the Captain cleared the table while Julia sat still,
contrary to Dutch custom. And also of things less on the surface--as
that Julia was head of the household and that Captain Polkington was
not the impressive and authoritative person Mijnheer seemed to think.
Concerning this last fact he made no remark when, on his return home,
he described the ways and customs of Julia's cottage to his parents.
The description served Mevrouw at least, as representative of all
English households ever afterwards.

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