Book: The Good Comrade

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




"No," she answered, "thanks to you--"

But he, evidently sharing her dislike for a fuss, was even more
anxious than she not to dwell on that, and dismissed the subject
quickly. He began to wipe the bottom of the basket, from which soup
was dripping, talking the while of the carelessness of continental
drivers and the silliness of children of all nations, perhaps to give
her time to recover.

She agreed with him, and then repeated her thanks.

He again set them aside. "It's nothing," he said; "I am glad to have
had the opportunity, especially since it also gives me the opportunity
of offering you some apology for an unfortunate misunderstanding which
arose when last I saw you. You must feel that it needs an apology."

For a moment Julia's eyes showed her surprise; an apology was not what
she expected, and, to tell the truth, it did not altogether please
her. She knew that she and her father had no right to it while the
money was unpaid.

"Please do not apologise," she said; "there is no need, I quite
understand."

"I was labouring under a false impression," Rawson-Clew explained.

She nodded. "I know," she said, "but it is cleared up now; no one who
spoke with my father could possibly imagine he lived by his wits."

Which ambiguous remark may have been meant to apply to the Captain's
mental outfit more than his moral one. When Rawson-Clew knew Julia
better he came to the conclusion it probably did, at the time he
thought it wise not to answer it.

"Here is your basket," he said; "I think it is clean now."

She made a movement to take it, but her arm was numb and powerless
from the blow she had received; it was the right shoulder which had
been struck, and that hand was clearly useless for the time being;
with a wince of pain, she stretched out the left.

But he drew the basket back. "You are hurt," he said.

"No, I'm not, nothing to speak of; it only hurts me when I move that
arm; I will carry the basket with the other hand."

"How far have you to go?"

She told him to the village and back.

"You had better go straight home at once," he said.

"I can't do that," she answered. She did not explain that she did not
want to, the pain in her shoulder not being bad enough to make her
want to give up this first hour of freedom. "My shoulder does not hurt
if I do not move it," she said; "I can carry the basket with the other
hand."

"Perhaps you will allow me to carry it for you?" he suggested; "I am
going the same way."

"No, thank you," she returned. "Thanks very much for the offer, but
there isn't any need; I can manage quite well. I expect you will want
to go faster than I do." She spoke decidedly, and turned about
quickly; as she did so, she caught sight of the bottle of
peach-brandy in the grass.

"Oh, there's the brandy," she exclaimed; "I mustn't go without that."

He fetched the fortunately unbroken bottle and put it in the basket,
but he did not give it to her.

"I will carry this," he said; "if our pace does not agree, if you
would prefer to walk more slowly, I will wait for you at the beginning
of the village."

Julia rose to her feet, there was no choice left to her but to
acquiesce; from her heart she wished he would leave the basket and go
alone; she wished even that he would be rude to her, she felt that
then he would have been nearer her level and her father's. She
resented alike his presence and his courtesy, and she could not show
either feeling, only accept what he offered and walk by his side, just
as if no money was owed, and no letter, condescendingly cancelling the
debt, had been written. She grew hot as she thought of that carefully
worded letter, and hot when she thought of her father's relief
thereat. And here, here was the man who must have dictated the letter,
and probably paid the debt, behaving just as if such things never
existed. He was walking with her--she could not give him ten yards
start and follow him into the village--and making polite conversations
about the weather, and the road, and the quantity of soup that had
been spilled.

She pulled herself together, and, feeling the situation to be beyond
remedy, determined to bear herself bravely, and carry it off with what
credit she could. She glanced at the more than half-empty soup can. "I
am afraid you are right," she said; "there is a great deal of it gone;
still, that is not without advantage--I shall be sent to take some
more in a day or two."

"You wish that?" he inquired.

"Yes," she answered, "I find the exercise beneficial; I have had too
much pudding lately."

He looked politely surprised, and she went on to explain.

"It is very wholesome," she said, "but a bit stodgy; I think it is too
really good to be taken in such large quantities by any one like me.
It is unbelievably good, it makes one perfectly ashamed of oneself;
and unbelievably narrow, it makes one long for bed-time."

She broke off to smile at his more genuine surprise, and her smile,
like that of some other people of little real beauty, was one of
singular charm.

"Did you think I meant actual pudding?" she asked. "I didn't; I meant
just the whole life here; if you knew the people well, the real middle
class ones, you would understand."

"I think I can understand without knowing them well," he said; "I
fancy there is a good deal of pudding about; in fact, I myself am
feeling its rather oppressive influence."

"The town is paved with it," Julia declared. "I thought so this
afternoon. I also thought, though it is Tuesday, it was just like a
spring Sunday; every day is like that."

Rawson-Clew suggested that many people appreciated spring Sundays.

"So do I," Julia agreed, "but in moderation; you can't do your washing
on Sunday, nor your harvesting in spring. An endless succession of
spring Sundays is very awkward when you have got--well, week-day work
to do, don't you think so?"

He wondered a little what week-day work she had in her mind, but he
did not ask.

"Are you living with a Dutch family?" he inquired.

She nodded. "As companion," she said; "sort of superior general
servant."

"Indeed? Then it must have been you I saw yesterday; I thought so at
the time; you were driving with some Dutch ladies."

Julia was surprised that he had seen and recognised her. "We went for
an excursion yesterday," she said; "they called it a picnic."

She told him about it, not omitting any of the points which had amused
her. Could Joost have heard her, he would have felt that his suspicion
that she sometimes laughed at them more than justified; but she did
not give a thought to Joost, and probably would not have paused if she
had. She wanted to pass the present time, and she was rather reckless
how, so long as Rawson-Clew either talked himself, or seemed
interested in what she said; also, it must be admitted, though it was
to this man, it was something of a treat to talk freely again. So she
gave him the best account she could, not only of the excursion, but of
other things too. And if it was his attention she wanted, she should
have been satisfied, for she apparently had it, at first only the
interest of courtesy, afterwards something more; it even seemed,
before the end, as if she puzzled him a little, in spite of his years
and experience.

He found himself mentally contrasting the life at the Van Heigens', as
she described it, with that which he had imagined her to have led at
Marbridge, and, now that he talked to her, he could not find her exact
place in either.

"You must find Dutch conventionality rather trying," he said at last.

"I am not used to it yet," she answered; "when I am it will be no
worse than the conventionality at home."

He felt he was wrong in one of his surmises; clearly she was not
really Bohemian. "Surely," he said, "you have not found these absurd
rules and restrictions in England?"

"Not the same ones; we study appearances one way, and they do another;
but it comes to the same thing, so far as I am concerned. One day I
hope to be able to give it up and retire; when I do I shall wear
corduroy breeches and if I happen to be in the kitchen eating onions
when people come to see me, I shall call them in and offer them a
share."

"Rather an uncomfortable ambition, isn't that?" he inquired. "I am
afraid you will have to wait some time for its fulfilment, especially
the corduroy. I doubt if you will achieve that this side the grave,
though you might perhaps make a provision in your will to be buried in
it."

Julia laughed a little. "You think my family would object? They would;
but, you see, I should be retiring from them as well as from the
world, the corduroy might be part of my bulwarks."

"I don't think you could afford it even for that; do you think women
ever can afford that kind of disregard for appearances?"

"Plain ones can," she said; "it is the only compensation they have for
being plain; not much, certainly, seeing what they lose, but they have
it. When you can never look more than indifferent, it does not matter
how much less you look."

"That is a rather unusual idea," he remarked; "it appears sound in
theory, but in practice--"

"Sounder still," she answered him.

He laughed. "I'm afraid you won't make many converts here," he said,
"where nearly every woman is plain, and according to your experience,
every one, men and women too, think a great deal of looks; at all
events, correct ones."

"They do do that," she admitted; "they just worship propriety and the
correct, and have the greatest notion of the importance of their
neighbours' eyes. It is a perfect treat to be out alone, and not have
to regard them--this is the first time I have been out alone since I
have been here."

"Rather hard; I thought every one had--er--time off."

"An evening out?" she suggested. "I believe the number of evenings out
is regulated by the number of applications for the post when vacant;
cooks could get more evenings than housemaids, and nursery governesses
might naturally expect a minus number, if that were possible. There
would be lots of applications for my post, so I can't expect many
evenings; however, I have thought of a plan by which I can get out
again and again!"

"What will you do?" he inquired.

"I shall get Denah--she is one of the girls who went for the
excursion--to come and teach Mevrouw a new crochet pattern after
dinner of a day. It will take ages, Mevrouw learns very slowly, and
Denah will know better than to hurry matters; she admires Mijnheer
Joost, the Van Heigens' son, and she will be only too delighted to
have an excuse to come to the house."

"And if she is there you will have a little leisure? Some one always
has to be on duty? Is that it?"

Julia laughed softly. "If she is there," she said, "she will want me
out of the way, and I am not satisfactorily out of the way when I am
anywhere on the premises. Not that Mijnheer Joost talks to me when I
am there, or would talk to her if I were not; she just mistrusts every
unmarried female by instinct."

"A girl's instinct in such matters is not always wrong," Rawson-Clew
observed.

But if he thought Julia had any mischievous propensities of that sort
he was mistaken. "I should not think of interfering in such an
affair," she said; "why, it would be the most suitable thing in the
world, as suitable as it is for my handsome and able sister to marry
the ambitious and able nephew of a bishop; they are the two halves
that make one whole. Denah and Joost would live a perfectly ideal
pudding life; he with his flowers--that is his work, you know; he
cares for nothing besides, really--and she with her housekeeping. He
with a little music for relaxation, she with her neighbours and
accomplishments; it would be as neat and complete and suitable as
anything could be."

"And that commends it to you? I should have imagined that what was
incongruous and odd pleased you better."

"I like that too," she was obliged to admit, "though best when the
people concerned don't see the incongruity; but I don't really care
either way, whether things are incongruous or suitable, I enjoy both,
and should never interfere so long as they don't upset my concerns and
the end in view."

He looked at her curiously; again it seemed he was at fault; she was
not merely a wayward girl in revolt against convention, saying what
she deemed daring for the sake of saying it, and in the effort to be
original. She was not posing as a Bohemian any more than she was truly
one.

"Have you usually an end in view?" he asked.

"Have not you?" she answered, turning on him for a moment eyes that
Joost had described as "eating up what they looked at." "Of course,"
she said, looking away again, "it is quite natural, and very
possible, that you are here for no purpose, and I am here for no
purpose too; you might quite well have come to this little town for
amusement, and I have come for the money I might earn as a companion.
Or you might have drifted here by accident, as I might, without any
special reason--" She stopped as she spoke; they were fast approaching
the first house of the village now, and she held out her hand for the
basket. "I will take it," she said; "I have a very short distance to
go; thank you so much."

"Let me carry it the rest of the way," he insisted; "I am going
through the village; we may as well go the rest of the way together, I
want you to tell me--"

But Julia did not tell him anything, except that her way was by the
footpath which turned off to the right. "I could not think of
troubling you further," she said. "Thank you."

She put her hand on the basket, so that he was obliged to yield it;
then, with another word of thanks, she said "good-evening," and
started by the path.

For a moment he looked after her, annoyed and interested against his
will; of course, she meant nothing by her words about his purpose and
her own, still it gave him food for reflection about her, and the
apparent incongruity of her present surroundings. On the whole, he was
glad he had met her, partly for the entertainment she had given, and
partly for the opportunity he had had to apologise.

An apology was due to her for the affair of last winter, he felt it;
though, at the same time, he could not hold himself much to blame in
the matter. He had gone to Marbridge to see into his young cousin's
affairs at the request of the boy's widowed mother. The affairs, as
might have been expected, were in muddle enough, and the boy himself
was incorrigibly silly and extravagant. The whole business needed tact
and patience, and in the end had not been very satisfactorily
arranged; during the process Captain Polkington's name had been
mentioned more than once; he figured, among other ways, of spending
much and getting little in return. Somehow or other Rawson-Clew had
got the impression that the Captain was--well, perhaps pretty much
what he really had come to be; and if that was not quite what his wife
had persuaded herself and half Marbridge to think him, surely no one
was to blame. The mistake made was about the Captain's wife and
daughters and position in the town; Rawson-Clew, in the first
instance, never gave them a thought; the Captain was a detached person
in his mind, and, as such, a possible danger to his cousin's loose
cash. He went to No. 27 to talk plainly to the man, not to tell him he
was a shark and an adventurer; it was the Captain himself who
translated and exaggerated thus; not even to tell him what he thought,
that he was a worthless old sponge, but to make it plain that things
would not go on as they had been doing. The girl's interruption had
been annoying, so ill-timed and out of place; she ought to have gone
at once when he suggested it; she had placed him and herself, too, in
an embarrassing position; yet, at the same time--he saw it now, though
he did not earlier--there was something quaint in the way she had both
metaphorically and actually stood between him and her miserable old
father. He had dictated the subsequent letter to the Captain more on
her account than anything else. He considered that by it he was making
her the amend honourable for the unfortunate interview of the
afternoon, as well as closing the incident. Of course, nothing real
was forfeited by the letter, for under no circumstances would the
money have been repaid; he never had any delusion about that. From
which it appears that his opinion of the Captain had not changed.

As for his opinion of Julia, he had not one when he first saw her,
except that she had no business to be there; now, however, he felt
some little interest in her. There was very little that was
interesting in this small Dutch town; it was a refreshing change, he
admitted it to himself, to see a girl here who put her clothes on
properly; something of a change to meet one anywhere who did not at
once fall into one of the well-defined categories.

Much in this world has to be lain at the door of opportunity, and
idleness in youth, and _ennui_ and boredom in middle ages. Rawson-Clew
was in the borderland between the two, and did not consider himself
open to the temptations of either. He was not idle, he had things to
do; and he was not bored, he had things to think about; but not enough
of either to prevent him from having a wide margin.

When he met Julia again there was no reason for dropping the
acquaintance renewed through necessity. But also there was no
opportunity, on that occasion, for pushing it further, even if there
had been inclination, for she was not alone.

It was on Saturday evening; she was walking down the same road, much
about the same time, but there was with her a tall, fair young man,
with a long face and loose limbs. He carried, of course, an
umbrella--that was part of his full dress--and the basket--he walked
between her and the cart track. She bowed sedately to Rawson-Clew, and
the young man, becoming tardily aware of it, took off his hat, rather
late, and with a sweeping foreign flourish. She wore a pair of cotton
gloves, and lifted her dress a few inches, and glanced shyly up at her
escort now and then as he talked. They were speaking Dutch, and she
was behaving Dutch, as plain and demure a person as it was possible to
imagine, until she looked back, then Rawson-Clew saw a very devil of
mockery and mischief flash up in her eyes. Only for a second; the
expression was gone before her head was turned again, and that was
decorously soon. But it had been there; it was like the momentary
parting of the clouds on a grey day; it illumined her whole face--her
mind, too, perhaps--as the eerie, tricky gleam, which is gone before a
man knows it, lights up the level landscape, and transforms it to
something new and strange.

Rawson-Clew walked on ahead of the pair; he had to outpace them, since
he was bound the same way, and could not walk with them. He was not
sure that he was not rather sorry for Denah, the Dutch girl; one who
can laugh at herself as well as another, and all alone, too, is he
thought, rather apt to enjoy the incongruous more than the suitable.




CHAPTER VII

HOW JULIA DID NOT GET THE BLUE DAFFODIL


Vrouw Van Heigen was learning a new crochet pattern; one did it in
thread of a Sevres blue shade; when several long strips were made, one
sewed them together with pieces of black satin between each two, and
there was an antimacassar of severe but rich beauty. Denah explained
all this as she set Mevrouw to work on the pattern; it was very
intricate, quite exciting, because it was so difficult; the more
excited the old lady became the more mistakes she made, but it did not
matter; Denah was patience itself, and did not seem to mind how much
time she gave. She came every day after dinner (that is to say, about
six o'clock), and when she came it was frequently found necessary that
Julia should go to inquire after the invalid cousin. Denah thought
herself the deepest and most diplomatic young woman in Holland; she
even found it in her heart to pity Julia, the poor companion, who she
used as a pawn in her romance. The which, since it was transparently
obvious to the pawn, gave her vast, though private, delight.

So Julia went almost daily down the long flat road to the village, and
very often Rawson-Clew had to go that way too; and when he did, his
time of going being of necessity much the same time as hers, he was
almost bound to walk with her. There was but one way to the place;
they must either walk together in the middle of the road, or else
separately, one side of it; and seeing that they were of the same
nationality, in a foreign land, and had some previous acquaintance, it
would have been nothing short of absurd to have done the latter. So as
often as they met they walked together and talked of many things, and
in the course of time Rawson-Clew came to find Julia's company a good
deal more entertaining than his own; although she had read nothing she
ought to have read, seen nothing she ought to have seen, and
occasionally both thought and said things she certainly ought not, and
was not even conventionally unconventional.

They usually parted at the footpath, which shortened her way a little,
Rawson-Clew giving her the basket there, and going down the road
alone; in consequence of this it was some time before she knew for
certain where it was he went, although she had early guessed. But one
damp evening she departed from her usual custom. It had been raining
heavily all day, and although it had cleared now, a thick mist lay
over the wet fields.

"I shall have to go round by the road," she said, as she looked at the
track.

Rawson-Clew agreed with her. "I am rather surprised that you came out
at all this evening," he remarked. "I should have thought your careful
friends would have been afraid of colds and wet feet."

"Vrouw Van Heigen was," Julia answered, "but Denah and I were not. It
is the last opportunity we shall have for a little while; Joost goes
to Germany on business to-morrow."

Rawson-Clew laughed. "Which means, I suppose," he said, "that she will
neglect the crochet work, and you will have to superintend it? Not
very congenial to you, is it?"

"Good discipline," she told him.

"And for that reason to be welcomed? Really you deserve to succeed in
whatever it is you are attempting; you do not neglect details."

"Details are often important," she said; "stopping at home and doing
crochet work while Joost is in Germany, for instance, may help me a
good deal."

The tone struck Rawson-Clew as implying more than the words said, but
he did not ask for an interpretation, and before long she had put a
question to him. They were nearing a large house that stood far back
from the road on the left hand side. It was a big block of a place,
greyish-white in colour, and with more than half of its windows
bricked up, indescribably gloomy. A long, straight piece of water lay
before it, stretching almost from the walls to the road, from which it
was separated by a low fence. Tall, thick trees grew in a close row on
either side, narrowing the prospect; a path ran up beside them on the
one hand, the only way to the house, but in the steamy mist which lay
thick over everything this evening one could hardly see it, and it
looked as if the place were unapproachable from the front.

Julia glanced curiously towards the house; it was the only one of any
size or possible interest in the village; the only one, she had
decided some time ago, that Rawson-Clew could have any reason to
visit.

As they approached the gate she ventured, "You go here, do you not?"

"Yes," he answered; "to Herr Van de Greutz."

"The cousin tells me he is a great chemist," Julia said.

"He is," Rawson-Clew agreed, "and one much absorbed in his work; it is
impossible to see him even on business except in the evening."

He paused by the gate as he spoke. "You have not much further to go,
have you?" he said. "Will you excuse me carrying your basket further?
I am afraid I am rather behind my time."

Julia took the basket, assuring him she had no distance to carry it,
but her eyes as she said it twinkled with amusement; it was not really
late, and she knew it.

"You are afraid of what will be said next," she thought as she looked
back at the man, who was already vanishing among the mists by the
lake. And the thought pleased her somewhat, for it suggested that
Rawson-Clew had a respect for her acumen, and also that her private
fancy--that the business which brought him here was not of a kind for
public discussion--was correct.

The cousin was better that evening; she even expressed hopes of living
through the summer, a thing she had not done for more than three days.
Julia cheered and encouraged her in this belief (which, indeed, there
was every reason to think well founded) and gave her the messages and
dainties she had brought. After that they talked of the weather, which
was bad; and the neighbours, who, on the whole, were good. Julia knew
most of them by name by this time--the kind old Padre and his wife;
the captain of the little cargo-boat, who drank a little, and his
generous wife, who talked a great deal; the fat woman who kept fowls,
and the thin one who sometimes stole the eggs. Julia had heard all
about them before, but she heard over again, and a little about the
great chemist, Herr Van de Greutz, too.

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