A KITCHEN COURTSHIP
For the rest of the morning, turning steadily away at that wheel, I
found myself wondering rather wistfully how things were going in
there.
In spirit I saw the whole setting for this love-scene. Mrs. Price's
back-kitchen with the big table, where she "put up" the dough for
baking, set under the latticed window. The huge, hive-shaped
"batch-oven" where I myself had helped with the baking last week.
That oven had to be heated, early, by filling it with a stack of
brushwood (some quite big boughs), setting the stack on fire, and
leaving it so until the wood was powdery-ash, and the bricks of the
domed oven-roof were white-hot. Then in went the loaves which Mrs.
Price's tiny expert hands had shown us how to knead and to put up!
They--Mrs. Price and Elizabeth--had reached this stage of the
morning's work by the time Colonel Fielding made his appearance in
search of the girl he'd decided to marry.
What happened I heard something of later. (Not all.) Partly from
Elizabeth, partly from him.
An odd courtship; so entirely War-time and modern! Yet going back
hundreds of years; for what could be more old-fashioned than for the
young man to seek his love among the warmth and the fragrance and the
homely domesticity of the kitchen on baking-day! There was little
Mrs. Price in her crisp grey overall with an old ivory brooch at her
throat, busy and brisk and looking with every inch of herself "a
Lady" in every sense, including that of the original Saxon
"Loaf-ward." There was my chum Elizabeth helping her. With her hat
off and her short thick hair rumpled about her small flushed face I
expect she looked like a rather defiantly conscientious cherub!
To them, enter Colonel Fielding (with his blush!) telling Mrs. Price
(with his usual shy charm of manner!) that he thought he'd like to
come and help her, since he understood she'd got a busy day on.
Mrs. Price, demurely: "It will be a wonder if the farm doesn't
prosper this year, considering the amount of help we are getting from
the Army! It's very good of you, I'm sure. The bread is all into
the tins now, Elizabeth? That's right; perhaps the Colonel will help
you put them into the oven with this."
She gave him the immensely long-handled oven-shovel. On this
Elizabeth set loaf after loaf in the tins, and he shoved one after
another into the farther part of the hot oven.
Then Mrs. Price turned to get water from the pump which is set just
over the spring in the scullery, and then she bustled away on one of
the thousand odd jobs that await the farmer's women-folk at every
turn. Or did she do it on purpose to leave those two together,
working in the cosy, fragrant place?
For some minutes they were silent as a couple of working ants. Not a
sound but the scraping of that shovel against the oven-floor!
Then he began, very gently, "D'you know who I feel sorry for?"
"No," from Elizabeth, setting her last tin loaf on the shovel. "Who?"
"Er ... People who have to get engaged in town," was his unexpected
reply. "Such a beastly rush. All mixed up with--er--taxis, and
catching trains and crowds of people in restaurants all watching you!
Having to go to the theatre.... And then the lights going up, or the
curtain. And people all hissing 'Ssh!' when you want to talk to the
girl. Everybody jostling you. Not a bit of peace, you know. No
room! No--er--time to say anything or feel anything. Don't you
know?"
I can picture the Man-hater suppressing her happy little fluster at
this; taking up the fruit tarts that had to go in in front of the
oven, after the loaves.
Colonel Fielding's shy but deliberate voice went on: "I think
one's--er--courtship ought to come in pleasant places. Where there's
quiet. And nice things about. And jolly things to do. Making hay.
Or ... bread. Don't you think so?"
Of course she thought so. The fields, the farm; any girl might envy
Elizabeth the scenes that set first love for her, without hurry,
without artificiality or fatigue! But I expect Elizabeth only
flushed deeper and deeper pink, half with emotion, half with the heat
of that oven. Little bright beads of moisture had gathered about her
forehead and neck; annoyed, she brushed them away with the sleeve of
her overall, hoping that he did not see.
As if anything she did would escape him now!
He moved from the oven and said thoughtfully: "I wish I could
remember that quotation properly."
"A quotation?"
"Yes, something I read about the sweetest sight in the world being
that of a woman baking bread, and how, even if it were in
the--er--sweat of her brow, what man was there '_who would not rather
kiss those drops away, than the powder from the cheek of a Duchess'?_"
Having arrived at this stage of the story as told me by Elizabeth
herself, I said to her: "And immediately after this, I suppose, the
young man proposed to you?"
Elizabeth then told me: "He didn't propose at all."
"What?" I cried.
"He didn't propose," repeated the Man-hater obstinately. "I did."
"You?"
"I had to," explained my little chum, glowing. "He made me."
"What can you mean, 'made' you?"
Elizabeth explained how "that quotation" had made her so embarrassed
(being quite unused to these remarks from men) that she hadn't known
what to say and had practically snapped the young man's head off.
She told him sharply: "The bottled currants have got to go into the
oven when the bread comes out. You might help to fetch them and
their tin trays out of the scullery, instead of just standing there
talking."
At that Colonel Fielding seemed positively to wither away where he
stood. He looked suddenly miserable (according to Elizabeth). He
said in the most unhappy voice: "Have I--er--put my foot into it
again? I suppose I must have, somehow. You're angry with me, Miss
Weare. I'll go."
Elizabeth begged him not to go (I don't suppose the creature had made
a movement to the door), and said she wasn't in the least angry, why
should she be?
The young Colonel then adopted a truly pathetic tone (I could hear
it!) about his being "very unfortunate with women, who always had a
down on him. Yes! They thought he was like a barber's block, and
hated him. All of 'em!"
I could imagine his sidewards tilt of the head as he told the tale to
Elizabeth, the boyishly-sincere.
She, blurting out "_I_ don't hate you!" hurried into the scullery for
a couple of those tall glass jars of fruit for bottling. He followed
her, carrying more fruit and murmuring that no girl could be got to
care for him; not really care!
Elizabeth said he looked more than ever like that picture "The
Falconer" on her chocolate-box lid. I can imagine her adoring glance
up at him!
This was in the kitchen, again in front of the oven. He had taken
hold with both hands of the tray that she still held.
"I shouldn't believe it," the young villain told her, gazing into her
flushed face. "Not unless I heard it out of a girl's own mouth! Not
unless she cared enough to say so first!"
Here Elizabeth broke off the story with a defiant "So you see!"
"What did you _say_?" I urged.
Neither of them would ever tell me. However! Before kind Mrs. Price
returned (to see they did not repeat that old story of Alfred and the
Cakes!) Elizabeth had said whatever it was.
In this proposal-scene she, the girl, had been forced to take the
initiative.
That went against all my instincts; I couldn't have done that. How
human beings vary! For she, strange little thing, simply loved being
made to "make the running." This I didn't understand.
"_He_ understood. _He's_ not like that great hulking brute you
prophesied for me, the one who would trample on me with policemen's
seventeens! _You_ thought I would be 'tamed' by somebody bullying
me. _That's_ not what happens to a girl like me; that's all wrong
psychology," babbled my chum exultantly, while I realized that the
last phrase at least must have come from him. "It's only the frilly,
helpless, overfeminized weepers that admire these huge, bullying
navvies with ugly faces and muscles like vegetable marrows! I'd have
been safe from _them_ for ever! But he's so wonderful! _He's_ not a
usual young man----"
"And you're not a usual girl," I told her affectionately. "My dears!
There is only one thing to be said: _you certainly have found each
other!_"