Hubert Marsland, the landscape painter, returning from a day’s
sketching on the river in the summer of 1921, had occasion to stay the
progress of his two-seater about ten miles from London for a minor
repair, and while his car was being seen to, strolled away from the
garage to have a look at a house where he had often spent his holidays
as a boy. Walking through a gateway and passing a large gravel-pit on
his left, he was soon opposite the house, which stood back a little in
its grounds. Very much changed! More pretentious, not so homely as when
his uncle and aunt lived there, and he used to play cricket on this
warren opposite, where the cricket ground, it seemed, had been turned
into a golf course. It was late--the dinner hour, nobody playing, and
passing on to the links he stood digesting the geography. Here must
have been where the old pavilion was. And there--still turfed--where
he had made that particularly nice stroke to leg, when he went in last
and carried his bat for thirteen. Thirty-nine years ago--his sixteenth
birthday. How vividly he remembered his new pads! A. P. Lucas had
played against them and only made thirty-two. One founded one’s style
on A. P. Lucas in those days--feet in front of the bat, and pointed
a little forward, elegant; you never saw it now, and a good thing
too--one could sacrifice too much to style! Still, the tendency was all
the other way; style was too much ‘off,’ perhaps!
He stepped back into the sun and sat down on the grass. Peaceful--very
still! The haze of the distant downs was visible between his uncle’s
old house and the next; and there was the clump of elms on the far
side behind which the sun would be going down just as it used to
then. He pressed the palms of his hands to the turf. A glorious
summer--something like that summer of long ago. And warmth from the
turf, or perhaps from the past, crept into his heart, and made it
ache a little. Just here he must have sat, after his innings, at Mrs.
Monteith’s feet peeping out of a flounced dress. Lord! The fools boys
were! How headlong and uncalculating their devotions! A softness in
voice and eyes, a smile, a touch or two--and they were slaves! Young
fools, but good young fools. And, standing behind her chair--he could
see him now--that other idol, Captain MacKay, with his face of browned
ivory--just the colour of that elephant’s tusk his uncle had, which
had gone so yellow--and his perfect black moustache, his white tie,
check suit, carnation, spats, Malacca cane--all so fascinating! Mrs.
Monteith, ‘the grass widow’ they had called her! He remembered the look
in people’s eyes, the tone in their voices. Such a pretty woman! He
had ‘fallen for her’ at first sight, as the Yanks put it--her special
scent, her daintiness, her voice! And that day on the river, when
she made much of him, and Captain MacKay attended Evelyn Curtiss so
assiduously that he was expected to propose. Quaint period! They used
the word courting then, wore full skirts, high stays; and himself a
blue elastic belt round his white-flannelled waist. And in the evening
afterwards, his aunt had said with an arch smile: “Good-night, _silly_
boy!” Silly boy, indeed, with a flower the grass widow had dropped
pressed by his cheek into his pillow! What folly! And that next
Sunday--looking forward to church--passionately brushing his top hat;
all through the service spying at her creamy profile, two pews in front
on the left, between goat-bearded old Hallgrave, her uncle, and her
pink, broad, white-haired aunt; scheming to get near her when she came
out, lingering, lurking, getting just a smile and the rustle of her
flounces. Ah, ha! A little went a long way then! And the last day of
his holidays and its night with the first introduction to reality. Who
said the Victorian Age was innocent?
Marsland put his palm up to his cheek. No! the dew was not yet falling!
And his mind lightly turned and tossed his memories of women, as a man
turns and tosses hay to air it; but nothing remembered gave him quite
the feeling of that first experience.
His aunt’s dance! His first white waistcoat, bought _ad hoc_, from the
local tailor, his tie laboriously imitating the hero--Captain MacKay’s.
All came back with such freshness in the quiet of the warren--the
expectancy, the humble shy excitement, the breathless asking for a
dance, the writing ‘Mrs. Monteith’ twice on his little gilt-edged
programme with its tiny tasselled white pencil; her slow-moving fan,
her smile. And the first dance when it came; what infinite care not
to tread on her white satin toes; what a thrill when her arm pressed
his in the crush--such holy rapture, about all the first part of
that evening, with yet another dance to come! If only he could have
twirled her and ‘reversed’ like his pattern, Captain MacKay! Then
delirium growing as the second dance came near, making him cut his
partner--the cool grass-scented air out on the dark terrace, with
the chafers booming by, and in the starshine the poplars wondrously
tall, the careful adjustment of his tie and waistcoat, the careful
polishing of his hot face! A long breath then, and into the house
to find her! Ballroom, supper-room, stairs, library, billiard-room,
all drawn blank--‘Estudiantina’ going on and on, and he a wandering,
white-waistcoated young ghost. Ah! The conservatory--and the hurrying
there! And then the moment which had always been, was even now, such
a blurred, confused impression. Smothered voices from between a clump
of flowers: “I saw her.” “Who was the man?” A glimpse, gone past in
a flash, of an ivory face, a black moustache! And then her voice:
“Hubert;” and her hot hand clasping his, drawing him to her; her scent,
her face smiling, very set! A rustling behind the flowers, those people
spying; and suddenly her lips on his cheek, the kiss sounding in his
ears, her voice saying, very softly: “Hubert, dear boy!” The rustle
receded, ceased. What a long, silent minute, then, among the ferns
and blossoms in the dusk with her face close to his, pale, perturbed,
before she led him out into the light, while he was slowly realising
that she had made use of him to shelter her. A boy--not old enough
to be her lover, but old enough to save her name and that of Captain
Mackay! Her kiss--the last of many. Oh, no! not upon _his_ lips, _his_
cheeks! Hard work realising that! A boy--of no account--a boy, who in
a day would be at school again, kissed that _he_ and _she_ might renew
their intrigue unsuspected!
How had he behaved the rest of that evening of romance bedrabbled? He
hardly knew. Betrayed with a kiss! Two idols in the dust! And did they
care what he was feeling? Not they! All they cared for was to cover up
their tracks with him! But somehow--somehow--he had never shown her
that he knew. Only, when their dance was over, and someone came and
took her for the next, he escaped up to his little room, tore off his
gloves, his waistcoat; lay on his bed, thought bitter thoughts. A boy!
There he had stayed, with the thrum of the music in his ears, till at
last it died away for good and the carriages were gone, and the night
was quiet.
Squatting on the warren grass, still warm and dewless, Marsland rubbed
his knees. Nothing like boys for generosity! And, with a little smile,
he thought of his aunt next morning, half-arch and half-concerned: “It
isn’t nice, dear, to sit out in dark corners, and--well, perhaps, it
wasn’t your fault, but still, it isn’t nice--not--quite----” and of
how suddenly she had stopped, looking in his face, where his lips were
curling in his first ironic laugh. She had never forgiven him that
laugh--thinking him a cynical young Lothario? And Marsland thought:
‘Live and learn! Wonder what became of those two? Victorian Age!
Hatches were battened down in those days! But, innocent--my hat!’
Ah! The sun was off, dew falling! He got up, rubbing his knees to take
the stiffness out of them. Pigeons in the wood beyond were calling. A
window in his uncle’s old home blazed like a jewel in the sun’s last
rays between the poplar trees. Heh! dear--a little long-ago affair!
1922.