Tod made another friend that summer, a Mr. Lavender, who kept a quiet
little tobacco shop in Greek Street, behind Caroline Crescent. Mr.
Lavender made a living by selling pipes and tobacco, but in the life
that mattered he was a naturalist and a lover of birds. He was a big,
fair, quiet man with a soft voice and blue eyes that were always ready
to smile, a great placid, lovable creature, a born countryman and hunter
of the woods and uplands, an idler by rivers, one of the few who cared
more for life than for money. As an ornithologist he was no mean
authority, and it is probable that he was the best read man in Shaston.
He read because he loved good books, and not with the spirit of Fred
Cragg, who wanted to collect information, borrowed stones and brilliants
with which to dazzle fools. Mr. Lavender had lost his egotism in the
great lap of Nature. He knew things that Frederick Cragg would never
know—because Life was his book, Life that cares nothing for the
intellectual vanities of the fussily clever people.
Tod bought his first pipe from Mr. Lavender, but their friendship began
when Tod discovered by some chance that Mr. Lavender had known his
father.
“I should think I did know him! We had a tramp’s holiday together
twenty-five years ago. Your father was one of the rare birds.”
“In what way?” Tod asked, intensely interested.
“Cared for the real things. Money was dirt to your father, useful dirt,
just what it should be.”
“My mother used to say that my father ought to have been a great man.”
“He was a great man, but he wasn’t a successful one according to modern
standards. There’s a difference.”
Tod supposed there was; and in the course of a few weeks he and Mr.
Lavender became close friends.
Tom Lavender spent each Sunday in the country. He would take the early
train for Bidhurst or Willoborough, and walk five and twenty miles
before sunset, carrying a haversack, a pair of field-glasses and a stout
ash stick. He would lie in a ditch or under a tree for an hour, watching
some bird, and sometimes he turned into a village church and joined in
the service. There was not a wild flower that he could not tell you the
name of, and he could spin all sorts of fascinating yarns about the life
of an ant or a bee. Nor was he a mere naturalist. He had a sense of
colour and of atmosphere, a love of landscape and an eye for all the
strangeness of beauty.
He made a disciple of Tod, and they spent many Sundays together tramping
the lanes and the field-paths and watching the life of the woods. Tod
learnt many things from old Tom Lavender: the tricks of the squirrel,
the notes and plumage of shy and elusive birds, how the woodpecker earns
his living, where bumble bees live, how trees should be grown, how to
tell an adder, where to look for plovers’ eggs, where trout might still
be found; but the most precious picture of all was the picture of old
Lavender himself. Tod was the better for having realised the gentleness
and the wisdom of the old man. Lavender gave his youth a new outlook on
life, a new choice, a new understanding. Here was a man who loved things
for themselves, who despised money and pitied greed, a man who was not
feverish, and to whom the world could offer no bribe.
“It’s up to all of us to choose,” he told Tod. “There are two ways of
owning things—by loving them and not wanting to put them in your
pocket, or by grabbing Life and trying to sell it. It’s up to all of us
to choose.”
“I don’t want a lot of money,” said Tod.
“Somebody else may.”
“Who?”
“The woman you marry.”
Tod had not thought of that.
“Why should she?”
“Women like a man to be successful. In the old days you got a horse and
knocked over other men, or you went on a great adventure. Success and
money are synonymous nowadays.”
“I shan’t marry a girl like that. Besides, my mother loved my father.”
“She wasn’t a money fool. She thought of the inside of her man before
she thought of the furniture.”
“That’s true,” said Tod.
So life promised well for Julian Burgetrode’s protégé. He had his feet
on the upland track and his eyes on the clear sky ahead of him. He was
healthy in body and mind, and he seemed in a fair way to escape the two
things that damn a young man most, cheap women and cheap money. He
played a good deal of tennis that summer, and he played much of it with
Bertha Cragg. He had joined the local club and had become something of
an expert.
He was known among the gossips as “Bertha’s boy.” The middle-class young
women were making a jest of it, but Tod was the most innocent thing on
earth just then.
Bertha knew.
But Bertha Cragg was not an average young woman. There was a fineness
about her, a reticence, a shrewdness that could watch and wait. She
understood Tod, glimpsed him as a healthy wholesome, delightful boy
whose whole attention was concentrated on the life outside him, on doing
things, and on doing them well. He was deep in his book of adventure,
his Crusoe story, and there was no woman in it. Some day a ship would
heave-to off Crusoe’s Island, the ship of sex, and Bertha Cragg hoped to
be the young mistress of that ship.
She loved Tod very dearly, but she hid her love so well that he never
caught the sheen of it. She wanted him to come to her, to open his eyes
to her and find that she had played herself into his life.
“Dear Bertha is growing quite pretty.”
Old ladies made that remark to her mother, and it was true.
She had a mass of fine dark hair, good teeth, very pleasant eyes, and
the bloom of her sex was upon her. She took great trouble with her
dress, wore the neatest of shoes, and was never gaudy.
Yet Tod remained blind. He liked her better than any other girl in
Shaston, and he liked her so well and in such a fashion that she
wondered whether he would go on liking her in that way till—— But
Bertha always shrank from the thought of the other girl who might swoop
in and carry Tod off in a night’s flirtation. She bore with the beastly
gossip and the sniggers and the knowledge that she was being watched by
the merciless eyes of competing flappers. She was always frank and merry
with Tod. She was his playmate, his sports-woman; and her dream was that
some day he would look into her eyes and discover the woman.
They entered at the local tournament as partners in the mixed doubles,
and they won.
Tod had been so keen on winning. Their last match was an uphill affair
against a pair who were the local experts. Tod, over zealous, had struck
an uncertain and eccentric patch, and was smashing into the net and
putting his drives out of the court. It was the girl who steadied him
and pulled them through.
“You’re worrying too much——”
“I know. I’m a silly rabbit; I want you to win.”
“I shan’t be cross if we don’t. Let’s stonewall for a while.”
They did, and Tod’s serenity came back. Bertha was returning everything
with that beautiful forehand drive of hers, and finding the side lines
with nearly all her shots.
“Set all, four all!”
“We are going to beat them, Tod.”
She wanted to call him “dear.”
And beat them they did, Bertha making the finishing stroke with a crisp
volley down the centre of the court. Tod had turned to her with an
exultant, happy face, “Oh, great shot!” and had tossed his racket in the
air.
He was almost the lover as they walked off the court together, and the
woman in her thrilled.
“You won it, you know. I should have been all over the place but for
you.”
She laughed softly and coloured.
“We never annoy each other, do we?”
“Rather not! I say, you must be tired. Come over here and sit down, and
I’ll get you something to drink.”
She was very happy when he made her put on her white blanket-coat.
She was very happy, too, when they took the prize, and Tod made an
ingenuous and half-shy little speech.
“My partner did it. She was the best player on the court.”
And some chit remarked to a friend:
“I believe she’s hooked him at last.”
But Tod remained as platonic and as innocent as ever, her playmate and
nothing more. The winter arrived, and he bought a dress-suit, took
dancing lessons and learnt to play bridge. He was popular and had nice
manners, and it leaked out that some very influential person was
interested in him. The tennis club carried on weekly subscription dances
during the winter, and Tod danced a great deal with Bertha Cragg. He
danced with other girls also, and she made a point of being very gay
whenever Tod had other partners. There were certain girls whom she
hated, mischievous little wretches who made eyes at Tod, and were quite
ready to make Bertha look a fool.
In fact, there was a game played by several of them, and they called it
“Bagging Bertha’s boy.” It did not prove to be a very successful game,
because Tod appeared to be so preposterously unsentimental and so loyal
to his comrade.
“You dance better than anyone else,” he told her; “most girls seem to be
such silly fools.”
Perhaps it was inevitable that Mrs. Rathbone Cragg should intervene. She
had eyes and ears and a maternal pride, and she was very fond of her
daughter. Nor had she any spite against Tod; she was quite ready for him
to become engaged to her girl. That was just it: the relationship needed
labelling, giving proper social significance.
She spoke to Bertha, and there was a quarrel. Mrs. Cragg had not thought
of quarrelling, but it happened. Some women are very sensitive.
“But, my dear, it can’t go on like this. You must realise that you are
getting talked about. It’s not nice. I know the boy is thoughtless——”
“I’m in love with him,” said the daughter with a queer, hard frankness.
“My dear child, that may be, but you ought to make him realise——”
Bertha flared out with sudden passion.
“You mean, I ought to do what most girls would do, grab him for myself
and land him on the sentimental hook. I know it could be done; he’s such
a dear boy, and sensitive. But I won’t.”
“You prefer to make a fool of yourself? Really, you are old enough——”
Bertha stood up.
“Mother, I have got a sort of pride that you don’t understand. I’m not
going to be clever with Tod; I love him in a better way than that. I
want him to come to me, if he is to come at all. As for all the beastly
gossip, it is not going to make me a little cad. I’m his friend; I can’t
help it—if I am not yet anything else.”
She was much moved, and almost in tears when she reached the door. Her
mother, a good soul in spite of all her conventionality, jumped up and
held out her hands.
“Bertha dear, we ought not to quarrel. You always were such a proud
child.”
“I can’t help it, Mother.”
“Don’t you think it may be that Tod doesn’t realise? I know you have
never helped him to realise, and he has seen so much of you. If you were
to make a kind of little break—like taking something away from a child
so that he missed it and found out how much he wanted it?”
Bertha looked straight into her mother’s eyes.
“Perhaps. To please you, I’ll try. Supposing I go and stay with Aunt
Ethel for a month?”
Mrs. Cragg kissed her.
“The very thing,” she said.
If Tod had had more personal vanity he might have discovered Bertha’s
secret. She went away to her aunt who lived at Surbiton, and Tod managed
to see her off at the station, a piece of boyish courtesy that clouded
the issue. He was not conscious of any gap in his life when Bertha Cragg
had gone. He did his work, played his games, took his food with the
usual zest, and went out with Thomas Lavender on Sundays, for the
country was never dead to old Lavender; he loved it wet and he loved it
fine. Tod danced once a week, and Mrs. Cragg had him to “Clovelly” to
play bridge. She was rather motherly and mysterious with Tod, but Tod
remained the most healthily unsubtle young idiot, and most ingenuously
blind.
The Horroxes were giving a big dance after the New Year, and Bertha
wrote to Tod to ask him if he would go with her. Each girl was taking a
man. Tod accepted, and thought no more about it. He liked dancing with
Bertha Cragg because it always seemed so easy, and he had not to
chatter; they both loved dancing for itself, the quick glide of their
youth together and the lilt of the music. There had never been any
mystery in it to Tod, no quiver of madness in the nearness of her, in
the whiteness of her shoulders or the smell of her hair. She had not the
spark to set him alight, and that was her woman’s tragedy.
Bertha did not return to Shaston till the day before the dance, and she
did not see Tod until he came up to “Clovelly” to share her cab. She had
brought a new dress with her from town, a most beautiful rose silk
thing, and she had spent more than an hour in dressing. It was her
“Flaming June,” her challenge of the youth in him, the conscious and
romantic assertion of the sex in her. She had scented her hair, and
fastened a spray of roses in her dress, and as she came down the stairs
a little pair of silver shoes flashed in and out under the rose-red
skirt.
Tod was waiting for her in the hall. He was glad to see Bertha, but it
was a sort of brother gladness, a cheerful “Hope-you-have-a-good-time”
welcome. There was no mystery about him. He took her black velvet cloak
and placed it over his shoulders.
“Very good of you to ask me to come,” he said; “the cab is waiting. Do
you think you’ll be warm enough in that thing?”
“Quite,” she answered very calmly, and smiling at her mother who had
come into the hall to see them off.
“Mind you take great care of her, Tod.”
“Of course I shall,” said Tod.
“I think we were lucky to get her back safely from Surbiton. She was
rather gay there.” And Mrs. Cragg smiled mysteriously and conspiringly
at Tod.
Bertha betrayed a moment’s impatience. She loathed being advertised.
“Time we were off. Come along, Tod.”
It is probable that that was the most unhappy evening the girl had ever
spent. Tod sat like “good dog Tray” in the cab, and talked like a
brother. The dance was a very sumptuous affair, for old Horrox had
plenty of money and knew how to spend it. He liked “display,” and the
Regent’s Hotel knew how to cater for people with social vanity. The
string band had been brought from town, and the room was decorated with
rambler roses. To do the unexpected and the expensive thing in the
middle of winter was an extravagance old Horrox loved. He had been an
expert at window-dressing in the days of his youth.
“Aren’t the roses lovely?”
“They are just the colour of your dress,” said Tod.
That was the only suggestively personal remark he made to her during the
evening. The interlude had taught him nothing. She was still his
playmate and nothing more, and he was as much at his ease with her as
though she were a man. She had hoped perhaps for a sudden and subtle
shyness in this boy, a sense of strangeness, an unfamiliar “What has
happened to you?” in his frank eyes. She gave him five dances, and he
always welcomed the return of their partnership, but he did not come to
her with the look of a lover, but with the air of a man calling her to a
game.
She was strangely silent as they drove home in the cab, lying well back
in her corner with a kind of languor. Tod was puzzled by her silence. He
did not understand.
“Tired?”
“A little.”
“It’s nearly three, you know, and I’m called at seven.”
“Poor Tod!”
She was strangely gentle with him; all her bitterness was against
herself. A sort of mother pathos softened her mood. She would not let
him leave the cab when it reached “Clovelly.”
“No. You need not fuss about me. You can drive straight on to the
terrace.”
“It’s been a jolly evening, hasn’t it?”
“Splendid! Good night!”
The cab rolled on, and Tod felt a healthy pleasure in the prospect of
going to bed. Bertha Cragg was in her room, bending forward and looking
at her face in her mirror. It was a plain face—a little drawn, tired,
colourless, for the joy of life had left it. She felt that she hated
that face of hers, hated it as she had never hated anything on earth
before.
“You fool!”
Her hands went to the shoulder straps of that exquisite dress of hers,
and ripped it relentlessly from bosom to waist.