“I suppose, with some women, it could be for home. If she says so——That
is what confounds one in her. She knows—she proves that she knows, in a
phrase like that, things that (when one thinks of her personality) she
_can’t_ know—couldn’t know. It’s inexplicable. ‘Till one’s lips
ache’——Oh, Lord!” She laughed harshly.
Anita looked at them uncertainly.
“Well, that’s what she said. And to judge from her description Westering
was something to be homesick for. I expected a paradise.”
“Westering? That’s quite a town.”
“Yes, I know. There’s a summer colony. Madala mourned over it. She was
absurd. She raced me out of the station and up the hill, and would
scarcely let me look about me till we were at the top, because the lower
end of the village had been built over. It might have been the sack of
Rome to hear her—‘Asphalt paths! Disgraceful! The grocer used to have
_blue_ blinds. They’ve spoiled the village green.’ And so it went on
until we reached Upper Westering.”
“Oh, where they live now?”
“Yes. And then she turned to me and beamed—‘_This is_ my _country_.’
It certainly is a pretty place. There’s a fine view over the downs;
but too hilly for me. We climbed up and down lanes and picked
ridiculous bits of twig and green stuff till I protested. Then she
took me into the churchyard. We wandered about: very pleasant it was:
such a hot spring day, and pretty pinkish flowers—what did she call
the stuff?—cuckoo-pint, springing from the graves—and daffodils. Then
we sat down in the shadow of the church to eat our lunch. We began to
discuss architecture and I was growing interested, really beginning to
enjoy myself—some of it was pre-Norman—when a man climbed over the
stile from the field behind the church, and came down the path towards
us. As he passed, Madala looked up and he looked down, and up she
jumped in a moment. ‘Why,’ she said, ‘I do believe—I _do_ believe—’
You know that little chuckly rise in her voice when she’s pleased—‘I
do believe it’s you!’ ‘Oh, Madala,’ I said, ‘the sandwiches!’ They
were in a paper on her lap, you know. She had scattered them right and
left. But I might have talked to the wind. I must say he had perfectly
respectable manners. He turned back at once, and smiled at her, and
hesitated, and began to pick up the sandwiches, though he evidently
didn’t know her. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘don’t you remember? Aren’t you Dr.
Carey? You mended my camel when I was little. I’m Madala!’ She was
literally brimming over with pleasure. But, you know, such a silly way
to put it! If she had said ‘Madala Grey’ he would have known in a
moment. There were a couple of _Eden Walls_ on the bookstall as we
went through. I saw them. However, he remembered her then. He
certainly seemed pleased to see her, in his awkward way. He stood
looking down at her, amused and interested. People always got so
interested in Madala. Haven’t you noticed it? Even people in trams.
Though I thought to myself at the time—‘How absurd Madala is! What can
they have in common?’ Yes, I thought it even then.”
“Well, what had they in common?”
“Heaven knew! She was ten and he was twenty-five when they last met. He
knew her grand-people: he had mended her dolls for her: he lived in her
old home: that, according to her, was all that mattered. She said to me
afterwards, I remember, ‘Just imagine seeing him! I _was_ pleased to see
him. He belongs in, you know.’ ‘No, Madala,’ I said, ‘I don’t know. Such
a fuss about a man you haven’t seen since you were a child! I call it
affectation. It’s a slight on your real friends.’ ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘but
he belongs in.’ She looked quite chastened. She said—‘Nita, it wasn’t
affectation. I believe he was pleased too—honestly!’ He was. Who
wouldn’t be? You know the effect she used to make.”
“What did he say?” asked the Baxter girl.
“Oh, he looked down at her as if he were shy. Then he said—‘You’ve a
long memory, Madala!’ Yes, he called her Madala from the first. It
annoyed me. She said—‘Oh, do you remember when Mother was so ill once?
You were very kind to me then.’ Then she said something which amazed me.
I’d known her for two years before she told me anything about that
_Sylvania_ tragedy, but to him she spoke at once. ‘They’re dead,’ she
said, ‘Mother and Father. They’re drowned. There isn’t anyone.’ But her
voice! It made me quite nervous. I thought she was going to break down.
He said, with a stiff sort of effort—‘Yes. I heard.’ That was all.
Nothing sympathetic. He just stood and looked at her.”
“Well?” said Miss Howe impatiently.
“Oh—nothing else. I finished picking up the sandwiches. She introduced
me, but I don’t think he realized who I was. It annoyed me very much
that she insisted on his eating lunch with us. As I said to her
afterwards, it wasn’t suitable. Buns in a bag! But there he sat on a
damp stone (he gave Madala his overcoat to sit upon) perfectly
contented. I confess I wasn’t cordial. But he noticed nothing. Obtuse!
That was how I summed him up from the first—obtuse! And no conversation
whatever. Madala did the talking. I believe she asked after every cat
and dog for twenty miles round. And her lack of reticence to a
comparative stranger was amazing. She told him more about herself in
half an hour than she had told me in four years. But she was an
unaccountable creature.”
“Yes, that’s just it. One never knew what Madala would do next, and yet
when she’d done it, one said—‘Of course! Just what Madala _would_ do!’
But it wasn’t like her to neglect you, Nita!”
“Oh, she noticed after a time. She began to be uncomfortable. I—withdrew
myself, as it were. You know my way. She didn’t like that. She tried—I
will say that for her—she did try to direct the conversation towards my
subjects. Useless, of course. He was, not illiterate—no, you can’t say
illiterate—but curiously unintellectual. Socialism now—somehow we got on
to socialism. That roused him. I must say, though he expressed himself
clumsily, that he had ideas. But so limited. He had never heard of Marx.
Bernard Shaw was barely a name to him. Socialism—his socialism—when we
disentangled it, was only another word for the proper feeding of the
local infants—drains—measles—the village schools. Beyond that he was
mute. But Madala chimed in with details of American slum life, and
roused him at once. They grew quite eloquent. But not one word, if you
please, of her own work. Anything and everything but her work. He did
ask her what she was doing. ‘Oh,’ said she in an offhand way, ‘I
scribble. Stories.’ And then—‘It earns money, and it kills time.’ Yes,
that’s exactly how she put it. ‘Madala!’ I said, ‘that’s not the
spirit—’ I’d never heard her use such a tone before. She had such high
ideals of art. It jarred me. I thought that she ought to have known
better. But she looked at me in such a curious way—defiant almost. She
said—‘It’s my own spirit, Nita. Oh, let me have a holiday!’ And at that
up she jumped and left us sitting there, and wandered off to the stile
and was over it in a second. We sat still. The hedge hid her. Then we
heard her call—‘Cowslips! Oh, cowslips!’ I thought he would go when she
called, but he sat where he was, listening. It was one of those hot,
still days, you know. There was a sort of spell on things. There were
bees about. We heard a cart roll up the road. I wanted to get up and
talk, make some kind of diversion, and yet I couldn’t. We heard her call
again—‘Hundreds of cowslips! I’m going to make a cowslip ball.’ Her
voice sounded far away, but very clear. And there was a scent of may in
the air, and dust—an intoxicating smell. It made me quite sleepy. It was
just as if time stood still. Three o’clock’s a drowsy time, I suppose.
And he never stirred—just sat there stupidly. But I was too sleepy to be
bored with him. Presently back she came. She had picked up her skirt and
her petticoat showed—it was that lavender silk you gave her, Lila. So
unsuitable, you know, on those dirty roads. And her skirt was full of
cowslips. She was just a dark figure against the sky until she was close
to us; but then, I thought that she looked pretty, extremely pretty.
Bright cheeks, you know, and her eyes so blue——”
“Grey—” said Mr. Flood, “the grey eyes of a goddess.”
“They looked blue, and she didn’t look like a goddess. She looked like a
little girl. Well, there she stood, with her grey skirt and her lavender
silk, and her cowslips—you know they have a sweet smell, cowslips, a
very sweet smell—and tumbled them all down on the tombstone. Then she
wanted string. Carey seemed to wake up at that. He’d been looking at her
as if he had dreamed her. He produced string. He was that sort of man.
Then she made her cowslip ball. I held one end of the string and he held
the other, and she nipped the stalks off the flowers and strung them
athwart it. That is the way to make a cowslip ball.”
“Nita, I love you!” cried Miss Howe for the second time, and the others
laughed.
She stopped. She stiffened.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Ne’ mind! Go on!”