Part 21 (1/2)
He opened a shabby pocket-book, and took out a letter. ”There, you read that,” he said.
Rawson-Clew read, and at the end was little wiser. Julia said she had left one situation (reason not even suggested), and had got another.
That she did not wish to give her new address, or to hear from Mr.
Gillat, or her family, at this new place, as it might spoil her arrangements. Rawson-Clew recognised the last word as a favourite of Julia's; with her it was elastic, and could mean anything, from a piece of lace arranged to fill up the neck of a dress, to a complex and far-reaching scheme arranged to bring about some desired end. What it meant in the present instance was not indicated, but clearly she did not wish for interference, and, with some wisdom, took the surest way to prevent it by making it well-nigh impossible. She had left one means of communication, however, though apparently that was for Johnny only. ”If you and father get into any very great muddle,” she wrote, ”you must let me know. Put an advertis.e.m.e.nt--one word, 'Johnny,' will do--in a paper; I shall understand, and, if I can, I will try to do something.” A paper was suggested; it was a cheap weekly. Rawson-Clew remembered to have seen it once in the small Dutch town that summer, so it was to be got there. Unfortunately, as he also remembered, it was to be got in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and Paris and Berlin too.
He folded the letter, and returned it to Mr. Gillat. ”Thank you,” he said; ”evidently, as you say, she does not wish to be found, and it would seem she has got some sort of employment, although I am afraid it cannot be of an easy or pleasant sort.”
He did not explain the reason he had for thinking so, and Mr. Gillat never thought of asking. Soon after he went away.
Clearly there was nothing to be done. Julia did not mean to have his help and protection; and, with a decision and completeness which, now he came to think of it, did not altogether surprise him, she has taken care to avoid them. That absurd refusal of hers was, after all, a reprieve, although until now he had not looked upon it in that light.
No doubt it was a good thing affairs had turned out as they had; the marriage would have been in many ways disadvantageous. Yet he certainly would have insisted on it, and taken trouble to do so, if she had not put it altogether out of his power. All the same, he did not feel as gratified as he ought, perhaps because the arrogance of man is not pleased to have woman arbitrator of his fate, and the instinct of gentleman is not satisfied to have her bear his burden, perhaps for some other less clear reason. He really did not know himself, and did not try to think; there seemed little object in doing so, seeing that incident was closed.
The next day he went north, and by accident travelled part of the way with a lady of his acquaintance. She was young, not more than five or six and twenty, nice looking too, and very well dressed. She had a lot of small impediments with her--a cloak, a dressing-bag, sunshade, umbrella, golf clubs--some one, no doubt, would come and clear her when the destination was reached; in the mean time, she and her belongings were an eminently feminine presence. She talked pleasantly of what had happened since they last met; she had been to Baireuth that summer, she told him, and spoke intelligently of the music, the technique and the beauty of it, and what it stood for. She was surprised to hear he had got no further than Holland, and more surprised still that he had not even seen Rembrandt's masterpiece while he was there. Her voice was smooth and even, a little loud, perhaps, from her spending much time out of doors, not in the least given to those subtle changes of tone which express what is not said; but as she never wanted to express any such things, that did not matter.
She did not bore him with too much conversation; she had papers with her--some three or four, and she glanced at them between whiles.
Afterwards she commented on their contents--the political situation, the war (there is always a war somewhere), the cricket news, the new books; touching lightly, but intelligently, on each topic in turn.
Rawson-Clew listened and answered, polite and mildly interested. It was some time since he had heard this agreeable kind of conversation, and since he had come in contact with this agreeable kind of person.
He ought to have appreciated it more, as men appreciate the charm of drawing-rooms who have long been banished from them. He came to the conclusion that he must be growing old, not to prefer the society of a pretty, agreeable and well-dressed woman to an empty railway carriage.
The girl had two fine carnations in her coat; the stalks were rather long, and so had got bruised. She regretted this, and Rawson-Clew offered to cut them for her. He began to feel for a knife in likely and unlikely pockets, and it was then that he first noticed a faint, sweet smell; dry, not strong at all, more a memory than a scent. He did not recognise what it was, nor from where it came, but it reminded him of something, he could not think what.
He puzzled over it as he cut the flower stalks, then all at once he laid hold on the edge of a recollection--a pair of dark eyes, in which mirthful, mocking lights flickered, as the sun splashes flicker on the ground under trees--a voice, many-noted as a violin, that grew softest when it was going to strike hardest, that expressed a hundred things unsaid.
He looked across at the owner of the carnations, and wondered by what perversity of fate it was decreed that any one who could buy such good boots, should have such ill-shaped feet to put into them; and why, if fate so handicapped her, why she should exhibit them by crossing her knees. He also wondered what possessed her to wear that hat; every other well-dressed girl had a variation of the style that year, it was the correctest of the correct for fas.h.i.+on, but he did not take note of that. Men are rather blockheaded on the subject of fas.h.i.+on, and seldom see the charm in the innately unbecoming and unsuitable, no matter what decrees it.
He looked back to the empty opposite corner, and, though until that moment he had not really thought of Julia since he left Mr. Gillat yesterday, he put her there in imagination now. He did not want her there, he did not want her anywhere (there are some wines which a man does not want, that still rather spoil his taste for others). She would not have made the mistake of wearing such a hat; her clothes were not new, they were distinctly shabby sometimes, but they were well a.s.sorted. As to the boots--he remembered the day he tied her shoe--he could imagine the man she married, if he were very young and very foolish, of course, finding a certain pleasure in taking her arched foot, when it was pink and bare, in the hollow of his hand. If she were in that corner now, the quiet, twinkling smile would certainly be on her face as she listened to the talk of books, and men, and places, and things. He did not picture her joining even when they spoke of things she knew, and places she had been to--he remembered he had once heard her speak of a town which had been spoken of this afternoon. She had somehow grasped the whole life of the place, and laid it bare to him in a few words--the light-hearted gaiety and the sordid misery, the black superst.i.tion and the towering history which overhung it, and the cheerful commonplace which, like the street cries and the gutter streams, ran through it all--the whole flavour of the thing. The girl opposite had been to the place too; she told him of the historic spots she had visited; she knew a deal more about them than Julia did. She spoke of the quaint pottery to be bought there--it had not struck Julia as quaint, any more than it did its buyers and sellers. And she referred to the sayings and opinions of a great pose writer, who had expressed all he knew and felt and thought about it, and more besides. Julia, apparently, had not read him--what reading she had done seemed to be more in the direction of _Gil Blas_, and Dean Swift, and other kindred things in different languages.
The owner of the carnations glanced out of window, and commented on the scenery, which was here rather fine--Julia would not have done that; all the same, she would have known just what sort of country they had pa.s.sed through all the way, not only when it was fine; she would have noticed the lie of the land, the style of work done there, the kind of lives lived there, even, possibly, the likely difficulties in the way of railway-making and bridge building. She would certainly have taken account of the faces on the platforms at which they drew up, so that without effort she could have picked out the porter who would give the best service; the stranger in need of help, and he who would offer it; and the guard most likely to be useful if it were necessary to cheat the company--it was conceivable that cheating companies might sometimes be necessary in her scheme of things.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Julia”]
He cut another piece off the carnation stalks, they were still too long. He did not wish Julia there; he fancied that it was likely she would not easily find her place among the people he would meet at his journey's end. But if there were no end--if he were going somewhere else, east or west, north or south--say a certain old oriental town, old and wicked as time itself, and full of the mystery and indefinable charm of age, and iniquity, and transcendent beauty--she would like that; she would grasp the whole, without attempting to express or judge it. Or a little far-off Tyrolean village, remote as the mountains from the life of the world--she would like that; the discomfort would be nothing to her, the primitiveness, the simplicity, everything. If he were going to some such place--why, then, there were worse things than having to take the companion of the holiday too.
He handed back the carnations, and then unthinkingly put his hand into his coat-pocket. His fingers came in contact with some dry rubbish, little more than stalks and dust, but still exhaling something of the fragrance which had been sun distilled on the Dunes. He recognised it now--Julia's flowers, put there in the wood, and forgotten until now.
”Thanks so much for cutting them,” said the girl with the carnations, smelling them before she fastened them on again. ”I really think they are my favourite flower; the scent is so delicious--quite the nicest flower of all, don't you think so?”
”I'm not sure,” Rawson-Clew said thoughtfully, and when he spoke thoughtfully he drawled very much, ”I'm not sure I don't sometimes prefer wild thyme.”
CHAPTER XII
THE YOUNG COOK
It was about ten o'clock on an October night; everything was intensely quiet in the big kitchen where Julia stood. It was not a cheerful place even in the day time, the windows looked north, and were very high up; the walls and floor were alike of grey stone, which gave it a prison-like aspect, and also took much scrubbing, as she had reason to know. It was far too large a place to be warmed by the small stove now used; Julia sometimes wondered if the big one that stood empty in its place would have been sufficient to warm it. She glanced at it now, but without interest; she was very tired, it was almost bed-time, and she had done, as she had every day since she first joined Herr Van de Greutz's household, a very good day's work. She had scarcely been outside the four walls since she first came there on the day after the holiday on the Dunes. This had been her own choice, for, unlike all the cooks who had been before her, she had asked for no evenings out.
Marthe, the short-tempered housekeeper, had not troubled herself to wonder why, she had been only too pleased to accept the arrangement without comment. Apart from the self-chosen confinement, the life had been hard enough; the work was hard, the service hard and ill-paid, and both the other inmates of the house cross-grained, and difficult to please. These things, however, Julia did not mind; discomfort never mattered much to her when she had an end in view; in this case, too, the end should more than repay the worst of her two task-masters.