Part 28 (1/2)

As he had expected, his companion replied, ”Ah, no; he died eight, nine years since.” And Mr. Haseltine then went on to tell, taking the war as the obvious interest, and not without the satisfaction that Guy had so often met and so often loathed, that he had lost dear ones. ”Children of my eldest son. Fine lads. Brave boys. One in the first month--at the Marne; the other only last year, flying. Yes; I've done my bit,” said Mr. Haseltine, with the fatuity that he was so plentifully companioned in displaying.

”Bit.” Odious word. His ”bit.” Why his? Had any one written a poem on the formula coming from the lips of those for whom others had died? A scattered, flagellating line or two floated through Guy's mind.

Something about barbed wire came in. He wondered how old Mr. Haseltine would have felt about his ”bit,” hung up on that and unable to die. He wondered where the fine lads now lay. No more coffee for them, with cream in it; no more robins singing; no more strolling smokes among mignonette in the sunlight. How they were forgotten, already, except for trophies, for self-glorification to display! How pleased, how smug this rescued, comfortable world! Something of his distaste attached itself even to Mrs. Baldwin when she next appeared. Something irritating him in her peacefulness. She, too, had seen nothing and lost nothing. But, at all events, she wouldn't, he knew that, take any stand on the two nephews to claim her ”bit.” There was nothing fatuous about Mrs.

Baldwin. The slight distaste still lingered, however, and he found himself wondering once or twice, during the day that pa.s.sed, in spite of it, so pleasantly, whether she wasn't, for all his idealizing similes, a stupid as well as a sweet woman. It was not because of filial self-effacement that she let her father do all the talking at meals: it was simply because she had nothing to say, and the good old boy was quite right in taking his responsibility for granted. The person who could talk was the responsible person. Her mind, though so occupied, was quite singularly inactive and, he was sure, completely uncritical. She didn't find her father in the least a bore, or suspect that anybody else might find him so. She did find, Guy felt sure, satisfaction in all her occupations. He heard her laughing--a quiet little laugh--with Cathy in the kitchen; and in the afternoon, when he helped her to p.r.i.c.k out seedlings, her attentive profile--as, after he had dug each hole, she dropped in the little plant, pressed the earth about its roots, and fixed it in its place--made him think of the profile of a child putting its dolls to bed. They planted three beautiful long rows, and Guy was quite tired by tea-time, for though they had high tea at half-past six, they were not deprived of the precious afternoon pause, taking place as it did at the unaccustomed but pleasing hour of four.

After tea she went to see some people in the village, Mr. Haseltine dozed in his chair, and Guy took a long walk.

So the days went on, and at the end of a week he was able to write to Dorothy and tell her that he was sleeping wonderfully and that Mrs.

Baldwin's cottage was all that she had pictured it. By the end of the week he had even grown rather attached to Mr. Haseltine, and he enjoyed playing chess with him every evening; and sometimes they had a game in the afternoon when tea was over. The undercurrent of irritation still flowed, but he had learned to put up with the old gentleman and to circ.u.mvent his communicativeness, and in the case of Mrs. Baldwin he more and more felt that she was the sort of person to whom one would, probably, forgive anything. It had become evident to him that what might be dulness might also be unawareness. That was a certain kind of dulness, it was true, but it didn't preclude capacity for response if the proper stimulus were applied. It amused him to note that if none of the nearly inevitable jars of shared life seemed ever to occur between her and her father, it was simply because, when a difference arose, she remained unconscious of it unless it were put before her. Nothing could have been less in the line of selfishness; it was she who thought of him, of his comfort and happiness, and who ordered her life to further them; he, in this respect, was pa.s.sive; but Guy felt that the poor old boy often brooded in some disconsolateness over small trials and perplexities that a companion more alert to symptoms would have discerned and dispelled at once. Mr. Haseltine even, sometimes, confided such grievances to the P.G.

”I don't want to bother Effie about it,” he said;--E. had stood for Effie--”she's a dreamy creature and very forgetful. But it's quite evident to me that the rector and his wife have been expecting to be asked to tea to meet you. I've just been talking to them in the lane, and I saw it plainly. They had asked us to bring you before you arrived, hearing we were to have another guest,--they've always been most kind and neighbourly in helping us to entertain our new friends,--and I really don't know why Effie should have got out of it. I usually have to remind her, it's true. But I sometimes get tired of always having to.

She doesn't care for them herself; but that's no reason why you might not. We have few enough interests to offer visitors.”

Guy was glad to have escaped the rectory tea, though he did not say this in a.s.suring Mr. Haseltine that the entertainment offered at Thatches was absolutely to his taste. He was completely out of place at any rectory; he could imagine no rector who would not find his poems pernicious; but he felt that there was justice in Mr. Haseltine's contention. He _might_ have cared for them. As it was, Mr. Haseltine was brought once again to reminding her. It was evident then that she was ready to please anybody or everybody.

”Ask them? Ought I to ask them?”

”My dear, it's ten days since they sent their invitation. They spoke again--and it's the second time--of having been so sorry not to see us, when I met them yesterday, in the lane. I don't know why you did not go.”

”I thought it would bore Mr. Norris, father. He came here for quiet, you know. But would it bore you?” she asked Guy. ”They are very nice. I don't mean that.”

”It's certainly very pleasant being quiet,” said Guy; ”but if Mr.

Haseltine likes having them, I a.s.sure you that people don't frighten me in the least.”

”Oh, not on my account,” Mr. Haseltine protested. ”I see our good friends continually. It is of them I am thinking, as well as of Mr.

Norris. He might find them more interesting than you do, Effie, and they will, I fear, be hurt.”

Now that it was put before her, Mrs. Baldwin did it every justice, rising from the breakfast-table, where she had just finished, to go to her desk, and murmuring as she went, ”I hadn't thought of that. They might be hurt. So, if it _won't_ bore you, Mr. Norris.”

And the Layc.o.c.ks were asked, and did indeed bore Guy sadly.

It was on the night after their visit--Mr. Layc.o.c.k had questioned him earnestly about his personal impressions of the war and to evade him had been wearying--that Guy, for the first time, really, since he had come, found sleep difficult and even menaced. It was because of that, he felt sure, looking back on it, that the curious occurrence of the next day took place--curious, and, had it taken place in the presence of any one else, embarra.s.sing. But what made it most curious was just that; he had not felt it embarra.s.sing to break down and sob before Mrs. Baldwin.

The morning had begun badly. The breakfast-table papers had been full of the approaching victory. Mr. Haseltine read out pa.s.sages from the _Times_ as he broke his toast and drank his coffee. He had reiterated the triumph of his long conviction, and Mrs. Baldwin had murmured a.s.sent. ”All's well with the world,” was the suffocating a.s.surance that seemed to breathe from them both. ”All's blue.” Was h.e.l.l forgotten like that? What if the war were won? Of course, it had to be won--that was an unquestioned premise that had underlain his rebellions as well as Mr.

Haseltine's complacencies since the beginning. But what of it? No victory could redeem what had been done.

He went out into the garden, to be away from Mr. Haseltine, as soon as he could, and took a book into the summer-house; and it was here, a little later, that Mrs. Baldwin, seeing him as she pa.s.sed, her garden-basket on her arm, paused to ask him, with her smile of the shy hostess, if he were all right. She didn't often ask him that, and he saw at once that his recent recalcitrancy to rejoicing had pierced even her vagueness. He knew that he still looked recalcitrant, and he was determined not to soften the overt opposition rising in him; so he raised his eyes to her over his book and said that he was not, perhaps, feeling very fit that morning.

Mrs. Baldwin hesitated at the entrance to the summer-house. She looked behind her at the garden and up at the roses cl.u.s.tering over the lintel under the thatch; she even took out her scissors, in the uncertainty that, evidently, beset her, and snipped off a dead rose, and she said presently, ”It was all that talk about the war, wasn't it--when what you must ask is to forget it.”

”Oh, I don't ask that at all,” said Guy. ”I should scorn myself for forgetting it.” She glanced in again at him, mildly. ”I want to forget what's irrelevant, like victory,” he said; ”but not what is relevant, like irremediable wrong.”

Her awareness had not, of course, gone nearly as far as this. She kept her eyes on him, and he was glad to feel that he could probably shock her. ”You see,” he found himself saying, ”I saw the wrong. I saw the war--at the closest quarters.”

”Yes--oh, yes,” Mrs. Baldwin murmured.

”For me, tragedy doesn't cease to exist when it's shovelled underground.