The Four Graces (19 page)

Only close friends had been invited to tea at the Vicarage, only the Chevis-Cobbes, Dr. Wrench, Miss Marks, Jimmy Howe, and Miss Bodkin, and a few other near neighbors who have not appeared in this veracious chronicle of the Grace family, and who, like the flowers of spring, have nothing to do with the case. There had been some doubt in Sal's mind whether or not to ask Miss Bodkin, for if one asked Miss Bodkin it might cause a little jealousy in the village, and, although Sal would have been charmed to ask the whole village, it just wasn't possible. But Mrs. Chevis-Cobbe had solved the problem. “Ask her, poor soul,” said Mrs. Chevis-Cobbe. “She'd love to be asked—she needn't come if she doesn't want to—and, after all, it's her affair if the others are jealous.” So Miss Bodkin had been asked and had accepted rapturously, and when Tilly came out of the side door, there she was walking across the churchyard to the Vicarage in her pink dress and hat (but, of course, not wearing the yellow muslin apron with the little black spots). The others were drifting toward the Vicarage, too. Sal and Roderick first, arm in arm, and seemingly oblivious that anybody else existed; Addie with Timmy Howe and, following them, a little group composed of Liz, Dr. Wrench, William, and the Chevis-Cobbes. Miss Marks was alone. Tilly came upon her standing before the memorial to the victims of the Black Death.

“How delightful to see you again!” exclaimed Miss Marks. “I hope you remembered to dust the organ today. It would have been most unfortunate if you had got dust upon that very charming dress.”

“Yes, I remembered,” replied Tilly, not very graciously, for of course the blame for the whole affair was directly attributable to Miss Marks and her umbrella (she even had it with her
today
!).

“Such a pretty dress, and so becoming,” added Miss Marks, with a friendly smile.

“Oh, I'm glad you like it,” replied Tilly, relenting a little. “You're coming to tea, aren't you? I think I'd better run on…”

Tilly had taken very little interest in the arrangements for tea, which was horrid of her, of course (she knew it was horrid), but, now, seeing all these people converging upon her home, her domestic instincts got the better of her horridness. Who was getting the tea, wondered Tilly, racing across the churchyard like a mountain goat. Not Joan, because Joan was in the church, not Liz nor Addie, because they were strolling idly and talking to the guests, and it was obvious that Sal's thoughts were not engaged with domestic affairs. Tilly rushed into the kitchen with the belated intention of putting on kettles, and trying to find something for the guests to eat—and so preventing an absolute fiasco—and there, to her amazement, she found Mrs. Element and Bertie busily engaged in filling teapots with boiling water from a magnificent array of kettles bubbling and hissing merrily upon the stove…and it was obvious that teapots and kettles from all over the village had found their way to the Vicarage kitchen to play their part in the celebrations.

“It's all ready, nearly. There's the trays,” said Mrs. Element, pointing to the trays of cups and saucers set out upon the kitchen table. “I'd be grateful if you'd just carry them in, Miss Tilly. I don't 'ardly like to trust Bertie and I ain't too keen on appearing myself. All those people makes me 'ot and bothered, so if you just take in the trays…”

“This is kind of you!” said Tilly.

“Kind!” exclaimed Mrs. Element. “Look what Miss Sal's done for Bertie and me! Bertie and me would do a good deal more than that for Miss Sal—Mrs. 'Erd, I
should
say.”

“Mrs. Herd?” cried Tilly. “Oh, yes…Mrs. Herd.”

“It'll take a bit of getting used to,” agreed Mrs. Element, smiling.

Put to shame by Mrs. Element (for what, after all, had Sal done for Mrs. Element compared with her endless kindnesses to her own family?), Tilly seized a tray and bore it into the drawing room where the guests were congregating and where there was such a storm of conversation already raging that there might have been a hundred people in the room instead of about a score. The newly married couple were standing in front of the fireplace, which was banked with flowers, and were receiving the congratulations of their friends with the blend of happiness and embarrassment usual under the circumstances.

There was a lull in the noise when Tilly appeared and the male element in the company rushed forward from all directions, converging upon the tray bearer and embarrassing her a good deal in its eagerness to be of service. Jimmy Howe was the successful competitor for the tray, and having obtained it he stood there holding it tightly with a strained expression upon his face.

“Where?” he inquired anxiously.

“Over there, I should think,” replied Tilly, pointing to a table in the window that was spread with a white lace doth and was laden with cakes.

“Oh, yes, of course,” said Jimmy Howe.

The tray having arrived at its destination in safety, Tilly was free to look at the cakes that, as far as she was concerned, were as manna, fallen from the skies. The
pièce de résistance
was a large iced cake bearing the inscription “Happiness and Good Fortune” done in pink sugar upon the top. On closer inspection Tilly decided the cakes must have come from the village, for she recognized the gingerbread as being of Mrs. Feather's baking, and the sponge was identical with the sponge Mrs. Bouse had made for the Women's Institute. Miss Bodkin, who was standing near the table, cleared up the mystery of the iced cake by remarking to Tilly in a low, anxious voice, “The icing is just a
little
soft, I'm afraid, but it's better than being too hard, isn't it?”

“Much better,” agreed Tilly. “It looks a marvelous cake. Sal had better cut it, hadn't she?”

The party followed a natural course; people talked and laughed: healths were drunk in tea and a few of the waggishly inclined made waggish speeches. Long before anyone had expected, the station taxi arrived from Wandlebury to convey the married couple to the station. There was no time for long-drawn-out farewells. Sal hugged everybody she could lay hands on—including Miss Bodkin—and the next moment had vanished from the scene, and the climax having been reached the party broke up rather quickly and the guests departed.

“It went off very well,” said Mr. Grace; he had said exactly the same after the Chevis-Cobbe wedding, but this time he said it differently, not cheerfully, not rubbing his hands together with satisfaction, but in a somewhat forlorn tone of voice.

And Liz, instead of replying—as she had done before—that weddings always
did
go off well and that she, for one, had never heard of a wedding that
didn't
, replied quite soberly that she thought it
had
, and at any rate Sal had looked perfectly sweet.

Jane Chevis-Cobbe walked down to the five-acre field with a large basket on her arm. The field was being harvested today—Archie had told her so at breakfast—and as it was a perfectly lovely day, fine and warm with just a suspicion of a breeze to keep it from being sultry, she had decided to take tea down to the field for Archie and herself. She intended to ask Liz to have it with them for Sal had asked her to keep an eye on Liz and cheer her up. Jane did not feel quite so drawn toward Liz—Sal was more her kind of person—but she realized that Liz must be feeling a little flat and this was a good way to keep an eye on her. Jane was disappointed when she got to the field to find no Archie, but Liz was there, helping to load up the last two wagons with the sweet-smelling sheaves of corn. Liz was a marvelous-looking creature, decided Jane, watching her at work, watching her gathering the sheaves and forking them onto the wagons. With her long legs and her straight back she looked like a Greek boy—yet not like a boy, either. The sun shone on her golden hair and her fair skin was tanned to a beautiful smooth brown.

Liz saw Jane and waved, and a few minutes later she came over to the hedge in the shade of which Jane had sat down.

“Archie's gone,” said Liz. “He had to go down to the garage to see Element about one of the tractors that wasn't behaving nicely. He asked me to tell you.”

“Perhaps you'd like some tea,” suggested Jane.

Liz sat down at once. “That's very nice of you, Mrs. Chevis-Cobbe. I was hoping you might have enough for me,” admitted Liz, smiling. “The fact is this sort of work agrees with me so well that I'm always hungry and thirsty. I don't know why I don't get fat.”

Jane thought the reason pretty obvious. “You work too hard,” she said. She hesitated and then added, “Sal calls me Jane. I'd rather, really. It seems funny when you call Archie, ‘Archie.'”

“We've known Archie such ages,” said Liz hastily. “But—yes, it
is
rather silly. I'd like to.”

“Good,” said Jane, taking out a Thermos flask and unscrewing the top.

“I wanted to thank you for decorating the church. It was lovely.”

“Sal was lovely. She's very happy, you know. I think you're a little worried about her, aren't you?”

“Just selfish,” declared Liz. “I'm missing her so horribly. We all are.”

“She'll miss you,” said Jane thoughtfully. “Oh, yes, she will. I'm terribly happy with Archie, but I miss my sister quite a lot. There are all sorts of things you share with a sister—silly little things that you wouldn't think of talking to a husband about.”

“I thought you had no relations!” exclaimed Liz. “She wasn't at the wedding—”

“We quarreled. She didn't want me to marry Archie…there was a reason, of course.”

Liz was interested. She had always sensed a mystery about Archie's wife, and as Liz was a forthright person she voiced her feelings at once. “A reason? What sort of reason?” inquired Liz eagerly.

Jane hesitated. She had very nearly told Sal her unusual history—that day when they were sitting on the seat in the middle of Chevis Green—but Sal had shown no curiosity and the moment had passed. Now, here was Liz, thirsting for information, and Jane felt inclined to give it to her. “I'll tell you if you're interested,” said Jane slowly. “I don't want other people to know—you'll soon see why.”

This mysterious utterance made Liz more anxious to know than ever. She promised the strictest secrecy and prepared herself to listen to the tale.

“Helen and I were very badly off,” said Jane, offering Liz a sandwich. “It was quite horrible. We lived in lodgings and scrimped and scraped, and then, quite suddenly, I found I could write stories, and the
extraordinary
thing was that the stories were accepted by a publisher and people bought them and read them.”

“Why extraordinary?” inquired Liz, who was under the impression that this was the natural sequence of events.

“Because they were so terribly bad,” explained their author in a matter-of-fact voice.

“Bad!”

“Oh, not
wicked
,” said Jane smiling. “They were silly, and soppy, and untrue to life and the characters were puppets.”

Liz was dumb. She gazed at her companion with wide blue eyes, her sandwich halfway to her mouth.

“But in spite of that,” continued Jane, “or perhaps because of that, thousands of people liked them, so all at once Helen and I found ourselves quite well off. We bought a very pleasant house and settled down comfortably—and of course I went on writing and the stories went on selling like mad. Everything in the garden was lovely; I liked writing and I liked getting letters from people all over the world. I was most horribly complacent and pleased with myself,” said Jane, nodding gravely. “I was as smug as a tabby—quite disgusting.
Then
I met two young airmen at tea one day, and one of them told me straight out exactly what he thought of my books.”

“He didn't like them?” asked Liz.

“Definitely not,” replied Jane, smiling at the recollection. “But I wasn't angry, I was interested, because really and truly in my inmost heart I had begun to feel bored with them myself. I had begun to realize what rubbish they were; he was only putting into words—and pretty hard words—exactly what I had been feeling. That finished it,” said Jane, with a shudder at the recollection. “That absolutely put the lid on—as Archie would say. I tried to go on writing but I couldn't. The whole thing revolted me. Helen was furious, of course, and I didn't blame her, really, because the books were our bread and butter, and also because she had helped a good deal in building up the publicity. I won't go into details, it would just bore you, but the end of it was I ran away and went to Ganthorne Lodge as a P.G. and there I met Archie.”

Jane stopped. She was obviously under the impression that the story—her own story—was finished. Liz thought otherwise.

“How interesting!” exclaimed Liz. “It's just like a novel, isn't it? Do go on and tell me more.”

“There isn't any more to tell.”
*

“Are you still writing?”

“No, indeed!” cried Jane. “And I never will—not
that
sort of story.”

“I wonder if I have read any of your books?”

“Quite likely,” said the author casually.

“Tell me some of their names,” urged Liz.

“Oh, there were dozens of them. I called myself Janetta Walters.”

Liz was amazed. “Janetta Walters!” she cried. “Oh, but how exciting! I
love
her books! I thought you said they were frightful—and there's one just out—all about Cornwall. It isn't quite as good as the others, of course; I like
Her
Prince
at
Last
the best, and I like—”

“I wish I hadn't told you!” exclaimed Jane.

Liz was no fool. “Oh, don't say that,” said Liz, full of remorse. “I mean, of course, if you're sick of them, you hate them. I understand that.”

“Yes, I hate them,” nodded Jane.

“But think of the pleasure they give other people,” urged Liz. “Surely you must feel proud of that—and pleased. Archie likes them. Archie has a whole set.”

“I know,” said Archie's wife.

Liz sighed. “It seems so
sad
. No more Janetta Walters! Couldn't you go on writing when you've had a good rest?”

“No, I couldn't,” replied Jane, smiling at her. “But you needn't worry; there will be plenty of Janetta stories to read. Helen is writing them now…but of course that's a secret.”

“Helen is writing them? But—”

“Anybody could write them if they had enough time and patience, if they sat down at a desk with plenty of foolscap paper and a good solid pen.”

“I don't believe it,” said Liz frankly.

“It's quite true. Helen wrote the new one, about Cornwall.”

“I told you it wasn't so good!”

Jane laughed. She said, “Yes, you did. I couldn't help being a little bit pleased about it, which is very illogical.”

“Why illogical?”

“Think it out,” said Jane, laughing quite cheerfully.

They were silent, drinking tea and eating buns. It was warm and pleasant; the sky was blue and cloudless, the stubble of the cut field glittered like millions of little spears in the sunshine. Jane looked about for another topic of conversation, for she did not want to answer any more questions about Janetta Walters.

“What are you reading?” asked Jane, pointing to a large, thick, shabby volume lying beside Liz's coat. She felt quite safe in asking the question for even at this distance, she could see the book was not one of her own.

“Oh, that!” said Liz. “As a matter of fact, I got it from the librarian at Wandlebury. I'm going to read every word of it.”

Jane was intrigued. Liz had announced her intention with resolute determination—almost with defiance—and the book certainly looked pretty heavy reading. If Liz liked the Janetta type of book,
that
shabby volume was obviously not her meat. Should she inquire further or not, wondered Jane, glancing at her companion…Liz was gazing in the other direction and looked so like an oyster that Jane decided not.

Jane was right, of course. The book was not the kind of literature Liz enjoyed, but she had not borrowed it for the purpose of enjoyment, nor had she borrowed it with the object of improving her mind. She had borrowed it because she needed something to
occupy
her mind. You had to have something to occupy your mind (so Liz had found). If you had decided not to think about Roderick—who was now your sister's husband—you had to have something else to think about. You couldn't just not think about Roderick, there had to be some positive alternative, so that when you found yourself beginning to think about Roderick you could immediately switch over. The problem was
what
positive alternative should you choose. Looking about for something, Liz's eye fell upon William, whose enthrallment with the Romans and everything to do with Roman civilization was obvious to the meanest intelligence. There must be something in it, thought Liz. The Romans must be interesting—if you knew about them. Liz wasted no time. She went to Wandlebury, sought out the custodian of the public library, and informed him that she wanted a book about Roman remains. He produced several books for her inspection and Liz chose the thickest (it was
A History of the
Romans
Under
the
Empire
, Vol. VIII, by Charles Merivale). I shall read every word of it, said Liz to herself as she tucked it under her arm. It was pretty heavy going, of course, but she set her teeth and stuck to it. She took the book to the fields with her and read it while she ate her lunch, and she took it to bed with her—it certainly had the merit of sending her to sleep. The experiment was taking a good deal of courage and determination, but nobody, not her worst enemy, could question the courage of Liz. Her judgment was sometimes faulty and she had a habit of leaping before she looked, but for sheer moral courage and determination it would have been hard to find her match.

“There's Archie!” exclaimed Jane, and she stood up and signaled to him with a Thermos flask.

***

Liz had been born upon the first of September and it was a habit of the Graces to have a picnic upon that auspicious day. This year, of course, Liz would be busy at the farm unless she asked for a special holiday.

“I think you
should
,” said Tilly. (It was the thirty-first of August; they were all having supper together in the kitchen, because it was Thursday and therefore Joan's day out.)

“I see no reason why you shouldn't,” agreed Mr. Grace.

“You work hard enough,” added William, helping himself to raspberry jam.

“I see lots of reasons why I shouldn't,” replied Liz firmly. “Archie would give me a holiday for my birthday if I asked him—he'd give it because I'm me—but what would he say if Nat Bouse asked for a day off because it was his birthday? Archie would think he had gone mad…Yes, it's silly, isn't it?” agreed Liz, surveying the laughter of her family with complete gravity. “It's silly if it's Nat; so it's silly if it's me. There's no difference at all between me and Nat except that he can milk three cows to my two. We're both farmhands, working for a weekly wage—what's the difference between us?”

“He has a red mustache,” replied Tilly, giggling.

With a lightning transition from the sublime to the ridiculous, Liz dipped her finger in the remains of the raspberry jam and the next moment was like Nat in this respect also.

“Crazy girl!” exclaimed Mr. Grace, laughing immoderately.

Perhaps the Fates were pleased with Liz for her devotion to duty; at any rate they provided a lovely day for her birthday. The morning had just the faintest tang of September when Liz let herself out of the back door of the Vicarage; she sniffed the air appreciatively and, throwing one long leg over her bicycle, rode off to work.

A lovely day for her birthday and there were more pleasures in store; for Polly—one of the huge Clydesdales of which Archie was so proud—was considerate enough to cast a shoe that very morning, and Archie called Liz away from cleaning the pigsties and asked her to take Polly to the blacksmith at Chevis Green.

“Take Toby, too,” said Archie. “Take them both. Trod may as well have a look at Toby while he's about it.”

“Honestly, Archie?” asked Liz, scarcely able to credit her good fortune.

Archie waved and strode away.

It was still quite early so Liz finished the pigsties, as a sop to her uncomfortably sensitive conscience, then off she went with the two big gentle creatures, sitting sideways on Toby's back and leading Polly in true plowboy style, joggle, joggle—joggle, joggle, through lanes smelling deliriously of damp earth drying in the warm September sun. It was a real birthday treat, and Liz enjoyed it all the more because she had just begun to enjoy life again with her old zest. The Romans had done their job and ousted Roderick. The odd thing was that now, when there was no longer any need to pursue her labors and immerse herself in their affairs, the Romans had become interesting to Liz on their own account, so, instead of throwing up her studies and exchanging
Romans
Under
the
Empire
, Vol. VIII, for a thinner and less weighty tome, in the Janetta Walters
genre
(which was a pleasure Liz had promised herself and to which she had been looking forward with eager anticipation), Liz had exchanged Merivale for another equally thick and no less weighty volume, which she intended to peruse from start to finish.