Mr. Potter, on the other hand, loved her very much. He was always loving her.
He gave her (just as poor Mr. Waite had thought he would)
an
enormous
diamond mounted in platinum; bulging under her glove like a heat bump or flashing from afar like a lighthouse warning off the poor and the unsuccessful. The ring was slightly too big for her, so that she was afraid of losing it but she was more afraid of asking Mr. Potter to get it made smaller.
Her capacious handbag easily contained the little worn New Testament, but it requires more courage than Jean possessed to read the New Testament while waiting for someone in a cocktail bar, and she was afraid (oh yes, she was very weak and cowardly; presently she began to accuse herself of both faults) of Mr. Potter’s smart female friends noticing it and exclaiming “How sweet!”
Mr. Potter had a number of these female friends, all youngish and smart and groomed, with the very latest gadgets to help them in smoking, drinking and painting themselves. They knew, seemingly by instinct, what it was smartest to wear, and eat, and where it was smartest to go. Their only fear was of seeming innocent or soft or dowdy or serious; they were so smart that they stung.
Mr. Potter, of course, never told Jean in so many words that she was on trial before these ladies, but she presently began to feel herself in that position. He liked her to look exactly as they did, helpful gadgets and all, and she willingly spent quite large sums in equipping herself. He also liked her to join in their long, long discussions upon where to obtain this brand of American shoe or that brand of rum (which was at the moment the only shoe and rum to wear and drink) to which he himself listened with the attention and interest the subject demanded.
Her attention occasionally wandered.
The ladies had a sixth sense which warned them when someone was bored, and they became suspicious and hostile towards a woman who might not be as interested as they were in shoes and rum. Presently Jean was referred to among them as “Oliver’s Dim-Out.” This would have surprised her very much if she had known, for she took such pains to
look
and speak exactly as they did that she was sure she had succeeded.
Mr. Potter was a good-natured and easy-going man when nothing occurred to annoy him, and it was quite six weeks before he, too, became a little disturbed about Jean. There was something wrong about her, but he was not quite sure what it was. She wore the right clothes, and said the right things, and did everything he told her to do and yet he did not feel completely at ease about her. He had the same feeling about her that he sometimes had about a golf- or tennis-ball which afterwards turned out to be faulty: it looked all right; it felt all right; and yet——
What could it be?
IN TWO DAYS
the harvest would begin at Naylor’s Farm. Sunlight had poured down for three weeks, uninterrupted by rain or cloud, upon the wheat, and the heads bore that shadowy pencilling on their undersides which appears only when they are ripe; the fields were burnished to pale gold, and blew in the wind with a dry rustle that was yet a luxurious sound, full of promise.
All was going forward cheerfully; with the shed already tidied and swept ready for the Supper, and Mrs. Hoadley planning a day’s baking on Sunday because there would be no time to bake on Monday when the harvest began; and everybody had sampled the wheat and pronounced that the stalk snapped off sharply when bitten, thus proving its excellence by fulfilling an ancient test. The Land Girl provided by the West Sussex Agricultural Office at Mr. Hoadley’s request had arrived; she was a merry little thing named Mary Parkes and everybody liked her
at
sight. And then the B.B.C. broadcast that all over the country there was Risk of Thunder.
At once the farm’s pleasant mood of anticipation was turned to anxiety. Sylvia (who was pleased at this threat of drama) frequently stopped her work to scan the cloudless sky, while Emilio (whose mood of late had been divided between fatherly indignation and swelling pride because his eldest
bambino
had been caught robbing an American lorry and promptly adopted by the regiment as a mascot) became sulky. Only Fabrio, bemused with love, hardly noticed what was being said.
However, Mr. Hoadley decided to stand by his first plan, for he had a low opinion of the experts upon the Air Ministry roof, preferring to trust to the weather lore which he had followed since his father had taught it to him as a boy, and it was his opinion that there would be no storms.
By tea-time the sky was still tranquil and cloudless and the heat showed no sign of becoming oppressive. Sylvia had the afternoon free, and had spent it quietly for once, resting in the garden at the back of the farmhouse and studying
The Petrified Forest
, in which she fancied herself in the part of Gabby.
Mary Parkes obligingly brought her tea out to her, and Sylvia, having overwhelmed her with loud and surprised thanks, cleared the tray in ten minutes. Then she set it down beside her chair, flung up her arms in a yawn, and decided to go for a walk.
It was too hot to move briskly, and she sauntered along the lanes enjoying the shade of overhanging trees until an open gate attracted her, and she wandered down a path that led through a field of ripe barley into the woods.
Late afternoon sunlight filled the coppices, and now and then a pigeon called among the green shadowy boughs. Her mood was quiet as the hour, and to-day she wanted neither excitement nor noise. She was happy, wandering on with a grass stem between her lips and her eyes fixed dreamingly upon the leafy distances, while there drifted through her mind the image of Fabrio’s smiling face. That ever-returning image increased her
happiness
, and when she remembered that he would be at the farm when she returned, and was to stay there throughout the harvest, she parted her lips and sang softly to herself—in that voice which even his love for her had not been able to praise, but which now, sounding quietly in the stillness, had a lulling charm.
For once she was not thinking of any film hero; she was remembering Fabrio’s kiss, and regretting that she had been unkind to him—but here her thoughts shrank in happy confusion—and she pulled a fresh head of grass, while a smile trembled upon her mouth and the woodland light shone down upon her young face.
Then she heard voices. Glancing away down a mossy ride she saw coming towards her Alda and the three children. She called and waved to them and they waved back and hastened to join her.
“Hot enough for you, Mrs. Lucie-Browne?” she asked.
“Too hot—” as the party walked on, “though one shouldn’t grumble. It’s grand for the harvest.”
“The wireless says there may be storms. It was on the eight o’clock news this morning.”
“I do hope not—it would be such a shame if the wheat were spoiled. We need it so badly.”
“Mr. Hoadley doesn’t think it’ll come to anything. Are you coming to the Harvest Supper, Mrs. Lucie-Browne? Mrs. Hoadley said she was going to ask you and the kiddies.”
“Of course. We’re looking forward to it.”
“Meg too?” glancing down at the small silent figure toiling along by Alda’s side, with plump arms and back tanned to gold.
“Oh yes. She can sleep late the next day and it would be a pity for her to miss it—a harvest supper is something to remember.”
Alda was wondering how soon she could introduce the name of Fabrio. She was determined to give Sylvia advice, and here was the perfect occasion.
Usually she did not take much notice of people’s appearance, for her practical mind was occupied with the plans and duties of the moment, but now she studied Sylvia and thought that she looked “attractive” (“beautiful” did not come into Alda’s vocabulary unless suggested by a landscape or flowers). Sylvia’s white skin had gradually turned to rosy gold beneath the heat of the sun, and her hair, which to-day she wore parted in the centre and spread upon her shoulders in abundant curls, had acquired the glint of copper. Amidst this gold and bronze her blue eyes looked wonderfully cool and clear.
Alda slightly despised her, of course, for her lack of education and her wrong values, but as she looked at her she understood why Fabrio loved.
“The Italians are staying at the farm for the harvest, aren’t they?” she asked.
“Oh yes. Just over the harvest,” Sylvia answered, and that was all. No joke, no mock-rueful “Worse luck!”, none of her usual forthright comments followed, and a note in her voice, the slightest shade of consciousness in her manner, caused Alda to fix her at once with a keen, mischievous gaze.
“How do you get on with Fabrio nowadays?” she began.
“Oh—all right.” Sylvia turned aside to pull off another head of grass; she was suddenly alarmed, for she did not want to talk about Fabrio to anyone, least of all to Mrs. Lucie-Browne with that look in her eyes. She wished that she could laugh too, but she could not: she only felt helpless, and her one wish was to keep her thoughts and her feelings about Fabrio to herself.
“Is he still as keen on you as ever?”
“Oh—I don’t know—I don’t think so. Who said he was—?” Her voice died off in a mutter.
“Nobody. The way he looks at you is enough.”
Sylvia said nothing. A kind of sickening misery was creeping over her. She had been so happy, and now everything was being dragged out and spoilt.
“You look at him as if you liked him, too,” the kind, teasing voice went on. “You do, don’t you?”
“He’s all right.” At that moment she felt that she hated him, and Mrs. Lucie-Browne as well. She added loudly, with an effort, “He’ll pass in a crowd with a shove,” and laughed.
“Well, you know, Sylvia, I think you might do very much worse than marry him. I’m sure he’s going to ask you—he’s got that look in his eye,” laughing. “
Has
he asked you yet?” and she inclined her charming face, full of curiosity and laughter, nearer to the girl’s.
Sylvia could only shake her head.
“Well, I’m sure he will. And if you take my advice you’ll say ‘Yes.’ That young man means business.”
Sylvia was trying to think of something to say, but it was useless, and she could only walk along in silence with a foolish smile and burning cheeks.
Alda glanced at her and thought that her sulky expression was not becoming, then lightly slipped her arm through the other’s sunburnt one.
“You’re thinking about your stage career, I know. But actors don’t make good husbands, Sylvia, and I’m sure that Fabrio would. And then what fun it would be, living in Italy! Sunshine all the year round, and it’s such a beautiful place; you can’t imagine how beautiful if you’ve never seen it. (I have; I spent my honeymoon there, in Venice.) You wouldn’t be rich, of course, but you’d have a
real
life, with Fabrio’s farm to live on——”
“It isn’t Fabrio’s, it’s his eldest brother’s.”
“Oh. Well, I expect he’ll have a share in it——”
“Not for years, he says. There’s a whole tribe of them—dirty, skinny, jabbering Eyeties. No thanks.” And she slipped her arm from Alda’s and lifted up Meg, who had suddenly halted and stood gazing at her mother in weary silence.
Sylvia settled the hot little body, scented with sunlight and the sweetness of bruised grass, comfortably into her arms. Her
throat
ached, but she angrily swallowed, and began at once in her usual tone:
“No, really, Mrs. Lucie-Browne, I’m afraid it’s a case of no-can-do. I’ve known girls who’ve married foreigners and it’s never worked. You never know what they’re really like until they get you into their own country; they’re quite different over here. Besides—hark at me! Better wait till I’m asked!”
“I think you’re very silly. There aren’t so many good-looking, devoted young men about, you know.”
“I’ll chance it,” Sylvia said indifferently, setting Meg down as they reached the beginning of the meadows, and the edge on her voice, the expression on her face, foreshadowed how she would look in twenty years, if nothing befell her to bring the woodland light to dwell in her eyes for ever.
Alda was annoyed but she laughed.
“I’m sure it will be ‘yes,’ when he does ask you, all the same,” she said, as she beckoned to her children and moved away.
“I bet you it won’t!” Sylvia called ringingly after her, and Alda turned with a mocking wave as she went through the cottage gate.
“What’s up? You looked browned-off,” said Mary Parkes, as Sylvia came up the path.
“I’m all right; I’ve only got a bit of a headache.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s the heat, I expect. Shall I get you an Aspro? You were so full of beans at lunch, weren’t you? I’ve been laughing all over again at some of the things you said.”
Sylvia smiled vaguely and went up to her room.
Fabrio and Emilio had only been informed on the previous day that they were to sleep at the farm, and for the past twenty-four hours they had been alternately in delight, and in agony lest the authorities should at the last minute prevent them from going. Now they were safe; their passes signed and all formalities fulfilled; and here they were, actually spreading two lumpy mattresses upon the floor of a large old chamber, dim with dust and still scented by the apples which it had harboured
last
autumn, extending over the whole area of the farmhouse, and having one small window through which could be seen the elms, the pond and meadows, the distant woods, and far off the dark hills below a pink sky.