Megan muttered something elusive, propped up her bicycle against the kerb and dived in a purposeful way into the International Stores.
“Extraordinary child,” said Miss Griffith, looking after her. “Bone lazy. Spends her time mooning about. Must be a great trial to poor Mrs. Symmington. I know her mother’s tried more than once to get her to take up something—shorthand-typing, you know, or cookery, or keeping Angora rabbits. She needs an interest in life.”
I thought that was probably true, but felt that in Megan’s place I should have withstood firmly any of Aimée Griffith’s suggestions for the simple reason that her aggressive personality would have put my back up.
“I don’t believe in idleness,” went on Miss Griffith. “And certainly not for young people. It’s not as though Megan was pretty or attractive or anything like that. Sometimes I think the girl’s half-witted. A great disappointment to her mother. The father, you know,” she lowered her voice slightly, “was definitely a wrong ’un. Afraid the child takes after him. Painful for her mother. Oh, well, it takes all sorts to make a world, that’s what I say.”
“Fortunately,” I responded.
Aimée Griffith gave a “jolly” laugh.
“Yes, it wouldn’t do if we were all made to one pattern. But I don’t like to see anyone not getting all they can out of life. I enjoy life myself and I want everyone to enjoy it too. People say to me you must be bored to death living down there in the country all the year round. Not a bit of it, I say. I’m always busy, always happy! There’s always something going on in the country. My time’s taken up, what with my Guides, and the Institute and various committees—to say nothing of looking after Owen.”
At this minute, Miss Griffith saw an acquaintance on the other side of the street, and uttering a bay of recognition she leaped across the road, leaving me free to pursue my course to the bank.
I always found Miss Griffith rather overwhelming, though I admired her energy and vitality, and it was pleasant to see the beaming contentment with her lot in life which she always displayed, and which was a pleasant contrast to the subdued complaining murmurs of so many women.
My business at the bank transacted satisfactorily, I went on to the offices of Messrs. Galbraith, Galbraith and Symmington. I don’t know if there were any Galbraiths extant. I never saw any. I was shown into Richard Symmington’s inner office which had the agreeable mustiness of a long-established legal firm.
Vast numbers of deed boxes, labelled Lady Hope, Sir Everard Carr, William Yatesby-Hoares, Esq., Deceased, etc., gave the required atmosphere of decorous county families and legitimate long-established business.
Studying Mr. Symmington as he bent over the documents I had brought, it occurred to me that if Mrs. Symmington had encountered disaster in her first marriage, she had certainly played safe in her second. Richard Symmington was the acme of calm respectability, the sort of man who would never give his wife a moment’s anxiety. A long neck with a pronounced Adam’s apple, a slightly cadaverous face and a long thin nose. A kindly man, no doubt, a good husband and father, but not one to set the pulses madly racing.
Presently Mr. Symmington began to speak. He spoke clearly and slowly, delivering himself of much good sense and shrewd acumen. We settled the matter in hand and I rose to go, remarking as I did so:
“I walked down the hill with your stepdaughter.”
For a moment Mr. Symmington looked as though he did not know who his stepdaughter was, then he smiled.
“Oh yes, of course, Megan. She—er—has been back from school some time. We’re thinking about finding her something to do—yes, to do. But of course she’s very young still. And backward for her age, so they say. Yes, so they tell me.”
I went out. In the outer office was a very old man on a stool writing slowly and laboriously, a small cheeky-looking boy and a middle-aged woman with frizzy hair and pinze-nez who was typing with some speed and dash.
If this was Miss Ginch I agreed with Owen Griffith that tender passages between her and her employer were exceedingly unlikely.
I went into the baker’s and said my piece about the currant loaf. It was received with the exclamation and incredulity proper to the occasion, and a new currant loaf was thrust upon me in replacement—“fresh from the oven this minute”—as its indecent heat pressed against my chest proclaimed to be no less than truth.
I came out of the shop and looked up and down the street hoping to see Joanna with the car. The walk had tired me a good deal and it was awkward getting along with my sticks and the currant loaf.
But there was no sign of Joanna as yet.
Suddenly my eyes were held in glad and incredulous surprise.
Along the pavement towards me there came floating a goddess. There is really no other word for it.
The perfect features, the crisply curling golden hair, the tall exquisitely-shaped body! And she walked like a goddess, without effort, seeming to swim nearer and nearer. A glorious, an incredible, a breathtaking girl!
In my intense excitement something had to go. What went was the currant loaf. It slipped from my clutches. I made a dive after it and lost my stick, which clattered to the pavement, and I slipped and nearly fell myself.
It was the strong arm of the goddess that caught and held me. I began to stammer:
“Th-thanks awfully, I’m f-f-frightfully sorry.”
She had retrieved the currant loaf and handed it to me together with the stick. And then she smiled kindly and said cheerfully:
“Don’t mention it. No trouble, I assure you,” and the magic died completely before the flat, competent voice.
A nice healthy-looking well set-up girl, no more.
I fell to reflecting what would have happened if the Gods had given Helen of Troy exactly those flat accents. How strange that a girl could trouble your inmost soul so long as she kept her mouth shut, and that the moment she spoke the glamour could vanish as though it had never been.
I had known the reverse happen, though. I had seen a little sad monkey-faced woman whom no one would turn to look at twice. Then she opened her mouth and suddenly enchantment had lived and bloomed and Cleopatra had cast her spell anew.
Joanna had drawn up at the kerb beside me without my noticing her arrival. She asked if there was anything the matter.
“Nothing,” I said, pulling myself together. “I was reflecting on Helen of Troy and others.”
“What a funny place to do it,” said Joanna. “You looked most odd, standing there clasping currant bread to your breast with your mouth wide open.”
“I’ve had a shock,” I said. “I have been transplanted to Ilium and back again.”
“Do you know who that is?” I added, indicating a retreating back that was swimming gracefully away.
Peering after the girl Joanna said that it was the Symmingtons’ nursery governess.
“Is that what struck you all of a heap?” she asked. “She’s good-looking, but a bit of a wet fish.”
“I know,” I said. “Just a nice kind girl. And I’d been thinking her Aphrodite.”
Joanna opened the door of the car and I got in.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she said. “Some people have lots of looks and absolutely no S.A. That girl has. It seems such a pity.”
I said that if she was a nursery governess it was probably just as well.
Three
I
That afternoon we went to tea with Mr. Pye.
Mr. Pye was an extremely ladylike plump little man, devoted to his petit point chairs, his Dresden shepherdesses and his collection of bric-à-brac. He lived at Prior’s Lodge in the grounds of which were the ruins of the old Priory.
Prior’s Lodge was certainly a very exquisite house and under Mr. Pye’s loving care it showed to its best advantage. Every piece of furniture was polished and set in the exact place most suited to it. The curtains and cushions were of exquisite tone and colour, and of the most expensive silks.
It was hardly a man’s house, and it
did strike me that to live there would be rather like taking up one’s abode in a period room at a museum. Mr. Pye’s principal enjoyment in life was taking people round his house. Even those completely insensitive to their surroundings could not escape. Even if you were so hardened as to consider the essentials of living a radio, a cocktail bar, a bath and a bed surrounded by the necessary walls. Mr. Pye did not despair of leading you to better things.
His small plump hands quivered with sensibility as he described his treasures, and his voice rose to a falsetto squeak as he narrated the exciting circumstances under which he had brought his Italian bedstead home from Verona.
Joanna and I being both fond of antiquities and of period furniture, met with approval.
“It is really a pleasure, a great pleasure, to have such an acquisition to our little community. The dear good people down here, you know, so painfully bucolic—not to say provincial. They don’t know anything. Vandals—absolute vandals! And the inside of their houses—it would make you weep, dear lady, I assure you it would make you weep. Perhaps it has done so?”
Joanna said that she hadn’t gone quite as far as that.
“But you see what I mean? They mix things so terribly! I’ve seen with my own eyes a most delightful little Sheraton piece—delicate, perfect—a collector’s piece, absolutely—and next to it a Victorian occasional table, or quite possibly a fumed oak revolving bookcase—yes, even that—fumed oak.”
He shuddered—and murmured plaintively:
“Why are people so blind? You agree—I’m sure you agree, that beauty is the only thing worth living for.”