Years of Plenty Part 32

"No, it was my fault. If I miss two-foot putts, you can't be expected----"

And thus during the whole journey superb concentration on an end to be won, superb oblivion to work and wealth and weariness.

Martin found Freda yawning in the porch.

"I thought you were staying upstairs all day," he began.

"Who said so?"

"The maid, I think."

"Well, I never said anything about it. You don't seem very glad to see me."

"Of course I am. Only I meant that I would have come back earlier if I had known."

"I wouldn't keep you from your golf."

He sat beside her, but she did not welcome him. She was hurt.

"If I'd only known, I wouldn't----"

"Day after day," she whispered. "I know you like to be out and about.

I don't claim you always, do I? But sometimes, surely."

"I didn't know," he repeated remorsefully. "I didn't know."

"Yesterday you went and to-morrow you'll go."

"No, I won't. Freda, I'm a brute. I've been rotten to you. I've nothing to say for myself."

"You've got to go to-morrow."

"I won't. You don't want me to go."

"You must go. I'm not going to keep you, if you don't stay of your own accord. The ball is much more amusing than I am."

He pleaded, he fought against her, but she insisted on his going.

The punishment was effective. He went in anguish and played with no zest for the game. He sliced, he topped, he missed short putts. The match fizzled out on the fourteenth green, a fiasco.

The Cartmells hurried back to London and Martin remained to make peace with Freda. He had been unspeakably pained by the sordidness and waste of energy and peace that quarrelling had entailed. He hated the suspicions and embarra.s.sments that must linger on: he was pa.s.sionately desirous of restoring the old intimacy and yet ... somehow or other the wound remained. He couldn't forget that evening on the ninth green.

Why wouldn't Freda see the point of these things? Why wouldn't she walk? She was strong enough now for a mile or two. Almost he was angry with her for having been ill, for it is an odd feature of humanity that we sometimes dislike people for their sufferings, hate them for a cough or sniff. And now Martin was on the point of blaming Freda for the weakness he had once adored. Why wasn't she strong like Margaret or Viola? Why didn't she understand about the moor and wind-swept s.p.a.ces and the miracle of hitting a golf-ball?

While he was bearing the olive branch these questions, dreaded and strongly combated, kept forcing themselves into the narrow pa.s.ses of his mind as the Persian host flooded into Thermopylae. It was futile to feign deafness: in time they would force a hearing. And there were other less easily worded doubts and apprehensions.

Perhaps the summer-time came as a release. More than he would have cared to admit, Martin wanted to be alone, to see Freda dispa.s.sionately, from a distance. And so to Oxford.

Freda, while undergoing all unconsciously this dispa.s.sionate appreciation, retired to London. But within a few weeks' time she had received another invitation to Devonshire, and tired not so much of town as of her relations she gladly accepted.

At The Steading were a Mr and Mrs Brodrick with their daughter. Arthur Brodrick had been contemporary with John Berrisford at Oxford and had pa.s.sed high into the Indian Civil Service. Just before his time for a pension was due he had been invalided home and had missed the full reward of his service. The Brodricks lived at Sutton in a remote mediocrity of wealth more galling than actual poverty.

Was it Chance again, the Chance that had brought a perfect Easter and put Martin on his game, that now seemed to keep the conversation on Oriental diseases and the rigours of imperial service? Certainly Freda heard more of fever in distant stations than of health and company at Simla. But the Brodricks had not been divorced from patriotism by the hardness of their lot: they still believed in the flag, in the pomp and state of the British Raj, in stately dinners at Government House where the couples went down to the feast in order of social precedence, and they recounted squabbles, petty but bitter antagonisms, of rival ladies who considered themselves insulted by their positions in the troop of diners.

Freda listened silently and learned.

So this was the life for which she had bargained. Eternal fever--so they implied--eternal society of the Brodricks and their kind! For Martin with his work to love and his career to think about such things might be well enough! But for her! How could she blend with this unknown, this unparalleled society?

Then the Berrisfords suggested that they should all go to Oxford for Eights Week. Mr and Mrs Berrisford had to be in town: would Mary Brodrick come? And, naturally, Freda? Both the girls accepted eagerly. It was soon settled and rooms were engaged at the Mitre.

On reading the letter announcing their plans Martin groaned in the spirit. It wasn't, of course it wasn't, that he did not want to see Freda. Did he not write to her as eagerly as ever? Did she not answer? But Eights Week of all times!

Martin was sufficiently a lover of Oxford, summery Oxford of the still water-ways, to loathe and despise Eights Week, that Whitsuntide holiday of the wealthy, when the city is invaded by a host of rich trippers, whose tripping has not even the justification of beer-bottles and hearty b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. He did not wish to eat salmon mayonnaise, to drink champagne cup, to propel, in faultless flannels, a punt among a solid ma.s.s of punts, to go for picnics where all London was revelling. His choice would have been to launch a vessel on the upper river, to find some tranquil backwater past Eynsham, with a canopy of willow and the scene of flowering meadows; or else to make use of deserted tennis courts and to enjoy things properly. Now they were going to break in upon him: and indeed another idle vacation had left him work enough to do. They had not come when he was a fresher and such things were allowable, and the Berrisfords knew Oxford well. Presumably they desired to show Freda the city and its ways. But why, oh why, in Eights Week? It wasn't like the Berrisfords.

They arrived duly and lived in state at the Mitre: they mingled with the crowds, tramped the colleges, and demanded to have things pointed out to them. Mary Brodrick said all the right things. Martin shuddered as the phrases came out in turn:

"Can we see the kitchens?" (at Christ Church).

"Where are the Prince's rooms?" (at Magdalen).

"Isn't this the clever college?" (at Balliol).

It was a gloomy ceremony.

There was Freda. And she ... well, he had to admit that she didn't harmonise with this world of fine raiment and expensive bean-feasts.

The Freda who glittered in the punt, the Freda clothed sumptuously at her uncle's expense was undeniably different from the insignificant wisp of a girl in plain blue coat and skirt who had hurried out of the office at six and come to Martin for rest and comfort. To have explained his feelings accurately would have been an impossible task for Martin, but he could not put aside a vague sensation that Freda was wrongly placed in this world, that she was pre-eminently a martyr and a rebel, not a woman of leisure.

She did not even know what to say. There is a particular kind of speech appropriate to these occasions: it is neither flirtation nor conversation in the proper sense, but a discreet blend, a mixture as insipid as it is inevitable. It does not demand brains or wit, but a certain quality, a training. Mary Brodrick, with all her limitations, knew the game; she was jolly and made things go. Freda hung back or, when she came forward, made mistakes. Odd that Martin should have been angry with Freda for her inability to play a game which he himself despised. Yet it did pain him that she didn't "fit in."

As a strange word whose meaning has recently been discovered seems to the reader to occur on every page he reads, so Freda suddenly revealed to Martin in a hundred ways her incapacity for "fitting in." And it was to the society of countless Brodricks that Martin would have to take her.

On the Wednesday evening, when the river was rendered invisible by the press of vessels and fair women, when the supporters of the victorious college swam across the river and dived from barge and boathouse, when supper-parties began to disappear up the Cherwell and gramophones to tinkle in shady recesses, Mary Brodrick caught her train to town, Mr and Mrs Berrisford went to see the Irish Players, and Martin took Freda on the river.

To avoid the crowd they were going to the Cherwell above the rollers.

She kept him waiting in the taxi that was to take them to Tims'.

At Tims' she found the punt dirty, said the cushions were filthy, and would ruin her dress.

"Eights Week," said Martin. "We've got to be thankful to get any kind of a punt."

Still she grumbled. Martin ran into a projecting bush and, before she knew what had occurred, her hat had been pushed over her eyes, her hair disarranged, and her face scratched. She said nothing at all. Worse than any expostulation! It grew cold and a chilly breeze sprang up.

Inevitably they quarrelled. There was no particular cause for the outburst. A long week of strain, of mutual revelation and discovery, of mingled pleasure and annoyance, was bound to tell.

They had at least the satisfaction of making things clear.

"You only cared for me as a martyr," she ended.

"I didn't, you know I didn't," he protested on the spur of the moment.