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  Fanny scrawled the name in the spidery handwriting which is produced by writing with one hand on a pad which won’t keep quiet, while the other hand is holding the telephone.

  “Any more details?” she asked as she scrawled.

  “Not that I know,” said Vanna. “I used to know her as a young girl, and I have hardly seen her since.”

  “Did Arthur rave frightfully about her?” inquired the shameless Fanny.

  “I don’t know about frightfully,” said Vanna. “I don’t think he was old enough to know what he was talking about, and certainly she hadn’t the faintest idea of being in love. I always thought her very nice, but a little bit dull and cold. Poor Arthur had some good imaginary suffering when she married very young, but that was all.”

  “Oh,” said Fanny, rather downcast, “I thought it was much more amusing than that. I hoped that when I told him she was coming, he would turn pale and look silly, and perhaps moan her name in his sleep.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Fanny,” said Vanna, and then they each laughed down their own receivers and the laughs very cleverly got past each other in the middle and reached the opposite end, and both Fanny and Vanna thought how amusing it was to be on such understanding terms with one’s in-laws. After a little more conversation about the boys and their holiday plans, the telephoning came to an end. Then Fanny went out to lunch with one of her wealthier admirers, and very much disconcerted him by talking exclusively about her adoration of her husband, which was not in the least what he had ordered a very expensive meal for.

  Chapter 2

  It was the usual gray rainy April day when the Howards and Aurea Palgrave arrived at the station. Fanny was there to meet them, full of high spirits, in a very ramshackle old car which she drove about the country at breakneck speed, preferably with one hand. Luckily the local police were her bosom friends and, in the absence of better flirting material, she kept her hand in on them to some purpose. She had never actually been in an accident, but if she had, it would have been very difficult to get evidence against her. The drive to Waterside lay across flattish wind-swept country where lines of pollarded trees, cringing all in the same direction, showed what was the prevailing wind. Mrs. Howard got into the front with Fanny, and the other two sat behind. Presently Fanny, seeing a clear stretch of road in front, turned half around, flung her left arm over the back of the seat, and shouted to Aurea:

  “You aren’t a bit like what I thought you were.”

  “What did you think?” asked Aurea.

  “Small, and dark, and very attractive,” shouted Fanny.

  All the others laughed.

  “Oh, I don’t mean that,” added Fanny hastily. “Of course you are terribly attractive, but you are tall and not very dark — what I would call ordinary brown — and it was a blow.”

  “Fanny, dear,” said Mrs. Howard, “I hate to interrupt, but will you, just for my sake, turn around again and look where you are going?”

  “Sorry, Mrs. Howard,” said Fanny, and turned around obediently.

  But in a moment she slewed around the other way and shouted to Aurea:

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “What?” said Aurea, who had been talking to her father.

  “Your name,” explained Fanny loudly. “I did ask Vanna, and now I’ve forgotten it.”

  “Oh, Aurea, please,” said Mrs. Palgrave.

  “How sweet of you,” yelled Fanny, and turning right around, blew a kiss in Aurea’s direction. Mrs. Howard gave a ladylike scream, which had the effect of making Fanny face the wheel again with a jerk that would have upset a less easy-going driver.

  “But what is Aurea’s real name?” she asked Mrs. Howard.

  “Palgrave.”

  “I love her,” said Fanny. “She confirms me in my opinion that Arthur has good taste, even if he isn’t clever. First Aurea, then me.”

  Mrs. Howard smiled but made no answer.

  Meanwhile, under the roar and clanking of the engine, Aurea got closer to her father and said:

  “Papa, I like Fanny, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Aurea.”

  “She is so nice and ready to be friends. Do you and mother see much of her and Arthur?”

  “A certain amount. Of course we are rather quiet for them, but we dine there sometimes, and occasionally when Fanny is alone I have taken her out to dinner. She is usually intelligent.”

  “Oh, papa, is she your Fate?”

  “No, dear, I wouldn’t put it that way.”

  “I mean, do you have fun together?”

  “Fun? Well, yes, I suppose we do. Fanny is very entertaining.”

  Fanny chose to be entertaining at that moment by swinging the car around abruptly and dashing up a narrow, muddy lane at the end of which Waterside stood.

  “Make yourselves at home,” shrieked Fanny, when they had got out, “while I see to the chickens,” and putting the car into reverse she disappeared around the corner of the house, while her guests stood on the doorstep.

  “I think I’ll go around the garden,” said Mr. Howard. “There’s time before lunch.” And off he went in the direction of the chicken run.

  Aurea and her mother went indoors and found a blazing log fire in the sitting room. Making comfort was one of Fanny’s gifts. Waterside was only an unpretentious farmer’s house, with low square rooms, which Fanny had furnished in the days of their comparative poverty. As she couldn’t afford luxuries she had concentrated on beds and chairs. Her rooms, therefore, combined comfort and emptiness.

  “Isn’t papa perfect with Fanny?” said Aurea affectionately.

  “How do you mean, perfect?”

  “Oh, you know, mother. Featuring old-fashioned courtesy, and being so devoted.”

  Mrs. Howard laughed. Aurea laughed. Obviously another case of relations understanding each other.

  In a few moments Fanny and Mr. Howard came in, Fanny full of a new incubator which was shortly due for its first hatching. After lunch she insisted on dragging them all out to see it. At tea time Arthur arrived from town, and Fanny was able to enjoy with her own eyes the meeting of her husband and his early love. Much to her regret both Arthur and Aurea took it very calmly, and Aurea even went so far as to express regret that Arthur had grown fatter since they last met. This was more than Fanny could bear.

  “Fatter, Aurea, is not a word for Arthur. Filled out, is what we say, and anyway it was twenty years ago, and I dare say Arthur was a thin misery of a wretch then. I remember when I first saw him I thought what a hideous starveling he looked, and indeed, Aurea, I took a dislike to him at first sight on account of his boniness, though, let it never be forgotten that he hated me because I was too fat, didn’t you, Arthur?”

  Mr. Howard saved Arthur the trouble of answering by assuring Fanny that she, more or less in the words of Queen Elizabeth, was neither too fat nor too thin, and Fanny, responsive to his rather Victorian technique, immediately fell into a violent flirtation with him.

  “Don’t listen to Fanny, Aurea,” said Arthur. “She is a good wife, but horribly untruthful.”

  Aurea smiled at him and then turned to her mother.

  “Did I show you my cable from Ned?” she asked. “It only came just before we started.”

  Mrs. Howard looked anxious.

  “He doesn’t want you to go back to Canada sooner, does he, darling?”

  “Oh, no, mother, the end of next month as we settled before — quite soon enough, though.”

  Mrs. Howard’s face showed such anguish for a moment that Aurea quickly went on to talk about plans for the next few weeks, and possible combinations of people for dinner parties, and the letters from her boy and girl.

  So that Arthur was, as so often happened, left out of it. In Fanny’s gay, noisy parties he was as silent and remote as the schoolboy had been; but if he had not been there Fanny would have been far less gay and noisy. It was only on rare occasions that she was unable to prevent her adoration of him from being visible, and most of her fri
ends had the habit of rather laughing at Arthur and calling him Fanny’s background. He was quite aware of this, and was also aware that to be a background to her was to be a beloved necessity to a creature that needed life and much companionship. In abstract arguments with Fanny and Valentine, he would maintain that a wife should do as she liked, and no husband should keep a wife one day after she wanted to be free. But Fanny knew at the back of her wild but quite clever head, that with Arthur for a background she wouldn’t be allowed to go too far, and that it was just possible he might even give her the beating she so richly deserved, if she tried him too severely — perhaps not an actual beating, though of that she wasn’t quite sure, but at any rate a mortification and humiliation which she wouldn’t at all like. So Arthur sat, and smoked his pipe, and watched his Fanny dancing a platonic minuet with Mr. Howard, and his first love discussing her children with Mrs. Howard.

  It was curious to meet one’s first love again. He had laughed at Fanny’s hopes of drama, and certainly there had been none. Aurea, of course, was not a girl of eighteen now, but she looked very young still. It was always a curious feeling to meet an old friend again after many years. For a moment you saw a stranger with a look that reminded you of someone you had known. Then, like the troubling of still water, the old face trembled to life through the new one, and the years made no difference. I know she is twenty years older than when I last saw her, thought Arthur, but I suppose I shall always think of her as eighteen. It doesn’t make any difference that she is married, and has children older than mine. I never knew that part of her life, so it means nothing to me. What made me lose the stranger in her and only see the long-lost friend? It wasn’t when she smiled at me — I had found her again long before that. Was it perhaps her voice? Voices don’t change so much as faces.

  He looked across the room and saw Aurea unpinning some carnations from her dress, and putting them into a bowl of flowers on the table by her. One she kept in her hand and smelt it, and presently began to nibble at the petals without thinking. Suddenly Arthur saw in his mind the country garden where he and Aurea had talked so much for three days. It was hot June — difficult to believe now that there used to be hot Junes — and they had walked and chattered continuously all that weekend, ignoring the rest of the house party. There had been no lovemaking at all. Only those talks of profound depth and profound ignorance, and a joy in being together. Arthur had often wondered what would have happened if he and Aurea had been older, and she had not married Ned Palgrave next year. Had he really loved her, or was it only a delusion of youth? If he had really loved her, wouldn’t he have said some word, made some sign, or asked for some sign? It was curious that, so far as he could formulate his feelings of so many years ago, he had never associated the word love with Aurea. She had been so delightfully fond of him, so obviously unaware of deeper emotions, that he had hesitated to betray himself in any way for fear of losing the fondness which she so openly showed. For which of them was it, he had often asked himself, that he was afraid? Was Aurea’s presence such bliss to him that he was afraid to risk the exchange of what was so sweet for what might be either more or less sweet? A kind of cowardice? Or had he really thought of her with such drowning of self that he couldn’t bear to cast even the thinnest silken web about her remote affection while she was so young and inexperienced?

  While he thought again of these things, he felt the hot June sunlight on the grass where they sat. Larkspurs, incandescent blue, shining with their own radiance, were behind Aurea, and she had nibbled a carnation while he talked to her about heaven knows what — a very young man’s ideas of life and books and people. He had been less silent with her than with most people. Then she had gone abroad. They had written to each other for six months very affectionately, and then Aurea had written to tell him she was engaged to a man called Palgrave, a journalist. He still didn’t like to remember the agony of getting her letter and answering it and somehow going on living, though he was able to admit now that he had sometimes positively enjoyed that agony from a literary point of view, feeling his own pulse, and taking his own emotional temperature. The war had been not unwelcome, and his heart became stiller. Aurea was in Canada, where her husband was editing a newspaper, and he heard nothing of her. Then he had met Fanny who, several years younger than Aurea, had far more knowledge of the world and was not at all unapproachable. Arthur had been swept off his feet by the wild charm, and life had been very happy for them both. He had no regrets for what might have been, or what might with equal possibility never have been. The present was very satisfactory, and Fanny occupied his mind very exclusively. Only why did Aurea sit nibbling at a carnation, just as a girl had done on that hot June day? Not being able to answer the question, he suggested a walk before dinner.

  Fanny, in pursuance of her unprincipled scheme, jumped at the idea, and sent Arthur and Aurea off together, while she stayed with the Howards, resolutely heading Mr. Howard off with his attempt to join the walking party.

  “After all,” she remarked, “they haven’t met for nearly twenty years, and Arthur was so terribly fond of her, and I think it would be a good plan for them to get it all off their chests and have done.”

  “Really, Fanny,” began the outraged father, but Mrs. Howard reassured him.

  “You know Fanny well enough, Will, to know how untruthful she is. Probably you don’t remember that Arthur and Aurea had a very boy and girl affair years ago. I don’t suppose either of them ever thought of it again.”

  But she was quite wrong as far as Arthur was concerned, as we already know.

  Aurea and Arthur had a long walk and talked very little. Arthur was normally rather speechless, and Aurea was thinking a good deal of her approaching return to Canada. As they neared home in the dusk, she pulled herself together enough to inquire about the ages and characters of his boys, and give a rapid sketch of her own family. Coming across the garden she stopped for a moment and said:

  “Do you remember the garden at your mother’s house, Arthur, and the larkspurs?”

  Arthur said he did.

  “Do you know we have never had a talk since then,” said Aurea. “And heaven knows how much we talked in those few days.”

  Arthur agreed that they had.

  “But neither of us was old enough to know what we were talking about,” said she, “at least I know I wasn’t.” And she smiled at him.

  “You haven’t given up eating carnations,” said Arthur abruptly.

  “Carnations?” said Aurea, genuinely puzzled, and moving on towards the house.

  “Don’t you remember eating them?” asked Arthur.

  “No,” said she doubtfully. “No, I’m sure I don’t. What a cannibal taste.” And she ran indoors to dress.

  Her bedroom was furnished in Fanny’s peculiar style. There were two kitchen chairs. The dressing table was a packing case with as many yards of primrose organdie tacked around it as would make a ballerina’s skirts. On it was sheet of glass, and an unflattering mirror in a tarnished gold frame. The bed, on the other hand, was large and voluptuous, with the latest thing in lightweight blankets, and one of the exquisite silk quilts which Fanny so surprisingly found time to make for all her bedrooms. The room was lighted by candles. Fanny came rushing in on her way to a bath.

  “Darling,” she cried, hugging Aurea, “you are perfect. Arthur looks a new man already. I’m dying to hear what you talked about.”

  “Nothing particular,” said Aurea. “We were just walking.”

  “Oh, well, it will come later,” said Fanny hopefully. “And I’m sorry there’s no wardrobe, but you’ll find two shelves in the dressing table under the flounces, and there’s a huge cupboard in the passage where you can hang things and heaps of hangers, only don’t take up all the room because Arthur will want some. And if you want a bath, darling, will you be ready in about ten minutes and I’ll scream for you and you can have it before Arthur.”

  Aurea agreed, but Fanny’s ten minutes had more than doubled themselves bef
ore the promised scream was heard.

  It was a quiet evening inside and out. The garden was still, and the party in the house was pleasantly drugged with fresh air. Fanny had decided on the role of virtuous and innocent matron for the evening, and asked intelligent questions of Mr. Howard with such zeal that Mrs. Howard and Aurea nearly had the giggles. Mr. Howard enjoyed it immensely, and became what Aurea afterwards described to her mother as super-paternal. Arthur spoke little, watching his Fanny with loving and sardonic thoughts. Sometimes Aurea or Mrs. Howard tried to bring him into their conversation, but he quickly slipped out again, and sometimes drifted back into a June garden.

  It was only ten o’clock when Fanny shepherded her ladies up to bed. After saying good night to Mrs. Howard, she accompanied Aurea to her room.

  “I’m going to sit here and watch you brush your hair,” she announced. “Long hair is still a curiosity. Didn’t you ever want to cut yours?

  “No,” said Aurea. “I know exactly what I’d look like.”

  Fanny cocked her impertinent head on one side and looked at Aurea.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she admitted. “Not the type at all. But I don’t wonder Arthur was so in love with you. You are just the kind of person people fall in love with.”

  Aurea stopped brushing her hair and looked gravely at Fanny.

  “But they don’t,” she remarked. “I never get a proposal at all. I don’t think I’d like it if I did.”

  Fanny considered the statement.

  “I suppose you are the kind that can’t care for more than one man at a time,” she said.

  “Why should I?” said Aurea, plaiting her hair and throwing it back over her shoulder.

  “So much more fun,” said Fanny. “If you only care for one you’ll always get hurt.”

  “Doesn’t one get hurt anyway,” said Aurea rather wearily.

  Fanny came up behind her, and looked over her shoulder into the unflattering glass.

  “Bad philosophy, my child,” she said to Aurea’s reflection. “Make up your mind that things won’t hurt you, and they don’t.”