‘I may as well start early,’ he said to himself. ‘It’s so horrid to meet people when one’s hot and rushed.’
He started indeed so extremely early that it was hardly half past two when he arrived within a couple of miles of the place. I can’t appear yet for hours! he thought, and tried to settle himself down in a pleasant corner of a field, taking out of his pocket a little volume of Songs of Innocence and Experience. He got as far as the title on the cover, which struck his fancy as being singularly appropriate; but the words inside the book might have been written in Chinese, for all they conveyed to his mind.
‘Confound this waiting!’ he said to himself. ‘It makes a person nervous. Maybe I’d better take a bit of a detour.’ This diplomatic move had the effect of so entangling him between hedges and ditches, and hayfields where he knew he mustn’t tread down the grass, that it was quite four o’clock before he made his appearance, decidedly hot and very muddy, at the door of Littlegate Vicarage.
Mrs Shotover had arrived, and with John Moreton and Nelly was standing on the lawn outside the vicar’s study.
Richard’s joining them was the signal for Grace to bring out tea, preparations for which had already been made under the shelter of a wide-spreading sycamore.
Nelly had blushed scarlet on first seeing him and had been so nervous that in introducing him to Mrs Shotover, she said the one thing which she had made up her mind she must on no account say, the one thing that it would be ‘perfectly awful’ to say. ‘Mrs Shotover,’ she said, ‘has been teasing me about you. She calls you my Stormy Petrel.’
As soon as she had uttered the words she could have bitten off her tongue. Some devil must have said that through my mouth! she thought.
A voice within the man she addressed did certainly not fail to point out that the jest was an ill-timed if not an ill-bred one; and that it was not pleasant to be the subject of ‘teasing’ between ladies. But this was only one voice among many that were uttering fantastic and carping comments in Richard’s brain; and the real Richard was very little affected by them. Indeed the girl looked at him so shyly and so wistfully after this blunder, that she could have said something far worse than that and he would have forgiven her.
‘I found a knapweed out this morning,’ remarked the vicar, after the first settling in seats and pouring out of tea had subsided. ‘I’ve never found one so early before; not in thirty years. It’s a remarkable season.’
‘Father always finds the first flower,’ said Nelly quickly. ‘He seems to know by instinct where to go for them. It’s quite queer sometimes. You’d think that no sooner were a new flower out, than it made a special signal to Father, over miles and miles, to come and see it.’
‘Mr Storm must come and see my garden,’ threw in the lady from West Horthing, ‘and I’ve got a few things in my house that no doubt would interest him still more.’
‘What things do you mean?’ asked Nelly with genuine curiosity. But her friend shook her head at her. ‘It’s Mr Storm I’m going to show them to, not you, dear. When you come to see me it’s all gossip and scandal, isn’t it? We’ve no time for serious things. Do you think it’s really true, Mr Storm, that women are fonder of gossip than men?’
It was the old naturalist who unexpectedly replied to her.
‘Women, Betty, gossip out of pure malice; in order to satisfy their spitefulness and spleen. Men gossip out of a philosophical interest in human nature.’
‘I would put it rather differently.’ said Storm. ‘Men gossip about their enemies — women about their friends. Women think themselves privileged to abuse their friends.’
‘Mr Storm! That isn’t true,’ broke in Nelly. ‘Don’t interrupt him, dear,’ said the old lady. ‘He was going to say something else. I saw it coming.’
What do you think yourself?’ inquired Storm, looking straight into her satiric screwed-up eyes.
‘I think we all gossip as fast as we can find subjects for it. Women’s subjects are more limited than men’s; so they’re bound to make more of them.’
‘Tell me this then—’ began Richard.
‘Oh no catechisms, I implore!’ cried Mrs Shotover. ‘That’s where you literary people are so unkind.’
‘I hope you don’t mean so boring,’ said Richard.
‘No, please, Granny dear; let Mr Storm finish his question. I’m sure it was thrilling. Ask me instead of her, won’t you?’ And Nelly smiled at him with a tender quiet little smile that seemed to say, ‘I love your catechisms!’
‘It probably wasn’t a proper question to put to you,’ chuckled Mrs Shotover. ‘Well, go ahead, young man, and be as unkind to the old lady as you like.’
‘I only meant — but there! we’ve driven your father away I’m afraid—’ and he stopped abruptly, as the vicar, nodding benevolently at them all, got up and shuffled across the lawn.
‘Oh no! Father never stays after he’s had his tea,’ cried Nelly. ‘Now Mr Storm, do finish your sentence!’
‘I only meant,’ Richard went on, cursing himself for having launched into the topic at all, ‘that it’s queer how women scold so bitterly and vindictively people that they’re really all the time actually in love with.’
Mrs Shotover put back her head, dropped her lorgnette, and dropped into a cackling high-pitched laugh. Then she leered at Richard with her head on one side like some wicked very old fowl. ‘Do they do that? My goodness! You notice, Nelly, what experiences Mr Storm has had.’
Richard glared at her angrily. ‘I’m afraid it wasn’t an original remark of mine,’ he retorted. ‘It’s that old well-known poem of Catullus I was thinking of. I hardly liked to bore you with it in Latin.’
‘In Latin!’ Mrs Shotover clapped her hands. ‘Oh Nelly, do put down that cake. You know you don’t want it. And listen to Mr Storm quoting Latin.’
But Nelly’s face was very serious. It would never do for Mrs Shotover and Richard to quarrel at this juncture. ‘You two dear nice people!’ she cried, rising to her feet in order to deal more adequately with the situation. ‘How you do fight over these absurd problems! As Mr Storm says, I don’t think we need much experience to know what people are like when they love and hate at the same time! But I don’t think it’s only women who torment the people they care for. I’m sure men do it. I don’t know whether you’d count Father as an example? But he certainly does it. Well? Shall we go round the garden?’
As they moved away Nelly thought to herself — The poor absurd darling! how sweet he looked when he got angry because she laughed. And how solemnly he began that old tiresome business about loving and scolding.
What pompous vain conceited things the nicest of men are! But oh I’m so glad to see him again — and there’s the same feeling between us — just the same — he feels it and I feel it. How wonderful it is!
And Richard thought in his heart — That vulgar impertinent old woman! Trying to make me look a fool before Nelly! But the sweet thing came to my rescue instead. Bless her heart! She may be innocent, but she’s got more intellect, any day, than that old harridan with false teeth and a grin like a hyena! Bless her heart! I was a silly ass to keep away all this time. What days I’ve wasted!
And as he followed the old and the young woman round that pleasant little garden he smiled to himself to notice how naïvely and simply he had thought of those even days of work at the main purpose of his life as ‘wasted’ — because he had hidden himself away from a girl of twenty-two.