Randall jerked himself up. He thrust the rose back into the bowl.
He smoothed his hair, looked away, looked back and said, 'Yes, she was there. You saw her?
'I caught a glimpse of her, said Hugh. 'Who was the person with her?
'A girl called Lindsay Rimmer, I think. Her secretary, companion person. A careful frown deadened Randall's face. Without losing Hugh's gaze he tilted his chair back against his divan bed, and reached out to where on the Welsh coverlet, geometrically figured in blue and white, Toby the toy dog and Joey the toy rabbit nestled shabbily together. He got hold of Toby and brought him on to his knee while he awaited Hugh's next remark.
'You see Emma occasionally?
'Now and then, you know.
'Where does she live now?
'In Notting Hill Gate, said Randall. He added, 'In the same place. A deep quietness had fallen between them during these exchanges, if other sounds in the room had been stilled.
Hugh was silent while Randall stared at him with his deadened watchful face and fondled the toy dog. The silence lasted long, trembling hideously with what might be said. It was a subject which could be named but could not be pursued. Yet the very name set the echoes ringing.
Hugh shivered and got up. 'Ah well, he said. 'I'm sorry you won't come to Seton. Now I'd better do that drying up if young Penn hasn't.
Chapter Four
'IT'S good of Felix to be so kind to Ann, said Hugh.
He was standing with Mildred Finch in the big bow-window at Seton Blaise while Mildred arranged in a blue porcelain bowl the old-fashioned roses which Ann had brought her. Outside across the lawn, under the shadow of the huge cedar tree, Ann could be seen sitting on a seat with Mildred's brother. Here the sun had dried the garden and the open window let in a warm rich smell of mown grass and satisfied earth. The dark green shadows of the trees were just becoming fatter and longer and the colours more intense with a hint of evening. The glossy surface of the slow stream, like dark lacquer, could be seen beyond the cedar, disappearing from view where a thick clump of bamboos almost hid the little eighteenth-century bridge. In the foreground near the house Humphrey, thin and elegant in white shirt sleeves, inspected the flower-beds, occasionally casting an eye to where across the stream in the grove of chestnuts Penn and Miranda could intermittently be seen running: two strange half-grown creatures, uneasy with each other, unable to rest and yet unable to play.
'Yes, he's a kind-hearted boy, said Mildred absently. She thrust a white-quartered green-eyed Madame Hardy in between two lilac shaded pink-scrolled Louise Odiers and stood back to admire the result.
'All the same, she said, 'I must admit no one arranges flowers like Ann. I hope she'll do the flower-arrangement competition at the Women's Institute again this year! It always gives me a special pleasure to see her beat Clare Swann hollow.
Hugh, who was feeling very tired and more than usually troubled with the buzzing in his head, which today sounded like a perpetual distant murmur of voices, said defensively, 'Clare's been very kind to us. Mildred's mild but almost universal malice depressed him sometimes.
'Why wouldn't she be? said Mildred. 'It costs her nothing and satisfies her curiosity. But however much she clicks her tongue, she wishes really that poor Douglas was a wild violent man like Randall.’ Was Randall a wild violent man? Hugh did not know. He sat down on the Ann of a chair and contemplated through the window the back of Humphrey's pure white copiously furnished head:. deplorable but happy Humphrey.
'Do you think Randall is going to leave Ann? asked Mildred. She added two Belles de Crecy to the left-hand side of the bowl.
'No, certainly not, said Hugh. 'He makes a fuss, but he'll stay. Ann irks him, but only Ann consoles him for it. He resented her casual curiosity. But he was not just putting her off; he believed what he said. He had seen his son like that before. He shifted his view to the scampering children across the stream. He recalled for a moment Randall's curious words of this morning: I need a different world, a formal world, and You managed all right without fading away. For a second, obscurely, he found himself envying Randall. Then it occurred to him paradoxically that perhaps Randall envied him. Randall saw him as a man who had overcome his difficulties.
'To prevent further discussion of Randall he said to Mildred, 'How's Beryl? That always set her off.
Beryl was the Finches’ daughter and only child, never apparently forgiven by her mother for not being a boy. Beryl, now in her thirties, was the principal of a teachers' training college in Staffordshire. Hugh, at their rare meetings, had liked her, appreciating her evident cleverness. He had been, he felt naively, unable to decide whether Mildred's show of contempt for her daughter was sincere or not.
' Always the same! said Mildred. 'That girl will never marry. She's always being the self-conscious vanguard of something or other; and men hate that. I suppose there wasn't much chance for her to be normal, with Humpo as queer as a coot all his life. But I doubt if she's the other thing either. I'd like to think she had some fun. She stripped a papery pink and white Rosa Mundi of its leaves and thrust it into the centre.
Hugh was constantly shocked at a liberality of speech in Mildred which bordered, he sometimes felt, on the vulgar. Of course, he had known her a very long time, ever since Humphrey, then his fellow- student at Cambridge, had produced her as his fiancйe. Humphrey had lint a better first and Humphrey had made a richer marriage. Hugh contemplated her now. She was not exactly a feminine type herself. Not feminine as dear Fanny had been. Mildred had an acute face of a powdery paleness, tightened and much marked about the brow and eyes by quizzical horizontal lines, as if bound about by fine threads.
The white skin of the cheeks by contrast had now a soft old look. The very blue eyes and the mouth were long, amused, often sarcastic. Her hair, a yellowish grey, had a short sensible cut which quite failed to control or even offer suggestions to its natural fluffiness, and her coiffure, never, the same from day to day or even hour to hour, had often a positively unkempt appearance; for Mildred was not always impeccably turned out. Yet she was the handsome, clever, bustling Mildred still. And his mind groped again for details of that kiss; but he could still remember nothing except that it was summer at Seton Blaise and he had kissed her. That had been just before the Emma business started; so perhaps it was not surprising that the record had been erased. Mildred had known Emma too, long ago; they had been eccentric lady students together, with beribboned straw boaters and chaperones and skirts that brushed the ground. But they had quite lost touch later, and Hugh was satisfied that Mildred had received no confidences touching himself.
'I think that'll do, don't you? said Mildred. She put the bowl of roses carefully on the mantelpiece. 'It's not up to Ann's standard, but it's not bad for poor me. Now, where's your drink? No more? Well, let's pretend we're an ancient pair, Shall we, and take a turn on the gravel? She took Hugh rather formally by the Ann and led him out towards the garden.
Everyone had felt relieved at coming to Seton Blaise. After the slightly damp, slightly sinister, and more than slightly Randall-ridden atmosphere of Grayhallock, Seton Blaise seemed a haven of innocence and warmth. Here the summer was more established and more complete. The pretty Queen Anne house, with its pitted rosy red bricks and its blunted grey stonework stretched its bland length with a certain luxuriant confidence, surrendering itself to the garden whose proportions were perfectly attuned to its own. There were no large views, as Seton Blaise was low-lying, surrounded by water meadows. But the little park afforded its own vistas: the avenue through the chestnut grove to the lake, the turn of the river, a miniature reach, between the cedar tree and the bridge, the lawn sloping, with little copses of feathery shrubs, towards the main gates. The place was small, but beautifully composed; and seeming to have everything it appeared neither large nor small but merely perfect. Hugh had coveted it once; but that too belonged with needs and longings that had died.