“What is going to happen to you?”
“Daddy hasn’t made up his mind yet. There is talk of a finishing-school, but I’d like to go to Europe and be a student.”
“What of?”
“Oh, anything. It would be quite enough just to be a student. They seem to have such good times. Riots, and political action. Do you know that there is a university town in Italy where the police have not been permitted even to speak rudely to the students in centuries?”
“Don’t be deceived. The university undoubtedly maintains a force of some kind which keeps the students under. Your idea of a student is about a hundred and fifty years out of date. Students today are a pretty solemn lot. One of the really notable achievements of the twentieth century has been to make the young old before their time.”
They had reached the front door of St Agnes’ and Griselda opened it with her key. “Don’t tiptoe, Solly,” said she; “it’s only half-past eleven.”
“Sorry,” said he; “I always tiptoe at home.”
They went into the library, which was dark, smoky and smelly. Mr Webster sat in a corner, reading the Colnett Journals.
“You know Solly Bridgetower, don’t you, Daddy?”
“No,” said Mr Webster, “who is he?”
“He’s right here.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t see you in the shadow. What did you say your name was?”
“My name is Solomon Bridgetower, sir.”
“Well, well. I dare say you are some relative of Professor Solomon Bridgetower, who died a few years ago.”
“I am his son, sir.”
“I knew your father slightly. Were you aware that your father was perhaps the finest geologist this country ever produced?”
“I have heard many people say so.”
“Yes. Wasted, teaching. But he did some splendid work in his vacations.”
“Very good of you to say so, sir.”
“Mother still living?”
“She was very ill two months ago. I came home to look after things until she recovered.”
“I remember her as a girl. She was very interested in Oriental things at that time.”
“The Yellow Peril?”
“Yes, that was it. She still keeping up with it?”
“From hour to hour, sir.”
“Well, well; it is our hobbies that keep us young. Do you want anything to eat or drink?”
“We thought we’d see what there was, Daddy.”
“There isn’t much of anything, I’m afraid. They left a few sandwiches but I ate them half an hour ago. It’s a funny thing; there never seems to be enough food in this house. You could get Freddy up; she knows how to make sandwiches.”
“Oh, no, please don’t do that,” said Solly.
“Or some breakfast food. I know for a fact that there is quite a lot of breakfast food in the pantry; several kinds. Would you like a bowl of breakfast food, Bridgetower?”
“No, really, sir.”
“What we’d really like, Daddy, is a drink, and you have a big tray of things right here.”
“Oh, certainly. Help yourself, Bridgetower. The ice has all melted, I’m afraid.”
“I like it at room temperature, sir.”
“Really? An English taste. Healthier, I suppose.”
“Shall I pour anything for you, Griselda?” asked Solly.
“No. I never drink anything. I don’t think it becoming in one of my years. I expect when I’m old and hardened I’ll soak. Freddy drinks.”
“What? Freddy drink? Nonsense!” said Mr Webster.
“Oh nothing serious, Daddy. She’s what I’d call a nipper. A nip here and a nip there. Like health salts; as much as will lie on a ten-cent piece.”
“Rubbish. She’s going through a religious spell. She can’t have both a religious spell and a nipping spell at the same time.”
“Oh Daddy, don’t be provincial. It’s only evangelicals who can’t mix drink and religion. Freddy’s madly Anglo-Cat; they swig and pray like anything.”
Griselda went on chattering to Solly, and Mr Webster reflected, as he had done so many times, how wretchedly he missed his wife. She would have known what to say to young men that Griselda brought home. She would have dealt with Freddy’s religious nonsense. She would have gone at once to the heart of the matter about Freddy drinking. But what can a father do? Can he confront a girl of fourteen and say, Do you drink? He cannot beat her, and he most certainly cannot reason with her. Why didn’t those schoolmistresses do their job? He wished, sometimes, that as fate had decided to make him a widower, fate had done the job properly and made him a childless widower. He was very fond of Griselda and Freddy, but he confessed to himself that he really had no firm idea of how they should be brought up. If they had been boys, now—. But girls were such unpredictable creatures. He came of a generation to which any girl, before she is married, is a kind of unexploded bomb.
“I’d better go now,” said Solly, when he had finished his drink. “My mother worries until I am home, and I don’t want to distress her.”
“I hope we’ll see you often, Bridgetower,” said Mr Webster.
“You will, sir.”
“Solly’s helping with the play,” explained Griselda.
“Oh God,” said her father; ‘do you know, for the last two or three days I have quite forgotten about that play?”
“I hope you won’t find it too dreadful, sir.”
“Daddy’s terribly jealous of his garden.”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but when I am at home I can’t bear the thought of strangers trampling about just outside the house. It fusses me. But it’s unreasonable, of course. I recognize that. So if you see me glowering out of windows at you, pay no attention, will you?”
“I know how you feel, sir,” said Solly, and went with Griselda out of the little pool of light through the dark corridor to the door.
Instead of leading him to her car Griselda took him by the arm and headed for the garden. “Let’s walk for a few minutes,” said she. “Your mother won’t really mind, will she?”
Solly knew how very much his mother minded lateness, and how much more she would mind it if she suspected that he was walking in the moonlight with a girl who was, in her opinion, a regular Dolly Varden. But it is not easy for a young man to suggest to a girl that her charms do not outweigh his mother’s displeasure, and before Solly knew quite what was happening they were approaching the upper lawn, chosen as the scene of the play.
Griselda said nothing as they walked, which alarmed Solly. The thought flashed through his mind that perhaps Griselda had been possessed by a sudden passion for him, and that she would demand something—possibly even what novelists occasionally referred to as All—from him here among the trees. Griselda was beautiful, and he was not lacking in the attributes of a man. But there is a time and a place for everything, and Solly felt that if there were to be any scenes of passion between himself and Griselda, he would like to stage manage them in his own way. The thought which was uppermost in his mind, when at last Griselda stopped and turned to him, was that his mother never went to sleep until he had come home and that her displeasure and concern, issuing from her rather as the haze of ectoplasm issues from a spiritualist medium, filled the house whenever he came home late.
“Solly,” said Griselda, looking at him solemnly, “you said something when we were driving which worried me. You said that you wanted to take me out last week and didn’t because you were afraid that you couldn’t amuse me. Please, Solly, don’t do that again.”
“Well, all right, I won’t. But what could we do?”
“Do we have to do anything? You can come and drink Daddy’s whisky and talk, if you like. Or we can go out in my car. Really, Solly, it frightened me when you said that people thought I was a snob and didn’t dare ask me out unless they had lakhs of rupees and big emeralds clenched in their navels. I’ve been awfully lonely since I came home. I don’t know many people in Salterton.”