“Oh dear,” said this splendid girl, leading him into the room with the Wedgewood urns. “Is it something to buy or forms to fill in or just a subscription? If it’s the first two I can’t help because my husband’s away with the yeomanry; if it’s a subscription I’ve got some money upstairs. I’ve been told to give the same as Mrs. Andrews, the doctor’s wife. If you haven’t been to her yet, come back when you find what she’s good for.”
Everything in the room was new; that is to say the paint was new and the carpets and the curtains, and the furniture had been newly put in position. There was a very large settee in front of the fireplace whose cushions, upholstered in toile-de-Jouy, still bore the impress of that fine young woman; she had been lying there when Basil rang the bell. He knew that if he put his hand in the round concavity where her hip had rested, it would still be warm; and that further cushion had been tucked under her arm. The book she had been reading was on the lambskin hearth-rug. Basil could reconstruct the position, exactly, where she had been sprawling with the languor of extreme youth.
The girl seemed to sense an impertinence in Basil’s scrutiny. “Anyway,” she said. “Why aren’t you in khaki?”
“Work of national importance,” said Basil. “I am the district billeting offer. I’m looking for a suitable home for three evacuated children.”
“Well, I hope you don’t call this suitable. I ask you. I can’t even look after Bill’s sheepdog. I can’t even look after myself very well. What should I do with three children?”
“These are rather exceptional children.”
“They’d have to be. Anyway I’m not having any thank you. There was a funny little woman called Harkness came to call here yesterday. I “do think people might let up on calling in wartime, don’t you? She told me the most gruesome things about some children that were sent to her. They had to bribe the man, literally bribe him with money, to get the brutes moved.”
“These are the same children.”
“Well for God’s sake, why pick on me?”
Her great eyes held him dazzled, like a rabbit before the headlights of a car. It was a delicious sensation.
“Well, actually, I picked on the Prettyman-Partridges…I don’t even know your name.”
“I don’t know yours.”
“Basil Seal.”
“Basil Seal?” There was a sudden interest in her voice. “How very funny.”
“Why funny?”
“Only that I used to hear a lot about you once. Weren’t you a friend of a girl called Mary Nichols?”
“Was I?” Was he? Mary Nichols? Mary Nichols?
“Well, she used to talk a lot about you. She was much older than me. I used to think her wonderful when I was sixteen. You met her in a ship coming from Copenhagen.”
“I daresay. I’ve been to Copenhagen.”
The girl was looking at him now with a keen and not wholly flattering attention. “So you’re Basil Seal,” she said. “Well I never…”
Four years ago in South Kensington, at Mary Nichols? home, there was a little back sitting-room on the first floor which was Mary’s room. Here Mary entertained her girl friends to tea. Here she had come, day after day, to sit before the gas fire and eat Fullers’ walnut cake and hear the details of Mary’s Experience. “But aren’t you going to see him again?” she asked. “No, it was something so beautiful, so complete in itself?” Mary had steeped herself in romantic literature since her Experience. “I don’t want to spoil it.” “I don’t think he sounds half good enough for you, darling.” “He’s absolutely different. You mustn’t think of him as one of the young men one meets at dances…” The girl did not go to dances yet, and Mary knew it. Mary’s tales of the young men she met at dances had been very moving, but not as moving as this tale of Basil Seal. The name had become graven on her mind.
And Basil, still standing, searched his memory. Mary Nichols? Copenhagen? No, it registered nothing. It was very consoling, he thought, the way in which an act of kindness, in the fullness of time, returns to bless the benefactor. One gives a jolly-up to a girl in a ship. She goes her way, he goes his. He forgets; he has so many benefactions of the kind to his credit. But she remembers and then one day, when it is least expected, Fate drops into his lap the ripe fruit of his reward, this luscious creature waiting for him, all unaware, in the Malt House, Grantley Green.
“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink ? on the strength of Mary Nichols?”
“I don’t think there’s anything in the house. Bill’s away you see. He’s got some wine downstairs in the cellar, but the door’s locked.”
“I expect we could open it.”
“Oh! I wouldn’t do that. Bill would be furious.”
“Well, I don’t suppose he’ll be best pleased to come home on leave and find the Connolly family hacking up his home. By the way, you haven’t seen them yet; they’re outside in the car; I’ll bring them in.”
“Please don’t!” There was genuine distress and appeal in those blue cow-eyes.
“Well, take a look at them through the window.”
She went and looked. “Good God,” said the girl. “Mrs. Harkness wasn’t far wrong. I thought she was laying it on thick.”
“It cost her thirty pounds to get rid of them.”
“Oh, but I haven’t got anything like that” ? again the distress and appeal in her wide blue eyes. “Bill makes me an allowance out of his pay. It comes in monthly. It’s practically all I’ve got.”
“I’ll take payment in kind,” said Basil.
