hand through his hair as came in, for a wood shaving had stuck in it.
“Our Jo,” said Mrs Robson, introducing them. “Go and get the kittle, Jo,” she added; and he went at once as if he were used to it. When he came back with the kettle, Sam began chaffing him about a hencoop.
“It takes you a long time, my son, to mend a hencoop,” he said. There was some family joke which Kitty could not follow about mending boots and hencoops. She watched him eating steadily under his father’s banter. He was not Eton or Harrow, or Rugby or Winchester; or reading or rowing. He reminded her of Alf, the farm hand up at Carter’s, who had kissed her under the shadow of the haystack when she was fifteen, and old Carter loomed up leading a bull with a ring through its nose and said “Stop that!” She looked down again. She would rather like Jo to kiss her; better than Edward, she thought to herself suddenly. She remembered her own appearance, which she had forgotten. She liked him. Yes, she liked them all very much, she told herself; very much indeed. She felt as if she had given her nurse the slip and run off on her own.
Then the children began scrambling down off their chairs; the meal was over. She began to fish under the table for her gloves.
“These them?” said Jo, picking them up off the floor. She took them and crumpled them up in her hand.
He cast one quick sulky look at her as she stood in the doorway. She’s a stunner, he said to himself, but my word, she gives herself airs!
Mrs Robson ushered her into the little room where, before tea, she had looked in the glass. It was crowded with objects. There were bamboo tables; velvet books with brass hinges; marble gladiators askew on the mantelpiece and innumerable pictures…. But Mrs Robson, with a gesture that was exactly like Mrs Malone’s when she pointed to the Gainsborough that was not quite certainly a Gainsborough, was displaying a huge silver salver with an inscription.
“The salver my husband’s pupils gave him,” Mrs Robson began, pointing to the inscription. Kitty began to spell out the inscription.
“And this…” said Mrs Robson, when she had done, pointing to a document framed like a text on the wall.
But here Sam, who stood in the background fiddling with his watch-chain, stepped forward and indicated with his stubby forefinger the picture of an old woman looking rather over life size in the photographer’s chair.
“My mother,” he said and stopped. He gave a queer little chuckle.
“Your mother?” Kitty repeated, stooping to look. The unwieldy old lady, posed in all the stiffness of her best clothes, was plain in the extreme. And yet Kitty felt that admiration was expected.
“You’re very like her, Mr Robson,” was all she could find to say. Indeed they had something of the same sturdy look; the same piercing eyes; and they were both very plain. He gave an odd little chuckle.
“Glad you think so,” he said. “Brought us all up. Not one of them a patch on her though.” He gave his odd little chuckle again.
Then he turned to his daughter, who had come in and was standing there in her overall.
“Not a patch on her,” he repeated, pinching Nell on the shoulder. As she stood there with her father’s hand on her shoulder under the portrait of her grandmother, a sudden rush of self-pity came over Kitty. If she had been the daughter of people like the Robsons, she thought; if she had lived in the north—but it was clear they wanted her to go. Nobody ever sat down in this room. They were all standing up. Nobody pressed her to stay. When she said that she must go, they all came out into the little hall with her. They were all about to go on with what they were doing, she felt. Nell was about to go into the kitchen and wash up the tea things; Jo was about to return to his hencoops; the children were about to be put to bed by their mother; and Sam—what was he about to do? She looked at him standing there with his heavy watch-chain, like a schoolboy’s. You are the nicest man I have ever met, she thought, holding out her hand.
“Pleased to have made your acquaintance,” said Mrs Robson in her stately way.
“Hope you’ll come again soon,” said Mr Robson, grasping her hand very hard.
“Oh, I should love to!” she exclaimed, pressing their hands as hard as she could. Did they know how much she admired them? she wanted to say. Would they accept her in spite of her hat and her gloves? she wanted to ask. But they were all going off to their work. And I am going home to dress for dinner, she thought as she walked down the little front steps, pressing her pale kid gloves in her hands.
The sun was shining again; the damp pavements gleamed; a gust of wind tossed up the wet branches of the almond trees in the villa gardens; little twigs and tufts of blossom whirled onto the pavement and stuck there. As she stood still for a second at a crossing she too seemed to be tossed aloft out of her usual surroundings. She forgot where she was. The sky, blown into a blue open space, seemed to be looking down not here upon streets and houses, but upon open country, where the wind brushed the moors, and sheep, with grey fleeces ruffled, sheltered under stone walls. She could almost see the moors brighten and darken as the clouds passed over them.
But then in two strides the unfamiliar street became the street she had always known. Here she was again in the paved alley; there were the old curiosity shops with their blue china and their brass warming-pans; and next moment she was out in the famous crooked street with all the domes and steeples. The sun lay in broad stripes across it. There were the cabs and the awnings and the book-shops; the old men in black gowns billowing; the young women in pink and blue dresses flowing; and the young men in straw hats carrying cushions under their arms. But for a moment all seemed to her obsolete, frivolous, inane. The usual undergraduate in cap and gown with books under his arm looked silly. And the portentous old men with their exaggerated features, looked like gargoyles, carved, mediaeval, unreal. They were all like people dressed up and acting parts, she thought. Now she stood at her own door and waited for Hiscock, the butler, to take his feet off the fender and waddle upstairs. Why can’t you talk like a human being? she thought, as he took her umbrella and mumbled his usual remark about the weather.
Slowly, as if a weight had got into her feet too, she went upstairs, seeing through open windows and open doors the smooth lawn, the recumbent tree and the faded chintzes. Down she sank on the edge of her bed. It was very stuffy. A bluebottle buzzed round and round; a lawn mower squeaked in the garden below. Far away pigeons were cooing—Take two coos, Taffy. Take two coos. Tak…. Her eyes half shut. It seemed to her that she was sitting on the terrace of an Italian inn. There was her father pressing gentians on to a rough sheet of blotting paper. The lake below lapped and dazzled. She plucked up courage and said to her father: “Father…” He looked up very kindly over his spectacles. He held the little blue flower between his thumb and finger. “I want…” she began slipping off the balustrade upon which she was sitting. But here a bell struck. She rose and crossed to the washing-table. What would Nell think of this, she thought, tilting up the beautifully polished brass jug and dipping her hands in the hot water. Another bell tolled. She crossed to the dressing-table. The air from the garden outside was full of murmurings and cooings. Wood shavings, she said as she took up her brush and comb—he had wood shavings in his hair. A servant passed with a pile of tin dishes on his head. The pigeons were cooing Take two coos, Taffy. Take two coos…. But there was the dinner bell. In a moment she had pinned her hair up, hooked her dress on, and ran down the slippery stairs, sliding her palm along the banisters as she used to do when she was a child in a hurry. And there they all were.
Her parents were standing in the hall. A tall man was with them. His gown was thrown back and one last ray of sunshine lit up his genial, authoritative face. Who was he? Kitty could not remember.
“My word!” he exclaimed, looking up at her with admiration.
“It is Kitty, isn’t it?” he said. Then he took her hand and pressed it.
“How you’ve grown!” he exclaimed. He looked at her as if he were looking not at her but at his own past.
“You don’t remember me?” he added.
“Chingachgook!” she exclaimed, recalling some