Now Garda exclaimed, “It does seem unfair, Althea, that you should be the only one of us who can wear Molly’s clothes. Look at that lovely dress you have on and no one to see you!”
“If you weren’t so greedy,” returned Althea, “you mightn’t be so fat.”
“I’m not fat! It’s you and Molly who are so tall and thin.” She buttered another piece of bread.
“I’d gladly give you the dress if you could get into it.”
“I know you would but it’s hopeless. Nothing that Molly casts off will fit me. I might as well eat and be merry.”
Gemmel broke in impatiently. “Do let’s stop talking about clothes and talk about the Whiteoaks. To think that you’ve had three encounters with them today, Garda! Now begin at the beginning and tell all over again.”
“Goodness, I shall be tired of the very name of Whiteoak!”
“Rubbish! Now which was it you met first?”
Garda, with an air of resignation that did not conceal her gusto for the recital, began, “It was Mrs. Piers Whiteoak. I was coming from the village with my arms full of packages when she overtook me in her car. She was on her way from the railway station. She’d been seeing about a large shipment of apples. She had her eldest son with her. He’s home from Ireland, you know.”
“We ought to,” laughed Althea. “We’ve heard of him a dozen times in the past month.”
“Oh, I wish I might see him!” Gemmel drew a long sigh. “He must be sweet. How old do you say he is?”
“Seventeen. But he seems older. He has what I call polished manners.”
“And they gave you a lift?”
“Yes. Oh, she’s so happy to have him home again! And she’s heard that next spring there will be an interchange of prisoners and her husband may be returned. Her eyes shone when she told me that. I asked Maurice where he was going to school and he said they were looking about for a tutor to prepare him for the university. He is to be in Canada till he is twenty-one and then he is going back to Ireland.”
“He has lots of money,” said Gemmel. “Owns a mansion and large estate.”
“Don’t interrupt. When he goes back his mother is to go with him for a long visit. She’s dying to see his place. You can see that she adores him.”
“What a pity he’s so young!” exclaimed Gemmel. “You might marry him, Garda.”
“I’m not so old as all that.”
“Seventeen and twenty! Let’s see! When he goes back to Ireland he’ll be twenty-one and you twenty-four. No, it wouldn’t be impossible. Especially as he is old for his years and you young for yours.”
“So you want to be rid of me!”
“No, but it would be fun.”
“Well,” Garda went on, “she let me out of the car at our gate and I was just turning in through it when who should appear but Finch, with two dogs at his heels. He arrived only yesterday.”
“To think,” cried Gemmel, “that I wasn’t looking out of the window!”
“Never mind. He’s coming to see us.”
Althea flushed. “I’ll not see him.”
“You’re the one he wants to see. He asked after you at once.”
“Not after me?” Gemmel’s eyes were tragic.
“Yes. After you too. But he likes Althea best. It’s easy to see that. Well, we talked for a bit and he told me quite simply that he’s divorced.”
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Gemmel. “Would you marry a divorced man, Althea?”
“I would marry no one.”
“But you do admire him?”
“Yes.”
“He has such an interesting face,” said Garda. “He looks as though he’d experienced every emotion.”
“I should like to give him a new one,” said Gemmel boldly.
“It’s shocking to hear you, Gemmel,” Althea protested. “You sound positively brazen.”
Garda spoke soothingly. “She doesn’t mean it.”
Gemmel hunched her flexible shoulders and gave her reckless laugh. “Offer me the chance,” she said. She took a cigarette from her pocket, where she carried them loose, and lighted it. There was something impudent about her that caused her sisters to look at her half-disapprovingly, half-admiringly.
“I pity him,” said Althea, “for I think I’ve never seen a more selfish face than his wife’s.”
“She’s not his wife now.”
“People don’t forget cruel experiences, Garda.”
“But it makes them appreciate kindness all the more.”
“What else did he say?” asked Gemmel.
“He said he was very tired and so glad to be at Jalna again. He’s going to help with the work. They are filling the silos tomorrow. They have tables set out in the old carriage house. Quite a feast, he said. I can’t see him working. He’s every inch an artist.”
“Now then, tell us of the third encounter,” demanded Gemmel.
“Oh, how persistent you are!” exclaimed Althea.
“You enjoy gossip just as much as I do.”
“I know I do but I’m ashamed of myself for it.”
Garda continued, “The third encounter was with Mrs. Vaughan. I do like her. She’s so unaffected and so friendly. Finch had just left me when she came down the road. She was on her way to see her uncles and she was taking a jar of apple jelly to them. She seemed to think it would ease the blow she had in store for them. I’ve already told you what it is.”
“Yes, yes, but tell us again.”
“It is simply that she has sold Vaughanlands. The entire property. And to a Mr. Clapperton — a widower.”
“How marvellous!” cried Gemmel.
Althea gave a small derisive smile. “That she has sold Vaughanlands or that she’s sold it to a widower?”
“Both. A new neighbour to watch.”
“She has known for some time that she must sell it,” went on Garda. “She simply cannot run that big place alone. It’s going to ruin. But at the last she settled everything quickly. The papers are signed, the first payment made. She moves out at the end of the month.”
“Where to, I wonder?”
“She would have liked to go to Jalna till the end of the war but she practically said that her sister-in-law, Mrs. Renny, is very difficult to get on with. Mrs. Piers tried to live there with her two little boys in the early part of the war but she had to give up and go back to her own house. So Mrs. Vaughan has bought a house on the road where the church is. It will be a sad change for her, she says.”
“Tell us about the widower,” said Gemmel.
“He’s a retired business man who has always wanted to live in the country — work in a garden, read books — that sort of man. Very nice, she says. Would