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Chapter XIX

Sidney went back to the Puhipuhi to find a halo round her head. George Mackenzie had come second on the scholarship list for the Auckland Province, and the Inspector had reported her first year results as remarkable. The Board sent her a letter of congratulation, and her "parents" met her bursting with pride in her. Mrs. Mackenzie almost wept, and Tom was at first unable to speak of the success of George, for they well knew that Sidney had made the chance for him, and had let nothing go that would count.

Jack Ridgefield and Sophie welcomed her back with a warmth that surprised her. Her school committee racked its collective brain to think of something that would show its appreciation. After proposing all kinds of impossible presents they finally took the advice of Jack Ridgefield simply to write her a letter with their signatures appended and have it suitably framed. Bob Lindsay spent three evenings and compiled nine editions of it before they were all satisfied. The committee called upon her in a body to presentpage 203 it. And Sidney, contrasting the simplicity of the scene and the honesty of the expression with much of her exotic summer setting, found it good. She did not wish to get into a state when she saw the whole of life as one kind of atmosphere.

She had seen at once that the Ridgefields were expecting their first baby. Though they lived in an intense world of their own anticipating the event, they determined they would not be publicly idiotic. They had not mentioned it to anyone yet, and had the idea that nobody knew. Sidney felt the difference in Jack Ridgefield. He had softened. She wondered how that quiet little Sophie had done it.

Sidney had been rather surprised to see how deeply she had enjoyed meeting Jack and his wife again. They stood out in contrast to many of the people she had met that summer, particularly to the men and women of the launch party. The latter were all right, she told herself, for occasional dessert, but give her Jack and Sophie for a steady diet.

They asked her to tea the night after she returned. Later, when Jack had gone to the store, Sophie brought out a basket of sewing, and made no pretence of hiding the little garments. She announced the fact to Sidney merely by holding up a midget shirt.

"Well!" exclaimed Sidney, as if she had not page 204 guessed. "Of course you're delighted. What do you want it to be?"

"Oh, a boy, I suppose. Jack, of course, wants it to be a boy." And then Sophie began to talk of something else. She had a horror of boring Sidney with a subject so unintellectual as babies. But Sidney, now dreaming of babies-to-be for Arthur and herself, would gladly have talked about them, and worked off some of the emotionalism running riot in her. She almost told Mrs. Jack, but decided that, as the situation was peculiar, and as it was Arthur's business as well as her own, she had better not.

There were reasons why she was glad Arthur was not returning to the Puhipuhi for two or three weeks. She had lived so intensely during the summer that she wanted time to catch up with her composure, as it were. She did not want to become the kind of drivelling idiot In love she had known some of her acquaintances to be. Also, she had to appear in the village as if nothing had happened to her. And, above all, she wanted to be normal before the Ridgefields.

With more time on her hands she wandered about at night, thinking and dreaming. Even though she was bound hand and foot to Arthur she liked to think she was judicial, that she could stand off and view herself and him. She liked to analyse him; his comfortable mind, his boyishpage 205 ways, his many attractions of heart and manner. He had been a long way more interesting, she told herself impartially, than any man she had ever met.

One night she stole into the mill, over the sawdust, under the maze of belts and wheels, and sat down at the edge of the dam. She had managed several times to get in there unseen by the old night watchman. She loved the powerful silence of the stagnant machinery, the vast energies chained in those belts and wheels, the symbol of power in the great construction.

And thinking of them her thoughts wandered to Jack Ridgefield, who had built this thing, who knew the significance of every nut and screw in it, who controlled the men who daily changed it from a sleeping giant to a torrent of motion where man trod warily among a thousand jaws of death.

She had lost no fraction of admiration for the Jack Ridgefields of the world. Unconsciously words of Arthur's drifted into her mind, "I could never build anything." She shrank from the obvious comparison, feeling it was disloyal. Then, because she had shrunk from it, she turned back to it. She saw that her ideal man would have been a combination of Arthur and Jack. Was it an impossible combination? she wondered. It was not the first time she had seen that there were things Arthur could never give her.

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Stealthy steps broke in upon her thoughts. She started to find Jack standing close beside her.

"Why, Miss Carey! I thought it was the watchman!" He looked curiously down upon her through the gloom.

She felt like a child caught stealing jam.

"Oh, I came here to listen to the silence," she said uncertainly; "it's weird, isn't it?"

"Yes," he answered. "I'm rather fond of it myself. Do you often come here?"

"I've just been once or twice. Nobody has seen me."

She knew he had a rule that women were not to enter the mill unless accompanied by himself or his father.

"Of course," she added lightly, "I might have known you would find out. You are the eye of God, you know."

Jack gave his curious little snigger, intended to be a laugh.

"You don't suppose I could run this place if I wasn't, do you?"

"How do you do it?"

Much of the admiration she felt deepened her voice.

"How do you teach, and make records?" he asked.

"It's not the same," she said. "Children are very easy to manage."

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"Men are easy to manage," he said. "And I found out why years ago."

"Why?"

"Because they have never ceased to be children."

"All the same, few people can manage them as you do."

"It seems very simple to me," he said quietly.

"Well, you were fortunate enough to be born knowing how."

"Yes, that's all it is."

They were silent for a minute.

"Were you looking for the watchman?" she asked. "I heard him up above, I think, a few minutes ago."

"Yes. I'll find him presently. I usually look him up in an evening."

"Dear me! Does he need to be watched himself?"

"No, indeed. He's a fine old fellow with a conscience. But it's pretty dull hanging round here all night. I like to drop in and show him I think he's worth noticing. That kind of thing costs nothing and goes a long way."

"Yes," she smiled up at him, "that's how you manage the men."

"Hm!" he said, as if his thoughts were a long way off.

He towered above her, mysterious like hispage 208 wonderful machinery. She wondered if he were lonely, and felt he must be. She questioned if his quiet little wife understood him, or touched his life at many points. She probably managed him wonderfully, all the better because she did not understand him, and did not struggle to. She accepted him without probing too deeply into the intricacies of his temperament. Certain combinations of men and women get on very comfortably that way.

As he went off Sidney had the feeling she had always had that she would have liked the chance to try her personality on him, would have liked to get at him. She saw that Arthur was a transparent babe beside him.

Jack wondered as he walked away why she wandered about in the night. He knew she had ridden out alone since her return without the object of meeting Arthur. He wondered if there was anything between them, wondered with a vague condemnation of him, but none of her. She now interested him because she had shown that she could do good work. Because she had managed to keep her independence and yet offend no one in the village. Because she had a conscience and character. He thought particularly well of the start she had given to George Mackenzie. But he did not understand her in the least. If men were simple to him, women were inscrutablepage 209 mysteries. He was more or less at sea with her mentality and always would be. He was extraordinarily pure male. And he got near to women only through the medium of sex.

Sidney sat on, continuing her comparison of the two men. It disturbed her rather to have the shadow of Jack Ridgefield cast upon the pedestal upon which she had exalted Arthur. It disturbed her that she could think about the difference between them. She thought of friends to whom love had been an engulfing delirium that had obliterated all smudges upon the shining robes of the beloved. And she wished she could have been capable of the glorious folly.

She saw now that she was doomed to go through life on compromise, that grim adjuster in the aftermath of great expectations that youth defies as long as it is able, and succumbs to only in the last ditch.

She went home wishing she did not see these things. She wanted her Arthur as irreproachable as she could make him. She fell back upon her happy summer. For that he had been a perfect lover, she told herself. And what was almost as good to her, a constantly interesting and responsive companion.

The summer had dissipated her doubts about him. He had talked freely about his past, a remote past, when he had done things he did notpage 210 care to think about, the usual things that young men did when trying to learn about themselves and the world. She had heard him, asking no questions, forgiving that past, as she knew all women did.

She was more interested to have him talk of the future, a future in which he meant to take up the responsibilities of his estate. She was eager to contribute ideas for the benefit of tenants, eager to spur him on to benefit the human race. The fact that he had had no real work to do had troubled her more than she would have admitted even to herself.

But she was no less in love with him when he returned because she had been able to think clearly about him in his absence.