CHAPTER XXXII

BUTTER-MAKING--WITH ACCOMPANIMENT

"There grows a flower in our garden Men call it Marygold, And if you will not when you may You shall not when you wolde." FOLK-SONG.

On Monday I was churning again for dear life as if I had no thoughts of a world beyond that of the big, cool, whitewashed dairy with its slate floor, its table set with pudding-dishes in which fresh cream was standing, its tall, covered, red-and-black crocks holding two gallons of sour cream for the butter.

Helped by Mrs. Price, I tipped the sour cream into the big brown barrel-shaped churn; I added the hot water; I gave a few turns to the handle of the churn. Then I took the bung out of the hole to let the air escape, having been warned, the first day of my churning, by an alarmed cry from the farmer's wife: "Let the air out! The air out! Mercy! The girl will burst the churn for me. Don't you know it's like you have to hold a baby up when he's halfway through feeding? Don't you ever forget that again, my dear!"

I did not forget again; and now the whole process was familiar to me of that homely miracle of butter-making.

Round and round went the handle--not violently and spasmodically, as in my early days of setting about any job, but rhythmically and steadily. Oh, yes, I'd learnt my lesson of letting "things do themselves"; never again would I imagine that violence meant strength, any more than one need suppose that some one speaking in a loud voice must be talking sense! It was Dick Holiday who had first taught me that, and had taught the principles of handling anything, whether it was spade or churn...

Round and round ... I glanced at the tiny glass "window" of the churn. No. Not yet was it crowded with any little yellow granules that announce that the butter was "coming." Today the butter was obstinate.

Round, and _round_ ... In my head, too, words that had haunted me began to go round and round.

"Dick Holiday ... Richard Wynn ... Dick Wynn ... Richard Holiday..."

I thought, "Am I to let Captain Holiday know I've found out that he is Richard Wynn?"

My first answer to this question of my thoughts was a vigorous "_Yes._"

I decided, mentally, "Yes, I'll tell Captain Holiday that I know all about it. After all, he has been pulling my leg ever since I met him! All the time I've been on this farm he has known that I am Joan Matthews, the girl to whom he wrote that letter signed by his other name! And he's never allowed me to know that he was the man who wrote the letter. It will make him look awfully foolish when I tax him with it. Serve him right! I shall tell him, just to be able to have the laugh over him for once!"

And I went on churning after another glance at the little window; no sign of a crumb of butter on it yet. Patience! Churn away....

The butter wasn't coming; but a fresh thought came.

This was a "No" as vigorous as my "Yes" had been.

"No! I can't tell him," I mused. "If I did it would seem like reminding him that he did, under the name of Richard Wynn, ask me to marry him. It would seem as if I were dropping hints that he might try again. Begging him, now that I knew him, to ask me a second time. Oh! horrible thought. For it isn't me he wants to marry now. It must be since the Spring that he's fallen in love with his cousin. I'd far better go on, pretending not to know that he's ever been called anything but Holiday!"

Round and round ... Still no butter! Mrs. Price would say it was a sign that my sweetheart wasn't pleased. I, who had no sweetheart to please, must work patiently still....

Another thought--.

--Will you forgive this chapter for being so much about just my meditations? There are times in one's life when thought brings about changes as big as any act could do. One of these times came to me in that spotless cool dairy, with me flushed and hatless, toiling at that churn.

--It swung back to "Yes" again.

"I must tell him," I mused. "I never answered his letter. How rude that must seem to him! He said not to write if he were not to come. But a letter demands a line just to say it's been received. I must at least explain to him why----"

I checked myself, remembering.

"Of course I have explained to him already! That day we were feeding the chickens on the hillside! I told him the whole story of the letter I'd had from a young man who reminded me of him! Why, I can hear Dick Holiday's voice as he barked at me 'Threw the letter away? You can't have thrown it away!' ... To think that it was his letter! Anyhow, he heard then, without my knowing what I was explaining, what became of his address!"

Here I changed hands without stopping the churn in the way that I was taught by Mrs. Price.

I thought: "He knew everything, did he? I've a good mind to let him know that I know now as well!"

Then I thought again: "I would, if there weren't any Muriel in the case. Muriel stops it all..."

And then desperately I thought, still churning busily: "Why does everything happen to me when it's either too soon--or too late? I fell in love with Harry, but by the time he proposed to me it was too late. Dick wrote to ask me to marry him, but it was too soon. I hadn't seen what he was like now. Ah, if I'd known! If I could have foreseen! Wouldn't I have written off by return of post to tell him he might come and see me!"

I sighed. "Too late. He doesn't want to, now. Ah, if he did!"

Then without warning or reason there flashed into my mind the queerest thought of all. "Supposing he does want to? Supposing all this about Muriel is a mistake? Supposing it's me he does care for all the time?"

I said aloud, "What lunatic rubbish!" and bent to look once more at the window of the churn.

Hurray! A few precious golden granules were forming on the glass. The butter was coming at last. Cheers! Much encouraged, I went on making the big churn spin round and round.

And as I did so, that lunatic theory spun in my head. Yes! Suppose Dick Holiday-Wynn did care for me. Hadn't he sought me out, followed me, taken the keenest interest in everything I did or said? Hadn't he confided in me? ... Ah! That story of the girl to whom he'd proposed, and who had said neither "Yes" nor "No" to him! Why had I made so sure that this had meant Muriel? Supposing it had been ... me? Supposing this had been his way of telling me?

Here a change in the sound of the milk in the churn, dashed round and round, warned me that the butter was "knocking." I churned with a will, and with a memory suddenly warming my heart.

That day of the thunderstorm in the hayfield, when we had sheltered together under the elms! Hadn't he said "Dear" to me? Had he meant it?

There was a possibility, a wonderful, dizzy, blissful possibility that----

"How's that butter, Joan?" asked a bright voice that brought me abruptly back from possibilities to facts as Mrs. Price stepped quickly into the dairy and up to the churn. "Yes! That's it, now, my dear----"

For we had unscrewed the round lid and taken it off the churn.

Yes; on the top of the butter-milk, with its rich and poignant smell there floated what might have been the golden ball cast by the Princess of the fairy-tale into the fountain. It was accomplished, that homely miracle on which town-dwellers have been used to waste never a thought.

England's butter!

For years English people took butter for granted. Pre-war butter was just something that came out of a shop and appeared as if automatically in silver dishes with parsley about it. They never inquired what journeys it had made before ever it reached that shop; whether from Wales, Ireland, Holland, or Denmark. It was there; it happened. ("Pass the butter, please.") Carelessly they spread it between hot toast and strawberry jam; casually they left it in unwanted pyramids at the sides of their plates. In kitchens they cast it in lumps into pans that concocted sauces; they kneaded it by the fistful into rich cakes. They smarmed it on to the fur of petted cats so that the creatures, licking it from their coats, need not stray. Some of us can even remember laying "wobs" of it (the size of a week's ration) on the school-room linoleum and thus organizing slides for flying feet in Blake-ily protected school-boots. Only at nursery tea-tables, perhaps, was the warning ever heeded "Now, then! Waste not, want not!"

We have paid for our extravagant waste of other things besides butter....

And nowadays perhaps more interest is taken in the process that produces such butter as is allowed to us. As carefully as one who grades yellow amethysts I tipped up the churn, let the butter-milk run out into the appointed crock, and washed, with cold spring water, every granule of my precious butter off the lid of the churn. I collected it in a milk-white wooden bowl with more water; I worked it with that scoop which Mrs. Price called the "Llwy-y-menyn," a spade-shaped thing, carved out of a single piece of pear-wood and having a flat round handle with a simple design for printing the pat. The farmer's wife told me it was more than a hundred years old; how strange to think that more than a century ago--in the year perhaps of Waterloo!--some clever hand had cut and carved the tool which was to do its tiny "bit" in the war for England's food!

I wielded it happily today, with that daringly happy thought still warm at my heart.

"Salt, Joan," said Mrs. Price, handing me the wooden box. I added the salt; worked the butter again, then put it aside in its corner. I had to leave it for a night to set.

And my thoughts were left, as it were, to set also.

For two days I heard and saw nothing of the Lodge party. By this time I had made up my mind how I should behave to Captain Holiday, alias Richard Wynn, next time that I saw him. I should observe him closely. I should take my courage in both hands. I should say to him: "Captain Holiday, I want to speak to you. Do you know, I don't think it is quite fair to make half-confidences to one's friends! If you confide in them about a given subject you ought to tell them the whole of the story. Not begin--and then leave off midway. For instance, you began weeks ago to tell me the story of that girl who wouldn't say whether she would marry you or not. And you don't tell me how that story is getting on! You simply say 'Good-morning' and ask me questions about myself. I should like to know about your affair, since you did allow me to hear that there was one. And now that the girl is here in Careg----"

Here I meant to break off. Or rather, here I knew that Captain Holiday would interrupt in his brusquest tone. He would be quite certain to say "The girl here? What d'you mean by that?"

I intended to answer: "Oh! I'm so sorry if I have said the wrong thing! But I was quite certain that you meant me to guess who 'THE' girl was! I thought it was the one who is staying with her mother in your house now. But if I've said anything I oughtn't to have said, Mr. Wynn----"

Here I'd intended to break off again. I should not need to emphasize the "Mr. Wynn." I'd just let it drop perfectly casually. He would rise to it all right!

He would say, or snap, or bark "How did you know I had another name?" And I could take it quite lightly by saying "Oh, doesn't everybody know that?"

After which, I thought, it would be his turn to be hopelessly puzzled. He would wonder if I'd known ever since I had been on the farm.... He'd ask questions, he'd give himself away, he'd show me what he meant! That was what I wanted! To know what he did mean, whether it was about Muriel Elvey or me or both of us. And now I should find out and put an end to all this hectic suspense.

I had got it all planned by the Wednesday of that week.

But alas for all human plans! Especially those which have anything to do with what one is going to say to young men. I ask any girl who reads this story to bear me out. One never says what one thought one was going to say so effectually. These brilliant conversational openings are not given. These happy retorts do not come off. Nothing occurs that one had hoped.

Only the unexpected happens; if that. For what did I hear, on the Thursday of that week, about Captain Holiday?

Why, that I was not to see him at all.

He had left Careg. He had gone away!