Camilla came home very late that night.
She had dined firstly with Sir Samuel and another couple at one of the big restaurants. After that she had gone to the play, and lastly she had gone back to supper at the house of a certain woman who affected a great regard for her, and there she had played cards with her usual disastrous luck.
She had driven home alone, tired, depressed, and yet conscious of an enormous relief.
For Broxbourne had spoken that night of going out of town immediately. This he had said when they had been alone, and the conversation had so tended that had he been prepared to bring forward the subject she so dreaded to hear, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to have done so.
Indeed, Camilla had held her breath for a moment, preparing herself to meet the black moment that had haunted her in anticipation ever since she had met him so unexpectedly that evening in the railway carriage.
But Sir Samuel had said nothing. Evidently he was still unaware that he had it in his power to make her suffer.
"And if he does go," Camilla said to herself wearily, as she alighted at her own door and passed into the silent house, "that means that I can breathe again. Oh, I wish he would go! I am not afraid of him as I was in the old days, but I loathe him just as much. He is more hateful than ever. He was always coarse and hateful, but now he is worse. Nothing can be beautiful in life when such a man is close to one." She smiled faintly. "If Agnes Brenton could hear me," she said to herself, "I suppose she would think that I was a little madder than usual, since I fought her the other day when she was trying to say this very same thing about Sammy. But, then, I should be sorry to be obliged to let Agnes understand why I seem to encourage this man. How Ned hated him! To-night when we were at supper all that Ned used to say about Sammy came back to me with a rush.... And to think that I have made it possible for such a brute to have the whip hand over me! Oh, sometimes I think it is a good thing to die even as Ned died! There can at least be no chance of being a miserable fool when one is in one's little grave."
Some letters were lying for her on the table. She gathered them together without looking at them, turned out the light, and mounted the stairs quietly.
It seemed an incongruous thing for this woman, so exquisitely arrayed, to be doing little menial duties. But Camilla was very thoughtful in lots of things. She never permitted any one of the maids to sit up for her.
Late as it was, a bright fire was still burning in the grate, and her room was warm and cosy.
She sat down in the big easy-chair in front of the fire.
Her thoughts still hovered about Broxbourne. When she was tired, and there was no excitement, she was ripe for remorse, for self-recrimination. And now it seemed to her overstrained nerves that she was tainted with the very coarseness, the vulgarity of the man she hated so much.
"If he will only go away," she said feverishly, "I shall feel free to breathe again: free of one horrible burden at all events! and he spoke very definitely of going to-night. Now I am sure," she said the next moment, "he can know nothing. If he had, hemusthave let me realize this in some way or other. We have been so much together. I have wanted to be with him as much as I could, just on purpose to watch him! And if he does not know now, why should he ever know? If I could only set the matter right unknown to him!" She gave a long sigh, and shut her eyes for a moment. "What a lot of things there are to set right! What a fearful lot!"...
She sat with her eyes closed for a little while, and then she roused herself and began to draw off her long gloves slowly. As she did so a little scrap of paper fell from the palm of one. She picked it up. It had scribbled on it the amount she had lost that night at bridge.
This swept her thoughts sharply into the old, the well-worn channel.
"Forty-seven pounds!" she said to herself. "Oh, Lord, what a fool I am! Why can't I play like other people do? I shall have to settle this to-morrow. Ena will be round here with the milk to get her money. How I hate losing to women."
She got up with a jerk, and her letters were scattered on the ground. As she stooped and picked them up she glanced at the writing on each.
One was from Agnes Brenton, the others looked like bills, with the exception of one that was addressed in a handwriting she knew and feared only too well.
It was a letter from Colonel Lancing, her husband's father.
Camilla bit her lip sharply and trembled. She flung off her beautiful theatre wrap, and stood deliberating with the letter unopened in her hand. Then with a sort of grim shadow on her face she took the plunge, and tore open the envelope.
The very look of the letter, with its straight, hard characters had an accusing tone about it. It started without any courteous beginning.
It was a horrible letter for Camilla Lancing to read. Clearly, coldly, uncompromisingly the writer put before her his knowledge of all those many facts that she had worked so hard to keep concealed from him.
Her life of debt and difficulty, her extravagances, her gambling, her friends, and her follies were denounced in hard, deliberate terms.
She was judged without mercy, without a chance of defence; and her sentence was written in the same hard, merciless way.
Colonel Lancing announced that the allowance he had made her since his son's death was taken from her; her independence was to cease at once.
"My son's children have been left too long in the miserable atmosphere of the life you affect; they are no longer infants, and I claim them. They will come to my home, and be reared in the way they should be reared, and if you conform to my commands you may live with them. But let us understand one another clearly. Here there will be permitted no reckless folly, no sinful waste; none of those things that have brought you to where you are. You will be given a place with my daughters, because you are the children's mother, and for no other reason; your life will be ordered entirely by me, and in accordance with what I hold to be proper and fit for a woman in your position. Refuse this, and I wash my hands of you; you may sink to what depth you like. But the children shall not sink. I have been patient too long, hoped too long. I now see that there is no good in you, and I mean to stand between these children and the harm you would do them."
Camilla stood like one transfixed.
The letter fluttered from her hand and lay on the floor.
The strong light of the electric light that was placed above her long mirror fell mercilessly upon her.
Her radiant charm seemed blotted out in this moment. She was like a woman blanched with some acute physical suffering.
This blow had fallen so suddenly, so unexpectedly. She had always known that she was an object of dislike, even of hatred, to her husband's people, that her claim upon them was recognized grudgingly; but she had quickly taught herself to think about them as little as possible. Her dependence only angered her when it had seemed to demand something of her. Even now it was not the hurt to herself that sent the blood running like ice in her veins; it was this stern revelation of authority, this demand for her children and the knowledge that, placed as she was, defiance to that authority was out of the question.
She put out her hand and steadied herself by the toilette-table; but she trembled and swayed as she stood, and once her eyes turned to the door in a hunted way, as though she could fashion out of the shadows on the landing the figure of the stern old man, who denounced her in words she dared not repeat to herself, who claimed from her the dearest possession life held for her.
The silent emptiness of the room came upon her all at once as the clock on the mantelpiece chimed three. Four hours of solitude stretched before her. Four hours before she could expect Dennis to knock at her door! Four hours of heart degradation and anguish, and deadly sickening fear! She put up one cold hand and pushed her hair back from her brow.
It seemed to her as if already she were alone; already she had been robbed of those little lives that made everything sweet, even the darkest hour.
"I am frightened," she said to herself, "I am frightened! frightened!... What shall I do?"
She began to pace the room, averting her eyes from the letter that lay on the floor. Once she said with her pale lips—
"Violet has done this!"
Another time she almost cried aloud as if with a sudden pain. Then all at once she stood still. Her expression changed. Her face flamed with colour, and she commenced with cold, feeble fingers to get out of her beautiful gown.
A feverish intention born of that sudden thought began to run like wildfire in her veins. She tore at the hooks, she had no thought for the delicacy of the lace, or the fragility of the material. She almost spurned the gown with her foot as it slipped from her, and she veritably threw aside the jewelry she had worn.
On her way to the door she only paused to fold herself in her warm dressing-gown and to shed her high-heeled satin shoes. Then softly, and with that same curious fever urging her on, she mounted the stairs cautiously till she stood outside the room where her children slept.
Caroline was a light sleeper. She started up in bed nervously as she heard the door open and some one move softly into the room.
"Who is it?" she asked. "Who is there? Is it you, Dennis? Has anything happened?"
Camilla came to the foot of the bed. She could not speak; she was breathing hardly, with difficulty. At first the girl could not distinguish her clearly, the light was so dim; but almost immediately she recognized that it was not Dennis who had come, and, slipping in haste from the bed, she went at once to the bowed figure that sat rocking itself to and fro, breathing in that painful fashion, as if struggling with some great suffering.
"You are ill; what can I do for you? Tell me. Oh, please tell me!" Caroline said, her nerves all ajar.
Camilla caught at her two hands.
"I ... I have had a shock," she said, when she could speak, "and I am frightened ... very frightened. I cannot stay alone. I want to be near the children. Imusthave the children with me.... I have come to take them downstairs."
To her suffering, distorted, mental vision in this moment Caroline looked like some spirit, tall and straight in her long, white nightgown, with her dark hair falling in two heavy plaits from her small, smooth head.
The girl was more than a little frightened herself, but she calmed herself with an effort.
It was, of course, impossible for her even to guess at what had happened; nor did she wish to, she only wanted to help, to comfort, if possible, for she realized that she had to minister to one who was passing through no ordinary ordeal.
Putting her finger on her lip as a gesture of silence, she drew Camilla to her feet.
"I will go down with you," she whispered, and they passed together out of the room, but Camilla's mind dwelt on the children.
"Don't separate me from them," she said; her voice was so changed, so dull, so hoarse. "Don't stand between me and the children," she said almost passionately.
"If you will go downstairs," said Caroline, quietly and gently, "I will bring the children down. I don't think they will wake. Make the bed ready and turn the lights low. I think we will put them into the blankets, they will not feel the cold that way."
At first she had been on the point of suggesting that Camilla should stay in the nursery and take her bed, but she quickly felt that it would be a wise thing to occupy the other woman a little, for even to her untutored eye there were unmistakable signs of acute and dangerous mental tension about Camilla at this moment.
"If you will go and make everything ready and come up again, you might carry Baby down," she whispered.
It made her heart ache sharply to see the pitiful eagerness with which Camilla did her bidding.
When the mother came back again she had divested herself of her silk underskirt, so that there should be as little noise as possible.
"Give me Betty," she whispered; then she pushed Caroline gently on one side. "I can lift her myself," she said, "I have done it before."
She almost staggered under the burden of the sleeping child as she took it out of the bed; but the colour came back to her face, and her eyes lost that wild look as she held Betty to her heart.
Caroline tucked a cot blanket securely about the little feet, and went down closely behind.
"Now I will bring Baby," she whispered.
Both journeys were accomplished satisfactorily; neither child woke, though Baby for a moment opened her sleepy eyes as though she would have questioned what was passing with her.
When they were both laid in Camilla's luxurious bed (and by the sound of their breathing the two listeners had assured themselves that the rest was unbroken) the mother went up to Caroline and kissed her, and then she put her arms round the girl and clung to her.
"Don't think me mad," she said hoarsely; "to-morrow I will tell you all."
"You are so cold," said Caroline, unevenly; "won't you have something? Let me get you a little brandy?"
"It is you who ought to be cold," said Camilla; "how selfish I am, dragging you out of your bed like this."
They spoke in hushed tones.
"I am not a bit cold," Caroline said.
Indeed, she had found time to slip on something about her shoulders, though her feet were bare.
She insisted upon putting Mrs. Lancing in the chair in front of the fire, and then she went down to the dining-room and brought back a little brandy.
Camilla thanked her with a wan smile, and urged the girl a second time to go back to her bed. But Caroline would not leave her at once.
She was a little alarmed at Mrs. Lancing's look, and she knelt down, chafing first the cold, slender hands, and then the small, cold feet.
"It is a long time since I carried Betty," Camilla said after a little while. "Dear heart, she has grown so much she is no longer a baby, alas! alas!"
The stimulant had already commenced to put a little sign of warmth and life into her; the misery in her expression was breaking a little.
"She was my first baby, you know," she said, "and her father thought her the most wonderful thing in the world. He used to walk up and down with her for hours at a time, and the old nurse I had wassoangry with him!... She said it was such a bad habit. But I loved to see him with that little creature in his arms; he was so gentle with it.... And then to think that he could forget her, turn away and leave her!... It does not seem so bad that he should have forgotten me," she said. She spoke dreamily.
There was a long pause. Caroline still chafed the small feet.
"You wonder, perhaps, why I asked for Betty," Camilla said in a low voice. "I love them both just the same, but Betty belonged to the beginning. Her father never saw Baby; poor little Baby! I wonder would he have stayed if he had seen her?"
"You are warm now," said Caroline, brightly; "do let me help you into bed. You will feel so much better there, and the children will keep you warm. Won't they be surprised when they wake up and find themselves in your bed?"
The smile that came into Mrs. Lancing's eyes was very pleasant to the girl kneeling beside her to see.
Her heart began to beat a little less nervously. The fear and the uneasiness began to slip from her. When she would have got up Camilla held her back a moment.
"You have been so good to me," she said in a broken way, "and you give me such a sense of strength, of comfort. How angry nurse would have been if I had disturbed her as I have disturbed you! Dennis is right. I have never had any one about me like you before."
Caroline smiled. There was a great sweetness in her face.
To the woman looking at her she had still that spiritual touch about her, and yet she was human, human in the most exquisite meaning of the word.
"Do let me help you to undress.... I am sure you ought to be in bed," she urged.
She got her way, and a little later, after she had tended Camilla as if she had been a tired child, she stood and looked at the mother nestling down in the bed between those two small slumbering forms, and the sight brought tears to her eyes.
"I am going to stay a little while in case you want me," she whispered.
Camilla heard her as in a dream.
The hot agony had passed from her heart and a sense of exhaustion fell upon her; she lay with a hand touching each of her children, and Caroline moved about the room softly, putting it tidy.
She picked up the lace gown from the floor; she laid it and the magnificent wrap on the couch.
The fire lit up the room with a warm, ruddy glow. Caroline put some more coals on noiselessly. By the firelight she saw the scattered jewels and gathered them together; then she put the letters in a pile, with Colonel Lancing's at the bottom.
When all was done she paused and listened quite a long time.
Mrs. Lancing never moved; she had fallen asleep.
"Poor creature!" said Caroline to herself.
She stole softly away, but the room upstairs had such a desolate look, she could not stay in it; so, as sleep was impossible now, she dressed quickly, and went back to Mrs. Lancing's room still in the same soft way.
"I may be of some use," she said.
She sat in the chair by the fire and she watched the bed. It gave her a sense of extraordinary gladness to see those three so closely together; in this moment she seemed to share in their union; she ceased to be a stranger.
Although he had both telegraphed and written to ask for some statement concerning Caroline Graniger from his mother, Rupert Haverford, of course, never expected to receive a prompt answer; indeed, he was quite prepared to have no answer at all.
He left orders that all his letters were to be forwarded to him whilst he was in the north, and Caroline's little epistle travelled thither with the rest of his enormous correspondence.
It would have been very difficult for Haverford to have described why he objected to the arrangement that had been entered into between Mrs. Lancing and Caroline Graniger. The girl's own argument to herself in favour of what she had done was a very sound one. Indeed, under the circumstances, most people would have regarded the matter as being both lucky and satisfactory.
But Rupert shared Mrs. Brenton's view about things done in haste; that for the first point; the second was that, as he had put himself out in a certain measure to make arrangements for Miss Graniger, he considered that he should have been consulted before she had made any definite plans.
To find, therefore, that she had already assumed an independent attitude, and had taken herself and her immediate future out of his hands, annoyed him.
There are very few men who really appreciate the spirit of independence in women, and Rupert Haverford was very much behind the times in his views concerning the way in which women were swarming into the world as bread-winners and wage-earners.
He made no haste to reply to Caroline's letter. As usual, he found much to occupy him when he arrived at that dirty, smoky, northern town.
He confessed to himself that he was glad to be away from London again even for a little while; glad to dissociate his thoughts from that element of his life that belonged to the world in which Camilla Lancing lived. Not that he expected to be able to put her out of his thoughts altogether, for even in the dull, prosaic, unlovely surroundings of the factory, remembrance of this woman haunted him in so tangible a way that at times he could almost have imagined she was close beside him. And on this occasion he carried with him new matter for thought where Camilla was concerned.
A new element had crept into his heart.
If he shut his eyes he could see with painful distinctness Camilla floating round that large room held in the arms of another man.
He knew perfectly well that this other man was no more to her than the floor on which she danced, but that did not affect the situation as far as he was concerned.
He winced and turned hot as he sat alone in the railway carriage whirling away from town, just as he had winced and grown hot the other night, when, like some graceful white leaf borne on a wayward wind, she had lightly skimmed past him, brushing him with her soft, clinging skirts.
Her laughing, petulant reproach when he had refused to dance because he could not dance had left a little wound.
She had made him feel clumsy; suddenly she had seemed to recede from him.
It was the first time that he had ever felt awkward, and at the mere suggestion that he could look foolish in the eyes of this woman Rupert Haverford discovered that he was very like other men, some of whom perhaps he had judged hardly, and some contemptuously.
He had no definite intention in his mind as to how he should act. Indeed, it seemed to him that the future was not held in restraint by his hand or his power, and he laughed once to himself a little bitterly, as he recalled how he had gone round and round this subject of late, thinking entirely of his own feelings, and of how far the bewitchment that this woman had cast upon him was to be permitted to order his life.
In the lightest way possible Camilla had shown him that he made too much of his own importance.
It was not exactly his fault that he had grown critical and reserved where women were concerned.
If he had met Camilla when he had been a man struggling every hour to work himself into independence, he would never have questioned her right, never have sought to analyze what went to form her brilliant personality. He would have given her unquestioning devotion, seeing in her that spirit of grace and delicacy and beauty which had always been placed in his dreams: a gift at once necessary and unattainable.
But the burden of his great wealth had changed in a certain measure Rupert's nature; it had made him cautious, it had made him doubtful, and he was so imbued with that weighty sense of responsibility that he never took a step in any direction without great deliberation, and forecasting as far as he could the probable results that would accrue from any act.
Mrs. Lancing was not the only woman who fluttered in and out of his life in these days, who charmed him momentarily and pressed upon him eagerly sympathy and friendship and delicately insinuated homage.
He would have been blind indeed if he had not realized that his marriage was a matter of importance and hope to many women; that any choice indeed was possible to him.
He was a little impatient with himself at times that it should be this one particular woman who held him; even now, when she had left him smarting and uncomfortable, he was falling back into that old train of anxious thought about her.
Of course, he knew her history as the world knew it. Most people were kind about Camilla. There had been nothing subtle in the way in which her husband had wronged her.
It was the knowledge of this wrong done to her that drew Haverford to her so surely. He longed to give her protection, to build up barriers between her and all those things that had been legacies of her married life.
And, of course, there was only one way in which he could do this.
All at once he realized that he had ceased to doubt or speculate as to the future of such a marriage; hope became deliberate intention. And still the path was not clear. He knew his own heart, but what about Camilla's heart?
Metaphorically, he stretched out his hands to catch that dancing, laughing, white-robed figure, only to feel that the soft, filmy draperies slipped from his grasp, and that Camilla was dancing away far, far out of his reach.
When he alighted at the familiar station he almost yielded to the temptation to put himself in the train again and go back to London.
As the doubt and uncertainty dropped out of his heart, something new came in their place.
Now he was jealous. He wanted to be sure of her. He wanted to hold her in his arms as that other man had held her. He wanted to lock her to him, to feel that she belonged to him.
"I shall go back to-morrow," he settled.
But he did not go south on the morrow. He found himself plunged into a mass of business, confronted with difficulties, some of which were as unexpected as they were bitter.
During the past year Haverford had been making enormous improvements in his northern property. He had introduced a quantity of new plant, the old factories were in process of being replaced by new buildings that, when finished, would cost a small fortune. Old Matthew Woolgar would not have known the place could he have seen it now.
In his determination to give this world of workers every possible chance, Rupert Haverford had left nothing undone that could militate to the benefit of their lives, both at work and in their homes.
And yet such is the trend of human nature that, notwithstanding all that he had done and was doing, he met with no gratitude. On the contrary, he was most unpopular. It was a fact known to every one but himself that these people, who occupied the first thought in his mind, had long since begun to regard him with suspicion and jealousy; some added contempt, and some—a great number—grudging hate.
He had been summoned urgently on this occasion because it appeared that there had been a good deal of friction in the works, and of late certain cases of incendiarism had occurred, culminating in a dastardly attempt to burn down the fine building which he had built and dedicated to the use of the factory hands as a place of mental and bodily education and refreshment.
It went very hard with Haverford to be forced to realize that this destruction of his property, this spirit of unrest and rebellion, found its rise in sullen animosity to himself.
At first, indeed, when he was told that there was a strong wave of bad feeling against himself he refused to believe it. The injustice of the ignorant is always hard to recognize and to accept.
He had never wanted gratitude; he had only wanted comradeship. He had wanted to share his good fortune, not to buy a kingdom.
He had been loyal to this old place, to these people, and his father before him had been loyal, even unto death.
"They have bad memories," he said to one of his managers. "My father gave his life working among these people; for his sake they might have met me fairly."
The other man shrugged his shoulders.
"You have done too much, sir," he said. "These sort of folk want the whip, not benevolence."
And Haverford said no more.
To speak further of his great hopes now lost, his numerous schemes, his almost passionate intentions for helping the people among whom he had worked and lived so long was to touch on a dead and sacred subject.
Yet he lingered in the north. He wanted to satisfy himself that he had made a mistake. He wanted to grow accustomed to his disappointment, to the humiliation of feeling that these people made a mockery of him and his generous intentions. Once he had grasped this in its fulness, and the matter would be closed. Henceforward they should have from him duty, nothing more.
He knew perfectly well that the men who served him and who held posts of importance had long since regarded him as a crank. Well, there should be no more quixotic weakness, no more sentiment. He had bared his heart to these people, stretched out his hand and called them his brethren, and his reward had been a stone at his heart and an evil word, coupled with a curse.
He did not go south till the lads who had been instrumental in trying to burn down his property had been caught and taken before the magistrate.
"If I am wanted, send for me," he said to his head-manager the day he left, "and report as usual."
He had telegraphed for his motor. He felt in need of a little spell of relief, of fresh influences, of something to divert his thoughts.
"I will go abroad for Christmas," he said to himself.
He dawdled on his way, putting up at various uninteresting places, where the chauffeur found the hours pass pretty slowly. But as he drew nearer to London he became nervous.
It seemed to him that he could not get on enough speed to satisfy a certain restless excitement that urged him southward.
When he finally reached town he found news of his mother. Mrs. Baynhurst had not written herself, but there was a letter from his half-brother.
Cuthbert Baynhurst announced that he had brought their mother home, and added that if Rupert had any business he wished to discuss it would be desirable if that business should be held over for a little while.
"I made her see a specialist in Paris, and he reported very indifferently about her. Of course she had no business to rush across the other day. If she will do these sort of stupid things, she is bound to suffer for it. She is a good bit annoyed about Miss Graniger, so I think if you don't mind it would be as well not to worry her more than you can help."
To this letter Rupert made no direct reply, but he scribbled a few words to his mother, saying that he would call on her the following day if she cared to see him.
"That will give her the opportunity of shirking me if she does not want me," he said to himself, with a faint smile.
He was obliged to give an hour or two to his secretary, and to make appointments that would occupy him nearly the whole of the next day. But he purposely kept the afternoon free; he wanted to see Camilla.
His cab had just pulled up at Mrs. Lancing's door when it was opened, and the two children passed out, with Caroline Graniger in attendance.
No sooner did they see Rupert Haverford than Betty and Baby ran to him and flung themselves upon him. They made quite a commotion in the streets.
Miss Graniger stood in the background, smiling faintly, yet conscious of a little awkwardness.
Mr. Haverford was so occupied with the children that he could not for the moment address a single word to her.
When his right hand was free, however, he lifted his hat and gave her a smile; then he stretched out his hand, and Caroline put hers into it.
"Do you wish to see Mrs. Lancing?" she asked. "She is at home, but not very well."
"But she will see you," Betty chimed in. "Do go and see her. Poor mummy! she issowhite, and her eyes look red, just like mine do when I have been crying."
"Perhaps I had better not go in," Mr. Haverford said.
But the children were urging him towards the door. Betty gave him all sorts of injunctions.
"Don't make too much noise," she said. "You mustn't jump about, or scream on the stairs. Babyalwaysscreams when mummy's got a bad head."
Caroline had to come to the rescue here; behind a good firm barrier Baby felt that she might hurl recrimination on her sister with impunity. It took some time to pacify her.
"I really don't think I ought to go in," Haverford repeated earnestly.
But Caroline had unlocked the door with a latchkey.
"I think Mrs. Lancing would like to see you," she said. She spoke stiffly; she did not feel quite at her ease with him. "Shall I go up and tell her you are here?"
"Yes; go," said Betty. "Mr. Haverford will take care of us; he's a very us-a-ful man. We'll play that he's a new nurse. Come on, Babsy!"
As she passed up the stairs Caroline said to herself—
"He did not say anything disagreeable, and he did not look very cross. I am rather glad."
Mrs. Lancing was sitting in front of the fire leaning back in a chair; a book lay open upon her knees. It was the day following the midnight raid on the nursery.
She looked very ill, and was very languid, and utterly unlike herself.
Dennis and Caroline had combined to keep Mrs. Lancing in bed all the morning, and if Dennis could have had her way she would have called a doctor; but Camilla prohibited this.
She looked round now with a start as the door opened and Caroline reappeared.
"I hear the children speaking to some one," she said, in a nervous sort of way. "Who is it? Why have you left them? After all, I don't think I will let them go out, Caroline."
"Mr. Haverford is downstairs. I told him you were not well. I think he would like to see you."
Mrs. Lancing leaned forward suddenly. The book slipped from her knees and fell to the floor. She had turned suddenly very hot, and her face was scarlet for the moment.
"No," she said in a jerky sort of way, and then, just as quickly, she changed her mind. "Yes ... yes, Iwillsee him! He may cheer me up. I feel half dead this afternoon. I am sure I must look an object, don't I?" She stood up for an instant and peered at herself in the glass over the fireplace.
"That depends what an object is like," said Miss Graniger, with a little laugh; "you are looking very pale, but extremely interesting, and that gown is lovely."
Camilla tried to laugh.
"That is all right," she said; "are you going now? Well, don't forget what I told you, keep both the children by the hand. I—I am so nervous about them to-day."
Caroline promised to bring the children back with all safety, and then she turned to go. But Mrs. Lancing called her again.
"Oh! I very nearly forgot. Will you take this letter to the post for me? I want it sent by express messenger. Sir Samuel is leaving town to-night, and I should like him to get it before he goes. I had a letter from him this morning," said Camilla, she laughed faintly; "it was very kind of him; he saw that I was upset last night when I lost so much money at bridge, and he wrote to ask if he could be of any assistance. This is to say, 'No, thank you,' in as pretty a fashion as possible. So, you see, I want him to get it; if you don't know where the post-office is, Betty will take you there. Where are the children now, by the way?"
"Mr. Haverford is taking care of them," said Caroline.
She was conscious that Camilla was speaking very flurriedly. Indeed, it seemed to her that Mrs. Lancing had confided the contents of her letter to Sir Samuel Broxbourne almost unconsciously, as though she were glad to speak for the mere sake of speaking.
Dennis had been greatly upset that morning by something her mistress had told her, but she had not shared her trouble with Caroline as yet. Indeed, up to the present the girl was absolutely ignorant (although she and Camilla had been drawn so closely together in the night hours) of the nature of the trouble that had evidently fallen so unexpectedly.
She found the children back on the doorstep; they parted with Rupert Haverford with reluctance.
"Say you'll be stayed till we come in," pleaded Betty.
Baby kept them waiting while she solemnly unfolded a piece of crumpled paper; from this she extracted a crushed-looking object that once had been a chocolate drop, and before Caroline could intervene she had pressed this upon Haverford. He accepted the gift with gratitude, and carried it upstairs to show it with pride to Baby's mother.
"Let me tell you," said Camilla, as she gave him her hand without rising, "that that is a sign that you are in very great favour. I thought I was the only person with whom Babsy shared the things she was eating. She is so fond of eating, dear little soul. Just like me. Pull up that chair and be sociable. Do you know that it is years since I saw you? Wherehaveyou been? I begin to think there is something mysterious about these journeys to the north."
It was an attempt at her usual pretty, light-hearted manner, but only an attempt.
Haverford did not pull up the chair; he stood by the fire and looked down at her. Strangely enough he felt quite at his ease with her to-day.
He had drawn off the glove that had the chocolate drop sticking to it, and Camilla noticed, not for the first time, what a fine hand he had. Though it was brown, and had been trained to such hard work, there was a charm about it. A hand can be so significant. With a sudden shiver she remembered the flat, coarse, cruel finger-tips of Samuel Broxbourne.
There was something inviting, something pleasant about the look of Rupert Haverford's hand.
"Do sit down," she said suddenly; and there was a little nervous tone in her voice.
Instead of obeying her he put a question to her.
"What have you been doing with yourself?" he asked.
She pretended to misunderstand him.
"I told Caroline I was sure I was not fit to be seen to-day;" then she shrugged her shoulders. "Late hours, my dear friend. The result of all the silly, stupid things that I know you want to denounce from the housetop. I came home very late last night," she said, after a little pause. "I played cards, and I lost a lot!... And then I found some tiresome letters waiting for me, and so"—she shrugged her shoulders a second time—"I had a bad night, and to-day, of course, I look a wreck."
"I think you ought to see a doctor," said Rupert Haverford.
Camilla moved impatiently in her chair.
"How unoriginal a man is! You are all alike," she said. "You imagine that as soon as a doctor has scribbled something on a paper, and the chemist has sent in a neat little white packet, and an equally neat little bill, then everything must be all right! Shakespeare was a man, but he knew things better than most of you do. He knew, for instance, that all the doctors in the world cannot do any good when the mind is ill."
There was a pause, in which Camilla made a strange discovery. She found she could hear her own heart beat quite plainly.
Was it chance or Providence that had sent this man to her now?
"The other day," said Rupert Haverford, in his quiet, seemingly unemotional way, "you came to me to ask me to help a friend of yours. You know my only reason for existence just now is that I may be of some service to other people. I cannot help feeling that perhaps I might be of some use to you. If you won't try a doctor, suppose you try me?"
"Suppose we talk about something else," said Camilla. "I know I have something to say to you—what is it?" She wrinkled her brows and closed her eyes, and he looked at her almost hungrily.
Lying back with her eyes closed, it seemed to him that her face had grown more delicate, that her general aspect was more fragile.
The very suggestion that she should be really in trouble, that care should be fretting her, was torture to him.
"Ah, I know what it was," she said, opening her eyes and bending forward. "I have a bone to pick with you. I hear that you are not pleased because Miss Graniger accepted the situation I offered her. I call that horrid of you."
"I suppose I have no right to feel anything about the matter one way or another," Rupert answered; "but, in reality, I did feel a little annoyed. I was not sure that it would be a good arrangement for either of you. You see, I know practically nothing about this girl."
"And you know too much about me," finished Camilla, with a little laugh. "Well, as it happens, it is the happiest thing for both of us. You can see for yourself that the children have turned to Caroline just as little ducklings turn to water; and as for myself, except for Agnes Brenton, I think this girl is the nearest approach to what I call arealwoman I have ever met; so I hope," with a flash of her old manner, "you are not going to interfere, exert your rights as a guardian or a parochial officer, or whatever you are, and take Caroline away."
He only smiled. The question of Caroline Graniger was of no interest to him.
As he remained silent Camilla felt that heart-beat sound again with heavy thuds in her ears.
"Do sit down," she said to him, almost weakly; "you—you look so big, so commanding as you stand there. I assure you I am not well enough to be awed to-day. I think I must have some tea. If I have a cup of tea I shall be stronger."
When the bell had been rung, and answered, she really had taken a grip of herself.
"It is very nice of you to come and see me," she said. "When did you get back?"
"I arrived just before lunch," he said; "I came down in the motor."
"Wasn't it very cold?"
He nodded his head.
"Yes; the country is rather bleak just now." Then he smiled. "Now I will sit down," he said, "since my size is so alarming!"
Camilla's delicate fingers were picking at the lace on her sleeve a little nervously.
"So you have only been back an hour or two, and you came to see me at once. Now that was very sweet of you, Mr. Haverford. Some instinct must have told you that I was dull and lonely, and dying for a pleasant companion."
Haverford's brown face coloured a little.
"The truth is, Mrs. Lancing," he said, "I felt in need of sympathy, so I came to you."
"Sympathy! Has something happened? Oh! do let me know!"
She spoke for the first time naturally.
He sat forward and looked into the fire for a moment, and then quietly and in a very few words he gave her the story of what had happened, or, rather, the story of what he had discovered up north, and Camilla listened eagerly; her own trouble, bitter and pressing and painful as it was, faded from her as she listened.
"I don't suppose anybody in the wide world knows what this means to me," Haverford said slowly, when he had spoken of his disappointment, of the breakdown of his hopes. "I was so fond of those people. I counted so surely on their faith in me, in their real affection. Money is a very destructive thing, Mrs. Lancing! I will stake my existence that there is not a man or a woman who had not a good thought for me in the old days. And now there is not one who would not enjoy flinging a brick at me."
Camilla did not speak for a moment.
"I think I understand," softly; then she said, "But I don't believe I can give you sympathy, Mr. Haverford. I am sure this has gone too deeply for any words of mine to help you."
She stretched out her hand, however, as she spoke, and Rupert took it, laying it on one broad palm and closing his other tenderly over it. He felt the nervous thrill that ran through her. Her face was scarlet as she took her hand away with a jerk.
"Here comes tea," she said. "You are going to wait upon me, please, Mr. Haverford. I don't feel quite equal to lifting the teapot."
When he had done this gravely, taking any amount of care, and they were alone, without any further interruption, he stood once more by the fireplace, and looked at her.
"Now I have told you my trouble, won't you tell me yours?"
She winced and caught her breath, and then with a sudden irresponsible movement she put her hands to her face, and he saw that she was crying.
His own hands moved convulsively, but almost immediately Camilla had mastered her weakness.
"Don't ... think me quite a fool," she said, "and don't,pleasedon't, run away with the idea that I want to cry. I must be very strong now.... I never want to cry ... tears are useless at all times, but they are worse than useless now. I believe," she said, as she dried her eyes hurriedly, "that it won't surprise you in the least to be told that I have always been more or less in difficulty. Of course it is money—hateful, horrible,horriblemoney."
She got up and moved away from him, still drying her eyes.
"I dare say lots of people have told you all there is to know about me, and so you may have heard that the only money I have in the world to live upon has come to me from my husband's people. Well! then you will understand a little bit why I am so upset to-day when I tell you that Colonel Lancing, that is, the children's grandfather, is so angry with me that he has stopped my money, and ... and ..." she broke off here, and put her hands against her trembling lips. "He thinks to force my hand, you see," she said, hoarsely; "he knows I have nothing, that there is no one to give me anything but himself, he knows that if I am content to starve myself I cannot let the children starve, and that is why he says the children are to belong to him. Oh!" she turned again, flinging out her hands with a little gesture of despair, "I am not going to try and defend myself. I know better than anybody can tell me how foolish I have been. What a multitude of wrong things I have done. I have been preparing myself for some sort of punishment—people who do wrong always do get punished, don't they? But I never, never thought of this. Of course he cannot take them from me by law. I am their mother, they are mine ...mine.... But if he cuts off the money, that gives him law!"
She sat down on a couch the other side of the room and dabbed her eyes with her wet handkerchief, and Rupert Haverford looked across at her with eyes that were wet too.
The silence that was so natural to him, and so irritating to Camilla, became oppressive now. She got up with a jerk.
"Youwouldmake me tell you what the matter was with me, and now I have bored you," she said. "Other people's troublesarebores, say what one will!"
And then he found his voice.
"Oh! don't let us play with realities," he said. "I could not speak at first because, well! because I am not good at words. You must have realized that by this time; and you must have realized something else, Camilla, and that is that everything that concerns you is dear to me, so dear that I tremble at the thought that I am still outside your life." He left the fire and went nearer to her. "I came here to-day," he said, "because I found that I could not go through another twenty-four hours without seeing you. You mean so much to me. I had no idea whether you would care for me to come; indeed, the last time I saw you I tormented myself by imagining that you found me tedious, and dull, that you wanted to have no more to do with me. Still I had to come."
Camilla gave a sharp sigh and turned round, her face was blurred with tears, she hardly looked young or pretty.
"I know what you are going to say," she said, "I know what you are going to ask me, but I am afraid to listen."
"Afraid?" he said, and his brows met; "afraid of what?"
"Oh, you don't know me," said Camilla, with a broken sound in her voice; "you think me pretty, you like me. Perhaps I fascinate you, but you don't know me. I ... I am not going to refuse to be your wife," she said, she spoke with her teeth half closed; "but I don't want any false pretences, I don't want you to imagine things about me that do not exist. I am full of faults, I am not a bit good. You don't know," she opened her eyes for a minute, and looked at him, "you don't know how un-good I am, and you ... you are so good. You will want to make me like yourself."
"God forbid," said Rupert Haverford.
He was so near to her now that he almost touched her. She was trembling with excitement.
"Oh! I don't mean that you would do it unkindly, only that you look at things differently. I am so afraid you will be disappointed in me, but ..." the tears were running down her cheeks, "I know one thing about you. I know that you are true, and that if you give your word it will be your bond." Her lips quivered. "The children," she said brokenly; and then she was lying with her face pressed down on his breast, and his arms were folded about her.
What he said she hardly heard, she was only conscious in that moment of a great, a wonderful relief. It was as though some gnawing pain that had fretted into her very soul had been lulled; that a beautiful rest had followed on the pain.
She closed her eyes, and she nestled nearer to him. Then, little by little, she came back to the reality, and her heart leapt in her throat, she tried to free herself, but those strong arms held her tightly. Some one was kissing her brow, and close beside her she could feel the quick beating of a strong heart.
Once she had said to herself, "He will love me too much."
And now she had accepted this love; she had bartered her freedom for it....
The thought of the bondage burned her, yet it had come about so naturally.
"I did not seek him," she said to herself; "he came, he would have come a little later, but he came now ... just when I needed some one ... something...."
How his heart beat!... How strong he was! When he kissed her brow and hair and eyes she could feel his lips quiver.
He would love her too much! He did not ask her to kiss him in return. He was so good ... so generous! He had given her back her children. For that she could have knelt at his feet. But she almost prayed that he would not ask for her kisses ... not yet ... not yet....