With the new year the damp, wet weather set in again, and it was generally conceded that it was much better that the children should be kept in the country.
"That is such a little poky house in town," Agnes Brenton declared.
Nevertheless, Camilla clung to the poky little house, although Haverford urged her all the time to fix a definite date for their marriage.
"Why should we wait?" he asked, very reasonably; "we have really no one to consult or consider. I am just longing for you to come into my great empty house and turn it into a home."
Camilla chose to treat the matter flippantly.
"Oh, is that all you want me for? Well, my dear Rupert, if you want a nice, comfortable, domesticated, housekeepery sort of a woman, I know the very person for you. I am ornamental, you know—exceedingly ornamental, but I am not the least bit of good to look after the linen, or to mend your socks, and I couldn't boil an egg to save my life."
Another time he said to her—
"I want to get you away from this house. I want to take you out of all that belonged to old times and sorrows. Have you forgotten that we are to go to Italy? To all the places where you were so happy with your father? Let us be married and start at once."
But Camilla always pleaded for time.
"I tell you why," she said to him once. "I want you—us—to get thoroughly well used to one another. Of course, you have known me a long time—it is nearly two years since we met—but there are such heaps of things we ought to realize before we make our great start together. I have made a little promise to myself," Camilla said weightily, "that I will not marry you till I have taught myself to be a little worthy of you."
"I wish you would not talk such rubbish," the man answered, with a very natural touch of bad temper.
"Now, you see," said Camilla, and she laughed—"you see I have done something to annoy you, and I am sure I don't know what it is. I shall be perpetually making these mistakes if we marry in haste." Then she changed her tone. "Surely, dear Rupert, we should be much wiser to wait another month or two. I—I am not really well enough to go abroad just yet. After Easter it will be delightful. We will do Paris first, and then go on to the south of Italy. Naples is enchanting in May." She gave a quick sigh. "And then I am making up my mind to be separated from the children," she said, "and, as Sammy Broxbourne would put it, 'it takes a little doing!' Oh, by the way, did I tell you that I had quite a charming letter from Sir Samuel, congratulating me on my engagement to you? Poor fellow! he has had an accident at Monte Carlo, and has injured his leg. He tells me he will not be able to walk for another month or so, and cannot get back to England just yet."
"The longer he stays away the better for England," said Haverford; "he is a very objectionable man."
"Oh, I see," answered Camilla, almost impatiently. "Agnes has been prejudicing you."
But Haverford made no reply to this, and the subject was dropped.
This was but a specimen of the conversation which passed between them whenever they met. But, as a matter of fact, they saw very little of one another.
Camilla got into the habit of running away from town to stay with one friend or another; the greater part of her time, however, was spent at Yelverton.
When she said she was not well in these days she stated the actual truth.
Mrs. Brenton was a little anxious about her, and tried to coddle her, and make her take care of herself—a difficult operation. It was strange to see Camilla listless and bored. She could not be roused to take an interest in anything except what concerned the children.
"I know I am deadly dull," she said on one occasion, "but you must put it all down to money. I don't owe a penny in the world, and you can'tthinkhow lonely I feel! I am simply rusticating for the want of excitement. When I am in town, and the door-bell rings at breakfast-time, I am perfectly unmoved; the postman's knock doesn't give me a single thrill. I can walk into Véronique's without troubling to invent a harrowing story about delayed remittances or unfortunate speculations. I can buy what I like and pay for it ... consequently I don't want to buy anything. And I was becoming such an excellent diplomatist. That is the polite word, is it not, for one who fights by subtlety and fabricates untruths? Also I am growing mean, Agnes. Do you know, now that I have got a fat banking account, and all the world is bowing down to me, I hesitate before I give away a shilling. I even went in an omnibus the other day."
She laughed as she said this; she would have loved to have explained to Mrs. Brenton that she had sought refuge in this useful conveyance to escape from meeting Haverford whom she had caught sight of in the distance. But she curbed the desire.
"Poor Agnes, she shivers and turns cold when she hears me say those sort of things. She is so afraid I am going to lose everything just as I have got it, and oh dear me, I wish I could lose him! If I had not been in such a hurry, perhaps I should have been able to patch things up, and have struggled on a bit longer; but now I am bound hand and foot. His unparalleled generosity"—there was a sneer in her thoughts—"prevents all chance of escape. If a woman lets a man settle any amount of money on her and her children, she cannot very easily back out and tell him that she is going to keep the money and say 'good-bye' to him."
On this same occasion Mrs. Brenton spoke for the first time on the subject of the Lancing people.
"You have never told me what they said about your engagement."
Camilla yawned a little.
"The old man cursed me, I suppose, but he had the decency to keep the curses off paper. Violet wrote, of course." She laughed languidly. "Violet is always ready to hold a candle to the devil, and Horace sent me a few kind words. Horace is not really a bad sort."
Camilla was silent a moment, and then she said—
"You know Rupert wanted to go down and interview Colonel Lancing, but I stopped that and made him write instead. I am not sure that it would not have been a good thing for him if he had gone; he would have heard some nice home-truths about me, wouldn't he? It would have been a kind of preparation for what is to come."
Agnes Brenton had taught herself already not to encourage this kind of conversation. Like Rupert Haverford, she was very anxious indeed for the marriage to take place, but she did not urge it openly as he did. Where she attacked the subject was on the practical side.
"Why not marry very quietly, and go abroad for two months? You really want rest and a thorough change; it would do you all the good in the world."
"Oh, I am too lazy!" Camilla said. "I hate travelling when I am not well, and, you see, Rupert is still so new. I must get a little more used to him before I go rushing off to the other side of the world with him. And then I must have a trousseau. Besides, we have settled to wait till Easter. Rupert is so busy. He is throwing himself into therôleof the ready-made father with the greatest zest. You should see all the arrangements he is making for the children. He bought Betty a pony the other day. I wish he would buy Caroline for me. I am so afraid one of these days she will fly away and leave us."
She had fallen into the trick of sitting a great deal in the little room that was called Caroline's sitting-room; her one interest at this moment was in putting together a charming wardrobe for the girl, and no one knew how to buy prettier clothes better than Mrs. Lancing.
That same day, after she had been chatting with Mrs. Brenton, she climbed slowly up the stairs to the children's floor, but she found it empty.
No place is lonely, however, that is dedicated to the use of children, and she walked through the large rooms (that no amount of tidiness would keep tidy) smiling sometimes, and sometimes standing and looking wistfully about her.
As she passed through the night nursery she paused in front of the portrait of Betty's father.
"What is there about Cuthbert Baynhurst that reminds me of Ned?" she said to herself. "The resemblance between them is very marked. Sometimes when Cuthbert is talking I could almost imagine Ned was in the room."
She put the portrait down abruptly, and biting her lip she went through to the sitting-room again.
"How lovely it would be if I could go abroad with Caroline and the children! I wonder if he would let us do that?" This thought brought a frown. The more she realized that Rupert Haverford had the right to dominate her the more she chafed at her position.
In truth, at times it seemed to her as if she had passed merely from one bondage—from one form of dependence to another. This bondage was splendid enough—she was surrounded with every possible thing she wanted or fancied; the magnificence of Haverford's settlement and gifts to her was still the theme for comment and amazement—but, splendid as it all was, it was still a bondage to Camilla. And he had no idea of this.
It gave him such wonderful happiness to share his wealth with this woman.
In the days following immediately on their betrothal he had seemed to walk on air. It was absolutely the first time that the fact of his enormous wealth had given him a sense of enjoyment or satisfaction.
He yearned over Camilla just as if she had been a child. He diverted his interest, the purpose of his life, from all former channels; henceforward it should be planned to run as she would have it run. He had no longer doubt as to her judgment; he imagined that he was beginning to understand her now.
Just because she had shown a desire to be at Yelverton, and to turn away from all the people whom he had regarded as being so injurious to her, he told himself that all those little things (about which he had troubled so sharply) had merely been the outcome of circumstances, and that she was now drifting into her proper, her natural mental condition. It sometimes angered Camilla that he should suppose she was so malleable, but for the most part she regarded his satisfaction as being satisfactory for herself also.
"As long as he is pleased, what does anything else matter?" she said now and then to herself. "He has paid a long price for me, so it would be rank hard luck if he felt he had made a bad bargain."
She stood now a little while at the window of the sitting-room, and then roused herself.
"A walk will do me good," she said; "I will go and meet them." She put on her furs, and went slowly downstairs to the large, cosy hall, stopping on her way out to chat a few minutes with Mr. Brenton, a tall, thin, careworn-looking man, who lived for the most part in the clouds, and was never so happy as when he and his wife were at Yelverton alone.
He was known all over the country as a collector of old and rare books, and also as an enthusiastic rather than a judicious purchaser. There were tons of useless volumes lumbering the upper storeys of the house, and still they continued to come. But dreamer and bookworm as he was, Dick Brenton had a place in his heart for all those who were dear to his wife, and he was very fond of Camilla Lancing. He always said her beauty was so helpful, so illuminating; and he adored her children.
As she passed into the damp and rather dismal grounds, Camilla's thoughts turned as usual to the coming future. The nearer the time approached the more she longed to postpone the marriage.
"Surely I ought to be able to invent something to give me a little more time," she said to herself; and just for an instant it crossed her mind how helpful it would be if the children could have some slight ailment; but she immediately took herself to task for this.
"God forgive me!" she said. And she shivered at the bare thought of what an illness to either of these loved little creatures would mean to her. Still, she craved to keep her freedom. At the same time, she realized that an indefinite engagement was out of the question. The man's very goodness and generosity forced upon her a duty to him.
"The worst is," she said to herself restlessly now, "he has no idea of the truth. Of course, he knows I don't love him in the way he cares for me, but I am sure he thinks I do care for him. I suppose I could never let anybody understand, even myself, how I feel about him ... how strangely I am drawn to him at one moment, and how I almost hate him the next...."
The butler had told her that he thought she would find the children on the road to the village.
And she moved in that direction. Her fretting, troubled mood broke and vanished as Betty's lithe, small figure came running round a corner of the road, and a cry of real joy hailed her.
It was the height of bliss to Betty and Baby to have their mother with them for a walk.
"Caroline's coming. I runned on because I wanted to hide ... and oh, such fun, mummy! we saw the hounds and a lot of the field running and jumping in the distance. They looked so 'cited.'"
Camilla slipped her arm through Caroline's as the girl and Babsy joined her.
"I missed you," she said; "I didn't know you were out." Then a little abruptly she added, "I think I shall have you back to town with me when I go this week. I have had the nurseries done up, and the children have been here so long, really I feel ashamed of trespassing too much on Agnes's hospitality."
Betty clapped her hands. She wanted to see the big, new house that was going to be her future home.
Rupert had told her that she should choose her own furniture, and her own little bed, and that her room should be done up entirely as she liked. But she had to talk about this in mysterious whispers so that Baby should not hear.
"You see I shall have to begin to get my clothes," Camilla said; "I don't want any really, but I must spend money; it is expected of me. Oh, I wish I were you, Caroline! If I had a hundred and fifty a year of my own I'd be the happiest creature in the world."
Caroline looked at her wistfully.
"I wish I could give you all I have," she said.
"Rupert declares," said Camilla, in her irrelevant way, "that I must make some arrangements to relieve you. What do you say to having a French maid for the nursery? Betty ought to begin to speak French now. She picked up the language very quickly when I had Hortense to maid me, but she was picking up other things too; that was why I sent Hortense packing."
"There's a man coming," announced Betty; "he's been tumbling in the mud, and his horse is all lame. Oh, do look, mummy!"
They paused and looked backwards. The picture Betty had described was very accurate.
Evidently the man, who was advancing rather slowly, limping a little as he moved, had come a cropper. He was splashed with mud from head to foot. Betty suddenly gave an exclamation.
"Why, mummy," she said, "it's Sammy!"
Caroline felt Mrs. Lancing start violently, and press closer to her as if unconsciously seeking protection. Instantly, however, she rallied herself.
Betty ran forward, of course, to greet Sir Samuel; and her mother, loosing her hand from Caroline's arm, followed the child.
"No need to ask you where you come from," she said, half gaily. She held out her hand to Broxbourne, but he shook his head, and showed his own mud-stained one by way of explanation.
He was not agreeable to look at. There was a grim, ugly expression on his face—the look of a man who knew how impotent anger was, and yet who could not help being angry.
Camilla was full of sympathy.
"I hope you have not hurt yourself," she said; "but," remembering quickly, "how came you to be hunting? I thought you were an invalid?" Then with a fugitive smile, "Indeed, I supposed you were still abroad."
"Came back three days ago," the man answered rather shortly. "I suppose Brenton will not mind putting this animal up for me? He can't go much further."
"Where are you staying?" asked Camilla.
They all moved on together slowly. He mentioned a house that had been taken for the hunting season by some friends of hers.
At this juncture Caroline and the children walked briskly on ahead.
"It is tea-time, you know," the girl explained. As a matter of fact, she was anxious to get away.
Sir Samuel had a trick of staring at any woman he thought worth looking at in a very embarrassing fashion, and Caroline was certainly pleasing to the eye.
The note of her appearance was simplicity itself beside the costly elegance of Mrs. Lancing, but she was slim, and straight, and fresh, and young, and with such a pair of eyes any woman must have been attractive.
"So you are rusticating," Broxbourne said, as he and Camilla were left to themselves; "not much in your line, is it? But I suppose now that you are going to settle down you have turned over a new leaf entirely. Is the lucky man down here?"
"No, he has gone to build a hospital, or buy up a whole county, as a thanksgiving for our approaching wedding," Camilla laughed. "Don't you think a hospital is a very good idea? I expect he imagines he may want it before I have finished with him."
She spoke as lightly as ever, and laughed with the same ease, but within the warm embrace of her furs she seemed to wither, to shrink a little. Not half an hour before she had been longing, praying almost, for some barrier to stand in the pathway of her marriage. Now she knew with the unerring sense of intuition that what she had dreaded so much just before Christmas, and which of late she had managed to forget almost entirely, was coming upon her—that her future was definitely threatened.
She had been so protected of late, so wrapped about with the tenderest, the most chivalrous care, that she felt this sudden translation into the old atmosphere more keenly than she had ever felt any of her former troubles and anxieties. It was as though she had been stripped of every warm garment, and thrust shivering and helpless into the aching cold of a black frost.
Yet she tried to play her part.
"You wrote me a very nice letter, Sammy," she said.
He laughed.
"Yes, didn't I? Too good by half."
Fate had played Camilla a nasty trick by bringing her face to face with this man just at this particular moment.
When he had been thrown, his first act on picking himself up had been to thrash his horse unmercifully. That had relieved him a little, but the poison of his anger had not worked off completely. He had always promised himself the pleasure of dealing very straightly with Mrs. Lancing. He was not likely to deny himself the satisfaction of doing this when he felt so much in need of a vent for his feelings; when, too, he knew that he had the situation in the hollow of his hand.
"I must say," he said, with that same sneering tone in his voice, "that I was taken all aback when I heard what had happened. Always thought you were a model of fidelity, that your heart was buried in Ned's grave, and that sort of thing, don't you know? But money makes a great difference, and there has never been quite enough money for you, has there, Camilla?"
She shivered. There was a leer on his face as he turned and looked at her. She answered him half lightly, half wearily.
"Oh, I don't know! I think one can have too much of anything, even of money."
At this Sir Samuel laughed loudly.
"Well, I must say you are a clever woman. Yes, by Jove! you are. I used to think in the old days, when Ned was on the scene, that you were a fool and a saint combined. I know a little bit better now."
Camilla's lips quivered. She turned to him. There was an unconscious entreaty in her voice.
"Dear Sammy," she said, "why are you so cross with me?"
But he only answered with another laugh.
"Yes, in the old days," he went on, "you played the part of the prude to perfection. Kept a fellow at arm's length, and pretended all sorts of things."
"Why go back to those old times?" asked Mrs. Lancing, in a very low voice.
"Because I choose to do so; because there is something that has to be settled between us, and you know that! I suppose you think I was taken in by the sweet way you treated me when we met down here in November. But it was the other way about. I took you in, didn't I?"
It was very cold in this damp country road; all the world seemed grey; the trees with their bare, seemingly withered branches stood like spectres against the dull sky.
Camilla's colour had faded. She looked haggard.
"Please speak a little more plainly," she said.
And Broxbourne answered her.
"Not I. There is nothing to be gained by telling the truth to a woman, especially to a woman like you."
She caught her breath sharply, almost as if she had been struck. Her mind, trained to work with almost incredible swiftness, fathomed the significance of these words.
She put out her hand and gripped his arm.
"What has to be said must be said to me, and to me only." Then suddenly she broke down. "Oh, Sammy!" she said, "I know. Don't you believe I know I did you a great wrong? There is nothing to excuse it, except that you don't know what a corner I was in!... What an awful temptation it was! It has all been so easy for you. You have never had to face hard times and black, killing difficulties. You can't be expected to understand what these things mean."
"Why didn't you ask me?" the man said surlily; and she answered in that same broken way—
"I ... I could not. First of all, you had gone away, and then I was afraid...."
She broke off abruptly; he looked at her sharply, and again he laughed.
"You thought I would want payment," he said. "Well, you're right there. I have a good business instinct. I always like to get full value for what I spend, or what is taken from me."
At this juncture they had reached the gates of Yelverton Park, and Sir Samuel caught sight of a gardener. He hailed the man, gave the horse into his charge, and burdened him with all sorts of commands to the head-groom.
"I'll be round at the stables very shortly," he said.
Camilla had walked on, but he overtook her. Her white, drawn face seemed to give him a great deal of satisfaction.
"You don't offer to give me back the money, but I suppose that is what is in your mind," he said.
His half-bantering tone stung her like the lash of a whip; she was silent only because she could not speak.
"Well, my dear, you may as well put that out of your mind once and for all; that little piece of paper which you worked at so carefully is not to be redeemed by money."
He searched in his pockets, found his cigarette case, paused to strike a match on his heel, and began smoking without any pretence of courtesy.
"This is a funny world, and no mistake! I was very fond of you when I came upon you first," he said; "I was prepared to make no end of a fool of myself about you. And you snubbed me up and down dale; wouldn't have anything to do with me. You were quite able to get along without my friendship, thank you. There are some things that stick, you know, Camilla, and the way you shut down on me in those old days is one of those things. I must say you have a rummy notion of morality! I wasn't good enough to come near you, yet you had no hesitation whatever about robbing me when the time came along."
An exclamation like a sob escaped Camilla. He laughed.
"It is an ugly way of putting it," he said; "but it is the only way, and I fancy that with his peculiarly straightforward views, his working man's propensity for calling a spade a spade, Mr. Haverford will regard the matter in the same light."
The woman turned at this half passionately.
"You are not going to tell him! Oh, you cannot. Youshallnot!"
"It lies with you to decide whether I tell him or not."
He puffed out some smoke on to the damp air, and Camilla watched it wreathe and separate and finally fade into the mist that was gathering about the trees; watched it with eyes dry and hot with misery and shame and fear.
Suddenly Broxbourne turned to her.
"You must break with this man," he said; "I have a prior claim. I don't intend to let you marry him."
She stood still and looked at him with dilated eyes.
"Break my engagement? Impossible....Impossible!"
Her heart was throbbing in her breast, her lips were white.
"Nothing is impossible," answered the man; "after all, I am not treating you badly. If I did the right thing, I should go straight to Haverford. What do you think he'd say, if he heard my pretty little story? How you begged a cheque out of me for a charity bazaar, and how, by chance having got hold of a blank cheque of mine, you filled it in for a nice large sum, and signed my name, by Gad! as bold as brass! I remember," said Broxbourne, shaking the ash from his cigarette, "I was in a tearing hurry when I answered your letter—it was the very day I left for America, in fact. I just scribbled the small cheque anyhow, and never noticed that as I tore it out of my cheque-book I tore a blank one with it. But you found that out in double quick time, didn't you?..."
Camilla turned to him. The hard, dry look had gone from her eyes; they were dim with tears.
"Sammy!" she said brokenly, "don't rub it in so hard. I know.... Iknowhow horrible this thing is! When you came back last November, I nearly died when I saw you. I prepared myself for everything, and when you were so friendly, when you said nothing, I began to hope, even to believe, you did not know. Why did you not speak then? Don't you see how much worse it is for me now?"
Sir Samuel smiled at her.
"Of course it is," he said, his cigarette between his teeth; "I know that.... I tumbled to your little game with this man the very moment I came back, and I promised myself some fun. It tickled me to death to have you running after me just as if you liked me, pretending to want me, and imagining you were throwing dust in my eyes! I settled then I would wait awhile. Worse for you! Well, do you want me to say 'I am sorry?'"
"I ... I want you to be merciful ... I am in your hands, I know it—but you—you won't be cruel to me, Sammy," said Camilla, in that same moved voice. She caught her breath. "If Rupert Haverford must be told ... I will tell him...." She turned to Broxbourne abruptly. "Do you know why I have promised to marry him? It is for my children's sake. Ned's father suddenly stopped the money he had been giving me, and demanded the children. If I had not done this thing, made them, myself, independent, he would have taken them from me. It is the truth I am telling you, Sammy—the truth. The children are more to me than life...."
Broxbourne answered her coolly; he was unmoved by her broken voice and her stained face.
"I have only been back a day or two, but from what I can gather," he said easily, "I believe you are now a fairly wealthy woman. I must say he has behaved extraordinarily well, but of course that was a little bit more of your cleverness. Anyhow, as you have just told me you have only promised to marry him because of the children, you see the man himself doesn't count. You've got the money, and he can't take that away from you—I don't suppose he would if he could—so all you've got to do is to slide out of things as quickly as you can. I'll give you a month to do it in," Broxbourne said magnanimously.
Camilla brushed her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief; she was utterly unable to answer him, and at that moment they heard the voice of Betty calling to them. The child was evidently running back to join them.
"Go on," said Camilla, hoarsely; "go on ... and meet ... her.... For God's sake, go ... don't let her come ... I ... I will follow...."
"I'll take her along with me to the stables," Broxbourne said, and he limped onwards with a smile, as Camilla turned, and half wildly, half blindly, walked sharply away from the house.
The year was speeding into spring. Easter had come and gone.
Down in the country, in the old-fashioned gardens that stretched at the back of Yelverton, the sun was busy bringing out the leaves, and even the blossoms, almost visibly.
The children had found a delightfully warm, sheltered spot, and here they sat with Caroline basking in the sunshine, protected from the chilliness of the spring wind by the tall, sunburnt wall on which spread pear trees and peach trees, the pink flowers and the white flowers mingling together where the long arms of the branches met and touched.
Betty was supposed to be having lessons, but she was not a very diligent pupil; not that any one urged her to learn.
Mrs. Brenton's theory was that children should run wild till they were seven or eight, provided they were properly influenced, and it was really Agnes Brenton who superintended with Caroline the care of the children now.
Mrs. Lancing had gone back to town just before Easter rather hurriedly, and she had not taken the children with her.
Her plans had been changed. Instead of staying in London she went to the south of England on a visit. From there she wrote announcing that she had felt impelled to postpone the marriage.
"I don't quite know what is wrong, but my heart is playing me tricks, and I really want to feel much better before I rush into my new responsibilities.... I have a sort of idea the Devonshire air will do me no end of good."
The children rejoiced openly when they found they were not going away from Yelverton.
Rupert Haverford came frequently down to see them all. His manner with Caroline always amused her. He seemed to regard it as a duty that he should put her through a sort of cross-examination.
"I wish you would understand," she said to him, half impatiently, once, "that I really and truly want to be with the children. What should I do with myself if I went away from them?"
"You might travel. You might study. Your income is not a very large one, but still it would give you the opportunity of coming in contact with a lot of things about which you know nothing now."
Caroline laughed at this.
"Well, that is true. I am woefully ignorant," she said. "It is rather impertinent of me to call myself a governess, but I am studying all the time. Mr. Brenton is educating me. I shall be quite learned in a little while."
"I only feel that it is my duty to put before you certain possibilities," Haverford said.
And Caroline answered—
"I am very much obliged to you, but I prefer the certainty that I have to all the possibilities in the world."
Then there had been a rather brisk passage of arms between them on the subject of Caroline's money.
"I wish you would not pretend things to me," the girl had said, when they had first discussed the matter. "I can't help feeling that this is all your doing, that you consider it your duty to make some provision for me; in fact," Caroline had added defiantly, "I don't believe my mother had anything to leave me." After a little pause she said, "And I assure you I don't care in the least to take money from other people, even from you, except, of course, when I earn it...."
She was astonished to see how cross he looked.
"Evidently," he said, "you have not read those old letters and papers I gave you."
And Caroline was obliged to confess she had not done so.
"I advise you," Haverford had remarked, "to acquaint yourself with your mother's story, then you will see I have invented nothing."
Caroline could be obstinate at times.
"Well," was all she had remarked in answer to this, "there may have been something; but I am convinced, Mr. Haverford, you are giving me more than I ought to have."
To this, a little stiffly, he said—
"If you are not satisfied with what has been arranged, you can instruct a lawyer to go into the matter. I will give you the address of a very good man."
And Caroline had frowned, and then smiled.
"You know perfectly well I am not grumbling at you. The idea is ridiculous!"
"Are you not?" he had queried, with a smile. "Well, it sounded uncommonly like it."
On the whole, however, they were on the best of terms, though they never progressed to intimacy.
April was well advanced when the children's mother arrived unexpectedly at Yelverton.
She had travelled up from Devonshire without pausing for rest in town, and declared that she was perfectly well; but Agnes Brenton was shocked at her appearance—shocked, too, and pained by the change in her manner.
That quiet, apathetic langour was gone; Camilla was all jerks and nerves. She seemed strung up to the highest pitch of excitement. She talked incessantly, and smoked nearly all the time. This was a new habit.
It appeared she had not come to stay at Yelverton. She was due at Lea Abbey.
"I want to leave Dennis here," she said to Mrs. Brenton. "She is seedy, poor soul, and I told her she had better take a holiday. I can manage without her for a day or two."
They strolled out-of-doors to join the children. Caroline was dreaming.
It was so delicious out in the garden, sitting looking at the country that stretched away in the distance, veiled in that tender, velvety bloom which is the first embrace of spring; so delicious to hear the irresistible and varied notes of the thrush from the boughs of the old apple tree, chanting to the buzz of the bees humming in and out of the adjacent currant bushes.
The children were playing about her. Baby was picking flowers; every now and then she would over-balance herself and topple over, and then would sit solemnly contemplating the earth with a resigned expression till Betty came and pulled her up. Her treasures were always brought and laid on Caroline's lap.
The girl closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them it seemed as if a fresh bunch of snowy pear blossom on the wall beside her had been whispered into life. Beyond in the paddock little lambs were bleating.
Betty had made a great discovery that morning. The robin's eggs in the nest hidden so cunningly (just at the entrance into the fruit gardens) had vanished, and in their place some little feathered morsels, with wide-open beaks and glittering eyes, were treasured in the warm, dark depths. Life was full of indescribable delights.
The coming of Camilla was like the falling of a curtain. The time for dreams was ended; the quiet garden seemed to quiver with another kind of life.
She spent the few hours she was at Yelverton with the children. They carried her everywhere—through the rough meadows, over the marshes to the woods that were carpeted with primroses, with here and there a patch of wild violets, and anon a streak of budding bluebells. A great weight seemed to have gathered about Caroline's heart. For the first time she lagged as she walked, and quite forgot to look for plovers' eggs. Once, as they paused to listen to a lark piping out its soul in the clear sky, and then watched it drop to earth, Camilla pinched the arm she held.
"Naughty Caroline," she said; "you are not a bit glad to see me!"
Caroline's eyes filled with tears.
"I am not a bit glad to see you looking as you look now," she answered.
"How do I look?"
"Ill and ... miserable...."
Camilla laughed.
"Ill and miserable, mydearchild; do you know what you are saying?... I may be a bit seedy—I don't deny that—but how can I be miserable when I have everything in the world to make me happy?"
"I don't know why you should be. I only know you are," Caroline said, in her quiet way. They had to carry Baby across the dykes; the exertion brought the colour flashing into her mother's cheeks for awhile.
"I shall get you a donkey to ride, Boodles," she said, as they turned homewards, their arms full, and their hats wreathed with the wood flowers. "You are such a lot too heavy to carry. That reminds me, Betty," Camilla added, "you are going to have a dog, a real beauty. Sammy is sending it to you."
"I don't want it, thank you very much," said Betty, in her clear treble. "Rupert's going to gived me a dog. I don't like Sammy." A little pause, then the child said thoughtfully, "I'm glad I'm not a dog, mummy—special Sammy's dog—because I've not gotten to eat my din-din out of his plate. And he can't kick me. I've saw him kick his horse in the stable that day he was throwed. I think he's a horrid man."
Camilla had turned white.
"You only care for the things Rupert gives you," she said, in a strangled voice; then, "Oh dear, how tired I am, and there is a dance-to-night! WhydidI walk so far?"
Indeed, she was a long time getting back to the gardens, and when they were reached, she asked that the carriage might be made ready at once to take her over to Lea Abbey.
"When do you want us to go to London?" Caroline asked her as they went indoors together.
"Next week.... I don't know.... I will write. It seems a sin to take the chicks away from here. How well they look!"
A little later, when she was getting into the carriage, Mrs. Lancing drew the girl towards her.
"Don't let them forget me...." Her voice had an odd, dry sound. "Don't let them suppose I am forgetting because they do not see me. Children can forget so easily." She pressed Caroline's hand. "It is funny," she said, in an unsteady way. "I never left them before without yearning to be back the moment they were out of sight; but I leave them with you, almost happily, you funny little cross-patch Caroline."
Caroline looked at her. Once again there were tears in her eyes.
"Come back soon," she said. "Come back and let us make you well. We all want you."
Their hands unclasped, the door was shut, and the carriage rolled away.
At the bend of the drive Mrs. Lancing leaned forward and waved her hand out of the window.
Caroline stood a minute or two and watched the carriage roll out of sight. The air was fragrant with the scent of spring, laden with the whispers of a thousand unseen blossoms.
From where she stood she could see nothing save the lawn and the mass of newly garmented trees. Only a little while before it had been easy to see the entrance gate; now all was blocked out by that fresh shutter of golden-green foliage.
Turning at last, she walked slowly through the hall. Mr. Brenton had discarded his usual corner, and had taken his books out into the sunshine. She could hear the children laughing and singing beyond. Their mother had given each a little parcel as she had gone away. It seemed to Caroline as if she had shirked taking farewell of them.
The girl was glad to be alone for a little while.
Dennis was with the children. Mrs. Brenton had vanished.
Caroline walked to and fro slowly in the afternoon sunshine. She wore no hat, but her head was well protected from any chilly breeze by the splendid thickness of her hair.
A curious longing possessed her in this moment to follow Camilla, and urge her to come back to Yelverton. She could not quite understand the reason for this protracted separation.
"There seems to be something more, something new," she said to herself. By that she meant that there was something more than that lack of sympathy with the man she had promised to marry that was actuating Mrs. Lancing in all her movements now.
"What is the use of my being happy?" Caroline asked herself suddenly, "if I cannot assure happiness to others?—to these two in particular?" And half impatiently she asked herself, "Why is she so obstinate? Why cannot she see that the longer she stands alone the farther she must be away from all that she needs? Surely she ought to trust him. I can't understand why she should doubt or hesitate for an instant."
The children came running up to her to show her their latest possessions, and then she had to greet Dennis, who seemed to be delighted to be where she was.
"It's a real joy to be here, miss," she said to Caroline; "but didn't I tell you what it was going to be when you first came? Just look at them two little angels! They ain't the same children; I declare they ain't."
"I'm sorry to hear you have not been very well, Dennis," Caroline remarked, as she collected the children and their toys and took them towards the house, for, as the sun began to drop, the air was cold.
"Me ill?" said Dennis, in surprise. "Why, there's nothing the matter with me! Who said I was ill?"
"Oh, I had a sort of idea you were not well," said Caroline. "Now, come along, chicks; we'll go upstairs and have a lovely game."
"And Dennis shall tell us a story," said Betty, to whom the last comer was always the most welcome.
Caroline walked behind the others laden with their treasures; and the stairs seemed long, and her limbs were strangely tired this day. There was, too, a curious ache when her heart beat.
The bath-time was over, and two little people were tucked up in bed when Mrs. Brenton beckoned Caroline out of the room.
"I hope you won't mind if we leave you this evening, but there is that concert and entertainment in the village. You said you did not care to go to it, but I think we must go. We always have supported the vicar, and he would never forgive if we did not turn up. Will you change your mind and come?"
Caroline shook her head.
"As a matter of fact, I have a good deal of work to do for Mr. Brenton. I have not translated my last lesson. The children are so pleased to have Dennis that she is going to sit with them."
"You will dine at the same hour," said Mrs. Brenton, and with a smile she passed on.
It was a significant fact she said nothing about Camilla.
Caroline went into her sitting-room, brought out pen and ink and foolscap, dictionaries and Latin grammar; but when she sat down to work, her usual pleasure and eagerness had flown.
She could hear Dennis whispering in the next room and one or the other child putting a pertinent remark in a very unsleepy voice; but she knew them well now. By the time she had changed her dress and had gone downstairs, both little voices would be hushed in sleep.
Camilla's few words to her just as they parted haunted her, but instead of that glow of satisfaction which would surely have come had they been spoken under other circumstances, they brought a renewed touch of heartache.
After a while she put away her books and writing.
"Assuredly," she said to herself, "love goes hand-in-hand with sorrow. When I had no one to love, nothing to care for, nobody to make me anxious, I never had tears in my eyes as I have them now. If only tears would do some good! But howcanI help her? what can I do? I have the sort of feeling that I ought to do something, but what—what?"
She was still standing by the window, looking at the beautiful evening sky, when a maid came into the room softly.
"If you please, miss," she said, "would you come downstairs and see Mr. Haverford? He says he would like to speak to you."
Caroline whipped round from the window.
"Mr. Haverford! He was not expected, and both Mr. and Mrs. Brenton are out."
"Yes, miss, I told him so; but he said he wanted to see you. He hasn't got any luggage; I don't think he means to stay. He's come in his motor, miss."
Caroline paused only an instant. Her brows had met with a frown—a sign that she was moved and nervous.
"Please say I will be down directly."
She went towards her bedroom with the intention of changing her dress, and then she checked herself.
Stealing into the children's room, she whispered to Dennis that she was going downstairs. The maid nodded her head; the children were quite quiet, and Dennis herself looked half asleep.
As she went slowly down the broad staircase Caroline saw him. He was standing in front of the fire in the hall warming his hands.
"Both Mr. and Mrs. Brenton are out—a rare occurrence," she said; "but it is a village festival...."
She gave him her hand, and as he took it she coloured very faintly.
"Yes, so I hear. I am rather glad to see you alone." His tone was terse. As Caroline moved forward to the fire he said, "I have come down to ask for news of Camilla. Can you give me any?"
The girl looked at him for an instant.
"She was here to-day," she said.
"Here?... What time?"
"She came in the morning. I understand she had travelled straight through from Devonshire, only changing stations in town."
He caught his breath in a way that was very like a sigh, and sat down, half shutting his eyes.
"Then she wished to avoid me," he said. "Where has she gone?"
When Caroline told him, he just nodded his head and said—
"Yes...." He paused a moment, and then he said, "I am very troubled about her, Caroline." Indeed, his voice sounded very heavy with trouble.
Caroline waited for him to go on.
"She seems to be slipping out of my hands," said Haverford; "try as I will, I cannot satisfy her, or keep pace with her. I assure you these last few weeks I have been like a creature on wires. I have not known from one moment to the next what she wished me to do. Perhaps I am too exacting. I don't know. I only know that I am wretched, that I cannot sleep for thinking about her; thinking, not in a selfish fashion, ... I give you my word it is not that, but troubling about her...." He sat forward, and stared into the fire. "The last time we were together we quarrelled rather badly," he said then.
Still Caroline said nothing.
There was nothing to say. It was a moment in which silence was more helpful than words.
"We quarrelled about Cuthbert," the man said, rising, and standing by the fireplace. "She has been sitting to him for her portrait. That I don't object to; but what I do object to most emphatically—what seems so wrong, so unmanly on his part, so weak, so foolish on hers—is the fact that he has been getting money out of her. I taxed him with it.... He could not deny it. And when I brought the matter to her, and insisted on giving her back the money, she said very bitter things to me."
He drew in his breath sharply; then, as if to himself, he said—
"What is there, who is there, that can help me to give this woman happiness? I hoped I was going to do it, but I have failed, failed right through!"
"How do you know that you have failed?" asked Caroline, speaking for the first time. "She is not an easy person to deal with, yet it is just her very elusiveness which gives her her hold on us. And I know one thing. I can affirm this, that if there is a creature on this earth whom she honestly respects and values, you are that person."
"Respect!" said Haverford. The fire-glow lit up his face, and she saw that he was smiling faintly. He was silent for a time, and then he said—
"I don't regard the question of Cuthbert as a serious one, notwithstanding that she has taken this peculiar attitude, ranging herself with him against me, and declaring my resolution to let him work up to fortune and fame as a cruel, an almost unnatural, thing; there are other points far more serious, unfortunately, which make the situation so difficult just now. I have repeatedly asked her not to go to Lea Abbey, yet, you see, she has gone there. And I have felt myself compelled to absolutely forbid her to have any sort of intercourse with Sir Samuel Broxbourne. To-day I learned quite by chance that he has been staying in Devonshire the greater part of the time she has been there. The man is her shadow. Wherever she goes he appears, and when we meet there is a look about him as though he would pick a quarrel with me."
Then Haverford pulled himself up suddenly.
"I really beg your pardon," he said. "I am pouring out my troubles just like an old woman. How pleasant it is here," he added abruptly, "so quiet, and cosy, and home-like." He paused again, then he asked hurriedly. "How was she looking?"
"Ill," Caroline answered, and added, "very ill!"
Then her eyes flashed. "Why don't you assert yourself? Why don't you insist on getting married? She belongs to you. When once she is your wife, all this nonsense will end. I think you are as much to blame as she is. After all, she has promised you; you ought to exact the fulfilment of her promise."
He turned and looked at her.
"That is how you spoke the first night you came to my house," he said, and his tone had a faint touch of amusement in it. "You are a little bit of a mystery, Caroline. How any one so sharp and impatient as you are can handle children as you do is a marvel."
Caroline was trembling with nervousness, and with a strange sick sensation of pain, but she laughed.
"Oh! I don't believe in fussing," she said; "if I had only had a little bit more spirit when I was with your mother, it would have been a better thing for me." She moved away from him, and then she came back to him, and looked straight into his face. "Do you know what you ought to do? You ought to go over now to Lea Abbey, and bring her back here. You ought to keep her here, and marry her down here. If you want a witness, I'll be one."
"I cannot do that to-night," said Haverford. "I have brought nothing with me, and I really must go back to town."
She understood him. It was not the first time she had realized how supremely delicate was his attitude towards Camilla. To follow her now might be to suggest to Camilla a desire to know what she was doing; to demonstrate to others his right to do this.
For all this thought and tact Caroline gave him keenest appreciation; at the same time she felt in her impatient way that it was the moment for action.
"Suppose I take the children to town to-morrow? I know she will come if I let her suppose she is wanted," she suggested.
"But they are so happy here, and so well."
"Oh!" said Caroline, almost sharply, "we are not considering the children now; they don't count. And besides, they can always come back here."
She sat down on the broad fender stool, and pondered a moment staring into the fire.
"Really and truly I believe if you pull her up sharply, let her know you are tired of being played with, all will go well. Mrs. Lancing is a bundle of nerves—she has had so much to try her, that she is really not able at this moment of taking matters into her own hands. I think it is so natural that she should be doubtful and nervous," said Caroline; "but one thing is sure, that the longer she delays, the more difficult it will seem to her to take any definite step. She wants some one else to show her the way. That is your duty."
She looked up at him; and Haverford smiled as he looked down at her.
"Practical little person," he said; "you would have made a splendid man, Caroline."
"I mean to be a working woman," the girl answered, "and that can be just as good as being a man."
Haverford did not answer her. He stood looking into the fire for a long time in silence.
"I wish I could feel that all would work out as you say," he said, rousing himself at last; "but——" Then he said, "I know she is ill; she seems to me to be on the eve of a nervous breakdown, but any remedy I suggest seems to have no healing power for her. You cannot think how I brood over her! She is so dear to me. The first living creature that has belonged to me since I was a boy. Mrs. Brenton gave me very much the same advice as yours," he said next. "The last time I was here, she urged me strongly to take Camilla abroad at once. I have pleaded with her a dozen times to do this: in vain!"
From a long, pregnant silence he roused himself.
"Sometimes I ask myself if she would not be happier without me."
"No!" said Caroline, sharply. "What ... what an absurd idea!" Then she turned on him again. "Oh! I wish I were in your place! I would not talk, or think, or sit down and worry. I would simply say I am going to have such and such a thing done, and I would see that itwasdone!"
She was trembling so much she had to get up and move away from him, and was thankful that the lights had not been lit in the hall, and that it was too dark for him to see her face distinctly.
A moment later she said—
"You would like dinner as soon as we can have it, I suppose?"
This roused him.
"Oh, thank you very much, but I want to get back! I will have some supper in town. I have a morning full of engagements to-morrow." He went to slip on his big motoring coat again. "Don't let Mrs. Brenton imagine all sorts of things because I ran down in this hurried way."
"Of course not," said Caroline.
He held her hand, and pressed it warmly.
"Thank you so much," he said, "you have cheered me up a great deal. A man is always a clumsy creature in these sort of things, and I am quite sure that everything that is happening is my own fault. Good-bye."
"We shall meet soon," said Caroline, as steadily as she could. "I shall telegraph to Mrs. Lancing in the morning, and tell her I find it necessary to take the children to town. I shall invent a great many things for her to do. I dare say she will find me very tiresome; but I must risk that."
He laughed and released her hand, and then he moved back again and looked at her in his characteristically keen way.
"I have not asked you how you are yourself?" he said.
"It is such an unnecessary question," retorted Caroline, "when you see that I am in robust health."
"Are you? I thought you were looking anything but robust as you came downstairs."
"Now please," said Caroline, "don't begin to go through the usual catechism!"
"I won't," he answered, "except I want to know—have you got the maid you were going to have?"
"All the servants in this house wait upon me and the nursery," said Caroline. "I have only to command and I have what I want. Will that satisfy you?" But he still paused.
"If I could only get her abroad," he said, with a thrill of eagerness in his voice, "I should keep her there, and then send for you and the children. A month or two in Switzerland, and then through Italy by easy stages. Doesn't it sound delightful? Well! Good-bye once more, and I think I shall take your advice." He laughed almost cheerily. "If I could only manage to elope with Camilla without her knowledge or consent, how she would enjoy it."
Caroline clapped her hands.
"At last," she said, "you are beginning to see your road."
He would not let her go outside, nor would he let her summon the butler. He passed out and shut the door behind him, and for a moment Caroline leaned against that door, and shut her eyes whilst she fought down the wild tumult of passion and heart suffering that rushed upon her.
There was a humiliation, too, in the suffering, a proud shame that she should confess even to herself, that this man who had just gone from her was so capable of moving her, that the touch of his hand, the sound of his voice, meant joy, in its most exquisite meaning, and that as he passed away from her, taking with him the spell of his presence, the light and the warmth of life itself went with him. And still a very lifetime of self-condemnation would not alter what had come. Love to some natures is borne as lightly, has as little value as a thistledown floating on the wind; it has the sparkle of a new jewel, the passing radiance of a summer day, to fade with the setting sun, and to come again when another day is born. But with other natures love comes but once, and comes to stay; pain, sorrow, age, separation, even death itself, have no power to dispossess such a love of its dwelling-place in natures such as these.
And it was in this fashion that love had come by stealth as it were into the heart of Caroline Graniger.