CHAPTER XXWAITINGAutumn gave place to winter and winter to spring. Another summer came, and people began to resign themselves to the hitherto almost incredible idea of the war lasting over another winter. That winter passed away and the interminable struggle went on.But even after two years the texture of life had not very greatly altered in England. Conscription had not yet come in; there was no food control; motor cars could be used for purposes of pleasure or convenience; the chief opportunities for the work of women in connection with the war were in nursing, and for girls in government clerkships. It was not for another full year that country life in England seemed quite a different thing from what it had been before the war. The change had come by degrees and its last stages were passed through much more quickly than the first. In the summer of 1916 it was still possible to live in a country house without being much affected by the war.Lady Brent lived on at Royd Castle to all outward appearances in much the same way as she had lived there since her widowhood. There came to be fewer servants, and her work in connection with the estate increased, for her bailiff had joined up, and she had not tried to replace him. She did much of his work herself, with the help of the estate staff, and perhaps welcomed the increased responsibility, for her life during those two first years was sad enough, with all that she had lived for taken from her just at the time when the hopes of years were to have been put to the test.Harry had written to his mother within a few days of Wilbraham's return from London, and again from time to time to her and to his grandmother and to Wilbraham; also to the children. But his letters contained very little news about himself. They were posted in London and gave no address to which answers could be sent. After some months there was a long silence, and then he wrote from Egypt, where his regiment had been sent. After that he wrote mostly to his mother. He told her more about his life, but never anything that would identify him.The letters sent from Egypt were subject to censorship, but they arrived at Royd in envelopes bearing a London postmark and with no label or stamp on them. Yet they were addressed in Harry's writing. He must have left a supply of them behind him.The clue to all this was no doubt a strong and considered determination to carry out his plan without risk of interference. The message carried to him by Viola had brought letters from him, but that was as far as he would go; and perhaps he would have written in any case. After the first one had been received Lady Brent wrote to Mr. Gulliver and told him not to pursue his inquiries. Harry must have his own way. As he had written, after it had seemed that he had made up his mind not even to do that, so perhaps he would some day relent and let them write to him. But nearly two years went by and he had not done so.In the long sad conversations they had about him at Royd during the early months, they arrived at some sort of conclusions, helped by an occasional expression in his letters. He had gone out of his own world, and as long as his time of probation lasted he would keep out of it. He was not likely to think himself degraded by serving in the ranks, but they came to understand that he was keeping his actual condition hidden. There was nothing in his letters, which would be read by his superior officers, to indicate it, and before he left England they were more about Royd than about himself. There was never very much about himself. Every time he wrote he said he was well and happy; but it peeped through that the change in his life was not without its effect upon him. How could it be otherwise, brought up as he had been? He was learning in a hard school; but he was learning, and flashes of his old boyish brightness broke through the reticence which he seemed to have imposed upon himself. They came to look upon it as a time of probation for him, and to believe that so he looked upon it himself. Sometimes they thought they saw signs of expectation. He was working for and looking forward to something. Viola, said Wilbraham to himself. His commission to be won in the field, said Lady Brent. He wanted no help towards it, as might have been given by finding him out, which should not have been difficult after he had left England, and pulling strings. When he had gained his commission, by his own unaided effort, and by no reliance upon his place in the world outside the army, then he would come back to them. It was hard on Lady Brent to wait, and to lift no finger, and harder still on his mother. But he must be trusted. They had directed him through his childhood, and youth, and now he would brook no direction. The only consolation they had was that his upbringing had not taken from him a man's initiative and determination. The experiment seemed to have been justified; but with a greater knowledge of the world beforehand he might not have thought it necessary so to cut his life in two. They were paying a heavy price.Wilbraham, who had more of a clue to Harry's actions than the others, was not without irritation against what at times he set down as mere hard undutifulness. He had great sympathy with Lady Brent, who had so wonderfully sunk her own feelings in acquiescing in the boy's unreasonable determination. She could almost certainly have traced him had she wished to do so. And Wilbraham, at least, knew that he must have been told at the very beginning that he would not be interfered with. Why could he not then have softened the hardship to those who loved him? Granted that the new love that had come into his life was so much more to him than the old; but it was not like him to throw over the old altogether, and indeed his letters showed that he had not done so.After a time his irritation died away. It could not be so distressing to Harry to be cut off from Royd as it was to them to be cut off from him, but his letters showed that he felt it, and especially the few letters that he wrote to little Jane, in which he seemed to be reaching out after the untroubled innocent happiness of his youth, and the beauty and freedom that had lain all about it. It was the old Harry that appeared in those letters, and here and there in others; the new Harry became more and more evident otherwise—a man doing a man's hard work in hard and uncongenial surroundings, much older than his years, where in some ways he had been so much younger.He was hard on himself as well as hard upon them. They had given him happiness in his sheltered youth, but the plunge he had taken into a life different from any that could have been anticipated for him can have been none the easier on that account. The ugliness and crudity that other boys might in some measure have been prepared for would bear very hardly upon him, and he would have to fight through it alone. Wilbraham came to see that he might shrink from mixing it up with his home life. Perhaps he was afraid that he might weaken in it if he was subject to any pressure. It would surely have been open to him to have had at least a few days at home before he went abroad; but he had not taken the opportunity.Had he blamed them for bringing him up in that seclusion? There was nothing in his letters to show it. But it must have been very soon revealed to him how exceptional his life had been, and how much he had missed of what other boys had had. He would not always be capable of gauging the value of what he had missed, when face to face with some situation with which his inexperience had unfitted him to cope lightly. It might take him a long time to acknowledge that what he had gained had been more than what he had missed, and partly arose from it. He would know, too, before long that the immovable seclusion in which his grandmother and mother and Wilbraham himself lived was anything but the normal state of affairs that it had been implicitly represented to him. He would ask himself why they had never left Royd from one year's end to another, and why so few people had ever come there; and he would see that it had all been with reference to him. He would hardly be able to understand it. If he acknowledged the freedom he had enjoyed, the limits of it would still strike him, with his new knowledge of the world's ways. If he had not, since his childhood, been dominated by women, he had certainly been managed, without knowing it. Whether, in the strangeness and disagreeableness and difficulty of much of his new life he was inclined to resent this unduly, or whether he saw behind it enough to admit that there had been wisdom as well as apparent eccentricity, and certainly love, in the steps his youth had been made to tread, it would not be surprising if he made up his mind at an early date that the managing should come to an end. It was for him to direct his own life now. He would run no further risk of influence brought to bear upon it, the clue to which was not in his hands.In the first spring Wilbraham left Royd to take up work in a Government office in London, for which Lady Brent had asked for him. A few months later Mrs. Brent broke loose from the now insupportable stagnation of Royd, and went to London with the avowed object of nursing. She had had no training and was quite ignorant of the steps to be taken, but Lady Brent arranged an income for her, and made no attempt to direct her movements in any way. She was left alone in the Castle, and stayed there alone for another year. To all outward appearance she was exactly what she had always been, always occupied, always unemotional, though sometimes more unapproachable than at others. The months dragged on.CHAPTER XXISIDNEYOne morning in May Lady Brent unlocked the letter bag, which she never did without anticipations of some news of Harry. It was at least a month since there had been a letter from him, but there at last it was, searched for among all the rest and making them of no value at all.It was directed to Mrs. Brent, and the envelope bore the stamps and marks of the field from which it had been written. All Harry's previous letters had been redirected from London.She sat looking at it and turning it over. Once or twice she seemed to be on the point of opening it, and she must have been under the strongest temptation to do so. What could it mean but that he had reached his goal, and the long time of half estrangement was over? Perhaps it was to say that he was coming home.She laid it down, and took up her other letters with a sigh, but before she opened any of them, she went to her writing-table and enclosed it in a note to Mrs. Brent. Then she rang the bell and gave orders that some one was to ride over to Burport with it, and arrange for its immediate transmission to London by train. By that means she might get the telegram she had asked for from her daughter-in-law that evening. Then she went calmly about her duties.These included one that was quite unusual at Royd Castle. It was to see that preparations were made for visitors. Her old friend Lady Avalon had written to ask if she might come for a few days. After twelve or thirteen years Poldaven Castle was to be occupied again for the summer. Lady Avalon wanted to see what was necessary to be done there, but it had been empty so long that she didn't want to trust herself in it for a night if Lady Brent could do with her at Royd and let her go over from there..Later on that morning she went again to her writing-table and wrote to Lady Avalon, who was expected in a couple of days' time. Would she care to bring her daughter Sidney with her? It was no doubt very dull at Royd, but there was just a chance of Harry coming home from Egypt. She sat considering for a moment when she had written this, but closed her letter without adding any more. Harry was extremely unlikely to be at Royd in a few days' time, but if Sidney had already been there when he did come home it would be easier to ask her there again.After this she went down to the village, taking Ben, Harry's retriever, with her.She called at the Vicarage. The Grants were to be asked to dine when Lady Avalon came. The maid who opened the door looked at her rather curiously, but she did not notice it. Mrs. Grant was in the drawing-room and sprang up to meet her. "Oh, I'm so glad!" she said, and came forward, her hand held out and her face all alight with pleasure.Lady Brent was taken aback by the warmth of the greeting. She liked Mrs. Grant and supposed that Mrs. Grant liked her, but she was not accustomed to this kind of welcome."Thank you," she said, a shade drily. "I came to ask if you and your husband would dine with me on Thursday. Lady Avalon will be staying with me, and possibly her daughter, Lady Sidney Pawle.""Oh, thank you, yes, we shall be very pleased," said Mrs. Grant. "Will Harry be home by then? He might, mightn't he? Oh, I am so glad he's coming at last."Lady Brent understood now, but it took her a little time to recover herself. "He has written to Jane, I suppose," she said, speaking in as natural a tone as possible. "There was a letter from him this morning, but it was to his mother, and I was not expecting to get the news in it until this evening.""Oh, I'll go and get the letter at once," said Mrs. Grant, and ran out of the room, leaving Lady Brent alone. She sat quite still, and the colour that had left her face returned to it again. When Mrs. Grant came back, accompanied by Jane, with the precious letter in her hand, she had quite recovered herself.Jane was rather a favourite of Lady Brent's. She was not in the least afraid of her, as her elders were apt to be, and talked to her about Harry in a way that nobody else did. She was often invited to the Castle by herself, and was always ready to go, though it might have been thought that her inclinations towards bodily activity would have made it a doubtful pleasure to have to sit and talk to an elderly woman. Probably she was the only person in the world of whom Lady Brent would not feel jealous because she had received this news first."I thought I'd like to bring you the letter myself," said Jane, and stood by her side as she read it.Jane was fourteen now. Probably no two years in her life could bring as great a change as the last two had brought to her. She had grown tall for her age, but was still slim and very upright. There was a good deal of the child in her still, and even a little of the boy, for her figure was not so rounded as with most girls of her age, and her taste for boyish activities was still strong. But there was more of the budding woman. She was gentler in speech and manner than of old, and her face, if not yet her figure, was wholly feminine. Her early promise of beauty was in course of being fulfilled. She was very pretty, with her fair hair and wide grey eyes, and it was no longer an effort to make her tidy in her dress. Her skirts were well below her knees, and in her more active moments she took some pains to keep them there."My dear Jane,"I shall be home almost as soon as you get this. I suppose you know I've been serving as a trooper all this time, but now I've got a commission. I shall be in London for a day or two to get my kit, and then I shall come down to Royd with a month's leave in front of me. Hurrah! You and I and Pobbles will have lots of fun together. I hope you've kept the cabin in good repair."Love from"HARRY."Lady Brent took a long time to read it, while Jane stood and looked at her. When she looked up at last, Jane said: "I wish I'd known that his other letter hadn't been written to you. I would have brought this up at once."Thank you, dear," said Lady Brent. "Of course he doesn't know that his mother is not at Royd. He would have thought that we should all get the news at the same time. Perhaps he will have told her more exact dates, if he knows them. At any rate it cannot be long now before we see him again."She was completely herself now, and no one who had not known her would have guessed that the news she had received meant very much to her. She rose almost immediately and took her leave. She kissed Jane as she said good-bye, which was an unusual attention, and perhaps meant that she bore her no grudge for having received the news first."I think it's rather horrid of Mrs. Brent to be away," said Jane, when she had gone. "Of course he would expect to find her waiting here for him."Mrs. Grant was sometimes puzzled in her dealings with this growing daughter of hers. She was becoming more of a companion to her, and now Pobbles had gone to school could be treated less as a child. But it was not always easy to decide how far she should be let into the confidences of her elders. She seemed to have acquired a prejudice against Mrs. Brent, which had hitherto been treated as something not to be encouraged."It has made it difficult not to be able to tell Harry anything of what has happened here," Mrs. Grant said. "She went away to try to get some nursing, and——""A fat lot of nursing she's done!" interrupted Jane. "I don't believe she's tried at all. She's just enjoying herself in London. I don't suppose Lady Brent cares for her much, but it's rather hard lines to leave her all by herself."Mrs. Grant was much of the same opinion, since Mrs. Brent had taken no steps, as far as was known, to embark upon the nursing career which she had announced as her intention; but she was not quite ready to agree with Jane's criticism of her. "It isn't only she that has left Lady Brent," she said."Mr. Wilbraham is doing some work," said Jane, "and Harry had to go. If he hadn't gone when he did, he would have gone by this time.""I don't want to criticize him," said her mother. "It will be all over now, but I think it has been hard lines, as you say, on Lady Brent that she hasn't been able to write to him.""She understands that," said Jane. "We've talked about it."Mrs. Grant knew that Lady Brent had, surprisingly, made something of a confidante of Jane. She was pleased that it was so, but did not like to ask questions about her confidences.Jane, however, seemed ready to give them. "We think," she said, "that until he was made an officer he wouldn't want anybody to know that he was Sir Harry Brent, or different from any other soldier. It would make it difficult if he had letters from home. She's proud of him for it. So am I."Mrs. Grant was touched by the "we." Evidently Jane was of some comfort to the lonely self-contained lady, if they discussed matters in that way. She kissed her. "I expect it's something like that, darling," she said. "Anyhow, it's all over now, and he'll be just like any other young man. You must go back to lessons now.""I don't think he's like other young men," said Jane, as she reluctantly prepared to leave. "I think it's much finer to go through all the hardships. It's like pioneering. I expect what we used to talk about in the log cabin had something to do with it.""Did you tell Lady Brent about that, darling?""Oh, yes. And she quite agreed with me. Lady Brent understands things. I think Mrs. Brent is a rotter. Good-bye, mother dear."Mrs. Brent's telegram came that evening, and she herself the next day. According to his letter, Harry might be in England almost as soon as it reached her. He would come down to Royd as soon as possible, but he must be in London for a few days to get his kit. He would wire from there. But he did not tell her where she could communicate with him.She was all on edge, and Lady Brent must have exercised the strongest control over herself to act with her accustomed calmness and suavity. Suavity had not always been the note of her intercourse with her daughter-in-law, but it was clear that this was not the time when friction between them could be allowed to appear. If she did not exercise restraint it was quite certain that Mrs. Brent wouldn't. She seemed to be anxious to show that she had thrown off anything like submission. She was noticeably less well-mannered than she had been, though she bore herself as if she had acquired more importance. She brought with her a great many expensive clothes, and talked about them a good deal. She dressed elaborately, and in a style to which no objection could be made if elaborate clothes were accepted as suitable for wear in the country and at this time; but they did not improve her. Lady Brent ventured upon a hint that Harry might like better to see her as she had been before, but she flared up in offence, and let it be known that she had learnt a lot since she had been in London. Harry also would have learnt something; the old days at Royd were over.Underneath all her new independence, and almost aggressive spirit, her longing for Harry was plain. She seemed to have resigned herself to his absence, and to have gained some satisfaction out of her life in London, of which she had remarkably little to tell. But now that he was coming home again her maternal instinct arose to swamp everything else. At the end of the twenty-four hours Lady Brent spent alone with her she was far nearer to being what she had been before she had left Royd. She had to have some sympathetic ear into which to pour her doubts and complaints and disappointments. If only Harry had told her where he was to be in London, she could have met him there. Oh, it was hard to think that he might be there now and she could not go to him. When did Lady Brent think they might expect him? She asked her this again and again, and made innumerable confused calculations, based upon this or that idea that came into her head. She was very trying, but she had to be put up with. She was Harry's mother, whatever she might have made of herself.On the day after her arrival Lady Avalon came, with her daughter, but still there was no word from Harry.They came in time for tea, and the two older ladies retired to talk together afterwards. Mrs. Brent was left to entertain the girl. In the few minutes' conversation Sidney had with her mother before dinner she told her that unless she gained some relief from that companionship she really couldn't stay at Royd. "She's a perfectly appalling woman, mother," she said. "How on earth she can have had a son like Harry, if he's anything like he used to be as a child, I can't understand.""I don't think she's so bad as all that, dear," said Lady Avalon. "From what Lady Brent tells me, she's been running with the people she comes from, and of course they can't be much. That's admitted, though I don't know anything about them. She seemed a quiet enough little thing when I was here last. She'll settle down again.""I hope she will. But it's a poor lookout for me if I've got to make a bosom friend of her, while you and Lady Brent are putting your heads together. Really, darling, I don't think I can stand it.""Harry may be home any day, and until he does come we can spend most of our time at Poldaven, though of course we mustn't just make a convenience of being here. The Vicarage people are dining to-night, so you won't have her on your hands entirely. The Vicar is David Grant, the novelist. I haven't read any of his novels, but I believe a lot of people do. I expect he's a clever man, and will cheer us up a bit.""I should think we shall have quite an hilarious evening—you and Lady Brent talking together, and me and Mrs. Brent and the Vicarage people.""I thought you rather liked Vicarage people. Don't make yourself superior to your company, there's a good girl. It's the worst sort of form—especially in the country."Whatever the allusion to Vicarage people may have meant, it sent Sidney out of the room with a blush on her cheeks, and Lady Avalon rang for her maid with a look on her face as of one who had been rather clever.Sidney had grown into a pretty girl, though she was considered the ugly duckling of the handsome family to which she belonged. She was tall, and had not yet quite grown out of the youthful awkwardness of her stature. But there was more character in her well-shaped features than her sisters could boast of, though their widely known beauty had descended upon them in early childhood and suffered no relapse through the years of their growth. They inherited their good looks from both sides of the family, but Sidney was the only one of the girls who derived more from her father. Perhaps on that account she was his favourite, and he was accustomed to prophesy that she would beat them all in looks when she really grew up. She had kind eyes and a smiling mouth, to which her decisively jutting chin gave character. Her skin was very fair and clear, and her abundant brown hair had just a touch of auburn in it. There were some to whom the hint of gaucherie in her carriage gave her an added charm. It spoke of health and youth and vigour, and went well with her free unafraid speech and her frequent smile.Grant, always on the lookout for new types of female beauty, but a little inclined to make all his heroines alike, studied her closely that evening at dinner and was enchanted with her. If he had known that she had been looked upon as an ugly duckling in her family it would almost have given him a novel ready made. Mrs. Grant liked her too, and as they walked home across the park, cheered by the unaccustomed pleasures of society, they made a match between her and Harry there and then, as the Pawle and Brent nurses had done in their early childhood."I shouldn't be surprised," said Grant, "if Lady Brent had asked her here with that idea in her mind. It's the first time in the three years we've been here that any young person has stayed at the Castle. I dare say Lady Avalon is in it too. They're old friends, and they seem to have their heads together a good deal.""Lady Brent didn't know Harry was coming home when she told us they were coming," said Mrs. Grant. "It's a coincidence, but perhaps a fortunate one. They played together as children—Harry and Lady Sidney. It would be rather a pretty match—except that Harry is so young—not twenty yet.""You think he ought to wait a few years and marry somebody much younger, eh? Somebody about the age of Jane."Mrs. Grant sighed. "I shouldn't be a mother if I hadn't thought of that," she said. "And Jane will be quite as pretty as Lady Sidney when she grows up. But Harry is so sweet and natural with the children that it would be a pity to spoil it by thinking of something that would make it all quite different. He wouldn't be what he is if he were to think of Jane as anything but a child, for some years yet.""I think you're right," said her husband. "Of course I've built a few castles in the air. I shouldn't be a father if I hadn't. But I expect he'll marry young; he seems to me that sort of boy, somehow. I don't think he could do better than marry Lady Sidney. She's very interested in the idea of him. She talked to me a lot about the time they used to play together as children.""She said she'd come down to-morrow morning. I think she wants to get away from Mrs. Brent, though I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Brent came with her. I think she wants to show me as many of her new clothes as possible. She hasn't improved up in London. I don't like her nearly as much as I did.""I never cared for her much," said Grant. "She's a common little thing, however she may dress herself up to disguise it. I've sometimes wondered what Harry will think about her when he does come home."Lady Sidney came down to the Vicarage the next morning, and Mrs. Brent came with her, as Mrs. Grant had anticipated. But apparently they each wanted to get rid of the other, for directly Mrs. Brent had greeted Mrs. Grant she said: "I want to have a long talk alone with you. I wonder if you'd spare Jane from her lessons to show Lady Sidney the log cabin that Harry built with the children. I've been telling her about it and she said she'd like to see it."Sidney laughed. "I don't want to be in the way," she said, "and I'd like to have a walk with Jane, if she can be spared."Jane was fetched. She received Mrs. Brent's effusive greeting with unsmiling coolness and looked Sidney over very critically when she was introduced to her. The inspection was apparently satisfactory, for she went off with some alacrity to change her shoes; but that may have been because she was relieved at getting off the rest of the morning's lessons.The two girls set out across the garden, where the Vicarage baby, now getting on for three, was asleep under a tree, as before. They stopped to look at it, and Sidney behaved in such a way as to give Jane a good opinion of her. "She's a darling," she said, as they went on. "I do hope she'll be awake when we come back. I love to hear them talk at that age, don't you?"Jane said she did, and recounted specimens of the Vicarage baby's wit, over which they both laughed freely. They were good friends by the time they reached the log cabin.Jane unlocked the door and waited for admiration, which was given. "I've kept it very tidy and clean ever since Harry went away," she said, looking solemnly at Sidney. "I hope he won't have got too old to like it. He wrote to me, you know, to say he was coming back, and he mentioned the log cabin. I expect he'll be pleased to see it again."There was half an appeal in her voice. Sidney looked at her quickly. "I'm quite sure he will," she said. "He's not so very old, after all—just as old as I am, in fact, and I'm not a bit too old to appreciate it.""Ah, but the war may have made a great difference in him.""It doesn't make as much as you'd think." She hesitated for a moment, and said: "I know a man who has been through it all from the beginning. He enlisted as Harry did, and had a rough time of it at first. He's been wounded too—rather badly. But he's much the same as he was before."Jane looked at her. "You knew Harry when he was little, didn't you?" she asked. "We only knew him first three years ago. He seemed old then to me and my brother, but he was only sixteen.""Let's sit down somewhere and I'll tell you all about it," said Sidney. "I don't think I want to walk any more, unless you do."They sat down on the bench under the eaves, and Sidney told her about that summer when she and Harry had played together as children. Jane kept her large eyes fixed upon her all the time, and they seemed to be searching her and adding her up. By and by her solemnity relaxed and she smiled when Sidney did, and asked her questions here and there. When the story came to an end it was plain that she had made up her mind about her, and that her opinion was favourable.This was made more evident still when she said calmly: "I expect Harry will fall in love with you, if you're here when he comes home."Sidney looked at her in surprise, and then laughed. "What an extraordinary girl you are!" she said. "You think of everything."Jane laughed too. She was feeling more and more at home with Sidney, who did not treat her as a child. "Would you like him to?" she asked.Sidney was unexpectedly silent and serious, and when she did speak, she did not answer Jane's question. "Would you like to be friends?" she asked. "Real friends, I mean, so that we could tell each other things.""Of course I should," said Jane. "But I expect you've got lots of friends older than me, that you know much better. I've got hardly anybody, because there aren't many people about here, and we don't go away very often.""I always know at once if I'm going to like a person," said Sidney, "and I knew I should like you when I first saw you. We might see a good deal of one another when we come down to Poldaven; and I shall want a friend. I think it's going to be rather difficult."Jane was enchanted at the offer of friendship. She admired Sidney tremendously, and to be on equal terms with her gave her a most gratifying sense of having left her childhood behind her. "Why do you think it is going to be difficult?" she asked, concealing her gratification."Oh, because, because! Well, because of what you said just now. If you haven't seen it already you will very soon. It's what I've been brought down here for. They don't say so, of course, but it's plain enough to see. Of course I shall like Harry awfully, if he's anything like he used to be. But you see I'm in love with somebody else. That's the trouble."This was a confession worth having as an introduction to the proffered friendship. Jane didn't know whether to be glad or sorry to hear it. She had accepted Sidney as a suitable person for Harry to fall in love with, but perhaps it would be of some advantage if she didn't fall in love with him. There remained, however, the question of his falling in love with her."Perhaps Harry ought to know that," she said after a pause.Sidney looked at her and laughed again. "You know Harry better than I do now," she said. "Do you think he's likely to fall in love with me?"Jane considered this carefully. "I don't know; I think I should if I was him," she said."It's very sweet of you to say that," said Sidney, becoming serious again. "Perhaps I will tell him; or perhaps you shall. Then we shall all be happy and comfortable together. I should like to have Harry as a friend, and I don't in the least see why one shouldn't have a man as a friend when you're in love with another man. Do you?"Jane had not considered the subject, but was pleased to have her opinion asked. It drew her to Sidney more than anything—this treatment of her as if her opinion on a grown-up subject was worth having. "Not if it's quite understood," she said, decisively. "I'm really rather glad that you are in love with somebody else, because Harry is already my friend, and if you are going to be, then I shall be very well off—much better than I should be if you and Harry wanted to be together and to leave me out of it. I don't mind telling Harry, if you like. It might be rather awkward for you to do it, as it would look as if you were giving him a warning. Who shall I say you're in love with?"Sidney laughed merrily and gave her a sudden embrace. "I can't help it," she said, "you're such a darling. Well, he's a Captain in the Grenadier Guards, and his name is Noel Chancellor.""That's the regiment that Harry was to have gone into," said Jane. "His father and grandfather belonged to it.""Did they?" said Sidney. "Some of Noel's people were in it too. It sounds all right, but as a matter of fact Noel was a schoolmaster when the war broke out. He's the son of our vicar at home. When the war is over he is going to be a schoolmaster again. So you see how it is."In her general ignorance of the world outside the immediate parish of Royd, Jane didn't quite see how it was. She asked kindly after Noel Chancellor and was given a pleasing impression of a handsome athletic young man, who had played cricket for Marlborough and Oxford and Notts, and had been happily engaged at a health resort on the East Coast of Kent, when the war broke out, in teaching thirty or so delightful boys under the age of fourteen to play cricket as it ought to be played, and to wrestle with the elements of Greek and Latin in their spare time."Considering that all the people who think themselves somebody send their children to be educated in schools like Noel was in," said Sidney. "I should have thought a person like me would have been just the touch that was wanted to make it still more of a success. But of course mother doesn't see it in that light. It's all very trying."Jane's affectionate heart went out to this tale of crossed love, the first that had ever come within her ken outside the pages of her father's novels, which she read dutifully but without much interest. She thought it quite natural that Lady Avalon should want Sidney to marry Harry, as both of them had titles, but did not say this for fear of being laughed at. She wanted to be a real help and comfort to her new friend."I am sure it will come all right in the end," she said. "Perhaps when we tell Harry he will be able to do something."CHAPTER XXIITHE RETURNHarry came home a few days after Lady Avalon and Sidney had come to Royd, and two days before they had been going away. But they were persuaded, without much difficulty, to stay a little longer. At least, Lady Avalon accepted Lady Brent's invitation to prolong their visit, and informed Sidney that she had done so. "You see how it is," said Sidney to Jane, with whom she was now fast friends, much to the maturing of Jane's behaviour, but not to the spoiling of her, as her parents gratefully remarked."She's a thoroughly nice unaffected girl," said Grant, "and she'll be a nice friend for Jane, especially if what we think is going to happen does happen.""I'm not sure she's not putting ideas into Jane's head," said Miss Minster. "I know they have secrets together, and I've a sort of notion that they're on the eternal subject of love.""Well," said Grant, "girls will talk about love, I suppose, and if they talk nicely I don't know that there's much harm done.""Jane ought to have learnt how to talk nicely about love by this time," said Miss Minster, with obvious reference. "I think Lady Sidney is all right really, or I should perhaps advise you both differently. Whether she's going to set her cap at Harry or not I don't know, and I don't suppose Jane would tell me if I asked her. But I'm pretty sure that they have discussed it."Mrs. Grant listened to this without remark, but was a little disturbed at the idea of Jane having secrets which she would not impart to Miss Minster. Would she impart them to her? It would mark a stage if Jane were not ready to tell her everything.She was considering the advisability of approaching Jane on the matter when Jane approached her. "I've got a secret with Sidney, mother," she said, in her abrupt but open way. "It's something she's told me about herself. She says she'd rather I didn't tell you just yet, if you don't mind, but she doesn't mind my telling you that there is a secret. You don't mind, do you?""What a lot of 'minds'!" said Mrs. Grant. "No, darling, I don't mind at all, unless it's something that you think you ought to tell me.""Oh, no, it's nothing of that sort," said Jane. "It's something about herself which she doesn't want people to know yet. I'm going to tell it to Harry when he comes home, so that we can all three enjoy ourselves together."Mrs. Grant, with the idea in her head that Sidney had confided to Jane that she retained a tender memory of Harry which might become more tender still, was a little surprised at this way of putting it; but it did not take her long to understand the truth when Jane had left her. She smiled and kept her own counsel, and liked Sidney all the better; for she must have known that if Jane told her that there was a secret she would guess what the secret was, little as Jane might suspect it.Harry sent a wire in the morning to say that he was coming by a train that would arrive in the late afternoon. Only Mrs. Brent drove to the station to meet him, but they were all waiting for him in front of the Castle, the Grants inclusive, and there was scarcely a villager who was not somewhere on the road, or in the more public parts of the park to see him drive by.His smiling excitement at this greeting from old friends—the only friends he had had up till two years before—made him seem at first exactly what he had been. But there was none of the little group at the Castle, except Lady Avalon and Sidney, who had not the impression, after the first greeting, of his having become much older. His fair boy's beauty had developed into the sunburnt hardness of a man. He was extraordinarily handsome in his smart khaki kit, but he looked years older than his age, which was not much over nineteen; and his speech and manner had altered. It would be another eighteen months before he would be legally his own master and the master of his ancient Castle, and all that went with it; but he seemed to have come into the house as its master, and to give it a meaning that it had never had while it had been ruled by a woman.It was not too late for tea, which provided an opportunity for everybody of getting used to the new Harry, as they sat on the terrace and made play with their cups and conversation. There were adjustments to be made, and the necessity for them to be covered up. Harry talked freely to everybody. His manner was perfect with his grandmother, to whom he showed deference, while she, of course, behaved with her usual calm and let nothing appear of all that she was thinking. Mrs. Brent kept her eyes on him all the time, and had an air almost of bewilderment. She did not try to assert herself, but accepted gratefully the notice he gave her from time to time. Lady Avalon was the only person present who asked him questions about his experiences, but it soon became evident that he had nothing to tell that was personal to himself. He answered the questions, but with a slight change in the frank manner of his speech when they touched upon his own experiences apart from the operations in which he had taken part. His mother told Mrs. Grant afterwards that he had said to her during the drive that he wanted to forget everything that had happened since he had left home—at least he didn't want to talk about it. They had yet to learn how far his experiences had changed him, and to gather whether or no they were such as to have left a painful mark upon his life; but he would give them no help in coming to their conclusions. His life in the ranks was to remain as it had been, a sealed book to them.With Sidney Harry was friendly, but no more. They talked a little of their childhood, and laughed over some of their memories, but it was not, apparently, to be the basis of any special degree of intimacy between them. Sidney retired a little into her shell after a time, and watched.Harry was more like his old self with Jane than with anybody. Beyond a single remark about her growth he had not shown himself aware of any change in her. He seemed to want to take up their friendship at exactly the place where it had stopped. He asked her many questions about Pobbles, and said he would write to him. His manner towards her was that of a grown man to a child whom he loves. Even Lady Avalon did not mistake it for anything else, for she told Lady Brent afterwards that it was rather extraordinary that he should not see that Jane was already growing into a very pretty girl, with the implication that the fact might dawn upon him as time went on.Jane herself showed a high but modest pride in the value he put upon her. "Now you see what he's like," she told Sidney. "When we three can be together and enjoy ourselves—well, we shall enjoy ourselves. I consider that Harry is about the nicest friend that anybody can have. He doesn't forget you when he's away.""He hasn't forgottenyou," said Sidney. "I'm beginning to wonder whether I shan't be a little in the way."Jane showed surprise at this, and Sidney laughed and said: "Darling old thing you are! You don't know what you're worth; but you will in a year or two. Anyhow, I'm not jealous of you, and I like Harry for remembering his old friends and not wanting to drop them for new ones. Of course I knew him before you did, but not as he is now. He's older than I should have thought, and I think he looks rather sad. You've got to cheer him up, and if I'm wanted to help I shall be quite ready.""Of course you'll be wanted to help," said Jane. "You'll be seeing more of him, for one thing, as you will be staying in the house. I suppose you won't mind my being hischieffriend though, if you like somebody else better.""I should be a horrid sort of creature if I did," said Sidney. "You won't suffer from me when you're not here."Harry and Sidney strolled together in the garden after dinner, with the full concurrence of their elders, except possibly of Mrs. Brent, who had not yet recovered from her air of slight bewilderment, and was quieter than she had been for the last few days.They talked about Jane, and for the first time Harry seemed to regard Sidney with interest. Hitherto he had been merely friendly with her on the surface, as with one who was there but didn't matter much. "Oh, yes, we're real friends," she said, with her free and pleasant smile. "I suppose you can only see that she's a child, but I've never treated her like one. I began like that because girls of that age love being talked to as if they were grown up, but I very soon found out what a lot there was in her. If she's a child in some ways still, as of course she is, it makes her all the more fascinating. She's one in a thousand. She'll make all the difference to me down here, if I can get hold of her sometimes.""She's a real person," Harry said. "If you and she have made friends it will be jolly for all three of us. We can all be friends together.""That's what Jane wants," said Sidney. "She's devoted to you, and I believe she's also devoted to me, though not so much so. We can go and get hold of her to-morrow morning, can't we? She has a holiday on Saturday.""Oh yes. I'm very glad you want to. I was half afraid you might think she was too young for you.""I suppose you mean that you were half afraid you'd have to dance attendance on me, when you'd rather have been with Jane; but you see you need fear nothing of that sort."They looked at one another. There was just light enough to catch an expression of face. Then they both laughed, and became friends from that moment."We'd settled that Jane was to tell you," said Sidney, "but I think I might as well do it myself. I'm engaged to somebody, but the engagement is not smiled upon. In fact it isn't recognized at all, and can't be spoken of. But Jane and I thought that if you knew of it it would make things more comfortable all round for us three."Harry asked her questions and showed a friendly sympathy towards her love affair. But the idea of it seemed to make him rather sad too, and Sidney did not make the mistake of thinking that his sadness was due to any disappointment created by what she had told him. Indeed her information had cleared the air, which held more of friendliness and companionship in it than before, as if he were relieved at having it quite understood that he would not be expected to make love to her, but short of that would give her all the friendship that she wanted, and be glad to take in return all that she had to give to him.She had a good deal to give him. That baby's friendship which seemed to have meant nothing to him had kept him alive in her heart. He was not quite like other men to her. Something of his childhood lingered about him, though he had advanced so far on the hard road of manhood, and but for her memories of him would have seemed to her much older than his years. She felt the desire to encourage in him those gleams of boyish laughter and irresponsibility which had once or twice shone out through the half-weary indifference of his attitude. She thought that he must have been through a harsh disillusioning experience, and was too tired in spirit to accept all at once the freedom of his release. Her own lover, who was some years older than Harry, had told her that it needed a good deal of resolution and self-hardening to go through the ranks, and that sometimes only the remembrance of her had kept him up to it. She thought she knew more than other girls were likely to know what it must have meant to Harry, who did not seem even to want to speak of it. The maternal instinct which is in all women drew her to sympathy with him. She and Jane between them would get rid of that sadness and tiredness that lay over him. If Jane was too young, and she too occupied with somebody else to give him the consolation that would quickly heal such wounds as he was suffering from, he would still, surely, respond to their affection, and forget his troubles. She must not talk too much about her own happiness. That seemed to depress him, kind as he was about it. Of course it was love he wanted, though he might not know it. It was a pity that Jane was not a few years older, or that she herself was the only unmarried one of all her sisters. She did not suppose that there was anybody else in these parts, from what she remembered of them, who would be good enough for Harry. But perhaps it was just as well. She and he and Jane would enjoy themselves together, and show the world, if the world happened to take notice and be interested, that a man and two girls could be the best of friends with no question of love affecting their intercourse.Perhaps that evening they might have got further into intimacy, but Harry had still something to do before he could feel himself free to take his enjoyment in the youthful companionship that had been so fortunately provided for him."I'm very glad you're to be here for a bit," he said. "There aren't many young people about and it would have been a bit dull for me, though I should have tried my best to keep it from my mother and grandmother. I think I must go in and have a talk with Granny now, if you don't mind. I haven't seen her alone since I came back."But apparently Mrs. Brent had decided that there was to be no talk between those two alone, as long as she could prevent it. Lady Avalon and Sidney said good night soon after ten o'clock, and when they had gone Mrs. Brent said: "Come out for a little with me, Harry dear. It's quite warm, and I don't even want a wrap. If you're tired, as I expect you are, you can go straight to bed when we've just had a little stroll."Lady Brent sat like a sphinx. Harry said: "All right, mother. But I'm not tired. We'll go out for ten minutes and then I'll have a little talk with Granny."Directly they were in the garden, Mrs. Brent said in a querulous tone: "Why should you want to have a talk with her? She took you away from me a lot when you were a child, but now it's different. She ought not to have any more authority over you than I have."Harry laughed at her. "Authority!" he echoed. "I don't feel like anybody having much authority over me now, little mother." He spoke tenderly, but there was a hint of impatience in his tone, which she detected."I'm sure I don't want to direct you in any way," she said. "I only want to feel that you're mine now that you've grown up, and not hers. Nobody in the world loves you as much as I do. I suppose you'll marry some day, and I shan't grumble at that when the time comes. But until then I want to feel that you and I are all in all to one another."He answered only her reference to his grandmother. "You're my mother," he said. "In one way you've always been more to me than Granny. But I owe her a good deal, and I mustn't forget it. I haven't done much for her since I went away. Now that I've got what I wanted, and have come back again, I want to make up for that—to both of you.""It was very cruel of you to cut yourself off from us as you did, Harry," she said. "You needn't have done it. Even she wouldn't have prevented you doing what you wanted to do, when once you'd done it.""We needn't talk about that," he said, decisively. "It's all over now. It's what I want to tell her. You must let me have a little talk with her when we go in, please, mother.""You mean you want me to go to bed while you sit and talk to her alone. Why should you want that? Why shouldn't I be there too?""Well, because you're not friendly to her, and I want to be—poor old Granny! I suppose you've never got on well together. I used to feel it, though I didn't think about it much. I think you both tried to keep it from me. I'd much rather you tried to get rid of that feeling, mother dear. It makes me unhappy, and you can't hide it from me any longer. After all, Royd is her home. I'm rather sorry you left it. I liked to think of it with you and her here, just as it used to be.""Oh, I couldn't stay here when you had gone. It was too much to ask of anybody. I suppose she'll always be here—at least till you come of age and are master instead of her. Couldn't we go away together—I don't mean now, but after you've been here a little, to London or somewhere—just you and I together? I've had so little of you, Harry, all to myself. All the dull years here, while she has been everything and I have been nothing, I've looked forward to it—to having you to myself for a little, when you were grown up."She peered into his face, and saw a frown on it; but when he spoke it had cleared, and he spoke very kindly. "I may have to go to London before my leave is up," he said. "But I should want to go alone. And I don't want to be away from Royd more than I can help. You've always belonged to Royd, mother, ever since I can remember. When I'm with you I'd rather be here than anywhere. Please don't spoil it for me by making things difficult with Granny. I think I'll go in to her now. I mustn't keep her up late."She expostulated, plaintively, as they went towards the house together. She felt that he was slipping from her, and that nothing would be as she had pictured it, but she had not the self-control to spare him her complaints and appeals. He was always kind, but he was firm too, with a man's firmness towards a weak and foolish woman. He had grown immeasurably in mental stature, and his determination impressed itself upon her increasingly. That mention of authority over him with which she had begun now seemed foolish even to her. As they went into the house she said: "Of course I don't want to treat you like a boy any more. I only want to be sure that you don't love anybody better than me. You do love me best, don't you, Harry?"He bent down and kissed her. "You know I love you, mother," he said. "Now I'll go and talk to Granny. Come and see me when I go to bed—say in half an hour—as you used to."That comforted her a little, and she went upstairs, while he went into the drawing-room where Lady Brent was still sitting where they had left her."Well, Granny dear," he said. "I thought we'd have a little talk. I've got things to tell you."She laid down her work, and looked at him fondly, sitting in a low chair opposite to her, so young in appearance, as he sat there with his long legs stretched out, but, as she felt, so old in experience, and so different from the boy he had been."Please don't think, dear Harry," she said, "that you owe me any explanation of anything. I've had a long time to think it all out, you know. I think I understand most things. Don't you want it treated as if it was all over now, and begin again, much as it was before? If so, I want that too. We've got you at home now, and we want to be all happy together."His face cleared as he spoke. "It's very good of you to put it like that," he said. "Yes, of course I want it to be as much as possible what it used to be as long as I can be here with you. There's a good deal I want to forget.""I'm afraid you've been through a very hard time, Harry.""Not harder than others, Granny. It's not a bad thing to learn what you have to learn in a hard school. Perhaps you learn it all the quicker."There was a pause before she said: "It has troubled me a good deal—the thought of your going straight from the life you lived here into the ranks. It wasn't that that we'd tried to prepare you for.""Oh, the ranks!" he said. "You needn't let that worry you, Granny. I'm glad I went into the ranks. I'd rather do it that way than any."She showed some surprise at this. "I've thought it over and over," she said. "But I've never thought of it in that way. It was the roughness and coarseness I hated for you. Isn't that what you want to forget?"He was silent for a time, looking down. Then he burst out: "It's learning what the beastliness of life is that I want to forget. That's what I'd never known. I never minded hard work—doing what others do. And I doubt whether I should have been let down so easily with people like myself—on the outside, I mean. No, I was nearer to the men who had lived simpler lives. I understood them better than I should have done the others. And they were good to me too. I don't think I should have wanted to get a commission if I hadn't felt I ought to. I should have been content to go on till the end of it. But now it's all got to begin again. Oh, don't let's talk of it. I've got a month here, where it's quiet and clean and beautiful. Let's forget what's past and what's coming. I never meant to talk of it. I only wanted to tell you what I was going to do, and to thank you for letting me go my own way."Poor Lady Brent went to bed that night with something new to think about. She could not sleep, and wrote a long letter to Wilbraham in London. "We might have thought of that," she wrote in the course of it. "It wouldn't have been the little hardships that would trouble him. He had prepared himself for all that, with the life out of doors that he had led here. And he would understand the men he was with, because he was friends with everybody about here. I'm sure they must have loved him too, and all the more because he wasn't like them. The others would have expected him to be like them. I am full of trouble about him. It looks to me now as if we had prepared him for nothing, so as to save him pain. Life has come as a shock to him, and he has not got over it yet. But one thing I'm sure of—he must work it out for himself. I shall meddle with him no more. I am not sure that I have not made a great mistake."
CHAPTER XX
WAITING
Autumn gave place to winter and winter to spring. Another summer came, and people began to resign themselves to the hitherto almost incredible idea of the war lasting over another winter. That winter passed away and the interminable struggle went on.
But even after two years the texture of life had not very greatly altered in England. Conscription had not yet come in; there was no food control; motor cars could be used for purposes of pleasure or convenience; the chief opportunities for the work of women in connection with the war were in nursing, and for girls in government clerkships. It was not for another full year that country life in England seemed quite a different thing from what it had been before the war. The change had come by degrees and its last stages were passed through much more quickly than the first. In the summer of 1916 it was still possible to live in a country house without being much affected by the war.
Lady Brent lived on at Royd Castle to all outward appearances in much the same way as she had lived there since her widowhood. There came to be fewer servants, and her work in connection with the estate increased, for her bailiff had joined up, and she had not tried to replace him. She did much of his work herself, with the help of the estate staff, and perhaps welcomed the increased responsibility, for her life during those two first years was sad enough, with all that she had lived for taken from her just at the time when the hopes of years were to have been put to the test.
Harry had written to his mother within a few days of Wilbraham's return from London, and again from time to time to her and to his grandmother and to Wilbraham; also to the children. But his letters contained very little news about himself. They were posted in London and gave no address to which answers could be sent. After some months there was a long silence, and then he wrote from Egypt, where his regiment had been sent. After that he wrote mostly to his mother. He told her more about his life, but never anything that would identify him.
The letters sent from Egypt were subject to censorship, but they arrived at Royd in envelopes bearing a London postmark and with no label or stamp on them. Yet they were addressed in Harry's writing. He must have left a supply of them behind him.
The clue to all this was no doubt a strong and considered determination to carry out his plan without risk of interference. The message carried to him by Viola had brought letters from him, but that was as far as he would go; and perhaps he would have written in any case. After the first one had been received Lady Brent wrote to Mr. Gulliver and told him not to pursue his inquiries. Harry must have his own way. As he had written, after it had seemed that he had made up his mind not even to do that, so perhaps he would some day relent and let them write to him. But nearly two years went by and he had not done so.
In the long sad conversations they had about him at Royd during the early months, they arrived at some sort of conclusions, helped by an occasional expression in his letters. He had gone out of his own world, and as long as his time of probation lasted he would keep out of it. He was not likely to think himself degraded by serving in the ranks, but they came to understand that he was keeping his actual condition hidden. There was nothing in his letters, which would be read by his superior officers, to indicate it, and before he left England they were more about Royd than about himself. There was never very much about himself. Every time he wrote he said he was well and happy; but it peeped through that the change in his life was not without its effect upon him. How could it be otherwise, brought up as he had been? He was learning in a hard school; but he was learning, and flashes of his old boyish brightness broke through the reticence which he seemed to have imposed upon himself. They came to look upon it as a time of probation for him, and to believe that so he looked upon it himself. Sometimes they thought they saw signs of expectation. He was working for and looking forward to something. Viola, said Wilbraham to himself. His commission to be won in the field, said Lady Brent. He wanted no help towards it, as might have been given by finding him out, which should not have been difficult after he had left England, and pulling strings. When he had gained his commission, by his own unaided effort, and by no reliance upon his place in the world outside the army, then he would come back to them. It was hard on Lady Brent to wait, and to lift no finger, and harder still on his mother. But he must be trusted. They had directed him through his childhood, and youth, and now he would brook no direction. The only consolation they had was that his upbringing had not taken from him a man's initiative and determination. The experiment seemed to have been justified; but with a greater knowledge of the world beforehand he might not have thought it necessary so to cut his life in two. They were paying a heavy price.
Wilbraham, who had more of a clue to Harry's actions than the others, was not without irritation against what at times he set down as mere hard undutifulness. He had great sympathy with Lady Brent, who had so wonderfully sunk her own feelings in acquiescing in the boy's unreasonable determination. She could almost certainly have traced him had she wished to do so. And Wilbraham, at least, knew that he must have been told at the very beginning that he would not be interfered with. Why could he not then have softened the hardship to those who loved him? Granted that the new love that had come into his life was so much more to him than the old; but it was not like him to throw over the old altogether, and indeed his letters showed that he had not done so.
After a time his irritation died away. It could not be so distressing to Harry to be cut off from Royd as it was to them to be cut off from him, but his letters showed that he felt it, and especially the few letters that he wrote to little Jane, in which he seemed to be reaching out after the untroubled innocent happiness of his youth, and the beauty and freedom that had lain all about it. It was the old Harry that appeared in those letters, and here and there in others; the new Harry became more and more evident otherwise—a man doing a man's hard work in hard and uncongenial surroundings, much older than his years, where in some ways he had been so much younger.
He was hard on himself as well as hard upon them. They had given him happiness in his sheltered youth, but the plunge he had taken into a life different from any that could have been anticipated for him can have been none the easier on that account. The ugliness and crudity that other boys might in some measure have been prepared for would bear very hardly upon him, and he would have to fight through it alone. Wilbraham came to see that he might shrink from mixing it up with his home life. Perhaps he was afraid that he might weaken in it if he was subject to any pressure. It would surely have been open to him to have had at least a few days at home before he went abroad; but he had not taken the opportunity.
Had he blamed them for bringing him up in that seclusion? There was nothing in his letters to show it. But it must have been very soon revealed to him how exceptional his life had been, and how much he had missed of what other boys had had. He would not always be capable of gauging the value of what he had missed, when face to face with some situation with which his inexperience had unfitted him to cope lightly. It might take him a long time to acknowledge that what he had gained had been more than what he had missed, and partly arose from it. He would know, too, before long that the immovable seclusion in which his grandmother and mother and Wilbraham himself lived was anything but the normal state of affairs that it had been implicitly represented to him. He would ask himself why they had never left Royd from one year's end to another, and why so few people had ever come there; and he would see that it had all been with reference to him. He would hardly be able to understand it. If he acknowledged the freedom he had enjoyed, the limits of it would still strike him, with his new knowledge of the world's ways. If he had not, since his childhood, been dominated by women, he had certainly been managed, without knowing it. Whether, in the strangeness and disagreeableness and difficulty of much of his new life he was inclined to resent this unduly, or whether he saw behind it enough to admit that there had been wisdom as well as apparent eccentricity, and certainly love, in the steps his youth had been made to tread, it would not be surprising if he made up his mind at an early date that the managing should come to an end. It was for him to direct his own life now. He would run no further risk of influence brought to bear upon it, the clue to which was not in his hands.
In the first spring Wilbraham left Royd to take up work in a Government office in London, for which Lady Brent had asked for him. A few months later Mrs. Brent broke loose from the now insupportable stagnation of Royd, and went to London with the avowed object of nursing. She had had no training and was quite ignorant of the steps to be taken, but Lady Brent arranged an income for her, and made no attempt to direct her movements in any way. She was left alone in the Castle, and stayed there alone for another year. To all outward appearance she was exactly what she had always been, always occupied, always unemotional, though sometimes more unapproachable than at others. The months dragged on.
CHAPTER XXI
SIDNEY
One morning in May Lady Brent unlocked the letter bag, which she never did without anticipations of some news of Harry. It was at least a month since there had been a letter from him, but there at last it was, searched for among all the rest and making them of no value at all.
It was directed to Mrs. Brent, and the envelope bore the stamps and marks of the field from which it had been written. All Harry's previous letters had been redirected from London.
She sat looking at it and turning it over. Once or twice she seemed to be on the point of opening it, and she must have been under the strongest temptation to do so. What could it mean but that he had reached his goal, and the long time of half estrangement was over? Perhaps it was to say that he was coming home.
She laid it down, and took up her other letters with a sigh, but before she opened any of them, she went to her writing-table and enclosed it in a note to Mrs. Brent. Then she rang the bell and gave orders that some one was to ride over to Burport with it, and arrange for its immediate transmission to London by train. By that means she might get the telegram she had asked for from her daughter-in-law that evening. Then she went calmly about her duties.
These included one that was quite unusual at Royd Castle. It was to see that preparations were made for visitors. Her old friend Lady Avalon had written to ask if she might come for a few days. After twelve or thirteen years Poldaven Castle was to be occupied again for the summer. Lady Avalon wanted to see what was necessary to be done there, but it had been empty so long that she didn't want to trust herself in it for a night if Lady Brent could do with her at Royd and let her go over from there..
Later on that morning she went again to her writing-table and wrote to Lady Avalon, who was expected in a couple of days' time. Would she care to bring her daughter Sidney with her? It was no doubt very dull at Royd, but there was just a chance of Harry coming home from Egypt. She sat considering for a moment when she had written this, but closed her letter without adding any more. Harry was extremely unlikely to be at Royd in a few days' time, but if Sidney had already been there when he did come home it would be easier to ask her there again.
After this she went down to the village, taking Ben, Harry's retriever, with her.
She called at the Vicarage. The Grants were to be asked to dine when Lady Avalon came. The maid who opened the door looked at her rather curiously, but she did not notice it. Mrs. Grant was in the drawing-room and sprang up to meet her. "Oh, I'm so glad!" she said, and came forward, her hand held out and her face all alight with pleasure.
Lady Brent was taken aback by the warmth of the greeting. She liked Mrs. Grant and supposed that Mrs. Grant liked her, but she was not accustomed to this kind of welcome.
"Thank you," she said, a shade drily. "I came to ask if you and your husband would dine with me on Thursday. Lady Avalon will be staying with me, and possibly her daughter, Lady Sidney Pawle."
"Oh, thank you, yes, we shall be very pleased," said Mrs. Grant. "Will Harry be home by then? He might, mightn't he? Oh, I am so glad he's coming at last."
Lady Brent understood now, but it took her a little time to recover herself. "He has written to Jane, I suppose," she said, speaking in as natural a tone as possible. "There was a letter from him this morning, but it was to his mother, and I was not expecting to get the news in it until this evening."
"Oh, I'll go and get the letter at once," said Mrs. Grant, and ran out of the room, leaving Lady Brent alone. She sat quite still, and the colour that had left her face returned to it again. When Mrs. Grant came back, accompanied by Jane, with the precious letter in her hand, she had quite recovered herself.
Jane was rather a favourite of Lady Brent's. She was not in the least afraid of her, as her elders were apt to be, and talked to her about Harry in a way that nobody else did. She was often invited to the Castle by herself, and was always ready to go, though it might have been thought that her inclinations towards bodily activity would have made it a doubtful pleasure to have to sit and talk to an elderly woman. Probably she was the only person in the world of whom Lady Brent would not feel jealous because she had received this news first.
"I thought I'd like to bring you the letter myself," said Jane, and stood by her side as she read it.
Jane was fourteen now. Probably no two years in her life could bring as great a change as the last two had brought to her. She had grown tall for her age, but was still slim and very upright. There was a good deal of the child in her still, and even a little of the boy, for her figure was not so rounded as with most girls of her age, and her taste for boyish activities was still strong. But there was more of the budding woman. She was gentler in speech and manner than of old, and her face, if not yet her figure, was wholly feminine. Her early promise of beauty was in course of being fulfilled. She was very pretty, with her fair hair and wide grey eyes, and it was no longer an effort to make her tidy in her dress. Her skirts were well below her knees, and in her more active moments she took some pains to keep them there.
"My dear Jane,
"I shall be home almost as soon as you get this. I suppose you know I've been serving as a trooper all this time, but now I've got a commission. I shall be in London for a day or two to get my kit, and then I shall come down to Royd with a month's leave in front of me. Hurrah! You and I and Pobbles will have lots of fun together. I hope you've kept the cabin in good repair.
"HARRY."
Lady Brent took a long time to read it, while Jane stood and looked at her. When she looked up at last, Jane said: "I wish I'd known that his other letter hadn't been written to you. I would have brought this up at once.
"Thank you, dear," said Lady Brent. "Of course he doesn't know that his mother is not at Royd. He would have thought that we should all get the news at the same time. Perhaps he will have told her more exact dates, if he knows them. At any rate it cannot be long now before we see him again."
She was completely herself now, and no one who had not known her would have guessed that the news she had received meant very much to her. She rose almost immediately and took her leave. She kissed Jane as she said good-bye, which was an unusual attention, and perhaps meant that she bore her no grudge for having received the news first.
"I think it's rather horrid of Mrs. Brent to be away," said Jane, when she had gone. "Of course he would expect to find her waiting here for him."
Mrs. Grant was sometimes puzzled in her dealings with this growing daughter of hers. She was becoming more of a companion to her, and now Pobbles had gone to school could be treated less as a child. But it was not always easy to decide how far she should be let into the confidences of her elders. She seemed to have acquired a prejudice against Mrs. Brent, which had hitherto been treated as something not to be encouraged.
"It has made it difficult not to be able to tell Harry anything of what has happened here," Mrs. Grant said. "She went away to try to get some nursing, and——"
"A fat lot of nursing she's done!" interrupted Jane. "I don't believe she's tried at all. She's just enjoying herself in London. I don't suppose Lady Brent cares for her much, but it's rather hard lines to leave her all by herself."
Mrs. Grant was much of the same opinion, since Mrs. Brent had taken no steps, as far as was known, to embark upon the nursing career which she had announced as her intention; but she was not quite ready to agree with Jane's criticism of her. "It isn't only she that has left Lady Brent," she said.
"Mr. Wilbraham is doing some work," said Jane, "and Harry had to go. If he hadn't gone when he did, he would have gone by this time."
"I don't want to criticize him," said her mother. "It will be all over now, but I think it has been hard lines, as you say, on Lady Brent that she hasn't been able to write to him."
"She understands that," said Jane. "We've talked about it."
Mrs. Grant knew that Lady Brent had, surprisingly, made something of a confidante of Jane. She was pleased that it was so, but did not like to ask questions about her confidences.
Jane, however, seemed ready to give them. "We think," she said, "that until he was made an officer he wouldn't want anybody to know that he was Sir Harry Brent, or different from any other soldier. It would make it difficult if he had letters from home. She's proud of him for it. So am I."
Mrs. Grant was touched by the "we." Evidently Jane was of some comfort to the lonely self-contained lady, if they discussed matters in that way. She kissed her. "I expect it's something like that, darling," she said. "Anyhow, it's all over now, and he'll be just like any other young man. You must go back to lessons now."
"I don't think he's like other young men," said Jane, as she reluctantly prepared to leave. "I think it's much finer to go through all the hardships. It's like pioneering. I expect what we used to talk about in the log cabin had something to do with it."
"Did you tell Lady Brent about that, darling?"
"Oh, yes. And she quite agreed with me. Lady Brent understands things. I think Mrs. Brent is a rotter. Good-bye, mother dear."
Mrs. Brent's telegram came that evening, and she herself the next day. According to his letter, Harry might be in England almost as soon as it reached her. He would come down to Royd as soon as possible, but he must be in London for a few days to get his kit. He would wire from there. But he did not tell her where she could communicate with him.
She was all on edge, and Lady Brent must have exercised the strongest control over herself to act with her accustomed calmness and suavity. Suavity had not always been the note of her intercourse with her daughter-in-law, but it was clear that this was not the time when friction between them could be allowed to appear. If she did not exercise restraint it was quite certain that Mrs. Brent wouldn't. She seemed to be anxious to show that she had thrown off anything like submission. She was noticeably less well-mannered than she had been, though she bore herself as if she had acquired more importance. She brought with her a great many expensive clothes, and talked about them a good deal. She dressed elaborately, and in a style to which no objection could be made if elaborate clothes were accepted as suitable for wear in the country and at this time; but they did not improve her. Lady Brent ventured upon a hint that Harry might like better to see her as she had been before, but she flared up in offence, and let it be known that she had learnt a lot since she had been in London. Harry also would have learnt something; the old days at Royd were over.
Underneath all her new independence, and almost aggressive spirit, her longing for Harry was plain. She seemed to have resigned herself to his absence, and to have gained some satisfaction out of her life in London, of which she had remarkably little to tell. But now that he was coming home again her maternal instinct arose to swamp everything else. At the end of the twenty-four hours Lady Brent spent alone with her she was far nearer to being what she had been before she had left Royd. She had to have some sympathetic ear into which to pour her doubts and complaints and disappointments. If only Harry had told her where he was to be in London, she could have met him there. Oh, it was hard to think that he might be there now and she could not go to him. When did Lady Brent think they might expect him? She asked her this again and again, and made innumerable confused calculations, based upon this or that idea that came into her head. She was very trying, but she had to be put up with. She was Harry's mother, whatever she might have made of herself.
On the day after her arrival Lady Avalon came, with her daughter, but still there was no word from Harry.
They came in time for tea, and the two older ladies retired to talk together afterwards. Mrs. Brent was left to entertain the girl. In the few minutes' conversation Sidney had with her mother before dinner she told her that unless she gained some relief from that companionship she really couldn't stay at Royd. "She's a perfectly appalling woman, mother," she said. "How on earth she can have had a son like Harry, if he's anything like he used to be as a child, I can't understand."
"I don't think she's so bad as all that, dear," said Lady Avalon. "From what Lady Brent tells me, she's been running with the people she comes from, and of course they can't be much. That's admitted, though I don't know anything about them. She seemed a quiet enough little thing when I was here last. She'll settle down again."
"I hope she will. But it's a poor lookout for me if I've got to make a bosom friend of her, while you and Lady Brent are putting your heads together. Really, darling, I don't think I can stand it."
"Harry may be home any day, and until he does come we can spend most of our time at Poldaven, though of course we mustn't just make a convenience of being here. The Vicarage people are dining to-night, so you won't have her on your hands entirely. The Vicar is David Grant, the novelist. I haven't read any of his novels, but I believe a lot of people do. I expect he's a clever man, and will cheer us up a bit."
"I should think we shall have quite an hilarious evening—you and Lady Brent talking together, and me and Mrs. Brent and the Vicarage people."
"I thought you rather liked Vicarage people. Don't make yourself superior to your company, there's a good girl. It's the worst sort of form—especially in the country."
Whatever the allusion to Vicarage people may have meant, it sent Sidney out of the room with a blush on her cheeks, and Lady Avalon rang for her maid with a look on her face as of one who had been rather clever.
Sidney had grown into a pretty girl, though she was considered the ugly duckling of the handsome family to which she belonged. She was tall, and had not yet quite grown out of the youthful awkwardness of her stature. But there was more character in her well-shaped features than her sisters could boast of, though their widely known beauty had descended upon them in early childhood and suffered no relapse through the years of their growth. They inherited their good looks from both sides of the family, but Sidney was the only one of the girls who derived more from her father. Perhaps on that account she was his favourite, and he was accustomed to prophesy that she would beat them all in looks when she really grew up. She had kind eyes and a smiling mouth, to which her decisively jutting chin gave character. Her skin was very fair and clear, and her abundant brown hair had just a touch of auburn in it. There were some to whom the hint of gaucherie in her carriage gave her an added charm. It spoke of health and youth and vigour, and went well with her free unafraid speech and her frequent smile.
Grant, always on the lookout for new types of female beauty, but a little inclined to make all his heroines alike, studied her closely that evening at dinner and was enchanted with her. If he had known that she had been looked upon as an ugly duckling in her family it would almost have given him a novel ready made. Mrs. Grant liked her too, and as they walked home across the park, cheered by the unaccustomed pleasures of society, they made a match between her and Harry there and then, as the Pawle and Brent nurses had done in their early childhood.
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Grant, "if Lady Brent had asked her here with that idea in her mind. It's the first time in the three years we've been here that any young person has stayed at the Castle. I dare say Lady Avalon is in it too. They're old friends, and they seem to have their heads together a good deal."
"Lady Brent didn't know Harry was coming home when she told us they were coming," said Mrs. Grant. "It's a coincidence, but perhaps a fortunate one. They played together as children—Harry and Lady Sidney. It would be rather a pretty match—except that Harry is so young—not twenty yet."
"You think he ought to wait a few years and marry somebody much younger, eh? Somebody about the age of Jane."
Mrs. Grant sighed. "I shouldn't be a mother if I hadn't thought of that," she said. "And Jane will be quite as pretty as Lady Sidney when she grows up. But Harry is so sweet and natural with the children that it would be a pity to spoil it by thinking of something that would make it all quite different. He wouldn't be what he is if he were to think of Jane as anything but a child, for some years yet."
"I think you're right," said her husband. "Of course I've built a few castles in the air. I shouldn't be a father if I hadn't. But I expect he'll marry young; he seems to me that sort of boy, somehow. I don't think he could do better than marry Lady Sidney. She's very interested in the idea of him. She talked to me a lot about the time they used to play together as children."
"She said she'd come down to-morrow morning. I think she wants to get away from Mrs. Brent, though I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Brent came with her. I think she wants to show me as many of her new clothes as possible. She hasn't improved up in London. I don't like her nearly as much as I did."
"I never cared for her much," said Grant. "She's a common little thing, however she may dress herself up to disguise it. I've sometimes wondered what Harry will think about her when he does come home."
Lady Sidney came down to the Vicarage the next morning, and Mrs. Brent came with her, as Mrs. Grant had anticipated. But apparently they each wanted to get rid of the other, for directly Mrs. Brent had greeted Mrs. Grant she said: "I want to have a long talk alone with you. I wonder if you'd spare Jane from her lessons to show Lady Sidney the log cabin that Harry built with the children. I've been telling her about it and she said she'd like to see it."
Sidney laughed. "I don't want to be in the way," she said, "and I'd like to have a walk with Jane, if she can be spared."
Jane was fetched. She received Mrs. Brent's effusive greeting with unsmiling coolness and looked Sidney over very critically when she was introduced to her. The inspection was apparently satisfactory, for she went off with some alacrity to change her shoes; but that may have been because she was relieved at getting off the rest of the morning's lessons.
The two girls set out across the garden, where the Vicarage baby, now getting on for three, was asleep under a tree, as before. They stopped to look at it, and Sidney behaved in such a way as to give Jane a good opinion of her. "She's a darling," she said, as they went on. "I do hope she'll be awake when we come back. I love to hear them talk at that age, don't you?"
Jane said she did, and recounted specimens of the Vicarage baby's wit, over which they both laughed freely. They were good friends by the time they reached the log cabin.
Jane unlocked the door and waited for admiration, which was given. "I've kept it very tidy and clean ever since Harry went away," she said, looking solemnly at Sidney. "I hope he won't have got too old to like it. He wrote to me, you know, to say he was coming back, and he mentioned the log cabin. I expect he'll be pleased to see it again."
There was half an appeal in her voice. Sidney looked at her quickly. "I'm quite sure he will," she said. "He's not so very old, after all—just as old as I am, in fact, and I'm not a bit too old to appreciate it."
"Ah, but the war may have made a great difference in him."
"It doesn't make as much as you'd think." She hesitated for a moment, and said: "I know a man who has been through it all from the beginning. He enlisted as Harry did, and had a rough time of it at first. He's been wounded too—rather badly. But he's much the same as he was before."
Jane looked at her. "You knew Harry when he was little, didn't you?" she asked. "We only knew him first three years ago. He seemed old then to me and my brother, but he was only sixteen."
"Let's sit down somewhere and I'll tell you all about it," said Sidney. "I don't think I want to walk any more, unless you do."
They sat down on the bench under the eaves, and Sidney told her about that summer when she and Harry had played together as children. Jane kept her large eyes fixed upon her all the time, and they seemed to be searching her and adding her up. By and by her solemnity relaxed and she smiled when Sidney did, and asked her questions here and there. When the story came to an end it was plain that she had made up her mind about her, and that her opinion was favourable.
This was made more evident still when she said calmly: "I expect Harry will fall in love with you, if you're here when he comes home."
Sidney looked at her in surprise, and then laughed. "What an extraordinary girl you are!" she said. "You think of everything."
Jane laughed too. She was feeling more and more at home with Sidney, who did not treat her as a child. "Would you like him to?" she asked.
Sidney was unexpectedly silent and serious, and when she did speak, she did not answer Jane's question. "Would you like to be friends?" she asked. "Real friends, I mean, so that we could tell each other things."
"Of course I should," said Jane. "But I expect you've got lots of friends older than me, that you know much better. I've got hardly anybody, because there aren't many people about here, and we don't go away very often."
"I always know at once if I'm going to like a person," said Sidney, "and I knew I should like you when I first saw you. We might see a good deal of one another when we come down to Poldaven; and I shall want a friend. I think it's going to be rather difficult."
Jane was enchanted at the offer of friendship. She admired Sidney tremendously, and to be on equal terms with her gave her a most gratifying sense of having left her childhood behind her. "Why do you think it is going to be difficult?" she asked, concealing her gratification.
"Oh, because, because! Well, because of what you said just now. If you haven't seen it already you will very soon. It's what I've been brought down here for. They don't say so, of course, but it's plain enough to see. Of course I shall like Harry awfully, if he's anything like he used to be. But you see I'm in love with somebody else. That's the trouble."
This was a confession worth having as an introduction to the proffered friendship. Jane didn't know whether to be glad or sorry to hear it. She had accepted Sidney as a suitable person for Harry to fall in love with, but perhaps it would be of some advantage if she didn't fall in love with him. There remained, however, the question of his falling in love with her.
"Perhaps Harry ought to know that," she said after a pause.
Sidney looked at her and laughed again. "You know Harry better than I do now," she said. "Do you think he's likely to fall in love with me?"
Jane considered this carefully. "I don't know; I think I should if I was him," she said.
"It's very sweet of you to say that," said Sidney, becoming serious again. "Perhaps I will tell him; or perhaps you shall. Then we shall all be happy and comfortable together. I should like to have Harry as a friend, and I don't in the least see why one shouldn't have a man as a friend when you're in love with another man. Do you?"
Jane had not considered the subject, but was pleased to have her opinion asked. It drew her to Sidney more than anything—this treatment of her as if her opinion on a grown-up subject was worth having. "Not if it's quite understood," she said, decisively. "I'm really rather glad that you are in love with somebody else, because Harry is already my friend, and if you are going to be, then I shall be very well off—much better than I should be if you and Harry wanted to be together and to leave me out of it. I don't mind telling Harry, if you like. It might be rather awkward for you to do it, as it would look as if you were giving him a warning. Who shall I say you're in love with?"
Sidney laughed merrily and gave her a sudden embrace. "I can't help it," she said, "you're such a darling. Well, he's a Captain in the Grenadier Guards, and his name is Noel Chancellor."
"That's the regiment that Harry was to have gone into," said Jane. "His father and grandfather belonged to it."
"Did they?" said Sidney. "Some of Noel's people were in it too. It sounds all right, but as a matter of fact Noel was a schoolmaster when the war broke out. He's the son of our vicar at home. When the war is over he is going to be a schoolmaster again. So you see how it is."
In her general ignorance of the world outside the immediate parish of Royd, Jane didn't quite see how it was. She asked kindly after Noel Chancellor and was given a pleasing impression of a handsome athletic young man, who had played cricket for Marlborough and Oxford and Notts, and had been happily engaged at a health resort on the East Coast of Kent, when the war broke out, in teaching thirty or so delightful boys under the age of fourteen to play cricket as it ought to be played, and to wrestle with the elements of Greek and Latin in their spare time.
"Considering that all the people who think themselves somebody send their children to be educated in schools like Noel was in," said Sidney. "I should have thought a person like me would have been just the touch that was wanted to make it still more of a success. But of course mother doesn't see it in that light. It's all very trying."
Jane's affectionate heart went out to this tale of crossed love, the first that had ever come within her ken outside the pages of her father's novels, which she read dutifully but without much interest. She thought it quite natural that Lady Avalon should want Sidney to marry Harry, as both of them had titles, but did not say this for fear of being laughed at. She wanted to be a real help and comfort to her new friend.
"I am sure it will come all right in the end," she said. "Perhaps when we tell Harry he will be able to do something."
CHAPTER XXII
THE RETURN
Harry came home a few days after Lady Avalon and Sidney had come to Royd, and two days before they had been going away. But they were persuaded, without much difficulty, to stay a little longer. At least, Lady Avalon accepted Lady Brent's invitation to prolong their visit, and informed Sidney that she had done so. "You see how it is," said Sidney to Jane, with whom she was now fast friends, much to the maturing of Jane's behaviour, but not to the spoiling of her, as her parents gratefully remarked.
"She's a thoroughly nice unaffected girl," said Grant, "and she'll be a nice friend for Jane, especially if what we think is going to happen does happen."
"I'm not sure she's not putting ideas into Jane's head," said Miss Minster. "I know they have secrets together, and I've a sort of notion that they're on the eternal subject of love."
"Well," said Grant, "girls will talk about love, I suppose, and if they talk nicely I don't know that there's much harm done."
"Jane ought to have learnt how to talk nicely about love by this time," said Miss Minster, with obvious reference. "I think Lady Sidney is all right really, or I should perhaps advise you both differently. Whether she's going to set her cap at Harry or not I don't know, and I don't suppose Jane would tell me if I asked her. But I'm pretty sure that they have discussed it."
Mrs. Grant listened to this without remark, but was a little disturbed at the idea of Jane having secrets which she would not impart to Miss Minster. Would she impart them to her? It would mark a stage if Jane were not ready to tell her everything.
She was considering the advisability of approaching Jane on the matter when Jane approached her. "I've got a secret with Sidney, mother," she said, in her abrupt but open way. "It's something she's told me about herself. She says she'd rather I didn't tell you just yet, if you don't mind, but she doesn't mind my telling you that there is a secret. You don't mind, do you?"
"What a lot of 'minds'!" said Mrs. Grant. "No, darling, I don't mind at all, unless it's something that you think you ought to tell me."
"Oh, no, it's nothing of that sort," said Jane. "It's something about herself which she doesn't want people to know yet. I'm going to tell it to Harry when he comes home, so that we can all three enjoy ourselves together."
Mrs. Grant, with the idea in her head that Sidney had confided to Jane that she retained a tender memory of Harry which might become more tender still, was a little surprised at this way of putting it; but it did not take her long to understand the truth when Jane had left her. She smiled and kept her own counsel, and liked Sidney all the better; for she must have known that if Jane told her that there was a secret she would guess what the secret was, little as Jane might suspect it.
Harry sent a wire in the morning to say that he was coming by a train that would arrive in the late afternoon. Only Mrs. Brent drove to the station to meet him, but they were all waiting for him in front of the Castle, the Grants inclusive, and there was scarcely a villager who was not somewhere on the road, or in the more public parts of the park to see him drive by.
His smiling excitement at this greeting from old friends—the only friends he had had up till two years before—made him seem at first exactly what he had been. But there was none of the little group at the Castle, except Lady Avalon and Sidney, who had not the impression, after the first greeting, of his having become much older. His fair boy's beauty had developed into the sunburnt hardness of a man. He was extraordinarily handsome in his smart khaki kit, but he looked years older than his age, which was not much over nineteen; and his speech and manner had altered. It would be another eighteen months before he would be legally his own master and the master of his ancient Castle, and all that went with it; but he seemed to have come into the house as its master, and to give it a meaning that it had never had while it had been ruled by a woman.
It was not too late for tea, which provided an opportunity for everybody of getting used to the new Harry, as they sat on the terrace and made play with their cups and conversation. There were adjustments to be made, and the necessity for them to be covered up. Harry talked freely to everybody. His manner was perfect with his grandmother, to whom he showed deference, while she, of course, behaved with her usual calm and let nothing appear of all that she was thinking. Mrs. Brent kept her eyes on him all the time, and had an air almost of bewilderment. She did not try to assert herself, but accepted gratefully the notice he gave her from time to time. Lady Avalon was the only person present who asked him questions about his experiences, but it soon became evident that he had nothing to tell that was personal to himself. He answered the questions, but with a slight change in the frank manner of his speech when they touched upon his own experiences apart from the operations in which he had taken part. His mother told Mrs. Grant afterwards that he had said to her during the drive that he wanted to forget everything that had happened since he had left home—at least he didn't want to talk about it. They had yet to learn how far his experiences had changed him, and to gather whether or no they were such as to have left a painful mark upon his life; but he would give them no help in coming to their conclusions. His life in the ranks was to remain as it had been, a sealed book to them.
With Sidney Harry was friendly, but no more. They talked a little of their childhood, and laughed over some of their memories, but it was not, apparently, to be the basis of any special degree of intimacy between them. Sidney retired a little into her shell after a time, and watched.
Harry was more like his old self with Jane than with anybody. Beyond a single remark about her growth he had not shown himself aware of any change in her. He seemed to want to take up their friendship at exactly the place where it had stopped. He asked her many questions about Pobbles, and said he would write to him. His manner towards her was that of a grown man to a child whom he loves. Even Lady Avalon did not mistake it for anything else, for she told Lady Brent afterwards that it was rather extraordinary that he should not see that Jane was already growing into a very pretty girl, with the implication that the fact might dawn upon him as time went on.
Jane herself showed a high but modest pride in the value he put upon her. "Now you see what he's like," she told Sidney. "When we three can be together and enjoy ourselves—well, we shall enjoy ourselves. I consider that Harry is about the nicest friend that anybody can have. He doesn't forget you when he's away."
"He hasn't forgottenyou," said Sidney. "I'm beginning to wonder whether I shan't be a little in the way."
Jane showed surprise at this, and Sidney laughed and said: "Darling old thing you are! You don't know what you're worth; but you will in a year or two. Anyhow, I'm not jealous of you, and I like Harry for remembering his old friends and not wanting to drop them for new ones. Of course I knew him before you did, but not as he is now. He's older than I should have thought, and I think he looks rather sad. You've got to cheer him up, and if I'm wanted to help I shall be quite ready."
"Of course you'll be wanted to help," said Jane. "You'll be seeing more of him, for one thing, as you will be staying in the house. I suppose you won't mind my being hischieffriend though, if you like somebody else better."
"I should be a horrid sort of creature if I did," said Sidney. "You won't suffer from me when you're not here."
Harry and Sidney strolled together in the garden after dinner, with the full concurrence of their elders, except possibly of Mrs. Brent, who had not yet recovered from her air of slight bewilderment, and was quieter than she had been for the last few days.
They talked about Jane, and for the first time Harry seemed to regard Sidney with interest. Hitherto he had been merely friendly with her on the surface, as with one who was there but didn't matter much. "Oh, yes, we're real friends," she said, with her free and pleasant smile. "I suppose you can only see that she's a child, but I've never treated her like one. I began like that because girls of that age love being talked to as if they were grown up, but I very soon found out what a lot there was in her. If she's a child in some ways still, as of course she is, it makes her all the more fascinating. She's one in a thousand. She'll make all the difference to me down here, if I can get hold of her sometimes."
"She's a real person," Harry said. "If you and she have made friends it will be jolly for all three of us. We can all be friends together."
"That's what Jane wants," said Sidney. "She's devoted to you, and I believe she's also devoted to me, though not so much so. We can go and get hold of her to-morrow morning, can't we? She has a holiday on Saturday."
"Oh yes. I'm very glad you want to. I was half afraid you might think she was too young for you."
"I suppose you mean that you were half afraid you'd have to dance attendance on me, when you'd rather have been with Jane; but you see you need fear nothing of that sort."
They looked at one another. There was just light enough to catch an expression of face. Then they both laughed, and became friends from that moment.
"We'd settled that Jane was to tell you," said Sidney, "but I think I might as well do it myself. I'm engaged to somebody, but the engagement is not smiled upon. In fact it isn't recognized at all, and can't be spoken of. But Jane and I thought that if you knew of it it would make things more comfortable all round for us three."
Harry asked her questions and showed a friendly sympathy towards her love affair. But the idea of it seemed to make him rather sad too, and Sidney did not make the mistake of thinking that his sadness was due to any disappointment created by what she had told him. Indeed her information had cleared the air, which held more of friendliness and companionship in it than before, as if he were relieved at having it quite understood that he would not be expected to make love to her, but short of that would give her all the friendship that she wanted, and be glad to take in return all that she had to give to him.
She had a good deal to give him. That baby's friendship which seemed to have meant nothing to him had kept him alive in her heart. He was not quite like other men to her. Something of his childhood lingered about him, though he had advanced so far on the hard road of manhood, and but for her memories of him would have seemed to her much older than his years. She felt the desire to encourage in him those gleams of boyish laughter and irresponsibility which had once or twice shone out through the half-weary indifference of his attitude. She thought that he must have been through a harsh disillusioning experience, and was too tired in spirit to accept all at once the freedom of his release. Her own lover, who was some years older than Harry, had told her that it needed a good deal of resolution and self-hardening to go through the ranks, and that sometimes only the remembrance of her had kept him up to it. She thought she knew more than other girls were likely to know what it must have meant to Harry, who did not seem even to want to speak of it. The maternal instinct which is in all women drew her to sympathy with him. She and Jane between them would get rid of that sadness and tiredness that lay over him. If Jane was too young, and she too occupied with somebody else to give him the consolation that would quickly heal such wounds as he was suffering from, he would still, surely, respond to their affection, and forget his troubles. She must not talk too much about her own happiness. That seemed to depress him, kind as he was about it. Of course it was love he wanted, though he might not know it. It was a pity that Jane was not a few years older, or that she herself was the only unmarried one of all her sisters. She did not suppose that there was anybody else in these parts, from what she remembered of them, who would be good enough for Harry. But perhaps it was just as well. She and he and Jane would enjoy themselves together, and show the world, if the world happened to take notice and be interested, that a man and two girls could be the best of friends with no question of love affecting their intercourse.
Perhaps that evening they might have got further into intimacy, but Harry had still something to do before he could feel himself free to take his enjoyment in the youthful companionship that had been so fortunately provided for him.
"I'm very glad you're to be here for a bit," he said. "There aren't many young people about and it would have been a bit dull for me, though I should have tried my best to keep it from my mother and grandmother. I think I must go in and have a talk with Granny now, if you don't mind. I haven't seen her alone since I came back."
But apparently Mrs. Brent had decided that there was to be no talk between those two alone, as long as she could prevent it. Lady Avalon and Sidney said good night soon after ten o'clock, and when they had gone Mrs. Brent said: "Come out for a little with me, Harry dear. It's quite warm, and I don't even want a wrap. If you're tired, as I expect you are, you can go straight to bed when we've just had a little stroll."
Lady Brent sat like a sphinx. Harry said: "All right, mother. But I'm not tired. We'll go out for ten minutes and then I'll have a little talk with Granny."
Directly they were in the garden, Mrs. Brent said in a querulous tone: "Why should you want to have a talk with her? She took you away from me a lot when you were a child, but now it's different. She ought not to have any more authority over you than I have."
Harry laughed at her. "Authority!" he echoed. "I don't feel like anybody having much authority over me now, little mother." He spoke tenderly, but there was a hint of impatience in his tone, which she detected.
"I'm sure I don't want to direct you in any way," she said. "I only want to feel that you're mine now that you've grown up, and not hers. Nobody in the world loves you as much as I do. I suppose you'll marry some day, and I shan't grumble at that when the time comes. But until then I want to feel that you and I are all in all to one another."
He answered only her reference to his grandmother. "You're my mother," he said. "In one way you've always been more to me than Granny. But I owe her a good deal, and I mustn't forget it. I haven't done much for her since I went away. Now that I've got what I wanted, and have come back again, I want to make up for that—to both of you."
"It was very cruel of you to cut yourself off from us as you did, Harry," she said. "You needn't have done it. Even she wouldn't have prevented you doing what you wanted to do, when once you'd done it."
"We needn't talk about that," he said, decisively. "It's all over now. It's what I want to tell her. You must let me have a little talk with her when we go in, please, mother."
"You mean you want me to go to bed while you sit and talk to her alone. Why should you want that? Why shouldn't I be there too?"
"Well, because you're not friendly to her, and I want to be—poor old Granny! I suppose you've never got on well together. I used to feel it, though I didn't think about it much. I think you both tried to keep it from me. I'd much rather you tried to get rid of that feeling, mother dear. It makes me unhappy, and you can't hide it from me any longer. After all, Royd is her home. I'm rather sorry you left it. I liked to think of it with you and her here, just as it used to be."
"Oh, I couldn't stay here when you had gone. It was too much to ask of anybody. I suppose she'll always be here—at least till you come of age and are master instead of her. Couldn't we go away together—I don't mean now, but after you've been here a little, to London or somewhere—just you and I together? I've had so little of you, Harry, all to myself. All the dull years here, while she has been everything and I have been nothing, I've looked forward to it—to having you to myself for a little, when you were grown up."
She peered into his face, and saw a frown on it; but when he spoke it had cleared, and he spoke very kindly. "I may have to go to London before my leave is up," he said. "But I should want to go alone. And I don't want to be away from Royd more than I can help. You've always belonged to Royd, mother, ever since I can remember. When I'm with you I'd rather be here than anywhere. Please don't spoil it for me by making things difficult with Granny. I think I'll go in to her now. I mustn't keep her up late."
She expostulated, plaintively, as they went towards the house together. She felt that he was slipping from her, and that nothing would be as she had pictured it, but she had not the self-control to spare him her complaints and appeals. He was always kind, but he was firm too, with a man's firmness towards a weak and foolish woman. He had grown immeasurably in mental stature, and his determination impressed itself upon her increasingly. That mention of authority over him with which she had begun now seemed foolish even to her. As they went into the house she said: "Of course I don't want to treat you like a boy any more. I only want to be sure that you don't love anybody better than me. You do love me best, don't you, Harry?"
He bent down and kissed her. "You know I love you, mother," he said. "Now I'll go and talk to Granny. Come and see me when I go to bed—say in half an hour—as you used to."
That comforted her a little, and she went upstairs, while he went into the drawing-room where Lady Brent was still sitting where they had left her.
"Well, Granny dear," he said. "I thought we'd have a little talk. I've got things to tell you."
She laid down her work, and looked at him fondly, sitting in a low chair opposite to her, so young in appearance, as he sat there with his long legs stretched out, but, as she felt, so old in experience, and so different from the boy he had been.
"Please don't think, dear Harry," she said, "that you owe me any explanation of anything. I've had a long time to think it all out, you know. I think I understand most things. Don't you want it treated as if it was all over now, and begin again, much as it was before? If so, I want that too. We've got you at home now, and we want to be all happy together."
His face cleared as he spoke. "It's very good of you to put it like that," he said. "Yes, of course I want it to be as much as possible what it used to be as long as I can be here with you. There's a good deal I want to forget."
"I'm afraid you've been through a very hard time, Harry."
"Not harder than others, Granny. It's not a bad thing to learn what you have to learn in a hard school. Perhaps you learn it all the quicker."
There was a pause before she said: "It has troubled me a good deal—the thought of your going straight from the life you lived here into the ranks. It wasn't that that we'd tried to prepare you for."
"Oh, the ranks!" he said. "You needn't let that worry you, Granny. I'm glad I went into the ranks. I'd rather do it that way than any."
She showed some surprise at this. "I've thought it over and over," she said. "But I've never thought of it in that way. It was the roughness and coarseness I hated for you. Isn't that what you want to forget?"
He was silent for a time, looking down. Then he burst out: "It's learning what the beastliness of life is that I want to forget. That's what I'd never known. I never minded hard work—doing what others do. And I doubt whether I should have been let down so easily with people like myself—on the outside, I mean. No, I was nearer to the men who had lived simpler lives. I understood them better than I should have done the others. And they were good to me too. I don't think I should have wanted to get a commission if I hadn't felt I ought to. I should have been content to go on till the end of it. But now it's all got to begin again. Oh, don't let's talk of it. I've got a month here, where it's quiet and clean and beautiful. Let's forget what's past and what's coming. I never meant to talk of it. I only wanted to tell you what I was going to do, and to thank you for letting me go my own way."
Poor Lady Brent went to bed that night with something new to think about. She could not sleep, and wrote a long letter to Wilbraham in London. "We might have thought of that," she wrote in the course of it. "It wouldn't have been the little hardships that would trouble him. He had prepared himself for all that, with the life out of doors that he had led here. And he would understand the men he was with, because he was friends with everybody about here. I'm sure they must have loved him too, and all the more because he wasn't like them. The others would have expected him to be like them. I am full of trouble about him. It looks to me now as if we had prepared him for nothing, so as to save him pain. Life has come as a shock to him, and he has not got over it yet. But one thing I'm sure of—he must work it out for himself. I shall meddle with him no more. I am not sure that I have not made a great mistake."