"Nobody has wanted me," she said.
"Oh, come, my dear! Don't tell me that you've been about as much as you have, and with all you have to offer, without attracting the foolish race of men."
"Anyhow, nobody has wanted me whom I have wanted. My first experience wasn't a very happy one. I suppose you know that, and there's no harm in saying so."
"Not a bit. But you're through with it, and it hasn't left much mark. None that I can see, except that you're wiser. You wouldn't marry again without knowing what you were letting yourself in for. Men are easy enough to judge if you look at them with your eyes open. Of course when you're once in love with them you don't. But you can marry first and fall in love afterwards. It saves lots of bothers and gives you something interesting to do at the beginning of married life, which is apt to be rather dull."
Ella laughed. "I shouldn't care to run that risk," she said. "One's freedom is worth something, after all. I shouldn't want to marry anybody unless I loved him."
"No. You're very young still. You've a right to look for that sort of thing. But there's love and love. Unless you find yourself bowled over by a passion,which may happen to anybody unless they're on the lookout—at least, I'm told so; it hasn't happened to me yet—I should pick out a man you like and can trust to look after you, and make you happy. It's much more comfortable in the long run, and if you manage him properly you'll have all the love that's good for you, and the sort that lasts."
"Supposing he doesn't pick me!"
"Oh, my dear, you could make any man pick you. You'd only have to pay him a little attention, and flatter his vanity. They're all the same, when they arrive at years of indiscretion. That sounds rather clever. I suppose you wouldn't want quite a young man. I should think you wouldn't have much difficulty there either, though they want more careful handling; they're so full of whims and crotchets. But I shouldn't recommend quite a young man. Five and thirty to two or three and forty is the best age. I wish George was ten years or so younger. Then you might marry him, and we should keep you in the family. He's the dearest old affectionate bat-eyed creature, really, though I never let him know that I think so."
"Why do you call him bat-eyed? I don't propose to accept your invitation, but I love him all the same; and I don't think he's bat-eyed."
"Oh, my dear—the fuss he's made about his girls! I've had it all out with him. He thinks he's been actuated solely by the most unselfish desire for their happiness, when all the time he's just been hating itbecause he can't keep them forever circling round himself."
"I think you're very unfair. He does love them awfully, and of course he hates losing them. But the way he's behaved about Caroline shows that he hasn't been thinking of what he wants himself. I feel very sorry for him now. He has to begin all over again, and he isn't a bit like an old man, who can sit down and wait for the end. He's as young in his mind and in his tastes as if he were twenty years younger."
"Yes, he's more of a baby than most men of his age, and that's saying a good deal. He's kept himself fit too. Oh, I don't deny that it has been a good thing for him to have his children to play with. No doubt it has kept him out of a lot of mischief. And I'm rather sorry for him losing them, too, though I don't tell him so. He's too apt to be sorry for himself; and after all, he's got to put up with it, like everybody else."
"How unfeeling you are! I'm not going to hear my dear Mr. Grafton criticised in that way without protesting. If he had really been selfish, as most men are, he would just have gone on amusing himself and hardly have missed the girls at all. It's no discredit to him that he has been so happy in his home that he can't bear it to be broken up."
"I suppose he was grousing and grumbling about that when you went out for a walk this afternoon."
Ella wondered how she knew that they had been out for a walk, but did not ask her. "He wasn't,"she said indignantly. "You say you like him, and you're always trying to make him out a poor weak creature with no backbone at all. I think he's a very wise man, and a good one too. I love him for loving his family as much as he does."
"Oh, well, my dear, if you love him, I don't want anything better. I told him the other day he ought to marry again, now the time has come for him to lose his girls. He made his first wife happy enough, and he'd make you. He's no longer young, but he isn't old either, and won't be for a long time to come. He's a husband you could be proud of, and he'd never let you down."
"Thanks for the offer. I'll wait till he makes it himself, and then I'll think about it. But please don't make mischief, or try to manage. As a matter of fact, I think the idea would rather shock him, and it isn't one that appeals to me, or I shouldn't talk about it as I'm doing now. He has been awfully sweet to me, and treated me very much like the rest. It has been just what I've wanted, for I was lonely till they came here. I'm going to keep it up, and help him to get overhisbad time—dear Mr. Grafton! If you go spreadingthoseideas about you'll make it difficult for me. So please don't."
"I should be a precious fool if I did," said Lady Grafton enigmatically.
Caroline and Maurice went to the South of France for their honeymoon, and were away a month. On their return they spent a couple of days in Paris, where Barbara was again installed for her last three months with her 'family.'
Barbara had taken very kindly to Maurice. She had cleared the ground by telling him everything she could think of that she had ever said about him from the first. "Now if you can like me after that," she said, "well and good. We shall be friends for life. If not, say so at once, and I shall know what to do."
Maurice had replied that he should have no difficulty in liking her if she would permit him, and she had forthwith taken him under her wing and given him several valuable hints on points of behaviour, from which he professed himself greatly to have profited. He had given her some in return, and they were on the best of terms together.
She was allowed to spend the days with them while they were in Paris. Caroline soon discovered that she was not happy, and was longing to be at home again. She clung to her side rather pathetically, and was quieter than her wont, though her quietness was varied by bursts of gaiety. Caroline made an opportunityof being alone with her soon after their arrival, and then it all came out. She sat by her side on a sofa with her head on her shoulder.
"It's lovely to see you so happy, darling," she said, more tenderly than she was wont to speak. "I think Maurice is a real dear, and you've improved him enormously already."
Caroline laughed. Barbara was allowed to say these things. "He's improved me," she said.
"No, he couldn't do that, darling," said Barbara caressingly. "You're perfect as it is. How I do wish I was coming home with you. I did ask Daddy, and he wouldn't let me. I hate being kept here, and I've learnt all the French I want to learn. I'm perfectly miserable here."
"Why, darling?" asked Caroline. "You were happy enough here before, and it won't be long now before you're at home for good."
"I don't think I shall be much wanted when I do come home," she said forlornly.
Caroline protested warmly against this statement. "You're the only one of us left at home now to look after Daddy," she ended. "Of course I shall see him a lot, but I can't be as much with him as you can."
Barbara began to cry. She was not given to tears, and hated to have them commented upon when she did give way. She cried softly on Caroline's shoulder. "I thought Dad would want me when you and B had gone," she said. "I wanted to begin at once, to bea lot to him. Of course he loves me, but he doesn't want me as he did you and B."
Caroline saw that there was something behind this. "Tell me about it, darling," she said softly.
"I believe he'll marry Ella," she blurted out. "She began to worm herself in the moment you had left. And it's going on now. That's what makes me so unhappy, being away."
Caroline was too surprised for the moment to say anything. An uneasy feeling came over her that she had been too immersed in her own happiness to have cared much what was happening to those others whom she loved.
Barbara went on. "He writes to me regularly," she said, "as he has always done. But his letters are full of her. She always seem to be there, whenever he comes down; or he goes over to Surley. He stayed there from Friday till Tuesday last week, instead of going home. He says that she has done a lot to make up to him for not having us. That's how she does it, I suppose. I never liked her as much as the rest of you did, and now she's showing what she is."
Caroline put this aside for the time. Her mind was working. "I asked her to look after Daddy when I went away," she said. "She has written to me about him, and I've been glad. I never thought what you think, darling. She has been almost like one of us. I don't think she can possibly think of him in that way, or he of her. There has been nothing in the letters of either of them to show it."
"Well, he doesn't want me, anyhow," said Barbara. "Perhaps I'm jealous, but if therewerenothing else I don't see why she should put herself in my place."
"Poor old pet!" said Caroline, kissing her. "Daddy couldn't get you back again directly after you had come over here, to finish up. When you do get home you'll be just as much to him as B and I have been. You know he loves you just as much, but we are older and—"
"Oh, I'm not grumbling about that. He has always been perfectly sweet to me, and he hasn't realised that I'm no longer a child, any more than you did up to a little time ago. But I was so looking forward to taking your and B's place with him—I know I couldn't do it as well, but I should have tried—and nowshecomes in to spoil it all. I hate her."
"Why do you hate her, darling? Why have you never liked her as we have?"
"I don't know. It's just that I haven't. Perhaps a little because she has tried to make me. I didn't exactly hold out, but somehow I couldn't. I suppose I knew all the time thatthiswas in her."
"Well, Barbara, darling, I don't think it's as you say; but supposing it were! We ought not to set ourselves against it, ought we?"
"What, our own Daddy! I think it would be horrible."
"Why, darling?"
She did not say why, but repeated that it would be horrible.
Caroline was at a loss. "I don't know why you don't like Ella," she said slowly. "Youaregood at judging of people, I know—better than I am—but I think that I should have found it out by this time if there had been anything that one ought not to like in her. I can't see it if there is. I think I love her next best after the family. I do love her."
"Would you love her if you thought she wanted to marry Dad?"
"Yes, I think perhaps I should love her all the more, though just at first perhaps I shouldn't like it—I mean I shouldn't likeanybodyto marry him. It's difficult to say, before anything has happened; and I believe you are making a mistake too. But supposing she did, itcouldonly be because she really loved him. She has had plenty of offers of marriage."
"So she says."
"Oh, Barbara, darling! That's silly. Sheisbeautiful, and clever, and nice too. Even if you don't agree entirely with the rest of us in liking her, we all do like her. And I don't think even you have not liked her really, though you think now you haven't."
"Well, go on."
"How am I to go on? Don't you agree that she wouldn't marry him unless she loved him?"
"Oh, I suppose so; but it would be a silly sort of love, when he's so much older than she is."
"Isn't that rather reflecting on him? Women do marry men a lot older than themselves, and love themdevotedly. I'm sure darling Dad is worth any woman's love. He's so kind, and understanding. And he's very good-looking too, and not even elderly, as many men of his age are."
"I can't imagine him falling in love, especially with somebody like her, who has been almost like we have to him."
"Well, that's what makes it difficult to talk about. Perhaps he wouldn't. I can't take it for granted you are right. One can only look at it in a general sort of way; and if it did happen I don't think there would be—anything out of the way in it—certainly nothinghorrible, as you say."
Barbara's tears flowed again. "I suppose it's I who am rather horrid," she said. "I should be if there wasn't anything in it at all. But I'm almost certain there is, or I shouldn't have thought about it. Did you know that the moment you went away she went out for a walk with him?"
"Yes, she told me that, and that he was feeling frightfully depressed at losing me, and she hoped she had cheered him up. If that's all, Barbara, darling, I think you are making a great deal out of a very little. I asked her to look after him, myself. Of course I didn't mean any more than to be as she always has been."
"I think you might have asked me to do that. I wanted to."
Caroline was stricken with compunction. "Oh, darling," she said, "I knew you would. I'd no idea of hertaking your place. I know how glad he will be to have you back. And I'm going home now. I shall look after him myself."
"Will you write and tell me what is happening?"
"Of course I will. Everything."
"Ifthatis happening, shall you try to stop it?"
"What could I do to stop it?" she asked, after a pause.
"You might remind Daddy that all his daughters haven't gone away from him yet. And Caroline, I wish you'd just say something—from yourself, I mean—about me being older, and that you liked having me to talk to and tell things to, after B was married. You did, you know, in the summer holidays. Daddy might see it if you said it about me—that Icouldbe a lot to him, I mean, if he wanted me. Of course you'd have to do it carefully."
Caroline promised to do this, and left Barbara two days later, somewhat comforted, but still rebellious at her exile, at this particular time.
She had given Caroline a good deal to think about. She confided Barbara's fears to Maurice, who expressed himself incredulous. But on such a subject as this he was not much of a guide. His training had not prepared him for judging of a man considerably older than himself, as one who had lived more in the world might have done. Grafton was Caroline's father. He could treat him with respect, and with affection, but hardly as having any of the qualities of youth remaining in him. He thought it very delightful that hisfamily should treat him in the companionable way they did, which was different from any way of parents and children of which he had had experience; but he was still apt to be surprised at certain manifestations of their attitude towards him. Caroline felt all the time that it was even more difficult for him than it was for her to envisage her father as a man who might still desire for himself what belonged by right to youth. It was only difficult for her because he was her father. She had to think of him from outside herself, and she had plenty of experience to guide her in seeing him as a man who might legitimately look for a further period of happiness in marriage, and as quite capable of gaining the love and devotion of a woman much younger than himself, and of keeping it.
"I do want him to be happy," she said, "and in his own way. Of course it would mean that he would give to her a great deal of what we have all had, and that's why poor little Barbara hates it so. But after all it is just what has happened with us—with B and me, and will happen by and bye with Barbara. He isn't less to us than he was, but he's no longer everything. We shouldn't be less to him."
"I think you would," said Maurice. "It isn't quite the same."
The idea still shocked him a little, and for the first time he was unwilling to express all his thoughts to Caroline, for they would seem to reflect upon her father. His simplicity and singleness of purpose went along with some rigidity of mind and outlook. Life presenteditself to him in elementary forms, and his ideas, born partly from his very limited experience, had not yet fully expanded under the influence of the great change that had come to himself. It was a man's right course to find his work in the world and to give himself up to it. All the rest would be added in due season, and he must not step out of his path to seek it for himself. He had lately learned that work can have a consecration that will lift it to a still higher plane of rightness; but that discovery had only settled his convictions. He did not think of Grafton as a man who had ever put his work in its proper place. He had seen him only enjoying the fruits of it, and depending upon those fruits for most of his contentment in life. He might not acknowledge it, even to himself, of Caroline's father, and certainly he would not have acknowledged it to her, but his tendency was to regard a man to whom life came so easily as it did to Grafton as liable to be weakened in fibre. He might take to himself gratifications that did not legitimately belong to him. In some respects the conventions of youth are more binding than those of age. Maurice would not have been disturbed at the idea of his father-in-law married again, to a lady of ripe age. He could not accustom himself to the idea of his falling in love at the age of fifty-one, and hoped that Barbara's fears would prove to be unfounded.
They went home by way of Havre and Southampton, and reached Abington without going to London. The Abbey was empty. Miss Waterhouse was away visiting,and Grafton was tied to the Bank that week. He was to stay at Stone Cottage over the week-end and Caroline made the most loving preparations for his reception.
Her happiness, but for the cloud brought by Barbara's fears, which try as she would she could not treat otherwise than as a cloud, was complete. The cottage, which had been renovated for them throughout, was as charming a little house as any newly married couple could wish to inhabit. Her father had offered to enlarge it for her, but she had wanted to run it on a modest scale, with only one servant, and as the wife of a poor man to do a great deal in it herself. Electric light had been installed, and a sumptuously fitted bathroom. Otherwise, except for its new paint and papers, it was as Mollie Pemberton and her mother had made themselves happy in.
Caroline had had her way with all the furnishing and arrangements of the Abbey when they had come to live there, but her zest for her very own little house was in no way diminished. It was almost too full of wedding presents, many of which would have been more suitable for the wife of a rich man than of a poor one. But Caroline had a genius for making a room. Mollie Pemberton opened her eyes when she saw what she had done with Stone Cottage.
Mollie and her husband, the Prescotts, Worthing, and Ella Carruthers, all came to see her on the day of her arrival, or the day after, and all helped her to get into order. She thought she must know fromElla's manner if what Barbara dreaded had come to pass, or was coming to pass. But she could tell nothing. Ella was just the same to her as ever, and showed herself delighted and excited at having her back. She seemed to have nothing to hide, and talked about Grafton with the frank affection that she had always exhibited towards him. If Caroline had not seen Barbara, no idea of any change would have come to her.
And yet she was not sure that Barbara was not right.
On the third morning she went to the Abbey to fetch some things for her father, who was coming down that evening.
It was rather sad to see it deserted, by all except the servants. But she did not feel sad on her own account. She now stood outside it, and the life it represented. She went through the large and beautiful rooms, so different from those in which her own life was to be spent, and asked herself whether she would regret anything that she had given up to marry Maurice. She could not find in herself the least desire to inhabit such a house again, even with him. She had immensely enjoyed coming to it, and dealing with it, but those enjoyments seemed now to have belonged to a different person. She had taken naturally the good things that had come to her through wealth, and found pleasure in them; but she wanted them no longer. She had something much better. Her happiness, as she went through the house, and into the gardens, was singing in her. The house and the gardens themselves hadgiven her happiness, but it was nothing to this new-found happiness, and they spoke to her scarcely at all now for herself. She was thinking all the time of her own little house in the village.
Not quite all the time. Her thoughts were much occupied with her father. The empty house, which for some time he would have to inhabit alone, or with the companionship of guests instead of that of his children who had surrounded him with love and affection, brought home to her fully for the first time what he had lost. If the light of the house had gone out for her, it had gone out for him also. But she had her home and her centre of love elsewhere.
She thought of the mother whom she had known and loved as a child, and still loved, as she knew he did. If she had been alive he would not thus have come to the end of most of what had made his home dear to him. She wondered what it would have felt like to come home from her honeymoon and find her mother waiting for her. Her old home would not have lost so much of its meaning if she had been there. But she did not think much about herself except to ask what she could do to make up to her father for his loss.
She thought, rather sadly on his behalf, that the very perfection of their family life must make the change worse for him. She would be much with him when he came down to Abington, but not the constant companion she had been hitherto. He had done hardly anything there without her, and she had devoted herself to him as now she would devote herself to her husband.She had gained immeasurably, and a great part of her gain was his loss. She knew that she had been more to him than any of the others, and that he had come more and more to depend upon her. She had loved him to come to her with any new idea or discovery, which would have lost half its value to him unless they had shared it. His letters since her marriage had been full of little jokes and felicities to which he had wanted her response; and she had always given it, but with the knowledge that it was no longer to him that she would take her own little discoveries and appreciations, and that he might sooner or later, unless she was very careful, be saddened by the change in her. He would never claim more than his right, but the change would be there, of necessity, and the loss to him.
Ought she not to be glad if he had found some one in whom his affections and home-loving desires could centre themselves again—some one who would give him back the devotion that he so richly deserved. It was natural that poor little Barbara should think that her turn had come to be his chosen companion, and resent the intrusion of another into the place she was so touchingly anxious to fill. But Barbara could not be expected to realise that her part would probably only be played for a few years at the most, and that when she left home the change would fall upon him still more heavily. And by that time his chance of winning for himself what he might want would be less. Perhaps it would have disappeared altogether. Carolinethought that her father would not deliberately set himself to choose a wife with whom he might be happy. But if a woman so beautiful and so suited to him in mind as Ella were to show him now that she loved him well enough to marry him—surely his children who loved him should do nothing to dim the happiness that might be his!
And yet she was not quite happy about it.
Preparations for her father's visit were a serious affair with Caroline, and with Maurice too, for he saw how much it meant to her, and loved every manifestation of her personality.
At the same time he was a little nervous about it all. There seemed to him such an immense difference between the way of living which was natural to himself, and that which Caroline took for granted, even in this modest home of theirs. All the beautiful furnishing and appointments, as perfect on their smaller scale as those to be found at the Abbey, he took pleasure in as the right setting for Caroline, and as giving her pleasure; but they said nothing to him apart from her, and he found them even a little irksome. They marked the difference between him and her, and, especially in the light of her careful and loving preparations, between him and her father.
Grafton was not a man to whom creature comforts were all in all. He could have roughed it if necessary, even at his age, as well as Maurice himself. But it seemed to Maurice that he needed as much attention and cosseting as a woman. His bedroom was arranged so that he should miss nothing of what he was accustomed to—his personal belongings brought downfrom the Abbey, his bedside table furnished with carefully shaded light, books, cigarettes, matches, ash-tray. His own servant was to be in waiting for him when he came, to deal with his clothes, and again in the morning, when he was to have his tea at the early hour he affected. There were the soaps and salts he liked in the bathroom, and the bath sheet was to be warmed and sent up at exactly the right time. Meals were a subject of earnest discussion between Caroline and her maid, and immense care was to be taken in preparing them. He had stocked their tiny cellar himself, and old Jarvis was called in to decide upon the question of wines andliqueurs, Maurice being entirely ignorant on such subjects. And Jarvis was to wait at table. The maid, though a treasure, could not do justice to the occasion.
In as far as all this meant that Caroline was displaying the charming desire of a young housewife to acquit herself well, and to do honour to one whom she loved, he could sympathise with her. But he did not see that it meant that almost entirely, and put a good deal of it down to the exigencies of a rich man, which Caroline had rather wasted herself hitherto in satisfying.
He was in process of adjusting himself all round. He would not have believed beforehand that so many of the ways of a large house could have been imported into a small one, run with one servant, as were surrounding him in Stone Cottage. They would not always live exactly as they were going to live during the few days of Grafton's visit But the life to which theywere already settling down was far more elaborate than any he had ever lived before, even in Worthing's bachelor establishment, which was run on more elaborate lines than those of his father's vicarage.
Caroline busied herself greatly about the house, doing much of the work in the rooms, and even in the kitchen, herself. But that was when he was out. Whenever he saw her she was no more occupied with such work than she had been at the Abbey. She would be in her drawing-room, having changed her clothes, ready to give him his tea when he came home, and she would keep him bright company afterwards. Then she would dress for dinner, and of course it was taken for granted that he would dress, too. The little dinner would be perfect, and the invaluable maid would serve it in such fashion that it was difficult to think of her as having also cooked it. Then after their coffee they would go into the drawing-room, where it seemed profanation for Maurice to smoke a pipe. So, though Caroline encouraged him to do so, he was preparing himself to knock it off altogether, and content himself with a cigarette after dinner until later in the evening.
To a man brought up to this way of living it would have been a miracle of happiness to have had it all so cleverly provided for him by the young wife who was anxious that he should miss nothing of what he had been used to. The little parlour, beautifully furnished as it was, was not a lady's boudoir, in which a man could not feel himself at home. There was a big easy chair, books, and magazines, arrangements for writing.But though the whole house and all its arrangements were to Caroline the last word in simplicity and economy, it was complicated luxury to him, of a sort that he could only adopt as his ordinary mode of life for her sake. It was not he who had gained it for her, or he might have taken more pride in it. As against this it was part of her, who was so much more delicately nurtured than himself, and the fit setting for her delicate charm, which he, as much as any of those who considered it ill-allied with his outward absence of charm and delicacy, thought of as setting her above him. So he was happy in adapting himself to what meant restraint and careful watchfulness to him. In all essentials her desires were as simple and unenvious as his. He knew that if their lot had been cast in a new country, where she would have had few or none of the refinements that she had always lived with, she would have made nothing of doing without them, and would have worked for him as he would have worked for her. She should never guess, if he could help it, that this sophisticated life was uncongenial to him. He had her, as his constant delight and treasure, and what did anything else matter?
Caroline went to the station alone to meet her father. Maurice had work to finish at the office, or said he had. He thought that Grafton would like to have her to himself alone at their first meeting. He was full of these little delicacies of mind, and of thoughtfulness for others. And her tenderness for her father had awakened an echo of it in himself. He had been so generousto him, giving him this priceless gift, which he had done so little to deserve, and losing so much in the giving of it. He was anxious to please him, and efface himself in doing so. There was not much he could do to show him gratitude. But she could do a great deal.
Only, if Grafton were preparing to transfer the centre of his affections from the hearts that had hitherto held it, Maurice would not look upon him with quite the same eyes.
He thought about it as he sat at his table in the office, not very busy with the work that he had given himself to do. He could not yet get used to the idea, try as he would. He thought that it was troubling Caroline, though she was preparing herself to welcome it if it should happen. It disturbed him somewhat that there was already a subject upon which they could not talk together with the freedom which it was their joy to use in everything. But to express all his thoughts would be to criticise her father, and he would not do that. In the sanguine spirit of youth, he hoped that this visit would prove that the fear was unfounded, and returned to his work.
In the meantime Caroline, driving to the station, was wondering what Maurice really thought of it, for she knew well enough that he had not told her all his thoughts. He might just as well have done so, for she divined the course they took, and was only ignorant of the strength of his antagonism to the idea. In this, as in smaller matters, she had to distinguish between ideas of his which arose from his true and right attitude tothe basic facts of life and conduct, and those prompted by his limited experience. In all essentials she respected his judgment as that of no other man. But in some non-essentials she knew that her own opinion was of more value than his, and that she could influence him. Was this question of her father's marriage one in which she ought to take his view, or be guided by her own wider experience, and influence him towards hers? She was divided between loyalty to her father and loyalty to her husband, but for the present she no more than he was able to solve the problem. She put it from her mind, and gave herself up to pleasure in the prospect of seeing her father again.
But even this pleasure was slightly tinged with doubt. Two strands were interwoven in her love for her father. Of late years he had been so much her preferred companion, and her position in his household had been such, that there had come about a sense of equality more than exists commonly between father and daughter. It was the spirit of companionship that in its fullest measure she had transferred to Maurice, and its transference had thrown into relief again the filial relationship, which had been strengthened by the quality of the love her father had shown towards her over her marriage. He had effaced himself. There had been no flaw in his tender paternal care for her welfare and happiness. Her grateful devotion to him was stronger than ever, but it flowed towards his fatherhood in a fuller degree than of late years. She recognised this change in her and thought that the idea of his marriage to onewho had shared with her the happy associations that were not wholly filial would not have perplexed her as it did now if it had arisen a year before. She was not so far from Maurice in her emotions towards it as either of them thought.
But the doubts were all swept away when they met. He was her father, loving and overjoyed to see her again, and apparently as excited at the prospect of playing guest to her hostess as she was.
She had hardly ever seen him in higher spirits than during their drive home together. They laughed together all the time, and she felt the bond between them to be as strong as ever.
Her cup of happiness was full when they reached home and his pleasure showered itself over her husband as well as herself. His greeting of Maurice was of the warmest, and without an atom of constraint. She knew that he had had a struggle with himself to accept him for her sake, and what valiant effort he had made to conceal it. But she felt now at last that the need of effort on his part no longer existed. Maurice was a son to him, at least as much as Dick was. In fact he showed more affection towards him than he habitually showed towards Dick, putting his hand on his shoulder as they stood together for a minute before the fire in the parlour, and chaffing him and Caroline together as two children absurdly but thrillingly placed in a position of responsibility.
When he had been conducted to his room, where Jarvis had made all ready for him to dress for dinner,and Caroline had changed the position of some things on his dressing-table, and Maurice had poked the fire, before withdrawing, they smiled happily at one another. "It's jolly to have him here," said Maurice. "And heisso pleased to see you again."
"You too, darling," said Caroline. "He's awfully sweet to both of us."
"I'm pleased enough to see him," said Maurice. "There's nobody in the world I'd rather have here. He's awfully pleased about Beatrix too."
Grafton had told Caroline on their way home that Beatrix was expecting a child, and a letter from her to Caroline had come by the evening post. They talked about it at intervals during the evening. Caroline laughed at the idea of his becoming a grandfather, but in her slightly altered attitude towards him the relationship seemed more fitting to him than it would have done before. There was no doubt about his pleasure in it.
Ella's name was mentioned, quite naturally by him. "She's been a great consolation to me while you've been away," he said. "Sometimes I haven't missed you in the least, darling. She has been quite like one of the family."
Would he have said this if he had been thinking of giving her the chief place in the family? Maurice thought not, when he and Caroline talked it all over at the end of the evening. His own fears, he told her, were at an end. Her father had allowed Ella to console him for the loss of his daughters, because shehad been more like them than anybody else. But it was them he really wanted. Now Caroline had come home that was plain enough to be seen.
Caroline was inclined to think as he did. Her father's high spirits and his obvious pleasure in having her back had made everything just perfect, and the way that he had taken Maurice into it all gave her the idea that he was happier in her new happiness than if he had kept her to himself. Such an attitude relieved her of the uneasy balancing of the claims of husband and father. If his fatherhood could take them both in and sun itself in their happiness, so that the thought of them would always be present with him, there would be much to balance the loss of her companionship to him. He might indeed have almost as much of it as before, since she would always be at Abington when he was there; and to enjoy it with that of Maurice added, so that what had knitted the two of them together would now knit the three, would be a gain all round. It would even heighten her appreciation of her own married happiness, for it would bring Maurice nearer to her in the one big thing in her life that would otherwise tend, however slightly and on the surface, to divide their aims.
She was very happy when she fell asleep, and thought of her dear father lying under her roof, still as near to her as he had ever been. But when she awoke in the night, after realising with some pleasurable emotion that he was there, and not going to sleep again immediately, the doubts began to creep in.
Might not these delightfully high spirits, which she had attributed to his joy in being with her again, and his pleasure in the thought of Beatrix's child coming—might they not have sprung from another source altogether? Ella was coming over to lunch that day, and they were to lunch with her on Sunday. If she was becoming, or had already become, the beloved object, that exhilaration which had made him seem as young as either of them throughout the evening past would be sufficiently accounted for. She knew from her own experience, and from memories of Beatrix, how the joy of loving and being loved effervesces in sparkling merriment, and sheds itself over those who are loved already. It saddened her a little to think that her father's whole-hearted acceptance of Maurice, which had so charmed her that evening, might after all only mean that she herself was no longer of paramount importance to him. His pleasure in their society would remain, but it would not call forth of itself that demonstration of happiness. It would not be they who had caused the years to fall off him.
She could come to no conclusion, except that if he were in the early stage of discovery that he might still love and be loved, it would affect him to just that insurgence of youthful spirit that he had shown throughout the evening.
He was less hilarious in manner the next morning, but still cheerfully content at being where he was. All three of them went down to the Abbey and looked for early flowers in the rock-garden. Then Mauricewent off to his work, and he and Caroline went to see the Prescotts, and after that he wrote a long letter to Beatrix while she busied herself with preparations for luncheon.
Ella came, and there was a revival of the high spirits; but all of them shared in it. There was nothing that there had not been scores of times before, when she had been with them and they had all made merry together. Nothing to indicate either in him or in her that the affectionate terms they had always been on now hid something deeper. The affection on either side expressed itself plainly enough, and to an outsider would certainly have seemed to indicate an unusual attraction; but it was what they had gradually come to. She had been given the affection of the family, his no less than theirs, and returned it.
Caroline wrote a long letter to Barbara, when he had gone back to London. "Really, darling, I think you are wrong. She does love him, just as all of us do, and he is awfully sweet to her, as he is to us. It has always been the same, and we have been glad of it. If you had not put it into my head that there might be something more, I should only have felt pleased that she had been able to console him for us all being away. Perhaps I haven't beenquitecertain, but I do think that if it had been as you think I should have known it. For one thing I think he would have wanted to be alone with her sometimes, and perhaps she with him, if it wereshewho wanted it, as you seemed to think. But neither of them ever showed any wish at all to beby themselves, even for a minute or two. It was all of us being happy and merry together, as it has always been. And what makes me feel more than anything that it can't be is that darling Dad seems older at the same time that he seems younger. He has been simply adorable to Maurice and me, and Maurice loves him almost as much as I do. And he is in a heaven of delight about precious B, and is going to rush off to her this afternoon the moment he can get away from the Bank. I can't help thinking that if he had it in his mind to begin all over again, for himself, with somebody so much younger, he wouldn't bequiteso pleased at the idea of being a grandfather.
"And he was awfully sweet about you too, darling. He made me tell himeverythingabout you, and kept on asking questions about you. He does love you awfully, and it will be splendid when you come home, and can look after him, and make him happy, as B and I have tried to do."
Barbara's fears were not allayed by this letter. "Hehasn't said he wants me home," she remarked to herself. "If he had, she'd have said so. I should only be in the way."
Caroline went up to London for a day's shopping that week. She lunched with Lady Grafton, and her father came to meet her, but had to leave immediately afterwards.
"The dear man!" said Lady Grafton. "I've never seen him so pleased with himself. It has given him anew lease of life. If it weren't for his hair you might take him to be about thirty."
They had been talking about Beatrix, and Caroline thought she referred to that. "He'll love being a grandfather," she said. "He'll be like he was to us when we were children, with B's baby."
"Let's hope he'll have babies of his own," said Lady Grafton uncompromisingly. "Most men wouldn't care about it at his age; but he will. He'll dote on them."
Caroline was taken back. Those possibilities had been absent from her mind, though Ella's name had been mentioned more than once. "Whatdoyou mean?" she asked.
"Oh, my dear, you can't be as blind as all that. When did you ever see a man in the state he's in unless he was in love, and things were going well with him?"
Caroline was silent.
"Haven'tyou seen anything?" Lady Grafton asked.
"You mean with Ella?"
"That shows you have. You ought not to be jealous and selfish about it, you know. He hasn't been to you. He behaved extraordinarily well overyourmarriage."
"I know he did," said Caroline quickly. She wanted no enlightenment of her aunt's opinions upon her marriage. "I shouldn't be jealous or selfish if he wanted that to make him happy. But I don't think he does."
"It's whatwouldmake him happy, isn't it? She'sa very charming creature, and she's devoted to him. She'd give him all the sort of young brightness that he's had from you, and a lot more besides. I don't say youareselfish. You never have been. But he isn't everything to you any longer, and you can't be everything to him, though I know you'll be everything you can. You ought to be glad that there's somebody who can step in and fill your place."
"Dear Aunt Mary, I think I should be, if I thought it was likely to happen. But you wouldn't expect me not to feel just a little sad that we shouldn't be everything to him any longer, as you say."
This was what Lady Grafton wanted. She did not like Caroline's marriage, and if her affection for her niece prevented her saying so, she was yet in the state of finding relief by being a little hard on her.
"That's only jealousy," she said. "And at bottom it's the jealousy of the young towards those they look upon as elderly. The fact is that George ought to have married again while he was still a young man. Almost any woman would have been glad enough to have him, and with the right sort of woman he'd have been a husband in a thousand. He was, as long as it lasted. He didn't marry again because he devoted himself to all of you instead, and as long asthatlasted he had all he wanted, though not as much as he might have had. Now he's lost it. B hardly thinks of him at all, except when she's with him, and of course he's nothing to you beside your husband. I don't blame you for that. It's natural enough, especially whenyou're first married. But he loses it all the same."
"I don't believe he feels that he's lost it. Maurice is almost as devoted to him as I am."
Lady Grafton refrained from saying: "So he ought to be," and said instead: "I'm glad to hear that," but in a tone that made Caroline regret that she had brought his name in. Of course Aunt Mary was incapable of understanding what she and Maurice together might be to her father. "I do love him," she said, "as much as ever; even more, I think, because he's been so good to me. I don't believe anybody in the world loves their father more than I do. It doesn't make me love him less because I love my husband. He knows that."
"Oh, my dear, we're not talking about all that. You've given him the love of a daughter; so has B, though she hasn't been as careful about it as you have. It was enough for him as long as you were all with him. Now you can no longer be with him it isn't good enough for him, though no doubt it will always count for a good deal. He wants the love and attention in his home, and he has a right to it if he can get it. What you want to do is to keep him tied down to his position as a father, and a grandfather. You can't see that other people may look upon him in quite a different light. He's an unusually attractive man, and extraordinarily well preserved.You'veall had something to do with keeping him young, and I've always said so. It isn't every woman, or even every girl, who falls in love with callow youth."
Caroline had something of her father's equability under attack. "I suppose that's a hit at me," she said with a smile. "I shouldn't be surprised, you know, at anybody falling in love with Dad. I know what a darling he is. But I'm not going to take blame to myself for thinking of him more as a father, or even as a grandfather. Do you think Ella loves him in that way? I know shedoeslove him. You've seen her, haven't you, since I've been away?"
"Yes, I've seen her. What I think is that they're both of them absolutely ready for it. But theymightbe held back, and a great chance of happiness for both of them lost, by doubts of howyouwould take it. Now I shan't say any more. You'd better think it over."
Dick went off on a cruise, and Beatrix came to stay at Abington. She came for a few days to Caroline, and then moved down to the Abbey to be with her father when he came home at the end of the week.
Caroline thought her more lovely than ever. She was radiantly happy at the thought of her child coming, but rather quieter than she had been wont to be, though at times she showed all her exuberant high spirits.
She and Maurice got on very well together, but Caroline knew, and he also probably knew, that she did not take much interest in him. She was bright and friendly with him when he was there, but when he wasn't she seldom mentioned him. But she clung to Caroline. Shehadto come to her, she told her. Even if Dick hadn't been obliged to go off, she would have left him and come. Or perhaps she would have asked Caroline to come to her. Here she laughed. "I'm more in love with him than ever," she said, "and I can't bear to be parted from him. But I want you too, darling, awfully. I do miss you, and I wish we lived nearer to each other."
So she would have flown to her mother at this time. Caroline felt very tenderly towards her. She was sucha child, in spite of her approaching motherhood. Maurice was touched, too, by her dependence upon Caroline. Caroline told her some of the things he had said about her, and she said: "He's an awful dear, Cara," and then went on to talk about Dick.
They talked a great deal also of their father. Beatrix was inclined to Lady Grafton's views, which had been imparted to her as well as to Caroline. "The idea was rather a shock at first," she said. "But when I came to think it over I thought it would be rather hard lines on the old darling not to be pleased about it, if it happens. He's not sofrightfullymuch older than Dick. If Dick had been married at eighteen, as one of his shipmates was, we were reckoning it out that he might have a daughter of fourteen now, and she'd only be two years younger than Bunting."
Caroline laughed. "I don't quite see what that has to do with it," she said.
"Oh, I do. What I mean is that because he's our dear old Daddy, we don't think of him as somebody who ought to be falling in love at his time of life. But I don't see why he shouldn't. And he's a million times better-looking than heaps of young men. If he were on the stage lots of silly girls would be in love with him."
Caroline laughed again. "I've got over all that feeling, if I ever had it," she said. "And Ella has been married before. She has been like a girl with us, but she's older in a great many ways. I suppose it would be suitable enough."
"Oh, I think so. And it would be more fun for the old darling to marry somebody he was in love with, than just to marry again—somebody like the Dragon, perhaps—just becausewehave got married and he feels rather lonely. Aunt Mary says that it isn't fair to expect him just to sit down by himself and think of us and our babies. He has as much life in him as anybody else, and he has given us the best part of it. Now we've left him he ought to have a chance on his own account. I don't look at it quite like that, but—"
"I'm surehedoesn't," Caroline interrupted her. "He has been the dearest father to us that anybody could have had, but we have made him happy, too. It isn't as if he had sacrificed himself."
"That's what I told her, and she said the sacrifice would begin now, if we didn't do all we could to help this on. WhatdoesElla think about it, Cara? You ought to have found out by this time. I'm not sure I shan't ask her when I see her."
"You won't want to when you do see her. She is just the same—towards him and towards us. I think she always will be. That's why I sometimes think that it would be rather nice if it did happen—nice for us, I mean, as well as for Dad."
"That's what I have come to think, too, with Aunt Mary to assist me. What she says is that if there were a question of his marrying somebody of what would be called a suitable age we should probably be glad of it, as we shouldn't have to bother ourselves about Dadwhen we simply wanted to be selfish with our own homes and husbands."
"Yes, that's the sort of thing that Aunt Marywouldsay."
"But what we really object to is his having the sort of happiness we have got for ourselves. Because he wouldn't get any of it fromus."
"There is generally a spice of truth in Aunt Mary's sharp speeches, which is worth looking out for. You haven't told me what Dick says about it."
"Oh, Dick takes the man's point of view, of course. Man remains a lovable creature till he's about seventy, or eighty or ninety. A woman has to leave off expecting to be loved when she's about thirty. He says Dad is as young as anybody, and he can't see what all the fuss is about."
"I don't know that there is any fuss. Except with poor darling Barbara. She hates it."
"Poor lamb! Of course she was looking forward to having her innings, with both of us married."
"She has never liked Ella as much as we have."
"I haven't noticed much difference. Of course she's jealous of her now. But that would calm down. Ishouldlike Dad to have some more children. He'd be awfully sweet to them. Fancy! They'd be younger than mine."
Beatrix then went on to talk about her baby that was coming.
Barbara wrote to Bunting. He was to tell her what he thought. She should not object, she added, to hearJimmy's view on the subject. Bunting was to tell Jimmy that she had thought over all he had said to her, and beyond a slight interest in a man who gave tickets for umbrellas at the Luxembourg Gallery, which she had subdued, she had behaved exactly as he would have wished since she had been back in Paris.
Young George imparted this piece of information first, as he and Jimmy took a Sunday afternoon walk together. "She did have you on," he said. "You have to keep your eyes skinned when Barbara begins to pull your leg."
"I can't say I care for that sort of thing much myself," said Jimmy. "Still, you must take people as you find them. If Barbara finds it amusing to play the fool in that way, I don't much mind. She is growing up into a very nice sort of girl and one can forgive her a few antics. I say, George, I shall have Feltham some day, and be fairly well off, I suppose. I don't suppose your Governor would object, would he, if anything were to come of it between Barbara and me?"
"Anything were to come of what?" asked Bunting.
"Oh, well, I should have thought you could have seen that Barbara is a good deal more to me than other girls. Of course I chaff her, and treat her in some ways as a kid, but—"
"I should have thought that was how she treated you."
"Well, it's our way of treating each other. I don'tsuppose she thinks of me as a kid any more than I do of her. I don't go as far as to say that she's gone on me, or anything of that sort. She's too young at present to be gone on anybody, however much she may lark and rot about it. And I haven't done anything to make her yet. I'm only asking you,supposingit took me that way, and I was serious about it, I might be the sort of fellow your Governor wouldn't mind Barbara marrying?"
"I should think he'd be half off his head with delight," said Young George. "I say, Jimmy, there's something I want to consult you about. Barbara has written to me about it, and she says I can."
"I shall be pleased to give you my advice, George. Her, too, if she wants it. How did she—er—put it—that she wanted it."
"Oh, she said: 'I don't mind your telling that little ass, Jimmy, and see what he thinks,' or something of that sort. She didn't mean anything by it."
"Oh, no. I don't mind. It's the way we treat each other. Well, what's the trouble, old man?"
Young George told him.
"Ah," said Jimmy sapiently. "I've been wondering how long it would be before you tumbled to that. It's the talk of the county."
"Do you mean that, or is it only swank because you always see everything—generally before it happens?"
"My dear chap, I can only tell you your Governor went out for a walk with her the moment after Carolinehad gone away, and fixed it up then. If you don't believe me, ask him."
"Oh, that's rot. Caroline was married over two months ago. If he had fixed it up then we should have known about it by this time."
"They agreed to keep it to themselves for a bit. You'll hear soon enough."
"Did my Governor tell you that, or Ella Carruthers?"
"There's no need to play the ass, George. Everybody knows it's settled. Vera mentioned it in the last letter she wrote to me. Mrs. Carruthers has gone up to London, to be near your Governor. He's working rather hard at present, and can't be at Abington as much as he was."
Young George knew that his father was rather tied to the Bank, as two of his partners were away. Jimmy's knowledge of this fact impressed him. "Is she keen on him?" he asked.
"Thinks about nobody else."
"How can you possibly know that? I wish you'd chuck pretending to be God Almighty, and just be little Jimmy Beckley. Barbara wants to know what we think, and what's really happening."
"Well, she's come to the right quarter then. I haven't said anything before, because I didn't know you'd tumbled to it. But I do know more about it than most. There's a cousin of ours who is dead keen on her, and she won't look at him."
"Who is he?"
"He's Sir John Ambleside—on my mother's side of the family. He's in the Scots Guards, and has just come back from India, where he's been A.D.C. to some Governor fellow. He hasn't got much money, so of course all our lot are rather keen on it, as she's supposed to have a good deal. But, as I say, she won't look at him, because of your Governor."
"Is he young?"
"About thirty. Good-looking chap too. It'd be a good match for both of them. There'd be his title against her money. But there it is. He hasn't got a chance. I'm not sorry for it myself, as I've an idea of nobbling him for Vera. She's getting on—twenty-two next birthday, and it's time she was settled. I'm going to get my people to ask him down at Easter, when I shall be at home and can look after things. I hope it will all be settled with your Governor by that time."
"I don't think Barbara knows it has gone as far as that," said Young George reflectively. "She only says she thinks it may happen, though Caroline doesn't. She won't be pleased when I tell her what you've told me."
"Why not?"
"Oh, well, I suppose she wouldn't be. Now Caroline and B are married she wants to be Number One with the Governor."
"Poor little girl!" said Jimmy tenderly. "I call that rather touching, you know, George. We ought to try and make it up to her, if it does happen—not lether feel herself out of it. I'm sure I'll do all I can to show her that she's still thought a great deal of."
"I'm sure you will," said Young George. "But you won't find she'll want much of you if she can have the Governor."
"That sort of feeling changes when girls grow up," said Jimmy. "Their Governors don't stand much of a chance when the right chap comes along. I will say for your Governor, though, that he knows how to make himself pleasant to younger people, men as well as girls. There's nobody of his age I like better to have a yarn with. I'm not a bit surprised at a woman like Mrs. Carruthers falling in love with him."
"You think it would be a good thing, then?"
"A good thing? Of course it would be a good thing. Don't you think so yourself?"
"Oh, I don't know. I like her all right. Rather rum to have her as a sort of mother, though."
"Nobody thinks anything of that now-a-days. She'd be more like a sort of sister. I must sayIshouldn't mind having her about the place, if it was me. She's a very fine woman. I spotted her three seasons ago, when she first began to hunt again after Carruthers died. If I hadn't felt myself a bit tied up with Kate Pemberton then, I think I might have tried to make myself pleasant to her. Well, I always have made myself pleasant to her. I think she likes me all right. If she marries your Governor we shall be pretty near neighbours."
"Well, I hopeyouwon't try to cut him out, if hewants to marry her. I don't quite know what to think about it. I shall tell Barbara that it would be a good thing."
"Yes, I should, if I were you. And you can tell her that I'm all in favour of it, as she has asked what I think."
"Thanks, I will," said Young George. "That ought to settle her mind, if anything can. I say, I haven't told you. B's going to have a baby."
"By Jove!" said Jimmy. "It seems no time since B was almost a kid. Makes you feel you're getting on, that sort of thing, eh? Poor little girl! I suppose she's pleased enough about it though, isn't she? They generally are."
"Oh, yes, she's pleased enough."
"Made up her mind it's going to be a boy, of course."
"Well, she does want it to be a boy. How did you know that?"
"They always want a boy—so that he shall be like hubby, I suppose. B had it pretty bad, you know. Nobody could get a word out of her when she was in love with Dick. That was a good business all round, George. You and I can congratulate ourselves on that."
"Why you and I?"
"Well, you asked my advice about it, didn't you? I told you what I thought. I suppose we had something to do with bringing it off. I wish we'd looked after Caroline a bit more. I don't like to think of agirl like that married to a chap like Bradby. I take your word for it that he's a good chap in himself, but Caroline is wasted on him all the same. She might have married anybody."
"She didn't want to marry anybody. She wanted to marry him, and it has turned out a great success. You'll say so yourself when you see them together."
"Ah, that's all very well at present. It hasn't had time to wear off yet. It's done now and can't be helped; but you see if she doesn't wish she'd not done it in a few years' time. There'll be B in her jolly country house, with all she can want; and Barbara, perhaps—well, I know a pretty decent country house that she can have by and bye, if she wants to. And Caroline—well, really, you know, it makes you feel rather sick. Poor girl! However, I don't altogether blame her for chucking herself away, if she was in love. I'd do it myself. But I dare say I should live to be sorry for it, if I married beneath me."