CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Brigit went for a long walk that afternoon, as was her wont when she wished to think. As she started from the house she met Carron. "Look here, Brigit," he said roughly, "you slept with your mother last night. Was it because you were afraid I might come back?"
She eyed him with great coolness from under the shadow of her felt hat. "No, I was afraid, when I left—my little brother—that you might have come back." And she took her walking-stick from its place.
"I—I beg your pardon," he returned sullenly, looking at her as she stood in the faint autumn sunshine, her well-cut coat and skirt somehow failing to take from her her curious Indian air. "I was a beast."
"You always are, Gerald. Once when I was a child a spider bit me—or do spiders sting? Well, it made me a bit sick at first, and then I—forgot it. Good-bye."
The man's nerves were evidently in a bad state, for at her insult his face broke out into a cold perspiration and went very white. "Oh—I am a spider, am I? All right, I am glad I kissed you. Glad I held you close in my arms. You can't undo that, whatever you may say."
She stood quietly swinging her stick, a smile just touching her disdainful mouth. She was purposely being maddening, and she knew to the uttermost the value, as a means of torture to the trembling man before her, of the slight lift of her upper lip as she looked at him.
"Quite finished?" she asked, as he paused. "Then perhaps you'll let me go? Good-bye."
He watched her out of sight, and then wiping his face carefully with his handkerchief, returned to the house.
Crossing the park by a footpath that was now half-buried in fallen leaves, she came out on the high road, and turning to the left, took a steep path leading to the downs.
She walked with unusual rapidity for a woman, climbing the path without relaxing her gait or losing her breath. The sharp, damp air brought to her face colour that Carron had been unable to call up. He was, poor wretch, so utterly secondary to her, that he was as little important as the long-forgotten spider. It was Joyselle who occupied her thoughts, whom her mental eyes saw, as she walked steadily seawards, as plainly as if he had been with her.
The next morning would begin a respite for her, in one sense, for he was going away. His old mother was ill in Falaise, and he was going to see her. "Then," he had added, "I must visit a friend in Paris. I shall not be back before the last of November."
This information he had volunteered to her immediately after lunch, having quite forgotten his resentment at her lack of response to his offers of advice. His quick changes of humour were very puzzling, and continually made her doubt whether she or anyone else knew him at all, though she had too much discrimination to doubt the sincerity of any one of his moods.
She had left him on the point of going to his room to play for Tommy, and knew that her brother would probably unfold to him during the afternoon his plan of becoming a violinist.
If the child had talent, Joyselle would, she believed, do his utmost to help him, and this was another reason why she could not make up her mind how to manage her own affairs.
Even if she wished to break her engagement and never see Joyselle again, had she the right thus to take from her brother the chance of great happiness and protection that seemed to have come to him?
"Joyselle would never speak to me again if I threw Théo over," she told herself. "First, he would scold me violently, and then he'd lop us all off, trunk and branch. And—he might be the making of Tommy. Théo is so gentle and good, and he so splendid—I could have Tommy a lot with—us——"
On the other hand, however, what if she went from bad to worse regarding Joyselle? Would she be able to bear it?
Her thoughts turning the matter relentlessly over and over, as a squirrel does his wheel, she came home, getting there just at tea-time.
Lady Kingsmead, very much bored with her guests, had her useful headache, and the girl had to hurry into dry clothes, for the rain had come on, and play hostess.
"Tea, M. Joyselle?"
He made a wry and very ludicrous face. "Merci, Lady Brigit!"
"French people always loathe tea, my dear," laughed the Duchess; "they take it when they have colds, as we take quinine."
Miss Letchworth, who had been three times to Paris for a week at a time, looked up from her embroidery. "Oh, Duchess! People of our class often drink it," she protested, the only tea she had ever consumed in Paris being that of her hotel or of Columbins, "don't they, mossoo?"
Joyselle's eyes drew down at the corners and he gave his big moustache a martial, upward twist. "Ask others, mademoiselle," he retorted wickedly. "I am not of your class!"
It was brutal, and there was a short silence. Brigit was annoyed. Last night she had hoped for one of his outbursts, but now that it had come she was ashamed for him. And she shivered as she realised that this shame was a serious sign.
"Horrid speech," she remarked, looking into the teapot she had forgotten to fill with water, "isn't it, Théo?"
But Théo only laughed and shrugged his shoulders. His father was his father, and except in little matters, such as satin and too flamboyant ties, not to be even mentally criticised.
"But it is true, my dear," continued Joyselle, the mischief suddenly gone from his face, a shrewd look of inquiry taking its place. "You are going to marry into a peasant family, you know." Another change of mood! He was severe now and disapproving.
She held up her head. "No one could call Théo a peasant, could they, Duchess?"
Joyselle understood, and with bewildering rapidity again changed. "Bravo!" he cried, laughing heartily. "You are marrying the son, you mean, not the father. C'est vrai, c'est vrai!"
His utter unconsciousness was a great blessing, no doubt, but at that moment it nearly maddened her. Was he blind?
Apparently he was, as he drank some mineral water and talked to the Duchess.
The arrival of Lady Brinsley's poor dear Mr. Smith, the vicar, was the next mild event of the day, and as his head too was filled with coals and blankets, the story of the abominable coal-dealer had again to be listened to and lamented over.
"The very worst coals I ever saw in my life, positively, are they not, Lady Brinsley?"
"Eh, yes, Mr. Smith, quite too shocking. Nothing but dust, Duchess, positively."
"We are all dust," returned the Duchess, who was whispering to Joyselle about the Grand Duchess Anastasia-Katherine, dans le temps. "Oh, no, we are all worms, aren't we?"
"Positively, I never saw such very inferior coals," went on the Vicar, wondering what on earth she was talking about.
Brigit looked at him as he babbled on. He was a very thin man, who always reminded her of a plucked bird. Soon he would ask her why he had not had the pleasure of seeing her in church for so long. He would hope that she had not had a cold.
He did both these things, poor man, for it was his rôle in life always to say and do the perniciously obvious.
It was a very trying hour, but at last, under the dutiful pretext of going to look after her mother, Brigit escaped and flew to Tommy's room.
It was a strange apartment for a little boy, for it had been assigned to him once when he was ill, as being sunny, and beyond his brass bedstead and small boy hoards, contained nothing whatever that looked as if it belonged to one of few years.
For it was hung in faded plum-coloured satin, the eighteenth-century furniture was quaint and beautiful, and the narrow oval mirrors, set in tarnished gilded frames like a frieze about its walls, presented to Brigit's eye as she opened the door an infinite and bewildering number of Tommies, bending studiously over a large sheet of writing-paper, that he held on a book on his knees.
"Hello, Tommy, what are you up to?"
The boy looked up, his face full of ecstasy. "I say, Bick, he will! He will help me learn to be a violinist! He's going to find a good teacher for me, and then, when I have got over the first grind, you know, he's going—oh, Bicky, darling—he's going to teach me himself, at the same time. Isn't he an angel!"
She sat down. "Yes, Tommy. But what on earth are you writing?"
"Well, you see, he—he says I must be educated. I had to promise him to go in for Latin and all that rot. It's—a bore, but he says a musician must be educated——"
She started. And he himself, was he educated? Did he know the ordinary things known, colloquially speaking, by everybody? She did not know. It had never occurred to her before.
"Yes, dear, but—what is that paper?"
Tommy blushed.
"Well, he's so keen on it, you know, I thought I'd advertise for a—a tutor."
"Advertise for a tutor!"
"Yes. There is no good in wasting time, is there? And she would potter about asking people their advice, etc., so I—I have just drawn up this. You won't tell?"
She shook her head with much gravity and then read what he had written:
"Wanted, by the Earl of Kingsmead, a tutor. Oxford man preferred. Must be fond of sport, particularly ratting and cricket."
"Do you think it's all right?" he asked, as he read it.
"Y—yes—only there isn't any 'k' in 'particularly.' But I think we'd better—ask someone, little brother. I don't imagine that children usually advertise for their own tutors."
"But there isn't any 'usually' about me, Bick. And certainly mother isn't 'usual,' nor you. And if she got a man I'd be sure to loathe him. Think of that chap Baker that she thought such a lot of. Why, he read poetry!"
"Poetry isn't any worse than music, is it?"
Tommy's mouth, as he smiled, was its most fawn-like. "Music! Rather different, my dear Brigit. Well—can you lend me some money for my ad?"
She was silent for a moment, and then answered in a kind of desperate impatience, "Oh, dear! Suppose you go and ask him what to do."