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Rose opened her brown eyes very wide. “The great Ford! I can guess who it is, can’t I?”
“I expect so,” said Charlesbury, smiling.
“The Grierson-Amberly girl? I thought so. Aren’t the Aviolets delighted about it?”
“I think they are. She’s a distant cousin, you know, and it’s very suitable in every way. I know Lady Aviolet has been hoping for something of the kind; I believe they’ve been rather afraid that Ford would never marry.”
“I suppose they thought no one would ever be good enough for him. I’m certain he thought so himself.”
Lord Charlesbury shook his head. “I wish I knew why you’re so hard on my friend Ford. I grant you that he’s been spoilt, and he has some irritating mannerisms, but he’s all right if you take him the right way. And he has brains, too, which ought to appeal to you.”
Rose smiled frankly at the implied compliment to herself.
“I’m not sure, though, that that isn’t the most sickening thing of all, about Ford. He has got brains. Time and again he could have explained what I really meant about Cecil, for instance, to the old people—and he just didn’t. He could have made them understand things—he’s educated, and I know very well I’m not,” said Rose calmly, “but he never helped me out—not once. The night after you left Squires, them and me had a bit of a flare-up. At least, I was frantic. They were as calm as could be, just thinking what a pity it was I should be so common. I was trying to tell them why I wouldn’t let Ces go to school, but they hadn’t the faintest idea of what I was driving at. They couldn’t understand that a thing which had always been a success in a general way might fail in a particular case. When I tried to explain, they just thought it was because I didn’t know anything about public schools, or because I spoilt Ces, and thought him delicate. Talking to them was like trying to describe a colour to people who’ve been born blind. But not Ford. He understood. He could have made the others see what I meant, even if they hadn’t agreed with me. But he didn’t. Ford hates me.”
“Why should he hate you?”
“I think,” said Rose Aviolet slowly, “that it’s because I’m alive, and Ford isn’t. He can’t get away from traditions. I think he tried to, especially when he went out to South Africa to fight, but he just couldn’t.”
Charlesbury looked keenly at her. “Do you know that you’re something of a psychologist, Mrs. Aviolet?”
“I don’t think I know what a psychologist is, exactly. But that’s what I think about Ford. He just doesn’t fit in. He is a tiny bit different, if you come to think of it—he’s clever, and he likes books, and china, and he reads. And doesn’t he say he’s a Socialist? He breaks away from the Aviolet tradition in those sort of ways, doesn’t he? But what I feel is, that he’s holding on to it with the other hand all the time too. He wants to be alive, but he wants to belong to Squires as well.”
“And the two don’t square. I see,” said Charlesbury reflectively.
“Some people could make them square. You could,” she returned crudely. “But it wants somebody stronger than Ford to do it, and I think he knows it. He’s sort of afraid, isn’t he?”
“That’s, as you say, tradition—holding him back all the time. Perhaps you’re right, and he hasn’t the courage of his emotions.”
“That’s just what I meant,” Rose assented admiringly, “only I couldn’t have described it like that. He hasn’t got the courage of his emotions. And I think, myself, that he’s jealous, downright jealous, because he knows that I have.”
“The things that matter, to you, do matter so very much?”
She nodded. “Ford knows that he doesn’t care about anything in the world one quarter as much as I care about Cecil’s little finger. And I think he wants to care—he wants to come alive.”
“Won’t Diana Grierson-Amberly help him to come alive, now?”
Rose looked at him, as though to see if he were really in earnest, and then uttered a derisive laugh.
“He’ll go down among the dead men for ever and ever now,” she asserted sweepingly. “But they’ll have Aviolet babies, and one of them will cut out my Cecil, thank goodness, and carry on the Squires traditions.”
“You don’t want Squires for your boy?”
“Part of me does, perhaps,” she confessed. “When I see how safe and solid it all is, you know, and when I think of what it means to be poor, and always hard up, and more or less in debt. But I know all the time, really, that Ces would never belong. Not altogether. After all, he’s half Smith. And if you don’t belong, well, it’s like Ford. You’re shamming and struggling and captive, all at the same time. And that’s awful.”
“You are very wise,” said Charlesbury slowly.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Indeed, I’m not. But I do want you, very much, to be wiser still. Won’t you, for Cecil’s sake, compromise, and come back to Squires for a little while?”
“And have them badger me about school again?”
“I don’t think they will. Besides, you know,” he smiled at her, “I’m still secretly hoping that Hurst and Mrs. Lambert will make a difference to your views. You see, supposing Cecil went there for a term or two, it would be simply experiment. It need not commit you to sending him to a public school later on. It may, even, prove to the Aviolets that your idea is correct, and Cecil is unsuited to school-life altogether. Hurst would be the test.”
“It sounds to me like the thin end of the wedge,” said Rose bluntly. “But, at least, you do see my point of view, and don’t talk as if I were a fool that just couldn’t face parting with her darling.”
“I know very well that you only want what will be best for the boy in the long run,” said Charlesbury gravely.
“That’s all. And it isn’t only the long run. It’s now, too. He isn’t well and happy like he was there. I never realized the difference that fresh air, and plenty of room, and the best of everything can make to a kid.”
“It does make a difference,” Charlesbury said levelly. “And moral fitness depends a great deal on physical fitness, doesn’t it, so that one wants to keep them up to the mark, from every point of view.”
Rose gazed at him, her honest, startled eyes full of a new apprehension.
“You mean that it mayn’t even be the best thing for his—his character, to take him away from Squires? Oh, I never thought of that.”
Charlesbury let her assimilate it in silence, her strong, capable hand twisting the wedding-ring on her big, straight-cut finger.
At last she lifted her head. “Perhaps you’re right. And, anyway, I don’t know how I can stand him being ill, and not comfortable. Though mind you,” she added with sudden warmth, “my Uncle Alfred that I’m with, he’s as kind as ever he can be, and had a fire lit on purpose for Ces—and he’s on the near side, is Uncle A., so it means something, coming from him. But, of course, his house isn’t run like Squires is, not by long chalks, and there’s no use pretending it is.”
“Very few houses are as comfortable as Squires. And I know Lady Aviolet looks forward to having Cecil there again. She told me so.”
“They think I’m coming back all right?”
“Certainly they do. I don’t think it’s ever entered their minds that you should do anything else.”
Rose laughed in a rather shame-faced manner. “Perhaps that’s as well. No one likes eating humble pie, now, do they? I’d just as soon they didn’t know I thought of not coming back at all—if I do go back, that is.”
“I think you mean ‘When I do go back,’ don’t you?” said Charlesbury with his friendly smile. “Why not let me send off a telegram for you, saying you’ll be back by the three o’clock train to-morrow? I don’t mind betting you’ll find sunshine in the country.”
“Wouldn’t that be good for Ces!” she murmured aloud wistfully. “Well, I suppose I’ll do it. One thing is, they’ll be too busy about Ford to think much about me.”
“Of course they will. A wedding is always an excitement.”
“I shouldn’t think my in-laws could ever get excited about anything, any more than a couple of old cod-fish,” said Mrs. Aviolet nonchalantly. “But it’ll be something to talk about, besides Cecil’s going to school and that everlasting old garden. I must get back now to Cecil,” she added abruptly.
Lord Charlesbury asked for his bill, and paid it, in spite of an ungracefully worded attempt from Rose to make herself responsible for her own share.
He took her to Ovington Street in a hansom, and they sent a telegram, on the way, to Lady Aviolet, to announce Rose’s return.
“Good-bye,” said Rose, at the door of the pawnshop. “It’s early closing to-day. I’m going in by the area. Thank you for the tea.”
“I’m so glad to have seen you. Thank you for giving me one of the pleasantest afternoons that I’ve spent for a long while.”
“I haven’t made you late for your train, have I?” she cried in sudden alarm.
“No, there’s plenty of time. I shall keep this fellow on and go straight to the station. I hope the little chap will be all right to-night, and I shall think of you both in the country to-morrow. Good-bye.”
Rose ran upstairs, astonished at finding herself committed to an immediate return to Squires, and yet surprisingly unperturbed at the prospect.
She found Cecil entertaining Felix Menebees with stories of his life in Ceylon, to which she did not allow herself to pay conscious attention. The little boy was not coughing, but he looked pale and languid, and her heart contracted strangely at his sudden flush of joy when she told him that they would go back to the country next day.
“Oh, Mrs. Aviolet!” said Felix Menebees, and looked at her in dismay through his spectacles.
“It’ll be the best thing to put him right, won’t it?” Rose said. “And we’re really only supposed to be here on a visit, you know. But we shall be back again one of these days, I expect.”
She had only the vaguest of projects in her mind, besides the desire to cheer the disconsolate Felix, but Cecil, with one of the sudden, uncanny intuitions of childhood, put the idea into words for her.
“Mummie’ll come here when I’ve been sent to school, Felix. And perhaps I’ll spend some of my holidays here, and tell you all about my school.”
“You know nothing about it,” cried his mother abruptly. “Come on, lovey, say good-night to Felix and thank him for being so kind to you.”
She hurried him upstairs to bed.
At supper, Uncle Alfred learned that his guests were proposing to leave him on the morrow.
“You are very impetuous, Rose,” he remarked with displeasure. “Why not have warned me of your intentions earlier? The girl, by my instructions, has ordered butcher’s meat for to-morrow, entirely on your child’s account.”
Rose entered whole-heartedly into this practical objection to her scheme.
“If it hasn’t been delivered yet, couldn’t we stop it?”
“I will speak to the girl.”
“It isn’t that we haven’t been happy, as you very well know, Uncle Alfred. But I daresay the country will get rid of Cecil’s cough before it’s got a hold on him, so to speak, and they’re expecting us back at Squires.”
“If you’ve told them you’re coming to-morrow, you must abide by it,” Uncle Alfred declared gloomily. “It’s worse than useless to have extra food ordered in twice over. Are they expecting you?”
“Yes, they are.”
Rose dared not admit to the telegram. The sight of a telegram was not infrequent at Squires, but in Ovington Street, a telegram signified a first cause of considerable magnitude. She knew that Uncle Alfred would have considered that a post-card could sufficiently announce the date and hour of her arrival, and in her heart, Rose agreed with him. The telegram had been Lord Charlesbury’s doing, like so much else.
Cecil had no return of croup, and the next day they left the rooms over the pawnshop.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Aviolet,” said Felix Menebees wistfully. “I hope the country will do Cecil a great deal of good.”
“Good-bye, Felix. Thank you for what you did that night he was ill. I’ll never forget it. I expect you’ll see us here one of these days again.”
Rose heartily shook the pale youth’s hand.
Her farewell to Artie Millar, in whom she had long ceased to be interested, was tepid by comparison. Uncle Alfred addressed his parting speech to his guests from the top of the stairs, where he had received them a fortnight earlier.
“Good-bye to you, Rose, good-bye to you, my little fellow. You are extremely fortunate in having one of the stately homes of England, as the poet calls them, thus thrown open to you. I feel sure,” said Uncle Alfred, with a doubting eye fixed upon his niece, “I feel certain that you appreciate your good fortune to the full. And I am equally sure, my dear niece, if you will allow an old man to speak a word in season, that you will remember from Whom all blessings flow. Take no credit unto yourself for those things which are Cæsar’s. And remember that I am prepared to enter into an arrangement with you, Rose, at any time, should you wish to return here when your boy has gone to school.”
Rose quite understood that this was the nearest approach to a cordial invitation that Uncle Alfred would permit himself, and enough of his blood ran in her own veins for her to take the suggested “arrangement” in the matter-of-course spirit in which he proposed it.
She said, “Thanks very much indeed, Uncle,” in an affectionate way, kissed him resoundingly, and ran downstairs.
Cecil was in high spirits. “Shall I ride the pony again, Mummie, and will Uncle Ford let me carry the rabbits for him when he’s been shooting?”
“I daresay, darling.”
“Will Miss Wade be there?”
“Yes. Are you glad?”
“I’ll be able to tell her all about London,” said Cecil reflectively. “I don’t think she knows much about London, Mummie.”
As the train took them further away from the city, the air lightened, and they presently ran into clear autumn sunshine.
At the end of the journey, the carriage from Squires was awaiting them.
Their return, which Rose looked upon as a milestone, roused no excitement at Squires.
“How are you, my dear?” said Lady Aviolet placidly, and gently bumped Rose’s face with her own. She kissed her grandson with more cordiality, remarked that he was looking pale, and told him that Miss Wade was returning from her holiday the next day.
“And you’ll have to work hard at your lessons, Cecil, to make up for your time away.”
“I went to Madam Tussawds in London,” Cecil announced.
“Mme. Tussaud,” said Lady Aviolet.
“Mummie says Tussawd.”
“Don’t answer back, Cecil, it’s a bad habit. Ring the bell for the hot water, and we’ll have tea.”
The silver kettle and the hot scones, the cut bread-and-butter and the various cakes, seemed oddly elaborate after Ovington Street.
“What a good tea!” said little Cecil.
Neither Ford nor Sir Thomas was present.
“We have a piece of news for you, Rose,” her mother-in-law presently said, when Cecil had been sent away in Dawson’s charge to the nursery.
“I think I know already.”
“Indeed?”
“I met Lord Charlesbury yesterday, and he told me—about Ford, isn’t it?”
“Did you meet Laurence Charlesbury?”
“Yes. I had tea with him.”
To her own disgust, Rose suddenly heard her voice becoming loud and defiant.
“Oh, yes—how nice! Where did you meet?”
“In the Brompton Road, and we went to a place in Bond Street. He told me that Ford is engaged to be married.”
“Yes, my dear, to Diana. Sir Thomas and I are very pleased about it. Let me give you another cup of tea?”
“No, thanks. Do tell me how it all happened.”
Rose, however much she might dislike Ford, and however cheaply she might hold Diana, was quite incapable of being anything but thrilled and excited over every detail concerning an engagement.
“How it happened?” Lady Aviolet repeated with a certain blankness.
“When did he propose to her and where, and has he given her a ring yet?” Rose earnestly inquired.
Lady Aviolet laughed gently. “How very nice of you to be so much interested in them!”
Her voice held the intonation that generally accompanies the words, “How very foolish of you ...” but she looked at Rose with her usual bleakly kind obtuseness of gaze.
“I believe, since you want so much to hear details, that they settled it in the train, last Saturday. Ford had been to see a man on business, and on his way back he met Diana at the Junction. She was travelling home—with her maid, of course—from some visit or other, and they got into the same train.”
“Is she—are they—does she—are they very much in love?” Rose blurted out, intensely curious.
“They’ve known one another all their lives, you know. Ford has always been very devoted to her, and I’m sure she is to him. Diana is such a thoroughly nice girl.”
“Has he been in love with her long?”
“I really couldn’t tell you, my dear. One always felt that if Ford did ask any girl to marry him, it would probably be Diana. But two or three men have very much wanted to marry her, and I’ve sometimes been afraid that Ford might delay too long.”
“Have they really?”
Rose’s voice held all the astonishment that she invariably experienced at each allusion to the attractions of Miss Grierson-Amberly.
“She could have made a most excellent marriage the year she came out. But her mother, of course, would never have dreamt of persuading her in any way, though I believe she was disappointed at the time. But they’re delighted about this, now, and so all is very well.”
“When are they going to be married?”
“Well, that’s hardly settled yet. Diana is coming to stay here for a little while, we hope, next month, and no doubt they’ll arrange it then. I hope it may be some time in the spring or early summer.”
“I do love weddings,” said Rose emphatically.
“Do you, my dear?” Lady Aviolet’s voice, though amiable, displayed not the least interest in Rose’s gushing enthusiasms.
“There will be a good deal of business to be settled before their wedding takes place, quite apart from Diana’s preparations, and her trousseau and things. Of course, in a sense, this alters your little Cecil’s prospects, but I think you can trust Ford to see that his interests are considered in every possible way.”
“I only hope to goodness,” said Rose fervently, “that Ford and Diana will have half a dozen kids of their own.”
A certain quality of taken-abackness in the silence that ensued conveyed to Rose that her aspirations might be open to the accusation of a lack of delicacy.
With unwonted discretion, she did not endeavour to rectify the mistake by volubly explaining it.
She found, to her surprise, that her stay in London had the effect of rendering Squires more bearable to her. She appreciated anew the material comfort of the big, luxurious house, and was happy when she saw Cecil regaining his colour and his appetite.
Ford was very often away, sometimes in London on business connected with his marriage, and sometimes at Diana’s home on the other side of the county.
He received Rose’s congratulations, which were curt, with his habitual equanimity, and added, after thanking her:
“You need not be afraid that Cecil’s interests will be allowed to suffer by this, Rose.”
“I wasn’t.”
“His welfare still remains one of my first responsibilities,” said her brother-in-law suavely.
She made no answer.
A little later on, Diana Grierson-Amberly came to stay at Squires.
She was friendly to Rose, very kind to Cecil, deferentially affectionate to Sir Thomas and Lady Aviolet—but then she had been all of these things before. Equally, her manner towards Ford was almost unaltered.
Her nearest approach to an endearment was “My dear old boy,” and she displayed neither blush nor tremor at the mild, stereotyped jokes about engaged couples in which her future father-in-law occasionally indulged.
To Diana, it was evidently all relegated to the same class as that which she cheerfully and pleasantly hailed as “chaff.”
She seemed amused, if also faintly gratified, by Rose’s schoolgirl excitement.
“What’s your ring? Oh, it’s lovely! What an enormous diamond! Are diamonds your favourite stones?”
“Yes, I think they are. Ford had several down from Hunt’s for me to choose from. He’s given me a beautiful pendant too, but I shan’t wear that till I’m married.”
She uttered the words most matter-of-factly, and Rose remembered her own brief, delirious engagement to Jim, and the glamour of romance that had surrounded every token of their hastily plighted troth.
“But then,” she reflected, “I was much younger than Diana, and I’d never had a proposal before, and apparently she’s had dozens—God knows why, or what any one can see in her. And she’s known Ford all her life, and I’d only known Jim three weeks, and come to that, I’d have done better never to have set eyes on him—except for my Ces.”
But although her habit of facing facts refused to allow Rose the sentimental luxury of a slurred retrospect, she felt very certain that her short-lived and exceedingly ill-starred love-affair had given her such moments of bliss as Diana, in her decorous betrothal, had never known, and never would know. Diana, however, in place of these, had a number of very substantial satisfactions.
She was much absorbed in her trousseau, a great part of which was being made for her at one of the many charitable institutions in which Lady Aviolet was interested, and she received an enormous number of wedding presents, testifying to her own popularity as well as to the good-will of her friends and relations.
There was also, to occupy her, the question of her new home.
“Naturally, we want to live in the country and to stick to these parts,” said Diana.
“I suppose so.” Rose’s acquiescence was dubious.
“I don’t really think it would be a good plan to start at Squires, do you?”
“Rotten.”
“I’m very fond of Cousin Catherine, and all of them, and they’ve been perfectly sweet to me, always, but Mother says, and I must say I agree with her—that those arrangements are always rather a risk.”
“I should think so.”
“I’ve got heaps of ideas for furnishing. You must help me choose the chintzes and things, won’t you?”
“I’d love to,” said Rose, gratified.
She was ready to take an eager interest in their selection, and in fact did so, but the violent blues and purples that she admired accorded ill with the blended art-shades preferred by Diana. They agreed better over the furniture, for Rose had imbibed from Uncle Alfred a genuine respect for what she termed “the antiques line” and Diana shared Ford’s fondness for picking up possible bargains in second-hand shops.
Once or twice Rose accompanied the bride-elect on such expeditions when Ford was not available. She felt herself to have done Diana a service by arguing so violently with the old proprietor of the curiosity-shop they visited that he at last parted with the Empire gilt mirror selected by Diana for a price that was very little above its intrinsic value.
Diana, however, seemed more embarrassed than obliged, and did not again invite Rose to shop with her.
It was finally arranged that the wedding should take place early in June, and Diana lost herself in a maze of letter-writing, consulting of catalogues, and trying-on of clothes.
She paid another visit to Squires three weeks before the date of her wedding, and declared her intention of having a thorough rest.
Rose thought her indeed looking tired and with something less than her usual well-bred security of manner.
“Isn’t all this preliminary fuss rather awful?” she one day abruptly inquired.
“How do you mean, Rose?”
Rose had no aptitude for definitions. “I know I should hate it, that’s all,” she said vaguely. “But I was only engaged a week.”
“But why?” Diana inquired, politely puzzled.
“Oh, it all happened on board ship, and I had a row with the woman I was travelling with, and I didn’t know anybody out there, so Jim just had to fix things up as quickly as he possibly could, and we were married two days after we landed. A woman who’d been on the boat was kind to me, and had me to stay with her till the wedding——”
“But how dreadful for you—and you must have been so very young, too!”
“Seventeen, I was.”
“I’m very glad I wasn’t married at seventeen,” said Diana, with an unaccustomed wistfulness that robbed the words of any offensive intention. “I think one’s so romantic at seventeen, don’t you? I mean, one expects so much.”
“So one ought to, in marriage,” Rose declared stoutly. “I daresay you know that I made rather a hash of things myself, but I do believe one can be most frightfully happy in this world, whatever any one says. It can be more glorious than one’s maddest dreams——”
She stopped short. Diana had attempted her usual rather meaningless little laugh, but had broken down half-way.
“What’s the matter?” said Rose. She put out her hand rather timidly, but Diana did not repulse it—rather did she appear to cling to the big, warm, enveloping grasp.
“Are you frightened?” asked Rose wonderingly.
“I’m tired and—and silly, I daresay. You see, it’s such a tremendous step in one’s life, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” said Rose energetically. “And it lasts for ever, too. At least, unless they die, like mine did, but you can’t marry on the off-chance of that, after all.”
“Oh, don’t!”
“I didn’t mean that I thought you meant that,” Rose explained, with habitual lucidity. “I suppose you wouldn’t be marrying him, unless you felt sure?”
“No,” said Diana faintly.
Rose looked at her. “You know, it’s still not too late, if you don’t feel perfectly certain. I know how awful it would be, after all those good, expensive presents, and all the money that’s been spent on furnishing the house, too—but, if I were you, I’d chuck it all up now, sooner than do it when you don’t really feel like it. I don’t suppose I’d have married Jim, you know, if I’d been a bit older, but I did have a certain amount of run for my money, because I was in love with him—at first. Just enough to show me that if one really cared, and the man did too—it would simply be heaven.”
“That’s what they say in books.”
“Well, I suppose that the people who write the books know,” said Rose simply.
Diana began to dab at her eyes with a handkerchief.
“I don’t know why I’m so silly and unlike myself. Of course, I’ve known him all my life, and we’ve always been fond of one another. It’s only that being married to a man is—is rather frightening, in a way, don’t you think?”
“It wouldn’t be, if you loved him.” Rose was staunch to her creed. “When I was a schoolgirl my mother used to tell me that when one really cared about a man, one cared with one’s body as well as one’s soul. And nothing to be ashamed of, either, she used to say.”
That Diana did not share Mrs. Smith’s opinion was evident. Her fair face and neck crimsoned.
“Oh, please——” she said hurriedly, and burst into tears.
“You poor kid! I’m awfully sorry—I didn’t mean to upset you!”
“It’s all right—I’ll go to my room. I don’t think I can be very well. Do forgive me for being so stupid.”
She hastened to the door, but Rose caught her hand again and said very earnestly:
“Look here, just half a minute. Listen: if you do really feel that you can’t carry on with this Ford business, will you tell me, and I swear I’ll stand all the racket for you—tell him myself, even if it’s only five minutes before he starts for the wedding—and—and——”
Diana wrenched her hand away. “I know you mean to be kind, but you mustn’t talk like that. I’m tired, and silly, and I’ve made you think all sorts of nonsense. Please, please forget it—and don’t let’s ever speak about it again.”
Her voice broke once more, and she hurried upstairs, leaving Rose staring blankly after her.