CHAPTER XII
With the new year the damp, wet weather set in again, and it was generally conceded that it was much better that the children should be kept in the country.
"That is such a little poky house in town," Agnes Brenton declared.
Nevertheless, Camilla clung to the poky little house, although Haverford urged her all the time to fix a definite date for their marriage.
"Why should we wait?" he asked, very reasonably; "we have really no one to consult or consider. I am just longing for you to come into my great empty house and turn it into a home."
Camilla chose to treat the matter flippantly.
"Oh, is that all you want me for? Well, my dear Rupert, if you want a nice, comfortable, domesticated, housekeepery sort of a woman, I know the very person for you. I am ornamental, you know—exceedingly ornamental, but I am not the least bit of good to look after the linen, or to mend your socks, and I couldn't boil an egg to save my life."
Another time he said to her—
"I want to get you away from this house. I want to take you out of all that belonged to old times and sorrows. Have you forgotten that we are to go to Italy? To all the places where you were so happy with your father? Let us be married and start at once."
But Camilla always pleaded for time.
"I tell you why," she said to him once. "I want you—us—to get thoroughly well used to one another. Of course, you have known me a long time—it is nearly two years since we met—but there are such heaps of things we ought to realize before we make our great start together. I have made a little promise to myself," Camilla said weightily, "that I will not marry you till I have taught myself to be a little worthy of you."
"I wish you would not talk such rubbish," the man answered, with a very natural touch of bad temper.
"Now, you see," said Camilla, and she laughed—"you see I have done something to annoy you, and I am sure I don't know what it is. I shall be perpetually making these mistakes if we marry in haste." Then she changed her tone. "Surely, dear Rupert, we should be much wiser to wait another month or two. I—I am not really well enough to go abroad just yet. After Easter it will be delightful. We will do Paris first, and then go on to the south of Italy. Naples is enchanting in May." She gave a quick sigh. "And then I am making up my mind to be separated from the children," she said, "and, as Sammy Broxbourne would put it, 'it takes a little doing!' Oh, by the way, did I tell you that I had quite a charming letter from Sir Samuel, congratulating me on my engagement to you? Poor fellow! he has had an accident at Monte Carlo, and has injured his leg. He tells me he will not be able to walk for another month or so, and cannot get back to England just yet."
"The longer he stays away the better for England," said Haverford; "he is a very objectionable man."
"Oh, I see," answered Camilla, almost impatiently. "Agnes has been prejudicing you."
But Haverford made no reply to this, and the subject was dropped.
This was but a specimen of the conversation which passed between them whenever they met. But, as a matter of fact, they saw very little of one another.
Camilla got into the habit of running away from town to stay with one friend or another; the greater part of her time, however, was spent at Yelverton.
When she said she was not well in these days she stated the actual truth.
Mrs. Brenton was a little anxious about her, and tried to coddle her, and make her take care of herself—a difficult operation. It was strange to see Camilla listless and bored. She could not be roused to take an interest in anything except what concerned the children.
"I know I am deadly dull," she said on one occasion, "but you must put it all down to money. I don't owe a penny in the world, and you can't think how lonely I feel! I am simply rusticating for the want of excitement. When I am in town, and the door-bell rings at breakfast-time, I am perfectly unmoved; the postman's knock doesn't give me a single thrill. I can walk into Véronique's without troubling to invent a harrowing story about delayed remittances or unfortunate speculations. I can buy what I like and pay for it ... consequently I don't want to buy anything. And I was becoming such an excellent diplomatist. That is the polite word, is it not, for one who fights by subtlety and fabricates untruths? Also I am growing mean, Agnes. Do you know, now that I have got a fat banking account, and all the world is bowing down to me, I hesitate before I give away a shilling. I even went in an omnibus the other day."
She laughed as she said this; she would have loved to have explained to Mrs. Brenton that she had sought refuge in this useful conveyance to escape from meeting Haverford whom she had caught sight of in the distance. But she curbed the desire.
"Poor Agnes, she shivers and turns cold when she hears me say those sort of things. She is so afraid I am going to lose everything just as I have got it, and oh dear me, I wish I could lose him! If I had not been in such a hurry, perhaps I should have been able to patch things up, and have struggled on a bit longer; but now I am bound hand and foot. His unparalleled generosity"—there was a sneer in her thoughts—"prevents all chance of escape. If a woman lets a man settle any amount of money on her and her children, she cannot very easily back out and tell him that she is going to keep the money and say 'good-bye' to him."
On this same occasion Mrs. Brenton spoke for the first time on the subject of the Lancing people.
"You have never told me what they said about your engagement."
Camilla yawned a little.
"The old man cursed me, I suppose, but he had the decency to keep the curses off paper. Violet wrote, of course." She laughed languidly. "Violet is always ready to hold a candle to the devil, and Horace sent me a few kind words. Horace is not really a bad sort."
Camilla was silent a moment, and then she said—
"You know Rupert wanted to go down and interview Colonel Lancing, but I stopped that and made him write instead. I am not sure that it would not have been a good thing for him if he had gone; he would have heard some nice home-truths about me, wouldn't he? It would have been a kind of preparation for what is to come."
Agnes Brenton had taught herself already not to encourage this kind of conversation. Like Rupert Haverford, she was very anxious indeed for the marriage to take place, but she did not urge it openly as he did. Where she attacked the subject was on the practical side.
"Why not marry very quietly, and go abroad for two months? You really want rest and a thorough change; it would do you all the good in the world."
"Oh, I am too lazy!" Camilla said. "I hate travelling when I am not well, and, you see, Rupert is still so new. I must get a little more used to him before I go rushing off to the other side of the world with him. And then I must have a trousseau. Besides, we have settled to wait till Easter. Rupert is so busy. He is throwing himself into the rôle of the ready-made father with the greatest zest. You should see all the arrangements he is making for the children. He bought Betty a pony the other day. I wish he would buy Caroline for me. I am so afraid one of these days she will fly away and leave us."
She had fallen into the trick of sitting a great deal in the little room that was called Caroline's sitting-room; her one interest at this moment was in putting together a charming wardrobe for the girl, and no one knew how to buy prettier clothes better than Mrs. Lancing.
That same day, after she had been chatting with Mrs. Brenton, she climbed slowly up the stairs to the children's floor, but she found it empty.
No place is lonely, however, that is dedicated to the use of children, and she walked through the large rooms (that no amount of tidiness would keep tidy) smiling sometimes, and sometimes standing and looking wistfully about her.
As she passed through the night nursery she paused in front of the portrait of Betty's father.
"What is there about Cuthbert Baynhurst that reminds me of Ned?" she said to herself. "The resemblance between them is very marked. Sometimes when Cuthbert is talking I could almost imagine Ned was in the room."
She put the portrait down abruptly, and biting her lip she went through to the sitting-room again.
"How lovely it would be if I could go abroad with Caroline and the children! I wonder if he would let us do that?" This thought brought a frown. The more she realized that Rupert Haverford had the right to dominate her the more she chafed at her position.
In truth, at times it seemed to her as if she had passed merely from one bondage—from one form of dependence to another. This bondage was splendid enough—she was surrounded with every possible thing she wanted or fancied; the magnificence of Haverford's settlement and gifts to her was still the theme for comment and amazement—but, splendid as it all was, it was still a bondage to Camilla. And he had no idea of this.
It gave him such wonderful happiness to share his wealth with this woman.
In the days following immediately on their betrothal he had seemed to walk on air. It was absolutely the first time that the fact of his enormous wealth had given him a sense of enjoyment or satisfaction.
He yearned over Camilla just as if she had been a child. He diverted his interest, the purpose of his life, from all former channels; henceforward it should be planned to run as she would have it run. He had no longer doubt as to her judgment; he imagined that he was beginning to understand her now.
Just because she had shown a desire to be at Yelverton, and to turn away from all the people whom he had regarded as being so injurious to her, he told himself that all those little things (about which he had troubled so sharply) had merely been the outcome of circumstances, and that she was now drifting into her proper, her natural mental condition. It sometimes angered Camilla that he should suppose she was so malleable, but for the most part she regarded his satisfaction as being satisfactory for herself also.
"As long as he is pleased, what does anything else matter?" she said now and then to herself. "He has paid a long price for me, so it would be rank hard luck if he felt he had made a bad bargain."
She stood now a little while at the window of the sitting-room, and then roused herself.
"A walk will do me good," she said; "I will go and meet them." She put on her furs, and went slowly downstairs to the large, cosy hall, stopping on her way out to chat a few minutes with Mr. Brenton, a tall, thin, careworn-looking man, who lived for the most part in the clouds, and was never so happy as when he and his wife were at Yelverton alone.
He was known all over the country as a collector of old and rare books, and also as an enthusiastic rather than a judicious purchaser. There were tons of useless volumes lumbering the upper storeys of the house, and still they continued to come. But dreamer and bookworm as he was, Dick Brenton had a place in his heart for all those who were dear to his wife, and he was very fond of Camilla Lancing. He always said her beauty was so helpful, so illuminating; and he adored her children.
As she passed into the damp and rather dismal grounds, Camilla's thoughts turned as usual to the coming future. The nearer the time approached the more she longed to postpone the marriage.
"Surely I ought to be able to invent something to give me a little more time," she said to herself; and just for an instant it crossed her mind how helpful it would be if the children could have some slight ailment; but she immediately took herself to task for this.
"God forgive me!" she said. And she shivered at the bare thought of what an illness to either of these loved little creatures would mean to her. Still, she craved to keep her freedom. At the same time, she realized that an indefinite engagement was out of the question. The man's very goodness and generosity forced upon her a duty to him.
"The worst is," she said to herself restlessly now, "he has no idea of the truth. Of course, he knows I don't love him in the way he cares for me, but I am sure he thinks I do care for him. I suppose I could never let anybody understand, even myself, how I feel about him ... how strangely I am drawn to him at one moment, and how I almost hate him the next...."
The butler had told her that he thought she would find the children on the road to the village.
And she moved in that direction. Her fretting, troubled mood broke and vanished as Betty's lithe, small figure came running round a corner of the road, and a cry of real joy hailed her.
It was the height of bliss to Betty and Baby to have their mother with them for a walk.
"Caroline's coming. I runned on because I wanted to hide ... and oh, such fun, mummy! we saw the hounds and a lot of the field running and jumping in the distance. They looked so 'cited.'"
Camilla slipped her arm through Caroline's as the girl and Babsy joined her.
"I missed you," she said; "I didn't know you were out." Then a little abruptly she added, "I think I shall have you back to town with me when I go this week. I have had the nurseries done up, and the children have been here so long, really I feel ashamed of trespassing too much on Agnes's hospitality."
Betty clapped her hands. She wanted to see the big, new house that was going to be her future home.
Rupert had told her that she should choose her own furniture, and her own little bed, and that her room should be done up entirely as she liked. But she had to talk about this in mysterious whispers so that Baby should not hear.
"You see I shall have to begin to get my clothes," Camilla said; "I don't want any really, but I must spend money; it is expected of me. Oh, I wish I were you, Caroline! If I had a hundred and fifty a year of my own I'd be the happiest creature in the world."
Caroline looked at her wistfully.
"I wish I could give you all I have," she said.
"Rupert declares," said Camilla, in her irrelevant way, "that I must make some arrangements to relieve you. What do you say to having a French maid for the nursery? Betty ought to begin to speak French now. She picked up the language very quickly when I had Hortense to maid me, but she was picking up other things too; that was why I sent Hortense packing."
"There's a man coming," announced Betty; "he's been tumbling in the mud, and his horse is all lame. Oh, do look, mummy!"
They paused and looked backwards. The picture Betty had described was very accurate.
Evidently the man, who was advancing rather slowly, limping a little as he moved, had come a cropper. He was splashed with mud from head to foot. Betty suddenly gave an exclamation.
"Why, mummy," she said, "it's Sammy!"
Caroline felt Mrs. Lancing start violently, and press closer to her as if unconsciously seeking protection. Instantly, however, she rallied herself.
Betty ran forward, of course, to greet Sir Samuel; and her mother, loosing her hand from Caroline's arm, followed the child.
"No need to ask you where you come from," she said, half gaily. She held out her hand to Broxbourne, but he shook his head, and showed his own mud-stained one by way of explanation.
He was not agreeable to look at. There was a grim, ugly expression on his face—the look of a man who knew how impotent anger was, and yet who could not help being angry.
Camilla was full of sympathy.
"I hope you have not hurt yourself," she said; "but," remembering quickly, "how came you to be hunting? I thought you were an invalid?" Then with a fugitive smile, "Indeed, I supposed you were still abroad."
"Came back three days ago," the man answered rather shortly. "I suppose Brenton will not mind putting this animal up for me? He can't go much further."
"Where are you staying?" asked Camilla.
They all moved on together slowly. He mentioned a house that had been taken for the hunting season by some friends of hers.
At this juncture Caroline and the children walked briskly on ahead.
"It is tea-time, you know," the girl explained. As a matter of fact, she was anxious to get away.
Sir Samuel had a trick of staring at any woman he thought worth looking at in a very embarrassing fashion, and Caroline was certainly pleasing to the eye.
The note of her appearance was simplicity itself beside the costly elegance of Mrs. Lancing, but she was slim, and straight, and fresh, and young, and with such a pair of eyes any woman must have been attractive.
"So you are rusticating," Broxbourne said, as he and Camilla were left to themselves; "not much in your line, is it? But I suppose now that you are going to settle down you have turned over a new leaf entirely. Is the lucky man down here?"
"No, he has gone to build a hospital, or buy up a whole county, as a thanksgiving for our approaching wedding," Camilla laughed. "Don't you think a hospital is a very good idea? I expect he imagines he may want it before I have finished with him."
She spoke as lightly as ever, and laughed with the same ease, but within the warm embrace of her furs she seemed to wither, to shrink a little. Not half an hour before she had been longing, praying almost, for some barrier to stand in the pathway of her marriage. Now she knew with the unerring sense of intuition that what she had dreaded so much just before Christmas, and which of late she had managed to forget almost entirely, was coming upon her—that her future was definitely threatened.
She had been so protected of late, so wrapped about with the tenderest, the most chivalrous care, that she felt this sudden translation into the old atmosphere more keenly than she had ever felt any of her former troubles and anxieties. It was as though she had been stripped of every warm garment, and thrust shivering and helpless into the aching cold of a black frost.
Yet she tried to play her part.
"You wrote me a very nice letter, Sammy," she said.
He laughed.
"Yes, didn't I? Too good by half."
Fate had played Camilla a nasty trick by bringing her face to face with this man just at this particular moment.
When he had been thrown, his first act on picking himself up had been to thrash his horse unmercifully. That had relieved him a little, but the poison of his anger had not worked off completely. He had always promised himself the pleasure of dealing very straightly with Mrs. Lancing. He was not likely to deny himself the satisfaction of doing this when he felt so much in need of a vent for his feelings; when, too, he knew that he had the situation in the hollow of his hand.
"I must say," he said, with that same sneering tone in his voice, "that I was taken all aback when I heard what had happened. Always thought you were a model of fidelity, that your heart was buried in Ned's grave, and that sort of thing, don't you know? But money makes a great difference, and there has never been quite enough money for you, has there, Camilla?"
She shivered. There was a leer on his face as he turned and looked at her. She answered him half lightly, half wearily.
"Oh, I don't know! I think one can have too much of anything, even of money."
At this Sir Samuel laughed loudly.
"Well, I must say you are a clever woman. Yes, by Jove! you are. I used to think in the old days, when Ned was on the scene, that you were a fool and a saint combined. I know a little bit better now."
Camilla's lips quivered. She turned to him. There was an unconscious entreaty in her voice.
"Dear Sammy," she said, "why are you so cross with me?"
But he only answered with another laugh.
"Yes, in the old days," he went on, "you played the part of the prude to perfection. Kept a fellow at arm's length, and pretended all sorts of things."
"Why go back to those old times?" asked Mrs. Lancing, in a very low voice.
"Because I choose to do so; because there is something that has to be settled between us, and you know that! I suppose you think I was taken in by the sweet way you treated me when we met down here in November. But it was the other way about. I took you in, didn't I?"
It was very cold in this damp country road; all the world seemed grey; the trees with their bare, seemingly withered branches stood like spectres against the dull sky.
Camilla's colour had faded. She looked haggard.
"Please speak a little more plainly," she said.
And Broxbourne answered her.
"Not I. There is nothing to be gained by telling the truth to a woman, especially to a woman like you."
She caught her breath sharply, almost as if she had been struck. Her mind, trained to work with almost incredible swiftness, fathomed the significance of these words.
She put out her hand and gripped his arm.
"What has to be said must be said to me, and to me only." Then suddenly she broke down. "Oh, Sammy!" she said, "I know. Don't you believe I know I did you a great wrong? There is nothing to excuse it, except that you don't know what a corner I was in!... What an awful temptation it was! It has all been so easy for you. You have never had to face hard times and black, killing difficulties. You can't be expected to understand what these things mean."
"Why didn't you ask me?" the man said surlily; and she answered in that same broken way—
"I ... I could not. First of all, you had gone away, and then I was afraid...."
She broke off abruptly; he looked at her sharply, and again he laughed.
"You thought I would want payment," he said. "Well, you're right there. I have a good business instinct. I always like to get full value for what I spend, or what is taken from me."
At this juncture they had reached the gates of Yelverton Park, and Sir Samuel caught sight of a gardener. He hailed the man, gave the horse into his charge, and burdened him with all sorts of commands to the head-groom.
"I'll be round at the stables very shortly," he said.
Camilla had walked on, but he overtook her. Her white, drawn face seemed to give him a great deal of satisfaction.
"You don't offer to give me back the money, but I suppose that is what is in your mind," he said.
His half-bantering tone stung her like the lash of a whip; she was silent only because she could not speak.
"Well, my dear, you may as well put that out of your mind once and for all; that little piece of paper which you worked at so carefully is not to be redeemed by money."
He searched in his pockets, found his cigarette case, paused to strike a match on his heel, and began smoking without any pretence of courtesy.
"This is a funny world, and no mistake! I was very fond of you when I came upon you first," he said; "I was prepared to make no end of a fool of myself about you. And you snubbed me up and down dale; wouldn't have anything to do with me. You were quite able to get along without my friendship, thank you. There are some things that stick, you know, Camilla, and the way you shut down on me in those old days is one of those things. I must say you have a rummy notion of morality! I wasn't good enough to come near you, yet you had no hesitation whatever about robbing me when the time came along."
An exclamation like a sob escaped Camilla. He laughed.
"It is an ugly way of putting it," he said; "but it is the only way, and I fancy that with his peculiarly straightforward views, his working man's propensity for calling a spade a spade, Mr. Haverford will regard the matter in the same light."
The woman turned at this half passionately.
"You are not going to tell him! Oh, you cannot. You shall not!"
"It lies with you to decide whether I tell him or not."
He puffed out some smoke on to the damp air, and Camilla watched it wreathe and separate and finally fade into the mist that was gathering about the trees; watched it with eyes dry and hot with misery and shame and fear.
Suddenly Broxbourne turned to her.
"You must break with this man," he said; "I have a prior claim. I don't intend to let you marry him."
She stood still and looked at him with dilated eyes.
"Break my engagement? Impossible.... Impossible!"
Her heart was throbbing in her breast, her lips were white.
"Nothing is impossible," answered the man; "after all, I am not treating you badly. If I did the right thing, I should go straight to Haverford. What do you think he'd say, if he heard my pretty little story? How you begged a cheque out of me for a charity bazaar, and how, by chance having got hold of a blank cheque of mine, you filled it in for a nice large sum, and signed my name, by Gad! as bold as brass! I remember," said Broxbourne, shaking the ash from his cigarette, "I was in a tearing hurry when I answered your letter—it was the very day I left for America, in fact. I just scribbled the small cheque anyhow, and never noticed that as I tore it out of my cheque-book I tore a blank one with it. But you found that out in double quick time, didn't you?..."
Camilla turned to him. The hard, dry look had gone from her eyes; they were dim with tears.
"Sammy!" she said brokenly, "don't rub it in so hard. I know.... I know how horrible this thing is! When you came back last November, I nearly died when I saw you. I prepared myself for everything, and when you were so friendly, when you said nothing, I began to hope, even to believe, you did not know. Why did you not speak then? Don't you see how much worse it is for me now?"
Sir Samuel smiled at her.
"Of course it is," he said, his cigarette between his teeth; "I know that.... I tumbled to your little game with this man the very moment I came back, and I promised myself some fun. It tickled me to death to have you running after me just as if you liked me, pretending to want me, and imagining you were throwing dust in my eyes! I settled then I would wait awhile. Worse for you! Well, do you want me to say 'I am sorry?'"
"I ... I want you to be merciful ... I am in your hands, I know it—but you—you won't be cruel to me, Sammy," said Camilla, in that same moved voice. She caught her breath. "If Rupert Haverford must be told ... I will tell him...." She turned to Broxbourne abruptly. "Do you know why I have promised to marry him? It is for my children's sake. Ned's father suddenly stopped the money he had been giving me, and demanded the children. If I had not done this thing, made them, myself, independent, he would have taken them from me. It is the truth I am telling you, Sammy—the truth. The children are more to me than life...."
Broxbourne answered her coolly; he was unmoved by her broken voice and her stained face.
"I have only been back a day or two, but from what I can gather," he said easily, "I believe you are now a fairly wealthy woman. I must say he has behaved extraordinarily well, but of course that was a little bit more of your cleverness. Anyhow, as you have just told me you have only promised to marry him because of the children, you see the man himself doesn't count. You've got the money, and he can't take that away from you—I don't suppose he would if he could—so all you've got to do is to slide out of things as quickly as you can. I'll give you a month to do it in," Broxbourne said magnanimously.
Camilla brushed her eyes with her pocket-handkerchief; she was utterly unable to answer him, and at that moment they heard the voice of Betty calling to them. The child was evidently running back to join them.
"Go on," said Camilla, hoarsely; "go on ... and meet ... her.... For God's sake, go ... don't let her come ... I ... I will follow...."
"I'll take her along with me to the stables," Broxbourne said, and he limped onwards with a smile, as Camilla turned, and half wildly, half blindly, walked sharply away from the house.