CHAPTER XIII
The year was speeding into spring. Easter had come and gone.
Down in the country, in the old-fashioned gardens that stretched at the back of Yelverton, the sun was busy bringing out the leaves, and even the blossoms, almost visibly.
The children had found a delightfully warm, sheltered spot, and here they sat with Caroline basking in the sunshine, protected from the chilliness of the spring wind by the tall, sunburnt wall on which spread pear trees and peach trees, the pink flowers and the white flowers mingling together where the long arms of the branches met and touched.
Betty was supposed to be having lessons, but she was not a very diligent pupil; not that any one urged her to learn.
Mrs. Brenton's theory was that children should run wild till they were seven or eight, provided they were properly influenced, and it was really Agnes Brenton who superintended with Caroline the care of the children now.
Mrs. Lancing had gone back to town just before Easter rather hurriedly, and she had not taken the children with her.
Her plans had been changed. Instead of staying in London she went to the south of England on a visit. From there she wrote announcing that she had felt impelled to postpone the marriage.
"I don't quite know what is wrong, but my heart is playing me tricks, and I really want to feel much better before I rush into my new responsibilities.... I have a sort of idea the Devonshire air will do me no end of good."
The children rejoiced openly when they found they were not going away from Yelverton.
Rupert Haverford came frequently down to see them all. His manner with Caroline always amused her. He seemed to regard it as a duty that he should put her through a sort of cross-examination.
"I wish you would understand," she said to him, half impatiently, once, "that I really and truly want to be with the children. What should I do with myself if I went away from them?"
"You might travel. You might study. Your income is not a very large one, but still it would give you the opportunity of coming in contact with a lot of things about which you know nothing now."
Caroline laughed at this.
"Well, that is true. I am woefully ignorant," she said. "It is rather impertinent of me to call myself a governess, but I am studying all the time. Mr. Brenton is educating me. I shall be quite learned in a little while."
"I only feel that it is my duty to put before you certain possibilities," Haverford said.
And Caroline answered—
"I am very much obliged to you, but I prefer the certainty that I have to all the possibilities in the world."
Then there had been a rather brisk passage of arms between them on the subject of Caroline's money.
"I wish you would not pretend things to me," the girl had said, when they had first discussed the matter. "I can't help feeling that this is all your doing, that you consider it your duty to make some provision for me; in fact," Caroline had added defiantly, "I don't believe my mother had anything to leave me." After a little pause she said, "And I assure you I don't care in the least to take money from other people, even from you, except, of course, when I earn it...."
She was astonished to see how cross he looked.
"Evidently," he said, "you have not read those old letters and papers I gave you."
And Caroline was obliged to confess she had not done so.
"I advise you," Haverford had remarked, "to acquaint yourself with your mother's story, then you will see I have invented nothing."
Caroline could be obstinate at times.
"Well," was all she had remarked in answer to this, "there may have been something; but I am convinced, Mr. Haverford, you are giving me more than I ought to have."
To this, a little stiffly, he said—
"If you are not satisfied with what has been arranged, you can instruct a lawyer to go into the matter. I will give you the address of a very good man."
And Caroline had frowned, and then smiled.
"You know perfectly well I am not grumbling at you. The idea is ridiculous!"
"Are you not?" he had queried, with a smile. "Well, it sounded uncommonly like it."
On the whole, however, they were on the best of terms, though they never progressed to intimacy.
April was well advanced when the children's mother arrived unexpectedly at Yelverton.
She had travelled up from Devonshire without pausing for rest in town, and declared that she was perfectly well; but Agnes Brenton was shocked at her appearance—shocked, too, and pained by the change in her manner.
That quiet, apathetic langour was gone; Camilla was all jerks and nerves. She seemed strung up to the highest pitch of excitement. She talked incessantly, and smoked nearly all the time. This was a new habit.
It appeared she had not come to stay at Yelverton. She was due at Lea Abbey.
"I want to leave Dennis here," she said to Mrs. Brenton. "She is seedy, poor soul, and I told her she had better take a holiday. I can manage without her for a day or two."
They strolled out-of-doors to join the children. Caroline was dreaming.
It was so delicious out in the garden, sitting looking at the country that stretched away in the distance, veiled in that tender, velvety bloom which is the first embrace of spring; so delicious to hear the irresistible and varied notes of the thrush from the boughs of the old apple tree, chanting to the buzz of the bees humming in and out of the adjacent currant bushes.
The children were playing about her. Baby was picking flowers; every now and then she would over-balance herself and topple over, and then would sit solemnly contemplating the earth with a resigned expression till Betty came and pulled her up. Her treasures were always brought and laid on Caroline's lap.
The girl closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them it seemed as if a fresh bunch of snowy pear blossom on the wall beside her had been whispered into life. Beyond in the paddock little lambs were bleating.
Betty had made a great discovery that morning. The robin's eggs in the nest hidden so cunningly (just at the entrance into the fruit gardens) had vanished, and in their place some little feathered morsels, with wide-open beaks and glittering eyes, were treasured in the warm, dark depths. Life was full of indescribable delights.
The coming of Camilla was like the falling of a curtain. The time for dreams was ended; the quiet garden seemed to quiver with another kind of life.
She spent the few hours she was at Yelverton with the children. They carried her everywhere—through the rough meadows, over the marshes to the woods that were carpeted with primroses, with here and there a patch of wild violets, and anon a streak of budding bluebells. A great weight seemed to have gathered about Caroline's heart. For the first time she lagged as she walked, and quite forgot to look for plovers' eggs. Once, as they paused to listen to a lark piping out its soul in the clear sky, and then watched it drop to earth, Camilla pinched the arm she held.
"Naughty Caroline," she said; "you are not a bit glad to see me!"
Caroline's eyes filled with tears.
"I am not a bit glad to see you looking as you look now," she answered.
"How do I look?"
"Ill and ... miserable...."
Camilla laughed.
"Ill and miserable, my dear child; do you know what you are saying?... I may be a bit seedy—I don't deny that—but how can I be miserable when I have everything in the world to make me happy?"
"I don't know why you should be. I only know you are," Caroline said, in her quiet way. They had to carry Baby across the dykes; the exertion brought the colour flashing into her mother's cheeks for awhile.
"I shall get you a donkey to ride, Boodles," she said, as they turned homewards, their arms full, and their hats wreathed with the wood flowers. "You are such a lot too heavy to carry. That reminds me, Betty," Camilla added, "you are going to have a dog, a real beauty. Sammy is sending it to you."
"I don't want it, thank you very much," said Betty, in her clear treble. "Rupert's going to gived me a dog. I don't like Sammy." A little pause, then the child said thoughtfully, "I'm glad I'm not a dog, mummy—special Sammy's dog—because I've not gotten to eat my din-din out of his plate. And he can't kick me. I've saw him kick his horse in the stable that day he was throwed. I think he's a horrid man."
Camilla had turned white.
"You only care for the things Rupert gives you," she said, in a strangled voice; then, "Oh dear, how tired I am, and there is a dance-to-night! Why did I walk so far?"
Indeed, she was a long time getting back to the gardens, and when they were reached, she asked that the carriage might be made ready at once to take her over to Lea Abbey.
"When do you want us to go to London?" Caroline asked her as they went indoors together.
"Next week.... I don't know.... I will write. It seems a sin to take the chicks away from here. How well they look!"
A little later, when she was getting into the carriage, Mrs. Lancing drew the girl towards her.
"Don't let them forget me...." Her voice had an odd, dry sound. "Don't let them suppose I am forgetting because they do not see me. Children can forget so easily." She pressed Caroline's hand. "It is funny," she said, in an unsteady way. "I never left them before without yearning to be back the moment they were out of sight; but I leave them with you, almost happily, you funny little cross-patch Caroline."
Caroline looked at her. Once again there were tears in her eyes.
"Come back soon," she said. "Come back and let us make you well. We all want you."
Their hands unclasped, the door was shut, and the carriage rolled away.
At the bend of the drive Mrs. Lancing leaned forward and waved her hand out of the window.
Caroline stood a minute or two and watched the carriage roll out of sight. The air was fragrant with the scent of spring, laden with the whispers of a thousand unseen blossoms.
From where she stood she could see nothing save the lawn and the mass of newly garmented trees. Only a little while before it had been easy to see the entrance gate; now all was blocked out by that fresh shutter of golden-green foliage.
Turning at last, she walked slowly through the hall. Mr. Brenton had discarded his usual corner, and had taken his books out into the sunshine. She could hear the children laughing and singing beyond. Their mother had given each a little parcel as she had gone away. It seemed to Caroline as if she had shirked taking farewell of them.
The girl was glad to be alone for a little while.
Dennis was with the children. Mrs. Brenton had vanished.
Caroline walked to and fro slowly in the afternoon sunshine. She wore no hat, but her head was well protected from any chilly breeze by the splendid thickness of her hair.
A curious longing possessed her in this moment to follow Camilla, and urge her to come back to Yelverton. She could not quite understand the reason for this protracted separation.
"There seems to be something more, something new," she said to herself. By that she meant that there was something more than that lack of sympathy with the man she had promised to marry that was actuating Mrs. Lancing in all her movements now.
"What is the use of my being happy?" Caroline asked herself suddenly, "if I cannot assure happiness to others?—to these two in particular?" And half impatiently she asked herself, "Why is she so obstinate? Why cannot she see that the longer she stands alone the farther she must be away from all that she needs? Surely she ought to trust him. I can't understand why she should doubt or hesitate for an instant."
The children came running up to her to show her their latest possessions, and then she had to greet Dennis, who seemed to be delighted to be where she was.
"It's a real joy to be here, miss," she said to Caroline; "but didn't I tell you what it was going to be when you first came? Just look at them two little angels! They ain't the same children; I declare they ain't."
"I'm sorry to hear you have not been very well, Dennis," Caroline remarked, as she collected the children and their toys and took them towards the house, for, as the sun began to drop, the air was cold.
"Me ill?" said Dennis, in surprise. "Why, there's nothing the matter with me! Who said I was ill?"
"Oh, I had a sort of idea you were not well," said Caroline. "Now, come along, chicks; we'll go upstairs and have a lovely game."
"And Dennis shall tell us a story," said Betty, to whom the last comer was always the most welcome.
Caroline walked behind the others laden with their treasures; and the stairs seemed long, and her limbs were strangely tired this day. There was, too, a curious ache when her heart beat.
The bath-time was over, and two little people were tucked up in bed when Mrs. Brenton beckoned Caroline out of the room.
"I hope you won't mind if we leave you this evening, but there is that concert and entertainment in the village. You said you did not care to go to it, but I think we must go. We always have supported the vicar, and he would never forgive if we did not turn up. Will you change your mind and come?"
Caroline shook her head.
"As a matter of fact, I have a good deal of work to do for Mr. Brenton. I have not translated my last lesson. The children are so pleased to have Dennis that she is going to sit with them."
"You will dine at the same hour," said Mrs. Brenton, and with a smile she passed on.
It was a significant fact she said nothing about Camilla.
Caroline went into her sitting-room, brought out pen and ink and foolscap, dictionaries and Latin grammar; but when she sat down to work, her usual pleasure and eagerness had flown.
She could hear Dennis whispering in the next room and one or the other child putting a pertinent remark in a very unsleepy voice; but she knew them well now. By the time she had changed her dress and had gone downstairs, both little voices would be hushed in sleep.
Camilla's few words to her just as they parted haunted her, but instead of that glow of satisfaction which would surely have come had they been spoken under other circumstances, they brought a renewed touch of heartache.
After a while she put away her books and writing.
"Assuredly," she said to herself, "love goes hand-in-hand with sorrow. When I had no one to love, nothing to care for, nobody to make me anxious, I never had tears in my eyes as I have them now. If only tears would do some good! But how can I help her? what can I do? I have the sort of feeling that I ought to do something, but what—what?"
She was still standing by the window, looking at the beautiful evening sky, when a maid came into the room softly.
"If you please, miss," she said, "would you come downstairs and see Mr. Haverford? He says he would like to speak to you."
Caroline whipped round from the window.
"Mr. Haverford! He was not expected, and both Mr. and Mrs. Brenton are out."
"Yes, miss, I told him so; but he said he wanted to see you. He hasn't got any luggage; I don't think he means to stay. He's come in his motor, miss."
Caroline paused only an instant. Her brows had met with a frown—a sign that she was moved and nervous.
"Please say I will be down directly."
She went towards her bedroom with the intention of changing her dress, and then she checked herself.
Stealing into the children's room, she whispered to Dennis that she was going downstairs. The maid nodded her head; the children were quite quiet, and Dennis herself looked half asleep.
As she went slowly down the broad staircase Caroline saw him. He was standing in front of the fire in the hall warming his hands.
"Both Mr. and Mrs. Brenton are out—a rare occurrence," she said; "but it is a village festival...."
She gave him her hand, and as he took it she coloured very faintly.
"Yes, so I hear. I am rather glad to see you alone." His tone was terse. As Caroline moved forward to the fire he said, "I have come down to ask for news of Camilla. Can you give me any?"
The girl looked at him for an instant.
"She was here to-day," she said.
"Here?... What time?"
"She came in the morning. I understand she had travelled straight through from Devonshire, only changing stations in town."
He caught his breath in a way that was very like a sigh, and sat down, half shutting his eyes.
"Then she wished to avoid me," he said. "Where has she gone?"
When Caroline told him, he just nodded his head and said—
"Yes...." He paused a moment, and then he said, "I am very troubled about her, Caroline." Indeed, his voice sounded very heavy with trouble.
Caroline waited for him to go on.
"She seems to be slipping out of my hands," said Haverford; "try as I will, I cannot satisfy her, or keep pace with her. I assure you these last few weeks I have been like a creature on wires. I have not known from one moment to the next what she wished me to do. Perhaps I am too exacting. I don't know. I only know that I am wretched, that I cannot sleep for thinking about her; thinking, not in a selfish fashion, ... I give you my word it is not that, but troubling about her...." He sat forward, and stared into the fire. "The last time we were together we quarrelled rather badly," he said then.
Still Caroline said nothing.
There was nothing to say. It was a moment in which silence was more helpful than words.
"We quarrelled about Cuthbert," the man said, rising, and standing by the fireplace. "She has been sitting to him for her portrait. That I don't object to; but what I do object to most emphatically—what seems so wrong, so unmanly on his part, so weak, so foolish on hers—is the fact that he has been getting money out of her. I taxed him with it.... He could not deny it. And when I brought the matter to her, and insisted on giving her back the money, she said very bitter things to me."
He drew in his breath sharply; then, as if to himself, he said—
"What is there, who is there, that can help me to give this woman happiness? I hoped I was going to do it, but I have failed, failed right through!"
"How do you know that you have failed?" asked Caroline, speaking for the first time. "She is not an easy person to deal with, yet it is just her very elusiveness which gives her her hold on us. And I know one thing. I can affirm this, that if there is a creature on this earth whom she honestly respects and values, you are that person."
"Respect!" said Haverford. The fire-glow lit up his face, and she saw that he was smiling faintly. He was silent for a time, and then he said—
"I don't regard the question of Cuthbert as a serious one, notwithstanding that she has taken this peculiar attitude, ranging herself with him against me, and declaring my resolution to let him work up to fortune and fame as a cruel, an almost unnatural, thing; there are other points far more serious, unfortunately, which make the situation so difficult just now. I have repeatedly asked her not to go to Lea Abbey, yet, you see, she has gone there. And I have felt myself compelled to absolutely forbid her to have any sort of intercourse with Sir Samuel Broxbourne. To-day I learned quite by chance that he has been staying in Devonshire the greater part of the time she has been there. The man is her shadow. Wherever she goes he appears, and when we meet there is a look about him as though he would pick a quarrel with me."
Then Haverford pulled himself up suddenly.
"I really beg your pardon," he said. "I am pouring out my troubles just like an old woman. How pleasant it is here," he added abruptly, "so quiet, and cosy, and home-like." He paused again, then he asked hurriedly. "How was she looking?"
"Ill," Caroline answered, and added, "very ill!"
Then her eyes flashed. "Why don't you assert yourself? Why don't you insist on getting married? She belongs to you. When once she is your wife, all this nonsense will end. I think you are as much to blame as she is. After all, she has promised you; you ought to exact the fulfilment of her promise."
He turned and looked at her.
"That is how you spoke the first night you came to my house," he said, and his tone had a faint touch of amusement in it. "You are a little bit of a mystery, Caroline. How any one so sharp and impatient as you are can handle children as you do is a marvel."
Caroline was trembling with nervousness, and with a strange sick sensation of pain, but she laughed.
"Oh! I don't believe in fussing," she said; "if I had only had a little bit more spirit when I was with your mother, it would have been a better thing for me." She moved away from him, and then she came back to him, and looked straight into his face. "Do you know what you ought to do? You ought to go over now to Lea Abbey, and bring her back here. You ought to keep her here, and marry her down here. If you want a witness, I'll be one."
"I cannot do that to-night," said Haverford. "I have brought nothing with me, and I really must go back to town."
She understood him. It was not the first time she had realized how supremely delicate was his attitude towards Camilla. To follow her now might be to suggest to Camilla a desire to know what she was doing; to demonstrate to others his right to do this.
For all this thought and tact Caroline gave him keenest appreciation; at the same time she felt in her impatient way that it was the moment for action.
"Suppose I take the children to town to-morrow? I know she will come if I let her suppose she is wanted," she suggested.
"But they are so happy here, and so well."
"Oh!" said Caroline, almost sharply, "we are not considering the children now; they don't count. And besides, they can always come back here."
She sat down on the broad fender stool, and pondered a moment staring into the fire.
"Really and truly I believe if you pull her up sharply, let her know you are tired of being played with, all will go well. Mrs. Lancing is a bundle of nerves—she has had so much to try her, that she is really not able at this moment of taking matters into her own hands. I think it is so natural that she should be doubtful and nervous," said Caroline; "but one thing is sure, that the longer she delays, the more difficult it will seem to her to take any definite step. She wants some one else to show her the way. That is your duty."
She looked up at him; and Haverford smiled as he looked down at her.
"Practical little person," he said; "you would have made a splendid man, Caroline."
"I mean to be a working woman," the girl answered, "and that can be just as good as being a man."
Haverford did not answer her. He stood looking into the fire for a long time in silence.
"I wish I could feel that all would work out as you say," he said, rousing himself at last; "but——" Then he said, "I know she is ill; she seems to me to be on the eve of a nervous breakdown, but any remedy I suggest seems to have no healing power for her. You cannot think how I brood over her! She is so dear to me. The first living creature that has belonged to me since I was a boy. Mrs. Brenton gave me very much the same advice as yours," he said next. "The last time I was here, she urged me strongly to take Camilla abroad at once. I have pleaded with her a dozen times to do this: in vain!"
From a long, pregnant silence he roused himself.
"Sometimes I ask myself if she would not be happier without me."
"No!" said Caroline, sharply. "What ... what an absurd idea!" Then she turned on him again. "Oh! I wish I were in your place! I would not talk, or think, or sit down and worry. I would simply say I am going to have such and such a thing done, and I would see that it was done!"
She was trembling so much she had to get up and move away from him, and was thankful that the lights had not been lit in the hall, and that it was too dark for him to see her face distinctly.
A moment later she said—
"You would like dinner as soon as we can have it, I suppose?"
This roused him.
"Oh, thank you very much, but I want to get back! I will have some supper in town. I have a morning full of engagements to-morrow." He went to slip on his big motoring coat again. "Don't let Mrs. Brenton imagine all sorts of things because I ran down in this hurried way."
"Of course not," said Caroline.
He held her hand, and pressed it warmly.
"Thank you so much," he said, "you have cheered me up a great deal. A man is always a clumsy creature in these sort of things, and I am quite sure that everything that is happening is my own fault. Good-bye."
"We shall meet soon," said Caroline, as steadily as she could. "I shall telegraph to Mrs. Lancing in the morning, and tell her I find it necessary to take the children to town. I shall invent a great many things for her to do. I dare say she will find me very tiresome; but I must risk that."
He laughed and released her hand, and then he moved back again and looked at her in his characteristically keen way.
"I have not asked you how you are yourself?" he said.
"It is such an unnecessary question," retorted Caroline, "when you see that I am in robust health."
"Are you? I thought you were looking anything but robust as you came downstairs."
"Now please," said Caroline, "don't begin to go through the usual catechism!"
"I won't," he answered, "except I want to know—have you got the maid you were going to have?"
"All the servants in this house wait upon me and the nursery," said Caroline. "I have only to command and I have what I want. Will that satisfy you?" But he still paused.
"If I could only get her abroad," he said, with a thrill of eagerness in his voice, "I should keep her there, and then send for you and the children. A month or two in Switzerland, and then through Italy by easy stages. Doesn't it sound delightful? Well! Good-bye once more, and I think I shall take your advice." He laughed almost cheerily. "If I could only manage to elope with Camilla without her knowledge or consent, how she would enjoy it."
Caroline clapped her hands.
"At last," she said, "you are beginning to see your road."
He would not let her go outside, nor would he let her summon the butler. He passed out and shut the door behind him, and for a moment Caroline leaned against that door, and shut her eyes whilst she fought down the wild tumult of passion and heart suffering that rushed upon her.
There was a humiliation, too, in the suffering, a proud shame that she should confess even to herself, that this man who had just gone from her was so capable of moving her, that the touch of his hand, the sound of his voice, meant joy, in its most exquisite meaning, and that as he passed away from her, taking with him the spell of his presence, the light and the warmth of life itself went with him. And still a very lifetime of self-condemnation would not alter what had come. Love to some natures is borne as lightly, has as little value as a thistledown floating on the wind; it has the sparkle of a new jewel, the passing radiance of a summer day, to fade with the setting sun, and to come again when another day is born. But with other natures love comes but once, and comes to stay; pain, sorrow, age, separation, even death itself, have no power to dispossess such a love of its dwelling-place in natures such as these.
And it was in this fashion that love had come by stealth as it were into the heart of Caroline Graniger.