CHAPTER XIX
‘Satan,’ says Dr. Watts, ‘finds mischief for idle hands to do.’ And Caroline Shepley, being very idle at Wynford, fell into mischief in a way which would have confirmed good Dr. Watts in his convictions. Lady Mallow’s influenza, by dint of coddling, had become very severe indeed, and Carrie was left quite to her own devices. What these were the readers who have followed this story so far will have little difficulty in guessing. Day after day Philip and Carrie met each other, and their acquaintance deepened and ripened with extraordinary rapidity. They seemed to have none of the preliminaries of friendship to go through, but to have arrived suddenly at intimacy. Carrie was no great letter-writer at any time, now all thoughts of writing had long ago left her; she had not put pen to paper for three weeks—so absorbing an interest is flirtation. The weather hitherto had been very fine, but at last one morning broke wet and grey. Carrie was sick at heart; how could she meet Philip out of doors on such a day? she asked herself.
Now dwellers in town may dread a wet day, yet they can scarcely dread it with that entire dismay of heart that falls upon the country dweller at sight of the blank grey heavens, the spongy roads, the dripping trees. The pleasures of the country are, in fact, entirely visionary in wet weather, its discomforts really practical. Carrie stood and looked out over the fields, yesterday so green, to-day so grey; up at the skies, yesterday so blue, to-day so leaden, and her heart died within her. What on earth should she do with herself all day? She went up-stairs and tried to be sympathetic over her aunt’s symptoms for an hour or more, then she came down-stairs again and worked at her embroidery, then she tried to read (Carrie was not intellectual, you remember), then she fell asleep and wakened to hear the dinner-bell ring, always a welcome summons to this hearty young heroine.
Dinner over, Carrie went again to inquire for the health of Lady Mallow, and as she stood beside the bed, listening with ill-concealed yawns to an enumeration of all the symptoms, Carrie became aware of a sudden lightening of the leaden skies, and a watery sunbeam shot in at the window. She could have clapped her hands for joy.
‘Now, Caroline,’ said Lady Mallow, ‘here is the Gentlewoman’s Journal, which contains much useful information, such as may be useful to you in after life. I commend to your attention the article which relates to the making of wax-flowers, a most pretty accomplishment, and one which, along with other feminine parts of education, I fear your good father hath omitted from your course of study,’ etc.
Carrie listened with very scant attention, but she took the Journal and made her escape from the room quickly enough.
There could be no doubt about it—the sun was trying to shine. It is true everything was dripping with moisture, but what of that? Carrie donned a long blue cloak, slipped a loose blue hood over her curls, and set off down the avenue without a thought. It must be confessed that a hope came to her that Phil too might be tempted out by this change in the weather. Nor was Carrie mistaken, for she had not gone very far along the roads—very miry they were—before she heard some one whistling gaily in the distance, and then Phil came across one of the fields, leaped the fence, and stood beside her.
‘Now, how delightful, Carrie!’ he began; ‘I was just wondering how best I could meet you. ’Twas bold of you to venture out in such weather, but you have your reward, you see,’ added this saucy young man.
‘If you but knew the day I have passed!’ cried Carrie. ‘Come, Phil, take me to walk somewhere; I am near stifled with sitting in my aunt’s chamber listening to her symptoms and reading the Gentlewoman’s Journal.’
‘We had best keep on the road, then; the fields are heavy walking to-day,’ said Phil, and they stepped out along the road very well pleased with each other. It struck Carrie, however, that her companion scarcely looked so cheerful as he had done the day before; perhaps this dull weather affected his spirits, she thought.
‘Tell me, what is your father like?’ asked Phil suddenly. Carrie was rather surprised, but she answered with eager pride:—
‘Tall above the common, and with eyes as blue as mine; and every one depends on him: half London come to him to be cured.’ Phil walked along in silence for a little.
‘What is the matter?’ asked Carrie; ‘you seem quiet to-day.’
‘I was thinking—thinking of my father,’ said Phil, then turning towards her with his sudden impulsive manner he burst out, ‘ ’Twould be strange to feel after that fashion for one’s father! I’ll tell you what my father is; I am so like him I can see—yes, see—straight into his mind, and I know every thought that passes through it. All my life I’ve lived with him, and had everything from his hand, and for the life of me, Carrie, I cannot trust him!’
‘Oh, Phil, have a care what you say!’ exclaimed Carrie, but Phil, fairly driven on by the current of his words, continued without heeding her—
‘Ninety-nine times he’d bless you, the hundredth time he’d curse you; his kindness, when he chooses, can’t be known, and when it comes to an end he’s as hard as these flints. Oh, but he is not bad through and through either, only like a rotten fruit—one bite so good and the next all gone to corruption. I sometimes look and look at him and wonder how ’twill end—the good or the bad. I’d like to have a bet on him, I’d back the devil in him though, and I’d win. And for all this, Carrie, when he talks to me, as he will sometimes for hours, ’tis all I can do not to worship him. He understands me full as well as I understand him, that’s the strange thing, and he knows I know his heart. When I look at him and think about myself, I think sometimes that I am doomed to perdition. I’ll go his way, only quicker, and that’s the way that leads——’
All of a sudden Phil stopped, pointing down to the ground ominously.
‘No,’ said Carrie; ‘for your eyes are open.’
‘That’s the way my father has gone; you don’t suppose he sins with his eyes shut,’ said Phil. ‘He told me once (he’s nothing if not frank) that——’
Round the corner of the road came a sudden sound of wheels, a jingle of harness, a plash of many horses’ feet through the mire. Carrie glanced up to see a coach with outriders approaching; the men wore prune liveries, and at sight of them Phil stood still.
‘My father, Carrie,’ he said, and Carrie marvelled at his tense voice.
Splish-splash through the sparking mud came the horses, each with his jogging postilion a-back, whipping and spurring and cursing by turns, for the roads were heavy and the horses weary.
Phil and Carrie stood to the side, and Carrie took a curious glance into the coach, where a man sat, its only occupant. The next moment the coach had drawn up beside them, and the man, opening the door, stepped out on to the road, and bowed low before Carrie.
‘I scarce expected to find my son in such fair company, madam,’ he said, but with a little interrogative lift of his eyebrows.
Phil’s face flushed, but he answered in a clear, steady voice.
‘Sir, may I have the honour to present to you Miss Caroline Shepley? It has been my good fortune to make Miss Shepley’s acquaintance since coming to Wynford.’
‘Good fortune indeed,’ said Richard Meadowes, though the name went through him like a stab. Nemesis, Nemesis!—what was this? A woman in a blue hood stood before him, who wore the very features of Sebastian Shepley, and did he dream that Philip called her by that name?
A good thing it is we do not see into men’s hearts as we look into their faces! Carrie, as she stood all unconscious by the roadside in her blue hood, saw in Richard Meadowes only an elderly man, alert-looking, and of courteous address, who smiled on her with such a singularly pleasant and interesting smile that at once she wished to see him smile again. To this end she smiled herself, and with a gesture towards Phil, she said very sweetly—
‘The fortune hath not been altogether on his side, sir, for indeed I should have fared ill at Wynford without your son’s society.’
‘Phil should know better than to ask a lady to walk out over such roads as these,’ said Meadowes, with a glance at Carrie’s shoes; for that careless young woman, who was very vain of her pretty feet, had come out in a pair of smart high-heeled satin shoes—now, alas! smart no longer.
‘Oh, we are not come so very far from home,’ said Carrie; ‘but, sir, Phil will wish to ride home with you. I shall not go farther now.’
‘You must allow me to have the honour of fetching you home in the coach,’ said Meadowes. He offered his hand to Carrie, and held open the door of the coach as he spoke.
Carrie considered it very good fun to ride home in a coach and four. She thought what fun she would make of it in her next letter to her father. But she noticed how silent Phil had become of a sudden. He sat on the back seat and allowed his father to carry on all the conversation.
At the gate of Lady Mallow’s house Carrie descended, and, with a farewell wave of her hand, tripped off up the avenue in her damp little shoes.
After Carrie had left the coach all efforts at conversation ceased entirely between father and son. But when they drew up at the door, Meadowes, as he got out, signified to Phil that he would speak with him at once in the library.
Phil followed his father with a shrug which was not noticed by the older man, as he seated himself in a large chair, and indicated to Phil that he should stand facing him.
‘Where did you meet Miss Caroline Shepley?’ was the first suavely put question which Phil had to answer.
‘In the fields by the river, sir.’
‘And what introduction had you to this fair lady?’
‘I had met her before, sir.’
‘Where?’
‘In London.’
‘At whose house in London?’
‘In the Park.’
‘And who presented you to her there?’
‘A friend, sir.’
‘What friend?’
‘I cannot tell you, sir.’
‘You must tell me.’
‘I will not.’
There was a short silence. Phil leant against the mantel-shelf looking straight at his father, and waited for him to speak.
Meadowes folded his arms, unfolded them, leant back in his chair, finally spoke—
‘Well, that is straight speech, my son, and mine shall be as straight: After this time you shall not with my permission have word or look again for Miss Caroline Shepley.’
‘Have you aught against Carrie Shepley, sir?’ asked Phil. He burned to tell his father all he knew, but the dread of bringing Peter into disgrace tied his tongue—he must try to extract the story for himself.
‘I have: let that suffice you. Philip,’ cried his father, starting forward in his seat, ‘Philip, you are too young to question my commands after this fashion. Enough that I tell you to have no further speech with this young woman. ’Tis not for you to gainsay me.’
Phil drew himself up quickly from the easy lounging attitude he had stood in.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘speak with Carrie? I will speak with her, yes, and court her, yes, and marry her—that I’ll do if Heaven so send that she’ll have me.’
‘On how long acquaintance have you taken this resolve?’ asked his father dryly.
‘Three weeks, sir.’
‘Ah, long enough assuredly for so unimportant a step to be considered!’
Phil was too acute not to see that his adversary had scored here. He had, moreover, a trait of age seldom to be noticed in the young: he could laugh at his own foibles. He laughed now, well amused at his ardour, and, dropping lightly on his knees beside his father’s chair, took Meadowes’ long white hand in his with his sudden irresistible impetuosity.
‘Sir, will you not tell me the story of your heart?’ he said. ‘Sure every man alive hath felt as I feel now!’
‘My heart! ’twould be a history indeed,’ said Meadowes. He spoke uneasily, for he had reached that stage of moral decay which refuses to answer any serious questioning. With a quick shuffle of the conversational cards he passed on:—
‘A history indeed.—But to return to the subject in hand from which you try to escape: you have known Caroline Shepley for three weeks; you wish to marry her; I do not intend that you should; therefore there the case stands.’
Phil had risen and stood before his father again. There is nothing more irritating to the finer feelings than to have questions, which we put in all seriousness, answered lightly. Phil had for a moment thought he might gain his father’s confidence, but he had been mistaken. He felt jarred and baffled.
‘I am sorry, sir. I shall take my own way,’ he said.
‘Then I shall have no more to do with you, Philip.’
‘Then I shall have to provide for myself. You have at least given me brains enough for that,’ said Phil hotly.
‘Do you think so? Well, brains are a good gift, better perhaps than gold.’
Phil stared at his father for a moment in blank amazement, then he turned on his heel and left the room without a word.