The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

The marked difference in atmosphere between Caroline's wedding and Beatrix's was not the cause of his mood, though it heightened, and perhaps had induced it. He had tested and examined himself so searchingly during the past weeks that the plainly-to-be-noticed disapproval of others could not now affect his own conviction that he had taken the right course. All of those who had a right to express their opinions had had their opportunity of expressing them directly to him, and he had answered them. And he had satisfied himself, by many signs and tokens, of Maurice's essential fitness for the great trust he had reposed in him. He already felt an affection for the boy; that was the reward he had gained from sinking his own prejudices, and making a strong effort to see him with Caroline's eyes. It was a big reward. It had removed from him all the discomfort of feeling that she was wasting her fine gifts upon one who could give her no adequate return for them. He had come to see that she was fulfilling herself in this marriage, and that the expression of her true and tender nature would flower beautifully under it, though its flowering might be hidden from the world at large.

Nor had he had to make the adjustments of his own attitude that had troubled him when Beatrix had given her love. Caroline had come to be more to him than ever before, because he had been able to enter with her into the deeper places of her heart. That reward he had also gained from his self-suppression. She trusted him and loved him, and had shown it as she had always shown it, without once causing him to feel that he was ever so little shouldered out of his place in her heart.

And yet the sense of irreparable loss was there in this black hour, and was growing deeper every moment. He hurried on his changing so as to get away by himself and keep it at bay by fast movement; and, if he could, to fight it down and regain his accustomed equanimity.

It was the sense of change and passing in his own life that had descended upon him so heavily as Caroline had driven off from her old home, with her face set towards her new one. With parents happily married, where family life is welded by strong affection and community of taste and pursuit, there comes this sense of breaking up when their children begin to leave them. They are no longer the centre round which their children's lives revolve. Mothers feel it most when their boys go to school, fathers when their daughters marry. But the family life goes on; though not in its fullest measure. Grafton's had come to an end. He might have Barbara with him for a time when she had finished her education. Young George would only occasionally be at home, for years to come. Miss Waterhouse would be there. That was all that would remain of the happy years in which he had had them all around him.

Caroline would be near him, but no longer in his home, to surround him with all the devotion that had brought him such solace since the death of her mother. He had not known how much he depended upon her until Beatrix's marriage. She had been almost everything to him since, and had kept him from the sense of loss that was weighing on him now, when Beatrix had left him. But it was the loss of both of them that he was feeling, and the end and finish of the longest and one of the best chapters of his life. What was his life to be in the future? It was that question to which he wanted to find some sort of answer before he faced again the people who had come to celebrate the opening of a new chapter for Caroline, but the close of one for him.

When he was ready to leave his room he paused before the portrait of his young wife hanging over the mantelpiece. He had never wanted her more than he did now, to tread the downward slope with him.

As he went along the corridor, the door of a room on the other side of it opened, and Ella Carruthers, who was staying in the house, came out. She also was dressed in tweeds and walking boots, and as they looked at one another she laughed and said: "I see we both want the same thing—to get away for a bit and think about it."

His first feeling was one of annoyance. Caught like that, he could not suggest that he should go his way and she hers. But he wanted no companionship in his efforts to face what he had to face.

But when he had said lightly: "We'll go for a sharp walk together, but don't let anybody else see us," he became conscious that just this companionship would be good for him.

She had been so much with his daughters that she was almost like one of his own family. She was only three or four years older than Caroline. During the disturbance of mind he had undergone at the time of Beatrix's engagement to Lassigny she had given him more help than anybody—more help even than Caroline, because she had a wider knowledge and experience; and she had shown wisdom with Beatrix too, who had listened to her when she would have listened to nobody else. If anybody could do so, she would help him over his dark hour.