The Graftons: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

Caroline sighed. "I wish he'd been the first," she said.

This was immediately after Young George had come home. Dick had driven himself over to luncheon. She and Beatrix and Miss Waterhouse had been in the Long Gallery when his name had been brought up, and Beatrix had said: "Oh, bother! I wanted to have a quiet afternoon." But over the luncheon table she had been in higher spirits than during the morning, when she had either been alone or sitting with them over her work, saying very little. This had given Caroline the idea that she was rather pleased that he had come over, after all, but had not in the least prepared her for what afterwards happened.

They had all gone out into the garden. Tennis had been suggested, but it was very hot, and there were only three of them. They had sat and talked together, and after a time Caroline had gone indoors, but not with the object of leaving them alone together. If he had wanted that, Beatrix had given no sign that she did.

She had come out an hour later, but they had gone off somewhere together. Tea was in the yew arbour, and as she was pouring it out, for herself and Miss Waterhouse, they had come up, and Dick had made his announcement. "Well, B and I have settled it up together. We're going to get married as soon as they'll let us."

Looking back upon what had followed, Caroline could not yet gauge all that lay beneath the matter-of-fact air with which both of them treated the momentous event. With Dick, it was not so difficult. Probably Bunting had found the right solution of his steady unemotional way of bearing himself. He was a man of strong self-control, but there were signs in his voice and in his look that a great deal of ferment lay under the crust of his manner, and would become apparent if he were not under the compulsion of hiding it.

But why should he have been under that compulsion at such a time, when love had found its triumphant reward, and there was no one before whom he need hide his exultation?

How did Beatrix really stand towards him? She had always treated his obvious pursuit of her lightly, and never as if her heart had been in the least touched by his suit, though Caroline had believed that in time it might be. Dick had been a good deal in London during the latter part of the season, and he had been there because Beatrix was there, for it was not his habit to devote his leaves to a round of fashionable engagements. Beatrix had talked about him when she had returned home, but not as if he had made any further impression upon her. Nor had there been any difference in her attitude towards him since, though his visits had been more frequent and his suit presumably more pressing than before.

Certainly, Caroline thought, she had not intended to accept him that afternoon, and if she had admitted to herself a possibility that she might do so, Caroline thought she would have divined it. Having accepted him, she was much as she had been before. She was bright, and contented, and complete mistress of herself. She talked of their father, and of others, friends and relations who might be expected to be pleased at her news. They had already sent off telegrams, going down to the village themselves before tea. They had both talked of an early marriage, and of where they would live, and of what she would do while Dick was at sea. She had been affectionate to Caroline, but had not responded to her little secret advances of love and sympathy, which no one else would have noticed but to which she would have answered readily enough if she had wanted to.

Caroline's heart was rather heavy. Beatrix had poured out all the tale of her love to her a year before, and afterwards relied on her more than any one to assuage her pain. Was she to be kept out of this new love altogether? Or was there no love that could be acknowledged and rejoiced over? Caroline would have little to offer if it was to be an affair of a suitable marriage only. Without love, it would not be so eminently suitable. In the future Beatrix would have the sort of place in the world to which her birth and connections entitled her. But in the meantime, as the wife of a sailor on active service, if she were to be with him as much as possible, she would be cut off from a great deal of what she had been accustomed to, and there would be no settling down for her anywhere. On the face of it, her life would be less in accordance with her tastes as Dick's wife than Caroline's would be if she were to marry Francis Parry. And Caroline had told her father that if she had loved Francis that wouldn't have mattered; she would have been happy with him anywhere, as Viola Prescott had been happy with her husband in surroundings little fitted for her. But without love it would matter—surely to Beatrix as much as to herself.

And Beatrix had loved so whole-heartedly and so tenderly, although she had had only a very short time to give herself up freely to the joy that had come to her. And after that, until the end had come, she had only had hope and the trust that was to be betrayed to uphold her; but still she had flowered and developed under it. Love meant very much to her. When the wounds left by the destruction of her first love had healed she must love again in some happy time. She could not do without it. Wasn't she laying up unhappiness for herself in taking a love that she could not return in full measure? And was it fair to the man who would want from her everything that it was in her to give to one whom she should love as she had loved once already?