“Of course, I couldn’t think of that, exactly,” he stammered naively. “You know quite well that, owing to my father’s preposterous will, I haven’t anything but what she gives me.”
“Exactly, my dear boy, though you and I both know very well that she only holds the whole thing in trust for you, as it were.”
“Rotten arrangement, I call it,” muttered Morris. “Of course, I practically do all the business that old Bartlett used to do for the estate, but it’s a bore being tied here and never my own master. I should have been in Germany studying music for the last four years if mother hadn’t made such a frightful fuss at the idea.”
“I wish you and she understood one another better,” sighed Bertha. “My sympathies are always on the young people’s side, you know, Morris, though your mother is my greatest friend.”
“Really?” he said eagerly. “Then I wish you’d talk to her a bit.”
“But, Morris, what could I say? I can’t let Rosamund drift into a sort of half-and-half engagement, you know.
It isn’t fair to her, and I am responsible for her just as though she were my daughter.”
“Why should it be ‘half-and-half’?” he asked rather defiantly.
“Because she’s too young, and has seen too little of the world, for me to sanction anything else at present,” said Bertha decisively.
Morris was slightly soothed by the fact that she laid all the emphasis on Rosamund’s youth, and not on his own, as he felt his mother would have done.
“Look here, Morris,” said Bertha earnestly. “I’m asking you for Rosamund’s sake to have a little patience. It this is the real thing, it won’t do you any harm to wait for a year or two, or her either. It’ll help you to know one another better, too. Why, you’ve not seen her since you were both children, except for this last week.”
“I knew the first minute I saw her again,” cried Morris eagerly and boyishly.
“I know she’s very attractive,” said Bertha, smiling rather proudly, “though I says it as shouldn’t, since she’s just like my own daughter. You know I’ve had them since their mother died, Morris.”
“I know,” he said.
“Well, then, don’t you think I’ve got just a little right to be consulted?” She looked at him so humorously that Morris laughed a little.
“Yes, of course. I expect I’d want to consult you, anyway, on my own account, you know. You do so understand about things, Mrs. Tregaskis.”
“You dear boy! That’s just the very nicest thing you could have said to me. I love young people, and it’s always been a disappointment to me that I didn’t have ten children.
You see, I had to adopt two as it was! Rosamund is a dear child, Morris, and I’ve loved her as much as though she were my own.”
She suddenly sighed, and some unexplained instinct made Morris exclaim rather defensively: “And of course she adores you. I’m sure of that.”
“Ah well, my dear boy, one doesn’t expect very much.
The thing I care most about is that they should be good and happy and keep well. Which reminds me that I must go and see after my poor little invalid. But, Morris, I do want to ask you one thing, if you’ll remember that I’m an old woman and not get angry with me.”
She paused a minute and he cried eagerly: “Of course, you can ask anything you like. You know that.”
“I really believe I can, you’re so reasonable. Well, Morris, I don’t want to know what’s passed between you and Rosamund, though I rather fancy that little tableau vivant that I came across in the hall this morning wasn’t strictly within the rules, but I do ask you not to let things go any further for the present. Rosamund is going up to Scotland with me in ten days’ time, which will make things easier, but I want you to show a man’s self-control and see less of her than you have been doing lately.”
Morris looked his consternation.
“Why don’t you go away altogether, if that is the only way, and come back again after we’re safe out of the way?”
She did not give him time to reply, but rose, and began walking back to the house.
“Think it over, while I’m seeing after Frances, and we can finish our talk when I come back.”
“But look here” — Morris, colouring deeply, had caught up with her in one or two long strides—” it sounds a most rotten thing to ask — but — but what will Rosamund think? She — she must know perfectly well that — that “He began to stammer helplessly, and Bertha’s level tones came with cheery common sense to his rescue.
“My dear boy, Rosamund is a very pretty girl who has been out a year and a half, and has met with quite a reasonable amount of admiration. She is much too sensible to take things seriously until they really become so.” She hastily dismissed from her recollection certain of the strictures recently passed upon Rosamund in conversation with Nina Severing.
“Don’t you think I’m in earnest, then?” demanded Morris.
Bertha looked at his flushed, youthful face, ardent with indignation.
“I’m quite sure that you are,” she said quietly, “and it depends on you not to let Rosamund become so, or at any rate think herself so. I am going to trust her to your honour, Morris.”
On this lofty note she left him, going into the house with a certain rapidity of step that might have suggested some anxiety not to spoil a good exit.
But Morris was a great deal too much absorbed in his own reflections to draw any such conclusions.
He paced up and down the front of the house, his hands in his pockets.
He did not analyze his sensations, and so escaped the humiliating knowledge that his principal emotion was one of satisfaction at Bertha’s admirable understanding. He wished that his mother could have heard her.
The wish, however, was a subconscious one — his main preoccupation was with the approaching interview. That there would be an interview between himself and Rosamund he took for granted. They would walk back from the moor together that very afternoon, and he would have to tell her that he was going away.
Morris thought of her brilliant, ardent gaze and clinging hands, and kicked the gravel about fiercely.
“Why can’t I be my own master,” he thought angrily.
Unwittingly the thought intruded itself that were he his own master, he should not make use of that independence to curtail it by the decisive step of marriage at the age of twenty-three.
“Damn,” muttered Morris. “Why aren’t things different all round?”
The desirability of a society where love-making should be smiled upon by parents and guardians with no ulterior thoughts of an announcement in the Morning Post to the effect that a marriage had been arranged, had had time to impress itself forcibly upon Morris before Mrs. Tregaskis rejoined him. She looked troubled, and Morris, attributing her expression to anxiety on his behalf, remarked with more than a touch of magnanimity: “Look here, it seems to me that things work out this way, more or less. I’d better say good-bye to her this evening, and go off yachting somewhere. And then by the time I get back I suppose she’ll be in Scotland.”
Bertha’s brow cleared a little as she looked at him.
“Shake hands, Morris,” she said quietly. “You’re a white man.”
“You know, I shan’t leave off caring about her,” he said wistfully. “I shall never love anyone else.”
“My dear boy, in two or three years’ time there’ll be absolutely no objection to you telling her so. And there’s nobody I should be gladder to give her to. But I do think that for the present this is the only way.”
Her words woke in Morris a fleeting recollection of Sidney Carton, and the realization of his own self-abnegation almost overcame him.
“Let me take that tea-basket,” he muttered hastily.
“Isn’t Frances coming?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve sent her to bed altogether. To tell you the truth, Morris, I’m a good deal worried about her, and if she’s no better this evening I shall ask you to call at Dr. Lee�
��s on your way to Pensevern, and send him up here.
She’s got a temperature — though, of course, that doesn’t mean much with her.”
“Is she so delicate?”
“She’s much stronger than she was when I first had her,” said Bertha decidedly. “But if she’s not better next week I certainly shan’t leave her. The other two will have to pay their visits alone. Poor Francie. She’ll be miserable at my not having the change, but I couldn’t leave her.”
“You’re awfully good,” murmured the boy.
She laughed heartily.
“I’m only an old hen fussing over her brood. It’s all in the day’s work, Morris, and if it does mean giving up time here, and some little pleasure or comfort there, one doesn’t think twice about it. But don’t let’s talk about me. Fat old bodies of my age,” said Bertha, striding vigorously across the garden, “aren’t at all interesting. I consider myself as dull as ditchwater, and of no earthly use except to give you young things a helping hand now and again.”
“I think you’re the most understanding person in the whole world,” said Morris with conviction.
VII
THE picnic up on the moor, regarded as an al fresco entertainment, was not a success.
Rosamund’s brow grew dark from the instant when she demanded, rather than inquired, of her guardian: “Where is Francie?” and received the placid reply that Cousin Bertie had thought Frances would be more comfy tucked up on her bed.
“And you are not going near her till to-night, my dear little girl,” she added, with a touch of genial severity.
“She’ll do much better without you.”
Bertie exchanged a laughing glance of amusement at her own hard-heartedness with Miss Blandflower, and Morris saw Rosamund flush the angry scarlet of a sensitive child that thinks itself unjustly treated.
She sulked frankly for the rest of the time, and only the prettiness of the defiant mouth and chin which was all that Morris could see under her big shady hat prevented him from feeling provoked with her.
He and Hazel kept up a cheerfully desultory conversation, while Miss Blandflower pressed unwanted attentions upon her hostess and fellow-guests.
“Mayn’t I pass you a rock-cake, Mrs. Tregaskis?” she pleaded. “Some bread-and-butter then? You’re not eating anything!”
“I be doin’ nicely, thank’ee, ma dear. What’ll yu be takin’? Crame?”
“No — no, thank you — not for me. Nothing more at all,” distractedly said Minnie, who had been nibbling at a small piece of bread-and-butter in the intervals of her activities.
“Oh, but you must have a jam sandwich,” cried Morris with the pseudo-heartiness characteristic of such occasions.
“Well — if you won’t all think me fearfully, fearfully greedy.”
Minnie hesitated and looked wildly round her, but as no one appeared in the least aghast at the prospect of her depredations among the jam sandwiches, she deprecatingly took the smallest one, murmuring, “Thank you muchly — this is fearful gluttony—’ just one more crust,’ as the boy said on the burning deck.”
The spasmodic conversation died away.
Presently Hazel said: “I’ve found the place where we got that white heather last year, mother. There are some more roots there, if you want to take them home for the rock garden.”
“Come on and let’s dig then,” said Bertha vigorously, rising as she spoke.
Morris shot Hazel a glance of gratitude.
He longed to be alone with Rosamund, even while thinking that he was dreading the pain of bidding her good-bye.
He looked at Miss Blandflower, but Hazel Tregaskis was quicker than he.
“I shan’t find the way without you,” she declared lightly.
“Come on, Minnie,” shouted Mrs. Tregaskis, already well on ahead.
“There’s no rest for the wicked,” said Minnie mechanically, and went.
Rosamund’s first words were not at all what Morris had expected. She looked at him sombrely, and remarked almost violently: “Do you know what’s the matter with Frances? Is Cousin Bertie really frightened about her?”
“No, not seriously, I don’t think,” he answered, instinctively anxious to soothe her. “She only said that if Frances wasn’t quite well again next week she wouldn’t go to Scotland, but would send you and Hazel alone.”
“I shan’t go if Francie is ill.”
He looked at her, astounded.
“But, Rosamund, what’s the matter? She isn’t ill. Mrs. Tregaskis herself said that a temperature didn’t mean anything at all with Frances.”
“Oh, you don’t understand,” she burst out angrily.
“Nobody understands in the least what Frances is to me.
Cousin Bertie has never understood, and never will. You heard what she said just now.”
He had forgotten.
“That I’m not to go near Frances till to-night. She always treats me like a child.”
She looked very like one indeed, as she spoke, flushed and indignant.
“Perhaps Frances was going to sleep, and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“As though I should disturb her! Why, I’ve looked after her ever since she was a little girl — until we came to live here. Now,” said Rosamund bitterly, “I’m told to mind my own business and let Frances mind hers.”
“Never mind,” consoled Morris. “Don’t let’s talk about it. I want to tell you something, Rosamund.”
Her angry face softened a little, but she seemed unable to dismiss the subject.
“Nobody has ever understood about Frances and me — ever. I feel more as though she were my child than my sister.”
Morris was becoming heartily tired of the discussion, and showed distinct traces of that fatigue in his tone, as he replied perfunctorily: “Of course I understand — but, really, she’s only three years younger than you are, isn’t she?”
“Cousin Bertie is always harping on that, and telling Frances not to be domineered over!”
“Rosamund!” cried Morris, “you really talk as though Mrs. Tregaskis was always being unkind to you. I can’t understand you. Why, she simply adores you both — just as though she were your mother.”
He was totally unable to understand why Rosamund, at this, turned the fury of her eyes full upon him.
“You don’t understand, any more than anyone else.”
“Don’t understand what?” almost shouted Morris. “I don’t understand you, when you talk like that.”
Nor did he. She seemed to him altogether unbalanced, and as different as possible from the stately, wonderful Rosamund whom he had met in the orchard at Porthlew.
“Why do you speak as though Mrs. Tregaskis was unkind, or unsympathetic?” he asked more gently. “She is devoted to you. You can’t think how proud she is of you, Rosamund.”
“I’m not her daughter.”
“She feels as though you were. She told me so herself.”
“I wish you hadn’t let her talk to you about me at all,” said Rosamund unhappily.
“I don’t think you’d say that if you knew how nice and understanding she was. I — I wish I could explain better.”
Morris felt the impotence of his lame and stammering words before the deep hostility, which he recognized, although he was at a loss to account for it, in Rosamund’s silence.
“I haven’t ever told anyone,” she said at last, stammering a little, “but I’ve always resented being told that Cousin Bertha has done everything for us and is so fond of us. Of course it’s quite true in a way, but she’s never made me happy — or Francie either.”
If Morris thought that the fault lay more on Rosamund’s side than on her guardian’s, he would not say so, but his too expressive face betrayed him to Rosamund’s quick perceptions.
“You think I’m ungrateful — but I do recognize all the material things she’s done for us.”
Morris thought her explanation very ungracious, and then chid himself half-heartedly for criticizing h
is goddess.
“She’s done more than material things, hasn’t she?” he reminded her gently. “It’s not as though Porthlew had been an alien atmosphere. She cares about all the things that matter — books and music and friendship and other things too. That’s what makes her so wonderful, I think — that she should have that side to her, as well as the splendid practical capable side that everyone can see and admire.”
Rosamund looked at him, with a face that seemed to have grown weary.
“Yes, of course,” she said slowly.
Morris felt, unreasonably, as though he had been weighed and found wanting, in the balance of that baffled, tired gaze of hers. He reflected with bewilderment that although she had looked at him like a child when she had spoken defiantly and angrily of her guardian, she now looked very much older, and more unhappy.
“What is it, Rosamund?” he asked, half involuntarily, and conscious of the futility of the question.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said drearily.
It was the discontented child again.
Morris remained silent, plucking at the tough strands of heather all round him.
He felt injured.
He had come out on the moor prepared to sacrifice himself, to Bid Rosamund a long farewell, and to take away with him only the memory of that bitter-sweet parting hour.
Surely the intuition of love should have met him more than halfway. But Rosamund, with childish perversity, had harped upon the string of her own grievances, grievances which Morris could not but feel to be for the most part imaginary ones. She was not thinking about him at all, and all his wealth of love and self-sacrifice had gone unheeded.
Morris began to feel angry, and, worse still, as though he were being made a fool of in his own eyes.
It did not calm him to reflect that he would probably appear in exactly the same light to the penetrating gaze of Bertha Tregaskis.
She was even now advancing slowly towards them, stooping every now and then to prod at some little root or plant and pull it up into her capacious basket.
Morris got up abruptly.
“Rosamund, do you know that I’m going away?”
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 64