Then he fell silent and they did not like to disturb him. Presently, he asked them to go, saying he was tired. Anna kissed her father and she and her William went softly upstairs, past the Spider’s Den, with pity for Anna’s mother, to the old nursery which the boys used as a kind of sitting and working-room.
Wilfred and George made them welcome, though evidently puzzled by their unexpected visit.
“Father all right?” said George to Anna.
“Yes. He wanted to rest, so we came up to tell you the news.”
“Not any more news today, Anna?”
“This isn’t bad news, at least I hope you won’t think so. William and I are going to get married.”
Both young men looked at the betrothed, bereft of all power of speech.
“Good lord, you’ll be Julia’s step-mother,” said George, rising to the occasion.
“If Julia hadn’t turned me down, you would have been my step-mother-in-law,” said Wilfred, awestruck. “Well, I don’t grudge it. Julia and Hugh are jolly lucky to have hit it off, and so are you and Colonel Beaton.”
“Could you manage William?” said Colonel Beaton.
“Certainly, sir. It’s a bit of a shock, but I’m glad. In fact I’m awfully glad,” said Wilfred as the facts began to soak into his mind. “Many happy returns of the day and congratulations and everything. You are both in luck.”
Anna hugged Wilfred while Colonel Beaton expressed warm thanks for his good wishes.
“George is pleased too, but he’s a bit slow in getting it out,” said Wilfred.
“Gee, William, that’s great,” said George, veiling his sincere pleasure and indeed emotion under the words of the newest language. “He’s a swell man, the new boss. Proud to woik under you, sir. And Anna’s a swell girl too. Heil Beaton,” he added looking at Wilfred.
But Wilfred wouldn’t rise, and the next half-hour was spent in a happy babel of talk and plans, in which James and Caroline were quite forgotten.
Mr. Danvers sat on in the library by his reading lamp, looking into the fire. He felt old, and there were too many thoughts in his mind. Anna and Beaton. She would be happy with him and Beaton would keep a firm hand on the business when he himself was gone, and look after Wilfred and George. Caroline came to his mind. Caroline as she was when James first brought her to see them, pale and shaken with her love for him, her anxiety to please his parents; as she was when James had finished with her. Then his thoughts stayed with James. His heart was flooded with the self-reproach that every parent feels for a child who has not fulfilled its promise. Had I done this: Had I not done that: Was it my fault? The questions circled through his mind unanswered. Faster and faster the thoughts, the questions whirled about him. He tried to wave them away, to shut his ears to them, but they pressed on him, louder and more insistent. He was looking at James as he had seen him that morning, laid upon the bed. A wordless prayer for mercy for James and himself came from his heart. Then he knew that his spirit had left him and was following the likeness of James as he used to be. Thoughts and questions were left far behind. A silence fell about him, a still clear light filled his eyes. The vision of his lost son passed from him, but peace filled his heart.
*
When at last Colonel Beaton said he must go, he and Anna went to the library to say good night. The fire had burned low and Mr. Danvers was half asleep. Though he looked old and tired, they thought he looked happier than he had been since James’ return. Anna took her father up to his room and Colonel Beaton went back to his hotel, thankful for his new-found happiness. He rang up Rose, who said Mr. Francis had phoned up to say he wouldn’t be back till tomorrow, so he determined to telephone to him at Beechwood early on the following day.
Chapter XIV
Francis Makes His Last Move
Francis, who was obliged to go to his office before starting his journey, had to waste a good deal of precious time over urgent matters of business before he could get away. So he did not get to Beechwood till after three o’clock, anxious and unfed. Here he was told that Mrs. Danvers had been out all day on the downs. Food was offered to him, but he refused, and set off to look for her. By questioning a laborer in a field by the hill and a shepherd who was loitering near a lambing hut, he learned that she had been seen on the ridge of the downs where she and William Beaton had walked one day while Francis had followed with Anna. He sped up the steep hollow lane and came out upon the frosty turf, but there was no way of telling which path she had taken. At a venture, Francis walked hurriedly on towards the low sun, breathless with the bitter windless air and the uncertain beats of his heart, till far off he saw a figure which he guessed with a pang of almost unbearable sharpness to be hers.
She, not expecting him, had been on one of her long walks hoping to fatigue herself to forgetfulness. Not till she had lived alone at Beechwood did she realize how constant was her need of Francis. Every day, she determined to telephone him but was ashamed to do it. Even to lift the receiver with his number in her mind so shattered her that she had to hang it up again. To write was solace, but she wrote so much that seemed to her diffident spirit too self-revealing that she tore up sheet after sheet, sometimes in despair sending those that she would less willingly have let him see. Francis’ lack of response did not perturb her, for she knew of old his inability to express himself on paper, but she read and re-read each of his letters, trying to get from it, to put into it, more than met the eye. Whenever the telephone bell rang, which was but seldom, she rushed to it, hoping to hear Francis’ voice. She was sleeping badly again, dreaming of Francis while she lay awake, dreading the dreams of James that haunted her restless sleep. Music, books, Anna’s village doings which she had promised to keep up for her, nothing could stop her dreams or her fears. Her terror of meeting James face to face kept her away from London and she wondered what her next step would be. A bed-sitting-room alone would be better than to eat the bread of James’ parents as things were now, but she was very vague as to whether her small income would even run to a bed-sitting-room. Her one solace was to be up on the downs and walk for silent miles on the springing grass, coming back as evening fell, tired but refreshed in mind. Then as she neared the house the fear of a letter, a telegram, some sign of James, the waiting for a telephone call from Francis which she yet dreaded to receive, all these undid the good that the lonely hills had done.
Today, she had gone out in the morning with sandwiches and had walked six or seven miles along the ridge westwards, dipping to the river and walking on again on the further side. When she had covered most of the homeward path she saw a figure approaching. She recognized Frances with the red light of sunset on him before he could be sure of her. She walked swiftly up to him and stopped a few feet away.
“I hoped you would come at last,” she said.
“I could have come before if I thought you wanted me. You never asked me in your letters.”
“I hadn’t the courage. I hardly knew if you would care to come.”
“Caroline, why did you hope I would come then?”
“Because I wanted you so much.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me?”
“Because I’m not good enough for you.”
“Not good enough?” said Francis almost roughly, taking a step towards her.
“No, no, Francis. Don’t. It’s not that I don’t want you so much that it is killing me, but what have I to give?”
“All that I want.”
“But what exactly do you want?”
“Caroline,” said Francis answering one question with another, “you said to me last time we spoke of this that you couldn’t care for any man in the way I meant. What did you mean? I have been thinking of your words, miserably.”
“What I meant was what I am trying to say now,” said Caroline, cautiously coming near him again and looking at him with her deep gaze. “It is so difficult that I hardly know how to say it. Francis, I have been married before. You know a little of what that marriage was. Can you thin
k, “she said, lowering her glance, “how broken I am, and how afraid of so much that marriage means? Dear Francis you are quite young still. You want a wife who can give you passion for passion, ardor for ardor. I can’t. I am dead. Leave me, Francis.”
Her hands raised to appeal were trembling. Francis caught them and kissed them.
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that?” he said. “Couldn’t you trust me, Caroline, for patience, for kindness? Such ordinary things.”
“How can I tell? I haven’t found them so very ordinary. I wouldn’t mention it, Francis, only I love you so much that I can’t bear to be unfair to you.”
“I think you may let me judge of the unfairness.”
Caroline gave him a look half afraid, half grateful, and releasing her hands hurried on. Francis, uncertain whether he had pleased or offended, followed her, but fast as he walked there was hardly a foot between them when they reached the road that plunged downwards into the twilit gloom. Francis drew nearer to Caroline in the heavy dusk and caught her arm as she stumbled on a root.
“Don’t take it unkindly, Caroline, if I slip your arm through mine,” he said, with his voice very much out of control. “I don’t want you to fall in the dark.” Caroline submitted without a word, but as they went down the hill her steps became slower and slower, and Francis felt her weight dragging at his arm.
“Caroline,” he said, looking anxiously at the glimmer of white that was his cousin’s face, “are you all right?”
He could hear a faint sound of “No.”
“What is it, then? Did you hurt your foot when you tripped? Are you too tired, my poor darling?”
“It’s not that,” said Caroline stopping altogether and speaking with the ghost of a voice. “But I love you so much that I can’t walk, I can’t even stand.”
“That settles it,” said Francis and gathered Caroline into his arms.
For a moment, she stiffened, then let herself melt into his embrace, while he hardly dared to move for fear of frightening away this strange sweetness.
“If you don’t marry me after this, it will be the unfairest thing you have ever done,” he said at last to the top of her head, for her face was buried in his coat collar.
“How soon could we be married?” asked a rather choked voice.
“Practically almost at once. Would you like that?”
Caroline looked up.
“Yes, please,” she said, “if it isn’t too expensive. I think Francis, if you are still of the same mind tomorrow you had better marry me as quickly as possible in case I get frightened again, or you change your mind.”
“We can quite well be married tomorrow if you like. I thought it was worth gambling on it after that lunch when you became so relenting. Would half-past eight tomorrow morning suit you?”
“Yes,” said Caroline, lifting her face to her lover.
*
“I shall have two boys and two girls,” said Caroline cheerfully as they walked home in the dark after a visit to the Vicarage, which had excited the Vicar very much, as he lived in a small way and had never seen a special licence before.
“Very well, darling,” said Francis, marveling at the way in which Caroline appeared to have adapted herself to her new situation.
“And what about a wedding ring,” said Caroline, “or can we be married with a curtain ring?”
“I was rash enough to buy one. I have always known the size of your finger.”
After a blissful but constrained dinner, Caroline suddenly had an access of conscience.
“Will it be respectable for you to spend the night here before we are married?” she asked. “Of course I know you are a sort of cousin, but then I have never been going to be married to you before. Only I don’t know where you could go. Whitelands is shut up at present, and I know the Vicar hasn’t got a spare room, and the Herberts won’t be back till tomorrow, and the village pub is impossible.”
“Don’t wrinkle your forehead, my love,” said Francis, “it will be perfectly respectable. I shall tell the servants that we are to be married at half-past eight tomorrow and they will be up all night with excitement, furnishing water-tight alibis. Will that do?”
“I don’t know, but I thought I had better just mention it, because, you see, I am very respectable, whatever my misfortunes.”
“It would do you a lot of good to be less respectable,” said her adoring betrothed.
“I know. But you see my first husband was so disrespectable that someone had to keep up the standard. Francis, did you notice how well I said that?”
“Said what?”
“‘My first husband.’”
“It’s bad taste to say that before you have a second.”
“But I have – practically.”
Francis was as good as his word in telling the servants, by which means he was to his eternal fury woken at four o’clock by an over-zealous housemaid who slept in the room above him and had set her alarm clock to that dispiriting four for fear of missing the wedding. He then spent three hours in having nightmares that he would not be called in time, and did not go comfortably to sleep till seven o’clock when the housemaid, in a state of twittering excitement, brought him his tea.
At a quarter-past eight, he and Caroline walked to the church where the Vicar, hoping that a special licence was all that is said it was, married them. They thanked him and walked back to Beechwood, discovering on the way that they both felt extremely shy.
Breakfast was ready, and the whole staff found an opportunity to be doing something in the hall or the dining room when they appeared. Before they had finished, the telephone rang.
“I always hoped it was you ringing up when the telephone rang,” said Caroline, “and it never was.”
Before Francis could thank her adequately, or explain how he had wanted to ring her up and been too frightened, a maid came to say that Colonel Beaton wished to speak to Mr. Lester. Francis was some time at the telephone and came back looking rather serious.
“Oh, Francis,” said Caroline, “was the special licence not a good one?”
“You are as silly as Julia,” said Francis, laughing in spite of himself. “It was perfectly good and thank heaven it was, or you mightn’t have felt like marrying me today.”
“It is rather beastly, darling, especially as it happened in my house. James was pretty drunk on the morning of Hugh’s wedding – yesterday in fact – and Mrs. Herbert and Rose stayed with him while Herbert went to the wedding. Then he went mad, you know how, and said he must have a bath. They couldn’t stop him and he slipped on that marble step – many’s the time I’ve slipped on it myself and cursed the thing – and he hit his head and was killed at once. Herbert came straight back and he and Beaton arranged everything. James has been moved elsewhere till the funeral.”
His wife looked straight before her and said rather defiantly, “I am glad.”
Francis could not disagree with her, but felt that it was hardly his place to applaud such sentiments.
“You see,” she said, “women are more truthful than men about some things. I wouldn’t have lifted a finger to hurt James, but I am extremely glad that he is dead.”
“So am I,” said Francis.
After a pause, he went on: “I told Beaton we were married and he was delightful about it. He said he had seen it coming, but people always say that. And he countered with another bit of news; he and Anna are engaged.”
Caroline’s scream of pleasure could hardly have been bettered by Julia. “Oh, how glorious,” she said. “I can’t imagine a nicer thing than to marry William, except you, darling. And William being a partner with Mr. Danvers seems all so suitable. Oh, but Francis – Mr. and Mrs. Danvers.”
“I know. It will all hit them pretty hard. We must see what we can do. Look here, my love, do you realize that your second husband has an office and can’t afford to neglect it unless you want to starve. We must go up today and – oh, what with getting married and one thing and another, I’d forgotten
almost the most important news of all. Beaton says Rose has given notice and won’t hear of staying on. I gather that Mrs. Herbert managed to offend her, though how I can’t think. So we can sell the house and live where we like. I wish I could live on a mountain top for you, my proud walker, but it doesn’t go with a solicitors office.”
Mr. and Mrs. Francis Lester drove accordingly to London and went straight to their house. Here they had to break the news of their marriage to Rose, who first had semi-hysterics, then frightened them out of their wits by nearly taking her notice back, and finally announced her irrovocable decision of leaving the house on the following day. She further obliged with a flood of reminiscence of Francis’ boyhood, which filled him with shame and was impossible to stem, till Caroline said mildly, “Thank you, Rose. And now where am I to sleep, I wonder?”
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, Miss Caroline,” said Rose with an offended expression, and becoming as stone left the room.
“Are you sure you don’t mind living here till we can find a nicer place,” said Francis. “I mean, you won’t mind about James.”
“If I minded living where James lived,” said Caroline, “I couldn’t have stayed with his people so long. It doesn’t much matter where he lived – or died. Where I am going to live with you is the important thing, and if this is your house it is my home. You have a spare room, haven’t you, Francis?”
“Yes,” said Francis, perplexed. “The Herberts were in it last.”
“Well, if there is room for the Herberts in your spare room—” said Caroline, and then looked out of the window.
“Certainly,” said Francis and rang the bell. After an interval, Maud appeared.
“Where is Rose?” asked Francis.
“Please sir, she said I was to answer the bell.”
“All right,” said Francis, feeling that the less he asked about Rose’s reasons the better, “I want you to get the spare room ready and put Mrs. Lester’s suitcases in it.”
O, These Men, These Men! Page 20