by Susan Barrie
She had seen the women looking at him in the theatre, the way assistants sprang forward to attend him in the various shops they had visited together, the deference of waiters when they appeared in restaurants. He might be many years older than she was, and his experience of life was certainly vast compared with hers, but at least there were many women—of all ages—who would jump, she felt certain, at the mere idea of marrying him, should the opportunity ever come their way.
But why he should ask her to marry him she simply could not understand. For if he was in no way accountable for any of her actions—if he was simply a rather kind and pleasant stranger who had promised her father to do the best he could for her, then he had already done more than he should—much more! He had given her a good education, clothed her in the past, provided her with her latest and most expensive wardrobe, and now he could conscientiously wash his hands of her, and tell her that in future she must earn her own living. Thousands of girls of her age were doing that.
But the fact that he had asked her to marry him sent the oddest little quiver of satisfaction darting through her, and it was the more odd because she knew she could not accept his offer. He might not realize how unwise he was being, but at least she was not so young that she could not realize it for him!
“What are you thinking about?” he asked, realizing she was deeply thoughtful.
“Nothing,” she answered hurriedly, and looked quickly away from him. “Nothing—at all—”
He beckoned the waiter and requested his bill, and then he stood up and helped her on with her cloak.
“I think we might discuss this better when we get back to the hotel,” he said. “Or would you prefer to wait until the morning?” “I would, please,” rather faintly.
“Then the morning it is! ” he agreed at once, very kindly, but one of his dark eyebrows cocked upwards a little humorously.
That night she dreamed that he and she were standing one on either side of a deep chasm, and that the ground under her feet was very wet and slippery, and that she was very unsure of her foothold. In the depths between them there was nothing but frightening space and a dreadful sensation of loneliness, and she knew a panic-stricken fear lest she should fall into them. The face of the man on the opposite side of the chasm was pleasant and smiling, and he gave her a little encouraging look before suddenly he turned away and started to walk briskly from her, and just as he did so she made an unwary movement and went down on one knee, and worse still she started to slide towards the edge. She let out a desperate call to him to turn, but he did not do so, and thankfully at that moment she woke up....
At breakfast the next rooming he told her to get on with her scrambled egg while he buried himself in his newspaper and pretended to become immersed in its contents. But after breakfast, in a corner of the hotel lounge, he merely turned and looked a question at her.
She asked in uncertain voice:
“Is it really necessary for us to get married? Couldn’ t we— couldn’ t we just go on as we are?”
“Not without doing something about it,” he replied. “At the moment our relationship is the least little bit improper.”
“I—I see,” she said. “I’m afraid I never thought of it in that way before. It—it’ s awkward, isn’ t it?”
He endeavored to conceal a smile.
“Slightly awkward.”
“But supposing—supposing one day you wanted to marry someone else? What then?” she asked, a little breathlessly.
“I should promptly set about divorcing you, of course,” he answered at once.
Her horrified expression made him lean hastily towards her and seize her hands, gripping them hard, while his expression softened miraculously. His voice, too, was suddenly gentle.
“My dear child, what a little idiot you are! ” he told her. “And why do you worry your head over such improbable situations? If you and I marry, we will stay married—at least you can be assured of that! And I think, looking at it from every angle, the only sensible thing we can do is to get married. That is if you don’ t seriously object to linking your future with mine?”
She looked up at him then, and her clear eyes reassured him. “Oh, no, I don’ t! ”
“And I certainly don’ t! ”
“You don’t think I ought to—to earn my own living? To stand on my own feet?”
He looked down at them, in their smart new shoes. “They’re rather small and slightly inadequate feet! ”
Carol looked almost relieved. She was still thinking of her dream.
“And your sister isn’t likely to object?”
“Why on earth should she?” Timothy Carrington demanded. “It’s nothing to do with her.”
Carol gave a little sigh, like a sigh of resignation.
“In that case—” she began. “In that case—”
“In that case I take it that I’m accepted?” Timothy murmured, and rewarded her with a small smile. He patted her hands, where they rested in her lap. “And now we can consider ourselves engaged, and I’ ll find out how soon we can get married. It may involve such a thing as a special license, and as you’ re a minor someone may have to give their permission. It is just possible that the permission of a magistrate may be necessary, but that’s what we’ve got to find out.”
“Yes,” she agreed, feeling as if she was being whirled into something quite extraordinary.
He looked down at her, and his smile became touched with sympathy.
“This is all rather sudden, isn’t it?” he said. “But you’ll get used to the idea.”
“Will I?” she murmured, and for an instant he hoped that he was doing the right thing—from her point of view. But one could never tell, and she was very young.
CHAPTER SIX
“I think that’s everything,” said Meg Carrington, consulting her list of ‘things to be done’ and ticking off each item before she dismissed it. “Flowers in vases, drawers re-lined, wardrobes thoroughly dusted inside, and polished outside—all furniture given final polish. Yes! I don’t think there’s anything we’ve forgotten, unless it’s those floral curtains.... I was going to change them and the bed coverlet for some peach moire silk, but on the whole I think flowered ones go better with this room and the mahogany furniture, especially the tiny pink rosebuds and the little violet sprays. They do somehow suggest youth and inexperience—one’s conventional idea of a bride ... ”
“Doesn’t seem real to me,” Agatha Hill declared, attacking the shining oval dressing-table mirror with her yellow duster, and giving it an extra polish. “Those horrible blow flies settle in a moment!—the beastly things!... But Mr. Timothy married!—I just can’ t realize it, I can’ t really! I never thought he was cut out for that sort of thing, somehow.”
“Neither did I,” Meg Carrington admitted very quietly, with a faint sigh in the words. “But there! These things happen, and men are not like women! ”
She thrust back the nose of the over-inquisitive golden spaniel who was about to jump up on to the old-fashioned four-poster bed.
“Behave yourself, Kate! Your paws are probably muddy, and that’s a clean counterpane.”
She looked round the room again with a searching, careful glance.
“Well, Aggie, I think we might as well go downstairs now, since there doesn’t appear to be anything more to be done. You’ ve made up the master’ s bed, haven’ t you, and seen that everything’s all right in his room? I don’t suppose he’ll sleep there tonight, but—he’ ll almost certainly want a dressing room...”
This was such unusual talk between herself and Aggie that it made her feel suddenly rather uncomfortable. Strange, intimate, almost foreign talk that brought a faint flush to her cheeks, and she turned away. But Agatha looked at her closely, and with the penetrating eyes of the old and faithful servant she read with complete ease all that her mistress was thinking. Her mistress with the grey threads invading her once rich brown hair, and her pleasant blue eyes that were usually rather humorous, but just
now were curiously thoughtful and ever so slightly shadowed. And there was a certain amount of effort in everything she did today.
Agatha wanted to go to her and take her hands and squeeze them hard and tell her not to mind. That although something was departing out of the house—something treasured, and free, and filled with contentment—something also was coming into it, and, who knew, they might grow to like the idea in time. A young wife—possibly a young mother at no very distant date! — and that would entail a fresh kind of interest, something that was after all very natural....
But Meg’s face did not invite that kind of talk just then; and instead Agatha watched the tall and rather awkward form that looked so well on the back of a horse move over to the diamond-paned window, and thrust wide the lattice. Kate followed her, obviously concerned by her air of repression, and by the unaccustomed sharp edge to her voice when issuing her rebuke.
Meg leaned out of the window, and drew deep breaths of the pure air. It was invigorating, that air to which she had been accustomed since her earliest days, and yet it always soothed her somehow. That and the prospect of the distant hills, just now veiled in a gauzy mist of cloud through which the sun was striving to force a pathway.
Below her was a smooth stretch of emerald turf, and a cedar tree reaching out dark branches towards the window. A white-painted garden seat was on the terrace immediately below the window and a huge white cat was sleeping contentedly curled up upon it, while a handsome Siamese male cat lay sprawled at no great distance. On the lawn was a common-or-garden tabby, washing itself most industriously.
Meg’ s face lightened as she watched the animals, although Kate growled low in her throat—not so much because she had any objection to cats, but because it helped to maintain her prestige. Then the woman’ s eyes drifted to the trim flower borders, magnificently displaying all the splendor of midsummer, and beyond them to the orchard and her own little herb garden. Beyond that again was tiny sunken rose-garden, where the air at this season of the year was saturated with the perfume of the roses, and clouds of falling petals—red, yellow and white—were flung in all directions by every playful gust of wind. The rose-garden was bounded by a little patch of wilderness, or woodland, through which a delicate silvery ribbon of a stream wound its way, after trickling uncertainly down from the hills, and slender forms of silver birch leaned perilously forward to peer at themselves in the water. Beyond all that were the wide open fields, and the thickets and the copses and the hidden dells which belonged to the Brown Furrows estate.
Meg wished so much sometimes that she had been born a man, and that all this that she could see from the window had been hers by right of birth. And that the old mellowing stone house, with its deep-set windows and its blackened beams, had been hers also. The next best thing was that it belonged to Timothy, and that Timothy had always allowed her to do almost exactly as she liked in the house and garden, and to advise on the running of the estate.
But now Timothy was married, and everything would be changed. She felt so deadly certain of that that it was like a load on her mind—a physical burden which she would henceforth have to carry. She could have cried out in anguish, not so much because, in future, she would have to share Timothy—who, after all, spent so much of his time abroad that she saw very little of him—but because she would have to share Brown Furrows with Timothy and his wife, and no one, save Agatha Hill, who stood watching her unhappily with hands clasped together rather helplessly, would ever remotely guess what she was feeling at this moment, and what she would continue to feel now that the change had come about.
Timothy, who was never going to get married!... Timothy, who had resisted even Viola Featherstone!...
The telephone rang sharply in the hall, and she nodded to Agatha to answer it. When the maid returned—panting a trifle, for she was no longer young, and the oak stairs were steep— Meg looked at her with an unconcealed expression of distaste in her eyes, as if she anticipated her news.
“What was it?” she asked.
“A telegram,” Agatha returned, a trifle breathlessly. “They’re coming tonight. They’ ll be here in time for dinner! ” She looked away from her mistress’s face. “Judson is to meet the seven o’ clock train at the junction. ”
Meg Carrington stood absolutely still, and then suddenly she bit her lip.
“That’s all right,” she said, after a moment, calmly. “I was expecting them to be here for dinner. You’ d better tell Ellen James that she will have to stay the night and wait at table, and if you want any more help in the kitchen you can get Mrs. Rogers from The Croft. Send Judson on his bicycle—tell him to leave whatever he’s doing.”
“Hoeing the potatoes, I think,” Agatha volunteered, still with that faint quiver of excitement in her voice.
“Then he can leave them. And get him to bring in enough peas to go with the duck I ordered from the farm, and I think if you make a raspberry and red currant fool, and perhaps an apricot flan—and some cheese straws, if you can manage it! Timothy always loves your cheese straws, Aggie!...”
“Very good, Miss Meg.” Agatha was looking at her half admiringly, for Meg’ s efficient, housekeeperly instincts were rising rapidly to the surface, and her cool, housekeeperly brain was prepared to deal with the questions of the moment in the precise and expeditious manner she customarily dealt with them.
“And tell Judson not to waste any time over at The Croft. We all know he has a weakness for the Rogersons’ eldest girl, but he is not to indulge it while executing my errands.”
“Yes, Miss Meg.”
She followed her mistress to the head of the staircase, and when they had descended it to the cool, quiet hall, with panelled walls and an open timber roof, Meg turned and briskly entered the drawing-room. Agatha hurried off to the kitchen to begin operations for the master’ s return home.
The drawing room, at that early hour of the afternoon, was a place of charm and infinite repose. It was dimly but sufficiently lighted by a fine specimen of a mullioned window, and at the opposite end french windows admitted one to the garden. The curtains and chair covers were not particularly new—they even bore some evidence of fading—but the subtle tones of blue and pink and primrose yellow contained in the chintz went well with the background of dark and ancient oak. And the wide fireplace was flower-filled, and so was every bowl and vase that was to be seen in the room.
Meg went round the room rearranging the clusters of old-fashioned Mrs. Sinkins, and the dark, almost mauvish red roses which were her favorites from the garden. She buried her face amongst the velvety blooms, inhaling their perfume with the relish of a connoisseur.
There were a great many silver-framed photographs loading little occasional tables, and delicate specimens of china-ware and other knick-knacks. It occurred to her that Timothy’s new wife might not altogether approve of such a heterogeneous collection of inherited family ‘treasures’, even though some of them were quite valuable, like Great-aunt Susan’s exquisite little Sheraton work-table, while others—Great-aunt Lucinda’s sampler, for instance, which occupied a rather prominent position on the wall above the fireplace—might easily have been dispensed with. And sooner or later a ‘clean sweep’ where the spindly-legged but not very comfortable furniture was concerned might occupy the mind of the newcomer, especially if she was a very modern sort of young woman.
Modern young women liked clear spaces and fitted carpets and cocktail cabinets. They had no time for faded but beautiful Persian rugs and silk embroidered cushions. A radiogram would probably very shortly replace the spinet in the corner, with its yellowed ivory keys, and one or two good pictures the slightly amateurish water-colors on the walls—mostly the work of herself when young, and one or two of her forebears.
In which case, thought Meg, she would retire to one of the remote corners of the house and surround herself with them.
Never once did it occur to her that she might be called upon to give way entirely to the bride, and that even her presence in th
e house might not be desired by that young woman. Mercifully for Meg, that thought had not yet been born to taunt and harry her.
When she went into the dining room the sideboard was ablaze with a splendid display of Georgian silver. Agatha and Ellen James had worked over it for half a morning, and it well repaid their efforts.
There was nothing at all in this room to which anyone—any reasonable human being, that is—could possibly take exception, for its proportions were excellent, it was dignified, and everything in it was the work of long-dead craftsmen. Meg paused beneath a portrait in oils of an inflammable-looking gentleman in the costume of an eighteenth century admiral, and a surge of pride went through her, for it was a portrait of one of her ancestors. And on the opposite wall was her great-great-grandmother and such an undoubted beauty that she felt a little saddened as she looked, for Meg knew that she herself had no pretensions to beauty whatsoever.
Meg would have given anything to have been born the sort of woman she so passionately admired in her heart, but which she knew she never could be now. A woman to be loved, and admired, and sought after—and married! A woman to attract an essentially man’ s man like Timothy, her brother, and to become mistress of Brown Furrows!...
As she went back upstairs to look out a dress to wear that evening she wondered whether Timothy’s new wife was really like that, and, if so, how would she feel about her? Would she— could she possibly—like her?
She would make a tremendous effort, of course, but—!
She dragged open the door of her wardrobe and ran her fingers along a row of dresses. They were all expressly designed to make the most of her angular proportions, and they were all elegant without being pretty, neutral and suitable in color, without one delicate pastel tint amongst them. And she felt that she hated them all, she hated even the thought of the future now that her world had been suddenly upset.