by Susan Barrie
She felt that he was not boasting, but that he was really proud of himself. He had very blue eyes and an engaging smile, and she could imagine that women would adore him. At least, most women. She herself liked listening to his entertaining voice, and she was conscious that there was a certain amount of admiration in his eyes whenever he looked at her—although when he looked at Timothy his glance became slightly puzzled.
Carol, extremely sensitive on this point of her marriage to a man who was in no sense of the word a normal husband, felt herself flushing even to the column of her slender neck when she caught the odd, speculative look in Brian Winslow’ s eyes after he had studied her for a while in silence, and then studied Timothy.
Mrs. Featherstone was so deeply lost in conversation with Timothy that she had little or no time to devote to his wife, despite her professed desire to get acquainted with Carol. There was no doubt about the unusual quality of her beauty, and none knew better than herself how to make the most of it, or how to ‘get it across’ as the saying goes. She had a way of half smiling under her heavy lids and thick eyelashes while her mouth remained faintly regretful, and Timothy himself was perfectly aware of what she meant by that look, and why she followed it by a glance across at Carol which suddenly seemed to smoulder a little.
“Why did you decide to take us all by surprise, Timothy?” she asked suddenly, after a brief conversation about nothing in particular.
“You mean why did I decide to get married without asking anyone else’s permission?” he inquired, with that faint, one-sided smile of his.
Her look was reproachful.
“You might at least have told your friends. Why were none of us invited to your wedding?”
“It was a very quiet wedding”
She looked slightly suspicious, and then a scornful note invaded her voice.
“Most men, marrying such a pretty girl as your very new wife, would have delighted in proclaiming the fact to the world, and the girl herself should have insisted on something more suited to her looks than a quiet wedding,” she told him. “And you told me she was your ward! If she was your ward how did you come to marry her, and why? Don’ t tell me you are head over ears in love with her, or she with you! If you are, then you are certainly the strangest pair that ever I’ ve encountered, and your ability to conceal your adoration of one another is really skilful. ”
“Do you think so?” he asked, voice and eyes mocking her a little.
“Timothy! ” She laid one of her white hands on his arm. Carol was listening to a dissertation from Brian on the enticements and the allure of Paris in spring, and the reasons why she really ought to see it one day if she had never done so, and her attention appeared to be fully occupied. “Are you really and truly and irrevocably married to this girl, or is there something else behind it? If there is, you might at least tell me! Is she rich—will she inherit a fortune one day, because as you know I am certainly not poor? Or was it because you wanted to behave chivalrously...? You’re so quixotic and ridiculous in some ways! ”
“Am I?” his lips tightened a little, although his eyes smiled.
“And why did you not even answer my letters while you were abroad? I wrote to you at least half a dozen times, but you never replied. It was mean of you—it was brutal, because you knew I was simply waiting for an answer. You must have known. ”
“Yet when I went away you were very much occupied in another direction altogether,” he reminded her quietly, ‘ so there was really no reason why I should have imagined you dying to hear from me! And as a matter of fact that was the very last thing I did imagine.”
“But why?” she demanded. She had flushed a little at his tone. “Of course I was never seriously interested in anyone else, and you of all people should have known that. And you did receive my letters—I’m sure you did—”
“I received one,” he told her, “but there was nothing in it to make me believe you had discarded the infatuation of the moment. Perhaps you were not quite prepared to do so at that time!... However, there’s very little point in discussing the matter now, is there? I am married, and believe me I’ m quite happily married, and if because I represent the plum that’ s out of reach you feel a little piqued, well—I’ m sorry! But there it is! ” A car was arriving at the foot of the verandah steps and he drew her attention to it. “Here are some more of your guests.... Hadn’t you better receive them?”
“Beast! ” she exclaimed, in a vicious undertone, directed a malignant glance at Carol, which the girl happily missed, and then went forward, all smiles and trailing velvet elegance, to welcome the newcomers.
They moved to the big main lounge, which was all gold and banked-up crimson dahlias, where an up-to-the-minute cocktail cabinet awaited them, and a radio-gramophone provided dance music. Carol was persuaded to dance with Brian Winslow, and since dancing was one of her few accomplishments they both thoroughly enjoyed it.
“You dance like a dream,” he told her. “Like a fairy. And you look rather like a fairy, too, with that spun-gold hair.”
He lowered his voice as he paid her the compliment in case Timothy was anywhere near. As a matter of fact Timothy was watching them and their beautiful, matching steps from the opposite end of the room, but neither realized that he was not still at his hostess’ s side.
“Why in the world did you want to get married at your age?” Brian demanded next, a little more boldly, for she was like thistledown in his arms, and her upturned eyes were indisputably lovely—there was a look in them which intrigued him enormously, it was so level, and direct, and clear. “You can’ t be a day older than eighteen, and you take on all the cares of matrimony before you even properly know what it’ s about! Why were you so unwise? Why didn’t you wait to enjoy life?” “Is that what you think you’re doing at the moment?” she inquired demurely, with a shrewdness and a swift touch of humor which surprised him. “Or am I to understand that you are married, too, and bitterly regretting your lost freedom?”
“Good heavens, no! ” he exclaimed. “What made you think that?”
“I didn’t, really,” she admitted. “Not,” she added, “at your age!”
“And what,” he inquired with frowning brows, “do you imagine my age to be?”
“Oh, about twenty-four,” she told him.
“You happen to be right,” he said, not looking too pleased. “But it must have been clever guess-work on your part, for I’m sure I look
older than that.”
“At this moment I think you look even a little younger,” she remarked, amused by the petulant expression on his good-looking face, and he laughed suddenly outright.
“What a girl you are!” he exclaimed. “But why do we all want to look older when we’re younger, and younger when we’re old? Can you tell me that? It’s one of the phenomena of this life, I suppose, and something we’re not intended to understand. However, no one wants to have much dealing with a babe in arms in my profession, so it’s important that I should look as if I’ ve outgrown the nannie stage, at least. Can you in all honesty assure me that I have done that?”
Carol laughed.
“Well, perhaps.... Except when you’re trying to be really impressive! ”
He gave her the lightest of shakes as they glided round the room, avoiding contact with the other dancers, including Viola and Timothy, who had been persuaded to act as her partner. Timothy’s eyes met Carol’s as they passed, and she gave him her swift, delighted smile, and he smiled back at her.
“Very touching! ” commented Brian, observing the little interchange. “But I still want to know why you are married when you are so ridiculously young—and why you had to select a man so many years older than yourself! Did you do it deliberately, or did it just happen?”
“Shall we just say that it happened?” Carol responded, very quietly, and suddenly he noticed that her eyes had clouded a little after that brilliant smile with which she had rewarded her husband’ s glance. And he wondered—was it because Viola
looked so languid and yielding in Timothy’s arms, as if with encouragement she might melt into them altogether? And with very little encouragement at that!
“Love’ s young dream, eh?” he murmured, apparently flippantly, although his voice was gentle.
Carol was silent.
“All right,” he said, as he led her bade on to the veranda. “I won’t put any more obnoxious and unwanted questions to you, but I will get you a drink. How will that do?”
When the time came for them to go home Timothy was rather silent as he handed Carol into the car. Viola waved to them from the foot of the veranda steps, and Brian stood watching them over her shoulder.
“Little charmer, isn’ t she?” he murmured, almost to himself.
Viola’ s lips tightened.
“Little schemer, if you ask me! ” she replied. “Possibly a designing little minx! ”
“Which makes her even more attractive,” Brian said thoughtfully, and turned away to join the thinning ranks of the guests.
At the wheel of their car Timothy said to his wife:
“Did you enjoy yourself?”
“Very much,” she replied, not altogether truthfully. “It was good fun. ”
“That,” he remarked, “was the impression I formed—that you found it good fun! ”
She glanced at him curiously. His voice was a little strange.
“Mrs. Featherstone is very beautiful,” she said, “and her home is lovely. ”
He nodded his head rather absently.
“She happened to marry a very rich man, and when he died he left her more than adequately provided for.”
“I expect she will marry again one day,” Carol remarked, rather tentatively. “Anyone as beautiful as she is”—she nearly added “and as rich” —is bound to marry a second time.”
“She might,” he agreed, quite casually. “In fact I should be inclined to say that she certainly will.”
There was silence between them for a little while not the usual, companionable silence, for he was frowning rather forbiddingly at the road ahead. And Carol felt vaguely anxious, a little maggot of doubt and unhappiness gnawing at her young and inexperienced heart.
“Young Winslow will probably go far,” Timothy remarked, when the silence was growing slightly oppressive. “He seems quite a bright lad, and he certainly has plenty of initiative. ”
“Do you think so?” Carol was not particularly interested. “He’s nice, but of course he’s very young,” she added. Her husband nodded. “That’s the point,” he said, with a grim inflection in his voice which she quite failed to understand. “He is young!”
And after that they neither of them said anything until they got home.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THAT night at dinner Timothy was unusually silent, and for the first time Carol was more or less ignored by him at a meal. He was punctilious enough when it came to passing her the various essential items on the table, but the few remarks he saw fit to make were addressed to his sister Meg. And Meg obviously thought this a little strange, for she glanced more than once at Carol in a mildly speculative fashion.
But Carol stared at her plate and wondered what she had done to incur this form of treatment, and anxiously searched her mind for anything she had said on the way home from Viola Featherstone’ s cocktail party to which Timothy might have taken exception. But she could think of nothing, beyond the fact that they had discussed Viola and her cousin. But surely that was a safe enough subject, and Timothy had never before revealed himself as ‘touchy’. But whenever she found the courage to glance at him his face looked definitely most un-Timothy-like, and his expression was withdrawn and even a little grim.
After dinner he had some business to attend to, and Meg took the car out and paid a call upon a friend in the village. Carol escaped into the garden, thankful for the sweet scents, and the warmth, and the magic stillness of the evening. It was a large, old-fashioned garden, and there were many flowers. Judson kept the lawns in perfect trim, and they were pleasant to walk upon at this late hour of the day, with the slanting shadows falling athwart them. In the little rose-garden Meg’s favorite mauvish-red roses filled the air with a quite intoxicating perfume.
Carol made her way through the rose-garden to the orchard, and the long orchard grass caressed her ankles as she moved. It was a little wet with falling dew, and her shoes were thin, but small matters of that sort never bothered her. Kate, who had accompanied her, and who was playing hide-and-seek in the grass, barked up at her when she decided to seat herself on a rustic bench and gaze upwards through the gnarled branches at the quiet sky above her head. But when she saw that the girl had no intention of moving she came and lay down quietly at her feet.
Carol talked to her in a gentle voice.
“It’s peaceful here, Kate,” she said, on a kind of sigh. “Very peaceful! ”
Kate showed that she agreed with her by wagging her feathery tail.
Carol stooped and tickled her silken ears.
“It’s all right for you,” she said, “You belong here! But I—!”
Again that rather ragged little sigh, and Kate’s golden eyes implored her to explain. After all, the animal tried to reassure her, it’s your home as well as mine, and I’ m perfectly willing to belong to you as well as anybody else. You know that!
But Carol could have told her differently. Kate was Meg’s dog. Captain, the parrot, was Meg’s parrot, the huge Siamese cat Benedict showed a definite preference for Meg. The roses blooming in the adjoining rose-garden were Meg’s roses, the very bench on which Carol was reclining had been carpentered especially for Meg by the handy Judson because the orchard was one of her favorite places in which to relax. But not as Carol was doing now, with empty hands. Always with a little fine sewing or embroidery, or perhaps a book, or a column of household accounts to add up. For Meg disapproved of complete idleness.
The light faded gradually out of the sky, and the night shadows deepened around her. In the orchard it was very dim and cool. Carol could see stars twinkling rather hazily in the blue above her head. She was feeling a little tired after her unusually well-filled day, and the making of new acquaintances, and although she was becoming aware of a faint chill in the air, and her frock was thin, and she was quite sure now that her feet were wet, she drifted into a kind of a tranquil little doze. But when she opened her eyes her husband was standing in front of her, and his face was dark in the gloom of the trees.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding yourself!” he said. “Go indoors at once, Carol, and in future do exercise a little ordinary common sense! ”
Carol started up guiltily.
Oh, I’m sorry! ’ she exclaimed. “Have you been wanting me?”
“I’ve been wondering where on earth you had got to,” he answered rather dryly. “Were you feeling tired?”
“A little,” she confessed. She followed him like a pale shadow across the lawn, up the worn stone steps to the terrace and in through the open french window to the drawing-room. She was thankful that Meg was still absent.
“I'm so sorry you had to come and look for me,” she repeated.
“Sit down,” he ordered, and almost thrust her on to one of the spindly-legged chairs, “and take your shoe off.”
She complied at once, and as he had suspected her thin brocade shoe was sodden and stained.
“You see?” he said, and held it out to her. “Do you want to collect pneumonia?”
“Of course not,” she answered.
His lips seemed to tighten a little, and something about the rest of his face made her heart sink a little. He went and turned on the electric fire, stimulating a basket of glowing logs, and then instructed her to hold her feet close to the warmth while he obtained another pair of shoes for her.
“Where do you keep them?” he asked rather curtly, before he reached the door. “In the wardrobe?”
Carol nodded.
“But there's no need for you to go and get them! I can get them m
yself—”
“I daresay you could,” he agreed; “but you’ll do what I tell you!” When he had left the room Carol sat waiting in the dim drawingroom, with the comforting glow from the electric fire warming her chilled feet, and the scent of the flowers in the many bowls and vases lying heavily in the air around her. She reached over and switched on a little table-lamp, and in its pale amber light the faded beauties in the Persian rug before the fireplace came suddenly to life, and so did the colors in a porcelain vase upon the mantelpiece. Her own fair hair assumed the effect of a delicate nimbus surrounding the creamy pallor o f her face, and her eyes looked deep and dark and slightly mournful. Her white georgette frock was stained with its contact with the orchard seat, and in one place it was torn a little.
When Timothy returned he bore in his hands her bedroom slippers, feather-trimmed mules from which her pink heels protruded. He also handed her a little fleecy angora wrap he had found lying over the back of a chair.
“Put it on,” he ordered her, “and in future do have the sense not to go sitting about in the orchard when the dew is falling. It’ s never particularly hot in there, and at this time of night you could easily catch a chill. Do you feel rather shivery? You look it! ”
“I did,” she admitted, “but I’m warmer now,” snuggling into the angora wrap.
He went through into the dining-room and came back with an inch of amber fluid at the bottom of a tumbler. It was whisky, she knew, and she drank it to please him, but heartily disliking the taste. As he took the glass from her she noticed that his face was still stern.
“I wish, Carol,” he remarked, when he had lighted a cigarette, and was standing gazing down at her with a reflective and faintly impatient look in his eyes, “that you were not quite so youthful. So extremely youthful, I ought to say!”
Carol felt as if he was accusing her of something, and her expression grew vaguely anxious.
“What—what do you mean by that?” she asked.
He flicked away the ash from his cigarette into a china ashtray.
“What do I mean? Well, simply that you were not quite so young in your ways. After all, there are many young women of your age—eighteen and a half! —who have not only been earning their living for a year or so, but have more wisdom tucked away in their quite businesslike heads than you appear to have in yours after years of careful and expensive tuition. Even Miss Hardcastle thought you were a little young for your age.”