Mistress of Brown Furrows

by Susan Barrie

  She changed into the dress she had worn the previous evening, but her fingers shook now a little as she fastened the hooks of the brief corsage. It was rather a sophisticated dress, of white slipper satin embroidered all over with tiny clusters of silver beads, and it was slender and elegant, and left her shoulders completely bare. She wore no ornament with it, save a pair of delicate drop ear-rings—pearls surrounded by minute specks of diamonds—which had been given to her by Aunt Harry, and which looked well in her rather flower-like ears. Her hair she simply combed into soft curls well back from her brow, and she added the faintest trace of color to her cheeks, for she knew she was looking rather pale—excitement, and her exertions of the day, were responsible for that.

  Timothy knocked politely at her door and conducted her down to the dining-room for dinner. Her heart thudded a little when she looked at him, so very much more distinguished and altogether better-looking than any of the other men around her. They had a table decorated with wine-red carnations and sprays of delicate fern, and an orchestra played softly in the distance, and there was a cleared space for dancing—if anyone wished to dance.

  Timothy did not suggest that they should dance, but he ordered a bottle of red wine which he remarked might put a little more natural color in Carol’ s cheeks, and she colored a little at that, and hoped he did not find her looking particularly haggard—although she had certainly felt haggard earlier in the day. He looked down at her quite kindly when he saw her flush, and his eyes reassured her a little.

  “Actually you’ ve survived this little adventure much better than I thought,” he remarked. “Aunt Harry was probably right when she said I was inclined to coddle you too much. You obviously respond better to rougher treatment. I shall have to remember that in future.”

  Carol cast down her eyes and wondered agonizingly what he meant. Was he merely teasing her, or had he definitely decided to adopt a fresh attitude towards her? He certainly was already treating her in quite a different manner to what she had been previously accustomed to from him, and he also was inclined to regard her with a certain amount of rather quizzical amusement, which disconcerted her a little. As if he found her at moments a slightly humorous study.

  “You haven’t told me yet how you came to—to know where to look for me,” she said, when he made no attempt to enlighten her.

  “Oh, that was easy,” he returned. “Your young friend Winslow wired me your address last night, and I must say I think that was rather decent of him. But perhaps by that time you had made it clear that you were not particularly interested in him? And Aunt Harry had already told me that you had gone to Paris, but at first I assumed that you had flown direct to Brian.”

  “You—you thought that?” she gasped.

  “Well why not?” he said casually. “I had to think something, didn’t I, and you left me no clue. You were apparently getting a little tired of being cossetted and fussed over by me, and Aunt Harry suggested that there was another reason. I couldn’ t, however, reconcile that with your deciding to depart so suddenly and leave me It was too much like a slap in the face, a somewhat chill return for my attempts in the past to make you as happy as I possibly could. That you were not and never have been happy with me is now plain, and that’s one thing I shall have to discuss with you.”

  “I don’t quite—I don’t know what you mean? Carol got out, looking almost pathetically concerned and bewildered. “Didn’ t Aunt Harry—didn’t Aunt Harry—explain to you?”

  “Oh, yes, she explained, but I’m afraid I can’t accept that explanation. ”

  “I see.”

  Carol looked down at her soup, which was rapidly cooling on the table in front of her. She had eaten very little that day, but her appetite had dwindled to nothing at all now. She felt as if she had received something in the nature of a shock. This was a Timothy quite new and strange to her.

  “Get on with your dinner and we’ll talk about it afterwards,” Timothy recommended.

  She obeyed him—or she tried to obey him—but the meal was a kind of long-drawn-out agony to her. When they finally left the dining-room he asked her whether she would like to see something of Paris night life, and because she could not very well do otherwise she agreed. He hailed a taxi, and the rest of the evening was a kind of colorful blur to Carol. She knew that she sat with him on the fringe of a dance floor, and that he somewhat surprisingly ordered a bottle of champagne, which did have the effect of making her feel temporarily just a little more hopeful. She also danced with him, and it was heaven after the misery of the night before when she had danced with Brian, and he introduced her to some friends he encountered when they were leaving the night-club.

  They were friends who were enjoying a bright week-end in Paris, and they wanted the Carringtons to return with them and join their party, but Carol could scarcely have endured such an ordeal at that, and she was thankful when Timothy said no; they were going back to their hotel.

  He obtained another taxi, and in the close darkness of the cab she watched him lying back and smoking a cigarette, apparently quite unaffected by her near presence. And he never even asked her whether she was tired, or whether she had enjoyed her evening, or whether, for that matter, she had any feelings about anything at all. He simply seemed to be completely detached from her, and it made her so desperately miserable that she wanted to cry out and beg him not to treat her like this, but something prevented her from doing so. It might have been her pride—she didn’t know. She was not even certain that she had got any pride just then.

  In a few moments, she kept saying to herself, they would be back at the hotel, and then what...? He had said that they would discuss the matter—but what matter would they discuss, and what would be the result of it...?

  When they reached the hotel, however, he leaned forward and spoke to the driver. The taxi circled, hooted madly in concert with the other darting vehicles whose lights were like fireflies in the velvet dark, and shot back along the way it had recently traversed. But it did not stop at the night-club or any other night-club. It went on over the fine roads beneath the uncannily bright Paris stars which refused to be put to shame by the competitive signs of restaurants or the bright lights of hotels or shop-fringed boulevards, and at last it was leaving the lights behind and the stars grew that much brighter. A cooler, fresher breeze came in at the open window, and there was a sweeter scent—the scent of open spaces.

  Carol drew her cloak up around her shoulders and peered ahead through the darkness.

  “Where—where are we?” she asked, when the silence seemed to her to have lasted between them a dreadfully long time.

  “I believe this road leads to Versailles if we keep going long enough,” Timothy replied, and lighted another cigarette.

  “Versailles?” she echoed and looked at him rather anxiously. “But isn't it—isn't it rather late—?”

  “It is quite late,” he agreed, consulting the luminous dial of his wrist-watch, “but it doesn't matter very much, does it? And we have a great deal to discuss, and I thought we could do it better in a taxi than in your bedroom at the hotel. You probably feel you have a right to your bedroom, and at least I have a right to be with you in a taxi! ”

  Carol's cheeks suddenly began to burn. Her eyes, even under cover of the darkness, grew confused, and she looked away from him.

  “What—what are we going to discuss?”

  “Your running way, for one thing! Was it entirely your own idea, or did Aunt Harry put it into your head?”

  Carol suddenly began to feel angry with him. This was all very well. She had left him because he refused to treat her as anything other than a child, and now he was making her feel like a child who had behaved in a fashion of which he obviously disapproved and whom he was prepared to punish quite severely if necessary! Even to the extent of severing their hitherto completely friendly relations and perhaps casting her adrift—if she desired it!

  But she did not desire it!...

  She said with sudden, r
ather youthful dignity:

  “Aunt Harry realized that I could not go on—not as we were going on. I—she—she agreed that it would be best for me to go away.... There seemed nothing else to do....”

  “Why?”

  She flung round on him

  “Well, if you didn't want me, there was no reason why I should stay. And as you plainly didn't want me—”

  ‘What made you think I didn't want you?”

  She was silent. She was conscious that this was all rather humiliating, and she thought it was brutal of him to put her through such an inquisition. Tears stung her eyes, but she winked them away almost angrily, for she could never bear him to see them, and her lips quivered so much that she had to take a firm hold of the lower one with her teeth. She shrank back in her corner of the taxi, and was thankful that there was now no moon to cast a revealing light into the cab.

  “What made you think I didn't want you?” he repeated,

  inexorably.

  Carol refused to answer, and kept her face rigidly averted.

  “Aunt Harry said something to me which seemed to indicate that you had had enough! But when I thought about it afterwards I realized that she could also have meant that you had not had all you wanted....”

  Carol felt herself go hot all over.

  “Look at me, Carol! ” he commanded.

  As she did not turn her head he put out a hand and caught hold of her chin and turned her face deliberately to meet his. The expression in his eyes was completely inscrutable as he gazed at her consideringly, his mouth was set in an uncompromising and rather hard line, or so she thought. His fingers gripped her chin so firmly that they hurt her a little, but when she winced slightly and attempted to withdraw from him he refused to let her go. There was no tenderness, as she realized, in his hold, and there was no tenderness in his look.

  “I waited four months after we were married for you to begin to grow up,” he said, in a cold voice, “but according to Aunt Harry you had already grown up! I then wasted a lot of further time while you recovered from your accident, but my anxiety for your welfare became a little cloying, apparently, and you would have preferred it if my instincts had been altogether more cave-man. Again I quote Aunt Harry! Well, I don’t pretend to understand women—least of all inexplicable nineteen-year-olds! —but one thing I do know is this: I am not going to waste any more time! ”

  Before she could properly realize what had happened he had snatched at her hands and deliberately he lifted and wound her white arms about his neck, her slight body was crushed up against him, her head forced back, and her quivering mouth was covered almost brutally by his own. There was nothing about this kiss which left her with any opportunity to respond in any way whatsoever, and she could only remain quite limp and not even yielding in his arms, although her fingers did cling to him a little.

  When he released her his own face was white and his eyes dark and intense. Her eyes looked up at him, a little bemused, but she was much calmer than he was, and she was obviously waiting.

  “Well?” he said.

  Suddenly her eyes softened miraculously. She put up a hand and lightly, very tenderly, she stroked his cheek, and she murmured gently:

  “Timothy!—Oh, Timothy!...”

  He kissed her lips again lingeringly, her eyes, her gold curls, the little warm hollows in her throat, and at last he murmured: “Carol, you unsatisfactory wife, I love you better than anything else in the world, but I’ m burning to punish you a little for treating me so abominably! ”

  She leaned against him happily, at last thoroughly content.

  “I don’t mind,” she told him, “so long as you don’t stop loving me at the same time! ”

  When at last he told the taxi-driver to turn they were well on their way to Versailles. He said, looking down at her as they returned to Paris:

  “As soon as we get back I think we ought to send a wire to Aunt Harry, or we might even manage to get her on the telephone. I think she’d be happier if she knew that I was not still chasing you across France.”

  “Or administering punishment?” she added, looking up at him with radiant eyes.

  He kissed the pink tip of her ear.

  “Dear Aunt Harry!” she said suddenly, warmly. “I’m longing to see her again.”

  “You will,” he told her, “very soon, for we’re returning to Venice almost immediately. But we can’ t stay there more than a few weeks longer—a strictly official honeymoon this time, I hope! And then we’ll have to return to Brown Furrows. I’ve made up my mind I’ m going to become quite a serious farmer, and you’ll have to turn yourself into a farmer’s wife.”

  “I shan’t find that very difficult,” she said, nestling comfortably in the crook of his arm. “And I’ ve made up my mind that Meg and I are going to share the housekeeping—I’m going to make a real effort to get to know and understand her, for your sake, Timothy, darling, as well as her own. ”

  “You won’t need to do that,” he told her, smiling with the old tenderness returned to his eyes and warming her heart. “Meg was married yesterday morning to Nat, and they’re setting up housekeeping together. They’ve found a house. Meg hopes you’ll go over and see her sometimes—and Nat, of course.”

  “Oh, Timothy!” Carol’s eyes had started to shine. She felt as if the last shadow was rolling away from her life. “How perfectly—exciting! And how thrilling for Meg! ”

  “And Nat, too I hope,” he said, grinning a little.