“But he doesn’t—I mean he can’t—It’s always been Fred, out there—doesn’t he mean to go back?”
“I don’t know,” said Rosalie hopelessly.
“Of course, I’d simply love to come—but would Mama ever let me? And shouldn’t I be in the way?”
“You’re never in the way. I’d love you to be there,” Rosalie said. She sounded so affectionate, thought Kate, and yet one somehow felt that, although the affection was there, it was not that which had prompted the amazing suggestion.
“But I don’t believe Lucy really meant it—about going out there. Do you?”
“I don’t know,” Rosalie said again.
Kate was silent, puzzled and distressed.
Something was utterly wrong. She didn’t know what it was.
“Go to bed,” said Rosalie gently.
They kissed one another.
“I wish I could do something for you,” Kate said, unable to find any other words that might express her bewildered sympathy.
Rosalie smiled at her again.
“Good-night, darling,” she repeated vaguely.
Chapter IX
(1)
“I Suppose,” remarked Cecilia cheerfully, “that there’s a little reason why Rosalie should be looking so far from well just now.”
Lucy, alone in the morning room with her, straightened himself suddenly.
“What on earth do you mean, Mama?”
Cecilia pursed her lips.
“What do you suppose I mean? It’s nature, and a very happy thing, although the shock and sadness about poor Mrs. Meredith couldn’t have come at a worse time. But Rosalie will recover her tone, poor dear, and this will be a comfort to her. Why don’t you let her see a good London doctor, who could prescribe a tonic for her?”
“You think——” said Lucy very slowly, and broke off.
“Certainly, I think she needs a tonic. It’s hard on any woman to have a great bereavement at a moment when she’s”—Cecilia paused, and finished delicately—“in Rosalie’s condition.”
She hunted amongst her embroidery silks for the exact shade of green that she needed, for Cecilia’s sight, although, she would never admit it, was beginning to fail a little.
When she felt satisfied that she had at last matched the fragment in her hand and looked up again, the door was closing upon the tall figure of her son.
(2)
“How history repeats itself!” Lucy said, and his voice was light and bitter, with an edge to it like the sharp hardness of a diamond drill.
Rosalie and Fred and Lucy Lemprière were in the schoolroom, and it was late afternoon, and Fred sat on the piano-stool, and Rosalie on the window-seat, with Lucy standing over her.
Her face was pale and strained, and even her blue-green eyes seemed drained of colour and life, so that they looked grey. Only her curling hair retained its appearance of vitality and strength.
“I’ll go away,” said Fred, his voice expressing only sulkiness.
He looked at Rosalie.
She was staring blindly at Lucy.
“This time,” Lucy said to her, “I’m afraid even you can’t get out of making up your mind. But you’ve chosen already, haven’t you? It’s Fred—it’s been Fred first, last and all the time, ever since you first met him—just a month after you’d promised to marry me. You can go with him now—it’s all over, so far as I’m concerned.”
“Do you mean you’re going to divorce her?” Fred asked heavily.
“And make a public scandal and have every filthy rag of newspaper in the country reporting the case? Not likely. Let her go to Barbados with you. No one’s likely to ask many questions there unless it’s Johnny Newton, and he’s more than half drunk most of his time. Anyway, no Lemprière ever does anything that isn’t perfect, to old Johnny. Take her with you.”
Rosalie began to cry helplessly, the tears pouring down her face. “Lucy!” she sobbed. “Will you forgive me?”
“Forgive you? Of course I forgive you,” said Lucy wearily. “What is there to forgive? Do you suppose I don’t know that you’ve suffered like hell already, over all this? You can’t help being what you are. It’s Fred whom I ought to put a bullet through—only how would that help any of us?”
“You’re right there. It wouldn’t,” Fred observed grimly. “It’s all going to be hideous enough as it is. There’s Mama, and Callie—what are you going to do about Callie?”
“She’s mine!” cried Rosalie passionately.
Lucy shook his head.
“Callie will stay in England,” he said. “It’s the only way to keep Mama quiet, and little Kate’ll see to her.”
“But she’s mine,” Rosalie reiterated piteously.
“You’ll have Fred’s child,” retorted her husband brutally.
(3)
Kate felt more bewildered and frightened than ever.
Fred had gone to London, at almost a day’s notice, declaring that he must see about his passage to Bridgetown.
To all Cecilia’s representations that there was no hurry, and that surely he could arrange everything without leaving The Grove, he turned a deaf ear.
“I’ll write,” he kept on saying, “I’ll write from London.”
“But you’ll be back in a few days,” urged Cecilia.
He nodded, kissed her.
Then he was gone.
Rosalie was at St. Brinvels.
Kate once or twice took little Callie into her own room at nights, although she dared not let Cecilia know it. It comforted and reassured her, in some obscure way. Lucy remained at The Grove, but he spent all day in his workshop or on horseback and Kate knew that he was terribly unhappy and that he did not want anyone to speak to him.
He never asked her to ride with him.
Only one day, less than a week after Fred’s departure, he came to find her.
“Kay—I want you to do something for me.”
Never, in all her short life, had she failed to respond to any request of Lucy’s.
“What is it?”
“Get Rosalie’s things packed up. I’ve given orders about having a trunk brought down—but I don’t want the servants to have anything to do with it. And don’t tell Mama.”
“Everything?” said Kate, trembling.
He nodded.
“Callie’s things too?”
“No.” He paused, looked at her, and said deliberately, “Callie’s your business, now.”
“Lucy!”
Kate began to cry.
“Don’t cry, my love. These things pass, in some extraordinary way.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“You understand all that matters, well enough. And all the rest will come out in a day or two. Meanwhile see to this packing job for me, and keep quiet about it.”
“I promise, Lucy.”
“I knew you would,” said Lucy, unsmiling.
For twenty-four hours Kate felt as though she were living and moving in a dream and nothing was wholly real or tangible.
Then came a sultry morning, the hottest day of a month that had been hot throughout, and Lucy ordered round his tall Canadian buggy and the roan horse that had once started at the overturning of a bucket in the stable-yard and frightened Rosalie. Cecilia and Kate both watched him climb into the driving-seat, as they stood in the shade of the arched stone entrance to the hall.
“I wish you’d take the carriage for Rosalie,” observed Lucy’s mother.
“Rufus wants exercise. Besides, I—may come back alone. It depends.”
“I think she ought to be here, resting,” Cecilia declared in her positive way. “It’s too much for her just now, in that tiny house, looking after that poor old man.”
Lucy lifted his driving-whip in a sketched salute and turned the horse, holding him in on a short rein as the beast dashed forward.
“Is Rosalie coming back this afternoon?” asked Kate, bewildered and yet hopeful.
“She really should. I’ve sent her a message.
Run up to her room, Kate, there’s a good child, and see that everything’s ready.”
Kate obeyed.
The blinds were drawn half-down in the big room, and the silk-and-lace-draped dressing-table bare, as it had been since Rosalie’s departure. The trunk that Kate had packed was gone.
She knew that the big wardrobe and the long, lavender-scented drawers and shelves were empty, for she had cleared them herself.
Rosalie was not coming back any more.
Kate was waiting.
For what, she had no idea.
The afternoon slowly rolled along, until a sudden heavy fall of rain came and blotted out the paling light, and Cecilia rang for lamps, exclaiming in annoyance that Lucy ought to have taken her advice and gone to St. Brinvels in the carriage.
He could never bring Rosalie home in this.
Callie was brought downstairs, and presently the nurse came and fetched her away to bed.
Still the rain poured down, more and more heavily. Cecilia and Kate sat down alone to dinner.
“I suppose Rosalie has persuaded him to stay up there for the night,” said Cecilia crossly. “Very inconsiderate, of course. And surely they could have sent a message.”
“There wouldn’t be anybody to send, Mama, on a night like this, and Lucy would know you’d guess he was stopping at the cottage.”
“You know nothing about it, Kate,” Cecilia replied, but she said it abstractedly and Kate thought that she was anxious, too.
At half-past eight a respectful enquiry came up from the stables.
“Tell Reynolds that Mr. Lucy is certain to be spending the night up at St. Brinvels. He needn’t wait.”
“Very good, madam.”
The rain slashed against the window-panes, behind the yellow brocade curtains.
(4)
Cecilia’s tall, portly figure was the first thing that Kate saw next morning standing between her and the window when she woke late from a heavy sleep.
At her first movement, Cecilia turned swiftly and showed a face disfigured with tears.
“My dear child, I’ve been waiting for you to wake. Kate, you’ve got to be brave and remember that I’ve known many heavy sorrows in my life—more than you ever will, I hope—and that I’ve always borne them courageously. Something very dreadful has happened. Dear Rosalie——”
Cecilia put her handkerchief to her eyes, from which the tears were flowing.
“You didn’t hear anything in the night? There’s been an accident, my dear. Poor darling Rosalie—Lucy was insane enough to try and drive in that storm. They had a terrible smash. Lucy was thrown clear but she——”
“Mama—she isn’t——?”
Cecilia bent her head.
“The doctor says it was instantaneous. She fell on her head. She couldn’t have suffered, even for a moment. She was killed instantly. It was as merciful as could be, for her. But my poor, poor boy!”
“Lucy!” moaned Kate.
“Thank God I’m still here to comfort him,” said Cecilia dramatically. “You realize that, at my age, the shock must be much greater to me than to anybody else—even than to poor Lucy, perhaps—but I shan’t fail him. I’m going up there now—they sent over early this morning—to tell me.”
“Is Lucy here?” cried Kate.
“No. He’s—but that’s got nothing to do with you, my darling. You may be quite sure that everything that is right has been seen to. I wouldn’t let you be waked any sooner.”
She was looking at Kate rather curiously, as though expecting her to burst into tears, but Kate felt completely stunned and unable to realize what she had just been told.
“I must go to Lucy,” she said suddenly, and Cecilia frowned a little.
“Leave Lucy to me, my dear. You can go up to Callie, presently. Nurse is looking after her. Poor little thing! Mercifully she’s too young to know what she’s lost.”
Kate shuddered, and hid her face in her hands. She longed for tears, but none came.
Rosalie dead? It was quite impossible.
It couldn’t be true that she wouldn’t ever smile her wide, lovely smile again, or twine her slim fingers into Kate’s own, and look at her with those narrowed, blue-green eyes.
“You’d better get up,” said Cecilia rather coldly. “I wanted to break it to you myself, but I can’t stay now. Everything will fall on me.”
As her mother went towards the door something in Kate’s mind seemed suddenly to snap, causing her an acute and violent sensation of actual physical agony.
In one blinding moment she understood that Rosalie was dead, lost to her for all time—and at the same moment the dim, muddled fears and sorrows of the past weeks took shape and rose before her—terrifying and semi-comprehended, to become part of herself for all the rest of her life, however long it might be. Kate threw herself face downward on the pillow and sobbed—the tearing, uncontrollable sobs of one pushed to the uttermost limits of sanity and beyond them.
(5)
It was late in the day when Cecilia came back to The Grove.
She was too insensitive a woman to be capable of reaching a very high degree of courage, but she possessed to the full the quality of indomitability.
It showed now, in her ageing and newly-ravaged face.
Lucy was not with her.
He had gone early that morning—incomprehensibly and without explanation gone—to London to find Fred.
It was actually John Meredith who, with Cecilia, had forced the surly, half-fuddled Dr. Williams, fetched to the spot as the nearest medical man, to call in a reputable colleague and, with him, interview the coroner in the hope of averting a public inquest.
The story of the accident was brief.
Lucy, said John Meredith, had driven up in the middle of the morning and gone straight to Rosalie. Meredith had exchanged barely three words with him and had himself then ridden off to a distant farm where he had business.
When he returned, in the early afternoon, his daughter told him that she was going to London for a few days at once.
He was surprised, but Lucy had said that he wanted her to consult a doctor, she was not well. He had been urging her to go, and now that she had agreed he was driving her in to catch the late express at Chepstow.
Meredith thought that his daughter looked very unwell, and she was in tears when she bade him goodbye, but he had attributed it partly to her state of health, and partly to the recent agitation of her mother’s death.
She had said that she would stay at Mrs. Troyle’s house and write to him from there.
Lucy and Rosalie then drove away, in the high buggy, before the storm began, but it broke soon afterwards—so violently that Meredith almost wondered whether they might not turn back after all, or stop at The Grove.
He was therefore not surprised when he heard steps hurrying up the path—he thought that they had returned, leaving the cart in the stable-yard below the garden.
Then there had been a ring at the bell, and he heard the maid go to answer it, and a minute later heard her scream.
He had gone out himself, and been told by a local labourer that there had been an accident. His daughter had been hurt. They were bringing her to the cottage.
The labourer had said that, coming home from work, he had had barely time to fling himself against the hedge as a trap and horse tore past him down the steepest part of the hill, the driver still in his seat and pulling back with all his weight against the reins.
There was no one else in the cart.
At the bend of the road the rocking cart overturned and the driver, one rein broken but the other one wound round and round his hand, was flung out.
The labourer, pluckily enough, had gone to the horse’s head and Mr. Lempriére, on his feet again almost directly, had come to his aid.
The roan, quivering and exhausted, had been brought to a standstill.
Then Mr. Lemprière had gone running up the hill again and the labourer had followed him, leading the trembling horse. He had had onl
y a little way to go.
Lucy Lemprière’s wife was lying by the side of the road, the rain pouring down on her and washing away the stream of blood alike from her upturned brow and from the great boulder of grey stone against which she had been thrown.
(6)
Fred and Lucy arrived together, by the last train. No one saw either of them except Cecilia, to whom Lucy had telegraphed from London.
Although her stupendous egotism made her obtuse where her own motives were concerned and had, all her life, kept her from learning wisdom or gentleness, Cecilia was not a stupid woman.
She was on the contrary a shrewd one, with a high degree of intuition concerning her only real preoccupations in life: herself and her sons.
Shocked, and genuinely, even if only superficially, distressed, her faculties absorbed by all the outward paraphernalia connected with death, she showed herself neither emotional nor dictatorial but met Lucy with steady kindness and tenderness.
Almost her first care was to let him know that the coroner, whom John Meredith as well as the two doctors had seen, would almost certainly agree to hold an inquest privately and with no jury, after hearing Lucy’s own story.
“I wish you’d stayed here, my dear boy, and not gone off like that,” said Cecilia gently. “But he’s to see you tomorrow morning at nine, at St. Brinvels. I don’t think there’s any doubt that he’ll give a verdict of accidental death.”
Lucy, haggard of face and looking scarcely sane, made no answer and after a while Fred said heavily:
“I’ll go with you.”
“That’s right, my dear. You ought both to try and get a night’s sleep. You know Fanny’s arriving to-morrow, and Tom?”
“Are they?” said Fred.
He looked round the room with his black, leaden gaze—anywhere but at his brother’s face.
“Where’s little Kate?”
“She’s in bed and asleep,” asserted Cecilia, although the last half of the statement was only an assumption. “She’s been very hysterical and, I’m-sorry to say, has made very little attempt to control herself. After a night’s rest I hope she’ll realize that this is a time to think of others, and not give way. After all, she was spared practically all the brunt of the shock. It was I who went and broke it to her myself.”
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