Ida Cobb rustled again. How like Helena not telling her anything—making her feel she wasn’t wanted. Goodness knew it had been inconvenient enough to come down. But had she hesitated? Marjory had wanted the car, and she had told her quite firmly that she couldn’t have it. “I must go to Aunt Helena.” That was what she had said at once. She tossed her head and rustled protestingly.
“Ring, Eustace,” said Mrs. Ryven.
CHAPTER IX
Valentine pulled her hand away from Timothy’s. There was a cold feeling deep inside her; when they talked about Aunt Helena it got worse. She didn’t want to talk about Helena any more. She pulled her hand away.
“Who was the man who opened the door?”
“Who opened the door? Oh, Bolton—he’s the butler. He’s been here since the year one.”
“Oh”—her colour rose—“I’ve always wanted to see a butler!”
Timothy burst out laughing.
“Why?”
“There was one in Lady Catherine’s Secret. It’s a lovely book. Edward said it was trash—but it isn’t. Have you ever read it?”
“No.”
“I’ll lend it to you. I brought it away from the island.”
“And there’s a butler in it?”
“Yes.” She leaned forward and spoke breathlessly. “Yes. And it was really him—no, he—I mean he was really the one who sent the warning, only no one knew—at least they didn’t know till the very last page.”
“It sounds frightfully exciting. I’m afraid Bolton’s not so exciting as that.”
He looked up at the sound of the opening door.
“What is it?”
Bolton stood there, pale and grave, his extreme decorum shadowed by a sense of catastrophe. After thirty years the family was so much his family, and the house so much his house, that a change of ownership seemed to him to demand some of the funeral gloom which is its normal accompaniment. He said,
“Mrs. Ryven would be glad if you will come into the drawing-room.”
As they crossed the hall, Valentine felt Timothy’s hand on her arm. He had an unformulated feeling of resentment against Helena. Why had she sent Bolton? Why couldn’t she have come herself? She was making an occasion of it. Helena always made occasions of things.
He opened the door and took Valentine into the room.
Mrs. Cobb described the meeting to her family late that evening. Marjory sat on one arm of her chair and Reggie on the other, whilst Henry Cobb, on the opposite side of the hearth, made comments which occasionally merged into the scraps which he always liked to read aloud to her from The Times. There was a little fire, and the room had a pleasant, well-worn air of comfort.
Mr. Cobb was a stout, comfortable man with a round bald head, a round clean-shaven face, and round shell-rimmed spectacles. Marjory had on her pretty new evening frock because she was going on to a dance with Reggie. Mrs. Cobb had not changed, and the children, one on either side of her—she always thought of them as “the children”—kept on telling her how untidy she was.
“Just like a hen, darling—a disgraceful, dissipated old hen with straw in its hair.”
“Marjy! How can you?” Mrs. Cobb’s protest was a feeble one.
Reggie prodded her with a jutting hairpin.
“Looks as if she’d been sleeping out in a haystack—doesn’t she?”
“Reggie, dear boy, that hurts! And you’re not listening. Of course Helena was wonderful—”
“Ain’t she wonderful? Ain’t she beautiful? I’ll—tell the world.”
Reggie and Marjy sang this in chorus.
“Really, children!” said Mrs. Cobb.
“It’s rough on Helena,” said Mr. Cobb. He turned a page. “Hullo! I see Cheesman’s standing for the Wurrel division.”
“I’m as sorry for Helena as anyone,” said Helena’s sister. “But, you know, Henry, she makes things rather awful—I don’t mean in a slangy sort of way—but I’m sure this afternoon if it had been a funeral it wouldn’t have been nearly so gloomy. I kept feeling as if I ought to be wearing black.”
Marjory stroked her mother’s cheek.
“And you look such a fiend in black, darling.”
“You’re interrupting,” said Reggie. “Cough it up, Mum! What happened when they met?”
“Well, Timothy brought her in—and I must say I felt sorry for the poor child, because there was Eustace looking too gloomy and handsome, and Mr. Waterson exactly as if he’d just finished reading the will, and Helena—”
“Being wonderful!” said Reggie with an irreverent cackle.
Henry Cobb looked mildly over the top of his glasses.
“The last Conservative majority was two thousand and eighty-one—but of course that was on a split vote.”
Marjory kissed the tips of her fingers at him.
“Lovely! Run away and play, darling! It’s rude to interrupt—and you’ve often told us how nicely you were brought up.”
“And she really did look scared,” said Mrs. Cobb. “She’s the prettiest child, but she looked scared to death. And she stopped just inside the door and clutched Timothy as if he was her only hope. And then all of a sudden she let go of him and ran to me and flung her arms round my neck.”
“Good for her!” said Reggie.
“My dears, it was dreadful! Because she took me for Helena—Henry, I do think you needn’t go on reading the paper!”
“I’m not reading it. I can’t, my dear, whilst you all make such a noise. I’m just glancing at it, glancing, you know. And by the way, Monty Askew is advertising that house of his—draughty old ruin—and he’s the face to ask six thousand for it!”
No one took any notice of Monty Askew.
“Wasn’t it dreadful?” said Mrs. Cobb. “She flung her arms round my neck and she said ‘Aunt Helena!’ And of course I was going to explain, but I thought I’d better kiss her first. And Helena was most unreasonably annoyed.”
“What a jest!”
“Reggie I My dear boy! You wouldn’t talk like that if you’d been there. Helena was too dreadfully dignified and imposing about it. I must say—” She pressed her lips together and restrained herself, but her cheek bones turned pink.
“Oh, Mum, do say it!”
“No, Marjy.” Ida Cobb tossed her head. “I’m sorry for Helena.”
“What happened?”
“Well, I was just going to explain, when Helena said in her platform voice, ‘You are making a mistake, Valentine. I am your Aunt Helena—and I should have preferred to have been the first to give you a welcome.’”
“And then?”
“Well, Valentine just turned round and looked at her, and you could see her face fall. And she said, ‘Are you?’ And then Helena kissed her forehead—”
“Darling, she couldn’t! You can’t kiss a person’s forehead—not off the stage.”
“Helena did—she took her hand and she kissed her forehead. And she led her up to Eustace as if he were the Pope or something and said, ‘This is your cousin Eustace.’ And Eustace shook hands with her in a hushed sort of way.”
“How grim!” said Marjory in heart-felt tones.
“Of course I’m very fond of Eustace,” said Mrs. Cobb. “But I must say he’s a little overpowering, and even Helena can’t pretend that he has any small talk. I don’t know what we should have done without Timothy, I came away as soon as I could—”
“Now here’s an odd thing,” said Henry Cobb. “Here’s a fellow writes to the paper to say that snails breed four times a year. Did any of you know that?”
“Henry!”
“Ouf!” said Marjory.
“Well, my dear, he says so, so I suppose they do.”
Ida Cobb waved the snails away.
“Of course Helena will marry her to Eustace.”
“An excellent if rather obvious solution,” said Mr. Cobb in an abstracted manner.
Reggie whistled. Marjory Cobb jumped off the arm of her mother’s chair.
“Well, I admire E
ustace,” she said. “I wouldn’t marry him for the world, but I do rather admire him. He’s got pots of money—at least he had pots of money—and instead of having a good time with it, he practically lives in a slum.”
Reggie got up too.
“Eustace don’t know how to have a good time,” he said. “Come along, Marj, it’s time we got going.”
Mrs. Cobb looked at them fondly as they went out together; Reggie, thin, nondescript-coloured, with a monkey-like capacity for grimace; Marjory, a little pale thing with oddly marked eyebrows, not pretty, but rather uncommon. She would not have changed either of them for Eustace Ryven; and it is certain that Eustace would never have sat on the arm of her chair and thrilled her maternal soul by poking in her hairpins and calling her an old hen. But all the same, she would have got on better with Helena had Marjory been a beauty, or Eustace plain.
The front door banged.
“Helena will certainly marry her to Eustace,” said Mrs. Cobb in a tired, fretful voice.
CHAPTER X
Valentine lay awake through the hours of her first night at Holt. It was not only her first night at Holt, but her first night in a house.
She had a room with three windows, and the windows and the chairs and her bed were all dressed in shiny chintz patterned with blue and yellow and crimson birds. There was a blue carpet on the floor, and a white fur rug in front of the fireplace; and there were a great many pieces of shining furniture. They were made of a wood that looked like dark, rippled water. And there were two looking-glasses; a long one hung between carved wooden poles; and another, a gleaming oval in a dark frame, on a table between the windows.
She had asked to have the windows open, and when the light was out, she pulled back the cold, shiny curtains so that the air, the wet dark air, could come right into the room. She did not sleep, because her mind was full to the brim. The house—her thoughts about the house lay uppermost. In Honolulu she had been in shops, and in an hotel for an hour or two. Holt was quite different. It was not as large as the hotel, but somehow it seemed to be larger, because no two rooms were alike. All the rooms had a strange crowded feeling; not because they were overfilled with furniture, but because so many people seemed to have lived in them. The portraits of these other people hung upon the walls—people who had been born at Holt; girls who had left it to be married; women who had come into it through marriage; men, women, and little children who had lived out long lives at Holt. She had wanted so much to come to her own people, but she felt something between excitement and awe in the presence of these pictures. They were the first portraits that she had ever seen, and they seemed to her to be very real, and the people they portrayed very near, very sensibly her people and near—and so many.
Helena Ryven had talked about them at dinner, and Valentine experienced a strange discomposure. The smiling lady in rose-coloured brocade had lived to be very sad. The old man with the beard who held a sword in his hand had had three wives. The portrait of one of them hung opposite Valentine. It was the portrait of a child of six in a lace cap and full, stiff yellow skirts; there was an apple in the dimpled hand. “She had ten children,” said Helena Ryven.
Valentine lay in the dark and wondered about the yellow-skirted child’s ten children. The house seemed full, full, full of people. She looked at her three windows, which she could just make out as three long panels of a darkness that was not quite so black as the rest of theroom. The three panels framed the steadily falling rain. They were like three pictures of rain, and night, and soft wet blowing wind. The rain, and the night, and the wind were nearer to her than all the people of Holt.
Long afterwards, Valentine knew that she thought about the portraits because she could not think about Helena Ryven or Eustace. Her mind would not think about them; it went blank and numb and blind at their approach. She could not think about Helena. And she tried not to think about the people in the portraits.
She looked at the rain-pictures and thought how strange it was that the blue and crimson and yellow birds on the shiny curtains should still be there all night though she could not see them. It would be funny, and nice, if they could fly out into the room.
She became a little drowsy as she thought about the birds and pictured them flying quite, quite silently through the dark on gold and blue and crimson wings. She began to drift into a light, half-conscious sleep which was full of dreams. She felt herself moving on a soft, wet breeze with the birds all round her. They were not in the house any longer; they passed the window and were part of the picture of the night. The wind blew them over the tops of the trees; it blew them towards the dawn. Then she heard the sea beating against rock. And all at once she was on the island and Edward was looking at her with a frown, just as he always looked when she was stupid. He began to say something; but the birds came crowding between them with such a twittering that Edward and the island and her dream slipped away from her.
She opened her eyes and saw that her windows framed the dawn. The rain had stopped. There were real birds twittering. She ran to the nearest window and looked out.
It was about four o’clock by the sun, five by the clock. Valentine did not think in hours. The sun was up, but not clear of the trees. This window looked south-east. The trees were edged and laced with gold. The sky, without a single cloud, was a pale, sweet blue, not clear, not misty. It was colour that became with every moment more full of light. The grass was all silvery green, and the woods held dark misty places which the light had not yet reached.
Instantly Valentine became filled with the desire to be out of the house. This desire rushed into her mind like a fresh, invigorating breeze; her thoughts became full of it to the exclusion of everything else.
When she wanted to do something she wanted to do it at once. It simply didn’t occur to her to wait or to go through the door and down the staircase into the dark shut-in hall. The window was so much the nearer way; and to Valentine, who had climbed the island cliffs since she was a child, it was quite an easy way.
She did put on some clothes; but clothes were as yet either a vanity or a protection from cold. It was warm already, with the warmth that comes on a still summer day after rain; and as far as vanity was concerned, she was at the moment much more passionately interested in all this new green world than in the adornment of Valentine Ryven.
She discarded her night-gown, chiefly because it was long and would be in her way, but she would not put on any of the dresses which Barclay had given her, because she thought they would get spoilt in those wet, deep woods. It ended in her fishing out one of the island dresses made from the Avronia’s sheets; and in this, bare-armed and bare-legged, she climbed out of her window with the help of a water-pipe in the near angle of the wall and the thick brown stem of the old wistaria which almost hid it.
She ran across the paved terrace, down the steps, and reached the long green stretch of turf that fell by an easy slope to the woodland. Last night’s rain lay in a thick pearly dew. It bathed her feet deliciously. She ran on, and half way down the slope turned to look back at the house.
In yesterday’s downpour she had not really seen it at all. It stood now above her, just touched by the rising sun, and looked at her with rows of blind, curtained windows. It was one of those square Georgian houses, beautiful in proportion and mellowed by sun, wind and rain to a most perfect harmony with its surroundings. The green of wistaria and Virginia creeper covered the entire front.
Valentine looked at it with awe. It held so many stories. Helena Ryven had told her that the house stood on the site of an older one which had been burnt down. Some of the furniture and a few of the portraits had come from this older house. She stared, trying to picture the two houses, one gone into smoke and ash, the other watching her. And all of a sudden she was frightened, and ran without stopping until she reached the trees.
It was more than an hour later that she came to the river. Sometimes she had walked, and sometimes stood quite still watching a bird, a squirrel, or a rabbit. The woo
ds were enchanted woods, full of the loveliest wonders—ferns; lichen; a spider’s web with the dew making rainbows in it; shy little furry creatures that could stay as still as she could and run even faster. She was seeing everything for the first time, and seeing it between rain and sun, with the bloom of dawn upon it.
When she came to the river, she remembered Timothy. He lived by the river, he and Lil. There was only one house in sight, a little picture-book cottage, all thatch and gables and pink climbing roses, sitting in a garden quite full of blue and pink and purple flowers. The garden ran down to the water’s edge. She wondered if it was Timothy’s house.
She sat down on a branch of willow and dabbled her feet in the water.
CHAPTER XI
Helena Ryven rang Timothy up at half-past seven, and he had only to hear her voice to know that she was angry. Helena angry was Helena even more restrained than usual. A feeling of boredom came over him. When Helena was restrained, it generally ended in his wanting to smash the furniture.
“She’s gone,” said Mrs. Ryven slowly and distinctly.
“Who has gone?”
“My dear Timothy, I do not want to mention names.”
“Oh, very well—if this is a guessing game—”
“I want you to go and look for her at once.”
“Why me? What’s wrong with Eustace? It seems to me—”
“Eustace went back to town last night. He naturally did not wish to stay here. Will you go at once?”
“Good Lord, Helena! I might as well look for a needle in a bundle of hay. If the girl’s gone for a walk, why fuss? She’ll come back when she’s hungry.”
Helena’s voice became colder.
“I should not have rung you up if it were merely a case of a walk.”
“Well—what is it a case of?”
A pause. Then, icily:
“As far as I can make out, she has gone without any shoes or stockings.”
“Well, it’s nice and warm—she won’t hurt.”
“I must really beg you to be serious. She must have climbed out of the window, because everything downstairs was shut up. It is extremely important that someone should find her and bring her home at once. We can’t have her wandering about without shoes and stockings or anything.”
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