“Valentine! What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know.” But she put out her hand, and when he took it her fingers clung.
“What is it, Val? I say, don’t cry!”
“I don’t know. He said he couldn’t come and see me, or write, or—or anything, because he hadn’t any money, and because, he said, I was going to have such a lot.”
Timothy whistled.
She pulled away her hand and rubbed her eyes with it.
“I thought he was going to be my own real friend. I do want to have a real friend of my own. And he said he couldn’t marry me because of the money. But I don’t want to marry anyone.”
Timothy found himself sitting beside her. He got out his handkerchief and began to dry her eyes with it. Her skin was most astonishingly soft and fine under the sunburn. There were little blue shadows beneath her eyes. The tears kept brimming up against her dark lashes and flowing over. He had never dried a girl’s tears before. Lil only cried when she was in a temper. He found it an absorbing occupation. The absent Austin appeared to him to be either an extraordinarily noble fellow of the strong silent sort, or else the world’s prize mug. He rather inclined to the latter view.
“I say—I wouldn’t cry any more.”
Valentine sniffed hard.
“I don’t know why I did. I don’t ever. Edward said female tears were an abomination. He said they were a grossly immoral method of getting one’s own way. May I have your handkerchief to blow my nose? He said a lot more things like that that I can’t remember. He never let me cry. He said it made men take to drink.”
“I shall plunge into The Spotted Cow on my way home and go on the binge.”
A look of bright interest came into Valentine’s eyes.
“That’s a new word! Barclay didn’t teach me that one. I love it. Does it mean getting drunk?”
Timothy grinned.
“In this instance it would. But it really only means going on the spree and having a beano—”
“Tell me lots more words like that! I do love them!”
“You’ll get them mixed up with the names of your flowers. Think of Helena’s face when you call a nasturtium a beano!”
“I won’t—I won’t!” Then with a shadow on face and voice, “Would she be—vexed?”
The laughing brightness had gone out of her eyes. How quickly she changed, and how sensitive eyes, lips and colour were to her change of mood. He was reminded of a day of ruffling wind and racing cloud—one of those very early spring days of sun, wind, rain, and sudden soft balm.
“What is it?” he said, and saw her colour brighten.
“I don’t like to vex her,” she said in a small wistful voice.
“My dear child—don’t be a goose! Why should you vex her? I was only rotting.”
Valentine leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her cupped hands. Her eyes regarded Timothy mournfully.
“What is it, Val?”
She went on looking at him with a sort of steadfast sadness that he found rather piteous. Then all at once she said in a quick whisper, “She tries to like me,” and her hands came up and covered her mouth as if she had said something dreadful.
Timothy felt oddly moved. He took refuge in being angry with Helena. And just because he was angry with Helena he had to defend her.
“What on earth put such an idea into your head?”
She took her hands from her mouth and made a gesture with them as if she were giving him something.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to say that—it jumped right out of my mouth.”
“Things do.” His eyes teased her a little, kindly. “But it isn’t your saying it that matters—what matters is that you should think it. Why do you?”
She spoke in flushed distress, impetuously, the words coming, now in a rush, and now haltingly word by word.
“Austin said—it would be like that. He said she wouldn’t love me. I always thought she would—I always thought about her on the island—I never thought she wouldn’t love me. And Austin said how could she when I was taking everything away from her and Eustace? He said she couldn’t possibly. But I thought she would.” She paused, took a choking breath and repeated, “She tries to like me.”
Timothy’s heart gave a jump. He concealed as carefully as possible an extreme tenderness for all young and helpless things—wild creatures, kittens, children. He concealed it so well that only Lil really guessed at it; and he was painfully aware that she considered it “soft.” He found Valentine very young, very much the wild, innocently daring, shy, bold, alert, sensitive creature that those other young wild things were. She had never been tamed; but she was fearless because she had never been harmed, and shy because she did not know her ground—bold one moment and shy the next because of her ignorance. And on the surface of her nature, quite unassimilated, the maxims and axioms of Edward. He found the whole thing rather moving.
He was sitting beside her on the step. He looked away from her, frowning a little. It was no use telling her lies. He said at last,
“Give her a little time, Val.”
Valentine said, “Yes—”
“You see,” pursued Timothy, frowning at an innocent delphinium, “you see, you’ve been thinking about her all these years, but she hasn’t been thinking about you—she didn’t know you existed.”
“It isn’t that,” said Valentine. The sorrowful certainty of her voice convicted Timothy of subterfuge. “It isn’t that at all. You see, I am taking everything away from her and Eustace. May I talk to you about it? Because I can’t talk to Aunt Helena—she says people don’t talk about that sort of thing—she says it isn’t done. Always when there’s something I very dreadfully want to do, someone tells me that it isn’t done—Austin was dreadful about it. But if I can’t talk to anyone about it, it feels like something hurting all the time—and when I wake up in the night it hurts more.”
Timothy moved a little farther off, because he was afraid that he would put his arm round her, and he didn’t think it would be fair; besides, someone might come. This was the very first time he had thought about putting his arm round her. When he moved away from her he took the first step that leads from pity to love. He said, in his kind, quiet voice,
“Of course you can talk to me about it.”
“Can I? I’ve been thinking about it such a lot. Colonel Gray says I can’t give any of the money back. He says I can’t do anything at all until I’m twenty-five—and I shan’t be twenty-one till March, so it’s a very, very long time to wait—isn’t it?”
“Eustace couldn’t take what doesn’t belong to him, Valentine,” said Timothy seriously.
“It would belong to him if I gave it back.”
She was brightening again—sun, wind, rain, and little racing clouds.
He shook his head.
“He couldn’t take it. So I shouldn’t worry about not being twenty-five. You’ll get there all in good time.”
“He wouldn’t take it for himself—Aunt Helena said that too. It wouldn’t be for him; it would be for all those poor people who haven’t got proper houses to live in. They can’t wash, and they can’t keep clean, and they’re all crowded together in dreadful dirty rooms, and they haven’t enough to eat.” Her face was quite pale, and there was horror in her eyes. “He wouldn’t take it for himself, but he would take it for them.”
“But you can’t give it to him, Val.”
Valentine put up her hand to her throat—the instinctive movement of fear. She was frightened but she didn’t know why. The pulse in her throat beat hard as she said, “I could if I got married.”
Timothy was half shocked, half touched.
“Good Lord! You’re not thinking of getting married?”
“I don’t want to—at least I think I don’t want to. But I’m thinking about it, because then I could give the money back. Colonel Gray said I could do what I liked with it if I got married.” Her tone was eager.
“Oh—” said Timothy; it was a sor
t of grunt. “And whom do you propose to marry?”
“Austin won’t,” said Valentine. “At least I don’t think he will—he said he wouldn’t. And I don’t know anyone else, except Barclay, and he’s so old. Do you think I ought to marry Barclay?”
Timothy found the situation a little beyond him. He got up, took Valentine’s hand, and pulled her to her feet, scattering her flowers.
“I don’t think nothing about it, as my old nurse used to say. Look here, you stop thinking about it too. The more you think, the less you’ll know. Come along down and have tea with Lil. She’s all alone, because I’ve got to go into Renton to see a horse.”
After tea Valentine sat in the garden and watched Lil sew. She used too long a cotton and took quick, jerky stitches. All her movements were rapid and rather awkward. She wore a very bright pink dress, too bright for anything but a flower.
“I’m making my trousseau,” she announced.
“Are you going to be married?” Valentine was full of interest.
“I suppose so—some day. I’ve been engaged five years. He’s in Canada. Hasn’t Mrs. Ryven told you about it?”
“No—she hasn’t.”
“How like her!” Lil took a vicious stitch. “She disapproves of me, and she disapproves of my engagement. It puts her in rather a hole though, because she’s always gone on like mad about my being a burden on Timothy; so she’s torn between wanting to see me off his hands so that he could make a good match—as if anyone could ever get Timothy to make a good match!—and feeling how dreadful it is for her half-brother’s half-sister to marry a farmer’s son.” The long cotton knotted, and she broke it with a jerk. “She needn’t think I don’t see through her,” she concluded.
Valentine looked at the river. The water did not seem to be moving at all. It held a smooth, unbroken picture of grey willows and green rushes. She wished very much that Lil would not talk about Helena Ryven. She said,
“Is he really a farmer’s son?”
“Yes, he is,” said Lil defiantly. “His father had one of Timothy’s farms. As a matter of fact an uncle took him away and half adopted him—sent him to a public school and all that. He’d made money. And then he died and never left Jack a penny. So like a relation! And Jack came back here to help his father—that’s how we met. And when his father died, he went to Canada, because he said he wasn’t going to have me looked down on for marrying him.”
Lil’s eyes were a very hard, bright blue. Valentine looked away. She said in a slow, dreamy voice,
“Five years is a long time. Do you love him very much?”
“Oh, love—” Lil was biting off a new thread; as she pulled on the cotton, the reel slipped from her lap and rolled away down the paved path—“I don’t know about love. I want to get married.”
A little line came on Valentine’s forehead just below the eyes. It gave her a puzzled look.
“There’s a lot of rubbish talked about being in love,” said Lil. “Real life isn’t like novels—I don’t want it to be myself. Jack’s a good sort and he’ll make a good husband. Even Timothy says that.”
“When are you going to be married?”
Lil laughed.
“This year—next year—sometime. I used to think it would be never; but the land he took up is beginning to pay all right now, so I suppose it’ll be sometime.”
Valentine watched a little breeze come ruffling down the stream. It moved the thin grey willow-leaves and the tall pointed rushes, and at once all their reflections moved too and made a blurred pattern. She liked looking at the river.
CHAPTER XIV
Mrs. Ryven was talking to her son in the room which he had used as an office for the last four years. It was very plainly furnished, and the best chair—she had taken the best chair—was only moderately comfortable. The windows looked on a dingy street, and a perpetual hum and rattle came from the thoroughfare beyond. It was a great deal hotter than it had been at Holt, and there was no freshness in the air.
“What will you do, Eustace?”
Helena Ryven had come up to town to put the question, but she had been sitting in her uncomfortable chair for half an hour before she asked it.
Eustace was obviously very busy. He sat at a littered writing-table, and every now and then the telephone-bell rang and a brief and sometimes unintelligible conversation ensued: “No—tell him quite impossible.… No, certainly not.… No, it would be quite useless.”
Twice Katherine Hill had come in from the outer room to refer to him for the wording of some letter of extra importance. As Helena greeted her, the thought passed through her mind that Eustace would miss such a capable secretary; only to be followed by the piercing second thought, “He won’t need a secretary now—his work’s gone.”
It was when Katherine came in the second time that it struck her that the girl looked as if she needed a holiday. Of course she was always pale—that type never had any colour. But … She watched her standing at Eustace’s elbow. The heavy intellectual face had an odd stiff look. The rather square figure was more upright than usual, and when for a moment she glanced past Helena at the window, those deep-set, thunder-coloured eyes looked as if they had not slept. “She’ll feel it too,” Helena thought; and when the door closed behind Miss Hill she said at once,
“What are you going to do, Eustace?”
Eustace pushed back his chair and surveyed her calmly.
“I shall join the Community at St. Luke’s. Harden will be very pleased to have me, and as I can live on very little, I shall just be able to finish the work on those last three houses. Katherine and I have been working it out, and it’s an immense load off my mind. Of course the scheme passed in April goes by the board.”
“And Miss Hill? What will she do?”
“I don’t think she has quite decided. I shall not, of course, require a secretary.” He had the air of closing the subject. “And your plans? Have you made any, Mother?”
Helena Ryven did not answer for a moment. She was struggling with the feeling that this interview would be easier if either or both of them were less under the necessity of behaving well. If Eustace could have broken through his strained pride and railed at his luck, or—impossible vision—had come to her for comfort—The thought broke off, too weak and insubstantial to carry such a load of improbability. It broke and faded. Yet at the back of her mind there was a verse from the Bible: “As one whom his mother comforteth.” Eustace did not want to be comforted, or if he wanted it, was shut away behind iron walls of reserve. He looked ill. It was no good. They must just go on as best they could. She said in her usual, pleasant, well-bred voice,
“I am thinking of staying at Holt for a time. Valentine seems to wish it, and it will look better from every point of view.”
“You won’t find it too trying?”
“I don’t think I ought to consider that. Except for these special circumstances, I should be the natural person to be with her. Colonel Gray seemed very grateful.”
“Naturally.”
“Yes—it relieves him of an awkward responsibility, and it will give Valentine a better start.” Her voice changed; a little more life came into it. “She’s really wonderful.”
Eustace did not answer. He turned to the table and wrote rapidly for a moment. As he looked up again, his mother was saying,
“When are you coming down?”
“I? Never.” There was both pride and distaste in his voice.
“I want you to reconsider that.”
He shook his head.
“Can you afford to indulge a personal feeling at the expense of your work?”
“How does my work come in?”
Helena chose her words carefully.
“Valentine is inclined to be deeply interested in it. She will have a very large income for the next five years, and at the end of that time she will be free to make any dispositions she thinks fit. She is, at the moment, a warm-hearted, impressionable child. I should like you to come to Holt and tell her what y
ou have been doing with regard to the slum property.”
Eustace pushed back his chair and walked to the window. He was so near to Helena that she had only to lift her left hand from the arm of her chair and it would touch him. She had the feeling that he was a very long way off. When he turned round, his face had changed. It was less set.
“If she could really be got to take an interest, it would be something. Old Gray wouldn’t let her do much out of income though. He’s a mass of prejudice, and he’ll have control until she’s twenty-five.”
“Unless she marries,” said Mrs. Ryven. There was no expression whatever in her voice.
When she had gone, Katherine Hill came back with half a dozen letters for him to sign. Eustace wrote his name at the foot of each in a beautifully clear hand. When he had finished, he looked up. She was standing at the other side of the table, facing him, the tips of her fingers just resting on the bevelled mahogany edge. Her eyes were cast down. He reflected that Katherine was the only woman he knew who could remain perfectly still and perfectly silent. Other women fidgeted, moved things, patted their hair. If he kept Katherine waiting for half an hour, she would not move at all. He found his mother’s question on his lips.
“Have you settled anything yet—about yourself?”
Without looking up she said “No—” in that rather deep, slow voice which was not like anyone else’s.
He sat there with the signed letters in his hand and made no comment.
Katherine Hill lifted her eyes and saw what Helena had seen, and a little more. He looked ill; there were lines—quite new; his face had sharpened; he held himself as if he were carrying something heavy; the hand that was holding the letters held them over-tightly. She thought he had not slept since Valentine Ryven came to Holt.
“And you?” she said.
“I told you my plans. I am going to St. Luke’s. I can still give service.”
A flash came and went in Katherine Hill’s dark grey eyes. They were so dark, the iris so heavily ringed with black, that they looked black. But black eyes are brilliant and hard; it is only those dark grey eyes that have the trick of tragedy. That flash between the thick black lashes lighted sombre depths.
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