Mistress of Brown Furrows (22 page)

There were two bedrooms, separated by a bathroom, and at the doorway to the first of these Carol hesitated, as if overcome by some sudden and absurd self-consciousness resulting from her occupation of that enormous and lonely hotel bedroom in Milan. But Aunt Harry went forward without any hesitation at all and told Carol at once that this was her room, and Timothy could have the one adjoining. Men, she said, didn’t care whether they had a charming room to sleep in or not, but to a woman it was all-important, and she was certain Carol would like this room.

Carol did more than like it. She gazed round at exquisite silver-grey walls, at an all-black carpet and a ceiling sewn with golden stars. The low French bed was covered with a quilt of the same shade exactly as an apricot, in dull but beautiful moire silk, and there were curtains of the same material hanging between it and the bathroom. Above the fireplace was a perfect example of a flawless Venetian mirror, with cupids and garlands entwined in beaten silver.

The bathroom was black marble and completely up-to-date, and Timothy’ s bedroom beyond looked severe but elegant.

“Well?” demanded the Marchesa, obviously expectant. “Do you like it?”

“Like
it?”

Carol could say no more. Timothy glanced at her. She was a little pale now, after the excitement of their arrival—and possibly the ascent of that magnificent staircase—and although she was already putting on weight she looked very slender and frail in her white linen suit, with the large shady hat she had removed from her gold curls dangling rather limply from her down-drooping hand.

“A rest for you, my child! ” he said. “And no argument about it, either! Aunt Harry, these rooms are more luxurious than the Ritz, but I always said you were the perfect sybarite. Now use your influence and order Carol to lie down—and tell her she’s not to think of getting up for lunch. She can have it in bed, and if she’s a good girl we may allow her up for tea, or at any rate for dinner.”

The Marchesa went over to Carol and lifted her chin and looked at her, noting the little smudgy lines under her eyes.

“Yes; you can certainly do with a rest, my dear,” she said. “And now I want you both to feel that these rooms are entirely yours, and if you choose to stay in them and not come downstairs and join me even for a meal for days at a time I shall perfectly understand. But if on the other hand you do choose to join me sometimes, I shall be delighted. Have I made myself quite clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Aunt,” Timothy assured her, with a serious expression belied by a suggestion of amusement at the back of his eyes.

Carol, however, looked a trifle apprehensive.

“Oh, but you’re not going to—we shall still see a lot of you, won’ t we, Aunt Harry?” she asked, catching the older woman by the hand and holding on to it rather tightly. “You’ re not going to—you’ re not going to wash your hands of us, are you, now that you’ve given us this wonderful flat to ourselves? I know it’s kind of you, but I do want to see you...”

Timothy came over and stood beside them both.

“What Aunt Harry is trying to convey to you, my dear Carol,” he said very quietly, “is that she thinks it’s high time— and probably more than high time! —that you got used to living alone with your own husband, and I must say I’m inclined to agree with her! That is the idea at the back of your mind, isn’ t it, Aunt Harry?” he asked, looking very levelly at his godmother.

“Well, perhaps....” She smiled very gently at Carol, and there was something understanding and reassuring at the same time in that smile. “I don’ t think Carol has had very much opportunity for getting the best out of her married life so far. And now I’ m going to send Francesca, the sister of my maid who has been with me for years in England, up to you to help you into bed, my dear, and it will be her job to look after you while you’re here. And now have a good rest, and—don’t attempt to get up until Timothy allows you! ”

She smiled at them both, as if they were the two people in her life for whom she had the greatest and the most genuine fondness, and then disappeared and left them alone together, and they heard her footsteps echoing over the tiled floor without.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

IT was a night of stars hanging low above the earth and the ripple of moonlight in the water. There was an almost sensuous stillness and a delectable soft warmth which was like the warmth of an English June, and the scent of the flowers in their hanging baskets rose gently into the air. Immediately underneath the balcony a gondola was passing, and the gondolier was singing a love song in a throbbing, passionate Italian voice for the delectation of his two passengers, a couple of American tourists, a girl and a man, who looked upwards at the balcony beneath which they were drifting, and caught sight of the girl and the man above them.

Carol, in a frock which was actually the faint pink of a hedge rose, but which looked white in the moonlight, lay back in her comfortable chaise-longue and listened with intense pleasure to the singing. Timothy, at her elbow, and quietly smoking a cigarette, also listened, but his eyes were on the graceful form of the girl who was not more than a few inches away from him, and not following the pair who were sampling the delights of Venice on such a night as this.

Carol looked almost unnaturally fair, fragile and removed from him in that silvery radiance, and there was a graver, older, more thoughtful expression on her face since her illness. Her eyes at the moment were filled with unmistakable dreams as she listened to the song of the boatman, but the corners of her mouth drooped a little. It was, Timothy decided, a wistful mouth.

“I had a letter from Meg this morning,” he said rather abruptly, shattering the silence when the song had died away. “She sent her love to you and hopes you are very much better. Kate has produced a litter of pups and Meg thinks you might like to have one for yourself. She’s already made a selection on your behalf.”

“That—that was kind of her,” Carol murmured, and she sounded a little abstracted.

“I remember you once told me, when we were driving away from Selbourne, that it was an ambition of yours to possess a dog of your own,” Timothy recalled, tossing the end of his cigarette over the balcony rail and selecting another from his case. He did not offer the case to Carol for the simple reason that she had not even yet taken kindly to smoking, and she was still highly abstemious when it came to indulging in liquid refreshment. In his heart he thought of her as a little puritan, and it made him smile sometimes, but he did not desire her to change—not in that respect, at least. “So now, at last, you have one.”

“I shall look forward to seeing it,” she said, with a sudden tinge of enthusiasm in her voice, and sitting up in her chair. “Kate is such an adorable dog, and I expect her puppies are really perfect. Meg will have to think up a name for it for me.”

“Couldn’t you do that yourself?” he suggested.

“Why, yes, of course.” But her face clouded—Meg, Kate, Brown Furrows, a new puppy.... But she did not want to go back to Brown Furrows—not for a very long time!

“Meg is looking out for a cottage for herself,” Timothy continued, not looking at his wife. “Nat Marples is helping her. Apparently he, too, is thinking of packing up his old home, and looking for somewhere smaller. Presumably Meg is also helping him.”

Carol looked as if she could not quite believe the evidence of

her ears.

“Meg looking out for a cottage!... But—but why...?”

Timothy shrugged slightly, watching the moonlight gilding the canal.

“Possibly she feels that she would like a home of her own. I don’t know....”

“But I do! ” Carol spoke slowly, thoughtfully. “It's because of me, isn't it, Timothy?” She looked at him, and he turned and met her eyes. “It’s because she feels that I—that I won’t want to return home while she's there—that I don't like her being there! That I never did like her being there! ”

“Well, even if you don't, it's quite understandable, isn't it?” Timothy remarked, in a voice which gave away no clue to his own feelings. “After all, it's your house, your home, and you should be mistress there. Aunt Harry feels that strongly, as we both know. You yourself have always been a little inclined to resent Meg...”

But Carol shook her head.

“It was Meg who resented me. She resented me—right from the beginning.”

Timothy was silent for perhaps half a minute, and then he rose and took a turn or two up and down the balcony. He looked very tall and very dark in that purifying light, and his sleek dark hair was perfectly brushed, and his lean jaw jutted against his white shirt front. Looking up at him, Carol thought his eyes looked strange and remote, and withdrawn somehow from herself, as if he was striving to be quite impartial, and to review the matter without allowing himself to be affected by either the natural affection he had for his sister or the consideration he felt to be due to his wife. And at last he said:

“As a matter of fact I had already made up my mind that I could not ask you to return to Brown Furrows while Meg was still there, and it was not easy for me to ask Meg to get out of the place without giving her a reasonable amount of time to find herself a new home. So I proposed taking you, when we left here, on a trip to East Africa, where you might have found it pleasant to spend a few months on my fruit farm, and where we might even have settled for a time. But now that Meg has stated very clearly in her letter that she is going to buy a cottage for herself—and she is financially quite independent, so she can do as she pleases—the whole thing has simplified itself—and we can go home as soon as you are well enough, or at least as soon as it begins to get too hot out here.”

Carol in turn, was silent, and he paused in front of her.

“Well? I take it that you do want to return home some time? You haven’t conceived an incurable dislike for Brown Furrows—as well as Meg?”

“Of course not.” But she looked up at him anxiously. “It isn’t true that I’ ve taken a dislike to Meg—I never did dislike Meg— but she—she—” She got up and wandered to the balcony rail, and she looked very young and slim and concerned in her filmy frock, with her too slender throat and shoulders revealed by its low neckline. “Honestly, Timothy, I did try to like Meg, and I loved Brown Furrows, but it wasn’ t my home—it was Meg’ s. And I wouldn’t have minded that if Meg had shown some signs of making a place for me—of wanting me. But she didn’t...” Timothy came and stood close beside her, and he looked down at her gravely.

“Did it never occur to you that she might be—jealous?”

“But, why—why?” She flung out a small hand in bewilderment. “It wasn’ t even as if I was a—a proper wife—” She colored furiously. “I mean, there was no question of your thinking any less of her, of my taking her place. I was never likely to do that, and she was secure—much more secure than I was...”

“Why do you say that?” he asked, almost sharply.

“Oh, I don’t know.” She turned rather wearily and grasped the balcony rail. “Because it’s true, I suppose. After all, you did marry me because you were sorry for me, didn’ t you? There was no other reason...?”

Suddenly she felt her arm caught in a grip of iron, and his fingers bruised her flesh.

“Carol,” he told her, in a fierce, concentrated voice which was utterly strange to her, “if anything had happened to you after your accident I would never have forgiven Meg. Even as it was I was prepared never to forgive her—and it’s hard even now, when I think of all you’ve gone through—and all
I’ve
gone through! ”

“You?” she whispered, looking up at him with large eyes.

“Yes, me! ” he almost snapped, looking down at her in the white light. “What sort of stuff do you think I’ m made of, I wonder? Possibly you think I’ m quite inhuman and insensible—even when I do happen to possess a wife who looks at this particular moment like a white flower on a slender

stem—a lovely, fragile, pathetic white flower ill fitted to stand up to the winds of adversity, which I’ve been endeavoring to protect you from! Perhaps I’ ve tried to protect you too much! Perhaps I haven t considered myself enough...”

His fingers were bruising their way into the soft flesh or her arm, and she winced a little, so that he released her at once. Then, white-faced and almost hostile-eyed, he continued to gaze at her.

Carol’ s heart was suddenly thundering and working overtime like a mill-race, and her grey eyes were beginning to glow as if they were lighted from behind by a secret electric bulb. Her lips fell slightly apart and her breath came unevenly.

“But, Timothy,” she whispered, “Timothy, you don’t mean—?”

He put out his hands on her shoulders and peered with intensity into her eyes.

“Is it true,” he demanded, “what Aunt Harry says, that I
do
mean something to you—?”

“Oh, Timothy!” she got out flutteringly, and seemed to sway towards him.

His arms went round her, caught her, held her so close that she could feel the wild beating of his heart against her own. His lips came down upon hers, and she yielded her own so willingly and so rapturously that the kiss was prolonged beyond all thought or count of time, and they lost all consciousness of place or anything else until he let her go. And then she was shaking like an aspen, and so pale, with little dark circles under her eyes, that he was instantly conscience-stricken because she was still such a very long way from being completely fit, with no reserves of strength to meet the overwhelming demands of passion when it came upon her unexpectedly.