Mistress of Brown Furrows (5 page)

“Oh,” she exclaimed, cheeks positively flaming, “how I must have embarrassed you! ”

“Not at all,” he answered coolly. “I am not easily embarrassed.” And then with a little smile: “But how do you react to the idea of marrying me?”

She tried not to look as if she was straggling with a welter of bewildered thoughts and new and disconcerting revelations, and he watched her across the table without any particular sympathy in his eyes, but with his eyebrow cocked upwards in that questioning manner she was getting to know so well. He extracted a cigarette from his case and lighted it, and through the haze of smoke he still watched her and her fair, revealing, ridiculously youthful face.

“Well?” he asked, at last.

“Why do you want to marry me?” she got out, in a little rush. “I don’ t know that I’ ve even told you that I do want to marry

you,” he could not resist answering; “but I think it’s an excellent notion,” with as much coolness and composure as if she had asked him why he had taken her out to supper. “Since I am not your official guardian there doesn’t appear to be any obstacle—if that could represent an obstacle—and it will simplify the business of keeping an eye on you and making sure that there is some kind of security about your future. In addition to which I shall be ensuring myself a more permanent housekeeper than Meg, who might take it into her own head to get married one day. ”

Carol was unable to appreciate this flash of deliberate humor on his part, and she said almost reprovingly:

“You know she is not likely to do that,” as if she had been privately assured of the improbability of such an event.

“Well, perhaps not, but you never know.”

“And you look upon me as a—as a schoolgirl! ” with unexpected shrewdness.

“Do I? Well, if I do, you won’ t always remain one, will you? And at least you are not still at school! ”

“No,” she agreed, and studied him every bit as closely as he was studying her.

Their eyes met and continued to meet across the table—his with a faint twinkle of amusement very plainly discernible in their blue depths, hers merely grave and searching. And suddenly the color returned to her cheeks and her eyelashes were lowered rather abruptly. For something of what he was offering had come to her while she gazed at him, and affected her with rather an acute sensation of shyness.

She had seen the women looking at him in the theatre, the way assistants sprang forward to attend him in the various shops they had visited together, the deference of waiters when they appeared in restaurants. He might be many years older than she was, and his experience of life was certainly vast compared with hers, but at least there were many women—of all ages—who would jump, she felt certain, at the mere idea of marrying him, should the opportunity ever come their way.

But why he should ask her to marry him she simply could not understand. For if he was in no way accountable for any of her actions—if he was simply a rather kind and pleasant stranger who had promised her father to do the best he could for her, then he had already done more than he should—much more! He had given her a good education, clothed her in the past, provided her with her latest and most expensive wardrobe, and now he could conscientiously wash his hands of her, and tell her that in future she must earn her own living. Thousands of girls of her age were doing that.

But the fact that he
had
asked her to marry him sent the oddest little quiver of satisfaction darting through her, and it was the more odd because she knew she could not accept his offer. He might not realize how unwise he was being, but at least she was not so young that she could not realize it for him!

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, realizing she was deeply thoughtful.

“Nothing,” she answered hurriedly, and looked quickly away from him. “Nothing—at all—”

He beckoned the waiter and requested his bill, and then he stood up and helped her on with her cloak.

“I think we might discuss this better when we get back to the hotel,” he said. “Or would you prefer to wait until the morning?” “I would, please,” rather faintly.

“Then the morning it is! ” he agreed at once, very kindly, but one of his dark eyebrows cocked upwards a little humorously.

That night she dreamed that he and she were standing one on either side of a deep chasm, and that the ground under her feet was very wet and slippery, and that she was very unsure of her foothold. In the depths between them there was nothing but frightening space and a dreadful sensation of loneliness, and she knew a panic-stricken fear lest she should fall into them. The face of the man on the opposite side of the chasm was pleasant and smiling, and he gave her a little encouraging look before suddenly he turned away and started to walk briskly from her, and just as he did so she made an unwary movement and went down on one knee, and worse still she started to slide towards the edge. She let out a desperate call to him to turn, but he did not do so, and thankfully at that moment she woke up....

At breakfast the next rooming he told her to get on with her scrambled egg while he buried himself in his newspaper and pretended to become immersed in its contents. But after breakfast, in a corner of the hotel lounge, he merely turned and looked a question at her.

She asked in uncertain voice:

“Is it really necessary for us to get married? Couldn’ t we— couldn’ t we just go on as we are?”

“Not without doing something about it,” he replied. “At the moment our relationship is the least little bit improper.”

“I—I see,” she said. “I’m afraid I never thought of it in that way before. It—it’ s awkward, isn’ t it?”

He endeavored to conceal a smile.

“Slightly awkward.”

“But supposing—supposing one day you wanted to marry someone else? What then?” she asked, a little breathlessly.

“I should promptly set about divorcing you, of course,” he answered at once.

Her horrified expression made him lean hastily towards her and seize her hands, gripping them hard, while his expression softened miraculously. His voice, too, was suddenly gentle.

“My dear child, what a little idiot you are! ” he told her. “And why do you worry your head over such improbable situations? If you and I marry, we will stay married—at least you can be assured of that! And I think, looking at it from every angle, the only sensible thing we can do is to get married. That is if you don’ t seriously object to linking your future with mine?”

She looked up at him then, and her clear eyes reassured him. “Oh, no, I don’ t! ”

“And I certainly don’ t! ”

“You don’t think I ought to—to earn my own living? To stand on my own feet?”

He looked down at them, in their smart new shoes. “They’re rather small and slightly inadequate feet! ”

Carol looked almost relieved. She was still thinking of her dream.

“And your sister isn’t likely to object?”

“Why on earth should she?” Timothy Carrington demanded. “It’s nothing to do with her.”

Carol gave a little sigh, like a sigh of resignation.

“In that case—” she began. “In that case—”

“In that case I take it that I’m accepted?” Timothy murmured, and rewarded her with a small smile. He patted her hands, where they rested in her lap. “And now we can consider ourselves engaged, and I’ ll find out how soon we can get married. It may involve such a thing as a special license, and as you’ re a minor someone may have to give their permission. It is just possible that the permission of a magistrate may be necessary, but that’s what we’ve got to find out.”

“Yes,” she agreed, feeling as if she was being whirled into something quite extraordinary.

He looked down at her, and his smile became touched with sympathy.

“This is all rather sudden, isn’t it?” he said. “But you’ll get used to the idea.”

“Will I?” she murmured, and for an instant he hoped that he was doing the right thing—from her point of view. But one could never tell, and she was very young.

CHAPTER SIX

“I think that’s everything,” said Meg Carrington, consulting her list of ‘things to be done’ and ticking off each item before she dismissed it. “Flowers in vases, drawers re-lined, wardrobes thoroughly dusted inside, and polished outside—all furniture given final polish. Yes! I don’t think there’s anything we’ve forgotten, unless it’s those floral curtains.... I was going to change them and the bed coverlet for some peach moire silk, but on the whole I think flowered ones go better with this room and the mahogany furniture, especially the tiny pink rosebuds and the little violet sprays. They do somehow suggest youth and inexperience—one’s conventional idea of a bride ... ”

“Doesn’t seem real to me,” Agatha Hill declared, attacking the shining oval dressing-table mirror with her yellow duster, and giving it an extra polish. “Those horrible blow flies settle in a moment!—the beastly things!... But Mr. Timothy married!—I just can’ t realize it, I can’ t really! I never thought he was cut out for that sort of thing, somehow.”

“Neither did I,” Meg Carrington admitted very quietly, with a faint sigh in the words. “But there! These things happen, and men are not like women! ”

She thrust back the nose of the over-inquisitive golden spaniel who was about to jump up on to the old-fashioned four-poster bed.

“Behave yourself, Kate! Your paws are probably muddy, and that’s a clean counterpane.”

She looked round the room again with a searching, careful glance.

“Well, Aggie, I think we might as well go downstairs now, since there doesn’t appear to be anything more to be done. You’ ve made up the master’ s bed, haven’ t you, and seen that everything’s all right in his room? I don’t suppose he’ll sleep there tonight, but—he’ ll almost certainly want a dressing room...”

This was such unusual talk between herself and Aggie that it made her feel suddenly rather uncomfortable. Strange, intimate, almost foreign talk that brought a faint flush to her cheeks, and she turned away. But Agatha looked at her closely, and with the penetrating eyes of the old and faithful servant she read with complete ease all that her mistress was thinking. Her mistress with the grey threads invading her once rich brown hair, and her pleasant blue eyes that were usually rather humorous, but just now were curiously thoughtful and ever so slightly shadowed. And there was a certain amount of effort in everything she did today.

Agatha wanted to go to her and take her hands and squeeze them hard and tell her not to mind. That although something was departing out of the house—something treasured, and free, and filled with contentment—something also was coming into it, and, who knew, they might grow to like the idea in time. A young wife—possibly a young mother at no very distant date! — and that would entail a fresh kind of interest, something that was after all very natural....

But Meg’s face did not invite that kind of talk just then; and instead Agatha watched the tall and rather awkward form that looked so well on the back of a horse move over to the diamond-paned window, and thrust wide the lattice. Kate followed her, obviously concerned by her air of repression, and by the unaccustomed sharp edge to her voice when issuing her rebuke.

Meg leaned out of the window, and drew deep breaths of the pure air. It was invigorating, that air to which she had been accustomed since her earliest days, and yet it always soothed her somehow. That and the prospect of the distant hills, just now veiled in a gauzy mist of cloud through which the sun was striving to force a pathway.

Below her was a smooth stretch of emerald turf, and a cedar tree reaching out dark branches towards the window. A white-painted garden seat was on the terrace immediately below the window and a huge white cat was sleeping contentedly curled up upon it, while a handsome Siamese male cat lay sprawled at no great distance. On the lawn was a common-or-garden tabby, washing itself most industriously.

Meg’ s face lightened as she watched the animals, although Kate growled low in her throat—not so much because she had any objection to cats, but because it helped to maintain her prestige. Then the woman’ s eyes drifted to the trim flower borders, magnificently displaying all the splendor of midsummer, and beyond them to the orchard and her own little herb garden. Beyond that again was tiny sunken rose-garden, where the air at this season of the year was saturated with the perfume of the roses, and clouds of falling petals—red, yellow and white—were flung in all directions by every playful gust of wind. The rose-garden was bounded by a little patch of wilderness, or woodland, through which a delicate silvery ribbon of a stream wound its way, after trickling uncertainly down from the hills, and slender forms of silver birch leaned perilously forward to peer at themselves in the water. Beyond all that were the wide open fields, and the thickets and the copses and the hidden dells which belonged to the Brown Furrows estate.

Meg wished so much sometimes that she had been born a man, and that all this that she could see from the window had been hers by right of birth. And that the old mellowing stone house, with its deep-set windows and its blackened beams, had been hers also. The next best thing was that it belonged to Timothy, and that Timothy had always allowed her to do almost exactly as she liked in the house and garden, and to advise on the running of the estate.

But now Timothy was married, and everything would be changed. She felt so deadly certain of that that it was like a load on her mind—a physical burden which she would henceforth have to carry. She could have cried out in anguish, not so much because, in future, she would have to share Timothy—who, after all, spent so much of his time abroad that she saw very little of him—but because she would have to share Brown Furrows with Timothy
and his wife,
and no one, save Agatha Hill, who stood watching her unhappily with hands clasped together rather helplessly, would ever remotely guess what she was feeling at this moment, and what she would continue to feel now that the change had come about.