Mistress of Brown Furrows

Mistress of Brown Furrows Susan Barrie

To go from the shelter and seclusion of an English boarding-school to the vastness and glitter of London, a beautiful estate in Westmorland and the dreaming palaces of Venice -- and to be surrounded by every comfort that money can buy -- what a transformation!

Yet everywhere Carol, who had been given so much, was haunted by the lack of something precious -- the love of the man who had married her out of compassion, to save her from a life of poverty and hardship.

What was she to do? How could she convince him that she was not a frail child but a woman capable of loving and being loved, of sharing his life and turning his house into a home?

“WELL, goodbye, old thing! I hope you’ll enjoy the hols. Sorry I couldn’t wait to see
him,
but I expect he’ll turn up any moment now!”

Carol Inglis waved goodbye automatically as the last of her friends was whirled away down the avenue of limes. The big shining car was the very last word in ostentatious elegance, and Janet Aintree, waving farewell out of the rear window, looked as smugly self-satisfied as her parents seated one on either side of her behind their well-dressed chauffeur.

Janet was wearing the daring little hat and the jauntily cut suit she had bought when she went shopping with Mademoiselle the previous week, and she was flaunting her new bright red lipstick. That she was leaving Selbourne for good meant, apparently, very little to her, and there was certainly no thought of tears in her heart, for she was going to a far more exciting life than anything she had known within the high protecting walls of the old Abbey. Her father had recently been appointed Physician-in-Ordinary to the ruler of some attractive-sounding country tucked away on the borders of Europe and Asia, and she was looking forward to an exciting whirl of shopping and theatres and other unaccustomed treats before tasting the ultimate and exquisite joy of being actually flown to her romantic destination.

Janet was riding the crest of a wave, and her handkerchief had ceased to flutter, and she had dropped down on to the seat between her parents, long ere the first bend in the winding drive took her out of sight of the pillared front door. And her only thought, as she shot between the gates for the last time, was that Life, with a capital L, was now actually Beginning.

Behind her, however, Carol stood forlornly beside her piled up suitcases and wondered at the silence which hung over everything. Not a heavy, brooding silence, but a rather wistful, regretful silence, like the first breath of autumn mist when it steals unexpectedly across a still flowering landscape.

The deserted playing fields, where yesterday voices had laughed and called to other laughing voices, the empty lawns, so recently thronged with gay summer dresses and flannelled forms of fathers, brothers and guardians, were utterly quiet now, and still. The old grey building behind her, which had stood thus for centuries, with its great, echoing hall in which Miss Hardcastle had made her end-of-term speech, and awarded the prizes, was like an empty grey shell in the slumbering countryside. And even from the servants’ quarters at the back of the house there was no customary hum of activity, for, with the departure of all the mistresses save Miss Hardcastle—who was to enjoy a holiday in the South of France, and was at the moment upstairs in her room engaged with her packing—the staff had dwindled to a mere couple of caretakers.

Carol felt suddenly appallingly lonely as she stood there in the late afternoon sunshine and waited for someone to come and collect her. Despite the warmth she was a little cold inside, although her hands were moist inside her immaculate gloves, and her throat was dry and hurt a little. She kept shifting uneasily from one neatly-shod foot to the other, and a small, anxious voice inside her kept crying with the persistence of a

babe in the wilderness:

“What if he doesn’t come? What if he doesn’t
come?”

If only a taxi would make its appearance round the bend in the drive!

If only Timothy R. Carrington would arrive to collect his ward!...

It seemed so much worse now that all the others had gone, so many of them borne away from Selbourne for good. Janet Aintree was on her way to a new life, like at least a dozen other girls for whom this closing summer term had been like a signpost pointing a way to the future. Youth behind—maturity ahead! Security behind—a very large question-mark indicating the possibilities in store!

And Carol had been as thrilled as the rest by the prospect of breaking away from her school days. For, after all, she was eighteen now—actually close upon eighteen and a half, although by a special arrangement with Miss Hardcastle she had stayed on at Selbourne instead of being one of the lucky ones who had been released from the nest at Christmas. And her biggest dread, until a fortnight ago, had been that she would celebrate her nineteenth birthday within the cloistered precincts, and that would have been a humiliation almost too great to be borne. For whoever heard of a nineteen-year-old school girl?

And then had come Timothy Carrington’ s letter.

Carol sat down suddenly on one of her suitcases, and although she did not realize it she looked considerably younger than her eighteen and a half years, and more than a little forlorn. For one thing, the trim little tailored suit she was wearing, which had been bought specially for the occasion—not under the auspices of Mademoiselle, but a dour Scots drawing mistress—was a very, unimaginative teen-ager suit, and her soft felt hat of a delicate and pearly grey which exactly matched her anxious eyes was perched rather far back on her short fair curls. The feathery ends of the curls themselves were being blown gently about by a vagrant breeze, she had the unaccustomed taste of lipstick in her mouth, having used it that day for the first time to outline her most attractive feature—soft, serious lips— and the light dust of powder she had applied to her cheeks had been dispersed to the winds long since.

And something that persisted in trembling on the edge of her lashes was about to spill over and roll down her cheeks....

She brushed it away impatiently, thereby soiling her new suede gloves.

After all, it was quite possible that her guardian had been delayed. He had had a long journey by air from Africa, and had probably needed a few days in London to attend to his own affairs. Affairs did get out of hand when you spent much of your life abroad. There were bank managers and people like that to be interviewed, almost certainly a tailor to be visited, perhaps a few friends and relations with a prior claim upon him. People to be visited whom he had not seen for years—telephone calls to be dealt with....

She felt a little odd when it was suddenly borne in upon her how little she knew about Timothy Carrington. Just his name, and the fact that he had handled her affairs since her father had died so disastrously eight years before, and his signature on a Christmas card, and once only on a birthday card. And once he had sent her a queer kind of Eastern idol as a present, and a bottle of exciting perfume. And presumably he had corresponded occasionally with Miss Hardcastle, and settled such all important matters as fees, clothing and pocket money accounts, etc. And arranged to call for her this afternoon and remove her from Miss Hardcastle’s care for good!

She started suddenly, and leaned eagerly forward, all but overbalancing on her suitcase. A taxi had appeared suddenly in the driveway, approaching the house at a considerable speed, the driver having obviously received instructions to hurry.

It skirted the bed of flaming geraniums outside the Head’s study window, rounded the circular patch of lawn before the imposing front door, drew up with a violent screeching of brakes at the foot of the flight of steps on which she and her cases were deposited, and then its passenger flung open the door.

He alighted almost unhurriedly—unless it was by contrast with the taxi’s recent exhibition of speed—and stood for a moment looking up at the grey face of the Abbey, with its long line of blank, unseeing windows, and its appearance of medieval calm. He was tall, dark, and possibly somewhere in the late thirties, lean-featured, sober-eyed, with a grave, quiet mouth and a bronzed skin, and dressed in a way which even the inexperienced Carol knew to be entirely correct. That is to say with restraint and the assistance of a first class tailor.

He removed his hat politely on catching sight of her, and was plainly about to ask her a question. But she fairly leapt up from her suitcase and darted down the steps towards him, holding out a welcoming hand.

“Oh,” she said, with such immeasurable relief in her voice that his eyebrows shot upwards, and assuming without a thought his identity, “I’ m so glad—I’ m so terribly glad you’ ve come! ”

AFTERWARDS Carol realized that she must have been holding on to his hand for fully half a minute before he spoke. When he did so it was with rather a curious expression in his eyes as they rested upon her. Very darkly blue and inscrutable, and unusually heavily lashed for a man, they flickered across her upturned face and took in every detail of her appearance, finally becoming lightened a little by the merest beginnings of a smile.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but do I—ought to know you?”

“Of
course.”
There was complete confidence in her voice now that he had at last arrived. “I’m Carol Inglis, your ward, and you’re Mr. Timothy Carrington, aren’t you? I’ve been waiting for you for ages—or it’s seemed ages since the others left. I was beginning to be dreadfully afraid that something had happened to you—that you might have met with an accident, or—or something—” Her voice trailed away. She swallowed something in her throat.

“I was almost in a panic because you were late. And there’s only Miss Hardcastle left.... ”

“I see.... ”

He spoke so slowly that she looked up at him quickly, her heart beating fast in her excitement and relief.

“You do know who I am now, don’t you? And you have come to take me away with you, haven’ t you? This is all my luggage—all these cases, and that hat box, and that hold-all, and the trunk.... Will the taxi-man be able to manage the trunk? If not we can have it sent on. Miss Hardcastle won’t mind. And I have said goodbye to her—” She seemed to be appealing to him, like a puppy, not to delay any longer, and her expression was so overanxious that for the first time he smiled at her in a way that could definitely be regarded as a smile. And as he did so she noticed that he had very white and even teeth under a shadow of dark moustache, and that there was a slight cleft in his chin, and his smile was rather attractively one-sided— perhaps a little quizzical. But the expression in his eyes was rather more baffling, for it was unmistakably a little surprised.

“Have you?” he said, and his voice was cool and quiet, and she decided that she liked it. “Then that’s all right, and all that remains is for you to hop into the taxi. I’d better have a word with your Headmistress before we disappear into the blue, however—if you’ll let me know where I can find her? And I’m sorry if I kept you waiting, but I missed my train and had to wait nearly an hour for another, and there were no taxis at the junction. This fellow picked me up on the road.”

He turned to the driver and spoke a few words to him, and the man started to deal with the odd assortment of luggage.

“Now, where can I find Miss Hardcastle?”

Carol instructed him to pull at the ancient bell-chain which hung like a snake beside the stout front door, and while she sat quietly but expectantly in her corner of the taxi he stood on the top of the flight of steps and waited for the door to be opened. But although the echoes were aroused by the clamorous summons and the sound went reverberating along the stone corridors within, the bell-chain evoked no response. A second hearty tug achieved no better result, and he turned back to her.

“There doesn’t seem to be anyone at home!”

Carol leaned anxiously out to him.

“She’s upstairs in her room, packing—or she was. But she may possibly be having a bath.
Must
you see her—” burning to be gone, “—I mean, is it absolutely necessary? Couldn’ t we just—go?’’

“We will if the alternative is disturbing a lady in her bath. ” There was no doubt about the one-sidedness of his smile now, although his voice was dry, and his eyes only twinkled mildly. “But I don’ t wish to appear to be running away with one of the young ladies of Selbourne Abbey. After all, Miss Hardcastle will naturally wish to see my credentials and so forth. But on the other hand—”

“Yes?” with an eagerness which he thought extraordinarily child-like.