Mistress of Brown Furrows (19 page)

But he had not gone very far before the hubbub grew positively tumultuous, and along the shut-in country road over which he was journeying at a slow and rather weary trot came a lively cavalcade of horses and dogs and riders, some of whom were triumphantly walking beside their animals while others were still in the saddle, in addition to men, boys and countrywomen who formed a solid mass of hangers-on. And in the midst of them Meg, with an expression on her face which betrayed the utmost satisfaction, displayed the ‘brush’ for all to see.

She waved a delighted hand when she caught sight of her brother, but he scarcely noticed her trophy. He was searching the welter of faces before him for one face which refused to materialize.

“Have you seen Carol?” he asked, rather abruptly.

“Carol?” she echoed. “Why, I—er—why, yes, I saw her about half an hour ago,” she admitted. She looked round her vaguely as if half expecting that Carol was near at hand. “She was following me across country, and I thought she was doing very well—she's a better horsewoman than I thought! But she doesn't seem to be here.”

“She isn't here,” Timothy said, and his voice this time was hard and cold with anxiety.

It was so dark in the lane that when anyone lighted a cigarette the flame of the match seemed temporarily to illumine an eerie cavern, and the steam from the horses' flanks rose like a mysterious vapor between the close-packed rows of suddenly curious faces.

“Has anyone seen Mrs. Carrington?” Meg asked, addressing those on the fringe of the crowd. “Are you sure she isn't somewhere behind there, bringing up the rear?”

But Carol was not behind, and she was not bringing up the rear. No one recalled seeing her for quite a while.

“Then what can have happened to her?” For an instant Meg's face betrayed a most un-Meg-like look of anxiety, and then she said quickly: “Oh, I know, she’s gone home! Of course she’s gone home! How simple! That's the explanation, Timothy.”

But Timothy said nothing, and instead he wheeled his horse.

“Yes, you go ahead,” Meg urged him. “I'll be with you in about another half-hour, and by that time I think we will be able to do with a drink and celebrate our victory.” She waved the brush which she still clutched. “Colonel Dennison's coming over for dinner tonight, and so are about a dozen others. See you later, Timothy! ”

Timothy did not answer. He was already getting the best out of a tired mount and making all speed for Brown Furrows.

The dinner-party Meg had apparently arranged for that night did not after all take place. Instead, the guests who had been invited went out searching the fields and the bleak stretches of moorland for the young mistress of the house who was most unaccountably missing. With torches and storm lanterns and stable lamps they searched for at least three hours before Meg managed to recall where it was that she had last seen Carol following her, and then they found her almost immediately—or Timothy did.

Timothy knelt down and touched the face which was so cold and so completely lifeless to his touch. He gathered the slight figure into his arms and cradled it up against him, protecting it from the viciousness of the night wind, although he was quite certain she was beyond all human aid.

Judson appeared suddenly out of the darkness holding a lantern aloft, and with him was one of the farm hands.

“Better bring a gate, hadn’ t we, sir, and get her home?” he suggested. “Or Dulverton House is nearest—it would mean less bumping and save a lot of time. Young Jim here can run and telephone for the doctor. ”

Timothy was automatically feeling for a pulse in one of Carol’ s limp wrists, but if there was any response his anxiety was too great to detect it. He looked up with a blank face at Judson.

“Yes; get a gate—get her to Dulverton House. Get her anywhere away from Meg,” he added silently to himself, unaware that Meg was at that moment engaged in heating blankets and stoking up the boiler to ensure an inexhaustible supply of hot water should the worst happen at any moment and Carol be brought home—in need of every possible attention.

And Meg had a cold and most unpleasant feeling at the base of her stomach which told her that the worst was bound to happen, and that Carol would need that attention She did not know why she was so certain, but she was beginning to feel slightly sick.

C H A PT E R N I N ET E E N

AUNT Harry was doing some exceedingly fine needlework, and she was bending over it as if it was the most important thing in the world. Every time she put in one of her ridiculously neat stitches she paused to gaze at it admiringly, and she held it up and looked at it through her glimmering, gold-rimmed spectacles, and then nodded her head in a kind of obvious satisfaction and proceeded to put in another stitch.

It was not to be wondered at, therefore, that the work did not grow quickly. As far as Carol could make it out, when she saw it held against the light, it was some sort of a soft pink material, and there were little ruchings of lace at what might have been the neck and sleeves of a garment. And there was also a spray of flowers—tiny blue flowers, like forget-me-nots—bordering one side of the neck (if it was a neck!) and some fairy-like tucks....

Carol shut her eyes then, rather hastily, for this concentration hurt her—or it hurt her eyes, and her head ached behind her eyes. When she opened them again it was dark, and the lamp beside the bed was burning in a subdued fashion, as if it was shielded by something more than an ordinary shade. Aunt Harry was still there, but she was lying back in a chair and her beautiful silvery hair was resting against a cushion, and her eyes were closed, as if she was enjoying a nap. Her complexion was almost perfect, Carol thought, gazing at it admiringly— soft and pink like apple blossom, and with scarcely a line to mar it, and yet she must be really quite old. At any rate she was not young ...

But what, Carol wondered, was she doing sitting beside her like this?

The girl tried to think—but thinking was too painful to be pursued for long. Every time she moved her head even the merest fraction of an inch on the pillow she was engulfed by feelings of nausea, and the world—the only world she knew at the moment, and which was made up of Aunt Harry and the lampshade—threatened to become blotted out again. So she decided to lie absolutely still, and not even to try to think.

Aunt Harry opened her eyes and looked at her. She had only closed them for a few minutes, not because she was tired, but because her eyes were tired.

“Hello, my dear!” she said, very softly.

Carol did not answer, but her lips moved.

Aunt Harry held a glass of something to her mouth, and she took—or tried to take—a sip at it. The Marchesa rested her hand, which smelled of lavender toilet soap, with a feather’ s touch on her brow, and then withdrew into the shadows behind and around the bed.

It was a nurse who took her place, a nurse in crisp white uniform, who placed business-like fingers upon Carol’s wrist, and then inserted a thermometer between her lips. Carol watched her read it, shake it down, and then place it in a little muslin-covered jar beside the bed. The glass was then held once more to her lips, she was able to take a couple of sips this time, and the nurse said in a very, very soothing voice:

“You’ re feeling better, aren’ t you? But you’ ve got to sleep—no lying there bothering your brain about anything! ”

After that the days passed, and each one was almost exactly the same as the other. She knew when the sun was shining, and the room was flooded by it, she knew when Aunt Harry drew the blinds because she thought it might bother her a little, and when the evening came and the lamp was lighted. One day she thought she recognized snow against the windows, and there was a great howling of wind in the chimney, and the fire in the grate gave off little puffs of smoke which curled upwards to the mantelpiece. But it was not the mantelpiece of her room at home—her bedroom at Brown Furrows!... Yes; of course, Brown Furrows was her home—or was it? What about Selbourne...?

And what, and where, was this... ?

She looked round the room, for she could turn her head now without being greatly upset by it. A most pleasant room, a charming room, with tiny bunches of rosebuds on the wallpaper, and curtains of highly glazed chintz. The dressing-table stood in a petticoat of snowy muslin, and the little oval-mirror was white-framed also. The carpet was green—clear green like a carpet of moss. Where had she seen a green carpet before, just like this one, overflowing into every nook and corner, even disappearing under the wardrobe? Oh, yes, of course!—Viola Featherstone’s house.... Then who was Viola Featherstone...?

Always she came up against a kind of blank wall when pursuing inquiries of this sort in her own mind. Names recurred to her—names of people and places, but she was never able to link them up satisfactorily with any events or situations or happenings which would awake to life any other events or happenings which must have occurred in a life she had once lived, unless that life had been wrapped in a kind of perpetual fog. But, even so—she must have felt something—
sometime....
She must have experienced something more acute than just lying here in bed, in this white and green room, with an Aunt Harry she knew coming to her several times a day and laying offerings of deliciously-smelling spring flowers, snowdrops and aconites and even little pale, long-stemmed violets, down beside her on the quilt, where she loved to lie and watch them. Sometimes she put out her hand and touched them, marvelling at the cool, crisp feel of them, the vitality in the fragile stems, and Aunt Harry would smile at her gently, smile and stroke her hair.

“Better today, dear...? Very much better today...?” she would ask.

“Much better today,” Carol would echo, like a child repeating a lesson.

The nurse was never very far away, and even Aunt Harry was not allowed to stay beside her for long. But Aunt Harry’s presence was soothing, her brown serene eyes always gave her a feeling of fresh courage, of a sudden little bubbling up of her strength. With Aunt Harry she was inclined to smile and to look and feel—happy about nothing very much in particular, but conscious of a delightful sensation of contentment, and a desire to probe no further. The Marchesa was always so dignified, and yet warmth, gentleness and peace flowed from her. She would answer any slightest little look of inquiry in Carol's eyes with a most comforting and reassuring little pat on her hands, and she would murmur soothingly:

“Not yet, dear—not yet. All in good time!...”

From which Carol would gather that in time the mists would be pierced, the blank wall scaled, but for the moment she must rest content.... And she really was content....

Until one morning when she awoke and there was a deep red rose on her breakfast tray. It was a hot-house rose, of course, but particularly choice and almost passionately scarlet. Aunt Harry, who followed the tray into the room, picked it up and rested it beside her cheek when she had been supported into a sitting position and her soft little fleecy bed-jacket wrapped round her.

“Many happy returns, child!...” she said.

Carol looked perplexed.

“Why, is it a birthday?” she asked. “Then how old am I?” A sudden light flashed on her, and she exclaimed: “Oh, of course, it's the twenty-eighth of February, and I'm nineteen. That's it, isn't it, nineteen?”

“Perfectly right, dear.” Aunt Harry sat down beside her on the bed, and she still fingered the rose, which made a rich contrast with her white, beautifully cared-for hands. She said in a voice which she endeavoured to free from every trace of emotion save calm, ordinary everydayness, “Timothy sent you this, dear, with his best wishes for your birthday. Perhaps you’d like to see him presently, when you’ve had your breakfast? Just for a few minutes, shall we say? If you are feeling up to it?” Carol lay back against her pillows, and her face was whiter than the fair, lace-edged linen. Her grey eyes looked enormous in a face which was small, pathetic and childlike, and her gold curls had been kept cropped close while she had lain in bed, and were no more than feathery gold rings framing the delicate, blue-veined structure of her forehead. The corners of her mouth drooped wistfully, and the expression in her eyes was anxious. One hand started to pluck nervously at the sheet.

“Timothy...?” she echoed, very slowly. “Timothy...? ”

“Yes, dear,” Aunt Harry said very softly, watching her while her heart thudded painfully with excitement, which she strove so hard to conceal. “Surely you must remember Timothy, and naturally he would remember your birthday! He—he couldn’t possibly forget, and he selected this rose— it’s perfect, isn’t it?—to convey his wishes. Take it, child, and smell it—it’ s got a heavenly scent! ”

Like an automation Carol obeyed, but there was not the faintest glimmering of recollection in her face. The name did not even mean as much to her as Viola Featherstone, or Brown Furrows, or Selbourne, or Miss Hardcastle. All these rang some sort of a bell, even if it was not answered, but Timothy— Timothy... ?

No; no it was no use. She had never heard it before. She had never heard of a man called Timothy. Timothy meant nothing— nothing at all!

Her expression grew so worried with the effort to think and to recall that Aunt Harry grew concerned, and took the rose gently from her.

“Never mind now, then, dear,” she said. “Don’t try to remember now. But perhaps when you see him...”

Carol smiled at her, wistfully and anxiously.

“Yes, perhaps,” she agreed. “And it
is
a lovely rose. I think I would like it put into water and placed beside the bed. On the little table, here,” reaching out her hand.