Mistress of Brown Furrows (20 page)

“Of course, darling.” Aunt Harry got up at once and placed the rose in a fluted crystal vase on a level with her eyes when she turned them towards it, and a little smile of pleasure chased the wistfulness from the expression of the invalid. “How’ s

that?” demanded the Marchesa.

“It’ s perfect! ” Carol exclaimed. “A red rose in February! I don’t think I’ve ever had a red rose in February before.”

“But then you were not married on your last birthday, were you, dear?” the Marchesa murmured.

“Married?” Instantly the worried expression returned to Carols eyes. ‘Am I—am I—married...?” She fingered the plain gold circlet on the third finger of her left hand. “I—I suppose I am... ”

“Yes, of course you are,” Aunt Harry said cheerfully. “You’ re married to Timothy. ”

Carol lay very still and silent.

Timothy...? She felt that she ought to remember. But Timothy—who, who was Timothy?

“And now I m going to make you look really nice for your visitor,” the Marchesa told her, with a bustling confidence she was actually far from feeling.

Timothy moved forward almost silently to the head of the bed when Aunt Harry beckoned him with her finger. But there was nothing tense, or strained, or anxious in his expression. He merely looked down at Carol rather yearningly.

She wore a pink bed-jacket, and it was lacy and tied with a satin ribbon, and the nightdress beneath it was lacy also. There was a pink ribbon in her hair, too, keeping the gold curls out of her eyes, but the face he remembered was shrunken to such a fine and delicate proportions that if he had not already observed it several times while she had lain either unconscious or sleeping he would have been badly shocked by it. As it was, the great grey shadowy eyes which looked up at him from the pillows bore little resemblance to the clear, grey, sparkling if generally shy eyes of the girl he had married in a London church, and whom he had first encountered on the steps of her old school. The shyness was there, still, but it was the shyness of one who welcomed a stranger.

“Well, Carol?” He sat down in the chair Aunt Harry had placed for him, and his voice was deliberately cool and quiet. “Are you feeling very much better? You must be if you’re permitted to receive visitors! And I’ m glad I’ m the first one to wish you very many happy returns of the day, apart from Aunt Harry, of course.”

“Thank you,” Carol replied, in a voice which was barely audible. A faint, faint pink had invaded her cheeks, and she was lying gazing at him and wondering. Those eyes—those very blue eyes with the long eyelashes—they had looked at her before, she knew that, and that mouth with the shadow of dark moustache on the upper lip ... that glimpse of white teeth when he slightly smiled, and that firm chin.... And his brown hand, reaching out to touch, lightly, the rose which reposed in the glass vase at his elbow....

“Did you like it?” his eyes asked.

“I love it,” Carol said simply.

Aunt Harry was watching them, with hands clasped anxiously, from a position just behind the bed. A pulse was beating suffocatingly in her throat, and her heart was pounding.

Would she...? Did the girl already recognize...?

“When you're better I'm going to take you away—to Italy,” Timothy told her. “Aunt Harry wants us to have her house, the Venetian
casa
she told you about. Actually these places are more like Doges' palaces than the ordinary conception of a house, but I know you'll find this one very comfortable. Trust our Aunt Harry for that! ” smiling up as the Marchesa came slightly forward, and rested her hand on his shoulder. “Isn't that so, Aunt Harry? You're the world's most luxurious sybarite! ”

“Am I, dear boy?” But she was secretly watching Carol, whose whole face looked so intent, and perplexed, and wondering, on the pillow. The girl, she could see, was stumbling blindly after a clue—she was following it in much the same manner as the owner of a hat which has been whipped away by a wanton breeze follows after his or her property, endeavouring to seize hold of it but finding it maddeningly elusive. She was reaching out—anxiously, eagerly—but the hat was like quick-silver, and it was tantalizingly removed just as her fingers were about to close upon it. “I know one thing, however, and that is that I am going to insist that you do take Carol to Venice. It will be the most wonderful place for her to convalesce.”

“Oh, I couldn't agree more,” he said.

Carol was seeing a flight of steps in the sunshine—the sunshine of late afternoon—and she was sitting upon them, on her suit-case, waiting for someone to collect her. And that someone drove up in a taxi, and he was tall, and dark, and he had blue eyes which smiled at her, and were a little quizzical besides. And he had just come home from abroad, and his name was... ?

Miss Hardcastle came into the picture, and she was looking on at Carol being married to the man with the blue eyes—and his name, she remembered now, was Timothy—Timothy Carrington! And he had a sister named Meg whose eyes were

blue but not so friendly, and a house called Brown Furrows....

And it was Christmas time, and the weather was cold and grey, and there were horses—horses and riders galloping over bleak, hard fields ...

Carol struggled up into a sitting position. Aunt Harry placed an arm about her shoulders, and her eyes became pin-pointed with anxiety.

“What is it, dear?” she asked, the cooing of doves and pigeons in her voice. “Tell your old Aunt Harry...?”

“Beauty?” Carol got out huskily, at last. “What happened— to Beauty?”

Aunt Harry looked over her shoulder at Timothy. He waved to her to disappear behind the head of the bed, and then he got up and took the old lady’s place on the quilt beside his wife, and picking up both her hands he enclosed them in a warm and comforting clasp while he looked down at her with his blue eyes no longer smiling, but abrim with an expression of tenderness which was like a deep and solid wall against which she could lean and drew strength if she would. Against which she was suddenly, overwhelmingly tempted to lean ...

“She broke a leg,” he told her quietly Carol nodded her head, as if she understood completely. She looked up at him, biting her lip.

“Poor Beauty! ” she said.

“Poor Carol! ” he remarked, smiling again slightly, his old, faintly quizzical smile.

“But I’ ve been so very well looked after! —Aunt Harry has been wonderful! ”

“Aunt Harry is wonderful,” he agreed. “And now I think you’d better have a little rest,” he said, urging her gently down on to her pillows, and caressing her with his eyes. “All this sudden excitement might not be too good for you, and you’ve a birthday cake to cut this afternoon! Nineteen candles—think of it! ”

Carol’ s color came and went with the delicacy and rapidity of a pair of fluttering wings, and the old half-shy look crept into her eyes.

“Am I to have a party?” she asked.

“If Aunt Harry and myself constitute a party—yes; Aunt Harry alone if you would prefer it—?”

She wanted to reach out and grasp hold of him, to cling on to him with all the frail strength of her hands and beg him not to leave her—not even until this afternoon. But somehow she had not the courage, not even after the way in which he had looked at her when he had sat beside her on the bed. She wanted to say: “I lost you for so many weeks, and now I've found you again don’t go! Don’t ever go!...

But the most she could manage just then was:

“How nice to have a party! And thank you—for the rose! ”

“ ‘My love is like a red, red rose’!” he quoted. And then he gently touched her cheek. “I should have given you a white rose. It would have suited you better.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

CAROL’S next visitor was old Agatha, who had been dying to see her for weeks, and who brought her an armful of early daffodils from the most sheltered corner of Brown Furrows' garden, a basketful of new-laid eggs, and a polite little letter from Meg. Meg sent her love and hoped she was making steady progress, and trusted that one day she would be allowed to see her.

Carol read the letter through, and then folded it carefully and laid it down on the bedside table. Agatha looked at her anxiously.

“Miss Meg is rather lonely these days,” she said, feeling that she must somehow put up some defence for the woman whose name was not popular amongst her old friends since the accident. Not that anyone had accused Meg of anything at all, but one and all felt that—well, three hours, my dear ... Surely she could have remembered before that!... And she knew that her sister-in-law was not really accustomed to horses!... She

was so keen to be in at the death.... And apparently she could

think of nothing else, although young Mrs. Carrington was such a little bit of a thing.... And three hours!... Well, it was only by a miracle that she was found alive!...

Agatha, of course, knew all this, and she knew also that her mistress's hair was no longer grey in parts. Patches of white had invaded it now, and Meg's eyes had a look in them which the faithful Agatha could not bear to meet. It was as if she had been wounded somewhere deep down inside, and she was trying to cover up the hurt—trying to pretend to herself that it did not exist. She went about her daily duties and her customary activities more or less as usual, but Agatha did not need to be told that she got little pleasure out of them. There was no pleasure in life for Meg any longer, or so it seemed to Agatha.

“Miss Meg picked these flowers for you,” she told Carol, when she had arranged them herself in a huge pottery vase. “She—she found you the first snowdrops, too. Went searching for them for days before she saw the first one peeping at her under the shelter of the hedge which cuts off the garden from the Long Meadow. And she was pleased as a child to come back with her hands full of them.”

There was no doubt about the appeal in her eyes as she looked at Carol and Carol found it difficult to reply to her. So far as she herself was concerned Meg was entirely guiltless, and she would never blame her at all for her accident. Meg must have been aware of that treacherous chasm, and she might have paused to warn her, but the fact that she had not done so did not mean very much to her sister-in-law. Carol’s only sensations where Meg was concerned were the result of a past unhappiness, and a shadowy and uncertain period of her life when she might have acted the part of mistress in her own home—if Meg had permitted. But here at Dulverton House everything was so different, and for the first time in her life she had known what it was to feel utterly secure and at peace. Timothy might not live here, but at least he came to see her very often, and soon—soon now—they would go away together, to another of Aunt Harry’s houses. Aunt Harry had almost made up her mind to go with them, and Carol had no room in her heart just then for anyone save Aunt Harry and Timothy. She felt, too, that if she saw Meg it would bring back a shadow.

“You can give my love to Miss Carrington and thank her for the flowers and tell her—tell her I shall hope to see her sometime! ” she said, with something of an effort (which Agatha entirely misunderstood) to the servant who had known both Timothy and Meg since their childhood. “As a matter of fact, you know, I am not really allowed visitors—at least, not many, just yet....”

She broke off. Agatha was a visitor, and she was not even a relative. And Meg was her sister-in-law!

But Agatha felt suddenly that she understood. She looked at the white, wan face of the young woman facing her, lying back against her pillows, and already a little exhausted, and remembered the bonny young face she had had, and her slim and active figure when she first arrived at Brown Furrows, and

Agatha felt her heart yearn over her, as much as it yearned over Meg.

“Let’s hope we’ll soon have you back at Brown Furrows, with the master,” she said. “The place don’t seem the same now that you’re out of it—once having been in it, if you know what I mean,” seeking to explain herself.

‘‘Thank you, Agatha,” Carol said gently, feeling really appreciative. “That’s very kind.”

“Not at all, miss—ma’am! I—we—Ellen James and Judson, we—we all miss you..”

She blinked away a tear, which persisted however in trickling to the extreme tip of her nose, forcing her to use her handkerchief.

“Let’s hope this Venice trip’ll put you on your feet again, miss—ma’am!—and don’t you ever go having nothing to do with horses again when you get back, no matter what Miss Meg says....” She sniffed again, with more disapproval.

“Don’t you worry about that, Agatha,” Timothy said, appearing suddenly. “Mrs. Carrington will never ride again—or if she does she’ll only ride when I am with her. Otherwise it will be taboo.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, anyway,” Agatha told him, and returned home feeling relieved of one anxiety at least. Mr. Timothy was going to put his foot down in future, and not before it was time. Miss Meg had had a habit of getting away with a lot in the past, such as continuing to run the house when Mr. Timothy got married, of which Agatha had never approved, and no one could say she had. It just hadn’t struck her as right, somehow.

Viola Featherstone was the third visitor, and she looked in to see Carol one not-so-bright early March afternoon when the girl was sitting up in her white brocade dressing-gown before a bright fire in her bedroom, and tea was just about to be brought in.

Timothy for once was not with her, and Aunt Harry was paying one of her rare afternoon calls, so only the nurse was on hand, and she retired into the background when Viola arrived.