Mistress of Brown Furrows (25 page)

She heard Timothy moving in the room beyond the bathroom, heard him throw open his window and knew that he was leaning out to draw deep breaths of the cool air, but she did not go to join him on her own balcony. Instead she hastily gulped down a cup of coffee and withdrew into the bathroom, securing the door very firmly after her and taking her bath quickly.

When she emerged again she dressed with equal speed, donning a crisp linen dress of palest green with a white belt and white sandals, and running a hasty comb through her fair hair until it framed her small face like a nimbus. Then silently she crept to the door of her room, stole across the floor of the outer salon, and fled past the head of the grand staircase in the direction of that wing of the old and slightly mouldering palace which contained the apartments of its owner.

The Marchesa never hurried in the mornings, and Carol knew very well that she would find her still in bed, leaning against a multitude of soft, downy pillows encased in lace-edged pillowslips, dealing with her correspondence and partaking of her breakfast at the same time.

The Marchesa believed in luxury on each and every possible occasion, and her bedroom reminded Carol of the bedroom of an old-time Gaiety Girl, or perhaps a modern film star. It was all decorated in palest peach, and the curtains and bedspread were of shimmering satin. The bathroom adjoining was a miracle in peach also.

“Why, Carol, my dear, fancy seeing you so early! ” She exclaimed as Carol entered, following a polite tap at the door.

She looked at the girl closely. Carol did not look young this morning, but she looked what Aunt Harry would have described to herself as ‘highly strung up’ and ‘tense.’ She refused to accept a cup of coffee when the Marchesa offered it her, and she sat down nervously beside the bed and started to pleat the peach satin coverlet with fingers that were not absolutely certain what they were doing.

Aunt Harry lay back against her pillows and drew an inward sigh. She knew, she felt, what was coming. She had seen it coming for over a week now, with Viola Featherstone invading the place at all hours for lunch and dinner and afternoon tea, joining them when they went to the Lido to bathe, in Bugatti’s, in the small little cafes on the Piazzo of San Marco, and even on sightseeing expeditions. Viola had certainly been thorough in thrusting herself upon them, and Carol had been withdrawing into her shell now for over a week. Timothy had been for some reason wilfully blind, and Aunt Harry had thought that it was all most unfortunate, conflicting as it did with her own deeply-laid plans.

Carol could have told her that she didn’t mind Viola Featherstone so much, she didn’ t mind her flagrant attempts to entice Timothy away from her, she didn’t even so very much mind her persistent presence in the house. None of those things would have mattered—at least not
very
much—if Timothy had treated her, Carol, in the same way as he treated Viola. As if, instead of being a child, she was a woman, instead of recovering from an unfortunate accident she was long past the stage of requiring endless sympathetic attention and considerate treatment, as if—in short—she was nineteen and human, married and in love with her husband, as attractive as Viola and desperately anxious for him to notice it.

One thing which had upset her very much over the past week was the recollection that she had actually told him that she was in love with him! —in love with him! and he had apparently forgotten all about it! He had opened the door of a kind of earthly paradise to her and then shut it, ruthlessly and inexorably, in her face!

Aunt Harry, when she heard all about it, could only agree that it was most extraordinary. But then Timothy was not quite like other men—he might have, he probably had got, his reasons. But whatever they were they were unfair to Carol, and the girl looked white, and upset, and almost desperate. At a time when, following a period of prolonged convalescence, she needed bolstering up and encouraging and rendering as happy and contented as possible, she was being flung into an abyss of unhappiness and profound depression and uncertainty because Timothy, apparently, had no eyes to see. And if he had he was keeping them closed for some reason of his own.

“What are you going to do, dear?” the Marchesa asked, watching Carol with the deepest sympathy.

“I don’t know.” Carol, still playing with the quilt, looked as if she had no longer any hope. “There’s nothing much I can do, except—”

“Except what, dear?”

“Except—” Carol drew a deep breath, bit her lip suddenly very hard, looked at the Marchesa with grey eyes that were deep and dark with her misery, and then got out rather huskily, “I have made up my mind to—go away! ”

The Marchesa did not look surprised. She did not even look as if she disapproved.

“I think perhaps you're right, child,” she murmured, very gently. “After all, there are refinements of torture, and although Timothy is my godson, and I am deeply fond of him, I can't offer you any explanation of his conduct towards you. I know—I believe, that is—that his affection for you is genuine, but I have long since come to realize that you do not require affection alone. It would be most unfair to expect you to accept anything so lukewarm and unsatisfactory, and if you are ever to learn what Timothy’ s true feelings are towards you, then there is only one course open to you.”

“You mean that you agree that I should go away?”

“I agreed that you should try the experiment,” Aunt Harry answered, pushing away her correspondence and her breakfast tray and sitting up in bed. She leaned forward and took both Carol’ s hands and pressed them hard, and at the same time she looked deep into the girl’s eyes. “You are unhappy now, Carol —you cannot be any more unhappy if you put Timothy to the test, and if the test fails—”

Carol actually winced, but the next moment she had set her lips and her eyes took on a look of resolution.

“If the test fails—then you will at least know where you are! But I do not believe it will fail!...”

“Don’ t you?” Carol whispered.

The Marchesa shook her head.

“Timothy
is
in love with you—I believe you yourself know that! But he’s got some extraordinary maggot in his brain about cherishing you and doing the right thing about you at this particular moment, and—”

“You don’ t think—you don’ t think Mrs. Featherstone has got anything to do with it?” Carol asked, waiting for her answer rather breathlessly.

“No, dear.” Aunt Harry shook her head quite definitely. “I don’t.”

“But she’s so beautiful—she’s got so much to offer him, and—and men like—men like—older women...”

“Do they?” Aunt Harry looked at her rather quizzically. “When Viola Featherstone was nineteen I don’ t think she had nearly so much to offer any man as you have. I don’t think, even now, she has so much to offer Timothy as you have—in fact, I’ m quite sure of it! So I wouldn’ t let Viola Featherstone worry you. ”

Carol looked relieved. But the next moment the gloom returned to her face.

“Then you really think I ought to—go?”

“Yes, dear.” Aunt Harry patted her hands again. “I think you should—but you will let
me
know where you are going?”

“I shall go,” Carol told her, having firmly made up her mind, “to Paris.”

Aunt Harry looked suddenly rather shrewd.

“You won’t become involved with that young Winslow boy?”

“Of course not! ” Carol was almost indignant. “But if I need a job he will help me to find one. And he will also be able to help me to find a little hotel where I can live cheaply. I haven’ t a great deal of money, but it will last me until I can earn more.”

Aunt Harry looked at her rather pityingly, the white, earnest face, the firm, quite capable little chin, the grey eyes that were fixed and determined.

“If you want money, my dear, you know you have only to ask me for some,” the Marchesa told her gently. “You mustn’ t ever allow yourself to run short, and I would never forgive myself if I thought you were alone in Paris and in difficulty, particularly as I have agreed that it is the right thing for you to go away. Promise me that you
will
let me know if you are in any difficulties—promise me, also, that you will keep in touch with me? It is very important, Carol, and I will not give you away to Timothy—unless I am absolutely certain in my own mind that, when he comes to bring you back, you can be glad to see him! ”

Carol looked down at her wistfully. She was thinking: What if Timothy never comes to bring me back!...

Two days later she was in Paris, having for the first time in her life journeyed alone by air. Aunt Harry had given her the name of an hotel where she could afford to spend one night at least before contacting Brian Winslow, and she went to bed without bothering about any dinner although conscious that the strangeness of a new, and rather wonderful, city, was all around her, and that she was virtually cut off from the life she had once known.

She went to the window and looked out at the lights of Paris, twinkling through the haze of the spring evening. Paris in spring had always sounded to her as if it must be the most wonderful place in the world, with its boulevards and its historic buildings, its unlimited entertainments—a city to live! But Carol’ s heart was as heavy as lead as she looked over the tops of the rapidly greening trees a delicate tracery of bursting buds, to where the sounds from the busy streets rose up in a swelling chorus proclaiming the joys and delights of living.

For her Paris had few charms tonight. But if she was here with Timothy!... If Timothy stood now, beside her, at her elbow, and they both looked out over those fascinating and enticing lights, and if she knew she was going out to discover the beauty and

excitement of it all with him as her guide!

Well, that would be more than different!

But Timothy was probably at this moment re-reading the uninformative little note she had left him, and trying to fathom out
why
she had left him—for, of course, he would not easily understand!...

She felt terribly lonely, and terribly disinclined to test the comfort of her solitary-looking bed, and instead she looked up Brian's telephone number and put through a call to him at his more modest hotel. He sounded absolutely flabbergasted when he heard her voice, and even more so when she made it clear to him that she was actually in Paris. He asked at once whether Timothy was with her, and seemed to find it difficult to credit the evidence of his own ears when she told him that he was not.

“Do you mean to tell me that you’re actually here
alone?”
he said. “But I can’t understand it!... It’s too good to be true!...”

Carol tried to explain to him that she wanted to see him the next day, but he cut her short in his excitement.

“Tonight! You’ll have dinner with me tonight? Of course you will! ”

But Carol said quite firmly that she was going to bed. At what time could she see him the following day?

Brian was not actually disappointed, for he finally arranged to collect her at her hotel the following morning, and to take her to a little place he knew of for lunch. His voice sounded excited and delighted beyond words. Carol’s heart misgave her a little as she realized what he might be thinking, but it was impossible to dim his enthusiasm over a telephone, and she thought it better to wait. All in good time she would have to make Brian realize that she was not here to afford him any particular pleasure from her near presence in Paris, and it might be as well to do so without very much delay. But for the moment his was the voice of the one friend she had in a strange city in an unknown country, and it comforted her a little to hear it.

She went to bed at last feeling suddenly desperately tired, and she actually fell asleep almost immediately her head touched the pillow. Which was a merciful dispensation on the part of Providence, for she was more than unhappy. She was wondering how she was going to get through the days ahead of her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

AT lunch the following day Brian was plainly in his element,

but he was a little at a loss to understand why Carol had left Venice. He attempted to convey to her that he had always been under the impression that she was rather keen, to say the least, on her husband, and if so why had she left him? It was not exactly a light step, walking out on the man who was one’s lawful lord and master, and what was Timothy going to have to say to it, anyway? Had Carol thought of that?

Carol had thought of it so much so continually during the past twenty-four hours that even she was a little appalled at what she had done. Timothy had always been so good to her, so good and kind and considerate, and this and abetted his wife in running away from him!

Carol felt rather sick inside herself at the thought of what she had done. After all, she loved Timothy—she would never wish to hurt him. And yet she had, she must have, hurt him a little. She was displaying a tendency to rank ingratitude at least.

“What are you going to do?” Brian asked her. “If you stay on here in Paris, have you got enough money to keep yourself?”

“For a time,” Carol told him. “And then I thought,” she explained rather shyly, “I’ d get a job. I thought you might be able to help me there.”

He looked at her, at her slender figure in the beautifully tailored light spring suit, her golden aureole of curls, her grey, soft, infinitely attractive eyes.