Mistress of Brown Furrows (8 page)

Would Meg look down on her as being utterly ignorant— perhaps utterly unworthy!... Or would she—would she, perhaps, be kind...?

When she returned from tidying herself in the cloakroom her hands were a little cold, as on that first occasion when she met Timothy Carrington. She had grown suddenly very quiet, and her eyes were anxious. Timothy, understanding a little, looked down at her and patted her shoulder.

“A good hot bath when we get home,” he said, “and you’ll feel fine. And Meg is bound to have fixed us a really first-class dinner. She and Agatha between them will have killed the fatted calf, I’ ve no doubt. ”

Carol said nothing. His mention of the word ‘home’ had stirred her pulses a little, but she could not yet believe that it was her home they were going to. And four walls and a roof do not make a home, not even when it is filled with beautiful furniture, and a sister-in-law waiting to welcome one!

There are other things—other ingredients, which make up a home!

The train was running into the junction, and Carrington caught sight of Judson, who looked up at him from the platform and grinned and touched his cap. He was a typical, sturdy specimen of young Westmorland countryman, and there was no doubt that he was pleased to see his master returning, and especially accompanied by a young and attractive bride.

“I’m sure I wish you both the best of luck, sir,” he said, in deep, broad, slightly embarrassed tones which stirred Carol to the heart, and she gave him one of her most grateful smiles which decided him then and there that ‘she was a right proper sort for the master’ , though she was certainly a bit on the young side.

“Everything all right at home, Judson?” Carrington inquired, as they climbed into the car which was parked outside the station entrance.

“Perfectly all right, sir,” Judson reassured him. “And everyone very glad to know you’ re coming home—especially Aggie. She’ s been up half the night getting things ready for your return—and Mrs. Carrington,” he added, remembering.

“Dear old Agatha!” Timothy exclaimed. He turned to Carol, sitting very quietly beside him on the back seat of the car. “She looked after Meg and me when we were young,” he explained, “and has been with us ever since.”

“How nice,” Carol murmured, in what sounded to him like a small and rather frozen voice.

He gave her hand a squeeze.

“Cheer up!” he whispered. “It’s only an eight and a half mile drive. We’ll soon be home.”

But Carol said nothing. In her heart she would have been glad if it had been an eighty-eight and a half mile drive, but naturally she did not intend to let him know.

The light was beginning to die out of the sky by the time they turned in at a pair of white-painted gates, and proceeded up a drive which was short and well-kept. The old stone house lay slightly in a hollow, and trees clustered rather thickly about it, so that it was not immediately glimpsed on rounding the final bend. And then all at once the car pulled up at the foot of a flight of steps, and they saw that the weather-beaten front door was standing invitingly open, and voices were coming out of the soft darkness within. A light shone forth—a sudden, bright light which looked like a star—and a corner of the oak staircase could be seen through the entrance. That and a heavily-framed portrait in oils which hung on the farther wall.

“Timothy, my dear! ”—Meg’ s voice came floating out to them, warm but controlled—“welcome home! And welcome to you too, Carol! ”

She came down the steps with her hands held out. She was dressed in a smart, shadowy, dark evening frock and a long stole composed almost entirely of sequins, which glittered like the scaly skin of a serpent. Her perfume was sophisticated, and when her face came close to Carol’s the girl felt it smooth and cold against her cheek. And Meg’ s hands touched hers ever so lightly, and held them for an instant.

“I do hope you’re not altogether exhausted after your journey!” And then she turned back to Timothy and embraced him. “Timothy, darling, this is wonderful! ” she said.

C H A P T E R N I N E

MUCH later that night Carol stood before her mirror brushing out her hair and listening to the heavy silence of the house.

Outside the window—and really quite alarmingly close to it—an owl hooted suddenly; and, muted by distance, she heard a cow bellowing with a pathetic insistence which proclaimed that it was probably due to calve. But the house itself, with its thick carpets and its ancient dark wood panelling, was as still and almost as solemnly hushed as a reed-fringed pool in the depths of a silent wood.

And yet it was not late. The little clock on her mantelpiece, with the delicate porcelain figurines clinging to the round dial, said half-past ten. And Meg, her sister-in-law, had said that she never went to bed before midnight, because otherwise she would never have slept, although she was always up at the first crack of dawn. In most parts of Westmorland sportsmen must perforce follow hounds on foot; but the country round Brown

Furrows was practicable for horses, and Meg hunted hard during the winter, and rode every morning before breakfast throughout the year.

She was probably downstairs in the library, talking to Timothy, who naturally had a great deal to talk to her about. Despite their dissimilarity in looks they were much of a type— that is to say they had the same interests, the only difference being that Meg apparently had no desire to travel, and never had had. But she loved listening to Timothy recounting all his various adventures, and describing all the fresh places and the fresh faces he had seen. And Timothy enjoyed talking by the hour to his sister, for she was a good listener.

They had decided that Carol
must
go to bed early, as she had had such an exhausting day. In the drawing room after dinner, in her white frock with the large black velvet pansies girdling the waist, and the snowy neck fichu which lent such a demure line to her throat and shoulders, she had sat so silently holding her coffee-cup that Meg had commented on the wanness of her looks. Meg had dispensed the coffee, taking the place she had always taken at the little round table on which the delicate Sevres china was set down, and had looked very much like a gracious and completely self-possessed hostess. Carol, sitting on the edge of one of the spindly chairs, had wondered whether any young women on the first night of their honeymoon—or on the first night of their marriage, at any rate—had felt as she was feeling at the moment when Meg said she looked definitely ‘all in’ .

“And I promise you I won’ t keep Timothy up half the night, talking about all the things we’re both dying to talk about,” Meg added archly. “It’ s a temptation, but I give you my word to resist it. And I do hope you sleep well, Carol, and find the bed comfortable. If it isn’ t you must let me know in the morning.”

“Thank you, I will,” Carol replied, and avoided looking at Timothy as he rose to accompany her to the door.

Outside the door, at the foot of the carved oak staircase, Timothy looked down at her frowning.

“Meg doesn’t know about us—yet,” he said. “But I promise you she shall by the morning.” He placed a hand very gently on her shoulder, and in the light of the swinging hall lantern he could see that she was no longer pale—even her throat and the tip of her chin were softly, delicately pink. “Remember what I told you in the train,” he added urgently. “Forget everything and have a good night’s rest. And if you want anything just ring. I shan’t be far away.”

“I will,” Carol promised again, and went without looking at him up the stairs.

When she reached her room Carol found the curtain drawn and the bedside light glowing softly. The sheets of the great four-poster bed were turned down invitingly, and her nightdress laid out ready for her by an admiring Agatha—who not only had chosen it from amongst her luggage, but had chosen it because it was so altogether exquisite, and Agatha had never seen anything quite like it before.

“White for a bride,” she had murmured to herself, when she had laid it out, and had fingered the folds of transparent nylon fabric, tucked and edged with a mist of lace.

For Agatha had capitulated hands down when her new mistress had first appeared in the front doorway downstairs, looking so wan and tired and rather dispirited, and actually not a bit ‘bride-like’, as she put it to herself when she thought about it afterwards. And Agatha had gone to her and conducted her upstairs to her room and taken her a cup of good, hot, strong tea, for there was nothing like a cup of tea after a journey. And afterwards, while Meg regaled her brother with a large whisky-and-soda downstairs in the library, she had run her bath and helped her to dress and felt very tenderly protective towards her every time Carol turned her large, ever-so-slightly anxious grey eyes upon her, and struck her as being almost ridiculously young for marriage—particularly when her husband was so many years older!

But that was the master’ s affair—not hers—and he always knew exactly what he was doing, and nothing she had ever known him to do had ever turned out to be very rash or unwise. And if Miss Meg didn’ t agree with her that was her affair also, and she, Agatha, was at liberty to give her affections where she pleased, and no one could help liking a nice, pretty little thing like young Mrs. Carrington.

Even Judson, downstairs in the kitchen, had said how much he liked her, and Ellen James was dying to set a look at her.

The only one who had greeted her with all the correctness in the world and no real warmth was Miss Meg. But even she would come round in time—of course she would!

And now Carol had donned the nightdress and was brushing out her hair before the beautiful old-fashioned mirror on the dressing-table.

Everything in the room was old and obviously carefully cherished. The bed-posts were carved into garlands of flowers, and the little sprays of flowers on the bed coverlet and curtains had instantly pleased her eye. A beautiful walnut tallboy had the sheen of polished satin, and so had the enormous wardrobe and the graceful little bedside table, decorated with some dark red roses, and a pretty-pink-shaded reading lamp. There were red roses on the dressing-table, too, in a shallow crystal bowl, and Carol put down her hair brush—one of the new gold-backed set given to her by Timothy for a wedding present— and fingered their petals gently.

Roses meant only one thing; but these were obviously intended simply as a welcome to the bride from her sister-in-law.

Her sister-in-law!...

There was a strange, heavy, rather wistful feeling in Carol’s heart as she thought of Meg. Meg who had certainly kissed her on arrival, but had scarcely spoken to her since. Meg who had occupied the seat usually reserved for the mistress of the house at the dinner-table, and had talked almost non-stop to Timothy during the meal. Meg who was anxious to hear everything that Timothy had done during his absence, who looked at him as if she adored him, who placed his comfort before her own and was most anxious to wait on him, and had a faint, occasional smile for his new wife.

“Carol, my dear, I expect you’ll find it a little strange up here if you’re used to the south.... We must have a little talk sometime and get to know one another...!”

Those were the only two remarks she had actually addressed to Carol during the evening, until she had commented on her tiredness and suggested that she ought to go to bed.

And now she was downstairs still talking to Timothy... !

Carol wondered suddenly whether she was being a little unreasonable about Meg, for she was, after all, Timothy’s sister, and naturally she had a great deal to say to him, and naturally they liked talking to one another. All their lives they had shared interests, and apparently they had few secrets from one another. And there was this marriage to be explained to Meg—the reason why it had come about, the conditions under which it had taken place....

Carol felt her face flame suddenly. No doubt Meg would declare to Timothy that he had behaved in the most quixotic manner imaginable, and that he must be slightly mad— unless

he was in love with the girl!

Which, of course, he was not.

And she might well ask why Carol had married Timothy....

Carol put her hands up to her suddenly hot cheeks and held them there. She looked at herself in the glass, in the white, clinging, transparent nightdress, with her pale gold hair framing her uncomfortably blushing features and her disturbed grey eyes, and the thought flashed through her mind that she did not look so young after all. The sophistication of the nightdress, with its elegantly lovely line, called attention to the slender perfection of her own figure, and for the first time in her life she knew that at heart she was no longer the complete schoolgirl. She was a woman who had married without knowing why, but at least of one thing she was certain. It was not because she had been frightened of facing the world alone. It was not because Timothy had offered her security and comfort. A little of the security had appealed to her, naturally, after her sheltered life, and so, perhaps, had the comfort. But that was not all....

She wandered away from the mirror and started to pick up things and put them down again in a distracted and slightly agitated manner. She slipped on her dressing-gown of white, quilted brocade and started to fasten it without being really aware of what she was doing, and in the same abstracted fashion slid her feet into mules.

Where, she wondered, was Timothy’ s room, and how far away was it from her own? In the hotel she had at least been aware of the number of his room, but here in his own house— and hers! —she had no knowledge at all of where he would be sleeping!