A MORNING RIDE
Caroline and her father rode out very early one morning at the beginning
of June. One of the habits they had formed was to seize to themselves
the delicious freshness of the new day, unspoilt by the smoke and stir
of towns.
She and he were alone at the Abbey. After more than a year in which the
London house had scarcely been used, they were beginning to discuss the
advisability of giving it up altogether. They discussed it now as they
rode across the dewy grass of the park, on their way to the high ground
which would bring them to their favourite view across miles of southward
facing country to the sea.
"You see, darling," Caroline was saying, "we always want to be here when
we are there, and we very seldom want to be there when we are here.
Beatrix generally stays with Aunt Katharine or Aunt Mary, anyhow, and
you like staying at your Club if you have to go up alone. Now that
Barbara has gone to Paris the Dragon won't have to be in London to look
after her, as we thought she must if she went up for classes."
"And what about you, Cara? You shirked most of your London gaieties last
year. Are you going to cut yourself off from them altogether?"
She laughed happily. "Fancy wanting London gaieties when you can have
this!" she said. "I sang for joy this morning when I woke up and found
myself here instead of in London."
"Yes, that's all very well," he said. "I feel like that myself, though I
suppose that at my age no satisfaction is quite as hilarious as it is at
yours. But it isn't only the gaieties that you miss by cutting yourself
off from London. It's being in the swim. When you've been in the swim as
long as I have, you know how much of it is necessary to you and how much
isn't. And you don't lose all that you've gained for yourself when you
begin to sit lightly to it all. But you have to gain it first."
"I'm not sure that I want to gain more than I have," she said. "I have
heaps of friends, and we see a good many of them down here. I like
seeing those who really do count in that way; you get to know them
better. It's the background of life that I love so in the country. You
belong to yourself more. Things come to you and you don't have to go out
to find them. I believe you feel that too, Daddy."
"Yes, I do," he said, "more than I should have thought possible a year
ago. But still I can't see that it is quite the right thing for you to
bury yourself down here entirely."
"Don't you feel that it's nice to have me here to welcome you when you
come home?" she asked.
"Oh, my darling," he said, "nothing could be better--for me. It's you
I'm thinking of."
Barbara had been sent off, protesting, to a 'family' in Paris a
fortnight before. She was to come home in August, when Young George
would also come home for his summer holidays; otherwise she had declared
she would not consent to go at all. Beatrix was in London with Lady
Handsworth, enjoying her second season, but not with quite the same
youthful abandon as she had enjoyed her first. Miss Waterhouse was away
visiting, but would come back shortly, either to Abington or to the
house in Cadogan Place, wherever the headquarters of the family should
be. Caroline after a week in London had pressed for Abington, and had
had her own way. It was true that her way would bring most pleasure to
her father. His centre of gravity had changed from London to the
country. Except on occasions, his work occupied him not more than three
days a week, and with her at Abington his home was indisputably there,
as it would not have been otherwise. But he was getting to be a little
anxious about this increasing disinclination of hers to follow out the
life that seemed natural for a girl of her birth and upbringing. Both
his sisters-in-law had spoken to him about it, Lady Grafton as well as
Lady Handsworth. She was not doing herself justice. They knew that he
did not want to give her up, and there was no necessity for her to marry
just yet. But she ought not to cut herself off from the surroundings in
which girls of her sort did find husbands, the surroundings in which he
himself, and all of them, had found wives and husbands.
He had felt the force of this. Though he hoped to keep Caroline with him
for a time longer, the thought of her eventual marriage was never quite
absent from his thoughts about her. He did not want it to be,
necessarily, what is called a brilliant marriage, though with a girl of
Caroline's beauty and charm the most brilliant of marriages would not be
more than her due; but he did want her to marry among the people with
whom both sides of her family had been connected now for some
generations past, and that was conditional, as it seemed to him, upon
her keeping 'in the swim.' There was an idea at the back of his mind
that her whole-hearted love of a country life was rather unsettling her
for the right sort of marriage. It seemed actually to have been
responsible for her unwillingness to accept the young man whom for some
time past he had thought, not without satisfaction, that she might
marry. Francis Parry was still in love with her, and a year ago she had
refused him in such a way as not to have made him relinquish all hope of
winning her. The young man had told Grafton so rather pathetically not
so long before. He had not bothered her, he had said, but wasn't she
getting tired of shutting herself away from everybody? Was his chance
absolutely gone?
The question had made Grafton bethink himself. When Caroline had
definitely refused Francis for the second time a year before he had been
well content to have it so. She had said that she had always liked him,
and given her father to understand that when she should be ready to
marry he would be such a husband as she would choose. It was because she
was so happy at home that she did not want to marry yet. But now he was
not so sure that it would be a man of the type of Francis Parry whom she
would choose. She seemed to have moved away from the sort of life he
represented, which was exactly the sort of life that he himself had
represented, and to which his daughters had been brought up. The fact
that he had refrained hitherto with her from any reference to the young
man's plea, although they had talked him over together frankly enough
before, showed the extent of his doubts about her. Although he
sympathised with her strong preference for this quiet stay-at-home
country life, and to a large extent shared it, it seemed almost as if
she were moving away from him.
They came to the high beechwood from which the famous view was to be
seen. They sat on their horses, and drank in the tonic air which came
from the sea across miles of open country. The sun was now high in the
sky, and a line of silver in the far distance fulfilled their
expectations. For in most conditions of atmosphere the view of the sea
was by faith and not by sight.
"Isn't it heavenly!" said Caroline. "Oh, Dad, you must leave me to this;
I want to live all my life with it. I shouldn't mind if I never saw
London again."
They were going to breakfast at Grays, the seat of the Pemberton family.
Bertie Pemberton, the only son, had married a few months before Mollie
Walter, who had lived with her mother in a cottage at Abington. He also
had forsaken London, to settle down to a country existence for the rest
of his life. It had been necessary for him 'to do something' before
succeeding to the parental acres, and the something he had chosen to do,
after enjoying himself for three years at Oxford, was dealing with
stocks and shares. This pursuit would appear to be singularly fitted for
a young man with connections but no exaggerated equipment of brain
power. But he was a countryman at heart, as had been all his forebears.
A few years 'in the City' were his tribute to the larger life. Upon
marriage he was quite content to close that chapter. There was enough
for him to do with the management of his father's estate as a serious
occupation, and with the sports of the field as one hardly less serious.
An old stone-roofed farmhouse, restored and refitted to make it a
suitable home for an heir-apparent, was now Mollie's habitation. It
stood a little way back from the road, and as Grafton and Caroline rode
up she came flying down the flagged path from the house door to greet
them. She was like a vision of the summer morning in her sparkling
bridal happiness. Caroline embraced her warmly when she had dismounted,
with more emotion than she could have expressed. The happiness of others
is a moving thing, especially when it rests upon love; and Mollie was
supremely happy. Her husband, with a loud-voiced geniality which showed
him at least to have nothing to complain of in life, followed her out
and added his welcome. Thereafter there was talk and laughter, pride of
new possession and sympathy with it, until it was time for the Graftons
to ride home again.
"Isn't it lovely to see them so pleased with themselves?" Caroline said,
when she had waved her last farewell. "Do you remember Mollie a year
ago, how shy and retiring she was? She is like a different creature
now."
"Master Bertie is a different creature too," said her father. "He's
always been noisy, but I like the sort of noise he makes now better than
I did."
"He adores Mollie," said Caroline, "and she is just the wife for him. I
love to see them together. You see, Dad, it isn't necessary to fag about
in London as a preparation for marriage. Mollie has hardly ever been
there."
She seemed to have divined his inmost thoughts, and her speech surprised
him a little. "Have you been thinking about that?" he asked.
"No," she said. "I'm quite happy with you, darling, if only you will
leave me peacefully to look after you at Abington."
Her words gave him pleasure, but his conscience was aroused about her.
"Lord knows I am happy enough to have you," he said. "But I can't keep
you for ever. You'll want what Mollie has some day."
"Some day," she said. "Yes. But I have all I want for the present."
"What about Francis?" he asked, after a short pause. "He wants you as
much as ever. He told me so."
She looked troubled. "I know he does," she said. "He told me so too."
He waited for her to go on.
"I like him as much as ever," she said, "for what he is."
"For what he is!" he echoed.
"What he is isn't what I want now," she said, not without hesitation.
"It would be different if I were in love with him, as I suppose he is
with me,--poor Francis! If I felt like that I should not mind what I did
or where I went with him."
"My dear child, you talk as if he'd take you out to the wilds. You'd
live where you liked, within reach of London. He has to stick to it
closer than I do, at present. You couldn't live right away, like this.
But--"
"Oh, it wouldn't be the same," she said. "But it isn't that, Dad. I
don't love him. I thought I might, perhaps, last year, enough to live
whatever life he liked with him. But now I know I never can. He isn't
what I want."
"What do you want?" he asked, throwing a glance at her.
"Only you, darling," she said lightly. "Don't worry me about Francis.
I'm worried about him a little myself, because I do like him, and we're
friends. But he'll get over it, and find somebody else. I'm heart-free,
Dad. Really I am. I love you and B, and Barbara and Bunting, and the
Dragon, and every single soul who lives at Abington, except Lord
Salisbury; and he's going soon. When I begin to love somebody else I'll
let you know. I don't suppose you'll have me on your hands all your
life, but you'll have me for a good long time to come. Let's have a
canter."
He was pleased enough. If she had wanted to marry Francis Parry he would
have resigned her, and felt that it was the right thing. But he didn't
want that, or any other marriage for her, yet. He only wanted to be sure
that he was not keeping her selfishly; and her words, and more than her
words, her tone, relieved him of any doubt on that subject. And her love
for Abington, and her wish to make his home for him there suited him.
She was more his at Abington than she could be in London.
But he made up his mind that the succession of guests should not fail at
Abington. She must not live out of the world, as he and his like
estimated the world, at her age. He did not want her to become like the
three loud good-natured horsey Pemberton girls, who in spite of their
parentage and their wide relationships would always be country cousins,
wherever they went. Country cousins who came from such a house as Grays
were well enough in their way, but it was not the way of the world that
Caroline belonged to, the world that she was so fitted to adorn, and
they were not.
They had cantered across a high-lying common, and descended into a
country lane along which they walked their horses, ready for
conversation again. The hedges on either side of them were pink and
white with May; the golden carpet of early June was spread all over the
meadows; the trees wore their dress of freshest green; larks sang in
high ecstasy overhead. Grafton felt the delight of the unused untroubled
country, but though it was a rest and a refreshment to him, his life was
bound up with other things that took him away from it, even while he was
enjoying it. Stealing a glance at his girl's much-loved face, he caught
something of what it was to her to soak herself in all the happiness of
nature, to wake and sleep with it, and to cast off from her the fitful
life of sought-out amusements. She had flowered under it. Much as he
adored his little Beatrix, and sweet and kind as she was, it came to him
that Caroline's was the finer character of the two. Beatrix loved
Abington too, and the quieter life they led there; but she loved it as
he did, as a change and a refreshment. She would never have been content
to settle down to it as Caroline had, for she had not the same resources
in herself.
"Do you think there's anything between Beatrix and Dick Mansergh?" he
asked suddenly.
She laughed at him. "I've been wondering when you were going to ask me
that," she said.
"Oh, then you've noticed it."
"Darling old thing!" she said fondly. "It's plain enough that he's head
over ears. You _must_ have seen, haven't you?"
"Well, I suppose I have. But I want to know about her. _She_ isn't head
over ears, is she?"
"No, she certainly isn't that. It's too soon, you know, Daddy."
A shadow always came over his face when that affair with Lassigny was
brought to his mind. "She's not still thinking of that fellow, is she?"
he asked.
"I expect she thinks of him a good deal. That's why she won't think of
anybody else for some time to come."
He did not push his question. He knew that that danger was past, and
that if Beatrix still thought of Lassigny it was not with love. That had
died in her.
"Poor darling!" he said tenderly. "You know how I hated it at the time.
But when she was getting over it I sometimes almost wished that he had
come back. I'm precious glad he didn't, though."
"So am I now," said Caroline. "But it did leave a mark upon her. Should
you mind, Dad, if she did want to marry Dick?"
"Mind? No. Why should I mind?" he asked. "It's just the sort of marriage
I should like for her. I suppose they'd be away a lot at first, but the
old man is over eighty. It can't be very long before Dick succeeds. Then
they'd be living at Wilborough. There's nothing I should like better."
She was a little surprised at this. It had not been only his objection
to the man whom Beatrix had wanted to marry that had so upset him nearly
a year before.
He answered the thought in her mind. "I know B has got to marry," he
said. "She's cut out for it. She was so young last year, and it came as
a shock to me that she was already of a marriageable age. I couldn't get
used to it--that she wasn't mine any more."
"Do you feel like that about it, Dad?"
"I don't now. I've got used to the idea."
"Of course we shall always be yours, whoever we marry."
"Not as you have been, darling. That's impossible. It was old Lady
Mansergh who told me that fathers hated their daughters marrying because
they had always been first with them, and couldn't be first any longer.
That's true, I suppose, if they marry somebody you can't take in. It
would certainly have been true of me if Beatrix had married that
fellow." He never spoke of Lassigny by name. "But with a man you like
and respect it's different. You don't lose everything, even if you can't
be first any longer. If he's the right sort of man you gain. I believe
your grandfather felt that about me. He loved your mother, and she was
very young when we married. He didn't like giving her up, but he was so
nice about it that I took particular pains to show him what a lot I
thought of him. He was a fine old boy. I wish you'd known him longer,
Cara. I believe, when he got used to it, that he was as fond of me as he
was of any of his sons. Your mother used to write to him every week, and
I used to write to him too. He told me before he died that it had made
all the difference to him, the first year of our marriage. She was his
only daughter, you see, and that was the time he felt it most."
"Should you have felt like that about Francis, if I had wanted to marry
him, Dad?"
"It would rather have depended on how he felt about me," he said.
"Should you about Dick Mansergh?"
"I think I should. Yes, I think I should. I like him. He's straight. And
he's companionable too. Besides, he'd be giving her all she ought to
have. That would count for a good deal."
"In what way, Dad?"
"Well, you see, you're responsible for bringing up your daughters in a
certain way. You take a pride in what they become. You don't want it all
thrown away on somebody who isn't up to their level."
She laughed. "It all sounds very mercenary," she said.
"I don't think it is. A woman's position is her husband's; until she's
married it's her father's. You don't want your daughters lessened. It
isn't a question of money. It's like to like. Look at that chap your
Aunt Prudence married."
"He had lots of money."
"It's all he did have. A silly fellow! Nobody thinks anything of him
beside her. She has to carry him on her back wherever she goes."
"Poor Aunt Prudence! It's rather pathetic the way she wants people to
like him."
"Women have a wonderful sort of loyalty in that way. She must have found
out his deficiencies long ago, but I suppose she wouldn't admit to
herself that he has any. It's the people who look on who see it. All of
us thought the world of her. She'd have helped on the biggest sort of
man. It's all wasted on that rabbit-brained nobody."
"Well, darling, none of us are going to trouble you in that way. I
shan't, because I shall certainly want somebody with brains, though I
haven't got as many as Aunt Prudence. And I don't think Beatrix will
make any marriage that you wouldn't like, now. She's had her lesson,
poor darling! She won't let herself be caught again."
"I really should like her to marry Mansergh, if she cared for him."
"She doesn't yet, dear. But I think she's quite likely to come to it. I
rather think that he's strong enough to make her."