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CAPRICIOUS CAROLINE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Susannah and One Other
Love and Louisa
Peter a Parasite
The Blunder of an Innocent
CAPRICIOUS CAROLINE
BY
E. MARIA ALBANESI
"GOD HAS A FEW OF US WHOM
HE WHISPERS IN THE EAR"
BROWNING
SECOND EDITION
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published_ . . . _September, 1904_
_Second Edition_ . . . _May, 1905_
This story originally appeared in the Weekly Edition of _The Times_,
and is now issued in book form by arrangement with the proprietors of
that journal.
TO
THE LADY AILEEN WYNDHAM-QUIN
CAPRICIOUS CAROLINE
CHAPTER 1
As the large motor swung along with the easy velocity and assurance of
some enormous bird, Camilla Lancing nestled more cosily into the warmth
of her fur wraps.
Rupert Haverford was driving, and he looked back every now and then to
see if his guest was comfortable.
"Is this too quick for you?" he asked once; and Mrs. Lancing only shook
her head with a smile.
"It is too delightful," she answered.
The little town where they had been lunching lay far, far away in the
distance now, its ugliness softened by the mingling of sun and haze,
and the country through which they were passing was very open; in a
degree bleak. On one hand marshland and rough common ground, and on the
other the beach inland, then stretches of wet sand, and then the
restless, murmuring sea, bearing on its shimmering surface the cold
embrace of the setting November sun.
Mrs. Lancing sighed involuntarily as she looked dreamily away to where
the sky and sea seemed to meet, but her sigh was an unconscious tribute
to the graciousness of the circumstances in which she found herself.
The smooth swinging movement of the car fascinated her. As she now and
then closed her eyes, she felt as if she were being carried away from
all that constituted life to her at other times; from excitement and
pleasure and anxiety, from sordid and obtrusive care; even from the
fever of hope and the illusive charm of chance. It was a delightful
sensation.
Sometimes as the road curved the car seemed almost to approach the
water, and the white-crested waves broke within a few yards of it with
a boom; the rushing of the incoming and receding water making a musical
accompaniment to the humming sound of the motor. Then they passed from
the coastline, and the road began to wind upwards. The sea was shut
from view by a wall of chalky hillocks covered with stubbly grass, and
only the country outlook remained.
Just before, for a brief while, the world had worn a soft, an almost
rosy tint; but as the sun vanished this warmth went also, and now the
landscape stretched into the distance grey, unsympathetic, and
monotonous.
The speed of the car lessened as the ascent grew steeper; a thin mist
began to gather ahead of them. To Mrs. Lancing's imaginative eye this
mist took the form of a flock of fleecy white birds just hovering
before winging flight.
Haverford pulled up here and, relinquishing his place to the chauffeur,
climbed into the body of the car.
"Are you very cold?" he asked anxiously; "do you know, I am very much
afraid, Mrs. Lancing, that this road will put us back an hour or so. It
was foolish of me to come this way, for the country is new to me, and
the road is certainly about the worst we have struck lately."
He occupied himself in tucking the big fur rug more securely about his
guest, despite her protestations that she was quite warm enough, and
quite comfortable.
The road was certainly very bad, and though the car disposed of the
rough ground with an air of superb indifference, a certain amount of
jolting was inevitable.
Camilla Lancing only laughed, however, as she was tossed up and down
occasionally by the elastic movement of the springs.
"It is a matter of perfect indifference to me what time we arrive
home," she said. "That is the effect motoring has on me! It engenders a
heavenly sensation of irresponsibility. I simply don't care a pin what
happens. My one conscious desire is to go on, and on, and on."
Rupert Haverford sat down in the other seat and looked at her with the
sincerest pleasure; she was so delightful to look at. The tone of her
garb was a rich brown; she had on a long coat of some rough fur, but
round her throat and shoulders she wore a stole of the softest sables;
there was a small cap of sables on her brown hair, and she had tied the
brown gauze veil she wore in a cunning bow under her chin. A knot of
white flowers that Rupert Haverford had given her at luncheon was
tucked in among the fur at her breast, and was the only break in the
harmonious whole. She turned to him as she spoke lightly; she had a
bird-like trick of moving her small head that was very characteristic
and very pretty.
"But of course this sounds horribly selfish. So like me. Shall we be
very late? I am so sorry if you are sorry, otherwise I don't think it
matters. Agnes said she would expect us when she saw us.
Fortunately"--Mrs. Lancing laughed--"dinner is a movable feast at
Yelverton, or indeed anywhere where Agnes Brenton presides."
Haverford answered this very frankly.
"I am afraid I am not troubling in the very least about Mrs. Brenton or
her dinner, I am thinking entirely of you. This is the first time you
have entrusted yourself to my care, you know, and I want everything to
go smoothly."
"Can anything go crookedly with you?" asked Camilla Lancing; there was
the faintest tinge of envy in her voice.
Haverford laughed.
"Oh! I suppose so," he said. "I have certainly had more than my share
of luck up to now, but one never knows what is waiting for one round
the corner." Then he half rose and looked ahead. "What a mist!" he
said. "I hope we are not in for a sea fog. I hate fog of any sort."
They drove on in silence for a few moments, and the mist gathered
increasingly about them; the flock of birds had melted away, and the
white velvety film floated about them like smoke. Everything became
indistinct; even the broad outline of the chauffeur was veiled and
vague.
Camilla Lancing spoke first.
"Now, please don't worry about me," she said, half-petulantly,
translating his silence adroitly. "I am absolutely comfortable.
Naturally"--she added with a laugh--"I know that if I had done my duty
I should have insisted on driving back with Agnes, though she declared
she did not want me; but it is so nice _not_ to do one's duty every now
and then. Did you ever hear of the little boy who always asked to be
allowed some wickedness on Sundays, as he had to be so good all the
days of the week? I share the sentiments of that little boy, Mr.
Haverford."
The car pulled up here again, and the chauffeur got down and lit the
powerful lamps. By now they had passed completely into the embrace of
the white fog; the air was raw, and the damp cold very penetrating.
"But perhaps you mean you wanted me to go back with the others," Mrs.
Lancing murmured softly, as they moved onwards again.
Haverford just looked into her eyes, that even through the mist and her
veil shone brilliantly.
"You know perfectly well I was not likely to do that," he answered
bluntly, and yet there was a kind of restraint in his voice. Mrs.
Lancing caught that restraint, and with a sudden impatient contraction
of her brows moved almost imperceptibly nearer to him; she arranged her
veil with her small, white-gloved hand, and then left it lying for an
instant on the outside of the rug. It was very close to his; but Rupert
Haverford did not touch the hand, nor enfold it as he might so easily
have done protectingly in his large, brown, strong one.
Mrs. Lancing bit her lip.
"There is no mistake, we _are_ in for a fog," she said jerkily, and she
slipped her hand as she spoke back into the warmth of her big sable
muff. It was not the first time that this man had unconsciously
repulsed her; there were times when, in her irritation, she called him
a prig. But she misjudged him; Rupert Haverford was not a prig, he was
only a very straightforward, practical, in a sense, simple-minded man,
who, like an explorer, was advancing step by step into an unknown
world, meeting and mingling every day with elements that were not only
new to him, but that belonged to a range of things about which he had
never had occasion to think hitherto. Camilla herself was prominent
amongst these new sensations; she at once was a bewilderment and a
fascination. There had been no woman of this class in his life up to a
couple of years before; indeed, women of any kind had played but a
nominal part in the busy, uneventful, and certainly unpicturesque
existence that had been his lot since early boyhood.
Mrs. Lancing, of course, knew briefly the outlines of the story of this
working man and his sudden and unexpected accession to wealth, and
recognized clearly enough that Haverford was as far removed in thought
and social education from the various men who fluttered in and out of
her life as the sun is from the earth; but she had little
discrimination. With her it was never a question of character or
quality; fundamentally she decreed all men were alike, strong in
prejudice, weak in temptation, selfish, and even tyrannical; vain and
sentimental, uncomfortably moral at times, but amazingly loyal, and, as
a rule, sensitively moved by the potent charm of a woman of her
temperament and attractions.
She liked men very much, she had many men friends, and few women
friends, although the spontaneous effervescing sympathy, which was
perhaps her most marked characteristic, made her very attractive to
women, and accounted for her wide popularity; there was something so
disarming, so delightful about Camilla Lancing. Beauty alone would
never have given her a quarter the power she possessed; it was her
ready interest (absolutely genuine for the moment), her quickness in
associating herself with those things that were paramount with the
persons who approached her, that made her irresistible to all sorts and
kinds of people.
She had the tact of a delicately fashioned nature, and a vast amount of
endurance.
But she was not patient, and the more she saw of Rupert Haverford, the
more necessary he became to her, the less patience she had.
He puzzled her; he piqued her; he annoyed her; he made her nervous.
What were his feelings towards herself?
"He is so horribly slow," she mused now fretfully, "he ponders every
word he says. I suppose he is terribly afraid of making a mistake. I am
sure his money oppresses him. He must have been ever so much nicer when
he was working as a foreman, or drayman, or whatever he was before all
this money came to him."
She kept her eyes turned resolutely away from Haverford. For perversely
enough, though he was so slow, so silent, so dull, he was exceedingly
good to look at. Old-fashioned, or rather out of the fashion, he might
be, but his manners were irreproachable, and his speech cultured, and
he dressed very well.
It came to Camilla as an inspiration, as the car moved on cautiously
through the cold white fog, that he was only shy and perhaps stupid.
Rupert Haverford had certainly a good amount of diffidence in his
disposition, but at the present moment it was the most exquisite, and
the most real sense of hospitality that tinged even his protective
courtesy with restraint.
When their hostess had deserted the motor after luncheon, and had
insisted in making her way homeward in a hired carriage, Haverford had
been delighted because Mrs. Lancing had elected to return with him. But
this very fact--the fact that this woman, who had been charming herself
into his inmost thoughts of late, was alone with him, charged him with
a sense of responsibility, and he steeled himself carefully against
even a suggestion of the delicious intimacy with which the situation
was fraught.
"The fog is lifting," he said, after a little while; "if we can only
get off this road and turn inland, we shall drive out of it altogether."
Mrs. Lancing had her muff in front of her face; the fog made everything
damp; her veil was clinging to her face uncomfortably.
"We are going downhill now," she said indistinctly.
Haverford was really a little anxious; they were certainly on a
downward grade, and the progress was not pleasant; the road appeared to
be rougher than it had been.
He sat forward, trying to scan what lay around and ahead, but the white
gloom baffled him.
And then all at once the machine grated sharply; they shook in their
seats, and Mrs. Lancing gave a little exclamation of alarm; then the
car stood still, and the chauffeur got out hastily.
"We're done for now, sir," he said; and Rupert Haverford swallowed a
word or two.
If it had not been for Mrs. Lancing he would not have cared two pins.
Time was of no importance to him, and a breakdown rather interested
him, as he had commenced to make a study of the mechanism of his
various cars, and knew pretty well how to put them right when things
went wrong, but this accident was most inopportune and annoying under
the circumstances.
Fortunately the cold, thick mist seemed to part a little at this
moment. With a reassuring word to his guest, Mr. Haverford got out and
joined the chauffeur in his investigations.
It was very, very cold sitting in that raw, damp atmosphere, and Mrs.
Lancing began to wish heartily enough that she had done her duty and
gone back to Yelverton in the carriage with Mrs. Brenton.
She felt tired now, and even a little cross. All the pleasure vanished;
that spell of delicious forgetfulness was swept away, and the morrow,
with its wearying demands, confronted her like a phantom.
After a sharp conference with the chauffeur, Mr. Haverford approached
his guest.
He spoke as cheerily as he could.
"Something has gone wrong with the works," he said, "we can't see what
it is exactly in this gloom. I wonder if you would mind sitting here a
little while I go and find out where we are? There may be somebody on
hand who can help us to get along a bit."
Mrs. Lancing shook aside the rug.
"Do let me come with you?" she pleaded. "Really, I would much rather
go, a walk will warm me up, and I shall feel so lonely without you. I
believe I am frightened. May I come?"
Her pretty helplessness touched him, of course. And as he helped her to
alight, Rupert Haverford felt his heart stir a little. So he supposed
other men felt when they ministered to a wife or some one who had a
tender claim on them.
They set off at a brisk pace down the hill.
Decidedly the fog was less thick, the bewildering effect on the eyes
was passing, but it was still sufficiently cold and raw to make them
shiver, though they were so warmly clad. Indeed, Mrs. Lancing was
rather overweighted with her long coat, and her small feet stumbled
every now and then.
Rupert Haverford drew her arm more closely through his.
He was conscious of a very tangible sense of pleasure in the near
proximity of this pretty, womanly creature. The unconscious claim that
she made upon his strength and protection moved him to tenderness, and
her delightful affectation of indifference to any discomfort awakened
his very real admiration.
"I have not the least idea where we are, but there must be a station
somewhere near, I suppose," he said. "And if we can only borrow a trap,
perhaps we shall be able to get back to Yelverton in time for dinner,
after all. It must be somewhere about half-past four now. I am afraid
you will never come out with me again, Mrs. Lancing. You see things
_can_ go crookedly with me at times! I am certainly out of luck to-day."
"I don't call this unlucky," Camilla said softly; and she nestled a
little closer to him. She was meeting him on familiar ground at last.
They came after a while upon a kind of village, in which the lights of
the one shop--a post office and general stores combined--shone
hospitably.
The keeper of the stores, a portly, good-natured man, could suggest no
better help for the motor than to borrow a couple of horses from the
nearest farm and tow the car away from the road. He amiably consented
to lend his trap to drive Mrs. Lancing to the nearest station, distant
about three miles, and when this was arranged, Mrs. Lancing remained at
the stores, where a cup of tea was forthcoming, whilst Haverford went
back into the mist to set matters right with his chauffeur.
Divested of his heavy coat, the man had crawled under the body of the
car, from whence he emerged very red in the face and very greasy.
"Found it all right, sir," he said. "One of the nuts has sheered in the
differential shaft." He declared his ability, however, to set the whole
thing right in the course of the next few hours. Agreeing with Mr.
Haverford that it would be a good thing to get the car off the road, as
it was an obstruction, Haverford did not leave the village till he had
arranged to give his man all the assistance possible. This done, he
lifted Camilla Lancing into the tall cart that was used to dispense the
goods from the stores, and they started for the station. To exchange
the luxurious armchair of the motor for a hard, slippery seat where
balance was most difficult, over a rough country road, was not the most
delightful experience in the world; but Camilla laughed at all
discomfort. Her good nature was really marvellous. Most women would
have been tired and cross and difficult. Mrs. Lancing, however, made
the best of everything. Even when the station was reached, and they
found they would have some time to wait, and then change trains before
reaching the nearest point to Yelverton, Camilla accepted the
discomfort philosophically.
"I know you are dying to smoke. Leave me here; this is quite a cosy
place; perhaps I will go to sleep," she said, as she passed into the
waiting-room.
He obeyed her reluctantly.
She looked so pretty, so pathetic, with the pallor of fatigue robbing
her cheeks of their usual delicate bloom. He stood looking at her with
a kind of frown on his face for a moment, but he said nothing, and, to
get rid of him, she closed her eyes and leaned her head against the
hard wooden wall.
Her lips trembled as he went out and closed the door.
She was a creature who lived absolutely from moment to moment; who had
the knack of separating herself from the most tenacious trouble to bask
in the warmth and glitter of a passing gaiety. Naturally these
delightful moments were followed by spells of reaction, when her
volatile spirit would sink to such depths of depression that all
energy, all hope, would appear to be swamped. But she had the optimism
of a gambler; let chance only give her the smallest opportunity, and
she revived again.
Agnes Brenton (the woman with whom she was staying and a very old
friend) had once likened her to an indiarubber ball.
"Camilla is an enchanting creature, a dear, sweet, womanly soul, but
you can never make a lasting impression on her," she had said. "However
hardly she is flung about, however sharply she may seem dented, she is
bound to come smoothly to the surface again, and show no trace of what
has happened."
She was being sharply dented now. In this hour of fatigue and
disappointment memory forced open the door she had held closed so
resolutely all the day.
On the morrow her visit to Yelverton would end, and she must go back to
town--back to the practically impossible task of clearing her daily
path of one or two hideous obstacles.
There were some things awaiting that had to be met that sent a shiver
of dread through her now as she recalled them. She opened her eyes
after a time and sat watching Haverford's tall, long-coated figure pass
the window of the waiting-room every now and then.
"And with a scratch of a pen," she said to herself wearily, "he could
put all my difficulties straight. Why _does_ he not speak? Sometimes I
feel he cares for me more than I have ever been cared for before, then
the next moment he chills me; he almost frightens me. He is so
reserved, so deliberate. I believe he must be hard. Of course"--her lip
curled--"he is cautious, and no doubt he is mean; he is far too rich to
be generous."
She repressed her tears with difficulty. She was so truly sorry for
herself. Other women (so she pondered) had such ease in their lives;
she knew of no other woman who was so lonely as herself, so burdened,
so troubled.
She got up impatiently, and, pulling a chair forward, sat down and
stared into the fire with wet eyelashes. Her face hardened a little as
her mind drifted away from fretful generalities to the practical
outlook, to the immutable fact that two and two made four for most
people, but in her case required six to be satisfactorily disposed of.
Little by little, however, she began, as was her custom, to make a
possible pathway for herself out of the tangle of vexatious care that
awaited her.
She was amazingly skilful in this sort of thing; no matter how
hopelessly involved the future might seem, she usually found some
loophole of escape, some tiny thread which, with the ingenuous
ingenuity of a child, would be weaved, before she had done with it,
into something substantial, on which she could just stand comfortably
for a little time.
Rupert Haverford paused by the window about this time. He watched her
awhile as she sat thinking so intently, then flung away his cigar and
opened the door.
"The train is just due," he said, "and the sea fog is creeping its way
here. I shall be very glad to get you home, Mrs. Lancing; I am sure you
must be thoroughly tired out. If I might prescribe for you," he added,
as they passed out on to the platform, "I should suggest dinner in your
room to-night and early bed."
Camilla answered with quick impatience--
"Oh! I couldn't do that, I never go to bed early; and besides, we are
going to play bridge to-night. You never play," she said the next
moment. "Why, I wonder? Don't you care about the game?"
"I don't care about cards at all," he answered; "a question of habit, I
suppose. There was no time for games of any sort in my old life."
"But there is nothing to prevent you enjoying heaps of things now,"
Mrs. Lancing said restlessly, almost crossly. Then her tone changed.
"Let me teach you bridge, it would be such fun! And I don't play half
badly for a woman. You shall have your first lesson to-morrow," she
decided quite gaily.
Haverford only shook his head.
"I cannot let you waste your time. I shall never play cards."
Camilla felt the warmth and sparkle fade out of her thoughts again.
"Oh," she said, "of course, I remember now! Somebody was telling me
only the other day how good you were, that you would never speculate,
or bet, or gamble in any shape or form. Lucky man, to be able to take
so firm a stand!"
He looked at her quickly; her sneer was unmistakable; he felt
uncomfortable and pained, and he suddenly remembered how, as he had sat
apart and watched her as she had been playing cards the night before,
the expression of her delicately pretty face had given him a sense of
trouble, even of uneasiness. Now her words, or rather the tone in which
they were said, angered him a little.
They drifted into a silence till the train came, and spoke very little
during the journey to the junction, where they were to alight and pick
up the London train.
Mrs. Lancing bought a book and some papers at the bookstall. There were
any amount of papers at Yelverton, but she never could deny herself the
joy of spending.
"I believe I downright hate him," she said to herself fretfully; "he is
a real 'bourgeois.' Why does such a man come amongst us if he does not
like our ways?"
When the London train steamed in there was only one first-class
compartment, and, as Haverford opened the door for Mrs. Lancing to
enter, the only occupant, a young man, glanced up casually.
Camilla Lancing drew back imperceptibly for an instant as she caught
sight of him, but if she had intended to retreat, this intention was
frustrated, for the young man flung aside his newspaper and started to
his feet.
"Hallo, there!" he exclaimed. "Hallo! Hallo! _Hallo!_ Here's luck!
Who'd have thought of meeting you, Mrs. Lancing? I'm just home from
Yankee land, and am toddling down to Yelverton for the night. Any
chance of your being there?"
Mrs. Lancing laughingly explained the situation, and introduced the two
men.
Sir Samuel Broxbourne looked keenly at Haverford.
"So that's the factory Johnny who came into all that tin the other day,
is it? Stuck up sort of chap! Might be a parson, or an actor."
Rupert Haverford subsided into a corner and let the other two talk. He
was seeing Camilla now in another phase, and one that was not charming
to him.
Instead of resenting Broxbourne's rough, slangy jargon she seemed to
enjoy it. Her eyes grew brighter, and the colour stole back into her
cheeks.
They had so much to talk about. She even used some slang herself,
though it sounded almost pretty coming from her lips.
Having disposed of that first moment of awkwardness, even of alarm,
which the unexpected meeting with Broxbourne signified to her, she
responded instantly to the excitement of the moment; her good temper
was completely restored.
When they left the train, however, and Broxbourne had gone on ahead,
she slipped her hand confidently for a moment in Mr. Haverford's arm.
"He is such a bore, isn't he?" she whispered. "I wonder why Agnes asked
him? She said nothing to me about his coming. I have known him all my
life, we are sort of cousins," she added; and then she laughed. "Well,
after all, it is lucky Sir Samuel is here, for, do you know, we quite
forgot to wire for a carriage? I only hope they have sent a big
brougham."
"I am going to walk," Haverford said at once; but this she vetoed. In
fact, she had no desire to drive _tete-a-tete_ with the other man.
"Oh, _please_ don't," she said. "I beg you will not leave me. And you
must not forget I am in your charge to-day."
And Haverford had to yield to this argument as a matter of course.
The drive was not a pleasant one, however. They were rather crowded in
the brougham.
Camilla laughed at this discomfort as she had laughed at all the rest,
but her voice had a shrill tone; or perhaps Rupert Haverford noticed
this for the first time.
As soon as they passed into the big hall, he left Mrs. Lancing and Sir
Samuel chatting with the others and went to his room.
He suddenly felt nervous and bad tempered, and he wanted to be alone.
It was a relief not to find his man waiting.
Some letters were lying on the table, and he took them up and glanced
at them mechanically, then he threw them down and strolled to and fro
in the room in the same preoccupied way as he had paced the platform.
When his servant came hurrying in, after a while, Haverford was staring
into the fire with a rather grim look on his face.
"Have everything packed early to-morrow, Harper," he said; "I shall go
to town by the first available train in the morning."
Then he roused himself and took up his letters again. The first he
opened was written on shabby paper in handwriting that was small and
curiously formed.
It was dated the day before, and had been forwarded from town.
"Dear Sir," it ran,
"If you please, will you come and see your mother as soon as you return
from the country? There was a little accident yesterday when she was
out driving, and she was much alarmed. I am glad to say she was not
hurt, but her doctor has ordered her to keep very quiet for a day or
two.
"Yours faithfully,
"Caroline Graniger.
"P.S. I have asked that this letter shall be forwarded to you."