Mrs. Tregaskis shut the door behind them with astonishing briskness and
whisked round to face her hostess.
“A little diplomatic ruse, my dear, to get those infants out of
hearing. And once out of doors they’ll be tearing all over the place
and forget our very existence. I really must talk to you about
them--that eldest girl means trouble if _I_ know anything of spoilt
children. I foresee a scene this evening.”
“Why, Bertie dear? I thought them so very brave and good, poor little
things.”
“Oh, you know what children are! They’ve practically ‘got over’ it as
people say, already, but there’s bound to be an outburst, I’m afraid,
at the ‘last evening’--you know the kind of thing. The men have been
taking away the furniture, such of it as is going to be sold, this
afternoon while we’ve been out, and I do rather dread taking them back
to that half-dismantled cottage. Rosamund is very highly strung, poor
child, and she always infects the little one.”
“Poor children,” sighed Lady Argent, while Ludovic was wishing that
Mrs. Tregaskis had not taken up a position that rendered it impossible
for him to walk out at the door.
“Poor me, too, I think. It’s very stupid to mind it, but these days
have been a frightful strain, in a way--one has somehow felt for them
so much more than they’ve probably felt for themselves. But what with
mothering them, and seeing to the business part of it all, and packing
up, I really feel a rag.”
She sank limply into an armchair and Ludovic made for the unguarded
doorway as rapidly as he could.
“My poor dear! But why shouldn’t you all stay here for the night, and
avoid going back to the cottage at all. _Do_ do that, Bertie dear.”
“Sybil, you angel!” cried Mrs. Tregaskis, reviving abruptly. “What a
lot it would save me--I’ve simply been dreading to-night. But wouldn’t
it be a fearful nuisance?”
Ludovic opened the door, stumbled on the threshold, then awkwardly
readjusted his crutch and shut the library door with a hasty bang.
He had almost fallen over Rosamund Grantham, crouching outside the door.
She raised a deeply flushed face, and he looked gravely down at her. He
was shocked only at the unchildlike misery and exhaustion that showed
in her dark-circled eyes.
“Let me help you up from the floor,” he said after a moment, as though
her position were the most usual one for a guest to select.
She let him take her hand and raise her from the floor, and then
followed him slowly across the hall into a small morning-room.
Ludovic supposed that he ought to say: “Listening at doors is
dishonourable,” but the sense of courtesy, apparently less in abeyance
than where Bertha Tregaskis was concerned, revolted, and he moreover
felt convinced that Rosamund was as well aware as himself of the breach
she had committed.
Presently she said in a low voice:
“I know it is dreadful to listen at doors. I have never done it
before, but I felt certain--_certain_--that they would try and arrange
something or other without telling me--perhaps separate me and Francie
or something; there’s nobody to understand anything, and I don’t know
what is going to happen to us.”
“They can’t separate you and your sister,” said Ludovic earnestly; “no
one could do that.”
“Then what are they settling in there, all by themselves? I know
they’re talking about us, because I could hear a little--but only a
very little--that was the worst of it.”
She began to struggle with tears.
“My mother asked Mrs. Tregaskis to stay here with you and your sister,
for to-night, instead of going back,” he told her straight.
“Why weren’t Frances and I asked if we would? Why is it arranged like
that without telling me?” she demanded resentfully, her voice shaking.
“I don’t know. I suppose Mrs. Tregaskis thought you would not mind.
Do you mind very much? If you do, I--I will see that you _do_ go home
to-night,” said Ludovic desperately.
She looked at him for an instant with a sort of wonder in her eyes that
touched him acutely, and then broke into floods of tears.
Ludovic stood looking out of the window.
“She is utterly bewildered by that woman,” he told himself angrily,
“and distrusts her instinctively. Heaven help the child! What
will she do in Cornwall? That woman will break her. Dear, kind,
wonderful Bertie, as my mother calls her! and those two--sensitive,
highly-strung, who’ve probably lived in an atmosphere of understanding
all their lives....”
He wondered for a wild instant if his mother could be persuaded to
receive Rosamund and Frances as daughters. It hardly seemed probable,
in view alone of her admiration for their self-appointed guardian.
How could the charges of the benevolent cousin be reft from her under
no pretext but their reluctance to be benefited, and Ludovic Argent’s
passionate conviction that such beneficence would be the ruin of both?
“I’m not crying any more,” said Rosamund’s voice behind him, after a
few moments.
He turned round.
“What shall I do? Shall I tell my mother that you are to go to your
home again this evening?”
She shook her head.
“No, thank you. In a way, they’re quite right. Frances would only cry,
which would be bad for her.”
“Where is she now?” asked Ludovic.
“In the garden. She doesn’t know,” said Rosamund, colouring again,
“about my listening at the door. She would think it dreadful, and I
know it is--but somehow nothing seemed to matter except just to know
what was going to be done with us.”
She looked mournfully at him and he saw her, bewildered and
defenceless, thrust among alien standards and with all the foundations
of her tiny world rocking. No wonder that in a suddenly revolutionized
scale of values honour had seemed to count for less than the primitive
instinct of self-defence.
“What _can_ I do for you?” he said, almost unconsciously venting aloud
the strong sense of impotent compassion that moved him.
“Oh,” she cried, “nobody can make things come right again--even God
couldn’t, though I’ve prayed and prayed.”
“Do you mean--your mother?”
“My mother _had_ to die,” she told him seriously. “She coughed and
coughed every night, sometimes right on till the next morning. The
night that she died, it was dreadful. She never stopped. I prayed for
anything that might stop her coughing like that, and God answered the
prayer by making her die. When I heard she wasn’t coughing any more, I
thought it was all my prayers being answered, and I went to sleep, and
then in the morning _she_ came and told us that mother had died.”
She stopped and looked at him, with the most pathetic look that can be
seen on a child’s face, that of bewilderment at pain.
“Go on,” said Ludovic in a low voice.
“Cousin Bertie said we could go in and see her afterwards, but I
wouldn’t”--she shuddered--“I thought it would frighten Francie so.
And we didn’t go to the funeral, either. Were you there?” she asked
suddenly.
“No. I only came back from Paris yesterday,” he told her gently.
“Cousin Bertie went. She was very kind, and made us go in the garden,
and told us a lot of things about heaven, and mother being quite well
again now and happy, and somehow it didn’t all seem so bad then. But
now we’re going away, and--and there’s nobody to understand. Except
you,” she added mournfully.
“Haven’t you any relations at all?”
“No. Only Cousin Bertie. She is very kind, and she is taking us to live
with her--but oh, she doesn’t understand!”
The despair in Rosamund’s voice seemed to Ludovic Argent to sum up
all the inadequacy that he had felt in Bertha Tregaskis. She was very
kind--she was taking the orphans to live with her--but she would never
“understand.”
He felt her lack of understanding to be yet more apparent when Mrs.
Tregaskis called Rosamund and Frances back to the library, just as
Frances timidly pushed open the French window of the room where he
stood with Rosamund.
An imploring look from Rosamund made him follow them quickly into the
library.
Lady Argent welcomed him with a glad look in which, nevertheless, he
detected a slight surprise.
“Well, you two,” began Bertha in a tone of careful gaiety, “what do you
think of an invitation? Kind Lady Argent wants us all three to stay
here for the night. Then cook won’t have any trouble about getting
supper ready for us, and we shan’t have to bother any more about
squeezing into the bedrooms with all those trunks! Isn’t that splendid?”
“We shall have to go back to get our things,” said Frances quickly and
solemnly.
“I’ll see to all that,” declared kind Mrs. Tregaskis briskly. “I’m
going to pop over and see to one or two things, and I’ll bring back the
nighties with me. I shall put on my seven-leagued boots, and be back
before you know I’ve gone.”
“I’ll go back with you,” said Rosamund.
“No, my dear. It’s too far for you.” There was an underlying anxiety in
Mrs. Tregaskis’ firm kindliness.
Frances looked at her sister with consternation.
“But--but----” she half-whispered, turning her back on Mrs. Tregaskis,
“it’s our very last night at home. We _must_ go back, Rosamund.”
“Bon! ça y est,” ejaculated Bertie under her breath and casting a
glance of humorous despair at Lady Argent and Ludovic. “Une scène de
première classe!”
He noted with angry resentment her admirable French.
“Rosamund and Frances,” she said, in a tone of elaborate
reasonableness, “I want you to listen to me, like good children. Lady
Argent is very kindly letting you stay here so that we shouldn’t have
to go back to the cottage, which is all upside down with packing
and--and furniture and things, and I want you to be very good and give
no trouble at all.”
“Oh no,” breathed Lady Argent, distressed. “But would they rather--do
they want to go to the cottage again----” She hesitated helplessly.
“Bless me,” cried Bertie cheerily, “the cottage isn’t going to run away
in the night. There’ll be heaps of time to-morrow morning before we
start for home.”
Rosamund flushed an angry red.
“The cottage is _our_ home,” she said with emphasis.
“Well, darling, that’s very loyal of you,” laughed her guardian, “and
I’m quite ready to hear you call it so until you’ve got used to our
part of the world.
“Now what about washing paws, Sybil, before we adorn your dinner-table?”
It was perhaps this masterly conduct of a difficult situation that
made Lady Argent say to her son that evening, when Mrs. Tregaskis had
hurried upstairs “just to give those two a tucking-up and ‘God bless
you’”:
“Oh Ludovic! How splendid Bertie is, and how I hope it will turn out
well.”
“Why should it not?” asked Ludovic, who held, indeed, his own
certainties as to why it should not, but was perversely desirous of
hearing and contradicting his mother’s point of view.
“It’s always rather a risk, isn’t it, to take other people’s children
like that, even though they are relations. But they’re dear little
girls, and so good and brave.”
“They seem to me singularly intelligent, and altogether rather
remarkable.”
“Yes, indeed, one does feel that,” returned Lady Argent with the
sort of gentle cordiality with which she almost always acclaimed any
opportunity of praising others, and which consequently detracted
considerably from the value of her approbation. “They are not at all
ordinary, I feel sure, and that’s why it seems so very fortunate that
Bertie, of all people, should take them. She will _understand_ them so
wonderfully. Her love of children is one of the most characteristic
things about her, and she always says herself that she’s never quite
stopped being a child in some ways, and so understands children. They
come to her instinctively. Children and animals always _know_, they
say.”
Ludovic had met this aphorism before, and disagreed with it profoundly,
but he had no wish to deprive his mother of any of the gentle Victorian
beliefs which ruled her life. At thirty years old, Ludovic Argent was
still young enough to feel superior.
But at this moment his thoughts were altogether engaged with the little
girls who yesterday had been all but unknown to him. Presently, to his
own surprise, he said:
“Mother, you wouldn’t consider the idea of having those two here, I
suppose?”
“You don’t mean for good, Ludovic?”
He did, but a certain strain of moral cowardice, always latent in the
imaginative, made him temporize.
“Well--for a long visit, perhaps. I--I think they’d be happier near
their old home, and in their own part of the world.”
“But, my dear boy,” said his astonished mother, “you surely don’t mean
to suggest that I should adopt two children of whom I know hardly
anything, when they’ve already been offered an excellent and much more
suitable home with a relation? It would be quite impossible. Do think
of what you’re saying.”
Ludovic thought. From every point of view his suggestion was
inadmissible. The instinct which had prompted it, he decided, was
unpractical sentimentality.
He rose abruptly.
“You’re right, of course. It would be quite impossible.”
Lady Argent’s sigh was compounded of mingled relief and regret that any
scheme suggested by her son would prove to be impracticable.
“Perhaps,” she said, by way of compromise, “we could have them to stay,
later on. I quite see what you mean about their liking the Wye valley,
poor little things. And of course I know how fond you are of children,
darling.”
Ludovic rightly conjectured that the last few hours had for ever placed
this parental illusion beyond the reach of doubt. It would be part of
the penalty of an unconventional, and therefore unpractical, suggestion.
“The infants are asleep!” cried Bertha Tregaskis at the door, merrily,
triumphantly, and also, as it happened, altogether untruly. “At least
if they’re not they ought to be. I left them very much _en route_ for
the Land of Nod, though Rosamund wouldn’t own to it, and of course the
little one always holds fast by her. I tell you what, Sybil, it will be
the making of them both to be with another child. As it is, I can see
that Rosamund is domineering, and Frances simply has no individuality
of her own. It always is so when there are only two. The elder or
cleverer or stronger simply has things all her own way--and Rosamund
is all three. She has any amount of character, but I foresee a handful.
Well, it’s all in the day’s work, I suppose.”
“As though your day wasn’t full enough already, Bertie dear!”
Ludovic left the room.
Next morning the visitors were driven early to the station. There was,
after all, Mrs. Tregaskis had declared at breakfast, no time to return
to the cottage on the other side of the valley--Rosamund and Frances
must wave to it from the train window. Couldn’t they see the garden
and a little bit of the house from the train? Very well, then it would
be quite exciting to watch for it. They could have a race to see who
caught sight of it first.
Into this bracing atmosphere of cheery optimism Ludovic’s voice cut
coldly and decisively:
“I can drive round that way, if you wish it.” He addressed himself
directly to Rosamund. His mother looked surprised, but it was left to
Bertha to exclaim:
“Only at the risk of missing the train, and I don’t want to do that--my
old man is counting on my being back by the early train, and he’ll
drive down to meet it, I expect. That’s no joke, when one lives three
miles from the station at the top of one of our Cornish hills!”
Mrs. Tregaskis was always possessive when speaking of Cornwall.
“I’m afraid you might find it rather out of your way, Ludovic, and we
haven’t left much time,” began Lady Argent apologetically.
“I don’t mind,” said Rosamund miserably, answering Ludovic’s gaze.
“Good girl!” said Mrs. Tregaskis approvingly. “Why, Francie!”
Frances had suddenly begun to cry, quietly and hopelessly.
Rosamund said “_Francie!_” in a tone of exasperated misery that spoke
of nerves rasped to breaking point.
“Hush! Leave her to me,” commanded her guardian. “Frances, darling,
what is it? Come here to me. What is the matter?”
She held out both her capable hands.
Frances looked at her quite silently with streaming eyes.
“Oh,” cried Lady Argent pitifully, and Frances turned to her at once
and hid her face against the outstretched arm.
“Poor little thing,” said Lady Argent almost tearfully. But Ludovic
noted that his mother seemed to comfort Frances in an instinctive sort
of way, with gentle hand stroking her hair, and without attempting to
make her speak.
Bertha Tregaskis, “wonderful with children,” Ludovic ironically
reflected, was capable of nothing more startling than an imperative:
“Hush, now, Rosamund. She’ll stop in a minute. Go on with your
breakfast, and remember that you have a long journey in front of you.
However, you’ll have a real Cornish tea when you arrive--splits and
cream, and pasties, and all sorts of things. Us has a real proper
ole set-tü, at tay-time.” She laughed, and for the rest of the meal
was very jovial and talkative, drawing attention from Frances, who
presently stopped crying and wiped her eyes in a shamefaced way.
She looked timidly once or twice at Rosamund, which glances were
intercepted by Mrs. Tregaskis with significantly raised eyebrows which
said plainly to Lady Argent, “What did I tell you?”
But it was Ludovic who saw the elder sister’s answering look and read
into it her intense agony of protective love and impotent apprehension.
The dead mother might have made Frances’ world, but Frances made
Rosamund’s.