“The sooner I pack up my young lady and take her off to Scotland, the
better, I think,” said Bertha decisively.
“It’s all so silly,” sighed Nina vaguely. “But I really don’t know--I
shouldn’t mind it, you know, Bertie, if he seriously wants it--only I
think he’s too young. I’ve always hoped he’d marry a daughter of yours,
and Rosamund’s as good as your daughter, though between ourselves, I’ve
always been fonder of both the other two.”
“Well--it may do very well when he’s a little older. But don’t take
it too seriously, Nina, my dear; it’s only a violent admiration for a
pretty face.”
“He hasn’t been proposing to her, or anything ridiculous of that kind?”
asked Nina nervously.
“Not that I know of, dear. He must know very well that, situated as he
is, he can’t possibly think of marrying--unless, of course, you made it
possible for him.”
“Of course, in a way, I want to see him married.”
“Not at that age, dearest. Why, the boy can’t know his own mind.”
“No. Poor Morris! And he is frightfully unbalanced.”
“So’s she,” said Bertha Tregaskis quickly. “Her be a right-down fulish
li’l maid, I tells ’er.”
“Oh, you’ve spoken to her?”
“Only laughed at her in a wholesome way, my dear. Neither she nor
Frances have a vestige of humour about them--everything is always _au
grand serieux_. That’s one reason why I don’t believe she and Morris
would ever really suit one another.”
Nina deftly seized her opportunity.
“Morris certainly has inherited my sense of humour,” she observed
pensively.
“Why, the other day he laughed so much at one of those stupid dialect
imitations of mine, that I simply had to stop and chuckle myself. It
was too infectious,” cried Bertie, with a laugh at the recollection.
“Poor boy!” smiled Nina tolerantly, and leaving it uncertain whether
or not she was pitying Morris for his easy appreciation of Cornish
rusticisms as rendered by Mrs. Tregaskis. “But, seriously, Bertie dear,
it would be no bad thing if later on they are both in earnest--only
just at present I think we’d better be hard-hearted, and not let it
come to anything definite.”
“It’s unlucky that visit of ours having fallen through,” observed
Bertha thoughtfully. “It keeps us here for another ten days before
the Scotch visits, and I can’t very well forbid Morris to come to the
house.”
“He’s there morning, noon, and night, I’m afraid,” sighed Nina.
“Oh, well, I flatter myself that I know how to manage a youngster of
his age. I’ll see if I can’t get an opportunity to make Master Morris
see reason.”
The opportunity was ahead of her.
At Porthlew Rosamund, coming downstairs, saw Morris wandering aimlessly
round the hall.
At the sound of her footfall he looked up, and came towards her,
impetuous and good-looking.
“Oh, Morris!” she cried.
He was halfway up the stairs and had caught both her hands in his.
“Rosamund, darling!” The grip of her strong, slender hands answered
his, but there was a sort of questioning sound in her exclamation.
“Dearest,” said Morris with gentle surprise, “you know I adore you,
don’t you? Don’t you love me?”
Mrs. Tregaskis, entering the hall briskly, in spite of her long, hot
walk, found them on the stairs, Morris holding Rosamund’s hands in his,
and gazing up at her with adoration in his handsome, boyish face.
“Tut, tut, what have we here?” cried Bertha, with sufficient lightness
in her tone to render a reply unnecessary. “Rosamund, you ought to be
out of doors on a day like this. Waste of God’s own sunshine to coop
yourself up with a book. I shall turn you and Francie out on the moor
the minute lunch is over.”
“Francie has a headache,” said Rosamund, with the quick, defensive
gleam in her eyes that her guardian’s cavalier treatment of Frances’
numerous minor ailments always roused.
“She won’t get rid of it by sitting indoors,” returned Bertha
decisively.
“Morris, you’ll stay to lunch, will you?”
“Thank you,” he said, rather naïvely surprised. Mrs. Tregaskis had not
been prodigal of invitations recently. A vista of the moorland sweep
and Rosamund opened before him, only to be blotted out by the voice
of Mrs. Tregaskis, its native ring of good-humoured decision somehow
emphasized:
“You and I will have a little ploy of our own, Morris, when I’ve driven
my lazybones out to take some exercise. I want a chat with you.”
She nodded, with her implacable kindliness, and asked where Frances was.
“In her room,” said Rosamund rather sullenly. “She is lying down.”
“Lying down at twelve o’clock in the morning!--and on a day like this,”
added Bertha, with another reproachful glance at the cracked, baking
ground and still sunlight outside. “Is her head very bad?”
“Yes.”
“I must go and investigate. I expect she needs one of my special
compresses of eau de Cologne and cold water. Well, well!”
She began to mount the stairs slowly, making no attempt to disguise
that her walk had slightly tired her.
“Stairs are no joke, at my age,” she panted laughingly over her
shoulder to Morris; “_and_ with my figure. I be growin’ a bit
broad-like across, ma dear!”
Morris laughed, and watched her disappear up the first short flight
of stairs. He turned to Rosamund rather shyly. Shyness was not at all
inherent in Morris Severing, but the advent of Mrs. Tregaskis and her
few crisp, kindly sentences, had somehow cut across the atmosphere of
joyous security in which he had met Rosamund that morning.
As he turned to her, Bertha’s broad face, reddened by heat and
exertion, appeared over the balusters.
“Rosamund, my dear, come up here a minute, will you?”
Rosamund gave Morris a look in which appeal and defiance seemed oddly
to mingle, and in her turn disappeared.
Morris Severing was left disconsolate in the hall. It was of no
amusement to him, although he gave the purely perfunctory laugh of
civility, when Miss Blandflower, hovering on the threshold of the
porch, said to him with a nervous laugh:
“Monarch of all you survey, I see.”
“Have you been gardening?” he inquired with polite superfluity, at
the same time relieving her of an earth-encrusted trowel and a basket
overflowing with plantain and dandelion roots.
“Oh yes,” she giggled. “Those _norrible_ weeds! There’s no rest for the
wicked.”
“But you’re not wicked at all, Miss Blandflower,” he assured her
gravely. “Only too good, to tire yourself like this. Come and rest in
the hall.”
Minnie looked doubtful.
She compromised by hovering restlessly between the hall-door and the
window, thereby keeping Morris on his feet, while she gazed longingly
at the sofa, set under the cool of a huge stand of white daisies and
geraniums.
“Very hot,” she sighed, passing an earthy hand over her heated face.
“Well, if you won’t think me too fearfully lazy----”
Miss Blandflower was always protesting feebly against accusations that
no sane mind could ever have entertained against her.
“Of course not. I should be much happier if you’d only sit down
till lunch,” said Morris with truth. The exhausted Minnie sank down
thankfully, murmuring “A _so_-fia is always a luxury, isn’t it,”
and the next moment bounding agitatedly to her feet as the gong
reverberated through the hall, and Frederick Tregaskis was heard
emerging from the study.
Minnie looked at her large earthy hands with an expression of horror,
muttered something about would these little hands never be clean, and
fled.
It was with a sense almost of fatality, as though such a thing must
inevitably happen where Miss Blandflower was concerned, that Morris
watched, without having time to prevent it, a collision between her and
her host at the foot of the stairs.
“Oh, Mr. Tregaskis,” shrieked Minnie, “I beg your pardon--I’d no
idea--_so_ stupid of me.”
“Do not apologize,” said Frederick, in tones of ice and casting a look
of concentrated venom at the overwhelmed Miss Blandflower. “And pray do
not be late for luncheon.”
“I’ve been gardening,” she gasped, displaying the trophies of toil in
unattractively blackened finger-nails and hardened palms.
“So I perceive. I believe the gong has sounded?”
“Yes, oh yes. I feel I’ve earned my lunch,” cried Minnie, disappearing
as fast as she could.
“My wife’s protégé,” remarked Frederick, as usual carefully
disassociating himself from his spouse, “has, to my certain knowledge,
made that remark before every meal for the past fourteen years.”
“I’m sure it’s a very true one, sir,” said Morris with what he
supposed to be a ready courtesy, and only the expression of rather
sardonic amusement which his host disconcertingly turned upon him
at intervals throughout the meal, betrayed to Morris that his ready
adaptability had led him to make an almost too apropos rejoinder to
Frederick Tregaskis’ peculiar form of pleasantry.
Morris sat between Hazel and her mother, and was able to look at
Rosamund on the opposite side of the table. She hardly once raised her
eyes to his, but when she did so, he saw a light in them that brought
an answering ardour to his own gaze.
He had hardly a glance to spare for Hazel Tregaskis, whose tawny hair
seemed to radiate sparkles, even as her charming personality radiated
vitality. Frances, beside her, looked pale and languid, with dark
circles round her eyes, and as soon as luncheon was over Morris heard
Mrs. Tregaskis say to her affectionately:
“You’d better go upstairs to the boudoir, Francie, and curl up on the
sofa. I’ll come up in a minute and see if we can’t find something for
the poor head.”
“Thank you, Cousin Bertie.”
Mrs. Tregaskis looked round, almost like a general arranging for the
dispersal of a superfluous staff.
“Hazel, on with the hat again! I’m not going to have you dashing out in
this sun with nothing on your head. I suppose you and Minnie want to go
up to the moors? and you must take this lazy child with you.”
She laid a possessive hand upon Rosamund’s shoulder.
“Dear Mrs. Tregaskis, there’s that tiny _wee_ little patch down by the
pond that I meant to finish this afternoon,” breathed Miss Blandflower,
evidently uncertain whether she was supposed to be pining for moorland
air, or eager to finish her weeding.
“No, no, Minnie.” Mrs. Tregaskis’ tone left no further room for doubt
upon the point. “You did far too much this morning. You know I’m always
telling you not to choose the very hottest time of day for weeding.
I dare say Morris and I will turn our energies to that patch by the
pond, and surprise you when you get in. Now then, off with you!”
“But am I not to go to the moors too?” demanded Morris, half amused and
half vexed, and wholly desirous of an afternoon in Rosamund’s company.
Bertha appeared to consider.
“How would it be if we took up tea to them, later?” she said, with an
air of suggestion. “That’s what we’ll do, and you can help me to carry
the tea-basket. I dare say Francie will be able to come with us by that
time, poor child. It will be cooler for her.
“Good-bye, you dear people. We shall meet again later--under the
wych-elm, Minnie, you know. Four o’clock.”
Morris dashed out and opened the gate for them.
“You’ll walk back with me,” he said hurriedly to Rosamund, and read her
answer in her eyes, before turning back with discontent in his own, to
where Bertha Tregaskis awaited him.
She surveyed him with unabashed gaze.
“Well, you think I’m an interfering, tiresome old spoilsport, don’t
you, Morris? But I really must have a talk with you, and I don’t feel
you’re going to be very angry with me, somehow. After all, we’re _very_
old friends.”
She laughed at him with a sort of friendly pleading in her look, and
Morris laughed a little too. He had always liked his mother’s friend.
“Let’s sit down in the shade, and leave the weeding till it’s cooler.
And now, my dear boy, I’m going straight to the point. I always face
up to my fences boldly--at least I used to, in the good old days when
Frederick could afford to keep a couple of gees in the stables. You
mustn’t make love to my little girl.”
Morris, to his fury, felt himself colouring hotly. He could not think
what to say.
“You see,” said Bertie, carefully looking away from him, “it isn’t
as though you were both of you a few years older. You’ve neither of
you seen anything of the world, and Rosamund is in some ways very
undeveloped and young for her age. I don’t want either of you to take
this attraction seriously--at any rate for the present.”
“Has my mother been talking to you?” demanded Morris rather sullenly.
Bertha hesitated for a moment.
“She’s only said what I felt quite sure of already--that she thinks you
too young to entertain any idea of--marriage, for instance.”
She looked at him narrowly as she spoke, and Morris coloured again.
“Of course, I couldn’t think of that, exactly,” he stammered naïvely.
“You know quite well that, owing to my father’s preposterous will, I
haven’t anything but what she gives me.”
“Exactly, my dear boy, though you and I both know very well that she
only holds the whole thing in trust for you, as it were.”
“Rotten arrangement, I call it,” muttered Morris. “Of course, I
practically do all the business that old Bartlett used to do for the
estate, but it’s a bore being tied here and never my own master. I
should have been in Germany studying music for the last four years if
mother hadn’t made such a frightful fuss at the idea.”
“I wish you and she understood one another better,” sighed Bertha. “My
sympathies are always on the young people’s side, you know, Morris,
though your mother _is_ my greatest friend.”
“Really?” he said eagerly. “Then I wish you’d talk to her a bit.”
“But, Morris, what could I say? I can’t let Rosamund drift into a sort
of half-and-half engagement, you know. It isn’t fair to her, and I am
responsible for her just as though she were my daughter.”
“Why should it be ‘half-and-half’?” he asked rather defiantly.
“Because she’s too young, and has seen too little of the world, for me
to sanction anything else at present,” said Bertha decisively.
Morris was slightly soothed by the fact that she laid all the emphasis
on Rosamund’s youth, and not on his own, as he felt his mother would
have done.
“Look here, Morris,” said Bertha earnestly. “I’m asking you for
Rosamund’s sake to have a little patience. If this is the real thing,
it won’t do you any harm to wait for a year or two, or her either.
It’ll help you to know one another better, too. Why, you’ve not seen
her since you were both children, except for this last week.”
“I _knew_ the first minute I saw her again,” cried Morris eagerly and
boyishly.
“I know she’s very attractive,” said Bertha, smiling rather proudly,
“though I says it as shouldn’t, since she’s just like my own daughter.
You know I’ve had them since their mother died, Morris.”
“I know,” he said.
“Well, then, don’t you think I’ve got just a little right to be
consulted?” She looked at him so humorously that Morris laughed a
little.
“Yes, of course. I expect I’d want to consult you, anyway, on my own
account, you know. You do so understand about things, Mrs. Tregaskis.”
“You dear boy! That’s just the very nicest thing you could have said to
me. I love young people, and it’s always been a disappointment to me
that I didn’t have ten children. You see, I had to adopt two as it was!
Rosamund is a dear child, Morris, and I’ve loved her as much as though
she were my own.”
She suddenly sighed, and some unexplained instinct made Morris exclaim
rather defensively:
“And of course she adores you. I’m sure of that.”
“Ah well, my dear boy, one doesn’t expect very much. The thing I care
most about is that they should be good and happy and keep well. Which
reminds me that I must go and see after my poor little invalid. But,
Morris, I do want to ask you one thing, if you’ll remember that I’m an
old woman and not get angry with me.”
She paused a minute and he cried eagerly:
“Of course, you can ask anything you like. You know that.”
“I really believe I can, you’re so reasonable. Well, Morris, I don’t
want to know what’s passed between you and Rosamund, though I rather
fancy that little _tableau vivant_ that I came across in the hall this
morning wasn’t strictly within the rules, but I do ask you not to let
things go any further for the present. Rosamund is going up to Scotland
with me in ten days’ time, which will make things easier, but I want
you to show a man’s self-control and see less of her than you have been
doing lately.”
Morris looked his consternation.
“Why don’t you go away altogether, if that is the only way, and come
back again after we’re safe out of the way?”
She did not give him time to reply, but rose, and began walking back to
the house.
“Think it over, while I’m seeing after Frances, and we can finish our
talk when I come back.”
“But look here”--Morris, colouring deeply, had caught up with her
in one or two long strides--“it sounds a most rotten thing to
ask--but--but what will Rosamund think? She--she must know perfectly
well that--that----” He began to stammer helplessly, and Bertha’s level
tones came with cheery common sense to his rescue.
“My dear boy, Rosamund is a very pretty girl who has been out a year
and a half, and has met with quite a reasonable amount of admiration.
She is much too sensible to take things seriously until they really
become so.” She hastily dismissed from her recollection certain of the
strictures recently passed upon Rosamund in conversation with Nina
Severing.
“Don’t you think I’m in earnest, then?” demanded Morris.
Bertha looked at his flushed, youthful face, ardent with indignation.
“I’m quite sure that you are,” she said quietly, “and it depends on you
not to let Rosamund become so, or at any rate think herself so. I am
going to trust her to your honour, Morris.”
On this lofty note she left him, going into the house with a certain
rapidity of step that might have suggested some anxiety not to spoil a
good exit.
But Morris was a great deal too much absorbed in his own reflections to
draw any such conclusions.
He paced up and down the front of the house, his hands in his pockets.
He did not analyze his sensations, and so escaped the humiliating
knowledge that his principal emotion was one of satisfaction at
Bertha’s admirable understanding. He wished that his mother could have
heard her.
The wish, however, was a subconscious one--his main preoccupation
was with the approaching interview. That there would be an interview
between himself and Rosamund he took for granted. They would walk back
from the moor together that very afternoon, and he would have to tell
her that he was going away.
Morris thought of her brilliant, ardent gaze and clinging hands, and
kicked the gravel about fiercely.
“Why can’t I be my own master,” he thought angrily.
Unwittingly the thought intruded itself that were he his own master, he
should not make use of that independence to curtail it by the decisive
step of marriage at the age of twenty-three.
“Damn,” muttered Morris. “Why aren’t things different all round?”
The desirability of a society where love-making should be smiled upon
by parents and guardians with no ulterior thoughts of an announcement
in the _Morning Post_ to the effect that a marriage had been arranged,
had had time to impress itself forcibly upon Morris before Mrs.
Tregaskis rejoined him. She looked troubled, and Morris, attributing
her expression to anxiety on his behalf, remarked with more than a
touch of magnanimity:
“Look here, it seems to me that things work out this way, more or
less. I’d better say good-bye to her this evening, and go off yachting
somewhere. And then by the time I get back I suppose she’ll be in
Scotland.”
Bertha’s brow cleared a little as she looked at him.
“Shake hands, Morris,” she said quietly. “You’re a white man.”
“You know, I shan’t leave off caring about her,” he said wistfully. “I
shall never love anyone else.”
“My dear boy, in two or three years’ time there’ll be absolutely no
objection to you telling her so. And there’s nobody I should be gladder
to give her to. But I do think that for the present this is the only
way.”
Her words woke in Morris a fleeting recollection of Sidney Carton, and
the realization of his own self-abnegation almost overcame him.
“Let me take that tea-basket,” he muttered hastily. “Isn’t Frances
coming?”
“I’m afraid not. I’ve sent her to bed altogether. To tell you the
truth, Morris, I’m a good deal worried about her, and if she’s no
better this evening I shall ask you to call at Dr. Lee’s on your way to
Pensevern, and send him up here. She’s got a temperature--though, of
course, that doesn’t mean much with her.”
“Is she so delicate?”
“She’s much stronger than she was when I first had her,” said Bertha
decidedly. “But if she’s not better next week I certainly shan’t leave
her. The other two will have to pay their visits alone. Poor Francie!
She’ll be miserable at my not having the change, but I couldn’t leave
her.”
“You’re awfully good,” murmured the boy.
She laughed heartily.
“I’m only an old hen fussing over her brood. It’s all in the day’s
work, Morris, and if it does mean giving up time here, and some little
pleasure or comfort there, one doesn’t think twice about it. But don’t
let’s talk about me. Fat old bodies of my age,” said Bertha, striding
vigorously across the garden, “aren’t at all interesting. I consider
myself as dull as ditchwater, and of no earthly use except to give you
young things a helping hand now and again.”
“I think you’re the most understanding person in the whole world,” said
Morris with conviction.