The picnic up on the moor, regarded as an al fresco entertainment, was
not a success.
Rosamund’s brow grew dark from the instant when she demanded, rather
than inquired, of her guardian: “Where is Francie?” and received the
placid reply that Cousin Bertie had thought Frances would be more comfy
tucked up on her bed.
“And you are not going near her till to-night, my dear little girl,”
she added, with a touch of genial severity. “She’ll do much better
without you.”
Bertie exchanged a laughing glance of amusement at her own
hard-heartedness with Miss Blandflower, and Morris saw Rosamund flush
the angry scarlet of a sensitive child that thinks itself unjustly
treated.
She sulked frankly for the rest of the time, and only the prettiness of
the defiant mouth and chin which was all that Morris could see under
her big shady hat prevented him from feeling provoked with her.
He and Hazel kept up a cheerfully desultory conversation, while
Miss Blandflower pressed unwanted attentions upon her hostess and
fellow-guests.
“Mayn’t I pass you a rock-cake, Mrs. Tregaskis?” she pleaded. “Some
bread-and-butter then? You’re not eating anything!”
“I be doin’ nicely, thank’ee, ma dear. What’ll yū be takin’? Crame?”
“No--no, thank you--not for me. Nothing more at all,” distractedly said
Minnie, who had been nibbling at a small piece of bread-and-butter in
the intervals of her activities.
“Oh, but you must have a jam sandwich,” cried Morris with the
pseudo-heartiness characteristic of such occasions.
“Well--if you won’t all think me fearfully, fearfully greedy----”
Minnie hesitated and looked wildly round her, but as no one appeared
in the least aghast at the prospect of her depredations among the jam
sandwiches, she deprecatingly took the smallest one, murmuring, “Thank
you muchly--this is fearful gluttony--‘just one more crust,’ as the boy
said on the burning deck.”
The spasmodic conversation died away.
Presently Hazel said:
“I’ve found the place where we got that white heather last year,
mother. There are some more roots there, if you want to take them home
for the rock garden.”
“Come on and let’s dig then,” said Bertha vigorously, rising as she
spoke.
Morris shot Hazel a glance of gratitude.
He longed to be alone with Rosamund, even while thinking that he was
dreading the pain of bidding her good-bye.
He looked at Miss Blandflower, but Hazel Tregaskis was quicker than he.
“I shan’t find the way without you,” she declared lightly.
“Come on, Minnie,” shouted Mrs. Tregaskis, already well on ahead.
“There’s no rest for the wicked,” said Minnie mechanically, and went.
Rosamund’s first words were not at all what Morris had expected. She
looked at him sombrely, and remarked almost violently:
“Do you know what’s the matter with Frances? Is Cousin Bertie really
frightened about her?”
“No, not seriously, I don’t think,” he answered, instinctively anxious
to soothe her. “She only said that if Frances wasn’t quite well again
next week she wouldn’t go to Scotland, but would send you and Hazel
alone.”
“I shan’t go if Francie is ill.”
He looked at her, astounded.
“But, Rosamund, what’s the matter? She isn’t ill. Mrs. Tregaskis
herself said that a temperature didn’t mean anything at all with
Frances.”
“Oh, you don’t understand,” she burst out angrily. “Nobody understands
in the least what Frances is to me. Cousin Bertie has never understood,
and never will. You heard what she said just now.”
He had forgotten.
“That I’m not to go near Frances till to-night. She always treats me
like a child.”
She looked very like one indeed, as she spoke, flushed and indignant.
“Perhaps Frances was going to sleep, and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“As though _I_ should disturb her! Why, I’ve looked after her ever
since she was a little girl--until we came to live here. _Now_,” said
Rosamund bitterly, “I’m told to mind my own business and let Frances
mind hers.”
“Never mind,” consoled Morris. “Don’t let’s talk about it. I want to
tell you something, Rosamund.”
Her angry face softened a little, but she seemed unable to dismiss the
subject.
“Nobody has ever understood about Frances and me--ever. I feel more as
though she were my child than my sister.”
Morris was becoming heartily tired of the discussion, and showed
distinct traces of that fatigue in his tone, as he replied
perfunctorily:
“Of course I understand--but, really, she’s only three years younger
than you are, isn’t she?”
“Cousin Bertie is always harping on that, and telling Frances not to be
domineered over!”
“Rosamund!” cried Morris, “you really talk as though Mrs. Tregaskis was
always being unkind to you. I can’t understand you. Why, she simply
adores you both--just as though she were your mother.”
He was totally unable to understand why Rosamund, at this, turned the
fury of her eyes full upon him.
“You don’t understand, any more than anyone else.”
“Don’t understand _what_?” almost shouted Morris. “I don’t understand
you, when you talk like that.”
Nor did he. She seemed to him altogether unbalanced, and as different
as possible from the stately, wonderful Rosamund whom he had met in the
orchard at Porthlew.
“Why do you speak as though Mrs. Tregaskis was unkind, or
unsympathetic?” he asked more gently. “She is devoted to you. You can’t
think how proud she is of you, Rosamund.”
“I’m not her daughter.”
“She _feels_ as though you were. She told me so herself.”
“I wish you hadn’t let her talk to you about me at all,” said Rosamund
unhappily.
“I don’t think you’d say that if you knew how nice and understanding
she was. I--I wish I could explain better.”
Morris felt the impotence of his lame and stammering words before the
deep hostility, which he recognized, although he was at a loss to
account for it, in Rosamund’s silence.
“I haven’t ever told anyone,” she said at last, stammering a little,
“but I’ve always resented being told that Cousin Bertha has done
everything for us and is so fond of us. Of course it’s quite true in a
way, but she’s never made me happy--or Francie either.”
If Morris thought that the fault lay more on Rosamund’s side than
on her guardian’s, he would not say so, but his too expressive face
betrayed him to Rosamund’s quick perceptions.
“You think I’m ungrateful--but I do recognize all the material things
she’s done for us.”
Morris thought her explanation very ungracious, and then chid himself
half-heartedly for criticizing his goddess.
“She’s done more than material things, hasn’t she?” he reminded her
gently. “It’s not as though Porthlew had been an alien atmosphere. She
cares about all the things that matter--books and music and friendship
and other things too. That’s what makes her so wonderful, I think--that
she should have that side to her, as well as the splendid practical
capable side that everyone can see and admire.”
Rosamund looked at him, with a face that seemed to have grown weary.
“Yes, of course,” she said slowly.
Morris felt, unreasonably, as though he had been weighed and found
wanting, in the balance of that baffled, tired gaze of hers. He
reflected with bewilderment that although she had looked at him like a
child when she had spoken defiantly and angrily of her guardian, she
now looked very much older, and more unhappy.
“What is it, Rosamund?” he asked, half involuntarily, and conscious of
the futility of the question.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said drearily.
It was the discontented child again.
Morris remained silent, plucking at the tough strands of heather all
round him.
He felt injured.
He had come out on the moor prepared to sacrifice himself, to bid
Rosamund a long farewell, and to take away with him only the memory of
that bitter-sweet parting hour. Surely the intuition of love should
have met him more than halfway. But Rosamund, with childish perversity,
had harped upon the string of her own grievances, grievances which
Morris could not but feel to be for the most part imaginary ones. She
was not thinking about him at all, and all his wealth of love and
self-sacrifice had gone unheeded. Morris began to feel angry, and,
worse still, as though he were being made a fool of in his own eyes.
It did not calm him to reflect that he would probably appear in exactly
the same light to the penetrating gaze of Bertha Tregaskis.
She was even now advancing slowly towards them, stooping every now
and then to prod at some little root or plant and pull it up into her
capacious basket.
Morris got up abruptly.
“Rosamund, do you know that I’m going away?”
She looked almost as much startled as he could have wished.
“When, Morris? Where?”
“At once,” he said gloomily. “I don’t know where--or care.”
He had meant to ask her if she would “wait for him” in the
time-honoured phrase, but he had not reckoned on having to cram the
whole parting scene, as it were, into the last three minutes of his
interview.
Rosamund also looked at Bertha’s advancing form and spoke rapidly.
“I didn’t know you meant to go away, Morris.”
Was her voice trembling a little?
“I didn’t!” he cried passionately.
Bertha hailed them with a prolonged “coo-ee” that might have been
regarded as superfluous in view of the fact that only some rapidly
diminishing hundred yards now lay between them.
“I didn’t,” repeated Morris earnestly, and was unable to resist adding,
“but--it’s the only way.”
* * * * *
He also made use of that excellent phrase, for which he was beholden to
Mrs. Tregaskis, in conversation with his mother that evening.
It was more than wasted upon her.
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘the only way,’” she returned with a
sudden irritating assumption of common sense, her lack of which she
habitually dwelt upon with pensive complacency.
“If you want to go yachting, Morris, well and good; but don’t talk in
an affected melodramatic style, as though you were making some great
sacrifice in going, please. It doesn’t ring true, and you know how I
hate little insincerities.”
Nina’s assault was perhaps not utterly unprovoked. A certain jutting
forward of her son’s jaw, a tendency to monosyllabic replies preceded
by the slight start of one roused from a profound reverie, had conveyed
to Nina all too accurately that Morris was enacting, in his own
opinion, the rôle of _jeune premier_ in a drama of self-sacrifice.
“I’ve already told you that you can start on this yachting trip
whenever you please, so why talk as though it were some tremendous
decision which you had just come to?” she demanded irritably.
Morris smiled with a superior expression.
“You don’t understand, mother,” he told her, with a touch of compassion.
Few remarks were more calculated to rouse her annoyance.
“My dear boy, it’s perfectly childish to talk like that. How can there
be anything about _you_ which _I_, your mother, can’t understand? It
makes one realize how very very young you are, when you talk like that.”
But even allusions to his youth could not disturb Morris’s exalted mood.
He was unable to resist giving his mother a hint of the heights to
which he had attained.
“I was up at Porthlew this afternoon,” he said in a meaning tone.
“So I supposed. You always come back in this silly, self-satisfied
frame of mind when you’ve been with those girls, who naturally play up
to your vanity. If that’s the effect of the Grantham girl’s influence,
Morris, the less you see of her the better, for your own sake.”
The fatal word “influence,” combined with the preposterous implication
that Nina had slightingly forgotten Miss Grantham’s very name, roused
Morris to anger at last.
“Rosamund Grantham and I have said good-bye, mother. It was the only
way. Some day I shall come back to her, and find her waiting,” said
Morris, considerably worked up by the pathos of his own eloquence, and
momentarily forgetful that he had received no such pledge. “But you
make it impossible that I should tell you anything of what I am going
through, when you speak as you did just now.”
He walked with sorrowful dignity to the door, confident that his mother
would not allow him to leave the room without giving him further
opportunities for rhetoric.
Nina, in effect, finding herself driven to her last resort, with a
readiness born of much experience, began gently to cry.
“Darling, you know I didn’t mean it if I spoke impatiently. I only want
to sympathize with you and comfort you.”
He turned slowly towards her.
She was deeply relieved that the _affaire_ Rosamund should have been
successfully tided over. Morris was far from being as heartbroken at
the idea of parting from his love as he had been before their final
interview, and the evening passed amid a harmonious rendering of a
strong man’s grief and his mother’s tender sympathy.
Preparations for his journey absorbed Morris for the next twenty-four
hours, during which he and his mother enjoyed the sense of perfect
companionship which was always theirs on the rare occasions when
their respective mental _tableaux vivants_ of one another happened to
coincide, and then he was off.
“Good-bye, my darling boy. Enjoy yourself.”
“Thank you, mother dear. Write to me and”--his voice took on
the slightly deeper note consecrated to the strong-man-in-grief
attitude--“tell me any news of _her_.”
“Yes, dearest, of course,” tenderly replied Nina, but she refrained
from telling him the only piece of news which transpired during the
next few days: that Frances was not well enough for Mrs. Tregaskis
to leave her, and that Rosamund had refused to accompany Hazel to
Scotland, but remained with her guardian at Porthlew.
“It _is_ tiresome of her,” said Bertha, in a tone more nearly
resembling annoyance than she often used.
“Frances isn’t seriously ill at all, and if she were Rosamund would
be the worst possible person for her. She goes about looking like a
tragedy-queen, as though Frances were at death’s door.”
“Why on earth did you let her stay?” said Nina with more derision than
sympathy in her voice.
“She asked Frederick. You know how tiresome and contradictory he can
be, and of course he knew perfectly well that I didn’t want Rosamund
fussing and fretting on my hands, but he said she could do as she
liked. He always takes up an absurd attitude of having no authority
over those two, as you know.”
“I know. So Hazel has gone alone?”
“I’ve had to send my maid with her, though I should have done that in
any case. I don’t approve of young girls travelling about all over the
country by themselves.”
“Lucky for you that you have girls who can be chaperoned! Look at poor
little me--I can’t run after Morris, let alone send a maid with him,
and have to sit here with a trembling heart, wondering all the time how
things are going with him.”
“That’s always the way with a son, my dear, or a husband either,” said
Bertha, determinedly emphasizing the fact that she, although not the
mother of a son, also possessed a male appendage.
“It’s our part just to sit at home and work and wait, while they have
all the fun,” Nina sighed. “A woman’s life is one long self-sacrifice,”
she murmured.
“It is, when one has to mend and make and nurse, and all the rest
of it,” cordially agreed Bertha, with one fleeting glance at Nina’s
exquisite, empty hands, folded in her lap.
The glance was not lost upon Mrs. Severing, who presently said
reflectively that Mr. Bartlett would no doubt call upon her shortly
with some of his interminable business questions, and she must ask
dearest Bertie to forgive her. It was not her way to put off a matter
of business.
“Unpractical, dreamy creature that I am,” said Nina with a sad, sweet
smile, “I have had too many years’ hard training in looking after this
big estate, ever to be unbusinesslike. Mr. Bartlett always amuses me so
much when he _will_ say that I should make a better agent than he does.”
“I don’t wonder!” exclaimed Bertha, the dryness of her tone making it
abundantly evident that her emphatic assent was directed towards Nina’s
amusement, and not towards Mr. Bartlett’s opinion of his employer’s
abilities. “No, no, dear. You must stick to your charming songs.
They’re _your_ work in the world,” smiled Bertha tolerantly.
“Dear Bertie! How sweet of you to say so. I’m always afraid of being
just some silly, trivial flowery thing--not of any real use in the
world.”
“The world needs its little speedwell flowers just as much as its
sturdy oak-trees,” laughed Bertha tenderly.
“Yes, dear,” said Nina deftly. “There is room for Mary as well as for
Martha. It always comforts me to remember that.”
Comfort, however, was not the predominant expression on the face of
Mrs. Tregaskis as she heard her friend’s favourite Scriptural parallel
once more enunciated.
“If you’re really waiting for Mr. Bartlett, darling, I mustn’t keep
you,” she said rather hastily. “Anyhow, I must get back to my invalid.
She’s much better to-day, and only fretting at the idea of my having
missed the Scotch visits. Of course one _had_ been rather longing for
a breath of Scottish air, this weather, but I dare say I shall manage
without. It’s an economy, at all events.”
She gave her cheery, plucky laugh.
“How is Morris enjoying Norway? Has he got over his love-lornity?”
Nina laughed a little.
“I think he has. I’ve had a very cheery letter from him, raving about
the fiords and things.”
Bertha looked slightly puzzled.
“The----? Oh, you mean the _fjords_! Yes, of course they must be
perfectly gorgeous at this time of year,” she remarked thoughtfully,
with the air of a connoisseuse.
“They are just the same at any time of year, dear,” sweetly returned
Nina. “Geoffrey and I went there for a fortnight once--it seems oh
so long ago! It somehow made one think of those far-away days when
everything was couleur de rose----”
There were few topics that Bertha enjoyed less than the retrospective
couleur de rose of her friend’s married life, and she hastily dragged
the conversation back into the living present.
“I’m so very glad about Morris. Give the boy my love when you write. I
wish Rosamund was half as sensible as he is. She goes mooning about the
place as though she’d lost her dearest friend.”
Bertha gave a slightly apologetic laugh at her own acerbity, and Nina,
whose regard for Rosamund always waxed in proportion as her friend’s
waned, murmured with the air of a compassionate angel:
“Poor child! One remembers the heartaches of one’s own youth. The
thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, Bertie!”
“Well, Morris appears to have curtailed his successfully enough, at all
events,” crisply returned Bertha. “I always said there was stuff in the
boy, Nina, although you’ve spoilt him so outrageously.”
Nina laughed, and kissed Mrs. Tregaskis affectionately as they said
good-bye.
It always pleased her to be told that she spoilt Morris. She had
consistently over-indulged him as a little boy, and did so still in all
matters where his personal pleasures were concerned, provided that they
did not interfere with her wishes. The accusation of spoiling seemed
to add colour to her frequently-voiced conviction that youth was very
hard, and that a mother’s sacrifices often went unheeded.
“I’m afraid I _have_ spoilt him,” she sighed in response to Bertha’s
words. “But after all, Morris has been my only thought for so many,
many years....”
Bertha told herself that really poor Nina was sometimes positively
maudlin, and firmly created a diversion by demanding the loan of Nina’s
seldom-used garden scissors.
“At all events,” she told herself, as she walked briskly away, “I
managed to forestall an allusion, for once, to poor Geoffrey. And now
for my little tragedy-queen!”
* * * * *
But Rosamund, though not undeserving of her guardian’s epithet, gave
less trouble than Bertha had anticipated. With characteristic want of
balance, she was absorbed in one thought only: that of her sister. As
long as Frances remained ill, Rosamund gave little thought to Morris
Severing. Perhaps the measure of her undeveloped lack of proportion
might have been probed by that fact. The memory of a spoilt illusion
might come to vex and grieve the youthfulness of her spirit later, but
that would only be when the nearer, and to her infinitely more real,
solicitude had ceased to be.
And Rosamund, her outlook being honest, knew, and was to know more
clearly yet, that her first love had brought her no nearer to that
reality which lies at the back of all wisdom, and which for her was
still typified by her love for Frances.