Ludovic Argent sometimes thought that the understanding of Mrs.
Tregaskis seemed hardest of all to Rosamund. Had she anything at all
left of her very own?
He found himself wondering.
He went across the valley on many days, and Mrs. Tregaskis always
welcomed him with eager cordiality. It was only after a time that
Ludovic admitted to himself that he sought another welcome than hers
with an insistence which surprised him vaguely. One day in the autumn
his halting step came slowly up the narrow garden path where Bertha
Tregaskis, in the short, dark tweed of determinedly unconventional
widowhood, was crouching over a border. She raised herself briskly
enough at the sound of his stick upon the gravel.
“Splendid!” she cried exuberantly, showing a pair of earthy palms. “I
can’t shake hands--too grubby. But you’ll help me tie up these poor
dear things, won’t you?”
Ludovic adjusted his crutch-like stick, and fumbled obediently with
long pieces of bass and the top-heavy overgrown dahlias.
“Rosamund is not good at this sort of job, although she offers to help
me most regularly, poor dear! But it’s not in her line at all.”
“Why don’t you have in old Jones or someone two or three times a week?”
said Ludovic with the more earnestness that his own wrestlings with the
bass were strangely unsuccessful.
“We do have him every now and then, but I love pottering about, and so
does Minnie. We’ve practically _made_ the whole of this border--the
place was in a dreadful state when we came.”
Ludovic looked round the small garden.
“It has altered a good deal,” he conceded.
His voice was expressionless.
Bertha looked up sharply.
“There have been no changes to hurt her,” she said quickly. “One
understood--good heavens, yes! There are the two tiny plots over
these under those lilac bushes, that belonged to them--Rosamund and
Frances--when they were little children. Somehow I knew that by
instinct--and why she always said wallflowers were her favourite
flowers. This place is one mass of them in the spring. She’s not
sentimental, you know, but little things like that that are sacred to
one--afterwards. And Rosamund knows that I understand.”
“Yes.”
“It’s curious,” Mrs. Tregaskis continued meditatively, “how quickly
one ‘senses’ things, when it’s a question of a beloved child. I don’t
think, though I _do_ say it myself, that any suggestion or change
of mine has jarred on Rosamund. You see, I can share in some of the
associations. I fetched them away from here as little children--and
I was here with them when their mother died--and now the place, in a
sense, is mine as well as hers. You see it’s been a harbour of refuge
for me, too, hasn’t it?”
“You don’t regret Cornwall?”
Bertha straightened herself slowly, and faced him.
“No,” she replied, deliberately, but very decisively. “The love of a
place is a great thing--and I’m Cornish through and through, as you
know--but, after all, other things matter more. Little Rosamund, for
instance. Oh, it’s not only that she wanted me--wanted me to mother and
shield and comfort her, as only a child that’s bought its own wilful
experience _can_ want one, but there’s the need of giving in her, too.
You know that. I rather fancy that you, too, understand Rosamund.”
She looked at him rather enigmatically for a moment, but Ludovic was
silent.
“Your mother told me once that she rather wondered if the whole thing
would end in Rosamund’s becoming a Roman Catholic, too. She made
friends with a woman at Francie’s convent.... But it won’t. Rosamund
hasn’t the religious temperament, for one thing. All she needed was
to find herself. A modern phrase, isn’t it--and one that I rather
avoid, as a rule, but it’s expressive enough. The child had to learn
proportion--and it was taught her through the strongest thing she
knew--her love for Frances. Reality is the only medium for reality,
after all. Her other emotions and phases weren’t real, you know--not
even a sort of love affair that she had one year. But she had to get
right down to bedrock to teach her what relative values are.”
Ludovic felt with an absolute conviction that Mrs. Tregaskis, as she
had said, understood indeed.
He wondered deeply concerning Rosamund’s acceptance of such
comprehension.
That the acceptance was almost matter of fact in its completeness was
evident, but it was only after a time that he became aware of a deeper
serenity underlying her tranquil receptivities. It was not the pale
serenity of resignation, either, for he was conscious of a certain
strength and hopefulness in her outlook that differed oddly from the
atmosphere of unrest diffused by Rosamund Grantham as he had known her
a few years earlier.
“I’m getting much happier,” she once said to him with laughing candour.
“Not for any reason, you know, but just because I am.”
“I thought you would. I’m very glad.”
“There’s no reason for it,” repeated Rosamund thoughtfully. “I’m horrid
enough to Cousin Bertie very often, as you know.”
He had seen her lose her temper in a quick, childish outburst over a
small matter that afternoon.
“And I always thought I _must_ have definite work or go mad. You know
I tried writing, and everything, and none of it seemed right. Yet here
I am, doing nothing at all, except little tiny jobs that Cousin Bertie
mostly makes for me, and sometimes wondering if I’m justifying my
existence at all--yet the days go by very quickly.”
“Work will come,” said Ludovic, voicing a conviction. “The jobs one
takes up just to save one’s fancied self-respect never seem to me to be
worth while.”
Rosamund laughed a little.
“I never can remember that you’re in Parliament--but I always think of
you in connection with your writing,” she remarked frankly.
“Exactly,” returned Ludovic dryly.
They both laughed, with the sense of companionship that a shared laugh
almost inevitably carries with it.
“Aha!” said Mrs. Tregaskis, at work in the garden with Miss
Blandflower, as the sounds came through the open window. “What do you
think of me as a scheming old woman, Minnie? I can always enjoy a
little match-making, even in my dotage.”
“Oh, Mrs. Tregaskis, how can you talk so ridiculously?” protested
Minnie. “Why, you’re the youngest woman I know. They always say a woman
is only as old as she looks.”
“Minnie, Minnie, don’t flatter! You know that spades are always spades
with me. But I don’t mind telling you a little secret. I think we shall
see Rosamund happy yet.”
“Oh! Do you mean...? But I used to think--only, of course, one can
never tell----”
“You mean Morris. She won’t have him, my dear. He’s not the sort of man
for her--he’s too young, for one thing. No, no--Ludovic Argent and the
Wye Valley, for Rosamund, is what _I_ think. I don’t mind telling you
that I’ve thought so all along, Minnie. I like Morris--he and I are
huge chums, as you know--but ever since that boy and girl affair at
home, ages ago, I’ve always said they weren’t suited to one another.”
“Well, we shall see what we shall see, I suppose,” was the timorous
reply of Miss Blandflower, which she hazarded as though voicing the
most startling of suggestions.
“It would please Sybil very much, I fancy. Of course I know perfectly
well that she wanted it to be Francie--but I suppose Rosamund is next
best, even though she isn’t an R.C.”
“But then neither is he.”
“Exactly. But poor dear Sybil has the subject on the brain, and always
fancies that her prayers will ‘convert’ him, as she calls it, one
of these days. I never saw any woman so utterly gone to pieces as
Sybil--sometimes I almost think she’s in her second childhood to hear
her babble as she does--there’s no other word for it--simply babble.”
“Babble, babble, little brook,” idiotically murmured Minnie, with a
pair of garden scissors between her teeth, and both hands full of
tangled string.
“Here, I’ll hold that for you. No, no, not the string--the scissors.
Give them to me, Minnie, you’ll break your teeth if you do that. Very
well--but you’re only getting it into a muddle. What was I saying?--oh,
about Sybil. Poor dear! One of the reasons that made me come here was
the thought of having her for a neighbour. We were the greatest of
friends, as girls, though there’s nearly ten years between us. There
might be twenty, now. Minnie, whatever happens, I do pray and trust
that I shall never die at the top first, as they say. If you see any
tendency to garrulous old age, you must tell me so in good time. It’s
much the truest kindness in the long run. One would so much rather
spend one’s last few years silently.”
“A few more years shall roll,” was the thoughtful response of Miss
Blandflower, as she gave a final pull to the string and scissors
entanglement, which succeeded in blending them all inextricably
together for the rest of the afternoon.
Bertie, in spite of her strictures on the wanderings of Lady Argent’s
mind, was not deterred from frequently crossing the valley in search of
her. She always told Rosamund vigorously that she liked the walk.
“So kind of you, Bertie dear,” her hostess murmured gratefully,
“because you know how much I love seeing you, and the pony is so
very old one can’t take him out often--especially with the bridge
at the very furthest end of the village, as it is--so exceedingly
inconvenient. It used to make poor dear Fergus so angry, but, of
course, one knows perfectly well that this is only one house, whereas a
whole village is a whole village--and was here first, besides.”
“You ought to have a ferry.”
“My dear, I never go down to the edge of the river without thinking of
St. Christopher--you know what I mean. It wasn’t a ferry, of course,
but it was all the same thing in the end--only of course so much
better than a regular ferry. Not that I mean it would do nowadays, or
for everybody---- My dear, what _are_ you laughing at? Have I said
something dreadfully profane? I am so terribly apt to, quite without
meaning it, and Ludovic always laughs at me.”
Mrs. Tregaskis laughed too, with kindly superiority.
“I don’t think you’re in any imminent danger of serious profanity,
Sybil, and I’m sure Ludovic doesn’t. Great cheek of me to call him
Ludovic, isn’t it? and I certainly shouldn’t dare do it to his
face--but I always think of you both as sort of relations, you know.”
The observation was more in the nature of a small feeler than an
accurate statement of fact, and Bertha watched for its effect narrowly.
“So nice of you, dear,” said Lady Argent absently, without a trace of
meaning in her voice or manner; “and you know I never had any sisters
or brothers, so Ludovic has never had an aunt. At least, dear Fergus
had one sister, but she was older than he was, a good deal, and so
very Scotch. Not that I mean for a moment that her being Scotch would
prevent her from being an aunt as well--in fact, I believe the Scotch
think more about relationships than we do. Blood is thicker than water
and all that, you know, dear, and kith and kin, whatever that may mean,
which I always think sounds so very Scotch--but she really wasn’t at
all like an aunt to Ludovic. Just called him ‘my brother’s child,’ you
know, and sent him a little book from time to time. Very Calvinistic,”
and Lady Argent, shaking her head, “and I always burnt them, even in
those days, though he was far too young to read, poor darling. In fact
she died before he was five years old.”
“Well, I’m only too delighted to do aunt by proxy,” said Bertha
good-humouredly. “I’ve been ‘auntie’ to a good many young people in my
time, though the rising generation generally prefers ‘Cousin Bertie.’
I remember ages ago asking those two poor mites, Rosamund and Francie,
what they’d like to call me. D’you remember my bringing them over here
to say good-bye to you, Sybil?”
“Yes, indeed, so good and pathetic, poor little dears,” said Lady
Argent tenderly; “and both so pretty, weren’t they?”
“Rosamund has rather lost her looks, I’m sorry to say.”
Bertha was looking keenly at her friend, who remained serenely
unconscious of her scrutiny.
“Don’t you think so, Sybil?”
“She’s rather too thin, and I don’t like those great shadows under
her eyes, but I’m sure she’ll always be a very pretty creature. So
like her mother, you know, though I always thought that Mrs. Grantham
spoilt herself with those enormous earrings, especially in the country,
somehow. I don’t quite know,” Lady Argent thoughtfully pursued, with an
air of far greater interest than any she had bestowed on the subject of
Rosamund’s looks, “why it is that I have always disliked earrings. I do
so hope it isn’t prejudice, which I always think so very narrow-minded
and shocking. But I never could bear the picture of St. Cecilia that
everyone likes so much because of those great things hanging from her
ears. Sitting at the organ, dear, you know. Though I’ve no doubt it was
the fashion, and quite proper and everything in those days, and in that
country.”
“My dear Sybil! Surely Cecilia was a Roman virgin? You talk as though
she’d lived in some unheard of region.”
“Well, I never can remember quite where Tyre and Sidon and Syracuse and
all those places are,” was Lady Argent’s rather surprising reply. “I
know St. Paul was always going there, but then he really did travel a
great deal, Bertie, even for nowadays. I never can bear to think how
dreadfully inconvenient their travelling arrangements must have been
then--though, of course, it made it all the more meritorious.”
Bertha made a decided effort to turn the conversation from channels
which appeared to her unnecessarily Scriptural.
“It’s such a comfort to see Rosamund looking better every day. There’s
nothing like youth, my dear, when all’s said and done. After all, in
spite of the grief and trouble which seem so bitter to them, they have
everything to look forward to--all life before them. It’s a wonderful
thing to be young, Sybil.”
She sighed.
“I always think that it _depends_ so much,” said Lady Argent
cryptically, and with the diffidence which she always brought to any
opinion that differed from her friend’s. “But, of course, when I think
of Frances, poor little darling, though I can’t think why I call her
poor, for she’s far better off than we are, and must have a much higher
place in Heaven than one can ever hope for oneself--but there it is,
Bertie, I am quite sure that she was a very privileged soul in every
possible way.”
“Now I’m going to shock you,” declared Bertha with a kind of deliberate
enjoyment in her tone, “but I should have had a much higher opinion of
Frances if she’d given up her own way and stayed quietly at home until
she was of an age to judge for herself. Oh yes, my dear, I know it’s
a dreadful thing to say now, but I’m nothing if not outspoken, as you
know, and I can’t pretend--it isn’t in me. One looks upon Francie as a
little victim, and so she was, poor child, but it was all owing to her
own self-will.”
Lady Argent flushed, looked doubtful, and then said gently and very
characteristically:
“So brave of you, Bertie dear, to be so unconventional and say it all
out, because of course I know you loved her just as if she’d been your
very own. Only you know it really was a vocation, if ever there was
one, and Father Anselm was very much impressed with her, and told me
so himself long before there was any question of her entering. Such a
very holy man, Bertie, and extremely clever. Plain chant, you know, and
all that kind of thing--so wonderful, I always think, though of course
I’m no judge at all, since I never really like good music--only tunes
I’ve known all my life, which are not plain chant at all, as you may
imagine, since they’ve only revived it quite within the last few years.
The Holy Father wishes it so much, for the Church, which of course
makes one like it, though I always think otherwise, it might strike one
as the least little bit dreary. So very little tune, you know.”
“Yes, I know what you mean. Sybil, do you know you’re getting very
discursive?”
“I dare say, dear,” said Lady Argent placidly, “a train of thought is
such a very difficult thing to follow, I always think--I mean another
person’s, of course. One’s own is naturally easy enough.”
Bertha did not look as though she shared this conviction--nor did she
where the tangled skein of Lady Argent’s meditations was concerned.
“I’ve got a little train of thought in my own head at the present
moment,” she said tentatively. “I wonder if you can guess what I’m at,
Sybil.”
“No, dear, I’m sure I can’t. I never was the least bit of good at
guessing anything at all. Don’t you remember when riddles were so much
the fashion, and people were always asking one why did Rider Haggard,
and ridiculous questions of that sort? I never could get the answers
right, even then, and there was one dreadful thing that dear Fergus was
so fond of--about a ton of lead and a ton of feathers. I’m sure you
must have heard it, Bertie.”
“I don’t think so--a ton of lead? Are you sure you don’t mean a herring
and a half?” laughed Bertha.
“Oh, yes, though I know that one too. The question, I mean--not the
answer, of course. But this was something about a ton of lead and a ton
of feathers being upset out of a boat or somewhere, into the sea, and
which would sink fastest. And, of course, I always answered ‘Lead.’
Because one knows perfectly well that feathers float and lead sinks.
But it always turned out to be the wrong answer.”
“My dear Sybil!” Bertie laughed helplessly.
“Yes, indeed,” said Lady Argent, still in melancholy retrospect, “I
once thought I would be very clever and surprise Fergus--so silly, my
dear, because nothing ever surprised dear Fergus, not even when one of
the mares had twin foals--he said he’d always expected it all along,
which one knows was quite impossible, but so very Scotch of him, wasn’t
it? Anyhow, one day I thought I’d get that dreadful riddle answered
once and for all, so instead of saying as one naturally would, and as
I’m bound to say I’d said quite a dozen times before, that of course
the lead would sink soonest, I suddenly said: The feathers. And I dare
say it served me quite right, because I certainly didn’t in the least
see how it could be the right answer, and was only pretending, which
I suppose was rather hypocritical of me--but Fergus simply roared
with laughter, and told everybody what I’d said for weeks and weeks
afterwards.”
“Sybil, Sybil, you’ll be the death of me.” Bertha was absolutely
mopping her eyes, streaming from her unaffected merriment.
Lady Argent looked at her affectionately.
“Dear Bertie, I do like to hear your laugh again.”
“It _is_ an infectious chuckle, I believe,” returned Mrs. Tregaskis;
“but I’ve always had a huge appreciation for the funny side of things.
It’s helped me all through life, Sybil. I’m not an irreligious woman,
though my religion is perhaps not a conventional one, but I really
believe the whole of my creed could be embodied in one word: ‘Smile!’ I
_do_ believe in smiling! It cheers others, helps oneself, and does good
all round. I don’t mind owning to you that a good many people, one way
and another, have told me they blessed my knack of smiling. I’m sure
one laugh is worth ten sermons, very often!”
“Sermons are so often a little difficult to understand,” said Lady
Argent apologetically. “I sometimes find myself quite hazy in
church--though I dare say that’s mostly from the long drive, which
makes me so dreadfully sleepy.”
“You have to go all the way to Chepstow, haven’t you?”
“Yes, and dear Ludovic is so angelic about driving me in. Not that he
often allows me to go early, but then that’s because he thinks it tires
me, not because he minds the distance.”
“Your relationship is a very beautiful one,” said Bertha thoughtfully.
“Oh, my dear, it is!” cried Lady Argent very simply. “I often wonder
what I’ve done to deserve a son like Ludovic, when I see how dreadfully
other people are worried by their children.”
She coloured suddenly at the allusion, and then hurried on. “It’s not
because I’ve brought him up beautifully or anything of that sort,
either. I never _could_ have theories, though I bought hundreds of
little books--from the very first day that I knew I was going to have
a baby. But I always forgot, and then dear Fergus, who was nothing if
not determined--so very Scotch, you know, dear--used to say that little
books were all rubbish, and if I wanted to know how to bring up a
child, Solomon had said all there was to be said upon the subject. Not
that he would ever have laid a finger upon Ludovic himself, you know.
The only time the poor darling was ever punished, when he was about six
years old, I had to do it myself, with a bedroom slipper. And I cried
so dreadfully that Ludovic said in the middle of it: ‘It’s all right,
mummy, don’t cry, you’re hardly hurting me at all.’ So touching, I
always thought.”
“I sometimes think that bringing up hasn’t anything at all to do with
it,” said Bertha dryly. “I brought up my own child as well as I knew
how, and practically brought up the other two girls as well. And look
at my Hazel, Sybil. She hasn’t one thought for me. She came home
when her father died and stayed a week--and her husband came for one
night. She was sweet enough and affectionate enough--Hazel’s always
been that--but do you suppose that I didn’t know that the whole of her
thoughts were at Marleswood, with Guy and the babies, after the first
day or two were over? Perhaps it’s natural--but it’s very bitter,
Sybil. I don’t ask for impossibilities--I couldn’t have lived with
them, and I should never wish to--but they never even suggested it.”
Lady Argent said nothing at all, and took Bertha’s hand into hers.
“It’s the fuss over her marriage that she’s never forgotten,” said
Bertha bitterly, “and yet God knows she can afford to. She’s taken her
own way, and is happy in it--and her father and I forgave her long ago,
if she wanted forgiveness, for her self-will and disobedience.”
There was a long silence.
“Well,” said Bertha at last, “Rosamund is the only one who has come
back to the old nest after all. Hazel’s gone right away from me--I
know that well enough, in spite of all her loving letters--and won’t
ever come back. Little Francie took her own way and followed a
will-o’-the-wisp that she thought was the Star in the East, and I tell
you, Sybil, that before she’d been in that place six months she was
just as remote and far away from us as though she’d been in another
world. Why, her very language wasn’t ours any longer--her whole scale
of values had shifted.... Someone who saw her once after she had
entered told me it was like talking to someone with a thick wall of
impenetrable glass all round. You could see her--but you could never
get near ... never be in touch again....”
“You are nearer now, perhaps,” softly said Lady Argent.
“Who knows? But the child that’s come back to me is Rosamund. And I
shan’t fail her, Sybil.”
“No, Bertie,” said Lady Argent lovingly. “You would never fail her.”
“Never,” repeated Bertha with curiously intense conviction. “You see,
apart from everything else, she’s the one of the three that has sought
me when other things failed her. It’s an appeal that one doesn’t
forget. I have to _give_, you know, Sybil. I’m made that way--and
Rosamund has every claim on me.”
There was silence again, and Bertha only broke it to take her departure
with a brisk matter-of-factness that seemed to draw a swift curtain
across some intimate threshold to a sanctuary where even her own
footsteps seldom penetrated.