early months, they arrived at some sort of conclusions, helped by an
occasional expression in his letters. He had gone out of his own world,
and as long as his time of probation lasted he would keep out of it. He
was not likely to think himself degraded by serving in the ranks, but
they came to understand that he was keeping his actual condition hidden.
There was nothing in his letters, which would be read by his superior
officers, to indicate it, and before he left England they were more
about Royd than about himself. There was never very much about himself.
Every time he wrote he said he was well and happy; but it peeped through
that the change in his life was not without its effect upon him. How
could it be otherwise, brought up as he had been? He was learning in a
hard school; but he was learning, and flashes of his old boyish
brightness broke through the reticence which he seemed to have imposed
upon himself. They came to look upon it as a time of probation for him,
and to believe that so he looked upon it himself. Sometimes they
thought they saw signs of expectation. He was working for and looking
forward to something. Viola, said Wilbraham to himself. His commission
to be won in the field, said Lady Brent. He wanted no help towards it,
as might have been given by finding him out, which should not have been
difficult after he had left England, and pulling strings. When he had
gained his commission, by his own unaided effort, and by no reliance
upon his place in the world outside the army, then he would come back to
them. It was hard on Lady Brent to wait, and to lift no finger, and
harder still on his mother. But he must be trusted. They had directed
him through his childhood, and youth, and now he would brook no
direction. The only consolation they had was that his upbringing had
not taken from him a man's initiative and determination. The experiment
seemed to have been justified; but with a greater knowledge of the world
beforehand he might not have thought it necessary so to cut his life in
two. They were paying a heavy price.
Wilbraham, who had more of a clue to Harry's actions than the others,
was not without irritation against what at times he set down as mere
hard undutifulness. He had great sympathy with Lady Brent, who had so
wonderfully sunk her own feelings in acquiescing in the boy's
unreasonable determination. She could almost certainly have traced him
had she wished to do so. And Wilbraham, at least, knew that he must
have been told at the very beginning that he would not be interfered
with. Why could he not then have softened the hardship to those who
loved him? Granted that the new love that had come into his life was so
much more to him than the old; but it was not like him to throw over the
old altogether, and indeed his letters showed that he had not done so.
After a time his irritation died away. It could not be so distressing
to Harry to be cut off from Royd as it was to them to be cut off from
him, but his letters showed that he felt it, and especially the few
letters that he wrote to little Jane, in which he seemed to be reaching
out after the untroubled innocent happiness of his youth, and the beauty
and freedom that had lain all about it. It was the old Harry that
appeared in those letters, and here and there in others; the new Harry
became more and more evident otherwise--a man doing a man's hard work in
hard and uncongenial surroundings, much older than his years, where in
some ways he had been so much younger.
He was hard on himself as well as hard upon them. They had given him
happiness in his sheltered youth, but the plunge he had taken into a
life different from any that could have been anticipated for him can
have been none the easier on that account. The ugliness and crudity
that other boys might in some measure have been prepared for would bear
very hardly upon him, and he would have to fight through it alone.
Wilbraham came to see that he might shrink from mixing it up with his
home life. Perhaps he was afraid that he might weaken in it if he was
subject to any pressure. It would surely have been open to him to have
had at least a few days at home before he went abroad; but he had not
taken the opportunity.
Had he blamed them for bringing him up in that seclusion? There was
nothing in his letters to show it. But it must have been very soon
revealed to him how exceptional his life had been, and how much he had
missed of what other boys had had. He would not always be capable of
gauging the value of what he had missed, when face to face with some
situation with which his inexperience had unfitted him to cope lightly.
It might take him a long time to acknowledge that what he had gained had
been more than what he had missed, and partly arose from it. He would
know, too, before long that the immovable seclusion in which his
grandmother and mother and Wilbraham himself lived was anything but the
normal state of affairs that it had been implicitly represented to him.
He would ask himself why they had never left Royd from one year's end to
another, and why so few people had ever come there; and he would see
that it had all been with reference to him. He would hardly be able to
understand it. If he acknowledged the freedom he had enjoyed, the
limits of it would still strike him, with his new knowledge of the
world's ways. If he had not, since his childhood, been dominated by
women, he had certainly been managed, without knowing it. Whether, in
the strangeness and disagreeableness and difficulty of much of his new
life he was inclined to resent this unduly, or whether he saw behind it
enough to admit that there had been wisdom as well as apparent
eccentricity, and certainly love, in the steps his youth had been made
to tread, it would not be surprising if he made up his mind at an early
date that the managing should come to an end. It was for him to direct
his own life now. He would run no further risk of influence brought to
bear upon it, the clue to which was not in his hands.
In the first spring Wilbraham left Royd to take up work in a Government
office in London, for which Lady Brent had asked for him. A few months
later Mrs. Brent broke loose from the now insupportable stagnation of
Royd, and went to London with the avowed object of nursing. She had had
no training and was quite ignorant of the steps to be taken, but Lady
Brent arranged an income for her, and made no attempt to direct her
movements in any way. She was left alone in the Castle, and stayed
there alone for another year. To all outward appearance she was exactly
what she had always been, always occupied, always unemotional, though
sometimes more unapproachable than at others. The months dragged on.
*CHAPTER XXI*
*SIDNEY*
One morning in May Lady Brent unlocked the letter bag, which she never
did without anticipations of some news of Harry. It was at least a
month since there had been a letter from him, but there at last it was,
searched for among all the rest and making them of no value at all.
It was directed to Mrs. Brent, and the envelope bore the stamps and
marks of the field from which it had been written. All Harry's previous
letters had been redirected from London.
She sat looking at it and turning it over. Once or twice she seemed to
be on the point of opening it, and she must have been under the
strongest temptation to do so. What could it mean but that he had
reached his goal, and the long time of half estrangement was over?
Perhaps it was to say that he was coming home.
She laid it down, and took up her other letters with a sigh, but before
she opened any of them, she went to her writing-table and enclosed it in
a note to Mrs. Brent. Then she rang the bell and gave orders that some
one was to ride over to Burport with it, and arrange for its immediate
transmission to London by train. By that means she might get the
telegram she had asked for from her daughter-in-law that evening. Then
she went calmly about her duties.
These included one that was quite unusual at Royd Castle. It was to see
that preparations were made for visitors. Her old friend Lady Avalon
had written to ask if she might come for a few days. After twelve or
thirteen years Poldaven Castle was to be occupied again for the summer.
Lady Avalon wanted to see what was necessary to be done there, but it
had been empty so long that she didn't want to trust herself in it for a
night if Lady Brent could do with her at Royd and let her go over from
there..
Later on that morning she went again to her writing-table and wrote to
Lady Avalon, who was expected in a couple of days' time. Would she care
to bring her daughter Sidney with her? It was no doubt very dull at
Royd, but there was just a chance of Harry coming home from Egypt. She
sat considering for a moment when she had written this, but closed her
letter without adding any more. Harry was extremely unlikely to be at
Royd in a few days' time, but if Sidney had already been there when he
did come home it would be easier to ask her there again.
After this she went down to the village, taking Ben, Harry's retriever,
with her.
She called at the Vicarage. The Grants were to be asked to dine when
Lady Avalon came. The maid who opened the door looked at her rather
curiously, but she did not notice it. Mrs. Grant was in the
drawing-room and sprang up to meet her. "Oh, I'm so glad!" she said,
and came forward, her hand held out and her face all alight with
pleasure.
Lady Brent was taken aback by the warmth of the greeting. She liked
Mrs. Grant and supposed that Mrs. Grant liked her, but she was not
accustomed to this kind of welcome.
"Thank you," she said, a shade drily. "I came to ask if you and your
husband would dine with me on Thursday. Lady Avalon will be staying
with me, and possibly her daughter, Lady Sidney Pawle."
"Oh, thank you, yes, we shall be very pleased," said Mrs. Grant. "Will
Harry be home by then? He might, mightn't he? Oh, I am so glad he's
coming at last."
Lady Brent understood now, but it took her a little time to recover
herself. "He has written to Jane, I suppose," she said, speaking in as
natural a tone as possible. "There was a letter from him this morning,
but it was to his mother, and I was not expecting to get the news in it
until this evening."
"Oh, I'll go and get the letter at once," said Mrs. Grant, and ran out
of the room, leaving Lady Brent alone. She sat quite still, and the
colour that had left her face returned to it again. When Mrs. Grant
came back, accompanied by Jane, with the precious letter in her hand,
she had quite recovered herself.
Jane was rather a favourite of Lady Brent's. She was not in the least
afraid of her, as her elders were apt to be, and talked to her about
Harry in a way that nobody else did. She was often invited to the
Castle by herself, and was always ready to go, though it might have been
thought that her inclinations towards bodily activity would have made it
a doubtful pleasure to have to sit and talk to an elderly woman.
Probably she was the only person in the world of whom Lady Brent would
not feel jealous because she had received this news first.
"I thought I'd like to bring you the letter myself," said Jane, and
stood by her side as she read it.
Jane was fourteen now. Probably no two years in her life could bring as
great a change as the last two had brought to her. She had grown tall
for her age, but was still slim and very upright. There was a good deal
of the child in her still, and even a little of the boy, for her figure
was not so rounded as with most girls of her age, and her taste for
boyish activities was still strong. But there was more of the budding
woman. She was gentler in speech and manner than of old, and her face,
if not yet her figure, was wholly feminine. Her early promise of beauty
was in course of being fulfilled. She was very pretty, with her fair
hair and wide grey eyes, and it was no longer an effort to make her tidy
in her dress. Her skirts were well below her knees, and in her more
active moments she took some pains to keep them there.
"My dear Jane,
"I shall be home almost as soon as you get this. I suppose you know
I've been serving as a trooper all this time, but now I've got a
commission. I shall be in London for a day or two to get my kit, and
then I shall come down to Royd with a month's leave in front of me.
Hurrah! You and I and Pobbles will have lots of fun together. I hope
you've kept the cabin in good repair.
"Love from
"HARRY."
Lady Brent took a long time to read it, while Jane stood and looked at
her. When she looked up at last, Jane said: "I wish I'd known that his
other letter hadn't been written to you. I would have brought this up
at once.
"Thank you, dear," said Lady Brent. "Of course he doesn't know that his
mother is not at Royd. He would have thought that we should all get the
news at the same time. Perhaps he will have told her more exact dates,
if he knows them. At any rate it cannot be long now before we see him
again."
She was completely herself now, and no one who had not known her would
have guessed that the news she had received meant very much to her. She
rose almost immediately and took her leave. She kissed Jane as she said
good-bye, which was an unusual attention, and perhaps meant that she
bore her no grudge for having received the news first.
"I think it's rather horrid of Mrs. Brent to be away," said Jane, when
she had gone. "Of course he would expect to find her waiting here for
him."
Mrs. Grant was sometimes puzzled in her dealings with this growing
daughter of hers. She was becoming more of a companion to her, and now
Pobbles had gone to school could be treated less as a child. But it was
not always easy to decide how far she should be let into the confidences
of her elders. She seemed to have acquired a prejudice against Mrs.
Brent, which had hitherto been treated as something not to be
encouraged.
"It has made it difficult not to be able to tell Harry anything of what
has happened here," Mrs. Grant said. "She went away to try to get some
nursing, and----"
"A fat lot of nursing she's done!" interrupted Jane. "I don't believe
she's tried at all. She's just enjoying herself in London. I don't
suppose Lady Brent cares for her much, but it's rather hard lines to
leave her all by herself."
Mrs. Grant was much of the same opinion, since Mrs. Brent had taken no
steps, as far as was known, to embark upon the nursing career which she
had announced as her intention; but she was not quite ready to agree
with Jane's criticism of her. "It isn't only she that has left Lady
Brent," she said.
"Mr. Wilbraham is doing some work," said Jane, "and Harry had to go. If
he hadn't gone when he did, he would have gone by this time."
"I don't want to criticize him," said her mother. "It will be all over
now, but I think it has been hard lines, as you say, on Lady Brent that
she hasn't been able to write to him."
"She understands that," said Jane. "We've talked about it."
Mrs. Grant knew that Lady Brent had, surprisingly, made something of a
confidante of Jane. She was pleased that it was so, but did not like to
ask questions about her confidences.
Jane, however, seemed ready to give them. "We think," she said, "that
until he was made an officer he wouldn't want anybody to know that he
was Sir Harry Brent, or different from any other soldier. It would make
it difficult if he had letters from home. She's proud of him for it.
So am I."
Mrs. Grant was touched by the "we." Evidently Jane was of some comfort
to the lonely self-contained lady, if they discussed matters in that
way. She kissed her. "I expect it's something like that, darling," she
said. "Anyhow, it's all over now, and he'll be just like any other
young man. You must go back to lessons now."
"I don't think he's like other young men," said Jane, as she reluctantly
prepared to leave. "I think it's much finer to go through all the
hardships. It's like pioneering. I expect what we used to talk about in
the log cabin had something to do with it."
"Did you tell Lady Brent about that, darling?"
"Oh, yes. And she quite agreed with me. Lady Brent understands things.
I think Mrs. Brent is a rotter. Good-bye, mother dear."
Mrs. Brent's telegram came that evening, and she herself the next day.
According to his letter, Harry might be in England almost as soon as it
reached her. He would come down to Royd as soon as possible, but he must
be in London for a few days to get his kit. He would wire from there.
But he did not tell her where she could communicate with him.
She was all on edge, and Lady Brent must have exercised the strongest
control over herself to act with her accustomed calmness and suavity.
Suavity had not always been the note of her intercourse with her
daughter-in-law, but it was clear that this was not the time when
friction between them could be allowed to appear. If she did not
exercise restraint it was quite certain that Mrs. Brent wouldn't. She
seemed to be anxious to show that she had thrown off anything like
submission. She was noticeably less well-mannered than she had been,
though she bore herself as if she had acquired more importance. She
brought with her a great many expensive clothes, and talked about them a
good deal. She dressed elaborately, and in a style to which no
objection could be made if elaborate clothes were accepted as suitable
for wear in the country and at this time; but they did not improve her.
Lady Brent ventured upon a hint that Harry might like better to see her
as she had been before, but she flared up in offence, and let it be
known that she had learnt a lot since she had been in London. Harry
also would have learnt something; the old days at Royd were over.
Underneath all her new independence, and almost aggressive spirit, her
longing for Harry was plain. She seemed to have resigned herself to his
absence, and to have gained some satisfaction out of her life in London,
of which she had remarkably little to tell. But now that he was coming
home again her maternal instinct arose to swamp everything else. At the
end of the twenty-four hours Lady Brent spent alone with her she was far
nearer to being what she had been before she had left Royd. She had to
have some sympathetic ear into which to pour her doubts and complaints
and disappointments. If only Harry had told her where he was to be in
London, she could have met him there. Oh, it was hard to think that he
might be there now and she could not go to him. When did Lady Brent
think they might expect him? She asked her this again and again, and
made innumerable confused calculations, based upon this or that idea
that came into her head. She was very trying, but she had to be put up
with. She was Harry's mother, whatever she might have made of herself.
On the day after her arrival Lady Avalon came, with her daughter, but
still there was no word from Harry.
They came in time for tea, and the two older ladies retired to talk
together afterwards. Mrs. Brent was left to entertain the girl. In the
few minutes' conversation Sidney had with her mother before dinner she
told her that unless she gained some relief from that companionship she
really couldn't stay at Royd. "She's a perfectly appalling woman,
mother," she said. "How on earth she can have had a son like Harry, if
he's anything like he used to be as a child, I can't understand."
"I don't think she's so bad as all that, dear," said Lady Avalon. "From
what Lady Brent tells me, she's been running with the people she comes
from, and of course they can't be much. That's admitted, though I don't
know anything about them. She seemed a quiet enough little thing when I
was here last. She'll settle down again."
"I hope she will. But it's a poor lookout for me if I've got to make a
bosom friend of her, while you and Lady Brent are putting your heads
together. Really, darling, I don't think I can stand it."
"Harry may be home any day, and until he does come we can spend most of
our time at Poldaven, though of course we mustn't just make a
convenience of being here. The Vicarage people are dining to-night, so
you won't have her on your hands entirely. The Vicar is David Grant,
the novelist. I haven't read any of his novels, but I believe a lot of
people do. I expect he's a clever man, and will cheer us up a bit."
"I should think we shall have quite an hilarious evening--you and Lady
Brent talking together, and me and Mrs. Brent and the Vicarage people."
"I thought you rather liked Vicarage people. Don't make yourself
superior to your company, there's a good girl. It's the worst sort of
form--especially in the country."
Whatever the allusion to Vicarage people may have meant, it sent Sidney
out of the room with a blush on her cheeks, and Lady Avalon rang for her
maid with a look on her face as of one who had been rather clever.
Sidney had grown into a pretty girl, though she was considered the ugly
duckling of the handsome family to which she belonged. She was tall,
and had not yet quite grown out of the youthful awkwardness of her
stature. But there was more character in her well-shaped features than
her sisters could boast of, though their widely known beauty had
descended upon them in early childhood and suffered no relapse through
the years of their growth. They inherited their good looks from both
sides of the family, but Sidney was the only one of the girls who
derived more from her father. Perhaps on that account she was his
favourite, and he was accustomed to prophesy that she would beat them
all in looks when she really grew up. She had kind eyes and a smiling
mouth, to which her decisively jutting chin gave character. Her skin
was very fair and clear, and her abundant brown hair had just a touch of
auburn in it. There were some to whom the hint of gaucherie in her
carriage gave her an added charm. It spoke of health and youth and
vigour, and went well with her free unafraid speech and her frequent
smile.
Grant, always on the lookout for new types of female beauty, but a
little inclined to make all his heroines alike, studied her closely that
evening at dinner and was enchanted with her. If he had known that she
had been looked upon as an ugly duckling in her family it would almost
have given him a novel ready made. Mrs. Grant liked her too, and as they
walked home across the park, cheered by the unaccustomed pleasures of
society, they made a match between her and Harry there and then, as the
Pawle and Brent nurses had done in their early childhood.
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Grant, "if Lady Brent had asked her
here with that idea in her mind. It's the first time in the three years
we've been here that any young person has stayed at the Castle. I dare
say Lady Avalon is in it too. They're old friends, and they seem to
have their heads together a good deal."
"Lady Brent didn't know Harry was coming home when she told us they were
coming," said Mrs. Grant. "It's a coincidence, but perhaps a fortunate
one. They played together as children--Harry and Lady Sidney. It would
be rather a pretty match--except that Harry is so young--not twenty
yet."
"You think he ought to wait a few years and marry somebody much younger,
eh? Somebody about the age of Jane."
Mrs. Grant sighed. "I shouldn't be a mother if I hadn't thought of
that," she said. "And Jane will be quite as pretty as Lady Sidney when
she grows up. But Harry is so sweet and natural with the children that
it would be a pity to spoil it by thinking of something that would make
it all quite different. He wouldn't be what he is if he were to think
of Jane as anything but a child, for some years yet."
"I think you're right," said her husband. "Of course I've built a few
castles in the air. I shouldn't be a father if I hadn't. But I expect
he'll marry young; he seems to me that sort of boy, somehow. I don't
think he could do better than marry Lady Sidney. She's very interested
in the idea of him. She talked to me a lot about the time they used to
play together as children."
"She said she'd come down to-morrow morning. I think she wants to get
away from Mrs. Brent, though I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Brent came with
her. I think she wants to show me as many of her new clothes as
possible. She hasn't improved up in London. I don't like her nearly as
much as I did."
"I never cared for her much," said Grant. "She's a common little thing,
however she may dress herself up to disguise it. I've sometimes
wondered what Harry will think about her when he does come home."
Lady Sidney came down to the Vicarage the next morning, and Mrs. Brent
came with her, as Mrs. Grant had anticipated. But apparently they each
wanted to get rid of the other, for directly Mrs. Brent had greeted Mrs.
Grant she said: "I want to have a long talk alone with you. I wonder if
you'd spare Jane from her lessons to show Lady Sidney the log cabin that
Harry built with the children. I've been telling her about it and she
said she'd like to see it."
Sidney laughed. "I don't want to be in the way," she said, "and I'd
like to have a walk with Jane, if she can be spared."
Jane was fetched. She received Mrs. Brent's effusive greeting with
unsmiling coolness and looked Sidney over very critically when she was
introduced to her. The inspection was apparently satisfactory, for she
went off with some alacrity to change her shoes; but that may have been
because she was relieved at getting off the rest of the morning's
lessons.