It was about eleven, when most of her household chores were done, that
Betty started off to pay an informal call on Miss Pendarth, in some ways
the most outstanding personality in the village of Beechfield.
"Busybody"--"mischief-maker"--"a very kind lady"--"a disagreeable
woman"--"a fearful snob"--"a true Christian"--were some of the epithets
which had been, and were still, used, to describe the woman to whose
house, Rose Cottage, Betty Tosswill, with a slight feeling of discomfort
bordering on pain, began wending her way.
Olivia Pendarth and her colourless younger sister, Anne, the latter
now long dead, had settled down at Beechfield in the nineties of the
last century. When both over thirty years of age, they had selected
Beechfield as a dwelling-place because of its quiet charm and nearness
to London. Also because Rose Cottage, which, in spite of its unassuming
name, was, if a small yet a substantial, red-brick house with a good
garden, paddock and stables, exactly suited them, as to price, and as to
the accommodation they then wanted. The surviving sister was now rather
over sixty, and her income was very much smaller than it had been, but it
never even occurred to her to try and sell what had become to her a place
of mingled painful and happy memories.
In every civilised country a village is the world in little, though it
is always surprising to the student of human nature to find how many
distinct types are gathered within its narrow bounds. And if this is
true of village communities all over Europe, it is peculiarly true of
an English village.
Miss Pendarth was a clever woman. Too clever to be really happy in the
life to which she had condemned herself. She had been born many years too
early to follow up any of the various paths now open to the intelligent,
educated woman. Yet she belonged, by birth and upbringing, to that
age-long tradition of command which perhaps counts for most of all to the
one class which has remained in England much the same for generations.
The Pendarths had once been very great people in Cornwall, and long
records of the family are to be found in all county histories. Olivia
Pendarth was wordlessly very proud of their lineage, and it is no
exaggeration to say that she would have died rather than in any way
disgrace it.
A woman of great activity, she had perforce no way of expending her
energies excepting in connection with the people about her, and always in
intention at least she spent herself to some beneficent purpose. Yet
there was a considerable circle who much disliked her and whom she
herself regarded with almost limitless scorn. These were the folk, idle
people most of them, and very well-to-do, who, having made fortunes in
London, now lived within a radius of five to ten miles round Beechfield.
Miss Pendarth was on excellent terms with what one must call, for want of
a better name, the cottage class. To them she was a good, firm, faithful
friend, seeing them through their many small and great troubles, and
taking real pains to help their sons and daughters to make good starts
in life. Many a village mother had asked Miss Pendarth to "speak" to her
naughty girl or headstrong son, and as she was quite fearless, her words
often had a surprising effect. She neither patronised nor scolded, and it
was impossible to take her in.
But when dealing with the affairs of those of her neighbours, who were
well-to-do, and who regarded themselves as belonging to her own class, it
was quite another matter. With regard to them and their affairs she was
what they often angrily accused her of being--a busy-body and even a
mischief-maker. Her lively mind caused her to take a great interest--too
great an interest--in the private affairs of people some of whom she
disliked, and even despised. She was also not as scrupulous as she might
have been in repeating unsavoury gossip. Yet, even so, so substantially
good a woman was she, that what some people called Miss Pendarth's
interfering ways had more than once brought about a reconciliation
between husband and wife, or between an old-fashioned mother and a
rebellious daughter. It was hopeless to try to keep from her the news of
any local quarrel, love-affair, or money trouble--somehow or other she
always found out everything she was likely to want to know--and she
almost always wanted to know everything.
There was another fact about Miss Pendarth, and one which much
contributed to her importance even with the people who disliked and
feared her: she was the only inhabitant of the remote Surrey village who
was in touch with the world of fashion and society--who knew people whose
"pictures are in the papers." Now and again, though more and more rarely
as time went on, she would leave Rose Cottage to take part in some big
family gathering of the important and prosperous clan to which, in spite
of her own lack of means, she yet belonged, and with whom she kept in
touch. But she herself never entertained a visitor at Rose Cottage, for
a reason of which she herself was painfully aware and which the more
careless of those about her did not in the least realise. This reason was
that she was very, very poor. Before the War, her little settled income
had enabled her to live in comfort in a house which was her own. But now,
had not her one servant been friend as well as maid, she could not have
gone on living in Rose Cottage; and during the last year, as Betty
Tosswill perhaps alone had noticed, certain beautiful things, fine bits
of good old silver, delicate inlaid pieces of furniture, and a pair of
finely carved gilt mirrors, had disappeared from Rose Cottage.
The house was situated in the village street, with, however, a paved
forecourt, in which stood two huge Italian oil jars gay from April to
November with narcissi, tulips, or pink geraniums. Miss Pendarth was
proud of the fine old Sussex ironwork gate and railing which separated
her domain from the village street. The gate was exactly opposite the
entrance to the churchyard, while at right angles stood the village post
office. From the windows of her drawing-room upstairs, the mistress of
Rose Cottage was able to see a great deal that went on in the village of
Beechfield.
Miss Pendarth's appearance, as is so often the case with an elderly,
unmarried Englishwoman of her class, gave no clue to her clever,
decisive, and original character. She had a thin, rather long mouth, what
old-fashioned people call a good nose, and grey eyes, and she had kept
the slight, rather stiff, figure of her girlhood. She still wore her
hair, which was only now beginning to turn really grey, braided in the
way which had been becoming to her thirty years before. The effect, if
neat, was rather wig-like, and the one peculiar-looking thing about her
appearance. She always wore, summer and winter, a mannish-looking
tailor-made coat and skirt, and a plainly cut flannel or linen shirt. At
night--and she dressed each evening--she alternated between two black
dresses, the one a velvet dress gown, the other a sequin-covered satin
tea-gown.
Such was the woman to whom Betty Tosswill had thought it just as well to
go herself with the news of Godfrey Radmore's coming visit to Old Place,
and as she walked slowly up the village street, the girl tried to remind
herself that Miss Pendarth had a very kind side to her nature. Of all the
letters Betty had received at the time of her brother's death, she had
had none of more sincerely expressed sympathy than that from this old
friend whom she was now going to see. And yet? Yet what pain and distress
Miss Pendarth had caused them all at the time of the Rosamund trouble!
Instead of behaving like a true friend, and, as far as possible, stopping
the flow of gossip, she had added to its volume, causing the story to be
known to a far larger circle than would otherwise have been the case. But
Betty, honesty itself, was well aware that her step-mother had made a
serious mistake in not telling Miss Pendarth what there was to tell. A
confidence she never betrayed.
Betty also reminded herself ruefully that in the far-away days when
Godfrey Radmore had been so often an inmate of Old Place, there had been
something like open war between himself and Miss Pendarth, and when she
had heard of his extraordinary good fortune, she had not hidden her
regret that it had fallen on one so unworthy.
As Betty went up to the iron gate and unlatched it, she half hoped that
the owner of Rose Cottage would be out. Miss Pendarth, unlike most of her
neighbours, always kept her front door locked--you could not turn the
handle and walk right into the house.
To-day she answered Betty's ring herself, and with a smile of welcome
lighting up her rather grim face she drew the girl into the hall and
kissed her affectionately.
"I was just starting to pay my first call on Mrs. Crofton. But I'm so
glad. Perhaps you'll be able to tell me something about her. I hear she
had supper with you the day she arrived!"
As she spoke, she led the way into a little room off the hall. "I've been
trying to make out to what branch of the Croftons she belongs," she went
on reflectively. "There was a man called Cecil Crofton in my second
brother's regiment a matter of forty years ago."
"She looks quite young," said Betty doubtfully.
"Old enough to know better than to get herself talked about the first
hour she arrived," observed Miss Pendarth grimly.
"I don't think she can have done that--"
"Not only did she bring a man with her, a Captain Tremaine,--but just
before he left they had some kind of quarrel which was overheard by two
of the tradespeople who were calling to leave their cards."
"How--how horrid," murmured Betty. But what really shocked her was that
Miss Pendarth should listen to that sort of gossip.
"It was horrid and absurd too, for the man had turned the key in the lock
of the sitting-room, and it stuck for a minute or two when one of them
tried to unlock the door in answer to the maid's knock!"
"What an extraordinary thing!"
"I could hardly believe the story, but now that I've seen Mrs. Crofton,
I'm not so very much surprised!"
"Then you have seen her?" Betty smiled.
"I've just had a glimpse of her," admitted Miss Pendarth grudgingly, "as
she came out of church, a day or two ago, with your sister Dolly."
"She's extraordinarily pretty, isn't she?"
"Too theatrical for my taste. But still, yes, I suppose one must admit
that she will prove a very formidable rival to most of our young ladies.
I'm told she's a war widow--and she certainly behaves as if she were."
"I don't think it's fair to say that!" Betty crimsoned. She felt a close
kinship to all those women who had lost someone they loved in the War.
"You mean not fair to the war widows?"
"Yes, that is what I do mean. Only a few of them behave horridly--"
There was a pause. Betty was trying to bring herself to introduce the
subject which filled her mind. But Miss Pendarth was still full of the
new tenant of The Trellis House.
"I hear that Timmy's dog gave her a fearful fright."
Betty felt astonished, well used as she was to the other's almost uncanny
knowledge of all that went on in the village. Who could have told her
this particular bit of gossip?
"I wonder," went on the elder lady reflectively, "what made Mrs. Crofton
come to Beechfield, of all places in the world. Somehow she doesn't look
the sort of woman who would care for a country life."
"Godfrey Radmore first told her of Beechfield," said Betty, and in spite
of herself, she felt the colour rise again hotly to her cheeks.
"Godfrey Radmore?" It was Miss Pendarth's turn to be genuinely surprised.
"_Godfrey Radmore!_ Then she's Australian? I thought there was something
odd about her."
Betty smiled, but she felt irritated. In some ways Miss Pendarth was
surely very narrow-minded!
"No, she's not Australian--at least I'm pretty sure she's not. They met
during the War, in Egypt. Her husband was quartered there at the same
time as Godfrey." She paused uncomfortably--somehow she found it very
difficult to go on and say what, after all, she had come here to say this
morning.
"I suppose," said Miss Pendarth at last, "that Godfrey Radmore is back
in Brisbane by now. One of the strange things about this war has been the
way in which those who could have been best spared, escaped."
In spite of herself, Betty smiled again. "Godfrey has come back to
England for good," she said quietly, "he's coming to-day for a long
week-end."
"D'you mean," asked Miss Pendarth, "that he's coming to stay with this
Mrs. Crofton at The Trellis House?"
"Oh, no!" exclaimed Betty. (What odd ideas Miss Pendarth sometimes had.)
"He's coming to Old Place of course: he telephoned to Janet from London,
and proposed himself."
"I think it's very good of you all to put up with him," said Miss
Pendarth drily, "I've never said so before, my dear, but I thought it
exceedingly ungrateful of him not to have come down here when he was in
England a year ago, I mean when he sent that puppy to your brother
Timmy."
Betty remained silent, and for once her old friend felt--what she too
seldom did feel--that she might just as well have kept her thoughts to
herself.
Miss Pendarth was really attached to Betty Tosswill, but she was one of
those people--there are many such--who find it all too easy to hurt those
they love.
They both got up.
"I'm afraid you think me very uncharitable," said the older woman
suddenly.
Betty looked at her rather straight. "I sometimes think it strange," she
said slowly, "that anyone as kind and clever as I know you are, does not
make more allowances for people. For my part, I wonder that Godfrey is
coming here at all. As I look back and remember all that happened--I
don't think that anyone at Old Place behaved either kindly or fairly to
him--I mean about our engagement."
Miss Pendarth was moved as well as surprised by Betty's quiet words. The
girl was extraordinarily reserved--she very rarely spoke out her secret
thoughts. But Miss Pendarth was destined to be even more surprised, for
Betty suddenly put out her hand, and laid it on the other's arm.
"I want to tell you," she said earnestly, "that as far as I am concerned,
everything that happened then is quite, quite over. I don't think that
Godfrey would have been happy with me, and so I feel that we both had a
great escape. I want to tell you this because so many people knew of our
engagement, and I'm afraid his coming back like this may cause a lot of
silly, vulgar talk."
Miss Pendarth was more touched than she would have cared to admit even to
herself. "You can count on me, my dear," she said gravely, "and may I
say, Betty, that I feel sure you're right in feeling that you would have
been most unhappy with him?"
As Betty walked on to the post office she was glad that _that_ little
ordeal was over.
* * * * *
John Tosswill was one of those men who instinctively avoid and put off
as long as may be, a difficult or awkward moment. That was perhaps one
reason why he had not made a better thing of his life. So his wife was
not surprised when, after luncheon, he observed rather nervously that he
was going out, and that she must tell Godfrey Radmore how sorry he was
not to be there to welcome him.
As she remained silent, he added, rather shamefacedly:--"I'll be back in
time to have a few words with him before dinner."
Poor Janet! She still loved her husband as much as she had done in the
days when he, the absent-minded, gentle, refined scholar, made his way
into her heart. Nay, in a sense, she loved him more, for he had become
entirely dependent on her. But though she loved and admired him, she no
longer relied on him, as she had once done; he had a queer way of failing
her at the big moments of life, and now, to-day, she felt it too bad of
him to shirk the moment of Godfrey Radmore's return. His presence would
have made everything easier, for he had never admitted either to himself
or her, that Godfrey had behaved in a strange or untoward manner.
As she turned over the leaves of a nursery-man's catalogue and gazed at
the list of plants and bulbs she could not afford to buy, long-forgotten
scenes crowded on her memory.
Radmore had been the violent, unreasonable element in the painful
episode, for Betty had behaved well, almost too well. The girl would have
thrown in her lot with her lover, but both her father and step-mother had
been agonised at the thought of trusting her to a man--and so very young
a man--who had made such a failure of his life. That he was going out to
Australia practically penniless--nay, worse than penniless, saddled with
debts of so-called honour--had been, or so they had judged at the time,
entirely his own fault.
John Tosswill, who had a very clear and acute mind when any abstract
question was under discussion, had told Betty plainly that she would only
be a dangerous hindrance to a man situated as Radmore would be situated
in a new country, and she had submitted to her father's judgment.
But how ironical are the twists and turns of life! If only they had known
what the future was to bring forth, how differently Betty's father and
step-mother would have acted! Yet now to-day, Janet tried to tell herself
that Betty had had a happy escape. Godfrey had been like a bull in the
net during those painful days nine years ago. He had shown himself
utterly unreasonable, and especially angry, nay enraged, with her, Janet,
because he had been foolish enough to hope that she would take his part
against Betty's father.
* * * * *
Acting on a sudden impulse, she went upstairs, and, feeling a little
ashamed of what she was doing, went into the room which was to be Godfrey
Radmore's. Then she walked across to where stood Timmy's play-box, in
order to find the letter which Betty's one-time lover had written to his
godson.
The play-box had been George's play-box in the days of his preparatory
school, and it still had his name printed across it.
She turned up the wooden lid. Everything in the box was very tidy, for
Timmy was curiously grown-up in some of his ways, and so she very soon
found the letter she was seeking for.
It was a quaint, humorous epistle--the letter of a man who feels quite
sure of himself, and yet as she read it through rapidly, there rose
before her the writer as he had last appeared in a railing whirlwind
of rage and fury, just before leaving Old Place--he had vowed at the
time--for ever. She remembered how he had shouted at her, hurling bitter
reproaches, telling her she would be sorry one day for having persuaded
Betty to give him up. But though she, Janet Tosswill, had not forgotten,
he had evidently made up his mind, the moment he had met with his
unexpected and astonishing piece of good luck, to let bygones be bygones.
For, after that first letter to his godson, gifts had come in quick
succession to Old Place, curious unexpected, anonymous gifts, but even
Dolly had guessed at once from whom they came.
No wonder the younger children were all excited and delighted at the
thought of his coming visit! Radmore was now looked upon as a fairy
godfather might have been. They were too young, too self-absorbed, to
realise that these wonderful gifts out of the blue never seemed to wing
their way to Betty or Janet. Yet stop, there had been an exception. Last
Christmas each had received an anonymous fairing--Betty, a beautiful
little watch, set in diamonds, and Janet, a wonderful old lace flounce.
Both registered parcels had come from London, Godfrey Radmore being known
at the time to be in Australia. But neither recipient of the delightful
gift had ever cared to wear or use it.