At the moment that Enid Crofton was telling herself that everything was
going fairly well with her, and that nothing could alter the fact that
she was now, and likely to remain for a long time, a woman likely to
attract every man with whom she came in contact--Godfrey Radmore,
following Janet Tosswill after breakfast into the drawing-room of Old
Place, exclaimed deprecatingly:--"I feel like Rip Van Winkle!'
"Do you?" She turned to him and smiled a little sadly. "It's _you_ that
have changed, Godfrey. Everything here is much the same. As for me, I
never see any change from one year to another."
"But they've all grown up!" he exclaimed plaintively. "You can't think
how odd it seems to find a lot of grown-up young ladies and gentlemen
instead of the jolly little kids who were in the nursery with Nanna nine
years ago. By the way, Nanna hasn't changed, and"--he hesitated, then
brought out with an effort, "Mr. Tosswill is exactly the same."
She felt vexed that he hadn't included Betty. To her step-mother's fond
eyes Betty was more attractive now than in her early girlhood. "I think
the children have improved very much," she said quickly. "Jack was a
horrid little prig nine years ago!"
She hadn't forgiven Radmore. And yet, in a sense, she was readjusting her
views and theories about him, for the simple reason that he, Godfrey
Radmore, had changed so utterly. From having been a hot-tempered,
untameable, high-spirited boy, he was now, or so it seemed to her, a
cool, restrained man of the world, old for his years. In fact it was he
who was now a stranger--but a stranger who had most attractive manners,
and who had somehow slipped very easily into their everyday life. Janet
liked his deferential manner to the master of the house, she enjoyed his
kindly and good-humoured, if slightly satirical dealings with Jack and
with pretty Rosamund, and she was very grateful to him for the way he
treated queer, little Timmy, her own beloved changeling child.
And now something happened that touched her, and made her suddenly feel
as if she was with the old Godfrey Radmore again.
"Look here," he said, in a low, hesitating voice, "I want to tell you,
Janet, that I didn't know till yesterday about George. You'll think me a
fool--but somehow I always thought of him as being safe in India." And
then with sudden passion he asked:--"How can you say that everything is
the same in Old Place with George not here? Why, to me, George was as
much part of Old Place as--as Betty is!"
"We all thought you knew--at least I wasn't sure."
"Thank God _he_ didn't think so poorly of me as that," he muttered, and
then he looked away, his eyes smarting with unshed tears. "Nothing will
ever be the same to me again without George in the world."
As she said nothing, he went on with sudden passion:--"Every other
country in Europe has changed utterly since the War, but England seemed
to me, till last night, exactly the same--only rather bigger and more
bustling than nine years ago." He drew a long breath. "Timmy and I went
into the post-office last evening, and Cobbett asked me to go in, and see
his wife. I thought I remembered her so well--and when I saw her, Janet,
I didn't know her! Then I asked after her boys--and she told me."
"It's strange that a man who went through it all himself should feel like
that," she said slowly.
The door opened suddenly and Rosamund's pretty head appeared: "There's a
message come through saying that your car's all right, and that it will
be along in about an hour," she exclaimed joyfully. To Rosamund, Godfrey
Radmore was in very truth a stranger, and a very attractive stranger at
that.
As a rule, after breakfast, all the young people went their various ways,
but this morning they were all hanging about waiting vaguely for Godfrey
to come and do something with one or all of them. Rosamund was longing to
ask him whether he knew any of the London theatrical managers; Tom was
wondering whether Godfrey would allow him to drive his car; Dolly and
Timmy, as different in everything else as two human beings could well
be, each desired to take him into the village and show him off to their
friends. The only one of the young people who was not really interested
in Radmore was Jack Tosswill. He was engaged just now in looking
feverishly for an old gardening book which he had promised to lend Mrs.
Crofton, and he was cursing under his breath because the book had been
mislaid.
As Rosamund looked in, her step-mother and Radmore both stopped speaking
abruptly, and so after a doubtful moment, she withdrew her head, and shut
the door behind her.
"Tell me about George," he said, without looking at her.
"I think Betty would like to tell you," she answered slowly: "Ask her
about him some time when you're alone together."
"Where is she now?" he asked abruptly.
"In the kitchen I think--but she won't be long."
Jack, looking ruffled and uneasy, very unlike his quiet, cool self, burst
into the room. "I can't think where that old shabby green gardening book
has gone, Janet. Do you know where it is?"
"You mean 'Gardening for Ladies'?"
"Yes."
"What on earth d'you want it for?"
"For Mrs. Crofton. Her garden's been awfully neglected."
"I'll find it presently. I think it's in my bedroom."
Again the door shut, and Janet turned to Radmore: "Your friend has made
a conquest of Jack!" She spoke with a touch of rather studied unconcern,
for she had been a little taken aback last evening when Timmy had told
her casually of his own and his godfather's call at The Trellis House.
"My friend?" Radmore repeated uncertainly.
"I mean Mrs. Crofton. The coming of a new person to live in Beechfield is
still quite an event, Godfrey."
"I don't think she'll make much difference to Beechfield," again he spoke
with a touch of hesitation. "To tell you the truth, Janet, I rather
wonder that she decided to live in the country at all. I should have
thought that she would far prefer London, and all that London stands for.
But I'm afraid that she's got very little money, and, of course, the
country _is_ cheaper than town, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is. But Mrs. Crofton can't be poor. I know she paid a
premium for the lease of The Trellis House."
"That's odd." Radmore spoke in an off-hand manner, but Janet, watching
him, thought he felt a little awkward. He went on:--"I know that Colonel
Crofton was hard up. He told me so, quite frankly, the last time I saw
him. But of course she may have had money of her own."
Janet looked at him rather hard. A disagreeable suspicion had entered her
mind. She wondered whether there was anything like an "understanding"
between the man she was talking to and the tenant of The Trellis House.
If so, she wished with all her heart that Godfrey Radmore had kept away.
Why stir up embers they had all thought were dead, if he was going to
marry this very pretty but, to her mind, second-rate little woman, as
soon as a decent time had elapsed?
"What are your plans for the future?" she asked. "Are you going to settle
down, or are you going to travel a bit?" ("After all, he won't be able to
marry Mrs. Crofton for at least another six months," she said to
herself.)
"Oh, I mean to settle down." His answer was quick, decisive, final.
He went on: "My idea is to find a place, not too far from here, that
I can buy; and my plan is to go about and look for it now. That's why
I've hired a motor for a month. Perhaps you'd lend me Timmy, and, if it
wouldn't be improper, one of the girls, now and again? We might go round
and look about a bit."
And then he walked across to where she was standing, and put his hand on
her arm, "How about you?" he asked, "why shouldn't I take you and Timmy a
little jaunt just for a week or so--that would be rather fun, eh?"
She smiled and shook her head.
He took a step back. "Look here, Janet--do try and forgive me--I'm a more
sensible chap than I was, honest Injun!"
"I'm beginning to think you are," she cried, and then they both burst out
laughing.
He lingered a moment. He was longing, longing intensely, to ask her
certain questions. He wanted to know about Betty--what sort of a life
Betty had made for herself. He still, in an odd way, felt responsible
for Betty--which was clearly absurd.
And then Janet Tosswill said something that surprised him very much. "I
think you'd better go round and see some of the people in the village
to-day. I was rather sorry you went off straight to The Trellis House
last evening. You know how folks talked, even in the old days, in
Beechfield?"
He looked uneasy--taken aback, and she felt, if a little ashamed, glad
that she had made that "fishing" remark.
There was a pause, and then he said with a touch of formality: "Look
here, Janet? I'd like you to know that though I've become quite fond of
Mrs. Crofton, I'm only fond--nothing more, you understand? Perhaps I'll
make my meaning clearer when I tell you that I was the only man in Egypt
who knew her who wasn't in love with her."
He saw her face change and, rather piqued, he asked: "Did you think I
was?"
"I thought that you and she were great friends--"
"Well, so we are in a way. I saw a great deal of her in London."
"And you went straight off to see her the moment you arrived here."
"Well, perhaps I was foolish to do that."
What an odd admission to make. He certainly had changed amazingly in the
last nine years!
Then it was Janet who surprised him: "Don't make any mistake," she said
quickly. "There's no reason in the world why you shouldn't marry Mrs.
Crofton--after a decent interval has elapsed. All I meant to say--and
I'd rather say it right out now--is that as most people know that her
husband hasn't been dead more than a few weeks, you ought to be rather
careful, all the more careful if--if your friendship should come to
anything, Godfrey."
"But it won't!" he exclaimed, with a touch of the old heat, "indeed it
won't, Janet. To tell you the truth, I don't think I shall ever marry."
"_I_ certainly shouldn't if I were a rich bachelor," she said laughing;
and yet somehow what he had just said hurt her.
As for Radmore, he felt just a little jarred by her words. Had she quite
forgotten all that had happened in that long ago which, in a sense,
seemed to belong to another life? He hadn't, and since his arrival
yesterday certain things had come back in a rushing flood of memory.
"I've something to do in the garden now." Janet was smiling--she really
did feel perhaps rather absurdly relieved. Like Timmy, she didn't care
for Mrs. Crofton, and the mere suspicion that Godfrey Radmore had come
back here to Old Place in order to carry on a love affair had disturbed
her.
"By the way, how's McPherson?" he asked abruptly. "He _is_ a splendid
gardener and no mistake! I've never seen a garden looking more beautiful
than yours does just now, Janet. I woke early this morning and looked
out of my window. I suppose McPherson's about--I'll go out and speak to
him."
Her face shadowed. "McPherson," she said slowly, "was one of the first
men to leave Beechfield. He was perfectly fit, and he made up his mind to
go at once. You know, Godfrey--or perhaps you don't know--that the Scotch
glens emptied first of men?"
"D'you mean...?"
She nodded. "He was killed at the second battle of Ypres. He was sent to
the Front rather sooner than most, for he was a very intelligent man, and
really keen. I've got a boy now, a lad of seventeen--not half a bad sort,
but it does seem strange to give him every Saturday just double the money
I used to give McPherson!"
She went out, through into the garden, on these last words, and again
there came over Radmore a feeling of poignant sadness. How strange that
he should have spent those weeks in London, knowing so little, nay, not
knowing at all, what the War had really meant to the home country.
He opened the door into the corridor, and listened, wondering where they
had all gone. He had some business letters to write, and he told himself
that he would go and get them done in what he still thought of in his
mind as George's room. He had noticed that the big plain deal writing
table was still there.
He went upstairs, and when he opened the bedroom door, he was astonished
to find Rosamund kneeling in front of George's old play-box, routing
among what looked like a lot of papers and books.
"I'm hunting for a prescription for father," she said, looking up. "Timmy
thinks he put it in here one day after coming back from the chemist's at
Guildford." She looked flushed, and decidedly cross, as she went on: "No
one's taught Timmy to put things in their proper place, as we were taught
to do, when we were children!"
Radmore felt amused. She certainly was very, very pretty, and did not
look much more than a child herself.
"Look here," he said good-naturedly, "let me help. I don't think you're
going the right way to work." He felt just a little bit sorry for Timmy;
Rosamund was raking about as if the play-box was a bran-pie.
Bending down he took up out of the box a bundle of envelopes, copybooks,
and Christmas cards. Then he sat himself down on a chair in the window,
and began going through what he held, carefully and methodically.
Suddenly through the open door there came a cry of "Miss Rosamund, I want
you!"
Rosamund got up reluctantly. "Nanna's a regular tyrant!"
"Leave all this to me," he said. "I'll find the prescription if it's
here."
She went off, and almost at once he came to a folded bit of paper.
Perhaps this was the prescription? He opened it, and this is what he
read:--
March 12, 1919. This is the happiest day of my life. One of my
godmothers has died and left me £50. I am going to buy two nanny-goats,
a boy and a girl. They will have kids, and I shall make munny. We shall
then have a propper cook, and I shall never help Betty wash up any
more. I wish my other godmother would die. She is very genrus and
kind--she would go strait to Heaven. But she is very hellfy.
Poor little Timmy! Dear little unscrupulous child of nature! Would Timmy
wish him, Godfrey Radmore, dead, if some accident were to reveal to him
what a great difference it would make to them all? He hoped not. But he
couldn't feel sure, for, from being well-to-do the Tosswills must have
become poor, painfully and, to his mind, unnaturally poor.
Further search proved the prescription was not in the play-box, and he
went downstairs. Still that same unnatural silence through the house.
Where could Timmy be? Somehow he felt that he wanted to see Timmy and
find out about the nanny-goats. He feared his godson's expectations of
wealth had not been fulfilled, but he supposed that there was a "propper
cook," probably the lack of her had been quite temporary.
He wandered into the drawing-room. In the old days all five sitting-rooms
had been in use. Now four of them were closed, and the drawing-room was
everybody's meeting place. Dolly was there working a carpet-sweeper
languidly.
"Where's everybody?" he asked.
"I think Betty and Timmy are still in the scullery. I don't know where
Rosamund is."
"I suppose _I_ can go into the scullery?"
She looked at him dubiously. "Yes, if you'd like to--certainly. Betty
loves cooking and all that sort of thing. I hate it--so in our division
of labour, I do the other kind of housework." She looked ruffled and he
told himself, a little maliciously, that she was not unlike a lazy,
rather incompetent, housemaid. "If it's Timmy you want," she continued,
"I'll go and see if he can come."
"Please don't trouble. I'll find him all right."
Radmore went out into the passage. As the baize door, which shut off the
kitchen quarters, opened, he saw his godson and Rosamund before they saw
him, and he heard Rosamund say, in a cross tone: "It only means that
someone else will have to help her; I think it's very selfish of you,
Timmy."
From being full of joy Timmy's face became downcast and sullen.
"Hullo!" Radmore called out, "I want you to show me the garden, Timmy.
Where's Betty?"
"She's in the scullery, of course. I tell you I _have_ done, Rosamund.
You _are_ a cruel pig--"
"Come, Timmy, don't speak to your sister like that."
It ended in the three of them going off--Rosamund to look for the
prescription, and the other two into the garden.
* * * * *
Nanna waddled into the scullery: "I'll wipe up them things, Miss
Betty," she said good-naturedly; "you go out to Mr. Godfrey and Master
Timmy--they was asking for you just now."
Betty hesitated--and then suddenly she made up her mind that, yes, she
would do as Nanna suggested.
In early Victorian days women of Betty Tosswill's class and kind worked
many of their most anxious thoughts and fears, hopes and fancies, into
the various forms of needlework which were then considered the only
suitable kind of occupation for a young gentlewoman; and often Betty,
when engaged on the long and arduous task of washing up for her big
family party, pondered over the problems and secret anxieties which
assailed her. Though something of a pain, it had also been to her a great
relief to realise that the living flesh and blood Godfrey Radmore of
to-day had ousted the passionately devoted, if unreasonable and violent,
lover of her early girlhood. In the old days, intermingled with her deep
love of Radmore, there had been a protective, almost maternal, feeling,
and although Radmore had been four years older than herself, she had
always felt the older of the two. But now, in spite of the responsible,
anxious work she had done in France during the War, she felt that the
rôles were reversed, and that her one-time lover had become infinitely
older than she was herself in knowledge of the world.
Old Nanna hoped that Miss Betty would go upstairs and change her plain
cotton dress for something just a little prettier and that she would put
on, maybe, a hat trimmed with daisies which Nanna admired. But Betty did
nothing of the sort. She washed her hands at the sink, and then she went
out into the hall, and taking up her big plain old garden hat went
straight out into the keen autumnal air.
And then, as she caught sight of the tall man and of the little boy,
she stayed her steps, overwhelmed by a flood of both sweet and bitter
memories.
During the year which had followed the breaking of her engagement there
had been corners and by-ways of the big, rambling old garden filled with
poignant, almost unbearable, associations of the days when she and
Godfrey had been lovers. There had been certain nooks and hidden oases
where it had been agony to go. She had considered all kinds of things as
being possible. Perhaps her most certain conviction had been that he
would come back some day with a wife whom she, Betty, would try to teach
herself to love; but never had she visioned what had now actually
occurred, that is Radmore's quiet, commonplace falling-back into the
day-to-day life of Old Place.
All at once she heard Timmy's clear treble voice:--"Hullo! There's
Betty."
Radmore turned and said something Betty did not hear, and the child went
off like an arrow from the bow. Then Radmore, turning, came towards her
quickly. She had no clue to the strange look of pain and indecision on
his face, and her heart began to beat, strangely.
When close to her:--"Betty," he said in a low voice, "I want to tell you
that I didn't know about George till last night. How could you think I
did?"
"I suppose one does think unjust things when one's in great trouble," she
answered.
He felt hurt and angry and showed it. "I should have thought you would
all have known me well enough to know that I should have written at
once--at once. Why, the whole world's altered now that I know that George
is no longer in it! Perhaps that sounds foolish and exaggerated, as I
never wrote to him. But I think _you'll_ know what I mean, Betty? It was
all right, as long as I knew he was somewhere, happy."
She said almost inaudibly:--"I think that he is happy somewhere. You
know--but no, you don't know--that George was a born soldier. Those
months after he joined up, and until he was killed, were, I do believe,
by far the happiest of his life. He always said they were."
As he made no answer she went on:--"I'll show you some of his letters
if you like, and father will show you the letters that were sent to
us--afterwards."
By now they had left the garden proper, and were walking down an avenue
which was known as the Long Walk. It was here that they two, with George
always as a welcome third, used to play "tip and run" and "hide and seek"
with the then little children.
"Tell me something about the others," he said abruptly. "I'm moving in a
world unrealised."
She smiled up into his face. Somehow that confession touched her, and
brought them nearer to one another.
"Jack frightens me a bit, you know--he's so unlike George. And then the
girls? Is it true what Timmy says--that Rosamund wants to be an actress?"
There was a slight tone of censorious surprise in his voice, and Betty
reddened.
"I don't see why she shouldn't be an actress if she wants to be! Father's
making her wait till she's twenty-one."
"Let me see," he said hesitatingly, "Dolly's older than Jack, isn't she?"
"Oh, no. Dolly will only be twenty next Thursday."
There came over her an overwhelming impulse to tell him something--the
sort of thing she could only have told George.
"You know that pretty old church at Oakford?"
He nodded.
"Well, Mr. Runsby is dead. They've got a bachelor clergyman now, and
Janet and I think that he's becoming very fond of Dolly! He's away just
now, or you would have already seen him. He's very often over here."
"I should have thought--" He hesitated in his turn, but already he was
falling again into the way of saying exactly what he thought right out to
Betty--"that with you and Rosamund in the house, no one would look at
Dolly!"
Betty blushed, and for a fleeting moment Godfrey saw the blushing,
dimpling Betty of long ago.
"Rosamund has the utmost contempt for him. As for me, he never sees
me--I'm always in the kitchen when he comes here." She added with a touch
of the quiet humour he remembered, "I don't think Dolly's in any danger
from me!"
"_Why_ are you always in the kitchen, Betty?" he asked. "Is it really
necessary?"
"Yes, it really is necessary," she answered frankly. "Father's got much
poorer, and everything's about a hundred times as dear as it was before
the War. But you mustn't think that I mind. I like it in a way--and it
won't last for ever. Some of father's investments are beginning to
recover a little even now, and prices are coming down--"
They had now come back to the garden end of the Long Walk. "I must go
now," she said. "Would you like me to send out one of the girls to
entertain you?"
He shook his head. "No, I think I'll stroll about the village for a bit."
They both felt as if the first milestone of their new relationship had
been set deep in the earth, and both were glad and relieved that it was
so.
Radmore walked about a bit, admiring Janet's autumnal herbaceous borders,
and then he remembered a door that he had known of old which led from the
big kitchen garden into the road. If it was open he could step out
without walking across the front of the house.
He turned into the walled garden, and walked quickly down a well-kept
path past the sun-dial to the door. It was open. He walked through it,
and then, with a rather guilty feeling--a feeling he did not care to
analyse--he made his way round the lower half of the village till he
reached the outside wall of The Trellis House.
There he hesitated for a few moments, but even while he was hesitating he
knew that he would go in. Before he could turn the handle the door in the
garden wall was opened by Enid Crofton herself. Radmore was surprised to
see that she was dressed in a black dress, with the orthodox plain linen
collar and cuffs of widowhood. It altered her strangely.
He was at once disappointed and a little relieved also, to find Jack
Tosswill in the garden with her. But soon the three went indoors, and
then, as had often been Mrs. Crofton's experience with admirers in the
past, each man tried to sit the other out.
At last the hostess had to say playfully:--"I'm afraid I must turn you
out now, for I'm expecting my sister-in-law, Miss Crofton."
And then they both, together, took their departure; Radmore feeling that
he had wasted an hour which might have been so very much more profitably
spent in going to see some of his old friends among the cottagers. As to
Jack Tosswill, he felt perplexed, and yes, considerably put out and
annoyed. He had been a good deal taken aback to see how close was the
acquaintance between Mrs. Crofton and Godfrey Radmore.