Caroline Breeze's diary at this time contained several items that bear
on the history of that year at "Happy House." Miss Breeze had indeed
been glad to chaperon Griselda to Yorkshire, and the journey and short
stay there was to her delightful in every respect.
"Sir John," she wrote on one occasion, "is the most chivalrous man, his
manners are perfectly beautiful. One would think by his politeness to me
that it must be me he was engaged to (which, of course, in point of
years might be considered more suitable), and not Grisel at all. He
behaves as if she was not exactly a daughter, but a niece he was very
fond of."
In another place she gives way to reflection about Grisel herself. "A
very much spoiled girl. I suppose her winter with the Fords at Torquay
has turned her head a little, for I am sure she never used to be so
changeable and hard to please. She is almost fretful sometimes and dear
Sir John is so patient with her. He is a wonderful man. He seems to have
taken a great fancy to that tiresome Mr. Wick, and he has invited him
down here for Sunday. (This was written at Whitby.) I am sorry he is
coming and so is Grisel. She told me yesterday that he bores her to
death. It rather surprises me, for he never struck me as exactly a
bore."
Then a little later she describes the visit.
"Mr. Wick has been to Weston-super-Mare to see Miss Perkins, who is
there with some friends, after nursing her grandmother. Grisel was
quite cross with him and although, of course, one sympathises with the
young man's raptures about his sweetheart, I must admit he rather rubs
her in--Miss Perkins, I mean.
"Sir John seems very much interested in Miss Perkins, and, if she had
come to Scarborough as she intended at first, he was going to take us
over in the car to see her. I am quite sorry her friends decided to go
to Weston-super-Mare instead, for I should love to see her. They are
going to be married in November, and really Mr. Wick's expression when
he talks about her is very nearly ridiculous."
A week later the diary goes on:
"We are going back to-morrow, for Paul has had a wire from dear Violet,
saying they are leaving Cauterets and coming to Paris on their way home.
I shall be glad to see Violet, it seems years since she went. Oliver is
going to bring them back from Paris, where he has gone in connection
with the signing of the Peace. Miss Perkins has written a charming
letter to Grisel; she must be a lovely girl.
"Grisel and Sir John are to be married in October, as he has to go to
the Argentine at the end of that month and she wants to go with him. I
hope the change will do her good, for she really looks ill and doesn't
seem at all herself."
Mr. Wick about this time writes to his mother from Paris.
"_It was wildly successful, but I nearly broke down a dozen times,
sometimes into a roar of laughter and sometimes into tears of pity.
She does so hate my poor Dorothy, mother, she is as jealous as a
Turk and so in love with me that I wonder everyone in the world
doesn't see it, but they don't. I rather had some doubts about Sir
John once or twice, he is no fool, and I have caught him looking at
me in a rather understanding way. He displays an almost suspicious
interest in my young woman. I made a little slip and had her headed
for Scarborough, but I saw in his eyes a plan for driving us all
over there to see her, so I had Billy Barnes wire me from
Birmingham that their plans were changed and I packed them all off
to Weston-super-Mare, a place that I am sure Dorothy would enjoy if
she really existed._
"_There is only one thing, mother dear, that disturbs me at all,
and that is Sir John Barclay. He is a splendid old fellow and I am
afraid he is going to be upset over our marriage. However, that
can't be helped, and after all a man of his age has no real right
to romance! That belongs to us_"--and so on and so on.
On the morning after her return Grisel came downstairs to find a
telegram just being handed in at the door. It was addressed to her and
announced that her mother and brother would arrive that night. It was
from Wick, dated Paris. She was a little late that morning, and Paul had
nearly finished his breakfast when she opened the dining-room door.
"They are coming to-night, Paul," she said. "This wire has just come
from Oliver."
Paul slew a wasp on the edge of his jam-baited plate and then took the
telegram.
"Good!" he said. "I shall be glad to see them, and Guy will like those
new songs of mine; we must get Jenny to come in to-morrow night and I
will sing them."
She sat down.
"You like Jenny very much, don't you?" she asked gently.
He looked up, his clever face, sometimes so highly repellent, almost
tender.
"Jenny is a dear," he declared, "she is the best accompanist I have ever
had and her taste of music is perfect."
Grisel, who had poured out her coffee, leaned her chin on her clasped
hands and looked at him thoughtfully.
"It is not only the music, you know," she said, "I think it is her
kindness that I like so much. Although she is so little and quick, her
mind always seems to jump towards the nice things in people instead of
like us--we always jump towards the faults. Instinctively, we seem to,
don't we, Paul?"
He was silent for a moment, apparently studying with deep interest the
remains of the wasp on his plate.
"Yes, I suppose we do. You and I and Hermione certainly do. We get that
from our beautiful father, no doubt. Mother and Maud are different, but
then, of course Jenny Wick has had a great pull in her mother. Mrs. Wick
is a fine old----" he paused, and added gravely, "_fellow_. That's what
she is like, a fine old man, whereas our father was always like a
spoilt, and--_not_ fine--woman. By the way," he suddenly felt in his
pocket. "I had a letter from father last night. He seems to be in
trouble of some kind."
"He would." Grisel answered indifferently. "Perhaps Clara Crichell is
sick of him; I should think she would be by this time."
Paul tossed the letter to her across the table.
"All she ever saw in him was his looks," he answered, "and he is looking
particularly handsome just now--or was three weeks ago. Barclay keeps
him pretty busy and he is on the water wagon, so as far as his beauty
goes he is flourishing like a rose."
Grisel opened the letter, which was written in pencil on a half sheet of
paper.
"_Dear Paul_," it said, "_let me know when your mother is coming
back, as I must see her. What on earth is she doing in Paris so
long? They say everything is frightfully expensive there now._
"_Thanks for sending me my bathing suit, I have had one or two
good swims and feel the better for them. I have been trying to
find new rooms. This is an awful hole I am in, but London is so
full of those beastly Colonials and Americans that I cannot get in
anywhere._
"_Is Grisel all right? I saw her sitting in Sir John's car in
front of Solomons the other day, but she did not see me._ I WAS ON
A BUS. _I thought she looked seedy. Do write and tell me the news,
and mind you let me know as soon as you know when your mother and
Guy are coming back; it really strikes me as very odd her
galloping about France like this at her age._
"_Your affectionate father_,
"FERDINAND WALBRIDGE."
"Characteristic, isn't it?" Paul asked.
She nodded. "Yes, very. Something has happened to upset him. Wouldn't it
be awful, Paul," she added, unconscious of any oddity in her speech, "if
Clara chucked him after all and we had to take him back!"
"Take him back, indeed!"
"Yes, mother would, you know, if he came to grief."
He rose. "Not while I'm alive, she won't," he said, with the amazing
firmness of the powerless. "Well, I must be off. I will send up some
flowers if I can find any that are not a guinea a bloom." He hesitated
and turned at the door. "Will you ring up Jenny and say they are coming,
or shall I? They might dine instead of to-morrow----"
"You don't want Jenny here the first night they are back, do you?"
"Well, yes; to-morrow would be better, of course, but I have just
remembered that I have an engagement to-morrow. Mother likes
Jenny--she's never in anybody's way--and it will cheer Guy up to hear
some music after his journey."
He went out, leaving his sister smiling over the peculiar and highly
characteristic logic of his last speech. How like Paul! She knew that
Oliver Wick would be sure to come straight to "Happy House" with his
charges, because there was luggage to be seen to and carried up, and a
thousand little matters to be settled before he went off to Brondesbury,
so it would be after all only natural for him to stay and have a bit of
dinner before he went on to Brondesbury, and as for Jenny, she was
staying, as she so often did, with Joan Catherwood.
Barclay, who was going away in a day or two, was to have taken her out
to dinner, but she rang him up at his office and asked him to dine at
"Happy House" instead, he being, as she told herself with decision, one
of the family. She gave the number and after the usual delay a voice
from the office answered her.
"Hallo, yes, you wish to speak to Sir John. Who is it, please?"
Grisel started, for it was her father's voice speaking to her.
"It is Miss----" she began nervously, and then making a face at herself,
she went on, "It is Grisel, father. Is John there?"
Ferdie Walbridge's soft voice had an unmistakable thrill in it as he
spoke again.
"Oh, it is you, dear! How are you, Grisel, and when is mother--I mean
your mother--coming home?"
"They are coming to-night; Paul had a wire this morning from Mr. Wick."
There was a little pause and she could almost see her father's
beautiful, self-indulgent face sharpen for a moment with surprise. He
had a way at such moments of catching his underlip sharply back with his
white teeth, and inflating his nostrils. This she knew he was doing now.
"To-night! Dear me, I hope they will have had a good crossing." Then he
added pitifully, "Dear me, Grisel, is it not--strange--that I should not
be there when they come?"
Grisel laughed. "Well, really, father!" she said.
"Oh, I know, I know. Of course, it is all my own fault," he was playing
on his voice now, and it was very pleasant to hear, although she
despised him for doing it. "But when you are my age, my child, you will
know that habit is a great thing and that old ties are not easily
broken."
"I know that already," she snapped, "I thought it was you who didn't."
After a pause, feeling that he was about to become lyrical, she cut him
short by asking pleasantly:
"How are--the Crichells?"
There was a pause and then he nobly replied:
"Poor Crichell, for whom I am very sorry, is coming back to-day. He has
been in Scotland and--er--Mrs. Crichell----"
"Oh, don't mind me, father, call her Clara," she interrupted, conscious
of and quite horrified by her own bad taste, and yet somehow unable to
keep back the words.
"Thank you, my dear. _Clara_ is staying with some friends in
Herefordshire."
"Well," she went on with a change of tone, "will you tell John I am
here, and want to speak to him?"
Again she could almost see her father gazing at her with noble reproach.
"I will tell him," he said with magnificent rhythm and throb in his
voice, "I will tell him, my child, that you are here----"
Then, knowing that he would add "God bless you," she snatched the
receiver from her ear and held it against her hip so as not to hear the
words.
During the morning Caroline Breeze came in to see how her recent
travelling companion felt after their journey. The summer winds and sun
that had been so kind to Griselda, painting her delicate face with
mellow brown and dusky crimson, had attacked poor Caroline's plain old
countenance with unkind vehemence. Her lashless eyes looked red and raw,
like Marion's nose in Shakespeare, and her thin and unusual
cartilaginous nose was not only painted scarlet, but highly varnished as
well and there were two little patches on her cheeks that were peeling;
but the good creature had no envy or even the mildest resentment at fate
in her long, narrow body. She was delighted to see the girl looking
brighter, and happier, and gave vent to a curious noise, nearly like a
crow, over the news of the arrival.
"Oh dear," she kept repeating, rubbing her dry hands together with a
rough scrape, "I shall be glad to see Violet--I _shall_ be glad to see
Violet," and then she went down into the kitchen to undertake all the
more tiresome errands that must be done in order to achieve a really
brilliant reception for the travellers.
Grisel was busy all day in a pleasant, unwearying manner. She filled her
mother's room with flowers out of the garden and arranged those sent by
Paul in the glasses for the table.
In the afternoon Jenny Wick arrived, with a basket of green peas that
had been sent to her mother by a friend in the country and that Mrs.
Wick had sent on as a little present to the "Happy House" people.
Late in the afternoon the cook, who was Grisel's devoted slave, being
very busy with some elaborate confections in the kitchen, the two girls
sat on the back steps where the Dorothy Perkins roses would, before
long, be in their full glory, and shelled the peas, each with a big blue
check apron over her frock.
"I guess this is the first time that ruby has ever shelled peas," Jenny
exclaimed after a while. "It _is_ a beauty, Grisel."
Grisel nodded, and her utter indifference struck the other girl.
"Funny," she remarked shrewdly, "how easily one gets used to things. You
were nearly off your head about that ruby at first, weren't you, and now
you don't care a bit about it."
"Oh, yes I do. It is very beautiful, but--well, that's just as you say.
One does get used to things--some things that is," she added sombrely.
Jenny, whose little cream-coloured face was peppered all over with large
pale freckles, like the specks in _eau de vie de Dantzig_, added a
handful of peas to the pan, that glittered like silver in the bright
sun.
"It's grand that people do get used to things," she reflected, screwing
up her little nose, "almost as good as getting _over_ things. Oh,
Grisel, do you remember how miserable poor Olly used to be about you?"
"Nonsense! He thought he was, but he wasn't, really."
"You don't know. He was frightfully unhappy. Mother and I were worried
to death----"
Grisel laughed. "Poor fellow. But anyhow it didn't last very long, did
it?"
"No, but it would have done," Jenny agreed with a shrewd shake of her
curls, "if Dorothy had not come along."
"We were going over to see 'Dorothy,' if she had come to Scarborough."
"Yes, it was tiresome, their going to that other place. Oliver has been
having such fun in Paris choosing an engagement ring for her; he has got
a beauty, he says, a very old one. An emerald with diamonds around it."
The two girls were intimate enough for Grisel to be able without
rudeness to exclaim at the obvious expensiveness of this choice.
"Yes, of course, it is," Jenny agreed, "but naturally he would want to
give her something worth while."
Grisel glanced at her big ruby and went on shelling peas.