Читать книгу Abington Abbey - Archibald Marshall - Страница 12

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The Abbey was ready for occupation early in April. Caroline, Barbara, and Miss Waterhouse went down on Monday. Grafton followed on Friday for the week-end and took Beatrix with him. She had announced that the dear boy couldn't be left by himself in London, or he'd probably get into mischief, and she was going to stay and look after him. As she had thought of it first, she had her way. Beatrix generally did get her way, though she never made herself unpleasant about it. Nor did she ever wheedle, when a decision went against her, though she could wheedle beautifully.

If any one of the three girls could be said to be spoilt, it was Beatrix. She had been frail as a child, with a delicate loveliness that had put even Caroline's beauty into the shade, although Caroline, with her sweet grey eyes and her glowing health, had been a child of whom any parents might have been inordinately proud. The young mother had never quite admitted her second child to share in the adoration she felt for her first-born, but Beatrix had twined herself round her father's heart, and had always kept first place in it, though not so much as to make his slight preference apparent. As a small child, she was more clinging than the other two, and flattered his love and sense of protection. As she grew older she developed an unlooked-for capriciousness. When she was inclined to be sweet and loving she was more so than ever; but sometimes she would hardly suffer even a kiss, and had no caresses for anybody. She often hurt her father in this way, especially in the early days of his bereavement, but he was so equable by nature that he would dismiss her contrariety with a smile, and turn to Caroline, who always gave him what he wanted. As the children grew older he learnt to protect himself against Beatrix's inequalities of behaviour by a less caressing manner with them. It was for them to come to him for the signs and tokens of love, and it was all the sweeter to him when they did so. Even now, when she was grown up, it thrilled him when Beatrix was in one of her affectionate moods. She was not the constant invariable companion to him that Caroline was, and their minds did not flow together as his and Caroline's did. But he loved her approaches, and felt more pleased when she offered him companionship than with any other of his children. Thus, those who advance and withdraw have an unfair advantage over those who never change.

Caroline and Barbara met them in the big car which had been bought for station work at Abington. It was a wild wet evening, but they were snug enough inside, Caroline and Barbara sitting on either side of their father, and Beatrix on one of the let-down seats. Beatrix was never selfish; although she liked to have her own way she seldom took it at the expense of others. She had had her father's sole companionship, and it was only fair that she should yield her place to her younger sister. So she did so of her own accord.

Caroline and Barbara were full of news. "Everything is ready for you, darling," said Caroline, her arm tucked into his. "You'll feel quite at home directly you get into the house; and there are very few more arrangements to make. We've been working like slaves, and all the servants too."

"The Dragon has had a headache, but she has done more than anybody," said Barbara. "It's all perfectly lovely, Daddy. We do like being country people awfully. We went down to the village in the rain this afternoon—the Dragon and all. That made me feel it, you know."

"It made us feel it, when you stepped into a puddle and splashed us all over," said Caroline. "George dear, we've had callers already."

"That ought to have cheered you up," said Grafton. "Who were they?"

"All clerical. I think Lord Salisbury put them on to us. He wants us to be in with the clergy."

"What do you mean? Lord Salisbury!"

"The Reverend Salisbury Mercer. I called him that first," said Barbara. "He likes us. He's been in and out, and given us a lot of advice. He likes me especially. He looked at me with a loving smile and said I was a sunbeam."

"We had Mr. Cooper, Rector of Surley, and his two daughters," said Caroline. "He is a dear old thing and keeps bees. The two daughters look rather as if they had been stung by them. They are very officious, but sweeter than honey and the honeycomb at present. They said it was nice to have girls living in a house near them again; they hadn't had any for some years—I should think it must be about thirty, but they didn't say that. They said they hoped we should see a good deal of one another."

"I don't think," said Beatrix. "Who were the others?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Williams, Vicar and Vicaress of I've forgotten what. They were quite nice. Genial variety."

"The Breezy Bills we called them," said Barbara. "They almost blew us out of the house. He carpenters, and she breeds Airedales, and shows them. She brought one with her—a darling of a thing. They've promised us a puppy and a kennel to put it in already."

"You didn't ask her for one, did you?" asked Grafton. "If she breeds them for show we ought to offer to pay for it."

"Oh, you're going to pay for it all right, darling. You needn't worry about that. The kennel too. But you're going to get that for the cost of the wood and the paint. He isn't going to charge anything for his time. He laughed heartily when he said that. I like the Breezy Bills. They're going to take us out otter hunting when the time comes."

"A Mrs. Walter and her daughter came," said Caroline. "At least they were brought by the Mercers. They live in a little house at the top of the village. Rather a pretty girl, and nice, but shy. I wanted to talk to her and see what she was like, but Lord Salisbury wouldn't let me—at least not without him. George darling, I'm afraid you'll have to cope with Lord Salisbury. He's screwing in frightfully. I think he has an idea of being the man about the house when you're up in London. He asked how often you'd be down, and said we could always go and consult him when you were away. He came directly after breakfast yesterday with a hammer and some nails, to hang pictures."

"The Dragon sent him away," said Barbara. "She was rather splendid—extremely polite to him, but a little surprised. She doesn't like him. She won't say so, but I know it by her manner. I went in with her, and it was then that he called me a sunbeam. He said he did so want to make himself useful, and wasn't there anything he could do. I said he might dust the drawing-room if he liked."

"Barbara!"

"Well, I said it to myself."

"What is Mrs. Mercer like?" asked Beatrix.

"Oh, a nice little thing," said Caroline. "But very much under the thumb of Lord Salisbury. I think he leads her a dance. If we have to keep him off a little, we must be careful not to offend her. I think she must have rather a dull time of it. She's quite harmless, and wants to be friends."

"We mustn't quarrel with the fellow," said Grafton. "Haven't you seen Worthing?"

"Have we seen Worthing!" exclaimed Barbara. "He's a lamb. He's been away, but he came back yesterday afternoon, and rolled up directly. The Dragon likes him. He was awfully sweet to her. He's going to buy us some horses. You don't mind, do you, Daddy? I know you've got lots of money."

"That's where you make the mistake," said Grafton, "but of course we must have a gee or two. I want to talk to Worthing about that. Did you ask him to dine to-night, Cara?"

"Yes. He grinned all over. He said we were a boon and a blessing to men. He really loves us."

"And we love him," said Barbara. "We were wondering when the time would come to call him Jimmy. We feel like that towards him. Or, Dad darling, it is topping living in the country. Don't let's ever go back to London."

All the circumstances of life had been so much at Grafton's disposal to make what he liked out of them that he had become rather difficult to move to special pleasure by his surroundings. But he felt a keen sense of satisfaction as he entered this beautiful house that he had bought, and the door was shut on the wild and windy weather. That sensation, of a house as a refuge, is only to be gained in full measure in the country, whether it is because the house stands alone against the elements, or that the human factor in it counts for more than in a town. There was the quiet old stone-built hall cheered by the fire of logs on the great hearth, the spacious soft-carpeted staircase and corridors, the long gallery transformed by innumerable adjustments into the very shrine of companionable home life, and all around the sense of completeness and fitness and beauty which taste and a sufficiency of wealth can give to a house built in the days when building was the expression of ideas and aspirations, and an art as creative and interpretative as any.

He felt positively happy as he dressed in the large comfortable, but not over luxurious room that Caroline had chosen for him. He had expressed no preferences on the subject when they had gone over the house together, but remembered now that he had rather liked this particular room out of the score or so of bedrooms they had gone through. It looked out on to the quiet little space of lawn and the trees beyond from three windows, and would get the first of the sun. He loved the sun, and Caroline knew that. She knew all his minor tastes, perhaps better than he knew them himself. He would have been contented with a sunny room and all his conveniences around him, or so he would have thought. But she had seen that he had much more than that. The old furniture which had struck him pleasantly on their first visit was there—the big bed with its chintz tester, the chintz-covered sofa, the great wardrobe of polished mahogany—everything that had given the room its air of solid old-fashioned comfort, and restful, rather faded charm. But the charm and the comfort seemed to have been heightened. The slightly faded air had given place to one of freshness. The change was not so great as to bring a sense of modernity to unbalance the effect of the whole, but only to make it more real. Caroline was a genius at this sort of expression, and her love and devotion towards him had stimulated her. The freshness had come from the fact that she had changed all the chintzes, and the carpet and curtains, ransacking the house for the best she could find for the purpose. She had changed some of the furniture too, and added to it. Also the prints. He did recognise that change, as he looked around him, and took it all in. He was fond of old prints, and had noticed those that were of any value as he had gone through the rooms. There had been rubbish mixed with the good things in this room; but there was none left. "Good child!" he said to himself with satisfaction as he saw what she had done in this way.

He thought of her and his other children as he dressed, and he thought of his young wife. A charming crayon portrait of her hung in the place of honour above the mantelpiece, on which there were also photographs of her, and of the children, in all stages of their growth. Caroline had collected them from all over the London house. The crayon portrait had been one of two done by a very clever young artist, now a famous one, whom they had met on their honeymoon. This had been the first, and Grafton had thought it had not done justice to his wife's beauty; so the artist, with a smiling shrug of the shoulders, had offered to do another one, which had pleased him much better, and had hung ever since in his bedroom in London. Now, as he looked at this portrait, which had hung in a room he seldom went into, he wondered how he could have been so blind. The beauty, with which he had fallen in love, was there, but the artist had seen much more than the beauty that was on the surface. It told immeasurably more about the sweet young bride than the picture he had made of her afterwards. It told something of what she would be when the beauty of form and feature and colouring should have waned, of what she would have been to-day more than twenty years later.

Grafton was not a man who dwelt on the past, and his life had been too prosperous and contented to lead him to look forward very often to the future. He took it as it came, and enjoyed it, without hugging himself too much on the causes of his enjoyment. The only unhappiness he had ever known had been in the loss of his wife, but the wound had healed gradually, and had now ceased to pain him.

But it throbbed a little now as he looked at the portrait with new eyes. He and she had talked together of a country house some time in the future of their long lives together—some such house as this, if they should wait until there was enough money. It was just what she would have delighted in. She had been brought up in a beautiful country house, and loved it. Caroline inherited her fine perceptions and many of her tastes from her. It would have been very sweet to have had her companionship now, in this pleasant and even exciting life that was opening up before them. They would all have been intensely happy together.

He turned away with a faint frown of perplexity. She would have been a middle-aged woman now, the mother of grown-up daughters. To think of her like that was to think of a stranger. His old wound had throbbed because he had caught a fresh glimpse of her as the young girl he had so loved, and loved still, for she had hardly been more than a girl when she had died. He supposed he would have gone on loving her just the same; his love for her had grown no less during the short years of their married life; he had never wanted anybody else, and had never wanted anybody else since, remembering what she had been. But it was an undoubted fact that husbands and wives in middle-age had usually shed a good deal of their early love, or so it seemed to him, from his experience of married men of his own age. Would it have been so with him? He couldn't think it, but he couldn't tell. To him she would always be what she had been, even when he grew old. It was perplexing to think of her as growing old too; and there was no need to do so.

The years had passed very quickly. Caroline had been only five when she had died, Beatrix three, and Barbara a baby. And now the two elder were grown up, and Barbara nearly so. It came home to him, as he looked at their photographs on the mantelpiece, how pleasant they had made life for him, and how much he still had in his home in spite of the blank that his wife's death had made. This puzzled him a little too. He thought he ought to have missed her more, and be missing her more now. But introspection was not his habit, and the hands of the clock on the mantelpiece were progressing towards the dinner hour. He dressed quickly, with nothing in his mind but pleasurable anticipation of the evening before him.

Worthing was in the morning-room talking to Caroline when he went downstairs. He looked large and beaming and well washed and brushed. The greeting between the two men was cordial. Each had struck a chord in the other, and it was plain that before long they would be cronies. Worthing was outspoken in his admiration of what had been done with the house.

"I've been telling this young lady," he said, "that I wouldn't have believed it possible. Nothing seems to be changed, and yet everything seems to be changed. Look at this room now! It's the one that Brett used to occupy, and it used to give me a sort of depressed feeling whenever I came into it. Now it's a jolly room to come into. You know, somehow, that when you go out of it, you're going to get a good dinner."

He laughed with a full throat. Caroline smiled and looked round the room, which had been transformed by her art from the dull abode of a man who cared nothing for his surroundings into something that expressed home and contentment and welcome.

Grafton put his arm around her as they stood before the fire. "She's a wonder at it," he said. "She's done all sorts of things to my room upstairs. I felt at home in it at once."

She smiled up at him and looked very pleased. He did not always notice the things she did out of love for him.

The other two girls came in with Miss Waterhouse. Beatrix looked enchanting in a black frock which showed up the loveliness of her delicate colouring and scarcely yet matured contours. Worthing almost gasped as he looked at her, and then shook hands, but recovered himself to look at the three of them standing before him. "Now how long do you suppose you're going to keep these three young women at home?" he asked genially, as old Jarvis came in to announce dinner.

They were all as merry as possible over the dinner-table. Beatrix made them laugh with her account of the house in London as run by herself with a depleted staff. She was known not to be domestically inclined and made the most of her own deficiencies, while not sparing the servants who had been left behind. But she dealt with them in such a way that old Jarvis grinned indulgently at her recital, and the two new footmen who had been engaged for the Abbey each hoped that it might fall to his lot some day to take the place of their colleague who had been left behind.

Worthing enjoyed himself immensely. All three of the girls talked gaily and freely, and seemed bubbling over with laughter and good spirits. Their father seemed almost as young as they were, in the way he laughed and talked with them. Miss Waterhouse took little part in the conversation, but smiled appreciatively on each in turn, and was never left out of it. As for himself, he was accepted as one of themselves, and initiated into all sorts of cryptic allusions and humours, such as a laughter-loving united and observant family gathers round about its speech. He became more and more avuncular as the meal progressed, and at last Barbara, who was sitting next to him, said: "You know, I think we must call you Uncle Jimmy, if you don't mind. It seems to fit you, and we do like things that fit, in this family."

He accepted the title with enthusiasm. "I've got nephews and nieces all over the place," he said. "But the more the merrier. I'm a first-class uncle, and never forget anybody at Christmas."

They began to discuss people. A trifle of criticism, hardly to be called malice, crept into the conversation. Miss Waterhouse found it necessary to say: "Barbara darling, I don't think you should get into the way of always calling the Vicar Lord Salisbury. You might forget and do it before somebody who would repeat it to him."

"I think he'd like it," said Caroline. "I'm sure he loves a lord."

Worthing sat and chuckled as an account was given of the visits of the 'Breezy Bills,' and the Misses Cooper, who were given the name of 'the Zebras,' partly owing to their facial conformation, partly to the costumes they had appeared in. He brought forward no criticism himself, and shirked questions that would have led to any on his part, but he evidently had no objection to it as spicing conversation, and freed himself from the slight suspicion of being a professional peacemaker. "He's an old darling," Barbara said of him afterwards. "I really believe he likes everybody, including Lord Salisbury."

When the two men were left alone together, Worthing said: "You've got one of the nicest families I ever met, Grafton. They'll liven us up here like anything. Lord, what a boon it is to have this house opened up again!"

"They're a cheery lot," said Grafton. "You'll like the boy too, I think. He'll be home soon now. I suppose there are some people about for them all to play with. I hardly know anybody in this part of the world."

"There are some of the nicest people you'd meet anywhere," said Worthing. "They'll all be coming to call directly. Oh, yes, we're very fortunate in that way. But yours is the only house quite near. It'll mean a lot to me, I can tell you, to have the Abbey lived in again, 'specially with those nice young people of yours."

"How far off is Wilborough? You go there a lot, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, I do. I look after the place, as you know, and old Sir Alexander likes to have me pottering about with him. You'll like the old boy. He's seventy, but he's full of fun. Good man on a horse too, though he suffers a lot from rheumatism. Wilborough? It's about two miles from me; about three from here."

"What's Lady Mansergh like? Wasn't she——"

"Well, yes, she was; but it's a long time ago. Nobody remembers anything about it. Charming old woman, with a heart of gold."

"Old woman! I thought she was years younger than him, and still kept her golden hair and all that sort of thing."

"Well, yes, she does. Wouldn't thank you for calling her old, either. And I don't suppose she's much over fifty. But she's put on flesh. That sort of women does, you know, when they settle down. Extraordinary how they take to it all, though. She used to hunt when I first came here. Rode jolly straight too. And anybody'd think she'd lived in the country all her life. Well, I suppose she has, the best part of it. Dick must be twenty-eight or nine, I should think, and Geoffrey about twenty-five. Nice fellows, both of them."

"Mercer told me, that second time I came down, that they weren't proper people for the children to know."

A shade crossed Worthing's expansive face. "Of course a parson has different ideas about things," he said. "She did divorce her first husband, it's true; but he was a rotter of the worst type. There was never anything against her. She was before our time, but a fellow told me that when she was on the stage she was as straight as they make 'em, though lively and larky. All I can say is that if your girls were mine I shouldn't object to their knowing her."

"Oh, well, that's enough for me. They probably won't want to be bosom friends. It would be awkward, though, having people about that one didn't want to know. According to Mercer, there aren't many people about here that one would want to know, except a few parsons and their families. He seems to have a down on the lot of them."

"Well, between you and me," said Worthing confidentially, "I shouldn't take much notice of what Mercer says, if I were you. He's a nice enough fellow, but he does seem, somehow, to get at loggerheads with people. I wouldn't say anything against the chap behind his back, but you'd find it out for yourself in time. You'll see everybody there is, and you can judge for yourself."

"Oh, yes, I can do that all right. Let's go and play bridge. The girls are pretty good at it."