Читать книгу The Abbey Girls on Trial - Elsie Jeanette Dunkerley - Страница 7

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“I’m glad I went!” Maidlin settled down in a corner of the big saloon car. “They’re nice girls. If I hadn’t gone Elspeth would always have thought of me as the person who’d been unkind. Even if she’d forgotten, I should have remembered her as the girl I was unkind to. Now I can forget and I’m sure she will.”

She could not call on Joan, because of the measles infection. So the chauffeur turned westwards, and Maidlin lapsed into a dream of her Camp Fire.

As the car drew up before the door of the Hall, Joy came running out. “Maidie, have you seen anything of Ros?”

The widowed Lady Marchwood was the double of her cousin, Joan Raymond, with the same bright bronze hair, unshingled, and the same brown eyes. Her gray dress set off her vivid colouring and suited her. At the moment her eyes were anxious.

“Ros?” Maidlin looked alarmed. “Joy, how could I? I’ve been away down in Sussex. Hasn’t Ros come back from the village?”

“She didn’t go to the village. She’s out wandering on the hills, and it’s nearly dark,” Joy’s voice and face were worried.

“But why? What’s happened, Joy? Is anything the matter with her? Didn’t she take the class at the Institute?”

“We’ll go and talk to Jen,” Joy dismissed the car. “Leave your coat, Maid, and come along. Ros is in trouble. I’ll tell you as we go.”

Maidlin ran indoors, looking frightened. She came out without her hat and big coat.

“Tell me, Joy! What’s wrong?”

“There was a letter,” Joy spoke quickly, as they crossed the lawn towards the shrubbery path. “A letter for Ros by the evening post, from Ceylon. I saw her father’s writing. She read it just as she was going to start for the village. I heard her cry: ‘Father! How could you? Oh, how awful! Mother!’—and then she rushed away into the Abbey.”

Maidlin’s lips were trembling. “Ros always goes to the Abbey when anything’s wrong. Didn’t she tell you anything, Joy?”

“I didn’t really see her. She was on the terrace, and I was at the nursery window. I heard her cry out and saw her run off, but I couldn’t speak to her.”

“And did she forget the class? It must be something awfully serious!”

“She didn’t forget,” said Joy. “In a few minutes your Aunt Ann came from the Abbey. Ros had asked her to tell me she had gone out on the hills, as she had to think over some news she had just received, and would I please send Mary to take the class. I went to Mary-Dorothy, and she was as worried as I was. She was working at those proofs that are bothering her so much, so I said I’d go down and teach instead. I’ve been teaching ‘Geud Man,’ with my mind full of Ros, wondering what her father could have said to upset her so much.”

“He can’t be dead,” Maidlin argued, as they hurried down the path between walls of rhododendron. “You said the letter was from him.”

“And Ros said: ‘Father! How could you?’ There’s only one thing,” Joy said grimly. “He’s married again, or he’s going to marry again.”

Maidlin stared at her. “Joy! Do you think so? Why, Joy?”

“There’s only one thing that would make a man’s grown-up daughter speak like that. Ros said,—‘Oh, how awful! Mother!’ I’m afraid it’s that,” Joy said.

“Ros with a stepmother! Joy, she’ll hate it. Will she have to go and live with them?” and Maidlin stopped short in dismay. “Oh, Joy, they won’t take her away from us?”

Joy laughed. “Ros is twenty-two. Nobody can take her away unless she wants to go or feels she ought to go. They won’t want her, Maid. What newly-married couple would want a girl of twenty-two? Her father has never wanted her; even if the new mother is nice she’ll prefer to have her husband to herself. I hope Ros will feel she belongs here now. It’s been her home for seven years.”

“Oh, I hope she will!” Maidlin cried. “Oh, if it means that I’ll wish he’d been married sooner! Ros has always said that some day she’d have to go to look after him. But now—!”

“Yes, perhaps now she’ll settle down,” Joy agreed. “But we don’t know yet that it is that, Maidie.”

“If Ros knows she hasn’t any other home, she’ll have to stay here,” Maidlin disposed of Rosamund’s future easily. “We’ll ask Jenny-Wren if she thinks we’re right.”

“Ros will feel it badly at first,” said Joy. “But I don’t see why she should care once the shock is over. She only saw her father for a short while in Switzerland at the time of her mother’s illness, and he has written to her very seldom in the last three years. She can’t pretend to care deeply about him.”

“But you said she was upset, Joy?”

“It was a shock, of course. And she’ll feel it for her mother’s sake. No girl likes to feel her mother’s place has been filled. Come and tell Jenny-Wren!”

The younger Lady Marchwood lay in a long chair among the rose bushes just outside the house, wrapped in a blue cloak and enjoying the sunset glow. Twenty-five, with bobbed yellow curls and blue eyes, she did not look like the mother of Andrew and Tony and Rosemary Jane.

“You dear people, how nice of you to come!” she cried. “Maid, tell me all about the Squirrel House! It’s too bad of you to discover it just when they won’t let me go for anything but the shortest little drives. Might as well be in a perambulator! I’m going for a proper run next week, if I have to dodge Nurse and the doctor. Joy, if you want Rosemary Jane you’ll have to go upstairs. Nurse said it was too late for a lady of her tender years to be out. Did you see the sunset? And look at that beautiful green glow!”

Joy sat on the edge of her chair and Maidlin on a stool by her side.

“Green glows are all very well, Brownie,” Joy used the old school nickname of May Queen days. “But we’ve come to talk over something serious. It won’t worry you, will it? You’re quite fit, aren’t you?”

“I’m as fit as fiddles, and ready for anything,” Jen spoke soberly. “What’s the row, Joy? I haven’t heard or thought anything serious since the babe was born. Ken’s like an infant when he has a new baby, and especially this time because she’s a girl. He’s quite off his head. Well, he really is awfully bucked, and I can’t drag a sensible word out of him. Every single thing he says is a joke. I’m ready to tackle any problem. I know it isn’t the twins, for you’re only worried. If one of them had fallen into the lake you’d be distraught.”

“Jenny-Wren, don’t be absurd! Would you be distraught if Tony had fallen into the lake?”

“I’d be in the lake too. That’s enough of nonsense! I’m teeming with advice. What’s the trouble?”

“Ros is upset by a letter from her father,” and Joy told what she had seen and heard. She waited, without comment but with her eyes fixed on Jen.

“H’m! And you don’t know what’s happened? It sounds to me like a stepmother.”

“Just what Joy said!” Maidlin cried. “I’d never have thought of it. Jen, what will Ros do?”

“That’s the question. We’ll have to wait—here she comes!”

Rosamund came across the lawn from the gate that led by a footpath to the hills.

“She’s fagged,” Jen said. “Fetch a chair, Maidie! In the sun parlour—a comfy one, with cushions. That’s right!—Ros, my dear, how nice of you to come!”

Rosamund dropped into the chair. “I saw Joy and Maid cross the lane, so I thought I’d tell you all at once. I was sorry to shunt the class on to Mary, Joy, but I couldn’t have taught even ‘Rufty Tufty’ to-night.”

“I took the class,” said Joy. “Mary was at her proofs. But I was thinking so much about you that I messed up the dances.”

“Sporting of you!” Rosamund exclaimed. “You saw I was upset, then?”

“I guessed there was something wrong. Tell us, Ros!”

“Father’s married,” Rosamund’s lips pinched. “I didn’t know he was thinking of it.”

“Oh, Rosie! We were afraid it was that. My dear, what a shock for you!”

Maidlin said nothing, but her eyes never left Rosamund’s face.

“You’d had no warning, Ros?” Jen asked, her tone full of sympathy.

“Not a word. I was dazed. I had to think it over, Joy.”

“Yes, of course. You’ll need time to get used to the idea,” Joy agreed.

“I can’t take it in. It seems awful to me. It’s only three years since Mother went.”

“It isn’t awful. It’s very usual,” Jen said practically. “Don’t be too hard on him, Ros! He was lonely and he wanted company, and you were a very long way off.”

“I’d have gone if he’d wanted me, and I’d have done my best to make up for Mother. You know I offered, and he said I’d better not come out. I know it’s nothing unusual, Jen, but I never expected it to happen to me.”

“That’s just the shock and the surprise,” Jen remarked. “In a week you’ll be thinking about it quite calmly. I’m not being unfeeling, Rosamunda; I’m desperately sorry about it. But it’s done, so let’s make the best of it.”

“It’s on Mother’s account that I mind. He’s never cared about me. He may have liked me when I was a small kid, but he’s forgotten that long ago. But he had Mother until three years ago. They were married for thirty years,” Rosamund said unsteadily. “How can he have forgotten?”

“It doesn’t follow that he has forgotten,” Jen pointed out. “Be fair, Ros! She made him so happy that he can’t live without a companion. Isn’t that possible?”

Rosamund gave an indignant exclamation. “He’s fifty-nine. And he’s married a beautiful girl; a girl! It’s hateful!”

“Oh!” Joy and Jen looked at one another.

“He says she’s about my age. How would any of you like to have a beautiful young stepmother no older than yourself?”

“I’d loathe it,” said Maidlin.

“Ros, that’s very trying,” Jen said sympathetically. “If she had been a nice sensible middle-aged person it wouldn’t have seemed so bad.”

“But a girl!” Joy added. “Yes, Rosie, it is horrid. But, my dear kid, need it make much difference? You won’t want to live with them?”

“Rather not! What do you take me for?”

“Of course Ros won’t live with them!” Jen exclaimed.

“No, but it changes everything,” Rosamund’s tone was sharp, for she anticipated opposition. “Don’t you see how it changes everything for me?”

She looked at Joy, and then turned wistfully to Jen, avoiding Maidlin’s anxious face.

“Jenny-Wren, don’t you see that everything is changed for me now?”

“I see that you’ve thought it all out,” said Jen. “Tell us, Ros! What do you mean by everything being changed for you?”

Through the trees and across the lawn came Mary Devine, Joy’s secretary and the friend of all the family. “Am I interrupting? We wondered what had become of Joy and Maidlin, for we knew the car had come back.”

“I’m sorry, Mary-Dorothy. We ought to have told you we were coming to consult Jenny-Wren,” said Joy, and made room for her on the chair beside Jen and herself.

“Come and help, old thing!” Jen exclaimed. “Ros has been telling us her news.”

Mary, short and slight, with dark hair touched with gray, and dressed in brown, looked at Joy.

Joy nodded. “It’s what we guessed. Ros has a new mother——”

“A beautiful young step,” Rosamund said gloomily. “How would you like that, Mary-Dorothy?”

“Is she young?” Mary asked. “It will have been a blow to her to hear about you, Ros.”

“My hat, yes! I hadn’t thought of that. Think of being suddenly presented with a daughter the size of me!”

“I’d rather have a daughter the size of Rosemary Jane,” Jen admitted. “Mary-Dorothy, Ros says it changes everything for her. She’s just going to tell us what she means.”

And all four looked anxiously at Rosamund.