Читать книгу Where Three Roads Meet - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 15

Table of Contents

The second child was christened Aldyth after her unwilling grandmother, to whom she bore a striking resemblance. She seemed to be of an assertive disposition almost from her birth, and Molly regarded her almost with a feeling of awe. She could hardly realize herself as the mother of this determined and uncontradictable atom that clawed and screeched its way into existence, blind to all persuasion and furiously resentful of any coercion. It was almost as if she held a tiger-cub to her breast.

“My word, she’ll be a handful presently!” was the nurse’s dictum, and in her secret heart Molly was compelled sorrowfully to agree.

But the thought of leaving Rollo was her chief preoccupation, and but for the ever-faithful Rose she could scarcely have brought herself to face it. But Rose was reassuring. She knew Rollo and all his ways, and she assured her mistress staunchly that she would never let him be put upon. So with this for her comfort and the added consolation that she would miss her adored firstborn more than he could possibly miss her, Molly surrendered herself to the inevitable and bade farewell to Aubreystone Castle for the first time since she had entered it.

Ivor was, as ever, very kind to her in his own peculiarly insistent fashion. His first idea was to have her entirely to himself. Without conscious selfishness he maintained that her husband’s devotion and full attention was all that any wife could desire. He loved her, and somehow he had failed to fathom the fact that she had never, despite her punctilious submission to his will, managed to love him in return. That he had branded her with the ineffaceable mark of his own egotism was a point of view that he was essentially incapable of comprehending. He had given her everything that lay in his power and he believed that he had filled the gap in her life with complete success.

And now, having done his duty to his country, he prepared to enjoy his reward in the shape of a well-earned rest. He was also of the opinion that it would be good for Molly to travel. Her education had not been a very extensive one, and he proposed to augment it at his leisure. It was just as well, too, that she should be broken in to the realization that she could not always have Rollo with her. He considered that he had been very forbearing on this point, but he wished her to understand that even in this respect his will was paramount. While not actually jealous of Rollo, he could not close his eyes to the fact that he was something of an incubus and inclined to claim more than his fair share of his mother’s heart. If Molly imagined that daily contact with him were essential to her happiness, the time had come to disprove the notion. No one but her husband should be thus essential, and Ivor was determined to bend her to his will in this direction also. He had ruled supreme over her for so long that he had come to believe that there was no dictum of his that she could not accept with meekness.

Certainly she made no fuss or protest over the parting. Her farewell to Rollo was no more than a close embrace accompanied by a trembling smile, and Rollo luckily was still too young to comprehend the meaning of either. He hugged her warmly and let her go, in order to throw a brick at the sour-faced Kennedy who could not slap him before a grown-up audience.

But later Ivor found her even quieter than usual though she made an effort to be cheerful when he took her to task about it. Surely she was pleased with the prospect of travelling and seeing something of the world in his company? She assured him that she was going to enjoy it thoroughly, and though for once not wholly satisfied he had to be content.

He was taking her round the world by the westward route, planning to spend the winter in the East and to return home in the spring—a programme to rejoice the heart of any girl. And, after the first, Molly did succeed in shaking off her depression and feeling the spur of adventure. She blamed herself for her base ingratitude to one who was so anxious to give her pleasure; but the fact remained that his continual presence was an almost overwhelming weight upon her spirit, and nothing could alter it. She had schooled herself to endure his proximity without any sign of shrinking, but there were times when it was a literal torture to her. The total lack of solitude, upon which to a certain extent she had been able to count at Aubreystone Castle, fretted her nerves almost unbearably, and his calm assumption that he was all-sufficing to her drove her upon occasion to the verge of wild rebellion. But yet she did not rebel. Dumbly she forced herself to bear her burden, and if now and then she became aware of something deep down within her that was terribly near to active aversion she smothered it swiftly even from herself and would not for sheer horror look upon it. There were many other things to think about, and she sought to fill her mind with them.

She had never before seen the interior of a liner and the palatial luxury in which she found herself amazed and sometimes bewildered her. The crowds of strangers that surrounded her were bewildering also. She had not met many people in her short life, the state of her health having precluded the presentation at Court and entrance into London society which old Lady Aubreystone loudly proclaimed to be essential. Ivor, on the contrary, had decided that there was plenty of time for these things, and he meant to have his long-deferred honeymoon first. He was not personally of a very social turn of mind, and had he been travelling alone would probably have accomplished the whole voyage without the interchange of more than the briefest and most ordinary commonplaces with his fellow-passengers. As a matter of fact there were very few with whom he cared to associate even to that limited degree. In his own fashion he rated the family honour quite as highly as did his mother, and the consciousness that he had married out of his station tended to make him even more fastidious. He was as it were perpetually on the defensive, more on his own account than on that of his wife. He had to justify that somewhat unusual step of his, and in his own opinion he had already justified it. Molly—or Mary, as he persisted in calling her—was a wife of high principle who fulfilled all his requirements. She had a certain quiet style of her own which would, he believed, serve her as passport in any society.

As a matter of fact it had served her already with what Ivor termed “the somewhat mixed bag” in the company of which they were obliged to travel. People took notice of her and invented excuses to make her acquaintance. Had she been sufficiently responsive, she might have been the centre of a considerable circle. But she was shy and hung back from anything approaching intimacy with anyone. Though the life on board interested her, she preferred to watch it from a distance, and Ivor signified his quiet approval of this attitude. In his opinion she could not afford to cheapen herself by being too friendly with the motley crowd around them.

There was, however, one man in this crowd who seemed to possess as much determination as Ivor himself. He had a place at a small table next to theirs, and almost from the first moment of seeing young Lady Aubreystone his attention was firmly, though quite unobtrusively, fixed upon her. He was an Englishman of American upbringing a doctor by profession, young, rather colourless, wholly unimportant of appearance, yet possessing a certain virility which was so purely of the spirit that it was not always noticeable. He had served with the British Army in the War, and he had emerged with a limp which only the very few knew to be due to an artificial leg.

Molly’s first impression of him was negligible; she scarcely even glanced his way. But it was not long before she was aware of a subtle something about him that affected her inexplicably. It was as if he were waiting for her to speak to him, and a curious conviction dawned upon her that he meant to be on speaking terms before long. She felt no urgent desire to make an opening for him, yet the consciousness that an opening would be made sooner or later if she failed to do so gave a spice of interest to the situation, and finally on the second day out, as she and Ivor took their places at dinner, she threw a fleeting glance that carried with it the ghost of a smile in the young doctor’s direction.

He caught it as he might have caught a lightly-flung rose; she knew without a second look that he smiled in return, and from that moment it was as if a bond had been forged between them. It was only a matter of an hour or two before he was actually talking to them in the saloon.

His conversation was mainly with Ivor and strictly commonplace, but it was the beginning of an acquaintanceship which thereafter could not reasonably be ignored, and of which in her heart Molly was convinced that no further preliminaries were required. He knew already who they were, and would probably greet her by name the next time they met.

In this she was not mistaken. Emerging on deck the next morning for a breath of sea-air before going to breakfast, she came upon him at the top of the companion, leaning on his stick and surveying the world in general with a slightly puckered smile.

The sun was brilliant, the ocean one great expanse of sparkling blue.

“What a lovely day!” she said.

And he answered, slightly drawling: “That’s true, Lady Aubreystone. I’m glad of it—for your sake.”

“For mine?” she questioned, puzzled.

He shifted his position, and she realized abruptly that he was in pain, though he continued to smile. “I don’t imagine you’ve had too many of them,” he said. “Am I wrong?”

She flushed a little at the question, but she could not take exception to it. Somehow this man was already a friend.

“I don’t suppose any of us have had that,” she said. “At least we should never think so.”

“Some people,” said Geoffrey Asterby deliberately, “never get any at all.” His grey-blue eyes dwelt upon her musingly. “I often think,” he said, “how deceptive circumstance can be.”

She met his look with quiet directness. “It isn’t everyone who can adapt oneself, is it? Circumstance can be rather overwhelming.”

He nodded. “Yes, it can. But it can be conquered—up to a point.”

“Can it? I wonder,” said Molly. And then suddenly it came to her that she was expanding to a complete stranger, and her habitual reserve arose and drove back her confidence. She gave him a brief smile that dismissed the subject. “Well, it’s a lovely morning anyway, and we shall all enjoy it. Have you had breakfast?”

“No, just coming down,” he said. “Like you, I came up for a breather beforehand.”

“You’ve had a bad night,” she said with quick intuition.

“No, not too bad,” said Geoffrey Asterby. “Everything’s relative, isn’t it? I’ve had worse.”

Something stirred her; she did not at the moment know what. “That’s how you look at things!” she said.

“Isn’t it the only way?” said Asterby.

She nodded. “I expect you’re right. It’s something anyhow to know that the worst can never happen twice.”

“It can never happen once,” he said emphatically. “Even in this poor old smashed-up world the final cataclysm has never materialized. It couldn’t.”

“Why couldn’t it?” asked Molly, interested and a little awed by his steady assurance.

“Why?” said Asterby, his quiet eyes meeting hers. “Because the Master Builder takes too much pride in His work, that’s why. Whatever may crash, you’ll always find there are some foundations left behind for other workmen to build on.”

“Oh!” said Molly, struck. “I’d never thought of that.”

“Some of us never get any thinking-time,” said Asterby. “One has to be on the shelf for that. Yes,” in reply to her look, “I’ve spent quite a considerable length of time there. But I’m off it now—thank God—and back among the workmen.”

He interested her in spite of herself, for there was nothing tangibly interesting about him. She had a feeling that in this man were forces of which humanity stood in dire need. Hidden below his colourless exterior and matter-of-fact speech was something of value—something which everybody wanted, at least, everybody who knew the meaning of suffering. And how many were there in this poor smashed-up world of which he spoke who did not?

Acting upon impulse, shy but imperative, she laid her hand upon his arm. “Let’s talk of this again!” she said. “That is, if you don’t mind.”

He smiled at her again, and she realized that his smile had a beauty that was wholly spiritual. “By all means, let us!” he said. “The workmen should always be ready to help each other.”

“I’m not a workman,” she said swiftly. “I’m only—a traveller.”

He touched her hand for a moment with his own. “We are all that too,” he said; “but we work as we travel. It makes the way easier.”

As Molly went down to breakfast with Ivor, she was conscious of a strange uplift at her heart.