Outrageous Fortune (16 page)

Caroline's heart jumped. She said quickly and breathlessly.

“The man Miss Williams married—was he small?”

“Never set eyes on him. Yes, you may well look surprised. Now thirty years ago she might have been afraid I'd cut her out.” She laughed, a broad chuckling laugh. “Well, it wouldn't be that now, and I'm the first to admit it! ‘The mystery man,' I called him, and fine and angry she was—‘And what do you mean by that, Mrs Hawkins?' ‘Why,' I said, ‘when a young lady keeps her young gentleman as dark as you do yours—meeting him round the corner and not so much as letting him see you home—well, she must expect remarks to be passed, and whether she expects it or not, passed they will be.' Really, you know, she'd a violent temper, for I'd hardly got the words out of my lips, when she was through the door and banged it so hard that my first-floor-front came out on the landing to know what was up. ‘Tempers,' I said. ‘And mystery or no mystery, I'm sorry for the man that marries her, for she's one of those that'll have the upper hand or bust herself.”

“Was she here long?” said Caroline.

“Took the room for three weeks and came and went. You've got to live three weeks in a district before you can get married there, so she left a bag, and she'd be here for a day and gone for a week—and I'm not saying I wasn't just as pleased, because the opinion I got of her was that if she'd been here the whole three weeks, she'd have been running the show, and me doing odd jobs and cleaning the boots and knives.”

Caroline felt an affection for the bibulous lady. She felt that way about Nesta herself. She was a little cheered; but at the same time she didn't really seem to be making any progress.

“And you never saw the man she married?”

“No one in this house so much as set eyes on him,” said the fat woman regretfully.

XVIII

It was after six when Caroline got back to the cottage. She found Pansy Ann sitting pensively on the hearthrug. She had a thimble on the middle finger of her right hand, and some blue velvet, a needle-case, a reel of silk, and two pairs of scissors in her lap. But she was not sewing; she did not seem even to have got as far as threading one of the needles. When the door opened, she was gazing into the fire, which was on the point of going out. Without turning her head, she said,

“Is that you? Have you had tea?”

Caroline had expected to be assailed with fussy questions. Pansy Ann was a most dreadful fusser. She had armed herself against a torrent of questions. To be asked only one, and that in a decidedly absent tone, was odd and a little damping. She said,

“I had a cup of tea at Ledlington. I had to change there and wait ten minutes.”

Even then Pansy didn't say, “Where have you been?” Instead, she spread out the bright blue velvet on her lap, turning it this way and that.

“Three-cornered pieces are so difficult to do anything with—but I thought I might get one of those new tight caps out of it. Do you think it would matter if there was a join? I thought perhaps piped with that silver ribbon Bessie Holmes gave me—I've never been able to use it for anything yet. What do you think?”

Caroline sat down on the bottom step of the stairs. She did not know how tired she was until she sat down; then she felt as if it was going to be too much trouble ever to get up again. Why not just spend the rest of one's life sitting peacefully on the bottom step and letting everything happen just as it liked? She felt as if she had been trying to stop the heavy wheels of the world. But why try—why not just let them go on? A voice in her mind said, “Juggernaut.” And then the queer minute passed, and there was Pansy Ann, frightfully peeved at not being attended to.

“I think you might
answer
when I ask you a question.”

“Sorry, darling—I wasn't there. Say it again.”

Pansy said it again.

“You see what I mean about the piping—round the edge and along the join, so that it would look as if it was
meant.”

Caroline shuddered.

“Darling, you
can't
! Make it into pin-cushions for the deserving poor—you know, the sort you stuff with bran and stick into a shell. I know someone who'd love one.” She thought of Mrs Rodgers, and her voice stopped.

Pansy had twisted round and was looking at her across the bright blue velvet. Her colour was high and her glance a little evasive.

“Robert Arbuthnot has been here,” she said in a casual way.

“My poor thing! What's gone wrong now?”

“I don't see why anything should have gone wrong.”

“Robert doesn't generally come unless it has. Why, it's only about a month since he dropped in to say your Beet Sugar bonds had passed their dividend. What is it this time?”

Pansy was pleating the bright folds of the velvet.

“Robert came to lunch.”

“He always does—and breaks the glad news over the coffee.”

Pansy's head came up suddenly.

“Why do you always make fun of Robert? I think it's very
wrong
of you! I'm sure it's very good of him to take so much trouble over our affairs.”

“Good gracious, Pansy Ann!”

Miss Arbuthnot's already high colour was now considerably higher.

“I suppose it's never occurred to you that he
needn't
! I suppose it's never occurred to you that it would be much easier for him to write—much easier and much
pleasanter,
if it wasn't—if it wasn't that he
wanted
to come!”

“Golly!” said Caroline to herself. If she hadn't been so tired, it would have said itself out loud. Was it possible that Robert had an Ulterior Object? Caroline dwelt with joy on Robert under the Influence of a Tender Passion, of Robert Pursuing a Courtship, of Robert Proposing and Being Accepted. She forgot that she was going to sit on a bottom step and let the world go by. Her eyes sparkled. She swooped down upon the hearth-rug beside Pansy.

“Pansy Ann—what have you been up to? What has Robert been up to? How could you be so indiscreet as to have him to lunch in the absence of your chaperon? A gay young man like that! Tell your Aunt Caroline all!”

Pansy began to cry. Her face worked. Tears came rolling down her cheeks. She sniffed loudly between angry sobs.

“You've never done him justice! I've had to put up with your making fun of him
always
! I didn't say anything—because it wouldn't have been any
use
saying anything! You only think about your own affairs—you don't confide in me—you never have! I'm sure if you'd been
engaged
to Jim, you couldn't have shut me up more—when I asked the simplest and most natural questions—though if I'd
chosen
—” She stopped and dabbed her eyes with the blue velvet. She was not quite prepared to claim Jim as a lover. She plunged hastily back into the original grievance. “You always make fun of Robert! If you were older, you'd appreciate him as
I
do. He has a very
high
sense of duty and a
pure
Roman nose. It isn't you he wants to marry, so it doesn't matter
what
you think of him!”

Caroline was appalled.

“Pansy darling—
don't
! I never, never, never meant to hurt your feelings. Darling, you know how one laughs at all sorts of things one respects most frightfully—like bishops—and the Bank of England—and—and Parliament.”

Pansy continued to sob.

“Robert isn't an—institution!”

That was exactly what he was. But never, never, never again must Caroline say so. She hugged the weeping Pansy.

“Darling, I respect him most
frightfully.
He's as safe as the Bank of England and as good as a bishop. Are you going to marry him? Has he asked you? Have you said yes? Here's my hanky—you're simply ruining that blue velvet.”

Pansy blew her nose on the proffered handkerchief.

“There's nothing settled,” she said in a muffled voice—“nothing at all. Only he said—he did say—his mother thought—he ought to marry. He's such a good son—and he said he would like to please her—and did I think forty-seven was too old—and when I said no, it was just the
prime
of life, he said he was very glad I thought so—because he valued my opinion very much. He said that twice—and then he asked me—whether I had any views about—cousins marrying—and I said I didn't think it mattered so long as they weren't very near.”

“Darling! That was practically a proposal!”

Pansy gave a final sob.

“I—thought—it was—because he got up and looked out of the window—and then he said, ‘Your great-grandfather was second cousin once removed to my grandfather.' And then he said he must be going—and then—just at the end—he pressed my hand—and said, ‘You will hear from me in confirmation of this interview.'”

Caroline sprang up hastily. If she laughed, Pansy would never forgive her. She went quickly towards the stair, saying,

“I'll just take my things off and come down again.”

“You
do
think he meant something?”

“It sounds like it.” Caroline was gathering up her bag and gloves.

“Of course he
said
he'd come down to ask us about Jim.”

With her foot on the bottom step, Caroline stood rigid. What had Robert Arbuthnot wanted to find out? She made an effort and said,

“About Jim?”

“Yes. Someone has told him about that broadcast, but they'd forgotten the name of the hospital. He wanted to know whether we had any reason to suppose that Jim was on the
Alice Arden.”

“And you said?”

“I said you thought he might have been. I told him it was the Elston cottage hospital, and that you had been over and found the man wasn't Jim. I told him the name wasn't Randal at all—it was a man called Riddell, and his wife had fetched him away.”

“He was quite satisfied?”

“He went on asking questions. He's so thorough. I think it's wonderful to be so thorough and conscientious.”

Caroline leaned on the old oak balustrade. The cottage had been there for three hundred years, and for three hundred years the hands of men, and women, and little children had been rubbing the baluster smooth. Caroline's hands slipped on it now. She came down a step and stood against the newel. What sort of questions had Robert been asking, and what sort of answers had Pansy given him?

“What did he want to know?” she said.

“When you heard from Jim last—and what his plans were—and whether we'd seen him since he landed.… Oh, and most particularly, whether we'd heard from him, or about him, since the wreck of the
Alice Arden.
And of course I said no, we hadn't. And then he said a most awfully curious thing.”

“What did he say?”

“It wasn't so much what he said as the way he said it. He coughed and cleared his throat, and poked the fire, and then he asked me whether we'd heard any
rumours.
What
do
you suppose he meant?”

“What did you say?”

“Well, I
hadn't
heard anything really, so I said I never listened to gossip. And he said, ‘Quite right—quite right,' and blew his nose and wouldn't say anything more except vague things like not getting drawn into any scandal, and remembering that we were two women living alone. And of course, after saying that about not listening to gossip, I didn't like to ask what he meant—he mightn't have thought it quite nice of me. You know, he thinks women ought to be protected from contact with the sordid side of life. He said so at lunch. He said their place was the home, and that a really nice woman asked for no higher or wider sphere. He said—”

“Why?”

“That's the sort of woman he admires.”

“I don't mean that. Why did he say all that about a scandal?”

“I don't know. It sounded—well, it
sounded
as if Jim—”

Caroline stamped her foot.

“Pansy Ann!”

“Well, it did sound like that—and of course when Mrs Smith was scrubbing out the kitchen yesterday she did say—you know her sister-in-law's eldest girl is kitchen-maid at Packham Hall—she did tell me—”

“Well?” said Caroline.

“You know how she talks—I wouldn't ask her anything, but you can't help listening—well, she says there used to be a photograph of Jim in Mrs Van Berg's sitting-room—a big one like yours—” She paused.

Caroline did not speak; she looked instead—proudly and a little contemptuously.

Pansy's colour rose.

“It's no use your looking at me like that! And you didn't let me finish. Mrs Van Berg might have fifty photographs of Jim if she liked, and if her husband didn't mind. Even Mrs Smith didn't mind her
having
the photograph.”

“What did she mind?” said Caroline in a deep, angry voice.

“Well, it isn't there now,” said Pansy.

“Why should it be?”

“It isn't. But it
was
—it was there the very day Mr Van Berg was shot, and it's never been there since—and, as Mrs Smith says, things like that are bound to make people talk.”

Caroline turned round and went up the stair. Her door shut sharply.

XIX

Try how she would, Caroline could see no way of getting to Hale Place before Pansy Ann and the village were in bed and asleep. People in villages have terribly sharp eyes and a superhuman faculty for putting two and two together even when they don't really exist. As for Pansy Ann, she had got over being peeved and was affectionate, clinging and conversational to the last degree. She sat up till eleven o'clock talking about Robert. This was the main theme, but it proved to be prolific in side shoots, such as, would it be tactful to insist upon new curtains and chair-covers in the drawing-room—the existing ones having been installed by Robert's mother at a period when maroon plush was considered the last word in elegance. The contemporary chair-covers had, fortunately, disintegrated, but Robert had replaced them by an indestructible olive-green tapestry.