Three Sons (Timeless Classics Collection) Read online

  ‘I had an idea,’ he admitted.

  III

  IN HERTFORDSHIRE

  Luck was on Carolyn’s side in one way. The barony which had been far off and unreal, materialised, for Lord Croft had an accident. It was in one of the motor-cars against which the old-fashioned public still raged, and dismissed as being ‘so dangerous’.

  Desmond, the child, was driving with his grandfather at the time, when the car dashed across a level crossing and into a lorry the other side. There was a horrible accident, the child being killed outright, the old man lingering for a few hours in the cottage hospital.

  The first intimation that Mrs. Spinx got was from the morning papers, which gave a photograph of James, who had become Lord Croft. He had spent the night at the hospital, and had had no time to let Carolyn know what had happened, in fact he was far too horrified to be himself at all.

  James was a highly sensitive man, habitually dogged by the very emotional crises that he dreaded most. He was one of those people who should never come in contact with serious illnesses, accidents or death, because they ravaged him. He would not have admitted it to any outsider, believing it to be some form of moral cowardice, but he quailed when the call came to the hospital. Galvanizing himself, he went to his uncle’s bedside. Old Lord Croft was a man whom James had never liked, he thought him a narrow old man who had quarrelled with most of his family and for whom it was impossible to entertain any affection. But disliking him made the present situation almost worse.

  James spent remorseful hours beside his bed. When the dragged-out ordeal was over, a worse one occurred, for the mother of little Desmond arrived by car. She was labouring under the impression that the child was still alive, though seriously ill, and James had to break it to her. He would never forget those minutes when he stood in the matron’s room, with the young woman looking at him across the table, still believing that Desmond was alive, and refusing to admit that he was dead.

  ‘He can’t be killed? He can’t be? He’s all that I have got.’

  She did not cry. She stood there staring at him, and her eyes seemed to accuse James of being the child’s murderer. He knew that his own strength was ebbing; the vigil beside his uncle’s death bed had been harrowing, raking him raw; he could not go through much more. Then the Matron came in, well versed in trouble; she put an arm round the girl.

  She said, ‘You’d like to see him?’ and to James, ‘Please come with us.’

  He wanted to say ‘I can’t. I daren’t,’ but pride stayed him. Men did not admit that they were afraid, so deliberately he followed them. They went down the passage that smelt of disinfectants, and on the threshold of the mortuary he had the feeling that he would be physically sick. Still he went on. Not far. He stopped dead, clutching at the lintels.

  There was nothing dreadful really, only the fear that kept rising up in his own heart. Inside a little child lay asleep, with no trace of injury on him, all that had been skilfully concealed, and about him was that peace which is not of the earth. His mother said nothing. She held on to the matron’s arm, staring down at the small, translucent face. Then came the sound of a crash, more insistent because in the mortuary it seemed all wrong that sound should penetrate.

  It was James who had fainted.

  They kept James in a private ward for some hours. He was helpless against emotional crises, he was the worst type of coward when it came to matters like this, and he knew it. Now, lying here, he recognized why he had applied himself so diligently to work at Cambridge, it had been not so much that he loved his books, but that he was afraid and wanted to avoid the contacts that might come with public life. He had dallied in the backwaters of life, afraid to travel with its stream in case he met a whirlpool.

  Utterly ashamed, he lay in this little room, with the garden beyond the window with maignonette and geraniums, early asters and zinnias, all mingling.

  A few hours later he travelled home, to find that newspaper reporters had already started coming to Dedbury, and he revolted against the publicity. As he went into his own study, he felt that an enormous change had occurred in him, not just the change that now made him Lord Croft, but the change of soul. Last time he had walked here he had been a young man, and now he felt extraordinarily old. He chafed against the fact that he should be what he now was. Not for his uncle, for him the years had run their course, and anyway he must have died soon; but it was so wrong that the little child with his light hair and his small, still body, should have lain there with the wastefulness of death stamped on his face.

  There was a letter from Carolyn asking if she should come to him, but he did not want to see Carolyn now, she was too young to be dragged into this atmosphere of death. Besides, he wanted to get over things a little before he saw her again.

  When he wrote, he told her that he thought that they would have to have a much quieter wedding than originally intended, and hurriedly he sealed the letter.

  Mrs. Spinx did not like quiet weddings; she felt that they always gave rise to chatter, and people wondering ‘if’, the ‘if’ in capital letters. At the same time she appreciated that a double bereavement of this nature, fortunate as it had been in many other ways, did curb the festivities, which could not be held now unless with an atrocious display of bad taste.

  The trousseau had eaten into a considerable sum, but she had managed to allow James to supply the champagne for the wedding, with a show of dissension, and of course that helped.

  The nearer they came to the day, she noticed that her daughter became quieter. It would be shocking if she were going back on it. Mrs. Spinx dared not entertain such a thought for a moment. Then one day, getting her mother alone, Carolyn said, ‘When you married my father, how did you make sure that you were in love?’

  Mrs. Spinx, feeling a stab of horror worse even than the lumbago, said coldly, ‘We knew.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Really, Carolyn, this is a very personal matter. People don’t discuss that sort of thing.’

  ‘James is behaving rather strangely. I find it so difficult to approach him.’

  ‘James has a very great deal to do. The death of his uncle and nephew must have been a shock to him.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know, but need he be odd to me?’

  ‘How odd to you?’

  ‘That’s just it,’ said Carolyn, her brows knitted, ‘there isn’t anything I can actually put my finger on, but he is odd.’

  ‘Oh,’ not encouragingly.

  Carolyn did not get the chance to refer to it again. Her mother had been horrified, and with twelve of everything in the linen room, and Heaven knows how much money wasted, she decided that the thing to do was to keep Carolyn occupied, and not give her the chance to back out. Never had there been more to do!

  The arrangements were now completed for a quiet October wedding, and Carolyn decided that they could actually walk to church down the side path, for the Lodge joined the churchyard under a yew arch. They had chosen Venice for their honeymoon, everything was arranged.

  The day before the wedding was a brilliant morning, dragging itself out of the mist, with the dahlias drenched in frost and a silver rim to the lawn. Mrs. Spinx was in one of her nagging moods and intolerable. Carolyn hated starting the day by quarrelling with her mother, but when she came down to breakfast she knew that was exactly what was going to happen. She hated the dining-room, and the light oak chairs with leather backs, the seats stamped with the crest, and pock-marked with time. On the shiningly clean cloth breakfast was spread with a bold display of silver, toast racks against each plate, and bowls of jam. Mrs. Spinx was reigning over the head of the table with a pile of letters at her elbow, and the Times. Sitting at the far end, Carolyn had the other paper, and she was so irritated by the trend of her mother’s general behaviour, spoiling for a row, that she opened the paper in self-defence.

  There was a picture of Arthur Hardy. It was the one that he had been so proud of, in his best suit with his hair brushed up into a quiff. Reading t
he caption eagerly, she saw that he had won the second prize in the competition with his plan of a house. There was the plan that she had seen last time on the desk in the tall red house where Mr. Fenwick had his offices. She could trace with her finger the elevations, the little arrows, and the details that he had shown her with such delight, speaking with that faintly common accent which at the time she had not recognised, but now knew was so impossible.

  Arthur Hardy was going a long long way in spite of the flat-faced little mother in River Street; in spite of the accent and the quiff; in spite of many things.

  ‘Why are you so quiet?’ challenged Mrs. Spinx, who was angrier than ever, for she had received an impertinent letter from a tradesman who had dared to ask for something on account. Really, she did not know what people were coming to!

  ‘I don’t know. Am I being quiet?’

  ‘Of course you are! I have had a most irritating letter, you would not believe that Pomfretts would dare to write in that manner. Listen to this …’ and off she went.

  Carolyn didn’t listen. She was thinking of Arthur Hardy, not only the Arthur Hardy whom she had known, but the Arthur who might so easily be, the Arthur she might have married. Now she knew that James would always take second place in her world, and she had never dared face it before.

  The day was full of little duties, the arrival of more gifts, the dismissal of more letters of thanks. All the time she was uncertain. That was it! Just uncertain. All the time her mother was insistent and demanding, and ordering this and that, and arguing that she could not understand how Pomfretts dare behave this way.

  I’ve got to do something, thought Carolyn, far too young to know what the answer was.

  At tea time she went over to the vicarage, because she could bear no more of this. Mr. Erith was busy with a bonfire in the garden, his clerical coat hung on the low branch of an apple tree, whilst the place smelt of smoke and burning. The silver rim still lingered on the cabbages in the shade; Carolyn noticed it as she went across to him.

  ‘Getting rid of a lot of old rubbish,’ he said apologetically, ‘does it smell awful?’

  ‘No, it smells a bit autumny, that’s all.’ And she stood there watching him. Her hands were sunk into the big pockets of her coat, and the fire was piled high, burning gaily.

  Then Mr. Erith, perhaps more aware of the restlessness within her than she thought, wiped his face over with a handkerchief and unhooked his coat. ‘What about some tea?’ he asked.

  They went together into the dining-room. Mrs. Erith saved firing by living in the dining-room, she knew that it was vulgar, because only common people lived in dining-rooms, and she very much wished that they could afford a drawing-room fire every day; instead she had to pretend that the sweep had come, or the carpet was being washed, or something like that. She heard Carolyn and her husband coming in and knew that she was caught again. It was a large tea spread on the dining-room table the sort of tea that in heart she liked, but which socially dismayed her. Mr. Erith went off to wash; Carolyn who did not care for his wife with her small foxy face and pale lips, sat down and they looked at one another.

  ‘I suppose you’re very excited?’ said Mrs. Erith after a noticeable pause.

  ‘I don’t really know.’

  ‘I was. I was so excited that I made myself sick. Funny, wasn’t it?’

  The association of ideas had become inescapable. Carolyn stared at her helplessly.

  ‘Herbert and I went to Bognor for our honeymoon. It was nice, I suppose, but honeymoons are over-rated. Besides, the Bishop was there at the time, and it was just when Herbert wanted preferment, so we had to be hanging round him. Two lumps?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Then Mr. Erith came back, his face shiny with soap and water, his hair freshly brushed. Carolyn knew that she had come here for consolation and that she wasn’t getting it. Instead she was being stirred into an even wilder ferment. She wondered how James was feeling about it, and as soon as she could, made her adieux and slipped home.

  The children were in the village street playing with peg tops; the butcher’s cart had driven out from the town and the village women were crowding round the back of it trying to secure a bargain. All was familiar, only she herself was unfamiliar! She would never be able to survive tomorrow, she thought desperately, never, never, never!

  As she entered her own house her mother called out to her. ‘Where on earth have you been? There is a parcel from the Hall. It looks like glass. One would have thought they would have sent a decent bit of silver, wouldn’t one? Come and open it at once.’

  To-morrow was another glorious day on a world lifting its silver self out of the mist, and the sun rising radiant as a great round marigold. Carolyn lay in bed late, then Lucy came to dress her. The pride in her wedding finery overcame her apprehensions about other matters. White chiffon, with cascades of small frills, the veil that had been her mother’s in the so unexpected marriage after she had reconciled herself to good works as being the next best thing. The Victorian posy of white gardenias was set closely and primly in a doyley of silver.

  The Lodge was no longer old; to-day youth flowed in and out of its doors, flooding it. Bridesmaids quivered together on the stairs. The hired waiters were all young men who took possession of the dining-room. Youthfulness, taking no nay, plunged in a full tide and could not be stemmed.

  Carolyn walked to church on the arm of a maternal uncle who had been subpoenaed into attending, and had it not been for the fractious urgings of a petulant wife, would never, never have complied. The day had emerged ripely warm with the after-glow of summer. About the garden now there lingered nothing of the fête, with its merry Barn Dance, the fairy lights outlining the house, and the poignant scent of syringa and Banksia roses. Perhaps that was why Carolyn had chosen gardenias in preference to orange blossom; she did not want to be reminded of that heavy sweet fragrance.

  She held her head high, and they passed under the dark yew arch into the unreal churchyard. Death seemed to be remote and could no longer touch her by reason of the proximity of love and life. The chiffon of the bridesmaids’ frocks fluttered against the porch, and Carolyn had a vision of their whiteness against the greened stone of a tombstone in the shade which wept under a tree.

  Then the church received them all, and to the girl it was a gateway to a new life. As she stood waiting for the clerical procession, she remembered that this was her one supreme moment. Some women are born to love their husbands, some their sons; the two loves never stand side by side, one is always ahead of the other.

  Funny that she should think this standing here, with the stir of excitement in the church, with the bridesmaids nervously whispering behind her, and the clerical procession approaching. Just funny!

  IV

  IN ITALY

  They motored to the coast and spent the night at the ‘Lord Warden’, crossing early next morning on a sea as calm as the garden had been, held in the hard, late frost of yesterday. Since Lynmouth, she had always been half afraid of the sea trip, but nobody could be afraid of so quiet a sea.

  After dinner the previous night, they had walked along the shore, brightly clear, a starlit night, still, with no hint of fog, but sparkling with frost.

  The afternoon, with the ceremony and the church fragrant with the scent of gardenias, might have been a thousand hours away, so remote did it seem. Mrs. Spinx had bustled about in too tight a frock, with a maddeningly proud expression on her face, and swift to allude to her daughter as Lady Croft. James had hated the whole day very much more than he had anticipated. Appalling shyness had come over him as he and his best man went into the church. He had stipulated for a very quiet wedding, and even though this was quiet (according to Mrs. Spinx’s lights) it was not quiet enough.

  He and Carolyn had come out of the church walking hand in hand through the churchyard to the house. There were reporters standing in groups amongst the crowd of village ‘goofers’, who had turned out whole-heartedly. James saw them there, but w
ith the ceremony behind him, did not care much. Carolyn did not see them. As she came out of the dimness of that church, she had been brought face to face with one man standing on a hillock, probably some forgotten grave. It was Arthur Hardy with his quiff of fair hair and his best suit. In his eyes there was a terrible glazed reproach. She knew that he had forced himself to come here, and that it was the highest form of self-torture, because in spite of all the things that he had said in that dreadful letter he had sent her, Arthur Hardy still cared.

  Carolyn was so young that she believed that everything would now be different; she tried not to look at him, anyway she was married, nobody could do anything about it! Being married was a complete change from being single. It put a fence around her. Walls! More walls! Walls all the time, and suddenly she was not sure that they were such a good thing.

  But at Dover all that seemed to be so far away behind them both that they did not give it a second thought. Why should they? It was peaceful walking beside a sea that made little frittering noises, stirring against the shingle on a falling tide. There was the pearl gleam of it, and the salt smell of it, and the knowledge that even though at this particular moment both might be shyly reserved, before them sprawled a long and happy future, when walls would be torn down and they would no longer be a couple of strangers with one another.

  ‘Venice will be very different,’ said James.

  ‘I know. The last few days have been rather awful,’ confessed Carolyn, then childishly, ‘I can’t think how people get married twice, can you? Once is bad enough.’

  ‘It always ought to be a register office, with two people, preferably ones you’ve never seen before, as witnesses. I thought to-day was positively appalling.’

  ‘Awful!’ she agreed.

  But it was not only the ceremony that had been so dreadful, it was that she was afraid. She hated the large bedroom allotted to them, and the dressing-room where ultimately James decided to sleep, having come to the conclusion that this would simplify everything. When he had gone, Carolyn sat up in bed and stared solemnly at the ceiling. He was afraid too, and wouldn’t admit it! That was it. Both of them were scared of the enormity of the prospect of all their lives together.