Caroline Read online

  Philippa relaxed in her chair and looked about the room. So she was back again. After thirty years. What scenes had taken place in this room between her and Gordon! She remembered sitting in that chair by the window and thinking that her heart was broken, that there was nothing left to live for. It must have been partly her fault, of course, though at the time it had seemed wholly his. A light-hearted inexperienced girl, she had fallen in love with his looks, and he with hers. It had been a short engagement, and during it there had been no serious clashes between them. They were both shy, deeply in love with each other, excessively polite to each other. It had been rather like a courtly minuet. Then came the marriage, and after that they had settled down to the serious business of life. The glamour with which her love had invested him soon vanished, and she found him narrow, intolerant, and domineering. He allowed her no will of her own. She was to obey him implicitly in everything on pain of his grave displeasure. Looking back in after-years she could find it in her heart to pity him as well as herself. He was obsessed by an unremitting sense of duty, weighed down by an ever-present burden of moral responsibility. He ruthlessly suppressed the softer side of his character, distrusting enjoyment of any sort, even the most innocent. Life must be consistently grim and earnest. He had tried to mould her to his pattern, crushing her youth as he had crushed his own. She was too proud and independent to submit, and there were constant scenes between them, scenes in which she wept and upbraided him, while he remained stern, aloof, controlled.

  When the children came—first Caroline, then Marcia—it was inevitable that she should disapprove of his treatment of them. He was not unkind, but he repressed them continually, checking their natural impulses, crushing their childish exuberance, trying to instil into them almost from babyhood his own exaggerated sense of duty and responsibility.

  Caroline, naturally serious and docile, had responded readily enough, but Marcia was headstrong and high-spirited, passionately resentful of discipline. The struggle between husband and wife intensified as the children grew older. Philippa deliberately encouraged in them the light-heartedness that their father wished to repress. She protected them from his displeasure, hid their misdemeanours from him, accused him of wanting to turn them into little prigs and hypocrites. The children were growing up in an atmosphere of open dissension. It gradually became clear to Philippa that her championship of them was doing more harm than good. And yet she could not stand by without protest and watch Gordon force them into the mould of his own character. He had already succeeded with Caroline. She was not a prig exactly—there was something too sweet and sound at the core of her for that—but she was earnest and conscientious, imbued with an anxious desire to do her duty and fulfil her responsibilities that was as ludicrous as it was pathetic in a child of four. Already she was looking at Philippa with disapproving eyes. She was Gordon’s child, as Marcia was Philippa’s. Something of the bitterness of the parents’ struggle was entering into the children’s relationship with each other. Even Marcia, thought Philippa, would be better without her. She was happy-natured, living entirely in the present, forgetting her punishments as soon as they were over, accepting life as it came, gaily and heedlessly. Better for both that they should be brought up entirely by Gordon than that their childhood should be made the battlefield on which their parents’ bitterness fought itself out. It was just as she was coming to this conclusion that she met Freddy Warrington. Freddy was the opposite of Gordon. He was gloriously irresponsible. He could and did make a joke of everything that came his way. He had charm, wit, good looks, and no sense of duty at all. He fell in love with Philippa and Philippa fell in love—not so much with the man himself as with the contrast he presented to Gordon. It was such a relief to be able to laugh over foolish little jokes without being checked by a stern glance and a frown, to feel that she could say whatever came into her head without first wondering whether it was, according to Gordon’s golden rule of conversation, “kind and true and necessary.” She promised to run away with him on an impulse and kept her promise without giving herself time to think it over. She would still have gone with him, even if she had given herself time to think it over. Life with Gordon had become impossible. The whole house was being poisoned by their antagonism.

  She lived with Freddy for two years and then they separated. Freddy wanted to marry her when Gordon divorced her, but she had discovered by then that the very irresponsibility that had delighted her so much at first had its drawbacks. Freddy was always ready to take the way of least resistance, and the way of least resistance not infrequently led him into quagmires from which he could only extricate himself by actual dishonesty. Yet he was as well meaning in his way as Gordon had been in his. Philippa felt that she had tried both kinds of men and found them equally unsatisfactory.

  Several years after she and Freddy had separated she met Rodney Meredith—a quiet middle-aged man who had been crippled in a motor accident and suffered almost constant pain. Something about him appealed to her thwarted maternal instinct, and, when he very tentatively and diffidently proposed marriage to her, she accepted him. Their married life—spent mostly in moving from place to place on the Continent in search of some alleviation of his pain—was not unhappy. He was pathetically grateful to her for her care of him, and they had many interests in common. She had mourned sincerely at his death.

  Then had come Caroline’s invitation—like a voice from another world. It was the thought of Caroline that had made her accept it—the memory of the grave sweet little girl who had been so anxious to live up to Gordon’s high ideals, so overwhelmed already by a sense of duty and responsibility. Would anything at all have been left of that disarming childish sweetness, or would it have been completely destroyed by Gordon’s training? And then there were Gordon’s other children. She felt curious about them, too. Nina . . . she remembered her well—a pretty, colourless, timid girl. She had borne Gordon three children and died at the birth of the third. Philippa always felt a pang of pity when she thought of her. Gordon had only lived a year longer, and the youngest child had been brought up by Caroline. She’d often wondered what sort of a job Caroline had made of the youngest child. And what sort of a job life and Caroline herself had made of Caroline. She was still wondering now that she had met her.

  The prig was there, of course, the prig whom Gordon had set to guard her every word and action but—the sweet simple little girl was there too. Philippa had been glad to recognise that little girl. She’d been terribly afraid lest the prig should have killed her.

  And—there was something else that Philippa couldn’t quite understand, something of which Caroline herself was probably unaware, something dark and secret and turbulent. It was as if all those natural impulses that Gordon had repressed had been driven inward, had festered and turned sour. She was beautiful in a cold passionless way, which she enhanced, probably deliberately, by the excessive plainness of her dress and the almost puritanical austerity of the smooth parted hair. The man—Richard Oakley—was obviously in love with her. She accepted his devotion gravely, detachedly, but she didn’t return it, though perhaps she thought she did. And Charles. . . . He’d turned from a self-conscious rather pompous young man into a ridiculous old dandy, but his devotion to Maggie was as touching as ever. He’d always been kind to her, protecting her from Gordon’s stern criticism, reassuring her, consoling her. Poor Maggie! She’d been frightened out of her wits by the old man in her childhood and had never quite found her way back into them.

  “You’ve been living in Vienna, haven’t you, Mrs. Meredith?” said Richard.

  Philippa roused herself to take part in the conversation again.

  “Yes, for the past year. A doctor there had discovered some new treatment that we thought might do my husband good.”

  “I went there once before the War,” said Charles, “but I suppose it’s all different now.”

  “Not so very, I believe,” said Philippa. “The people are as charming as ever, and there’s still the opera
. And the country round is delightful.”

  They began to talk about Vienna and the Dolomites, then Richard told her that he was going to Madeira for a holiday, and it turned out that Philippa had spent several months there, and they all began to talk about Madeira, Richard growing quite excited and making himself really ridiculous, thought Caroline, sitting back in her chair and watching them with eyes that were growing bluer and bluer. She might not have been in the room for all the notice anyone was taking of her.

  “I generally find,” she said, smiling, “that the people who have most to say about the marvellous scenery abroad know little or nothing of English scenery. I suppose one does feel rather more important when one praises the Dolomites than when one praises—say, the English Lakes or the Scottish Highlands.”

  Again there was a constrained silence. Maggie’s necklaces jingled nervously. Maggie could always tell when Caroline was annoyed, however kindly she spoke.

  “Fay must play to us when she comes home,” she said with a vague idea of propitiating her by praising Fay.

  Charles coughed loudly and remarked that the days were drawing in. Philippa threw her daughter a look of quiet amusement. It was the second time since her arrival that she had deliberately snubbed her. Why had she invited her at all, she wondered. Perhaps the child herself didn’t know. She was talking about a holiday that she had once spent at the Lakes with her father and the children.

  “You could walk for miles without seeing a house, just the hills and valleys and rocks. I don’t know how old the farmhouse was where we stayed, but it looked as much a natural part of the scenery as the rocks and lakes. It was rather thrilling to feel that everything as far as you could see must have looked just the same for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

  “I know,” said Richard. “It is thrilling.”

  But she could tell that he wasn’t really interested. Neither was Charles. They wanted to talk to Philippa again, to ask her about Vienna and Budapest and Berlin and all the other places where she’d stayed, to listen to her casual illuminating descriptions, her little flashes of wit. Everything that she, Caroline, said sounded suddenly heavy and pedantic. Wistfully and with a kind of fear, she remembered the last tea-party she’d had in this room, when there had been just Richard and Uncle Charles and Aunt Maggie. They’d listened to her with such obvious interest. And now it was all changed. There was a laboured politeness, a faint suspicion of boredom in their manner. Even in Richard’s. The fear deepened. Again she faced the fact that she might have made a grave mistake in asking this woman to come here. She’d never forgive herself if her influence harmed any of those near and dear to her. She didn’t like the way she’d made fun of Mr. Cookson or the way she paraded her knowledge of foreign places. Both were in very bad taste.

  Chapter Eight

  THEN Fay came in—eager and tremulous, like a leaf blown by the wind.

  “This is Aunt Philippa, dear,” said Caroline. She had decided on Aunt as the most convenient form of address in the circumstances.

  Fay looked at the new-comer, then burst out laughing.

  “Oh!” she said. “And I’d thought of you as an old lady in a black dress.”

  They all laughed, except Caroline.

  “I’m so sorry,” apologised Philippa.

  “Oh, but it’s lovely,” said Fay. “I’m so glad you aren’t.”

  “I’m an old lady in a red dress instead,” said Philippa with dancing eyes.

  “You’re not old,” protested Fay, “and it’s too lovely a colour to be called red.”

  What on earth was the matter with the child, thought Caroline irritably. She was generally so shy and quiet and well-behaved. This woman seemed to have the most extraordinary effect on everyone round her. . . .

  “Your tea’s laid in the dining-room, dear,” she said quietly. “We had ours at four. . . . Then you might begin your home-work there straight away when you’ve had your tea. You’ve got rather a lot to do tonight, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” said Fay. Her glow had suddenly faded.

  “Run along, then. We’ll all excuse you from coming in again.”

  Philippa watched her go slowly from the room. How adorably young and fresh she was! There had been a dewy sparkle about her when she entered, but it had died away at Caroline’s tone. Caroline had deliberately extinguished it. But Caroline, too, could light it again by a word or a look. It was quite easy to see that. And she hadn’t extinguished the glow, as Gordon or his father would have extinguished it, because they distrusted it as worldliness or frivolity. It was something far more subtle than that.

  Richard was rising to take his leave.

  “I’ll see you out, Richard,” said Caroline.

  She went with him into the hall, then drew him into the little morning-room and closed the door.

  “Richard,” she said, “do you think I’ve made a great mistake?”

  “How do you mean, Caroline?”

  “In asking her to come. I’d no idea she’d be like this.”

  “Like what?”

  She threw out her hands.

  “Oh, Richard . . . Didn’t you think there was something—brazen in the way she talked about Bartenham? As if—as if she hadn’t left it in the way she did.”

  He looked slightly embarrassed.

  “I don’t know. . . . After all, it’s a long time ago.”

  “Does that make any difference?”

  “Well, I think it does. . . . Don’t worry, Caroline. You’re just a little tired. I could see you were, in the drawing-room.”

  “I’m not at all tired,” said Caroline coldly.

  “It was splendid of you to ask her here as you did, and I know you won’t regret it. She’ll be able to help you in lots of ways. And she’s charming.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Don’t you?”

  She looked at him with clear blue eyes.

  “I can see that some people would find her so, but somehow I didn’t think you’d be one of them.”

  “Why ever not?”

  She shrugged.

  “Nothing. . . . Well, I must get back to the others. Goodbye.” “Goodbye.”

  She stood in the hall when he had gone, her heart beating unevenly. She and Richard had never come so near to quarrelling before. It was all her mother’s fault. There was about her some indefinable quality that made for disharmony. And more than disharmony. It had turned Fay into a silly giggling schoolgirl. It had made Richard, for the first time in her experience of him, seem imperceptive and—yes, almost coarse-grained. It—blurred things, threw them into wrong focus. Nothing had seemed right and natural since she entered the house. Always Caroline had faced the fact that her influence might be evil, but she hadn’t realised how much charm and loveliness might be left from the wreck of her life to strengthen that influence. But—she set her lips—she wasn’t going back on her word. She’d asked her to the house, and if she brought with her an evil influence she would fight it. She’d never yet withdrawn from any task she’d set herself. . . .

  She returned to the drawing-room, her cheeks flushed, her head held high, her eyes very blue.

  “And I remember a kitten you had called Topsy,” Philippa was saying to Maggie. “Once it got so completely tangled up in your wools that it took all of us all evening to disentangle it.”

  “Oh yes, I remember,” laughed Maggie, then she saw Caroline and looked rather guilty, gathering her scarves together with little nervous movements. “We ought to go now, Charles. It’s after half-past five.”

  They took their leave, Charles making his most courtly bow over Philippa’s hand.

  Maggie walked down the road with a little springing step that told Charles she was happy.

  “She’s nice, Charles, isn’t she?” she said.

  “Yes,” agreed Charles. “Very nice indeed.”

  “She couldn’t ever have been wicked, could she?”

  “Of course not,” Charles reassured her.

  Maggie
gave a little ineffectual tug at a scarf that was too short on one side and too long on the other.

  “I expect the whole thing was a misunderstanding,” she said vaguely. “Things so often are.”

  “What a delightful child Fay is!” Philippa was saying.

  “Yes, isn’t she?” agreed Caroline. “She’s a little weak and easily led, that’s all.” She took some sewing from a work-basket that stood on the table near her chair and began to work at it with quick unsteady movements. “She’s studying very hard just now for her scholarship examination, so I don’t suppose you’ll see much of her.”

  “I don’t expect to,” smiled Philippa. “Girls of that age generally have so many friends and interests that no generation but their own exists for them.”

  There was a silence, then Philippa said:

  “Caroline . . . tell me about things since I went away.”

  Caroline cut off a strand of silk before she answered.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she said at last, lightly.

  Philippa smiled wryly. She’s putting me in my place. I’ve no right to pry into her private affairs. She’s quite right, of course. I haven’t.

  Caroline looked up from her work.

  “Wouldn’t you like to lie down on the sofa?” she said kindly, and added after a slight hesitation, “Mother.”

  “No, thank you,” said Philippa. “I’m not at all tired. And don’t call me ‘Mother’ if you’d rather not, Caroline. After all, it does seem a little unnatural. I’m afraid I wasn’t much of a mother to you. Why not just call me Philippa?”

  “Very well,” agreed Caroline.

  There was another silence, in which Philippa decided to make a fresh assault upon Caroline’s defences.

  “Caroline, I know hardly anything of what’s happened here since I left, except what I’ve seen in the Births and Marriages and Deaths column of The Times. I know I’ve no right to ask it, but won’t you fill in the gaps for me?”