Outrageous Fortune

by Patricia Wentworth

  I went to look for violets,

  There were no violets there;

  But every single widowed leaf

  Had shed a shining tear of grief

  For violets that were.

  I went to look for roses,

  The roses all were fled—

  Caroline went off into a gurgle of laughter.

  “That’s not a poem—it’s a foregone conclusion! I can tell you exactly what the other rhymes are going to be before you come to them. It’s not another ‘Abaddon,’ I suppose?”

  “No. She signs Gwendoline, but her name is really Dobbs.”

  Caroline scrambled to her feet.

  “Sorry, Pansy Ann, I’m going to bed—I don’t think I can bear any more Gwendoline.”

  She went up the stairs, which ended on a tiny landing with a door on either side. Her room was on the left, and you went down two steps to it. Both the steps and the floor of the room were odd polished boards, very wavy and uneven. The window, which looked to the front of the house, was set in a deep embrasure. Caroline had given it curtains of green sprigged chintz, a pattern of little holly leaves on a shiny white ground. There were green rush mats on the floor, and an old hand-quilted bedspread worked with pink and green flowers on the wide, low bed.

  Caroline was very fond of her room. The bedspread had been worked by her great great-great-aunt Caroline, who had been called after Caroline of Anspach. The bed had belonged to her too, and it was much too big for the room. Caroline had slept in it ever since she was six years old.

  She shut the door and turned on the light in the lamp beside her bed. Hazelbury West had had electric light for the last eight years and considered itself very up to date in consequence.

  Caroline turned down her bed, folding the quilt carefully and laying it on the chest in which she kept her hats. She had said she wanted to come to bed, but she wasn’t really sleepy. If the fire had not died, she would have gone on sitting there beside it; but it is the saddest thing in the world to sit by a dying fire. And as for Pansy Ann’s Circle and their appalling balderdash—with the least encouragement Pansy would have read her the whole lot.

  She opened the bottom drawer of the chest of drawers which faced the window and took out a bundle of letters tied with a twist of pale blue knitting silk. Then she went over to the bed. Sitting down on the edge of it, she untied the bundle and turned the letters over. There were not a great many of them. Two the first year after Jim went out—one for her birthday, and one for Christmas—and two again the second year, and the third. In the fourth year he only wrote for Christmas. The pain of that missed birthday came across the three years interval and hurt her still. She had counted on her letter, and it hadn’t come. Her birthday was in June, so it was six months since Christmas, and it would be six months before it was Christmas again. Six months is a most frightfully long time when you are nineteen.

  In the fifth year there was no letter at all. On her birthday and on Christmas day Caroline read the old letters and tried to make believe that they had just come. It was not a very successful make-believe.

  In the sixth year there were still no letters.

  And then in the seventh year—this year—they began again. He had written at Christmas from New York.

  Caroline got out the letter and read it again. It was a very nice letter. She hugged herself a little over it. It began, as all his letters always had begun, “Darling Caroline”; and it was quite long. He had been in lots of exciting places. He had been building a bridge in Mexico, and he had been in Chile, and Peru, and up in wild places in the Andes. He had also been inventing something which he hoped would make his fortune. He was burnt pretty nearly as dark as an Indian. And he had become a pretty good shot, because you needed to be. He was hers, Jim. He always signed just like that—“Yours, Jim.”

  That was the Christmas letter. Caroline answered it at once. She told him she was living with Pansy Ann, and she told him just how dreary and lonely and neglected Hale Place was getting to look—weeds in the drive, and green mould on the pineapples at the entrance—“and if you don’t come home soon, Jim, the trees will meet across the drive, and the cedar and the copper beech will grow in at the west windows. There’s ivy across the glass already, and the wisteria is over the old schoolroom. Aren’t you ever coming home? I do so want you to come. Your loving Caroline.”

  She had always signed like that to Jim from the time that she wrote him her very first letter when she was seven years old and he had sent her a doll for her birthday. It had real hair, and brown eyes that opened and shut. Jim was sixteen. He loomed heroic to little Caroline. He could climb trees. He could swim two miles—as far as from Hazelbury West to Packham. He could make a swing. He could make a kite. He could swing you right up into the air over his head and hold you there. He wasn’t a grown-up. Grown-ups said, “Don’t—” and “You mustn’t!” Jim was just Jim. She was his loving Caroline.

  He wrote again in February. He was very hopeful about his invention. He couldn’t tell her about it, because it was all extremely confidential. Elmer Van Berg might be going to back it. If he did, the thing was made. He wrote at length about Elmer Van Berg, for whom he seemed to have a high admiration—“The bother is, he’s interested in too many things. He takes turns at them. Whilst he’s riding one, the others might as well be dead. Just as I thought I had brought my job off, his uncle, old Peter Van Berg, died and left him an extraordinary collection of jewels. Elmer’s too busy with them to have time for me and my affairs.” There was a lot more about the Van Bergs. Susie Van Berg was awfully pretty, and awfully kind. They were great friends.

  In March he wrote that the Van Bergs were coming to England for the summer—“Susie wants to go to Court in as many of old Peter Van Berg’s jewels as possible. There are some emeralds which beat the band. They are said to have belonged to Atahualpa, the last of the Incas. I shouldn’t mind having what they would fetch—you can’t launch an invention without capital. If this thing of mine can only get a start, it’s bound to go big.”

  After that there was nothing for a couple of months. Then he wrote again, still from New York. The Van Bergs were in England. He was half thinking of coming over after them. Susie thought it might be worth his while—she thought Elmer was working up for a change of hobbies. They had taken Packham Hall for the summer—“You might go over and call as it’s so near.”

  Caroline had gone over to call with Pansy Ann; but it was June, and the Van Bergs were taking their London season very seriously and only coming down for week-ends. Caroline and Pansy had been asked to lunch on a Sunday—and of course it had to be just that one particular Sunday which Robert Arbuthnot had already commandeered. he was a distant cousin of Pansy’s, a still more distant cousin of Caroline’s, and trustee to both of them. He was an able solicitor, and a blinding bore. Caroline maintained that he only came to see them when he had something unpleasant to impart with regard to their investments. On this occasion he left Pansy the poorer by about twenty pounds a year, and made it impossible for Caroline to meet the Van Bergs.

  In July Caroline went north to visit her father’s sister, who kept open house every year in the Highlands. It was whilst she was at Craigellachie that Jim wrote to say he was in London. He was given a warm invitation to join Mrs Ogilvie’s party.

  Caroline passed quickly over the time when they waited for his answer. He would come—of course he would come. They would go for tremendously long walks, and tell each other all the things that you couldn’t put into letters. If he got Aunt Grace’s letter on Wednesday morning, he might catch the night train and come right through. Caroline had gone about in a queer warm dream of happiness which it hurt her to think about now. Because Jim hadn’t come. He hadn’t written for three days, and then it was just a few lines to Grace Ogilvie. He thanked her very much, and he hoped perhaps he might be able to get up later on, but just at the moment he was afraid he couldn’t spare the time. He didn’t write to Caroline at all, not until the beginning of A
ugust, and then it wasn’t what you could call a letter; just half a dozen lines, all scrawled in a hurry:

  “I may be able to get off on the 8th if Grace can still have me. I shall probably take a steamer up the coast.”

  And that was all. That was the very last letter. It might have been written to anyone—to a hotel, or to someone you disliked, or to a Mere Acquaintance. It wasn’t the kind of letter to be Jim’s last letter to his loving Caroline. It gave her a very desolate, grey, hopeless feeling. It made her feel, quite illogically, that Jim was drowned. The Alice Arden had sailed on the eighth of August and had gone to bits on the Elston rocks. If Jim wasn’t drowned, where was he? The only address they had ever had was his bank. She had been to the bank, and had been told that they had no address, and that Mr Randal had not called for his letters since the sixth of August.

  That was a very frightening thing to hear. It seemed to make it certain that Jim had sailed on the Alice Arden. A cold shiver passed over Caroline. She put the letters together again with hands that moved a little stiffly. When she went over to put them away, the room felt very cold. She drew a sobbing breath as she shut the drawer. It felt as if she were shutting Jim away. The tears began to run down her face, and all at once she couldn’t bear the light any more. It is only happy people who want to stand in the light. Caroline pushed down the switch, and was glad of the dark.

  She cried bitterly, crouching down by the bed and pressing her face into the pillow lest Pansy Ann should hear. Pansy had come upstairs and was moving about in the room across the tiny landing. Caroline cried all her tears away. She had held them in for a long time; now they were all gone, and she felt rather like a ghost, weak and light and insubstantial.

  She went to the window and opened it, kneeling on the deep window-ledge and leaning out to get the air. It was a still night that would come near to frost before morning. There was moonlight, but the moon was not visible. The elm-trees opposite rose up dark and vague as smoke. All the shadows were soft and formless. The white phloxes in the border looked like spilled milk.

  Something in Caroline’s mind said quickly, “It’s no good crying over spilled milk.” She thought that was very odd.

  She leaned out farther. There was something strange about the night. Or perhaps the strangeness was in herself. She felt as if everything was a very long way off and out of reach. A ghost might feel like that if it came back. There is a ballad in which a dead man comes to his lover’s window an hour before the day:

  “Are ye sleeping, Margaret?” he says,

  “Or are ye waking presentlie?

  Give me my faith and troth again,

  I wot, true love, I gied to thee.”

  The verse came into Caroline’s mind. It seemed to float there giving out a peculiar atmosphere of eerie strangeness. It would have been on just such a night as this that Margaret looked from the shot window and saw the dead man come tirling at the pin—no lighter than this and no darker—moon-shadow—moon-dusk. Even a living man might look like a ghost. A faint damp breath moved the trees across the road. Over the edge of the silence came the sound of footsteps coming nearer.

  Caroline drew back a little. She didn’t want anyone from the village to see her leaning out of her window at midnight. The steps were coming towards the village, not from it. She wondered who it could be that was coming home so late. Hazelbury West kept early hours. She drew back until she was out of sight. When she stopped moving, the footsteps had stopped too. She leaned against the side of the recess and waited for them to pass. She waited a long time, and there was no sound at all. If the footsteps had passed, she would have heard them. They had not passed.

  She leaned forward again with a shiver running over her. There was someone standing at the gate. She could see no more than that. A hornbeam hedge divided the garden from the road. It was cut into an archway over the gate, and under this arch someone was standing. Caroline could see nothing but a dark shape standing there quite still

  The little breath of air had died away. None of the shadows in the garden moved. And then all at once the shadow by the gate did move. She heard the click of the latch, the gate swung, creaking a little, and a man came a few slow steps along the path. He stopped between the second and third rose-trees and looked up.

  In that moment Caroline thought that her heart had stopped. Everything seemed to stop, because, in the dusk that was neither light nor darkness, she thought it was Jim Randal standing there. He had stood like that a hundred times, looking up at the old school-room window when he wanted her—calling, “Caroline!” He didn’t call now. It wasn’t Jim—it couldn’t be Jim. Oh, Jim was drowned. How could it—how could it be Jim? Did anyone ever come back like that in the dead of the night? She felt as if she were drowning too, because she couldn’t take her breath.

  And then quite suddenly he turned and went down the path and out at the gate. The gate clicked, and everything went on again.

  Caroline found herself taking deep choking breaths, whilst her heart raced furiously. The next thing she knew she was on the stairs, running down; and then the door was open and she was on the brick step, listening. There was no sound behind her in the house. Pansy Ann slept deep. There was no sound in the garden, not the rustle of a leaf or the stirring of a bird; but from the road there came the faint sound of footsteps that were going away.

  She ran down the path and out of the gate and followed them.

  It was cool in the road, and dark because of the elmtrees. The moon was somewhere behind the trees. Caroline ran a little way, and then stopped to listen again. The footsteps were just ahead, and presently she could see a something that was darker than the shadow of the elms moving before her at a steady pace.

  It’s hosen and shoon and gown alone.

  She climbed the wall and followed him

  Until she came to the green forest,

  And there she lost the sight of him.

  The words came and went, and came and went again. What was she doing? She didn’t know. Where was she going? Wherever Jim went. It wasn’t Jim—it couldn’t be Jim. Who was she following? Jim was drowned. What was she following? Her mind shuddered away—

  They went past the churchyard and past the church. They came to the green, with the pond catching the moonlight like looking-glass. There were trees still along the edge of the road, trees with spaces of moonlight in between. When he crossed the moonlight patches, Caroline was afraid. She could see no more than a tall man walking as if he were tired. It was when he was only a shadow that she felt most sure that he was Jim.

  They passed a little row of silent, empty shops. They passed Mrs Grainger’s cottage. It had one pale lighted window. Mrs Grainger slept badly, and was inordinately proud of the fact that she often read until past midnight. It was past midnight now.

  Caroline looked back over her shoulder and saw the window very small and far away. The village world, other people, firelight, lamplight—the whole of everyday life—they were all small and far away and left behind. The ballad verse drummed in her head:

  It’s hosen and shoon and gown alone.

  She climbed the wall and followed him

  Until she came to the green forest,

  And there she lost the sight of him.

  But it should be dark forest—dark; not green—

  Until she came to the dark forest

  And there she lost the sight of him.

  And with that the gate-posts of the Hale Place stood up in front of her in the ghostly light. There was no gate between them, nor ever had been since Caroline could remember. But the posts had always been there—tall pillars of grey stone with a stiff stone pineapple on top of each. The moon shone on the posts and on the pineapples, and on the man who passed between them into the black shadow which lay beyond.

  And there she lost the sight of him.

  But she mustn’t lost the sight of him. She had lost the last light of the village. Whatever happened, she mustn’t lose Jim.

  Jim was drowned.
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br />   She stood for a moment on the edge of the moonlight. The elms stopped here, and the light shone clear across the green. Something clamoured in Caroline’s ear: “Jim’s drowned—it can’t be Jim.” And then she was running through the moonlight and into the shadow.

  The trees that bordered the drive had been growing together for thirty years. Old Mr Randal wouldn’t have anything cut. It was as dark as the darkest tunnel. It was dark even when the sun was shining. Now it was like a tunnel hung with black velvet. The gravel was so overgrown with moss that it was like running on a soft carpet. Caroline’s feet made no noise at all, nor, when she checked and listened, could she hear the sound of any other foot. She went on again, not running now, and with her hands fending out before her. The tunnel under the trees had an empty feeling. It went right on to the corner of the house and there ceased.

  Caroline stood still and listened again. She couldn’t hear anything at all. It wasn’t dark any longer, but all the light came barred and chequered through the branches of the great cedar which stood up against the moon. The house seemed vague and unsubstantial, its tangled creepers dappled with silver. It wasn’t a place where people lived any more. There was no fire on its hearth, no light in its chambers. It was a house of dreams.

  Until she stood in the black mouth of the drive and looked at the house, Caroline had been afraid. Part of her had been very much afraid, but she had gone on because she had to go on. Now the part that was afraid stopped being afraid any more. The empty house drew her into its own dream, and she stopped being afraid. She began to run across the bars of moonlight and shadow, and as she ran she called,

  “Jim! Jim! Wait for me!”

  XIII

  Caroline came to the corner, and saw the whole front of the house and the gravel sweep before it unshadowed in a faint moony light. In the middle of the sweep the man whom she had followed stood looking up at the house.

  Caroline had done with hesitating and being afraid. Those were things which she had left behind, outside the dream. She came to him, running lightly, and as he turned at the sound of her running feet, she caught him by the arm.