“But what does she say about Callie’s father? Is he going to get well?”
“He isn’t going to get well. But he may live some weeks longer and he’s very glad … she’s come.…”
Aunt Fanny’s voice failed her and Awdry, with an exasperated expression, took Mona by the shoulders and gently pushed her out of the room.
Uncle Tom walked in as the door opened and said, “Don’t upset yourself, Fanny. What are you girls thinking about to let your mother upset herself?” and looked at them so reproachfully that all three—Awdry, Juliet and Callie—went away without attempting any explanation.
“We shall hear later, I expect,” said Awdry philosophically. “I’m terribly sorry and all that. But there isn’t anything much one can say, is there, when we none of us remember him in the very least?”
“And haven’t ever been told anything about him,” added Juliet. “Not even Callie.”
“I’ve been told some things,” Callie felt obliged to say. “That he looks like Uncle Fred, only not fat, and used to play cricket very well, and ride and drive, and Aunt was his favourite sister and—well, as a matter of fact, I think that’s all. It seems frightfully little to know about one’s own father, I must say.”
“And that he was called Lucy, which I think was very odd indeed,” proclaimed Mona unexpectedly. “It’s a ridiculous name for a man.”
“Not in the least,” said Awdry, and at the same moment Juliet ordered her junior to be quiet.
Callie knew that, for her sake, they resented the implied criticism.
What did it matter whether one knew or didn’t know one’s father, when one was part of a family as loyal and affectionate as were the Ballantynes?
As the days slipped by Callie found that she was accumulating a series of strange little images in her own mind, formed from fragments—phrases spoken by Aunt Fanny, or read aloud by her from Aunt’s letters.
For she did read parts of them aloud, usually at unexpected moments and without any preliminary so that Callie was often the only person to listen.
“ ‘It doesn’t seem like thirteen years,’ ” Aunt had written. “ ‘He hasn’t altered much, and his voice is exactly the same. When I arrived he said “Hallo, Kay”—as if I’d just walked into the schoolroom at home.’”
Home! thought Callie. Then had Aunt, all these years, not thought of Rock Place as being home?
It was somehow a startling idea.
“ ‘He’s frightfully ill, of course, and the French doctor, who is quite nice and intelligent, says——’”
“We won’t read that,” said Aunt Fanny. And she read something else instead.
“ ‘There isn’t a bed in the whole place that’s long enough for him. I’ve tried everywhere. He doesn’t seem to mind, lying there.’”
Aunt Fanny stopped, looked up from the thin sheets of paper and gazed unwinkingly at Callie.
“Lucy’s head would look so very dark against white sheets and pillows, and she says he’s quite hollow-eyed, poor boy, and terribly thin. He had a way of raising one eyebrow higher than the other.”
Once she astonished Callie by remarking that Lucy had never married again.
“I suppose—I suppose, of course, he could have,” said Callie, confused.
“Kate says he hasn’t.”
“Aunt Fanny, were he and my mother very fond of each other?”
Callie asked the question rather breathlessly. She could have put it to no one else, but Aunt Fanny never seemed to mind what one asked her and she appeared quite to have forgotten for the time being that Callie was not someone of her own age.
“I think they were,” said Aunt Fanny judicially. “Whatever anybody may have said, I shall always believe that they were. Lucy was perfectly crazy about her and nearly went off his head when he lost her. No wonder.”
“Did you know her quite well?”
“No. No, I can’t say that. Kate was her friend. Kate adored her. I think a great many people did. There was something about her—I suppose it was charm.”
“Was she very pretty?”
“She was pretty—but it wasn’t that. Charm,” repeated Aunt Fanny rather helplessly.
She added after a minute:
“Lucy had it, too. And Fred. But Rosalie most of all.”
Every day they expected a telegram to say that it was all over.
When it came, in the early days of May, a second one followed almost immediately. Fred had reached Nice Maritime twenty-four hours too late to see his brother alive.
(5)
“It was so exactly like Fred to leave it too late,” said Aunt Fanny, in tears.
“Lucy knew he would. He told me so, and he laughed. Just like he always used to.”
Callie heard Aunt say that. It added something to her knowledge: not very much.
Two more phrases remained with her, out of the innumerable and unremembered conversations, explanations and descriptions, that followed Aunt’s return from France.
“It was just before he became unconscious.… I suppose he was slipping away. I was sitting by him and it was very hot. I think he’d been dozing. He opened his eyes and cocked up one eyebrow—you know, Fanny?—and—I could hardly hear him. It was just a croak. He said, ‘How’s that, umpire?’ And I said, ‘Not out, Lucy.’ I hope,” said Aunt clearly, “that he heard, and carried his bat.”
Summer had come and Callie and Juliet came out, just as Awdry had done a year earlier, and there were garden parties and tennis tournaments and the ffillimores’ dinner-party and a dance given by Lady Berringer.
Reggie came home for a fortnight’s leave, and little Mary Berringer was suspected of having fallen in love with him.
Cecil was at home too, less pale and rather less silent, and talking more freely to Callie.
Elisabeth was to come and stay in July.
Life was really beginning, Callie thought.
Yet it was in the midst of all these distractions and excitements that she caught, in the hearing of a few short sentences, the final reference that—for a brief moment—established in her mind a connecting link between the unreal past and the real present.
“It’s over now, and you saw him again. It was you he wanted, Kate. Don’t cry. It’s all past and over.”
“It’s over, but it’ll never be over, because of the things it did to all of us—most of all to Lucy.”
“And to you. If only he’d come home. I never can understand why he didn’t come, to see his child—Rosalie’s child.
“Can’t you, Fanny?”
A long silence.
“Unless, perhaps, it was because he could never feel sure.…”
Part III
The Grove
(1872–1901)
Chapter I
(1)
Kate Charlecombe, in her dark-blue cotton frock with the white spots, leant over the little gate that led out of the park into the lane.
It was the most exciting day of her life, she thought—but added the words—so far, although it seemed to her that seventeen years was quite a long while to have lived.
Lucy was coming home, after having made the Grand Tour, this very evening. And as if that wasn’t enough, Rosalie Meredith, who lived at St. Brinvels, was Kate’s own friend, and they loved each other. Kate had known for months that she adored Rosalie’ and thought her the loveliest person she had ever met, but it was only within the last few weeks that she had begun, incredulously, to realize that Rosalie was fond of her in return. Life was marvellous and exciting, and this breathless late May afternoon was the happiest one of her life. Even happier than Fanny’s wedding-day, four years ago, because that had meant Fanny’s going away to live in Devonshire with Tom Ballantyne.
Kate had been happy then, because Fanny was happy—so happy that she had become almost a different person—and she had enjoyed being a bridesmaid, and since then Fanny had had a baby boy, and then a little girl, and Kate had stayed with her and Tom, and little Cecil had learned to call her “Aunt.
”
Long before Fanny’s wedding Fred had gone out to Barbados, overriding all his mother’s objections, and Lucy, under the pretext of studying the management of an estate, had been the one to remain at home. A year ago he had announced his intention of travelling.
Kate thought of Lucy, the day before he left, when he had looked at her in his own special way, with one eyebrow raised a little higher than the other, and called her Kay. Nobody else ever called her that, and once years ago when Fred had done so, Kate had been very angry and sulked, and Mama had punished her and made her apologize to Fred.
Good-natured Fred had forgiven her at once, and promised never to call her Kay again. He was always kind, even though he teased her occasionally, and Kate loved him dearly, just as she loved Fanny.
But her feeling for Lucy was different.
She hadn’t told even Rosalie about that.
Presently she heard carriage wheels at the bottom of the lane, where it joined the road that ran along the valley between Monmouth and Chepstow.
The sound was very distinct in the absolute hush of the late afternoon, and it meant that Rosalie’s father, on his way to visit one of the tenants on the Tintern estate for which he was agent, had left her to spend an hour at The Grove with Kate.
Her heart at once beginning to beat rapidly with excitement, Kate pushed open the little gate and ran down the lane.
Rosalie was running up it.
She was half laughing, as she nearly always was. Her hat was swinging from her hand, and her curling pale-gold hair looked lint-white in the gloom of the green lane where the branches met overhead. Her graceful length of limb enabled her to run more swiftly than Kate, who was of medium height and sturdier build, but it was Kate, flying towards lovely, laughing Rosalie, who covered the ground fastest.
Rosalie put out her long, slender hand and steadied her, and she looked with her shining, blue-green eyes into Kate’s before they kissed.
“Oh, darling! I’m so glad to see you,” said Rosalie. Her voice was high and light, and very musical. It had a gay ring that never quite left it except when Rosalie dropped it to a very soft whisper, as she sometimes did, looking straight at one with her eyes narrowed.
Kate’s heart seemed to turn within her when she met that look of Rosalie’s.
But this afternoon both of them laughed, sheerly exhilarated.
“How long can you stay?” asked Kate breathlessly.
“Papa is going to call for me in about an hour. He won’t come up to the house, and I’m to be at the bottom of the drive at six o’clock.”
“Shall we stay out, or go to the house?”
Kate hoped passionately that Rosalie wouldn’t choose to go up to the house, to where Mama was sitting under the weeping ash at the end of the terrace, writing her mail letter to Fred.
“Couldn’t we just stay here together and talk?” Rosalie said, with a very faintly wistful intonation, as though she were not quite certain that Kate would want to do this as much as she did herself.
“I’d like that better than anything,” said Kate ardently.
They went through the wicket-gate into the grounds of The Grove, and sat down in the long grass under the rhododendron bushes and the flowering red mays.
“Your brother hasn’t come yet, has he?”
“No. He won’t arrive till the half-past seven train. Mama is going to meet him at the station.”
“Not you?”
“No.”
Kate hesitated.
She felt unable to explain that she didn’t mind not meeting Lucy at the station. She would rather Mama had him first, and then he’d not be thinking of anybody except her when they did meet. She wasn’t even going to wait for the carriage in the drive, but stay in the hall.
Mama always took a little while, letting Johnson open the carriage door and let down the step and then laying down her dust-cloak on the oak chest in the hall. She wouldn’t be paying any attention to Lucy for those few moments, anyway, nor he to her.
“I want you to know Lucy, and I want him to see you. I’ve never had a friend before—not of my very own,” Kate said.
Rosalie smiled at her.
When she smiled, the tip of her tongue showed.
“I want to meet him very much,” she said and added, after a fractional pause that gave earnestness to the words, “because he’s your brother.”
Kate caught her breath.
When Rosalie said things like that, it seemed to her as though the whole world could never contain her gratitude and rapture.
“How soon do you think I’ll be able to see him?” Rosalie asked.
“On Saturday, if you can come over for the cricket match. Cousin Joe is bringing over the Newton Players, you know, and Lucy is sure to play. He isn’t in the eleven now, of course, but he’s to play for the village—they’re counting on Lucy. He’ll be much better than anybody else they’ve got. Could you come over for lunch, Rosalie?”
“If Papa can spare one of the horses, I could drive Mother over. She’d like it, I know. And we shall have one of my aunts staying with us, so that it’ll be something to entertain her, if she could come too?”
“Oh yes. There’ll be lots of people, there always are. We have about three cricket lunches here every season, and they’re great fun, but especially when Lucy’s here, or Fred. And of course, Fanny used to be here too before she got married.”
“I wish I wasn’t an only child,” Rosalie said. “It always sounds so lovely to be one of a family, like you.”
“Only I’m so much the youngest. The others are all grown-up, and away nearly all the time. And Fanny’s married.”
“Of course, they’re only your half brothers and sister really, aren’t they?”
“It’s all the same,” said Kate, surprised. “You see, Fanny couldn’t even remember her own father, and I can’t remember mine, and so it’s the same for both of us. We only both of us remember Mama, and she’s the mother of all of us.”
Rosalie laughed a little, and Kate, confused, laughed too.
“I’m explaining it in rather a muddled way, but you do know what I mean?”
“Of course,” said Rosalie.
“Rosalie, you always understand.”
“I’d always understand you, I think. Kate, you’re much the nearest thing to a sister that I’ve ever had.”
Kate felt as though she could gladly lay down her life in return for such happiness as the possession of Rosalie’s friendship.
She was not able to speak, but her eyes turned adoringly towards Rosalie’s face.
It was a face of oval form, with a beautifully defined line of cheek and jaw, a skin of fine apricot-bloom, and unexpectedly marked eyebrows, tilting slightly at the corners with an odd Harlequin effect. The tilt was repeated at the corners of Rosalie’s sweet, wide mouth.
Her charm lay chiefly in her eyes, which were narrow and not large, widely spaced, and of a tint mid-way between green and blue.
Her hair was beautiful: thick, pale-gold and abundantly waving, growing low on her forehead and temples like that of a child.
She was unusually tall, built on long, slim lines, with narrow hips and long legs.
Kate thought that Rosalie was the most beautiful person she had ever seen.
They had only known one another for about six months, although Rosalie’s parents had been living at St. Brinvels for years. But after the first exchange of calls between The Grove and St. Brinvels’ Cottage it had so happened that there had been very few meetings between the two households until—on the very first occasion of Kate’s putting up her hair—kind Mrs. Joe Newton had given a small dinner-party for her.
Rosalie Meredith, five years her senior, had been the nearest to Kate in age and had charmed her from the first instant of their meeting.
For a long while she could not believe that Rosalie could possibly find her interesting, but gradually it had become established that she was Kate’s friend.
“Tell me about your friend
Rosalie,” Fanny had once or twice said, when Kate had been staying with her at Rock Place in Devonshire.
And Kate’s mother, arranging a day’s picnic in the Forest of Dean, or issuing invitations for a garden-party, said: “I suppose, Kate, you’d like to ask your friend Rosalie to come early?”
It seemed to be taken for granted that she had a claim on the enchanting Rosalie.
Sitting under the scented, flowering trees and shrubs, they talked on and on—about themselves, about Kate’s brothers, about the books they liked, and the visit to London that Rosalie hoped to pay her aunt in the autumn.
“I hope you’ll go, because you want to,” said Kate loyally. “But I shall miss you most dreadfully.”
“And I shall miss you, too. But it’ll be lovely writing to you, and getting your letters,” said Rosalie happily.
Kate thought how wonderful she was, always able to say the thing that comforted and made one feel so certain of her affection and understanding.
The hour flew by on wings of gossamer and gold. It was Rosalie who remembered the time and cried out that she must go, Papa wouldn’t like the horse to be kept waiting.
Hand in hand they ran down the drive and to the lodge-gates and waited there, still chattering, until they were obliged to part.
Kate turned away, as Rosalie waved her hand and sprang round the corner that hid her from sight, and went slowly back to the house. She felt excited and intensely happy, as she always did after being with Rosalie, but she knew that another stronger and more pervasive bliss was waiting to take possession of her wholly as soon as she cared to let it rise within her.
In a vague, rather unperceptive way Kate liked the countryside, was fond of animals, enjoyed reading and needlework—which she did well—and looked forward to a picnic, a village cricket match or a day’s shopping in Monmouth as to a treat. But her strongest feelings could only be roused through her affections, which were deep and ardent.
Ever since she could remember, Lucy had been the person she loved best in the world. She had once, as a child of seven or eight years old, said so to Fanny, and Fanny, after one of her immense pauses that always gave one time to wonder whether she really meant to answer at all or not, had said that one ought to love one’s mother best in the world.
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