“Or anything? My dear Helena—”
“Don’t be a fool!” said Helena Ryven. “Please go and look for her. I suppose even you can see that we don’t want to set everyone talking.”
Timothy got out his car, threw a coat of Lil’s into it, and went off to look for Valentine, who might be anywhere within a ten-mile radius, or beyond it, if she got up really early.
That he found her in about twenty minutes was due to the fact that she was looking for him and had remembered approximately what he had told her about the position of his house. She was getting hungry, when she heard the car and moved away from the willow-tree to see where the sound was coming from.
She had come down through the woods to the river. About a hundred yards farther along, a winding road took a bend and ran for a mile or two above the stream. The car came round the bend, slowed down, and stopped.
Valentine called out, “Timothy!” and ran up the sloping bank.
“Oh, my hat!” said Timothy to himself.
Valentine came up to the car, running with an easy grace. Her hair hung in curls of a really startling wildness; her drenched sleeveless smock was stained and torn, her bare legs were scratched, and from one deepish cut a trickle of blood ran down to her wet foot.
She shook the curls out of her eyes, scrambled over the hedge, and jumped down on to the running board with a laugh.
“Oh, Timothy, I was looking for you!”
“Well, you’ve found me,” said Timothy. “Oh, Lord! Where have you been? Here—put this on quick!”
He fished out Lil’s coat and held it up.
“I don’t want it—I’m quite warm.”
“Put it on!” said Timothy.
He thrust it on her, and she began to laugh.
“Is it Lil’s? I shall make it all wet. Are you going to take me to see Lil?”
“I’m going to take you straight back to Holt. Helena’s raging.”
At Helena’s name she changed, stopped laughing, and drew away.
She said “Why?” in a quick, breathless way; and all at once Timothy didn’t want to take her back to Holt—not looking like that anyway.
“Oh, get in!” he said. “Look here, I’ll take you back to have breakfast with Lil if you like. I can telephone to Helena, and Lil can lend you some clothes to go home in.”
“Lovely! Oh, Timothy—”
“What?”
“I didn’t know anything could be as lovely as this!” Then, with a droop in her voice, “Is she angry? Why is she angry?”
Timothy started the car.
“I think she was frightened. She’ll be all right by the time you get back.”
She gave a sigh and snuggled down into Lil’s coat. They were turning and going back along the river’s edge. The little picture-book cottage was being left behind. She leaned out to look at it.
“I thought you lived there. I was watching to see if you would come into the garden.”
“That’s old Trent’s cottage. Pretty—isn’t it!”
“I wish you lived there. I wish I lived there. I don’t think I want to live at Holt.”
“Holt belongs to you, Valentine,” said Timothy seriously.
She said “No,” saw his look of surprise, and found troubled, stumbling words of explanation: “It doesn’t belong to me—I don’t see how it could. It belongs to all those other people, it doesn’t belong to me.”
“What people?”
Did she mean Helena and Eustace?
“All the old people. After you went away and Eustace, Aunt Helena showed me their pictures and told me stories about them.”
He thought, “Funny child—but rather nice.”
“What’s bothering you?” he said.
She looked startled.
“Why does that bother you?”
“It doesn’t—bother.”
“Something does.”
He took a quick sidelong glance and saw her flush and look away.
“There isn’t room for me,” she said in a very low voice.
There was a silence.
Yesterday Timothy had been sorry for her. Today he did not feel exactly sorry. He had been angry and bored—fed up. And then, with extraordinary suddenness, he had stopped being angry and bored. He wondered shrewdly whether it was Holt that gave her the crowded feeling, or Helena. Helena had a way of making one feel crowded.
“Timothy—” said Valentine.
“What is it?”
“Why did you say that Lil would lend me some clothes to go home in?”
“Well—”
“Aren’t these proper clothes?”
“They’re very wet.”
“That’s not what you meant.” She fingered the hem of her smock where the coat fell away. “It’s what I wore on the island. I didn’t want to spoil the dress that Barclay gave me. He gave me some lovely dresses. But they all got dirty on the yacht except the one I had on yesterday. So I thought—I was afraid—”
Her flush had deepened. He saw to his horror that her eyes were wet.
“I say—it doesn’t matter.”
He heard a little woe-begone sniff.
“Edward said I should have to be so very careful when I came to England. He said it was folly to run counter to the established conditions of English society. He said—” Her voice wobbled.
Timothy fairly shouted.
“I say, I’m awfully sorry—but it did sound so funny!”
He looked round at her apologetically and found her laughing too.
“Oh, Timothy, you are nice!”
“Am I?”
He wondered a little what her standard was.
The road began to leave the river. It took an upward slope. The fields on either side of it were Timothy’s fields. Now they bent towards the river again. A tall holly hedge rose like a black wall on their left.
Timothy turned in between grey stone pillars.
“Is this your house?”
He nodded.
The drive was like a green tunnel. Under yesterday’s rain it would have been black. To-day the sun shone through the crowding foliage like light coming through a stained glass window.
The car came out of the tunnel and stopped in front of a low white house with a thatched roof. The walls were almost hidden by climbing roses, and a very large lavender bush bloomed on either side of the front door.
Timothy Brand had inherited from his father one of those old small manor houses which are fairly plentiful in the south of England. The land that went with it had steadily dwindled in value, and if Mr. Brand had not been able to leave his son some hundreds a year from other sources, Timothy would have been forced to take his farming tastes to one of the Dominions.
As Valentine jumped out, the door opened and a girl in a bright blue cotton dress ran to meet them. She had fair hair rather like Timothy’s, and a peaked thin face which looked pretty when she was flushed with excitement; her eyes were a very bright pale blue. She looked at her coat on the strange girl. And then Valentine made one of her quick movements.
“Oh, Lil! You are Lil, aren’t you? Timothy has brought me to breakfast. And I’ve made your coat wet—and Timothy says you’ll lend me some proper clothes.”
“She’s drenched,” said Timothy. “Take her away and give her something dry to put on.”
Valentine followed Lil Egerton up a staircase with heavy oak newel posts into a whitewashed bedroom that had bright blue curtains at the casement windows.
Lil stared as the coat came off. What clothes!
“Have you been in the river?”
“No—only in the woods. I didn’t think there was anything so lovely—” She broke off, slipping out of the wet smock and displaying a pink Parisian undergarment to Lil’s astonished eyes. “And there were creatures—do you think I had better wash my feet?—There was one with a bushy tail that ran up a tree and held up his paws and made such a funny scolding noise. Do you think he was a squirrel? Edward told me about squirrels, but I’ve never seen o
ne. Oh, thank you! It was the long thorny things that scratched me.”
“What does it feel like?” said Lil suddenly.
She had poured water into a bowl and was watching Valentine’s quick movements.
“What do you mean?”
“Everything,” said Lil with a wave of the towel she was holding. “I wanted to see you before you got used to it all. I’d have given anything to be there when you arrived yesterday, but of course Mrs. Ryven—”
“Why do you call her Mrs. Ryven?”
Lil tossed her head.
“I’d like to see her face if I were to call her Helena!” She laughed. “She’s Timothy’s half-sister, and I’m Timothy’s half-sister. But she’s always taken particular pains to make it quite clear that I’m not a relation, so I wondered when I was going to be allowed to see you.”
Her antagonism to Helena Ryven was so plain that Valentine was abashed. She took the towel and sat down on the floor to dry her feet. After a moment she looked up sideways, as a bird looks at a crumb which he does not feel quite sure about.
“I’ve never talked to a girl before.”
“How do you get on with Mrs. Ryven and the great Eustace?” Lil never took hints; when she wanted to know things she asked about them and went on asking.
Valentine finished drying her left foot in silence.
“Well—how did you get on with her? Of course Eustace is frightfully good looking. But I never know what to talk to him about—he won’t be bothered, you know. Did he talk to you?”
Valentine looked up with a faint, fleeting gleam in her eyes.
“He said, ‘How do you do, Valentine?’ and he shook hands with me. And directly after Timothy had gone he said ‘Good-night, Valentine,’ and he shook hands again. He has a very large hand to shake—hasn’t he? And then he got into his car and went back to London.”
“And left you all alone with Mrs. Ryven? Goodness! How frightful!”
Valentine stood up.
“She was very kind. She told me stories about the house.”
She came down to breakfast with a neat shining head, curls disposed in an orderly fashion, eyes and cheeks very bright above an old brown jumper of Lil’s. She wore shoes and stockings, and an air of being very clean and on her best behaviour.
The dining-room was small and rather dark because the old panelling drank up the light and the ceiling was low and crossed by three black beams. There were two little windows with diamond panes, and Timothy’s grandfather had cut through the wall to make a rather incongruous French window which opened on the garden. All through the summer this window stood wide open to a path paved in the middle and edged with cobble stones. On either side of the path was a wide border ablaze with flowers, and the path, with its brilliant borders, ran down a gentle slope to the river’s edge.
Valentine ate brown bread and honey, slice after slice, and talked about the island. She told them how Edward had planted maize and rice, and how hard it was at first to get them to grow.
“Was that all you had to live on?” It was Lil who asked the questions.
“At first—oh, at first there were the things on the ship. And afterwards there were cocoanuts—and of course we had the hens—and we caught fish.”
“How did you have cocoanuts when you were coming from New Zealand?”
Valentine sucked a sticky finger.
“Everyone asks that. They were on the ship. Edward said they came from Honolulu. The ship touched there and came to New Zealand, and she was going back again. And there were still some cocoanuts left, so Edward planted them, and they grew.”
Lil continued to look at her with an interest that sharpened her features and gave her an air of being rather hungry.
“What did you do all that time you were alone on the island? I’m sure I should have gone out of my mind. Three months and nobody to speak to. It must have been too awful! Wasn’t it?”
Timothy saw the colour go out of Valentine’s face. She looked out of the window at the bright flowers. She seemed to have become in one moment too remote to reach. He scowled at Lil, kicked her under the table, and said the first thing that came into his head.
“Lil can’t imagine anyone being able to go for half an hour without talking.”
He wanted to change the subject, but he could not think of anything to say.
Valentine turned her head slowly. Her eyes were dark and mournful. She spoke to him, not to Lil.
“I don’t like to talk about being alone.” Her lip quivered. “Why does she ask me about it? Everyone does. But why do they? If it had happened to them, they wouldn’t want to talk about it.” There was no anger in her voice; it was just slow and sad.
“You shan’t talk about anything you don’t want to,” said Timothy. “Shall she, Lil?”
He kicked her again, and she coloured high but did not speak.
A little wavering smile curved Valentine’s mouth. She drew a long sighing breath.
“I do wish I could eat more honey—but I can’t.”
Timothy burst out laughing; it came so suddenly, and was said with so much earnestness.
“I’ve got to take you home.”
“Can’t I stay here?”
“Not to-day. Colonel Gray is coming to see you.”
“Who is Colonel Gray?”
“He’s your trustee. He has charge of your money, you know.”
“Have I got money?”
“Yes—a great deal.” He found her eyes fixed on him with a hesitating question in them. He went on quickly, “Colonel Gray will explain it all to you. That’s why he wants to see you.”
Valentine sprang up and ran to the open window. The air was full of warmth and light. There was a scent of lavender in it, and a scent of roses. The borders were full of flowers whose names she did not know. She would have liked to walk in the garden and learn the names of all the flowers. She turned back regretfully.
“I like your house much better than Holt,” she said.
CHAPTER XII
Colonel Gray could not have said what he expected Maurice Ryven’s daughter to be like; but vague alarming visions came and went in the recesses of his mind, whilst isolated words such as squaw, wigwam, tomahawk, and other equally irrelevant expressions rose occasionally to the surface like bubbles rising through muddy water.
When he saw Valentine he experienced such a shock of relief that he became almost effusive. Maurice’s daughter! Well—well. Dashed pretty girl! Not like Maurice—not in the least like Maurice—not like any of the Ryvens. But when Mrs. Ryven presently made the same remark, he discovered a likeness to old James Ryven. He was so pleased with his discovery that he talked about it at some length.
“And now, my dear—I beg your pardon, but I ought to have known you when you were a child, and it slipped out. I knew your father when he was a child, anyhow. Well, what I was going to say was this. We’ve got to have a little talk—a business talk, you know. Dry stuff business, but we can’t get on without it, and I think we’d better just come along into the library and get it over.”
Valentine regarded the library with awe. It had never occurred to her that there could possibly be so many books in one room. They went up to the ceiling, and down to the floor, and all round the walls, except just above the grim black marble mantelpiece, where an ancestor in armour looked down on them with a stern, unseeing stare. He was William de Ruyven, and he had come over with William of Orange. He looked as if he would have had very little patience with his descendants.
Valentine sat with her back to him. Colonel Gray was rather frightening to look at, but not nearly so bad as the ancestor. He had a long bony nose, a red weather-beaten face, and a stiff white moustache; but his little grey eyes looked quite kindly at her, and she liked his fluffy hair. She could not imagine the ancestor looking kindly at anyone, so she kept her back to him whilst Colonel Gray explained to her that he and Mr. Waterson were her trustees, and what a lot of money she had.
He explained very carefully
what a trustee was, and he spoke very loud as if she were deaf.
“Now my dear, do you know what coming of age means?”
“Oh, yes—Edward told me all that sort of thing. You come of age when you’re twenty-one.”
“Ah!” said Colonel Gray very briskly and smartly. “Ah, now! There we are! That’s just what I want to explain to you. The fact is, you do not come of age when you are twenty-one—at least not so far as your money is concerned.”
“Edward said—”
Colonel Gray tapped the table.
“I said as regards your money. Let me explain. In the ordinary sense you come of age when you are twenty-one, but the whole of your property remains in the hands of your trustees until you are twenty-five. Your great-grandmother brought a lot of very valuable London property into the family, and it’s a good thing for you, my dear, that your cousin, Eustace Ryven, only came into it four years ago instead of nine, or there would have been precious little of it left. What with pulling down and rebuilding, and buying up neighbouring properties and pulling them down, he’s run a pretty rig already.”
Valentine lifted her dark blue eyes to his face.
“Did Eustace have my money?”
Colonel Gray went on explaining, very loud:
“When your father died in New Zealand, the property devolved upon you—and when you were supposed to have been drowned, it passed to Eustace. Mr. Waterson and I will now take the legal steps to put you in your proper position.”
Valentine went on looking at him.
“Am I taking the money away from Aunt Helena and Eustace?”
“Not from Mrs. Ryven.” Colonel Gray coughed.
“From Eustace?”
He coughed again.
“You must understand that it never really belonged to Eustace Ryven.”
“I don’t want to take anything away,” said Valentine earnestly.
Colonel Gray drew out a violent-coloured bandanna and blew his nose. He always blew his nose when he was embarrassed. He didn’t like Eustace Ryven. But undoubtedly the situation was a difficult one. He was willing to concede that it pressed rather hardly on Eustace.
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