To Love Part 2

She had not seen Gilbert since the morning. He had had an appointment in the city, he had left it to her to get the flat ready for his mother.

And she had done everything, there was nothing that she could reproach herself with. She had engaged an extra room for Gilbert on the next floor, she had bought fresh flowers, she had made the place look as pretty as possible. It had not taken her long to do her own packing, there was nothing of hers left anywhere about. And all morning she had kept the window overlooking the Park tight shut. The scent of flowers should bring no disturbing memories to weaken her resolve. Then when everything had been quite settled she had sat down to write just a short note to Gilbert.

"I have tried to make you understand a little of all I felt this morning, but it was not any use. You cannot understand.

It is just that we have always looked at things differently. I cannot live with you any more, Gilbert; what is the use of trying to explain. It is better just to say--as we agreed that either of us should be free to say--it is all finished, and good-bye."

She had propped the letter up for him to find, where she knew he would look first of all, by his pipe and matches on the mantelpiece. Now she had taken her ticket to Wrotham and wired Aunt Janet to say she was coming. But as she stood waiting for the train to start it occurred to her that she was really watching to see Gilbert's slim, well-built figure push its way through the crowd towards her. The thought made her uneasy, she hoped he would have been late getting home; she doubted her strength of will to stand against him should he appear in person to persuade her.

He did not come, however, and presently with a great deal of noise and excitement, whistles blowing and doors slamming, the train was off and she could sit back in her corner seat with a strange sense of pleasurable excitement at having so far achieved her purpose.

Uncle John was at the station to meet her. A straight-held old figure--in his young days he had been in the army and very good-looking--now the bristling moustache was white and the hair grew in little tufts either side of an otherwise bald head. Ever since Joan could first remember him Uncle John had moved in a world separate from the rest of the household and entirely his own. It was not that he took no interest in them, it was just that he appeared to forget them for long intervals, talking very seldom, and when he did always about the days that were past. He had never married, but there had been one great love in his life. Aunt Janet had told Joan all about it, a girl who had died many years ago; after her death Uncle John had lived for nothing but his regiment. Then he had had to leave it because old age had called for retirement, and he had sent for Aunt Janet to come and keep house for him and together they had settled down in the old home at Wrotham--both unmarried, both very quiet and content to live in the past. Then Joan had descended on them, a riotous, long-legged, long-haired girl of eight, the child of a very much younger, little known brother.

With the coming of Joan, new life and new surprising interest had awakened in Aunt Janet's heart, but Uncle John had remained impervious to the influence. He was very fond of Joan in his way, but he scarcely ever noticed and he certainly knew nothing about her. He had realized her less and less as she grew up; when he spoke or thought of her now it was always as still a child.

"You are a nice young lady," he greeted her good-humouredly, stooping to kiss Joan at the station; "your Aunt Janet was sure this sudden return meant a breakdown. She is all of a twitter, so to speak, and would have been here to meet you herself only we have got a Miss Abercrombie staying with us. Where's the luggage?"

"I have only brought my small things with me," Joan explained, "the rest are coming on. I am sorry Aunt Janet is worried, and who is Miss Abercrombie?"

"Friend of your aunt's," he answered; he took her bag from her. "I have brought the trap, Janet thought you might be too delicate to walk." He chuckled to himself at the thought and picking up the reins climbed into the cart beside her. "Don't think Sally has been out twice since you left, see how fat she has got."

The little brown pony certainly answered to the implication. Her sides bulged against the shafts and bald patches were manifesting themselves, caused by the friction.

"What have you been doing then?" asked Joan; "why haven't you been out?"

"Nothing to go for," he answered, "and I have been too busy in the garden. Extended that bit down through the wood." The garden was his one great hobby.

"And Aunt Janet," Joan questioned, "she always used to like taking Sally out."

"I suppose that was when you were here;" he looked down at her sideways, "she missed you, I think, but she potters about the village sometimes."

He relapsed into silence, and Joan could see that his thoughts were once more far away.

Several of the villagers came out as they pa.s.sed through the little village street to bob greetings to the young lady of the manor, as they had always called Joan. Wrotham did not boast many county families; there was no squire, for instance. The Rutherfords occupied the old manor house and filled the position to a great extent, but they owned none of the land in the neighbourhood, and the villagers were not really their tenants. And beyond the Rutherfords there was no one in the village who could undertake parochial work except the vicar, a hard-working, conscientiously mild gentleman, with a small income and a large family. He could give plenty of spiritual advice and a.s.sistance, but little else; the old people and the invalids of the parish looked to Aunt Janet for soups and warm clothes and kindly interest.

Wrotham boasted a doctor too. As Joan remembered him he had been a gentleman of very rubicund complexion and rough manners. Village gossip had held that he was too fond of the bottle, but when sober he was kindly and efficient enough for their small needs. He had been unmarried and had lived under the charge of a slovenly housekeeper. As the Rutherfords drove past his house, a square brick building with a front door that opened on to the village street, Joan noticed an unfamiliar air of spruce cleanliness about the front door and the window blinds.

"Dr. Simpson has had a spring cleaning," she said, pointing out the transformation to Colonel Rutherford.

He came out of his reverie, whatever it was, and glanced at the house.

"No," he said, "Simpson has left. There are new people in there. Grant is their name, I think. Young chap and his sister and their old mother.

Came to call the other day; nice people, but very ignorant about gardens. Your aunt has taken a great fancy to the young man."

With that the trap turned into the wide open gates of the manor, and Joan, seeing the old house, was conscious of a quick rush of contentment. She had come home; how good it was to be home.

The house, a beautiful grey building of the Tudor days, stood snug and warm amid a perfect bower of giant trees. Ivy and creepers of all sorts clung to its stones and crept up its walls, long tendrils of vivid green. The drive swept round a beautifully kept lawn and vanished through a stone gateway leading into the stable-yard. It was only a pretence at a garden in front. Uncle John always held that the open s.p.a.ce which lay at the back of the house and on to which the drawing-room windows opened was the real thing. There, was more green gra.s.s, which centuries of care and weeding and rolling had transformed into a veritable soft velvet carpet of exquisite colour that stretched out and down till it met the wood of tall trees that fringed the garden.

Flowers were encouraged to grow wild under those trees; in spring it was a paradise of wild daffodils and tulips. That was Aunt Janet's arrangement; Uncle John liked his gardens to be orderly. He was responsible for the straight, tidy flower-beds, for the rose gardens, for the lavender clumps that grew down at the foot of the vegetable garden. For lavender is not really an ornamental flower and Uncle John only tolerated it because of Aunt Janet's scent-sachets.

Beautiful and old and infinitely peaceful, the sight and colour of it could bring back childhood and a sense of safety to Joan, a sense that Uncle John's figure and face--dear and familiar as they were--had been quite unable to do. London, her life with Gilbert, the rack and tumult of her thoughts during the past six months appeared almost as a dream when seen against this dear old background.

Aunt Janet was waiting their arrival in the hall, and Joan, clambering down out of the trap, ran straight into those outstretched arms.

"Oh, Aunt Janet, it is good to be back," she gasped. Then she drew away a little to take in the tall, trim figure dressed all in black save for a touch of white at neck and wrists; the face stern and narrow, lit by a pair of very dark eyes, the firm, thin-cut mouth, the dark hair, showing grey in places, brushed back so smooth and straight and wound in little plaits round and round the neat head. "You are just the same as ever,"

Joan said. "Oh, Aunt Janet, it is good to get back."

The dark eyes, softened for the moment by something like tears, smiled at her. "Of course I am just the same, child. What did you expect? And you?"

"Oh, I am I," Joan answered; her laughter sounded unreal even to herself.

"You have been ill," contradicted Miss Rutherford, "it is plain to see all over your face. Thank G.o.d, I have got you back."

She brushed aside the sentiment, since it was a thing she did not always approve of.

"Come away in and have your tea. John, leave Mary to carry up Joan's boxes; she will get d.i.c.k to help her; they are too heavy for you. Your uncle is getting old," she went on, talking brusquely as she helped Joan off with her coat, "he feels things these days."

"I haven't been away more than a year, Aunt Janet," laughed Joan; "you talk as if it had been centuries."

"It has seemed long," the other woman answered; her eyes were hungry on the girl's face as if she sought for something that kept eluding her. "A year is a long time to people of our age."

"Dear, silly, old Aunt Janet." Joan hugged her. "You are not a second older nor the tiniest fragment different to what you used to be. I know you don't like being hugged; it makes you untidy; but you have simply got to be just once more."

"You always were harum-scarum," remonstrated Aunt Janet, under this outburst. She did not, however, offer any real objection and they went into the drawing-room hand-in-hand.

A small, thin lady rose to greet them at their entrance and Joan was introduced to Miss Abercrombie. Everything about Miss Abercrombie, except her size, seemed to denote strength--strength of purpose, strength of will, strength of love and hate. She gave Joan the impression--and hers was a face that demanded study, Joan found herself looking at it again and again--of having come through great battles against fate. And if she had not won--the tell-tale lines of discontent that hung about her mouth did not betoken victory--at least she had not been absolutely defeated. She had carried the banner of her convictions through thick and thin.

Joan was roused to a sudden curiosity to know what those convictions were and a desire to have the same courage granted to herself. It gave her a thrill of pleasure to hear that Miss Abercrombie would be staying on for some time. She was a schoolmistress, it appeared, only just lately health had interfered with her duties and it was then that Aunt Janet had persuaded her, after many attempts, to take a real holiday and spend it at Wrotham.

"Sheer vice on my part, agreeing," Miss Abercrombie told Joan with a laugh; "but everyone argued with me all at once and I succ.u.mbed."

"Just in time," Aunt Janet reminded her; "I was going to have given up asking you; even friends.h.i.+p has its limits."

They had tea in the drawing-room with the windows open on to the garden and a small, bright fire burning in the grate. Aunt Janet said she had discovered a nip in the air that morning and was sure Joan would feel cold after London. Uncle John wandered in and drank a cup of tea and wandered out again without paying much attention to anyone.

Aunt Janet sat and watched Joan, and the girl, conscious of the scrutiny and restless under those brown eyes as she had always been restless in the old days with a childish, unconfessed sin on her conscience, talked as lightly and as quickly as she could upon every topic under the sun to Miss Abercrombie. And Miss Abercrombie rose like a sportswoman to the need. She was too clever a reader of character not to feel the strain which rested between her two companions. She knew Aunt Janet through and through, the stern loyalty, the unbending precision of a nature slow to anger, full of love, but more inclined to justice than mercy where wrongdoing was concerned. And Joan--well, she had only known Joan half an hour, but Aunt Janet had been talking of nothing else for the last fortnight.

They kept the subject of Joan's life in London very well at bay for some time, but presently Aunt Janet, breaking a silence that had held her, leaned forward and interrupted their discussion.

"You have not told us why you left, Joan," she said, "or what has been settled about your plans. Are you on leave, or have you come away for good?"

Miss Abercrombie watched the faint pink rise up over the girl's face and die away again, leaving a rather unnatural pallor.

"I have left," Joan was answering. "I----" Suddenly she looked up and for a moment she and Miss Abercrombie stared at each other. It was as if Joan was asking for help and the other woman trying to give it by the very steadiness of her eyes. Then Joan turned. "Aunt Janet," she said, hurrying a little over the words, "I want to ask you to let us not talk of my time in London. It--it was not what I meant it to be, perhaps because of my own fault, but----"

"You were not happy," said Aunt Janet; her love rose to meet the appeal.

"I never really thought you were. I am content to have you back, Joan; we will let the rest slip away into the past."

"Thank you," whispered Joan; the burden of lying, it seemed, had followed her, even into this safe retreat; "perhaps some day, later on, I will try and tell you about it, Aunt Janet."

"Just as you like, dear." Aunt Janet pressed the hand in hers and at that moment Mary, the servant-girl, appeared in the doorway with a somewhat perturbed countenance.

"Please, mum, there is that Bridget girl from the village and her mother; will you see them a minute?"