Branches, Saturday Afternoon, November 5th
This morning I woke with a headache, to see the rain beating against my windows, and mist and fog—a fitting day for the 5th of November. I would not go down to breakfast. Véronique brought me mine to my sitting-room fire, and, with Spartan determination, I packed steadily all the morning.
About twelve a note came up from Lord Robert. I put it in.
Dear Miss Travers,—
Why are you hiding? Was I a bore last night? Do forgive me and come down. Has Christopher locked you in your room? I will murder the brute if he has!
Yours very sincerely,
Robert Vavasour.
“Can’t; I am packing,” I scribbled in pencil on the envelope, and gave it back to Charles, who was waiting in the hall for the answer. Two minutes after, Lord Robert walked into the room, the door of which the footman had left open.
“I have come to help you,” he said, in that voice of his that sounds so sure of a welcome you can’t snub him. “But where are you going?”
“I don’t know,” I said, a little forlornly, and then bent down and vigorously collected photographs.
“Oh, but you can’t go to London by yourself!” he said, aghast. “Look here, I will come up with you, and take you to my aunt, Lady Merrenden. She is such a dear, and I am sure when I have told her all about you she will be delighted to take care of you for some days until you can hunt round.”
He looked such a boy, and his face was so kind, I was touched.
“Oh no, Lord Robert! I cannot do that, but I thank you. I don’t want to be under an obligation to any one,” I said, firmly. “Mr. Carruthers suggests a way out of the difficulty—that I should marry him, and stay here. I don’t think he means it, really, but he pretends he does.”
He sat down on the edge of a table already laden with books, most of which overbalanced and fell crash on the floor.
“So Christopher wants you to marry him—the old fox?” he said, apparently oblivious of the wreck of literature he had caused. “But you won’t do that, will you? And yet I have no business to say that. He is a dam good friend, Christopher.”
“I am sure you ought not to swear so often, Lord Robert; it shocks me, brought up as I have been,” I said, with the air of a little angel.
“Do I swear?” he asked, surprised. “Oh no, I don’t think so—at least, there is no ’n’ to the end of the ‘dams,’ so they are only an innocent ornament to conversation. But I won’t do it, if you don’t wish me to.”
After that he helped me with the books, and was so merry and kind I soon felt cheered up, and by lunchtime all were finished and in the boxes ready to be tied up and taken away. Véronique, too, had made great progress in the adjoining room, and was standing stiff and maussade by my dressing-table when I came in. She spoke respectfully in French, and asked me if I had made my plans yet, for, as she explained to me, her own position seemed precarious, and yet, having been with me for five years, she did not feel she could leave me at a juncture like this. At the same time she hoped mademoiselle would make some suitable decision, as she feared, respectfully, it was “une si drôle de position pour une demoiselle du monde,” alone with “ces messieurs.”
I could not be angry; it was quite true what she said.
“I shall go up this evening to Claridge’s, Véronique,” I assured her—“by about the 5.15 train. We will wire to them after luncheon.”
She seemed comforted, but she added—in the abstract—that a rich marriage was what was obviously mademoiselle’s fate, and she felt sure great happiness and many jewels would await mademoiselle if mademoiselle could be persuaded to make up her mind. Nothing is sacred from one’s maid. She knew all about Mr. Carruthers, of course. Poor old Véronique! I have a big, warm corner for her in my heart. Sometimes she treats me with the frigid respect one would pay to a queen, and at others I am almost her enfant, so tender and motherly she is to me. And she puts up with all my tempers and moods, and pets me like a baby just when I am the worst of all.
Lord Robert had left me reluctantly when the luncheon gong sounded.
“Haven’t we been happy?” he said, taking it for granted I felt the same as he did. This is a very engaging quality of his, and makes one feel sympathetic, especially when he looks into one’s eyes with his sleepy blue ones. He has lashes as long and curly as a gypsy’s baby.
Mr. Carruthers was alone in the dining-room when I got in; he was looking out of the window, and turned round sharply as I came up the room. I am sure he would like to have been killing flies on the panes if he had been a boy. His eyes were steel.
“Where have you been all the time?” he asked, when he had shaken hands and said good-morning.
“Up in my room, packing,” I said, simply. “Lord Robert was so kind he helped me. We have got everything done; and may I order the carriage for the 5.15 train, please?”
“Certainly not. Confound Lord Robert!” Mr. Carruthers said. “What business is it of his? You are not to go. I won’t let you. Dear, silly little child!—” his voice was quite moved. “You can’t possibly go out into the world all alone. Evangeline, why won’t you marry me? I—do you know, I believe—I shall love you——”
“I should have to be perfectly sure that the person I married loved me, Mr. Carruthers,” I said, demurely, “before I consented to finish up my life like that.”
He had no time to answer, for Mr. Barton and Lord Robert came into the room.
There seemed a gloom over luncheon. There were pauses, and Lord Robert had a more pathetic expression than ever. His hands are a nice shape—but so are Mr. Carruthers’s; they both look very much like gentlemen.
Before we had finished, a note was brought in to me. It was from Lady Katherine Montgomerie. She was too sorry, she said, to hear of my lonely position, and she was writing to ask if I would not come over and spend a fortnight with them at Tryland Court.
It was not well worded, and I had never cared much for Lady Katherine, but it was fairly kind, and fitted in perfectly with my plans.
She had probably heard of Mr. Carruthers’s arrival, and was scandalized at my being alone in the house with him.
Both men had their eyes fixed on my face when I looked up, as I finished reading the note.
“Lady Katherine Montgomerie writes to ask me to Tryland,” I said. “So if you will excuse me I will answer it, and say I will come this afternoon,” and I got up.
Mr. Carruthers rose, too, and followed me into the library. He deliberately shut the door and came over to the writing-table where I sat down.
“Well, if I let you go, will you tell her then that you are engaged to me, and I am going to marry you as soon as possible?”
“No, indeed I won’t,” I said, decidedly. “I am not going to marry you, or any one, Mr. Carruthers. What do you think of me? Fancy my consenting to come back here forever, and live with you, when I don’t know you a bit! And having to put up with your—perhaps—kissing me, and—and—things of that sort. It is perfectly dreadful to think of!”
He laughed as if in spite of himself. “But supposing I promised not to kiss you?”
“Even so,” I said, and I couldn’t help biting the end of my pen. “It could happen that I might get a feeling I wanted to kiss some one else—and there it is! Once you’re married, everything nice is wrong!”
“Evangeline! I won’t let you go—out of my life—you strange little witch! You have upset me, disturbed me—I can settle to nothing. I seem to want you so very much.”
“Pouf!” I said, and I pouted at him.
“You have everything in your life to fill it—position, riches, friends. You don’t want a green-eyed adventuress.”
I bent down and wrote steadily to Lady Katherine. I would be there about six o’clock, I said, and thanked her in my best style.
“If I let you go, it is only for the time,” Mr. Carruthers said as I signed my name. “I intend you to marry me—do you hear?”
“Again I say, ‘Qui vivre verra!’” I laughed and rose with the note in my hand.
Lord Robert looked almost ready to cry when I told him I was off in the afternoon.
“I shall see you again,” he said. “Lady Katherine is a relation of my aunt’s husband, Lord Merrenden. I don’t know her myself, though.”
I do not believe him. How can he see me again? Young men do talk a lot of nonsense!
“I shall come over on Wednesday to see how you are getting on,” Mr. Carruthers said. “Please do be in.”
I promised I would, and then I came up-stairs.
And so it has come to an end, my life at Branches. I am going to start a new phase of existence, my first beginning as an adventuress!
How completely all one’s ideas can change in a few days! This day three weeks ago Mrs. Carruthers was alive. This day two weeks ago I found myself no longer a prospective heiress, and only three days ago I was contemplating calmly the possibility of marrying Mr. Carruthers; and now, for heaven, I would not marry any one! And so, for fresh woods and pastures new! Oh, I want to see the world, and lots of different human beings; I want to know what it is makes the clock go round—that great big clock of life. I want to dance and to sing and to laugh, and to live—and—and—yes, perhaps some day to kiss some one I love!