They both got up.
"I"m afraid you think me very uncharitable," said the older woman suddenly.
Betty looked at her rather straight. "I sometimes think it strange," she said slowly, "that anyone as kind and clever as I know you are, does not make more allowances for people. For my part, I wonder that G.o.dfrey is coming here at all. As I look back and remember all that happened--I don"t think that anyone at Old Place behaved either kindly or fairly to him--I mean about our engagement."
Miss Pendarth was moved as well as surprised by Betty"s quiet words. The girl was extraordinarily reserved--she very rarely spoke out her secret thoughts. But Miss Pendarth was destined to be even more surprised, for Betty suddenly put out her hand, and laid it on the other"s arm.
"I want to tell you," she said earnestly, "that as far as I am concerned, everything that happened then is quite, quite over. I don"t think that G.o.dfrey would have been happy with me, and so I feel that we both had a great escape. I want to tell you this because so many people knew of our engagement, and I"m afraid his coming back like this may cause a lot of silly, vulgar talk."
Miss Pendarth was more touched than she would have cared to admit even to herself. "You can count on me, my dear," she said gravely, "and may I say, Betty, that I feel sure you"re right in feeling that you would have been most unhappy with him?"
As Betty walked on to the post office she was glad that _that_ little ordeal was over.
John Tosswill was one of those men who instinctively avoid and put off as long as may be, a difficult or awkward moment. That was perhaps one reason why he had not made a better thing of his life. So his wife was not surprised when, after luncheon, he observed rather nervously that he was going out, and that she must tell G.o.dfrey Radmore how sorry he was not to be there to welcome him.
As she remained silent, he added, rather shamefacedly:--"I"ll be back in time to have a few words with him before dinner."
Poor Janet! She still loved her husband as much as she had done in the days when he, the absent-minded, gentle, refined scholar, made his way into her heart. Nay, in a sense, she loved him more, for he had become entirely dependent on her. But though she loved and admired him, she no longer relied on him, as she had once done; he had a queer way of failing her at the big moments of life, and now, to-day, she felt it too bad of him to shirk the moment of G.o.dfrey Radmore"s return. His presence would have made everything easier, for he had never admitted either to himself or her, that G.o.dfrey had behaved in a strange or untoward manner.
As she turned over the leaves of a nursery-man"s catalogue and gazed at the list of plants and bulbs she could not afford to buy, long-forgotten scenes crowded on her memory.
Radmore had been the violent, unreasonable element in the painful episode, for Betty had behaved well, almost too well. The girl would have thrown in her lot with her lover, but both her father and step-mother had been agonised at the thought of trusting her to a man--and so very young a man--who had made such a failure of his life. That he was going out to Australia practically penniless--nay, worse than penniless, saddled with debts of so-called honour--had been, or so they had judged at the time, entirely his own fault.
John Tosswill, who had a very clear and acute mind when any abstract question was under discussion, had told Betty plainly that she would only be a dangerous hindrance to a man situated as Radmore would be situated in a new country, and she had submitted to her father"s judgment.
But how ironical are the twists and turns of life! If only they had known what the future was to bring forth, how differently Betty"s father and step-mother would have acted! Yet now to-day, Janet tried to tell herself that Betty had had a happy escape. G.o.dfrey had been like a bull in the net during those painful days nine years ago. He had shown himself utterly unreasonable, and especially angry, nay enraged, with her, Janet, because he had been foolish enough to hope that she would take his part against Betty"s father.
Acting on a sudden impulse, she went upstairs, and, feeling a little ashamed of what she was doing, went into the room which was to be G.o.dfrey Radmore"s. Then she walked across to where stood Timmy"s play-box, in order to find the letter which Betty"s one-time lover had written to his G.o.dson.
The play-box had been George"s play-box in the days of his preparatory school, and it still had his name printed across it.
She turned up the wooden lid. Everything in the box was very tidy, for Timmy was curiously grown-up in some of his ways, and so she very soon found the letter she was seeking for.
It was a quaint, humorous epistle--the letter of a man who feels quite sure of himself, and yet as she read it through rapidly, there rose before her the writer as he had last appeared in a railing whirlwind of rage and fury, just before leaving Old Place--he had vowed at the time--for ever. She remembered how he had shouted at her, hurling bitter reproaches, telling her she would be sorry one day for having persuaded Betty to give him up. But though she, Janet Tosswill, had not forgotten, he had evidently made up his mind, the moment he had met with his unexpected and astonishing piece of good luck, to let bygones be bygones.
For, after that first letter to his G.o.dson, gifts had come in quick succession to Old Place, curious unexpected, anonymous gifts, but even Dolly had guessed at once from whom they came.
No wonder the younger children were all excited and delighted at the thought of his coming visit! Radmore was now looked upon as a fairy G.o.dfather might have been. They were too young, too self-absorbed, to realise that these wonderful gifts out of the blue never seemed to wing their way to Betty or Janet. Yet stop, there had been an exception. Last Christmas each had received an anonymous fairing--Betty, a beautiful little watch, set in diamonds, and Janet, a wonderful old lace flounce.
Both registered parcels had come from London, G.o.dfrey Radmore being known at the time to be in Australia. But neither recipient of the delightful gift had ever cared to wear or use it.
CHAPTER VIII
And meanwhile the man of whom every single human being in Old Place, with the exception of the little village day girl, was thinking this afternoon, was coming ever nearer and nearer to Beechfield in an ecstasy of sentient joy at being "at home" again.
As Radmore motored along the Portsmouth Road through the warmly-beautiful autumn countryside, a feeling of exultation, of intense personal love for, and pride in, the old country, filled his heart. Why had he stayed in London so long when all this tranquil, appealing loveliness of wood, stream, hill and hollow lay close at hand? There are folk who deny the charm of Surrey--by whom this delicious county, with its n.o.ble stretches of wild, fragrant uplands, and wide, deep valleys, is dismissed as suburban. But though they would deny it vehemently, the eyes of such folk are holden.
As he was borne along through the soft, lambent air, everything he pa.s.sed appealed to his heart and imagination. Each of the small, yet dignified, eighteenth-century houses, which add such distinction and grace to each Surrey township--Epsom, Leatherhead, Guildford--gave him a comfortable feeling of his country"s well-being, of the essential stability of England. Now and again, in some woodland glade where summer still lingered, he would pa.s.s by happy groups engaged in black-berrying; while on the road there waited the charabancs, the motor-cycles, the pony-traps, which had brought them.
Once, when they came to such a spot, he, Radmore, called out to his chauffeur to stop. They were close to the crest of Boxhill, and below them lay spread out what is perhaps the finest, because the richest in human and historic a.s.sociations, view in Southern England. As he stood up and gazed down and down and down, to his right he saw what looked from up here such a tiny toylike town, and it recalled suddenly a book he had once read, as one reads a Jules Verne romance, "The Battle of Dorking,"
a soldier"s fairy-tale that had come perilously near being a prophecy.
Before Radmore"s eyes--blotting out the n.o.ble, peaceful landscape, rich in storied beauty--there rose an extraordinarily vivid phantasmagoria of vast ma.s.ses of armed men in field grey moving across that wide, thickly peopled valley of lovely villages and cosy little towns. He saw as in a vision the rich stretches of arable land, the now red, brown, and yellow spinneys and clumps of high trees, the meadows dotted with sleek cattle, laid waste--while sinister columns of flames and ma.s.sed clouds of smoke rose from each homestead.
"Drive on!" he called out, and the chauffeur was startled by the harsh note in his employer"s generally kindly voice.
On they sped down the great flank of the huge hill, past the hostelry where Nelson bid a last farewell to his Emma, on and on along narrow lanes, and between high hedges starred with autumn flowers. And then, when in a spot so wild and lonely that it might have been a hundred miles from a town--though it was only some ten miles from Beechfield--something went wrong with the engine of the car.
Janet had proposed that tea should be at five o"clock, so as to give the visitor plenty of time to arrive. But from four onwards, all the younger folk were in a state of excitement and expectation--Timmy running constantly in and out of the house, rushing to the gate, from whence a long stretch of road could be seen, till his constant gyrations got on his mother"s nerves, and she sharply ordered him to come in and be quiet.
At a quarter to five the telephone bell rang and Jack languidly went to answer it. Then he came back into the drawing-room. "Radmore"s had a breakdown," he said briefly, "he"s afraid he can"t get here till seven."
Here was a disappointing anti-climax!
"Then we"d better all go and have our tea," said Timmy sententiously, and everyone felt, in a dispirited way, that, as usual, Timmy had hit the nail on the head.
They all trooped into the dining-room, but Timmy was the only one who did full justice to the cakes and scones which had been made specially in G.o.dfrey Radmore"s honour: all the others felt cross and disappointed, especially Tom and Rosamund, who had given up going to a tennis-party.
Tea was soon over, for everyone talked much less than usual, and then they all scattered with the exception of Timmy and Betty. Janet had someone to see in the village; Tom persuaded Rosamund that they would still be welcome at the tennis-party; Betty stayed to clear the table.
She, alone of them all, was glad of even this short respite, for, as the day had gone on, she had begun to dread the meeting inexpressibly. She knew that even Tom--who had only been seven years old when G.o.dfrey went away--would be wondering how she felt, and watching to see how she would behave. It was a comfort to be alone with only Timmy who was still at table eating steadily. Till recently tea had been Timmy"s last meal, though, as a matter of fact, he had nearly always joined in their very simple evening meal. And lately it had been ordained that he was to eat meat. But much as he ate, he never grew fat.
"Hurry up!" said Betty absently. "I want to take off the table-cloth. We can wash up presently."
Timmy got up and shook himself; then he went across to the window, Flick following him, while Betty after having made two tray journeys into the kitchen, folded up the table-cloth. Timmy might have done this last little job, but he pretended not to see that his sister wanted help. He thought it such a shame that he wasn"t now allowed the perilous and exciting task of carrying a laden tray. But there had been a certain dreadful day when...
Betty turned round, surprised at the child"s stillness and silence. Timmy was standing half in and half out of the long French windows staring at something his sister could not see.
Then, all at once, Betty"s heart seemed to stop still. She heard a voice, familiar in a sense, and yet so unlike the voice of which she had once known every inflection.
"Hullo! I do believe I see Timothy G.o.dfrey Radmore Tosswill!" and the window for a moment was darkened by a tall, stalwart figure, which looked as if it were two sizes larger than that which Betty remembered.
The stranger took up Timmy"s slight, thin figure as easily as a little girl takes up a doll, and now he was holding his G.o.dson up in the air, looking up at him with a half humorous, half whimsical expression, while he exclaimed:--"I can"t think where you came from? You"ve none of the family"s good looks, and you haven"t a trace of your mother!"
Then he set Timmy down rather carefully and delicately on the edge of the shabby Turkey carpet, and stepped forward, into the dining-room.
"I wonder if I may have a cup of tea? Is Preston still here?"
"Preston"s married. She has five children. Mother says it"s four too many, as her husband"s a cripple." Timmy waited a moment. "We haven"t got a parlourmaid now. Mother says we lead the simple life."
"The devil you do!" cried Radmore, diverted, and then, not till then, did he suddenly become aware that he and his G.o.dson were not alone.
"Why, Betty!" he exclaimed in a voice he tried to make quite ordinary, "I didn"t see you. Have you been there the whole time?"--the whole time being but half a minute at the longest.