And then he strode across the room, and, taking her two hands in his strong grasp, brought her forward, rather masterfully, to the window through which he had just come.
"You"re just the same," he said, but there was a doubtful note in his voice, and then as she remained silent, though she smiled a little tremulously, he went on:--
"Nine years have made an awful difference to me--nine years _and_ the war! But Beechfield, from what I"ve been able to see of it, seems exactly the same--not a twig, not a leaf, not a stone out of place!"
"We didn"t expect you for another hour at least," said Betty, in her quiet, well-modulated voice.
She was wondering whether he remembered, as she now remembered with a kind of sickening vividness, the last time they had been together in this room--for it was here, in the dining-room of Old Place, that they had spent their last miserable, heart-broken moment together, a moment when all the angry bitterness had been merged in wild, piteous tenderness, and heart-break...
"I had a bit of luck," he answered cheerfully, "as I went out of the house where I had managed to get on to a telephone, there came a car down the road, and I asked the man who was driving it if he would give me a lift. My luck held, for he was actually breaking his journey for half an hour here, at Beechfield!"
He was talking rather quickly now, as if at last aware of something painful, awkward, in the atmosphere.
"Others all out?" he asked. "Perhaps you"ll show me my room, G.o.dson?"
"Wouldn"t you like to see Nanna?" asked Timmy officiously. "She"s so looking forward to seeing you. She wants to thank you for the big Shetland shawl she supposes you sent her last Christmas, and she has an idea that the little real silver teapot she got on her birthday came from you too. It has on it "A Present for a Good Girl.""
As Radmore followed Timmy up the once familiar staircase, he felt extraordinarily moved.
How strange the thought that while not only his own life, but the lives of all the people with whom he had been so intimately a.s.sociated, had changed--this old house had remained absolutely unaltered! Nothing had been added--as far as he could see--and nothing taken away, and yet the human atmosphere was quite other than what it had been ten years ago.
Just now, in the moment of meeting, he had avoided asking Betty about George. Betty"s twin had been away at the time of Radmore"s break with Old Place--away in a sense which in our civilised days can only be brought about by one thing, an infectious illness. At the time the agonising debate was going on at Beechfield, he had been in a fever hospital close on a month, and they were none of them to see him for three more weeks. It had been at once a pain and a relief that he should not be there--yet what good could a boy of nineteen have done?
As to what had happened to George afterwards, Radmore knew nothing. He believed that his friend had joined the Indian Civil Service. From childhood George had always intended to make his career in India, his maternal forebears having all been in the service of John Company.
During the last few days Radmore had thought a great deal of George, wondering what had happened to him during the war--whether, for instance, he had at last managed, as did so many Anglo-Indian officials, to get leave to join the Army? At one moment, before it had entered into his mind to write to his little G.o.dson, he had thought of opening up communications through George. But he had rejected the notion. The break had been so complete, and George, after all, was so closely connected with Betty! Considering that he had not mentioned Betty"s brother, either when speaking to Janet on the telephone two or three days ago, or again just when he had made his unconventional re-entry into Old Place, it was odd how the thought of Betty"s twin haunted him as he followed his little guide upstairs. Odd? No, in a sense very natural, for he and George often raced each other up these very stairs. They had been such pals in spite of the four years" difference between them.
Radmore and Timmy were now in the kind of annex or wing which had been added some fifty years after the original mansion had been built. The lower floor of this annex consisted of one big room which, even in the days of Radmore"s first acquaintance with the Tosswills, was only used in warm weather. Above it were two good bedrooms--the one still called "George"s room," over-looked the garden, and had a charming view of bracken-covered hill beyond.
Timmy opened the door with a flourish, and Radmore saw at once that only one of the two beds was made up; otherwise the room was exactly the same, with this one great outstanding difference--that it had a curiously unlived-in look. The dark green linoleum on the floor appeared a thought more worn, the old rug before the fireplace a thought more shabby--still, how well things lasted, in the old country!
He walked across to one of the windows, and the sight of the garden below now in its full autumn beauty, seemed to bring Janet Tosswill vividly before him.
"Your mother as great a gardener as ever?" he asked, without turning round, and Timmy said eagerly:--"I should think she is! And we"re going to sell our flowers and vegetables. _We_ shall get the money now; the Red Cross got it during the war."
As his G.o.dfather remained silent, the boy went on insistently:--"Fifteen shillings a week clear profit is 40 a year, and Mum thinks it will come to more than that."
Radmore turned round.
"I wonder if any of you have yet met a lady who"s just come to live here--Mrs. Crofton?"
"Oh, yes, we"ve met her; in fact she"s been to supper." Timmy spoke without enthusiasm, but Radmore did not notice that.
"I was wondering if you and I could go round and see her between now and dinner?"
"I _think_ I could." There was a doubtful touch in Timmy"s voice. He knew quite well he ought to stay and help his sister to wash up the tea-things and do certain other little jobs, but he also knew that if he asked Betty to let him off, she would.
"I shan"t be a minute," he exclaimed, and a moment later Radmore heard the little feet pattering down the carpetless back stairs, and then scampering up again.
Timmy ran in breathlessly. "It"s all right!" he exclaimed, "I can go with you--Mrs. Crofton has got The Trellis House--I"ll show you the way there."
"Show me the way there?" repeated Radmore. "Why, I knew The Trellis House from garret to cellar before you were born, young man."
In the hall Timmy gave a queer, side-long look at his companion. "Do you think we"d better take Flick?" he asked doubtfully, "Mrs. Crofton doesn"t like dogs."
"Oh, yes, she does," Radmore spoke carelessly. "Flick was bred by Colonel Crofton. I think she"ll be very pleased to see him."
Timmy would have hotly resented being called cruel, and to animals he was most humane, yet somehow he had enjoyed Mrs. Crofton"s terror the other night, and he was not unwilling to see a repet.i.tion of it. And so the three set out--Timmy, Radmore, and Flick. Somehow it was a comfort to the grown-up man to have the child with him. Had he been alone he would have felt like a ghost walking up the quiet, empty village street. The presence of the child and the dog made him feel so _real_.
The two trudged on in silence for a bit, and then Radmore asked in a low voice:--"Is that busy-body, Miss Pendarth, still alive?"
They were pa.s.sing by Rose Cottage as he spoke, and Timmy at once replied in a shrill voice:--"Yes, of course she is." And then, as if as an afterthought, he remarked slyly:--"Rosamund often says she wishes she were dead. Do you hate her, too?"
"Hate"s a big word," said Radmore thoughtfully, "but there was very little love lost between me and that good lady in the old days."
They pa.s.sed the lych-gate of the churchyard, and then, following a sudden impulse, Radmore turned into the post-office.
Yes, his instinct had been right, for here, at any rate, was an old friend, but a friend who, from a young man, had become old and grey.
Grasping the postmaster, Jim Cobbett, warmly by the hand Radmore exclaimed:--"I"m glad to find you well and hearty, Cobbett." There came the surprised: "Why, it"s Mr. Radmore to be sure! How"s the world been treating you, sir?"
"Better than I deserve, Cobbett."
"Can you stay a minute, sir--Missus would like to see you, too?" The speaker opened a door out of the tiny shop, and Radmore, followed by Timmy and Flick, walked into a cosy living-room, where an old dog got up and growled at them.
"That dog," said Timmy in a hoa.r.s.e whisper, "frightened poor Mrs. Crofton very much the other day as she was coming out of church."
For a moment Radmore thought the room was empty. Then, in the dim lamp-light, a woman, who had been sitting by the fireplace, got up.
"Here"s Mr. Radmore come all the way from Australia, mother."
"Mr. Radmore?" repeated the woman dully, and Radmore had another, and a very painful, shock.
He remembered Mrs. Cobbett definitely, as a buxom, merry-looking young woman. She now looked older than her husband, and she did not smile at him, as the man had done, as she held out her worn, thin hand.
"A deal has happened," she said slowly, "since you went away."
"Yes," said Radmore, "a deal has happened, Mrs. Cobbett; but Beechfield seems unchanged, I cannot see any difference at all."
"Hearts are changed," she said in a strange voice.
For the first time since he had been in Beechfield, Radmore felt a tremor of real discomfort run through him.
He looked up at the mantelpiece. It was bare save for the photographs, in cheap frames, of two stolid-looking lads, whom he vaguely remembered.
"Those your boys?" he asked kindly, and then, making an effort of memory of which he felt harmlessly proud, he said:--"Let me see, one was Peter and the other was Paul, eh? I hope they"re all right, Mrs. Cobbett?"
"In a sense, sir," she said apathetically. "I do believe they are. They was both killed within a month of one another--first Paul, then Pete, as we called him--so Mr. Cobbett and I be very lonely now."