Capricious Caroline Part 27

To find, therefore, that she had already a.s.sumed an independent att.i.tude, and had taken herself and her immediate future out of his hands, annoyed him.

There are very few men who really appreciate the spirit of independence in women, and Rupert Haverford was very much behind the times in his views concerning the way in which women were swarming into the world as bread-winners and wage-earners.

He made no haste to reply to Caroline's letter. As usual, he found much to occupy him when he arrived at that dirty, smoky, northern town.

He confessed to himself that he was glad to be away from London again even for a little while; glad to dissociate his thoughts from that element of his life that belonged to the world in which Camilla Lancing lived. Not that he expected to be able to put her out of his thoughts altogether, for even in the dull, prosaic, unlovely surroundings of the factory, remembrance of this woman haunted him in so tangible a way that at times he could almost have imagined she was close beside him.

And on this occasion he carried with him new matter for thought where Camilla was concerned.

A new element had crept into his heart.

If he shut his eyes he could see with painful distinctness Camilla floating round that large room held in the arms of another man.

He knew perfectly well that this other man was no more to her than the floor on which she danced, but that did not affect the situation as far as he was concerned.

He winced and turned hot as he sat alone in the railway carriage whirling away from town, just as he had winced and grown hot the other night, when, like some graceful white leaf borne on a wayward wind, she had lightly skimmed past him, brushing him with her soft, clinging skirts.

Her laughing, petulant reproach when he had refused to dance because he could not dance had left a little wound.

She had made him feel clumsy; suddenly she had seemed to recede from him.

It was the first time that he had ever felt awkward, and at the mere suggestion that he could look foolish in the eyes of this woman Rupert Haverford discovered that he was very like other men, some of whom perhaps he had judged hardly, and some contemptuously.

He had no definite intention in his mind as to how he should act.

Indeed, it seemed to him that the future was not held in restraint by his hand or his power, and he laughed once to himself a little bitterly, as he recalled how he had gone round and round this subject of late, thinking entirely of his own feelings, and of how far the bewitchment that this woman had cast upon him was to be permitted to order his life.

In the lightest way possible Camilla had shown him that he made too much of his own importance.

It was not exactly his fault that he had grown critical and reserved where women were concerned.

If he had met Camilla when he had been a man struggling every hour to work himself into independence, he would never have questioned her right, never have sought to a.n.a.lyze what went to form her brilliant personality. He would have given her unquestioning devotion, seeing in her that spirit of grace and delicacy and beauty which had always been placed in his dreams: a gift at once necessary and unattainable.

But the burden of his great wealth had changed in a certain measure Rupert's nature; it had made him cautious, it had made him doubtful, and he was so imbued with that weighty sense of responsibility that he never took a step in any direction without great deliberation, and forecasting as far as he could the probable results that would accrue from any act.

Mrs. Lancing was not the only woman who fluttered in and out of his life in these days, who charmed him momentarily and pressed upon him eagerly sympathy and friendship and delicately insinuated homage.

He would have been blind indeed if he had not realized that his marriage was a matter of importance and hope to many women; that any choice indeed was possible to him.

He was a little impatient with himself at times that it should be this one particular woman who held him; even now, when she had left him smarting and uncomfortable, he was falling back into that old train of anxious thought about her.

Of course, he knew her history as the world knew it. Most people were kind about Camilla. There had been nothing subtle in the way in which her husband had wronged her.

It was the knowledge of this wrong done to her that drew Haverford to her so surely. He longed to give her protection, to build up barriers between her and all those things that had been legacies of her married life.

And, of course, there was only one way in which he could do this.

All at once he realized that he had ceased to doubt or speculate as to the future of such a marriage; hope became deliberate intention. And still the path was not clear. He knew his own heart, but what about Camilla's heart?

Metaphorically, he stretched out his hands to catch that dancing, laughing, white-robed figure, only to feel that the soft, filmy draperies slipped from his grasp, and that Camilla was dancing away far, far out of his reach.

When he alighted at the familiar station he almost yielded to the temptation to put himself in the train again and go back to London.

As the doubt and uncertainty dropped out of his heart, something new came in their place.

Now he was jealous. He wanted to be sure of her. He wanted to hold her in his arms as that other man had held her. He wanted to lock her to him, to feel that she belonged to him.

"I shall go back to-morrow," he settled.

But he did not go south on the morrow. He found himself plunged into a ma.s.s of business, confronted with difficulties, some of which were as unexpected as they were bitter.

During the past year Haverford had been making enormous improvements in his northern property. He had introduced a quant.i.ty of new plant, the old factories were in process of being replaced by new buildings that, when finished, would cost a small fortune. Old Matthew Woolgar would not have known the place could he have seen it now.

In his determination to give this world of workers every possible chance, Rupert Haverford had left nothing undone that could militate to the benefit of their lives, both at work and in their homes.

And yet such is the trend of human nature that, notwithstanding all that he had done and was doing, he met with no grat.i.tude. On the contrary, he was most unpopular. It was a fact known to every one but himself that these people, who occupied the first thought in his mind, had long since begun to regard him with suspicion and jealousy; some added contempt, and some--a great number--grudging hate.

He had been summoned urgently on this occasion because it appeared that there had been a good deal of friction in the works, and of late certain cases of incendiarism had occurred, culminating in a dastardly attempt to burn down the fine building which he had built and dedicated to the use of the factory hands as a place of mental and bodily education and refreshment.

It went very hard with Haverford to be forced to realize that this destruction of his property, this spirit of unrest and rebellion, found its rise in sullen animosity to himself.

At first, indeed, when he was told that there was a strong wave of bad feeling against himself he refused to believe it. The injustice of the ignorant is always hard to recognize and to accept.

He had never wanted grat.i.tude; he had only wanted comradeship. He had wanted to share his good fortune, not to buy a kingdom.

He had been loyal to this old place, to these people, and his father before him had been loyal, even unto death.

"They have bad memories," he said to one of his managers. "My father gave his life working among these people; for his sake they might have met me fairly."

The other man shrugged his shoulders.

"You have done too much, sir," he said. "These sort of folk want the whip, not benevolence."

And Haverford said no more.

To speak further of his great hopes now lost, his numerous schemes, his almost pa.s.sionate intentions for helping the people among whom he had worked and lived so long was to touch on a dead and sacred subject.

Yet he lingered in the north. He wanted to satisfy himself that he had made a mistake. He wanted to grow accustomed to his disappointment, to the humiliation of feeling that these people made a mockery of him and his generous intentions. Once he had grasped this in its fulness, and the matter would be closed. Henceforward they should have from him duty, nothing more.

He knew perfectly well that the men who served him and who held posts of importance had long since regarded him as a crank. Well, there should be no more quixotic weakness, no more sentiment. He had bared his heart to these people, stretched out his hand and called them his brethren, and his reward had been a stone at his heart and an evil word, coupled with a curse.

He did not go south till the lads who had been instrumental in trying to burn down his property had been caught and taken before the magistrate.

"If I am wanted, send for me," he said to his head-manager the day he left, "and report as usual."

He had telegraphed for his motor. He felt in need of a little spell of relief, of fresh influences, of something to divert his thoughts.

"I will go abroad for Christmas," he said to himself.

He dawdled on his way, putting up at various uninteresting places, where the chauffeur found the hours pa.s.s pretty slowly. But as he drew nearer to London he became nervous.