Capricious Caroline Part 49

Rupert Haverford himself wrote the message that brought his half-brother home.

He himself was on the eve of sailing for the United States when his mother's condition became so serious.

He had promised Mrs. Brenton to spend one night at Yelverton before leaving for America, but of course all his arrangements were upset.

"It is impossible to describe to you the suffering my poor mother is enduring just now," he wrote. "She is amazingly brave, and her brain is as active as ever. It sounds cruel to say it, but I almost regret this, for she persists in fatiguing herself. Only yesterday she worked for three hours."

Another time he wrote--

"She has been very ill for some time, how ill no one but she herself has known; but undoubtedly she has hastened matters to the present crisis by her unhappiness about Cuthbert's marriage. It was a great shock to her; she craves for him, and seems to torture herself with vain and unreasonable jealousy. I am most unhappy about her.... It is a bitter thing to feel that I have not the gift of ministering to her!"

All these letters pa.s.sed into Caroline's hands.

Usually she read them out in the garden, and when she was alone.

She was well again, but very restless in these days. After that nervous breakdown Mrs. Brenton endeavoured to treat her as a kind of invalid, but she quickly abandoned this as a hopeless undertaking, and indeed the girl very speedily picked up her colour and her strength. But she was changed; her calm, determined, practical mood was gone altogether.

There were times when Mrs. Brenton was puzzled by her manner, and nothing was more difficult for her to understand than the friendship which appeared to have sprung up between Caroline and Sir Samuel Broxbourne.

Sir Samuel was always turning up at Yelverton at unexpected moments.

As the Brentons had known him since he was a boy he was outside the category of guests; but though Mrs. Brenton was hospitality itself, she really chafed a little at his constant visits, and if she could only have imagined that he was indirectly or directly connected with what she in her plain-spoken way called Camilla's "wickedness," he would have found himself shut out of Yelverton in particularly quick time.

As it was, very little of what went on in Broxbourne's world found its way to Mrs. Brenton's ears, and she was in happy ignorance of the fact that when Camilla had broken her traces in that startling fashion, Broxbourne had been as much an object of curiosity to a certain section of society as Rupert Haverford himself.

Nevertheless she gave him very little encouragement to come so often; but Sir Samuel was, happily for himself, thick-skinned.

"What _do_ you find to talk about, you two?" she asked Caroline on one occasion, almost irritably; and the girl had shrugged her shoulders.

"I listen," she said; and then, with an effort, she had added, "Sir Samuel amuses the children. He is always inventing some marvellous games."

"Yes," said Mrs. Brenton, thoughtfully; "but it is not a bit like Sammy Broxbourne to spend his time inventing games to amuse children."

Caroline's eyes had flashed, and she had laughed for a moment.

"I expect he finds the country air refreshing after town."

"Is it possible," Mrs. Brenton said to her husband after this little conversation, "is it possible that Sammy has fallen in love with Caroline?"

Mr. Brenton closed his book with his finger in it to keep the place.

"It does not seem improbable," he said; and then he added, "Caroline is a very sweet girl."

To which his wife retorted--

"Do you think I don't know that? She is much too sweet for a man like Sammy."

In a vague sort of way this question of Broxbourne seemed to divide Caroline and Mrs. Brenton. The older woman resented, not unnaturally, the fact that the girl should not confide in her.

"Of course if he is in love, and he wants to marry her, it might be foolish to do anything to prevent it. Though he is not very nice himself, he has a very nice position, and his people are the kindest creatures in the world. It would be what the world would call a wonderful marriage for Caroline, I suppose. But _does_ he want to marry her? And would she have him?" Here Mrs. Brenton had to shrug her shoulders hopelessly. "I should have thought he would have been the last man on earth to attract her."

And Caroline was perfectly well aware of what was pa.s.sing in the other woman's mind. It was one of the many little p.r.i.c.kly burdens which she carried in her heart in these days.

If it could have been possible to have shared this trouble with Agnes Brenton, she would have done it gladly; but she knew that Camilla's disloyalty had worked far deeper into the heart of this woman, who had loved her with the anxious love of a mother for so many years, than even Agnes Brenton herself realized.

Mrs. Brenton had never set Camilla on a pedestal; she had never proclaimed her faultless, but she had never ceased to find reasonable excuses for all the mistakes that the younger woman had made.

Her love had always been tempered by her judgment. She had forgiven more in Camilla than she would have been able to forgive in other people; but she could not easily pardon that act of betrayal, that deliberate renunciation of right, of honour, and of duty.

Caroline was by no means sure that if she were to have lain before Mrs.

Brenton the facts which Sir Samuel had disclosed to her that sad and strange morning, she would have received any suggestion of help. On the contrary, it seemed to her that Camilla's old friend might have been more definitely estranged, as a.s.suredly she would have been made more miserable were she to have listened to that story of temptation and weakness and dishonour.

Caroline herself, though she pitied, also condemned.

Undoubtedly the woman had been sorely tried; she must have endured a veritable torture at Broxbourne's hands, but surely (Caroline argued now), surely she owed the man who had loved her so wonderfully, too big a debt of grat.i.tude to have exposed him so needlessly to the heart suffering and humiliation she had brought upon him?

"What she ought to have done," Caroline said over and over again to herself, "was, firstly, to have broken her engagement, then if he had pressed her for an explanation, she could have told him the truth. I know this must have seemed too hard for her to do, but I know, too, that such love as he had for her can work miracles. If she had only thrown herself on his hands for protection, I am convinced he would have stood by her. As it is, she has lost him, she has lost Agnes Brenton, and she has sold herself into a worse bondage than any she ever had in the past!"

And still though she judged, and even condemned, Caroline could not detach herself from this woman. In her turn she owed a heavy debt to Camilla, a debt that was sweet to pay, that claimed from her the best she had to give.

The same spirit that had sent her out into the night, eagerly defiant of fatigue, loneliness, or any possible danger, merely to stand beside this helpless, lovable woman, animated her still. She could not shut out of her remembrance the pleading patheticness of Camilla's look the last time they had met, and though they were now parted by an irrevocable barrier, she remained still acutely sensitive to the spell exercised by that creature of wayward moods and tenderest influences.

When Mrs. Cuthbert Baynhurst reached London, she at once wired to Yelverton, announcing her arrival, and desired that the children might be taken to town the following day to meet her.

To Caroline she sent a little pleading note, in which she asked the girl to bring the children herself.

"She has at least the grace not to suggest coming here," said Mrs.

Brenton, with a laugh that had the sound of tears in it.

Then she looked at Caroline.

"You will go?" she said in a low voice; and Caroline said--

"Yes."

The Cuthbert Baynhursts were installed naturally in one of the best suites of one of the largest and most sumptuous hotels.

It was so strange, so natural, and yet so unreal to see Camilla again!

She looked marvellously well; that fretted, excited, nervous air had gone entirely.

As Betty phrased it--

"You look _so_ pretty, mummy darling, just like a new, young girl."

The presence of the children relieved the situation to a great extent, yet both Caroline and Cuthbert Baynhurst's wife felt the strain of this meeting sharply.