Capricious Caroline Part 5

"No, it will take me too long to get to town. I must see my mother before going into the City. I shall not say 'Good-bye,'" Rupert added, as he held her hand in his, "for you are coming up to town almost directly, are you not? And you have promised to dine with me, you know."

"I am longing to see your house," Agnes Brenton said. "I hear it is full of beautiful things. Camilla has raved to me about it."

"It is beautiful," he agreed, and then he just smiled; "you see, I can say that because I have had very little to do with putting it together.

I inherited nearly all my treasures."

He was gone before Mrs. Lancing, in a pause of the game, realized that he was nowhere near. She got up from the card-table suddenly; there was a patch of hot colour on her cheeks.

"Give me a cigarette, Agnes," she said; "now that Mr. Bogie has gone, I can smoke in peace."

"Mr. 'Bogie,' as you call him," Mrs. Brenton said evenly, "is leaving us very early to-morrow morning. But he wants you to use his motor if you care about doing so."

"Thanks, no," said Mrs. Lancing; "I think I have had enough of a motor-car for a day or two. What have you been talking about, you two?"

she asked suddenly, after a little pause. She threw away the cigarette as she spoke; smoking with her was only a pretence.

"I don't know," said Agnes Brenton, "nothing in particular. He is the sort of man one need never try to make conversation with. I mean to see as much of him as I possibly can; I like him very much."

Camilla made a _moue_ at her.

"You are well matched--just two dear preachy people together," she said. "He ought to have been a schoolmaster. I know I shock him awfully, don't I?"

"My dear child," said Mrs. Brenton, "Mr. Haverford has not confided in me, but if I speak the truth I don't think he troubles himself about you much one way or the other."

Camilla Lancing was amazed and sharply hurt.

"Oh! _don't_ you?" she said. "Oh! that is quite a new idea! As a matter of fact, I had a sort of notion he was thinking about me a great deal."

"You are a vain little person," said Mrs. Brenton, in the same even way; "but there, trot along; they are calling for you. Sammy has finished dealing."

No one was stirring when Rupert Haverford descended the stairs the next morning. He breakfasted alone; but just as he was about to get into the brougham and drive away, one of the maids brought him a little note. It was from Camilla.

"Thank you so much," she wrote, "for wishing me to use your motor, but I don't care to go in it without you. Do let me know how your mother is. I hope with all my heart that you will find her better.

Don't forget you have promised to have tea with the children next week!

"Sincerely your friend, "C. L."

He slipped the note into his pocket-book. It was pleasant to have that little remembrance from her.

Pa.s.sing the corner of the house he bent forward unconsciously to look at the windows of the room where she was, but the blinds were drawn; in fact, as he took out the little note and read it again, he saw that it was dated at three o'clock that morning. She must have scribbled it before going to bed. He knew she had gone to her room very late, for he had sat waiting for the sound of her voice and the swish of her gown.

Their rooms had been on the same landing.

He slipped his pocket-book back with a sigh, and as he drove rapidly away he found himself wishing with every turn of the wheels that he was going back again; that was the curious part of this charm which Camilla exercised over him.

When he was near to her she vexed him, she troubled him; when he was away he only felt the appealing claim of her beauty, of that simplicity, that "insouciance" that was so apart from and yet, with her, so much a part of her womanliness.

She was such a curious mixture, pre-eminently womanly, tender, sympathetic, and, at the same time, tainted unmistakably with p.r.o.nounced worldliness. Much as he had studied her, he felt quite unequal to gauging her character.

Once he had heard some woman declare that Camilla was "insincere." He had felt a wholly unreasonable amount of anger against that woman. And yet he was quite unprepared to defend her this morning against such an accusation.

He had suffered, really suffered, when he had seen her with Broxbourne.

It was inconceivable to him that a woman so delicately fashioned as she mentally (though not supremely intelligent, her mind had a tendency to poetry and charm evinced unconsciously a score of times) could find pleasure in the society of this young man with his rough voice, his sporting look, his peculiar manners. Nevertheless, she had laughed and sparkled and met Sir Samuel with all the ease and intimacy of a comrade.

"It is because she is alone, because she has no one to lead her," he said to himself as he sat in the train whirling to town. But ponder as he might, he could offer to himself nothing convincing or satisfying where Camilla Lancing was concerned. All he knew was that no matter how his mind might busy itself with other thoughts, it always circled back to Camilla in some fashion or other.

As he drew nearer to the smoke and the fog of the great city he closed his eyes and dreamed of the day before--of that wide expanse of restless, sun-kissed sea, with the sky fading in the distance into a glorious sweep of gold and purple and grey.

In his imagination he could hear again the break of the waves on the wet beach mingling with the musical hum of the car, and he could feel once again that sense of delight, almost of possessive delight, as he had looked back ever and anon and had met the smile of Camilla's sweet eyes and pensive lips.

She seemed to be cut away from him altogether by this darkness and heavy atmosphere.

The yellow gloom fell like a pall on all that was bright and beautiful and desirable.

He longed to go back to the country; above all, he longed to see her again, and quickly.

CHAPTER III

When he reached his mother's house in Kensington, Rupert Haverford was met with the information that Mrs. Baynhurst had left town the preceding day.

The house was all shut up, and the servant who opened the door to him wore no ap.r.o.n or cap.

He pa.s.sed into the hall thoroughly vexed.

Of course by this time he ought to have been well prepared for any startling move on the part of his mother, who never by any chance did those things that were expected of her, or, indeed, anything that she had announced she intended doing.

He put the parlourmaid through a cross-examination.

"I came up from the country on purpose," he said to her, naturally irritated. "I understood from a letter that was sent on from my house that my mother had had an accident, and that she was anything but well!"

"No more she is, sir," said the maid. "Dr. Mortlock, he was quite angry when he come here this morning and found Mrs. Baynhurst gone; but there was a letter come yesterday from Mr. Cuthbert, saying as he was ill in Paris, and the mistress she fussed herself into a fever, and wouldn't rest satisfied, so she left last night. She wasn't no more fit to travel than this doormat, sir. You see, there was all but a smash up with the brougham."

Rupert Haverford was frowning sharply.

"Who is with my mother?" he asked.

"She's took Stebbings, her maid that is, sir, but not Miss Graniger.

Most probable she'll have to join Mrs. Baynhurst in a day or two."

The maid rambled on loquaciously, and Rupert Haverford quickly gathered that his mother must have had a nasty shock, as her carriage had apparently just escaped collision with a runaway cab. She was not a nervous or a timid woman, far from it; but of late she had been in anything but good health, and this journey to Paris appeared to Haverford not merely an altogether needless fatigue, but a very foolish undertaking on her part.

In all probability his half-brother's serious illness would signify nothing more than an ordinary cold.

It was so typical of Cuthbert Baynhurst to write in a sensational way about himself; equally typical of their mother to take immediate alarm when any such news reached her.