Mrs. Orland tittered sharply.
“We were out riding,” said the squire, ‘and as we were passing … well, Carrie and I did not feel we could pass old friends without calling in to say how do you do.”
“Of course not. Of course not. You will drink a glass of my cowslip wine, Squire?”
Cowslip wine! Elderberry wine! These old ladies! Champagne he would have preferred in his present mood.
“Nothing would delight me more!” he said, and he let his rather bloodshot eyes roam over her. Skinny, was his verdict. A proper parson’s wife. Poor Orland! He reckoned he did not have much of a time with her. She flushed now at the boldness of his stare. Inwardly he chortled. These old women! Full of pretence. They thought they hated the way he looked at them because it was lechery; what they really hated was the fact that they had such skinny unattractive bodies. If they had something worth offering, they would be all a-simpering like any pot-house trollop.
But he had forgotten his new role; he was a father today, not a hunter of women.
“It is the little girl’s birthday,” he said, as they all sat drinking the cowslip wine.
“I know that,” said Mrs. Orland, smiling.
“Carolan, my dear, if you will go into the library you will find a parcel with your name on it. You may open it.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Orland.”
“Now run and get it.”
Everard came into the library just as she found the parcel.
“I heard your voice,” he said.
Her eyes were dancing, her cheeks red as berries, her hair glinting like the bronze ornaments on the mantelpiece.
“What has happened?” asked Everard.
“It is my birthday. The squire has given me a horse … all for myself. And now … Mrs. Orland has said there is a parcel here for me… I have it.” On the brown paper was written “For Caro-Ian on her birthday from Sophia, Edward and Everard Orland’.
Everard came over to look. He had not known it was Carolan’s birthday; he did not know what was in the parcel. Until this moment he had not been very interested in Carolan. She was just a little girl who was shamefully bullied by her half-brother whom Everard disliked intensely.
Inside the parcel was a cedarwood box.
“Oh …” cried Carolan.
“What a lovely box! Oh, Everard, isn’t it lovely to have a birthday!” She leaped up suddenly and, putting her arms round his neck, kissed him.
Everard said: “Here… I say … I soy!” But he was blushing, perhaps because she had kissed him, perhaps because he had known nothing of the cedarwood box.
“It is lovely … lovely of you, Everard, to remember my birthday.”
He was filled with shame; heartily he wished that he had remembered. He was going to explain, but that would be tantamount to saying his mother had told a lie. He was full of chivalry; he could not expose his mother’s deceit, any more than he could allow that beast Charles to bully his little half-sister.
“I must go to thank your mother,” she said, and together they went back to the drawing-room. The squire was sprawling on the sofa, his great legs apart.
“Ha, ha! Here is the heroine of the day!” Carolan was hugging the cedarwood box.
“Thank you, Mrs. Orland. It is a beautiful box! May I go and thank Mr. Orland?”
“He is writing his sermon, dear; I should not disturb him. I will convey your thanks to him.”
“Let me see the box,” said the squire, and Carolan went over to him. She listened to his breath coming noisily through his great nostrils. The hairs in his nostrils fascinated her; they had frightened her when she was younger.
“Ha! A nice little box, eh, daughter?” He thought with satisfaction cheap though! Picked up from some plaguey pedlar! And he laughed to think of the strawberry roan, impatiently stamping her foot outside.
Some new intuition told Carolan that he wanted to be thanked again for his gift, and because she was truly grateful and wanted to show her delight, and because, in some way she did not understand she was sorry for him, she said “May I show Everard my lovely, lovely horse?”
The squire gave her a contented push.
“Go on!” he said.
“Go on!”
And she and Everard went out. It was good to be with Everard. Everard was old, nearly seventeen; a man, of course; she had to remember that and not be too silly, too childish.
Everard patted the mare and said she was a beauty.
Suddenly he said: “Carolan, we’ll ride together one day.”
“Oh, Everard, shall we?”
He wondered why he had suggested it. He, almost seventeen and destined for the church, to want to go riding with a little nine-year-old girl! It seemed silly; but he had spoken on impulse and now he would have to go, for he was much too kind to go back on his word.
“And Carolan,” he said.
“Wait here a moment, will you? Do not go indoors. Just wait here. I will be back.”
She caught the excitement in him, birthday excitement.
“Yes, Everard, I will wait.”
She patted the mare, and stroked her soft, velvety muzzle.
“You are mine,” she whispered.
“You are mine! Carolan’s strawberry roan mare, you are! Nobody else’s.”
The mare showed her pleasure in being made much of, and Carolan thought, She knows she’s mine and I love her.
Then Everard was beside her. He held out to her a paperknife of wood which he had made himself.
The box was from all of us.” he said shyly, ‘but I wanted to give you something special.”
“Oh, Everard! Another birthday present. But you gave the box…”
“Ah, but this is different. From me alone.”
“From you alone,” said Carolan solemnly, and she knew that it was a very special present because Everard had given it to her. She was too young to keep that knowledge to herself.
“I love it. It is the loveliest of all my presents.” She fondled the mare, and she knew she understood that this was no reflection on her value as herself, but merely as a birthday present.
“It is not really very good,” said Everard, and showed her a flaw in the wood.
“I love the flaw,” she persisted stubbornly, and he laughed and noticed, as the squire had done, that her eyes were deep green as the sea sometimes is.
He said slowly: “If Charles ever hurts you, Carolan, you are to come and tell me. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“I will tell him what you said,” she promised him, looking up at Everard’s tall figure and hunching her shoulders in delight.
“I think he will take very great care when I tell him that.”
“It will be better for him if he does.” boasted Everard, and she played with the idea of telling him about the shrew mouse. How angry he would be, and what delight in seeing his anger! But her pity for her enemy was strong within her, for he was a vanquished enemy; today he had already been beaten for his cruelty and, worse still, humiliated. So she did not tell.
Mrs. Orland and the squire watched them coming across the lawn, Carolan dancing beside Everard, dancing round him a dainty creature with flying hair and uncurbed spirits. Quite the most attractive of the Haredon children, though Mrs. Orland, and Everard obviously liked her more, it seemed, than he liked Margaret. But what did that matter, they were young yet. He would marry Margaret; both she and Edward had decided on Margaret for Everard, for Margaret would make an ideal parson’s wife, a sweet girl, skilled in the domestic arts, gentle and pliable. Mrs. Orland foresaw a happy life for her son. This living would be his and two others besides; a life of leisure should be Everard’s, with curates to help him. But Margaret was of course the wife for him, so he must not get too fond of the little girl. Her birth for one thing was against her; people in a small place did not forget these things; besides, her high spirits, her lack of decorum -charming as it was were not suitable for a parson’s wife. One had heard stories of a certain blacksmith’s daughter who had married a parson. History must not repeat itself as neatly as that.
The squire watched them too, and wondered why anyone with as much spirit as his Carolan could admire a pale-faced scholar as this boy seemed to be. He felt jealous too. Dammed, there will be a bit of trouble with her when the time comes, he thought, and he did not know whether he was pleased or angry that there would be this trouble. He was disturbed anyway.