“And are your friends happy?” asked Miss Craven bluntly.
“They are content.”
Miss Craven snorted. “Content!” she said scornfully. “Marriage should bring more than contentment. It’s a meagre basis on which to found a life partnership.”
A shadow flitted across the girl’s face.
“I had a friend who married for love,” she said slowly. “She belonged to the old noblesse, and her family wished her to make a great marriage. But she loved an artist and married him in spite of all opposition. For six months she was the happiest girl in France—then she found out that her husband was unfaithful. Does it shock you that I speak of it—we all knew in the convent. She went to Capri soon afterwards, to a villa her father had given her, and one morning she went out to swim—it was a daily habit, she could do anything in the water. But that morning she swam out to sea—and she did not come back.” The low voice sank almost to a whisper. Miss Craven looked up incredulously. “Do you mean she deliberately drowned herself?” Gillian made a little gesture of evasion. “She was very unhappy,” she said softly. And in the silence that followed her troubled gaze turned almost unconsciously to her guardian. He had risen and was standing with his hands in his pockets staring straight in front of him, rigidly still. His attitude suggested complete detachment from those about him, as if his spirit was ranging far afield leaving the big frame empty, impenetrable as a figure of stone. She was sensitive to his lack of interest. She regretted having expressed opinions that she feared were immature and valueless. A quick sigh escaped her, and Miss Craven, misunderstanding, patted her shoulder gently. “It’s a very sad little story, my dear.”
“And one that serves to confirm your opinion that a girl does well to accept the husband who is chosen for her, Miss Locke?” asked Peters abruptly, as he glanced at his watch and rose to his feet.
Gillian joined in the general move.
“I think it is—safer,” she said, as she had said before, and stooped to rouse the sleeping poodle.
CHAPTER V
Miss Craven was sitting alone in the library at the Towers. She had been reading, but the book had failed to hold her attention and lay unheeded on her lap while she was plunged in a profound reverie.
She sat very still, her usually serene face clouded, and once or twice a heavy sigh escaped her.
The short November day was drawing in and though still early afternoon it was already growing dark. The declining light was more noticeable in the library than elsewhere in the house—a sombre room once the morning sun had passed; long and narrow and panelled in oak to a height of about twelve feet, above which ran a gallery reached by a hammered iron stairway, it housed a collection of calf and vellum bound books which clothed the walls from the floor of the gallery to within a few feet of the lofty ceiling. On the fourth side of the room, whither the gallery did not extend, three tall narrow windows overlooked the drive. The furniture was scanty and severely Jacobean, having for more than two hundred years remained practically intact; a ponderous writing table, a couple of long low cabinets, and half a dozen cavernous armchairs recushioned to suit modern requirements of ease. Some fine old bronzes stood against the panelled walls. There was about the room a settled peacefulness. The old furniture had a stately air of permanence. The polished panels, and, above, the orderly ranks of ancient books suggested durability; they remained—while generations of men came and passed, transient figures reflected in the shining oak, handling for a few brief years the printed treasures that would still be read centuries after they had returned to their dust.
The spirit of the house seemed embodied in this big silent room that was spacious and yet intimate, formal and yet friendly.
It was Miss Craven’s favourite retreat. The atmosphere was sympathetic. Here she seemed more particularly in touch with the subtle influence of family that seemed to pervade the whole house. In most of the rooms it was perceptible, but in the library it was forceful.
The house and the family—they were bound up inseparably.
For hundreds of years, in an unbroken line, from father to son … from father to son.... Miss Craven sat bolt upright to the sound of an unmistakable sob. She looked with amazement at two tears blistering the page of the open book on her knee. She had not knowingly cried since childhood. It was a good thing that she was alone she thought, with a startled glance round the empty room. She would have to keep a firmer hold over herself than that. She laughed a little shakily, choked, blew her nose vigorously, and walked to the middle window. Outside was stark November. The wind swept round the house in fierce gusts before which the big bare-branched trees in the park swayed and bowed, and trains of late fallen leaves caught in a whirlwind eddied skyward to scatter widely down again.
Rain lashed the window panes. Yet even when storm-tossed the scene had its own peculiar charm. At all seasons it was lovely.
Miss Craven looked at the massive trees, beautiful in their clean nakedness, and wondered how often she would see them bud again. Frowning, she smothered a rising sigh and pressing closer to the window peered out more attentively. Eastward and westward stretched long avenues that curved and receded soon from sight. The gravelled space before the house was wide; from it two shorter avenues encircling a large oval paddock led to the stables, built at some distance facing the house, but hidden by a belt of firs.
For some time Miss Craven watched, but only a game-keeper passed, a drenched setter at his heels, and with a little shiver she turned back to the room. She moved about restlessly, lifting books to lay them down immediately, ransacking the cabinets for prints that at a second glance failed to interest, and examining the bronzes that she had known from childhood with lengthy intentness as if she saw them now for the first time.
A footman came and silently replenished the fire. Her thoughts, interrupted, swung into a new channel. She sat down at the writing table and drawing toward her a sheet of paper slowly wrote the date. Beyond that she did not get. The ink dried on the pen as she stared at the blank sheet, unable to express as she wished the letter she had intended to write.
She laid the silver holder down at last with a hopeless gesture and her eyes turned to a bronze figure that served as a paper weight. It was a piece of her own work and she handled it lovingly with a curiously sad smile until a second hard sob broke from her and pushing it away she covered her face with her hands.
“Not for myself, God knows it’s not for myself,” she whispered, as if in extenuation. And mastering herself with an effort she made a second attempt to write but at the end of half a dozen words rose impatiently, crumpled the paper in her hand and walking to the fireplace threw it among the blazing logs.
She watched it curl and discolour, the writing blackly distinct, and crumble into ashes. Then from force of habit she searched for a cigarette in a box on the mantelpiece, but as she lit it a sudden thought arrested her and after a moment’s hesitation the cigarette followed the half—written letter into the fire.
With an impatient shrug she went back to an arm chair and again tried to read, but though her eyes mechanically followed the words on the printed page she did not notice what she was reading and laying the book down she gave up all further endeavour to distract her wandering thoughts. They were not pleasant and when, a little later, the door opened she turned her head expectantly with a sigh of relief. Peters came in briskly.
“I’ve come to inquire,” he said laughing, “the family pew held me in solitary state this morning. Time was when I never minded, but this last year has spoiled me. I was booked for lunch but I came as soon as I could. Nobody ill, I hope?”