"Aunt Patty, you are an old schemer. Just suppose she liked me and agreed to take me ... I shouldn't be with you."
"My love, that little house will be waiting for you. School holidays will be our red letter days. Dear old Vi will give an extra polish to the brass-she has a fetish about that brass of hers-I shall be in a whirl of excitement. Just imagine the rejoicing in the house, "Cordelia is coming home". This time next year I can see it all so clearly. We'll all go to the carol service in the church. The rector is such a nice man. In fact it is a very friendly place."
"Oh, Aunt Patty," I said. "I was so looking forward to being with you. After all, in three years I have seen very little of you."
"You will see more of me when you are in Devon. Not just Christmas and summer. There is a station about three miles from the house and we'll have the little dog cart. I'll come to meet you. Oh, I am so looking forward to it. And if you were at a school like Colby Abbey, where believe me the nobility send their daughters, you'd be getting into the right genre ... if you know what I mean. We had a knight or two, but let me tell you, Daisy Hetherington has earls' daughters and the odd duke's."
We were laughing as it was always so easy to do with Aunt Patty. She had the unique gift of making any situation amusing and tolerable.
My thoughts were in disorder. I had wanted to teach; in fact I had felt I had a special vocation for it; it was what I had been brought up to expect for years, but I did feel this situation was too much for me to take in all at once: the removal from Grantley; the prospect of a new home with Aunt Patty and Violet, and then to be presented with the possibility of a career in my chosen profession with a hope of my own school at the end of it! But in the forefront of my thoughts was Edward Compton, the man who had a habit of appearing mysteriously in my life and was at last taking on what I thought of as a natural image.
Before, he had been like a fantasy, nameless, and I could not fit him into a home. Now I knew. He was Edward Compton of Compton Manor and he was coming to tea with us tomorrow afternoon. Sitting with Aunt Patty and Violet he would shed that aura of make-believe, and I wanted him to do that.
He excited me. He was so handsome with those beautifully chiselled features and that exciting look of another age, which had fallen from him a little in the wood. When he had said his name-with the slightest hesitation so that it had seemed as though he was unwilling to give it-he had become like a normal human being. I wondered why he had been a little reluctant to tell me. Perhaps he knew that coming upon us in the forest, and again on me on deck, he had created an aura of mystery and he wanted to cling to it.
I laughed. I was looking forward to seeing him more than I would care to admit to Aunt Patty; and he dominated my thoughts even to the extent of the coming of Daisy Hetherington and the effect this might have on my future.
My disappointment was so bitter next day when Edward Compton did not appear that I realized how deeply I had allowed my feelings to become involved.
Aunt Patty and Violet were ready and waiting for him. I had expected he would arrive a little before four o'clock as tea was served at that hour, but when at four thirty he had not appeared, Aunt Patty said we should start without him. And this we did.
I was listening all the time for his arrival and gave rather absent-minded answers to Aunt Patty and Violet who talked continuously about Daisy Hetherington's visit.
"Perhaps," said Aunt Patty, "he was called away suddenly."
"He could have sent a message," said Violet.
"Perhaps he did and it went to the wrong place."
"Who could mistake Grantley Manor?"
"All sorts of things could happen," said Aunt Patty. "He could have had an accident on the road coming here."
"Shouldn't we have heard?" I asked.
"Not necessarily," replied Aunt Patty.
"Perhaps he changed his mind about coming," suggested Violet.
"He asked for the invitation," I said. "It was only yesterday.
"Men!" said Violet, speaking from vast ignorance. "They can act very funny at times. It could be anything ... You never know with men."
"There'll be an explanation," said Aunt Patty, spreading her meringue with strawberry jam and giving herself up to the ecstatic enjoyment of it. "I tell you what," she said when she had finished it, "we could send Jim to the Three Feathers. They'd know if there had been an accident."
Jim was the stable man who looked after the carriage and our horses.
"Do you think it looks as though we're too interested?" asked Violet.
"My dear Vi, we are interested."
"Yes, but him being a man..."
"Men have mishaps as well as women, Violet, and it seems a funny thing to me that he didn't come when he said he would."
They talked a little about Edward Compton and I explained how, with a party of girls, I had met him in the forest and afterwards by a strange coincidence he had been on the Channel boat. Then he happened to be here.
"Oh, I reckon he was called away suddenly," said Aunt Patty. "He left a message to be delivered but you know what they are at the Three Feathers. Pleasant ... but they can be forgetful. Do you remember, Vi, when one of the parents wanted to stay for a night and we booked her in and Mrs. White forgot to make a note of it. We had to put her up at the school."
"I remember that well," said Violet. "And she liked it so much she stayed an extra day and night and wanted to come again."
"So you see," said Aunt Patty and went on to talk of the preparations for Daisy Hetherington's visit.
It was an hour later when Jim returned from the Three Feathers. No Mr. Compton had been staying there. All they had at the moment were two elderly ladies.
That seemed very strange. Hadn't he said he was staying at the Three Feathers ... or had I imagined that he must be?
I was not sure. When he had told me his name I had begun to feel that mysterious air retreating. Now it was back again.
There was something odd about this stranger from the forest.
There was no message from Edward Compton and I went to bed mystified and disappointed, for he had, after all, expressed a wish to call. I was sure something unexpected had happened.
I spent a disturbed night of jumbled dreams in which he figured mixed up with Daisy Hetherington. In one near nightmare I dreamed that I was at Colby Abbey Academy, which was some great menacing Gothic castle, and I was searching for Edward Compton. When I found him he was a monster-half man, half woman, himself and Daisy Hetherington; and I was trying to escape.
I sat up in bed breathless and I guessed I had been shouting in my sleep.
I lay still trying to quieten my mind.
Such a lot seemed to have happened in a short Lime that it was small wonder I had disturbed dreams. As for Edward Compton if he had decided he did not want to visit us and had not the courtesy to let us know, so much for him. But I did not believe that was the case. What had been so striking about him had been that air of almost old-world chivalry.
It was all rather mysterious. I should probably find the solution soon. Perhaps a message would be on its way to me now.
When I went down, breakfast was over and the girls were on their way to their various classes. Lessons were always a Little perfunctory at such a tune with break-up so near and the Christmas spirit everywhere.
During the morning I went into the town.
Miss Stoker, the owner of the little linen draper's shop, was in the street inspecting her display of doilies and tablecloths laid out with branches of holly here and there designed to catch Christmas shoppers.