Part 14 (1/2)
Long ago, when he was little more than a boy, he had met Horace Avory and his wife in an out-of-the-way fis.h.i.+ng village in Wales. Avory's treatment of the small timid woman had roused pity and resentment in Toffy's mind. A student of character would have seen directly that a woman with more power and strength of mind--a woman with a bit of the bully in herself--who could have taken the upper hand with the big red-faced tyrant, might have made a very fairly good imitation of a gentleman, and perhaps even of a good husband, of Avory. But his wife--timid, and all too gentle--could only wince under the things he said, or let her big eyes suddenly brim over with tears. Toffy began to writhe under the cruel speeches which Avory made to her; he never saw for an instant that there was a fault anywhere save with the husband. She was one of those women who invariably inspire sweeping and contradictory criticisms on the whole of her s.e.x, one man finding in her a proof that all women are angels, and the next discovering as certainly that all women are fools.
Presently Avory left the fis.h.i.+ng village on the plea of business and went back to London, leaving his wife and child in the little hotel by the sea. There had followed a whole beautiful sunlit month of peace and quiet for Mrs. Avory, while her little girl played on the sands and she worked and read, or walked and fished with Nigel, and the colour came back to her cheeks, and the vague look of terror left her eyes.
And Toffy determined that Mrs. Avory should have a good time for once.
The years between boyhood and manhood had been bridged over by a sense that some one needed his care, and that he was a protection to a little woman who was weak and unhappy. And, whether it was love or not, the thing was honourable and straightforward as an English boy can make it.
And then one night by the late post had come a letter from Horace Avory of a kind particularly calculated to wound. Mrs. Avory brought it to Toffy to read out on the sands; and she broke down suddenly and sobbed as though her heart would break; and Toffy to comfort her had told her that he loved her, and meant every word he said, and asked what on earth he could do for her, and said that she must really try not to cry or it would make her ill. He put his arm round the trembling form,--and Mrs. Avory took his hand in hers and clung to it; and then, comforted, she had dried her eyes at last, and gone back to the little hotel again. Toffy saw the whole scene quite plainly before him now.
The little whitewashed inn with the hill behind it, the moonlit water of the bay, and the tide coming rolling in across the wet sands. When they met on the following day he told her with boyish chivalry that he would wait for her for years if need were, and that some day they should be happy together.
That had all happened long ago now, and during the years between they had hoped quite openly and candidly that it would all come right some day, although hardly saying even to themselves that the coming right was dependent upon Horace Avory's death.
Meanwhile Mrs. Avory worked hard at her unremunerative tasks, and trimmed parasols and cut out blouses, and worked hopefully, because she knew that it would all come right some day, and because Nigel had said that he loved her. And Nigel wrote regularly to her, and always went to see her on Sunday when he was in London. And every night of his life of late he had dreamed of a girl dressed in rose colour, who had given him her photograph to put on his writing-table.
He read Mrs. Avory's letter again (she wrote probably the worst hand in Christendom), and when he had spelt the ill-formed words once more, he discovered that the blotched and scrawled writing contained a postscript which he had not at first noticed. 'After all, you had better not come here,' it said, 'but I will run down and see you to-morrow. It is far the best and wisest plan, and I must say good-bye. Please expect me by the three o'clock train.' The letter, as usual, had not been posted in time to reach him in the morning, and Toffy realized almost with a sense of disaster that to-morrow was now to-day, and that it was too late to write and expostulate or to suggest to Mrs. Avory how unwise her visit would be. There was nothing for it but to order the motor-car and go to the station to meet her, and afterwards to give her tea in the library, and say to her all the comforting and consoling things he could think of.
Mrs. Avory appeared more than usually worn and thin this afternoon; and her eyes, so ready to brim with tears, looked pathetically large in her sallow little face. She had been sitting up late for many nights to finish her work, and there had been 'bothers' in her little household which she took to heart and worried over. Her dress looked worn and shabby, and her gloves were darned. The nervousness in her manner was increased by ill-health, and she reiterated that she knew she had done the best thing in running down here quietly for an hour, and that she had quite meant to bring her child and the governess; but Dorothy had not been well, and she did not like either to bring her or to leave her alone.
'I didn't know until the last minute that they couldn't come,' she reiterated nervously. Perhaps--who knows?--even she, poor soul, was dimly conscious that she had done a not very wise deed. But Toffy was all that was comforting and tender towards her, told her without flinching that of course she had done the right thing, and that it was awfully plucky of her to have come. He took off the damp tweed cape which she wore and led her to the fire. They had tea together in the big cold drawing-room, and then came the time to say good-bye, and Mrs.
Avory pleaded to walk to the station for the sake of one last talk together, and her watch--which never kept scrupulous time--deceiving her as to the hour, she missed the last train at the little branch station at Hulworth, and then wondered tearfully, and with an access of nervousness which rendered her almost hysterical, what she should do.
Toffy had a Bradshaw twelve months old which he promised to consult if Mrs. Avory would walk back with him across the fields again to the house. He consoled her as best he could, and a.s.sured her that it would be all right. And Mrs. Cosby, who was really a great woman at a crisis, suggested suddenly and with brilliance that there was a train from the main station ten miles off at eight o'clock, and that the motor, if it did not break down, might take them there in half an hour.
She provided warm wraps for the lady, and Nigel found rugs for her; and when all had been arranged, and she who got so little pleasure started for a moonlight drive in the cold crisp air, with Nigel taking care of her and wrapping her up warmly in rugs and furs, Mrs. Avory felt with a sudden rush of that joy of which she had so little experience that all had turned out happily and for the best.
It was not Toffy's fault upon this occasion that the motor-car came to grief. Mr. Lawrence's big Panhard ran into them when they were seven miles from home, and Mrs. Avory was taken back to Hulworth insensible and with a broken arm. Mr. Lawrence was himself bruised and shaken, but he helped to take Mrs. Avory home, where the housekeeper's greeting convinced him, if he had required convincing, that Mrs. Avory was staying at Hulworth. He said good-night when he had done everything that was useful and neighbourly, and had sent his chauffeur in his own car for the doctor, and had been helpful in getting remedies and suggesting cures. And the following day he had the pleasure of being first with the news of Mrs. Avory's escapade. Half his friends and neighbours heard all about it before lunch-time; his own bruises--rather obtrusively displayed--were proof of the truth of his story, if proof were needed. And Mr. Lawrence finished up his well-spent morning by lunching with Miss Abingdon, and by recounting to her in his high-pitched, gossiping voice his very latest piece of intelligence.
'I don't believe it,' said Miss Abingdon sharply.
Sometimes these ladies of a sterner period than ourselves say surprisingly rude things in the most natural and simple way.
'But it's a fact, really!' said Mr. Lawrence, with enjoyment. 'Why, the first thing the housekeeper said to her was, ”So you 're back again!” No one had seen Toffy for ages. He said he had influenza.'
Mr. Lawrence was going to add some jocular words to the effect that Toffy was a sly dog, but something in Miss Abingdon's face checked him, and he murmured only that it was an awful pity.
And then Kitty Sherard came in; she was staying with Miss Abingdon for a few days to console her for Jane's absence. Miss Abingdon did not quite approve of her, but, alas for the frailty of humanity, a little lightness and amus.e.m.e.nt are sometimes lacking in our otherwise admirable English homes, and the man or woman who can provide them is readily forgiven and easily excused. Miss Sherard was amusing; no one could deny it. She told her _risque_ stories with the innocent look of a child, while her big eyes were raised almost with an air of questioning to her bearer's face. Also she was boundlessly affectionate, although she said such dreadful things, and in fine, where she was there were young men gathered together.
She came up the drive now. Canon Wrottesley's two elder sons with her and a sailor friend of theirs, and she was smiling at them all quite indiscriminately and doing considerable damage to their hearts without in the least intending it.
Miss Sherard had been shooting duck in the marshes below Bowshott, where Peter had given her leave to shoot when she liked; and she came towards the house now, a miniature gun over her shoulder, and clad in a brown shooting dress, with a knot of her favourite colour under her chin.
There was a certain jauntiness about Kitty which became her, where in almost any one else it might have seemed outrageous. Even Miss Abingdon always remembered that Kitty had lost her mother when she was four years old, and since then had been the playmate and boon companion of a man who had been accounted fast even in the go-ahead set in which he lived, and who had taken his daughter to every race meeting in England since the time when she could first sit beside him on the front seat of his coach. He had never allowed her to go to school, and he had dismissed half a dozen governesses in turn because they were trying to make a prim little miss of her, and because they always insisted on pouring out tea for him as if they expected him to marry them. When Kitty was sixteen he dismissed 'the whole bothering lot of old women'
and finished her education himself. Lord Sherard spoke French like a native, and was one of the best riders and sportsmen of his day. He faithfully conveyed all that he knew to his daughter, with the result that Kitty had more knowledge of French literature than of English, and she and her father conversed but little with each other in their native tongue. But the result as far as Kitty was concerned was that she had turned out a beautiful and engaging young woman with eyes that looked frankly and charitably on the world. She loved you so much that she nearly always had her arm linked in yours when she told her absurd little stories; and she smiled so delightedly when you saw the joke of them, that even when you said, 'Well, really, Kitty!' you knew quite well that hers was a sort of innocence of daring, and you warned her severely that she must be very careful indeed to whom she said things like that, but that of course it didn't matter a bit as far as you yourself were concerned, because you understood her and loved her. And because everybody else said exactly the same sort of thing to her, and because no one would have ventured to crush that blithe and childlike nature by one word of real disapproval, there was not much hope that Kitty would ever reform and become sober-minded and well-behaved and satisfactory. The plague of it was that you couldn't help loving her whatever she did, and she loved you too, which was perfectly intoxicating when you came to think of it, except that you knew that she loved at least a hundred different people in exactly the same sort of way. She kept her real affection for her father and Jane Erskine, and lately she had fallen in love--which is a different thing--with Sir Nigel Christopherson.
Kitty stamped her feet in the hall, and then drew off her gloves and came forward to the drawing-room fire, with the big white sheepskin in front of it; and kneeling down before the blaze she told Mr. Lawrence and Miss Abingdon collectively that they had had very good sport in the marshes, and that she had brought back some duck for Miss Abingdon; and didn't everybody think it was too awfully cold, and what would their poor hunters do if a frost came?
Finally, having enunciated all these small remarks, Miss Kitty turned a radiant face on their visitor, who was stretched luxuriously in a big armchair by the fire, and bade him tell her the very latest news, for she expected all sorts of gossip and, if possible, some scandals from him.
Mr. Lawrence laughed delightedly; he was really proud of his reputation as a scandal-monger. 'Well,' he said, 'I believe I can supply you with the very latest thing of that description,' and then he told her the story.
Kitty had led a rough-and-tumble sort of life, and every one knew perfectly well that hers had been a liberal education at the hands of her father. Yet even Mr. Lawrence would not have blurted out his tale to Jane Erskine, for instance, as he had just done to Kitty. But bless you! every one knew that old Lord Sherard told his daughter his best scenes, and that she stayed with him in Continental hotels which some very particular mothers would not have allowed their daughters to enter. Mr. Lawrence wound up by saying, in a very charitable way, that he didn't blame the poor little woman, for she had a perfect beast of a husband.
Kitty was still kneeling on the white sheepskin rug and holding out her cold hands to the blaze when Mr. Lawrence had finished; and Miss Abingdon, who had tried once or twice without success to catch Mr.