THERE ARE FOUR SEASONS, page 10
But this particular episode was not over. Harold Frensham’s easy passions had been inflamed, and he had made an excuse for staying on at the Manor after the rest of the party had gone home in order to meet Vicky again.
He was a connoisseur of women, a past master in the art of seduction, and Vicky’s youth and innocence, which had made such a strong appeal to his senses, seemed also to ensure his speedy success. Her mother’s history, too, he considered to be in his favour.
Vicky threw a quick hunted glance around her. Mark was arranging a croquet game on the lawn in his best school prefect manner, issuing orders in an unnecessarily loud voice, and looking aloof and important.
Dorothea Milner had refused to play. She had had a secret struggle with herself before refusing, because she liked croquet, but there was no getting away from the fact that it was worldly, so she sat, her eyes fixed on the ground, trying hard not to take an interest in it.
Vicky had been among the first to volunteer for the game. There, at least, she would be safe from her pursuer. (She thought of him as her pursuer, though she had not seen him since that first short meeting.) But she could not escape his eyes. As she moved to and fro with her mallet they followed her—dark eloquent eyes that seemed to melt her resolution like snow.
After the game she made her way to a chair as far away from Harold Frensham as she could. Roger brought her a cup of tea, and she began to talk to him with eager friendliness, as if begging him to stay with her and protect her, but it only increased his natural shyness, and he moved on with his gentle smile.
Mark came up to her with a cake-stand, but he could not stay long, either, for he was bringing all his powers of organisation to bear upon the croquet games. He had another game in progress and was keeping a stern eye upon the players to see that they did not cheat, and handing round cakes at the same time, so he had little attention for anything else, and he, too, passed on, swinging the cake-stand precariously to and fro as he went, shouting out instructions and admonitions.
Vicky watched him disappear among the other guests, then turned to meet the eyes of Harold Frensham, who had taken the empty chair at her side.
She was not really surprised. Something in her had known all the time that she could not escape. Her pulses pounding in her ears, she took the initiative, trying to speak lightly and casually.
“i didn’t expect to meet you here. i thought you’d gone away last week.”
“Can you guess why I stayed?” he said.
She tore her eyes from his and looked round again for protection. Roger was now talking to Dorothea Milner, and Mark was directing the players. Everyone was engrossed either in conversation or in the game. There was no one to help her. There never had been. . . . A sudden bitterness invaded the turmoil of her spirit. No one cared what happened to her. What did it matter what she did?
“Say you’ve thought of me . . . just a little . . . Vicky. . . .”
She made no response. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, and her cheeks were very pale. She dug the point of her parasol into the grass. He saw that she was trembling.
“Will you come for a stroll round the garden with me, Miss Carothers?” he said, speaking formally and in a voice that was loud enough for their neighbours to hear.
He stood up and gave Vicky his hand to assist her to her feet. Against her will, she obeyed.
They passed through the crowds of guests on the lawn, round the corner of the house, to the other lawn, now deserted, where a small summer-house stood.
“You’re looking very pale,” he said. “Come into the summer-house and sit down.”
Of course she mustn’t do that, she told herself, but, with his eyes upon her, she couldn’t resist. She went with him up the sloping side of the lawn and, after hesitating a moment, entered the little wooden house. There was a rustic table in the middle, and a wooden seat running round the side. He followed her in and closed the door behind him.
She made a faint resistance when he took her in his arms—a resistance that convinced neither of them, for his kisses sent that wave of sweetness through her again, and she lay still in his arms, her eyes shut, surrendering herself to it.
“Vicky . . . tell me you love me . . .”
Terror stirred beneath the ecstasy. She felt trapped—not by him but by something in herself. A “light woman” like her mother. . . .
“Be kind to me.”
“No, no,” said Vicky, in a quick sobbing breath.
He held her closer.
“Where’s Vicky?” said Mrs Abbot’s voice faintly in the distance.
That broke the spell. She struggled to free herself.
“Let me go,” she whispered.
He released her reluctantly, keeping his hands on her shoulders, looking down at her intently.
“Vicky . . . come for a walk with me to-night. In the moonlight. Just the two of us . . . with no one else to bother us. I’ll be at the Hall gate at twelve. You can slip out, can’t you? Just for a lark. . . .”
She shook her head. She felt stunned, shaken, caught up by an intolerable joy, beneath which loomed a black abyss of fear.
“Are you afraid?”
“No, no. It’s not that.”
“You’ll come,” he said quietly.
She turned from him blindly and went out onto the sunny lawn. He followed, smiling to himself. He had felt her surrender and had no doubt of ultimate victory.
“There you are, Vicky dear,” said Mrs. Abbot. “Mark’s getting up another game. Will you play?”
Vicky took the mallet that Mark handed her and began to play. It all seemed like a dream. She wouldn’t go, of course. She had been mad to let him kiss her. She wouldn’t go. She would never speak to him again. . . . But beneath it all something stronger than reason was saying, “You will go. Of course you’ll go. You can’t help it. . . .”
She was relieved when she heard that Andrew had come to fetch her. Mrs. Abbot, radiantly happy at the success of her party, kissed her affectionately and came round to the front door, where Andrew waited with the dog-cart. But it was Harold Frensham who helped her in, tucked the rug round her, and whispered, “Twelve o’clock. . . . Don’t forget. I’ll be there.”
She didn’t answer or look at him, but the blood crept into her cheeks, and again that strange sweet excitement surged through her.
As they drove home she was hardly aware of Andrew, sitting beside her, his pale freckled face grave and intent.
Celia came running into the hall to greet her.
“Darling, how lovely to see you again! Did you have a nice time?”
Miss Standish appeared in the background, laughing girlishly.
“Celia and I are longing to hear all about it,” she said. “We can neither of us settle down to lessons till we’ve heard.”
Vicky answered their questions absently.
Mrs. Carothers, stout, handsome, matronly, came out of the drawing-room.
“Here you are, my dear. You look rather tired. Hadn’t you better go and rest before dinner?”
Vicky went upstairs and changed mechanically into her evening dress. The soft sensual haze that had drugged mind and body was departing, and her resolution was hardening. Of course she wouldn’t go. It would be wicked. She was horrified to think that she had considered it even for a moment.
She came downstairs to the drawing-room. Mrs. Carothers sat on one side of the fireplace, her head bent over her embroidery, and on the other sat Mr. Carothers. Celia, in a cream cashmere dress embroidered with red, a red sash round her hips, her curls hanging over her shoulders, was perched on the arm of his chair, and, as Vicky entered, he was looking at her with an expression of tenderness that softened and transformed his stern features. Then his eyes turned to Vicky, and his face hardened into a mask of cold severity. He rose abruptly, said “Good evening, Victoria,” and went from the room.
He generally found some excuse to leave a room as soon as Vicky entered it, but never before had he shown his aversion quite so openly, never before contrasted it quite so plainly with his love for his other daughter.
A hot rush of anger surged over Vicky. Why should she try to be good when nobody cared about her but Celia, Celia who was only a child, and for whom she felt this sudden bitter jealousy? A “light woman” like her mother? Very well, she would be like her mother. Perhaps that would hurt him. She hoped it would. She wanted to punish him even if she could only do it by bringing disgrace on him. Beneath her anger was the old wistful longing to be loved and made much of, the longing to which her lover’s tenderness made such an irresistible appeal.
She went upstairs early and sat at her bedroom window, watching the light fade over the garden, till the trees stood like dark giants against a silvered sky. She sat there, taut and upright, her eyes unnaturally bright, little quivers of excitement creeping through her frame. Though it was a hot night, she had to clench her teeth to stop them chattering.
At last the clock struck twelve.
She put on her hat and coat and went noiselessly down the staircase.
She did not attempt the front door, which was locked and bolted and chained, but went round to the French window in the drawing-room, opened the catch, and stepped out upon the moonlit terrace.
A figure detached itself from the shadows, and came towards her. At first she thought it was Harold Frensham, then she saw that it was Andrew.
The servants’ hall gossip about Harold Frensham had filtered down to Andrew’s sister, who was kitchen-maid at Morton Manor. Wide-eyed with horror, she had repeated it in the kitchen of the jasmine-covered cottage. Andrew had paid little enough attention, but when he saw the hero of the unsavoury stories bending over Miss Vicky, fixing his eyes on her, and whispering “Twelve o’clock. I’ll be there,” he remembered them with a feeling of uneasiness.
It was not his business, of course, and in any case “twelve o’clock” might have meant to-morrow morning, but the old unreasoning sense of responsibility nagged at his heart. Miss Vicky was young and thoughtless, and had no one but him to look after her. He must not let her do anything foolish if he could help it.
He went to bed with his brother as usual, then, as soon as his brother was asleep, got out of bed, dressed, and made his way across the fields to the Hall. Standing on the terrace in the shelter of the house, he waited till the clock struck twelve. Nothing happened, and he was on the point of turning away when a slender figure appeared behind the glass door of the drawing-room, deft fingers pushed back the catch, and Vicky appeared on the terrace.
She gave a start as he stepped in front of her.
“Andrew!” she gasped.
“Miss Vicky,” he began, and words tumbled out, though he hardly knew what he was saying. “You mustn’t, Miss Vicky. You can’t. You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what he’s like.”
She turned on him with flashing eyes.
“How dare you!” she said.
“Miss Vicky, listen. I’ve known you since you were a little girl. I can’t let you do this. I——”
She pushed him aside, white with anger, and began to walk down the drive.
He followed her, still pleading incoherently.
Half-way down the drive Harold Frensham came into sight, walking towards them with his leisurely arrogant stride, completely at his ease. His face darkened as his eyes fell on Andrew’s stocky ungainly figure.
“Who’s this?” he said shortly.
Andrew stepped forward. His pale freckled face was tense, his lips set.
“Miss Vicky’s not coming with you, Mr. Frensham,” he said.
Harold Frensham’s lip curled.
“Oh, indeed,” he said, “and who says so?”
“I am coming,” put in Vicky hysterically, but Andrew motioned her back, and she obeyed almost without knowing she was doing so.
“I say she’s not,” said Andrew. “I’m here to stop her and I will stop her even if——”
“We’ll soon see about that,” said the other.
The two men made a striking contrast as they stood there face to face—the one tall, handsome, finely proportioned; the other plain, clumsy, common-looking.
Frensham’s fist shot out, catching Andrew on the cheekbone and nearly throwing him off his balance. Andrew hit back gamely but at random, no match for his opponent. He returned to the attack again and again and was punished more savagely each time, till at last he fell onto the gravel and lay there motionless. Frensham looked down at him, breathing heavily, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight.
“Perhaps that’ll be a lesson to you,” he said, and vented the remnant of his rage in a contemptuous kick. It was the kick that woke Vicky from the stupor that held her. She flung herself on her knees beside Andrew, sobbing beneath her breath.
“Andrew . . . Andrew. . . . Oh, you’ve killed him.”
“Nonsense!” said the man, straightening his coat and collar. Now that his anger had spent itself, he was feeling rather pleased by the situation. It was an auspicious beginning to the affair that Vicky should have seen him displaying his manly qualities to such advantage. Women admired physical strength. He almost wished he had had better material to try it on than that weed of a fellow.
“He’s only knocked out and probably shamming at that. Come along, my dear.”
His tone was complacent, possessive.
But she was still kneeling by Andrew.
“Andrew . . . Andrew, look at me. . . .”
Harold Frensham took her by the shoulders as if to raise her to her feet, but she shook him off angrily.
“Go away,” she said. “I’m not coming with you. I hate you. I never want to see you again.”
He stared at her, open-mouthed. She met his gaze with hostile blue eyes.
“But . . . Vicky . . .” he said.
“Go away,” she repeated. “I hate you, I tell you. If you won’t go I’ll fetch Papa.”
It was unlikely that she would fulfil the threat, but he had no wish to be confronted by an irate parent, and his presence there at that hour would be difficult to explain.
He turned on his heel and left her, thinking that he was probably well out of it after all. Women were the devil. She had obviously been on the point of coming with him, and then she’d suddenly changed to a raging spitfire, and all because of some wretched little cad of a manservant whose insolence he had justly punished. He made his way back to Morton Manor, feeling both chagrined and relieved. Perhaps the whole thing had been crazy and it was as well that he had seen the girl in her true colours before it was too late. . . .
Andrew was struggling to his feet. He was a pitiful object, with a bleeding nose, swiftly closing eye, and a cut lip.
He looked at Vicky’s white tear-stained face.
“Don’t take on, Miss Vicky,” he said in a thick husky voice. “He wouldn’t have been no good to you.”
“Andrew, are you terribly hurt?”
“No, Miss Vicky,” he said, still speaking with difficulty. “He isn’t no good, you know, Miss Vicky. He hadn’t no right to try to make you do a thing like that. You’d better go in now, Miss Vicky, quick, or there may be trouble.”
“Yes,” said Vicky meekly. “Good night, Andrew.”
“Good night, Miss Vicky.”
She went in by the French window, and Andrew walked stumblingly, unsteadily, down the drive.
Chapter Nine
VICKY sat tense and upright on the seat of the railway carriage, her hands folded in her lap, her blue eyes fixed absently on the fleeting scenery. It was just a week since Andrew’s encounter with Harold Frensham. She had gone about since then pale and nerve-wracked, avoiding both Andrew (who had accounted for his disfigurement by the unconvincing story of a fall) and Celia, whose childish devotion and high spirits now irked her intolerably, spending most of her time alone in her bedroom.
Her thoughts had been turning more and more towards her own mother. It was there she belonged, not to these aliens—Celia, her stepmother, the father who hated her. The decision to go to her came quite suddenly while she lay awake one night, staring into the darkness. Apart from every other consideration, it would hurt her father almost as much as her going to Harold Frensham would have done. (She was still the little girl who had to punish her father for ignoring her by defiance and daring.) Moreover, there would be in it the thrill of the unknown, of breaking free from this life in which she had no part, of starting afresh.
“Mama,” she said the next afternoon, as the two were having tea together in the drawing-room, “what does my mother call herself?”
“Your mother’s name now is Mrs. Orell,” said Mrs. Carothers rather shortly.
“Where does she live?”
It happened that Mrs. Carothers had received a letter from a friend only a few days previously, telling her, as a piece of idle gossip, where Rosamund was living. She hesitated for a moment, then took the letter from her desk and read out the address.
“Thank you,” said Vicky.
Mrs. Carothers replaced the letter in her desk without comment or question. The child evidently meant to write to Rosamund. Well, it could do no harm. . . .
Vicky spent the next day in a kind of trance. I’m leaving them all for ever, she kept saying to herself. Perhaps I’ll never see any of them again—not Papa or Mama or Celia or Andrew.
She wrote to her mother by the afternoon’s post, packed her bag with a few necessities overnight, and, rising in the morning before anyone was about, slipped quietly down to the station.
Her plan worked with unexpected smoothness. She met no one. No one was on the platform. The train was practically empty. Her heart gave a leap as it started. The new life had begun. . . .
She tried to imagine what her mother would be like. All she knew of her was that she was a “light woman.” Vicky’s mental vision of a “light woman” was of someone standing on a table in the middle of a circle of men who were holding up wine-glasses or drinking out of a slipper. . . . Whatever sort of a life she lived, Vicky would now be part of it. It was her place—her home, her mother. The craving for love and understanding that had been with her ever since she could remember reached out hungrily, confident at last of satisfaction. Whatever her mother was like, she was her mother. She would love and care for her. Perhaps she had longed for her child all these years, just as Vicky had unconsciously longed for her mother.
