The Fortunes of Springfield (13 page)

CHAPTER
EIGHT

“W
e
are going home today,” announced Wendy, as she came up the steps of the terrace of the Everton house, to find lunch set on the terrace table.

“I know,” said Mrs. Everton, “and I am very sorry you are going, and so is Jennifer.”

“Miss Hearst says perhaps we will come and see you again.”

“You must keep Miss Hearst to that,” said James, giving Caroline his warm smile.

“Well, you won’t see us,” said one of the twins, “because we are going to school, and we won’t be home until the summer holidays.”

“Are you going to
sleep
at school?” asked Babs, perplexed.

“Of course we are! It’s a boarding school. You do everything there—you live there.”

“I
think
it will be horrid,” said Wendy.

“Girls,” said one twin to the other in disgust. “Boys always go to boarding school.”

Then why don’t I, thought Terence enviously, and hung back behind everybody else so that nobody would notice him and wonder why he didn’t go to boarding school like all other boys.

It was a farewell luncheon party for the little Springfields, but everybody was very gay, knowing that the separation would not be allowed to grow too long. Caroline thought that if she were to marry Duncan, she would be able to invite the Evertons to stay with her there, but she could not invite them to Springfield, where she was only the housekeeper. David was coming to pick them up immediately after lunch so that they could be home in the early evening; and although the children said they did not want to leave the sea and the beach and Emily, Caroline was aware of a
faint
excitement at going home again. It made parting with her new friends easier than it might have been; it
made
saying good-bye to Emily bearable; it made it easy to cope with the excitement of the children. Sitting behind David, with Wendy and Babs, gradually growing quieter, on each side of her, she felt a slow content. Contained in the space of the car, she could feel once more that they were a united family.

Her first surprise came when the car turned in at the wrought-iron gates and Caroline noticed that they had been rehung and repainted. Then she saw that the drive had been resurfaced, and was smooth, level and free from the pot-holes that had always made this ride so bumpy.

“What an improvement,” she said at once to David. “You have had the drive resurfaced.”

“Yes,” he said. “It will be easier on the car springs.”

“And on all of us,” laughed Caroline; and then her laugh was cut short, as the car came up to the house and turned in front of it. For the whole of the front of the house had been redecorated too. The shutters had been hung and painted; all the window frames were painted and the windows gleaming; the creeper had been cut back neatly, and stopped at the roof. The front door was a gleaming white, the brasswork s
hining,
the broken fanlight mended, immaculate now in its elegant Georgian tracery.

“Oh,” sighed Caroline in satisfaction, “how beautiful it looks. You must be so pleased with it, Mr. Springfield.”

“Are
you
pleased with it?” he wanted to know.

“I? Oh, I think it is lovely. But you must be pleased because you always knew it could look like this.”

“Come inside,” he said, lifting bags and suitcases to take in for her.

Inside, there was the same improvement in everything. New paint, new paper, Persian rugs brought from upstairs rooms into the hall, the chandelier, which had been lying in pieces in the mo
rn
ing-room, put together and rehung. David conducted her into the drawing
room, the dining-room, and Caroline saw the new carpets, the curtains with their pelmets, the expensive wallpapers, the impeccable taste which had brought the house back to its old glories.

“You have done wonders,” she said. “I do congratulate you. It is perfect. It is a lovely house.”

“That is as far as we got,” said David. “Upstairs must wait a little longer.”

“I want to go on admiring, but I must get the children’s tea and put them to bed. Then I can have a long look at everything.”

She went to the kitchen, which was much as she had left it. She prepared tea for the children, and took some into the mo
rn
ing-room for David. Then she busied herself getting the children into their beds
an
d unpacking their luggage.

It was late when she went to her own room. David had said he would eat at the Green Lion on this first night to give her time to settle in. She had wondered if anything had been done to her room, but as he had said that upstairs must wait, she had presumed there had not been time enough. But it was, all the same, with pleasant feelings of anticipation that she went along the corridor and turned the handle of her door.

She switched on the light, and gasped. For a confused moment, she thought she must have come to the wrong room; and, having reassured herself about this, she went to the windows and drew the curtains—new curtains of a soft, sea-green brocade, lined with sea-green too, and hanging in rich folds. With her back to the windows, she looked at the room. Sea-green carpet, stretching soft and comfortable almost to the walls; a paler green wallpaper with a small embossed fleur
-
de-l
i
s; a bed cover of quilted silk the same colour as the curtains; and the doors and windows, and her clothes cupboard and fireplace, painted white. There was a new bedside lamp with a peach-coloured shade; there was a priceless little mahogany lowboy which Caroline had seen in one of the guest rooms, and all her books had been arranged in a small mahogany bookcase she had never seen before.

It was so beautiful—and so infinitely more beautiful than any room she had ever called her own—that it did not seem suitable. It was not a housekeeper’s room. It was the room of an honoured guest—or a loved member of the family. And her great longing brought into Caroline’s mind a strange thought. She thought: Surely this was done by the hand of love. And she would not look at probabilities; only at what she wanted to see. She wanted to
think
that David Springfield had done this because he loved her. Tomorrow morning she would have to be more sensible, perhaps; tomorrow morning she would have to turn her back on that thought; but for the time being, it was too sweet to be parted with; for the time being, it could be a lovely dream. David did not come back early from the Green Lion, so Caroline went to bed with her beautiful dream.

Next morning he was out on the farm when Caroline came downstairs and gave the children their breakfast; and when he came in for his, Mrs. Davis was in
the
room, and private conversation was impossible. Caroline went away to make beds, and heard him leave the house again, and wondered when she would be able to say an appropriate thank you for so wonderful a gift.

It was when she and Mrs. Davis were seated in the kitchen with their mid-morning coffee that Miss Weedon arrived, following her knock with her usual rapid entry into the room. Mrs. Davis and Caroline exchanged glances, but there was nothing else to do but offer coffee to this unwelcome guest.

“I heard you were back,” said Miss Weedon, “so I just had to drop in and see how the dear children were. I hope their holiday really did them good?”

“They are very well and very bonny, thank you,” said Caroline.

“What lovely weather you had, too! Quite a kind Providence looked after you. You, too, Miss Hearst, look
so
much better for it.”

“Yes, it was marvellous weather,” agreed Caroline.

“Well,” said Mrs. Davis, rising, “if you’ll excuse me, miss, I’ve got plenty of work to get on with.”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Miss Weedon. “I shall have a nice little chat with Miss Hearst. My coffee is so hot, I can’t possibly drink it yet.”

She refused Caroline's offer of milk, and watched Mrs. Davis depart with satisfaction.

“Now tell me, dear Miss Hearst,” she said confidentially, “how
did
you like all the improvements to the house?”

“I think they are all quite charming,” said Caroline clearly.

“Yes, aren’t they? I have been here a good deal while you were away, and it has been so interesting to see everything changing. Of course, dear Patricia has such perfect taste. And, if I may say so—no disrespect of course—she is so determined, that not even the man from Flummery’s could make her change her mind; so that if Patricia said brocade then brocade it was: and if she said chintz, then it would be chintz and so on
...
And the expense! Well, of course that isn’t any concern of mine, but we all know that Flummery’s isn’t
cheap
and that Patricia always had most extravagant tastes. But one thing I will say: Mr. Springfield only seemed to
encourage her; and I suppose that isn’t surprising in the circumstances. No, I won’t have another biscuit, thank you.”

She sipped her coffee and Caroline took the opportunity to get up from her chair.

“There is a lot to do this morning, Miss Weedon,” she said. “As you can imagine, our fi
r
st morning back.”

“
Oh quite, my dear, but you wouldn’t drive me out before I can drink my coffee, would you?” Caroline repressed a sigh and sat down again. “I was so anxious to know how the children were—so pale and peaky they were before they went away.”

She sipped slowly. Caroline began to shell peas.

“Oh, that is fine,” said Miss Weedon. “Now I don’t feel that I am hindering you. I must tell you, Miss Hearst, how very glad I am to hear that Duncan Wescott went down to see you, and in general, if you will forgive me, shows so much devotion to you. And that isn’t inquisitiveness on my part either. It’s because I’ve
o
ften wondered what your position in this house would be when our dear David married.”

“I shouldn’t want you to worry about that,” said Caroline drily. “That is my affair.”

“But after you have been so kind in taking over the children and always doing your level best for them, it would be too grim to be out of a job. Not, of course, that that would follow. I should imagine Patricia would be only too glad to have them off her hands, and have all her time for David. But, just between you and me, Miss Hearst, Patricia isn’t always as sweet as she makes herself out to be. She has a nasty temper at times, and a very jealous temperament.”

“Miss Weedon, I really can’t listen to gossip about Mr. Springfield’s friends.”

“Gossip! Oh, my dear, fancy throwing all my thought for you and my consideration, back into my face as gossip! I have been really concerned about you, and
what your position will be; because it is quite obvious to all of us that it won’t be long before the engagement is announced. That is why we all feel so pleased about Duncan Wescott and you.”

“If there is as much truth in the Patricia-David engagement as there is in anything between Duncan and myself, then I obviously need have no fear of losing my job,” said Caroline coldly.

“Well, of course, if you choose to take it unfriendly, it isn’t my fault,” said Miss Weedon, rising. “But you can take it from me that Patricia hasn’t been redecorating this house for anybody’s benefit but her own; she hasn’t been chasing after David day and night for the last month to help
him
make the house look like this for any other woman; and they didn’t waste a single day after you were out of the house, before the builder was in. You can be an ostrich and bury your head in the sand if you like, but if I were in your shoes, I’d be watching carefully and keeping an eye on my future.”

She went away, to Caroline’s relief, to report at her next house of
c
all that that Miss Hearst was getting so conceited there was no talking to her at a
ll
; but that she obviously hadn’t liked it in the least to know that Patricia was in there as soon as her back was turned, having everything upside down.

Caroline sat where Miss Weedon left her and went on shelling peas; but her mind contained no beautiful dream now. She was down to earth. It was all quite plain and simple. Her going away had left a golden opportunity to Patricia and David to get on with their well-laid plans; and she admitted that they had made a wonderful job of them. And her own room? Had the decorations for that been Patricia’s idea? And what was the point of doing it for her? Was it, as that odious Miss Weedon had suggested, that Patricia did not want to look after the children and thought it worth while to conciliate Caroline? It well could be, thought Caroline, wondering how she could possibly go on living in this house, caring for the children, if David brought
Patricia
here. Patricia could be charming. Everybody knew that. But there was that reverse side to her character that Miss Weedon had talked of—everybody knew that too. She might always be charming to David, but that did not mean that everybody who lived in her house would
f
ind her so. And, most important of all, would she be
good for the children? This was something new for Caroline to worry about.

Wendy and Babs had begun to have that feeling of security that Caroline had wanted for them. They knew now that their love and friendliness could meet with love and friendliness in return, and it would be a great setback to them if they expected it from Patricia and met with any coldness. And Caroline knew that it would be difficult for any bride to come into a house where there was already a family established, and have to look after it: difficult to love these children who would, take time and thought from David. She sighed, troubled for them,
thinking
more of the effect the marriage would have on them than the one it would have on herself.