The Fortunes of Springfield (18 page)

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

“I CAME over,” said Caroline, “because I was in need of a little peace and quiet; and, if the truth be told, a
l
ittle consolation too.”

“Then I’m very glad you came here for it,” said Duncan. “Shall we go into the house or the garden?”

“The garden would be lovely. Would Mrs. Drew bring us some tea out there?”

“She shall, Caroline. I’ll just tell her, and we’ll go round by the roses.” As they walked into the garden, he said:

“I didn’t expect you back as soon as this.”

“No. The visit was such a ghastly failure that I had to write to Mr. Springfield and ask him to bring us home.”

“Oh? I’m sorry to hear that. What made it such a ghastly failure?”

“Terence chiefly. From the very beginning he was as naughty and mischievous as he knew how to be. I
thin
k
the Everton twins, Julian and John, put his back up. They had just had their first term at school. Even before they got home from Singapore they were looking forward to their English school—they made up their minds they were going to like it, and like it they did; and all they could do in front of Terence was boast and brag about this wonderful new school. And Terence hadn’t anything to boast about, so he got mad. The twins went in for engineering projects in the sand—
d
ams
and bridges and so on—and Terence smashed them down. Terence loves modelling and the twins smashed his models by way of revenge. So they started fi
ghting,
and were always going for each other; and the girls stood up for their brothers and quarrelled all the time, and Janice and I spent our days chiding and persuading, and apologizing to each other, and either stopping fights or preventing them. If you don’t know much about children, you don’t know how wearing it can be. It was quite impossible—so we came home.”

“I think, Caroline, that these children are too big a job for you. They will wear you out.”

“I’m worn out,” said Caroline, laughing.

“Then give it up, darling, give it up and marry me. I won’t wear you out. I shall cherish you.”

“Duncan, I know you would, and just at the moment it sounds heavenly. But I’m not really worn out. I have wonderful powers of recuperation. And, in any case, I have an idea about Terence now. Would you like to hear it, or does all this talk about the children bore you?”

“I’ll be frank,” said Duncan. “The children bore me, but because they are of absorbing interest to you, I want to hear about them, because I want to know what is in your mind all the time. So tell me this idea about Terence.”

“No,” she said seriously. “Why should I bore you? It is my problem—perhaps Mr. Springfield’s too—but certainly not yours.”

“Caroline, dearest, your problems are my problems. Come along, tell me all about it.”

“No,” she said. “Here is Mrs. Drew with our tea— and, after all, it will be nice for me to forget it too, for a little while. Hallo, Mrs. Drew, am I being a nuisance, wanting tea out here in the garden?”

“Good afternoon, Miss Hearst, no, my dear, you’re no nuisance to me. She couldn’t be a nuisance in t
hi
s house, could she, Mr. Wescott?”

“No,” said Duncan, smiling at Caroline. “You see,” he said, when Mrs. Drew had gone away, “she approves of you too. Why don’t you come over to me, Caroline? Do come. I want nothing so much in the world as to make life happy for you.”

“My life is happy,” she said. “Problems don’t spoil that. Perhaps they only add to its interest.”

“Who is looking after the children today?” he asked.

“Patricia. Why?”

“You see. Patricia is dying to have the job. Patricia and David will marry. Why don’t you make it easy for them by coming over to me?”

“You aren’t trying to say that I’m a stumbling-block to them, are you?”

“No, of course not. But I expect David would t
hink
many times before asking you to leave. In fact, they would both be idiots if they allowed you to—if I am to be perfectly honest. But it would please me enormously, and it would throw those two together.” Caroline smiled at him.

“I don’t think they need throwing together,” she said. “Do you really think that Mr. Springfield would be slow to act if he wanted to be married?”

“It might not rest with him,” said Duncan.
“I
want to be married, and I don’t think I was slow to act— but where has it got me?”

“Poor Duncan,” she said. “Why don’t I say no to you, and end all this suspense?”

“Why don’t you say yes to me, and end the suspense?”

“Because, my dear, dear Duncan—and I wish I didn’t have to say it again—I am not in love with you.” For a little while, there was the usual persuasion from Duncan, the usual reluctance to be persuaded from Caroline, and then Duncan said he would bother her no longer.

“After all, you came for peace and quiet. For consolation. I won’t go on arguing with you. Can you stay to dinner?”

“Oh, I don’t
think
so, Duncan.”

“Yes, you can, for this one evening. Ring up Patricia, and I’m quite sure she won’t mind looking after David.”

“Shall I?” she asked doubtfully, and eventually went to the telephone, and asked Patricia if she would mind, and was reassured (and yet hurt too) by Patricia’s evident delight. She would have been hurt yet more if she heard the use to which Patricia put this dinner engagement. For Patricia made the very most of Caroline’s desire to be with Duncan; and then went on to make the most of Caroline’s inability to cope with Terence,
emphasising
her own and her mother’s concern for the children, hinting, too, that it was hardly likely that Caroline could concentrate on th
e
children if her heart and mind were engaged with Duncan.

So Caroline stayed at Duncan’s house, and had to admit to herself that it was such a delightful change and so restful to be waited on; to sit at the dinner table, with its gl
eaming
cloth and
sil
ver and its low bowl of flowers, while Mrs. Drew brought the food to them; to enjoy
the
elegance and peace of the beautiful house. And she sat on the settee with Duncan after they had drunk their coffee, in the circle of his comforting arm, and told herself that this would be a wonderful life to live here; and only occasionally gave a thought to Springfield, where Patricia would be dining with David.

Although Duncan had not been sufficiently interested for Caroline to tell him her latest ideas about Terence, these ideas continued to absorb her. Without appearing to, she had watched Terence carefully. She had discovered on the day of the picnic that he was jealous of his sisters and the love they shared with Caroline. That had made Caroline far more circumspect before him. She had been more demonstrative to him whether he seemed to like it or not; and had tried to be less demonstrative to the little girls except when Terence was not there. It had not worked very well, because Wendy and Babs were just as much prepared to be jealous of Terence; and a very fine balance had to be achieved and maintained between these three sensitive children, for whom love or affection was too new a
thing
to be treated casually or taken for granted. However, Caroline had felt, until the visit to the Evertons,
that she was making slow headway with Terence. That visit had ruined everything.

Now, she thought she saw why. Terence had had nothing to put against the bra
gging
of the twins. He had had to submit to it in impotence. And the twins, who had really an enormous interest in the farm, had not spoken of it
u
ntil David appeared on the scene. If only, thought Caroline, they had shown it at the outset, before their boasting roused Terence’s jealousy and destructive intentions, all might have been well. Terence, too, would have had something to boast about—the farm horses and other animals, the fact that Davis had let him drive the tractor, that Uncle David had once let him hold the gun and shoot at a rabbit. (He hadn’t hit it, but that was not important—he had fired a gun.) If he had known that the twins could only oppose a house and garden to the whole of Springfield farm, he could have talked about the stream, and the old sand quarry, and the wood, with tall trees to be climbed. Springfield would have seemed a boy’s paradise.

There was yet another thought that nagged continually at Caroline’s mind. This was that it might be a good plan to send Terence to school. Julian and John had presented school as a sort of superior existence; and Terence had so much disliked his present school that he played truant from it. Was it possible that a boarding school would be good for him? Would he more quickly find his level? And that was what troubled Caroline. He was, at present, such a bad mixer that she had grave doubts.

She would have liked to talk all this over with David, but David was busy with the end of the harvest; and he also seemed to have taken on more social commitments. Many evenings he
went out to dinner at the houses of friends; many times, resplendent in evening dress, he went
dancing with Patricia and Oriel and a small party of friends. It seemed that he had already
accomplished much of what he set out to do: he had brought in a successful harvest; he had seen to repairs and renewals on the farm as well as to the house; and now he felt that he could relax a little. There had never been anything but a very slight bond between Caroline and David, and now she seemed to see it getting
thinn
er and thinner.

Perhaps she would not stay much longer. If David married Patricia, they would probably send Terence to school in any case, and the little girls could easily be managed by somebody else. Caroline would not stay as housekeeper in a house where David lived with another woman. She could marry Duncan. Or she could make a clean break and go away. Get that job abroad. Or in London. But that thought saddened her, for it seemed that she would never have a background of her own, never have ties of love to hold her anywhere.

One afternoon, when the children had been promised a picnic by the stream, the rain fell unceasingly, the meadows were soaked and the lanes were
r
unning
with
w
ater. Terence disappeared on his own activities, but the little g
i
rls, not realizing the hopelessness of the situation, knelt up on the chairs by the kitchen window, looking for the first signs of the rain’s stopping. Caroline, explaining that the picnic would be impossible even if the rain did stop, consoled them by arranging a doll’s picnic for them, and they settled happily in their bedroom, surrounded by their dolls, and a doll’s tea set. No doubt there would be a few crumbs and a few spots of water on the carpet, but it was a small price to pay for the amount of peace it would bring. Caroline went back into the kitchen, to find Miss Weedon standing by the door, very wet.

“I’m so sorry to come in like this,” she said, “but just as I passed your drive, the rain simply poured down. And I felt sure you wouldn’t mind sheltering me for a while.”

Caroline, who was quite unaware that she had
ma
de
an enemy of this woman some
time
before, said:

“Oh dear, you are wet. Take off your coat and let me
dry it for you. And I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

“I left my umbrella in the scullery.” Miss Weedon was taking off her coat rapidly. This was a better welcome than she had expected.

“Such a disappointing day,” said Caroline.

“Yes, I’m afraid the people who didn’t get their co
rn
in have missed their opportunity now.”

“Fortunately, Mr. Springfield has his in. But I had promised the children a picnic by the stream this afternoon, and that has definitely been washed out.”

“Poor dears. Where are they then?”

“I believe Terence is making models. Wendy and Babs are having a doll’s picnic upstairs—a poor substitute but better than nothing. The kettle is nearly boiling. A hot cup of tea will do you good.”

As Caroline busied herself
making
the tea, Miss Weedon pumped her for information, and passed on what she had already gathered at previous ports of call. She protested that the men seemed very slow off the mark these days, since the whole village had expected to hear the news of two engagements for months, but since Caroline presented a decidedly chilly front at
this,
she did not pursue it Instead, she went on:

“I was so sorry to hear that your holiday was so unsuccessful after all. I can quite understand how you must have felt about it all—nobody likes having to admit failure.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand you,” said Caroline.

“Oh, my dear, we all feel for you very much. Having to ask dear David to bring you home like that. And we all feel that, quite apart from the humiliation for you, it was much too much to ask you to do in the first place. You are too young to have the charge of a little hooligan like Terence.”

Caroline poured out the tea, refusing to show either her surprise or her indignation.

“You say you all feel for me,” she said. “Who are the ‘all’ that are so compassionate?”

“All your friends, my dear, and I’m sure that must be the whole village. Mrs. Close and Mrs. Arnold and many others—all of us, in fact. But we hope that you won’t feel discouraged. Even if you can’t manage these naughty children, we all know how efficient you are in other ways.”