Now, with the same curious feeling of duality to which she was accustomed, she listened to Mrs. Harrison.
At the end of half an hour, the latter recalled herself suddenly.
“I’ve been talking about myself all this time,” she exclaimed. “And I came here to talk about you and your plans.”
“I don’t know that I’ve got any yet.”
“My dear—you’re not going to stay on here.”
Katherine smiled at the horror in the other’s tone.
“No; I think I want to travel. I’ve never seen much of the world, you know.”
“I should think not. It must have been an awful life for you cooped up here all these years.”
“I don’t know,” said Katherine. “It gave me a lot of freedom.”
She caught the other’s gasp, and reddened a little.
“It must sound foolish—saying that. Of course, I hadn’t much freedom in the downright physical sense—”
“I should think not,” breathed Mrs. Harrison, remembering that Katherine had seldom had that useful thing, a “day off.”
“But in a way, being tied physically gives you lots of scope mentally. You’re always free to think. I’ve had a lovely feeling always of mental freedom.”
Mrs. Harrison shook her head.
“I can’t understand that.”
“Oh! you would if you’d been in my place. But, all the same, I feel I want a change. I want—well, I want things to happen. Oh! not to me—I don’t mean that. But to be in the midst of things—exciting things—even if I’m only the looker-on. You know, things don’t happen in St. Mary Mead.”
“They don’t indeed,” said Mrs. Harrison, with fervour.
“I shall go to London first,” said Katherine. “I have to see the solicitors, anyway. After that, I shall go abroad, I think.”
“Very nice.”
“But of course, first of all—”
“Yes?”
“I must get some clothes.”
“Exactly what I said to Arthur this morning,” cried the doctor’s wife. “You know, Katherine, you could look possibly positively beautiful if you tried.”
Miss Grey laughed unaffectedly.
“Oh! I don’t think you could ever make a beauty out of me,” she said sincerely. “But I shall enjoy having some really good clothes. I’m afraid I’m talking about myself an awful lot.”
Mrs. Harrison looked at her shrewdly.
“It must be quite a novel experience for you,” she said drily.
Katherine went to say good-bye to old Miss Viner before leaving the village. Miss Viner was two years older than Mrs. Harfield, and her mind was mainly taken up with her own success in out-living her dead friend.
“You wouldn’t have thought I’d have outlasted Jane Harfield, would you?” she demanded triumphantly of Katherine. “We were at school together, she and I. And here we are, she taken, and I left. Who would have thought it?”
“You’ve always eaten brown bread for supper, haven’t you?” murmured Katherine mechanically.
“Fancy your remembering that, my dear. Yes; if Jane Harfield had had a slice of brown bread every evening and taken a little stimulant with her meals she might be here today.”
The old lady paused, nodding her head triumphantly; then added in sudden remembrance:
“And so you’ve come into a lot of money, I hear? Well, well. Take care of it. And you’re going up to London to have a good time? Don’t think you’ll get married, though, my dear, because you won’t. You’re not the kind to attract the men. And, besides, you’re getting on. How old are you now?”
“Thirty-three,” Katherine told her.
“Well,” remarked Miss Viner doubtfully, “that’s not so very bad. You’ve lost your first freshness, of course.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Katherine, much entertained.
“But you’re a very nice girl,” said Miss Viner kindly. “And I’m sure there’s many a man might do worse than take you for a wife instead of one of these flibbertigibbets running about nowadays showing more of their legs than the Creator ever intended them to. Good-bye, my dear, and I hope you’ll enjoy yourself, but things are seldom what they seem in this life.”
Heartened by these prophecies, Katherine took her departure. Half the village came to see her off at the station, including the little maid of all work, Alice, who brought a stiff wired nosegay and cried openly.
“There ain’t a many like her,” sobbed Alice when the train had finally departed. “I’m sure when Charlie went back on me with that girl from the dairy, nobody could have been kinder than Miss Grey was, and though particular about the brasses and the dust, she was always one to notice when you’d give a thing an extra rub. Cut myself in little pieces for her, I would, any day. A real lady, that’s what I call her.”
Such was Katherine’s departure from St. Mary Mead.
Eight
LADY TAMPLIN WRITES A LETTER
“Well,” said Lady Tamplin, “well.”
She laid down the continental Daily Mail and stared out across the blue waters of the Mediterranean. A branch of golden mimosa, hanging just above her head, made an effective frame for a very charming picture. A golden-haired, blue-eyed lady in a very becoming négligé. That the golden hair owed something to art, as did the pink-and-white complexion, was undeniable, but the blue of the eyes was Nature’s gift, and at forty-four Lady Tamplin could still rank as a beauty.
Charming as she looked, Lady Tamplin was, for once, not thinking of herself. That is to say, she was not thinking of her appearance. She was intent on graver matters.
Lady Tamplin was a well-known figure on the Riviera, and her parties at the Villa Marguerite were justly celebrated. She was a woman of considerable experience, and had had four husbands. The first had been merely an indiscretion, and so was seldom referred to by the lady. He had had the good sense to die with commendable promptitude, and his widow thereupon espoused a rich manufacturer of buttons. He too had departed for another sphere after three years of married life—it was said after a congenial evening with some boon companions. After him came Viscount Tamplin, who had placed Rosalie securely on those heights where she wished to tread. She retained her title when she married for a fourth time. This fourth venture had been undertaken for pure pleasure. Mr. Charles Evans, an extremely good-looking young man of twenty-seven, with delightful manners, a keen love of sport, and an appreciation of this world’s goods, had no money of his own whatsoever.
Lady Tamplin was very pleased and satisfied with life generally, but she had occasional faint preoccupations about money. The button manufacturer had left his widow a considerable fortune, but, as Lady Tamplin was wont to say, “what with one thing and another—” (one thing being the depreciation of stocks owing to the War, and the other the extravagances of the late Lord Tamplin). She was still comfortably off. But to be merely comfortably off was hardly satisfactory to one of Rosalie Tamplin’s temperament.
So, on this particular January morning, she opened her blue eyes extremely wide as she read a certain item of news and uttered that noncommittal monosyllable “Well.” The only other occupant of the balcony was her daughter, the Hon. Lenox Tamplin. A daughter such as Lenox was a sad thorn in Lady Tamplin’s side, a girl with no kind of tact, who actually looked older than her age, and whose peculiar sardonic form of humour was, to say the least of it, uncomfortable.
“Darling,” said Lady Tamplin, “just fancy.”
“What is it?”
Lady Tamplin picked up the Daily Mail, handed it to her daughter, and indicated with an agitated forefinger the paragraph of interest.
Lenox read it without any of the signs of agitation shown by her mother. She handed back the paper.
“What about it?” she asked. “It is the sort of thing that is always happening. Cheese-paring old women are always dying in villages and leaving fortunes of millions to their humble companions.”
“Yes, dear, I know,” said her mother, “an
d I daresay the fortune is not anything like as large as they say it is; newspapers are so inaccurate. But even if you cut it down by half—”
“Well,” said Lenox, “it has not been left to us.”
“Not exactly, dear,” said Lady Tamplin; “but this girl, this Katherine Grey, is actually a cousin of mine. One of the Worcestershire Greys, the Edgeworth lot. My very own cousin! Fancy!”
“Ah-ha,” said Lenox.
“And I was wondering—” said her mother.
“What there is in it for us,” finished Lenox, with that sideways smile that her mother always found difficult to understand.
“Oh, darling,” said Lady Tamplin, on a faint note of reproach.