Paid In Full/Chapter 3

due course that capable young person Joan Cradock piloted her great-uncle back to Abbot’s Mill. Here she led the way to the sunny drawing-room on the west side of the house. The room was empty.

‘Mother will be here in a moment,’ said Joan. ‘I expect she’s out with Molly somewhere, as usual. Molly’s the pet, you know. Will you have some brandy, or some champagne, or something, till tea is ready? I know where the key of the cellar is.’

Sir Anthony declined this hospitable offer, and, straying to the open window, looked out up the river.

‘What a landscape!’ he said. ‘Ah me! it’s almost worth while living in the Central Provinces of India for the whole of one’s working life to revisit such a scene as this occasionally.’

‘You wait until it rains!’ suggested the matter-of-fact Miss Cradock. Sir Anthony laughed.

‘My dear, it is possible to live in a country where people pray for rain—or rather, would pray for rain if they knew what it was. But they don’t, so they can’t. I come from a place rather like that. To me a British wet day is as refreshing as—what shall we say?’

‘Strawberry ice-cream?’

‘Let us say as Balm in Gilead—whatever that may be. What is that strip of water out there?’

‘That’s Ripleigh Reach. You ought to see it on a Sunday afternoon,’ said Joan who, like most of her sex, was more interested in persons than places. ‘Couples in punts come and moor under those willows all along the bank. They get so cross if you go near them. Denny and I have a lot of fun that way.’

‘What is that island?’

‘That’s Abbot’s Island.’

‘It appears to split the river almost evenly.’

‘Yes. There is a weir on the far side; the lock is on this side. Of course that gives mother fits all day long.’

‘And why should it give mother fits?’

‘Because she has quite made up her mind that we are all going to be drowned there some day. The only thing she hasn’t quite settled is the order of going in. Hallo, here she is! Now you’ll get your tea.’

Mildred Cradock, dressed in white, was approaching from the landing-stage at the foot of the lawn. For the mother of three lusty children, she looked absurdly young. She was tall and slim, and her figure so far appeared to have escaped that calamity known among the victims as ‘middle-aged spread.’ She looked little more than twenty-five, though she was ten years older. Her face beneath her white felt boating-hat was soft and round, and her expression, especially when she looked at her children, both whimsical and tender. She had the easy smile and the comprehending eyes which mark people of a large and tolerant sense of humour. But if you regarded her face closely in a strong light—assuming that you were so ungallant as to do such a thing—you would have observed two little lines running from the curve of each nostril to the corners of her mouth—lines which usually indicate a woman who has had once or twice to set her face resolutely towards the facts of life and practise the art of keeping a stiff upper lip. But the lines were not visible now—nothing but the superficial preoccupation of a conscientious hostess.

‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting for tea, Uncle Tony,’ she said, as she entered the drawing-room window. ‘Molly took me out in the punt, and—well, we found the punt-pole a little too long for us, didn’t we, Molly?’

She looked down affectionately upon the small figure at her side—a little girl of nine, with a mop of black curly hair, dark blue eyes, and a countenance rendered crimson by recent exertion.

‘I did,’ corrected Molly. She was a literal and truthful child, lacking Joan’s worldly poise. Her voice was deeper, too. Altogether Molly took life more seriously than her elder sister.

‘The pole stuck in the mud,’ she announced gravely to Sir Anthony, ‘and it nearly pulled me in. But mother held on to my frock, and we got it out. Some of the gathers gave way.’

‘The gathers?’

‘Yes. Look.’

Molly turned round, in order to afford her great-uncle a better view of her disordered raiment. Her mother interrupted hastily.

‘Now, chick, run off upstairs to your tea, and leave Uncle Tony and me in peace. Take Molly upstairs, Joan.’

‘Righto!’ replied Joan. ‘Come on, Mophead! I’ll race you. You go through the house and I’ll go round by the garden.’

The challenge was precipitately accepted, and with a wild shriek the two ladies shot out of the door and window respectively, and were no more seen.

Sir Anthony chuckled gently, and sat down in an armchair. His hostess, having rung for tea, sat down beside him and took his hand affectionately.

‘Dear Uncle Tony,’ she said, ‘don’t think me a terribly demonstrative female, but you don’t know how I enjoy having you here, even for such a flying visit. After all these years, too. I do wish you could stay longer.’

‘Carried unanimously! But the British Empire must be governed somehow, and sometimes. That reminds me, I have promised to discourse after tea to Joan upon the inner workings of the Indian Civil Service. I think she imagines I black myself all over and listen behind trees to Thugs and Dacoits.’

‘Don’t let her bother you.’

‘It’s a pleasure. Your children are very companionable, Mildred.’

Mildred flushed with pleasure. It was easy to see where her treasure was laid up.

‘You don’t think Joan is too precocious?’ she asked, obviously hoping to be contradicted.

‘She’s got her head screwed on the right way, if that’s what you mean. But that doesn’t prevent her heart from being in the right place.’

‘I am glad to hear you say that, because sometimes she seems to me just a little harder—a little more difficult to mould—than the other two.’

‘Joan’s all right. Her head just about balances the other organ, I should say. In the case of the other two, the balance inclines a little bit towards what magazine editors call “heart interest”—eh? They get that from their mother, I imagine.’

‘What makes you think that? Do you accuse me of being sentimental?’

Before Uncle Tony could frame a tactful reply to this leading question, the door opened and a grim-faced maid entered with the tea.

‘Out on the veranda, please, Thwaites,’ said Mildred.

‘You’d better have it in here,’ replied Thwaites calmly.

‘But it’s quite warm and sunny outside.’

‘It’s September, and a cold in the head is a cold in the head any time of the year. There’s your tea. Drink it up while it’s hot; it won’t improve with talk.’ And, having planted the tea-tray on its usual table, Thwaites departed composedly to her own place.

Mildred made a little moue.

‘You see how I am treated by my staff!’ she said.

‘A privileged retainer, I should say.’

‘You’re right; she is. She was my maid in the old days. When I became the mother of a growing family a maid looked like an extravagance, so I turned her into a parlourmaid. She wages perpetual warfare with the children, but they love one another really.’

‘She was with you before your marriage?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then she knew your husband?’

‘Yes. Sugar and cream, Uncle Tony?’

‘No, thank you. I wish I’d known him too. Do you care to speak of him, or do you prefer to keep your memories to yourself?’

‘No,’ said Mildred after a pause. ‘I think I like to speak of him. Of course, to a certain extent one’s memories are sacred things, but that is no reason why one should not recall them for other people. Denis is a mere name to you, naturally.’

‘Yes. I heard in a vague way in India, fifteen years ago, that you had gone out to South Africa, and that you had married there; but the first definite news that I had was your cable asking me to be Master Denny’s godfather.’

‘Yes. He was born on the second of July. He weighed—’

‘Tell me about the other Denis—your husband,’ said Uncle Tony, a little hastily.

Mildred obediently abandoned nursery statistics, and her face assumed a curious rapt and far-away expression. She began to talk in a low monotone—like a medium describing a vision. Apparently the memories she recalled were written deeply on her heart.

‘I was in Cape Town,’ she began, ‘when the South African War broke out, staying at the Mount Nelson Hotel.’

‘Alone?’

‘Yes.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Just twenty-one.’

‘God bless my soul!’

‘I had gone there to get away from—’

‘An undesirable suitor in London?’

‘Yes. But he wasn’t undesirable—only rather stupid.’

‘But he was pertinacious?’

‘Yes. And being a girl of independent disposition—’

‘You certainly were. I remember your swimming out to the bell-buoy at Whiteness and back when you were barely seventeen, just because somebody bet you you couldn’t.’

‘Fancy your remembering that!’

‘I always remember important things. Continue. Of independent disposition—?’

‘—And just having come into my money, I thought it would be a good plan to leave England, and—and—see the world. So I told the other two trustees—old Mr. Embury and General Oddie—since you weren’t there—’

‘I certainly was not, or there would have been a little more opposition, I promise you!’

‘I told them what I meant to do. They were terribly upset; but seeing that I was determined, they gave way. So Thwaites and I packed up—you can imagine Thwaites’s comments on the excursion!—and went off to Cape Town together. There we were caught by the South African War.’

‘And couldn’t get back—eh?’

‘I am not sure that I wanted to. I went and worked in Wynberg Hospital. I was quite happy there. You see, I was doing something useful for the first time in my life. There I met—Denis. He was one of my first patients.’

Sir Anthony nodded comprehendingly.

‘A wounded officer—eh? Have you a photograph of him?’

‘No. But he was a very handsome man.’

‘What was his regiment?’

‘Somebody’s Irregular Horse, I think. I am always rather stupid about military titles. We were married almost at once—as soon as he was convalescent. He wasn’t seriously wounded, and we lived in Cape Town for nearly four years.’

‘Didn’t he go back to duty?’

‘No. I think he had a job at the Base given him.... Anyhow, the war ended at last.’

‘And you sailed for home?’

‘Not immediately. Denis had various business interests in Cape Town, and he could not get out of them all at once. The war had been over nearly a year before we sailed. I had little Denny and Joan with me, of course; Molly wasn’t born until a few months later.’

‘You sailed on the Gallia.’

Mildred nodded. ‘You remember what happened, then?’ she said.

‘One read about it in the newspapers, of course. Collided with another boat, didn’t she?’

‘Yes—one terribly dark night off Teneriffe. We nearly cut her in two; and we began to sink as well. It was pretty awful.’

‘A sad business. What were your own experiences?’

‘I was very helpless at the time; but everybody was wonderful to me. They put me into one of the biggest boats, with the two children. We were picked up by another ship the next day, not much the worse.’

‘And your husband?’

Mildred Cradock drew a long, full breath, and once again her face assumed the same fixed, rapt expression.

‘The last glimpse I had of him,’ she said, ‘he was saving some one else’s life. I never set eyes on him again—after that.’

Her voice ran down, with a little quivering sigh. There was a pause. Then Sir Anthony said gently:

‘At least he left a gallant memory behind him.’

‘You are right, Uncle Tony; that is just what he did leave.’ Mildred was speaking with a curious intensity now, and the little drawn lines in the corners of her mouth were visible. ‘And that memory has been my sheet-anchor to windward for nearly ten years. While he was alive it was strength to be with him; now that he has gone it is strength to remember him. I don’t pretend to be a strong woman, or a clever woman; so when I am in any doubt or difficulty about myself or the children, I just say to myself: What would Denis have done about it? That’s been a real help, Uncle Tony.’

‘I can quite believe it, my dear.’

‘And I try to bring up my children by his standard—that’s all. Now, I mustn’t bother you any more.’ She rose, smiling hospitably, with a woman’s enviable faculty for shaking off a grave topic. ‘Come into the garden and smoke a cigar.’

‘I will,’ replied Sir Anthony. He rose, and laid his hand upon his niece’s shoulder. ‘But tell me one thing: can I help you or serve you in any way? I hesitate to offer, because you are the most competent woman I have ever met. But as you have got an odd man about the house for a week or so, you might as well make use of him. Can I do anything? Audit your pass-book? Have a row with the plumber? Whitewash the henhouse? I am yours to command.’

‘I’ll tell you what you can do, Uncle Tony,’ said Mildred suddenly. ‘Have a talk with Denny. Give him some advice.’

Uncle Tony made a wry face.

‘H’m! An improving discourse to a young man about to leave home for the first time—eh? It’s a bit out of my line. In my own circle I fear I am regarded as a rather worldly, not to say cynical, old gentleman.’

‘You are nothing of the kind.’

‘Well, I’ll admit I impose on some people—Joan, for instance. She regards me as something between a newly born babe and a doddering octogenarian—which I suppose, when you come to think of it, I am. In fact, we all are. However, I’ll try. After all, the boy’s my godson—and I fairly asked for it. I’ll do it now. Where is he?’

‘He’s at a tea-party at Middlefield, with his friend Leo Bagby.’

‘And Miss Bagby, I gathered.’

‘From Joan, of course?’

‘Joan was certainly my informant.’

‘Joan’s an imp. But never mind that. Why not talk to him when he comes home this evening, about six o’clock?’

‘That hour is already bespoke by the young lady just mentioned. I’ll tell you what. I’ll stroll over to Middlefield now, and meet him. Then I can get things off my chest on the way home.’

‘Will you? How kind you are to me?’

‘Isn’t everybody?’

‘Well, now I come to think of it, I suppose everybody is.’

‘They ought to be. You are the nicest woman I know. Au revoir! Exit Admonitory Uncle. Tell Joan I will be back in good time.’

The door closed, and Sir Anthony’s footsteps died away in the direction of the front door. Mildred crossed to a little table beside the fireplace. Upon it stood three photographs—one of each of her children. One by one she picked them up and examined them. She lingered a little longer over Molly than the others. Suddenly the door behind her opened, and Thwaites appeared. Mildred guiltily set down Molly’s photograph and turned towards the window. Thwaites began to collect the tea-things.

‘Some people,’ she observed severely, ‘don’t know when they’re well off.’

Mildred did not reply. She stood gazing out towards the river; but she did not see it, for her eyes were filled with tears.