Mrs. Carruthers

“ The invitation to dinner had been prompted by impulse; he had no particular feeling of friendship for the man.
Dare, who was often in Cape Town, was acquainted with some of the guests present. The Carruthers, who were neighbours of the Arnotts, and with whom Pamela was on terms of greater intimacy than with the majority of her large circle of friends, had known him for years. Mrs Carruthers had once thought of marrying him before she met Carruthers, misled by a certain deferential kindliness he displayed towards all women, being naturally fond of the sex, into thinking he cared for her. ”

“ So grandfather got his supper, and went back to the office to finish his pipe and his tumbler, while Timotheus was entertaining Tryphosa in the kitchen. Mrs. Carruthers retired, but, first, she visited the young ladies' apartment, and said, in a tone which she meant to be reproachful as well as regretful: "Mr. Coristine has left us never to return." The kindest-hearted woman in the world, having thrown this drop of bitterness into her niece's cup, left her to drink it to the dregs. ”

“ There is no use pretending even when people are dead, if one is writing down one's real thoughts. I detested Mrs. Carruthers most of the time. A person whom it was impossible to please. She had no idea of justice, or of anything but her own comfort, and what amount of pleasure other people could contribute to her day.
How she came to do anything for me at all was because she had been in love with papa, and when he married poor mamma—a person of no family—and then died, she offered to take me, and bring me up, just to spite mamma, she has often told me. ”

“ His eyes met hers for a second or so, and then, to her increasing amazement, avoided her gaze. He thrust his hands in his pockets and looked everywhere save at this woman whom he liked immensely, but whom he hoped to keep comfortably outside his confidence. He was afraid of Mrs Carruthers’ powers of divination. When a woman takes an affectionate interest in a man, she can become an embarrassment as much as a pleasure. ”

“ The survivor is the actual proprietor, Old Carruthers; but I am the London agent to his solicitor, and he was reported to me to be in extremis the very day before I left London to join you. We shall run into a port near the place, and you will not land; but I shall, and obtain precise information. In the meantime, mind, your husband's name is Carruthers. Any communication from me will be to Mrs. Carruthers, and you will tell that man as much, or as little, as you think proper; if you make any disclosure, give yourself all the credit you can ”

“ Good-bye, dearest boy, and write to me at Mrs. Carruthers, High Towers, Godalming.”
“I say, I know Mrs. Carruthers. She lives near us,” Maurice exclaimed.
“Come on,” his friends insisted. “You haven’t time now to explain the complications of Surrey society.”
“I’m so glad,” said Mrs. Fane. “Because you’ll be able to see that Michael remembers the address.”
“I never forget addresses, mother,” protested Michael.
“No, I know. I always think everyone is like me. Merry Christmas, and do send a post card to Stella. She was so hurt you wouldn’t go to Germany.” ”

“ Dare did not wait for her to question him; he looked across at her towards the finish of the meal, and plunged of his own accord into the subject.
“That man, Arnott, is a double-dyed scoundrel,” he said. “He has left that poor girl without a word. She doesn’t know where he is even. He doesn’t write to her.”
“I suppose,” Mrs Carruthers observed calmly, “if he has eloped with some one else he would be little likely to write to her. Why, in the name of commonsense, did she confide her troubles to you? ”

“ It is very difficult for a young and naturally yielding woman like Mrs. Carruthers to discipline alone even so young a child as Henrietta. I know you will help me all you can to help her. Believe me, my dear friend, even in the short time you have been in Glendale you have become a tower of strength to me. I feel that I can take my most difficult and sacred perplexities to you."
Now, what do you think of that, Jane? Be sure and rub this situation in on all the waiting Five disciples. ”

“ They make a break. I suppose it’s because they claim so much of one’s time and attention.”
“Yours don’t get it, whatever they may claim,” Mrs Carruthers answered. “And children are the only decent excuse for marriage. I wish I had a dozen.”
She looked at Pamela curiously, not quite sure what to make of her speech, and not liking it particularly. The children had just been taken away by Miss Maitland. Pamela had let them go reluctantly. Whatever her opinion as to the desirability of children, she was unquestionably devoted to her own.
“They make a difference,” Pamela insisted. ”

“ In a desire to be obliging one is apt to become prosy.”
Carruthers entered the room at the moment with a syphon of soda and glasses. Dare eyed the syphon discontentedly.
“I hope you are for offering me something more heartening than that,” he remarked. “Your wife has reduced me to a state bordering on nervous collapse. She is starting a matrimonial agency. I wish you would bear me out in the lie that I’ve got a wife somewhere. I fancy she thinks it is not respectable to be unmarried.”
“The whisky is on the table behind you,” returned Carruthers, unmoved. ”

“ She had heard nothing from the servants about his lordship's being on particularly friendly terms with any lady in the neighbourhood. Hutchings would be the most likely person to know a thing like that. He had been in service at the Castle all his life. Of course, her ladyship, too, she might know.
Mr. Flexen made up his mind to seek out Hutchings at once and question him on the matter; but Mrs. Carruthers had only just left him when he saw Olivia come into the rose-garden with Colonel Grey. ”

“ Mamma's father was a lord, and her mother I don't know who, and they had not worried to get married, so that is how it is poor mamma came to have no relations. After papa was dead, she married an Indian officer and went off to India, and died, too, and I never saw her any more—so there it is; there is not a soul in the world who matters to me, or I to them, so I can't help being an adventuress, and thinking only of myself, can I?
Mrs. Carruthers periodically quarrelled with all the neighbors, so beyond frigid calls now and then in a friendly interval, we never saw them much. ”

“ Carruthers's respectable age, he should still have been subject to the feelings tauntingly mentioned as the "vagaries" of love, it must be remembered that George's mother was the only woman he had ever cared for, and that he had only of late achieved the loftier ideals of love. It was of recent date that he learned to hold his wife more dear and precious than Mr. Carruthers of Poynings. ”

“ Carruthers demanded, pulling vigorously at his pipe, a trick of his when excited.
According to Dare, Carruthers is sometimes hopelessly English, not in his ideas; but in his method of expressing them—his ideas themselves are Continental. Dare told him that by saying Millie Standish's husband, instead of Standish, he implied that he, Dare, was in love with another man's wife. ”

“ Carruthers eyed the figure uneasily. He saw what seemed to be a man dressed in a long, fibrous garment. With white hair and beard, it was a strange figure indeed for an apeman. He saw also that the eyes were well spaced, a mark of intelligence. The forehead was high and broad. And as Carruthers mentally studied the creature, strange and bizarre thoughts crossed his mind.
he mouth of the white apeman twitched as if he were going to speak. The heavy lips parted. A single word came to Carruthers' ear—"Man?"
Carruthers nodded. "We are from the earth." ”

“ Carruthers did not regret that he was childless; he had never cared for children, and, though not a keenly observant person, he had noticed occasionally that the importance of a rich man's heir was apt, in this irrepressibly anticipative world, to outweigh the importance of the rich man himself. No Carruthers on record had ever had a large family, and, for his own part, he liked the idea of a female heir to the joint property of himself and his brother, who should carry her own name in addition to her husband's. ”

“ Miss Carruthers hesitated a moment and then said in that plaintive voice which already was beginning to get on Mame’s nerves. “Cousin Lucy can’t afford to do that. She’s been so hit by the War. The Towers eats money. One has to be rich to keep up a place of that kind.” ”

“ Carruthers's present on my last birthday. I never thought then to what charming use it would be put.
"Now I think we have demolished all your silly little reasons for making me miserable," he said. "What others have you to bring forward as to why you can't marry me in a fortnight?"
I was silent—I did not know how to say it—the principal reason of all.
"Evangeline, darling," he pleaded. "Oh, why will you make us both unhappy? Tell me, at least."
"Your brother, the duke," I said, very low. "He will never consent to your marrying a person like me, with no relations." ”

“ We do thank you! Victory means so much to us."
The Carruthers were a young couple who, the moment after they had inherited the larger share in the great firm of Templeton & Carruthers, Bombay merchants, had found themselves involved in a partnership suit due to one or two careless phrases in a solicitor's letter. The case had been the great case of the year in Bombay. The issue had been doubtful, the stake enormous and Thresk, who three years before had taken silk, had been fetched by young Carruthers from England to fight it. ”

“ Carruthers said it was much more useful to learn to sit still and not fidget than to fill the world with rubbish like this.
Mary Mackintosh dominated the conversation. She and Lady Letitia Smith, who have both small babies, revelled in nursery details, and then whispered bits for us, the young girls not to hear. We caught scraps though, and it sounded grewsome, whatever it was about. Oh, I do wonder when I get married if I shall grow like them!
I hope not.
It is no wonder married men are obliged to say gallant things to other people, if, when they get home, their wives are like that. ”

“ But she did dare that night; they both of them dared. Already, since they had been married, they had had some strange days and nights; but that was the strangest night of their strange honeymoon.
CHAPTER XXXII A FORGOTTEN COAT
Lady Jane Carruthers was one of those elderly ladies who are never quite well, yet seldom actually ill. ”

“ In time, the boy received a lucrative appointment in India; on his naturalisation as a British subject, changing his name to Carpenter. Miss Carpenter was placed under the charge of a governess, Miss Nicholson, and, requiring a change of scene, was, through the kindness of Lord Downshire, sent with her governess to Cumberland, where she was to live in such pleasant rural spot as might be found by the Rev. Mr Burd, Dean of Carlisle. The two ladies arrived unexpectedly, when Mrs Burd was setting out for the sake of her health to Gilsland. ”

“ All idle horses, &c., must be dispensed with.
‘For you, my dear friend, we must part—that is, as laird and factor—and it rejoices me to think that your patience and endurance, which set me so good an example, are like to bring round better days. You never flattered my prosperity, and in my adversity it is not the least painful consideration that I cannot any longer be useful to you. But Kaeside, I hope, will still be your residence; and I will have the advantage of your company and advice, and probably your services as amanuensis. ”

“ “Well,” said I, “you call that love, Mr. Carruthers, but I should call it selfishness.”
“Maybe the two things go together. ”

“ Carrington's guard of cool aloofness and something faintly common, a suggestion of the woman who lives by wits, showed itself in the smartly uttered contradiction.
“Plenty of women marry men younger than themselves,” she went on. “Is that your only reason?”
“You know it is not,” answered Lady Rainault quietly. “Mrs. Carrington, need I go into details? You and I both know that there are a hundred reasons why you are an unsuitable wife for my son. Won't you just accept the fact that I can't consent to an engagement between you?” ”

“ The three years have brought about many changes, it is true, but Jean Carruth will remain Jean Carruth to the end of the story. She has grown like a weed, to be sure, and seems to be nearly all long arms and legs with a body like a hazel wand—pliable and vigorous, with powers of endurance far beyond its indications. A casual observer might think her less strong than she is, but in reality she is “soun’ as a dollar and de cause ob mo’ trebbilation dan a million ob ’em could be,” insisted old Mammy. ”

“ Carrington clung on desperately to the fringe of society and confronted the world with a sweet, enigmatic smile. But there were moments, tense, panicky moments, when to herself she admitted the bitter truth. She had invariably just failed to secure her footing. Unless she could make good by a successful marriage, she was destined to remain always on society's outskirts, a precarious hanger-on, barely able to scrape along. ”

“ Lady Rainault answered simply, “that Billy realizes it. You've dazzled him, you see.”
“And I'm going to marry him. What's more, you can't stop me. He's over age,” Mrs. Carrington burst out triumphantly.
“True. He's over age. But he's not independent of his father financially.”
The significance of Lady Rainault's reply shattered Mrs. Carrington's last shred of self-control. That clever assumption of aloofness, which so often had passed muster successfully where she was unknown as the quiet detachment of a woman of unquestionable status, went with it. ”