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CAPRICIOUS CAROLINE



BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  Susannah and One Other
  Love and Louisa
  Peter a Parasite
  The Blunder of an Innocent




CAPRICIOUS CAROLINE

BY

E. MARIA ALBANESI


  "GOD HAS A FEW OF US WHOM
  HE WHISPERS IN THE EAR"
                 BROWNING



SECOND EDITION



METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON




  _First Published_... _September, 1904_
  _Second Edition_ ... _May, 1905_


This story originally appeared in the Weekly Edition of _The Times_,
and is now issued in book form by arrangement with the proprietors of
that journal.



TO

THE LADY AILEEN WYNDHAM-QUIN




CAPRICIOUS CAROLINE




CHAPTER 1


As the large motor swung along with the easy velocity and assurance of
some enormous bird, Camilla Lancing nestled more cosily into the warmth
of her fur wraps.

Rupert Haverford was driving, and he looked back every now and then to
see if his guest was comfortable.

"Is this too quick for you?" he asked once; and Mrs. Lancing only shook
her head with a smile.

"It is too delightful," she answered.

The little town where they had been lunching lay far, far away in the
distance now, its ugliness softened by the mingling of sun and haze,
and the country through which they were passing was very open; in a
degree bleak. On one hand marshland and rough common ground, and on the
other the beach inland, then stretches of wet sand, and then the
restless, murmuring sea, bearing on its shimmering surface the cold
embrace of the setting November sun.

Mrs. Lancing sighed involuntarily as she looked dreamily away to where
the sky and sea seemed to meet, but her sigh was an unconscious tribute
to the graciousness of the circumstances in which she found herself.

The smooth swinging movement of the car fascinated her. As she now and
then closed her eyes, she felt as if she were being carried away from
all that constituted life to her at other times; from excitement and
pleasure and anxiety, from sordid and obtrusive care; even from the
fever of hope and the illusive charm of chance. It was a delightful
sensation.

Sometimes as the road curved the car seemed almost to approach the
water, and the white-crested waves broke within a few yards of it with
a boom; the rushing of the incoming and receding water making a musical
accompaniment to the humming sound of the motor. Then they passed from
the coastline, and the road began to wind upwards. The sea was shut
from view by a wall of chalky hillocks covered with stubbly grass, and
only the country outlook remained.

Just before, for a brief while, the world had worn a soft, an almost
rosy tint; but as the sun vanished this warmth went also, and now the
landscape stretched into the distance grey, unsympathetic, and
monotonous.

The speed of the car lessened as the ascent grew steeper; a thin mist
began to gather ahead of them. To Mrs. Lancing's imaginative eye this
mist took the form of a flock of fleecy white birds just hovering
before winging flight.

Haverford pulled up here and, relinquishing his place to the chauffeur,
climbed into the body of the car.

"Are you very cold?" he asked anxiously; "do you know, I am very much
afraid, Mrs. Lancing, that this road will put us back an hour or so. It
was foolish of me to come this way, for the country is new to me, and
the road is certainly about the worst we have struck lately."

He occupied himself in tucking the big fur rug more securely about his
guest, despite her protestations that she was quite warm enough, and
quite comfortable.

The road was certainly very bad, and though the car disposed of the
rough ground with an air of superb indifference, a certain amount of
jolting was inevitable.

Camilla Lancing only laughed, however, as she was tossed up and down
occasionally by the elastic movement of the springs.

"It is a matter of perfect indifference to me what time we arrive
home," she said. "That is the effect motoring has on me! It engenders a
heavenly sensation of irresponsibility. I simply don't care a pin what
happens. My one conscious desire is to go on, and on, and on."

Rupert Haverford sat down in the other seat and looked at her with the
sincerest pleasure; she was so delightful to look at. The tone of her
garb was a rich brown; she had on a long coat of some rough fur, but
round her throat and shoulders she wore a stole of the softest sables;
there was a small cap of sables on her brown hair, and she had tied the
brown gauze veil she wore in a cunning bow under her chin. A knot of
white flowers that Rupert Haverford had given her at luncheon was
tucked in among the fur at her breast, and was the only break in the
harmonious whole. She turned to him as she spoke lightly; she had a
bird-like trick of moving her small head that was very characteristic
and very pretty.

"But of course this sounds horribly selfish. So like me. Shall we be
very late? I am so sorry if you are sorry, otherwise I don't think it
matters. Agnes said she would expect us when she saw us.
Fortunately"--Mrs. Lancing laughed--"dinner is a movable feast at
Yelverton, or indeed anywhere where Agnes Brenton presides."

Haverford answered this very frankly.

"I am afraid I am not troubling in the very least about Mrs. Brenton or
her dinner, I am thinking entirely of you. This is the first time you
have entrusted yourself to my care, you know, and I want everything to
go smoothly."

"Can anything go crookedly with you?" asked Camilla Lancing; there was
the faintest tinge of envy in her voice.

Haverford laughed.

"Oh! I suppose so," he said. "I have certainly had more than my share
of luck up to now, but one never knows what is waiting for one round
the corner." Then he half rose and looked ahead. "What a mist!" he
said. "I hope we are not in for a sea fog. I hate fog of any sort."

They drove on in silence for a few moments, and the mist gathered
increasingly about them; the flock of birds had melted away, and the
white velvety film floated about them like smoke. Everything became
indistinct; even the broad outline of the chauffeur was veiled and
vague.

Camilla Lancing spoke first.

"Now, please don't worry about me," she said, half-petulantly,
translating his silence adroitly. "I am absolutely comfortable.
Naturally"--she added with a laugh--"I know that if I had done my duty
I should have insisted on driving back with Agnes, though she declared
she did not want me; but it is so nice _not_ to do one's duty every now
and then. Did you ever hear of the little boy who always asked to be
allowed some wickedness on Sundays, as he had to be so good all the
days of the week? I share the sentiments of that little boy, Mr.
Haverford."

The car pulled up here again, and the chauffeur got down and lit the
powerful lamps. By now they had passed completely into the embrace of
the white fog; the air was raw, and the damp cold very penetrating.

"But perhaps you mean you wanted me to go back with the others," Mrs.
Lancing murmured softly, as they moved onwards again.

Haverford just looked into her eyes, that even through the mist and her
veil shone brilliantly.

"You know perfectly well I was not likely to do that," he answered
bluntly, and yet there was a kind of restraint in his voice. Mrs.
Lancing caught that restraint, and with a sudden impatient contraction
of her brows moved almost imperceptibly nearer to him; she arranged her
veil with her small, white-gloved hand, and then left it lying for an
instant on the outside of the rug. It was very close to his; but Rupert
Haverford did not touch the hand, nor enfold it as he might so easily
have done protectingly in his large, brown, strong one.

Mrs. Lancing bit her lip.

"There is no mistake, we _are_ in for a fog," she said jerkily, and she
slipped her hand as she spoke back into the warmth of her big sable
muff. It was not the first time that this man had unconsciously
repulsed her; there were times when, in her irritation, she called him
a prig. But she misjudged him; Rupert Haverford was not a prig, he was
only a very straightforward, practical, in a sense, simple-minded man,
who, like an explorer, was advancing step by step into an unknown
world, meeting and mingling every day with elements that were not only
new to him, but that belonged to a range of things about which he had
never had occasion to think hitherto. Camilla herself was prominent
amongst these new sensations; she at once was a bewilderment and a
fascination. There had been no woman of this class in his life up to a
couple of years before; indeed, women of any kind had played but a
nominal part in the busy, uneventful, and certainly unpicturesque
existence that had been his lot since early boyhood.

Mrs. Lancing, of course, knew briefly the outlines of the story of this
working man and his sudden and unexpected accession to wealth, and
recognized clearly enough that Haverford was as far removed in thought
and social education from the various men who fluttered in and out of
her life as the sun is from the earth; but she had little
discrimination. With her it was never a question of character or
quality; fundamentally she decreed all men were alike, strong in
prejudice, weak in temptation, selfish, and even tyrannical; vain and
sentimental, uncomfortably moral at times, but amazingly loyal, and, as
a rule, sensitively moved by the potent charm of a woman of her
temperament and attractions.

She liked men very much, she had many men friends, and few women
friends, although the spontaneous effervescing sympathy, which was
perhaps her most marked characteristic, made her very attractive to
women, and accounted for her wide popularity; there was something so
disarming, so delightful about Camilla Lancing. Beauty alone would
never have given her a quarter the power she possessed; it was her
ready interest (absolutely genuine for the moment), her quickness in
associating herself with those things that were paramount with the
persons who approached her, that made her irresistible to all sorts and
kinds of people.

She had the tact of a delicately fashioned nature, and a vast amount of
endurance.

But she was not patient, and the more she saw of Rupert Haverford, the
more necessary he became to her, the less patience she had.

He puzzled her; he piqued her; he annoyed her; he made her nervous.

What were his feelings towards herself?

"He is so horribly slow," she mused now fretfully, "he ponders every
word he says. I suppose he is terribly afraid of making a mistake. I am
sure his money oppresses him. He must have been ever so much nicer when
he was working as a foreman, or drayman, or whatever he was before all
this money came to him."

She kept her eyes turned resolutely away from Haverford. For perversely
enough, though he was so slow, so silent, so dull, he was exceedingly
good to look at. Old-fashioned, or rather out of the fashion, he might
be, but his manners were irreproachable, and his speech cultured, and
he dressed very well.

It came to Camilla as an inspiration, as the car moved on cautiously
through the cold white fog, that he was only shy and perhaps stupid.

Rupert Haverford had certainly a good amount of diffidence in his
disposition, but at the present moment it was the most exquisite, and
the most real sense of hospitality that tinged even his protective
courtesy with restraint.

When their hostess had deserted the motor after luncheon, and had
insisted in making her way homeward in a hired carriage, Haverford had
been delighted because Mrs. Lancing had elected to return with him. But
this very fact--the fact that this woman, who had been charming herself
into his inmost thoughts of late, was alone with him, charged him with
a sense of responsibility, and he steeled himself carefully against
even a suggestion of the delicious intimacy with which the situation
was fraught.

"The fog is lifting," he said, after a little while; "if we can only
get off this road and turn inland, we shall drive out of it altogether."

Mrs. Lancing had her muff in front of her face; the fog made everything
damp; her veil was clinging to her face uncomfortably.

"We are going downhill now," she said indistinctly.

Haverford was really a little anxious; they were certainly on a
downward grade, and the progress was not pleasant; the road appeared to
be rougher than it had been.

He sat forward, trying to scan what lay around and ahead, but the white
gloom baffled him.

And then all at once the machine grated sharply; they shook in their
seats, and Mrs. Lancing gave a little exclamation of alarm; then the
car stood still, and the chauffeur got out hastily.

"We're done for now, sir," he said; and Rupert Haverford swallowed a
word or two.

If it had not been for Mrs. Lancing he would not have cared two pins.
Time was of no importance to him, and a breakdown rather interested
him, as he had commenced to make a study of the mechanism of his
various cars, and knew pretty well how to put them right when things
went wrong, but this accident was most inopportune and annoying under
the circumstances.

Fortunately the cold, thick mist seemed to part a little at this
moment. With a reassuring word to his guest, Mr. Haverford got out and
joined the chauffeur in his investigations.

It was very, very cold sitting in that raw, damp atmosphere, and Mrs.
Lancing began to wish heartily enough that she had done her duty and
gone back to Yelverton in the carriage with Mrs. Brenton.

She felt tired now, and even a little cross. All the pleasure vanished;
that spell of delicious forgetfulness was swept away, and the morrow,
with its wearying demands, confronted her like a phantom.

After a sharp conference with the chauffeur, Mr. Haverford approached
his guest.

He spoke as cheerily as he could.

"Something has gone wrong with the works," he said, "we can't see what
it is exactly in this gloom. I wonder if you would mind sitting here a
little while I go and find out where we are? There may be somebody on
hand who can help us to get along a bit."

Mrs. Lancing shook aside the rug.

"Do let me come with you?" she pleaded. "Really, I would much rather
go, a walk will warm me up, and I shall feel so lonely without you. I
believe I am frightened. May I come?"

Her pretty helplessness touched him, of course. And as he helped her to
alight, Rupert Haverford felt his heart stir a little. So he supposed
other men felt when they ministered to a wife or some one who had a
tender claim on them.

They set off at a brisk pace down the hill.

Decidedly the fog was less thick, the bewildering effect on the eyes
was passing, but it was still sufficiently cold and raw to make them
shiver, though they were so warmly clad. Indeed, Mrs. Lancing was
rather overweighted with her long coat, and her small feet stumbled
every now and then.

Rupert Haverford drew her arm more closely through his.

He was conscious of a very tangible sense of pleasure in the near
proximity of this pretty, womanly creature. The unconscious claim that
she made upon his strength and protection moved him to tenderness, and
her delightful affectation of indifference to any discomfort awakened
his very real admiration.

"I have not the least idea where we are, but there must be a station
somewhere near, I suppose," he said. "And if we can only borrow a trap,
perhaps we shall be able to get back to Yelverton in time for dinner,
after all. It must be somewhere about half-past four now. I am afraid
you will never come out with me again, Mrs. Lancing. You see things
_can_ go crookedly with me at times! I am certainly out of luck to-day."

"I don't call this unlucky," Camilla said softly; and she nestled a
little closer to him. She was meeting him on familiar ground at last.

They came after a while upon a kind of village, in which the lights of
the one shop--a post office and