“I don’t think,” said Lady Heritage briefly. “I know. Mr. Ember went up to the headland after he left you, and there were footmarks in the gravel. Some man had undoubtedly been there, and you must have seen him. Mr. Ember made the entire round and saw no one, but some one had been there.Nowwill you tell me what you saw?”
“Oh!” said Jane. Rather to her own astonishment she began to cry. “Oh, that’s why I was frightened then! The stone fell so suddenly, and I didn’t know why—why——”
The sobs choked her.
Lady Heritage stood looking at her for a moment.
“Are you just an arrant little fool,” she said in a low voice, “or....”
“Oh, I’m not!” sobbed Jane. “Oh, I’ve never been called such a thing before! I know I’m not clever, but I don’t think you ought to call me a f—f—fool.”
Lady Heritage pressed her lips together, and walked past Jane and out into the sunshine. She stood there for a moment tapping with her foot. Then she called rather impatiently:
“Miss Molloy! Dry your eyes and come here.”
Jane came, squeezing a damp handkerchief into a ball.
“Bring your flowers in; I see you’ve left them over there to die in the sun. I’m driving into Withstead this afternoon and you can come with me. I have to see Mrs. Cottingham about some University extension lectures, and she telephoned just now to say would I bring you. She has a girl staying with her who thinks she must have been at school with you or one of your cousins. Her name is Daphne Todhunter.”
Jane stood perfectly still. Daphne Todhunter? Arnold Todhunter’s sister Daphne! Renata’s friend! But Daphne must know that Arnold was married? The question was—whomhadArnold married. Had his family welcomed (by letter) Jane Smith or Renata Molloy to its bosom? If Renata Molloy, how in the world was a second Renata to be explained to Miss Daphne Todhunter?
“Miss Molloy, what’s the matter with you?” said Lady Heritage.
Jane could not think quickly enough. Supposing Lady Heritage went to Mrs. Cottingham’s without her; and supposing Daphne Todhunter were to say that her brother Arnold had married a girl called Renata Molloy?
It was too much to hope that Arnold had carried discretion to the point of telling his own family that he had married an unknown Jane Smith.
Jane suddenly threw up her chin and squared her shoulders. The colour came back into her cheeks.
“Nothing,” she said, with a little caught breath. “I’m sorry I was so silly, and for crying, and if I was rude to you. It’s most awfully kind of you to take me into Withstead.”
If there were any music to be faced, Jane was going to face it. At least the tune should not be called behind her back.
A feeling of exhilaration amounting to recklessness possessed Jane as she put on the white serge coat and skirt sacred to the Sabbath crocodile. Attired in it Renata, side by side with Daphne Todhunter, had, doubtless, walked many a time to church and back. In front of her two white serge backs, behind her more white serge, and more, and more, and more. Jane’s head reeled. She detested this garment, but considered it appropriate to the occasion.
They drove into Withstead across the marshes. The sun blazed, and all the tiny marsh plants seemed to be growing and stretching themselves.
Mrs. Cottingham lived in a villa on the outskirts of the town, and was ashamed of it. She had married kind little Dr. Cottingham, but imagined that she had condescended in doing so. Her reasons for thinking this were not apparent.
Jane followed Lady Heritage into the dark, rather stuffy drawing-room, and beheld a middle-aged woman with a rigidly controlled Victorian figure, a tightly netted grey fringe, and a brown satin dress with a good many little gold beads upon it. She had a breathless sense of the extraordinary way in which the room was overcrowded. Every inch of the walls was covered with photographs, fans, engravings, and china plates. Almost every inch of floor space was covered with small ornamental tables crowded with knick-knacks. There was a carved screen, and an ebonised overmantel with looking-glass panels. There was a Japanese umbrella in the fireplace.
Jane’s eyes looked hastily into every corner. There were more things than she had ever seen in one room before, but there was no Daphne Todhunter. Mrs. Cottingham was shaking hands with her. She had a fat hand and squeezed you.
“And are you Daphne’s Miss Molloy?” she said. “She waswildlyexcited at the prospect of meeting you, and I said at once, ‘I’ll just ring up Luttrell Marches, and ask Lady Heritage to bring her here this afternoon.’ I thought Imightdo that. You see, I only happened to mention your name this morning, and Daphne was soexcited, and she goes away tomorrow, so it was the only chance. So I thought I would just ring up and ask Lady Heritage to bring you. I said to Daphne at once, ‘Lady Heritage is so kind, I’m sure she will bring Miss Molloy.’”
Jane saw Lady Heritage’s eyebrows rise very slightly. She moved a step, and instantly Mrs. Cottingham had turned from Jane:
“Why Lady Heritage, you’re standing! Now I always saythisis the most comfortable chair.”
Her voice went flowing on, but Jane suddenly ceased to hear a word she said, for a door at the far end of the room was flung open. On the threshold appeared Miss Daphne Todhunter.
In common with most other Daphnes, Cynthias and Ianthes, she was short and rather heavily built. Her brown hair was untidy. She wore the twin coat and skirt to that which was adorning Jane.
With an exclamation of rapture, she rushed across the room, dislodging a book from one little table and an ash-tray from another.
(“Her eyes are exactly like gooseberries which have been boiled until they are brown,” thought Jane, “and Iknowshe’s going to kiss me.”)
She not only kissed Jane, she hugged her. Two stout arms and a waft of white rose scent enveloped Jane’s shrinking form.
After a moment in which she wondered how long this embrace would last, Jane managed to detach herself. Mrs. Cottingham’s voice fell gratefully upon her ears:
“Daphne, Daphne, my dear, come and speak to Lady Heritage.—She’s wildly excited, as I told you—the natural enthusiasms of youth, dear Lady Heritage, so beautiful, so quickly lost; I’m sure you agree with me.—Daphne, Daphne, my dear.”
Daphne came reluctantly and thrust a large hand at Lady Heritage without looking at her. Raymond looked at it for a moment, and, after a perceptible pause, just touched the finger-tips. Mrs. Cottingham never stopped talking.
“So itisyour friend, and you’re just too excited for words. Take her away and have a good gossip. Lady Heritage and I have a great deal to talk about.—You were saying....”
“I was saying,” said Lady Heritage wearily, “that you must write at once if you want Masterson to lecture for you next winter.”
Daphne dragged Jane to the far end of the room.
“Oh, Renata, how perfectly delicious! But how did you come here? And what are you doing, and where’s Arnold, and why aren’t you with him?” She made a pounce at Jane’s left hand, and felt the third finger.
“Oh, where’s your ring?” she said.
“Hush!” said Jane.
They reached a sofa and sank upon it. Immediately in front of them was an octagonal table of light-coloured wood profusely carved. Upon it, amongst lesser portraits, stood a tall photograph of Mrs. Cottingham in a train, and feathers, and a tiara. The sofa was low, and Jane felt that fate had been kinder than she deserved.
“Oh, Renata, aren’t you married?” breathed Daphne.
She breathed very hard, and Jane was reminded of Arnold on the fire-escape.
“Oh, Renata, tell me! When she ... Mrs. Cottingham said, ‘Miss Renata Molloy,’ I nearly died. I said, ‘Miss Molloy?’ And she said, ‘Yes, Miss Renata Molloy,’ and oh, I very nearly let the cat out of the bag.” She grasped Jane’s hand and pressed it violently. “But I didn’t. Arnold told me not to, and I didn’t, but, of course, I’m simplydyingto know all about everything. Now, darling, tell me ... tell me everything.”
Never in her life had Jane felt so much aloof from any human creature. There was something so inexpressibly comic in the idea of pouring out her heart to Daphne Todhunter that she did not even feel nervous, only aloof—aloof, and cool. She looked earnestly at Daphne, and said:
“What did Arnold tell you?”
“It was the greatest shock,” said Daphne, “and such a surprise. One minute there he was, moving about at home, and not knowing when he would get a job, and perfectly distracted with hopelessness about you; and the next he rushed down to say good-bye because he was going to Bolivia, and his heart was broken because you wouldn’t go too....” She stopped for breath, and squeezed Jane’s hand even harder than before. “And then,” she continued, “you can imagine what a shock it was to get the letter-card.”
“Yes,” said Jane, “it must have been. What did it say?”
Daphne opened her eyes and her mouth.
“Didn’t he show it to you? How perfectly extraordinary of him!”
“Well, he didn’t” said Jane. “What did he say?”
“I know it by heart,” said Daphne ardently. “I could repeat every word.”
“Well, for goodness’ sake do!”
“Renata! How odd you are, not a bit like yourself!” Fear stabbed Jane.
“Tell me what he said—tell me what he said,” she repeated.
With an effort she pressed the hand that was squeezing hers.
“What, Arnold, in the letter-card? But I think it was just too weird of him not to have shown it to you—too extraordinary.”
Jane felt that she was becoming dazed.
“What did he say?”
“I know it all by heart. I could say it in my sleep. He said, ‘Just off; we sail together. We were married this morning, and I’m the happiest man in the world. Don’t tell any one at present. If you love me, not a word to a soul. Will write from Bolivia.—Arnold.P. S.—On no account tell Aunt Ethel.’ So you see why I nearly died when she said Miss Renata Molloy, for of course I thought you were in Bolivia with Arnold, and oh, Renata, where is he and what has happened? Tell me everything?”
She flung her arms about Jane’s neck as she spoke and gave her a long, clinging kiss. Jane endured it under pressure of that, “You are not a bit like yourself.” When she had borne it for as long as she could, she drew back.
“Listen,” she said.
“Tell me—tell me the worst—tell me everything. Where is Arnold?”
“Arnold is in Bolivia,” said Jane.
“And why aren’t you with him?”
Jane produced a pocket-handkerchief. It was a very little one, but it sufficed. In her own mind Jane described it as local colour.
“We have parted,” she said, and dabbed her eyes.
“Renata! But you’re married to him!”
“No,” said Jane, quite truthfully.
An inward thankfulness that she was not married to Arnold supported her.
Daphne stared at her with bulging eyes.
“You’re not! But he said, ‘We were married this morning.’ I read it with my own eyes, and I could repeat it in my sleep. I know it by heart....”
Jane checked her with a look that held so much mysterious meaning that the flood of words was actually stemmed.
“He didn’t marryme,” said Jane, in a tense whisper. She looked straight into the boiled gooseberry eyes, and then covered her own.
“He didn’t marry you?” repeated Daphne, gasping.
“No,” said Jane, from behind the handkerchief.
“But he’s married?”
“Y—yes,” said Jane.
“Oh, Renata!”
Miss Todhunter cast herself upon Jane’s neck and burst into tears. The impact was considerable and her weight no light one.
“Daphne, please—please—Lady Heritage is looking at us. Do sit up. I can’t tell you anything if you cry. There’s really nothing to cry about.”
Daphne sat up again. She also produced a handkerchief, a very large one with “Daphne” embroidered across the corner in coral pink. A terrific blast of white rose emerged with the handkerchief.
“But he was so much in love with you,” she wailed. “I don’t understand it. Howcouldhe marry any one else and break your heart!”
“My heart is not broken,” said Jane.
“Then it was your fault, and you’ve broken his, and he’s got married just to show he doesn’t care, like people do in books. I don’t believe you love him a bit.”
Jane looked modestly at the carpet, which was of a lively shade of crimson.
“I’m afraid I don’t,” she said, in a very small voice.
An unbecoming flush mounted to Daphne’s cheeks.
“I don’t know how you’ve got the face,” she said.
Much to Jane’s relief, she withdrew from her to the farthest corner of the sofa, and then glared.
“Poor Arnold! Aunt Ethel always did say you were sly. She always said she wouldn’t trust you a yard.” She paused, sniffed, and then added, in what was meant for a tone of great dignity:
“And please, whomhasArnold married?”
“Her—her name is Jane, I believe,” said Jane, with a tremor.
At this moment she became aware that Lady Heritage had risen to her feet. Mrs. Cottingham’s voice clamoured for attention.
“Oh, Lady Heritage, not without your tea! It won’t be a moment. Indeed, I couldn’t dream of letting you go like this. Just a cup of tea, you know, so refreshing. Indeed, it would distress me to think of your facing that long drive without your tea.”
Raymond stood perfectly still, her face weary and unresponsive.
“I am afraid my time is not my own,” she said, and crossed the room to where the two girls were sitting. They both rose, Daphne with a jerk that dislodged a photograph frame.
“I am afraid I must interrupt your talk,” said Lady Heritage. “Were you living school triumphs over again? I suppose you swept off all the prizes between you?”
If there was irony in the indifferent voice, Miss Todhunter was unaware of it. She laughed rather loudly, and said:
“Renata never won a prize in her life.”
“Oh!” said Raymond, with a lift of the brows. “I am surprised. I pictured her always at the head of her class, and winning everything.”
Daphne laughed again. She was still angry.
“I’m afraid she’s been putting on side,” she said. “Why, Miss Basing would have fainted with surprise if she had found Renata anywhere near the top of anything. Or me either,” she added, with reluctant honesty.
“Miss Molloy,” said Raymond, “ask Mrs. Cottingham if she will let Lewis know that we are ready;” and as Jane moved away, she continued, “I should have thought her languages now....”
Daphne’s mouth fell open.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said, “shemusthave been piling it on. Why, her languages were rotten, absolutely rotten. Why, Mademoiselle said that I was enough to break her heart, but when it came to Renata it was just, ‘Mon dieu!’ the whole time; and then there were rows because Miss Basing thought it was profane. Only, somehow it seems different in French—don’t you think?”
Lady Heritage looked at Daphne as though she had some difficulty in thinking about her at all.
“I see,” she said gravely, and then Mrs. Cottingham bore down upon them.
“Tea should have been ready if I had known,” she said. Her colour had risen, and her voice shook a little. “If I could persuade you ... I’m sure it won’t be more than a moment. But, of course, if you must ... but if I had only known. You see, I thought to myself we would have our talk first, and then enjoy our tea comfortably, and indeed it isjustcoming in—but, of course, if you areobligedto go....”
“Thank you very much; I am obliged to go. Good-bye, Mrs. Cottingham. You’ll write to Masterson and let me know what the answer is? I think I hear the car.”
Miss Todhunter, who had embraced her friend so warmly half an hour before, parted from her with a tepid handshake; but if neither Daphne nor Mrs. Cottingham considered the visit a success, Lady Heritage seemed to derive some satisfaction from it, and Jane told herself that not only had a danger been averted, but a distinct advantage had been gained.
Jane ran straight up to her room when they got back, but she was no sooner there than it came into her mind to wonder whether she had put away the files which she had been working on just before she went into the garden. Think as she would, she could not be sure.
She ran down again and went quickly along the corridor to the library. The door was unlatched. She touched the handle, pushed it a little, and stood hesitating. Lady Heritage was speaking.
“It’s a satisfaction to know just where one is. Sometimes I’ve been convinced she was a fool, and then again ... well, I’ve wondered. I wondered this afternoon in the garden. That man on the headland gives one to think furiously. Who on earth could it have been?”
“I ... don’t ... know.”
“But I don’t believe she saw him. I don’t believe she saw anything or knew why she was frightened. She just got a start ... a shock—began to run without knowing why, and ran herself into a blind panic. She looked quite idiotic when I was questioning her.”
“Oh,” thought Jane. “It’s horrible to listen at doors, but what am I to do?”
What she did was to go on listening. She heard Lady Heritage’s rare laugh.
“Then this afternoon—my dear Jeffrey, it would have convinced you or any one. The friend—this Daphne Todhunter—well, only a fool could have made a bosom friend of her, and, as I told you, even she had the lowest opinion of her adored Renata’s brains.”
“I don’t know,” said Ember again. “You say she’s a fool, I say she’s a fool, her friend says she’s a fool, but something, some instinct in me protests.”
“Womanly intuition,” said Lady Heritage, with a mocking note.
There was silence; then:
“These girls—were they alone together?”
“No. They conducted what appeared to be a curiously emotional conversation at the other end of Mrs. Cottingham’s dreadful drawing-room, which always reminds me of a parish jumble sale.”
Ember’s voice sounded suddenly much nearer, as if he had crossed the room.
“Emotional? What do you mean?” he said quickly. Lady Heritage laughed again.
“Mean?” she said. “Does that sort of thing mean anything?”
“What sort of thing? Please, it’s important.”
“Oh, hand-holding, and a tearful embrace or two. The usual accompaniments of schoolgirlschwärmerei.”
Jane could hear that Ember was moving restlessly. Her own heart was beating. She knew very well that in Ember’s mind there was just one thought—“Suppose she has told Daphne Todhunter.”
“Which of them cried?” said Ember sharply.
“I think they both did—Miss Todhunter most.”
“And you couldn’t hear what they were saying?”
“Not a word.”
“I must know. Will you send for her and find out? It’s of the first importance.”
“You think....”
“She may have told this girl what we’ve been trying to get out of her. I must know. Look here, I’ll take a book and sit down over there. She won’t notice me. Send for her and begin about other things, then ask her why her friend was so distressed....”
Jane heard Ember move again and knew that this time it was towards the bell. She turned and ran back along the way by which she had come. Five minutes later she was entering the library to find Lady Heritage at her table and Ember at the far end of the room buried in a book.
“I want the unanswered-letter file.” Lady Heritage’s voice was very businesslike.
Jane brought it over and waited whilst Raymond turned over the letters, frowning.
“I don’t see Lady Manning’s letter.”
“You answered it yesterday.”
“So I did. Miss Molloy—why did your friend cry this afternoon?”
“Daphne?”
“Yes, Daphne. Why did she cry?”
“Oh, she does, you know.”
“But I suppose not entirely without some cause.”
“She was angry with me,” said Jane very low.
“Yes? I noticed that she did not kiss you when you went away.”
“No, she’s angry. You see”—Jane hung her head—“you see, she thinks—I’m afraid she thinks that I didn’t treat her brother very well.”
“Her brother?”
“Yes. She wanted me to be engaged to him, but he’s married some one else, so I think it’s rather silly of her to be cross with me, don’t you?”
“I really don’t know.”
Out of the tail of her eye Jane saw Mr. Ember nod his head just perceptibly. Lady Heritage must have seen it too, for she pushed the letter file over to Jane.
“Put this away. No, I don’t want anything more at present.”
Tea came in as she spoke.
Afterwards in her own room Jane sat down on the broad window ledge with her hands in her lap, looking out over the sea. The lovely day was drawing slowly to a lovelier close, the sun-drenched air absolutely still, absolutely clear. The tide was low, the sea one sheet of unbroken blue, except where the black rocks, more visible than Jane had ever seen them, pierced the surface.
Jane did not quite know what had happened to her. Her moment of exhilaration was gone. She was not afraid, but she felt a sense of horror which she had not known before. She had thought of this adventure asheradventure, her own risk. Somehow she had never really related it to other people. For the first time, she began to see Formula “A,” not as something which threatened her, but as something that menaced the world. It was ridiculous that it was Mrs. Cottingham and Daphne Todhunter who had caused this change.
It is one thing to think vaguely of civilisation being swept away, andquiteanother to visualise some concrete, humdrum Tom, Dick, or Harry being swept horribly out of existence. Jane’s imagination suddenly showed her Formula “A”—The Process, whatever they chose to call the horrible thing—in operation; showed it annihilating fussy Mrs. Cottingham, with her overcrowded drawing-room and her overcrowded talk; showed it doing something horrible to fat, common Daphne Todhunter. The romance of adventure fell away, the glamour that sometimes surrounds catastrophe shrivelled and was gone. It was horrible, only horrible.
Jane kept seeing Mrs. Cottingham’s ugly room, and Raymond Heritage standing there, as she had seen her that afternoon, like a statue that had nothing to do with its surroundings. All at once she knew what it was that Lady Heritage reminded her of—not Mercury at all, but Medusa with the lovely, tortured face, stone and yet suffering.
As she looked out over that calm sea she had before her all the time the vision of Medusa, and of hundreds and hundreds of quite ordinary, vulgar, commonplace Mrs. Cottinghams and Daphne Todhunters being turned to stone. A tremor began to shake her. It kept coming again and again. Then, all at once, the tears were running down her face. It was then it came to her that she could not bear to think of Daphne as she had seen her at the last, with that hurt, angry, puzzled look.
“She’s a fat lump, but Arnold is her brother, and Renata is her friend, and she thinks they’ve failed each other and been horrid to her. I can’t bear it.”
At that moment Jane hated herself fiercely because Daphne’s tears had amused her.
“You’ve got a brick instead of a heart, and, if you get eliminated, it’ll serve you right.”
She dabbed her eyes very hard, straightened her hair, and ran downstairs to the library again.
Ember was the sole occupant, and Jane addressed him with diffidence:
“Mr. Ember, do you think I might ... do you think Lady Heritage would mind ... I mean, may I use the telephone?”
“What for?” said Ember, looking at her over the edge of his paper.
“I thought perhaps I might,” said Jane ... “I mean, I wanted to say something to my friend, the one who is staying with Mrs. Cottingham.”
“Ah—yes, why not?”
“Then I may?”
“Oh yes, certainly. Do you want me to go?”
Jane presented a picture of modest confusion. It was concern for Daphne Todhunter that had brought her downstairs, concern and the prickings of remorse, but at the sight of Ember, she experienced what she would have described as a brain-wave.
“If you wouldn’t mind,” she said. “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I did rather want to talk privately to her.”
“Oh, by all means.” Ember’s tone was most amiable, his departure most courteously prompt.
Jane would have been prepared to bet the eighteen-pence which constituted her sole worldly fortune to a brass farthing that upon the other side of the door his attentive ear would miss no word of her conversation.
She gave Mrs. Cottingham’s number, and waited in some anxiety.
The voice that said “Hullo!” was unmistakably Miss Todhunter’s, and Jane began at once:
“Oh, Daphne, is that you? I want to speak to you so badly. Are you alone? Good! I’m so glad.”
At the other end of the line Daphne was saying grumpily:
“I don’t know what you mean. There are three people in the room. I keep telling you so.”
“Good!” said Jane, with a little more emphasis. “I want to speak to you most particularly. I’ve been awfully unhappy since this afternoon; I really have. And I wanted to say—— I mean to ask you not to be upset about Arnold. It’s all for the best, really. Please, please, don’t think badly of him. It’s not his fault, and I know you’ll like his wife very much indeed. He’ll tell you all about it some day, and you’ll think it ever so romantic. So you won’t be unhappy about it, will you? I hate people to be unhappy.”
Without waiting for Miss Todhunter’s reply, Jane hung up the receiver. After a decent interval she opened the door. Mr. Ember was at the far end of the passage, waiting patiently.
Jane waked that night, and did not know why she waked. After a moment it came to her that she had been dreaming. In her dream something unpleasant had happened, and she did not know what it was. She sat up in the darkness with her hands pressed over her eyes, trying to remember.
The vague feeling of having passed through some horrifying experience oppressed her far more than definite recollection could have done.
She got up, switched on the light, and began to pace up and down, but she could not shake off that feeling of having left something, she did not know what, just behind her, just out of sight. She looked round for the book she had been reading, but she remembered now that she had left it downstairs. She looked at her watch. It was three o’clock. The house would be absolutely still and empty. It would not take her two minutes to fetch the book from the drawing-room. She slipped on Renata’s dressing-gown, put out her light, and opened the door.
With a little shock of surprise she saw that the corridor was dark. Some one must have put out the light which always burned at the far end. Instead of the usual faintly rosy glow, there was darkness thinning to dusk, and just at the stairhead a vivid splash of moonlight. After a moment’s hesitation Jane slipped out of her room, leaving the door ajar. Somehow she had not reckoned upon having to cross that brightly lighted space. She came slowly to the head of the stairs and looked down into the hall. It was like looking into the blackness and silence of a vast well. She could see nothing—nothing at all. The moon was shining in through the rose window above the great door. There was a shield in the window, a shield with the Luttrell arms, and the light came through the glass in a great beam shot with colour, and struck the portrait of Lady Heritage and the vine leaves and grapes on the newel just below. The window and the portrait were on the same level, and the ray seemed to make a brilliant cleavage between the silvery dusk above and the dense gloom below.
Jane descended the stairs, walking carefully so as to make no noise. At the foot she turned sharply to the left and passed the study door, the fireplace, and the steel gate which shut off the north wing. The door of the Yellow Drawing-Room was straight in front of her. She opened it softly and went in.
The book would be on the little table to the right of the fireplace, because she remembered putting it there when Lady Heritage made an unexpectedly early move. She stood for a moment visualising the arrangement of the chairs, and then walked straight to the right place. The book was where she had left it, put down open, a bad habit for which Jimmy had often rebuked her. She was back at the door with it, and just about to pass the threshold when she heard a sound. Instantly she stood still, listening. The sound came from the other end of the hall, where the shadows lay deepest round the massive oak door.
“But there can’t be any one at the door at this hour,” said Jane—“there can’t, there can’t possibly.”
The sound came again, something between a rustle and a creak, but so faint that no hearing less acute than Jane’s would have caught it.
“It’s on the left of the door, underneath Willoughby Luttrell’s picture....”
Jane suddenly pressed her hand to her lips and made an involuntary movement backwards, for there was an unmistakable click, and then, slow and faint, a footfall. Jane stood rigid, staring into the darkness of the corner. She thought she heard a sigh, and then the footsteps crossed the hall, coming nearer. At the stair foot they paused, and then began to ascend.
Jane gazed into the deeply shadowed space where the footfall sounded, but nothing—not the slightest glimpse of anything moving—came to her straining sight.
She looked up and saw the level ray of moonlight overhead. Whoever climbed the stair must pass up into the light and be visible, but from where she stood she could only see the side of the stair like a black wall. But she must see—she must. If some one had come out of the darkness where there was no door she must know who it was. Her bare feet made no sound as she moved from the sheltering doorway. Step by step she kept pace with those slow mounting footsteps. She passed the steel gate, and, feeling her way along the wall, came to a standstill by the cold black hearth. Then, with her whole body tense, she turned and looked up. There was a darker shadow among the shadows, a shadow that moved upwards, towards the beam of moonlight. Jane watched, breathless, and from where The Portrait hung, the sombre eyes of Raymond Heritage seemed to watch too. Out of blackness into dusk a something emerged; one step more and the moonlight fell on a dark hood. Up into the light came a cloaked figure, draped from head to foot, shapeless.
On the top step it turned. Jane caught her breath. It was Lady Heritage. She stood there for a long minute, her left hand just resting on the newel post with its twining tendrils and massive overhanging grapes. The light shone full upon her, and her face was sharpened, blanched, and sorrowful. Her eyes seemed to look into unfathomable depths of gloom. The amber, the rose, and the violet of the stained glass fell in a hazy iridescence upon the black of her cloak.
In front the cloak fell away and showed the straight white linen of an overall, and cloak and overall were deeply stained with dull wet smears. A piece of the stuff hung jagged from a tear.
Jane looked, and could not take her eyes away.
“Oh, she’s so unhappy,” she said to herself.
With a quick movement Raymond Heritage pushed the hood back from her hair. Then she turned, faced her own portrait for a moment, and passed slowly out of sight. Jane heard a door close very softly.
She stood quite still and waited, gathering her courage. She would have to mount the stair and pass through that light before she could reach the safely shadowed corridor. Just for a moment it seemed as if she could not do it. Her feet seemed to cleave to the ground. Five minutes passed, and another five.
Jane felt herself becoming rigid, and with a tremendous effort, she took one step forward, but only one, for as her foot touched a new cold patch of floor, some one moved overhead.
For an instant a little pencil of electric light jabbed into the darkness and went out again. The next moment Mr. Ember stepped into the moonlight. He too wore a linen overall, and in his left hand he carried the mask-like head-dress which was in use in the laboratories. His right hand held a torch.
He came down the stairs, walking with astonishing lightness. Half-way down the torch came into play again. He sent the little ray in a sort of dazzle-dance about the hall. With every leaping flash Jane’s heart gave a jump, and she only stopped her teeth from chattering by biting hard upon the cuff of Renata’s dressing-gown. She had covered her face instinctively, and peered, terror-stricken, between her fingers.
The light skimmed right across her once, and but for the crimson flannel, she would certainly have screamed aloud. If Mr. Ember had been looking, he could have seen a semicircle of white forehead, two clutching hands, and a quivering chin. But his eyes were elsewhere, and the dancing flash passed on.
Ember crossed the hall to the far corner out of which Lady Heritage had come. Suddenly the light went out.
Jane heard again the very, very small creaking noise which she had heard before. It was followed by a faint click, and then unmitigated silence. The seconds added themselves together and became minutes, and there was no further sound. The minutes passed, and the beam of moonlight slipped slowly downwards. Now The Portrait was in darkness, now the newels were just two black shadows. It was a long, long time before Jane moved. She climbed the staircase with terror in her heart. At the edge of the moonlight she waited so long that it moved to meet her. When the edge of it touched her bare, hesitating foot she gave a violent start, and ran the rest of the way.
The dark corridor felt like a haven of refuge.
She came panting to her own door, and suddenly there was no haven of refuge anywhere. The door was shut. She had left it ajar. It was shut.
Jane stood with her outstretched hand flat on the panel of the door. She kept saying over and over to herself:
“I left it open, but it’s shut. I left it open, but it’s shut.”
Once she pushed the door as if it could not really be shut at all, but it did not yield; the latch had caught. It was shut. At last she turned the handle slowly and went in. A gust of wind met her full. Perhaps it was the wind that had shut the door. She left it ajar, moved to the middle of the room, and waited. For a moment there was a lull. Somewhere in the house a clock struck four. The sound came just over the edge of hearing, with its four tiny distant strokes. Then the wind rushed in again through the open window, and the door fell to with a click.
By next morning the wind had brought rain with it. A south-west gale drove against the dripping window-panes, and covered the sea with crests of foam.
Jane, rather pale, wrote a neat letter to the Misses Kent, Hermione Street, South Kensington, mentioning that she would be much obliged if they would send her patterns of jumper wool by return. She hesitated, and then underlined the last two words.
“I always think big shops do you better,” was Lady Heritage’s comment, and Mr. Ember added, “Do you knit, Miss Renata? I thought you were the only girl in England who didn’t”—to which Jane replied, “I want to learn.”
It was after the letter had been posted that she found Henry’s second message, “Hope to see you to-day, Friday.” She could have cried for pure joy.
At intervals during the day, the thought occurred to her that Henry was a solid comfort. She wasn’t in love with him, of course, but undoubtedly he was a comfort. She had plenty of time to think, for she spent the entire day by herself. Sir William had gone to town for three or four days. Lady Heritage disappeared into the north wing at eleven o’clock, and very shortly after, Mr. Ember followed her. Neither of them appeared again until dinner-time. Jane went to sleep over a book and awoke refreshed, and with a strong desire for exploration.
If only last night’s mysterious happenings had taken place anywhere but in the hall. The dark corner from which Raymond had emerged and into which Mr. Ember had vanished drew her like a magnet, but not until every one was in bed and asleep would she dare to search for the hidden door.
“If I were just sitting here and reading,” she thought to herself, “probably no one would come into the hall for hours; but if I were to look for a secret passage, all the servants would begin to drift in and out, and the entire neighbourhood would come and call.”
When the lights had been turned on, she wandered round, looking at the Luttrell portraits. This, she thought, was safe enough, and if not the rose, it was at least near it. Willoughby Luttrell’s picture hung perhaps five feet from the ground and about half-way between the hall door and the corner. Jane had always noticed it particularly because Henry undoubtedly resembled this eighteenth century uncle.
Mr. Willoughby Luttrell had been painted in a Court suit of silver-grey satin. He wore Mechlin ruffles and diamond shoe-buckles. He had the air of being convinced that the Court of St. James could boast no brighter ornament, but his face was the face of Henry March, and Henry’s grey eyes looked down at Jane from beneath a Ramillies wig.
After an interval Jane stopped looking at Mr. Luttrell’s eyes, and reflected that the click which she had heard the night before came from a point nearer the corner. She did not dare go near enough to feel the wall, and no amount of staring at the panelling disclosed any clue to the secret.
Jane went back to her book.
By sunset the rain had ceased to fall, or, rather to be driven against the land. The wind, lightened of its burden of moisture, kept coming inland in great gusts, fresh and soft with the freshness and softness of the spring. The entire sky was thickly covered with clouds which moved continually across its face, swept on by the currents of the upper air, but these clouds were very high up. Any one coming out of an enclosed place into the windy night would have received an impression of extraordinary freedom, movement, and space.
Henry March received such an impression as he turned a pivoting stone block and came out of the small sheltering cave behind the seat on the headland above Luttrell Marches. At the first buffet of the gale he took off his cap, and stuffed it down into the pocket of the light ulster which he wore, and stood bareheaded, looking out to sea. His eyes showed him blackness and confused motion, and his ears were filled with the strange singing sound of the wind and the endless crash and recoil of the waves against a shingly beach.
He stood quite still for a time and then turned his wrist and glanced at the luminous dial of the watch upon it, after which he passed again behind the stone seat and was about to re-enter the blacker shadows when a tall figure emerged.
“Have you been here long?” said a voice.
“No, I’ve only just come. How are you, Tony?”