"The angels sing-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling,They've got the goods for me.The bells of hell ring ting-a-ling-a-lingFor you, as you shall see."
"The angels sing-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling,They've got the goods for me.The bells of hell ring ting-a-ling-a-lingFor you, as you shall see."
Enid Crofton sat up in bed. She felt suddenly afraid—horribly, desperately afraid. As is often the case with those who have drifted away from any form of religion, she was very superstitious, and terrified of evil omens. During the War she had been fond of going first to one and then to another of the fashionable sooth-sayers.
They had all agreed as to one thing—this was that her husband would die, and of course she had thought he would be killed at the Front. But he had come through safe and sound, and more—morehatefulthan ever.
One fortune-teller, a woman, small, faded, commonplace-looking, yet with something sinister about her that impressed her patrons uncomfortably, had told Enid Crofton, with a curious smile, that she would have yet another husband, making the third. This had startled her very much, for the woman, who did not even know her name, could only have guessed that she had been married twice. Enid Crofton was not given to making unnecessary confidences. With the exception of her sister-in-law, none of the people who now knew her were aware that Colonel Crofton had been her second husband.
She lay down again, and in the now dying firelight, fixed her eyes on the chintz square of the window curtain nearest to her. She shut her eyes, but, as always happens, there remained a square luminous patch on their retinas. And then, all at once, it was as if she saw, depicted on the white, faintly illuminated space, a scene which might have figured in one of those cinema-plays to which she and her house-mate, during those happy days when she had lived in London, used so often to go with one or other of their temporary admirers.
On the white, luminous background two pretty little hands were moving about, a little uncertainly, over a window-ledge on which stood a row of medicine bottles. Then, suddenly the two pretty hands became engaged in doing something which is done by woman's hands every day—the pouring of a liquid from one bottle into another.
Enid Crofton did not visualise the owner of the hands. She had no wish to do so, but she did see the hands.
Then there started out before her, with astonishing vividness, another little scene—this time with a man as central figure. He was whistling; that she knew, though she could not hear the whistling. It was owing to that surprised, long-drawn-out whistling sound that the owner of the pretty hands had become suddenly, affrightedly, aware that someone was there, outside the window, staring down, and so of course seeing the task on which the two pretty little hands were engaged.
Now, the owner of that pair of now shaking little hands had felt quite sure that no one could possibly see what they were engaged in doing—for the window on the ledge of which the medicine bottles were standing looked out on what was practically a blank wall. But the man whose long, surprised whistle had so suddenly scared her, happened at that moment to be sitting astride the top of the blank wall, engaged in the legitimate occupation of sticking bits of broken bottles into putty. The man was Piper, and doubtless the trifling incident had long since slipped his mind, for that same afternoon his master, Colonel Crofton, had committed suicide in a fit of depression owing to shell shock.
Enid Crofton opened her eyes wide, and the sort of vision, or nightmare—call it what you will—faded at once.
It was a nightmare she had constantly experienced during the first few nights which had succeeded her husband's death. But since the inquest she had no longer been haunted by that scene—the double scene of the hands, the pretty little hands, engaged in that simple, almost mechanical, action of pouring the contents of one bottle into another, and the vision of the man on the wall looking down, slantwise, through the window, and uttering that queer, long-drawn-out whistle of utter surprise.
When at last Mrs. Crofton had had to explain regretfully to clever, capable Piper that she could no longer afford to keep him on, they had parted the best of friends. She had made him the handsome present of twenty-five pounds, for he had been a most excellent servant to her late husband. And she had done more than that. She had gone to a good deal of trouble to procure him an exceptionally good situation. Piper had just gone there, and she hoped, rather anxiously, that he would do well in it.
The man had one serious fault—now and again he would go off and have a good "drunk." Sometimes he wouldn't do this foolish, stupid thing for months, and then, perchance, he would do it two weeks running! Colonel Crofton, so hard in many ways, had been indulgent to this one fault, or vice, in an otherwise almost perfect servant. When giving Piper a very high character Mrs. Crofton had just hinted that there had been a time when he had taken a drop too much, but she had spoken of it as being absolutely in the past. Being the kind of woman she was, she wouldn't have said even that, had it not been that Piper had got disgracefully drunk within a week of his master's death. She had been very much frightened then, though not too frightened to stay, herself, within hail of the man till he had come round, and to make him a cup of strong coffee. When, at last, he was fit to do so, he had uttered broken words of gratitude, really touched at her kindness, and frightfully ashamed of himself.
Lying there, wide awake, in the darkness and utter stillness of Beechfield village, Enid Crofton reminded herself that she had treated Piper very well. In memory of the master whom he had served she had also given him, before selling off her husband's kennel, two prize-winners. But it is sometimes a mistake to be too kind, for on receiving this last generous gift the man had hinted that with a little capital he could set up dog-breeding for himself! She had had to tell him, sadly but firmly, that she could not help him to any ready money, and Piper had been what she now vaguely described to herself as "very nice" about it, though obviously disappointed.
At the end of their little chat, however, he had said something which had made her feel rather uncomfortable:—"I was wondering, ma'am, whether Major Radmore might perhaps be inclined for a little speculation? I wouldn't mind paying, say, up to ten per cent, if 'e'd oblige me with a loan of five hundred pounds."
She had been astonished at the suggestion—astonished and unpleasantly taken aback. He had surprised her further by going on:—"I believe as what the Major is coming 'ome soon, ma'am. Perhaps then I might venture to ask you to say a word for me? Major Radmore was known in the regiment as a very kind gentleman."
"I'll do what I can, Piper." She had said the words with apparent earnestness, but, deep in her heart, she had thought the request totally unreasonable.
And now it was this conversation which came back to her as she moved restlessly about in her bed. She wondered uneasily whether she had made a mistake. Her capital was very small, and she was now living on her capital, but after all, perhaps it would have been wiser to have given Piper that £500. She was quite determined not to mix up Piper with Godfrey Radmore, but she had a queer, uncomfortable feeling that she had not done with this man yet.
At last she fell into a heavy, troubled, worried sleep—the kind of sleep from which a woman always wakes unrefreshed.
But daylight brought comfort to Enid Crofton, and after she had had her early cup of tea and had enjoyed her nice hot bath, she felt quite cheery again, and her strange, bad night faded into nothingness. She was young, she was strong, above all she was enchantingly pretty! She told herself confidently that nothing terrible, nothingreallydreadful ever happens to a woman who is as attractive as she knew herself to be to the sex which still holds all the material power there is to hold in this strange world.
During the last three weeks, she had sometimes wondered uneasily whether Godfrey Radmore realised how very pretty she was. There was something so curiously impersonal about him—and yet last night he had very nearly kissed her!
She laughed aloud, gaily, triumphantly, as she went down to her late breakfast.
At the moment that Enid Crofton was telling herself that everything was going fairly well with her, and that nothing could alter the fact that she was now, and likely to remain for a long time, a woman likely to attract every man with whom she came in contact—Godfrey Radmore, following Janet Tosswill after breakfast into the drawing-room of Old Place, exclaimed deprecatingly:—"I feel like Rip Van Winkle!'
"Do you?" She turned to him and smiled a little sadly. "It'syouthat have changed, Godfrey. Everything here is much the same. As for me, I never see any change from one year to another."
"But they've all grown up!" he exclaimed plaintively. "You can't think how odd it seems to find a lot of grown-up young ladies and gentlemen instead of the jolly little kids who were in the nursery with Nanna nine years ago. By the way, Nanna hasn't changed, and"—he hesitated, then brought out with an effort, "Mr. Tosswill is exactly the same."
She felt vexed that he hadn't included Betty. To her step-mother's fond eyes Betty was more attractive now than in her early girlhood. "I think the children have improved very much," she said quickly. "Jack was a horrid little prig nine years ago!"
She hadn't forgiven Radmore. And yet, in a sense, she was readjusting her views and theories about him, for the simple reason that he, Godfrey Radmore, had changed so utterly. From having been a hot-tempered, untameable, high-spirited boy, he was now, or so it seemed to her, a cool, restrained man of the world, old for his years. In fact it was he who was now a stranger—but a stranger who had most attractive manners, and who had somehow slipped very easily into their everyday life. Janet liked his deferential manner to the master of the house, she enjoyed his kindly and good-humoured, if slightly satirical dealings with Jack and with pretty Rosamund, and she was very grateful to him for the way he treated queer, little Timmy, her own beloved changeling child.
And now something happened that touched her, and made her suddenly feel as if she was with the old Godfrey Radmore again.
"Look here," he said, in a low, hesitating voice, "I want to tell you, Janet, that I didn't know till yesterday about George. You'll think me a fool—but somehow I always thought of him as being safe in India." And then with sudden passion he asked:—"How can you say that everything is the same in Old Place with George not here? Why, to me, George was as much part of Old Place as—as Betty is!"
"We all thought you knew—at least I wasn't sure."
"Thank Godhedidn't think so poorly of me as that," he muttered, and then he looked away, his eyes smarting with unshed tears. "Nothing will ever be the same to me again without George in the world."
As she said nothing, he went on with sudden passion:—"Every other country in Europe has changed utterly since the War, but England seemed to me, till last night, exactly the same—only rather bigger and more bustling than nine years ago." He drew a long breath. "Timmy and I went into the post-office last evening, and Cobbett asked me to go in, and see his wife. I thought I remembered her so well—and when I saw her, Janet, I didn't know her! Then I asked after her boys—and she told me."
"It's strange that a man who went through it all himself should feel like that," she said slowly.
The door opened suddenly and Rosamund's pretty head appeared: "There's a message come through saying that your car's all right, and that it will be along in about an hour," she exclaimed joyfully. To Rosamund, Godfrey Radmore was in very truth a stranger, and a very attractive stranger at that.
As a rule, after breakfast, all the young people went their various ways, but this morning they were all hanging about waiting vaguely for Godfrey to come and do something with one or all of them. Rosamund was longing to ask him whether he knew any of the London theatrical managers; Tom was wondering whether Godfrey would allow him to drive his car; Dolly and Timmy, as different in everything else as two human beings could well be, each desired to take him into the village and show him off to their friends. The only one of the young people who was not really interested in Radmore was Jack Tosswill. He was engaged just now in looking feverishly for an old gardening book which he had promised to lend Mrs. Crofton, and he was cursing under his breath because the book had been mislaid.
As Rosamund looked in, her step-mother and Radmore both stopped speaking abruptly, and so after a doubtful moment, she withdrew her head, and shut the door behind her.
"Tell me about George," he said, without looking at her.
"I think Betty would like to tell you," she answered slowly: "Ask her about him some time when you're alone together."
"Where is she now?" he asked abruptly.
"In the kitchen I think—but she won't be long."
Jack, looking ruffled and uneasy, very unlike his quiet, cool self, burst into the room. "I can't think where that old shabby green gardening book has gone, Janet. Do you know where it is?"
"You mean 'Gardening for Ladies'?"
"Yes."
"What on earth d'you want it for?"
"For Mrs. Crofton. Her garden's been awfully neglected."
"I'll find it presently. I think it's in my bedroom."
Again the door shut, and Janet turned to Radmore: "Your friend has made a conquest of Jack!" She spoke with a touch of rather studied unconcern, for she had been a little taken aback last evening when Timmy had told her casually of his own and his godfather's call at The Trellis House.
"My friend?" Radmore repeated uncertainly.
"I mean Mrs. Crofton. The coming of a new person to live in Beechfield is still quite an event, Godfrey."
"I don't think she'll make much difference to Beechfield," again he spoke with a touch of hesitation. "To tell you the truth, Janet, I rather wonder that she decided to live in the country at all. I should have thought that she would far prefer London, and all that London stands for. But I'm afraid that she's got very little money, and, of course, the countryischeaper than town, isn't it?"
"I suppose it is. But Mrs. Crofton can't be poor. I know she paid a premium for the lease of The Trellis House."
"That's odd." Radmore spoke in an off-hand manner, but Janet, watching him, thought he felt a little awkward. He went on:—"I know that Colonel Crofton was hard up. He told me so, quite frankly, the last time I saw him. But of course she may have had money of her own."
Janet looked at him rather hard. A disagreeable suspicion had entered her mind. She wondered whether there was anything like an "understanding" between the man she was talking to and the tenant of The Trellis House. If so, she wished with all her heart that Godfrey Radmore had kept away. Why stir up embers they had all thought were dead, if he was going to marry this very pretty but, to her mind, second-rate little woman, as soon as a decent time had elapsed?
"What are your plans for the future?" she asked. "Are you going to settle down, or are you going to travel a bit?" ("After all, he won't be able to marry Mrs. Crofton for at least another six months," she said to herself.)
"Oh, I mean to settle down." His answer was quick, decisive, final.
He went on: "My idea is to find a place, not too far from here, that I can buy; and my plan is to go about and look for it now. That's why I've hired a motor for a month. Perhaps you'd lend me Timmy, and, if it wouldn't be improper, one of the girls, now and again? We might go round and look about a bit."
And then he walked across to where she was standing, and put his hand on her arm, "How about you?" he asked, "why shouldn't I take you and Timmy a little jaunt just for a week or so—that would be rather fun, eh?"
She smiled and shook her head.
He took a step back. "Look here, Janet—do try and forgive me—I'm a more sensible chap than I was, honest Injun!"
"I'm beginning to think you are," she cried, and then they both burst out laughing.
He lingered a moment. He was longing, longing intensely, to ask her certain questions. He wanted to know about Betty—what sort of a life Betty had made for herself. He still, in an odd way, felt responsible for Betty—which was clearly absurd.
And then Janet Tosswill said something that surprised him very much. "I think you'd better go round and see some of the people in the village to-day. I was rather sorry you went off straight to The Trellis House last evening. You know how folks talked, even in the old days, in Beechfield?"
He looked uneasy—taken aback, and she felt, if a little ashamed, glad that she had made that "fishing" remark.
There was a pause, and then he said with a touch of formality: "Look here, Janet? I'd like you to know that though I've become quite fond of Mrs. Crofton, I'm only fond—nothing more, you understand? Perhaps I'll make my meaning clearer when I tell you that I was the only man in Egypt who knew her who wasn't in love with her."
He saw her face change and, rather piqued, he asked: "Did you think I was?"
"I thought that you and she were great friends—"
"Well, so we are in a way. I saw a great deal of her in London."
"And you went straight off to see her the moment you arrived here."
"Well, perhaps I was foolish to do that."
What an odd admission to make. He certainly had changed amazingly in the last nine years!
Then it was Janet who surprised him: "Don't make any mistake," she said quickly. "There's no reason in the world why you shouldn't marry Mrs. Crofton—after a decent interval has elapsed. All I meant to say—and I'd rather say it right out now—is that as most people know that her husband hasn't been dead more than a few weeks, you ought to be rather careful, all the more careful if—if your friendship should come to anything, Godfrey."
"But it won't!" he exclaimed, with a touch of the old heat, "indeed it won't, Janet. To tell you the truth, I don't think I shall ever marry."
"Icertainly shouldn't if I were a rich bachelor," she said laughing; and yet somehow what he had just said hurt her.
As for Radmore, he felt just a little jarred by her words. Had she quite forgotten all that had happened in that long ago which, in a sense, seemed to belong to another life? He hadn't, and since his arrival yesterday certain things had come back in a rushing flood of memory.
"I've something to do in the garden now." Janet was smiling—she really did feel perhaps rather absurdly relieved. Like Timmy, she didn't care for Mrs. Crofton, and the mere suspicion that Godfrey Radmore had come back here to Old Place in order to carry on a love affair had disturbed her.
"By the way, how's McPherson?" he asked abruptly. "Heisa splendid gardener and no mistake! I've never seen a garden looking more beautiful than yours does just now, Janet. I woke early this morning and looked out of my window. I suppose McPherson's about—I'll go out and speak to him."
Her face shadowed. "McPherson," she said slowly, "was one of the first men to leave Beechfield. He was perfectly fit, and he made up his mind to go at once. You know, Godfrey—or perhaps you don't know—that the Scotch glens emptied first of men?"
"D'you mean...?"
She nodded. "He was killed at the second battle of Ypres. He was sent to the Front rather sooner than most, for he was a very intelligent man, and really keen. I've got a boy now, a lad of seventeen—not half a bad sort, but it does seem strange to give him every Saturday just double the money I used to give McPherson!"
She went out, through into the garden, on these last words, and again there came over Radmore a feeling of poignant sadness. How strange that he should have spent those weeks in London, knowing so little, nay, not knowing at all, what the War had really meant to the home country.
He opened the door into the corridor, and listened, wondering where they had all gone. He had some business letters to write, and he told himself that he would go and get them done in what he still thought of in his mind as George's room. He had noticed that the big plain deal writing table was still there.
He went upstairs, and when he opened the bedroom door, he was astonished to find Rosamund kneeling in front of George's old play-box, routing among what looked like a lot of papers and books.
"I'm hunting for a prescription for father," she said, looking up. "Timmy thinks he put it in here one day after coming back from the chemist's at Guildford." She looked flushed, and decidedly cross, as she went on: "No one's taught Timmy to put things in their proper place, as we were taught to do, when we were children!"
Radmore felt amused. She certainly was very, very pretty, and did not look much more than a child herself.
"Look here," he said good-naturedly, "let me help. I don't think you're going the right way to work." He felt just a little bit sorry for Timmy; Rosamund was raking about as if the play-box was a bran-pie.
Bending down he took up out of the box a bundle of envelopes, copybooks, and Christmas cards. Then he sat himself down on a chair in the window, and began going through what he held, carefully and methodically.
Suddenly through the open door there came a cry of "Miss Rosamund, I want you!"
Rosamund got up reluctantly. "Nanna's a regular tyrant!"
"Leave all this to me," he said. "I'll find the prescription if it's here."
She went off, and almost at once he came to a folded bit of paper. Perhaps this was the prescription? He opened it, and this is what he read:—
March 12, 1919. This is the happiest day of my life. One of my godmothers has died and left me £50. I am going to buy two nanny-goats, a boy and a girl. They will have kids, and I shall make munny. We shall then have a propper cook, and I shall never help Betty wash up any more. I wish my other godmother would die. She is very genrus and kind—she would go strait to Heaven. But she is very hellfy.
March 12, 1919. This is the happiest day of my life. One of my godmothers has died and left me £50. I am going to buy two nanny-goats, a boy and a girl. They will have kids, and I shall make munny. We shall then have a propper cook, and I shall never help Betty wash up any more. I wish my other godmother would die. She is very genrus and kind—she would go strait to Heaven. But she is very hellfy.
Poor little Timmy! Dear little unscrupulous child of nature! Would Timmy wish him, Godfrey Radmore, dead, if some accident were to reveal to him what a great difference it would make to them all? He hoped not. But he couldn't feel sure, for, from being well-to-do the Tosswills must have become poor, painfully and, to his mind, unnaturally poor.
Further search proved the prescription was not in the play-box, and he went downstairs. Still that same unnatural silence through the house. Where could Timmy be? Somehow he felt that he wanted to see Timmy and find out about the nanny-goats. He feared his godson's expectations of wealth had not been fulfilled, but he supposed that there was a "propper cook," probably the lack of her had been quite temporary.
He wandered into the drawing-room. In the old days all five sitting-rooms had been in use. Now four of them were closed, and the drawing-room was everybody's meeting place. Dolly was there working a carpet-sweeper languidly.
"Where's everybody?" he asked.
"I think Betty and Timmy are still in the scullery. I don't know where Rosamund is."
"I supposeIcan go into the scullery?"
She looked at him dubiously. "Yes, if you'd like to—certainly. Betty loves cooking and all that sort of thing. I hate it—so in our division of labour, I do the other kind of housework." She looked ruffled and he told himself, a little maliciously, that she was not unlike a lazy, rather incompetent, housemaid. "If it's Timmy you want," she continued, "I'll go and see if he can come."
"Please don't trouble. I'll find him all right."
Radmore went out into the passage. As the baize door, which shut off the kitchen quarters, opened, he saw his godson and Rosamund before they saw him, and he heard Rosamund say, in a cross tone: "It only means that someone else will have to help her; I think it's very selfish of you, Timmy."
From being full of joy Timmy's face became downcast and sullen.
"Hullo!" Radmore called out, "I want you to show me the garden, Timmy. Where's Betty?"
"She's in the scullery, of course. I tell you Ihavedone, Rosamund. Youarea cruel pig—"
"Come, Timmy, don't speak to your sister like that."
It ended in the three of them going off—Rosamund to look for the prescription, and the other two into the garden.
Nanna waddled into the scullery: "I'll wipe up them things, Miss Betty," she said good-naturedly; "you go out to Mr. Godfrey and Master Timmy—they was asking for you just now."
Betty hesitated—and then suddenly she made up her mind that, yes, she would do as Nanna suggested.
In early Victorian days women of Betty Tosswill's class and kind worked many of their most anxious thoughts and fears, hopes and fancies, into the various forms of needlework which were then considered the only suitable kind of occupation for a young gentlewoman; and often Betty, when engaged on the long and arduous task of washing up for her big family party, pondered over the problems and secret anxieties which assailed her. Though something of a pain, it had also been to her a great relief to realise that the living flesh and blood Godfrey Radmore of to-day had ousted the passionately devoted, if unreasonable and violent, lover of her early girlhood. In the old days, intermingled with her deep love of Radmore, there had been a protective, almost maternal, feeling, and although Radmore had been four years older than herself, she had always felt the older of the two. But now, in spite of the responsible, anxious work she had done in France during the War, she felt that the rôles were reversed, and that her one-time lover had become infinitely older than she was herself in knowledge of the world.
Old Nanna hoped that Miss Betty would go upstairs and change her plain cotton dress for something just a little prettier and that she would put on, maybe, a hat trimmed with daisies which Nanna admired. But Betty did nothing of the sort. She washed her hands at the sink, and then she went out into the hall, and taking up her big plain old garden hat went straight out into the keen autumnal air.
And then, as she caught sight of the tall man and of the little boy, she stayed her steps, overwhelmed by a flood of both sweet and bitter memories.
During the year which had followed the breaking of her engagement there had been corners and by-ways of the big, rambling old garden filled with poignant, almost unbearable, associations of the days when she and Godfrey had been lovers. There had been certain nooks and hidden oases where it had been agony to go. She had considered all kinds of things as being possible. Perhaps her most certain conviction had been that he would come back some day with a wife whom she, Betty, would try to teach herself to love; but never had she visioned what had now actually occurred, that is Radmore's quiet, commonplace falling-back into the day-to-day life of Old Place.
All at once she heard Timmy's clear treble voice:—"Hullo! There's Betty."
Radmore turned and said something Betty did not hear, and the child went off like an arrow from the bow. Then Radmore, turning, came towards her quickly. She had no clue to the strange look of pain and indecision on his face, and her heart began to beat, strangely.
When close to her:—"Betty," he said in a low voice, "I want to tell you that I didn't know about George till last night. How could you think I did?"
"I suppose one does think unjust things when one's in great trouble," she answered.
He felt hurt and angry and showed it. "I should have thought you would all have known me well enough to know that I should have written at once—at once. Why, the whole world's altered now that I know that George is no longer in it! Perhaps that sounds foolish and exaggerated, as I never wrote to him. But I thinkyou'llknow what I mean, Betty? It was all right, as long as I knew he was somewhere, happy."
She said almost inaudibly:—"I think that he is happy somewhere. You know—but no, you don't know—that George was a born soldier. Those months after he joined up, and until he was killed, were, I do believe, by far the happiest of his life. He always said they were."
As he made no answer she went on:—"I'll show you some of his letters if you like, and father will show you the letters that were sent to us—afterwards."
By now they had left the garden proper, and were walking down an avenue which was known as the Long Walk. It was here that they two, with George always as a welcome third, used to play "tip and run" and "hide and seek" with the then little children.
"Tell me something about the others," he said abruptly. "I'm moving in a world unrealised."
She smiled up into his face. Somehow that confession touched her, and brought them nearer to one another.
"Jack frightens me a bit, you know—he's so unlike George. And then the girls? Is it true what Timmy says—that Rosamund wants to be an actress?"
There was a slight tone of censorious surprise in his voice, and Betty reddened.
"I don't see why she shouldn't be an actress if she wants to be! Father's making her wait till she's twenty-one."
"Let me see," he said hesitatingly, "Dolly's older than Jack, isn't she?"
"Oh, no. Dolly will only be twenty next Thursday."
There came over her an overwhelming impulse to tell him something—the sort of thing she could only have told George.
"You know that pretty old church at Oakford?"
He nodded.
"Well, Mr. Runsby is dead. They've got a bachelor clergyman now, and Janet and I think that he's becoming very fond of Dolly! He's away just now, or you would have already seen him. He's very often over here."
"I should have thought—" He hesitated in his turn, but already he was falling again into the way of saying exactly what he thought right out to Betty—"that with you and Rosamund in the house, no one would look at Dolly!"
Betty blushed, and for a fleeting moment Godfrey saw the blushing, dimpling Betty of long ago.
"Rosamund has the utmost contempt for him. As for me, he never sees me—I'm always in the kitchen when he comes here." She added with a touch of the quiet humour he remembered, "I don't think Dolly's in any danger from me!"
"Whyare you always in the kitchen, Betty?" he asked. "Is it really necessary?"
"Yes, it really is necessary," she answered frankly. "Father's got much poorer, and everything's about a hundred times as dear as it was before the War. But you mustn't think that I mind. I like it in a way—and it won't last for ever. Some of father's investments are beginning to recover a little even now, and prices are coming down—"
They had now come back to the garden end of the Long Walk. "I must go now," she said. "Would you like me to send out one of the girls to entertain you?"
He shook his head. "No, I think I'll stroll about the village for a bit."
They both felt as if the first milestone of their new relationship had been set deep in the earth, and both were glad and relieved that it was so.
Radmore walked about a bit, admiring Janet's autumnal herbaceous borders, and then he remembered a door that he had known of old which led from the big kitchen garden into the road. If it was open he could step out without walking across the front of the house.
He turned into the walled garden, and walked quickly down a well-kept path past the sun-dial to the door. It was open. He walked through it, and then, with a rather guilty feeling—a feeling he did not care to analyse—he made his way round the lower half of the village till he reached the outside wall of The Trellis House.
There he hesitated for a few moments, but even while he was hesitating he knew that he would go in. Before he could turn the handle the door in the garden wall was opened by Enid Crofton herself. Radmore was surprised to see that she was dressed in a black dress, with the orthodox plain linen collar and cuffs of widowhood. It altered her strangely.
He was at once disappointed and a little relieved also, to find Jack Tosswill in the garden with her. But soon the three went indoors, and then, as had often been Mrs. Crofton's experience with admirers in the past, each man tried to sit the other out.
At last the hostess had to say playfully:—"I'm afraid I must turn you out now, for I'm expecting my sister-in-law, Miss Crofton."
And then they both, together, took their departure; Radmore feeling that he had wasted an hour which might have been so very much more profitably spent in going to see some of his old friends among the cottagers. As to Jack Tosswill, he felt perplexed, and yes, considerably put out and annoyed. He had been a good deal taken aback to see how close was the acquaintance between Mrs. Crofton and Godfrey Radmore.
There is nothing like a meal, especially a good meal, for inducing between two people an agreeable sense of intimacy. When Enid Crofton and her elderly sister-in-law passed from the dining-room of The Trellis House into the gay-looking little sitting-room, with its old-fashioned, brightly coloured chintz furnishings, and quaint reproductions of eighteenth-century prints, the two ladies were far more at ease the one with the other than before luncheon.
Enid, in the plain black woollen gown, with its white linen collar and cuffs, which she had discarded almost at once after her husband's funeral, felt that she was producing a pleasant impression. As they sat down, one on each side of the cheerful little wood fire, and began sipping the excellent coffee which the mistress of the house had already taught her very plain cook to make as it should be made, she suddenly exclaimed:—
"I do want to thank you again for the money you sent me when poor Cecil died! It was most awfully good of you, and very useful, too, for the insurance people did not pay me for nearly a month."
These words gave her visitor an opening for which she had waited during the last hour: "I'm glad my present was so opportune," said Miss Crofton in her precise, old-fashioned way. "As we have mentioned money, I should like to know, my dear, how you are situated? I was afraid from something Cecil told me last time he and I met that you would be very poorly left."
She stopped speaking, and there followed a long pause. Enid Crofton was instinctively glad that she was seated with her back to the window. She was afraid lest her face should betray her surprise and discomfiture at the question. And yet, what more natural than that her well-to-do, kind-hearted sister-in-law should wish to know how she, Enid, was now situated?
Cecil Crofton's widow was not what ordinary people would have called a clever woman, but during the whole of her short life she had studied how to please, cajole, and yes—deceive, the men and women about her. Unfortunately for her, Alice Crofton was a type of woman with whom she had never before been brought in contact; and something deep within her told her that she had better stick as close to the truth as was reasonably possible with this shrewd spinster who was, in some ways, so disconcertingly like what Enid Crofton's late husband had been, in the days when he had been a forlorn girl-widow's protecting friend and ardent admirer.
Yet, even so, she began with a lie: "When my mother died last year she left me a little money. I thought it wise to spend it in getting this house, and in settling down here." She said the words in a very low voice, and as Miss Crofton said nothing for a moment, she added timidly:—"I do hope that you think I did right? I know people think it wrong to use capital, but the War has changed everything, including money, and one simply can't get along at all without paying out sums which before the War would have seemed dreadful."
"That's very true," said Miss Crofton finally.
Enid, feeling on sure ground now, went on: "Why, I had to pay a premium of £200 for the lease of this little house. But I'm told I could get that again—even after living for a year or two in it."
Miss Crofton began looking about her with a doubtful air: "I suppose you mean to spend the winter here," she said musingly, "and then let the house each summer?"
"Yes," said Enid, "that is my idea."
As a matter of fact, she had never thought of doing such a thing, though she saw the point of it, now that it was put by her sister-in-law. She hoped, however, that long before next summer her future would be settled on most agreeable lines.
"Then I suppose the balance of what your mother left you forms a little addition to your pension, and to what poor Cecil was able to leave you?"
As the other hesitated, Miss Crofton went on, in a very friendly tone:—"I hope you won't think it interfering that I should speak as I am doing? I expected to find you much less comfortably circumstanced, and I was going to propose that I should increase what I had feared would be a very small income, by two hundred a year."
Enid was as much touched by this unexpected generosity as it was in her to be, and it was with an accent of real sincerity that she exclaimed:—"Oh, Alice, youarekind! Of course two hundred a year would be agreathelp. Nothing remains of what my mother left me. But you must not think that I'm extravagant. I sold a lot of things, and that made it possible for me to take over The Trellis House exactly as you see it. But even during the very few days I have been here I have begun to find how expensive life can be, even in a village like this."
"All right," said Miss Crofton. She got up from her easy chair with a quick movement, for she was still a vigorous woman. "Then that's settled! I'll give you a cheque for £100 to-day—and one every six months as long that is, as you're a widow." Then she smiled a little satirically, for Enid had made a quick movement of recoil which Alice Crofton thought rather absurd.
"It's early to think of such a thing, no doubt," she said coolly. "But still, I shall be very much surprised, Enid, if you do not re-make your life. I myself have a dear young friend, very little older than you are, who has been married three times. The War has altered the views and prejudices even of old-fashioned people."
"I want to ask you something," said Enid, "d'you think I ought to tell people that I have already been married twice?"
Miss Crofton told herself quickly that such questions are always put with a definite reason, and that she probably would not be called upon to pay her sister-in-law's allowance for very long.
"I don't think you are in the least bound to tell anyone such a fact about yourself, unless"—she hesitated,—"you were seriously thinking of marrying again. In such a case as that I think you would be well advised, Enid, to tell the man in question the fact before you become obliged to reveal it to him."
There was a pause, and then Miss Crofton abruptly changed the subject by saying something which considerably disturbed her young sister-in-law.
"I should be much obliged, my dear, if you would tell me a few details as to my poor brother's death. Your letter contained no particulars at all," and as the other made no immediate answer, Miss Crofton went on:—"I know there was an inquest, for one of my friends in Florence saw a report of it in an English paper. Perhaps you would kindly let me see any newspaper account or cuttings you may have preserved?"
"I have keptnothing, Alice!" Enid Crofton uttered the words with a touch of almost angry excitement. Then, perhaps seeing that the other was very much surprised, she said more quietly:—"The inquest was a purely formal affair—the Coroner himself told me that there must always be an inquest when a person died suddenly."
"Oh, but surely the question was raised, and that very seriously, as to whether Cecil took what he did take on purpose, or by accident? I understood from my friend that the account of the inquest she saw in some popular Sunday paper was headed 'An Essex Mystery.'"
Enid felt as if all the blood in her body was flowing towards her face. She congratulated herself that she was sitting with her back to the light. These remarks, these questions made her feel sick and faint. Yet she answered, composedly:—"Both the Coroner and the jury feltsurehe had taken it on purpose. Poor Cecil had never been like himself since the unlucky day, for us, that the War ended!" And then to Miss Crofton's surprise and discomfiture Enid burst into tears.
The older lady got up and put her hand very kindly on the younger one's shoulder:—"I'm sorry I said anything, my dear," she exclaimed; "I'm afraid you went through a much worse time than you let me know."
"I did! I did!" sobbed Enid. "I cannot tell you how terrible it was, Alice."
Then she made a determined effort over herself, ashamed of her own emotion. Still neither hostess nor guest was sorry when there came a knock at the door, followed a moment later by the entry into the room of a stranger who was announced by the maid as "Miss Pendarth."
Enid Crofton got up, and as she shook hands with the newcomer she tried to remember what it was that Godfrey Radmore had said of her old-fashioned looking visitor. That she was a good friend but a bad enemy? Yes, that had been it. Then she remembered something else—the few kind words scribbled on a visiting card which had been left at The Trellis House a day or two ago.
She turned to her sister-in-law:—"I think Miss Pendarth knew poor Cecil years and years ago," she said softly.
"Are you—you must be Olivia Pendarth?" There was a touch of emotion in Alice Crofton's level voice.
"Yes, I am Olivia Pendarth."
Enid was surprised—not over pleased by the revelation that these two knew one another.
"I suppose it's a long time since you met?" she said pleasantly.
"Miss Crofton and I have never met before," said Miss Pendarth quietly. "But I knew your husband very well in India, when he and I were both young. My brother was in his regiment."
"The dear old regiment!" exclaimed Miss Crofton.
Enid Crofton smiled a little to herself. It amused her to see that these two old things—for so she described them to herself—had so quickly become friends. "The Regiment!" How sick she had got of those two words during her second married life! She was sorry that Alice, whom she liked, should be so queerly like Cecil. Even their voices were alike, and she had uttered the two words with that peculiar intonation her husband always used when speaking of any of his old comrades-in-arms.
All the same Miss Pendarth's sudden appearance had been a godsend. Enid hated going back to the dreadful time of her husband's death.
And then, when everything seemed going so pleasantly, and when Enid Crofton was still feeling a glow of joy at the thought of the cheque for £100, one of those things happened which seem sometimes to occur in life as if to remind us poor mortals that Fate is ever crouching round the corner, ready to spring. The door opened, and the buxom little maid brought in two letters on the salver she had just been taught to use.
One of the envelopes was addressed in a clear, ordinary lady's hand; the other, cheap and poor in quality, was in a firm, and yet unformed, handwriting.
Enid glanced at the two elder ladies; they were talking together eagerly. She walked over to the bow-shaped window, and opened the commoner envelope: