Dear Madam,I hope you will excuse me writing to tell you that my husband has had to leave Mr. Winter's situation. Piper considers he has been treated shameful, and that if he chose he could get the law on Mr. Winter. I am writing to you unknown to Piper. If you could see me I think I could explain exactly what it is I want Piper to get. There do seem a difficulty now in getting jobs of Piper's sort, but from what he has told me there were one or two other jobs you heard of that might have suited him.Yours respectfully,Amelia Piper.
Dear Madam,
I hope you will excuse me writing to tell you that my husband has had to leave Mr. Winter's situation. Piper considers he has been treated shameful, and that if he chose he could get the law on Mr. Winter. I am writing to you unknown to Piper. If you could see me I think I could explain exactly what it is I want Piper to get. There do seem a difficulty now in getting jobs of Piper's sort, but from what he has told me there were one or two other jobs you heard of that might have suited him.
Yours respectfully,Amelia Piper.
Enid Crofton stared down at the signature with a sensation of puzzled dismay.Piper married?This was indeed a complication, and a complication which in her most anxious communings she had never thought of. The man had always behaved like a bachelor—for instance he had always made love to the maids. There also came back to her the memory of something her husband had once said, with one of his grimly humorous looks:—"Piper's a regular dog! If he'd been born in a different class of life he'd have been a real Don Juan." She now asked herself very anxiously how far a married Don Juan of any class confides in his wife? Does he tell her his real secrets, or does he keep them to himself? Judging by her own experience the average man who loves a woman is only too apt to tell her not only his own, but other people's secrets.
Slowly she put the letter back in its envelope. She had gone to a great deal of trouble, and even to some little expense, over procuring Piper a really good situation. She had seen not only his new employer, but also what she liked doing far less, his new employer's wife; and she had got him extraordinarily good wages, even for these days. It was too bad that he should worry her, after all she had done for him. As for his wife—nothing would induce her to see Mrs. Piper. Neither did she wish Piper to come down to Beechfield. She was particularly anxious that the man should not learn of Godfrey Radmore's return to England. Unfortunately Radmore was on the lookout for a good manservant.
She took up the other letter. It was a nice, prosperous-looking, well addressed envelope, very different from the other. Perhaps this second letter would contain something that would cheer her up. But alas! when she opened it, she found it was from Mrs. Winter, Piper's late employer's wife.
Poor Enid Crofton! As she stood there reading it, she turned a little sick. Piper had got drunk the very first day he had been in his new situation. While drunk he had tried to kiss a virtuous young housemaid. There had been a regular scene, which had ended in the lady of the house being sent for. There and then Piper had been turned out neck and crop.
It was not only a justifiably angry letter, it was a very disagreeable letter, the writer saying plainly that Mrs. Crofton had been very much to blame for recommending such a man....
Feeling very much disturbed she turned and came back towards her two visitors. They were now deep in talk, having evidently found a host of common associations: "I find I ought to answer one of my letters at once," she said. "Will you forgive me for a few moments?"
They both looked up, and smiled at her. She looked so pretty, so fragile, so young, in her widow's mourning.
She went through into the dining-room. There was a writing-table in the window, and there she sat down and put her head in her hands; she felt unutterably forlorn, frightened too—she hardly knew of what. It had given her such a horrible shock to learn that Piper was married....
Taking up a pen, she held it for a while poised in the air, staring out of the window at the attractive though rather neglected old garden, in which only this morning she had spent more than an hour with Jack Tosswill.
Then, at last, she dipped her pen in the ink, and after making two rough drafts, she decided on the following form of answer to Mrs. Piper, telling herself that it might be read as addressed to either husband or wife:—
Mrs. Crofton is very sorry to hear that Piper has lost his good situation. She will try and hear of something that will suit him. Mrs. Crofton cannot see Mrs. Piper for the present, as she is leaving home to start on a round of visits, but she will keep in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Piper and hopes to hear of something that may suit Piper very soon.
Mrs. Crofton is very sorry to hear that Piper has lost his good situation. She will try and hear of something that will suit him. Mrs. Crofton cannot see Mrs. Piper for the present, as she is leaving home to start on a round of visits, but she will keep in touch with Mr. and Mrs. Piper and hopes to hear of something that may suit Piper very soon.
She began by writing "Mr. Piper," on one of her pretty black-edged mauve envelopes; then she altered the "Mr." to "Mrs." After all it was Piper's wife who had written to her, and she suddenly remembered with a slight feeling of apprehension, that Mrs. Piper, for some reason best known to herself, had not told Piper that she was writing. On the other hand it was quite possible that the husband and wife had concocted the letter between them.
Having addressed the envelope, she suddenly got up and ran up to her bedroom. There she opened her dressing-table drawer. Quite at the back lay an envelope containing four £5 notes. She took one of the notes, and running down again, slipped it in the envelope and added a postscript to her letter:—
Mrs. Crofton sends £5, which she hopes will be of use while Piper is out of a situation.
Mrs. Crofton sends £5, which she hopes will be of use while Piper is out of a situation.
She went downstairs, giving her letter, on her way back to the drawing-room, to the cook to take out to the post-box.
As she opened the drawing room door, something which struck her as a little odd happened. Her two visitors, the murmur of whose voices she had heard in deep, eager converse while she was stepping across her hall, abruptly stopped talking, and she wondered uneasily what they could have been saying that neither wished her to hear.
As a matter of fact that sudden silence was owing to a kindly, old-fashioned, wholly "ladylike" instinct, on the part of the two older women. Miss Crofton had been talking of her brother's death, confiding to Miss Pendarth her desire to learn something more as to how it had actually come about. With what was for her really eager sympathy, Miss Pendarth had offered to write to a friend in Essex, in order to discover the name of the local paper where, without doubt, a full account of the inquest on Colonel Crofton must have been published.
Saturday, Sunday, Monday, slipped away, and on Tuesday there seemed no reason why Godfrey Radmore should leave Old Place. And so he stayed on, nominally from day to day, settling down, as none of them would have thought possible that anyone now a stranger could settle down, to the daily round and common task of the life led by the Tosswill family. After two or three days he even began to take command of the younger ones, and Janet was secretly amused to see how he shamed both Rosamund and Dolly into doing something like their full share of the housework.
In relation to the two younger girls, his attitude was far more that of a good-natured, rather cynical, elder brother than was his attitude to Betty. Into her special department, the kitchen, he seldom intruded, though when he did so it was to real purpose. Thus, Dolly's twentieth birthday was made by him the excuse for ordering from a famous London caterer a hamper containing enough cold and half-cooked food to keep them junketing for two or three days. Janet was rather puzzled to note that Betty, alone of them all, seemed to look askance at the way Radmore spent his substance in showering fairy-godfather-like gifts on the inmates of Old Place.
The happiest of them all was Timmy. Most men would have been bored by having so much of a child's company, but Radmore was touched and flattered by the boy's devotion, and that though there was a side of his godson which puzzled and disturbed him. Now and again Timmy would say something which made Radmore wonder for a moment if he had heard the words aright, but he followed the example silently set him by all the others of taking no notice of Timmy's claim both to see and foresee more than is vouchsafed to the ordinary mortal.
Miss Crofton had also stayed on in Beechfield, but only a day longer than she had intended to do—that is, till the Tuesday. She and Miss Pendarth had met more than once, striking up something like a real friendship. But this, instead of modifying, had intensified Miss Pendarth's growing prejudice against the new tenant of The Trellis House. She felt convinced that the pretty young widow had made her kind sister-in-law believe that she was far poorer, and more to be pitied, than she really was.
Life in an English village is in some ways like a quiet pool—and, just as the throwing of a pebble into such a pool causes what appears to create an extraordinary amount of commotion on the surface of the water, so the advent of any human being who happens to be a little out of the common produces an amount of discussion, public and private, which might well seem to those outside the circle of gossip, extravagant, as well as unnecessary.
The general verdict on Mrs. Crofton had begun by being favourable. Both with gentle and simple her appealing beauty told in her favour, and very soon the village people smiled, and looked knowingly at one another, as they noted the perpetual coming and going of Jack Tosswill to The Trellis House. No day went by without the young man making some more or less plausible excuse to call there once, twice, and sometimes thrice.
It was noticed, too, by those interested in such matters—and in Beechfield they were in the majority—that Mr. Godfrey Radmore, whose return to Old Place had naturally caused a good deal of talk and speculation—was also a frequent visitor at The Trellis House. Now and again he would call there in his car, and take Mrs. Crofton for a long drive; but they never went out alone—either Dolly or Rosamund, and invariably Timmy, would be of the party.
As the days went on, each member of the Tosswill family began to have a definite and, so to speak, crystallised view of Enid Crofton. Rosamund had become her champion, thus earning for the first time in her life the warm approval of her brother Jack; but Dolly and Tom grew rather jealous of their sister's absorption in the stranger. Rosamund was so very often at The Trellis House. In fact, when Jack was not to be found there, Rosamund generally was. But she had soon discovered that her new friend preferred to see her visitors singly. Betty kept her thoughts as to Mrs. Crofton to herself—for one thing the two very seldom met. But Janet Tosswill was more frank. With her, tepid liking had turned into dislike, and when she alluded to the pretty widow, which was not often, she would tersely describe her as "second-rate."
Now there is no word in the English language more deadly in its vague import than that apparently harmless adjective. As applied to a human being, it generally conveys every kind of odious significance, and curiously enough it is seldom applied without good reason.
Mrs. Crofton had gentle, pretty manners, but her manner lacked sincerity. She was not content to leave her real beauty of colouring and feature to take care of itself; her eye-brows were "touched up," and when she fancied herself to be "off colour" she would put on a suspicion of rouge. But what perhaps unduly irritated the mistress of Old Place were Mrs. Crofton's clothes! To such shrewd, feminine eyes as were Janet Tosswill's, it was plain that the new tenant of The Trellis House had taken as much pains over her widow's mourning as a coquettish bride takes over her trousseau.
Janet Tosswill was far too busy a woman to indulge in the village game of constant informal calls on her neighbours. She left all that sort of thing to her younger step-daughters; and as Mrs. Crofton never came to Old Place—making her nervous fear of the dogs the excuse—Janet only saw the new tenant of The Trellis House when she happened to be walking about the village or at church.
But for a while, at any rate, an untoward event drove the thoughts of most of the inmates of Old Place far from Mrs. Crofton and her peculiarities, attractive or other.
One day, when Radmore had already been at Beechfield for close on a fortnight, Timmy drew him aside, and said mysteriously: "Godfrey, I want to tell you something."
Radmore looked down and said pleasantly, though with a queer inward foreboding in his mind: "Go ahead, boy—I'm listening."
"Something's going to happen to someone here. I saw Dr. O'Farrell last night, I mean in a dream. You were driving him in your car through our gate. Last time I dreamt about him Dolly had measles; she was awfully ill; she nearly died."
As he spoke, Timmy kept looking round, as if afraid of being overheard. "I don't mean to tell anyone else," he added confidentially. "You see it upsets Mum, and makes the others cross, if I say things like that. But still, I just thought I'd tellyou."
Radmore was impressed, disagreeably so, in spite of himself; but: "Look here, Timmy," he said chaffingly. "The Greeks have a proverb about the bearer of ill-tidings; don't let yourself ever become that, old man! Have you ever heard, by the by, about 'the long arm of coincidence'?"
Timmy nodded.
"Don't you think it possible that your having dreamt about Dr. O'Farrell just before Dolly was taken ill may have been that long arm of coincidence—and nothing more? I can't help thinking that probably your mother said something about sending for Dr. O'Farrell—for people don't get measles in a minute, you know; they are seedy for some days beforehand—and that made you dream of him. Eh?"
But Timmy answered obliquely, as was rather his way when brought to book by some older person than himself. "I think this time it's going to be an accident," he said thoughtfully.
And an accident it was! Old Nanna, who, in spite of her age, had become the corner-stone of the household as regarded its material well-being, slipped on the back staircase, and sprained her leg, and of course it was Radmore who went off in his car to fetch and bring back Dr. O'Farrell.
A slight alleviation to their troubles was brought about by Miss Pendarth, who was going off on a visit the very day the accident happened, and who practically compelled Janet to accept the temporary service of her own excellent servant. It was her readiness to give that sort of quick, kindly, decisive help which made so many of those who had the privilege of her acquaintance regard Miss Pendarth with the solid liking which is founded on gratitude.
But the help, offered and accepted in the same spirit, could not go on for long, for Miss Pendarth came home after a four days' absence; and, for the first time in many months, Janet Tosswill made time to pay a formal call at Rose Cottage in order that she might thank her old friend. She intended to stay only the time that strict civility enjoined, and she would have been surprised indeed had she been able to foresee what a pregnant and, to her, personally, painful train of events were to follow as a result of the quarter of an hour she spent in Miss Pendarth's old-fashioned upstairs sitting-room where only privileged visitors were ever made welcome.
"Will you come upstairs to-day, Janet? I have something about which I want to consult you."
And then, when they had sat down, Miss Pendarth said abruptly: "While I was in Essex I came across some people who had been acquainted with Mrs. Crofton and her husband."
Janet looked across at the speaker with some surprise. "What an odd thing!" she exclaimed, and she did think it rather odd.
But Olivia Pendarth was a very honest woman—too honest, some people might have said. "It was not exactly odd," she said quickly, "for, to tell you the truth, I made it my business while there to make certain enquiries about the Croftons. In fact, I partly went to Essex for that purpose, though I did not tell my friends so."
The visitor felt rather shocked, as well as surprised. Surely Olivia Pendarth's interest in her neighbours' concerns was, to say the least of it, excessive. But the other's next words modified her censorious thoughts.
"Colonel Crofton and one of my brothers were in the same regiment together. I knew him quite well when he and I were both young, and when Miss Crofton came to see her sister-in-law a fortnight ago, I offered to make certain enquiries for her."
There was a touch of mystery, of hesitation in the older lady's voice, and Janet Tosswill "rose" as she was perhaps meant to do. "What sort of enquiries?" she asked. "I thought Miss Crofton was on the best of terms with her sister-in-law."
"So she is; but she wanted to know more than Mrs. Crofton was inclined to tell her about the circumstances—the really extraordinary circumstances, Janet—concerning Colonel Crofton's death. And now I'm rather in a quandary as to whether I ought to tell her what I heard, and indeed as to whether I ought even to send her the report of the inquest which appeared in a local paper, and which I at last managed to secure."
"Of course I know that Colonel Crofton committed suicide." Janet Tosswill lowered her voice instinctively. "That poor, second-rate little woman seems to have told Rosamund as much, and Godfrey Radmore confirmed it."
"Yes, I suppose one ought to say that there is no real doubt that he committed suicide." Yet Miss Pendarth's voice seemed to imply that there was some doubt.
She went on: "It was suggested at the inquest that the chemist who made up a certain heart tonic Colonel Crofton had been in the habit of taking for some time, had put in a far larger dose of strychnine than was right."
Janet Tosswill repeated in a startled tone: "Strychnine! You don't mean to say the poor man committed suicide with that horrible poison?"
Miss Pendarth looked up, and Janet was struck by her pallor and look of pain. "Yes, Janet; he died of a big dose of strychnine, and the medical evidence given at the inquest makes most painful reading."
"Itmusthave been a mistake on the part of the chemist. No sane man would take strychnine in order to commit suicide. Besides, how could he have got it?"
"There was strychnine in the house," said Miss Pendarth slowly. "When Mrs. Crofton was in Egypt it was prescribed for her. You know how people take it by the drop? A chemist out there seems to have given her a much greater quantity than was needed, and in an ordinary, unlabelled medicine bottle, too." The speaker waited a moment, then went on: "Though she brought it back to England with her, she seems to have quite forgotten that she had it. Buthemust have known it was there, for after his death the bottle was found in his dressing room."
"What a dreadful thing! And how painful it must have been for her!"
"Yes, I think she did go through a very dreadful time. But, Janet, what impressed me most painfully, and what I am sure would much distress Miss Crofton were I to tell her even only a part of what I heard, was the fact that the husband and wife were on very bad terms. This was testified to, and very strongly, by the only woman servant they had at the time of his death."
"I never believe servants' evidence," observed Janet Tosswill drily.
"The Coroner, who I suppose naturally wished to spare Mrs. Crofton's feelings, told the jury that it was plain that Colonel Crofton was a very bad-tempered man. But the people with whom I was staying, and who drove me over to look at the God-forsaken old house where the Croftons lived, said that local feeling was very much against her. It was thought that she really caused him to take his life by her neglect and unkindness."
"What a terrible idea!"
"I fear it's true. And now comes the question—ought I to tell his sister this? Some of the gossip I heard was very unpleasant."
"Do you mean that there was another man?"
"Other men—rather than another man. She was always going up to London to enjoy herself with the various men friends she had made during the War, and the only guests they ever entertained were young men who were more or less in love with her."
Janet smiled a little wryly. "There's safety in numbers, and after all she's extraordinarily attractive to men."
"Yes," said Miss Pendarth, "thereissafety in numbers, and it's said that Colonel Crofton was almost insanely jealous. They seem to have led a miserable existence, constantly quarrelling about money, too, and often changing their servants. On at least one occasion Mrs. Crofton went away, leaving him quite alone, with only their odd man to look after him, for something like a fortnight. Colonel Crofton's only interest in life was the terriers which he apparently bred with a view to increasing his income."
"They can't have been so very poor," said Janet abruptly. "Look at the way she's living now."
"I feel sure she's living on capital," said Miss Pendarth slowly, "and I think—forgive me for saying so—that she hopes to marry Godfrey Radmore. I'm sure that's why she came to Beechfield."
"You're wrong there! She settled to come here before Godfrey came home."
"I'm convinced that she knew he was coming home soon."
Janet got up. "I must be going now," she exclaimed. "There's a great deal to do, and only Betty and I to do it."
"I suppose Godfrey Radmore will be leaving now?"
"I hope not, for he's a help rather than a hindrance. He takes Timmy off our hands—"
"—And he's so much at The Trellis House. I hear he dined there last night."
"Yes, with Rosamund," answered Janet shortly.
Miss Pendarth accompanied her visitor down and out to the wrought-iron gate. There the two lingered for a moment, and than Janet Tosswill received one of the real surprises of her life.
"Colonel Crofton and I were once engaged. I went out to India to stay with my brother, and it happened there.Nowwe should have married. But things were very differentthen. When my father found Captain Crofton was not in a position to make what was then regarded as a proper settlement, he declared the engagement at an end."
Janet felt touched. There was such a depth of restrained feeling in her old friend's voice. Somehow it had never occurred to her that Olivia Pendarth could ever have been in love!
"It must be very painful for you to have her here," she said involuntarily.
"In a way, yes. But I suspected she was his widow from the first."
"I think that, if I were you, I would say nothing to his sister," observed Janet.
"Very well. I will take your advice."
She changed the subject abruptly. "Let me know if Kate can be of any more use. She's quite anxious to go on helping you all. She's got so fond of Betty: she says she'd do anything for her."
"We're managing all right now, and Godfrey really is a help, instead of a hindrance. He actually suggested that he should do the washing-up this morning!"
"That's the best thing I've ever heard of Godfrey Radmore," exclaimed Miss Pendarth. "I sincerely hope—forgive me for saying so, Janet—that there's really nothing between him and Enid Crofton. I should be sorry for my worst enemy to marry that woman, if the things I was told about her were true."
"I don't believe that he is thinking of her, consciously—" Janet Tosswill spoke slowly, choosing her words.
"Of course she's making a dead set at him. But there's safety in numbers, even here," observed the other, grimly. "I hear that your Jack simply lives at The Trellis House. The whole village is talking about it."
Jack? Janet Tosswill felt vexed by what she considered a bit of stupid, vulgar, village gossip. "Jack's the most level-headed young man about women I've ever known," she said, trying to speak pleasantly. "If anyone has fallen in love with Mrs. Crofton, it's our silly little Rosamund!"
The morning after Janet Tosswill's call at Rose Cottage, Rosamund followed her step-mother into the drawing-room immediately after breakfast, and observed plaintively that it did seem strange that "Enid" was never asked to Old Place. "We take anything from her, and never give anything back," she said.
Janet, who had a certain tenderness for the pretty black sheep of the family, checked the sharp retort which trembled on her lips. Still, it was quite true that Rosamund had more than once been kept to lunch at The Trellis House, and that on the day of Nanna's accident Mrs. Crofton had issued a sort of general invitation to supper to the young people of Old Place—an invitation finally accepted, at Betty's suggestion, by Godfrey Radmore and Rosamund.
Janet admitted to herself that they did owe Mrs. Crofton some civility. If the thing had to be done, it might as well be done at once, and so, when Rosamund had reluctantly gone upstairs to do her share of the household work, his mother beckoned Timmy into the drawing-room, and told him that she would have a note ready for him to take to The Trellis House in a few minutes.
"Oh, Mum, do let Jack take it!" the boy exclaimed. "I can't go to The Trellis House with Flick, and it's such a bore to shut him up."
"Why can't Flick go with you?"
"Mum! Don't you remember? Mrs. Crofton isterrifiedof dogs. Do let Jack take it!"
"But are you sure Jack is going there this morning?" she asked, and then she remembered Miss Pendarth's ill-natured remark.
"He goes there every morning," said Timmy positively, "and this morning he's going there extra early, as he's lending Mrs. Crofton our best preserving pan. She wants to make some blackberry jam."
And then there occurred one of those odd incidents which were always happening in connection with Timmy and with which his mother never knew quite how to deal. He screwed up his queer little face for a moment, shaded his eyes with his hand, and said quietly: "I think Jack is just starting down the drive now. You'll catch him if you'll open the window and shout to him, Mum—it's no good my going after him—he wouldn't come back forme."
Janet Tosswill got up from her writing-table. She opened the nearest window and, stepping out, looked to her right. Yes, there was Jack's neat, compact figure sprinting down the long, straight avenue towards the gate. He was holding a queer-looking, badly done up parcel in his hands.
"Jack! Jack! Come here for a minute—I want you," she called out in her clear, rather high-pitched voice.
He slackened, and it was as if she could see him hesitating, wondering whether he dare pretend he had not heard her. Then he turned and ran back down the drive and across the wide lawn to the window.
"What is it?" he asked breathlessly. "I'm late as it is! I'm taking one of our preserving pans to The Trellis House. The fruit was all picked yesterday."
"I won't be a moment. I want you to take a letter for me to Mrs. Crofton. I'm asking her to come in to dinner to-night."
She turned back into the room and, sitting down, took up her pen: "Timmy? Go into the scullery, and help Betty for a bit."
After her little son had left the room, she called out to Jack, "Do come inside; it fidgets me to feel that you're standing out there."
After what seemed to Jack Tosswill a long time, though it was only three minutes, his step-mother turned, and held out her note: "She needn't write—a verbal answer will do. If she can't come we shall have done the civil thing."
And then, thinking aloud, she went on: "Somehow I don't expect her to stay long in Beechfield. She's too much of a London bird."
"I don't suppose she would have come at all if she had known what a beastly, inhospitable place Beechfield is," said Jack sharply. Though he was in such a hurry to be off, he waited in order to add: "She's been here nearly a month, and you've never called on her yet—it's too bad!"
Janet Tosswill flushed deeply. Jack had not spoken to her in such a tone since he was fifteen.
"What nonsense! She must be indeed silly and affected," she exclaimed, "if she expected me to pay her a formal call, especially as we had her in to supper the very first day she was here! I might retort by saying that she might have sent or called to know how poor old Nanna was! Everyone in the village has done so—but then your friend, Jack, is not what my father used to call '18 carat'!"
"I think it's we who are not '18 carat,'" he answered furiously. "We have shown Mrs. Crofton the grossest discourtesy, and I happen to know that she feels it very much."
Janet Tosswill looked at her elder stepson with a feeling of blank amazement. It had often astonished her to notice how completely Jack had his emotions and temper under control. Yet here he was, his face aglow with anger, his voice trembling with rage.
Poor Janet! She had had long days of fatigue and worry since the old nurse's accident, and suddenly she completely lost her temper. "I don't want to say anything unkind about the little woman, but I do think her both silly and second-rate. I took a dislike to her when she behaved in such a ridiculous manner over Flick."
"You were almost as frightened as she was," said Jack roughly.
"It's quite true that I was frightened for a moment, but only because I was afraid for Timmy."
"I can tell you one thing—she won't come here again to supper unless I can give her my word that all our dogs are really shut up. And I fear I must ask you to undertake to see that Timmy does not let Flick out after Ihaveshut him up."
Janet Tosswill held out her hand. "I think you'd better give me that note back," she said curtly. "We certainly don't want anyone here of the kind you have just described. From something Godfrey said to me it's clear that Mrs. Crofton's horror of dogs is just a pose she thinks makes her interesting. Why, her husband bred terriers; Flick actually came from there! And Godfrey says that she herself had a little dog called by the absurd name of 'Boo-boo' to which she was devoted."
"'Boo-boo' was the exception that proves the rule," answered Jack hotly. "As for Colonel Crofton, it was beastly of him to breed terriers, knowing how his wife felt about dogs! She told me herself she would never have married him if she had known there was any likelihood of that coming to pass. She feels about dogs as some people feel about cats."
"I never heard such nonsense!"
"Nonsense?" he repeated in an enraged tone. "It isn't nonsense! The best proof that that horror of dogs is instinctive with her is the effect that she herself has on every dog she comes across. That was shown the evening she was here."
"Really, Jack, that's utterly absurd! Flick was not thinking of her at all. Something in the garden had frightened him. Your father feels sure that it was a snake which he himself killed the next morning." And then, for she was most painfully disturbed by this scene between herself and Jack, she said quietly: "I'm sorry that Mrs. Crofton ever came to Beechfield. I didn't think there was anyone in the world who would make you speak to me as you have spoken to me now."
"I hate injustice!" he exclaimed, a little shamefacedly. "I can't think why you've turned against her, Janet. It's so mean as well as so unkind! She has hardly any friends in the world, and she thought by the account Godfrey gave of us thatweshould become her friends."
"It's always a woman's own fault if she has no friends, especially when she's such an attractive woman as Mrs. Crofton," said Janet shortly. She hesitated, and then added something for which she was sorry immediately afterwards: "I happen to know rather more about Mrs. Crofton than most of the people in Beechfield do."
She spoke with that touch of mysterious finality which is always so irritating to a listener who is in indifferent sympathy with a speaker.
"What d'you mean?" cried Jack fiercely. "I insist on your telling me what you mean!"
Janet Tosswill told herself with Scotch directness that she had been a fool. But if Jack was—she hardly knew how to put it to herself—so—so bewitched by Mrs. Crofton as he seemed to be, then perhaps, as they had got to this point, he had better hear the truth:
"Mrs. Crofton made herself very much talked about in the neighbourhood of the place where she and her husband settled after the War. She was so actively unkind, and made him so wretched, that at last he committed suicide. At least that is what is believed by everyone who knew them in Essex."
"I suppose a woman told you all this?" he said in a dangerously calm voice.
"Yes, it was a woman, Jack."
"Of course it was! Every woman, young or old, is jealous of her because she's so pretty and—so—so feminine, and because she has nothing about her of the clever, hard woman who is the fashion nowadays! The only person who does her justice in this place is Rosamund."
"I disapprove very much of Rosamund's silly, school-girlish, adoration of her," said Janet sharply.
She was just going to add something more when she saw Timmy slipping quietly back into the room. And all at once she felt sorry—deeply sorry—that this rather absurd scene had taken place between herself and Jack. She blamed herself for having let it come to this pass.
"I daresay I'm prejudiced," she exclaimed. "Take this note, Jack, and tell Mrs. Crofton that Flick shall be securely shut up."
"All right." Jack shrugged his shoulders rather ostentatiously, and disappeared through the window, while Janet, with a half-humorous sigh, told herself that perhaps he was justified in condemning in his own mind, as he was certainly doing now, the extraordinary vagaries of womankind. She turned back to her writing-table again. However disturbed and worried she might feel, there were the weekly books to be gone through, and this time without Nanna's shrewd, kindly help.
Suddenly she started, for Timmy's claw-like little hand was on her arm: "Mum," he said earnestly, "do tell me what Colonel Crofton was really like? Did that lady—you know, I mean the person Jack thinks is jealous of Mrs. Crofton—tell you what he was like?"
"No—yes—oh, Timmy! I'm afraid you must have been listening at the door just now?"
"I didn't like to come in," he said, wriggling uneasily. "I've never heard Jack speak in such an angry way before. He was in a wax, wasn't he? But, Mum, do tell me what Colonel Crofton looked like—I dosowant to know."
She put down her pen, and turning, gazed down into the child's eager, inquisitive little face.
"Why should you wish to know, Timmy?" She spoke rather coldly and sternly.
She was sorry indeed now that she had been tempted to repeat what was perhaps after all only the outcome of Miss Pendarth's unconscious jealousy of the woman who had made a fool of the man she had loved as a girl. It was unfortunately true that Olivia Pendarth had an unconscious prejudice against all young and pretty women.
"I want to know," mumbled Timmy, "because I think I do know what he was like."
"If you know what he was like, then there is nothing more to say."
"I want to be sure," he repeated obstinately.
"But how absurd, Timmy! Why should you want to know about a poor old gentleman who is dead, and of whom you are not likely ever to hear anything? I have often told you how horrid it is to be inquisitive."
Timmy paused over that remark. "I want to know," he said in a low mumbling voice, "because I think I have seen him." He did not look up at his mother as he spoke. With the forefinger of his right hand he began tracing an imaginary pattern on the blue serge skirt which covered her knee.
She looked around apprehensively. Yes, the door was shut. She remembered that Dr. O'Farrell had told her never to encourage the child's confidences, but, on the other hand, never to check them.
"I first saw him the evening she came to supper," Timmy mumbled. "They were walking together down the avenue. I thought he was a real old gentleman. There was a dog with him, a terrier exactly like Flick, only a little bigger. Of course I thought it was a real dog too. But now I know that it wasn't. I know now that it was a ghost-dog. It isthatdog, Mum, that frightens the other dogs who meet them—not herself, as she's come to think."
"Oh, Timmy,"—Janet felt acutely uncomfortable—"you know I cannot bear to think that such things really happen to you. If you really think them I'd rather know, but I'd so much rather, dear boy, that you didn't think them."
But Timmy was absorbed in what he was saying. "I know now that it was Colonel Crofton," he went on, "because I've seen an old photograph of him, Mum. Mrs. Crofton brought a tin box full of papers with her, and there were some old photographs in it. There was one of an officer in uniform, and it had written across it, 'Yours sincerely, Cecil Crofton.' She tore it up the day after she came here, and threw it in the waste-paper basket, but her cook took it out of the dustbin, and that's how I saw it."
"How disgusting!" exclaimed his mother, feeling herself now on firm ground. "How often have I had to tell you, Timmy, not to go into other people's kitchens and sculleries? No nice boy, no little gentleman, would do such a thing. Of course it was seeing that photograph made you believe you saw Colonel Crofton's—"
She stopped abruptly, for she never, if she could help it, used the word "ghost," or "spirit," to the child.
"Up to now I've always supposed that animals had no souls, Mum, but now I know they have. I know another thing, too," but there was a doubtful note in his voice. "I suppose that ghost-dog hates Mrs. Crofton because she was so unkind to his master. That's why he makes the other dogs fly at her, I expect—or d'you think it's just because they're frightened that they do it?"
Janet Tosswill was an unconventional woman, also she was on terms of very close kinship with her strange little son. Still, she reddened as she drew him closer to her and said: "Look here, Timmy, I want to tell you something. I'm sorry now I said what I did say to Jack about Mrs. Crofton. I ought not to have said it—I'm ashamed of having said it! It was told me by someone who is rather fond of repeating disagreeable, sometimes even untrue, things."
Timmy had also grown very red while his mother was making her little confession. He took up her hand and squeezed it impulsively, as an older person might have done.
"I think I know who you mean," he said. "You mean Miss Pendarth?"
"Yes," said his mother steadily, "I do mean Miss Pendarth. I think it quite possible that poor little Mrs. Crofton was never really unkind to Colonel Crofton at all."
"But you wouldn't like Jack to marry her, Mum, would you?"
Janet felt a shock of dismay go through her. There flashed into her mind that sometimes most disturbing text—"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings...."
"I shouldn't like it at all," she exclaimed, "and I think you're old enough to understand that such a thing would be impossible. Jack won't make enough money to keep a wife for years and years." She hesitated, and then added, speaking to herself rather than to Timmy, "Still, I hope with all my heart that he won't get foolish about her."
"Heisfoolish about her," said Timmy positively. "Even Nanna thinks"—he waited a moment, then said carefully—"that he is past praying for. She said yesterday to Betty that there were some things prayers didn't help in at all, and that love was one of them. She says that Jack's heart has gone out of his own keeping. Isn't that a funny idea, Mum?"
"It is a terrible idea," and, a little to her own surprise, tears rose to Janet Tosswill's eyes. Timmy, looking up into her face, felt his heart swell with anger against the person who was causing his mother to look as she was looking now.
He moved away a little bit, as if aware that what he was going to say would not meet with her approval, and then he said in a peculiar voice, a defiant, obstinate voice which she knew well: "I do wish that Mrs. Crofton would die—I do hate her so!"
Janet Tosswill looked straight into her little son's face. She felt that she had perhaps made a mistake in treating Timmy as if he were grown up. "My dear," she said very gravely, "remember the Bible says—'Thou shalt not kill.'"
"Of course I knowthat,"—he spoke with a good deal of scorn. "Of course I want her to die anaturaldeath."
"No, you mustn't come in; I'm tired. Besides, I've got someone coming to tea."
The ready lie slipped easily off Enid Crofton's tongue, as Jack Tosswill looked down into her face with a strained, pleading look. They were standing in the deserted road close to the outside door set in the lichen-covered wall of The Trellis House. It was already getting dusk, for they had been for a long walk.
"I shall never, never forget to-day!" He gripped her hand hard as he spoke, and she looked up and down the empty road a little apprehensively. But no one was coming or going, and the group of little old cottages opposite The Trellis House held as yet no twinkling lights.
"I shall never forget it, either," she said softly. "But I reallymustgo in now—you know we are meeting this evening?"
"May I come and fetch you?" he asked.
"No, I'd rather you didn't do that—if you don't mind," and then, seeing his look of deep disappointment, she added, "Perhaps you will walk back with me after dinner?"
"Of course I will, but I'm afraid Radmore or one of the girls will want to come too."
As he gazed down into her face there was a look of infinite longing in his eyes, and even she felt a certain touch of genuine emotion sweep over her. It is so very, very delicious to be loved.
"Good-bye, darling," he whispered huskily; and, before she had time to stop him, he had taken her in his arms and kissed her, passionately, lingeringly. Then, with no other word, he released her and went off quickly down the road.
After Enid Crofton had shut the heavy door in the wall behind her, she did not go straight along the path which led to her front door. Instead, she turned in the gathering darkness to the left, and started walking round the garden which in daylight looked so different, now that Jack Tosswill had put in so many hard mornings' work at it.
She felt more surprised and moved by what had happened this afternoon than she would have thought possible. Poor Jack! Poor, foolish, adoring, priggish boy!
When he had come in this morning, bringing the note of invitation from his step-mother, he had seemed excited and ill at ease. She had felt vexed at his coming so early, as she was anxious to superintend the jam-making herself. Enid Crofton had a very practical side to her character, and she was the last person to risk the wasting of good sugar and good fruit through the stupidity of an inexperienced cook.
While Jack was still there one of her new acquaintances had come in for a moment, for she had already made herself well liked in the neighbourhood, and after the visitor had gone, Jack, exclaiming angrily that they were never left in peace together, had begged her to go for a walk with him that afternoon. This she had consented to do, after discovering that Godfrey Radmore had gone up to London for the day.
And then, during their walk, Jack had suddenly made her a pompous offer of marriage!
No wonder she smiled mischievously to herself, when pacing slowly up and down the path between a row of espaliered apple trees.
She told herself that in a sense it had been her fault. They were sitting on a fallen tree trunk, in a lonely little wood, Jack, as he seldom was, tongue-tied and dull. Piqued, she had twitted him on his silence. And then, all at once, he had turned and, seizing her roughly, had kissed her with the pent-up passion of a man in love who till now has never kissed a woman.
Pacing slowly in her dark garden, Enid Crofton's pulse quickened at the recollection of those maladroit, hungry kisses. Something—a mere glancing streak of the great shaft of ecstasy which enveloped Jack Tosswill's whole being had touched her senses into what had seemed to him marvellous response.
When at last he had released her, and in words of at once triumphant and humble adoration, had made her an offer of marriage, she had felt it an absurd anti-climax to a very delicious and, even in her well-stored memory, a unique experience.
And now she remembered the last time a man had kissed her. It was quite a little while ago, on the day she had taken possession of The Trellis House. Of course Captain Tremaine had tipped the guard so that they should have a carriage to themselves. But she had been uncomfortably aware that he was half-ashamed of himself—that he remembered, all the time, that she was a newly-made widow.
Somehow Jack Tosswill hadn't remembered that. Jack hadn't thought of it. But oh! how absurd he had been when his first rapture was over. Without even waiting for an answer to his proposal, he had coolly suggested they should wait till he had made a start at the Bar! At last she had managed to make him listen to her plea that, till a year had elapsed, she could not think of re-marriage. And he had believed her!
All at once she told herself, a little ruefully, that she had perhaps been foolish; that this affair, slight and altogether unimportant as it was, might become a tiresome complication. Of course she could keep him in order, but she was well aware that when a man had kissed her once, he generally wanted to kiss her again, and very soon.
In principle, she had no objection to Jack Tosswill's kisses. There was something fresh, alluring, wholly delightful, even to so hardened a flirt as was Enid Crofton, in being the object of a youth's first love. But she told herself, almost fiercely, that she must make him understand very, very clearly that, though they might sometimes kiss, they must never be caught. Fortunately Jack was curiously cautious for so young a man. That had been one of the reasons why she had been tempted to—well—to make him lose his head.
And then another figure, one of far greater importance and moment to herself than poor Jack Tosswill, came and challenged Enid Crofton to anxious attention. How did she stand with regard to Godfrey Radmore?
She stopped in her pacing, and stared straight before her. For the first time in her life she was quite at a loss as to what a man, of whom she was seeing a great deal, really felt about her.
Rosamund Tosswill was very young, and Enid secretly thought her very stupid, but there could be no doubt as to her essential truthfulness. Now, a day or two ago, Rosamund had said: "Isn't it funny of Godfrey? He told Janet when he first came here that he had made up his mind to remain a bachelor!"
And yet they two, she, Enid, and Godfrey, had had something tantamount to an emotional little scene the first time he had come to see her at The Trellis House. True, it had only lasted two or three seconds, but while it lasted it had been intense. Had Timmy Tosswill not burst into the room in that stupid, inopportune way, Radmore would have certainly taken her in his arms. Though Radmore was no innocent, high-principled boy, even one kiss between them would have altered their whole attitude, the one to the other. She would have seen to that. In her heart she had cursed Timmy for his idiotic intrusion, and now she cursed him again.
Lately she had thought Radmore was becoming aware of Jack Tosswill's growing absorption in her, and she had suspected, as well as hoped, that he was a trifle jealous. Now jealousy, as Enid knew well, is a potent quickener of feeling between a man and a woman. It was unfortunate that Radmore seemed to regard Jack Tosswill as a mere boy—a rather tiresome, priggish boy. Still, that had its good side. Jack was only a very slight complication after all!
Again she cast a fleeting thought to Tremaine. In a sense he was her real mate, her real soul, and, yes, body mate. If only he wasn't so poor! She felt for a moment tempted to throw up everything—to do what he had so urged her to do, what he was always writing and begging her to do. That was to marry him quickly just before the end of his leave, and go out to India with him. He wrote to her every day, and his last letter was in the little silk bag now hanging on her arm.
It was the kind of love-letter that Enid understood, and enjoyed receiving: full of ardent, if rather commonplace, expressions, and of comparisons, very pleasant to her vanity, between her pretty self and the stupid, ugly women he said he was now meeting. He had been with his people in Cornwall—but for that he would of course have come down to see how she was getting on. In this particular letter he announced that he was going to be in London very soon, and might he run down for a day? He had added a question, chaffingly worded, and yet, as she well knew, seriously intended. Did she think it would be improper for him to come and spend two or three days with her? And now she told herself, very decidedly, that of course she couldn't have him here—in stupid, old-fashioned Beechfield. It would be a tiresome, useless complication. But why shouldn't she go up to London for three or four days and have a good time with him there?
Enid was well aware that absence frequently makes the heart grow fonder, and that distance does lend enchantment to the view. But she would not have put it in those exact words.
At last she began walking towards the house, telling herself that she felt oddly tired, and that it would be very pleasant, for once, to have a solitary cup of tea. Her house-parlourmaid was shaping very nicely. Thus the girl had evidently brought the lamps into the sitting-room, though she had forgotten to draw the curtains.
Enid knocked and rang. She had a theory that the possession of a latchkey by their mistress makes servants slow to answer the door.
"There's a person waiting for you in the drawing-room, ma'am. She says she's come down on purpose from London to see you. She came just after you went out first."
There swept over Enid Crofton a strong, sudden premonition of evil. She realised that for the last ten days she had been secretly dreading that this would happen to her. She blamed herself sharply, now that it was too late, for having done nothing further to help the Pipers; but she had hoped the five pounds would have kept them quiet.
"I'll go upstairs and take off my things," she said wearily. "Bring me a cup of tea in my bedroom—I don't want anything to eat—and then I'll come down and see this person." She forced herself to add, "I suppose it's a Mrs. Piper?"
The girl answered at once, "She didn't give her name, ma'am. She just said that she wanted to see you, and that it was urgent. She's not got very long; she wants to catch the six o'clock train from Telford. She wouldn't believe at first that you wasn't in."
Enid found some comfort in those words, and she made up her mind that she would linger upstairs as long as she possibly could, so as to cut short her coming interview with the tiresome young woman. After all there was very little to say. She had behaved in a kind and generous manner to her late husband's servant, and she had already said she would do her best to help him again.
When she got upstairs she lit the two high brass candlesticks on the dressing-table, and then, after she had taken off her hat and long black woollen coat, she sat down in her easy-chair by the wood fire. Soon there came a familiar rap and a welcome cup of tea.
She was sipping it, luxuriously, when there suddenly came a very different kind of rap on the door. It was a sharp, insistent knock, and before she could call out "Come in," the door opened, and a singular-looking figure advanced into the luxurious-looking, low-ceilinged bedroom.
"Excuse me coming up like this, Modam. But I'm afraid of losing my train."
The speaker was small and stout, with a sallow face which might once have held a certain gipsy-like charm, for, in the candlelight, the luminous dark eyes were by far its most arresting feature. She wore a small, old-fashioned-looking, red velvet bonnet perched on her elaborately dressed hair.
Enid Crofton looked at her odd-looking visitor with astonishment. Who on earth could this be? Certainly not Piper's wife. A feeling of intense relief came over her when the strange-looking woman came towards her with a soft, gliding step, and handed her a card on which was written: