Four Strange Women

by E. R. Punshon

  She saw where his quick glance rested, and if her expression had been hostile before, now it grew deadly. Unfortunately, too, her father noticed the change in her expression and noticed, as well, that she raised her hand to pull still further forward the lock of hair with which she had hoped to hide the hurt. The gesture made him look still more closely and he said at once:—

  “What have you been doing to yourself, Becky? Had a blow?”

  “It’s nothing,” she answered, “a tennis ball—caught a hot service full, too near the net, I suppose. It was an awful whack.”

  She turned as she spoke and began to move away, but before she did so she gave Bobby just one look—a look that suggested daggers and poisons and even more unpleasant things.

  “Put my foot in it good and hard,” he reflected ruefully; and tried to look unconscious as if he thought bruises from tennis balls the most natural, ordinary things in the world.

  He noticed, too, that as she moved away she showed something of that light grace in movement and ease in action he had noticed also in Gwen Barton. It came, he supposed, from the tennis at which, apparently, both girls excelled. But the deepest impression his new chief’s daughter made on him was of a strong, vigorous, angry personality of which it would be well to beware. Disconcerting in the extreme, he thought, for though he had known the colonel had a daughter—‘one d. one s.,’ was an item in the Who’s Who paragraph—he had taken it for granted she would be the ordinary young woman, interested in her own affairs, concerned, no doubt, for her father, but entertaining for his subordinates only that vague, polite indifference a girl in her position would be likely to feel. But ‘vague’, ‘polite’, ‘indifference’, were not the words that came to the mind in thinking of Becky Glynne—especially not the second of the three—and indeed the colonel himself seemed slightly embarrassed by his daughter’s behaviour.

  “What will you take?” he asked, moving towards a small table on which various glasses and bottles were set out. “You’ll need something after your spill.” To Becky, or rather to her back, he explained, “We welcomed Mr. Owen by doing our best to kill him. Biddle drove right over my dahlia bed and overturned the car. Drinking again, I suppose. It’s the last time. He might have killed Owen—and he’s ruined the dahlias.”

  Becky was round in an instant, facing them both and looking more angry than ever. Those clear, penetrating eyes of hers glared at Bobby with an expression that told she considered it was entirely his fault and she wouldn’t forget it. To her father she said:—

  “Biddle? drinking? it’s not true, I’m sure he wouldn’t. What happened?”

  “What I told you—” the colonel began and she interrupted him rudely.

  “I’ll ask Biddle,” she said, and disappeared through the open french window.

  “Biddle’s a favourite with Becky,” the colonel explained as he proceeded to pour out the glass of sherry Bobby had asked for. “I’ve told her before he would have to go if he started drinking again. She’ll be upset. He is a good driver as a rule.”

  “If I may say so, sir,” Bobby said, “he struck me as an unusually good driver. But for the way he handled the car we might easily have had a collision with a fool who charged out of a side turning without warning. I’m pretty sure he hasn’t been drinking at all.”

  The colonel grunted.

  “What did it then if it wasn’t drink?” he asked. “Sane and sober, no one would drive like that. He might easily have killed you. It’s a mercy there are no bones broken. My dahlias—”

  He left the sentence unfinished and took refuge in a drink, and Bobby was aware of a faint suspicion that the colonel was more distressed over the fate of his dahlias than over the risk to which his visitor had been exposed. Tactfully but not altogether truthfully, Bobby said:

  “I noticed those dahlias even while I was doing my double summersault.”

  “They made a fine show, didn’t they?” agreed the colonel sadly. “Ruined now. I expected another first prize this time. Washed out. Hannay will be as pleased as punch, confound him.”

  Bobby went on:—

  “I think what really happened was that as we came up the drive here we passed two people. They were some distance away, but we had a clear view of them through a gap in some flowering trees on the left of the drive. I think Biddle didn’t want me to see them, and accelerated quickly to get by as fast as he could, and he overdid it.”

  The colonel listened gloomily. Then he said:—

  “Why shouldn’t he want you to see them? I suppose you mean one was Becky?”

  “I only had the merest glimpse,” Bobby answered. “Biddle accelerated all right.”

  The colonel made no comment. He was evidently quick in understanding, for he had realized at once the meaning of what Bobby said and the significance of his failure to deny that it was Miss Glynne he had seen. The silence continued. Bobby had nothing to say and the colonel was deep in thought, not pleasant thought either to judge from his expression. A tall, slim youth came into sight, crossing the lawn in an oblique direction towards the rear of the house. He bore a strong resemblance to Becky but was much better looking; his features more regular and better shaped; his hair, where hers had been a light golden brown, almost of a pure gold tint and with the same fascinating wave to it; his eyes, though they lacked that clear fire of penetration hers had seemed to show, large, soft and luminous, with long, silky lashes. A young Apollo, he looked, as he came with long strides across the lawn, and yet with little about him of that air of strength and dark resolve his sister showed, even though his expression at the moment was fully as hostile and angry. From the window the colonel called to him:—

  “Len, have you and Becky been quarrelling again?” The young man halted and looked angrily at his father. “I’ll lay her out for good one of these days,” he said. ‘‘I’ll not stand that tongue of hers. Let her mind her own blasted business. I’m fed up, her and her dirt.” He walked on. He had not seen Bobby or probably he would have spoken less freely. The colonel turned round and seated himself. Bobby was absorbed in his sherry. One would have thought his glass of sherry was an object of such interest as never before had the world presented to him. There was silence for a moment or two. The colonel said abruptly:—

  “I suppose Biddle was trying to hide our family skeleton.”

  “I’m sorry, sir,” muttered Bobby, more embarrassed than ever, and he wondered what demon of bad luck was presiding over the beginnings of this new appointment from which at first he had hoped so much but that now he felt was going to turn out a complete fiasco. Most likely Colonel Glynne was already considering how best to get rid of him. He would have to go back to the Yard with his tail between his legs and of course every one would always for ever inevitably believe that he had failed to show he possessed the qualifications needed for a responsible post. More sensible, he supposed, to have held his tongue about the little family scene of which he had been the unlucky witness. But that would hardly have been fair to Biddle, who had plainly been trying to be loyal to his employers, and again, if he was to act as confidential assistant to his chief, he mustn’t start by keeping things hidden from him. The colonel said:—

  “The tennis ball was a lie. Len did it.”

  Bobby felt more awkward still. He supposed he might as well go back to London at once. The colonel went on:— “You may as well know the whole story, Owen. It’s no secret, and anyhow you would have heard all about it before you had been here a month. Len used to be in the R.A.F. Becky met one of the other men in Len’s flight—Cadman, his name was, Charley Cadman. They fell in love rather violently. They got engaged. Len didn’t like it. He never said why. He and Becky quarrelled—badly. He told her he wasn’t going to allow her to marry Cadman. She asked him how he thought he was going to stop it. He told her to wait and see. A week later Cadman crashed. He was killed. At the inquiry it was proved that the machine wasn’t in a fit condition for use, that Len ought to have known it, and ought to have stopped Cadman. He
was found guilty of neglect of duty, made worse by proof that he was the worse for drink at the time. He was allowed to resign. Now he has taken up commercial flying. He doesn’t do much. He doesn’t seem to want to. The accident has warped both their lives.”

  Bobby made no comment. There was none he could make. A tragic story, he thought, and he felt he could do nothing but receive it in silence. He wondered why the colonel had told it in such detail, but supposed he knew that, as he had said, Bobby would be sure to hear the tale sooner or later and so had thought it best to give him the truth. Bobby wondered, too, if it was the truth, or rather, all the truth, since all the truth even the colonel himself might not know. Anyhow the violent antagonism between brother and sister was explained, as also Biddle’s attempt to keep all knowledge of it from the visitor.

  “Thank you,” said the colonel suddenly, and Bobby, at first surprised, understood he was being thanked for the silence he had preserved.

  It continued for a moment or two and then Becky came back into the room, small, swift, and angry. She said:

  “I’ve been to Biddle. He’s packing. I told him not to. He’s not been drinking. If any one told you he had, it’s a lie.” This last sentence was accompanied by a fierce look at Bobby that was quite plainly an accusation. “Biddle won’t say a word, but he’s no more been drinking than I have,” she asserted.

  “He upset the car,” the colonel said, “and nearly killed Owen. But Owen tells me Biddle struck him as a very good driver and he doesn’t think it was drink, whatever else it was, made Biddle play the fool the way he did. You can tell Biddle he won’t hear anything more about it and he can thank Mr. Owen for that.”

  The girl turned again her angry, unplacated eyes on Bobby. They said as plainly as possible: ‘What’s the game? Trying to suck up? ’ Without a word of acknowledgment she went away. The colonel remained silent. Bobby continued to interest himself in his sherry. He wondered again if he had better offer to take the next train back to London. He asked himself even if it would not be wiser to do so, for certainly it did not look as though things were going to be easy here. The colonel got up and with a muttered apology left the room. Bobby, now alone, sat down, and felt depressed. A sound of footsteps approaching from without made him look round. There came to the open window a tall, striking-looking woman, one who could almost have been called beautiful, though even Bobby’s untrained masculine eye could tell that some of that beauty was due to a careful and a skilful art. Still the classic regularity of the features, the perfect oval of the face, the graceful bearing, were all nature’s gift; though possibly the exquisite complexion, the pencilled eyebrows, the long, curling lashes, even the soft lustre of the large, dark blue eyes, might all have received a certain encouragement. In any case the effect, combined with an exquisitely thought out toilet most admirably expressive of the innocence and peace of the country—it made you think of nymphs and milkmaids though somehow of Bond Street and Piccadilly, too—was sufficiently striking to bring a somewhat dazzled Bobby to his feet at once.

  In a voice less pleasing, for it was a little harsh, even coarse in its undertones, this vision said:—

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. I came across before the others. I walked through the shrubbery and round by the rosery. I thought Len was here. Or Colonel Glynne?”

  “Colonel Glynne was here just now, I expect he’ll be back in a moment,” Bobby answered, slightly confused. “You are Lady May Grayson?”

  She gave him a smile, a dazzling smile, showing lovely teeth, but all the same Bobby thought it would have been more dazzling still had it not been so plainly mechanical, taken from stock, as it were, and swiftly returned for future use as required.

  “A society beauty,” he told himself, “only that and nothing more. If you pricked her, she would bleed cocktails and small talk.”

  “Now, I wonder how you know who I am?” she said, obviously expecting the obvious reply Bobby promptly made.

  “Every one knows Lady May Grayson,” he answered. “There was the portrait in the last Academy for instance.”

  “And those perfectly, too utterly awful things they put in the papers,” she sighed, “and you can’t stop them either.” She lifted long, white, slender, perfectly manicured hands as she spoke, and Bobby was a little startled to see how there shone and glittered on the middle finger of her right hand a diamond that seemed almost as big as a pea, and that gave out a peculiar soft bluish brilliance. It reminded Bobby of what he had heard of the famous Blue John stone, recently withdrawn from public auction as the reserve price of £3,000 had not been reached.

  An angry, impatient voice shouted from a distance:— “Hi, May, is that you? I’m over here.”

  “That’s Len,” Lady May said, and with another mechanically dazzling smile mechanically designed to complete Bobby’s capture, Lady May hurried away.

  Bobby, watching her go, found himself remembering that story Lady May had so hotly denied of Andy White’s present to her of an extremely valuable diamond necklace. But at any rate Andy White could not have given her the famous Blue John diamond, since the auction sale had been subsequent to his still unexplained death.

  “Most likely it wasn’t the Blue John at all,” he told himself, “though it looked pretty valuable,” and he remembered, too, that Lady May was generally supposed to have so little money—her father, the Earl of Merefield, being one of the fraternity of the hard up peers—that she could only afford to go about as she did because she got her frocks free on condition of telling all her friends who dressed her; her gloves and stockings free because she allowed it to be known what brands she wore; her dinners free on condition of allowing paragraphs to appear saying what restaurant she patronized; her car as a reward for being photographed by its side. As for cigarettes, she not only got them free but as much as many a man earned in a year besides for simply allowing it to be known that if she did offer you a cigarette in the unlikely event of your meeting her, then it would be one of such and such a make.

  Great are the uses of advertisement, Bobby reflected, and found himself oddly worried by the thought of that softly-shining diamond on her lifted hand.

  CHAPTER IV

  CONSULTATION

  Colonel Glynne came back into the room. Accompanying him was a tall, grey-haired man, with a thin, intellectual face; a shy, retiring manner; mild, blinking blue eyes. One could have taken him for an Oxford professor who had never known a danger more deadly than that of making some slip in a learned article and so exposing himself to equally learned criticism. In fact he was, as Bobby learned to his surprise, General Sir Harold Hannay, with the right to tag most of the alphabet to his name. He had the reputation of being the cleverest man in the army—it was said he read Professor Whitehead for recreation and had discussed on equal terms mathematical problems with the gentleman who does not wish to be known as Lord Russell. He had, too, to his credit a series of reckless exploits in the last war, on the North-West frontier, in various other quarters of the globe, and yet in independent command he had not always been a success. Apparently he lacked that fierce, untiring energy of will great commanders need, and he was also always more willing to risk his own life than the lives of others. Bobby regarded him with a good deal of awe, and was reduced to speechless embarrassment when he found the general appearing to regard it as a high privilege to meet a young man of such promise and achievement as he knew Bobby to be.

  With him was his daughter, Hazel Hannay, in many ways an odd contrast to her father. Where he was fair, tall, and lean, she was tall, dark, bigly made, with dead black hair, and, beneath heavy, strongly marked brows, dark, passionate eyes whose glance seemed to engulf and absorb all it rested on. Nor was there much that was shy or retiring in her manner, or in the heavy, questioning, somewhat haughty gaze she directed full upon Bobby. In her dress she seemed more inclined to bright and contrasting colours than is usual and a jacket she wore of glittering gold sequins had a striking effect. Bobby noticed also that in her movements she showe
d much of that grace and ease he had observed both in Becky Glynne and in Gwen Barton and that he supposed they learned from playing tennis.

  There was a little small talk. The general refused the sherry his host offered him, but Hazel accepted a cocktail and drank it eagerly. Bobby thought her manner strained and uneasy, and he began to think, too, that in the way in which she still looked at him, there was something not only questioning but both doubtful and defiant, as though she were asking herself whether he were friend or foe. He was conscious of an impression that with her it had to be very completely either one or the other, and that where she gave either her love or her hate she gave it wholeheartedly. He remembered having heard that her mother was a Spaniard, so possibly it was from her she had inherited her hair that seemed like night itself, those dark and passionate eyes under their heavy brows, that intense manner as of bubbling fires beneath. Bobby felt he could understand better now he had seen her the references tennis commentators often made to the fierce intensity of her play, and their criticism that until she learned not to throw all she had into her first games, keeping nothing in reserve, she would never win the championship.

  But then, Bobby reflected, if she ceased to give her all at once, if she thought about guarding reserves, she would cease to be herself, and those who cease to be themselves lose far more than they gain. He reflected, too, how entirely and utterly different were these four types of modern girlhood he had met in the last twenty-four hours—Lady May, the society beauty; Becky Glynne, bitter and frustrated; Hazel Hannay, dark and passionate, caring evidently very little for the conventions; Gwen Barton, something of an enigma with her apparent insignificance, her devotion to her lover, the odd fascination of her own to which that lover had so plainly and so utterly succumbed.