The thought of Miss Maltby trembling in the lamp-lit kitchen had a very heartening effect upon Shirley. The glow from the kitchen window gave her her direction. She stopped shuddering, disengaged herself from the evergreens, and made her way quite easily round the house and out of the yew-shadowed gate.
As soon as she was outside she stopped and put on her coat, and it was when she was buttoning it up that it came to her with a crashing sense of disaster that she had left her cap and her bag behind her in Acacia Cottage. The cap didn’t matter. Lots of people go about without hats in the country even in the middle of the winter. But the bag—that was the really frightful loss, because it had all her money in it—every single penny of it. And how was she to go on running away without so much as a single halfpenny to run with?
She stood against the hedge which bordered the garden and stamped her foot in desperate anger. “Oh, Shirley—you blasted food!” she said. It really was a most horrible situation. If she hadn’t been wanted by the police, she could, of course, have walked up to the front door, knocked firmly and loudly, and explained with calm that she had left her bag in the kitchen. But if she hadn’t been wanted by the police she wouldn’t have been here at all. And of course the really awful thing was that Miss Maltby must know perfectly well by now that Shirley Dale was wanted by the police. They would have been to Mrs Camber’s, and Miss Maltby would have told them her horrible lying story about the marked sixpences. It certainly was a very nasty mess.
The odd thing was that it wasn’t until this moment that it occurred to Shirley to regard Miss Maltby’s sudden appearance as anything except a breath-taking catastrophe, but now quite suddenly it seemed to require explanation. Acacia Cottage was Jane Rigg’s cottage. Then why Miss Maltby? Had she followed her, Shirley, down from town? She couldn’t have—not an hour later, and by a different train. And she had walked into the house as if it belonged to her.… Something in Shirley’s mind said in a loud penetrating whisper, “Suppose it does belong to her. Suppose Miss Maltby is Jane.”
Shirley’s flesh crept all over from the top of her scalp to the tips of her fingers and the soles of her feet. Miss Maltby her sister! She said desperately, “Oh, no, no—she’s too old!” and then remembered that Jane must be fifty-one. The bit in the family Bible—“John and Jane, b. 1884”—And how old was Miss Maltby?—Some people didn’t look a bit old when they were fifty, and other people did—Miss Maltby might be any age—She might be sixty-five, or sixty, or fifty. She might be Jane.
The idea was so frightful that Shirley started to run away from it. She didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do. All she knew was that she must get away from Acacia Cottage and the revolting possibility that Miss Maltby might be Jane.
She might have run quite a long way if she hadn’t bumped into William Giles. William was on his way to fetch the village nurse to his wife, and, it being a first baby, William was in a hurry, and in a very flustered and unnoticing state of mind, otherwise he would probably have avoided the collision. As it was, it was a head-on affair, and Shirley certainly saw stars. All William wanted was to get Mrs Gaunt as quickly as possible. He apologized—all the Giles have very nice manners—and then hurried upon his way. But before he had gone a dozen yards, there was the girl he had nearly knocked down coming up behind him and saying in a soft panting voice,
“Oh, please, please can you tell me how to find Emshot Place?”
William could and did, and as shortly as possible, because anything that came between him and getting Mrs Gaunt for Rosie had to be got out of the way as sharp as it could be done.
“Straight on the way you were going till you come to the churchyard, and there’s the gate right along next to it—you can’t miss it.” He ran on into the darkness.
Shirley turned round and walked in the opposite direction. Whenever you asked anyone the way in Emshot they always told you you couldn’t miss it. Well, she hadn’t missed Acacia Cottage. She shivered, squared her shoulders, and marched along briskly. It was funny that knocking her head and seeing stars should have made her remember Anthony, but the moment the first bang was over that was just what had happened. She had been running blindly without an idea in her head except to get away from Miss Maltby who might be Jane, and then after an interval of stars her panic was gone and she was remembering that Anthony was at Emshot Place, and that she had better hurry up and get into touch with him.
She hurried.
William Giles was perfectly right—you couldn’t miss the churchyard. Even on a dark night like this the whiter tombstones showed up. A polished marble angel gleamed wraith-like above a polished marble tomb, and just where the churchyard wall began there was a pair of open gates and a shadowy drive that went on, and on, and on, and out of sight. Shirley couldn’t see if there was a lodge or not. Anyhow the gates were open. She turned between them and began to walk along the drive.
She had no idea what time it was, because she had no idea how long she had slept in the kitchen of Acacia Cottage. Everything had happened too quickly after she woke up for her even to have thought of looking at the clock. Suppose it was the middle of the night. Suppose it was the small hours of the morning. Suppose everyone in Emshot Place had gone to bed … “Suppose fiddlestick ends! That man was out, wasn’t he? And Miss Maltby had arrived from somewhere—she wouldn’t be walking about in the middle of the night. Besides it hasn’t got that after-midnight kind of feeling.”
It was, as a matter of fact, a little short of half-past ten.
Shirley thought the drive was never going to come to an end. And then all of a sudden it came out of a particularly dark belt of shrubbery and she saw the lighted house right in front of her, a big square block with a glow coming from it as if it was full of people and all the rooms in use. She had been thinking about reaching the house, but she hadn’t thought about what she was going to do when she got there. Ring the bell and ask for Anthony Leigh? Oh no, she couldn’t possibly do that. Her hair was wild, her face probably coal-black after blundering in amongst those wet evergreens, and her shoes plastered with mud from the soft garden bed. She must look like a tramp. And even if she didn’t, she couldn’t go up to that door and ask for Anthony.
Well, what was she going to do? She didn’t know.
The drive came out on a newly gravelled sweep before the house. New gravel makes the most ghastly noise when you walk on it. Shirley felt very modest indeed about making a noise. She wondered if there was a dog loose. It was horrid to feel that she would mind if there were. But when you are in someone else’s grounds in the middle of the night and the police are after you it has a very undermining effect on your courage, and on the ordinary affectionate feelings you would have towards the Alsatian, or mastiff, or bull terrier who might be going the rounds of his master’s property.
As she stood there hesitating, the veering wind brought her a faint snatch of music. It had the hoarse, tinny sound of gramophone or wireless heard in the distance. Synthetic music does not travel well. Shirley’s feet moved at once and instinctively in the direction of the sound. Where there is a gramophone or wireless in full swing, there are people gathered together. Where there were people gathered together in this house, there would be Anthony Leigh. And if the music was making enough noise to reach her as far away as this, they wouldn’t be likely to heat her feet on the gravel.
Nevertheless she skirted the edge of it until she came to the place where she could see past the end of the shrubbery and along the side of the house. A big lighted conservatory ran the whole length of it. She could see palms rising to the roof and spreading out there, black against the glow behind them.
When she had passed the front line of the house the gravel wasn’t new any more. She crossed it without making any noise and stood by the glass wall of the conservatory looking in. The music was quite loud now that she was so near. A crooner with a voice dripping with sentiment was wailing out something about the “melancholy—folly—of loving you.” There was a group of
palms which prevented her from seeing in. They touched the glass, and their stems, which looked as if they had been wrapped up in matting and only partially unpacked, made a thick screen. She moved a little to the left and looked round them. The place was more like a palm room at an hotel than a real conservatory. There was matting on the floor, and green wicker furniture. There were bright banks of azaleas, and a lot more palms. Amongst the palms and the azaleas three bridge tables had been set out. At the nearest one Anthony was playing bridge.
Shirley felt a little tingling triumph. He was really here, and she had really reached him.
And then the triumph died, because the three or four yards between her and Anthony might just as well have been miles. There he was, all nice and clean and tidy, with the celebrated profile in full view. He had probably had a most frightfully good dinner, and he was playing bridge with a jolly red-faced old man, and a white-haired woman who drooped and frowned and fidgeted with her cards, and a girl. The girl had her back to Shirley. She looked exactly as if she had never been out of a glass Case in her life—rows of little shining curls coming down on to her neck, and the most wonderful waves. Her hair was exactly the colour of honey after the frost has thickened it. Her dress had a silver bib in front and nothing at all behind. At any other time it would have interested Shirley very much, because there didn’t seem to be any reason at all why the bib should stay put. Unless it was stuck on—and then suppose it melted. She could hear their voices. Someone had just dealt, and the bidding was going on.
Shirley stood there and listened, and was hot with humiliation and anger. She felt like a beggar, standing here all muddy and grimed and untidy, looking in at that glass-case girl with her white flesh and her silver bib, and at Anthony, who wouldn’t care if he never saw her again, and who was sitting comfortably in a warm, lighted place whilst she was out in the dark and the cold. And presently he would have an absolutely super bed to sleep in and as many eiderdowns as he wanted, and she, Shirley, would probably be sleeping in a ditch. No, she wouldn’t—not without putting up a fight about it anyhow.
The bidding had finished. Anthony kid down his cards and got up. He stood there for a moment lighting a cigarette, and then moved away. Before Shirley knew what she was going to do she had stooped, picked up a pebble, and thrown it tinkling against the glass. The fidgeting, frowning woman started nervously, and the girl with the pale shining hair looked over her shoulder in a languid, unhurried way. Shirley saw that she had an odd heart-shaped face with pale blue eyes and artificially darkened eyebrows and lashes. There was no colour at all in her face except in the lips, which were painted a smooth, deep strawberry red. Her look was vague and uninterested. The fidgety woman played a card from dummy’s hand, and the girl turned back to the game.
Anthony Leigh strolled over to the glass wall and stood there with his cigarette in his hand looking out. It was a dark night—dark and windy. The B.B.C. dance orchestra was playing “Wein Weib und Gesang.” He loathed playing bridge to the wireless. He would rather have heard the wind in those black trees out there. He wondered who had thrown a pebble against the glass. You couldn’t see a yard with all these lights behind you.
And then he saw Shirley looking at him through the hard, clear pane which divided them. He was startled to the point of immobility. Her face had swum out of the darkness like a face rising through water—a dead face coming up out of dark water—
The moment of shock passed. Her lips moved, and her eyes implored him. Then she was gone again, without sound and without visible movement.
Anthony walked round the palms, opened a glass door, and descended four steps. The wind caught the smouldering end of his cigarette and blew it into a bright point of fire. He said just under his breath,
“Shirley, where are you?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Shirley came up like a shadow, caught him by the wrist, and ran with him across the old gravel. At the black edge of the shrubbery she stopped. Her hand was cold on his. She dropped it. She said in a whispering, panting voice,
“I had to see you—I haven’t got any money—I’m running away—”
He took her by the arm.
“There’s a path just here—we’d better get down it a little way. There—this will be all right, and I can keep my eye on the table. I shall have to go back as soon as the hand is over.”
Shirley boiled with rage. She said in a furious whisper,
“I’m running away. I left my bag at Jane’s blighted cottage—it’s got all my money in it. I can’t go back because Miss Maltby’s there.” And then it came over her that Anthony didn’t know about Miss Maltby, and her horrible sixpences, and the lies she had told Mrs Camber. And he didn’t know about Mrs Huddleston’s brooch and the police. And all he wanted was to go back to the girl with the strawberry lips and go on playing bridge. She hated him with a fiery hatred, and it was the last humiliation on earth to have to ask him to lend her a pound.
“You’re awfully cold,” he said. “Why are you running away?” He was partly amused and partly annoyed. It was the first time he had stayed with the Parrys. Shirley turning up like this looked as queer as the devil.
She stamped her foot on the garden path.
“Lend me a pound and I’ll manage! I don’t want to keep you—you can go in! I’ll pay you back!”
The quivering rage in her voice got home.
“Shirley—is anything really the matter?”
Shirley caught her breath.
“Oh no! I’m running away for fun—and the police are after me for fun—and you haven’t got time to hear about it, so please go in!”
They were standing quite close in the narrow path with the dense blackness of holly, and laurel, and yew shutting them in. Anthony’s hands came down hard upon her shoulders. He spoke with an angry tang in his voice.
“Cut that out! Tell me what’s happened—tell me at once!”
Shirley began to tell him. His hands gripped her so tightly that they hurt. They held her squarely in front of him so that she couldn’t move. Under all her anger was the dreadfully weak feeling that it would be nice to cry on his shoulder. Her voice went tripping and stumbling amongst a lot of difficult words.
“It began with Miss Maltby—she told Mrs Camber that—two sixpences were gone—from her room—sixpences, Anthony! She said she had marked them—and she said she had seen me come out of her room—and she made Mrs Camber look in my room—and they found the sixpences—under the toilet-cover—on my chest-of-drawers. That’s only the beginning.”
“Then you’d better go on,” said Anthony.
He felt her quiver under his hands, and that surface annoyance of his was gone. The Parrys were gone too—off the map and out of the world. The world just now was this black shrubbery which enclosed himself and Shirley. In this world something was happening between them—an onset of anger shaking them both, and then, in himself, a vehement uprush of some feeling which he did not recognize. It was strange to him. It seemed to be blended of fear and a new sort of anger, and over and above the fear and the anger there was a warmth and a kind of aching sweetness.
Shirley stumbled on.
“Mrs Huddleston’s brooch came off—her big diamond brooch. She said to put it on the mantelpiece—the catch was broken—I leaned it up against the shepherdess. Then she had her rest. Afterwards I didn’t notice it. I got away at six—I had to run for my bus—and something kept banging against my leg. When I was in the bus I felt the hem of my coat to find out what it was—and it was Mrs Huddleston’s brooch—”
“What?”
“It was. I could feel it—in the hem. I didn’t know what to do—the bus had gone quite a long way. Then it stopped, and I got out and ran back. I thought if I went straight back and told her, we could find out who had put the brooch in my coat—because someone must have put it there.”
“Yes, that was right. Go on.”
Shirley gave a bitter little sob.
“No, it wasn’t right—it all
went wrong. She must have missed the brooch the minute I’d gone—they’d seat for the police, and there was a policeman going into the house when I got there, and—and I ran away. And I thought about Jane Rigg at Emshot—and I thought if I came down here she’d have to take me in, and then I could give you the brooch and that would be the next best thing to giving it to Mrs Huddleston.”
“Yes,” said Anthony—“yes.” He took his hands off her shoulders. He picked her up suddenly and held her tight for a moment, “Shirley—don’t! It’ll be all right. You’ve got to do just what I tell you—you’ve got to. Do you hear?”
Shirley gave another sob.
“Darling, listen! Can you find your way down the drive? All right. Then go and wait by the gate—I’ll be as quick as ever I can. I can’t stop now, or they’ll come and look for me. The rubber’s just finishing, and then I’ll cut out. You’ll wait?”
Shirley said “Yes,” and then he let go of her and was gone.
She stood at the end of the path and watched him go up the steps and cross behind the palms and come out into the lighted space where the bridge table was. It gave her the strangest feeling to see him there in the light, and to remember how he had held her a moment ago. He hadn’t kissed her, only held her up against him hard and then let her go. She had felt the beating of his heart. She wasn’t angry any more. She was shaken, and yet comforted.
Hole and Corner Page 9
