“That’s what I don’t know.”
“David, if she were alive, you’d have heard long ago.”
“That’s what I’ve said to myself.”
“She’d have written to you. David, she must have written to you. You—you hadn’t quarrelled?”
“No, no.”
“It must be a coincidence.”
“That’s what I said the first time.”
Eleanor exclaimed sharply. She repeated his words:
“The first time!”
“Yes.” He leaned over and took up the cutting. “This is the third, Eleanor.”
She sat up straight, looking at him.
“David—when?”
“The first was three years ago. Look here, Eleanor, I’m telling you the whole thing. The Family had begun to think it was time I got married. Grandmamma gave the matter her personal attention. Betty was roped in and proceeded to ask a series of young things to stay. One of them came pretty often. She was a jolly little thing, and we got on awfully well in spite of Grandmamma. As a matter of fact she used to chaff me about it. Well, right in the thick of it all, this advertisement came out for the first time. I tried to find out where it had come from, but of course there was nothing doing. I wrote to the steamship company and to the solicitor I’d been to in Cape Town to ask whether they’d ever heard anything; and they said they hadn’t. I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and after a bit I put the matter out of my mind.”
“It must have been a coincidence.”
David looked away from her.
“The second one came out after your husband died.”
Eleanor did not speak.
“I tried again to find out. I wrote to Cape Town again, and to the agents at Melbourne and Sydney. They said the same as before—they’d heard nothing.” He paused for a moment and got up. “The third advertisement came out yesterday. Coincidence, Eleanor?”
“David, what do you really think?”
“I don’t know what to think. If I’d ordinary initials—no one can pretend that there’s likely to be another D. A. St. K. F. with a missing wife. If it’s a practical joke, it’s cruel and damned pointless. And if Erica’s alive, why doesn’t she write and say so?”
“How old was she?” said Eleanor irrelevantly.
“Sixteen—I told you she was only a child.”
“You didn’t tell me her other name.”
“Moore—Erica Moore.”
“Did you ever try and find the aunt you spoke of?”
David threw out his hand.
“I hadn’t an idea how to set about it. She was Aunt Nellie, and her surname was Smith, I shouldn’t wonder if there were thousands of Nellie Smiths.”
“I should advertise,” said Eleanor quickly.
“For Nellie Smith?”
“No—for Erica. I should put her name first—Erica Moore, and then say that anyone giving news of her would be rewarded,”
David walked across the room and back.
“Yes,” he said, “yes. It couldn’t do any harm.”
He sat down at the table, wrote for a moment and laid the sheet of paper on Eleanor’s knee. She read:
“ERICA MOORE.—Anyone giving information with regard to Erica Moore will be rewarded.”
A fidgeting, hesitating hand fumbled at the door. Betty came halfway across the threshold and spoke querulously:
“I didn’t think you could possibly know the time. The dressing-bell went ages ago.”
CHAPTER XIII
Dinner was rather a silent meal. Betty alone upheld the conversation. She had had a letter by the evening post from Dick. She read it aloud, and then, taking it as a text, discoursed upon it.
David, who had heard it all before, produced no remarks. Eleanor, with a slight air of being somewhere else, said “Yes,” and “Did he?” and “How nice, Betty!” Folly, who felt no interest at all in Dicky Lester, watched Betty between her lashes and decided shrewdly that it was not only Dicky’s letter that had brought the colour to Betty’s cheeks and the edge to her voice. “Jealous cat!” she said to herself.
After dinner David, with the air of a man who has had as much Dicky as he can swallow, introduced a new topic:
“By the way, I quite forgot to say Tommy Wingate’s home. I ran into him last night. I’ve asked him to come down.”
Eleanor looked up smiling, and Betty said “Oh?” in a half-offended tone. “You might have told me at once. Is he coming?”
“Yes—to-morrow. He’s eating nuts with an aged uncle to-night, or I’d have brought him with me.”
Folly, on her stool before the fire, looked from Eleanor to David.
“Who is he? Is he nice? Is he young? May I play with him?”
“Ask Eleanor,” said David. “He’s her property.”
“Ooh! How exciting! Eleanor, may I flirt with him a little bit, just to keep my hand in?”
Eleanor laughed.
“Tommy will be delighted. He flirts nearly as well as you do.”
“Ooh!” said Folly. She looked out of the corners of her eyes at Betty, and then whisked round and tugged at David’s sleeve.
“David, you’re not to read the paper. You’re to listen and give expert advice. Which of my frocks shall I wear to-morrow so as to strike Eleanor’s Tommy all of a heap?”
David laughed in spite of himself.
“It’s no good—he’s irrevocably Eleanor’s.”
Folly caught David’s hand and pinched it vigorously.
“I don’t want him for keeps. You haven’t been listening. Eleanor’s lent him to me to flirt with. Haven’t you, Mrs. Grundy, darling?” She made an impudent face at Eleanor over her shoulder, then pinched David again, softly this time. “There! I’ve got Mrs. Grundy’s leave! Even Betty can’t say anything after that. Shall I wear this frock? Or does it make me look too good? I always think blue gives one a sort of maiden’s prayer look. I’ve got a red frock you haven’t seen—but perhaps that would shock him. George said it wasn’t respectable.”
David had a quick vision of a little scarlet Folly with green eyes full of laughing, beckoning mischief. He pulled his hand away from the fingers that had begun to stroke the place they had pinched, and said roughly:
“Tommy won’t notice what you wear.”
“You seem to have a great many clothes,” said Betty in her most disagreeable voice.
“’M—I have. I like having lots; then I can wear the wicked ones when I feel good, and the little mild angel frocks when I’m going to run amuck.” She blew an impudent kiss at David. “That’s the way I keep the balance true.”
“And who pays for the frocks?” said Betty.
Folly gazed at her artlessly.
“Oh, I can always find a man to do that,” she said.
“Folly! How could you?” said Eleanor when they had gone upstairs.
“How could I what?”
Eleanor took her firmly by the arm.
“Come into my room. You’re a little wretch, and I’m going to scold you.”
Folly skipped on to the bed and sat there with one leg tucked up under her. With the heel of the other she drummed against the brass of the bedstead.
“Folly, you shouldn’t—you shouldn’t really! I hated to hear you say it.”
Folly drummed.
“Say what? What did I say?”
“You said you could always get a man to pay for your clothes.”
“So I can.”
“Folly!”
Folly made large round eyes.
“I’m the cat with the eyes like mill-wheels, and Betty’s the witch, and we’re all in a fairy story—but I’m not quite sure who’s the prince,” she announced.
“Folly, you shouldn’t have said it.”
“Why not, if it was true?”
“It wasn’t—it isn’t.”
Folly blew her a kiss.
“It is—it’s perfectly true—I do get a man to pay for my clothes. I get George. And doesn’t he grumble?”<
br />
She jumped down laughing and flung her arms round Eleanor’s neck.
“I took you in! I shocked you! Oh, Mrs. Grundy, what a score! I’m games and games and games up on you!”
Eleanor shook her.
“Folly, it isn’t a game. People have beastly minds—they believe that sort of thing quite easily. Betty believed it. You saw how she changed the subject. I only hope—”
“What?” said Folly. Her arms dropped. She looked at Eleanor defiantly. “Well, what do you hope?”
“I hope David didn’t believe you.”
Folly stamped her foot; her green eyes blazed out of a very white face. She said:
“I don’t care a damn what David thinks!”
With the last word she had the door open and was gone. Her own door slammed and the key turned sharply.
It was a long time before Eleanor got to sleep. She woke with a start. Something had waked her, and for a moment she did not know what it was. Then the little click of the downstairs window came to her mind. That was what had waked her.
She listened intently, and heard the window close; her own window, wide open above it, carried the sound. She ran to it and leaned out. It was much later than it had been the other night, and it was cloudy, with a low mist everywhere. She looked, and could see nothing; and she listened, and could hear nothing at all.
She drew in shivering, more from strain than cold, for the night was soft. As she drew away from the window, she heard something, a faint sound which came from beyond her closed door. She opened it and stood there in the dark.
The passage ran from her door past the head of the stairs to the wing where Betty and David slept. The old schoolroom was there, and a spare bedroom. Folly’s room faced the stairs. And it was on the stairs that something was moving.
With a quickness born partly of fear and partly of a sudden sharp anger, Eleanor put her hand on the switch outside her door and jerked it down. The light at the stair-head came on. The passage shone bright and empty.
Eleanor ran forward noiselessly. Halfway up the stair, with a black cloak thrown round her, stood Folly March, the fingers of her left hand resting on the balustrade, her eyes wide open and blank with fright. She looked up, saw Eleanor, and came up the remaining stairs with a rush.
“Ooh! You nearly killed me! Put the light out—put it out quick!”
She pushed open her own bedroom door, dragged Eleanor in, and turned out the passage light from the switch just outside. Then she shut the door and put on the light in the ceiling.
“Did you want to kill me? You nearly did.”
“Folly, where have you been?”
Folly pulled off her cloak, rolled it into a ball, and flung it across the room.
“’M—” she said. “That’s the question!”
She was in her nightgown, a flimsy transparent affair, white, with pink flowers on it. Her little feet were as bare and pink as a baby’s.
Eleanor looked at the hem of the flimsy nightgown. It had been drizzling with rain all the afternoon; the mist was breast-high outside; park, and grass, and stone-paved walk must all be dripping wet. The little flowered night-gown was dry and crisp. The little pink feet were dry.
Folly stood looking at her toes. She shot an innocent glance at Eleanor’s puzzled face, then she twiddled the toes.
“They’re quite dry,” she said with modest pride.
“Folly, where have you been?”
“On a broomstick over the moon.”
“Folly, darling!”
“Didn’t you know I was a witch? You can keep beautifully dry on a broomstick. Go to bed, darling. You can. It’s quite safe—I never go for more than one broomstick ride at a time. And I really like moonlight best—it’s more amusing.”
She put her arm round Eleanor, hugged her, pushed her out of the door, and locked it in her very face.
Eleanor heard a smothered laugh:
“Good-night, Mrs. Grundy.”
The light in Folly’s room went out with a click.
CHAPTER XIV
Next day being Saturday, Tommy Wingate came down for the week-end. Miss Folly March seemed to approve of him; she certainly flirted with him to an extent that made Betty look down her nose, and provided a good deal of entertainment for the domestic staff. Tommy played golf with her, sang with her, and danced with her. But Folly was shrewdly aware of the fact that Eleanor had only to beckon him with a glance.
When she did, Tommy’s gratitude was patent. He did not flirt with Eleanor; he merely adored. He had never hidden, or desired to hide, his devotion.
On Sunday evening he came down early, and found Eleanor early too. She was standing by the fire, dropping fir-cones on to it and watching them blaze. She wore a white embroidered shawl of China crêpe over her black velvet dress; the long white fringes fell almost to her feet. She turned to him, half laughing, as he came in.
“Don’t they smell good? I love the fat green ones. Oh, Tommy! Isn’t it good to be home again?”
“It’s good to be anywhere that you are,” said Tommy, looking at her through his absurd shining eyeglass. He thought her the most beautiful woman in the world, and the most gracious.
“Thank you, Tommy. It’s been ever so nice to see you.”
Tommy leaned against the mantelpiece, one hand on the marble edge.
“You’ll see lots of me. Are you going to be in town?”
“For a bit.”
“I can get up for week-ends. You’ll let me come and see you?” His jolly eyes were suddenly wistful like the eyes of a dog who begs for what he knows he must not have.
Eleanor looked back at him sweetly and kindly.
“I shall love it,” she said. Then she put her hand on his for a moment. “Nice Tommy! But, Tommy, dear, don’t be too nice to me.”
“Why not?” said Tommy stoutly.
She just shook her head without speaking.
“I know it’s no good now,” he said without looking at her. “But some day—”
Eleanor looked down into the fire. There were tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Tommy, that’s all over.”
Tommy squared his shoulders.
“That,” he said, “is nonsense! You’re twenty-five aren’t you? There’s a frightful lot of time ahead of one at twenty-five.”
“Yes,” said Eleanor.
She stooped over the fire and pushed down a log with her hand. Tommy screwed his eyeglass firmly into his eye.
“When you’re twenty-five there’s no end of time to be happy in. That’s what you want to get into your head. The other’s all rot. You’re meant to be happy, and I want to see you happy. Of course, I’d like it to be me; but if it isn’t me, I’d like it to be some good chap who’ll make you a thundering good husband.”
“Tommy, dear, don’t!”
“All right, I won’t. You know I’m—well, I’m always there, and I always shall be there. You can bank on that.”
It was at this moment that they both became aware of Folly with her hand on the half-open door. For once in her life she seemed to be a little taken aback. She looked over her shoulder, saw Betty behind her, and ran forward.
She had put on the scarlet frock. It suited the quiet Sunday evening about as well as scarlet paint would suit St. Paul’s Cathedral. George March had been justified in his protest. The scarlet tulle left Folly’s slim white back bare to the waist and stopped short a good two inches above the knee; there were no sleeves; there was very little bodice. There was, in fact, so little of it at all that if it had not been of a surprisingly vivid colour, it might have been mistaken for an under-garment.
Folly wore the curls on a silver ribbon. She also wore a dead white complexion and scarlet lips. Tommy looked at her with interest. Later on, after dinner, she took him away to the far end of the room, seated herself on the arm of a stiff, old-fashioned sofa, and said:
“Tommy, are we friends?”
Tommy didn’t sit; he stood beside her with his back to the group by the f
ire.
“Rather!” he said.
“Are we old friends? You know, the sort that can talk home truths to each other?”
Tommy twinkled at her.
“Do you want me to talk home truths to you? Where shall I begin?”
“Stupid!” said Folly, swinging her feet.
She looked over Tommy’s shoulder and was delighted to observe that Betty was watching them.
“Who are you calling stupid? I’m the brains of the Army.”
“Then it’s got very stupid brains. I’m going to it tell the home truths to you—that is, if we’re really friends and you won’t go through the roof. Well—shall I?”
“Are you going to tell me I’ve got a smut on my nose?”
“As if I should bother! It’s your nose—you can have as many smuts on it as you like. No—I’m serious! ’M—I can be serious, Tommy, so you needn’t look at me like that.”
“All right, fire away!”
“Perhaps you’ll be angry. All right, here goes. Don’t be a mug.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I mean, don’t be a mug. You are, you know. I came in and heard you.”
“What did you hear?”
“I heard you being a mug. You were telling Eleanor that, whatever happened, you’d always be there, nice and handy for her to trample on when she wanted to.”
Tommy stiffened a little.
Folly kicked her heels and made a face at him.
“There you go! I knew you would. Mind you, I don’t suppose you’ve got a chance anyhow. If she marries anyone, she’ll probably marry David. But if you have got the least scrap of a chance, you’re simply chucking it away when you talk like that. Who’s going to bother about a man who’s always there? Go to the pictures and see some nice films about sheikhs—that’s what you want. If Eleanor didn’t think you were going to be lying about waiting to be picked up for the next hundred years or so, she might—”
Tommy shook his head.
“You don’t understand. And look here, I think we’d better go back to the others.”
“Mug!” said Folly, jumping off the sofa.
She went to the piano and played old-fashioned out-of-date song-tunes, all very sentimental and sugary. As she played, she watched the others. Betty and Eleanor on the sofa to the left of the fire; and Tommy with his back to her leaning forward in his chair and talking cheerfully and discursively to Eleanor. Betty had a book. Sometimes she read it; sometimes she listened to Tommy. Every now and then they all laughed.
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