Out of the Past
Page 7
Her “No-” came faintly from stiff lips. She had to get out of the room-somehow, anyhow.
She never really knew how she did it. The stairs were misty, the landing unsteady to her feet. Voices came from the open door of her room-Mrs. Beeston and the daily help making up the great cumbersome bed in which Octavius Hardwick had slept in solitary state-in which she and James would have to sleep tonight. There was to be no privacy-either now-or then. She found that she did not want it now. What would she do if she was alone? Sit down and think-that James had bought her. A shudder went over her heart. For as long as she could she would keep that thought at bay.
She went into the room, opened a drawer, and took out the shady hat which she had worn yesterday. The mist was lifting. It was going to be hot.
Mrs. Beeston was a big woman with a plain sensible face. She said, “A little more of that sheet, Mrs. Rogers,” and turned it down over the yellowing blankets. Then, to Carmona,
“Mr. James will be coming today?”
Carmona said, “Yes.”
“If he will be here for dinner, ma’am, we couldn’t do better than a nice salmon mayonnaise. Always very partial to it, Mr. James is.”
“Yes, it would be nice.”
“Going to be hot again, and I thought if you could see your way to it, ma’am, it would be a good thing if you could call in at Mr. Bolding’s, for the sooner I have that fish cooked and in the fridge the better pleased I’ll be.”
“Oh, yes, Mrs. Beeston, I’ll do that.”
“And a nice cucumber and anything you can see for the salad. I’ve got some of my own bottled strawberries for an iced sweet, and I’ve saved the top of the milk for cream.”
“That will be lovely.”
She went into the dressing-room and shut the door. Her hat swung from her hand. As she stood at the mirror putting it on she could see the dark reflection of the room behind her-marble-topped washstand, mahogany chest of drawers, and the single bed against the wall. She would have given anything she possessed to tell Mrs. Beeston to make up that bed for James tonight, but she just couldn’t do it. Mrs. Beeston mightn’t talk-she was the old dependable sort-but Mrs. Rogers had a small persistent trickle of gossip full of “I said to her,” and “She said to me,” and “Only fancy anyone doing a thing like that.” It wasn’t any good, she couldn’t face it. If it really came to the point, it would be easier to face James and have it out with him. There would at, least be the lash of anger to drive her.
She did not feel it yet. She thought how strange it was that she should feel nothing but this sick dismay. It would be easier to be angry, but you cannot be angry at will.
She came out of the house, and saw that the sun had broken through and the mist was rolling up across the sea. She walked down to the shops and bought the things Mrs. Beeston wanted. Mr. Bolding had a fine cut of salmon for her and hoped that they would all enjoy it. He remembered her from the time when she was twelve years old and they used to come down for the holidays.
She took her basket back to the house and went down to the beach to join Esther Field.
It was a long, hot day. Alan had gone away and did not come back again. Having planted a thorn, he believed in leaving it to fester. The more you let a woman alone, the more frightened she became. Meanwhile he was going to bathe. He swam out to the point, lazed about there until the tide came up, and then swam back again. After which he made an excellent lunch and slept away the hot hours of the afternoon.
Miss Silver saw her niece Ethel off by an early train, and later strolled down on to the beach. Passing the hut which belonged to Cliff Edge, she stopped to speak to Mrs. Field and enquire how she was getting on with her knitting.
“Very badly indeed, I’m afraid.”
Miss Silver became aware that there was something wrong. Those swollen eyelids, that tremor in the voice. She sat down beside Esther Field, discovered a number of dropped stitches in the red woolly shawl, and began to pick them up. Presently her kind voice and the cheerful ordinariness of her conversation had their effect. Alan couldn’t really mean to publish his father’s private letters-you didn’t do things like that. And you didn’t hand over large sums of money to a wild extravagant young man who had dissipated far too much already. He wasn’t a boy any longer, and it was time he turned to some sensible employment and settled down. Perhaps a small share in the ranch he had mentioned-he had always been very fond of horses…
She began to take an interest in the new way of holding her needles. It would certainly help her not to drop stitches, but she was afraid she would never be able to remember about looping the wool over her left forefinger instead of her right. She said so, and was assured that it would all come with practice.
Mrs. Field shook her head doubtfully.
“I’m afraid I’m really rather a stupid person,” she said. “I can do the kind of things I learned when I was young, but I don’t seem to be any good at new ones. Do you think that might make one not really able to understand someone else’s point of view?”
Miss Silver said in a meditative voice,
“I suppose it might-”
Esther had an impulse towards confidence. She said,
“There is my stepson-I don’t know if you have met him. He is staying with Darsie Anning.”
“A tall young man with fair hair-very good-looking?”
Esther Field nodded.
“He is-isn’t he? He is like my husband, you know, and he has the same kind of charm. But he doesn’t settle down to anything.”
She told Miss Silver a good deal about Alan Field, finishing up with,
“He wants me to advance quite a large sum of money for something which I’m afraid I don’t think at all sensible. But of course he thinks it very unkind of me to refuse.”
Miss Silver looked shocked.
“My dear Mrs. Field!”
The tears rushed into Esther’s eyes.
“I know, I know-I oughtn’t to do it-I mustn’t do it. But if I don’t-”
Carmona was coming towards them across the sands. Esther felt an odd relief. She didn’t know what she might have said if she had been able to go on talking to Miss Silver. It was so easy to talk to her. But she might have said too much. She hoped that she had not done so already.
The next moment she was thinking that Carmona looked pale. There were shadows under her eyes. Her voice had a lifeless sound as she greeted Miss Silver and asked,
“Where is Pippa? Have you seen her?”
“I think she has gone out.”
“Out?”
“She called something down over the cliff. I think she said she was taking that horrid little red car. I only hope it’s safe.”
Carmona sat down in the patch of shade.
“Oh, I expect so.”
Embarked on the topic, Esther found it easy to go on.
“You know, she does fly about too much. I thought she really didn’t look very well this morning. Of course, with all the stuff girls put on their faces, you can’t tell, can you?”
Miss Silver said, “No, indeed,” but opined that the general effect was often pleasing.
They continued to talk about make-up, a subject upon which one would not have supposed them to possess any particular knowledge, but which appeared to interest them in no small degree.
By the time they had finished their chat Esther was feeling a great deal better. The world about her had again become the world she knew-one in which pretty girls made up their faces, young people fell in love and got married, and no one really wanted to do wrong or to act unkindly. When sorrow visited this world it was endured with courage and with the consolations of a simple faith. Friends were kind, and in due time cheerfulness returned. She became more and more persuaded that Alan could not possibly have meant what he said.
To Carmona their talk was like something on a radio programme which you hear, but to which you do not listen. It went by, but never once broke in upon the closed circle of her mind. She lay on the beach and let
the small hot pebbles run through her fingers.
Miss Silver took her way home in rather a thoughtful mood. That very good-looking Mr. Field appeared to have had a disturbing effect not only on the Annings’ household, but also on Cliff Edge. Very good-looking young men were rather apt to produce this effect upon a distinctively feminine household. There was obviously some link with a younger and perhaps gayer Darsie. Mrs. Anning’s words could really bear no other construction. And now here was this nice Mrs. Field who had certainly been upset to the point of prolonged weeping, to say nothing of Carmona Hardwick whose thoughts appeared to be quite painfully turned in upon themselves. She showed no traces of tears, but if Miss Silver was not very much mistaken, she was at this moment suffering from some kind of shock. There was, further, the rather strange conduct of Mrs. Maybury, an exceedingly pretty young woman of whom she had caught only a glimpse upon the previous evening. She had then appeared to be very far removed from the type which prefers solitude to company. To come down for so short a visit and then go off by herself in this way might have nothing at all to do with Alan Field, but it was obviously causing Mrs. Field some anxiety.
As she walked along the hot cliff path with her knitting-bag on her arm she reflected that human nature was of all studies the most absorbing. The knitting-bag was a new one presented by her niece Ethel upon the occasion of her birthday. The remnant of chintz from which it had been made was most tasteful, the pattern embracing a great number of flowers all blooming together in a profusion seldom conceded by nature, and the lining an agreeable shade of green. A much appreciated feature was the addition of a row of useful pockets to hold everything from pattern-books to spare needles and balls of wool. Her thoughts followed Ethel Burkett on her journey with affection, picturing with pleasure her prospective reunion with the family from whom she was never willingly parted.
It being by now close on one o’clock, Darsie Anning would be engaged in superintending the dishing-up of lunch. Even with a good refrigerator, food must be a problem in such weather as this, and with a foreign staff you really could not be too particular. Miss Silver was therefore surprised as she crossed the upper landing to see Miss Anning come a little way out of her mother’s bedroom and then turn back again.
“Now, Mother, I really must go and see about your lunch. Marie will bring it up to you.”
Mrs. Arming’s voice sounded fretfully through the half open door.
“I don’t like these foreign girls, Darsie. I keep on telling you, but you don’t do anything about it. My mother had a French maid when I was a girl. She read our letters. I should like you to send Marie away. I don’t like her to be left with me. I don’t know why you don’t stay with me yourself. I don’t want you to go away and leave me.”
Miss Anning came out half way upon the landing and saw Miss Silver. At the sound of a fretful sob she drew her brows together and said, “Oh dear!”
Miss Silver coughed.
“Could I perhaps be of any use? I could sit with your mother until her lunch comes up. I know what a busy time this is.”
Darsie Anning gave a short brisk nod.
“That is very kind of you. Mother, here is Miss Silver come to pay you a visit.”
Mrs. Anning was in a state of unusual agitation. She had a high flush and a wandering eye. Miss Silver was asked with insistence to see that the door was really shut.
“It has a way of springing open, and these girls stand at the crack and listen. Foreigners are all spies-you can’t trust them. But you can’t trust anyone, can you?”
Miss Silver said,
“I should be very sad if I believed that.”
“I have been sad for a long time,” said Mrs. Anning. “My husband died, and Alan went away, and then we had no money, you know. He said he couldn’t marry her because he had no money either. Young people can’t live on nothing, can they? But Darsie has never been the same. People always said how pretty she was, and she used to be so gay. She took away all her photographs, but I hid one in the cover of my needle-book. Would you like to see it?”
The photograph was a snapshot, tucked in between two of the little pinked-out flannel leaves which had been meant to hold needles. It showed a dark girl with a lively laughing face, and a handsome fair young man. Mrs. Anning snatched it away again almost before Miss Silver had time to look at it. Her fingers shook as she put it back into hiding.
“He oughtn’t to have gone away!” she said in a sudden loud voice. “You can’t do things like that and not be punished! You ought to be punished when you do wrong! It says so in the Bible-‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!’ Perhaps that is why he has come back, so that he may be punished. I thought about that when I heard his voice. I told Darsie it was his voice, and she said no. She oughtn’t to tell lies about it, ought she? As if I wouldn’t know Alan’s voice-Alan Field!”
She was running on in this way, when the door opened. The French girl Marie came in with the tray-a cutlet in aspic, salad, a drink of iced lemonade, all very nicely served. Marie’s eyes took darting glances here and there in the room. She set down the tray upon a small table which stood ready for it and went out again, leaving the door unlatched. Mrs. Anning said loudly and angrily,
“She wants to hear what I am saying about Alan Field! Well, let her hear it! Why should I care? Anyone may hear it, because it is true! He ought to be punished! I told you she listened at doors!”
CHAPTER 11
James Hardwick drove up from the station, and thought that for once in a way the tail end of an English summer was doing itself proud. The weather looked like lasting too. Tomorrow he and Carmona would swim out to the Point and take their time about coming back.
Carmona! In less than ten minutes he would be seeing her again. When he was away from her, this was what he looked forward to-this moment of anticipation when he could savour to the full the thought that he was coming home. Every meeting held the romance and the promise of the first time when they had not really met at all but he had looked across the crowded theatre and loved her.
They turned in at the hot cement drive. He paid off his taxi and walked up the steps between the empty urns and into the hall, which seemed dark and cool after the outside glare. As he set down his suit-case, the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs was striking seven. It was very large and very ugly, and it struck with a whirring note which had alarmed him very much when he was a little boy. He waited for it to stop, and caught the sound of voices through the open drawing-room door. Esther Field said,
“Oh, no, Alan.”
James stood where he was. Unbelievable that Alan Field should be here in this house. Esther must have been speaking about him, not to him. He went on down the hall and into the room.
There were seven people there having drinks, but the one he saw first was Carmona, in a white dress, with her hat thrown down upon the arm of a chair beside her. Her dark hair was a little ruffled, and she was pale. She had a lemon drink in her hand with lumps of ice in it frosting the glass. He saw her first, but in the next instant he saw Alan Field at her elbow. The others in the room were the Trevors, Adela Castleton, Esther Field, and Pippa Maybury.
Carmona came to meet him. She was much too pale. He put his hand on her shoulder and just touched her cheek with his lips-any husband greeting any wife in the presence of a party of old friends. But inwardly he was the lover who wished them all at Jericho so that he might catch her up in his arms and hold her close. It was the lover who was aware that there was no response. He might have been touching one of those wax models which you see in a shop window. She didn’t look at him. As soon as he had touched her cheek she drew away. Whilst he was speaking to the Trevors, to Adela, and Esther, whilst Pippa Maybury was telling him he must be dying for a drink and mixing him one, she had gone back to her old position and stood there aloof and withdrawn.
He came with his drink in his hand to stand beside her and speak to Alan.
“You here, Field? How very unexpected!”
He put down his glass and turned to Carmona.
“Well, I’m afraid I must be pushing off-they dine at half past seven. In this weather! Esther, old dear, I’ll see you in the morning. Oh, just a moment, Pippa-”
They went out of the long window together. Presently Pippa came back. There was a flush of colour in her cheeks. She was fingering her pearls. The party melted away to change.
James arrived from the bathroom to find Carmona pinning an old-fashioned pearl brooch on to the front of her thin yellow frock. She turned from the glass and put out a hand to hold him off.
“No-I want to talk to you. But not now-there’s no time.”
“Carmona, what is the matter? What is that fellow Field doing here?”
“He came to see Esther. You heard what he said-he has business with her.”
“I suppose he wants money.”
“I suppose he does.”
Right up to this moment she had gone on feeling numb or, rather, not feeling anything except a kind of cold emptiness. Now there began to be pain-hot stabs of it. Her heart shook and was afraid. She said quickly,
“Esther is upset. I can’t talk about it now-I don’t want to. We must get through the evening first.”
There was a heavy gilt clock on the mantelpiece. He glanced at it and said,
“I’d like to know what all this is about. It isn’t only Esther who is upset. You can tell me while I dress. We’ve got thirtyfive minutes.”
“No-James, I can’t.”