“Well, I’ll tell any one she’s handsome,” said Corinna, in the tone of one who concedes a single virtue.
Anna came in alone. The dancing floor was empty for the moment, and she crossed it slowly and with the most complete self-possession.
Corinna was quite right-she’s handsome, and I’d never seen her look handsomer. She was dressed in some sort of rose-colored stuff which sparkled all over as if it were powdered with diamonds. She holds herself magnificently, and she walks like a Spanish woman or an Indian. Every one in the room was looking at her.
She came up to Corinna and shook hands. I didn’t know whether she’d seen me or not.
“I’ve come after all,” she said. “Uncle John was so distressed at my missing your party. He begged me to take the car and run up-and as he really was going straight to bed after his dinner, I came.”
When Corinna had been nice and polite, Anna looked at me, and was surprised. I don’t know how she thought I was going to believe she’d only just seen me, because I am six foot one to Corinna’s five foot two, so it stands to reason she couldn’t very well have seen her and missed me.
She said, “Car! What a surprise!”
I said, “Is it?” and Corinna laughed.
“Is it?” said Anna. “What am I to say to that? It’s a very pleasant surprise to all your friends to find you’ve come out of your shell again.” She turned to Corinna. “We’re very old friends, you know, and though I’ve come so late, I hope he’s not too much booked up to dance with me.”
I was dancing the next with Fay, and I said so; but as I said it, she came up behind us and told me quite coolly that she was cutting my dance. After that there didn’t seem to be any way out of dancing with Anna, so we danced. But when we had gone about half-way round the room, she said, in a low voice,
“I don’t want to dance-I want to talk to you. Let’s go and sit out somewhere. Up in the gallery’s a good place if it’s not too crowded.”
First of all I hoped it would be crowded, and then I decided that it might be just as well to have a good straight talk with Anna. If she was my mysterious employer, I was through, and the sooner she knew it the better.
The gallery runs across one side of the room, and at either end of it there are palms in pots, and a couple of chairs which are pretty well screened from view. She made a beeline for the nearest pair of chairs, and it just went through my mind that she seemed to know all about the place. And then I saw something that gave me the most furious amount to think about. Anna was looking at me, and I hope my face didn’t give anything away. I stood aside to let her sit down, and then I took the outer of the two chairs myself.
What I had seen was this. Lying on the floor in front of my chair was one of the little sparkling diamond things which were sewn all over Anna’s dress. I put my foot on it, because I didn’t think she’d seen it, and I didn’t want her to see it. It meant that Anna had been up in this gallery already to-night. She hadn’t just come-she’d been up in the gallery in one of these screened seats, watching us all. It looked very much to me as if I had found my employer all right, because if she wasn’t watching me, why should she first say she couldn’t come, and then pretend she’d only just arrived, when, as a matter of fact, she must have been here some time? I felt most awfully sick about the whole thing, and I was determined to have an explanation.
All this takes a long time to write, but it didn’t take any time to think. I just saw it in my mind like you see a picture hanging on a wall. By the time Anna had finished settling herself and getting into a becoming attitude, I was ready.
“I was very glad to see you,” I said.
“Were you? How nice of you!”
“Not very. I’m glad to see you because I want an explanation.”
“Do you? How unpleasant!”
Anna does annoy me when she talks like that. I wish she’d realize that making her voice sweet and arching her eyebrows at me simply doesn’t cut any ice at all. If we were only happily uncivilized, I should shake her when she does it. Unfortunately one can’t go about shaking people in modern evening dress-I think it’s rather a pity myself. I expect I glowed a bit, but I wasn’t going to let her put me off. I said,
“Look here, Anna, I want to know straight out whether you’re my employer?”
Her eyebrows went nearly up to the roots of her hair.
“My-dear-Car!”
“Yes or no-are you?”
“No.” She began to laugh. “No, no, no, no.”
“I don’t see anything to laugh at.”
She stopped laughing so suddenly that there was something startling about it. Her face turned tragic. She doesn’t really look her best when she laughs, and I expect she remembered that and switched off into being the tragic muse.
“Why did you say that?” she asked.
“Because I wanted to know. The other day I had an appointment to meet some one with a view to earning five hundred pounds. You and Bobby Markham kept the appointment and took me down to Linwood. You offered me five hundred pounds to do something which I refused to do.” I stopped because I wasn’t sure how much to tell her-I’ve never had what you might call an urge to tell Anna anything about my private affairs. At the same time I’d got to find out whether I was being jockeyed into taking money from her.
She looked at me rather strangely, leaning a little forward in her low chair.
“Yes, Car,” she said; and then, “You refused. I went home. That was all.”
“Was it? That’s what I want to know. You see, next morning I got a letter saying that my original correspondent had not kept his appointment. He made another.”
“You went?” Her voice shook.
“Yes, I went.”
She had turned pale-I swear she had.
“And-”
“Don’t you know?”
“No. Car, can’t you see that I don’t? You must see.” If it had been any one else, I should have said she was speaking the truth. “Tell me what happened.”
“No-I don’t think I will. If you’re not mixed up in it, you’re not. But what I want to know is-why did you butt in on that first appointment of mine? If you’re not in the affair now, what brought you into it then? You say you’re not in it now. Well then, it was a private affair between me and some one else-a very private affair. How did you come to know about it? Why did you keep that appointment? Where, in fact, do you come in?”
She leaned back in her chair as soon as I began to ask my questions. This brought her face into shadow. The little sparkles on her dress caught the light when she moved. Then she stopped moving and there was one of those silences that feel as if they might go on forever. I wasn’t going to break it. I wondered if she was thinking up a lie, or trying to make up her mind to tell the truth. Anyhow, it was up to her.
After a long time she sighed as if she was tired. Then she said,
“Car, if I tell you the truth, will you believe me?”
“Yes-if you tell me the truth,” I said.
“I don’t suppose you will believe me, but this is what happened. I had come up to town, and I was looking for a place in the City where a friend of mine had told me you can get a marvelous reduction on Persian rugs-I wanted one for my bedroom. I couldn’t find the number.”
I wondered what all this rigmarole was about. It sounded to me as if she was giving herself time to invent something, or to put the finishing touches to what she had invented. She looked at me all the time-the dark, mournful gaze stunt.
“There were two men walking just in front of me, and one of them said your name-he really did, Car. So of course I was startled and interested, and I came up a little nearer and listened to what they were saying. You know how people will talk in a London street when they think no one knows them.”
“What did they say?” I asked.
“One of them said, ‘I’ve talked to him on the telephone and made an appointment to meet him to-night at ten o’clock at the corner of Churt Row and Olding Cresce
nt.’ The other man said, ‘Will he come?’ and the first man laughed and said, ‘He’d go farther than Putney for five hundred pounds! So would I if I were in his shoes!’ ”
“Well?” I said.
“They went on talking,” said Anna. “One of them was a little man in glasses, and the other was tall and thin. It was the little man who was going to meet you.”
I wondered about this little man. For the first time, I thought Anna might really be speaking the truth. Z.10 had kept under the shadow of the wall in Olding Crescent; but even in the dark you can tell a little man from a tall one, and I put him down at five foot five or so. And he wore glasses, because he kept putting up his hand and fiddling with them whilst we were talking. It wasn’t so dark but that I could see when we moved.
I said, “A little man with glasses?”
“He had gray hair and a pointed ferrety nose,” said Anna. “He said, ‘Mind you, I shall test him very carefully before I use him. To begin with, I have made an appointment with him for to-night. But I shall not keep it-I shall leave him to kick his heels, and then make another appointment. That will test his temper and his keenness.’ ”
I was getting interested. Anna stopped, so I said,
“Go on.”
“There isn’t any more,” she said. “The tall man looked round, saw how near I was, and said something that I didn’t catch. They began to talk about other things, and a moment later they separated.”
I thought about that. It might have happened. A month ago I was walking down the Strand, and a man and a girl in front of me whom I had never seen before in my life were talking about Billy Rogers who was at my prep school. Things like that happen.
Anna went on looking at me as if she expected me to say something. After a bit I said,
“Why did you keep that appointment?”
She said “Oh!” as if I had made her angry.
“Well,” I said, “it seems to me it’s a very natural thing for me to ask. What made you butt in on a business affair between me and some one you didn’t know anything about?”
She lifted her hand and let it fall again on to her knee.
“I hadn’t seen you for three years.”
That’s the sort of thing that’s most frightfully difficult to answer. It made me angry, and she said quickly,
“You don’t believe that.”
I let that go.
“And what made you think of asking me to forge a check?”
“Hush!” she said. “Car-you promised-you promised!”
I thought she was frightened. She was acting of course. I don’t think she can help acting-but under the acting she was frightened. I came to the conclusion that she really had been monkeying about with Uncle John’s money, and I did just wonder whether she hadn’t told me about it in confidence so as to shut my mouth. I didn’t see how it could have come to my knowledge-but Anna would have known more about that than I did. Well, I thought that was about enough. I pushed back my chair, but she caught hold of my arm.
“You promised, Car! You’ll keep your promise, if you won’t help me in any other way.”
“I won’t forge,” I said, “and I won’t do seven years, if that’s what you mean by helping you,” My temper was getting up a bit.
She still had her hand on my arm. She clenched her fingers down on it, and she said in a sort of whisper,
“You would do it for Isobel.”
I pulled my arm away and got up. She had lost her temper first after all.
“Leave Isobel out of it!” I said.
“You’d do it for her-you would-you would!”
She was one of her rages, all white and shaking. I emptied the watering-pot over her once when we were about eight. That’s the only thing I’ve ever known stop her.
“Isobel would never be in a position to need that sort of help,” I said.
Anna seemed to pull herself together when I said that. She went quiet and still for a minute, but she was frightfully white. I hoped to goodness she wasn’t going to faint-it would be just like her to score off you that way and make you feel what a brute you’d been.
Just as I was thinking that, she said, “No?” She said it under her breath, holding on to the word and making a long question of it.
I’d had enough. Anna’s one of the people who think no one has any nerves, or a temper, or feelings except herself. I turned round and went away. Honestly, I was afraid of what I might do if I stayed.
XVIII
I danced again with Isobel. I didn’t mean to, but she came up and asked me in front of Fay. I only danced about one round, because she wanted to talk to me about my uncle. That’s why she asked me to dance.
We went and sat down at a table, and I ordered her some lemonade-she wouldn’t have anything else. She told me I ought to go and see my uncle, and when I said I couldn’t, she said she thought I would feel different if I were to see him. She says he’s changed a lot, and that several times lately he has spoken about me to her and to Miss Willy.
“You know, Car,” she said, “one doesn’t like to say things like that-but I have thought, and so has Aunt Willy, that he isn’t-” she stopped. “Car, I feel as if it was horrid of me.”
“Never mind about being horrid. What isn’t he?”
The color flew into her cheeks.
“Not-not quite-a free agent.”
“What do you mean, my dear?”
“Anna’s devoted to him, of course,” said Israel, “and she’s run the house and done everything for so many years-she couldn’t have been more than sixteen when Mrs. Carthew died-so it’s natural he should lean on her, but-”
She stopped and looked at me in distress.
I laughed.
“My dear child, if you’re trying to be tactful about Anna, it’s a bit late in the day as far as I’m concerned! I’ve no doubt at all that by this time Uncle John can’t call his soul his own!”
“You’re not quite fair to her. I mean-Car, I don’t think I’m fair to her-at least I hope I’m not-oh dear, I’m getting so tied up! But I do hate saying this sort of thing.”
“I don’t think you need mind what you say about Anna- it’ll always fall a good bit short of the truth.”
“Don’t, Car! And don’t let’s talk about her. I really only wanted you to see that Mr. Carthew needs you.”
“I don’t see it.”
“He does, Car.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he told me.”
“He told you?”
“Yes, he did-really. It was the first time I’d seen him alone for a long time. I was coming up from the village, and I overtook him. He was walking so slowly, not a bit like he used to, and he said, ‘Ah, you young people!’ And when I told him how wonderful I thought he was, he said, ‘That’s all very well, but one wants some one to hand things over to. There’s no one to take an interest, and no one who really cares.’ We were walking along, you know, and talking as we went. I’m only telling you bits.”
“Well-I don’t see where I come in.”
She blushed.
“Don’t be angry, Car. I did say, ‘If Car were here, he could help you.’ ”
I laughed again.
“Jesuit!”
“I’m not. You should have seen how he jumped at it. He looked very gruff, like he always does when he’s feeling anything, and he said, ‘I’m nothing to him. We quarreled, you know. He wouldn’t come near me now. He’s got his pride like the rest of us.’ ” She blushed again, and looked at me in an undermining sort of way.
When Isobel looks at me like that, I would give her the whole of my kingdom if I had one.
“What did you say?” I asked as sternly as I could. I tried to frown, but I don’t know whether I managed it or not. Isobel is frightfully undermining when she blushes.
She looked guilty.
“I said I was sure you’d be ready to make up your side of the quarrel if he really wanted you to.”
“Oh, Isobel!” I said.
/>
“You would-wouldn’t you, Car dear? Because he’s old, and he’s lonely, and he really, really wants you.”
“He’ll have to tell me so,” I said.
“And I thought,” said Isobel, “that if Aunt Willy were to ask you to come and stay-”
I said “No!” and pushed back my chair. Go and stay- see her every day-see Heron making love to her, and not break down and say things that I’ve no business to say to her… I couldn’t do it.
I don’t know what she thought. Her color was all gone. Perhaps she thought I was angry with her-I don’t know. I felt I must get away, because if I didn’t, anything might happen. I didn’t realize that the music of the next dance had begun until Isobel put her hand on my arm.
“I’m dancing this with Giles,” she said, and I took her across the room to where Heron was waiting for her. We did not speak a single word.
I’m afraid Fay must have found me a dull partner.
As soon as I got hold of myself I went over what Isobel had said about my uncle. It seemed to me that it fitted in with Anna’s story. It seemed to me that if Anna knew that Uncle John was wanting to get into touch with me, she might very easily get the wind up and be afraid of my finding out what she’d been up to-that is, if she’d really been messing about with his banking account. And if she was afraid of my finding her out, it would be just like her to try and muzzle me in advance.
The sort of half guess which I had made when she was talking to me looked a good deal more likely now. If I was right, it wouldn’t be the first time Anna had played that trick. I remembered her stopping her nurse’s mouth that way when she couldn’t have been much more than seven. She had thrown a ball through one of the drawing-room windows, and she got nurse to promise she wouldn’t tell Uncle John if she told her something. I don’t know what Nanny thought she was going to tell her, but she promised, and she kept her promise; though I can remember her crying bitterly because I was punished, first for the window (it was my ball) and secondly for telling a lie and saying I hadn’t been near the place. Those are the sort of things that have made me love Anna.
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