PEARL PALLISER
391 Morningdale Road.
She looked at it for a long time. Then she put the map away in a drawer, and sat down in the big arm-chair by the hearth, still holding the paper tightly.
There was a fire burning in the grate, a small, bright fire that sent out a pleasant warmth. Evelyn was quite horribly cold. After about five minutes she leaned forward and dropped the paper into the fire. For a moment it lay on the red embers, whilst a faint brown stain crept across white surface and pencilled scrawl. Then, with a little puff of flame, it was gone, leaving a thin, trembling sheet of black ash which suddenly fell away into nothingness.
Evelyn was cold because she had had a shock. If the red embers into which she stared had reproduced first the black ash, then the scorching sheet, and finally the white paper which she had thrown on them, she would hardly have been more startled. It was just over ten years since she had seen that address at the head of a letter and read Pearl Palliser’s name signed at the foot of it.
She went down on her knees and spread her hands to the fire. It was all over long ago. But it had hurt so dreadfully at the time. Jack Laydon and she just three days engaged, and Lacy their only confidante. She had been so frightfully happy, so frightfully excited when the post came in and brought her his first letter. Phrases from it came back to her now: “I’ve never cared for anyone before. I never thought I could care for anyone like this”; and then lower down, “I’ve had a ripping letter from Lacy which I’m sending for you to see.”
Evelyn had read her love-letter twice before she picked up and unfolded the enclosure, which was not from Lacy. It was headed 391 Morningdale Road. And it was signed “Pearl Palliser.” Between heading and signature an extraordinary medley of abuse, appeal, and slang. Odd scraps of it rose up in Evelyn’s mind: “Of course, if you’ve got off with an heiress—Jacky, you swore you loved me”; and at the end, “You needn’t think I care, or that I can’t get a dozen as good as you and better.”
Evelyn drew her hands back sharply, because they were scorching. If Jack hadn’t been the careless creature that he was, she would have married him, not Jim—married him in the spring of 1915.
The front door bell rang. When the maid showed Sir Henry Prothero in, Evelyn was standing looking down into the fire, a little pale, but ready to return an affectionate greeting and an affectionate kiss.
“What a nice surprise!”
“A surprise is it? I drove Laydon up, and told him to tell you I was coming round. I suppose he forgot.”
“I suppose he did.”
Sir Henry plunged straight into the middle of what he had come to say:
“Fact is, my dear, I was particularly anxious to see you. I couldn’t catch you yesterday.”
“I ran away,” said Evelyn. “It’s better to funk than to make a fool of yourself; and I couldn’t stand another minute of it. Monkey was an angel; he drove me back to town, and let me cry all the way.”
Sir Henry leaned forward and patted her shoulder. “Much the best thing you could do, my dear. And that brings me to what I was going to say. You went away so suddenly that no one had any opportunity of asking what you thought about it all.”
Evelyn was silent.
“Did you, my dear, for instance, come to any—conclusion?”
She looked at him then, her blue eyes bright and dark.
“You mean, did I recognize him?”
“Well, I don’t know that I meant quite so much as that. I think I meant just what I said—did you come to any conclusion?”
She did not answer, but, after looking at him for a little longer, turned away with an impatient movement.
“Why—I don’t know what you mean.”
“You see,” said Sir Henry very gently, “as far as Sir Cotterell and the estate are concerned, the matter is really settled. But as regards yourself—well, it’s all quite in the air.”
A little flicker of colour showed in Evelyn’s cheeks.
“If I don’t know already just how delicate my position is, it isn’t for want of telling. No, that’s beastly of me, because you’re a lamb, and you do really want to help. But, darling, have you any idea of how exasperating it is to be in a delicate position, and have everybody in the family telling you so and watching you through miscroscopes and telescopes and periscopes? It makes my blood boil, and it makes me want to go and do something frightfully compromising. So if you hear I’ve eloped, don’t be surprised.”
Sir Henry laughed.
“Where are you going to elope to?”
“Cologne, I think,—with Monkey. But don’t tell anyone, please.”
He looked surprised, then nodded.
“Lacy’ll do the telling.”
“Let her. It won’t matter by then.”
“Well, well,” he said. “Now look here, my dear. I come into this matter from outside as it were, because I never saw the Laydon boys after they grew up, and even as boys I never really knew them. But you knew them intimately for years before you married Jim. And you haven’t answered what I came here to ask you. There must be things that strike you one way or another, quite apart from features and what is ordinarily called a likeness—the little unconscious or half-conscious things, like the way a man gets up, comes into a room, shakes hands; and the things that spring out of character and temperament. Those are the things I want to know about.”
“I can’t help you,” said Evelyn. “He’s different—he isn’t like either of them.”
“H’m. Well, there’s another thing—and you’ll just have to forgive me for speaking about it. Laydon has the most extraordinary self-control, but when you came into the room yesterday he wanted every bit of it. Now, my dear, you have just to consider what that points to.”
“It doesn’t point to anything, I’m afraid.”
“Why doesn’t it?”
“Because they both—they both—cared.”
“I didn’t know that.”
Evelyn looked up defiantly. There was a little moisture on her lashes.
“Lacy knew. She doesn’t tell everything, you see, darling.”
“H’m! Well, you’ve taken away my best clue. You’re not very communicative, you know, Evelyn. And yet——” He passed his hand slowly over his chin and asked, “Which was the untidy one?”
“Jack,” said Evelyn before she knew that she was going to answer him.
“He was? A bit careless too?”
“Yes.”
Yes, Jack was careless enough, or she would never have seen that letter from “Pearl Palliser.” Now Jim could no more have enclosed the wrong letter—Jim——With startling distinctness she saw the scrap of paper with the address on it, left carelessly between the folds of her map. She spoke suddenly, eagerly:
“Uncle Henry, darling, what’s the good of all this? It’s like trying to dig up things that are dead and buried. He isn’t Jack, and he isn’t Jim; he’s someone who’s lived ten years away from us in a dream and come back different. We can’t dig things up and put them together again, and it’s no use trying. If we could do it, I shouldn’t want to do it. I don’t want the past—it’s gone, it’s dead, I want to let it go. I want the present, and the future. And I want time—time for both of us. Don’t you see, we’ve got to find our feet, and find out where we are and what we want?”
She came up close to him, looking extraordinarily beautiful, with the tears in her eyes and the colour in her cheeks.
“Don’t let them rush us! That’s the thing I’m most afraid of—being rushed before we know—before we know. Make them keep quiet! Make them leave us alone. You can if you will—but will you?”
Sir Henry put a large hand on her shoulder.
“My dear child,” he said. “My dear child.”
“Will you? Will you?” Her eyes were as insistent as her voice, insistent and yet soft.
“I’ll do my best. And mind you, I think you’re right, my dear—right, and wise. But, you know, it’s all easier said than done. Famili
es aren’t so easily kept quiet.”
“Darling, you’re so frightfully clever. You can do it if you like. And if you think I’m right, you’ll like doing it, and everything will be quite all right.”
Evelyn said “Darling” in rather a charming way; there was just a little emphasis on the last syllable, a little inflection of the voice that took it right out of a form and made it very personal. Sir Henry was not unaffected by this charm. He patted his niece’s shoulder and observed:
“Manning won’t bother you. And I can manage Cotterell—I think I may say that I can manage Cotterell—for a time, you know. But I can’t undertake to keep Cotty Abbott off the war-path.”
Evelyn broke into a ripple of laughter. “I just saw Cotty with feathers in his hair and a tomahawk. And oh, wouldn’t Sophy make a lovely squaw!” Then, suddenly grave and low-voiced: “Is Cotty on the war-path?”
“I’m afraid he is,” said Sir Henry.
When Sir Henry Prothero had gone, Evelyn rang Manning up. She smiled when she heard his rather cross “Hullo!”
“It’s me, Monkey—Evelyn. Do a nicer voice, please.”
“My voice is my misfortune, not my fault.”—It was still rather cross.
“Pouf!” said Evelyn. “That’s a kiss I’m blowing you. Feel any better?”
“H’m. What do you want?”
“How dreadfully suspicious, Monkey!”
“It’s not suspicion; it’s certainty. It is the old married man who speaks. Lacy always wants something when she coos. What is it?”
“I think you’re nearly too clever to live, Monkey—not quite, but nearly.”
“Woman, what do you want?”
“I want to come to Cologne with you.”
“An elopement?”
“With Lacy at the other end—yes.”
“My good girl, why?”
Her voice dropped half a tone.
“I want to see Anna Blum.”
She heard Manning whistle. Then he said:
“The deuce you do! Well, I’m off to-morrow. What about a passport?”
“Oh, Pat Winter’ll manage that for me. I’ll ring him up. What about your job—have you got it?”
“Yes, worse luck.” He sounded very cross indeed. “Lacy’ll like it; but I shan’t—regular office-stool, nose-in-the-ledger stunt.”
“Lacy’ll love it,” said Evelyn with conviction.
XV
Lacy Manning sat curled up in a big arm-chair one foot dangling, the other tucked beneath her. The electric lamp on the table behind her diffused a becomingly shaded light over the slim, rose-coloured figure. Lacy was sewing, and as her hand moved to and fro, her rings caught the light and sent it back in sparkles of blue, and red, and green. The dangling foot wore a golden shoe.
“You know, Evelyn,” said Lacy, “you know Monkey was simply fiendish to me about the whole thing. Now I’m sure he told you a whole lot of nonsense about my being quite muddled—I’m sure he did.” She took little, vicious stitches that stabbed the fine white stuff on which she was sewing.
Evelyn, in the opposite chair, laughed a little. She was leaning back, her arms along the arms of the chair, her head tilted against a brilliant emerald cushion. This vivid green and the golden lights in her hair alone broke from the shadow which covered half the room.
Lacy, frowning and looking across at her cousin, could not really see whether Evelyn smiled or not.
“Didn’t he?” she repeated. “I know he did, because I know what a fiend Monkey can be.”
Evelyn laughed again.
“And weren’t you muddled, Lacy?”
Lacy stopped sewing.
“No, of course not—not really. Of course, just at first—just for the minute, you know,—well, it was really too bewildering. What would anyone feel like if they opened their own dining-room door and saw a perfectly strange person about eight feet high, in a counterpane and a beard, calling them ‘Lacy.’”
“Poor old Lacy!”
“I fainted,” said Lacy with modest pride—“naturally. And afterwards—well, of course it was most dreadfully agitating. I mean, when I really did see him—next day, you know—I kept thinking of you, darling; and of course I couldn’t help feeling upset and confused. But afterwards—afterwards, when I thought it all over, I wasn’t a bit confused; and I made up my mind then—I don’t care what Monkey says—I made it up then and there.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, I did. You know, Evelyn, Monkey doesn’t believe a bit in woman’s intuition. And I believe in it most firmly. Don’t you?”
“Depends, my child.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, supposing your woman’s intuition said one thing, and mine said another?”
“You’re laughing at me. I didn’t think you’d laugh about a thing like this.”
Evelyn’s left hand just rose and fell again. There was a dark gleam from the one ring she wore above her wedding-ring, a dark emerald gleam.
“If I couldn’t laugh——”
“Well, I couldn’t. I think you’re frightfully hard to understand, Evelyn.”
Evelyn laughed quite naturally.
“I know—‘Life is real, life is earnest.’ “Well what did your woman’s intuition say?”
Lacy pressed her lips together. Her eyebrows rose, making perfect arches over dark, reproachful eyes.
“You know you mean to tell me, so you’d better out with it.”
Evelyn’s voice was lazily teasing, but her hands tightened a little on the chintz-covered arms of her chair.
“I tell you because I think you ought to be told, and because—Evelyn, when I went over it all in my own mind afterwards, I was sure, quite sure, which one of them it was.”
“Were you?”
“Yes, I was.”
“And which was it?”
“Oh, I’m sure that he’s Jack,” said Lacy in her high, sweet voice. She dropped her work and gazed in Evelyn’s direction, wishing with all her heart that she could see her cousin’s face, and not just golden hair against a green cushion. All the light seemed drawn to a focus about her own rose-coloured figure. The other side of the room was deeply washed with shadow; the chair in which Evelyn sat looked black and formless. Evelyn in her dark dress was just a shadow in the shadow; her hands, on the arms of the chair, showed pale against the dusk background; her face was a pale oval whose features could hardly be discerned.
“Jack?” said Evelyn. Her voice was quite toneless.
“Yes, I’m sure he’s Jack—I’m quite sure, Evelyn.”
“Why—Jack?”
“That’s what I want to tell you. I’ve had plenty of time to think about it, you know, with Monkey away; and the more I think about it, the more certain I am.”
“But why?”
Lacy leaned forward, needle in hand, her colour bright and clear.
“I’ll tell you. I think you ought to know. You know that horrid paragraph in The Weekly Whisper?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I brought the paper over with me to show Monkey; and he was so furious that he just pitched it into a corner of the room.”
“But I don’t see what that’s got to do——”
“Wait! I’m telling you. Monkey pitched it on to a chair. Well, when I came in—it all happened in the dining-room, you know—when I came in and saw him, Jack,—only of course I never thought of it’s being Jack till afterwards, what with the beard and the counterpane, and his saying ‘Lacy,’ and my fainting——”
“Yes—go on.”
“I am going on, darling.” Lacy’s voice was reproachful. “I am telling you, and you mustn’t interrupt. Well, when I went in and he said ‘Lacy!’, I saw that wretched paper all crumpled up on the floor; and it wasn’t where Monkey had thrown it at all, but over by the window, right in front of the bureau.”
“Oh!” It wasn’t a word, but a sharply indrawn breath.
“I didn’t think of it at the time because of it’s all being
so frightfully upsetting. But afterwards I thought of it a lot. And I’m sure, I’m quite sure that he’d picked it up and read the paragraph about you, and then he’d scrumpled it and thrown it down in a fury just like Monkey did.” She drew a long complacent breath and leaned back. “So that’s why I’m quite sure it’s Jack.”
“Oh,” said Evelyn again; and then, “You know, you’ve left out a good deal. Suppose you fill in the gaps. I don’t see why he should be Jack just because he read that disgusting paragraph—if he did read it.”
“I’m sure he read it. Don’t you see that it explains everything? He read the paragraph, and he realized that he’d been away for ten years.” She shuddered lightly. “I think it’s horribly creepy. That’s the first thing he’d take in. And then he’d see from that paragraph that you weren’t married yet, but that you—well, that you were thinking about it, or at any rate that people thought you were thinking about it. Oh, Evelyn, don’t you see? He always adored you. Poor Jack! He did—you know he did. And I never could make out why you threw him over. Don’t you see, all in the same moment it must have come home to him that he’d been away ten years, and that you were a widow, and that he’d got a chance again if only he could gain time?”
“Time!” said Evelyn. “Time!” There was a note of bitterness in the pretty, quiet voice. “After ten years—time, more time!”
“Yes,” said Lacy, speaking eagerly. “You see, he’d want time more than anything. If he could only stop you getting engaged to anyone else, don’t you see—and of course you couldn’t get engaged to anyone else as long as you didn’t know whether you were a widow or not—Evelyn, you must see.”
As the disjointed sentences tumbled over one another, Evelyn sat up and leaned forward, her hands pressed together on her knees.
“Lacy, stop! You don’t know what you’re saying!”
“Yes, I do.”
“You’re talking as if he knew who he was all the time, and was just pretending not to know in order——”
The Amazing Chance Page 10
