“I don’t want to talk about it any more. You go home and think it over. Get Sophy to help you, and—and Tom Mendip-ffollinton. I think you’ll see that all the things you thought so conclusive aren’t really so conclusive as you thought they were.”
Cotty went away feeling rather cold.
XVIII
Jessica darted back into the room and banged the door. She found Evelyn with one arm on the mantelpiece and her face hidden against it.
“I’ll kill that man if he comes here bothering you! I can’t think why somebody hasn’t killed him. Evelyn, what is it?”
Evelyn lifted her head.
“Nothing, Jess. I’ll laugh in a minute. Cotty makes my head go round. I’m trying to sort out what he said from what Sophy said.” She did laugh a little, but very faintly.
Jessica stamped her foot.
“Don’t talk about him unless you want to. I’ll say you’ve gone to Nova Zembla next time he comes.”
Evelyn was gazing abstractedly into the fire. She heard Jessica flounce round, fluffing up cushions and straightening chairs. She looked at the bright flicker of a dozen little yellow flames, but her thoughts were a long way off. She turned presently with a long-drawn breath.
“I’m going to talk to Uncle Henry,” she said, and went to the telephone.
Sir Henry Prothero had just finished breakfast when the bell rang. He was delighted to hear his niece Evelyn’s voice, and said so:
“Very glad you’re back, my dear. Yes, I’m in town. You want me to do something for you? my dear, you know very well that it won’t be any trouble. What is it?” He thought Evelyn’s voice sounded a little strained.
“Cotty’s just been here.”
“My unfortunate child! I thought you sounded depleted.”
A very faint laugh.
“Cotty makes one feel like that, Uncle Henry.”
“My dear.”
“He’s got hold of the most extraordinary mare’s nest—only he called it a germ.”
“A what?”
“A germ. And he, and Sophy and Tom Mendip-ffollinton have boiled it up and developed it.”
“My dear, if I knew what you were talking about!”
“Uncle Henry, he thinks Tony is Jim Field.”
“Tony! Oh—ah—is that what you call him?”
“Yes, darling. I must call him something.”
“Certainly, my dear, certainly. So Cotty thinks he’s Jim Field, does he? Why?”
Evelyn told him why.
“My dear, what a bewildering story!” he said when she had finished.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? And—and, Uncle Henry——”
“Yes? Look here, my dear, would you like me to come round and see you?”
“No, I’ve got to go out. But if you would do something.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to go to the registry office place—Upton Street I think he said it was—and just have a look at the entry of that marriage. I think someone ought to verify it. After all, we don’t know anything about Cotty’s detective, and he may have made the whole thing up.”
“He wouldn’t do that. But of course I’ll go. What was the date?”
Evelyn hesitated.
“December—yes, I think December the seventh; but I’m not sure of the year. He said something about ’13 and ’14, and I’m not sure—no, I can’t be sure. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind looking at ’14 and ’13.”
“All right. And when shall I report? Will you be at home this afternoon?”
“Yes. But don’t come then. We’re having Jessica’s adorable Lovey to tea—her sister’s baby, you know—and we shouldn’t be able to talk. Come to dinner. Jess is going to take the baby home and dine with her sister. Can you do that—eightish?”
Late that afternoon Evelyn’s maid announced Mr Laydon; and Anthony Laydon came in upon what he thought was a very pretty scene. There was still some cold daylight outside, but Evelyn’s apricot curtains were all drawn, and the room was full of firelight and a very soft, golden lamplight. Evelyn was on the hearth-rug, with a fat baby girl of three cuddled up on her lap. She put out a hand.
“Come in. I can’t get up,” she said. “This creature weighs tons and tons and tons.”
The creature shrieked with laughter, beat at Evelyn with five spread-out pink fingers, and said “Not!” in a gurgling contralto.
“Yes, it does. Lovey, say ‘How d’you do?’ Say it nicely.”
Lovey took a peep at the large, strange man. Her eyes reminded Laydon of the story about the dog with eyes like saucers; they were so very round, and so very, very blue. He came up close, and put out rather an awkward hand. Lovey went on staring.
“Do?” she said, gurgled, half turned to Evelyn, and then turned back, putting up a pursed, pink mouth to be kissed. Laydon kissed her solemnly, whereupon she said “Oo!” and flung herself with great suddenness upon Evelyn, catching her round the neck and going off into peals of laughter.
Laydon drew back and sat down in a low chair. He watched the little fat, laughing creature with rather an odd smile. The village children had always thrown stones at Anton Blum. He saw, with his outward vision, Evelyn rocking to and fro in the firelight, her bright hair tumbled by those fat, clutching hands; whilst, pressing upon his inward vision, came a picture of dark trees under snow, a child not much bigger than this child shrieking because he had looked at it; and behind it an older child with hand up-raised to throw, and a sharp-edged flint clutched in the bony fingers.
Evelyn’s voice banished the picture.
“I’m so sorry, Tony. Lovey, be good. Jess is just getting ready to take her home. Oh, Lovey, you’re choking me!”
Lovey bobbed up and down.
“Eve bad! Eve naughty! Lovey want Diggle!”
Evelyn buried her face for a moment in the baby’s neck. Only two people in the world had ever called her Eve. One was this baby thing; and the other—she didn’t know—oh God, she didn’t know whether the other was here in the room with them now or not—not a yard away within reach and touch of her hand. She might guess—but she didn’t know.
Lovey went on bobbing up and down. She patted Evelyn’s hair, her cheek, her shoulder, with little cushiony pats.
“Want Diggle! Want Diggle! Eve bad! Man bad!”
Evelyn looked at Laydon in the fire-light.
“Isn’t it a Iamb?” Her voice melted on the last word. “Cosset lamb,” she said, and kissed the dimpled neck.
The cosset lamb pushed her away with plump, determined hands.
“Want Diggle! Want Cat and Figgle!”
“She wants me to sing,” said Evelyn with a helpless ripple of laughter.
“Sing Diggle!” commanded Lovey.
“Only once then. And then you go home with Jess as good as good.”
“’M,” said the cosset lamb. She settled herself cross-legged in Evelyn’s lap. “Sing Diggle!” she repeated.
Evelyn sang obediently.
“Hey Diggle, Diggle, the Cat and the Figgle——” She turned laughing eyes on Laydon, “She will have it that way——”
Lovey jogged impatiently and held out her hands.
“All right, Ducky.” Evelyn took a pink right hand and pinched the thumb.
“This little Piggle went wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.
This little Piggle went squeak.
This little Piggle gave a wriggle and a giggle.
This little Piggle gave a shriek.
And this little Piggle went giggle, giggle, giggle,
All into Saturday week.”
Each finger was pinched in turn, and the wiggles, wriggles, giggles, squeaks and shrieks were given in the most realistic manner. Lovey’s shriek was one of pure ecstasy, and her giggle the most infectious thing imaginable. She and Evelyn were both at the end of their breath, when Jessica swooped in scolding.
“Lovey, you demon child, come home at once! Evelyn, you’re worse than she is—much worse. Yes, quail, both of you! Nanna�
�s in the hall and she’ll say—well, you know the sort of things she’ll say”—she snatched the reluctant Lovey—“hot—untidy—excited. Come along this minute, Villain!”
She whirled from the room, Lovey laughing all the time. The door banged.
Evelyn turned to Laydon with her hand at her dishevelled hair.
“Jessica’s a whirlwind, but a perfect dear. It didn’t seem quite the moment to introduce you, did it?”
“Not quite.”
Silence fell between them, and a certain constraint. Evelyn leaned back against the big chair behind her. She felt that Laydon was looking at her. Then she heard him move, and risked a quick, upward glance. He was looking past her now into the fire.
His face was thinner than it had been; the heavy lines were fining down. Something in his expression gave Evelyn a sickening pang. She said, on a quick unguarded impulse:
“What is it?”
“I beg your pardon?” Voice and manner were those of a courteous stranger.
Evelyn leaned her elbow on the seat of the chair and shaded her eyes with her hand. The outside door had shut upon Jessica and Lovey; she and Tony were alone in this intimate fire-light. How could they be strangers? How could they not be strangers?
She said, “What is it?” And this time he answered her:
“I was remembering how the children threw stones at Anton Blum.”
“Why?”
It was more like an indrawn breath of pain than a word.
His face kept its hard look.
“I don’t know. I was different—I was dumb. A person who is different is probably dangerous.”
A pause. Evelyn bit her lip hard. Laydon went on speaking:
“Curious how I’m remembering all that time. It gets a bit clearer every day.”
“I wish you didn’t remember. Don’t think back, Tony,—why should you?”
“I don’t do it purposely; it comes. I don’t mind—in fact I’m glad. Being able to remember makes one feel more normal—safer. It would be beastly to have a ten years’ hole in one’s memory.”
Evelyn made a quick half-turn and pulled down the cushion from the chair against which she was leaning. It was a violet-coloured cushion with gold tassels. She pushed it down behind her back, and leaning against it, said,
“I saw Anna Blum the other day. You know I’ve been over in Cologne?”
“Yes, I heard. I’m very glad you saw Anna, because I’m most awfully worried about her. I asked Monkey to find out how she was getting along. You see, the story was bound to leak out, and I was afraid she might be having a perfectly rotten time. Monkey wrote and said he was afraid the people round had rather sent her to Coventry. You know, the more I remember, the more I realize how extraordinarily good she was to me. So I wrote and asked her if she would come over here. My grandfather offered her the South Lodge.”
“She wouldn’t,” said Evelyn quickly.
“No, I thought not too. But I had to do something. I got her answer this morning.” He laughed a little grimly. “Just one line written very neatly: ‘I stay with my own people.’ Just like Anna!”
“I think she’s an extraordinary person,” said Evelyn. “She made me feel that I couldn’t help believing every word she said. But she made me feel too that no one would ever get her to say a single word more than she meant to say. When I’d seen her, I could understand how she’d managed the whole thing—I couldn’t before.”
Laydon nodded without speaking. Silence again. This time it held no constraint. Laydon felt it invade his unquiet thoughts and touch them for the moment at least, into contentment. On the table at Evelyn’s elbow there was a jade bowl full of violets. They brought a wild, sweet breath from the spring woods into the room. It was ten years since he had seen these little dark violets bloom in an English wood, ten years since he had sat with Evelyn in the fire-light. Just for a space the intimate moment held him—a golden moment in a golden room—Evelyn in that familiar attitude, her arm propped by the violet cushion, the folds of her dull blue dress against the dim mosaic of the Persian carpet. He had a sense of homecoming, a sense of what home might be. If things had gone differently with him and Evelyn, this might have been his home, and the little laughing creature who had kissed him his child and hers. A chill came over his mood, blowing in on the enchanted moment like a cold east wind. He frowned, and said in a rough, impatient voice:
“How am I to talk to you? I can’t talk to you as if you were a stranger—and yet how else am I to talk?”
Evelyn started. It was the echo of her own thought, but it was strange that he should give it words. She looked down at her folded hands, and said quietly,
“Of course I know what you mean. But can’t we just be natural? I’m sure it’s the best way. I mean if there’s anything you want to say, say it. I shan’t mind.” With the last word she looked up, met an intensely frowning gaze, and smiled suddenly and sweetly. “I’m not a frightfully terrifying person after all, Tony.”
“No,” said Laydon. “But you see—Evelyn, can you see how—how stranded I am? I’m remembering my own ten years—it comes a bit clearer every day; but I can’t remember yours. You have put in ten years that I don’t know anything at all about—everyone has. It gives one the most extraordinary, disconnected feeling, just as if something had come unhooked in the middle. No, that sounds—I can’t get it right.”
“Oh, but I know, I do know. Tony, won’t you let me help you? I could, you know.”
“Could you?” The inflexion of his voice pulled Evelyn up short. He looked past her, and stared at the bowl of violets. After a moment he said, “What do you do with yourself? What have you done with yourself all this time? Do you mind my asking?”
“No. Why should I mind? I haven’t any dark secrets.” She laughed a little; but his face did not relax. “It’s a very simple history really. I was in Gertrude Hinton’s hospital as long as the war lasted; in fact I didn’t get away until the middle of ’19. And then I took a holiday—a good, long one. Then Monkey was ordered to Egypt, and Lacy wanted to go too, so I took Don. He was such a darling; I did love having him. I got this flat, and Jessica joined me. The family were perfectly happy as soon as they saw that her hair was grey.” Evelyn gurgled. “It’s frightfully comic when you know Jessica. She doesn’t even see conventions as a rule, or know that they exist; but if by any chance one is, as it were, forced upon her, she just naturally yearns to smash it to atoms and sing The Red Flag among the ruins. However, as the family didn’t know that, it was perfectly happy. Aunt Clorinda—do you remember Aunt Clorinda?—absolutely purred over Jessica; and you know what a dragon she was.”
“Do dragons purr?” said Laydon in an odd voice.
The tears rushed scalding to Evelyn’s eyes. He had said it just without thinking—playing up to her nonsense. It was almost the old voice, the old teasing way; only at the end he should have turned smiling, teasing eyes on hers and caught at her with teasing hands. He neither smiled nor looked at her. The tears burned, and dried.
Laydon was conscious of something that he could hardly control. So many years in a hospital, so many years of looking after Lacy’s child—so much anyone could have told him. It was like looking from the street at the outside of a house where every window is tightly shuttered. He wanted to say to Evelyn, “Tell me about you, the real you. How many men have loved you? How many men have wanted to marry you in those ten years? Why didn’t you care for any of them? Why didn’t you marry?” That was the question he wanted to ask and couldn’t ask. “Why didn’t you marry, Evelyn? Why didn’t you marry?” The paragraph that he had read in Manning’s dining-room at Cologne came up before him, word for odious word.
XIX
The telephone bell rang in the dining-room. Evelyn pulled herself up by the arm of the chair against which she was leaning and ran out of the room. She left the door open, and Laydon could hear every word of the one-sided conversation which followed.
“Oh, Chris, is that you?”
Wh
o was Chris? Someone had mentioned a Chris Ellerslie, and had then changed the subject abruptly.
“No, I can’t to-night. How eleventh-hourish of you! Uncle Henry’s coming to me. Tomorrow? Yes, I think I can—yes, I’d like to most awfully. What time? My dear Chris, how frivolous that sounds! Shall we be awfully late?”
He heard her laugh and say au revoir. Then she came back into the room smiling, and picked up the violet cushion. She set it decorously back into its place on the big chair, and in some indefinable way Laydon felt that it was time for him to go. He made no move to go however, but stood looking down into the fire.
Who was Chris Ellerslie that Evelyn should look like that for him? Why had Monkey changed the subject when somebody mentioned the fellow’s name? He tried to steady himself against the black gusts of angry jealousy which beat upon his self-control. If he had come home to find Evelyn lost to him, it would have been as bitter as death; but to come home, to find her free, and to see her go to another man before his eyes—this was unimaginable torment. He thrust himself against it with bitter determination. Still looking down into the flames, he said, in a voice as casual as he could make it,
“By the bye, I meant to ask you—will you dine with me to-morrow?”
Evelyn’s half-laughing “Oh, I can’t” came from nearer than he had expected. He swung round to find her not a yard away, and seeing her like that, he received a strange, vivid impression of colour, bloom, and gaiety.
“Oh, I can’t. You’re just too late. I’ve promised Chris Ellerslie.” Her eyes held a dancing, challenging sparkle; they laughed at him and said quite plainly, “You heard me—you must have heard me.”
“Who is Chris Ellerslie?” His voice was as rough as the question.
Evelyn’s colour rose ever so little; her dimple showed.
“He’s a very old friend. We’re going to be terribly frivolous and dine and dance and sup together. I haven’t danced for—oh, about three weeks.”
Under his look she turned suddenly nervous. The room seemed full of queer, unexplained waves of emotion; his eyes had a dark look—a dark, smouldering look. She stepped back and picked up the jade bowl full of violets. For a moment she bent her face to them; then she came back and held the bowl up to Laydon, laughing to hide the flutter in her voice.
The Amazing Chance Page 13
