“Well, well—this is great!”
And then, before he could say anything else, Lucilla came up with her partner and he was introducing them.
“This is Lucilla, and this is my son, Richard. But perhaps you’ve already met.”
Sarah opened smiling lips, but she looked at Lucilla before she spoke. The child was wearing a white shirt and a short black skirt, with black stockings and white tennis shoes. Her face, which had been so pale in the light of Sarah’s electric torch, had the prettiest wild-rose flush. Her hair, as soft and fine and fair as a baby’s, stood out all round her head like a halo. Her round innocent eyes met Sarah’s and said a very plain and insistent no.
Sarah’s smile widened. She beamed amiably at the little group and said,
“I think Lucilla was out.”
“So you didn’t meet?” Uncle Geoffrey’s tone was very pleasant.
“I was out with Ricky,” said Lucilla abruptly, and then suddenly the colour ran right up to the roots of her hair. She dropped her racket and stooped to pick it up again.
“Odd child,” thought Sarah. She took a look at the third Hildred, and decided that he wasn’t nearly so good-looking as his father. If Lucilla was having an affair with him, she was a little fool and it was high time she had someone to look after her. She thought Master Ricky looked a good deal of a milksop, a pale watered down edition of his papa—tall, slight, fair, and very well pleased with himself, with the pale blue eyes which make you think of skim milk.
Presently, while Lucilla and Ricky finished their game, Geoffrey Hildred talked very sympathetically about his ward.
“I hope you’ll rouse her—take her about, get her out of some of this heavy black. Miss Hildred is old-fashioned and she doesn’t realize how bad it is for Lucilla to live under a perpetual reminder of her loss. It’s all very sad, very regrettable, but everyone has his own life to live. I don’t mind telling you I have been very deeply concerned about Lucilla. There have been times when I have been afraid, but—well, it isn’t necessary to go into that now. You will, I am sure, do her a world of good. But there’s just one thing—”
Sarah gazed at him in the manner of the earnest neophyte awaiting instruction. As she did so, she felt quite sure that she was receiving full marks for tact and womanly sympathy. Uncle Geoffrey’s fine blue eyes dwelt on her with approbation.
“Just one thing,” he pursued. “You have your own car, I believe. Well, I am afraid that at first—yes, at any rate at first—Miss Hildred would rather you did not take Lucilla out in it. There is an old Daimler, and a very trustworthy chauffeur who will be at your disposal whenever my cousin is not requiring him, but for the present she is much alarmed at the idea of your driving Lucilla.”
Sarah’s face fell. It sounded unutterably stuffy and hum-drum.
“There are many pleasant expeditions which you could make,” said Mr. Hildred consolingly. “It is really no distance to the sea. It is a pity you were not here earlier, but really the weather is so wonderful that bathing is still quite possible. That would be excellent for Lucilla, quite excellent. I hope you swim.”
Sarah swam. She had swum with Eleanor Manifold. They talked about the Manifolds.
When Lucilla had finished her game, she took Sarah round the garden. As soon as they were out of sight, she looked sideways out of those round blue eyes of hers and said,
“They’re all potty about cars. If they’d known you had nearly run me over, you’d have been in the soup.”
“I?” said Sarah indignantly.
Lucilla’s gaze became full, wide, and innocent.
“Of course,” she said. “Tearing down the drive like that and knocking me over!” She began to giggle. “You know, Aunt Marina thinks cars ought to be forbidden to go more than five miles an hour by Act of Parliament. If you’re ever really desperately keen on stroking her the right way, you try saying you think so too. It’s never been known to fail.”
“Thank you,” said Sarah.
“You needn’t. Look here, you didn’t go and promise only to take me out in the Daimler with Morris driving it as if it was a hearse, did you? A push-bike’s better fun than that. I’ve got a new one, but the other’s still quite rideable. Here—this is supposed to be the spot view, if you’re keen on views.”
They had come suddenly from a path between crowding bushes to the open top of a knoll. It was surprising to see how far they were above the village. The thatched roofs looked like a line of haystacks grouped about the church. You could see the road with its hedgerows and elm trees, and you could see woodland, and yellow reaped fields, and pasture where the grass was green again after the rain, a stretch of pleasant, peaceful country losing itself towards the horizon in the autumn haze.
“That’s Holme Fallow,” said Lucilla, and pointed. Her voice changed on the name as if she forced it a little.
Sarah looked first at her and then along the line of the pointing finger. An odd child Lucilla. She saw the road running on away from the village, and, perhaps a mile away, the chimney-stacks of a house lifting from amongst trees. It looked to be a big house with a park about it. The road forked and enclosed the park as a stream divides to encircle a rock.
Sarah looked at the chimney-stacks, and had thoughts. She said,
“What is Holme Fallow?”
“It’s mine,” said Lucilla.
“Yours?”
Lucilla’s hand dropped to her side. She went on looking at Holme Fallow.
“Yes, it’s mine, but I’ve never lived there. I shall some day. I hate this house—don’t you?”
“No—why should I? Why do you hate it?”
Lucilla gave a laugh which was not in the least like the schoolgirl giggle of a little while before. It had a dry, unmirthful sound.
“Oh, it’s a first-class house—central heating, hot and cold water in all the bedrooms, and every modern convenience, like the house-agents’ blurb always says. It doesn’t belong to me, thank goodness. It was my step-father’s, and the Guardians have taken it on from the nephew who came in for everything. He’s in India, so he doesn’t want it himself.”
“Would you like to live at Holme Fallow?” said Sarah idly.
Lucilla flushed and was silent. Then she said,
“Nobody’s lived there since the war. I was born there, and then—my great-grandfather died—and Mummy married my step-father—and Uncle Henry never came home.”
“You mean he was killed?”
“No, he wasn’t killed, but he never came home. He had shell-shock and he couldn’t keep still. He had to go on travelling all the time, and he never came home. He died about six months ago.” She had spoken in a low, expressionless voice. Suddenly it changed and came alive again. “Would you like to go over and see the house? They won’t let me go alone, because Aunt Marina’s an old fusty-fuss, but no one could object to my going with my chaperon.”
“Am I a chaperon?” said Sarah laughing.
“You ought to know. You’re either a chaperon or a governess, and we might just as well get it quite dear at the very start that I’m not going to be governessed.” She shook back her hair and tilted an impudent head.
Sarah laughed again.
“I’m not really set on being a governess,” she said.
“No—you don’t look like one, thank goodness. I was going to make your life a hell on earth, but I’m calling it off for the present. We’ll go and look at Holme Fallow to-morrow and sleuth the burglar.”
Sarah had more thoughts—very quick, disturbing ones. She hoped her voice was all right when she said,
“What burglar?”
Lucilla clutched her arm and swung it to and fro.
“Why, it was the day you were here. You know, when you came down to see the Guardians and nearly killed me. Whilst you were doing all that, someone was burgling Holme Fallow. You see, there’s a caretaker called Snagge, and he went out at six and he didn’t come back till eleven, because he’d been in to Ledlington to the pictures. And he d
idn’t notice anything that night, but next day he came up here all of a doodah and said the place had been burgled. There were damp footmarks up the steps to the side door, and in the passages, and all over the parquet, and a desk had been broken open and what not. Aunt Marina was in a most frightful fuss. A car had been driven right up to the house, which was pretty fair nerve, but I suppose they knew Snagge would be out. Everyone in the village knows that he and Mrs. Snagge go in to Ledlington on Thursday evenings. They’ve been doing it for years, so I expect the burglar knew. And the village policeman, who is a nice fat old grampus called Minnow, says he thinks it was a gang, because another car had been standing by the west drive and there were marks where petrol had been spilt.”
Sarah breathed an inward “Golly!” Then she opened her mouth to speak and shut it again. The suspicions which had come to her when she first beheld the chimney-stacks of Holme Fallow were being most painfully confirmed. She had most undoubtedly seen the burglar at his burgling. But would it really be a good plan to say so? Would it really give her what you might call a good start with the Guardians? She had a horrid feeling that it would not. They would probably think, and say, that she ought to have sought out Mr. Minnow and told him what she had seen instead of blinding off to town to meet Ran. Silence looked very golden to Sarah Trent. She closed her lips firmly and let Lucilla go on talking.
CHAPTER VII
They went next day to Holme Fallow. It took much longer on a bicycle than it had done in The Bomb. Sarah remembered where she had turned, but instead of following the left-hand fork of the road Lucilla kept straight on until they came to a lodge and a pair of iron gates.
Mrs. Snagge came out of the lodge to let them in. She was a little woman with a long sharp nose and a tight mouth.
Lucilla leaned on her bicycle and said good morning.
“This is the way the burglar came in,” she said to Sarah.
Sarah looked at the big gates which Mrs. Snagge was opening.
“Aha! That’s where the fun comes in!” said Lucilla. “I say, Mrs. Snagge, did you tell Minnow how the burglar got in?”
Mrs. Snagge pursed up her lips.
“There’s no saying—” she began, but Lucilla cut her short.
“Oh yes, there is. You know, and Snagge knows, and I know, that you left the gates open.”
“I’m sure, Miss Lucilla—” The woman’s voice shook, but Sarah thought it was with anger. Her eyes were resentful too.
“So am I,” said Lucilla sternly—“quite, quite sure. You always do leave them open when you go into Ledlington, because it saves trouble when you get back late.” She laughed a little. “You needn’t be afraid—I shan’t give you away.”
Mrs. Snagge sniffed and gulped.
“And what difference could it have made when all’s said and done, with the other drive that’s never had no gates to it, not in my time nor in Snagge’s anyway, and nothing to stop anyone going up it day nor night?”
“Well, the burglar came this way—didn’t he?” said Lucilla, and then she jumped on her bicycle again and rode up the drive.
Sarah followed her. The drive was newly gravelled and neatly swept. The marks of the burglar’s tyres must have been quite easy to see.
They came out upon a wide flat space before the house and left their bicycles leaning against the wall.
There is always something mournful about an empty house. Holme Fallow was beautiful, but it looked dead. The ground-floor windows were shuttered, and those above shut close, and blank. Lucilla looked up, frowning, and then led the way round to the side door which Sarah remembered only too well. That was where the other drive came up, and this was where she had stood in the dark and seen the lighted window spring suddenly into view. Those were the steps which she had mounted.
Silence continued to be golden.
They went along the passage and into the big hall, which was nearly as dark as it had been at night. No—once your eyes got accustomed to the change, it was only dusk that filled it and not darkness. The stairs went up at the far end, and they went up into the light, as if there were a window which lighted them just round the turn. They went up to a small landing, divided, and went on again. The window which lighted them was round the left-hand turn.
Sarah nodded. Yes, of course, that was it—that was the window at which she had seen the light, and the burglar had been coming down the stairs.
Lucilla came close up to her and put a hand on her arm.
“Do you have feelings about houses? What does Holme Fallow feel like?”
Sarah considered. She had come into it happily enough, and then she had been frightened. But that was because of the burglar; it had nothing to do with the house. She tried to put all that out of her thoughts and start fresh. After a moment she said tentatively,
“It’s—old—”
“Some of it’s sixteenth-century. The front is Queen Anne.”
Sarah tried again.
“It’s—friendly—” Some houses weren’t friendly, especially empty houses. They made you feel as if you were pushing in upon their private affairs. Holme Fallow was friendly.
“Yes,” said Lucilla. Her hand dropped from Sarah’s arm. “Some day I shall live here.” And with that she went on across the hall and opened the door which had been open when Sarah came that way before.
The room beyond was quite dark now, but Lucilla crossed it without having to grope her way. The next moment a long streak of light broke the dark and widened there. The middle shutter went back with a creaking sound and the daylight came in. There was bright, warm sun outside. Lucilla opened all the other shutters, and dusted her hands on her skirt.
“Snagge’s a lazy hound,” she said. “He ought to have all the windows open on a day like this.” Then she turned back to the room and waved a grimy hand. “Family portraits—” They hung round three sides of the room in heavy tarnished frames.
A tall fair youth in the riding-clothes of the eighteen-fifties, and opposite to him something very fair and fragile in ringlets and a crinoline.
“Great-grandfather and great-grandmother at the time of their marriage.” Lucilla’s voice was quiet and serious. “She didn’t live very long. He only died the year I was born.… That’s my grandfather. He was their only child, and he was killed out hunting before he was thirty. That was done when he was twenty-one.”
Sarah looked and saw another fair young man with a scarlet coat, and breeches which looked as if they must have been too tight to ride in.
“That’s my father and his brothers, when they were all children.”
This picture was the last on the wall facing the windows. It showed John Hildred’s three children. Lucilla named them in order of age.
“That’s Uncle Henry. He was about five. And that’s my father next to him. He was three and a half. And the baby is Uncle Maurice.”
Henry Hildred had his hand on his little brother’s shoulder. He stared haughtily out of the picture—a very fair, handsome child with an air of having bought the earth. Jack, in a linen smock, had an apple at which he seemed to look longingly, whilst the baby Maurice, in an embroidered muslin dress, sat placidly on the grass at their feet. They were all fair and rosy, with the same grey-blue eyes. Jack and Maurice were round and chubby of face.
Sarah was looking at the baby.
“I didn’t know you had an Uncle Maurice. Your aunt didn’t mention him. She talked about Henry and Jack.”
“Jack’s my father,” said Lucilla. “She doesn’t talk about Maurice much, because it makes her cry, and she wouldn’t want to cry when she was interviewing you. She was most awfully fond of him.”
“Is he dead?”
“They don’t think so, but of course he must be.”
“Who’s they, and why don’t they know?”
“Well, he was missing in 1918, but Aunt Marina always swore he wasn’t dead.”
“But why?”
“Oh, because she just couldn’t bear it, I suppose. She thinks he’s aliv
e, and what’s more Uncle Geoffrey thinks so too.”
“But why? I mean why doesn’t he come home if he’s alive?”
Lucilla frowned.
“They think he’s wandering about in the States, or Canada, or somewhere like that. You know, Uncle Henry kept wandering and wouldn’t come back, so that makes it seem more likely. And then a client of Uncle Geoffrey’s told him he’d met someone who was most awfully like the Hildreds, and he and Aunt Marina made up their minds it was Maurice. But I’m sure he’s dead.”
Dead.… The word echoed in Sarah’s mind as she looked at the picture. What a damnable thing war was. There was Henry, who had been a wanderer on the earth and couldn’t face his home, and he was dead. And the jolly round-cheeked little boy with the apple was Jack, and Lucilla’s father, and he was dead too, somewhere in France, a long time ago. And there was Maurice, the fat happy baby, and he was either dead like Jack or a wanderer as Henry had been, with shattered nerves perhaps or memory gone.… Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.… Would the world ever be mad enough to plunge into that vortex of blood and misery again.…
“And that’s their mother—my grandmother,” said Lucilla, and pulled her round to look at the chimney-piece. The portrait of Mrs. John Hildred looked down the length of the room. Sarah might have seen it a dozen times, but she had kept her eyes away. She had to raise them now and wonder, as she had wondered over and over again, why she should have taken fright and run when the ray of the burglar’s torch had touched such a sweet and smiling face.
“I’m supposed to be awfully like her,” said Lucilla. “She was a Hildred too—a cousin from miles away back in the family tree. It’s poisonously dull to marry a cousin—don’t you think so? But they didn’t have time to get bored, he was killed so young. Do you think I’m like her?”
The likeness was evident, though not so startling as it had seemed when the beam illumined the face alone. Seen in daylight, the long flowing dress in the fashion of the nineties, the style of the hair, and the air of gracious maturity all made for difference. Eleanor Hildred had borne her three children when this portrait was painted. She smiled down from it as a young mother smiles, watching her boys at play.
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