Sarah took off her dress and hung it up.
“I don’t suppose it’s important at all.”
“’M—it is—thrillingly important.”
“Then for goodness sake say it!”
Lucilla leaned against the end of the bed, gazed at the cornice, and recited in a voice modelled on the most nasal of the choir-boys, “Un-der the harsh and un-sym-pathet-ic treat-ment of her cru-el gov-er-ness the un-hap-py gy-url quick-ly with-ered a-way.”
“Lucilla, I’ll pour cold water over you if you don’t stop.”
“Her cru-el-ties—No, angel darling Sarah, I’ve stopped—I’ve quite stopped.”
Sarah put down the water-bottle.
“You’re a perfect pest,” she said. “What do you want to say?”
“It’s about Mr. Brown,” said Lucilla in a bubbling voice. “No, Sarah—do listen. I’m in deadly earnest—I really am. You know, he swears he isn’t Uncle Maurice, and I’d simply love him to be, because I do think he’s a pet besides being my Noble Preserver, but there really was a sort of truthful gleam in his eye when he said he was quite sure he wasn’t, especially at the end. Don’t you think so?”
Sarah was brushing her hair. She brushed it all over her face and said in the voice of a person who is bored to extinction,
“I don’t think, and I won’t be made to think.”
“Dull,” said Lucilla. “Besides, it’s not true. Your brain’s waving quite brightly really. But you mustn’t keep interrupting, because what I was going to say was this. He swears he isn’t Uncle Maurice, and I think the gleam really was a truthful one, though of course you never can tell, men being deceivers ever, and all that sort of thing.”
“You’re talking exactly like Aunt Marina,” said Sarah in a vicious voice.
Lucilla clutched her side with a long-drawn moan of anguish.
“O-oh! What a stab! And it’s all your fault if I don’t get on. Now do be an angel and just listen for a minute—curb the tongue, you know, and all that sort of thing. A snare, my dear Miss Trent—a terrible snare. No, Sarah! Not cold water! I’ll scream if you don’t put that bottle down—I really will! Angel darling, I’m as good as gold. Butter isn’t melting in my mouth. And what I’ve been trying to say is that if the Noble Preserver isn’t Uncle Maurice, perhaps—perhaps, I say—”
“Well?” said Sarah. She had tossed back her hair and still held the water-bottle poised.
Lucilla screwed up her face mysteriously, dropped her voice to a thrilling whisper, and said,
“Why shouldn’t he be Uncle Henry?”
Sarah put the bottle down slowly and carefully. What fantastic nonsense. She found the last word saying itself quite loudly and emphatically—“Nonsense.”
Lucilla nodded.
“Of course, angel. But then, it’s all nonsense. Can you put your hand on your heart and say one single sensible thing has happened since you got here? You can’t. It’s nonsense for him to say he’s John Brown, and be able to find his way in the dark all over Holme Fallow. There’s that little step down going through to the back of the hall. I sometimes trip over it myself if I’m not thinking. But he didn’t. I hid down there when he was He, and he came along in the dark and never stumbled. He knew it was there. Isn’t that nonsense? And isn’t it nonsense for him to look like my Eleanor grandmother? And he did—down there by the pool.” She changed her voice suddenly. “Sarah, you don’t know what a feeling I’ve got about his being Uncle Henry.”
Sarah’s cheeks were burning. She made her voice quiet.
“When did Henry Hildred die?”
“He was supposed to have died about six months ago. I wish he hadn’t. Oh, how I do wish he hadn’t!”
“Where?”
“Some Pacific island sort of place. I never can remember its name. You know, it could quite easily have been a fake, Sarah. He just travelled, and travelled, and travelled with a servant who’d been with him for ages. Nobody ever saw him, and he never came home. Well, suppose he thought he’d like to come back like a sort of ghost without anyone knowing who he was—”
“Why should he pretend to be dead?” said Sarah.
“I dunno. What’s the good of asking silly questions like that?” She pointed solemnly at the ceiling and made her voice deep and quavery. “‘It’s a mad world, my masters.’ Don’t I know a lovely lot of Shakespeare, govvy darling? I think my Uncle Henry ought to be very, very proud of me—don’t you? And Holme Fallow belongs to him and not to me—oh cheers! And—and we all live happy ever afterwards. Oh, I do, do, do hope he’s Uncle Henry!”
A very bright, lovely colour came into Sarah’s cheeks.
“What does it matter who he is?” she said.
“Oh, Sarah! As far gone as all that!” She clasped her hands and looked upwards in round-eyed adoration. “Oh, John—a cottage with you!”
Sarah took her by the shoulders and shook her.
“Lucilla, you’re a brat. Now I give you fair warning—if you’re not out of this room by the time I’ve counted five, I’ll come in the middle of the night when you’re asleep and pour cold water slowly down the back of your neck.”
Lucilla uttered a muffled shriek, wrenched herself free, and fled. But a moment later she put her head round the door again and murmured,
“Please, darling, where am I to sleep?”
“Wherever you like.”
“Oh, I like sleeping in here. The pinkness soaks right down into me and does me a lot of good.”
“Beat it!” said Sarah.
Lucilla put out her tongue and shut the door.
When they had changed over and Sarah was alone in the blue room, she found herself no longer in the least sleepy, but quite extraordinarily wide awake. She went and looked at herself in the glass, and was startled at a reflection all bloom, and colour, and shining eyes. Not Maurice, but Henry.… Was it possible? A sardonic voice in her own mind asserted that anything was possible, but that some things were so unlikely that they didn’t happen.
If John Brown was Henry Hildred, he had been offering her Holme Fallow, down by the lower pool. Holme Fallow and Sarah Trent.… And she had blushed like a schoolgirl in front of Lucilla and said it didn’t matter who he was.… Was it true that it didn’t matter? If he was just John Brown, making an up and down living with his sketches and his articles on insects and birds, if he was plain John Brown, rather poor and never likely to be anything else, would she take a risk with him and let herself care? As sure as you care you get hurt. She had kept that in mind all these years, and it had kept her light-hearted and safe. Other people had got hurt, but not Sarah Trent. Was she going to risk being hurt because John Brown could put something into his voice that made her feel glad and sorry, or because the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled? She shook her head and spoke very firmly indeed to the radiant image in the glass. “Sarah, my girl, you’re a fool,” she said. And with that she turned away and snapped off the light, blotting out the image and its follies.
The glowing bulb faded into the surrounding darkness. It really was a relief to get rid of all that pale blue, but she wasn’t in the least bit sleepy. She heard Ricky pass the door and go along to his own room. Uncle Geoffrey was the one who sat up late. It was only that afternoon that she had told John how early they all went to bed, and how drugged with sleep they were by ten o’clock. “Mr. Hildred sits up till about midnight as a rule. He says his brain works best at night. Mine’s boiled long before the evening’s over.” She had said that. And John had said—no, she couldn’t remember what John had said, though she could remember how he looked when he was saying it.
“Sarah, you’re potty,” she said sternly. And as much to break her thoughts as anything else she went over to the east window and looked out.
At first she couldn’t see anything at all. She dropped the curtain behind her, opened the lower sash and leaned out with her elbows on the sill. The air was warm and dark. She could distinguish the black line of the trees against the sky, which was not
black, but a deep colourless grey. It was still, but there are always sounds in the stillness of the night. Sarah listened to these sounds and was soothed by them—the stirring of a sleepy bird, the falling of a leaf to other leaves which are fallen and withered.
She had begun to feel sleepy again, when she heard another sound, and immediately was awake. Someone had come up the drive and was crossing the gravel. There was no attempt at concealment. It was a man by the sound of the footsteps. He walked with a quick, light tread. She heard him pass under Ricky’s window and go round to the front of the house.
Sarah’s heart beat hard. She could have sworn that the footsteps were John Brown’s, but what in the world could be bringing him up to the Red House at this time of night, she simply could not imagine. It must be close on eleven o’clock, and he knew how early they went to bed. There was an answer to that, but Sarah didn’t like the answer. He knew that Geoffrey Hildred usually sat up late. Sarah didn’t like the answer at all. Why should he want to see Geoffrey Hildred?
She crossed her room in the dark and opened the door. Opposite the pink room there was an empty guest chamber whose windows looked out at the front of the house. She slipped across the passage, shut the door of this room behind her, and made her way to the windows, all in the dark. She got one of them open and put her head out, and as she did so, she heard a sound of knocking on the window below.
“What on earth?” said Sarah to herself. She leaned out as far as she could. She couldn’t see anything at all, but the knocking was repeated. This room was over the study. John Brown was knocking on the study window. It was a long French window, opening like a door.
And all at once it was open. The curtain must have been drawn back on the inner side, for a bright slanting rectangle appeared suddenly upon the gravel. The window opened, and there was a low murmur of voices. A man came into the light, stood there a moment, and then passed in at the open window and out of sight. The bright rectangle moved, narrowing quickly until it was gone. There was a faint thud as the glass door fell to. Sarah remained staring down into the darkness.
And then one of those little unexpected things happened. Upon the darkness there crept the faintest, narrowest streak of light. And this streak was not stationary. It moved. Sarah stared at it. It went on moving. A bare inch one way—and back again. A bare inch the other way—and back again.
She drew in her head and straightened up. The moving streak could only mean one thing—the French window was not quite shut. It had closed with that little thud and started again. It was now open, perhaps an inch, perhaps a little more, and the slight draught which came through the crack was moving the curtain gently, rhythmically, and so releasing that moving streak of light.
Sarah has never been very proud of what she did next. In the far away days before the crash she had been taught by her excellent and respectable nurse that there were a number of things which little ladies didn’t do. Little ladies didn’t bite their nails. Little ladies didn’t tell lies. Little ladies didn’t listen at doors. Sarah still retained a distaste for people who transgressed this nursery code. She was now, however, about to transgress it herself. Her only excuse is, and always has been, that she simply had to know what John Brown was saying to Geoffrey Hildred.
She went quickly back into the blue room. She could not go eaves-dropping out of doors barefoot and in her night-gown, a mere wisp of yellow crêpe-de-chine. Her own clothes being next door, she had to fall back upon Lucilla’s. She found a pair of dark stockings and the black cardigan suit and put them on. The stockings would probably get cut to pieces on the gravel, but she couldn’t risk the noise that shoes would make. And she would have to get out of the house and go round, because the opening of one of the drawing-room windows might be heard, and of course the front door was out of the question.
She climbed out of the window of the servants’ sitting-room and made her way along the back of the house. Miss Marina’s light was out, but Lucilla’s still burned, throwing a faint rosy glow through the pink curtains.
She turned the corner. Three dark windows here, her own, the bathroom, the spare room, and then one lighted one. Ricky wasn’t in bed yet.
She came round the corner to the front of the house and saw the streak of light which she had seen from above. She must go very very quietly now. The gravel hurt her feet. She remembered the story of the pilgrim and the peas. You can’t boil gravel.
She came very slowly and cautiously to a level with the nearer hinges of the French window. Two stone steps led up to the sill. The window had two leaves. It was the farther one that stood ajar, and through the glass she could see an inch-wide gap in the heavy crimson curtains which hung within.
Sarah got off the gravel on to the first step. She could not hear a sound of any sort from the room. She had not heard a sound of any sort since she had turned the corner. The silence made her feel cold. There were two men in that room. There must be two men there. She had heard one of them knock, and she had seen the window open to admit him. She had seen John Brown go into the room. If he had gone away, the window would have been shut and locked again. She began to be afraid, and more afraid, and her fear took her up on to the top step and set her right hand on the leaf that was ajar. She pulled it a little and leaned towards the gap in the curtains.
And as she leaned, she heard John Brown say,
“Well, Geoffrey?”
It was John Brown speaking, but it was not quite the John Brown she knew. The gentle, amused tone was gone from his voice. It was quiet, but it rang hard.
There was no answer. There went on being no answer for such a long time that Sarah began to feel quite giddy with the strain. Her thoughts rocked. Who was John Brown that he called Geoffrey Hildred “Geoffrey”? There were two answers that would fit. Either Henry or Maurice Hildred would say Geoffrey, as cousin to cousin.
John Brown spoke again. He used the same words. He said,
“Well, Geoffrey?”
And this time there was an answer. Geoffrey Hildred spoke in a laboured voice. It sounded as if he had his work cut out to speak at all. He said in that hard-come voice,
“I don’t recognize you.” And then, “You’re a stranger to me—a complete stranger.”
There was a pause. There was the sound of something being poured into a glass. The gap in the curtains was no more than an inch. Sarah leaned very near, and saw a handsbreadth of the writing-table, the corner of a silver ink-stand, and beyond it a couple of inches of whisky in the bottom of a tumbler. The whisky was neat. The fingers of Geoffrey Hildred’s right hand came above it on the glass and lifted it out of sight. She could hear that he drank. And then the tumbler came down again empty. The hand withdrew. Geoffrey Hildred must be sitting at the writing-table. She could not see John Brown at all, but his voice had come from her right. It came from there now.
“Feeling better?”
It was obvious that Geoffrey Hildred was feeling better. Whatever shock he had had, he was getting himself in hand again. He spoke rather heavily, but with self-command.
“You know, Brown, this is a most astonishing claim.”
“You seemed to be rather more than astonished.”
“I was very much astonished. I cannot believe that you are serious. And I would like to say that if this is a practical joke, I consider—”
John Brown interrupted him.
“You needn’t consider anything at all. I’m not joking. You won’t find it a joke, I’m afraid.”
“And what do you mean by that?” said Geoffrey Hildred.
The other man laughed.
“Pretty much what you’d expect me to mean,” he said.
There was the sound of a chair being pushed back. Geoffrey Hildred’s voice came louder.
“The whole thing is preposterous! After all these years! Do you imgaine for an instant that you could make out a case? This sort of thing has been tried on before. You may have heard of the Tichborne case. Do you happen to remember that the planitiff got fourteen
years for perjury? Pour encourager les autres, Mr. Brown. If you’re hankering after an opportunity of acquiring first-hand knowledge of English prison life, I advise you to take this claim of yours into court.”
John Brown laughed again very quietly.
“Oh, I don’t think it’ll ever come into court. There will be an amicable settlement. Think it over and you’ll see that that will be best for us all. Joyous reunion, happy family party, and all the rest of it.”
“Take care,” said Geoffrey Hildred. “Take care, Brown.” His voice had thickened. “I’m warning you—that you’re on dangerous ground. The whole thing is preposterous—the whole thing! What’s your case? Where are your witnesses? They’re all dead, I tell you! That’s convenient for an impostor, isn’t it? Old John Hildred is dead, and Lucy is dead—Lucy Raimond—and the doctor, and the parson. They’re all dead. And it’s fifteen years since the war came to an end. You’re fifteen years after the fair, Mr. Brown. And you can put that in your pipe and smoke it!”
“Thank you. Now just for a moment I would like you to listen to me. I’ve got something to say, and I really think you had better let me say it.”
Geoffrey Hildred’s right arm came into view—his hand, his right arm, and a bit of his shoulder. He had pulled his chair in again and leaned forward with his elbow on the table. The hand went out of sight. Sarah guessed at it supporting his chin, perhaps covering the line of the mouth. He said with a composure that was now complete,
“Oh, say anything you like. It won’t be the first tall tale I’ve heard, or the last either.”
“What I want to say is this. It is a pity to take a tone which is bound to make things more difficult all round. When I came over here I wasn’t sure whether I would stay or not—I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to stay. I thought I would just come over and see how I felt about it all. When I walked into your office I was quite prepared for you to recognize me. Are you quite sure you didn’t?”
Geoffrey Hildred laughed briefly.
“How should I recognize a man I’d never set eyes on before?”
“Well, well,” said John Brown—“that’s what you say. I’ve never felt sure about it myself. Sometimes I could have sworn you had recognized me, and sometimes I didn’t know whether you had or not.”
Touch and Go Page 18
