Rosalind Denny’s lunch party was not very successful. To start with, she had not intended it to be a lunch party at all. There wasn’t going to be anyone but Jeremy. And then at ten o’clock on Sunday morning, after a wakeful, miserable night, she had felt that she couldn’t face Jeremy alone. When Garrett had made his horrible suggestions about Jeremy Ware, she had cried out, “It isn’t true!” but in the night the thing came back and poisoned her dreams. When she was awake she could fight it down, but when she slept she had horrible dreams. The whole wound of her loss had been torn open. She told herself that these vile suspicions would fall down dead as soon as she saw Jeremy himself, but on Sunday morning she panicked, rang up three people one after another who were all engaged, and finally in desperation fell back on Garrett and her old governess, Miss West.
It was scarcely to be wondered at that the party was not very successful. Of the three guests not one had anything to say to the others. That they all had an affection for Rosalind did not help matters. Neither Garrett nor Jeremy would talk intimately to her in the presence of the other, and Miss West’s admiring personalities were an embarrassment to everyone except herself. In the upshot, Garrett was brusque to the verge of rudeness, Jeremy, for about the first time in his life, silent, whilst Miss Mary West recounted endless instances of Rosalind’s cleverness, Rosalind’s unselfishness, Rosalind’s admirable proficiency in French, and so forth and so on, with Rosalind vainly attempting to stem the flood of reminiscence. If she had been a coward, she had her punishment. To catch the sardonic gleam in Garrett’s eye was surely punishment enough. As for Jeremy, his silence gave those horrible whispers which she had tried to stifle a new chance of being heard.
The whispers talked, and Miss West talked, and after an interminable time lunch was over. She took them into the drawing-room for coffee, and it was then that something really disquieting happened. All that had gone before was like a vague smouldering, and then quite suddenly there was a spark and a sharp, dreadful tongue of flame. That was how it seemed to her when she looked back on it. At the time it took her utterly by surprise.
She was on the sofa pouring out the coffee with Miss West beside her. Miss West had just said that the fog had lifted, and that it was going to be quite a fine afternoon. Her tone gave everyone to understand that this was entirely due to dear Rosalind. She sat there with her large trimmed hat slipping back from her high forehead with its endy wisps of mouse-coloured hair, her long unpowdered nose and her amiable blue eyes alike moist with affection, and smiled her wide, amiable smile. Jeremy was handing cups, whilst Garrett prowled the room like a restless terrier. Miss West said,
“Three lumps please, dear.”
Jeremy lifted a cup from the tray, and as Rosalind said “Frank,” Garrett came down the room, holding his right hand out in front of him closed. As he came up to the hearth, he opened it. Jeremy, straightening himself with his cup in his hand, saw in Garrett’s palm not half a yard away a snail modelled in blue-green clay. Head raised and horns protruded, it looked at him. Garrett’s voice came harsh to his ears.
“Ever see anything like that before?”
Jeremy felt the colour rush into his face. He held the cup steady. He looked at the snail, he looked at Garrett. He turned and spoke to Rosalind.
“Where did you get it, Mrs Denny? It’s awfully good.”
Rosalind bit her lip. Anger with Frank Garrett, anger with herself, anger with Jeremy, swept over her in successive waves. Gilbert’s last gift to her, and Frank knew it—and he must bring it out like this! It wasn’t Jeremy’s fault—she oughtn’t to feel angry with Jeremy. And then she remembered that Garrett had associated this little clay model with Gilbert’s death. Impossible! Impossible, and wicked! She turned very pale as she said,
“Gilbert gave it to me. I don’t know where he got it, Jeremy.”
“Do you?” said Garrett with hard insistence. He had moved so that he faced both Jeremy and Rosalind, but it was to Jeremy that he spoke. He still held the snail.
Jeremy looked at him full and square.
“No, I don’t,” he said.
There was a very short silence. Miss West broke in upon it.
“But what a pity!” she said brightly. “There might be other models—a group would be so charming, would it not? I have a delightful collection of brass animals which May Crocksley sent me from India—I was with the Crocksleys for three years after I left dear Rosalind. Brass is very delightful, but a little troublesome to clean. I find all these brass polishes distressingly bad for the hands. Beautiful hands are a woman’s chief charm—don’t you think so—though the modern fashion for scarlet finger-nails is one I cannot really admire. Dear Rosalind always had the most delightful hands.”
Jeremy was the first to leave. Garrett and Miss West were strangers whom he rather disliked, and suddenly, inexplicably, Rosalind Denny had become a stranger too. He covered a cold, wounded feeling with some surface talk and got up to go.
Miss West obviously hoped for a tête-à-tête with Rosalind. Garrett, grimly silent behind a newspaper, was as obviously determined to outstay her. She prattled a little longer, refused a second cup of coffee, hoped dear Rosalind was keeping up her music, embraced her affectionately, and departed, talking to the last.
Garrett threw down his paper and scowled at his hostess.
“Has she ever been in a mental home?”
“Is that because she’s fond of me?” said Rosalind. “Some people are, you know.”
“What do I say to that?” said Garrett. “It’s a common complaint—will that do?”
“My dear Frank, you overwhelm me!”
She rang the bell, and he fidgeted while the maid removed the tray. Pretty woman Rosalind, particularly when she was angry. If he’d ever been fool enough to think of marrying, it would have been someone like her.
When they were alone again, he burst out,
“What on earth ever made your mother engage that woman as a governess?”
“She’s very accomplished. She speaks French and German perfectly, and she plays the piano like an angel.”
“She has the face of a mentally deficient sheep,” said Garrett in a tone of ferocious gloom.
Rosalind laughed; she couldn’t help it.
“Darling Frank, I do honestly think you are the rudest person I ever met.”
Garrett grinned. That was one of the things he liked about Rosalind—she got angry, but she came off it again. A sulky woman was like cold suet pudding. Then suddenly he frowned, picked up the blue-green snail from the mantelpiece, and thrust it at her.
“Did you see Ware’s face?”
The distressed colour rose.
“I don’t know what you mean, Frank.”
Garrett was openly triumphant.
“Oh yes, you do! This wasn’t the first of these things that Ware had seen. It hit him right between the eyes. He’d seen something like it before, and he wasn’t owning up. He didn’t spill his coffee, because he controlled his hand. He couldn’t control his colour—he went brick-red, and I expect he’s still cursing himself. I’m glad I don’t blush—it’s a bad handicap. Good-bye, Rosalind—I’ll let myself out. I wouldn’t see more than you can help of Master Jeremy Ware.”
CHAPTER XIII
JEREMY WALKED AWAY AT an angry pace. He was both angry and sore. He had made a fool of himself under the eyes of that damned policeman. Why in heaven’s name had Rosalind asked them there together? And what had happened to her? She had hardly spoken a word to him, and she had looked at him as if he were someone whom she might or might not have met before.
He headed for Regent’s Park. He wanted to get away from pavements and stretch his legs. That twittering West woman had been right about the fog. It had lifted, and the sun shone from a cloudless sky. There remained only that faint blue haze which gives a touch of enchantment to everything.
When he h
ad walked for a time, Jeremy stopped being angry. He began to puzzle over the snail. It quite certainly came from the same family as the baby owl which Rachel had dropped the first time he had seen her walking in her sleep. There was nothing so very strange about that. If someone was making these models, Rachel might have one, and Rosalind might have one, and so might dozens of people. The thing that puzzled him was why Garrett should have expected him to recognize the thing. He had sprung it on him. He had watched for some sign of recognition, and like an unutterable ass Jeremy had blushed. What was Garrett playing at? Rosalind had said that Garrett was taking an interest in him. Why?
He didn’t like it. He sat down on a bench and tried to sort things out.
He didn’t get on with it very well. He was reminded of the tangle of silks in his old Cousin Emily’s work-bag. When he stayed with her as a schoolboy, she invariably produced it just as he had got well down into a book. She always said the same thing, with that sort of false brightness with which many otherwise excellent people address the young. He could hear her now—“And who’s going to be very useful and disentangle my poor silks for me?” And with that she would pull out a jumbled mass about the size of a football. He supposed there must have been hundreds of hopelessly tangled skeins—bright and dark, old and new, pink, blue, yellow, red, green, orange, purple, magenta, and gold.
This business was exactly like Cousin Emily’s jumbled silks. There were loops without ends, ends that led into a tangle, and knots which brought you to a standstill. There was the bit of paper he had found in Anecdotes of the Great, scrawled all over with his signature. There was the safe that had been left unlocked when he could swear that he had locked it and given Mannister the key. There was the letter which he had left in the safe and found only a few hours afterwards in the locked drawer of his own writing-table. There was Rachel, who came walking through cellar walls in her sleep, who said his name in a grieving voice, and showed him the open safe and the missing letter. There were the little models in blue-green clay. There was Rosalind, who had become a stranger. There was Colonel Garrett, who had the air of having sprung a trap upon him. A moment ago he had been wondering why Rosalind should have asked him with Garrett. Was it in order that Garrett might spring his trap? What a damnable thought! Rosalind wouldn’t do that—not the Rosalind Denny he knew. But the Rosalind of to-day was a stranger. How do you know what a stranger will do?
He frowned and pushed the whole thing away. There had always come a time when he shoved Cousin Emily’s silks back into their bag with a sort of furious haste because he felt like pitching the whole lot into the fire. He felt like that now. He shoved the whole thing away, banged a door on it, and began to take notice of his surroundings.
There was a wide stretch of green to his left, and a railed-off shrubbery with tall leafless trees rising out of evergreens and bare lilac bushes. Immediately in front a gravel walk separated him from the railing. A girl was leaning against it with her back to him. She had on a very shabby blue serge coat, thin indoor shoes which were quite new and beautifully cut, expensive silk stockings, and an absolute rag of a knitted cap which had once been red. Jeremy noticed her shoes and stockings first because the feet and ankles which they set off were highly commendable. He didn’t know when he had seen better feet and ankles. Then his eye travelled upwards, and the blue serge coat struck him all of a heap. It was the sort of coat you simply don’t see in London, where the poorest little fifteen-year-old apprentice contrives to look gaudy if not neat. It was of an aged fashion, flowing out to a wide circular hem, and it was worn, faded and stained to an almost unbelievable extent. It might have been salved from an ancient wreck of sea-rotted timber, and there was a shoaling play of colour from blue to purple which suggested prolonged immersion in salt water. The little red cap was its disreputable fellow, and both looked very odd indeed in conjunction with the smart shoes and stockings.
Jeremy could see no more of the girl herself than an inch or two of her neck with a knot of dark hair which met the blue serge collar. She was leaning on the railing, and she was whistling, not any air or tune, but a soft piping call, and just as he became aware of this, the call was answered. There was a splash of grey in the lilac and a squirrel came darting and checking, first to the right, then to the left. Suddenly, with a flirt of the tail, he ran up the railing and sat up not half a yard from the blue serge coat. The girl turned gently round, showing a bare hand with a lump of sugar on the palm, and as she turned, Jeremy caught his breath, for it was Rachel. He would have known the outstretched hand even if he had not seen her face. The lump of sugar lay where the key of the safe had lain last night.
With a little chattering sound the squirrel darted on the sugar and, sitting up, began to eat it, holding the lump delicately between his paws. He sent wary looks right and left as he ate, and as soon as he had finished he began to chatter for more.
Jeremy watched Rachel dive into a pocket and produce another lump. He could see her face in profile as he had seen it last night. But last night she had been in a different world, and what he saw was like a shadow or a ghost. Rachel awake had as many changing expressions as a pool of clear water on a day of wind and sun and racing cloud. Her lips parted in suspense when the squirrel hesitated, smiled encouragement when he advanced, and widened into lovely laughter when he snatched and fled. A very faint pure colour came and went in the cheeks which had been as white as milk in Mannister’s library. There were little crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she laughed.
Jeremy had the strangest feeling that he was watching something which was for himself alone. To dream an unbelievable dream, and then to see one of the creatures of that dream at three o’clock in the afternoon in Regent’s Park, would be likely to induce that kind of feeling. The rest of the people in the Park had ceased to have any existence at all. He watched Rachel, and Rachel watched the squirrel, who presently returned for more sugar.
Jeremy got up without any conscious intention of doing so, drifted slowly to the railing, and leaned upon it. A distance of about three yards separated him from Rachel. The squirrel was between them. That is to say, he would have been between them if he had remained, but after one lightning glance at Jeremy he chattered, dropped to the ground, and streaked behind a lilac-bush. Rachel’s first conscious glance at Jeremy was therefore one of reproach. Her eyes were dark with it.
“Oh!” she said. “You frightened him!”
Jeremy said, “I’m so sorry.” And then he thought what an idiotic thing that was to say, and for the second time that day he blushed, and was furious with himself for blushing.
He could not, as a matter of fact, have done anything that would have served him better. Rachel had spoken without thinking, but a bare instant afterwards she remembered that you can’t speak to strangers in London. She would have turned away if Jeremy had not changed colour, but when she saw him blush, she was afraid she had been too severe. If you have the gentleness which brings wild things to eat out of your hand, you do not readily hurt the feelings of a strange young man. So Rachel looked kindly at Jeremy Ware and said sweetly,
“Please don’t mind—he’ll come back. I’m sure you didn’t mean to frighten him.”
Up to this moment Jeremy had been looking on. Last night Rachel had been in her dream, and he had watched her there. To-day he had watched her again, and she was awake. When she looked at him and spoke, he stopped looking on and the dream closed round them both. Nothing is strange in a dream, and there are no conventions. Jeremy met the kind, deep eyes and discovered that they really were brown—not the hot brown which makes for trouble, or the bright shiny brown which reminds one of bullseyes, or the shallow greeny brown which is almost hazel, but a clear, soft brown which took the lights and shadows of her mood. Last night they had been as dark as all the trouble in the world, but just now, when she smiled, they were almost golden.
Jeremy went on looking at her and thinking these things.
; She did not blush or look away, but gradually the gold died and a faintly troubled look passed over her face. Her lips parted with a slight tremor, and she said,
“Have I seen you before?”
“I don’t know,” said Jeremy. “I’ve seen you.”
She put a finger up and touched her lip.
Jeremy wondered how old she was. Eighteen—nineteen—twenty? She could not be more.
Her hand came down to the railing again. She went on looking at Jeremy.
“I thought I knew your voice. Do you ever begin to remember, and then it stops and you can’t get hold of it? It was like that when you spoke to me—I thought I knew your voice.”
“I’ve spoken to you before,” said Jeremy.
They were side by side now. If he had moved his hand three inches, it would have touched hers. They were speaking low and as if they had known each other for a long time. She looked up at him like a puzzled child. Her eyes were wide and clear.
“Where have I seen you?”
“I don’t know whether you saw me or not.”
“But you spoke to me. What did you say?”
Jeremy hesitated. Was she really remembering? What would she do if he said, “My name is Jeremy Ware”? He did not want to say that yet. He wanted first to know her name, and where she lived, and how he could see her again. He said,
“Please tell me your name.”
The very smallest possible smile showed in her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. For the first time her lashes came down and hid the colour of her eyes. They were dark lashes, very fine and silky.
“Please tell me your name,” said Jeremy. After a pause he said, “Please, Rachel.”
The lashes flew up again. She looked at him with a mixture of fear, astonishment, and something which he could not define. He thought it was recognition—not recognition of him, but of some tone in his voice when he spoke her name.
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