Fear by Night: A Golden Age Mystery
Page 16
Hector snapped his fingers.
“I will not have to think of anything. The girl will keep him. It is you that will have to wait.” He smiled a little.
Jimmy scowled at him.
“Get along and watch them! And speak properly about that young lady, because I’m going to marry her! Get along with you and keep an eye on them! A nice time of night to come sneaking round a man’s house and getting a young lady out of bed—by gum it is! Get along with you!” He put a hand upon Gale’s shoulder and shook the cards from his hand. “Are you coming or are you staying? You can please yourself, but if you want to come you’ve got to look lively, because I’m not waiting for you. Do you hear?”
“Oh, I’m coming,” said Gale Anderson. He pushed the cards together and got up without haste.
“Then look sharp and stir those lazy stumps of yours, for I’m not waiting for you nor for nobody—by gum I’m not!” said Jimmy Halliday. He struck the table a blow which made the glasses jump and went off down the passage to the old part of the house, swearing in a vehement undertone at all skulking blackguards in general and at Charles Anstruther in particular.
Gale Anderson followed him.
About half an hour later under the trees in the pine-scented dusk Charles Anstruther said,
“I must go.”
Ann said “Yes,” but she did not lift her head from his shoulder. Perhaps it would never be there again. The world can change in a night. This was their enchanted hour. Perhaps when they had come back to civilisation, and ordered ways, and what the world would think—perhaps then she would find that she mustn’t marry Charles however much she loved him or however hard he pleaded with her. Those early days of being on sufferance in someone else’s house had left their ineffaceable mark.
Charles tightened his hold.
“I must go.”
Ann said “Yes” again. The enchanted hour was over. The dawn waited cold and grey on the other side of it. A little shiver went over her.
“How I hate this money business!” she said with something piteous in her voice. “I don’t want that wicked old man’s money. He let my mother kill herself with work. She might have been alive now if he had helped her. I hate his money, and I hate the feeling that we are waiting for him to die. It’s horrible!”
“But, Ann—”
“It’s horrible!”
“But, Ann, my blessed darling child, we’re no doing anything of the sort. I don’t care whether you’ve got twopence-halfpenny or a million.”
Ann pulled back as far as she could and stood there straining against his arm.
“Don’t you care if you have to sell Bewley?”
His clasp did not exactly relax, but something happened to it. Ann did not have to strain against it any more.
He spoke soberly.
“I shall keep Bewley if I can.”
“And if you can’t—if you have to sell, and if I let you marry me with twopence-halfpenny only I haven’t even got that, you will have to sell. Are you going to say you don’t care?”
“No, I won’t say that,” said Charles.
“He mustn’t marry me—he mustn’t! I mustn’t let him!” Ann said this desperately to herself.
Charles gave her a sudden shake.
“What’s the matter? Are you planning to be noble and give me up? Look here, let’s have this out once and for all. I can’t keep Bewley unless I can keep it up. I’d rather sell the place than see it go to pieces. If this money comes to you, we’ll be able to keep it up. If it doesn’t, we’ll have enough to live on, and I’m going to have an experimental fruit farm. What I am not going to do is go round cadging for an heiress. Now say, ‘Charles, I love you enormously, and I’ll marry you as soon as we can get a licence’—or whatever it is you do get in Scotland—we shall have to find out. Say it—say it quickly! Because I ought to be going.”
“I can’t,” said Ann in a mournful whisper.
Charles picked her up, kissed her, and set her down again.
“It doesn’t really matter whether you say it or not—you’re going to do it all right. Now I’m going, and I want to see you back into the house first.”
“I thought I’d come down to the beach to see you over the strait.”
“Nothing doing. I want to see you safe indoors before I go. There aren’t going to be any accidents in this scene. You go in, and I’ll wait on the edge of the lawn till I see you wave out of the window. And in about seven or eight hours I’ll be back here to take you away, so you’d better pack before you go to sleep.”
As they stood on the edge of the lawn, there came upon the air the strange booming sound which Ann had heard before. It shook the silence and was gone again. Ann caught at Charles’ arm.
“Listen!”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know. I heard it last night, and afterwards—there was something—swimming in the loch.”
“How do you mean, something swimming in the loch?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see it—not really—only a sort of foamy track. And Mary said, ‘It comes—swimming—in the water.’ She said I must keep away from the water. And oh, Charles darling, I hate your going over in that little boat!”
By the time that Charles had convinced her that she might have seen a seal, and that seals were of all creatures in the world the most peaceable and harmless, Hector had become impatient. He, no less than Charles, had had a long day’s run, and, unlike Charles, he had nothing to compensate him for the loss of his night’s rest.
At last he saw Ann cross the lawn. She got in by the parlour window, and presently she leaned from her own window and waved. Charles at once turned on his heel and went down to the beach. Instead of following him, Hector ran out along the face of the slope and so back to his old look-out place upon the headland.
Charles pushed off his boat and rowed out upon the strait. The moon was high overhead and the air a little thickened by a light haze which veiled the hills and gave to the water a blurred and softened look The far reaches of the loch were of a ghostly whiteness, and as his oars rose and fell, they dipped into a hands-breadth of mist and came up through it again.
He was only a third of the way across the strait, when he heard the booming sound again. It reminded him of something. A bittern? He wondered if there were bittern as far north as this. And then there was a swirl in the water ahead of him, and out of the mist there rose up a long black serpentine head and neck. The water dripped from it. The moon shone on it. It reared up and came at him in a roar of sound, the water boiling before it and rushing past in foam. Charles pulled violently upon his left-hand oar, but failed to get the boat clear. He had no time to do more than throw all his strength into that one desperate stroke, for in the same moment he was caught by the full force of the onset and plunged into the water. His head was struck, and he went down and for an instant lost himself. Time and his sense of direction were gone. When they returned, he felt that he was drowning and struck out for the surface.
He came up by the boat, which had capsized. One of the oars floated near, the other at some distance. He caught a glimpse of it as the haze closed down. There was nothing else to be seen. He discovered a hole in the boat, so wasted no time in trying to right it. He got it to the farther shore without incident and then went back for the oars.
It must be confessed that he disliked doing this as much as he had ever disliked doing anything in all his life. Things out of nature shake the nature in us. That snaky head and neck coming up dripping out of unknown depths and rushing upon him with horrid force had certainly shaken Charles. But if he didn’t get the oars, he wouldn’t be able to go back for Ann to-morrow. He thanked heaven that he had not persuaded her to come away with him to-night.
When he had retrieved the oars, he hefted them and the boat and made his way back to the car. He was, of course, wet through. He was also shaken and puzzled. And he was afraid, because Ann was still on the island.
Chapter Twenty-Three
She went and stood by the window and leaned out. The mist was white, dazzling, and impenetrable. She could not see the trees on the farther side of the lawn. It was just as if they did not exist. Yet she and Charles had stood under them last night, and Charles had held her close and kissed her. A most desolate, cold feeling swept over Ann. The fog seemed to have blotted everything out.
She shook herself impatiently. “Don’t be such a gump! At your age! Doing lost dog just because there’s a mist, which probably means that it’s going to be an absolutely topping day!”
She went down to breakfast and sat there straining for the sound of Charles’ step. The fog was certainly lifting. The faint wraith-like spectres of the trees could be discerned across the lawn.
“Nothing I ’ates like a fog,” said Mrs. Halliday. “Let me see what’s happening, I say, and bad or good you know where you are. But a fog gives me the creeps. You don’t know where you are, nor you don’t know what’s alongside of you, and if it’s something that shouldn’t be, you’ll likely find it out too late. There was my own grandmother’s nephew by ’er first husband, Abram Sidebotham by name, come home in a fog on the Tarriton turnpike with a girl as he was friendly with and wishing that he was something more. They wasn’t engaged nor they wasn’t walking out, but he’d tried to snatch a kiss and got ’is face smacked for him, and he was wishful for ’er better acquaintance. Annie was the girl’s name, and some said she was ’andsome, but I couldn’t see it myself—bit of a chit of a little thing and as quick as an adder, with a great fuzz-bush of hair a-hanging down her back. Well, Abram and she they walked a piece together, and it was frosty and a thick fog, and I won’t say as he hadn’t had ’is glass, nor I won’t say as he hadn’t had a glass too much. Anyhow it seems he tried to kiss ’er, and Annie she dodged away from him, so there they was, ’er a-dodging ’im, and ’im grabbing at ’er all over the highway, and the fog that thick you couldn’t see your ’and before your face. Albert Larkin he come up with them in ’is gig driving very slow and careful acause of not being able to see, and he hears Annie give a screech, and he hears Abram yell out, ‘I’ve got yer!’ And the language he used after that was what Albert couldn’t bring ’isself to repeat, being Methody-reared. And all of a sudden the fog shifted the way it do, and by the light of Albert’s gig-lamps there was Abram with his arm round the neck of Eli Todd’s old donkey, cuddling its mane and saying, ‘I got yer, and I’m going to keep yer!’ And a couple of yards away there was that piece Annie with ’er great bush of ’air that Abram thought he’d got hold of ’er by laughing and making game of him. Albert didn’t hold ’is tongue neither, and pore Abram got so laughed at that he went and turned teetotal. Annie she took up with Albert Larkin, that was born to be poll-pecked if ever a young man was, and rule him she did good and proper, and all ’er eleven children likewise. So I don’t ’old with fogs.”
“It’s lifting,” said Jimmy Halliday. He had his own reasons for wanting it to lift and to stay lifted. He had a cargo to run and he wanted fair weather for the trip. A light mist was one thing—he wouldn’t object to a mist, in fact it would make things all the safer—but a fog like this would be the devil.
It was lifting all right. The trees were not spectres any longer but trees seen through a haze. A little faint sunlight began to filter through.
Ann sat down to read a five-days-old paper to Mrs. Halliday, and found it very difficult to keep her mind on what she was reading. The old lady’s remarks about car-bandits, vigorous though they were, hardly reached her—“A paperful of pepper right in the eyes—that’s what they want. An uncle of mine he always made his girls carry pepper travelling lonely roads.”
The front door shut, and Ann jumped in her chair. She saw Jimmy Halliday go round the house and went back to her paper with a sigh. Mrs. Halliday shot her an angry, suspicious glance.
“Who was that went by?”
“Mr. Halliday,” said Ann.
“Then I’ll thank you to keep your eyes for what you’re supposed to be reading and not go looking out of the window after my son!”
The bright furious colour rushed into Ann’s face. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and read in a muffled voice: “An unknown man who jumped from the running-board of the car and made off down Green Street is requested to communicate with the police.”
“And a lot of good it is asking him to do that!” said Mrs. Halliday. “And let me tell you, Miss Vernon, that if I hadn’t thought as how you were a young lady that knew how to behave ’erself, I wouldn’t have ’ad you in my house.”
Ann put down the paper.
“I’m leaving here to-day, Mrs. Halliday,” she said.
“And may I ask how?” said Mrs. Halliday with a tremendous aspirate.
Ann hesitated. Suppose Charles didn’t come. Suppose he had lost his way in the fog. Suppose a hundred different things.… She did not dare to burn her boats. The angry tears were stinging her eyes. They made an iridescent halo about Mrs. Halliday’s morning cap.
“Miss Vernon!”
Ann ran out of the room and banged the door.
The morning went on, slowly, draggingly, and in a rising mist of fear. The fog outside lifted, but the fear gathered thicker and thicker about Ann. Charles did not come, and every hour dragged by more slowly than the last.
She went up into her own room and sat there thinking of reasons which might have prevented Charles from coming. He might have overslept. He might have found a puncture. For the matter of that, he might have had almost any kind of mechanical breakdown. By twelve o’clock none of the reasons seemed to have any life in them. They faded out and left Ann alone in the fog.
She could not have said just at what point “Charles hasn’t come” became “Charles isn’t coming,” but by lunch-time she had given him up. Something had happened, and he wasn’t coming. A verse from an old German folk-song came ringing in her head:
“Mein lieb is auf die wanderschaft hin.
Ich weiss nicht warum Ich so traurig bin.
Vielleicht ist er falsch, vielleicht ist er tot.
Darum wein’ ich die lieblichen äuglein rot.”
It went on ringing there, sometimes in German and sometimes in English.
“My love he is wandering far and near,
I know not why, but my heart it is drear.
Perhaps he is false, perhaps he is dead,
And so I weep and my eyes are red.”
It was a song of the most uncomfortable melancholy. Another of the verses said:
“Oh thistles and thorns they prick full sore,
But a false, false tongue hurts a heart far more.
No fire on earth so burns and glows
As a secret love that no man knows.”
In the last verse of all the poor forsaken damsel begs the wandering lover to return and shed one tear upon her grave.
“Dieweil ich dich so treulich geliebet hab.”
The sweet, melancholy cadence fell on Ann’s heart, and for a moment there was a faint reaction. Charles loved her, and he hadn’t gone away and left her. He wouldn’t—he never would. She was just letting herself be mesmerized by a sad old song.
“Oh love of my heart, one thing I crave,
That you will stand by my lonely grave,
That you will drop one tear for me,
Because I so truly have lovéd thee.”
Ann reacted a little more vigorously. “Sloppy, sentimental idiot—you’re just wallowing! You’re being a coward and a fool, when you kno
w perfectly well that Charles cares a lot more for you than you deserve! You know perfectly well he does!” The part of her that Ann was scolding struck back, and suddenly. “That’s just it—he wouldn’t go. Where is he? What’s happened to him? Something’s happened to him.”
She was so pale at lunch that Gale Anderson frowned above the cold suspicious glance he gave her. Jimmy Halliday pressed food upon her until she could have screamed. And Mrs. Halliday retailed a selection of anecdotes on the text of Wilful waste makes woeful want. “And leaving of food on plates is what I don’t hold with and won’t ’ave in my house. There was my cousin Sarah Rankin as reared ’er children on the outside crust of the loaf all hot from the baker, they having a fancy that way—and what they done with the crumb ’eaven knows, but I reckon it went to the pigs. And what come of it?” She fixed Ann’s pallor with an accusing glare. “There was the eldest, Samson—he drunk ’is wife and children out of house and home. And Delilah that there was such a fuss over the christening of, parson holding it wasn’t no Christian name and Sarah saying as it was in the Book and that was good enough for ’er and threatening to go over to the Methodies—Delilah, she had six children by ’er first ’usband, and married a widower with ten for ’er second, and lived like pigs, the lot of them, so as the whole village cried shame. And the third, Annie Amelia, she come on the parish, and none of the rest of them was any credit to the family. And what can you expect, with them brought up to waste good food?”
It was a most trying meal.
As soon as it was possible, Ann escaped from the house and went up on to the heather knoll at the top of the island. She could see the hills, and the loch, and the strait, and the bend of the road coming down to the waterside. If Charles came, she would see him come. She had still a little faint hope that he would come. Just when it seemed most dead it would spring up again. For he must come—he must. He couldn’t leave her here—he wouldn’t—not Charles. There was an answer to this stammering hope—a final, dreadful answer. Ann tried to prevent herself from hearing it, but it was getting harder and harder. Soon it would be impossible, and then she would have to hear it, and it would say: