by Annie Haynes
Fortune favoured her this morning. Mr Gillman’s expected visitor did not arrive until after luncheon, and after hesitating a minute or two after Cynthia’s request to be allowed to sit with her cousin until tea-time, Gillman gave a gracious consent.
“Not both of you, though,” he stipulated. “Sybil must stay down to be at hand in case this man should want any explanation of family matters that I am not able to give him.”
Cynthia had only a passing glimpse of the stranger; it struck her that Gillman was anxious to hurry off.
She found Lady Hannah looking much as usual; she greeted Cynthia with one of the odd, wry contortions of her mouth which passed for a smile.
“So the customer has come, I hear, and I suppose Sybil is flirting with him, as she has deputed you to sit with me in her stead.”
“I do not think so; I do not know where she is,” Cynthia said truthfully. “I think she came upstairs after dinner. Cousin Hannah, I want to ask you, could you recommend me to anyone who wants a governess? I think I could teach quite small children, or I might be a companion or something of that sort,” vaguely, “so that I may have somewhere to go when you leave here.”
Lady Hannah did not answer at first. Cynthia looked at her imploringly; once more she was struck with the lack of response, with the absolute rigidity of the invalid’s features, with the eyes hidden by their blue spectacles. It was like talking to a mask, she thought.
“If you have really made up your mind to take a situation,” Lady Hannah said at length in her queer, whispering voice, “if you have decided not to go back to your husband, we must help you. I will tell my husband and see what can be arranged. Would you care to go into apartments in London until you decide upon something? I could recommend some people I used to know who would make you comfortable.”
Cynthia bit her lip—she felt desperate. It seemed to her that her cousin’s lack of comprehension was wilful, that Lady Hannah wished her to understand that she accepted no responsibility with regard to her.
“I have no money,” she burst out. “I must get something to do at once, Cousin Hannah. I cannot live on air.”
Lady Hannah moved her head about in the old restless way.
“Are matters really as bad as that? Lord Letchingham ought to make you an allowance—you must have had settlements.”
Cynthia threw back her head proudly.
“I would rather not take a penny from him!” she said passionately. “I would rather beg my bread from door to door. I—”
“That is all very well,” Lady Hannah interposed impatiently, “but you know you are talking nonsense. No! If you are foolish enough to refuse to avail yourself of the provision that has been made for you, I suppose I must allow you a certain amount until you have got some work. I will speak to my husband about it. You can use my name as a reference, though I do not approve of the plan.”
Cynthia clenched her hands together in the effort to keep back the words in which she longed to refuse the offer thus grudgingly made; but already she had learnt that the world is a very hard place for a penniless, friendless woman, that for such a one as herself to earn even her daily bread was a matter of no small difficulty; and, ungracious though her manner was, Lady Hannah’s help was true kindness. It would at least give her a chance of surmounting her difficulties.
“Thank you, Cousin Hannah!” she said meekly at last. “It is very kind of you. I hope that I shall soon get a situation and that I shall not trouble you long.”
The invalid made no response, but moved her head about as if in discomfort.
“Can I do anything for you, Cousin Hannah?” asked Cynthia, who was much affected by the evident suffering of the invalid. “May I raise you or move the pillows?”
“No, thank you; no, thank you! Keep away, please! I cannot bear to be touched. I think I hear voices”—as Cynthia, much hurt, moved back—“probably Henry is taking that man—Mr Squires—round. Just look out and tell me which way they are going.”
Cynthia raised the blind, which was closely drawn to-day, and peeped out.
“They are standing outside on the lawn. I think they are taking measurements or something. Do you hope he will buy it, Cousin Hannah?”
“I do, indeed!” For once the thick tones sounded shrill in the invalid’s excitement. “I am tired of being here. I want to get away. I hate Greylands now!”
Cynthia dropped the blind.
“I am not surprised you want a change,” she said quietly. “You must find the time long here.”
“Long—yes, it is terrible!” Lady Hannah spoke with emphasis. “I would never have come if I had known what it would be like. It—it is a hateful place!” her voice quavering with excitement.
Cynthia looked at her in some astonishment.
“You liked it at first—it was your own choice!” she said.
“Oh, perhaps it was! Don’t worry me, Cynthia,” irritably. “That is the worst of you, you will talk and ask questions. Sybil is content to sit still—she is much more restful.”
“I am so sorry,” Cynthia said penitently. “I see you so seldom that there seems so much to talk about, but I will be more careful in the future. I really think you are looking better to-day.”
“You are a good girl, Cynthia, and I am a tiresome old woman,” Lady Hannah said unexpectedly. “Yes, I feel sure I am better; I am beginning to feel some pain now, and that is a sign that the nerves are recovering their strength. I am anxious to try the baths and the treatment at Nauheim. As soon as I can stand the journey I shall go over. What are they doing outside now?”
Cynthia raised the blind again.
“They are going down the path into the fir plantation,” she reported.
“Ah, my husband is going to show Mr Squires poor Spot’s grave! He buried him just under those oak saplings that he has been transplanting, and I am anxious that his poor little bones should not be disturbed. I shall make a stipulation to that effect. Could you read the paper to me a while, Cynthia? It is a day old, but I have not heard it all yet.”
Cynthia took up the paper obediently, and began one of the leading articles. The invalid interrupted her impatiently:
“Not that dry stuff! Turn to the Court news and the weddings. I want to hear about those.”
Cynthia turned obediently to another part of the paper. In the subdued light it was no easy matter to make out the small print. She read on steadily for some time, and then laid the paper down to rest her eyes for a minute. Her cousin was lying still now; it seemed to Cynthia, looking at her, that the distortion of the face was much less apparent than usual, that the likeness to Sybil was stronger than she had ever seen it.
Her eyes wandered to the slim white hands that lay folded in pathetic immobility on the counterpane. Their utter unlikeness to the hands she had seen for one brief moment as she stood on the coachhouse roof struck her afresh, and for the hundredth time she wondered how the transformation could possibly be accounted for, and marvelled what could be her cousin’s motive for feigning a greater degree of helplessness than was actually the case.
She had never wavered in her certainty that there had been no occupant of the bed when she first looked in, and neither Sybil’s persuasions nor Farquhar’s attempted explanations could make her doubt the evidence of her own eyes.
Lady Hannah was in a restless mood to-day, and seemed inclined to resent her silence.
“Go on, go on!” she commanded. “Read the dramatic notes and criticisms.”
“I wonder where they are?” Cynthia remarked and turned the paper over. “It seems a long time since I was at the theatre,” she went on conversationally. “The last time was at the St James’s. Ah, here is a paragraph about the future arrangements at His Majesty’s. It seems there is to be a revival of The Tempest and Marcus Hill is to play Ferdinand again. I wonder—” she stopped short.
“Go on!” Lady Hannah ordered. “Let me hear what it says. Who is to take Miranda?” Cynthia made no effort to obey her; she did not glance at
the paper she still held; instead her eyes were fixed on those hands looking so white still against the Oriental bedspread; she caught her breath sharply. On one of the delicate, blue-veined wrists there was a long, jagged scratch, and as Cynthia gazed at it, with dilated eyes, she knew that she had made no mistake—she remembered where she had seen that scratch before.
Chapter Twenty
“GO ON, Cynthia! Why are you stopping?” The queer, thick tones were as harsh as ever; from behind the blue glasses a pair of eyes were watching the girl’s face anxiously.
There was no response. Cynthia sat motionless, her gaze still centred on those tell-tale innocent-looking hands. As she watched, her breath began to come in short, panting gasps. At length she leaned over and very deliberately turned the left wrist towards her.
“What are you doing, Cynthia? Go farther away! You know I do not like to be touched.” This time, underlying the irritation, there was distinctly a note of fear in the voice, and the crooked mouth began to twitch painfully.
Cynthia was ghastly white now; the colour had faded even from her lips. In contrast her eyes looked unnaturally big and dark. As she still gazed at the pale, mask-like face on the pillows her agitation and her anger grew, and with them a haunting, terrible dread, indefinable as yet even to herself. In that countenance, notwithstanding its contortion, its pallor, it seemed to her that a new and yet a familiar personality was becoming more apparent every moment.
The Cousin Hannah about whom she had speculated, and whose help and sympathy she had claimed, was gone, and in her place there was—what? A chimera! a trick!
The silence grew oppressive. Not a sound was heard but the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner, the quickened breathing of the two women confronting one another.
At length Cynthia spoke; her throat was dry and parched, her lips felt cold and stiff, and she brought her words out with infinite difficulty.
“What—does—it—mean?” she asked, with a slow, painful pause between each word. “Why—did—you—do it?”
There was another silence. Then the woman on the bed opened her mouth. It was the same hoarse, unnatural voice:
“I don’t understand! Cynthia, you are making me ill!”
Cynthia held up her hand.
“Not now, please, because I know—it is no use!”
“You know what?”
As she spoke the handle of the door turned. In her absorption Cynthia did not heed it, but pointed to the hands lying on the bed, to the red, inflamed mark on the wrist turned uppermost.
“That told me! I knew it was the same! Oh, I have been blind, blind”—raising her voice with sudden fire—“not to have guessed it before, not to have seen that you are not Cousin Hannah at all—that you are Sybil!”
“Ah!” It was a long-drawn sob, almost a cry. The white hand with its ugly scratch was raised and pointed behind Cynthia.
The girl turned quickly. Gillman stood in the doorway, an evil smile in his blue eyes. He glanced from the woman now cowering amid the pillows, her hands thrown over her face, guilt-stricken, to Cynthia, standing upright before him, her accusing, reproaching eyes fixed upon him.
“Why have you done this?” she demanded passionately. “Where is Cousin Hannah?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It seems to me that this is scarcely the tone to adopt to me, my dear Cynthia. I cannot guess to what you allude. My wife—” He glanced at the prostrate figure.
“Oh, what is the use of talking like that—what is the use of pretending?” Cynthia broke in hotly. “Don’t you see that I know? Sybil”—she bent forward and caught the other woman’s sleeve—“tell him that I—”
She was drawn away. Gillman’s arms held her back, as though in a vice.
“I cannot allow this. You must leave the room. Cynthia.”
As he released her in the passage the girl staggered back.
“How—how dare you?” she stammered indignantly.
Gillman held up his hand.
“Hush! I will not allow this,” he said in a low stern voice.
Cynthia, half-cowed by his tone, opened her lips to remonstrate, but she shrank back appalled and silenced by the indescribable malice of his glance.
As she cowered away from him, catching at the wall for support, Gillman stepped back into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.
Utterly overwhelmed at the discovery of this duplicity and unable as yet to do more than recognize the stupendous fact that Sybil had been personating her cousin, while Gilman had certainly been a participator in, if not the instigator of, the fraud, Cynthia leaned, white and trembling, against the wall, feeling dazed and well-nigh stunned.
The puzzle that had troubled her so long, that had perplexed Farquhar, was partly elucidated now. The end of the clue to the mystery that had hung like a pall over Greylands from the day of her first coming was in her hands, but at present she could not realize all that her discovery implied.
At length she turned, and, catching feebly at the wall, gasping with terror and bewilderment, made her way to her own room. There she went over to the window, and, leaning against the frame, looked with blank, unseeing eyes into space.
She seemed unable even to think clearly; one phrase seemed to repeat itself over and over again with sledge-hammer force and iteration:
“Sybil is Cousin Hannah; Cousin Hannah is only Sybil!”
In vain she tried to fit in the various events that had puzzled her since her coming to Greylands with this new and astonishing knowledge; her mind could not as yet solve the puzzle or grasp in any way its true significance.
A glimpse of the pine-wood recalled Farquhar to her, but she shivered forlornly as she thought that she could not now go to him for help or counsel. Yet she told herself that it was imperative he should hear of this new development, that she must put her own feelings aside and write to him without delay.
How long she had stood there she never knew, but the shadows on the lawn below were growing longer when there was a low, hesitating tap at her door. It was opened cautiously, and she saw that Sybil stood outside—a very different-looking Sybil from the butterfly creature to whom Cynthia was accustomed. There was an indescribably crushed and dejected aspect about the girl’s whole appearance. She was trembling, her hair was disordered, her eyes were swollen by weeping.
“May I come in?” she said timidly, casting an apprehensive glance behind her. “Oh, Cynthia,” as she did not reply, “I must tell you—you must let me explain! Indeed—”
Her words faltered and died away in a sob as she met Cynthia’s steady glance. Cynthia had not moved forward to speak to her; she had drawn herself up from the window-frame and stood, straight and tall, silhouetted against the window curtain, her eyes fixed upon Sybil’s guilty face.
“That will be difficult, I think,” she said with uncompromising directness.
“Yes, if you look at me like that,” Sybil sobbed; then, before the other girl had realized her intention, she rushed across the room and flung herself down beside her, clasping her round the waist so that Cynthia could not move. “Indeed, indeed, you must listen!” she pleaded with a fresh burst of tears. “I shall die if you do not let me tell you!”
In spite of her anger Cynthia relented a little as she glanced at the pleading eyes, at the quivering lips. Some of her old affection for Sybil asserted itself. Sybil was quick to take advantage of the momentary softening in her face.
“It was all done in fun at first!” she sobbed. “I see now that you think I was mean and deceitful, but indeed, indeed, I did not mean any harm! When—when—Cousin Hannah came back I thought you would be amused!”
Cynthia tried in vain to free herself from the clinging hands.
“Why did you do it? I cannot understand! Where is Cousin Hannah? When did she go away?”
Sybil’s tears were coming thick and fast now.
“I will tell you,” she said, her voice choked by sobs. “Indeed, I will tell you everything if—if yo
u will not look at me like that!” hiding her face against Cynthia’s brown skirt.
Almost against her will, it seemed to Cynthia, her hand touched the ruffled golden head gently.
“Go on,” she said gently.
“It was like this,” Sybil began, her voice low and broken, her breath catching in a sob every now and then. “Cousin Hannah would come here—you know how determined she always was. Cousin Henry tried his best to persuade her to take a house nearer town, where she could have some society, but she said she did not wish to see anyone—she only wanted to be alone. Then, when they came here, her temper got worse. Cousin Henry thought, though she would not confess it, the loneliness tried her. She was always finding fault with him—and with everything else for that matter—and they could not keep any servants. She wrote to me to come for a long visit—and I suppose you too—but before we, either of us, arrived, she had a violent quarrel with Cousin Henry and went off suddenly without a word of explanation.
“Cousin Henry was terribly upset; he knew that all our relatives had always disliked the match, and he felt sure that they would blame him entirely. Hoping that she would perhaps come back in a day or two, he simply told Mrs Knowles that she was ill and keeping her room. Then you came just before he expected me, and he did not know what to do; finally, as you know, he gave you the same explanation he had given to Mrs Knowles. When I arrived it was a different matter; I had stayed with them before, I knew what Cousin Hannah was, and he told me everything.”
As Cynthia listened her eyes had wandered back to the pine-woods, to the clouds that were massing on the horizon. She did not see that the golden head was raised cautiously, that the blue eyes shot a quick, suspicious glance at her unconscious face. She did not speak, and presently Sybil went on:
“Then, when he told me that he did not know what to do, that if you found she was away and that he had no idea where she was, you would tell the other relatives, and there would be such a bother, perhaps ending in a regular separation. I was so sorry for him. I always liked him better than Cousin Hannah, and I proposed that I should take her place for a week or two, until she came back. I thought it would only be for a short time, and I had always been thought so good at private theatricals and at making up. So that was how it was,” she concluded vaguely.
