“You can’t tell me why?”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t. You’ll just have to take my word for it that young Waveney had better give up any idea of meeting his cousin.”
“If he’s got the idea—and he seems to me to have got it pretty strongly—he won’t give it up.”
“Surely the young man can take a hint!” Mr. Carruthers’ tone was indignant.
Lewis said, “’M—I shouldn’t say he could—not unless he’s changed a good deal. He’s one of those strong, persevering fellows that take a notion into their heads and stick to it through thick and thin. I ought to be the last person to complain of it, because I shouldn’t be here now if he wasn’t that sort. No one else would have thought it was possible to get me in that time I was wounded at Loos. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t possible; but he did it somehow. He’s an obstinate fellow, as I told you.”
CHAPTER VII
John had a dinner engagement that evening. His host was the publisher who was producing Peterson’s book in England, and the other guests were all men. He had not met any of them before. The talk was of Peterson, of books, and of the wild places of the earth.
After dinner a little man with a beard and a bald head moved up beside John.
“My name,” he said, “is Fossick-Yates—Frederick Fossick-Yates. Does that recall anything to you?”
John wasn’t sure. He temporized. There was something distantly familiar about the name, but for the life of him he couldn’t pick up the connection.
The little man put his head on one side and regarded him with expectancy; behind his glasses his round, bright, prominent eyes were a good deal like the eyes of a bird that is watching a worm. Before John’s hesitation became an embarrassment Mr. Fossick-Yates put an end to it.
“I wrote to Peterson—yes, several letters. It was about three years ago.”
John began to remember a very persistent correspondent who had written a number of letters full of meticulous details about variations from type in European snakes.
“Yes, I remember,” he said.
“Ah! Now, may I ask whether Peterson found my contributions useful?”
“He certainly used some of them—in the sixth chapter, I think. Oh yes, and there was a footnote later on.”
Mr. Fossick-Yates fairly beamed. He shot a cuff and scribbled upon it with a small, neat gold pencil.
“Ah! The sixth chapter? And a footnote? I feel very much gratified, Sir John. I suppose you can’t remember which of my data—”
“As it happens, I believe I can. The footnote refers to the case, which I think you cited, where the stripe down the viper’s back was almost white instead of black.”
Mr. Fossick-Yates snatched off his glasses and began to polish them furiously with his table napkin.
“Splendid!” he said. “Most gratifying—er—most gratifying! I assure you I feel quite overwhelmed. A footnote citing my viper. Can you remember in which chapter it occurs?”
“Fifteen,” said John—“the one on albinism.”
Mr. Fossick-Yates crammed his glasses back upon his nose. The angle they assumed gave his appearance an incongruous touch of abandon. He scribbled once more, and jerked his chair a little nearer.
“Sir John, I must persuade you! I have that very specimen at my house, not two miles away. You will come and see it! Of course, I have other specimens too—albinism has always enthralled me—er—yes, enthralled me. You will give me the pleasure of dining with me. My wife will be charmed to make your acquaintance. You may have heard of her. She was a prominent suffragist—she writes on social subjects. She is the Mrs. Fossick-Yates.”
As John walked home, he wondered why on earth he had allowed himself to become entangled with the Fossick-Yates. They would give him an appallingly bad dinner, and he would have to look at all Fossick-Yates’ specimens and listen through hours of protracted boredom to Mrs. Fossick-Yates on social subjects. He groaned aloud at the prospect, and cursed his folly. If Frederick Fossick-Yates had been a shade less innocently delighted over his mention in chapter six and the footnote about his viper in chapter fifteen, he would have gone on saying no or having previous engagements till all was blue. As it was, the beaming eyes behind the crooked glasses had betrayed him into this ghastly engagement.
He stopped thinking about Mr. Fossick-Yates, and let his thoughts go back to Anne Belinda. He began very methodically to sort out and file away all the different scraps of information which he had collected. He had not the very slightest intention of taking Mr. Carruthers’ advice and letting the matter drop. That he had been advised to let it drop was, in fact, one of his most urgent reasons for not dropping it; at every hint of opposition his determination hardened.
It was years since anything except acute physical discomfort had kept John awake at night. As a rule, when his head touched the pillow, sleep came and remained, deep, peaceful, and dreamless until forcibly disturbed next morning. To-night he lay awake for a long time, trying to fit his scraps together. He held imaginary conversations with Mrs. Jones and with Mr. Carruthers—frightfully leery conversations, in which he extracted information from them which they were quite determined not to give up. The extraordinary ingenuity which he displayed was very encouraging to him; but a dreadful fear that it might evaporate in the daylight kept him from being unduly puffed up.
He must have passed directly from one of these conversations into an uneasy sleep, for quite suddenly he not only heard Mrs. Jones speaking, but he could see her—only she wasn’t Mrs. Jones at all, but little Fossick-Yates in petticoats, with his beard, and his glasses all askew, and a wreath of primroses round his bald head. He said, speaking very earnestly, “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you—but it’s most frightfully confidential. The fact is, it’s a yellow streak—not a white one, you understand, but yellow, yellow all through.” When he said yellow the second time he began to throw primroses at John, and they turned into snakes as they touched the ground.
In his dream John began to run like the wind. He ran all up one side of the Amazon, and all down the other. And then all at once quite suddenly he was running down the Valley of the Waveney by a little crystal stream that lost itself in moss. Suddenly he stopped running, because there was nothing to run away from any more. He stood quite still and looked across the stream; and from the other side of it Anne Belinda looked at him and smiled. She wore her old brown holland overall, and her hair fell in two long dark plaits. She smiled at him, and an intense, joyful expectancy stabbed deep, deep into his dream. He didn’t know in the least what he expected.
He woke, and found himself sittting straight up in bed, which was very odd indeed. The whole thing was very odd. He lay down in the dark and puzzled over it. It was strange to feel in a dream what he had never felt by day. He had had good times and bad times, but never before had he felt this utter poignancy of joy. It was quite beyond his experience; there was nothing easy or soft about it; it had a keenness that was only just not pain; it was something he did not know. It was a strange thing to find it in a dream.
CHAPTER VIII
John went to call on Mrs. Courtney next day. He was shown into the drawing-room and left there whilst the maid went to find her mistress.
He looked about him with interest. The room was not at all like any room he had seen before. Walls, floor and ceiling, curtains, woodwork, and chair-covers were all of one even shade of grey—and that not the bluish grey which is called French, but the real pure grey which comes from the equal mixture of black and white. Against this neutral background the few contrasting objects took on an added value. There were cushions of half a dozen shades of purple, from violet to cyclamen; there was a bright green clock on the mantelpiece, flanked by tall green candlesticks; on one long, bare wall there hung an etching of a black pine tree bending in the wind.
It was odd to find a break in so rigid a scheme. Yet a break there was; the room contained no nick-nacks, but there were three framed photographs on the piano, and they were a
ll photographs of the same person. John had no difficulty in recognizing Jenny Marr—Jenny in her wedding-dress, with an exquisite lace veil on her fair hair—Jenny in Court dress, with feathers and a gleaming train—and, prettiest of the three, Jenny in soft, thin drapery bending over a tiny sleeping baby.
He wondered what Mrs. Courtney would be like; and as he wondered, she came in. Like her room, she was dressed in grey—he was to discover that she never wore anything else. Her masses of white hair were arranged in such elaborate waves and curls as to remind him of an eighteenth-century peruke. It was hair that would have suited well enough with delicate arched brows and a long oval face; but Mrs. Courtney’s face was square, her features harsh, and her brown prominent eyes surmounted by broad, tufted eyebrows.
She shook hands with John, giving him a firm, rather hard clasp. Then she settled herself in a chair, observed him keenly for a moment, and said:
“I’m glad you came. You mustn’t mind if I have a good look at you. I knew your father and mother.” Her voice was deep and, like her features, rather harsh.
John was sharply surprised.
“You knew them? I didn’t, you know.”
“Yes, I know. It’s a pity. Your father was the best-looking man I ever saw. You don’t take after him.”
John could not help laughing; she shot the sentence at him so suddenly and with more than a tinge of grievance in her tone. It was rather as if someone had been trying to foist an imitation upon her.
“No, I’m afraid I can’t compete,” he said.
Mrs. Courtney frowned.
“And you needn’t imagine an old romance either. Your father was already besottedly in love with your mother when I knew him. He used to come and confide in me—they both did. Probably you can’t imagine why.” Her face softened in an extraordinary manner; the rather large mouth turned up at the corners in a wide, enchanting smile. “Your mother was the sweetest child in the world. She was seventeen then, and Tom was three-and-twenty. I was as old as the hills. Well, well, they were lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided. But it’s your loss.”
“My great loss,” said John simply.
She nodded.
“You can understand why I wanted to see you. I’m sorry you’re not like them, but I dare say I shall get used to that. Now, let’s come down to present day. There’s something depressing about the past—don’t you think so? People of my age generally live with their heads screwed round backwards, looking at things that have been over and done with for years. Thank the Lord, I don’t do that! I’m interested in to-day. I’m interested in you. You’re going to stop at home and live at Waveney, I hope.”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Nonsense! What’s the good of having a place if you don’t live in it? You’ve got money to keep it up—and that’s more than most people have nowadays. So you’d better look round you for a wife and do the old place up a bit. It was looking shocking the last time I was down there—just before Jenny’s wedding that was. Have you seen Jenny yet?” A warm tone had come into her voice at the mention of Jenny’s name.
“No,” said John. His heart beat a little faster. “I want to meet her. And I want particularly to meet Anne.”
“Anne?” The warmth was gone. “Jenny’s my girl—my god-daughter, you know. She gets her Jenifer from me.”
“Yes, I want to meet Anne,” said John.
“’M—she’s not a patch on Jenny. It always makes me quite angry when people pretend they don’t know one from the other.”
“Aren’t they very much alike?”
“Oh, there’s a likeness—I’m not saying there isn’t. But they’re as different as they can be. Jenny’s the sweetest thing—like a sunny day.”
“And Anne?”
“Oh, I’ve nothing against her. But she’s not Jenny. Anyhow, you can’t meet her, because she’s been ill, and I believe she’s still abroad. And look here, just let me give you a hint—when you do meet Jenny, don’t go and worry her by talking about Anne.
“Why should it worry her?”
Mrs. Courtney’s thick eyebrows rose.
“Because she’s ridiculously devoted to her. I never can see why twins should be specially devoted to each other. But there it is, Jenny has taken this illness quite absurdly to heart. There she is, with an adoring husband, and a nice fat baby, and everything in the world to make her happy; and yet one only has to mention Anne’s name to see her cloud over and look wretched, positively wretched. So I thought I’d just give you a word of warning.”
John leaned forward.
“Mrs. Courtney, where is Anne Waveney? Can you give me her address?”
She looked at him with an effect of surprise.
“I don’t know her address. I believe she’s abroad somewhere. To tell you the honest truth, I’ve never taken very much interest in Anne. Jenny’s my girl, as I told you.”
“I want very particularly to know where she is. If she’s ill, she can’t be alone—someone must be looking after her.”
“Oh, I expect she’s all right again by now. She was ill at the time of Jenny’s wedding. And then, I believe, she went abroad with Aurora Fairlie. She’s a cousin on the Courtney side—you must have heard her name. She wanders about Europe and writes the sort of books I never read myself: Platitudes from the Pyrenees, Meanderings in Morocco, Balkan Balderdash, and so on.”
“And Anne Waveney is with this Miss—er—Fairlie?”
Mrs. Courtney looked vague.
“Jenny said something about it. But, as I told you, I don’t talk to her about Anne. It only upsets her; and I wouldn’t have Jenny upset for a dozen Annes.” She paused, smiled beautifully, and added: “I’m a fool about Jenny. But wait till you meet her.”
It was as she said the last word that the door opened and Jenny came in. John would have known her from Amory’s picture, and from the photographs, even without Mrs. Courtney’s cry of “My darling!” and her close embrace. She turned, with one hand still on the girl’s shoulder.
“I haven’t got any manners—I always forget introductions. And, besides, you ought to have known each other for years.”
Jenny turned her head, in its close black cap, and smiled a puzzled, deprecating smile. The movement and the smile were full of a natural grace and charm. She did not speak, but stood there smiling with a delicate lift of the eyebrows.
“It’s your cousin, John Waveney,” said Mrs. Courtney in her deep voice.
John shook hands, and became properly sensible of the fact that he was certainly lucky to have so charming a cousin. An old woman in Waveney village once said of Jenny Marr that everything she did became her. “If she talks to you, the time just passes like a flash. And if she don’t talk, one can always look at her.”
She was much prettier than John had expected. The thin black which she wore showed off a very graceful figure and a dazzling complexion.
John stayed ten minutes, and then made his farewells. From the moment of Jenny’s entrance Mrs. Courtney’s interest centred on her so obviously as to make him feel himself in the way. Jenny gave him three fingers and a pretty, friendly glance.
“You must come and see us. You will—won’t you? I’m only up for the day, but you must come down to us for a week-end. I suppose this week’s no good?”
“Well, as a matter of fact—”
“Could you come? Then do. As Aunt Jen says, we ought to have known each other years ago, and I want you to meet Nicholas.”
He went out into the street, warmed with a pleasant sense of kinship. Jenny turned to Mrs. Courtney.
“He’s rather nice. I like the quiet, straight way he looks at you. Thank goodness he’s presentable. He might have been anything, really, what with going out to the colonies at eighteen, and the war, and knocking about all over the place ever since. You’d better start match-making for him.”
“I told him he ought to marry and settle down. Jenny, he’s frightfully interested in Anne. When’s she
coming home?”
“In Anne!” Jenny’s pretty colour faded slowly. “How can he be interested in Anne?”
“I don’t know. But he is.”
Jenny’s eyes filled with tears.
“Aunt Jen, don’t! I can’t bear it.”
“Isn’t she any better? Oh, my darling, don’t cry! What a fool I was to ask!”
Jenny dabbed her eyes.
“It’s silly of me. I won’t. I do miss her so, Aunt Jen. And when you said that about John Waveney being interested, I couldn’t help thinking how lovely it would be if—” Her voice broke into a sob.
“Well, perhaps it will be.” Mrs. Courtney would have said anything to bring the sunshine back.
Jenny pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. Mrs. Courtney could feel her trembling. She said, “No—no,” in a muffled, broken voice. Then she got up, went quickly to the window, and stood there fighting for composure. When she turned round she was still pale, but her smile had come back.
“Look what Nicko gave me yesterday!” she said.
She dropped back into her chair and held out a long chain of square-cut crystals held together by platinum links. The links were set with emeralds. The crystals were exquisitely carved.
“How lovely! But, Jen, it must have cost a fortune. Why not pearls? I do so love you in pearls.”
Something flickered for an instant in Jenny’s eyes. They were brown eyes—brown, sunny eyes; but just for that instant they looked dark and cold.
“I don’t care frightfully for pearls,” she said. Then, with a complete change of voice, “Aunt Jen, baby laughed at me yesterday—he did really. He saw me come in at the nursery door, and he turned his head and laughed. Nurse says he’s most awfully young to laugh. She says babies of three months old often don’t—and he was only two months yesterday. She says—”
She talked ecstatically for an hour about little Tony Marr. Mrs. Courtney did not mention Anne again.
CHAPTER IX
Anne Belinda Page 5
