John enjoyed his week-end at Waterdene—the small, well-chosen party, the gay ease, the informal friendliness which he found there. Jenny was a perfectly delightful hostess, and Nicholas Marr an equally delightful host.
The other guests were all young; Nicholas himself older than any of them by some years. John liked him, but wondered occasionally what lay behind a manner of so much charm. Sometimes he thought there might be a stiff, black pride behind it. He could imagine that Nicholas Marr would continue to be perfectly charming to a man whom he hated and meant to kill; he could imagine him absolutely implacable behind a smile. He had the dark good looks, the tinge of pride, which made the right complement to Jenny’s sunny beauty.
Jenny, for her part, was very much pleased with her new cousin. He actually noticed that the baby had a dimple, a fact which she had insisted on from the first in the face of a good deal of scepticism from Nicholas. Also he admired her in a very proper and cousinly manner—and above all things in the world, Jenny loved the warm, sweet atmosphere of admiration and liking. She had had it all her life; father, brothers, Aunt Jen, had provided it without stint until she met Nicholas and received its distilled essence. And the more she received, the more she gave back. Small wonder that so warmly responsive a creature should be surrounded by a devoted court in the midst of which she moved with a singular grace.
After the first twenty-four hours John found that he could no longer see any likeness to Anne; there was a similarity of feature, but no more. Jenny was Jenny, and there was an end of it. She was a radiant creature in the full sunshine of youth, beauty, and happiness. In what shadowed place, under what sombre cloud was Anne? A curious resentment sprang up in him at the thought; he was filled with jealousy for Anne. Jenny had everything—friends and home, face and fortune, husband and child. What was Anne’s portion? Where was she? Everything came back to that. He had meant to wait, but a strong impulse carried him away. He turned to Jenny with a question which he could not keep back any longer:
“Jenny, where’s your sister Anne?”
They had been dancing together, and were sitting in one of the low window-seats of the long panelled room. At the far end of it a gramophone discoursed jazz. Three couples were still dancing. Nicholas Marr passed them with Pamela Austin. Her sleek, smooth black head was higher than his. It might very well have been a boy’s head, and close cropped even for a boy. The brilliant scarlet dress, cut daringly low and ending at the knee, gave a shock of incongruity. Nicholas laughed as they passed, and Pamela waved her hand.
Jenny put her head back against the polished wood. She loved the dark background, which threw up her shining hair and the freshness of her tints. She was wearing a little white frock that made her look seventeen again; her soft, fair neck was innocent of even a school-girl’s row of pearls. She looked at John and caught her breath.
What did you say? Shall we go on dancing?”
“No, I want to talk. I want to talk about your sister Anne. Do you mind?”
Jenny nodded.
“I—I can’t—I can’t really.”
“That’s just it. Why can’t you?”
Jenny’s heart fluttered dreadfully. If only she could get over minding about Anne. She was being a perfect idiot. If she could only control this stupid shaking and just say something, anything, quite casually and as if it didn’t matter.
“Why can’t you?” said John. He made his voice very gentle and persuasive. “Look here, Jenny, I can’t help knowing there’s something wrong. You see, I met Anne once—”
“When?” Jenny looked startled.
“Years ago—nine years. She was only a kid. She didn’t know who I was. And I didn’t know who she was until I saw Amory’s portrait of you both.”
Jenny’s colour flickered. She said, “That hateful picture!” in a voice just above her breath.
John went on:
“I want to know where she is—I want to see her.”
“You can’t.” It was a whisper.
John smiled. The smile frightened Jenny; it frightened her very much. She said:
“John, you can’t—really.”
“Why can’t I? Don’t you think you had better tell me?”
She shook her head. There ought to be something that she could tell him. If she didn’t tell him something, he would go on trying to find out. She tried very hard indeed to keep steady and to find words.
“John, you can’t, because—”
“Well?”
Why on earth had she asked him down here? If only the gramophone didn’t make such a noise, she might be able to think. Pamela and Derek Austin were singing too—ridiculous words that buzzed in the general din like flies buzzing in a train. She sat up straight and pushed her wedding ring down hard until it cut into her hand.
“She’s been ill—she’s abroad.”
“Yes, Mrs. Courtney told me that. She’s with a Miss Fairlie, isn’t she?”
Jenny nodded. She kept her eyes on John’s face. If he made her go on, it would be his fault, not hers. She hoped with all her heart that he would be satisfied and not ask anything more. The hope failed as it rose.
“Then will you give me her address? I’m at a loose end, and I should rather like an excuse for a prowl abroad.”
It was no use. Anything she said would be his fault. She didn’t want to say it. She had tried her very best not to tell him anything. Her eyes were hot with the rush of tears. She turned her shoulder on the bright, noisy room and pushed open the casement window behind them. A breath of lilac-scented air came in. She spoke in a little sad voice, very low:
“John, you can’t see her. She can’t see people—she can’t even see me.”
“Why can’t she, Jenny?”
Jenny’s voice trembled lower still.
“Can’t you guess?”
“I’m afraid not. I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me.”
Jenny jumped up.
“Not here,” she said in a stifled voice. “They’re all looking at us—I saw Pamela look.”
She slipped out of the window on to the flagged walk outside. The drop was not more than a couple of feet. John followed her, and saw her move away in the dusk like a white moth. The sound of the gramophone died to a blurr.
The house stood half-way up a gently sloping hill. From where they stood the ground dropped by successive terraces to the open water-meadows through which there flowed a broad and shallow stream. A fitful moonlight brightened the water-flow and the white lilac blooms on the lower terrace.
Jenny stopped where a grey stone vase lifted a sheaf of scented tulips to the darkness. The colour was lost, but they smelt like violets.
“Well, Jenny?” he said.
Jenny faced him. The dusk gave her confidence. Why had she not come out before? Now that he could not see her, she could tell him.
“John, you must think me very foolish,” she began. “I ought to be more used to it. But I can’t get used to it. We always did everything together; and now I haven’t seen her for a year, and she hasn’t even seen baby.” Tears came into her voice.
“Yes. But why?”
Jenny stamped her foot.
“I suppose you like hurting me like this! I suppose you like hurting people!”
“I only want to know where Anne is.”
“She’s where you can’t go to her. Why don’t you believe me? She got ill just before I was married, and they shut her up. They—they won’t let anyone see her.”
John had known that it was coming; it was as if he had watched it coming from a long way off. Yet, now that it was here and the vague unformulated dread had taken form in the spoken word, everything in his nature rose up against it in a violence of denial that was purely instinctive. He heard the wind stir the tulip leaves; he heard Jenny take a sobbing breath; he heard Pamela Austin’s clear, high, boyish voice in a snatch of syncopated tune. He waited until he could speak quietly:
“Do you mean that Anne is mad?”
Jenny cried out at th
at.
“I’m sorry—but I’ve got to know—is that what you mean?”
“Oh!” said Jenny. It was a very piteous little cry. She put both hands over her face as if the darkness were not shield enough. “Oh, John, it breaks my heart! My darling Anne!” she said, and broke into convulsive sobbing.
CHAPTER X
Anne Waveney came out into the spring sunshine and looked about her. She was carrying a small suitcase. A woman who was passing stared. Anne turned to the right and walked away, with her head held high and her heart beating rather quickly. After a minute or two she forgot all about the woman. She looked at a blue sky full of light, at the puddle in the road which showed that it had rained last night, at a child with a riot of copper-coloured hair, at a slinking sandy cat; and for the moment all these things were equally beautiful and equally dear. A real cat, prowling in a real London street; real people, going on errands, meeting each other, talking to each other; a real baby in a perambulator. As she passed the baby, Anne made dancing eyes at it, and the baby said “Goo,” and waggled a much sucked rattle.
Anne turned the corner and hailed a passing taxi. She had planned all this many times over, had thought of it day and night until sometimes she wondered whether she had not drawn all the thrill from it in anticipation. But no anticipation had given her quite this sense of having wings; she was so full of happiness that it seemed to lift her and carry her without her own volition.
She sat in the taxi and looked eagerly out of the window. How awfully short everybody’s skirts were! She was wearing a pretty grey tweed coat and skirt and a close black felt hat turned up in front. The coat and skirt and the hat had been quite new a year ago. They were quite new now; but they were out of date. People were wearing brims again—little brims, and higher crowns—awfully becoming. And her skirt was inches too long, though she and Jenny had felt rather daring when they wore these twin coats and skirts last year. She wondered what Jenny had done with hers. “I can ask her—I can ask her to-day—I can see Jenny to-day—I can ask her anything I like!”
She drew a long trembling breath of happiness. The thought of seeing Jenny so soon brought the colour to her cheeks and a dancing sparkle to her dark blue eyes. Her thoughts danced too. Then she set herself to plan. Dancing thoughts were all very well, but she had got to be practical; there was a lot to be done before she went down to see Jenny.
She had given the address of the hotel at which she and Mrs. Jones had stayed more than a year ago. But now, as they turned into the familiar street, a sort of cold horror swept over her. She had not known that she would feel like that. It was unreasonable, it was foolish—but there it was.
Suddenly there came into her mind the name of another hotel. On the impulse she leaned out of the window and gave the address to the driver. As she drew back again, the cold horror receded, leaving her trembling with relief.
The place would probably be just what she wanted—frightfully respectable and not too expensive, since Aurora Fairlie always stayed there when she was in town. She wondered, with a little laugh, where Aurora was and what she was doing.
A few minutes later she was explaining to a blasé booking clerk that she wanted a room just for the day. A key was put into her hand, and a register pushed forward for her to sign, without the girl so much as raising her eyes. Anne felt a little chilled. She was in the mood in which one likes to assure total strangers that it is a lovely day. Her real need was a fellow creature to whom she could say, “I’m so dreadfully happy!”
She signed the register, and, just as she was pushing it back, she saw Aurora Fairlie’s broomstick signature at the top of the left-hand page. There it was, large, black, awkward, and quite unmistakable.
Anne fled to the refuge of the room that had been allotted her. Of all people in the world, she least wished to meet Aurora Fairlie. She was breathing a little quickly as she locked the door and set her suitcase down on the bed.
Aurora! What an odd bit of luck that she should be here! Now, what exactly did Aurora know? That was the question; and no one but Jenny could answer it. Everything came back to Jenny in the end.
Anne turned from the bed and went across to the dressing-table. She tilted the glass and looked long and earnestly at her own reflection. After a moment she took off her hat. She couldn’t go and see Jenny, looking like this. Her hair was too awful. She must have it properly cut and waved. For the rest, there was something a little unfamiliar in what she saw. Her skin had the even pallor that comes from an indoor life. She rubbed her cheeks, and as the quick blood stained them, she felt that she knew herself a little better. There were dark marks under her dark eyes, and her face was thin—a good deal thinner than it had been a year ago. This thinner oval of her face made her eyes look startlingly large. The likeness to Jenny was very much in abeyance.
With a sudden movement she pushed the glass so that she could no longer see herself and went back to the bed. Sitting sideways on it, she opened the suitcase and, burrowing, produced three old letters. They were addressed to Miss Annie Jones. Anne removed the envelopes, tearing them into very tiny scraps and throwing the scraps out of the window. Then she took up the letters and read them through. They were all from Mr. Carruthers, and were written throughout in his own hand.
The first, dated just over a year ago, began:
“DEAR MISS JONES,
“It is with great regret that I have to inform you of the sudden death of your father …”
Anne read it through to the end, and then tore it up.
The second letter also began with a regret. This time Mr. Carruthers regretted having to inform her that her name did not appear in her father’s will, everything having been left to her sister. Anne turned rather white as she laid the fragments of this letter beside the others.
She took longer over the third letter. It ran:
“DEAR MISS JONES,
“Your sister wishes you to be informed that she has a son, now a month old. She wishes you to know that she is very well. Your other sister has been travelling all this year with Miss Dawn. Your sister wished you to know this. Will you ring me up before communicating with your sister?
“Yours truly,
“L. AUSTIN CARRUTHERS.”
Anne caught the corner of her mouth between her teeth as she read. Not only Jenny to see, but Jenny’s baby. Lovely! Lovely! Lovely! Lovely and strange—Jenny with a baby! She shut her eyes for a minute and tried for a picture of it. Nothing would come but Jenny’s face. Not Jenny’s face as she wanted to see it, but as she had seen it last, white to the very lips, the eyes wild with terror.
She jumped up with a quick little cry. Why did she always see Jenny like that? It was the thing that hurt most of all; and, more than anything else in the world, she wanted to blot it out with the picture of the real, happy Jenny, all love and smiles, with her little son in her arms. That was what she was going to see to-day.
She glanced at the letter again. The pen was the pen of Mr. Carruthers; but the words were certainly Jenny’s words. Jenny was letting her know where Anne Waveney was supposed to have been all this year—“Your other sister has been travelling with Miss Dawn.” It hadn’t taken her a moment, of course, to recognize Aurora. So she had been travelling with Aurora Fairlie. Just for a moment her upper lip lifted in a smile; she wondered whether Aurora knew. Then the smile faded, and she frowned. The letter was clever: Jenny was clever. Anne hated the cleverness as much as she loved Jenny. She hated it with a quick, rebellious hatred.
She tore up the third letter. Then she put all the bits into the waste-paper basket and went along the corridor to telephone to Mr. Carruthers.
It took her some time to get on, and as she waited, she began to feel a little frightened. She didn’t really want to talk to Mr. Carruthers. She couldn’t imagine why he should want to talk to her. No, that wasn’t quite true; it wasn’t a bit difficult to imagine the sort of things that her father’s lawyer might feel it his duty to say to her. “Wouldn’t” was the word, not
“couldn’t.” She wouldn’t imagine those things.
“Hullo!” said a voice very loudly.
Anne said “Hullo!”
The voice said “Hullo!” again in a faint, dying whisper.
Anne went on saying “Hullo.”
When the voice had come a little nearer, she asked for Mr. Carruthers.
The voice said, “Who?”
Anne said, “Mr. Carruthers.”
The voice became very loud again. It said, “This is City OOOB. There is no one of the name of Jones here.”
Anne giggled. She had forgotten how mad telephones could be.
“I said Carruthers—I didn’t say Jones—I don’t want Jones.”
She didn’t really want Carruthers either. This helped her to bear up when the voice said reprovingly, “Mr. Carruthers is away. He has been ill. Would you like to speak to Mr. Smith?”
Anne repressed a warm feeling of relief. She wished Mr. Carruthers a speedy return to health; but the reprieve certainly raised her spirits. She said hastily:
“No, I don’t want to speak to Mr. Smith. I only wanted to ask whether Lady Marr is at Waterdene.”
“Oh yes—I believe so. As a matter of fact, we addressed some papers there this morning. Who is it speaking?”
“Thank you,” said Anne, and rang off.
She went back to her room and put on her hat and gloves. Then she went downstairs, where she looked up an afternoon train and despatched a telegram: “Arriving three-thirteen. Anne.” She glanced at the little wrist-watch which had been Sir Anthony’s present on her twenty-first birthday. She had just time to have her hair cut, but no time to dawdle. She was almost at the outer door, when she turned sharply aside and bent to the fastening of a shoe.
Aurora Fairlie, in a monstrous hurry, passed within a yard of her. Her heavy shoes creaked as much as ever—Aurora’s shoes always did creak. Anne looked back and saw the broad tweed-clad shoulders and rough deer-stalker hat disappear in the crowd. She slipped into the street half laughing, and once again she wondered whether Aurora knew that Anne Waveney had been travelling with her for a year.
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