“You can’t buy aeroplanes at Woolworths,” Jeremy comforted her. “Hullo, here’s someone.”
Voices sounded in the hall, but I didn’t think either of them was Hilary’s. Nor was it. The door was pushed open and Nunn came in with Eleanor. Drenched, weary and full of anxiety as she was—and at that moment none of us knew the tremendous burden under which she laboured—there was something about her so striking that she made a mere onlooker catch the breath. Her face had fined without sharpening during the difficult years that followed Percy Feltham’s death; she was cool and detached, without having lost any of her zest for the adventure of living. Beneath that mask of composure blazed what ardour, what passion, what radiance, what ability to express and to endure. By a gesture of her fine expressive hands, a movement of the beautifully-shaped head, how she could inspire, enthral and sometimes embarrass an audience! All the old sense of being submerged in a rich flood overwhelmed me as she came forward and took my hand, and I noticed the feeling and life throbbing in hers as she did so. The man with her was a perfect foil to her compelling personality. He was short, square, controlled. His voice as he said, “You’re worth a thousand Hilarys and I refuse to allow you to wear yourself out for a worthless young woman like that,” didn’t betray a trace of anxiety. No one would have suspected that he had been tramping over drenched and concealed moors for the past two hours. In his own way he was as striking as she. It was easy to believe he was what is called a self-made man. There was about him some lack of finish, something difficult to describe, but whose absence was immediately apparent. But, if he hadn’t got breeding, which is inborn, he had something better still, and that was personality. You saw how he’d built up his big concern. His face was like one of his own plate-glass windows, displaying the iron resolution, the integrity and courage that had never known what it was to feel dismayed. He’d struggled; there had been a time when, after ten years’ work, he had had to abandon his dreams and go into employment with a man whose methods he despised, but he’d gone on building. He wasn’t a man you could ever tire or wear down. I could see the irresistible fascination he would have for a woman like Eleanor. In short, they were a fine couple. But with such a man at call I wondered what on earth it was that had induced Eleanor to send me that frantic, despairing note.
Jeremy was just proposing to go out and lend the unknown Dennis a hand when the fellow himself appeared. As Meriel Ross had told us, he wore a grey suit and a black tie. He wasn’t, somehow, at all the kind of man I had supposed Hilary would attract; and certainly not the kind I had anticipated would attract her. For one thing, he must have been nearly twice her age (subsequently I learnt that he was thirty-eight), a pleasant, short-sighted, fair-haired chap, not in the least good-looking, but with an attractive voice and manner, an Irishman, casual, irresponsible and cool. He murmured to Nunn, “No luck yet? I should like to shake that child till her eyes drop out. Oh, thank you, sir.” That was still to Nunn, who shoved a hot drink into his hand.
“You’d better have something to eat now you are back,” his host continued, but Dennis, smiling, shook his head.
“I don’t think so, sir. Bad habit to go prowling on wet moors immediately after a heavy meal. B-besides, Hilary m-might think it heartless. And I d-don’t want to find her for the pleasure of l-losing her again.”
“I should imagine if you want her you’re welcome to her,” remarked Nunn, and I was astounded at the animosity in his voice.
Meriel Ross had disappeared, and I realised that beneath her surface manner of naïve helplessness was a strong streak of common sense. Now she returned with a plate of sandwiches that she thrust into Dennis’s hands.
“You won’t go another step till you’ve eaten all those,” she said, sternly, and at once he set to. Eleanor was talking to Jeremy, whom she had recognised.
“It’s no use your trying to seduce your young policeman away from me,” said Mrs. Ross, instantly. “I’ve got him tight. And, my dear, do try and cultivate a sense of humour. I really fail to see why Hilary should have all the laughs.”
“We haven’t come to that stage yet,” said Nunn, in a curt voice. “Are you really going out, Freyne?”
“I thought perhaps Dennis and I might go together,” said Jeremy. “I know these moors pretty well; I know the short cuts and I know the places where Hilary might conceivably try to shelter if she lost her way.”
Nunn didn’t want Dennis to go out again. He suggested that, if anyone must go, Jeremy and I might do our turn and give the other fellows a rest. But he might as well have tried to budge a young tank as move either of them.
Nunn looked angry. “I can see I’m wasting my words on you,” he said. “It’s obvious how it is with you both. But you’ll rest here and eat something solid before you go. I don’t mean to send out stretcher-parties before midnight.”
He and I and Dennis and Jeremy went out of the room together, leaving Meriel Ross and Eleanor alone. Dennis went upstairs for dry footgear, and the rest of us turned into the dining-room.
“There may have been an accident,” Jeremy was saying, more urgently than he had yet spoken. I fancy he was a little nonplussed by his host’s attitude.
“Serve her right if there is. But I doubt it. That young woman always falls on her feet—or someone else’s.”
“Oh, come, sir,” Jeremy protested. “You aren’t really blaming her for missing her road in a confounded fog like this.”
“I’m blaming her for being out in it at all, or taking Dennis out. I’ve seen my wife make herself ill over this young woman, and the rest of you propose to beat the heather all night. Which is what I should like to do to her.”
Jerry looked at him inquiringly.
“Yes,” reiterated Nunn, in his curt, equable voice. “I consider she’s behaved extremely badly. That fellow takes it much too quietly. She’s had her head too long, that’s the trouble. Comes of not having a father, I suppose. If she belonged to me I’d take a slipper to her for upsetting the house like this. And, of course, all you young poops encourage her.”
I was surprised to hear Jeremy chuckle, as he said, “I’ve often felt that way myself, sir.”
Nunn’s severity relaxed. “It’s a pity you’re not going to marry her,” he remarked.
“Oh, but I am,” said Jeremy, coolly. “You’ve said yourself that Dennis wouldn’t be good for her. And I agree.”
At that moment Dennis came back in dry footgear, carrying a rather noisome-looking lantern.
“May I ask how far you intend to go to-night?” Nunn asked him.
“As far as we can. You know the extent of these m-moors? We haven’t gone over a t-tenth of them yet.”
“Well, Freyne’s coming to direct you.”
At the name I saw Dennis give a little start, and then he smiled.
“My p-patron saint,” he murmured.
For a moment I thought it was a new version of the old expletive, “My sainted aunt!” but it wasn’t.
“What the devil d’you mean?” Jeremy wanted to know.
“I beg your pardon. That slipped out. I was brought up in a f-frightfully ecclesiastical home. My father was a p-parson, and when I was a kid every C-Christmas we used to put a p-penny in the box and take a card. And the card had the p-picture of a saint on it, and his p-particular virtue on the back. All that year you had to p-practise that p-particular virtue. My father saw to it that we did, too. You know the k-kind of thing—p-patience or p-perseverance and so forth. And he became your p-patron saint for that year. Hilary’s always held you up as a model of all the virtues she admires, and I’m supposed to be trying to m-model myself on you. You see?” His smile was charming. For all his superior years he seemed almost shy. But I had begun to wonder how far this was a surface manner. He wasn’t a fool, that was certain. And in spite of my friendship with Jeremy I couldn’t help hoping this chap would get his own way. Besides, it would leave Jerem
y free for a bit longer, an excellent plan to my thinking.
“You won’t be able to feel your feet in the morning,” said Nunn, dubiously.
Dennis shook his head and smiled. “I’ve been on a m-motor-bicycle,” he reassured us. “A chap at the garage lent me one.”
“Where is it now?”
“It b-broke down,” admitted Dennis, apologetically. “It’s somewhere on the moor.”
“Then you can’t use it again?”
“I d-don’t want to. To tell you the t-truth, I’m rather alarmed by the brute. It slips about so. But now I’m going on foot. It’s much s-safer, and I think it’s more certain. I’ve just got this lantern. It never goes out, they say, even if it’s dropped in a pond, and the l-light is p-peculiarly brilliant.” He flashed it on our faces and we all staggered, looking as yellow as guineas.
“I thought you wouldn’t mind my coming with you, as you don’t know the moors,” observed Jeremy. “Perhaps I ought to tell you that I’m proposing to marry Hilary myself.”
“Well, we can’t either of us marry her to-night,” said Dennis, sensibly. “We might l-let that little matter stand over till we have her back.”
“How’s the fog?” asked Nunn.
“Oh, lifting,” returned Dennis cheerily. “It’s been l-lifting for some time. It’s begun to r-rain now. Quite nice s-straight rain.”
He opened the front door, and we all looked out. The fog was really dispersing at last, hanging in long yellow wisps over the soaked heather, and a heavy rain had begun to fall. Dennis and Jeremy buttoned up their collars and went out. I hadn’t offered to go. I knew my accursed weakness too well. That unsound leg of mine would let me down before I’d covered a couple of miles. It lost no opportunity of reminding me that my A1 days were over.
“I suppose that fellow wants to commit suicide,” growled Nunn, ringing and telling his butler that what was left of the party would now dine. “Looking over an indescribable area for a problematical corpse. The next thing is they’ll both disappear as well. It’s a damnable night; the mud sucks over your ankles at every step. And if and when she’s found, they’ll fuss over her as if she had a million dollars for each of them in her two hands.”
I felt unequal to discussing Hilary with him, and he brooded, while we waited for the women. Suddenly he broke out, “I’m not denying there’s some purpose in all this. That girl generally has a reason for the things she does. And it’s no use most of the time trying to understand a woman’s reasons for doing things. They haven’t got the same standards as we have, and I doubt if they ever will. I tell you, Keith, I’m always getting the shock of my life at the things perfectly decent women will do without turning a hair. And they raise Cain at what seem to us the merest trifles. That young woman’s running a crooked course. If there’s anything wrong she ought to tell Dennis.”
“Perhaps she daren’t,” I suggested feebly, trying to think of something that would frighten Hilary.
“Then she’s no right to get herself engaged to him. We have a right to expect moral courage in our women. I don’t blame them for jumping if they see a mouse, or raising a tired man just when he’s got to sleep, because there’s a beetle under the bed. That’s their nature. But moral courage is one of their natural virtues, like—like long hair. I’ve sometimes thought it’s partly because they’re less sensitive than we are, and they have a hatred of being thought like anyone else. A woman will own up at any time to being different from other people; she’d be furious if you classed her with a whole lot of other women. But a man tries to look as much of a sheep as all the other sheep he grazes with. It’s the way the creatures are made. Male and female created He them, seeing farther than we. And a damned sight farther, we’ll hope.” Then his voice changed once more; the speculative tone left it, and he became impassioned. Clearly he felt very deeply on this point, and I wondered where the source of that feeling lay. I couldn’t quite believe that Hilary had roused him to this pitch. “If it really is something wrong, then it’s something Dennis ought to know. A girl has no right to marry if there’s something behind her she daren’t let her husband hear. She ought to trust him outright and take her fences clean. I don’t like this underhand dealing. It’s all wrong, and more than that, it doesn’t pay. It doesn’t pay in business, and it doesn’t pay in love.”
Some impulse made me turn my head at that moment, and I saw Eleanor standing in the doorway. She and Meriel Ross must have crossed the hall together, and have heard Nunn’s last words. I have never seen an expression so tragic, so terrible, so full of an incalculable despair on any face as I saw on Eleanor’s then. For an instant she remained motionless, without colour or even vitality, like some woman slain upon her feet. Then she recovered; slowly one saw the life creep back into the body. It was like watching some marvellous piece of machinery awake to action. She spoke, slowly at first, with gradual movements of her arms and hands; then the blood flowed more quickly and eagerly, until by the time the meal was half over she appeared her normal self.
But not to me. I could not forget that expression, tense, secretly alarmed, that had transfixed her for an instant in the doorway. And I realised then that whatever Hilary’s secret was it was in some way bound up with Eleanor’s life.
Chapter IV
I don’t remember, even in the trenches, eating a more uncomfortable meal. Humanity is a complex affair, and it is next door to impossible to explain the sudden changes of mood that overwhelm us at every step. Difficult, too, to realise how we determine in our own hearts the things that matter most, differentiate between the significant and the unimportant. Until I saw that expression on Eleanor’s face I had been profoundly troubled by the thought of Hilary perhaps hurt or distraught among those endless black ridges, for I was once lost myself in complete darkness, and I know how the loss of sight, which is what such a position amounts to, intensifies the smallest and most familiar sound into a terror and sets the most normal brain flashing with incredible fears. And if, in addition to being lost, Hilary was really in trouble so serious she dared not confide in Dennis, who, by reason of his age and experience and a certain warm kindliness that was unmistakable, was her most obvious confidante, I thought her deserving of sympathy rather than censure. But no sooner had I seen that expression on Eleanor’s face, than my feelings did a kind of nose-dive. I almost forgot Hilary or, at all events, she disappeared into the depths of my mind where she was barely perceptible. My interest in Eleanor, that had always been considerable, leapt up and overpowered everything else. I wanted to know nothing, understand nothing, but the meaning of that spontaneous frozen fear. All through the meal I watched her covertly for an instant of self-betrayal, but none came. In her smallest gesture she was once again mistress of her emotions. But it was like seeing for a second some rich tapestry flicked aside by accident, to reveal a treasure-trove of which the merest glimpse kindled the onlooker’s ardent curiosity. I waited with an impatience I found it hard to dissemble while we got through the meal somehow, talking a little of Hilary, more of Dennis and Jeremy, and of more general subjects, such as a coming by-election in the neighbourhood and the effect on local rates of the opening of a factory at Ravensend. And all this time, while I bandied words with Meriel Ross or answered Eleanor’s casual questions, I was aware of such a storm of feeling raging behind the quiet controlled mask that the very air seemed stirred by its force. I tried not to watch her movements, or observe the changes of her tone; but it was inevitable. The world might have shrunk to no larger than was necessary to hold the pair of us; I was convinced that she could explain this sudden absence of Hilary’s. She had, indeed, a look as though some dreadful thing had been accomplished, that she had been unable to prevent, but for which she was nevertheless accountable, something that would shatter the fabric of her own happiness and security, a woman facing ruin yet refusing even so to exhibit her misery to the world.
After dinner she told me the story, and allowed me
to see how closely I had identified my version of the position with the truth. We were alone, and, waiting for her to speak, the strain of that artificial silence during which she was nerving herself to tell me the rather horrible truth playing on my nerves, I muttered something about Hilary.
“Where on earth she can be…” I began, and Eleanor said, “Ask Ralph.”
Something in her voice, something dull, certain and hopeless, astounded me.
“Ralph?” I repeated foolishly.
“I’m convinced he’s at the bottom of this as he’s at the bottom of the rest of the trouble.”
“The trouble about which you wrote to me?”
“Yes. But I wrote too late. He’s struck. I didn’t think he’d dare.”
“But what hold has he got over Hilary?”
“The same as he has over me. Only I brought my trouble on myself, and Hilary’s suffering for it.”
“I wish you’d explain.”
“Yes. I must start at the beginning. It’s a long time ago. It began during the war, when I wanted Cleghorne so badly. There is a lot of nonsense talked about the effect the war had on people who stayed at home, but there’s a grain of truth among the chaff here and there; and undoubtedly people did change their standards. Or rather, their standards imperceptibly shifted. In a way, I think that was for the good. Because in most cases they shifted away from the eternal question of how this or that would affect themselves and did, however vaguely and even hysterically, begin to think of how it would affect communities, or, at all events, their neighbours. All this,” she added, regaining control over her voice, that had been a little shaken and unsteady, “isn’t meant as an excuse for myself. I don’t think even at the time I thought of it as that.”
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