She said quite softly, watching him:
“She won’t marry you—or you won’t marry her—or you’re married already.”
She had the satisfaction of seeing his look of black anger. Then he turned his back on her and went over to the fire.
Folly hit the keyboard with both hands and produced a medley of screaming notes. Then, to a series of discords, she sang in a husky, penetrating whisper:
“My baby’s a scream,
My baby’s a dream,
She’s a hula mula wula girl,
She’s a crazy daisy nightmare—ula
My baby’s a scream.”
CHAPTER VI
Eleanor came into Folly’s room that night after they had all gone upstairs. She found three electric lights on and Miss Folly in her shift practising barefoot dancing. Her black frock lay in a heap on the floor. There was one stocking by the washstand and another at the foot of the bed. The high-heeled black shoes were in opposite corners of the room. One scarlet garter decorated the bedpost.
Folly went on dancing without taking any notice of Eleanor, who said, “Untidy little wretch!” and then watched her indulgently. In the end Folly turned her head over her shoulder and inquired laconically:
“Pie-jaw?”
“Do you deserve one?”
“Prob.” She rose on her bare toes, clasped her hands above her head, and yawned.
“Folly, what did you say to David? He hardly spoke for the rest of the evening. What on earth did you say to him?”
Folly looked sleepy and innocent. Then she laughed. The laugh was not so innocent.
“I ran a pin into him—I ran three pins, and one of them pricked him. I wish I knew which pin it was.”
A look of distress crossed Eleanor’s face.
“I wanted David to like you—but you’re such a little fool.”
“They should have called me Flora. I should have been perfectly good if I’d been called Flora—I get no end of moral uplift every time Grandmamma does it. But when I’m Folly—ooh! Eleanor, I’m going to tea with a nice young man the day after to-morrow. I met him this morning, and he asked me. I think he’s a farmer.”
“Nonsense!”
“His name is Matthew Brown. You can’t say that isn’t respectable, and you can’t say I didn’t tell you. He’s got a sister called Gladys Ann—she lives with him. And if I can’t go to a night club with Stingo to-morrow, I do think I might be allowed to go and have a respectably chaperoned tea with Matthew Brown.”
“Rubbish!” said Eleanor. “Look here, Folly.”
Folly was leaning out of the open window, the chintz curtain held aside.
“I think I shall go for a moonlight ramble. Perhaps I should pick up something more exciting than Matthew Brown.”
“Folly—it’s icy! Do shut that window.”
“Stuffy old thing!” The words came just above a whisper in a little child’s voice. Then the window banged and the curtains fell. “It must be frightfully odd to be a widow. I expect it adds years to one’s natural stuffiness. I’m going to grow my hair and do it in curls. David would like me to.”
“Did he say so?” Eleanor’s tone was dry.
“’M—he did. He thinks you’re beautiful.”
Eleanor laughed.
“I suppose he told you that too?”
“’M—I said, ‘Do you think Eleanor is beautiful?’ And he said—no, I shan’t tell you what he said—and then I thought I’d grow my hair and have it in curls like you, and not put any stuff on my face, or do my lips, and always be goood. You and David were engaged, weren’t you?”
“Folly, what a little idiot you are!”
“You were engaged, weren’t you?”
“Ancient history,” said Eleanor.
“Why didn’t you get married?”
“We were infants—there was nothing in it.”
Folly looked through half-closed eyelids; and something in the look set a spark to Eleanor’s temper.
“Perhaps if I’m very good, and let my hair grow, and wash my face with yellow soap—Do you wash your face with yellow soap, Eleanor darling?”
“Do I look as if I did?”
“Sometimes. No—not really. What a temper you’ve got! It jumped out of your eyes like red-hot knives. Does David like people with tempers? I could grow one whilst I was growing my hair if he does.”
She stood on one foot and caught the heel of the other in her left hand. With the fingers of the right she blew Eleanor a kiss.
“I haven’t quite made up my mind whether I’ll have David,” she said. “I might get bored with him.”
Eleanor was conscious of colour in her cheeks.
“It’s time you stopped talking nonsense and went to bed.”
“Of course, if you want him,” said Folly, twirling on one bare foot.
Eleanor went out of the room; the door shut sharply.
By the time she reached her own room she was wondering why she had so nearly lost her temper. Folly had scored instead of being coolly snubbed as she deserved. She moved about the room for a little without undressing. There was a pleasant fire. A fire-lit room and a still house. There was something about Ford that felt like home. She sat down by the fire and let the stillness and the firelight and that home feeling have their way.
It might have been half an hour later that she heard the sound and raised her head to listen. It was quite a little sound, faint and distant. As she listened, she heard another sound, fainter still. Someone had opened one of the long windows in the room below; she had heard the bolt move and the catch slip. She sprang up and went to the window.
The shadow of the house lay black upon a flagged path and a stretch of turf. She pushed the window open and leaned out, listening. In the shadow someone was moving. She could not see the movement, but she could hear it. The sound grew fainter.
The shadow lay twenty feet wide. Eleanor’s window looked upon the path and a steep grassy slope that fell away to woodland. The terrace lay on the right, and the moon shone on it. The edge of the shadow was very sharp and black. It crossed the flagged path at an angle.
Eleanor leaned out, and heard the footsteps pass; someone was going in the direction of the terrace. She watched the edge of the shadow and held her breath.
Quite suddenly a black-cloaked figure crossed the line between shadow and moonlight. Eleanor saw blackness—movement—a cloak that covered everything. And then the figure was gone. Just short of the terrace the path descended by a dozen steps; the wall of the terrace shadowed them.
The figure that had come out of the darkness dropped down the steps and was lost in the dark again.
Eleanor shut her window and snatched a fur-lined cloak from the tall mahogany wardrobe. That little idiot Folly! Who could have imagined that she really meant to go out? Of course, it might be one of the maids. No, that wasn’t likely. She slipped out of the room and felt her way noiselessly down the stairs and through the hall.
The room immediately below her bedroom was Betty Lester’s sitting-room. Eleanor felt her way across it until her hands touched the chintz curtains. They were cold and shiny, and as she pulled them back, the draught that came from behind them was colder still. The window was a French window, opening to the ground, and it stood a hand’s breadth ajar.
“Little idiot!” said Eleanor to herself. Then she pulled her cloak round her and ran to the corner of the house.
The steps were at her foot, very black; they went down to a path which wound back along the slope and then lost itself in the darkness of the woods. Eleanor stood on the top step and called softly:
“Folly—Folly!”
She waited a moment, and then called again:
“Folly! Folly! Are you there?”
An owl hooted in the wood. Eleanor hated owls. She shivered a little; and the owl cried again, on an unearthly, floating note that sounded nearer. She decided that it would be ridiculous for her to follow the little wretch; besides, she might quite easily miss her i
n the wood. The sensible thing to do was to go back into Betty’s room and wait for her there.
She drew back from the steps and walked to the edge of the terrace. It was such a lovely night—so still, so clear, with the moon coming up over the edge of the little hill away on the left—a golden moon very nearly full. It was just clear of the tree-tops, and half the lake below the terrace shone in a light between gold and silver; the other half lay black in the shadow of the wooded hill.
Eleanor looked at the water and moved along the terrace until she came to the head of the stone steps which led down to it. They were bathed in the soft light. She went down a little way, and then stood for a while letting the beauty in upon her troubled thought.
Folly—what had possessed her? How lovely the tracery of bare boughs against the moon-flushed sky! Why had Folly kept to the dark path instead of coming this way?
Her hand moved on the wall that followed the steps. There were little dry stalks and withered leaves on it. In a month or two there would be arabis, and aubretia, and alyssum, in sheets of white, and lilac, and violet, and yellow.
“Perhaps I ought to have gone after Folly. The wood’s so dark—and I do hate owls. Why did she go into the wood? It’s dark. I ought to have gone after her. Why on earth did she go into the wood? I’m a coward. I ought to have gone after her.”
She took her hand off the wall, and, as she turned, something moved where the wood ran down to the lake.
It wasn’t Folly; it was a man.
Eleanor’s heart thumped, and then quieted. It was David. It was only David. She ran down the steps to meet him; her “Have you seen her?” was a little breathless.
“Her?”
“Folly—have you seen Folly?”
“No—why should I? It’s a topping night—isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Yes. Folly—Folly’s gone for a walk.”
“Nonsense!”
“But she has. She said something about it, and I thought she was joking. But I heard the morning-room window open, and I saw someone go down the steps.”
“These steps?”
“No.”
“How do you know it was Folly?”
“Well, I can’t think of anyone else who’d be so idiotic.”
David laughed unexpectedly.
“Well, I’m out, and you’re out. As a matter of fact, I often go for a walk before I turn in. I shouldn’t bother about that little image if I were you.”
“David, she oughtn’t to.”
He laughed again.
“Do you think you or anyone else’ll ever stop her doing the things she oughtn’t to? Don’t you worry about her—she’ll come back all right. Naught comes to naught.”
“Don’t!” said Eleanor quickly. “David, I did want you to like her.”
“Did you?” His voice was dry. “Look here, we’d better be getting up on to the terrace.”
“Oh yes—I mustn’t be locked out!”
“Don’t run—I’ve got a key.”
They had reached the topmost step when David asked:
“Why do you want me to like her?”
“She wants friends. She’s picked up with a perfectly rotten crowd.”
“I’m afraid I can’t compete.”
Eleanor slipped her hand into his arm.
“No, David, listen! She does want friends. She—you know her mother ran away?”
“Vaguely. I shouldn’t be surprised at anyone running away from George. Oh, he’s a bore!”
Eleanor shook the arm she was holding.
“Don’t!”
“My dear girl, that George is an unqualified and undisputed bore is the sort of thing you can’t argue about—it’s simply a bed-rock fact, and every time I meet George I stub my toe on it.”
“Well, you can’t say Folly’s a bore, anyhow.”
“No—she’s not a bore—I’ll give her that. Is she like her mother?”
“No, she isn’t. Why must people be like someone? She’s herself.”
“She’s a little devil. What was the mother?”
“Big—fat—fair—sleepy—looked at you sideways—fat white hands. I loathed her.”
“So I see. Folly looks at you sideways.”
“She doesn’t—not like that. David, she doesn’t really. Don’t you see how rotten it is for a girl when everyone—everyone—expects her to go off the rails because her mother did? And she’s not like her—she’s not. She’s naughty and she’s provoking; but she’s not in the least like her mother. David, do you know the woman carried on with that child in the house and didn’t care whether she knew about it or not?” She dropped his arm and stepped back with an angry stamp of the foot. “It makes me wild!”
“How old was she?”
“Folly? Fourteen. Can you imagine it? The child hasn’t had a chance. George doesn’t pretend to care a rap for her. And, David, she’s only nineteen now. Do make friends with her.”
David looked at Eleanor in the moonlight. He felt an extreme disinclination to talk about Folly March. Eleanor did not look at him; her eyes were on the bright lake and the dark woods; her thoughts were far away.
“How bright and cold!” she said at last, only just above her breath.
“It’s too cold for you. Come in.”
“I didn’t mean that.” Then, after a pause: “It’s like Indian moonlight frozen.” On the last word her voice fell lower still.
David said, “Did you like India? Do you want to go back?” He had not meant to say it, but the words came.
“No,” said Eleanor quickly. “No!”
He was sorry he had spoken, because she shivered; and yet, having spoken, something pricked him on.
“Eleanor—how has it been—all these years?”
Eleanor winced.
“It’s over.”
“My dear, I—was it as bad as that?” He laid a hand on her shoulder and felt it rigid.
“It’s over,” she said again.
Someone was coming up the dark steps on their right, softly and with great caution. Just for a moment this someone stood in the shadow looking at the lighted terrace and the two figures standing so close together that they made one figure in the moonlight. Then, quickly and silently, a woman in a black cloak crossed from shadow to shadow and was gone.
David and Eleanor were aware of one another and of the past; they neither saw nor heard. David’s hand tightened on Eleanor’s shoulder, and he said:
“Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know—you were so far away—I don’t know—” Then quite suddenly: “That’s not true. I do know. I was a fool—girls don’t understand very much—he fascinated me—it was like a fever—I didn’t think—I just did it. And then—when it was too late—I woke up.”
She shivered and drew away from him, holding her cloak with cold, clenched fingers.
“David—” She choked on the word and began again. “Why did you ask? No—I suppose you’ve a right to ask.”
“No,” said David. “No.”
She controlled her voice.
“I don’t know why I should mind. Everyone knew. There’d been someone else for years. I would have cared for him if it had been possible. It wasn’t—and everybody knew.”
David knew something too. Cosmo Rayne had had a reputation; amongst other things, he drank. It was not hard to believe that Eleanor had not found it possible to care. Gay, unscrupulous, a drunkard, trusted even less by men than by women. He felt a pity, which had no words, for Eleanor.
With an effort she turned her eyes from the glittering water.
“Betty and I—we both made rather a mess of things—didn’t we?” She paused; something tragic looked out of her eyes. “Betty’s got Dick. I lost my baby. Did you know?”
“Yes,” said David.
Eleanor walked away towards the house. She wanted to reach the black shadow, to pass through it to her own dark room, and to cry her heart out. The old mournful pain which never quite left her heart had
risen in sudden flood; it overwhelmed her, and she could only just hold back the tears.
She came to the window of Betty’s room, groped for the pane, and pushed. The window was shut.
David came up behind her.
“What is it? Are you faint?”
Her hand was on the glass; she leaned against the jamb.
“David, it’s shut!”
“You came out this way?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Quite sure.”
“Then she’s slipped in and done us down. It doesn’t matter—I’ve got a key.”
He took her arm in an easy, brotherly fashion, and they came together to the door which led into the garden-room.
David switched on the light.
“Run up and see if you can catch her. She deserves a wigging.”
In the light Eleanor was very pale, but her composure had come back. David’s friendly clasp, the bare room full of familiar shabby things, the light—all helped to restore her to her everyday self. There was the old battered croquet set, the fishing rods, the old garden chairs. She said, “Yes, she does,” and ran across the hall and up the stairs to Folly’s room.
She did not knock, but opened the door quickly and stood listening. Darkness and silence. Her hand went up and pulled down the switch; the bulb in the ceiling sprang into brilliance. The light shone on one stocking by the washstand and another by the dressing-table; on a pair of shoes in opposite corners of the room; on a scarlet garter hanging from the bedpost; on Folly’s scattered garments; and on Folly March in bed, with a pale blue eiderdown snuggled tightly up to her chin.
Eleanor crossed over to the bed and stood there looking down. Folly’s black lashes lay smoothly upon Folly’s pale smooth cheek; Folly’s little red mouth, washed clean of lipstick, was firmly closed; one little ear showed pink against the sleek black hair. She looked very young.
Eleanor put a hand on the blue eiderdown; and all of a sudden Folly cried out and turned, her eyes wide open and an arm flung out. Her cry was the unintelligible murmur of a dream. The wide green eyes were as empty and blank as water; there was no imp in them; there was nothing but sleep.
Eleanor said, “Folly!” and Folly said, “O—oh!” She flung out her other arm and blinked at the light.
Will O’ the Wisp Page 4