Will O’ the Wisp

by Patricia Wentworth

  “She’s not a lady born.”

  He made a movement of impatience.

  “I don’t ask about what is past and gone,” said Miss Smith; “but I want to know whether you’ll do right by her now. I want to know what’s in your mind, Mr. Fordyce. She’s got her marriage lines, and I want to know whether you’re going to treat her as your wife fair and open, or whether it’s in your mind to hush things up and pay her to keep out of the way.”

  David flushed.

  “Good Lord!” he said. “What do you take me for?”

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” said Miss Smith, panting for breath. “How do you mean by her, Mr. Fordyce?”

  “I’ve told you,” said David.

  “No, you haven’t—and I want to know. Is Erica to keep out of the way? Or is she to be your wife and the mistress of your house?”

  “Miss Smith,” said David earnestly, “I don’t know how to convince you. If Erica’s alive, I only want to make amends to her for what she must have suffered. There’s no question of concealment—there’s no question of any of the things you’ve been asking me. If she’s Erica, she’s my wife, and Ford is her home.”

  He was using the words he had used to Folly, and they brought her up before him—vivid, anguished. For an instant it was her face he saw; and his own changed so suddenly that Miss Smith gave a startled cry:

  “What is it—Mr. Fordyce?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  David recovered himself with an effort. Folly was gone.

  Miss Smith came forward slowly. She came right up to him and laid a hand on his arm.

  “You mean what you say?” There was something strained about the intensity of her look. David met it very steadily.

  “Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Oh,” said Miss Smith a little wildly, “perhaps I don’t want to believe you. Mr. Fordyce, are you honest? Will you put your hand on the Bible and swear that you’re honest?”

  “I will if you want me to,” said David. He did not know what was behind all this, but the feeling that there was something behind it gained upon him.

  Miss Smith went over to the rose-wood table. She lifted the heavy Bible from the pink and green wool mat on which it lay. With trembling hands she brought it to the edge of the table and rested it there.

  “Put your hand on it and swear that you mean honestly by Erica. I don’t ask anything about the past; but can you swear that you mean honestly and openly by her now?”

  “Yes, I can,” said David. He put his hand on the worn, black cover and said: “I swear that I mean honestly by her.”

  Miss Smith’s eyes wavered and fell. She let go of the Bible and stepped back.

  “You mean honestly,” she said. “I think—I think you’re honest. I think—oh, I think I’m a very wicked woman.” She clutched at a chair and sat down on the edge of the black horse-hair seat; her hands fell into her lap as if she could not hold them up any longer.

  David was appalled at her look. He said very gently:

  “Why are you wicked?”

  “I didn’t think you were honest—and I’ve not been honest myself. I rebuked you for taking the Lord’s name in vain, but I’ve taken it in vain myself getting on for three years, for I’ve called myself a Christian, and I’ve been living a lie. Only at first I wasn’t sure, and it’s hard—oh, it’s hard to go to the workhouse.” Her voice trembled lower and lower till the last word was just a horrified breath.

  David took a chair, pulled it up close to her, and sat down. Betty’s tears had never accustomed him to seeing a woman weep, and the slow, cold drops that were rolling down Miss Smith’s lined cheeks touched his pity to the quick. She looked the frailest and forlornest thing on earth.

  “Won’t you tell me about it?” he said. “You’re very unhappy. Won’t you tell me why?”

  Miss Smith looked down at her hands. Those slow tears went on falling.

  “I was too ill at first,” she said. “It’s not wicked to make a mistake. The wickedness came in when I began to think it might be a mistake and I wouldn’t face it. That was when I began to be wicked.”

  “What did you make a mistake about?”

  “About her,” said Miss Smith. “If you’re honest, I can’t go on with it. I didn’t think you were honest; but two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  He put his hand over one of hers.

  “Miss Smith—what was the mistake you made?”

  She lifted her drowned, desolate eyes to his.

  “I thought she was Erica,” she said in a whispering voice; the words only just reached him though he was so near.

  He said: “You thought—don’t you think so now?”

  Miss Smith shook her head.

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She drew away her hand, took out a handkerchief, and dried her eyes. A little strength returned to her voice.

  “Erica wrote to me after her father died. She said she was going to her aunt in Sydney. Then I didn’t hear any more. I wrote, and my letters came back. It troubled me very much, but I kept on thinking that I should hear from her, or that she would come. I got to think that I didn’t hear because she was coming home. I thought about it a lot, because things were going very badly for me. There’s a mortgage on the house, and it was getting more and more difficult to keep up the payments. I thought if Erica came home she’d help me.”

  “I’m sure she would have helped you,” said David.

  “I thought she would. Then I got ill. It was just after Colonel March and his daughter were here. I was very ill, and they told me I talked about Erica all the time—they said I seemed to be looking for her.” She paused, and added in a lower voice: “Then she came.”

  “Heather Down?”

  “Yes,” said Miss Smith, wiping her eyes again. “She came, and I thought she was Erica—oh, I did think so. And I began to get well.”

  “Did she say she was Erica?” asked David.

  “I don’t know.” Miss Smith looked bewildered. “It’s all so confused. She called me Aunt Nellie and she paid for everything. Of course I could never have let her do that unless—unless she was my own niece.”

  “What happened when you got better?”

  “She told me—not all at once, you know, but a bit at a time—that she’d been married, and that her husband had deserted her, and that she’d come home to find him, and that she wasn’t using her own name till the right time came. She said she was calling herself Heather Down. She said Erica was a foreign name for heather—and of course Moor and Down are pretty much the same thing. She was very bitter about men, and about her husband, and marriage, and being deserted. She wanted to punish you, Mr. Fordyce.”

  “Yes, she told me so. When did you begin to think she wasn’t Erica?”

  “I don’t know,” said Miss Smith weakly. “It just came to me. There was a photograph of her father, and she didn’t know who it was. It wasn’t a good one, but I thought she would have known it. And there were things she didn’t remember, and—and it began to come to me. Only I wouldn’t let it come, because if she wasn’t Erica, I couldn’t let her pay for things like she was doing.” She laid her wet handkerchief on her lap and plucked at the edge. “It’s her money that keeps me going; and if she’s not my niece I can’t take it, and then—there’s only—the workhouse. I’ve been living a lie because I didn’t dare to face it. She’s not Erica, Mr. Fordyce, and I can’t take her money any more.”

  There was a quick step in the passage and the door was flung open.

  Heather Down came in.

  CHAPTER XXXIX

  She stopped in the middle of the room. Miss Smith put a shaking hand on the back of the chair and stood up.

  “I had to do it,” she said. “I couldn’t go on—I had to do it.”

  “What have you done?” said Heather Down.

  “I had to,” said Miss Smith. She went to the door and opened it. “I had to do it,” she said again. �
�And may the Lord forgive me for not having done it before.”

  She went out of the room and shut the door.

  “What has she done?” said Heather Down sharply. “Look here, David Fordyce—”

  “She’s upset,” said David. “Let her alone. I want to talk to you.”

  He thought she hesitated. Then she said, rather defiantly:

  “Well, we can’t talk in the dark. This blindman’s holiday sort of business is enough to upset anyone. Pull those curtains over while I light the gas.”

  The yellow light flared out and showed him Miss Down in her red coat and bright pink hat.

  “Now,” she said. “What have you been saying to upset Aunt Nellie? I told her not to see you. I tell you I won’t have her upset like this.”

  “Miss Smith is upset,” said David, “because she does not believe that you are her niece. She has just told me so.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is perfectly true.”

  “She does believe it.”

  “No, she does not. She only really believed it whilst she was ill. Ever since she has pretended to herself and to you because, she says, she can’t go on taking money from you if you’re not really her niece, and she’s horribly afraid of the workhouse.”

  Heather Down cried out and clapped her hands together:

  “Oh, if I didn’t hate you before, I’d hate you for this!”

  “Don’t be silly!” said David. It was easy enough to talk to Heather Down if she were Heather Down and not Erica. “Why do you talk like that? I shan’t let her go to the workhouse—you might know that. I think I could persuade her that there’s no reason why I shouldn’t help her a bit. You see, I really am a nephew by marriage. I think I shall be able to get over her conscience all right with that. And now let’s have things out. Why do you say you hate me? What have you got to hate me for? You’re not Erica.”

  Heather Down stood under the gas-light. Her hands were clenched at her sides. The left hand was ringless. She said vehemently:

  “I never said I was.”

  “Didn’t you? You went pretty near it, I think. You tried your level best to make me believe that you were Erica. You wanted me to believe that I was bound to you. You said you wanted to punish me. Why?”

  “Because you deserted Erica.”

  “Do you really believe that? Come, Miss Down, won’t you tell me the whole thing? I think you knew Erica—I think you must have cared for her.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Won’t you tell me about it? I don’t know anything except that, somehow, she survived the wreck. I don’t know how. I don’t know anything except—You’ll tell me now, won’t you, whether she’s alive?”

  “She died more than four years ago,” said Heather Down in a dull, sullen voice.

  David turned away and walked to the window. He pulled back one of the bright, flimsy curtains and looked out into the dusk. Vague outlines of dark houses; lighted squares which were windows; a misty, darkening sky. He turned back again. Heather Down saw how pale he was.

  “Will you tell me how it all happened?” he said. “I put her in the second boat, and it was never heard of again. How did she escape?”

  “She didn’t stay in it. You never thought of that, I suppose. She was awfully frightened, and she wanted to stay with you. The first boat upset whilst they were lowering it, and when she saw that, she climbed down on to the deck again. She was going to look for you, but it was all dark and she got very frightened. One of the officers came up to her, and he said, ‘You’re Miss Baker? There’s a place for you here.’ He took her by the arm, and she said, ‘No—no.’ Eva Baker was the girl who was in her cabin. She was little and slight like Erica. The officer got Erica half across the deck, and then she fainted. When she came to she was in a boat with a lot of other people. I think something had hit her head—she said she felt all queer and didn’t know who she was or where she’d got to. She remembered taking her rings and hanging them on the little chain that she wore round her neck. She thought she did it partly because of not getting the turquoises in her engagement ring spoilt with the sea-water, and partly because people round her called her Miss Baker, and she said she thought she oughtn’t to be wearing a wedding ring. She was all confused and light-headed, poor kid. And that was the last thing she remembered. The boat was picked up by the Lennox. Erica was still unconscious when she was landed at Cape Town. Everyone thought she was Eva Baker.”

  “Who was Eva Baker?” said David. He remembered her vaguely. Erica had not liked her very much.

  “Eva Baker was my uncle’s granddaughter. He hadn’t ever seen her, because she’d always lived in Australia, and she was coming to make her home with him after her mother died. Erica came to his house as Eva Baker, and for six months no one thought anything else. Then Erica began to come to herself, and she told us who she was.”

  “Six months?” said David.

  “Yes, she was queer in her head, you know. I was nursing her most of the time. I took away the rings so that no one should see them. She used to talk a lot—conversations with you, and with that woman she stayed with in Sydney. She used to say the things over and over like a gramophone record till I got to know them by heart. I thought some man had got her into trouble, poor kid, and I wouldn’t let anyone else hear her. Then she came to, and she told us she wasn’t Eva at all. She told us she was Mrs. David Fordyce.”

  She looked at him accusingly.

  “My uncle didn’t believe her at first—I’d a work to make him. But after a bit we could all see she was quite sensible in her mind. She wrote to you—I helped her with the letter. That’s how I knew what was in it. And uncle wrote. That was the first letter. It was posted the first week in September.”

  David nodded.

  “Well, then, we waited for you to answer—and you didn’t answer.”

  “Why didn’t you cable?”

  “Uncle wouldn’t. He was old fashioned and had a horror of telegrams and things like that. I very nearly sent one on my own, but by the time I’d worked myself up to it, it was getting on for time for your answer to come; so I waited.”

  “Why didn’t you cable when the answer didn’t come?”

  “She wrote the second letter,” said Heather Down. “I helped her with it, and I registered it for her. And she died two days afterwards—just slipped away in her sleep.”

  She began to cry and to rub away the tears with the back of her hand. Then all at once she threw back her head.

  “I promised myself then that I’d punish you, and when you didn’t answer the second letter, I hated you so that I could hardly bear it. I’d not much use for men anyway—I’d been let down myself when I was no older than Erica; and I thought to myself, ‘I can’t punish him’—he’d gone away and I didn’t even know his right name—‘but if I ever get a chance of punishing David Fordyce, I’ll do it, and I’ll reckon I’m paying my own account as well as Erica’s.’”

  “I see,” said David. “Why did you wait so long?”

  “I waited because I had to. Needs must when necessity drives. I was in a manicure business—partner with the woman who started it, and I couldn’t leave her in the lurch. And I couldn’t leave uncle. I was very fond of him, and he was all broken up about Eva and about Erica. When he died, I sold my share of the business and came over here. I hadn’t got any plan in my head. I came to look for Erica’s Aunt Nellie, and I found her ill and down to her last penny. And she took me for Erica because her head was full of Erica. Well, I didn’t mean to deceive her—I wasn’t brought up to tell lies, whatever you may think—but I just hadn’t the heart to tell her Erica was dead. I thought it would kill her, so I made up my mind I’d let her go on thinking I was her niece until she was a bit stronger. Well, I never did tell her. I nursed her, and I got fond of her. You get awfully fond of people when they’ve got nobody but you. I got to know pretty soon that she wouldn’t let me help her unless she thought I was Erica, and after a bit I just let it go at that.
She hadn’t anyone, and I hadn’t either, so where was the harm?” She looked defiantly at David. “I wasn’t thinking about you at all—not till afterwards. I went on hating you like poison, and one day it came to me that I’d got a way to punish you all ready to my hand, because if Aunt Nellie could take me for Erica, I could play it up on you enough to get you all upset. I went over everything Erica had told me and everything I’d heard her say those nights when she’d go over and over all the things she’d ever said to you, or you to her; and I felt certain I could get you so that you wouldn’t know what to believe.” She gave a little hard laugh. “I did it too—didn’t I? You thought I was Erica. You weren’t sure; but you did think so.”

  David regarded her with some pity.

  “What made you ring me up when you did?”

  “I’d been finding out about you—I’d been down to Ford two or three times. The last time I went, everyone in the village was talking about you and Mrs. Rayne. They said she was an old sweetheart, and they were all hoping you’d marry her. It made me wild to hear them. And then, on the top of that, I saw your advertisement asking for news of Erica, and I thought to myself, ‘Now I’ll let you have it.’”

  She had been flushed and excited, but suddenly the flush died, her voice went flat.

  “Funny—isn’t it, the way things turn out? I’d thought about punishing you for years, and it came off better than I ever thought it could. I’d lain awake nights and nights planning what I’d say. And when I’d done it all, I just didn’t care a bit. I thought if I could pay you out, that I should feel as if I’d got rid of something. But I didn’t—I just felt as if the bottom had dropped out of everything and there wasn’t anything left for me to do. That’s what I felt like. And then I got your letter, and it made me think perhaps I’d made a mistake. I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Look here,” said David, “can’t we be friends? I’d like to be because of what you did for Erica. Why can’t you believe I’m honest? I’d like to be friends with you, and then we could join forces and see what can be done for Miss Smith. Can’t we be friends?”