The Amazing Chance

by Patricia Wentworth

  Sir Henry nodded.

  “Is there anything that strikes you specially?”

  Sir Henry took out a sheaf of typewritten pages, turned the leaves, and put a large, white forefinger down in the middle of a line.

  “Yes,” he said, “the identity disc. She mentions it specially, I see—says she put it with his clothes at the edge of the stream above the fall. What happened to it?”

  “She doesn’t know. I thought we ought to send someone down to make inquiries on the spot.”

  “Yes,” said Sir Henry, “certainly.” The large finger jabbed the page again; the rather colourless eyes looked mildly at Manning. “Yes, certainly. But hasn’t it occurred to you, my boy, that this Anna Blum must have seen the name on the disc? She took it off him, handled it—she must have seen the name.”

  “She says she didn’t. I put the point to her when we had her over to get her statement properly taken down; it occurred to me at once, and I rather urged it. She only said the light was bad, and she hadn’t thought of reading the name. When I pressed her she shrugged her shoulders and came out with ‘Na, Herr Major, do you not think I had enough on my mind without prying into matters that did not concern me? Why should I care what his name was? For all I knew, he was going to die. And whether he lived or died, it was likely enough to be a stone wall and some German bullets for me, as you yourself have said. It seemed to me that already I knew too much.’ And when you come to think of it, sir, she wasn’t far wrong.”

  Sir Henry turned the pages on his knee, nodded, and folded the papers again.

  “Well,” he said, “we’ve been talking about everyone except the one person who matters most. We’ve got to consider Evelyn’s position, you know, Monkey. What exactly have you done about Evelyn?”

  “I wrote from Cologne—said I was coming over and wanted to see her—, and I’ve had a wire to say she is getting back to her flat to-night. I’ve written and told her what’s happened; and I enclosed a copy of Anna Blum’s statement.”

  “You’ve written?” There was a shade of surprise in Sir Henry’s voice.

  Manning pulled viciously at his moustache.

  “Yes,” he said. “Evelyn ’ll get it first thing to-morrow. I wrote because I thought she wouldn’t want anyone there for a bit—not at the first go off, you know. I thought, better give her time to pull herself together, and then either you or I could go round and talk it over.”

  Sir Henry was sensible, not for the first time, of the fact that his son-in-law was possessed of unexpected delicacies and those intuitions asserted by Lacy to be the special gift of Woman with a capital W.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think you’re right. Then if you will go and see Evelyn, I’ll go down to Laydon Manor and tell Cotterell.”

  Manning made a most hideous face.

  “Don’t you think you’d better see Evelyn?” He didn’t look at Sir Henry, but pushed the fire again and scowled at the falling embers.

  “I don’t think so,” said Sir Henry, leaning back. “For one thing, you’re nearer Evelyn’s age. I don’t mean to say that the actual years count for anything. But you talk the same language—play the game of life, in fact, by the same rules. It’s all a convention of course; and the strange part is that it is just in moments of catastrophe that these conventions count for most. I know it’s not the commonly accepted idea; but it’s a fact for all that. I’ve seen lives ruined because, in a moment of great emotion, the people concerned were unable to understand each other’s conventions. If novelists are to be believed, the early Victorian woman played a swoon where the modern girl plays a piece of neo-Georgian slang. I don’t suppose their feelings differ at all; but the swoon convention and the slang convention won’t mix. No, my boy, you shall see Evelyn, and I’ll tell Cotterell. By the way, Monkey, someone ought to let Cotty Abbott know; he’s very directly concerned.”

  “Poor old Cotty! I should think he was. Yes, he ought to be told. But I think old Gregory might do that.”

  “Yes, he offered to when I saw him this morning. I thought he ought to see the statement, and also I wanted to get clear as to the legal position. I had, I may say, horrifying visions of a cause célèbre. Mercifully, we’re saved from any danger of that by the fact that neither the estate nor the personal property involved is entailed. As Gregory pointed out, if Sir Cotterell Laydon accepts this man as his grandson, he has only to alter his will in order to leave him anything he chooses. And I must say it was an enormous relief to me to hear it. Oh, whilst we’re on the subject of Gregory,—he laid tremendous stress on our preventing Evelyn from committing herself in any way. I agree with him, though I rather suspect you’ll have your work cut out to make her see it.”

  “What do you mean by ‘Evelyn committing herself’?”

  “Well, Gregory proposes what, in fact, amounts to a family council. He thinks he ought to be there as legal adviser to the family, and he says Cotty Abbott should be invited. Laydon would meet the whole family, and they could talk things over and see whether they couldn’t come to some conclusion. And what Gregory lays great stress on is that Evelyn shouldn’t compromise herself or the family by seeing him alone first.”

  Manning swung round with a jerk.

  “Oh, I say, sir!”

  “He laid great stress on it. You see, Evelyn might be as undecided as you are yourself. But on the other hand,”—he raised a large, white finger—“she’ll naturally be in a state of very considerable emotional disturbance; and we don’t want her emotions to hurry her into a recognition which couldn’t afterwards be substantiated.”

  “Yes, I see the point,” said Manning angrily. “But it’s pretty cold-blooded to expect her to meet him under Cotty Abbott’s eye, for instance.”

  “I don’t think either Gregory or myself would insist on Cotty Abbott,” said Sir Henry. His lips relaxed a little, and a faint twinkle appeared momentarily. “No, I don’t think we need insist on Cotty Abbott. But I thought, and Gregory thought, that Sir Cotterell and myself should be present.”

  “Evelyn,” said Manning, “will kick.”

  “Evelyn is the most reasonable woman I know,” said Sir Henry.

  “No woman is really reasonable,” said Manning in tones of profoundest gloom.

  X

  Chris Ellerslie once said of Evelyn Laydon that it would be impossible for her to be unhappily married. She had, he explained, the opposite of Circe’s gift. Instead of being a fatal enchantress who roused and inflamed warring and discordant qualities she had the home genius, the one gift which puts a more than ordinary happiness within a woman’s grasp. One could not imagine her experiencing a grande passion, but one discerned the capacity for a great love, something as high as the stars and as useful as bread. But then Chris Ellerslie was a poet in spite of being addicted to vers libre; also he was as much in love with Evelyn as a calm and self-centred nature permitted.

  There was a letter from Mr Ellerslie on the top of a small pile that was waiting for Evelyn at breakfast on the day after Manning’s conversation with Sir Henry Prothero. Evelyn looked at it with just the very faintest contraction of the golden-brown eyebrows, which were a shade deeper than her gold-brown hair. She was of the fair type which expresses a warm and generous nature. She brought warmth, light, and colour into any room she entered. Her skin had a golden fairness; her eyes were the dark grey-blue which can deepen until they are almost black, or brighten until they look like sunny water; her lips were very firm and red.

  She took up Chris Ellerslie’s letter, opened it, and read:

  “MY DEAR EVELYN,

  I bow to your decision, and will not even say that I regret it, inasmuch as I would a hundred times rather possess the free gift of your friendship than be placed in the intolerable position of demanding what you were not willing to give.

  My own feelings have remained unaltered for the last ten years. I do not imagine that the future is very likely to modify them. I am therefore always, and in every sense of the word,

  Yo
urs,

  C. E.”

  Evelyn finished the letter with a look of relief. Then she frowned again and immediately broke into a little laugh. Chris was so reasonable. He expressed himself so beautifully. Perhaps that was why she was still Evelyn Laydon.

  She turned back to her letters and saw a long envelope addressed in Manning’s hand. It looked as if it might contain legal documents. As she picked it up, she wondered what on earth Monkey had sent her, and why he had dragged her back to town to meet him. Then she opened the envelope.

  It was half an hour later that the telephone bell rang. It rang a second time before Evelyn Laydon heard it. She got up from the chair in which she had been sitting, rising with a strange, jerky movement and walking stiffly. As she got up, Manning’s letter, the long envelope, and the typed sheets of Anna Blum’s statement fell unheeded on the floor.

  Manning, at the other end of the line, said “Hullo!”, and did not recognize the voice that answered him.

  “I want to speak to Mrs Laydon.”

  “I am—Mrs Laydon.”

  “Oh, Evelyn? It’s Monkey speaking. You—I—I say, my dear girl, have you had my letter?”

  “Yes,” said Evelyn. She was finding it quite difficult to speak.

  “I thought you’d better have the letter first. And then I thought I’d like to come round and see you. I mean I don’t want to butt in. But I thought we might talk it over—and there might be things you wanted to ask.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I come round then?”

  “Yes.”

  “At once?”

  “Yes.”

  Evelyn felt that she was quite incapable of more than that one word. She hung up the receiver and, turning, picked up all the fallen papers. Then she went into the drawing-room of the little flat and sat down to wait. It was a very charming room, with the effect of being sunny in the dullest London weather. Shades of gold and apricot, warm Persian rugs with prevailing tones of orange and brown made up the background of this effect. But the greater part of it came from Evelyn herself; it was her own sunny atmosphere which filled and brightened the foreground.

  At this moment it was as if that sunny atmosphere was torn and convulsed by storm. A rushing wind drove in upon it, and brought with it a sense of panic fear and blind confusion. Evelyn felt herself driven as the wind drove, back through the years from a hard-won calm to the passionate place where she had broken her heart. From that place she had climbed slowly and with bleeding feet—and now the wind drove her back to it.

  Manning came into the room unheard, and saw her sitting in a low brown chair, her head a little thrown back, her eyes fixed. She wore a dress of honey-coloured wool, long in the sleeve and high in the neck. Her face showed white above the high collar and against the dull brown of the chair; only her hair was warm and bright. Her hands were folded in her lap; bare, beautiful hands, the right one lying uppermost and clasping the other so that the wedding ring was hidden.

  Manning looked at her with concern for a moment. Then he crossed the room, drew up a chair, and sitting down, slipped a hand inside her arm. He said, “Evelyn—old girl—” And she gave a little shiver, turning slowly round towards him. Manning withdrew his hand after giving her arm a friendly squeeze.

  “You read my letter—and the statement——” He broke off. “My dear girl, are you all right?”

  Evelyn smiled with stiff lips.

  “I shan’t do a faint, Monkey, if that’s what you mean. I—I’m just a bit knocked out of time.”

  “You would be. I know what I felt like myself; I know I wondered whether I’d gone off my rocker. You know, there are some things that make one feel like that. You just can’t believe ’em; it don’t seem possible that they can be true. And when you find that they are true, it just knocks you out—makes you feel sort of thin and unsubstantial, as if you couldn’t be real yourself.”

  He was talking to give her time; and as he talked, his kindness, the warm brotherly affection that lay behind every word, was thawing out the frozen stiffness which had fallen on Evelyn. When Manning stopped speaking she said with a little catch in her breath,

  “Monkey, where is he?”

  “He came over with me,” said Manning.

  She caught her breath again, more sharply this time.

  “Is he well?”

  “Fit as a fiddle.”

  “Is he——” She stopped, throwing out her hands as if she were pushing something away. “Monkey, which is he?”

  Manning caught the hands in his own and held them tightly.

  “My dear girl, if I knew, wouldn’t I have told you straight away?”

  She seemed to be searching his face.

  “They weren’t so much—so very much alike,” she said in a piteous whisper. “They weren’t, Monkey, they weren’t.”

  “No, I know. But, my dear, he isn’t——” He bit off the end of the sentence, frowned horribly, and made a new start. “He’s not like either of them, and that’s a fact.”

  Evelyn pulled her hands from his and sprang up.

  “What do you mean? You said—what do you mean?”

  “No, no, not that.” Manning got up too. “He’s one of them all right, but he’s not like either of the boys that we remember. You see, for one thing, he’s spent ten years doing very hard field work, with his mind more or less asleep all the time. He’s put on at least three stone and terrific muscle, and his face has got full and rather heavy. It’s beginning to fine down a bit; I notice a distinct difference already. But you mustn’t expect to see anyone who looks like either Jim or Jack used to. I want you to realize that, or you’ll get the most frightful shock.”

  Evelyn went to the window and stood there looking out. She saw, not the grey stone of the house over the way, but a very young, gallant, boyish figure with a world of boyish adoration in the eager grey eyes. She heard the voice that had said “Evelyn!”—with a difference. Without turning round she put another question:

  “What about his voice, Monkey?”

  “Not like either,” said Manning; “deeper, you know—fuller.”

  “I must see him,” said Evelyn. “You can’t really tell me anything. But if I see him myself——Will you go and fetch him, please.”

  Manning began to blench at the task before him.

  “Sir Henry thought that you—er, well, they thought you oughn’t to see him alone.”

  Evelyn half turned, her hand on the heavy curtain of gold and apricot.

  “Not see him alone? What do you mean? How else does anyone expect me to see him?”

  “They said——” began Manning. “I say, my dear girl, don’t look at me like that. I knew you wouldn’t like it—I told them you wouldn’t like it. But they seemed to think it’s desperately important. I did my best, but they stuck to their point—and of course I can see the force of it. You see, the succession to Laydon Manor is involved, and Cotty Abbott’s position, and—er, several other things. And they’ve got it all fixed up. Sir Henry’s gone down to Laydon Manor to tell Sir Cotterell. And to-morrow they want the family to meet there. I’m to bring Laydon down; and they thought you’d go down either to-night or to-morrow morning and see him quietly before the others come—just your uncle and Sir Cotterell there, you know. And—they’ve got it all fixed up.”

  Evelyn turned back to the window blindly. She had a passionate longing for darkness. To be looked at, to be watched, with every feeling stripped and quivering; to meet the man who might, or might not be her husband under keenly watching eyes——Her pride rose at the thing, and then suddenly broke. In a moment the tears were running down her face and burning as they ran. Manning, behind her, put his hands heavily on her shoulders.

  “God knows, women can be brave,” he said. “I believe you’re as brave as any woman living. Stick it, Evelyn!”

  XI

  It was on a bleak and bitter day of wind and rain that Anthony Laydon came to Laydon Manor. He and Manning walked from the station, tramping silently
through soggy lanes between bare hedges. Once a patch of blackthorn broke from the dark hedgerow like a splash of snow. Laydon stopped and stood looking at it for a minute, then tramped on again in silence.

  When the big gate came into view he stopped again, looked at the stone pillars, and spoke for the first time:

  “Let’s go round by the door in the wall, Monkey.”

  “It won’t be open; it’s always kept locked.”

  “Yes—I forgot. I used to have a key of course. I’d forgotten.”

  They went on up the drive, with its over-arching trees all leafless in the rain. At his first sight of the house Laydon drew a long breath.

  “Thank the Lord, there’s something that hasn’t changed!” he said at last.

  Then they went up to the big oak door which stood open, and came through the hall to the door of Sir Cotterell’s study without seeing anyone.

  Inside the study Sir Henry Prothero stood with his back to the fire. He looked very large, very wise, and rather sad. Between the window and the fire was a long, narrow table of polished walnut. It carried, as a rule, newspapers, magazines and periodicals arranged in orderly rows; but for today’s occasion it had been cleared and was empty, except that at the window end a sheet of blotting paper had been laid upon it, flanked by a silver presentation ink-stand and two or three pens. The chair at this end of the table was empty too, Mr. Gregory having not yet arrived. But at the other end, half turned from his brother-in-law and the fire, Sir Cotterell Laydon sat stiffly upright, his eyes on the door, his right hand stretched out upon his knee, where it beat time mechanically to some tune in his brain. He had pushed his chair back from the table, and had the air of a man who is listening intently. When the door opened his fingers stopped beating time, his hand clenched on itself, and he rose to his feet with a jerk.