“Did she say he was Jim Field?”
“Not in so many words. As Cotty said, a woman of that sort will not readily commit herself to a direct statement. But her manner was, he said, very convincing.”
“I don’t think Cotty’s account of her manner will do very much to convince Sir Cotterell,” said Evelyn rather drily.
Sophy Abbott folded two pieces of bread and butter together, and took an offended bite. Then she emptied her cup, handed it to Evelyn, and said stiffly,
“Cotty was convinced. As he said to my brother Tom, ‘I went there with a perfectly open mind, and I came away convinced.’ My brother Tom told me afterwards that he thought there was no doubt at all that Anthony Laydon was Jim Field——No, only one lump this time, please; I don’t touch sugar as a rule.”
“Look here,” said Evelyn, “what did Pearl Palliser say?”
Sophy sipped her tea.
“It was not so much what she actually said.”
“Yes, but what did she say?”
Sophy stared at her.
“My dear Evelyn, I’m telling you. As I said to Cotty, ‘What are words? They merely serve to conceal thought.’ I forget where that quotation comes from, but it always strikes me as so true. Cotty agreed with me. As he said to Tom and myself, ‘This Palliser woman obviously has something to conceal.’”
“Sophy, do try and tell me what she said.”
“I am telling you. When Cotty asked her point blank ‘Did you recognize him? Who is he?’, she said——” Sophy reached for the last macaroon.
“What did she say?”
“She laughed, and said she hadn’t made up her mind, but she supposed Jim Field was as good a name as another, and she wasn’t sure it wouldn’t suit her well enough too.”
This at least was genuine Pearl Palliser.
Evelyn laughed.
“I don’t think very much of that, Sophy.”
“You haven’t let me finish,” said Sophy Abbott, putting down her cup. “She went on to say that if Cotty could show her good reasons for making a statement, she would be prepared to swear to his being Jim Field. There! What do you think of that?”
It was another half-hour before Sophy tore herself away, but the remainder of her conversation consisted of a repetition of what Cotty had said about Pearl, and what her brother Tom had said about what Cotty had said.
Jessica came in a little later, to find most of the brightly coloured cushions piled on the hearth-rug, and Evelyn in the midst of them looking limp.
“What have you been doing?” said Jessica severely. She flung her parcels into a chair as she spoke, and subsided cross-legged on a stray cushion at Evelyn’s feet. “What have you been doing?”
“I never wish to see another relation so long as I live,” said Evelyn, “or a relation’s wife, or a relation’s child. And if anyone mentions Tom Mendip-ffollinton’s name to me, I shall scream.”
Jessica plucked off a rather battered hat, flung it from her, ran her fingers through her wild grey hair, and said in briskly bitter tones,
“It’s your own fault. Has Sophy been here?—or was it Cotty?”
“Sophy,” said Evelyn with a groan. “Hours and hours and hours of Sophy. Why is it my fault?”
“I’ve told you a dozen times. You encourage them. You’re the sort of person that relations absolutely cling to and cluster round. No one ever saw one clinging to me. But if you will have golden hair and blue eyes, and play up to your type——”
“I don’t. Jess, what a pig you are!”
“You do. You gaze at them as if you adored them, and murmur at them sympathetically, and——”
Evelyn threw an orange cushion at her, and simultaneously Ponson opened the door and announced Sir Henry Prothero.
Jessica made a perfectly horrible face, jumped up, said “How do you do?”, snatched her hat, and banged out of the room with astonishing rapidity Evelyn sat up and pointed to the nearest chair.
“I’ve got all the cushions, I’m afraid; but I’ll spare you one.” Then, as the door closed Ponson and Sir Henry made himself comfortable she added, “Oh, darling, I’ve had such a day! Sophy’s been here, and Cotty’s gone down to Laydon to worry Sir Cotterell, and I’ve been to see Pearl Palliser.”
“Oh! You shouldn’t have done that,” said Sir Henry quickly.
“Don’t be Victorian,” said Evelyn, blowing him a kiss. “I’m frightfully glad I went, for—oh for lots of reasons, one of them being that I’m now in a position to check what Sophy says that Cotty says that Pearl said.”
“Well, my dear, suppose you tell me about it. I came round because Cotterell rang me up from Laydon. He’d had Cotty there, and he was a good deal put out.”
“I should think he was furious.”
“Yes, he was angry—that goes without saying; but he was upset too. I think Cotty had shaken him more than he would admit. Did you know that Jim Field was a connection of the family?”
“No—yes—yes, I believe I did.”
“’M. Well, it seems Cotterell stuck out about having been convinced by the likeness to his father’s portrait, and when Cotty countered by reminding him that Sir James’ sister was Jim Field’s great-grandmother, he was rather knocked off his balance.”
“Oh,” said Evelyn. “Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. I see. It’s awkward.” She looked at him frowning, then made a gesture as if she were pushing something away. “Now I’m going to tell you about Pearl Palliser.”
“What is she like? I still think you oughtn’t to have gone, my dear.”
“Pouf! She’s like nothing on earth; but a good sort, and she must have been most frightfully pretty; you can quite understand why they all married her.”
“All?”
“Yes, darling, lots and lots of them.” Evelyn sat bolt upright and waved her hands. “I think she just got married like getting a new hat. She said quite artlessly that she supposed it was a habit. ‘Some do, and some don’t,’ she said.”
“And she did?”
“Yes. Now, darling, just hold on to your head and attend. First she married Ted Edwards, who was a crook and beat her. And he went first to prison and then to Australia; and she thought he was dead.” Evelyn ticked Ted Edwards off on her first finger. “Have you got him? And then she married Albert Laycock, who had a hairdresser’s shop in Tooting. And he went off to Canada because he heard that Ted Edwards was still alive, and he’d been very strictly brought up, and he was getting tired of Pearl.” She ticked Albert off on her second finger. “And then she didn’t marry anyone for quite a time. I don’t know why, and I don’t think she does. On December the seventh, 1914, she married Jim Field; and in February she had a letter from Australia to say Ted Edwards only died on December the eighth. So she wasn’t really married to Jim Field at all.” She touched her third finger lightly: “Have you got that? And then in March, 1915, she married Jack Laydon.”
“My dear!”
“What makes it so much more complicated is the fact that she never told Jim Field that their marriage wasn’t legal; so he never knew about Jack, and Jack never knew about him.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to see her,” said Sir Henry, frowning. “She must be a most infamous woman.”
“No, she isn’t. She’s just casual, and—and frightfully good natured—anything to oblige. And I’m most awfully glad I went, because it’s a check on Cotty.”
“My dear, Cotty wouldn’t——”
“Oh, I know he’s honest. But he’s so stupid. And Pearl Palliser—Uncle Henry, she’d say anything that anyone wanted her to as long as it didn’t upset her own plans. She wants to get married again—yes, she does really. That makes five, and she was quite transparent about the whole thing. She thinks it would really suit her best to say that Tony is Jim Field, because her marriage with him wasn’t legal. But she’s quite willing to do me a good turn and say he’s Jim—Jim Laydon, if—if I want her to.” Evelyn turned very pale as she finished speaking, so pale that Sir Henry leaned
forward and held out his hand.
“My dear——”
She bit her lip hard.
“You see it’s a good thing I went. She’d say anything, and she’d swear anything. She doesn’t like Cotty, and she rather likes me; so if I tell her to say that Tony is Jim Laydon, she’ll say it. She won’t say he’s Jack of course, because then she couldn’t marry her gentleman friend and settle down comfortably.”
“I see,” said Sir Henry.
There was a short silence during which Evelyn looked at the fire, and Sir Henry looked at her with a good deal of concern. Presently he said,
“She had really seen Laydon, then?”
Evelyn nodded.
“Do you think she recognized him?”
“I don’t want to say,” said Evelyn. “She’s like water; her evidence goes for nothing.”
“You don’t want to say?”
“No. Don’t—don’t ask me.”
“If I mustn’t ask you that, I wonder whether I may ask you something else.”
Evelyn looked at him with rather a tremulous smile.
“That depends,” she said.
“Well, my dear, the fact is——” He hesitated and broke off. “Evelyn, my dear, forgive me—but I’ve sometimes wondered whether you had recognized him. May I ask you that?”
Evelyn went on looking at the fire. After a moment she said,
“Yes.”
“I may ask?”
“Yes.”
“Then I do ask. You recognize him?”
“Yes,” said Evelyn again. She spoke in a quiet, low tone. Her hands were folded on her lap.
She remained quite still for a moment. Then, before Sir Henry could speak, she got up and went to the window. She pulled the curtain away and stood looking out into the darkness. Her flat was high up on the fourth floor of the house. She could see the black tops of trees just moving like shadows in the quiet square on her right. Below her street lamps like bright beads on a dark thread stretched away and away to the left. She threw the window open, and there came in a buffet of icy air and the distant sound of the great thoroughfare beyond.
She heard Sir Henry come up behind her, and felt his large, gentle hand on her shoulder.
“My dear, that’s too cold. Shut it.”
She gave a little broken laugh and pulled the window down; but she did not turn.
“Evelyn, my dear, am I not to ask you anything more?”
He felt her quiver under his hand.
“No—please.”
There was a short pause; Sir Henry’s hand fell to his side.
“My dear, do you think it is wise to withhold——”
Evelyn swung round.
“I’m not thinking about being wise,” she said, “and I’m not thinking about Cotty, or the family, or even about you, darling; I’m—I’m only thinking about him.”
She leaned against the dark pane and held the gold and apricot curtain in one tightly clenched hand.
“Evelyn!” Sir Henry was certainly startled, “Evelyn, what do you mean?”
Evelyn held her head high.
“I mean I won’t rush him, and I won’t help anyone else to rush him. When he wants to say who he is, he’ll say.”
“Do you think he knows? Evelyn—my dear.”
Evelyn laughed.
“Oh, darling,” she said, “of course he knows!”
XXII
About the time that Mrs Cotty Abbott was having tea, Laydon was turning out of St. James’ Street into Piccadilly. He was a good deal taken up with his thoughts—and Piccadilly is not really a very good place to think in. He bumped into someone, heard a voice that he knew say “Hullo!” in tones of protest, and found himself shoulder to shoulder with Major Thursley, the survivor of that party of four who had gone up on a November day ten years ago—Jim Field, the two Laydons, and Thursley, known familiarly as Jobbles.
Laydon laughed to himself at the recollection of how Thursley had looked when he trotted out the old nickname at the War Office the other day.
“Hullo, Jobbles!” he said. “How are you?”
Thursley responded without any marked enthusiasm. He had developed into one of those men to whom correctness is more than a religion, and he had no desire to be mixed up in what he feared might yet become “The Laydon Case.” He was about to pass on, when the very pretty woman on his other side pinched his arm surreptitiously but severely. Next moment he was introducing Laydon to “my sister-in-law, Mrs Dick Thursley,” and Mrs Dick was being, as the disgusted Thursley put it to her later, “all over the fellow.” They had quite a brisk little quarrel about it.
“And why shouldn’t I be all over him? I think he’s frightfully attractive; and the whole story is simply just too romantic for words.”
“You don’t want to get mixed up in a story of any kind.”
Mrs Dick laughed a light, silvery laugh.
“My blessed Jobbles,—wasn’t that what he called you? I think it’s simply the divinest name, and I’m never going to call you anything else—What was I saying? I mean what did you say? Oh, I know. You said that of course I wouldn’t want to get mixed up with a romantic story. And I say that there’s nothing in the world that I should more absolutely adore. There, Jobbles, dear.”
“Don’t call me Jobbles,” said Thursley stiffly. “And look here, Elizabeth, even if you are all over the fellow, I think you might draw the line at asking a man you’d never set eyes on before to dine and dance to-night.”
“Didums was?” said Mrs Dick. “If you’re going to be cross, you can go home all the way back to Farnborough; and then I shall be a man short all over again; and my party’ll be an absolute frost; and you won’t care a bit; and someone else will dance all the evening with Angela Meiklejohn.”
Thursley permitted himself to thaw a little. He was a man of method, and fully intended that a carefully developed courtship should that evening culminate in a proposal. He could not, therefore, afford to quarrel with Elizabeth at this juncture. He reminded himself that she had her good points, that she was poor Dick’s widow, and that he depended on her good offices with Angela.
He had reached this point, when Elizabeth gripped him by the arm.
“Oh, Lord, Jobbles, supposing he can’t dance!”
“Nothing is more probable,” said Thursley with some enjoyment.
Elizabeth groaned aloud in Bond Street.
“Tell me the worst at once. Did he—could he dance—a thousand years ago, before the war, I mean, when even you were a gay young thing—could he?”
“No one knows which he is.”
“Could either of them? Jobbles, don’t be a fiend. Put me out of my agony. Could they dance? Did they dance?”
“Oh, they danced.”
“But how? How, Jobbles?”
“Elizabeth, I must really ask you——”
“HOW?” said Elizabeth firmly, and in large capitals.
“Oh, they were rather star performers, as a matter of fact.” Thursley made the admission reluctantly.
“There!” said Elizabeth. “Doesn’t that show how clever I am?”
Laydon would have been puzzled to explain exactly why he had accepted an invitation to dine at The Luxe and dance afterwards from such a complete stranger as Mrs Thursley. He was, in fact, more than a little surprised at himself, for he had the very clearest intention of avoiding social engagements of all kinds whilst his position was in doubt. He had the feeling that the people whom he would care about knowing would find him an embarrassment, whilst the people whom he did not want to know would jump at any opportunity of pushing themselves and him into the limelight. Why on earth then had he instantly accepted Elizabeth Thursley’s invitation? Partly, no doubt, because it was quite obvious that Jobbles hoped he would refuse; partly because Mrs Thursley was a very pretty woman with an enchanting smile; and partly because Evelyn had refused to break her engagement to dine with Chris Ellerslie.
He found himself one of a party of eight when he arrived at T
he Luxe that evening. Everybody was very cheerful and frivolous except Thursley, who wore an air of high solemnity not particularly suited to a dinner party, but quite in keeping with the fact that he was about, with due ceremony, to propose marriage to Miss Angela Meiklejohn. Laydon, sitting between his hostess and a girl with cropped black hair and very bright blue eyes, listened to the flow of chaff and light talk. The black-haired girl was Marcia Lane, and the man at the end of the table was her brother, Tommy Lane. His hair was really a little longer than hers.
“That’s because he composes,” explained Elizabeth in a loud and piercing whisper. “Tommy, you’re a genius, aren’t you?” she continued in her ordinary voice. “I’m just going to tell Mr Laydon that you are, and I thought I’d better make sure first. Who should know if you don’t yourself? You are, aren’t you?”
Tommy showed his nice even teeth in a grin.
“Rather!” he said.
“I knew it,” said Elizabeth, “because I do so hate your stuff—and I always hate works of genius. I like things with nice little simple tunes that you can sing in your bath, so I always know that any piece of music I admire must be ‘the absolute dregs of vitiated taste.’ That’s a quotation.”
Angela Meiklejohn allowed a slight frown to disturb her expression of placid enjoyment. She was a very tall, healthy-looking girl with red-brown hair, eyes exactly the same colour, and a really wonderful complexion. She was not clever. She looked seriously at Tommy Lane and asked:
“Couldn’t you write some nice tunes if you tried, Tommy?”
Tommy’s “I wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with a nice tune” was lost in the general laughter.
It was at this moment that Laydon looked across the room and saw Evelyn. She was one of a party of four, and she was sitting half turned from him, talking to a tall, thin man on her left. Laydon could not really see her face, and he waited in an odd excitement for her to turn. The tall, thin man must be Chris Ellerslie—extraordinary small head the fellow had—straw-coloured hair—much too smooth and shiny—looked as if he had a pretty good opinion of himself—what on earth could Evelyn see in him? Suddenly he was aware of Elizabeth Thursley’s pretty, light laugh.
The Amazing Chance Page 16