The Amazing Chance

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Oh, Cotty Abbott, of course. I don’t blame Uncle Cotterell. Cotty’s enough to drive anyone out of their senses—even without being married to that perfectly awful Sophy!”

  “What’s Cotty done now?”

  “Well, he rang up just after you went out, and Uncle Cotterell came back foaming at the mouth, and said that Cotty said that he and Sophy were coming down to-morrow with documentary evidence to prove that Uncle Cotterell had been imposed on. We shall have a cheerful dinner tonight and no mistake. The Gaunt cousin is the most awful woman. I think I shall put on that tea-gown I got from Toinette. It cost the most frightful amount—I simply daren’t tell Monkey how much—and if a party’s going to be extra dreadful, I do think it helps one through to know that your clothes have cost a great deal more than they ought to have.”

  Laydon was the last of the family party to come into the drawing-room that evening.

  It was a delicately proportioned room panelled in white, with recessed windows that looked upon the terrace; but it was rather obviously a room without a mistress. A portrait in water colours of the last Lady Laydon smiled archly from the centre panel above the hearth. Her husband stood just below, talking in vehement tones to Manning and Sir Henry Prothero. Lacy in black and gold—a great deal of gold and very little black—was standing on tiptoe, trying to catch the effect of her new tea-gown in the long Empire mirror whose scroll work had gone a little dim with age.

  Laydon’s thought as he came in was a quick: “She hasn’t come!” Then something white moved in the farthest recess, and Evelyn dropped the pale blue curtain behind her and came down the room.

  “Such a lovely night! There’ll be a moon too,” she said. Then she gave Laydon her hand and a sweet, strange smile, and passed on.

  “Mr and Mrs Gaunt—Mrs Weatherby,” said Lake at the door; and Evelyn became involved in greetings and a long explanatory introduction.

  “Evelyn, my dear,”—this was the Vicar—“it is good to see you again. I feared, we all feared—at least Marion says ‘No’, but I was very much afraid—that we should not have the pleasure of seeing you here this year—Marion, my dear, why do you pinch me? It is all the greater pleasure. And let me introduce our cousin—or at least Marion’s cousin—who is staying with us, we hope, for quite a long visit.”

  He had got as far as this, when Mrs Gaunt interposed briskly:

  “Mrs Weatherby—Mrs Laydon.”

  Evelyn shook hands with a tall, dark woman in an extravagantly fluffy garment composed of bright pink beads and bright blue tulle. The lady showed a good many bones, and waved a large feather fan in rainbow shades of pink and blue and green. She had a hard eye, a loud voice, and an over-assured manner. Nothing short of a lifelong affection for the Gaunts could have infused any cordiality into Evelyn’s manner.

  At dinner, up to a certain point, Mrs Weatherby proved a God-send, for she talked with so much sustained energy as to save everybody else a great deal of trouble. She had been to all the latest plays; she had read all the latest books. In the world of politics she knew exactly why So-and-So had failed of a Cabinet post, and why Somebody Else had applied for the Chiltern Hundreds. She sat between Laydon and Sir Henry, but her conversation was by no means confined to them. If she dropped her voice a shade in order to acquaint Laydon with the true scandalous history of Mlle Une Telle, who had recently been gracing the London stage, she did not drop it so far as to deprive anyone else of a single interesting detail.

  Mr Gaunt, vaguely benign, began to feel his vagueness invaded by a shade of embarrassment. Mrs Gaunt, small, brisk, precise, made two or three attempts to stem the flood. Her little dry cough and her “Are you quite sure, my dear Millicent, that your information is correct?” had no other effect than to induce a yet more copious flow from dear Millicent’s lips. Evelyn caught Lacy’s eye once, and it said “I told you so” with so much poignancy that she did not dare to meet it again.

  It was with the savoury, however, that the worst moment arrived. Dear Millicent, having pilloried a Bishop, given reasons why at least two Deans should be unfrocked, and left a Judge, three Actresses, and a very prominent K.C. without a vestige of moral support, suddenly flung Chris Ellerslie’s name into the arena:

  “I adore his books, of course, though they say he’ll gamble away whatever it is he makes out of one, in a single night. He’s a Mah Jong fiend, and they tell me—of course I don’t play myself—that you can drop an absolutely unlimited amount. Not that that matters to Chris, because I hear he’s frightfully well off—outside his books, you know—and he’s going to marry a pretty widow with pots of money. Some people have all the luck. I don’t know her name, but the man who told me declared she was quite pretty—the golden-haired, blue-eyed type, if you admire it; I can’t say I do myself.”

  Her hard, restless eyes challenged a compliment from Laydon. She fingered the large false pearls at her throat, and paused for him to take his cue. When he did not take it, she went on talking with the comfortable conviction that she was being very brilliant and entertaining, and waking up these dull country people for once in their lives.

  It was not to be supposed that the man-less half-hour in the drawing-room after dinner would pass easily. Mrs Weatherby smoked one cigarette after another and looked bored, whilst Lacy talked about her flat, its curtains, its carpets, the probable condition of furniture which had been stored for six years, and a few more equally exciting topics. She was quite determined not to give “that appalling person” any further opportunity of displaying her conversational talents; and as she was herself no mean performer, she held the stage until the men came in.

  “Evelyn, my dear, will you give us a little music?”

  Sir Cotterell’s old-fashioned phrase brought the suggestion of a sneer to Mrs Weatherby’s face. She looked invitingly at Laydon, but it was Sir Henry Prothero who seated himself beside her whilst Evelyn moved to the piano.

  Laydon watched her. She had on a white dress with long, soft, floating sleeves. Her arms showed through them, and they fell away like a mist as she lifted her hands to the keyboard. He wondered if it was the white dress that made her seem so pale. Her eyes were like deep water. He could make nothing of their look. On the surface, colour, sparkle, beauty; but in the depths, what? He could not tell. The depths might hide a shipwreck, or a treasure. She wore her pearls—Jim Laydon’s pearls, and on her left hand, dark against its whiteness, was the emerald of Jim Laydon’s ring. She wore the pearls; she wore the ring. What was in her heart? What image? And what memories? A burning fire of jealousy rose in him; the flame of it consumed him. He watched her hands move on the keys, and listened to the singing, rippling notes. She played something that was like bright water. He looked back into the lost years and saw bright water run beneath dark trees. Here the sun shone on it and it was bright; and there the low black branches shadowed it and it was dark. Anton Blum had known that water well.

  XXIX

  The nightmare evening was over at last. Mr Gaunt had said good night with such an affectionately troubled look that Evelyn was moved almost to tears. Mrs Gaunt wore the air of a woman who has made up her mind. She had. She had decided not only that dear Millicent was to go without delay, but that dear Millicent must never be asked again.

  “She has changed very much—very painfully. She behaved atrociously. Yes, Matthew, she did.” This in the seclusion of their bedroom.

  “We must try to be charitable, though I admit——”

  “I was horrified at her behaviour. She must go.”

  “But, my dear, we asked her for a month. We mustn’t be inhospitable, or uncharitable, or—in fact, Marion, I don’t see how——”

  “There are ways,” said Mrs Gaunt darkly.

  Laydon flung out of the house as soon as the guests had departed. Darkness, space, silence—these were his needs. The house smothered him.

  Evelyn went to her room, but she did not undress. Instead, she locked the door, put out the light, and threw the window wide. She had the s
et of rooms which had been Lady Laydon’s, and which would have been her own if she had come here as Jim’s wife. There was a bedroom, and next door to it a sitting-room opening through long French windows on to a stone-railed balcony. The bedroom windows looked out towards Laydon Sudbury.

  The village lights were out; there was not one yellow twinkle left. But in the moonlit dusk she could see the square tower of the little church, and above and around the village a blackness of mysterious woods. She had walked in them that afternoon when they were full of scent of flowers and the spring sunshine. Now they looked strange and formless like the forests of a dream. Everything was still and silent under the moon. She leaned out, and wondered at the soft warmth of the night air.

  She stayed like that for a long time, half kneeling, half sitting, letting her thoughts drift. Cotty was coming down to-morrow. Well, it didn’t matter. Lacy had been rather a brick after dinner. That awful woman! The poor darling Gaunts. Lacy could be a brick sometimes. It was extra nice of her, because she really was put out about the Lady’s Garden. Impossible to take her there; impossible to take anyone there. Sir Cotterell was a dear; he never asked her if she used her key, never showed by word or look that he remembered that she had one. Well, she had never used it.

  She began to wonder what the garden was like. It seemed so strange that she had never been into it, when every year she was consulted about the flowers by old McAlister, who after all generally had his own way. Last year they had planned a drift of star narcissus. She wondered how it looked under the moon. Vaguely and slowly there came into her mind the desire to go to the garden and stand among the flowers. She felt a drawing and a compulsion, and then sharp reaction. What nonsense! Of course she couldn’t go at this hour.

  She drew the curtains, switched on the light, and missed the wild, fresh sweetness of the night air. After a moment she went to her jewel-case, unlocked it, and lifted out the tray that lay uppermost. Underneath, in a long velvet-lined compartment, lay the key—a large old-fashioned key beautifully wrought with iron tracery. She looked at it. It had lain there for nearly ten years. Why should she not use it? Why be within four walls and under this glare of light, when the May night waited outside, beautiful, comforting, serene, in a silver dusk?

  She threw a loose black satin wrap over her white dress and went down through the still house to the library. The French window opened easily. She passed the Dutch garden and went down the steps beyond.

  Laydon came up the long slope of the beech walk between the bare hedges, and saw something move in the shadowed angle by the door of the Lady’s Garden. He stood still, and in a moment the door creaked and swung open, letting the moonlight through. A dark figure stood out against the light. He saw the moon on Evelyn’s hair, and the flutter of a long white sleeve as she turned to close the door behind her. Then everything was in shadow again. He did not move at once. Evelyn—here—alone like this! Strange! But perhaps she was only doing what she had done a hundred times before. And the garden was hers. It was not hard to imagine the lure of its peace and stillness on such a night as this.

  He began to walk on slowly, and as he walked he thought about the garden. It had been the centre of their games when they were children, a secret place, remote and hidden. The games centred about it, but it remained unknown, untrodden. He could remember Lacy’s “But why can’t we go in? I want to go in. Oh, do make him let us go in just once!” He could see the little flushed face and the long floating hair. He could hear her stamp her foot and cry out pettishly: “But I want to go in!” And he could hear McAlister’s answer: “Then want’ll be your master, Miss Lacy.” None of the children had even been into the garden—not big Jim Field, though he had once sworn to climb the wall and failed, nor little Lacy, nor the two Laydon boys, nor Evelyn. None of them had ever been into the garden. But Evelyn was there now.

  He walked into the shadowed corner, pushed gently at the door, and stood on the threshold, looking in. The garden was small, and the middle of it was sunk and paved. Laydon stood at the top of half a dozen steps and looked down on a paved walk with a pool in the middle of it. A very sweet scent came up to him, and he saw that the sloping sides of the garden were thickly planted with white narcissus. He came down the steps and stood by an old, crooked hawthorn which grew at the foot, its branches hidden in a drift of white blossom.

  On the moss-grown steps his feet had made no sound at all. He stood amongst the white flowers and saw Evelyn quite close to him, sitting motionless on the low stone wall that guarded the pool. She had thrown back her cloak; her head was raised; her eyes looked far. There were yellow irises growing in the pool; the moonlight blanched them almost to silver. There was such a stillness that it seemed impossible to move or speak. To Laydon the moment was almost one of peace. For the first time he could look at Evelyn and know that no one was there to weigh his look or to find a meaning in it.

  He did not know how long a time went by, but at last she moved. It seemed to Laydon that she came back. She had been away in some far off place of dreams.

  She came back with a little shiver, dropped her eyes from the glory of the night sky, and put out her hand. Laydon moved too, and at once her face changed. She said “Who’s there?” in a soft, fluttered voice, and put her hand to her throat in the way she had when anything startled her.

  He took a step forward.

  “It is I. Did I frighten you?”

  Evelyn did not speak. She could not say to him any of the things that were in her mind. Her thought was full of him, so full that she could not find words. After that one startled instant, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should be there. He came forward slowly and looked down into the water.

  “Do you come here often?” The words came in spite of himself. They were part of his hunger to know what lay behind that still look of hers.

  She answered in her lowest, gentlest voice:

  “I’ve never been here before.”

  That touched the old boyish romance, the secret dream. This was the garden of the dream; and they were here together.

  “Why did you come to-night?”

  Evelyn lifted her eyes, and the dream was chilled. He thought they said “What is that to you?”; yet after a while she said, speaking very slowly,

  “I think I came—to say good-bye.”

  She looked into the pool as she spoke, and saw her own face dimly. She saw Laydon as a dark and formless shadow.

  “Good-bye—to what?”

  She did not answer at once. The dark came closer to them both. At last she moved; her lips moved.

  “To the past, I think, Tony.”

  The soft, low-spoken words pierced his heart. So it was like that? Irrevocably the past was gone. She was letting it go, saying farewell to it; and he had no power to bid it stay. She was gone from him—Evelyn—Evelyn—lost—lovely—beloved—Evelyn!

  Evelyn looked into the water. Her heart beat hard; a passion of thoughts beat with her heart. “Let the past go. What does it matter? It’s now that counts. It’s you and I, and this moment—this. Tony—Tony—Tony! Don’t you care at all? Can’t you let the past go?” The clamorous thoughts went on. Her lips were cold and silent.

  Laydon was conscious only of his own crying need. If he could know. If he could be sure. If he could bridge that ten years’ gap and know which of them had had her heart. And yet, if he knew, how would it help the man he was to-day? To trade on a long-ago romance, to take what had belonged to one of those young lovers—how would that help him now? If she had cared for the boy he was no longer, would that content him? If she had cared for the other boy, if she still cared for him——

  If only they could have started clear of all these cross-currents of memory, with their cold, confusing touch. If they could get clear of them now,——

  There was still Chris Ellerslie.

  An ugly stab of jealousy ran deep into his mood. He turned from the past to the present with a jerk. There was a bitter smile as he looked at the sil
ver-golden irises, the moon-flecked pool, and the mysterious drifts of blossom that surrounded Evelyn and himself. The place, the hour, the exquisite breath of the flowers—these were pure romance, or a boy’s dream of it. Once, in a dream, he had stood in such a place as this and held her to his heart, wordless because no words would come and none were needed. Now romance was in the dust of the dead years. There remained the strange irony that had brought them here—here, to realize how far apart they were. The silence that might have been so sweet became thing intolerable.

  As if his thought had touched her, Evelyn moved. She made a little groping motion with her hand and rose slowly to her feet. Her cloak had dropped across the low stone wall; her white dress was uncovered. Laydon’s heart cried out in him. He saw, not Evelyn, but lost love itself, unearthly, blanched, withdrawn. He made a step forward, and as he did so, the door at the top of the steps swung in. There was a rustling sound, and Lacy’s voice with a catch in it:

  “Evelyn—are you there? Evelyn—oh!”

  Lacy stood on the topmost step, bending forward, clinging to the door. From where she stood she could see the pool and Evelyn standing white above it. She cried out, an involuntary, frightened cry:

  “Evelyn!”

  Evelyn did not speak. She bent down, took up her cloak, and put it on. To Laydon she seemed to become a shadow amongst the shadows, a shadow crowned with a nimbus where the moonlight caught her hair. She went up the steps, and he followed her. The moment with all it might have held was gone.

  Lacy Manning caught at Evelyn’s arm.

  “Evelyn!”

  But Evelyn walked past her and stood outside in the deep shadow, waiting. When Laydon and Lacy had crossed the threshold, she shut the door and turned the key. All the beauty and the fragrance were shut away. She drew the key from the lock, and went by so close to Laydon that her cloak touched him with a light, fluttering touch as if a leaf had blown against his hand.

  He stood and watched her go, walking with a strange swiftness and energy. He turned with a start to find Lacy pulling at his sleeve.