They parted, and Jeanie turned towards the farmyard, where thirteen-year-old Sarah Molyneux came running to meet her.
“Oh Jeanie!” cried the child tragically as they met. “Your kitten!”
“Oh darling, don’t say you’ve discovered it isn’t house-trained!”
“Worse than that!” Sarah’s rather pale narrow little face which made so piquant a contrast with the living springing gold of her hair, wore quite a tragic expression. “He’s dead!”
“Dead! What, the kitten you’ve been saving up for me? Oh dear! Oh well,” said Jeanie hastily, as she saw that there were tears in Sarah’s eyes, “never mind, my pet! Poor little chap! I expect it ate something.”
“It didn’t. It got shot.”
“Shot! Oh, poor wee thing!”
Sarah’s full underlip stuck out and trembled.
“I’d like to know who did it. The beast. The brute. The foul damned cad.”
“Langwidge! Langwidge!” said Jeanie in half-affected horror. Sarah had had a queer upbringing before her Uncle Robert took charge of her, Jeanie knew. Her father, Robert Molyneux’s younger brother, had died, leaving her in the charge of a queer, neurotic, unhappy mother who had dragged the child with her round Europe in the course of two more ill-starred marriages and one or two less regular alliances. Three years ago, Robert had at last persuaded his sister-in-law to hand over to him the responsibility of his brothers little daughter. She had been well pleased, then, to be rid of her child. But Jeanie had heard from Agnes that she had latterly altered her mind, and now nourished a maternal sentiment in her bosom, and wrote every week or so passionate but ill-spelt letters to her brother-in-law demanding the immediate return of her child, and had even threatened to swoop down on Cleedons and abduct the unwilling Sarah, “who, after all, is the only creature in the world I have to love!”
“Whoever did it,” said Jeanie reasonably, stroking the child’s damp cheek, “probably thought the poor kit was a rabbit.”
“A white rabbit, how could they? You could see him from miles away, my darling little white kitten! He used to go hunting beetles in the orchard! He used to jump up after butterflies! And now he’s dead! Oh, Jeanie!”
“Don’t cry, my pet, but tell me all about it. I’ll have one of the tabby ones. I don’t mind.”
“There isn’t anything to tell,” said the child dejectedly, raising red eyes from Jeanie’s chest and allowing herself to be led towards the gate. “I couldn’t find him anywhere this morning. And I went to look for him in the orchard. And I found him, shot.”
She searched around her knees for the handkerchief that was absent from the legs of her knickers. Jeanie proffered her own and they went in through the barnyard gate. Jeanie paused a moment as Sarah led the way towards the stables, forgetting both the poor dead kitten and Sarah’s sorrow in the scene before her. In the damp air of this sunny November afternoon, the grey mossy roofs of the barns and milking sheds, the cooler grey of their stone walls, the watery ground that reflected here and there in puddles the wistful blue of the autumn sky, the pale gold of the ricks in the yard to her left, the dark gold of the lingering leaves on the tall trees, made a picture in low muted tender tones sweet as a scene by Corot. Men were carting litter into the barn. Through the tall barn doors she saw the wagon piled high with rusty bracken. A man in a bright blue shirt wielded a pitch-fork upon that rusty brown, and the orchard behind supplied a note of rich damp green. The westering sun made that wagon framed in the dark doorway, that blue, that green, the centre of a picture.
“What are you looking at?” asked Sarah curiously.
“Oh—just things,” uttered Jeanie vaguely. “The bracken. The green grass. Things.”
“You look at things like that, and then you paint them?”
“Sometimes.”
“There’s so much stuff in the world I don’t see how you ever know what to paint.”
“Ah well!”
“There was an artist staying at the White Lion the summer before last. He was thin, and rather old, and had a beard.”
“Hubert Southey. I know him. He used to teach at an art school I went to.”
“I suppose you know all the artists in the world,” uttered Sarah, climbing like a spider up the worn silvery steps of the loft-ladder.
“Not quite all. Have I to go up there?”
“Aye, aye, me hearty!”
“Heave ho, then, mates!”
The loft, with its dry, warm, enticing scent of hay, its pale rafters heavily hung with cobwebs, its grey boards strewn with old faded wisps and empty husks of grain, enchanted her. She went to the large window at the end, and cleaned the smeared glass with a sack that hung beside it.
“This’d make a splendid studio, if you put a skylight in. You get a good view from here, don’t you? There’s your Uncle Robert going into the orchard.”
“Pruning his apple-trees. He was at it all the morning.” A sleepy tabby kitten emerged from its nest in a dark corner, exposed the elegant pink ribbings of the roof of its mouth in a yawn and then, sitting down and neatly bringing its tail around its fore-paws, made gleaming crescents of its eyes and silently mewed.
“That’s a sweet one!”
Sarah swallowed.
“Timkins was the sweetest!”
“Never mind, my pet. One casualty out of four kittens isn’t too bad.”
“Yes, but he was the only white one! He was rare!”
“It can’t be helped now.”
“That’s what Uncle Robert said,” muttered Sarah. “People seem to think a kitten doesn’t want its life. How’d Uncle Robert like it if somebody went shooting at him while he was catching beetles and butterflies and playing in the sun?”
Jeanie stifled an ill-timed giggle, and Sarah looked at her with cold reproach over her lapful of assorted kittens. Jeanie said hastily:
“May I have this one? What’s his name?”
The vivid image which her picture-forming mind had presented to her of the burly, tweed-clad Molyneux pouncing on beetles and leaping after butterflies among the orchard grasses, amused Jeanie a good deal.
“Her name is Petronella,” said Sarah pointedly.
“Her! Oh dear!”
“They make the best mousers.”
“I know, but—”
“She might not have kittens more than once a year.”
“All right. I’ll risk it. But Petronella! Must I call her that?”
“She was called after Peter, you see. Peter Johnson.” Jeanie recalled to mind the dark-eyed youth who had been Molyneux’s secretary when she was staying at Cleedons in the summer.
“What’s happened to him?”
“He left,” said Sarah rather grimly. “About three weeks ago, all of a sudden. There was some row; I don’t know what. Miss Wills said he was never coming back, and I wasn’t to write to him. But I did write to him,” added she, flushing defiantly, “because I knew he’d want to know about the Field Club outing this afternoon, and I didn’t see why he shouldn’t come if he liked.”
“Oh, is the Handleston Field Club outing this afternoon?”
“Yes. I shall have to go in and wash soon. I’ve got to help with tea. I didn’t want to, but Aunt Agnes said I must. She was cross because Uncle Robert said he must prune his trees while it was fine, and couldn’t meet the Field Club at the tumulus. Sir Henry Blundell is coming,” said the child.
“I see,” said Jeanie. Sir Henry Blundell, Chief Constable of the county, a landowner in whose mansion Cleedons might be swallowed almost unnoticed, was certainly a personage of some importance. Agnes, a snob of the more simple and whole-hearted kind, as Jeanie was reluctantly coming to realise, would certainly make a special occasion of the Field Club’s visit to Cleedons if Sir Henry Blundell were of the company.
“She was cross,” pursued the child. “And so was Miss Wills.”
“Miss Wills? Why on earth should she be cross?”
“She’s always cross when Aunt Agnes is cross.”
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“Dear me, how awkward!”
“She adores Aunt Agnes. When Aunt Agnes said she might call her Agnes, her nose went all pink.”
“Is that a sign of adoration?”
“I don’t think she’s staying much longer,” said the little girl with satisfaction. “I hope not, anyway. Uncle Robert says I’m beyond her and must go to school.”
“Little wretch! I wouldn’t be your governess for a million a year! What are the Field Club looking at this afternoon?”
“Oh, the usual things, I expect,” replied the blasé dweller in a historic house. “Black Ellen’s tower, and the medieval kitchen where the wine-cellar is now, and Grim’s Grave.”
“I thought your Uncle Robert was talking of opening Grim’s Grave.”
“He is. Aunt Agnes is cross about that too. She says it’s a waste of money and there’s nothing in it but a few nasty bones and a bit of broken crockery.”
Jeanie smiled.
“Probably, but then how thrilling nasty bones are to those that like nasty bones! Mr. Fone, for instance. He’d be delighted.”
Sarah opened her greenish eyes very wide.
“No!” she said with bated breath. “He’s furious! He says if Uncle Robert opens Grim’s Grave there’ll be a curse on everyone for miles! He says Grim’s Grave is sacred ground. He says if we open it Awful Forces’ll come out and destroy us!”
“Oh dear, how you make my flesh creep!”
“Well, he’s a poet, you see,” explained Sarah. “But Uncle Robert says he’s no confounded poet and he’s going ahead, and old Funnybone can put his poetic frenzies in a book if he likes, but he won’t have him going round upsetting all the local people.”
“Why, does he?”
Sarah looked vague. Her quotation from Uncle Robert stopped there.
“Quite a lot of people wouldn’t like Grim’s Grave opened,” she admitted. A slight uneasiness came into her young eyes. “After all, Jeanie, people don’t usually go digging up people’s graves. And it’s just as much a grave, even if it’s a very old grave. What’s that?”
She sat up suddenly, and the kitten, grasped too tightly, gave a plaintive mew. Jeanie listened. Somebody was talking in the yard below, and she heard the clump of heavy boots on cobbles, but there was nothing in this to bring that look of apprehension into the child’s eyes. With a gesture Sarah silenced her. Listening, with her eyes curiously on the little girl’s face, Jeanie heard a drawling female voice.
“Well, thank you, but I know my way to the house, when I want to go!”
The cowman’s boots clumped heavily away.
Sarah stood up softly, putting the kitten down on the floor. She tiptoed to the doorway which overlooked the yard, and of which the half-door stood open. Jeanie rose and went softly to look out beside her at the woman who was standing irresolutely in the yard, as if undetermined where to look next for something she was seeking.
“Surely this isn’t a member of the Handleston Field Club!” remarked Jeanie.
The woman below had pulled off her little velvet cap and her thick, mechanically-waved hair, strangely bleached to an unnatural gold for half its length, looked like a head-piece of some coarse woven fabric. Her cheeks were brightly pink, her lips crudely red. The cool November sunlight smiled at the youthful pretensions of her lined and weary face. Her mackintosh coat hung gracefully on her slim figure, but her neck stooped, her hands were thrust stiffly into her pockets, she stood heavily with bent knees on the high heels of her thin town shoes.
“That’s a very lively bit of painting,” murmured Jeanie to herself, “but not much technique about it. Ought we to go down and offer to help her, I wonder?”
“No,” said Sarah in the queerest little hard voice. Glancing at her in surprise, Jeanie saw that her eyes were dark, her upper lip drawn to a straight line. She added: “That’s my mother.”
“Your mother!” echoed Jeanie, with an involuntary unflattering surprise.
So this was the much-talked-of Mrs. Peel, Robert’s sister-in-law, Agnes’s bête noire!
“Did your aunt know she was coming?”
“I shouldn’t think so.”
“Don’t you think we ought to do something?”
“No!”
“Not go down and speak to her?”
“No!”
“But she is your mother, my kid!”
“It isn’t my fault I was born, is it?”
Jeanie, about to combat this somewhat elementary view of filial duty, suddenly caught her breath. The woman in the yard below had taken her right hand out of her pocket, and glancing furtively around the yard, had taken a long look at that right hand and what it held. What it held gleamed darkly in the November sunlight. It was a heavy service revolver.
Chapter Two
A SHOT IS FIRED
The stranger started at Jeanie’s exclamation, and thrust the weapon back into her pocket. She looked up. Her eyes, darkly lashed like a china doll’s, narrowed in an anxious, uncertain look. She seemed to hesitate whether to explain that revolver or to assume that Jeanie had not seen it.
“So there you are, Sally!”
She had a clear, rather intense voice, and Jeanie remembered hearing that she had been an actress before her marriage to Franklin Molyneux.
“Mrs. Peel?” asked Jeanie. “Do you want Sarah?” To Sarah, who had withdrawn herself from the doorway and stood frowning, she murmured: “Why not go down and speak to your mother? I won’t desert you.”
“No,” said Sarah, tight-lipped.
“Sally! Sally!” called the clear voice coaxingly from the court-yard below. “Don’t be silly, dear! Mr. Agatos has driven me all the way from London specially to see my little girl! I thought we might go for a picnic!”
The child, standing against the wall, out of sight of her mother, pressed her hands together and compressed her lips. Her eyes were dark and frowning. Looking at her, Jeanie could make a guess at the past relations of these two, and her guess hardened her heart against Myfanwy Peel. Looking cautiously out, she saw the angry, thwarted look upon Myfanwy’s face, the tight, dragged line of the mouth. Yes, said Jeanie to herself, I think you could be cruel, like most sick neurotic people!
When the other woman spoke again it was with the sort of factitious brightness with which nervous people seek to win the confidence of children.
“I say, Sally! Give you three guesses what I’ve got in the play-room at home! It begins with a D! Two words! A D and an H! And it’s for you to play with when you come back to stay with me!”
To hear the artificially lilting, foolish brightness of that voice and at the same time to see the stony, experienced look upon the little girl’s face, was not a pleasant thing. Jeanie felt suddenly absurdly sorry for Myfanwy, who thought she could win with dolls’-houses the confidence of a child who could wear this look.
“The fact is, Mrs. Peel, Sarah’s a bit nervous of firearms. She saw that revolver you’ve got in your pocket.”
“Revolver?” echoed Myfanwy. “Oh, that!” She hesitated. No guilty blood could stain her cheeks a brighter colour, but a patchy red appeared upon her neck.
“I—I—oh, how silly, darling! It’s not loaded!”
She took the weapon from her pocket and pointing it at the ground, dramatically pulled the trigger. There was a click, nothing more.
“Why carry such a thing around?” asked Jeanie.
Something in her friendly tone seemed to touch a chord in the other woman’s unstable spirit. With a gesture too clumsy to be studied, she put her hand to her eyes, she gave a little sob.
“Oh, I don’t know! I’m a fool! I was—I was going to see Robert! I thought I’d—”
“Sarah’ll come down and speak to you, if you want her to.”
“I shan’t!” uttered Sarah. “I shan’t!” she whimpered. “Jeanie, no!”
Looking at Sarah, Jeanie’s common-sense view of the situation wavered again. What, after all, did she know of Myfanwy Peel? What was the woman doing h
ere? Why, if she wanted to see Robert Molyneux, had she not driven to the house? Was it possible that she contemplated the forcible abduction of her daughter?
“Oh!” cried Myfanwy, with a melancholy sound, half-sob, half-laugh. “Don’t trouble her! I see she’s swallowed everything Robert and Saint Agnes have said about me! She’s forgotten what fun she used to have with her mother! I shall have to see what my lawyer’s got to say about this! You can’t stay away from me for ever, you know, Sally, just because your Uncle Robert’s got a big place for you to play in and plenty of money to give you! It won’t be very nice for you, you know, being made to come back to me by the law! And I dare say by the time the lawsuit’s over I shan’t like you quite as much as I do now!”
Myfanwy’s voice, which had started on a low emotional note, had grown harder and shriller through this recital until she was speaking like a very virago. Her hands nervously clenched and unclenched, the stiffness of anger made her look old and ill.
“Why don’t you go and see Mr. Molyneux? He’s in the orchard,” suggested Jeanie. “I’m sure he’d let you take Sarah for a picnic, if you want to!”
She was not sure of any such thing. But at her level friendly tone Myfanwy’s hands unclenched, she stood helplessly, her whipped-up rage seemed to break and fall away from her. She cried in a strangled voice:
“Don’t keep calling her that! Her name’s Sally!” and stamping her foot less like a virago than like a child, she burst into tears and ran across the yard out of sight.
“Oh dear!” said Jeanie disconsolately. “Sarah, I do think you’re a little beast.”
Myfanwy’s sob, her final pathetic cry, so fraught with maternal jealousy, had touched Jeanie’s heart, and her ready sympathies were at the moment not with this cold child but with Mrs. Peel, a silly woman, a light woman, no doubt, but, after all, the child’s mother and perhaps too rigidly barred from her child by Robert’s well-meaning powerful arm.
There were birds chirping under the eaves of the farm buildings and singing in the trees. There was the sound of heavy wheels in the lane, and the clop of horses’ hoofs and the sound of men’s voices. Farther away, a motorcar hummed along the road, and farther still a threshing-machine was busy. Yet so quiet was it in the hay-loft that Jeanie, conscious of none of these other sounds, heard a gun-shot as though it came shattering a perfect midnight silence. That sudden crack woke Jeanie’s startled ears, and as its echoes died away in her mind she became aware of the wheels, the men’s voices, the threshing-machine. She stared at Sarah. Sarah’s eyes, wide and dark with apprehension, stared back at her.
Let Him Lie Page 2