The Sacrifice

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The Sacrifice Page 9

by Sarban


  ‘My examinations began the next day but one. Between worrying about those and worrying about Shirley I had a dreadful week. I tore up the letter to Aunt Eva. Thinking the whole business over in bed at night—as far as I could think at all after exhausting myself on the day’s exam papers—I decided that I would have another tussle with Shirley as soon as the exams were over. If I could make nothing of her then I would write, but in a less excited way.

  ‘It so happened that the guest-house we had written to in Argyllshire wrote back that they could not book us for the week we wanted, but offered us a time a fortnight later. That gave me a little more time. I told my friend a little about the difficulty I was having with Shirley—though nothing about all the Harburian business—and we agreed to accept the later booking.

  ‘Before going to see Shirley again I went and looked up her old dancing teacher, the principal of the company’s ballet-school. I had met her once before, when Shirley was much younger, after an exhibition that her pupils had given. She had met Aunt Eva, too. I asked her frankly what she thought about Shirley now.

  ‘She looked at me sorrowfully. She was a Frenchwoman trained in the ballet of the Grand Opera in Paris, and she spoke with feeling and great energy of expression.

  ‘ “Ah, my dear, your sister is a bitter deception—a disappointment, a tragedy. Why has she stopped working? She was one who never had to be made to work before. She is not one of the stupid ones who will go so far and no farther. She is not one whom you would advise after a certain time, See my child, you know how to do your steps very nicely, you are a beautiful coryphée, but to be famous you had better take to something else. . . . No, no, no! Shirley had so much promise, she has intelligence, she has understanding and imagination. . . . Why does she give up? She is not ill? I think she is not ill. But she is tired. She has no spirit anymore, no life! She is missing practice. She is irregular. I scold her and she does not come for two or three days. What is it? She has a young man, eh? He is behaving badly?”

  ‘There was little I could tell her, except that there was no young man. She obviously did not believe me. I asked her if she could not persuade Shirley to go away with me for a holiday.

  ‘ “But I have told her!” she cried. “I have told her a dozen times! She always says, No, I can’t go away. It is you my dear who must persuade her. You are her sister. She will listen to you.”

  ‘I came away thinking that if the one woman who had ever had some influence over Shirley in the past had failed to make her see reason there was very little hope left. Still, the dancing teacher had told me what I wanted to know: that I was absolutely right in trying to get Shirley away from the Guyatts.

  ‘I went off to Number Fourteen that same afternoon. With the finals over and term ending in a few days I had plenty of spare time, now. The wicket gate was unlocked, the house shut up and deserted-looking as usual. I got a prompt answer to my ring this time.

  ‘Mrs Guyatt popped her head round the door and, before I could say a word, snapped: “She’s out!”

  ‘ “Well then I’ll wait for her,” I said very firmly.

  ‘ “It’s no use. She won’t be in,” Mrs Guyatt said. She was positively grinning at me, showing a row of top teeth like a horses.

  ‘ “Do you mean to tell me that she’s refusing to see me?” I demanded.

  ‘ “She’s out. That’s all there is to it,” said Mrs Guyatt with that maddening smirk again.

  ‘What could I do? Force my way in? Frankly, I thought of trying to. The whole business was utterly undignified and absurd; and still I had that dreadful feeling that it was necessary, vitally necessary to see Shirley again.

  ‘I stepped back and raised my voice, shouting so that Shirley must hear me, upstairs. “All right,” I called out. “I’ll go away now, but I shall do what I said I was going to do. We will find a way to get you away from here!”

  ‘Mrs Guyatt slammed the door before I had finished. I stood for a moment staring in complete frustration at the blistered, peeling paint. Then I heard a giggle behind me. I turned round and saw Ellen standing in the drive a few yards from me. There was a malicious grin all over her monkey-like little face. A lock of her lifeless black hair was hanging over one eye; she screwed up the other and pulled an ugly, impudent face at me, baring her teeth.

  ‘I stepped down from the porch, so wild that I could have forgotten that she was a cripple and smacked her face. Then, to my astonishment she balanced herself evenly on both legs and swung up her crutch and pretended to lunge at me with it as if it had been a spear. She put out her tongue and went, with a horrible, staggering run, straight up to the front door, flinging herself against it and half-turning round to scream at me. “Get out! Get out! I’ll kill you if you don’t get out! I’m getting strong. I shall soon be as strong as you. Stronger! Get out! We don’t want you!”

  ‘The door softly opened behind her and she tumbled in.

  ‘I went home again. I was sickened and dispirited by the whole business now. I didn’t know what to do against those people. I felt that poor Aunt Eva wouldn’t be much good either. Nevertheless I wrote to her; she knew some old acquaintances of my father’s who might help; there was his lawyer in Birmingham. I wrote guardedly to aunt Eva, thinking about her heart and not wishing to upset her too much; but I wrote another letter to our younger Aunt—though that was more difficult because we scarcely knew her—and told her more of the facts and asked her to judge whether Aunt Eva was fit to come over to London.

  ‘Perhaps, in my anxiety not to upset Aunt Eva, I wrote too guardedly, and perhaps all I managed to convey to Aunt Emily was that Shirley and I had fallen out about some friends of hers, for the replies I got from both were rather soothing little letters, telling me that, after all, Shirley had a right to choose her own friends. Both said they were very sorry, of course, to hear that Shirley was not doing so well in her dancing, but they were sure that it could be nothing serious and when they came over they would have a good long talk with her. Aunt Eva was doing very nicely under her new doctor’s treatment, but it was rather slow and she didn’t see how she would be able to come to London earlier than she had planned. I was to go away and have my holiday in Scotland and not worry. I had been working so hard for my finals, they knew, and I must need a good rest and no worries. . . .

  ‘Before these letters came I got a note from Shirley.

  I heard you’d been round again. If it was about going away with you, I haven’t changed my mind. I can’t go. So please don’t bother me again. If you still think you can argue me into leaving these lodgings, I should like you to get into your head once for all that you can’t. I shall leave here in my own good time, and not before, and for my own reasons and not for anybody else’s. I am perfectly well and there’s no need for you or Aunt Eva or anybody else to bother your heads about me in the slightest. Ellen sends you her love. She says she saw you the other afternoon and showed you that she can run now. So perhaps you’ll admit that I’m not behaving so badly after all!

  ‘Well, I gave up. I had done my best and didn’t know what else I could do. I went off to Argyllshire with my friend and told myself I would simply leave Shirley to Aunt Eva when she came over. I know that I wished so much that I knew somebody understanding and reliable and resourceful in London whom I could go to and who would know what to do. But I didn’t know anyone like that. True, I thought of the police, but it was too obvious that the police would tell me there was nothing they could do about it. My sister had every right to choose her own lodgings and I had not a shred of evidence that anything the Guyatts had done was against the law. There’s no law against crank religions, or holding private religious services in your house, or making converts, as far as I know.

  ‘So, off I went to Scotland, and, if I wasn’t entirely happy, I got lots of exercise and fresh air, and I came back feeling fit, physically, at any rate.

  ‘It was about seven on a Saturday evening when I arrived back at my lodgings in Dulwich. The first thing I saw whe
n I went upstairs was that the door of Shirley’s old room was open and just inside was a pile of her luggage. Miss Willis came running up the stairs after me. She was breathless, bewildered and excited.

  ‘ “Has Miss Shirley said anything to you?” she asked. “She must be coming back. But its funny she hasn’t let me know. However, isn’t it lucky I didn’t let the room. Of course, I wouldn’t have done without asking you. . . .”

  ‘I went in and looked at the luggage: a trunk and three or four suitcases of different sizes, a hat-box and an attaché-case—all the luggage that Shirley possessed as far as I was aware. The labels were neatly lettered, though not in Shirley’s hand, I thought.

  ‘ “But hasn’t she written to you?” I asked. “When did this come?” It was an immense relief to me to see it. After all that worry, to think that Shirley had at last seen reason. I remembered her last note to me and the phrase about her leaving the Guyatts in her own good time. I thought, with some relish, that there must have been a quarrel. But her unpredictability and her thoughtlessness were exasperating. First, wild horses wouldn’t drag her away from the Guyatts and then she packs up and migrates back to Miss Willis without a word of warning. After all, for all she knew Miss Willis might have let the room.

  ‘I was dwelling so much on my own relief and the rightness of my own attitude and predictions that I did not for a minute pay much attention to what Miss Willis was telling me.

  ‘ “It came yesterday,” she was saying, “and, of course I was expecting Miss Shirley to come along soon after it, but she didn’t. And then I thought, well, there’ll be a letter by the afternoon post, but there wasn’t. . . .”

  ‘ “Yesterday?” I said. “You mean Shirley didn’t sleep here last night?”

  ‘ “Oh no.”

  ‘I went downstairs. The Guyatts had no telephone. The only thing was to go over to Clapham and see what Shirley was doing. It might have seemed unnecessary, since the likeliest thing was that she had kept the things she needed for one night and meant to finish the week out with the Guyatts. But why send the other stuff in advance at all? Why not pile it all on a taxi and come with it?

  ‘I turned the possible explanations over in my mind as I sat in the bus. There seemed no very good reason for Shirley doing as she had done. But then, Shirley did not always have reasons that I should call good for what she did.

  ‘I had expected to find Mrs Guyatt less smirkily triumphant now, and I was right. All her old dejection had returned; and something more: she seemed frightened. She let me into the hall, and her shifty eyes roved all over me.

  ‘ “Where’s Shirley?” I asked.

  ‘ “Aren’t you satisfied?” she said. “Have you come to mock me? Go away and leave us alone.”

  ‘ “With pleasure,” I said, very tartly. “But I want a word with my sister first.”

  ‘ “She’s not here. You know she’s not here,” she said.

  ‘ “Oh, she’s out, is she? Really out? Where has she gone?”

  ‘ “How should I know?” she said. “Why are you asking me? You should know. She has gone back to where she lodged before with you.”

  ‘ “Her things are there,” I said. “But she isn’t. I’ve been away for a fortnight and only got back to London just this evening. I haven’t seen Shirley. She hasn’t been to our lodgings and I want to know where she is.”

  ‘ “Well I can’t tell you,” Mrs Guyatt said. “She sent all her things away early yesterday morning and she paid me for the week and she left about ten o’clock. That’s all I know.”

  ‘I turned to go. I could not understand it at all. If Shirley had spent the last night neither at Mrs Guyatt’s nor at Miss Willis’s where had she spent it, without luggage? Then of course, another idea occurred to me. Shirley might well have acquired things I didn’t know about in the months she had been staying at the Guyatts’.

  ‘ “Was she going away, out of town? Had she any hand luggage with her?” I asked.

  ‘ “No, she hadn’t,” said Mrs Guyatt. “And all she said was that she was going to your house.”

  ‘ “Does Ellen know where she was going,” I asked. “Let me see Ellen.”

  Mrs Guyatt showed some spirit at that.

  ‘ “I won’t. You may mock me, but you shan’t insult the child,” she said.

  ‘I did not relish seeing the little beast, and it had been only a faint hope that she might have told me something. She would most likely have lied to me out of spite. So I simply said, “I’m sure I don’t want to mock her, as you call it,” and I added, rather unkindly, I’m afraid, “I suppose this is one of her worse days?”

  ‘My sneer angered her, and anger, surprisingly, gave her dignity. She flushed and drew herself up.

  ‘ “The child is heart-stricken. But well in body. I praise the Lord, she is better than she has ever been. Thanks to your sister. She was the instrument. The Lord has performed a wonderful work with her.”

  ‘Her voice had a truly fanatical ring; there was anything but humble thanksgiving in her tone and looks. Her joy and praise were of the sort that religious maniacs express at exhibitions of the Lord’s wrath, not His mercy.

  ‘There was clearly nothing more to be got out of her. I left her and went back to Dulwich. I suppose that was the last mistake I made in the whole dreadful business. I should have insisted on seeing Ellen that evening. But I had not begun to suspect then what I suspect now, nor even what I began to suspect in the course of that following day.

  ‘Well, when I look at it after this lapse of time, sometimes I think that I must have had a subconscious knowledge then that Ellen knew better than anyone what had happened to Shirley; and, if so, it may have been some automatic defensive mechanism of my mind that kept me from insisting on seeing her. My sanity might not have withstood seeing Ellen that morning if what I suspect now is true.

  ‘I telephoned that evening first to Shirley’s dancing teacher, then to some members of the company, whose numbers I got from her, including the girl who had first told me about Shirley’s falling off in her work. Until midnight I was ringing people up or trying to ring them up, most of them, of course, being out. No one knew anything. The teacher was the only one who gave me any concrete information at all: Shirley had not been to any dancing practice for a week. The teacher thought she must have gone away with me after all.

  ‘The next morning I telephoned to the manager of the company himself. He knew about Shirley’s absence, and had been annoyed with her for going off without telling anyone. I told him I thought it was serious and asked him if he thought I ought to tell the police. I remember his voice squeaked with alarm.

  ‘ “Good gracious! Is it as serious as that?” Then, after a long pause, he said: “Well, yes, perhaps you’d better.”

  ‘I hadn’t really thought seriously of that step until then, but after giving it another hour’s consideration I went to the police station.

  ‘Obviously there would be something wrong if the police showed the same agitation as the people who take their troubles to them, but it did seem to me that the men at the station were unnecessarily phlegmatic. They didn’t exactly say, “There, there, she’ll turn up again, like a bad penny”, but that, I felt, was their attitude. However, I had to admit later that once their machine started it did everything that one could have expected of it.

  ‘I told them all the facts at the station. Everything, that is, that I could honestly call a fact, not everything that I’ve told you tonight, because so much of the tale as I’ve told it to you is impressions, not facts. I certainly didn’t wrap up what I knew about Mrs Guyatt—little as it was when it came to things that a policeman could write down—and I hoped they would question her about her efforts to convert Shirley. Even if there wasn’t anything illegal in that, there was something in it that would be the better for being hauled out into the antiseptic daylight. I had begun to imagine frightening things that might have happened to Shirley now.

  ‘A constable went back with me to get some p
hotographs of Shirley and to take a statement from Miss Willis. We went upstairs and looked at the luggage. The constable made a note of the pieces and asked if that was Shirley’s lettering on the labels. It wasn’t. I hadn’t given much thought to it before, but now it occurred to me that it must have been Ellen’s, and I said so.

  ‘Later in the day a sergeant came round to make some more enquiries. I gathered that he had already been to Clapham and questioned Mrs Guyatt and had a look round Shirley’s room there. Mrs Guyatt had told him exactly what she had told me, and as for her room, there was not a thing left to give any clue to her whereabouts. All the drawers and cupboards were empty. Mrs Guyatt had assured him that Shirley had packed everything. She had torn up some letters and thrown them in the waste-paper basket and then asked Mrs Guyatt to burn them, which she had done, in the kitchen range.

  ‘The sergeant asked me to listen to a description of what Shirley was wearing when she left Number Fourteen. It was Mrs Guyatt’s description. He read it out from his notebook. I was certain that the description corresponded to nothing that Shirley had owned up to her leaving our joint lodgings, but the sergeant himself provided the obvious explanation of that.

  ‘ “Your sister spent quite a bit on clothes, I expect?” he said.

  ‘Of course, she did. It was about four months since we parted. It would have been strange if Shirley had not bought herself some new summer clothes in that time. The grey suit Mrs Guyatt had described sounded very much the sort of thing that Shirley liked.

  ‘The sergeant then proposed that I should open the luggage with him and see if any of Shirley’s effects were missing. Most of the things were not locked, only fastened with straps. Shirley could never keep the key of anything. The one or two things that were locked the sergeant opened with a key from a bunch that he produced. We went through all her things. There was nothing missing, as far as I could tell, and, of course, there were quite a lot of new clothes that I had not seen before. Her jewellery was all there, and so were all her toilet things. Unless she had a completely new and separate lot of night things, she was clearly expecting to spend the night at Miss Willis’s when she sent off her luggage. And Mrs Guyatt had been positive that she was carrying nothing but her small handbag when she left Number Fourteen.

 

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