Lonesome Road

by Patricia Wentworth

  Rachel watched her with a dazed look.

  “Are they adders?” she said rather faintly. “They were talking about adders downstairs tonight. Richard said Mr. Tollage was digging out his hedge. The men found a lot of adders in the bank.”

  Louisa Barnet thrust at the fire with the tongs and dropped them back upon the hearth.

  “Mr. Richard?” she said. “Oh, yes-he’d know, no doubt.”

  Strength came back to Rachel Treherne-strength, and anger.

  “Louie!”

  “Oh, no-you won’t hear a word! Him and Miss Caroline can do no wrong by you-not if you was to see them with your own eyes.” She came suddenly near and caught a fold of Rachel’s maize-colored dressing-gown between her hands. “Oh, my dear-you don’t believe, and you won’t believe, and I mustn’t say a word. But what would you feel like if it was the one you loved best in all the world-if there was them that was creeping and crawling and going all ways to gain their own end, and you only a servant that nobody wouldn’t listen to? Oh, my dear, wouldn’t it wring your heart same as mine’s been wrung? Oh, the Lord, he knows how it’s been wrung, and he’ll forgive me if you won’t!”

  Rachel put her hand on the woman’s shoulder and spoke gently.

  “Louie, we’re both upset. There are things I can’t listen to-there are things you mustn’t say. But that doesn’t mean I won’t do something about this. And now I’d like clean sheets, so there’s something you can do whilst I’m undressing.”

  When she was alone, Rachel Treherne sat a long time by the fire. The noise of water and the noise of wind came to her ears with their accustomed sound. Here, on the edge of the cliff, there were very few days or nights so still that this wind and water music was wholly absent. Tonight it had sombre undertones. The wind was a desolate voice. The sea dragged on the shingle under the cliff.

  She got up at last and looked at the clock. The hands stood at midnight. She felt a momentary startled wonder that so little time should really have passed. It was only an hour since she had left the drawing-room-half an hour since she had sent Louie away.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and lifted the receiver from the telephone beside it.

  She got through very quickly. Miss Maud Silver’s voice sounded most reassuringly awake and clear.

  “Yes? What is it?… Oh, Miss Treherne?… Yes… You would like me to come down tomorrow instead of Saturday?… Yes, I-I quite understand. I will wire my train in the morning. Good-night.”

  Rachel hung up the receiver. She felt as if the burden were off her shoulders.

  She got into bed, put out the light, and stopped thinking. She slept until Louisa came in with the tea at half past seven.

  Chapter Ten

  Richard Treherne came through the hall on the way to breakfast. As he passed the study door, he heard voices. The door was ajar. He pushed it a little way, and then stopped because he heard Cherry say in a taunting voice,

  “You should have done what you were told, Car-o-line. I said I’d tell on you if you didn’t give me a rake-off.”

  Richard waited to hear what Caroline would say.

  She said nothing.

  He pushed the door a little wider, and saw her standing at the window with her back to him. Cherry, a little nearer, half turned from him, half turned to Caroline, showed him a malicious profile. Her pale hair caught the light.

  “You’d much better pay up,” she said. “I expect you got at least fifty pounds for that ring. You can easily spare me a tenner.”

  Caroline did not turn her head. She said, “Why should I?” in a tone of gentle scorn.

  Cherry Wadlow laughed.

  “Because you’d better. I warned you I’d tell about the ring, and I told. But there’s something else I can tell about too if I don’t get my little rake-off.”

  Richard came in, shut the door behind him, and crossed the floor.

  “And that’s about enough of that!” he said. “Cherry, in case you don’t know it, blackmail is an indictable offence, and you can get quite a nice long stretch of penal servitude for it.”

  She put out her tongue at him like a child.

  “And a nice time your darling Caroline would have in the witness-box. ‘You pawned a diamond ring, Miss Ponsonby. I believe it belonged to your mother. You must surely have had a very strong motive for parting with it. Oh, you wanted the money? Now you wouldn’t like to tell the Court what you wanted the money for, would you? No, I thought not-a most natural reluctance.’ There, Dicky- that’s how it would be. Do run me in. I think it would be simply wizard-don’t you, Carrie? Shall I tell him what you wanted the money for?… No? All right, I’ll let you off this time, because though revenge is sweet, I’d really rather have that tenner, so I’m giving you time to think it over.” She slipped her arm through Richard’s. “Wouldn’t you like to kiss me good-morning, darling?”

  Richard would have liked to strangle her, but he curbed himself and said in a bored tone,

  “Not amusing, Cherry. You’re out of the schoolroom now, though it’s a bit difficult to realize it.”

  He had the satisfaction of seeing her change color. She ran out of the room. The door banged.

  Caroline said, “It’s wicked to hate people, but I think I hate Cherry.”

  “What she wants is a daily dozen,” said Richard- “laid on with a good stiff hair-brush. Maurice the same. Now-what’s all this about? Are you going to tell me?”

  The color came into Caroline’s face. She said,

  “No.”

  Richard took her hands in his own. He said,

  “Better tell me, Caroline.”

  She said “No” again, but rather faintly.

  “Silly to make mysteries, my dear-really silly, when it’s you and me. Don’t you know that you can tell me anything?”

  She said “Yes,” and caught her breath and said, “Anything about me. But this isn’t anything about me, Richard.”

  ‘Thank the Lord for that! But I think you’d better tell me.”

  She tried to pull her hands away, and when he held them fast she threw him a piteous look which he found hard to bear.

  “Please, Richard-I can’t. Please, Richard, let me go.”

  He lifted her hands, kissed them, and let them go.

  “Well, don’t let Cherry bully you. And don’t forget I’m here. What do you mean by letting her drag us all into a melodrama before breakfast? The emotions should never be excited before three in the afternoon. Come and eat scrambled eggs and kippers. Particularly kippers. They have a very stabilizing effect.”

  Breakfast was not a particularly tranquil meal. The Wadlows, Ernest and Mabel, had obviously cast themselves for the role of martyrs. They asked for coffee in tones of gloom, refused sugar as if it had been poison, and gazed upon Rachel with a steady reproach which she found extremely trying. Maurice sulked openly, whilst Cherry advertized the fact that she was in a bad temper by pushing away her cup of tea with so violent a shove as to send half of it into Caroline’s lap.

  For a moment Rachel saw them, not as part of her family, but as four singularly irritating and disagreeable people. For that moment she disliked them extremely, wondered why she had put up with them for so long, and made up her mind to send them packing. Then the moment was over. The Wadlows were family again. You were fond of them, you put up with them, you could never, never, never be rid of them. It was not an enlivening thought.

  Ernest ate fruit and cereal, Mabel cereal without fruit. Cherry crumbled toast and upset her tea. Caroline ate nothing at all. The telephone was active.

  Maurice answered it the first time, and reported that Cosmo Frith was coming over bag and baggage before lunch.

  “He might just as well live here and have done with it.”

  “So might any of us for the matter of that,” snapped Cherry.

  This was so undeniably true that no one attempted to deny it.

  The telephone bell rang again. This time there was a telegram. Richard took it down, laid the mess
age beside Rachel’s plate, and saw her change color. She said,

  “Miss Silver will be arriving this afternoon by the five-thirty. I shall have to send Barlow to meet her. It’s my day for Nanny Capper.”

  “Who is Miss Silver?” said Cherry, staring.

  Rachel hoped she wasn’t sounding nervous. She said,

  “I don’t think any of you have met her. She’s a retired governess. Not very exciting, I’m afraid, but I want to have her down here for a bit.”

  Cherry pushed back her chair rudely.

  “Oh, why not turn the house into a home for the aged and have done with it!” She strolled towards the door with her hands in her pockets, whistling. She was wearing mustard-colored tweeds and a large emerald-green scarf. She stopped just as she was going out of the room, because Maurice was taking another call. He turned with the receiver in his hand.

  “Oh! It’s for you. The faithful, or shall we say the unfaithful, Bob.”

  Cherry said “Damn!”, and snatched the receiver. With her father and mother watching, she had to keep her face sulkily indifferent while Mr. Robert Hedderwick said in a voice of violent passion,

  “Cherry, you’re driving me mad!”

  The Wadlows saw her eyebrows lift a little. They heard her say,

  “Why?”

  The line quivered under the energy with which Mr. Hedderwick told her why. Cherry found it very difficult to go on looking sulky, because this was all most exciting. And gratifying. The fact that Bob Hedderwick was within a few weeks of his marriage to Mildred Ross contributed an added thrill.

  “Cherry, I’ve got to see you!”

  She said, “All right.”

  “Tonight-at the usual place.”

  Cherry said, “Well, I don’t know,” and was rewarded by another outburst.

  “I tell you I’m going clean off my head! I’ve got to see you and talk it out! You’ve got to come! Say you will!”

  Cherry said, “Perhaps,” and rang off.

  This was heady stuff for the breakfast table. She had the utmost difficulty in not looking as pleased as she felt. She poured herself out another cup of tea and sipped at it to hide a lurking smile. Meanwhile the telephone bell was ringing again. Richard spoke over his shoulder, his palm against the mouthpiece.

  “Personal, private and particular for you, Rachel. G.B. on the line.”

  The young people’s complaint about having the telephone in the dining-room came home with force to Rachel as she took the receiver and heard Mr. Gale Brandon say with his agreeable American accent,

  “Miss Treherne?”

  Of course there was an extension in her bedroom, but it would look so marked if she switched over. No, it wouldn’t do at all. She said,

  “Miss Treherne speaking.”

  Gale Brandon’s voice became eager.

  “Oh, now, Miss Treherne-I wonder if you would do me a favor. I don’t really like to ask you, but I know you’ve got a very kind heart, and if you’ll think that here I am on the wrong side of the Atlantic for getting help from any of my own women folk, well I think that kind heart of yours will urge you very strongly to step into the breach and help me choose my Christmas presents.”

  Rachel heard the pleased note in her own voice as she said,

  “But it’s much too early. I haven’t even begun to think about mine.”

  Gale Brandon’s voice sounded pleased too. She thought, “He’s pleased with himself,” and tried to bang the door on that other thought, “He’s pleased with me.”

  He laughed and said, “If I don’t start early I don’t at all. I just stall and quit. Now if you will come into Ledlington with me this morning-I don’t know how much we could do there but we can make a start.”

  “Well, I don’t know.”

  His voice took a pleading tone.

  “I shall be just lost if you won’t. You know, I do lose my head in a store, and I am liable to send a pair of skates to my bedridden Uncle Jacob, or the lastest thing in lipsticks to my Aunt Hephzibah. What I need is guidance. So won’t you just cut out all those things you were going to do and let me call for you in half an hour’s time?”

  Several bright thoughts arrived in Rachel’s mind simultaneously. If she went out with Gale Brandon, Ernest and Mabel would not be able to talk to her. Maurice would not be able to talk to her, and she could put off talking to Caroline. She would also avoid Louisa. And she could make quite certain of being out when Mrs. Barber brought Ella Comperton over.

  She said with alacrity, “Well, I oughtn’t to, but I will,” and hung up.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gale Brandon drove a fast car very fast indeed. He said he had come to live at Whincliff because it offered the best selection of roads without any speed limit which he had so far been able to discover. Yet on this particular morning he showed a disposition to dally.

  “How many presents do you want to get, and what sort of people are they for? Have you really got an Uncle Jacob and an Aunt Hephzibah?”

  He turned his head to smile at her. A big, goodlooking man in the early forties, with a ruddy tan on his skin and a bright dancing something in his eye-zest and humor always, anger sometimes. He said,

  “I certainly have, and they’ve got to have presents. Uncle Jacob likes a good crime story, so he’s easy-but Aunt Hephzibah has me beat. She doesn’t read, she doesn’t drink, and she doesn’t smoke. I once gave her a bottle of scent, and it was a near thing whether she cut me out of her will. It’s just a relaxation for her altering her will, so I have to be very careful. Now, Miss Treherne, what makes you look like that?”

  She had thought his eye was on the road.

  “I think I hate talking about wills,” she said.

  “Then we won’t talk about them. Would you say it would be safe to send Aunt Hephzibah a handbag?”

  “She’ll have to pay duty on it, won’t she?”

  Mr. Brandon looked a good deal cast down.

  “Well-if I hadn’t forgot all about the duty! And would she be mad! Didn’t I say I needed guidance? Look what you’ve saved me from already.”

  Rachel laughed.

  “That’s my horrid practical mind. I’ve had to learn to be practical, you know-it didn’t come naturally. But if you can’t get your presents, why are we going on?”

  “Oh, I’ve got friends this side the Atlantic too. I’ll have to let a cousin of mine see about the old folks at home, but there’ll be plenty we can be getting along with this morning. To start off with, there’ll be chocolates and toys for about a dozen children…”

  They did the toys and chocolates very successfully, and then sat down and took stock of their purchases over a cup of coffee. Mr. Brandon produced a list.

  Gloves for Peggy and Moira. 6½.

  Silk stockings for Jane. Half a dozen pairs. 9½.

  Handkerchiefs for Irene. Sheer linen. One dozen.

  Handbag for Hermione. Dark blue. Initials.

  He handed the list over. It continued to the bottom of the page, where there was a large question-mark on a line by itself.

  “Now that,” said Mr. Brandon, “is what I wanted to ask you about. All these other things, they’re for the wives and daughters of very good friends of mine over here. I’ve known most of them a long time, and I know just what sort of things they’ll like, and just what sort of things it would be all right for me to give them. But there’s another present I want to give that I’m not so sure about. It’s for a woman, and it’s for a woman I’ve known all her life. I’d like to give her something that’s really worthwhile- something she can wear. But I don’t want to offend her or have her think I’m presuming.”

  Rachel Treherne felt a sort of cold shock which she could not account for. She said at once,

  “You’ve known her all her life?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And how well do you know her?”

  His eyes danced.

  “Pretty well. Better than she knows me.”

  “But-are you fri
ends? You see, I can’t say what you can give her unless I know just how friendly you are.” She felt as if she were excusing herself, and changed color. “Do you know, you are making me sound inquisitive. I don’t really think I can advise you at all.”

  He leaned to her across the little table.

  “Now look here, Miss Treherne, you couldn’t sound inquisitive to me whatever you said. But this is rather a delicate matter.”

  Rachel felt her cheeks burn.

  “After all, we’re almost strangers,” she said.

  If she had expected Gale Brandon to be rebuffed, she was disappointed. He said in an earnest voice,

  “Oh, I don’t feel that way at all, and I’d appreciate your advice. You see, I have a very great affection and respect for this lady-in fact I love her.”

  Rachel said, “Does she love you?”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve never asked her.”

  “Are you going to ask her?”

  “Oh, yes, when the right time comes.”

  She smiled, and wondered why her lips felt stiff.

  “Well, Mr. Brandon, if you want my advice, I should say wait till you have told her how you feel. Then you will know whether you can give her this present.”

  He took some time to think about that. Then he said,

  “Well, I had a kind of idea that I would like the present to tell her. Do you get what I mean? I thought I’d make it something she wouldn’t take unless she meant to take me with it. Then if she did take it, I’d know.”

  Rachel laughed a little.

  “That might be very dangerous, Mr. Brandon. I’m afraid there are women who would take your present and think no more about it.”

  He shook his head.

  “She wouldn’t do that.”

  They bought the friends-of-the-family presents first. Rachel could not help a quick surface amusement over the very definite likes and dislikes which Mr. Brandon exhibited. So far from needing her help he knew exactly what he wanted, and made it quite plain that he must have it. But when they crossed the Market Place to Mr. Enderby’s old dark shop his manner changed, lost its certainty. He dropped back a good twenty years and showed her the anxious, eager boy he must have been then.