She hurried on her way and upstairs soon became too busy with Countess Wych to have time for much further thought.
The old lady was evidently very disturbed and upset. The shock and excitement of her grandson’s return, for that she accepted him as grandson was made plain by her so referring to him twice over, had plainly been great. Sophy’s suggestion, for she was really a little alarmed by the old lady’s condition, that the doctor should be sent for, was however firmly rejected.
“No, no, I want no doctor,” she said with energy, and then later on, after she had quietened down a little, she fell into a troubled sleep from which in about half an hour she woke abruptly. Looking at Sophy, who was sitting near with some sewing, she said:—
“Harm will come of it, much harm.”
Sophy came to her side and tried to persuade her to sleep again. But she was still restless and evidently in no fit condition to be left alone, so Sophy sent down word that she would not come to dinner if she might have something sent to her on a tray. The tray was duly brought, but by Martin himself instead of by one of the maids. He asked how her ladyship was. Sophy answered that she was dozing, and tried to think Martin’s inquiry was of good will, but in this did not quite succeed.
“He’s gloating,” she thought, astonished by the word that had so suddenly presented itself to her as the only one to describe Martin’s attitude. “They’re all like that. Why? That’s silly. They can’t be. Only they are.” Natural, she supposed, perfectly natural, inevitable indeed, that this sudden appearance of an heir long believed to be dead, should cause many unexpected complications. It was the nature of those complications that puzzled her, for she felt that all concerned had seen possibilities and chances that were utterly beyond her understanding, and yet that she felt vaguely to be full of strange, dark implications.
From the bed, Countess Wych called her.
“Sophy,” she said, “is he still here?”
Sophy hesitated:—
“Do you mean—?” she began and paused, not quite sure how to refer to the claimant.
“Ralph,” the countess said. “He was here, wasn’t he? Did he stay—when he knew?”
“No, he went away almost at once,” Sophy answered, again with a vision of that broad and upright back vanishing behind the ornamental shrubs.
“Did he say anything? Did anything happen?”
“He was very upset,” Sophy answered cautiously, thinking it no time to go into details. “I suppose any one would be. It was such a surprise.”
“I was afraid,” the old woman said. “He is young and fierce. He won’t give in easily. I was almost afraid he might—” She seemed to be about to leave the sentence unfinished and then added:—“be unwise.”
“Oh, Mr. Ralph would never do anything silly,” declared Sophy, though not with entire conviction, for she, too, had been afraid that Ralph’s self-control might slip, as indeed whose might not under such a blow that reduced him in one moment from the position of heir to a title and great estates to that of the poor relative dependent entirely on a rich cousin’s bounty.
The old countess was lying back in bed and her aged eyes were heavy with trouble and with fear.
“If Ralph—you see, Sophy, Ralph doesn’t understand, and he may ruin it all, all.”
“Yes,” Sophy said, not understanding this. “Dear Countess Wych, won’t you try and forget it now and get a little sleep and then to-morrow it will be easier to realize what it all means.”
“It means mischief,” the old woman answered. “Mischief will come of it. There was nothing else to do but mischief will come of it and worse—much worse.”
Some soup Sophy had asked for, now arrived, brought again by Martin. Sophy could not understand why he was so attentive, for he was certainly not as a rule inclined to go outside his ordinary duties. Did he feel there was distress and bewilderment in the room and did he hope to get some hint of its cause? or did he know that cause already and did he merely find pleasure in assuring himself that that distress existed? The soup was good and appetising, but Countess Wych could only be persuaded to take a spoonful or two. Resolutely she pushed it aside, cutting short Sophy’s attempted coaxing with the sharp remark:—
“When you went to those A.R.P. lectures, didn’t you meet some policeman’s wife?”
For this was at the time when the shadow of a war that to many seemed so wanton, and therefore so fantastically incredible, was already beginning to creep across the land. A.R.P. precautions were being taken. Ralph, to his huge disgust, had been informed that he was ‘reserved’, and that his war service, if a thing so wholly unnecessary and absurd and improbable as war did occur, was to consist in increasing the production of food from the land. Evacuation plans were being made. It had already been arranged that in case of what was then called an ‘emergency’—an emergency some of the papers were declaring every day would never come into being—a wing of Castle Wych would be used for the accommodation of a girls’ school. The villagers also were being asked to get ready to receive children, and in connection with these plans, and then again at A.R.P. lectures, Sophy had met the Mrs. Owen to whom she supposed Countess Wych was now referring.
“You mean Mrs. Owen?” she asked. “I don’t think Mr. Owen’s a policeman exactly,” she added doubtfully, for she supposed that only those were policemen who wore a uniform and a helmet and were such a comfort when you had to cross busy streets. “I think he has something to do with Colonel Glynne.”
“Well, Colonel Glynne is a policeman, isn’t he?” asked the countess, a little tartly. “If a county chief constable isn’t a policeman, who is? Isn’t Mr. Owen the Bobby Owen man they brought from Scotland Yard to show Midwych how to do detective work? Most unnecessary in my opinion.”
“Mrs. Owen did say they came from London,” Sophy admitted. “I heard someone at the lecture say he was awfully clever. I only saw him once.”
“What is he like?”
Sophy searched her memory. Bobby Owen might be a well-known detective and quite an important person now he was acting as Colonel Glynne’s private secretary and more or less as director of the not too efficient or up-to-date Midwych C.I.D., but he had made very little impression on Sophy.
“I don’t think he said anything,” she observed finally. “He just sat about. I remember looking when that was said about his being awfully clever, but he was just like any one else, only more so. I liked Mrs. Owen. She seemed very nice, only rather awfully stylish. Oh, and her hats—”
Sophy paused with a little gasp of admiration. “Each time she had a different one, and each time it was nothing really and yet perfectly wonderful. She used to have a hat shop before she married, someone said.”
“I hope it’s only hats we shall ever hear of from either her or her husband,” the countess muttered, and Sophy wondered very much why she said that.
“If anything does happen and they do want to send children here,” Sophy remarked, “she is to help to look after them. If there is an emergency, I mean.”
“It is another kind of emergency I was thinking of,” Countess Wych answered.
After that she would say no more, and Sophy was only too glad that now she seemed inclined to rest.
But Sophy slept with the door of her own adjoining room wide open; and once, when in the middle of the night she heard the old woman muttering, she got up and went to her side. She was asleep but quite plainly Sophy heard her mutter once again:—
“Harm will come of it—much harm,” and then, loudly and distinctly, the name: “Ralph.”
Very thoughtfully Sophy went back to her own bed.
CHAPTER IV
GOSSIP
From the strained and difficult situation at Castle Wych, growing ever more darkly ominous as the hours and the days passed, Sophy, when opportunity served, sought escape in the village. There this day she met her father, noticed with disapproval that he had managed to escape from the vicarage in the shabby, worn out old coat he was supposed to wear only
when working alone in his study, and so turned back to go home with him, there to remind Mrs. Longden and the maid of the necessity for a more careful watch being kept.
On the way they talked of the extraordinary development at the castle and the unexpected return of an heir so long believed dead. Nothing else indeed was being spoken of anywhere; the Nazi threat, still only a threat no one took very seriously, was quite forgotten; and Mr. Longden had been very worried to find that through all the gossip and chatter was running a note of strange suspicion.
“I can understand,” he told Sophy as they walked along, “that they all sympathize with Ralph, but I do hope and trust there will be no show of hostility towards this young man. It’s not his fault.”
“I don’t like him,” said Sophy, suddenly and loudly.
“My dear,” said Mr. Longden, slightly shocked, for he thought it only right and natural that every one should always like every one else. “Why, you hardly know him. What makes you say such a thing?”
“He makes me think,” Sophy answered unexpectedly, “of keeping my door locked.”
Mr. Longden looked very puzzled, and then began a frantic search of his pockets.
“There,” he said distractedly, “I must have left my keys at Mrs. Potter’s.”
The clergy have a reputation, not always well deserved, for absent-mindedness, and in one respect Mr. Longden did his best to live up to it. His path through life was littered with forgotten keys, umbrellas, books, even hats, of late gas masks, too, that he was always putting down upon tables or chairs and then never thinking of again, unless indeed he seized someone else’s hat or book or keys or umbrella that happened to be near, and so went well satisfied on his way. In other respects he was careful and precise, and never forgot an engagement or was late for an appointment, though both his wife and daughter declared that this was largely because his diary—foolscap size—was too big to be carried about, had to be kept on his study table, and could not therefore get very badly mislaid. It was, in fact, the first rule of the house, that never, never must the engagement book be taken out of the study; and if ever Mr. Longden were seen wandering away with it under his arm, then everything else had to be abandoned until it was back in its place on the study table.
Possibly a truer explanation was that engagements and appointments concerned the convenience of other people, and that therefore his sub-conscious mind saw to it they were remembered; while such things as keys and umbrellas concerned only himself personally and so mattered less.
However, on this occasion, no harm was done, for a small girl came running up with the keys left behind on Mrs. Potter’s table, and Sophy, noticing something else now, said:—
“Dad, where’s your umbrella?”
Mr. Longden looked vaguely at his hands, surprised to find them empty.
“I can’t have brought it with me,” he said hopefully.
But Sophy knew better. Mr. Longden had certain fixed habits. One was, before going out, to open the door and regard the weather. If it looked like rain he nodded with the air of a man who expected no less and turned back for his umbrella. If it seemed likely to be fine, he nodded with the air of a man not to be deceived by appearances and turned back for his umbrella.
“If I did bring it out with me,” he decided presently, “I must have left it somewhere.”
Sophy agreed that this seemed probable.
“Where did you go first?” she asked.
Mr. Longden said he thought it was the post office, so they went there and found the missing article and a small group of people discussing the lost heir’s return—a topic that much talk had done little to exhaust. Mr. Longden, aware again of an undercurrent of suspicion and hostility, pointed out that the heir’s reappearance should be a matter of general thanksgiving and must be an overwhelming joy to his aged grandparents. To that they all agreed, and said ‘of course’, and looked as if they meant the opposite, and one man observed that neither the earl nor his old lady seemed very greatly cheered by the return of the prodigal. He added that by all accounts Earl Wych was going about looking as if he had lost a five pound note and found a bad penny, and that his wife was said to be eating nothing, sleeping not at all, and hardly ever speaking a word to any one.
They all watched Sophy when this was said. She tried to look as expressionless as possible and pulled at her father to come away, observing tartly and disrespectfully as they went that for the future his umbrella would have to be chained round his waist.
“Extraordinary,” Mr. Longden declared, “what things people will say. No doubt what’s happened is rather overwhelming and I expect both the old people are very worried about Ralph. And that’s what makes all this gossip.”
“It may be gossip,” Sophy answered, “but it’s true. Both of them look as if they had done something they are awfully ashamed of and they know harm will come of it. The countess keeps muttering that to herself—that harm will come of it.”
“All the same,” persisted Mr. Longden, “the young man has his rights, and among them is the right to a welcome home. There’s a touch of romance in such a return I should have thought would appeal to every one. I am afraid the butler, Martin, is responsible to some degree. He was at the Wych Arms last night and he seems to have talked in a way that has helped to spread this gossip.”
Sophy was silent, but she remembered how like a waiting vulture the soft-footed butler had seemed, hovering and silent and patient at a little distance. She wondered if he could know something, but that seemed to her unlikely. Her father was saying anxiously:—
“I do hope, once the first shock is over, Ralph will take it in the right spirit, and that he will try to be friendly to the young man.”
“Mr. Ralph says he is an impostor,” Sophy found herself saying, though she had not meant to tell her father that.
Only somehow the words came tumbling out before she was aware.
Mr. Longden stood still and shook his head sadly.
“I am very, very sorry to hear it,” he said. “It had occurred to me, but I couldn’t believe it of Ralph. I had a better opinion of him. I shouldn’t have said that,” he added remorsefully. “It must have been a terrible shock to any young man. No one has a right to judge him unless they have been in the same position.” This was a favourite remark of Mr. Longden’s, and as no one is ever in exactly the same position as any one else, it followed that no one ever had the right to judge another, as is probably true.
They were passing the Wych Estate office now. This was a comparatively new building, in two stories. On the ground floor were three rooms, an outer office for a Miss Higson, the typist, who liked to call herself secretary; a waiting-room; and an inner office for Ralph. Above were rooms occupied by Mrs. Gregson, who was the widow of an old estate employee, acted as caretaker and office cleaner, and sometimes as office boy as well, provided tea every day and occasionally other meals when Ralph happened to be busier than usual. Mr. Longden was half inclined to call in the hope of finding Ralph in a mood which would permit of the offering of a little friendly counsel, but then decided that it was too near the luncheon hour.
“Perhaps,” he said as they went on, “Miss Anne Hoyle’s influence will help him to get over it better. I do hope she isn’t being unfriendly to the young man.”
“No, she isn’t,” said Sophy briefly; and only just prevented herself from adding that Anne was flirting with him as hard as she knew how.
It was an entirely new phase of Anne’s character, and one that greatly bewildered and disturbed Sophy. Hitherto Anne had seemed quite indifferent to young men, whom she was often inclined to snub. Older men seemed to attract her much more, and even to Ralph she showed a degree of coldness that surprised Sophy, though she had admired it greatly as a proof equally of feminine reserve and of aristocratic self-control that would permit no display of that love you must obviously feel for the man you were engaged to, or else why are you engaged to him? If doubts had at times tried to enter her mind, Sophy was far too
loyal to admit them, and had indeed closed the door on them with such a bang that no wonder they vanished, in a probable panic. All the same, for their mere appearance Sophy felt she ought to do penance, as was her custom when she knew she hadn’t been behaving very nicely. Get up half an hour earlier than usual, perhaps, to learn by heart one of the less comprehensible chapters of Jeremiah, or not drink her early cup of tea she always enjoyed so much. Only to leave it would seem ungrateful; to pour it away would be wasteful, so she supposed it would have to be Jeremiah. Sophy sighed at the prospect; and such are the bewildering difficulties of the conscientious life found herself as a result of this distasteful prospect thinking more and more uncharitably of Anne, more and more inclined to believe she really was flirting with Bertram, and thus becoming more and more guilty for harbouring thoughts so lacking in charity.
So to avoid a vicious circle of more penance, causing more and more uncharitable thoughts, rendering more penance necessary, Sophy said:—
“Well, why is Mr. Clinton Wells going to help Mr. Ralph if he doesn’t think it’s all a horrid fraud?”
Mr. Longden had no answer to this problem. But he remembered that Mr. Wells was a partner in the firm acting for Earl Wych who accepted Bertram as his grandson. It seemed a little difficult to believe Mr. Wells would act against the earl. Like being on both sides at once. So Sophy explained that Clinton Wells intended to resign his partnership, and would he do that, she asked triumphantly, unless he was quite, quite sure?
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