Anne Belinda

by Patricia Wentworth

  “Thank you for my nice tea and my lovely drive.”

  He held her hand for a moment, and then let go of it rather suddenly.

  Anne was a yard away when he called after her:

  “Good-night, Miss Jones.”

  Mrs. Brownling let Anne in with a warning gesture in the direction of the drawing-room, the door of which was ajar.

  “Is that Jones?” said the voice of Mrs. Fossick-Yates as they passed.

  “Yes, madam.”

  The hundred and eighty-three days began to rise up in front of her.

  “I’m glad you are punctual. I expect punctuality.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  The kitchen was untidier than ever. Anne had slipped into doing quite half Mrs. Brownling’s work. During the hours that she had been away an incredible number of dirty plates seemed to have accumulated. A game of patience was in progress amidst the débris of tea and supper. Something with a pungently unpleasant smell had been spilt upon the stove.

  “Good thing you weren’t late,” said Mrs. Brownling, shutting the door. “Didn’t I tell you she’d sit there with the door open waiting to catch you? In a way, she’d be in a better temper if you was late, because then she’d get it off her chest, so to speak. It’s to-morrow you’ve got to look out for now, and don’t you forget it. There’s a drop of soup I saved for you in the far saucepan. She don’t allow supper on your evening out; but I’ve saved it, for I know what it is to go off to your bed feeling hollow. So you just drink it up.”

  Anne was glad of the kindness, if not of the soup.

  “I wouldn’t mind her temper if she wasn’t so mean,” pursued Mrs. Brownling. “Drat the cards! What’s come to them? There isn’t an ace in the pack to-night, and that I’ll swear. ‘Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,’ is what they always say. And I’m sure if it was true, I’d be the Queen of England; for worse cards than what I’ve always had you couldn’t imagine, let alone see. But there, I suppose I’ve had my share, when all’s said and done. Did I tell you about the Italian Count that I was engaged to?”

  “No—not that one.”

  “Didn’t I? He was a very handsome gentleman—if you don’t mind them black, which I didn’t, being so fair myself.

  She patted her light fuzzy fringe complacently. The colour of it reminded Anne vaguely of parsnips.

  “Fair ladies prefer dark gentlemen as a general rule. And, of course, his manners were lovely. It was my poor father who came between us. He was a very violent-tempered man, though a perfect gentleman and very highly respected at the Board of Trade—I think I told you what a lovely inkstand he had given him on his twenty-fifth anniversary. Well, it was he that came between us. He said he didn’t hold with marble halls, and curling hair, and a diamond ring on a gentleman’s finger. And when he called the Count an organ-grinder’s monkey to his face, there was quite an unpleasantness, and nothing for it but for me to send him back the lovely real mosaic brooch he’d given me for my birthday.

  On Saturday Anne received a parcel. It contained a writing-pad, envelopes, an indelible pencil, a stylographic pen, five shillings worth of stamps—and a letter from John Waveney.

  The letter ran:

  “DEAR MISS JONES,

  “I think I’d better practise calling you Miss Jones. I feel as if it would need a good deal of practice. Are you going to practise calling me Sir John? Or shall I be a Jones too? I don’t mind being one if you’d rather. But John Jones sounds pretty awful—doesn’t it? Of course you could call me Mr. Jones if you liked. You had better think it over and let me know on Sunday—you do get out this Sunday, don’t you? I’ll be at the same place at half-past two. I’m sending you some things to write with, because you haven’t written yet, and I thought perhaps you hadn’t got a block, and couldn’t get out to get one. I think you owe me five letters.

  “Will you make out the list of the clothes you want and bring it with you on Sunday?

  “Yours,

  “J. M. W. alias JONES.”

  Anne looked helplessly at this epistle. He was a dreadfully unsnubbable young man. She told her conscience that she really had tried to snub him. And if he wouldn’t be snubbed, what on earth was she to do?

  Anne’s conscience, in a voice of austere severity, immediately provided her with an answer: “You can stop seeing him, and you can return his letters unopened.”

  Anne was rather haughty with her conscience. She said: “How rude!” and then, with rather less certainty, “I—I couldn’t be rude.”

  “Don’t go out with him to-morrow,” said the severe, unpleasant voice.

  “But I want to.”

  “You oughtn’t to want to.”

  Anne tossed her head.

  “I won’t be bullied,” she said.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  The weather held. Sunday was as fine as Thursday had been, and about five degrees hotter. There was a shimmering haze over the distance, and a deeper, fuller green on trees and hedgerows.

  “Why did you send me writing-paper?” said Anne.

  “I told you why. Have you brought that list?”

  “I’ve written to Nanna. I don’t know where my things are.”

  “She’ll know,” said John cheerfully. “Look here, Anne, how much money have you got?”

  Anne laughed.

  “How frightfully sudden you are!”

  “Yes, I know. I haven’t got any tact. I hate crawling round on egg-shells. It’s really ever so much better just to crash into the middle of what you want to say—it saves a lot of trouble in the end. How much money have you got?”

  “Sixpence,” said Anne.

  They were passing through a little emerald wood. In the middle of the wood there was a pond. The reflections in the pond were the greenest things that Anne had ever seen. They were like green flames.

  John scowled at all this beauty. He said: “Ridiculous!” in a loud, hectoring sort of voice.

  “Why is it ridiculous?”

  “It’s the most insensate thing I’ve ever heard of. Sixpence!”

  Anne fairly bubbled over:

  “Oh, my sixpence—my pretty little sixpence!

  I love sixpence better than my life.

  I spent a penny of it, I lent a penny of it,

  And I took fourpence home to my wife.

  “Having only sixpence is a most valuable moral lesson—it trains one in habits of strict economy.”

  “When will you get any more?”

  “Not for ages.”

  “Why?” The word was jerked at her.

  Anne decided that he looked exactly like a cross schoolboy.

  “Because I hadn’t any uniform, and Mrs. Fossick-Yates had to get the things. And as far as I can make out, it’ll take me about three months to work them off.”

  John was restored to cheerfulness by the bright thought that this obligation would prevent Anne from running away. He spent the rest of the afternoon in being very nice to her.

  They were nearly back, when Anne said firmly:

  “You mustn’t write to me.”

  “Was I going to write to you?”

  “I don’t know. I’d rather you didn’t.”

  “Why?”

  “She looks at the post-marks.”

  “Let her.”

  “And she says what a lot of letters I get.”

  “Do you get a lot of letters?”

  “Only yours—I don’t think she likes it.”

  “Tell her they’re from a cousin who is a most respectable young man.”

  Anne exclaimed in horror:

  “She doesn’t think any young man can possibly be respectable. You won’t write—will you?”

  “Wait and see,” said John.

  On Monday there was no letter. It is very depressing to be taken at one’s word. On Tuesday there was a fat letter all about Mrs. Jones, and Anne’s clothes, and plans for Thursday.

  “Do you play golf? I forgot to ask. Write by return. And if you do, I’ll bring clubs and we’ll
go somewhere and play. I’m frightfully keen, and frightfully bad. My last handicap was about fifty, I think. You’ll knock my head off, and then you’ll be prouder than ever. You remember Red Pete I told you about the other day? After he threw the fifty dollars into Niagara he got engaged to a girl called Maud Matilda Caroline Blenkinsop. She was a very pretty girl. I don’t know why she got engaged to him. He jilted her because he found out that she had three hens and a cottage piano in her own right. I thought you’d like to know what pride leads to—though in this instance she was well out of it.”

  Anne’s box came on Wednesday. All the things that she had asked for were there, and some that she had not remembered to ask for. She went through everything very carefully. Only a very few of the things had a name, or even initials on them. She destroyed all the marks there were, and felt an odd pang as she did it. It seemed to put Anne Waveney clean out of mind amongst nameless and forgotten things.

  Here were the handkerchiefs that jenny had given her for Christmas—little transparent things made of sheer linen lawn with a slim “A” embroidered in the corner. The “A” could stay where it was; but Mrs. Fossick-Yates would disapprove very heartily of a parlour-maid who possessed handkerchiefs so much finer than her own.

  There was the blue and silver frock she had worn at the Hunt Ball. Ronny Carstairs had proposed to her halfway through the evening, after telling her that she looked like a blue flower on a silver stalk. Ronny had published his first thin volume of poetry a few months earlier, so what he said didn’t really count. Still, it was rather nice to remember now. Only what on earth was Nanna thinking about to put in blue and silver tissue and silver shoes? Anne had certainly not asked for them.

  She packed them hastily away at the very bottom of the box. Then she wrote to John. The letter consisted of a single line without beginning or ending.

  “The box has come. I don’t play golf.”

  John had a visitor that morning. “A lady to see you, sir,” brought him down into the lounge posthaste. It couldn’t possibly be Anne, but if it were—

  It was Jenny Marr, in the thin, smart black which she always wore in town, and which set off her fair skin and bright hair so perfectly. The chain which Nicholas had given her took the light as if its carved crystals were diamonds.

  John said: “How do you do?” But even as Jenny’s hand touched his, she was saying in an anxious tone, “Where can we talk?” and he realized that she had not just looked in to play some light game of make-believe.

  He led the way to a small room that opened out of the drawing-room, and they sat down on a stiff upholstered couch. Jenny pulled off her gloves and tossed them down between them.

  “Nanna came down yesterday,” she said. “I couldn’t get away before. Where is Anne?”

  John was conscious of satisfaction. He had had them all against him, lying themselves stiff; and now the tables were turned, and it was Jenny who had to come to him and say “Where’s Anne?” He smiled quite pleasantly.

  “Why do you ask me?”

  “Nanna said you’d sent her to fetch Anne’s clothes. She said you’d given her a letter from Anne. Where is she, John?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  Jenny tried to smile.

  “I’ve been most terribly anxious. I should think you would know that. Where is she? It would be such a relief to know she’s all right. You can’t think—” Her words died under his hard stare.

  “Can’t I? I think I can,” he said.

  “What do you mean? How funny you are! I want to know where she is. Of course I want to know.”

  John let himself go a little.

  “Haven’t you hurt her enough?”

  Jenny flushed brightly.

  “Why should I hurt her? Why should you think—What has she been saying?”

  He looked at her with contempt.

  “When you offered her four hundred a year on condition that she kept out of your way, weren’t you hurting her?”

  “Oh!” Jenny was very pale. “She didn’t say that!”

  “She didn’t say anything. It was Nicholas who told me. He said you’d offered Anne the money her father left away from her on condition that she left you and Nicholas alone.”

  “Oh!” said Jenny, shrinking back.

  “That’s why I said ‘Haven’t you hurt her enough?’”

  “John, you don’t—you don’t understand. You’re angry because of Anne. I love you for being angry and for taking her part. But you don’t understand.”

  “Don’t I?”

  She put her hand to her wet eyes for a moment.

  “No—you can’t. It’s not your fault. It’s all such a horrible tangle! Don’t you think I love Anne? Don’t you think I want to have her with me? We’ve got all tangled up so that I can’t do anything. It’s for Anne’s own sake as much as anything else. If she would take the money she could travel—she’d make new friends. I’d give her more than half—I’d give her six hundred—I could get Nicholas to let me do that.”

  “It’s not what you’ll give; it’s what Anne’ll take. And you know as well as I do that Anne won’t take sixpence if she’s got to take an insult with it. What’s the good of saying ‘Oh!’ and crying? It is an insult, isn’t it? What would you feel about it yourself if Nicholas—yes, Nicholas—were to say to you: ‘I don’t want to see you any more, or have anything to do with you, but you can have an allowance if you’ll undertake to keep well out of my way’?”

  Jenny’s voice failed her. She put out her hands and she tried to say “Don’t!” but only a little dry, whispering sound came from her lips. John’s words had called up visibly before her face that very secret inward terror which sometimes whispered to her in the dead of night when she couldn’t sleep.

  John got up and walked away. There was a table at the far side of the room with papers on it. He stood there and turned the leaves of an illustrated weekly with angry fingers. The leaves turned. There was a picture on every page. He did not see one of them. After a moment he went back and stood by the end of the sofa.

  Jenny had a handkerchief crumpled up in her hand; she held it in a hard, trembling grip.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “Why are you so angry? Why won’t you tell me what I want to know?”

  “Look here, Jenny,” he said, speaking slowly, “it’s no good. You can’t have it both ways—you can’t push Anne out of your life with one hand and hold on to her with the other. You told her to go away. Well, she’s gone. The least you can do is to leave her alone.”

  Jenny looked at him in silence. Then she said hesitatingly:

  “Is she well? Is she happy?”

  “She’s got such a lot to make her happy, hasn’t she?” said John with so much bitterness that Jenny caught her breath.

  “Why do you care so dreadfully?” she said.

  And that was the moment that it came home to John just how much he did care for Anne. His anger, his bitterness, his determination—these he knew; but, until this moment, he had not known that they were the reverse side of love, the love he had for Anne. He felt as if he had always loved her, with an immense, protecting tenderness.

  The sudden knowledge must have showed in his face, because Jenny said quickly:

  “John, you can’t!”

  “Can’t what?”

  “Care for Anne—like that.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “You know you can’t. You know it’s impossible. What’s the use of making it harder for yourself, and for her, and for everyone?” She put her handkerchief to her mouth and whispered: “You know—Nicko said he told you—she’s—been—in—prison.”

  Just for a moment John went on looking at her. Then he laughed.

  “What difference does that make? She’s Anne.”

  A piercing stab of jealousy went through Jenny. It was not for John—she didn’t want John, or anything of his; she wanted Nicko. But she wanted a Nicko who would look as John looked just now; she wanted a Nicko to whom
nothing would make any difference. If she were in Anne’s place would Nicko have said what John had said? Would Nicko feel that nothing made any difference? She didn’t know. She didn’t know; and she was dreadfully afraid. She leaned back in the corner and closed her eyes. She didn’t cry. It would have been easier if she could have cried. Her secret terror whispered to her of dreadful and unendurable things.

  After a moment John said gruffly:

  “I say, don’t look like that.”

  Then she opened her eyes.

  “Do you mean that you care for Anne—really?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you mean you want to marry her?”

  “What do you think?” His colour had risen. He looked her in the face and laughed.

  “Is she—going to—marry you?”

  “I hope so,” said John cheerfully.

  “Oh! said Jenny. She dabbed her eyes and got up. “I’m lunching with Aunt Jenifer—I must go.”

  She did not offer to shake hands, but went over to a wall-mirror and stood there, touching her face with a little powder-puff which she took out of her vanity-case. When she had finished, she wrapped the puff in a rose-coloured handkerchief and put it away. Still standing there, with her back to John, she drew on her white suede gloves. Then she went to the door. But just before she reached it she turned and came back.

  “You won’t tell me where she is?”

  “No—she wouldn’t want me to.”

  “Will you take her a message?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know what it is.”

  “My love,” said Jenny, “—and little Tony’s love.” She said the words as if they took all the breath she had. Then, without waiting for him to answer, she turned and went out of the room.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  John walked up Bond Street that afternoon, took a side turning, and entered a jeweller’s shop. It had the usual large plate-glass window, with a little grill in the middle to shield a display of diamonds and emeralds. One side of the window showed some fine specimens of antique French and Russian jewellery; in the other there were Georgian candelabra and a few more pieces of old silver. The name over the window was Levinski.