Still She Wished for Company

by Margaret Irwin

  “Gone? Lucian, you are not going?”

  “Yes, I am going and this house will be the happier for it. I have no place in it, nor in this country, nor, perhaps, in this whole age, but what of that? I shall jig about and fit into odd corners here and there and find new things to amuse me.”

  “But oh, brother, why must you go?”

  As she asked the question she remembered that Vesey had said Lucian was to be tried for the murder of Monsieur le Due. And that there had been something she could do or say.

  Exhausted as she was, she withdrew a little from his arms, and leaned back upon the pillows, trying hard to think.

  “I remember now. I was there. It was in the library. You did not murder him. He attacked you and you fought. It was a duel. I was witness.”

  “So you once told me,” said Lucian coolly, “but you were not there when I had the misfortune to kill my good friend Saint Aumerle. That was one of your strange dreams. Do you not remember my telling you so?”

  “No, no, it’s true—I remember——” her voice rose sharply.

  “Look at my shoes—the green and silver shoes on the rug. They were there. Do you not remember—’ the little green and silver shoes, there in the moonlight’?”

  He laughed softly.

  “What a madcap mind yours is! Would you bring the little green and silver shoes into Court to bear evidence in my favour? Why, it was I who spoke of their running through the house when you were asleep, dancing by themselves in the library in a pool of moonlight! And then when you had that odd, life-like dream of my fight with Saint Aumerle and his death, you heard him say something of the sort in his voice— it is the way of dreams. And would you tell that pretty fairy tale to a judge, my charmer?”

  “Oh, Lucian, do not laugh! If I cannot bear evidence, who can? I do not think it can have been all a dream—part, perhaps—the shoes—I do not know——”

  He leaned forward and his face was serious again; it wore indeed an expression of almost terrible earnestness.

  “And if it were not a dream,” he said,” if it were true that you had been there and seen it all (as it is not true), I would not, for anything that life or death can offer, have your name brought in in such a business. Should we tell the justices, the twelve honest men and true of the jury, pursy, staring grocers, of the odd undertakings that brought us down to the library after midnight when all the rest of the household were in bed and asleep? Your evidence would do me little good in such circumstances, nor would they regard it for a moment.

  “So you may satisfy yourself that not only is it an unreal fancy, but better that it should be so.”

  He was looking close into her eyes, and he did not speak again for some time. He seemed to be waiting, summoning his strength for some great effort. She could see herself reflected in the pupils of his eyes, and the sight gave her a quick fear, but she soon regained her composure. Lucian’s eyes told her there was nothing to fear.

  “It was a dream,” he said at last, “which you will forget like the rest. You had forgotten it for some weeks, you know, and then Vesey’s words and the fear for me brought it all back. But you will forget it again as you will the rest. Already, you are forgetting it. Forget it all—yes, all.”

  “Forget it all?” she repeated. Those had been Mr. Daintree’s words to her, down in the drive. Was it possible the same words should sound so different? Lucian’s eyes were receding from her until they were mere motionless points. Forget? What was it that she would forget?

  A very faint, dull sound came through the open windows. Lucian heard it, for he turned his head quickly, and as he did so, Juliana heard it, too. It was the sound of horsemen riding down the drive. From her high bed she could see the trees and the stone bridge over the stream. She saw a company of men come riding out from the trees and cross the bridge in the sunlight.

  Suddenly she knew that they were the men who had come to arrest her brother.

  “Lucian—quick!” she cried.

  He, too, had been looking out of the window, and now as he turned his head to face her his eyes had all their old brightness. He snatched her up in his arms, half lifting her from the bed.

  “You are my dear sweet pretty little sister,” he said very fast and gaily, “and when you are married to your widower, your grandfather, and shut up in his great country house, you will not quite forget me, whatever else you forget. Nor shall I quite forget.”

  “Oh, brother, shall we not meet again?”

  “What—have you forgotten our promise? To meet sometimes and walk upon the terrace? Now, or a hundred years ago, or a hundred years hence—it is all one. I will not forget.”

  He was laughing as he kissed her, laid her gently down again upon the bed, and sprang to the door.

  Most of the household were in the hall as he came down the stairs. Few of them had been to bed that night. They had been watching by Juliana who had not shown a sign of consciousness since noon the day before, when she had tried to speak of Lucian and Monsieur le Due. By evening, the doctor had declared that she was sinking fast and there was nothing to be done.

  At daybreak, Lucian had amazed them all by walking into the room.

  They had thought he would be at the coast by now—they exclaimed and questioned—George told him his neck was in danger, Vesey told him he must ride like the devil. Lady Chidleigh, stupefied and exhausted, could only stare at him as though he had been a ghost.

  Lucian had replied that he intended first to bring Juliana back to life. There were more questions and expostulations, but his only answer was that he must have the room to himself and at once, as there was no time to be lost. He drew back the curtains, opened the windows, and ordered the company out of the room.

  “You can watch through the little window into the passage if you fear my methods,” he said, “but no one is to enter the room or try to interrupt.”

  George said something about devil’s quackery and danger to Juliana, and refused to leave the room.

  Lucian answered, “I would remind you, brother, that I am not yet hanged, and you are not yet Chidleigh.”

  George gave an inarticulate growl between his teeth, but left the room with the rest.

  Mr. Daintree had arrived late in the evening before, on hearing of Juliana’s condition, and had stayed all night. He urged the family now, since the doctor had given up all hope, to let Lucian try what he could do, unimpeded, and it had been his entreaty that had helped them to yield the quicker. He hardly knew what had impelled him to it, and the frantic, unreasonable throb of hope that he had felt on seeing Lucian. But the two occasions on which he had lately seen Juliana in the park had made him wonder whether Lucian were not in some mysterious way connected with Juliana’s illness, and that what he may have helped to cause he might now be able to cure.

  For over three hours the household had drifted in and out of the hall, up and down the stairs, looking anxiously at the door, from which no smallest sound emerged.

  George, who insisted on looking in once through the little passage window, declared that Lucian was doing nothing in the world but holding the girl’s hands and staring into her face. The fellow was mad, he always knew it. He seemed, however, a little disturbed, for him, and did not look in again.

  Now, after three hours, Sophia had stolen to the top of the stairs and come down declaring that she had heard voices in the room; yes, she was sure she had heard her own precious darling’s voice as well as Lord Chidleigh’s. They all quickly gathered in the hall, debating whether they should now go up to the room. On that instant they saw Lucian come running to the top of the stairs and down it in great leaps.

  “Tally ho!” he shouted. “Gone away! George, will you get my brush?”

  He dashed through them, through the open doors, out into the courtyard where Bartelmy had waited all this time with two fresh horses, ready saddled. Both were on horseback in a moment and galloping out through the archway.

  It was at that moment that the constable and his men e
merged from the drive in a straggling, widespread line, and were suddenly charged by horsemen who came through the archway and through their line like a thunderbolt. None of the parties had time to load and fire their clumsy pistols. Lucian’s sword was out, and he dealt a swinging backhander as he plunged through, cutting one of the men from his horse. He and Bartelmy were clear of them in an instant and galloping furiously down the drive.

  “Gone awa-ay,” shouted Vesey from the steps, mad with excitement, “Gad, he’s a Clare after all!”

  He dashed out through the archway, and began pulling up the fallen man’s horse. Another horse had gone down in the scuffle and its rider was pulling it on its feet again, amid wild confusion and scurry. Only one man was riding after the fugitives. He had waited to load his pistol but was now riding hard.

  Vesey had got the horse on its feet and swung himself into the saddle. He had no whip nor spurs and pricked it with his sword into a gallop, shouting to the man in front of him to stop. But the man turned a stupid, staring red face for one instant and then rode on.

  Juliana had heard the shouts and scuffle and clash of steel outside the courtyard but it was not under her window and, she could see nothing. She heard the beating of horses’ hoofs again in the drive, a furious thud-thud that was now going up the drive instead of down. Lucian, then, had escaped; Lucian was riding away. She heard a shot, but the thud of the hoofs continued. Whoever had fired must have missed.

  Then she saw him come out of the drive, followed close by Bartelmy, on to the stone bridge in the open sunlight. But he rode strangely, swaying in the saddle, and as his horse’s hoofs rang clear and hollow on the bridge she saw him suddenly roll over sideways and fall to the ground.

  Bartelmy pulled up only just short of that prostrate body. She saw him dismount and run to his master, then Vesey came riding out of the trees and dismounted also, running towards Lucian. He shouted. Others came. There was soon a huddled crowd on the little bridge where she had seen the boy King sitting in the sunlight.

  She could not see what they were doing, she could not hear what they said. Now they were all coming back down the drive to the house again, coming very slowly, for they were carrying something. Would no one come and tell her?

  She raised herself from the pillows; she found that she could move, she could even get out of bed. She crossed the room, unsteadily, but still she reached the door. Down the corridor to the stairs, and there she stopped, clinging to the banisters, unable to go further. Down in the hall, people were crying out and running about distractedly. Lady Chidleigh had fainted in a chair and maids were attending to her. She heard slow, heavy steps coming up into the hall from the courtyard, the low murmur of men’s voices.

  “Lucian!” she wailed. “Is he dead?”

  A figure detached itself from the little group now in the doorway, and dashed up the stairs to her. She was caught up and held tenderly and very close.

  “Is he dead?” she whispered.

  “Yes, he is dead,” said Mr. Daintree’s voice, “but you—oh, Juliana, my love, my angel, you are alive.”

  Time Will Be

  Epilogue

  On a Saturday evening early in September, Donald Graeme came down for the week-end to Helen’s cottage at Barton. Jan had come down the night before, more than two months after she had returned from her long holiday at Barton to her work in town. She had not seen Donald just lately as he had been away from town on a job and had now come down into Berkshire direct from it.

  They had an early supper to leave time after it for a walk, and Donald reminded Jan of her promise to show him Chidleigh. They would be able to go all over the gardens and grounds now that the Harrises had left and the new owner had not moved in. Jan agreed, but without enthusiasm. She put on a brown leather hat that “went with” the old brown coat-frock she had been wearing all the summer, and thick brown shoes.

  She found herself striding along interminably beside Donald, the light of the setting sun in her eyes so that her eyelashes were full of rainbows. She saw him through a yellow haze that made him seem dark and remote from her, a shadow stalking beside her rather than a living companion.

  He had been talking for some time. She knew he had something to tell her from the moment when she had seen him come very fast up the village street and pull open the tiny garden gate with an energy wholly out of proportion to the amount required. She must attend more closely to what he was saying. She had not found it so difficult since she was at school, a bored, home-sick child whose mind in lessons was apt to grow more and more blank.

  Whenever she thought of school she thought of a long dark room, the walls covered with old books, where a boy sat alone at a large table, his head resting on his hand, his face hidden. He had books in front of him but he was not reading. The memory of that motionless figure was always slightly disturbing. She had wondered if it were an illustration to some ghost story she had read at school and forgotten, or possibly some dream, half nightmare, that she may have had there more than once.

  And now she had seen that room.

  She turned her head restlessly, and told Donald it was splendid news. She had heard him say he had been offered a job in America and now began to ask questions. Yes, it was a good job and it should lead to something bigger in the future. He would have to start in a few months. He was looking at her. He would soon be asking her if she would marry him and go out with him to America in a few months. She must think what she would say. She had felt so much alone just lately; would she be less alone if she married Donald and went to America?

  She used not to be alone. When she had walked through the parks or down the same old streets where she went every day, she had felt that she had walked there lately with someone, she had not known whom, but she Had known that the touch of his sleeve under her hand was soft and velvety.

  She used often to wake feeling happy and excited as though in her dreams she had been with some companion more delightful than anyone she had met. She could never remember her dreams, but often and often in the daytime she had been just on the point of remembering what that companion was like. She would find herself looking at the people who passed, in happy expectancy, as though she hoped to see and recognize that unknown face among all the other blank white faces in the street.

  And now she had seen that face.

  Donald was talking of American architecture, the sole architecture now to show any individual quality. He spoke his admiration for its dignity, its spaciousness and restraint.

  Jan was attracted by the words. Perhaps in this, too, as in Donald’s job, lay a promise of “bigger things” in the future. Donald advanced into technicalities. All that he said sounded so real and solid, she wished she could catch on to it. No doubt if she could, she would find it all very dull, but then nothing could be more dull than this empty solitude.

  She tried hard to think of American architecture. She saw wrought iron gates three times her height; a high red wall, and behind it, the slender tops of cypresses, twisted chimneys, irregular roofs, and a white turret that might have imprisoned a princess in a fairy tale; a window into a low, pleasant room where three girls laughed and chattered, in dresses that were out of date a hundred years ago.

  She had never been able to get away from the house. Whenever she had gone out for a ramble by herself she had always found she was turning in its direction, and again and again she would come through woods on to the drive when she had not realized that she was anywhere near it.

  On the last evening of her holiday she had resolutely turned in the opposite direction, climbing the steep hill above the further road, some way behind the cottage, toiling up a dark, open sweep of field that stretched up to a pale and luminous sky; and there at the top had been surprised by the sight of the house far below. From above, it appeared to be closely surrounded by the trees of the park and drive.

  She had stood and watched that straggling cluster of roofs and towers grow gradually more dim among the trees, and imagined it as the palac
e of the Sleeping Beauty, rising above the dark encircling grove of its enchanted forest.

  It had been impossible to believe that the Harrises lived there, that the maids were probably at that moment turning down the beds and putting hot-water cans in their washstands. What she had believed was that she was wanted down there; that she must go down and see what was happening; that there was danger, to herself, perhaps, but far more to some person in that half-hidden house among the trees.

  She had laughed at herself, shaken it off, and gone home to bed. And then, after she had fallen asleep—

  But no, she did not want to remember that night. She must have been asleep and dreaming or else stark mad.

  She wished Donald would not look at her so thoughtfully; did he see any change in her?

  But Donald had seen more than one change in Jan since her holiday. On her return from Barton he had thought her abstracted, and he had once or twice surprised a scared look in her eyes. This had changed gradually to an air of suppressed and hardly natural excitement; she seemed positively to dance as she walked, her eyes full of a secret laughing expectancy whose cause he could never fathom. Then quite suddenly she had become dull and lifeless, frequently irritable, as though some pleasing light of fancy had died out within her and left her empty. It was so that he had left her and now found her again.

  They were going now over the fields by the short cut that Jan knew so well to the woods by the drive. Their eyes were dazzled by the setting sun, but the long grass where they walked was already in shadow. In another moment the sun had set, and the golden scene to which they had grown accustomed looked suddenly cold and strange. The last time she had gone that way had been when the moon was up.

  That last evening of her holiday, she had stood and watched the house from the hill-side until the sense of dread and mystery that had assailed her proved so strong that she turned and ran down the hill back to the cottage.

  She had gone to bed very early, for she was tired, but she could not fall asleep at once, and as she lay uneasily dozing, she thought that she was called and sprang fully awake on the instant. She could not, however, be sure that she had heard her name; and now as she considered, she was sure that she had not. Yet she had been called, she knew that, and she knew also that she was wanted now, and with terribly insistency. She must go to the house, and without telling anyone she hurried on her clothes and went.