Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “I take back all that I have said to you. If Harry has spoken to you already I have lost — that’s all. I didn’t know,” she said. Her cheeks were white, her eyes suddenly grown large with a horror in them which Joan could not understand.

  “Yes, it’s all over. I have lost,” she kept repeating in a dreadful whisper, moistening her dry lips with her tongue between her sentences.

  “Oh, don’t think that I am standing aside out of pity,” Joan answered her. “To-morrow I shall be impossible as a wife for Harry Luttrell.” The words fell upon ears which did not hear. It would not have mattered if Stella had heard. Since Harry Luttrell was that night asking Joan to marry him, the hopes upon which she had so long been building, which Jenny Prask had done so much to nurse and encourage, withered and crumbled in an instant.

  “I must go back and dance,” said Joan with a shiver.

  She left Stella Croyle standing in the room like one possessed with visions of terrible things. Her tragic face and moving lips were to haunt Joan for many a month afterwards. She went out by the window and ran down the drive to the spot where she had left Miranda’s car half-way between the lodge and the house. The gates had been set open that night against the return of the party from Harrel. Joan drove back again under the great over-arching trees of the road. It was just ten o’clock when she slipped into the ball-room and was claimed by a neighbour for a dance.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  The Rank and File

  MARTIN HILLYARD CRAMMED a year’s enjoyment into the early hours of that night. He danced a great deal and had supper a good many times; and even the girl who had passed the season of 1914 in London and said languidly, “Tell me more,” before he had opened his mouth, failed to ruffle his enjoyment.

  “If I did, you would scream for your mother,” he replied, “and I should be turned out of the house and Sir Chichester would lose his position in the county. No, I’ll tell you less. That means we’ll go and have some supper.”

  He led a subdued maiden into the supper-room and from that moment his enjoyment began to wane. For, at a little table near to hand, sat Joan Whitworth and Harry Luttrell, and it was clear to him from the distress upon their faces that their smooth courtship had encountered its obstacles. A spot of anger, indeed, seemed to burn in Joan’s cheeks. They hardly spoke at all.

  Half an hour later, he came face to face with Joan in a corridor.

  “I have been looking for you for a long while,” she cried in a quick, agitated voice. “Are you free for this dance?”

  “Yes.”

  Martin Hillyard lied without compunction.

  “Then will you take me into the garden?”

  He found a couple of chairs in a corner of the terrace out of the hearing of the rest.

  “We shall be quiet here,” he said. He hoped that she would disclose the difficulty which had risen between herself and Harry, and seek his counsel as Harry’s friend. It might be one of the little trifling discords which love magnifies until they blot out the skies and drape the earth in temporary mourning. But Joan began at once nervously upon a different topic.

  “You made a charge against Mario Escobar the other day. I did not believe it. But you spoke the truth. I know that now.”

  She stopped and gazed woefully in front of her. Then she hurried on.

  “I can prove it. He demands news of your movements in the Mediterranean. If it is necessary I must come forward publicly and prove it. It will be horrible, but of course I will.”

  Martin looked at her quickly. She kept her eyes averted from him. Her fingers plucked nervously at her dress. There was an aspect of shame in her attitude.

  “It will not be necessary, Joan,” he answered. “I have quite enough evidence already to put him away until the end of the war.”

  Joan turned to him with quivering lips.

  “You are sure. It means so much to me to escape — what I have no right to escape, I can hardly believe it.”

  “I am quite sure,” replied Martin Hillyard.

  Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She sat up as though a weight had been loosed from her shoulders. The trouble lifted from her face.

  “You need not call upon me at all?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t want to shirk — any more,” she insisted. “I should not hesitate.”

  “I know that, Joan,” he said with a smile. She looked out over the gardens to the great line of hills, dim and pleasant as fairyland in the silver haze of the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along the ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop’s Ring which marks the crest of Duncton Hill, and the dark fold below where the trees flow down to Graffham.

  “You ask me no questions,” she said in a low, warm voice. “I am very grateful.”

  “I ask you one. Where is Mario Escobar to-night?”

  “At Midhurst,” and she gave him the name of the hotel.

  Martin Hillyard laughed. Whilst the police were inquiring here and searching there and watching the ports for him, he was lying almost within reach of his hand, snugly and peacefully at Midhurst.

  “But I expect that he will go from Midhurst now,” Joan added, remembering his snarl of fear when the door had opened behind her, and the haste with which he had fled.

  Hillyard looked at his watch. It was one o’clock in the morning.

  “You are in a hurry?” she asked.

  “I ought to send a message.” He turned to Joan. “You know this house, of course. Is there a telephone in a quiet room, where I shall not be interrupted or be drowned out, voice and ears by the music?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Willoughby’s sitting-room upstairs. Shall I ask her if you may use it?”

  “If you please.”

  Joan left Martin standing in one of the corridors and rejoined him after a few minutes. “Come,” she said, and led the way upstairs to the room. Martin called up the trunk line and gave a number.

  “I shall have to wait a few minutes,” he said.

  “You want me to go,” answered Joan, and she moved towards the door reluctantly.

  “No. But you will be missing your dances.”

  Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him, but stood facing the door as she replied; so that he could not see her face.

  “I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I am not in the way I would rather wait with you.”

  “Of course.”

  He was careful to use the most commonplace tone with the thought that it would steady her. The trouble which this telephone message would finally dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She needed companionship; her voice broke, as though her heart were breaking too. He saw her raise a wisp of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the telephone bell rang at his side. He was calling at a venture upon the number which Commodore Graham had rung up in the office above the old waterway of the Thames.

  “Is that Scotland Yard?” he asked, and he gave the address at which Mario Escobar was to be found. “But he may be gone to-morrow,” he added, and hearing a short “That’s all right,” he rang off.

  “Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back into the garden.”

  They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied and sat for a while in silence. Hillyard recognised that neither questions nor any conversation at all were required from him, but simply the sympathy of his companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan sat by his side.

  She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop’s Ring, small as a button upon the great shoulder of the Down.

  “Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you back from Goodwood?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said to me, ‘If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back into the rank and file.’ And I cried out, ‘Oh, I understand that!’”

  “I remember.”

  “What a fool I was!” said Joan. “I didn’t understand at all. I thought that it sounded fine, and that was why I applauded. I am only beginning to understand now. Even after
I had agreed with you, my one ambition was to be different.”

  Her voice died remorsefully away. From the window further down the terrace the yellow light poured from the windows and fought with the moonlight. The music of a waltz floated out upon the yearning of many violins. There was a ripple of distant voices.

  “All this week,” Joan began again, “I have found myself standing unexpectedly in a strong light before a mirror and utterly scared by the revelation of what I was ... by the memory of the foolish things which I had done. From one of the worst of them, you have saved me to-night. You are very kind to me, Martin.”

  It was the first time he had ever heard her use his Christian name.

  “I should like to be kinder, if you’ll let me,” he said. “I am not blind. I was in the supper-room when you and Harry were there. It was for him that you had kept all the last dances free. And you are here, breaking your heart. Why?”

  Joan shook her head. A little sob broke from her against her will. But this matter was between her and Harry Luttrell. She sought no counsel from any other.

  “Then I am very grieved for both of you,” said Hillyard. Joan made a movement as if she were about to rise. “Will you wait just a moment?” Martin asked.

  He guessed that some hint of Stella Croyle’s story had reached the girl’s ears. He understood that she would be hurt, and affronted; that she would feel herself suddenly steeped in vulgarities; and that she would visit her resentment sharply upon her lover, and upon herself at the same time. And all this was true. But Martin was not sure of it. He meant to tread warily, lest if he stumbled, the harm should be the more complete.

  “I have known Harry Luttrell a long while,” he said. “No woman ever reached his heart until he came home from France this summer. No woman I believe, could have reached it — not even you, Joan, I believe, if you had met him a year ago. He was possessed by one great shame and one great longing — shame that the regiment with which he and his father were bound up, had once disgraced itself — longing for the day to come when it would recover its prestige. Those two emotions burnt in him like white flames. I believe no other could have lived beside them.”

  Joan would not speak, but she concentrated all her senses to listen. A phrase which Stella Croyle had used — Harry had feared to become “the slovenly soldier” — began to take on its meaning.

  “On the Somme the shame was wiped out. Led by such men as Harry — well, you know what happened. Harry Luttrell came home freed at last from an overwhelming obsession. He looked about him with different eyes, and there you were! It seems to me a thing perfectly ordained, as so few things are. I brought him down here just for a pleasant week in the country — without another thought beyond that. All this week I have been coming to think of myself as an unconscious agent, who just at the right time is made to do the right thing. Here was the first possible moment for Harry Luttrell — and there you were in the path — just as if you without knowing it, had been set there to wait until he came over the fields to you.”

  He turned to her and took her hand in his. He had his sympathies for Stella Croyle, but her hopes held no positive promise of happiness for either her or Harry Luttrell — a mere flash and splutter of passion at the best, with all sorts of sordid disadvantages to follow, quarrels, the scorn of his equals, the loss of position, the check to advancement in his profession. Here, on the other hand, was the fitting match.

  “It would be a great pity,” he said gently, “if anything were now to interfere.”

  He stood up and after a moment Joan rose to her feet. There was a tender smile upon her lips and her eyes were shining. She laid a hand upon his arm.

  “I shall have to get you a wife, Martin,” she said, midway between laughter and tears. “It wouldn’t be fair on us if you were to escape.”

  This was her way of thanking him.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  The Long Sleep

  THE AMAZING INCIDENT which cut so sharply into these tangled lives occurred the next morning at Rackham Park. Some of the house party straggled down to a late breakfast, others did not descend at all. Harry Luttrell joined Millie Splay upon the stairs and stopped her before she entered the breakfast-room.

  “I should like to slip away this morning, Lady Splay,” he said. “My servant is packing now.”

  Millie Splay looked at him in dismay.

  “Oh, I am so sorry,” she said. “I was hoping that this morning you and Joan would have something to say to me.”

  “I did too,” replied Harry with a wry smile. “But Joan turned me down with a bang last night.”

  Lady Splay plumped herself down on a chair in the hall.

  “Oh, she is the most exasperating girl!” she cried. “Are you sure that you didn’t misunderstand her?”

  “Quite.”

  Lady Splay sat for a little while with her cheek propped upon her hand and her brows drawn together in a perplexity.

  “It’s very strange,” she said at length. “For Joan meant you to ask her to marry you. She has been deliberately showing you that you weren’t indifferent to her. Joan would never have done that if she hadn’t meant you to ask her; or if she hadn’t meant to accept you.” She rose with a gesture of despair.

  “I give it up. But oh, how I’d love to smack her!” and with that unrealisable desire burning furiously in her breast, Lady Splay marched into the breakfast-room. Dennis Brown and Jupp were already in their white flannels at the table. Miranda ran down into the room a moment afterwards.

  “Joan’s the lazy one,” she said, looking round the table. She had got to bed at half-past four and looked as fresh as if she had slept the clock round. “What are you going to eat, Colonel Luttrell?”

  Luttrell was standing by her at the side table, and as they inspected the dishes they were joined by Mr. Albany Todd.

  “You were going it last night,” Jupp called to him, with a note of respect in his voice. “For a top-weight you’re the hottest thing I have seen in years. Stay another week in our academic company, and we shall discover so many excellent qualities in you that we shall be calling you Toddles.”

  “And then in the winter, I suppose, we’ll go jumping together,” said Mr. Albany Todd.

  Like many another round and heavy man, Mr. Albany Todd was an exceptionally smooth dancer. His first dance on the night before he had owed to the consideration of his hostess. Sheer merit had filled the rest of his programme; and he sat down to breakfast now in a high good humour. Sir Chichester stumped into the room when the serious part of the meal was over, and all the newspapers already taken. He sat down in front of his kidney and bacon and grunted.

  “Any news in The Times, Mr. Albany Todd?”

  “No! No!” replied Mr. Albany Todd in an abstracted voice, with his head buried between the pages. “Would you like it, Sir Chichester?”

  He showed no intention of handing it over; and Sir Chichester replied with as much indifference as he could assume,

  “Oh, there’s no hurry.”

  “No, we have all the morning, haven’t we?” said Mr. Albany Todd pleasantly.

  Sir Chichester ate some breakfast and drank some tea. “No news in your paper is there, Dennis, my boy?” he asked carelessly.

  “Oh, isn’t there just?” cried Dennis Brown. “Oppifex and Hampstead Darling are both running in the two-thirty at Windsor.”

  Sir Chichester grunted again.

  “Racing! It’s wonderful, Mr. Albany Todd, that you haven’t got the disease during the week. There’s a racing microbe at Rackham.”

  “But I am not so sure that I have escaped,” returned Mr. Albany Todd. “I am tempted to go jumping in the winter.”

  “You must keep your old Lords out if you do,” Harold Jupp urged earnestly. “Bring in your Dukes and your Marquises, and we poor men are all up the spout.”

  Thus they rattled on about the breakfast table; cigarettes were lighted, Miranda pushed back her chair; in a minute the room would be deserted. But Millie Splay uttered
a little cry of horror, so sharp and startling that it froze each person into a sudden immobility. She dropped the newspaper upon her knees. Her hands flew to her face and covered it.

  “What’s the matter, Millie?” cried Sir Chichester, starting up in alarm. He hurried round the table. Some stab of physical pain had caused Millie’s cry — he shared that conviction with every one else in the room. But Millie lifted her head quickly.

  “Oh, it’s intolerable!” she exclaimed. “Chichester, look at this!” She thrust the paper feverishly into his hands. Sir Chichester smoothed its crumpled leaves as he stood beside her.

  “Ah, the Harpoon,” he said, his fear quite allayed. He knew his wife to have a somewhat thinner skin than himself. “You are exaggerating no doubt, my dear. The Harpoon is a good paper and quite friendly.”

  But Millie Splay broke in upon his protestations in a voice as shrill as a scream.

  “Oh, stop, Chichester, and look! There, in the third column! Just under your eyes!”

  And Sir Chichester Splay read. As he read his face changed.

  “Yes, that won’t do,” he said, very quietly. He carried the newspaper back with him to his chair and sat down again. He had the air of a man struck clean out of his wits. “That won’t do,” he repeated, and again, with a rush of angry blood into his face, “No, that won’t do.” It seemed that Sir Chichester’s harmless little foible had suddenly received more than its due punishment.

  The newspaper slipped from his fingers on to the floor, whilst he sat staring at the white tablecloth in front of him. But no sooner did Harold Jupp at his side make a movement to pick the paper up than Sir Chichester swooped down upon it in a flash.

  “No!” he said. “No!” and he began to fold it up very carefully. “It’s as Millie says, a rather intolerable invention which has crept into the social news. I must consider what steps we should take.”