Beggar’s Choice (15 page)

“I won't forge,” I said, “and I won't do seven years, if that's what you mean by helping you.” My temper was getting up a bit.

She still had her hand on my arm. She clenched her fingers down on it, and she said in a sort of whisper,

“You would do it for Isobel.”

I pulled my arm away and got up. She had lost her temper first after all.

“Leave Isobel out of it!” I said.

“You'd do it for her—you would—you
would
!”

She was one of her rages, all white and shaking. I emptied the watering-pot over her once when we were about eight. That's the only thing I've ever known stop her.

“Isobel would never be in a position to need that sort of help,” I said.

Anna seemed to pull herself together when I said that. She went quiet and still for a minute, but she was frightfully white. I hoped to goodness she wasn't going to faint—it would be just like her to score off you that way and make you feel what a brute you'd been.

Just as I was thinking that, she said, “No?” She said it under her breath, holding on to the word and making a long question of it.

I'd had enough. Anna's one of the people who think no one has any nerves, or a temper, or feelings except herself. I turned round and went away. Honestly, I was afraid of what I might do if I stayed.

XVIII

I danced again with Isobel. I didn't mean to, but she came up and asked me in front of Fay. I only danced about one round, because she wanted to talk to me about my uncle. That's why she asked me to dance.

We went and sat down at a table, and I ordered her some lemonade—she wouldn't have anything else. She told me I ought to go and see my uncle, and when I said I couldn't, she said she thought I would feel different if I were to see him. She says he's changed a lot, and that several times lately he has spoken about me to her and to Miss Willy.

“You know, Car,” she said, “one doesn't like to say things like that—but I have thought, and so has Aunt Willy, that he isn't——” she stopped. “Car, I feel as if it was horrid of me.”

“Never mind about being horrid. What isn't he?”

The color flew into her cheeks.

“Not—not quite—a free agent.”

“What do you mean, my dear?”

“Anna's devoted to him, of course,” said Isobel, “and she's run the house and done everything for so many years—she couldn't have been more than sixteen when Mrs. Carthew died—so it's natural he should lean on her, but——” She stopped and looked at me in distress.

I laughed.

“My dear child, if you're trying to be tactful about Anna, it's a bit late in the day as far as I'm concerned! I've no doubt at all that by this time Uncle John can't call his soul his own!”

“You're not quite fair to her. I mean—Car, I don't think I'm fair to her—at least I hope I'm not—oh dear, I'm getting so tied up! But I do hate saying this sort of thing.”

“I don't think you need mind what you say about Anna—it'll always fall a good bit short of the truth.”

“Don't, Car! And don't let's talk about her. I really only wanted you to see that Mr. Carthew needs you.”

“I don't see it.”

“He does, Car.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he told me.”

“He told you?”

“Yes, he did—really. It was the first time I'd seen him alone for a long time. I was coming up from the village, and I overtook him. He was walking so slowly, not a bit like he used to, and he said, ‘Ah, you young people!' And when I told him how wonderful I thought he was, he said, ‘That's all very well, but one wants some one to hand things over to. There's no one to take an interest, and no one who really cares.' We were walking along, you know, and talking as we went. I'm only telling you bits.”

“Well—I don't see where I come in.”

She blushed.

“Don't be angry, Car. I did say, ‘If Car were here, he could help you.'”

I laughed again.

“Jesuit!”

“I'm not. You should have seen how he jumped at it. He looked very gruff, like he always does when he's feeling anything, and he said, ‘I'm nothing to him. We quarreled, you know. He wouldn't come near me now. He's got his pride like the rest of us.'” She blushed again, and looked at me in an undermining sort of way.

When Isobel looks at me like that, I would give her the whole of my kingdom if I had one.

“What did you say?” I asked as sternly as I could. I tried to frown, but I don't know whether I managed it or not. Isobel is frightfully undermining when she blushes.

She looked guilty.

“I said I was sure you'd be ready to make up your side of the quarrel if he really wanted you to.”

“Oh, Isobel!” I said.

“You would—wouldn't you, Car dear? Because he's old, and he's lonely, and he really,
really
wants you.”

“He'll have to tell me so,” I said.

“And I thought,” said Isobel, “that if Aunt Willy were to ask you to come and stay——”

I said “No!” and pushed back my chair. Go and stay—see her every day—see Heron making love to her, and not break down and say things that I've no business to say to her.… I couldn't do it.

I don't know what she thought. Her color was all gone. Perhaps she thought I was angry with her—I don't know. I felt I must get away, because if I didn't, anything might happen. I didn't realize that the music of the next dance had begun until Isobel put her hand on my arm.

“I'm dancing this with Giles,” she said, and I took her across the room to where Heron was waiting for her. We did not speak a single word.

I'm afraid Fay must have found me a dull partner.

As soon as I got hold of myself I went over what Isobel had said about my uncle. It seemed to me that it fitted in with Anna's story. It seemed to me that if Anna knew that Uncle John was wanting to get into touch with me, she might very easily get the wind up and be afraid of my finding out what she'd been up to—that is, if she'd really been messing about with his banking account. And if she was afraid of my finding her out, it would be just like her to try and muzzle me in advance.

The sort of half guess which I had made when she was talking to me looked a good deal more likely now. If I was right, it wouldn't be the first time Anna had played that trick. I remembered her stopping her nurse's mouth that way when she couldn't have been much more than seven. She had thrown a ball through one of the drawing-room windows, and she got nurse to promise she wouldn't tell Uncle John if she told her something. I don't know what Nanny thought she was going to tell her, but she promised, and she kept her promise; though I can remember her crying bitterly because I was punished, first for the window (it was my ball) and secondly for telling a lie and saying I hadn't been near the place. Those are the sort of things that have made me love Anna.

I had her name in my mind, when I looked across Fay's shoulder and saw her not a yard away. I don't know what Fay had been saying, but she must have said it more than once, because when I did hear her she sounded really peeved.

“Car, are you deaf? I want to stop—my brooch has come undone.”

I had to stop, because the brooch fell and rolled almost under Anna's feet. She was sitting alone at a table; but I could see she hadn't been along long, for there were two glasses, and a chair pushed back. I retrieved the brooch and got up with it in my hand, and just as I was giving it to Fay, I saw Bobby Markham coming along with his brother. They came up to Anna, and Bobby said,

“May I introduce my brother Arbuthnot?”

Anna wasn't too effusive—and I don't wonder. Arbuthnot Markham isn't exactly a human ray of sunshine. Bobby's a fat-headed-looking sort of chump; but there's something about Arbuthnot that makes me want to go home. He'd look better if he was bald like Bobby—his hair's too black and shiny.

I heard him say, “I took the liberty of asking my brother to introduce me.” Then he asked her for a dance, and Fay and I finished ours.

I went and talked to Miss Willy after that. I was afraid she'd want to dance—and it's just like dancing with a steam-engine. But she said she wanted to talk to me, and then I wondered whether it wouldn't have been better to risk being crushed. She's a most overpowering person, and I don't know how Isobel stands living with her. If it weren't for Isobel, she'd have come some awful smash long ago. I've never met any one with so much exuberant enthusiasm going to waste.

She began at once to talk about my uncle, and about Anna. She hadn't any of Isobel's hesitation. She called Anna quite a number of things that made me feel better, and she was wildly indignant on my uncle's behalf.

And then she broke off to tell me all about a row she'd had with old Monk, and from that she got on to another row with the Vicar—I think the one with Monk had something to do with Anna, but not the one with the Vicar—and in the middle of the second row she suddenly switched back on to Uncle John and said I must come down and be reconciled to him. Now I happen to know that Miss Willy hasn't had a good word to say for me ever since the smash. I don't blame her, because it was on Isobel's account; but I wondered why she should be all over me now. Then it came down on me like a cartload of bricks. If Isobel was going to marry Heron, I didn't matter any more—Miss Willy could let her naturally kind instincts rip, have me to stay, reconcile me to Uncle John, and annoy Anna, all at one blow. I discovered that she had heard Anna allude to her as a blatant old maid. That clinched it—I was convinced that she regarded me as a convenient retort.

I seem to have written reams about last night, but I'm nearly through. I want to get it all down, and then go over it and see what I can make of it. There are just two more things to get down. I think one of them's important.

Fay said she'd go home in a taxi, and I went out to get one. When I was coming back, I saw Anna come down the steps with Arbuthnot Markham. There wasn't room for my taxi to draw up, so I nipped out and cut across behind the car Anna was getting into. There was rather a jam and a crowd on the pavement, and I didn't particularly want her to see me, so I stood and waited for her to get in and shut the door. She got in, and then she leaned out of the window, and she said to Arbuthnot Markham, “He
mustn't
go to the Tarrants—he
mustn't.”

He said something I didn't catch.

Anna's got a carrying voice. She said,

“You must stop him somehow.”

And then he stepped back, and she drew in her head, and the car went on.

Well, she must have meant me. And there isn't anything strange in her not wanting me to go and stay with the Tarrants, because she naturally isn't keen on my being anywhere within ten miles of Uncle John. But why tell Arbuthnot about it? I'd seen him introduced to her about half an hour before, and it struck me as pretty good going.

I got Fay, and we drove home. I wished I had walked, because she began to play up like she does sometimes. I shouldn't want to flirt with Fay if there wasn't another woman on earth—and she might have the common intelligence to know that I wouldn't want to flirt with Peter's wife. She doesn't mean anything, of course, but it's jolly bad form, and she riled me till I told her so straight out. In a way I'm fond of her, like you are of a second or third cousin, and it annoys me to see her making an ass of herself.

It began with my saying she ought to drop this silly Miss Everitt business and call herself Mrs. Lymington. I said it wasn't fair. It isn't. It worries me to hear Corinna talking about Peter as if she were engaged to him. Of course I didn't mention Corinna—I just said it wasn't fair. And the silly goose made eyes at me and said,

“Because some one might fall in love with me? Is that what you mean?”

It wasn't in the least what I meant, but I let it go at that, and I supposed it encouraged her.

“If I hadn't been married to Peter——” she stopped there and put her head against my arm.

I said, “You
are
married to Peter.”

“And if I weren't,” she said—“if I'd been free all the time—would you have fallen in love with me?”

I said, “No, I shouldn't,” and I said it pretty sharply.

“If I were free now——”

I took her by the shoulder and put her back in her own corner of the car.

“Drop it, Fay!” I said. “You don't mean anything, and you know it, and I know it, so why the devil do you do it? If you ask me, it's the rottenest of rotten bad form.”

She flared out at me.

“I didn't ask you! I'm not asking you anything! I hate you!”

“Don't be an ass, Fay,” I said.

Then she began to cry and said I was a brute.

XIX

September
21
st
—I've just been reading over what I wrote yesterday. The two points that matter are:

Who is employing me?

and

Why?

There are a lot of subsidiary ones. The most important of these seem to be:

1.  Anna's connection with the affair.

2.  Bobby Markham.

3.  Fay.

I don't know what to think about Anna. If I hadn't lost my temper, I might have got something out of her. That's the worst of a temper—it always lets you down. I don't think she's the big noise in this affair.—I think she butted in. If I thought the money came from her, I'd chuck the whole show.

Bobby Markham—I can't make out whether it was he who interviewed me in the hut. Anna certainly gave me to understand that it was Bobby—but that's a good enough reason for its being some one else. Then there's the question of whether Bobby could have been in the hut to meet me after spending the evening with the Tarrants. I don't think so much of this point as I did, because I hadn't a watch, and though I think we were at the hut by eleven I may be mistaken. It oughtn't to take more than an hour from Putney to Linwood, but I was thinking of other things. I didn't notice how fast we were going, and I suspect the driver went out of the way on purpose. Then Isobel says Bobby didn't go away till about twenty past, after starting to say good-night at eleven. That's vague too. I can imagine time hanging a bit heavy whilst a fathead like Bobby was making pretty speeches. I suppose he could have got to the hut in ten minutes if he took the path through the woods.