Fear by Night (18 page)

Ann was sitting up clasping her knees.

“I haven't got one. And, dear Mrs. Halliday, I don't want to bathe the least bit in the world—and certainly not with Mr. Anderson—not even if I'd got a bathing-dress exactly like Gwendoline's and Sophy's with yards of blue serge and little white squiggly edges, and Riddle to chaperone us all the time he was teaching me to swim.”

“Let him teach 'is own wife!” said Mrs. Halliday severely.

“Perhaps she doesn't want to learn,” said Ann. “I'm sure I don't—I keep telling you so. I should hate him to teach me anything. I should think he's got a perfectly horrid temper. I don't like him a bit. Do you?”

Mrs. Halliday drew herself up with an air of offence.

“And it's not for you to say who you like and who you don't, Miss Vernon—not in my house nor yet in Jimmy's, seeing as Mr. Anderson is his friend.”

Ann bit her lip. She would have liked to shake Mrs. Halliday. She would have liked to trample on the ostrich feathers. She would have liked to give notice. When you have no home and no money, you can't afford the luxury of losing your temper. She had not lived all her life in other people's houses for nothing. She bit her lip very hard, and the colour ran brightly up to the edge of her hair.

Mrs. Halliday gave a rather lesser snort like an engine letting off steam and cooling down.

“You mind your manners, and I'll mind mine,” she said. “A good talking to don't do a girl any harm—and I'll say this much for you, you don't answer back. Jimmy ain't asked you to go swimming with him, has he?”

“Oh no, Mrs. Halliday.”

“
And better not
,” said Mrs. Halliday darkly. “I'll take a couple of turns round the lawn if you'll give me your arm, Miss Vernon, my dear.”

CHAPTER XXI

Charles drove on through the lovely weather. The clear arch of the sky was of a tender and melting blue. The hills that rose against it showed every gradation of colour from dark pine-green to the heather tints and the bright light leafy mist of the birch. There was black rock and grey rock, hillsides scarred with the red of rusty iron or dropping in ledges of purple shale. Here and there great streaks of yellow ochre dazzling to gold in the sun, and here and there a sudden gleam of white marble looking like frozen snow. The road climbed and fell across wild high moorland where the bog-cotton blew and dark water stood among tussocks of coarse faded grass.

All the time he was getting nearer to Ann.

The sun went down before he reached Loch Dhu. He was between the hills when he lost it. The valley filled with the dusk, whilst the hill-tops still kept the sun. Then there was twilight everywhere.

A motor-cyclist passed him about half an hour later, coming up with extraordinarily little noise, slowing as he passed and then shooting away. The road became rougher and rougher. The last ten miles was merely a track, with at least two bends that were dangerous in daylight and an adventure in the dark.

About half a mile from the loch the hill had been quarried. There was a flattish space by the side of the road. Charles drove his car on to it and stopped the engine. It would be better to wait till to-morrow before trying to see Ann, but quite definitely and certainly Charles knew that he was not going to wait—not till to-morrow anyhow. There would be a moon in an hour or two. He would wait till then and no longer. How, in the middle of the night, he was going to get hold of Ann he really did not stop to think. Fortune had been kind to him before, and might be kind again. Once on the island, it would go hard if he could not contrive a way to Ann.

He switched on a small electric lamp and proceeded to a picnic meal. When it was done and everything neatly put away, he hefted the collapsible boat, which weighed exactly fifty-six pounds, and went down to the shore of the loch to wait for the moon.

The motor-cyclist had been there before him, but he was not there now. In response to his hail a boat had put off and fetched him over to the island. Jimmy Halliday rowed the boat, and he seemed to expect his visitor.

The motor-cycle was pushed under the lee of the ruined house and covered with a tarpaulin. Charles found it there and stood a moment staring at it by the light of a carefully shielded torch. He had been wandering aimlessly round the ruined house wondering who had lived there and why it had been allowed to tumble down, when he came on the motor-cycle.

Presently he went on round the house and found something else. On the side farthest from the track the roof had been roughly repaired, and what might have been the kitchen looked now uncommonly like a garage. Rough wooden doors had been fitted, and a padlock fastened them. Charles made a complete circuit of the house and then sat down on a bit of broken wall. The moon ought not to be long now.

Ann met Mary in the dark of the upper landing with a candle. She looked more wraith-like than ever. She came close and pressed Ann's arm.

“Ma man's hame.”

“Your husband?”

“Ay.”

Ann was faintly startled. They were so cut off, it seemed strange that anyone should come to them from the outside world.

“Are you glad, Mary?”

There was no gladness in Mary's tone, nor in the way she threw out her hands at the question.

“Glad?” Then, coming very close, she said with her lips at Ann's ear, “Mind yersel, lassie,” and slipped away.

No one else mentioned Mary's husband.

Ann went to bed and slept. She left the blind up so that if she woke she would see the moon go up the sky. There were stars when she leaned from the window after blowing out her candle. They were not very bright, because the sky was still so full of light. It would not be really dark all night in those reaches of the upper air. The hills were dark, and the trees were dark, but the sky would not be dark all night.

Ann left the blind up, and fell asleep with her face to the window.

She didn't know how long she had been asleep, when she began to dream that it was raining—heavy, plopping rain that hit the ground like hail. It wasn't rain at all; it was hail—gold and silver hail, coming down out of a clear sky and bouncing all round her. She woke up and found herself in the moonlight with the sound of the hail in her ears, and as she sat up and shook back her hair, it came again—the plop of something falling just inside the window.

She threw off the clothes and stared at the window. The thought of hail was still in her mind, but the sky was clear in the moonlight.

Plop. Something fell again, as a pebble falls.

Ann slipped out of bed and felt on the floor. She found a small dark pebble and, picking it up, she went to the window and looked out. The moon was just above the trees. The moonlight shone on her. It made her feel pale and unsubstantial, and as if it would be quite easy to float away out of the window and disappear into a dream. Anything in the world might happen on such a night as this. She leaned out over the sill, and Charles Anstruther said,

“Ann—”

For a moment she really did wonder if she was dreaming. And then she remembered that in a dream she would not have wondered, because nothing is too strange to happen in a dream. She looked down and saw Charles on the near edge of the lawn looking up.

“Ssh! Ann—”

“Charles—ssh!”

“Come out!” said Charles in a penetrating whisper.

Ann's heart began to beat wildly. Anyone might hear, anyone might come—and Charles was right in the eye of the moon. She made a vehement sign in the direction of the trees, nodded her head, and put a warning finger to her lips.

As Charles ran across the lawn, she turned back into the room and groped for her clothes. Suppose someone waked. Suppose someone heard her. Well, suppose they did—they couldn't
do
anything, could they? There wasn't anything criminal about landing on an island at night, even if it was a private island. She remembered with comfort that trespassers couldn't be prosecuted unless they damaged something. Mrs. Halliday's sense of propriety was the only thing that was in danger of being damaged.

Ann went down the stairs, carrying her shoes as she had done before, but this time she got out of the parlour window. She ran across the lawn with a breathless sense of adventure. The shadow was very black under the trees. She blinked at it, and had begun to say, “Where are you?” when Charles' arms came round her and she was lifted up and kissed.

“Oh, Charles!”

“Ann, darling!”

“Oh, Charles—you mustn't!”

“Why mustn't I? Ann—kiss me! You're letting me do it all.”

“I'm not letting you!”

“Liar!”

“You're just doing it.”

“Do it too!
Ann
!”

Ann kissed him, and then she pushed him away.

“Come farther under the trees—come where we were before. This isn't safe. If anyone came down to the boat-house—”

“They'd find my boat,” said Charles coolly.

“Oh, they mustn't!”

“I don't suppose they will—I don't care a damn if they do. Look here, darling—”

“Ssh! Come down here.”

She guided him as she had done before. The path was too narrow for them to go abreast, but when they came to the clearing which showed the moonlit sky above, Ann stopped.

“How did you come? Did you say you had a boat? How did you get it here? Did you come all round by sea? They all say it's fearfully dangerous.”

“It's a collapsible boat,” said Charles with pride. “I went to Glasgow and got it.”

“
Glasgow?
”

Charles kissed her.

“I'm the world's non-stop speed merchant. I've got simply loads to tell you. Do you know that you're an heiress, and that I'm going to marry you for your money?”

“Am I—are you?”

“I am—you are. And if I was the sort of noble-minded hero you read about in books, I should say, ‘Woman, unhand me! I am but a poor broken-down land-owner with a blighted ancestral property which will probably land us all in the workhouse some day. Who am I to ask a rich heiress to join her fate to mine? Tempt me not, but let me go my way—
alone
!'”

“Charles, if you make me laugh, someone will hear us.”

“
You
—not us,” said Charles. “You've got one of those ringing laughs—pleasing to the ear but noticeable.
I
am not laughing—I'm telling you the sort of bilge I'd talk if I had a heroic nature. I haven't. I'm going to marry you even if you turn out to have a million. Only don't get all buoyed up, darling, because shipping isn't what it was. Anyhow, whatever it is, you're bound to marry me, because I've compromised you like anything, luring you out to a secret assignation by throwing gravel in at your window. I say, darling, I thought you were never going to wake up. You must have a frightfully good conscience to sleep like that.”

“I've got a lovely conscience—pure as the driven snow. Charles, how did you know it was my window you were throwing gravel through? Just suppose it had been Mrs. Halliday you had lured to a secret assignation. You'd have been strewed all over the lawn in bits by now. It was marvellous of you to guess right the very first time. How did you do it?”

“There was only one open window. Oh, my sainted aunt—only one in the whole blessed house, on a night like this! I plumped for you as the fresh air fiend.” His arms tightened round her. “Ann—what are we going to do? How soon will you marry me?”

“I haven't said I'll marry you,” said Ann with a quiver in her voice that was only half a laugh.

Charles shook her.

“I do wish you wouldn't keep on saying the same thing over and over again! It's just like a gramophone record. You ought to be encouraging me like anything. You told me to look out for an heiress—you know you did.”

Ann put a hand across his lips.

“Don't, Charles!… No, let me speak—
please
. Do you mean I'm really going to have some money? I heard them say something about it here.”

“Who?” said Charles sharply; and then, “What did they say?”

Ann pinched his arm rather hard.

“It was little bits and no names—something about a will, and a girl, and a lot of money, and its being a pity that Gale Anderson couldn't marry her, and perhaps she'd have a boating accident, and things like that.”

“
What?
”

“I don't like it,” said Ann. “I—I hate it—it's rather frightening. And now you come and say I'm an heiress. Was it a joke? Because I don't feel like joking.”

“No—it wasn't a joke,” said Charles in rather an odd tone of voice. He was remembering that Hilda Paulett had said that she wouldn't go into mourning if Ann had an accident.

“Ann,” he said—“one minute. Who said all those things about the boating accident, and the money, and the will?”

“It was Gale Anderson and Jimmy Halliday.”

“They didn't know that you could hear what they were saying?”

“No. Please tell me what you know about it.”

“You remember you told me you had an uncle called Elias Paulett, and I said I knew a girl called Hilda Paulett. Do you remember?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I ran into her in a tea-shop in Glasgow yesterday afternoon. I had tea at her table, and she started talking. She's the most awful babbler, and before I knew where I was she was telling me she was secretly married to her uncle's secretary. She called the fellow Gale.”

“Gale Anderson,” said Ann quickly.

“It might be. Is he here?”

“Yes.”

“Staying in the house?”

“Yes.”

“I see.… Well, Hilda went rambling on about not knowing what to do, and Gale being fed to the teeth because they'd found out that Uncle Elias had left all his money to another great-niece, and I was most awfully bored, and wondering how I could stem the tide and get away, when all of a sudden out came your name. My jaw dropped about a foot and a half, and if Hilda ever thought about anything except herself she'd have noticed it. As it was, she just went on babbling. I gathered that she'd had a peep at the old man's will—saw he'd left everything to his great-niece and hadn't time to turn the page. If she had, she'd have found out that the name on the other side was Ann Vernon and not Hilda Paulett. She went off as bright as a button and told this Gale fellow she'd seen the will, and that she was sole heiress. I gather that Gale said, ‘Righto—how soon can we get married?' After which the gump Hilda fell into his arms, and everything in the garden was lovely until they found out that she wasn't the right great-niece, and that you were. Gale cut up rough, and Hilda doesn't quite know whether he's going to kill her off and marry you, or do you in so that she will have the money.”