Hue and Cry (24 page)

“Oh, dear boy! Oh, I couldn't!” Miss Angela was very much flushed. She stole a look at her nose, and felt discouraged. “Oh, no, I couldn't really.”

Ethan supplied suitable encouragement. He spent the entire day in being nice to his Aunt Angel, of whom he was really very fond. They walked in the snow, and Miss Angela found occasion to visit most of the shops. There was a time-honored formula to which Ethan was so used that it no longer made him smile: “My dear boy, I think I really must go in here—if you wouldn't mind too much.” And once in, a pleasant interchange of compliments would follow: “I see you've got your nephew with you again, miss—and I hope in good health,” whereupon Miss Angela would become pleasantly fluttered and turn to Ethan with a “Mrs. Jones, whom you will remember,” or “Miss Wright, whom I'm sure you haven't forgotten.”

Once, Miss Serena, loud-voiced and aggressive, had taken it upon herself to tell her sister roundly that no young man could be expected to put up with being dragged round all the shops in a one-horse place, tied to an old maid's apron-strings. Miss Angela looked struck to the heart, and Ethan had a really satisfying row with his Aunt Serena.

After tea all the old songs were produced, and he listened to Miss Angela enjoying herself very much in a faint, small voice over such classics as “Whisper and I shall hear,” “Pray, Sweet, for me,” and “The Lost Chord.” He even joined in the refrains, deriving a special pleasure from “Whisper, and I shall hear,” delivered in a stentorian roar which the lady of the ballad could certainly not have avoided hearing.

When he had departed for dinner at Menden, Miss Angela felt that she had the most delightful day to look back upon and a pleasant evening still in store. Her conscience pricked her a little as she reflected that the house did seem more peaceful when Serena wasn't there, and she reminded herself instantly of how clever, how energetic, and how admirable in every way Serena really was.

She had her supper on a tray by the drawing-room fire, a thing which always made her feel rather dissipated, and then she read the “modern” novel until close on ten o'clock, when she turned the lamp down and went up to her room. Grace had retired half an hour ago, and somehow Miss Angela never cared to stay alone on the ground floor for very long.

She went up to her room, put on a dressing-gown, and began to try experiments with her hair, pinning it so as to get the effect of its being cut short. Presently she looked at her watch. Serena could not be coming back, or she would have been here by now.

With trembling fingers Miss Angela took from the very back of her drawer an aged pair of curling tongs and held them over the lamp. They got very black, and they did not get very hot; but in the end she succeeded in curling the side bits of her hair and peered timidly at the result. As she stood there, her eyes bright and rather alarmed, she bore an extraordinary resemblance to a mouse just peeping from a hole, its whiskers all a-tremble lest the cat should be about.

Miss Angela touched the little gray curls with a nervous finger. Did they make her nose look pinker, or did they not? Was it really so very pink? She shut her left eye and looked sideways at it with her right. It did seem pink—yes, it really did. And perhaps the curls were too juvenile. She opened the left eye and shut the right one. They might be juvenile, but she did think that they were becoming. She touched the curls again, a little more hopefully this time; and as she did so, she heard the click of the gate, and footsteps coming slowly up to the front door. Her heart gave a terrified jump.

“Serena! Oh, dear—and my hair like this! Oh
dear
!”

She ran to the door and locked it, then to the window and raised the sash with trembling hands.

Serena was knocking. Miss Angela leaned from the window and called to her in a soft, breathless voice:

“The key is under the mat. And there's coffee on the stove, and plenty of hot water if you want a bath. The dear boy's not in yet. I—I won't come down. Good-night, dear.”

She shut the window.

CHAPTER XXIX

Mally had lost count of time; she had no idea how long it was since she had slipped down the ladder and fled, clasping her bundle, from the dark, closed-in place which was no longer a shelter. The sound of horrible heavy breathing seemed to follow her, and she ran from it until she pulled up gasping and could run no more.

It was after that she lost count of time. There was a cottage where a woman talked to her from the window, but wouldn't open the door. It was the woman who told her that there were two Miss Messengers living in Weyford, and that Weyford was “just a piece along the road.”

It was a long piece, or else she had missed her way. She began to have the feeling that she was being blown along by the wind like a leaf, and that presently, like a leaf, she would be all dry and withered and brown. Once she slipped into something like a dream, and woke from it to find herself leaning up against a thorny hedge.

It was the pricking of the thorns that waked her, and it was soon after that she met a vaguely strolling couple with arms entwined. They told her that the Miss Messengers' house was right in Weyford High Street—“third house after you pass the church, and you can't miss it, because it stands back from the road like.”

Mally felt curiously comforted by the confident way in which the young man asserted that she could not miss the house. It was the third house after the church, on the left. It had a white gate. She couldn't miss it. She went on saying these things over and over to herself as she struggled along that last half-mile into Weyford. She went on because she had to go on—and for other reasons.

Presently the darkness was pricked with little points of light. If Mally had still been capable of emotion, the first lamp-post in Weyford would have brought tears to her eyes. She found herself leaning against it, touching it almost incredulously. And standing there, she could see, just ahead, the square, black tower of Weyford Church. Three doors beyond the church a white gate. She couldn't miss it. She went on, and came very slowly past the church, holding to the low stone wall which shut it in.

Where the wall ended there was a lane, and then a square house, black with ivy, and next to it a little dumpy, low cottage with shuttered windows flush with the pavement. Mally went past blind shutters, and saw a white gate and a flagged path that ran back to a little white house. “It stands back from the road—you can't miss it.” She hadn't missed it.

She lifted the latch and went up the flagged path to the front door. It was all like the end of a dream. The house was to be found, and she had found it. Nothing felt real except the cold—and it was very cold.

She put up her hand and knocked on the door, and immediately there was a sound overhead. A window opened above her on the left, and a fluttered, anxious voice called down to her in a whisper:

“The key is under the mat. And there's coffee on the stove, and plenty of hot water if you want a bath. The dear boy's not in yet. I—I won't come down. Good-night, dear.”

The window was shut.

Mally stood leaning against the door. Her hand had slipped from the ice-cold knocker to the smooth painted panel below it. It rested there, open, all her weight upon it. She felt very odd, very detached, as if this were happening to somebody else, some one in a fairy tale. It wasn't Cinderella now, but Red Riding-hood. “Lift up the latch and the bobbin will fall”—yes, that was how it went—“Lift up the latch and the bobbin will fall”—“The key is under the mat.”

She stooped down, turned up the mat, and picked up the key. It moved in the lock without a sound. The door swung in, and Mally came into a little square hall lighted by an oil-lamp hung from the ceiling by a brass chain. She shut the door, and felt a blessed warmth and stillness. On the left a half-open door showed a dimly lighted room. On the right there was an oak chest on which were set two bedroom candlesticks. The passage ran right through the house, with the stairs going up on the left beyond the half-lit room.

Mally put down her bundle and lighted one of the candles. The voice had said “coffee on the stove.” She went down the passage and found the kitchen at the end of it, neat as a new pin and warm with a warmth which she had almost forgotten. The fire was not quite out, and the coffee was in a double saucepan on the hot-plate. At one end of the kitchen table there was a tray with a home-made cake, two cups, an
egg
on a plate, and a spirit-lamp on which stood a saucepan half full of water. It was exactly like the best fairy tales.

She boiled the egg, and discovered brown bread and butter between two plates. She boiled the coffee, and drank two large, steaming cups of it. When she had finished the egg and bread and butter, she ate about half of the home-made cake. It was one of the nice damp sort, with little bits of ginger in it, and very fat sultanas.

All this time the house was as still as any house could be—still, not with the dead, uncanny stillness that makes you wish for any sound, however dreadful, but peacefully, gently, sleepily still, as a virtuous house should be at such an hour. Grace in her atticroom slept as she was accustomed to sleep, the immovable, dreamless sleep that no sound would penetrate until her alarm went off at half-past six. Miss Angela had made haste to put out the light and cover the incriminating curls with the bedclothes. She had not unlocked her door. She hoped that she would be asleep when Serena came upstairs. She hoped that it would not be very wicked if she pretended to be asleep. She began to think about her curls and her nose, and slipped insensibly into a dream.

Mally found the bathroom half-way up the stairs. “Plenty of hot water if you want a bath”—how delicious that sounded! She took a long, long time over that bath, and in the end only left it because she was afraid of going to sleep. She put on the clean clothes she had brought from Curston, and then looked with repugnance at her dark jumper and skirt. Not for any one in this world would she go out again that night. She put on her rose-red domino and went on round the turn of the stairs, walking very softly in her gold and silver slippers.

The first door was on her right. This was the room from which the voice had spoken. She went past it, holding her candle with a steady hand. She was past caring about anything. She opened the next door an inch at a time and looked in. There was no one there; but the bed was turned down, with a crimson eiderdown lying folded at the foot of it.

Mally made a step forward and saw a suit-case. It was a brown leather suit-case, and it had the initials E. M. stamped on it in black. She looked across at the dressing-table and saw a man's brushes, a safety-razor. She made a snatch at the crimson eiderdown, whisked it over her arm, and fled noiselessly down the stairs.

The E. M. stood for Ethan Messenger—and Ethan Messenger was the “dear boy” who hadn't come in yet.

“Ethan is the ‘dear boy'; but who in all the world am I?” said Mally as she came to a standstill in the hall. She put the key back under the mat, rolled up the things she had taken off, and brought them down from the bathroom so as to be handy in case she had to run away again—“But not tonight—
nothing
will induce me to run anywhere to-night.”

She went into the room on the left of the hall door, and found a lamp turned low and the remnants of a fire. The room was a drawing-room, with prim, light chintzes on the chairs and a rose-patterned carpet on the floor. There was a piano. There was a glass-fronted cupboard with old china in it. There was a white woolly sheepskin mat on the hearth.

Mally put two bits of coal on the fire without so much as a tremor of conscience. Then she curled herself up in the largest chair and went fast asleep under the comforting folds of the crimson eiderdown.

CHAPTER XXX

Ethan Messenger came home from Menden in a rather preoccupied mood. It was just on the hither side of midnight and as cold as the wind could make it. It had been a jolly evening—in some ways. He liked Mrs. Holmes and he liked Janet Elliot; but it was not of either Janet or Elizabeth that he was thinking as he drove through the icy lanes. His mind was entirely taken up with Candida Long, whom he had met for the first time that evening. Was it the first time? That was the question which he debated.

The first sound of Candida's voice had called up a vivid picture of the ballroom at Curston. He was sure, or he was almost sure, that it was Candida who had touched Mally on the arm just before the clock struck twelve. He tried very hard to piece his disjointed scraps of knowledge together.

Item one:—Mally had disappeared.

Item two:—Miss Long had meant to cross to France to-day, and had put off going because she said she couldn't travel without a maid.

Item three:—Some one—was it Janet?—had said that Candida's maid had vanished into the blue whilst they were all at Curston.

Item four:—Willie Elliot had begun to say something about Paul Craddock.

Item five:—Elizabeth Holmes had said “Hush,” and changed the subject in an extremely masterful manner.

It was all extremely disjointed. Candida Long—Mally Lee——Where
was
Mally Lee? He thought that he would like to see Candida Long again, and alone. Vague plans for doing so floated through his mind. They were still unformulated when he ran his car into a vacant stall in the Vicar's stable and, having locked the door on it, came past the church to the house with the white gate.

He took the key from under the mat, opened the door, and passed, as Mally had done, into the square lighted hall. On the chest to his right stood two bedroom candlesticks. But instead of being arranged neatly side by side, one of them stood on the very edge of the chest, and the candle in it had burned right down. On his left the drawing-room door stood ajar. He pushed it a little wider and saw, between the firelight and the turned-down lamp, Mally Lee lying very fast asleep in his Aunt Serena's large armchair.