The Dawn of Reckoning (17 page)

“While you amuse yourself with your cat.”

“Yes, why not?—He’s a darling. Just look at him—do you like
cats?”

“I like all animals.”

“Do you?—Oh, so do I. Philip doesn’t. He’s kind to them, of course,
but they get on his nerves.”

She made an attempt to secure Roly for Ward’s inspection, but the cat
scampered away, afraid, no doubt, of the stranger.

“Never mind; he’ll come back,” she said, laughing. “He doesn’t know you.
And no wonder. I haven’t seen you since Philip was ill.”

“That wasn’t very long ago,” he answered.

“Two months.”

“Well?—Do you call two months a long time?”

“It’s seemed so to me.”

Then, as if realising suddenly the interpretation of which her reply was
capable, she blushed a fierce red, mercifully indistinct in the shadows.

“To me,” he went on, either not noticing or else seeming not to notice,
“the time has gone just like a busy day. I assure you this is the first
opportunity I’ve had of leaving town even for a few hours. I wanted to see
how Philip was getting on.”

“He’s much better,” she replied. “And working tremendously hard. I suppose
you are also. Still in Bethnal Green?”

“Yes. Not at all a dull place to live in. A hundred thousand people all
packed together within a few hundred acres, so one doesn’t lack company.”

“It sounds better to me than Chassingford. I’d like to go and see it. Can
I visit you some time?”

He seemed to throw off the question without giving a direct answer. “Yes,
you certainly ought to visit a place like Bethnal Green. It would teach you
things.”

She looked at him, quick to perceive his evasion of her question.
“Philip…” he began, and she went on, as if glad of the lead he had given
her: “Yes, I’ll fetch him. He’ll be in his study writing. Do you mind waiting
here for a moment?”

She left him standing with his back to the fire, his
overcoat still on, but loosely unbuttoned. And when she returned, a few
minutes later, he was still in the same place, as if he had scarcely moved a
muscle during the whole interval.

But her scampering return roused him, and her face, when in the flickering
fire-glow he could glimpse it, made him step forward and catch sharply at her
bare arm. “What’s happened?” he said quickly. “You’re looking scared. What’s
the matter?”

She stared up at him and for a long moment could not speak. Through the
tears that streamed from her eyes there gleamed a light that he had never
seen in them before; she spoke at last with slow sobbing passion. “They’ve
drowned my kitten,” she said, brokenly.
“They’ve—drowned—Roly…What for?—Oh, why on earth should
they have done it?—I can’t understand—I can’t understand…”

She would have fallen had not he supported her, and after that she lay
helplessly in his arms, her whole body rocking and shaking with sobs.

Ward’s voice was calm but grim. “Who’s the ‘they’ you’re talking
about?”

“The gardeners.”

“
They
drowned your kitten?”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

“Yes—why—
why
? That’s what I can’t understand…They
wouldn’t tell me.”

“Didn’t they know it was your kitten?”

“Perhaps not…But why—why—?”

“Look here.” He pushed her gently away from him and made her sit down in a
chair. “I’ll go out and talk to those fellows. Then we shall see what’s
happened.”

He went out and returned in about ten minutes. His face was grimmer than
ever then; he walked over to the window and stood looking out upon the grey
wintry twilight for some time without speaking. Then he came towards the fire
and began quietly: “This is a peculiar business. Those fellows wouldn’t tell
me the truth at first. They said they’d merely done it because they thought
it was a stray, and they always drown strays…But at last I got them to talk
differently. And they said—it seems queer, I’ll admit—that Philip
ordered them to drown the kitten.”

“
What
!”

She stood up with clenched fists and flashing eyes. “You say Philip
ordered them to—”

“Don’t shout!” he commanded. He put both his hands on her arms as if to
calm her excitement. But she would not be calmed. “You say Philip—” she
went on, in a furious torrent of words, and then stopped suddenly.

For in the shadow of the doorway stood Philip himself, thin-faced and
stooping.

Ward was the first to speak. He began, briskly: “Good
evening, Philip. Mrs. Monsell is rather upset because the gardeners have
drowned her kitten. I went out to make inquiries and the men say that you
gave them orders to do so. Surely that can’t be true?”

Philip stepped forward and held out his hand to Ward. “Delighted to see
you…What an extraordinary thing for the men to say…My poor Stella…good
heavens, why on earth should I give them such an order?”

He tried to put his arm round her shoulders but she shrank away from
him.

He went on: “I must certainly enquire into this business. I can’t
understand why they have done such a thing, and still less why they say I
ordered them to. An absurd story…Doesn’t it seem so to you?” He looked at
Ward.

The latter did not reply, and Philip went on, shrugging his shoulders:
“Well, anyway, I’ll go and see the men about it straight away. It’s a
scandalous thing.”

When he had gone Stella said: “What does it all mean? Can you understand
it?”

And Ward replied: “No, I can’t…I can’t…I can’t at all…”

They stood together in silence, as if faced with the presence of something
uncanny. The firelight stirred the silence with cracklings,’ and every now
and then some beam or joist in the old house gave a faint creak, like a thing
hardly alive. After a few moments Philip returned, and they noticed that he
was very pale. But he addressed them calmly enough.

“I’ve paid the men a week’s wages and told them to go,” he announced.
“They must have had some unaccountable grudge against you, Stella. Anyhow,
after the lies they told, it didn’t seem to me to be a case for
leniency…Well now, don’t let’s make ourselves unhappy about it.” He turned
to Ward. “You’ll stay to dinner, of course?”

“Sorry, but I’ve an appointment in town again this evening. I just took
the only opportunity I had of running up to see how you were.”

“Oh, I’m much better. Don’t I look it?”

He stepped into the firelight, revealing cheeks no longer pale but flushed
with excitement.

“I’m not sure that you do.” Ward gave him a curious glance, and then, with
a final shrug of the shoulders, turned towards the door. “Well, I must get
along to catch the train. Just a flying visit, that’s all…Good-bye…”

Philip shook hands with him cordially and left him alone with Stella in
the hail.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Monsell,” he said quietly, taking her hand.

“It’s an excuse to get away, isn’t it?” she whispered: “You don’t want to
stay?

“Well? Can you blame me? Wouldn’t it be uncomfortable for all of us if I
did stay?”

“Perhaps…” She added softly: “But I shall be frightened when you’ve
gone.”

“
Frightened
? Why? Of what? Of whom?”

“I don’t know yet. But I can feel something terrible growing up all around
me. When I was a little girl my father used to beat me, and I was always
frightened when he went towards the corner where he kept his stick. I feel
like that now.”

“Don’t be silly…” He gave her hand a quick, clumsy pressure, as if her
words had stirred him suddenly and uncomfortably. “Don’t be silly…Good-bye.
You’ll be all right.”

“You don’t think so yourself,” she urged. “You’re full of doubts. I can
feel that from your voice. You’re puzzled, aren’t you?”

“Look here.” His tone was severe. “You know my address. Write to me if you
want any help or advice. Don’t ‘phone, because I’m very rarely on the spot to
answer. See? And now, go back and try not to fret about the kitten. I’m sure
there must have been some mistake about it. Good-bye.”

“You’re
not
sure,” she whispered, but he either did not hear or
else pretended not to.

She gave him a strange farewell smile and closed the heavy door after
him.

That was in December.

Upon a certain evening of the following February, Stella waited by the
main bookstall at Liverpool Street Station. Her slim, girlish body was oddly
at variance with her nervous pacings to and fro and glancings at the clock.
She could hardly see it, however, for there was a thick fog outside, and
sufficient had penetrated under the glass roof to obscure in a dull yellow
haze everything more than a few yards off.

As the minute-hand jerked itself further from the position of seven
o’clock she became more and more restless, peering through the gloom at
strangers who passed by, and continually walking the length of the bookstall
and back again.

She waited till a few minutes to eight and then was on the point of going
away when a tall, heavily-coated figure approached her and touched her
lightly on the arm.

“Mrs. Monsell.”

“Doctor Ward.”

They looked at each other with puzzled recognition, as if expectant of
some explanation.

He began: “Sorry I’m late. The fog at Bethnal Green is so bad that I
feared I shouldn’t get here at all.”

She answered: “And if you hadn’t, I think—I really mean this—I
think I should have gone out and killed myself.”

He clutched quickly at her arm. “Oh, nonsense. You mustn’t talk like that.
Come now, let’s go somewhere out of this fog. How are things getting on at
Chassingford—all right, I suppose so—It’s over two months since I
saw or heard from you—”

She interrupted him excitedly. “You didn’t get any of my letters,
then?”

“Letters?” He stared at her in blank astonishment. “Certainly not. I never
received any letters until the one this morning. Did you write before
that?”

“I can see I shall have to tell you quite a lot,” she said, with suddenly
achieved calmness. “Where can we go? Somewhere where we shan’t be seen.
Philip, of course, doesn’t know I’ve come.”

“Why not?”

His voice, grown stern, had the effect of making her cry softly. “Please
be kind to me,” she whispered. “Until I’ve told you everything, at any rate.
Please don’t be cross with me for anything I’ve done. Not for
anything
.”

“I didn’t mean to be unkind,” he answered gruffly. And there in the thick
evening fog, as completely isolated from the rest of the world as if they had
been on a lonely moorland instead of on a busy railway platform, he slipped
his arm protectingly round her waist.

They managed to reach a small café in Broad Street—not
the kind they would have ordinarily have chosen, but a welcome shelter on
such a night. Its red plush seats and gilt-framed mirrors and odour of steak
and onions combined to give an atmosphere of good cheer if not of good taste.
Stella, however, insisted that she was not hungry, so Ward ordered tea and
cakes, after choosing a seat in the least blatantly conspicuous corner of the
establishment.

“Now,” he began, when the greasy-looking, white-aproned waiter had taken
their order. “Please remember that I’m completely in the dark. Tell me
everything from the beginning. You say you wrote me letters. How many?”

“Five,” she answered. “And I got no answer to any of them. So at last I
decided I’d see you in person. And when you didn’t come I thought—I
thought—”

“Well?”

“I thought of walking on to the Embankment and throwing myself over.”

“Now, now—” He stared at her acutely for a moment, and then added
quietly, almost professionally: “It’s quiet evident you’re in a highly
nervous condition. Will you please tell me exactly what’s made you so. I give
you my solemn word I will help you all I can. There!”

The waiter appeared with the tea, and while he laid it on the table Stella
stared vacantly about her. They were sitting next to a window, not one
fronting Broad Street, but a smaller one that overlooked some side entry or
warehouse yard. As soon as the waiter had gone, Stella leaned forward
excitedly across the table and whispered: “A man put his face to the window
just now and looked at us. He did! I saw him!—While the waiter was
laying the tea things…And I saw him before on the platform while I was
waiting for you!—Oh—my God—my God—I’ve been
followed!”

She almost collapsed, spilling her tea into the saucer and attracting the
curious attention of the waiter. Ward seized her wrist in a grip that must
have hurt. “Stop it!” he cried, in a loud whisper. “You’re a silly
girl—to frighten yourself like that. Your nerves are all unstrung. It’s
absurd—how could anybody—how
should
anybody want to follow
you—on such a night, as well? Here, drink some tea…I’ll send you a
tonic to-morrow morning…”

Perhaps the pain in her wrist where he had held her exercised a calming
effect. She began to talk very slowly and quietly, drinking her tea in gulps
every now and then. “It would be Philip who had sent somebody to follow me,”
she said. “You don’t understand Philip. He’s different since you knew him.
And he frightens me.”

“Frightens you? How?”

“The things he does…The house itself frightens me. I’m so lonely in
it…And he hardly ever speaks to me. But he goes walking about so softly and
mysteriously, and sometimes in the middle of the night I hear his footsteps
pacing about the rooms…And one night…I sleep in one of the top rooms and
there’s a big wardrobe at the side of my bed. It was bright moonlight and I
couldn’t sleep. I lay awake for hours, and then must have gone to sleep for a
while and wakened again. I remember opening my eyes and wondering for the
moment if the moonlight were dawn. On one side of the bed, as I told you, is
the wardrobe, and on the other there’s a full-length cheval-glass.
Now—now—” her voice became slightly unsteady—“I could see
the wardrobe door through the mirror…You understand…And I saw—I saw
the door open slowly and a man stepped out of it.”