Touch and Go (16 page)

When John Brown presently took his departure he gave Sarah a small folded slip of paper. It was quite openly given, and his voice was at its usual pitch as he said,

“That's the name of the book you were asking me about. I think you'll find it quite interesting.”

Sarah hadn't the least idea what he was talking about, but she could play up if she was given a lead. She laughed a little and said,

“I don't suppose I shall read it really.”

Up in her own room, she straightened the paper out. It was a page torn from a note-book with faint blue lines on it. Across the lines John Brown had written:

I want to see you. Same place. Same time
.

There was no signature.

She lit a match and burned the sheet to ashes.

She was going to sleep in Lucilla's room, but she dressed and undressed in her own. She had taken off her tweed skirt and jumper, and was hanging them up, when Lucilla came in with her evening dress over her arm. She was still in the black woollen cardigan suit she had worn all day. Sarah thought she looked very pale.

She said, “What is it?” and Lucilla sat down on the bed with her black georgette frock across her knees.

“I did feel to want to dress in here.”

“All right—dress. It's about time you did.”

Lucilla shook her head with its fair fluff of hair.

“Oh no—lots of time. You've hardly begun yourself, and I dress like a lightning flash.”

“Well, get on with it, my child.”

Lucilla made no attempt to get on with it. She gazed soulfully at Sarah.

“Angel darling, I want to ask you something.”

Sarah was washing at the pink basin. She said, through the sound of the rushing water,

“Ask away.”

“Cross your heart and die—you won't tell a lie?”

“I won't if I can help it.”

“Oh, Sarah! And you a governess!”

Sarah laughed.

“I really don't tell lies. Get on with it.”

“Well then—how passionately do you love Uncle Geoffrey?”

Sarah turned round with a pink linen towel in her hand.

“I could live without him,” she said.

“
I
'm serious,” said Lucilla. “Nobody ever thinks I'm serious, but I am—sometimes. Do you love him at all?”

“Lucilla, what are you driving at?”

“I asked you a plain question.” Lucilla's voice was mournful. “All right, govvy, I won't press for an answer—I'd hate to make you blush. But if you won't respond about Uncle Geoffrey, I would like to know what you feel about Mr. Brown.”

Sarah dried her face carefully with the towel, and was glad of it. The most piercingly inquisitive eye cannot see through a yard of pink linen. She said, quite untruthfully,

“I don't think about him at all.”

“You ought to think about him,” said Lucilla reprovingly. “He's my Noble Preserver. You ought to be palpitating with gratitude, because if he hadn't saved my life you'd be out of a job. You know, I did come most awfully near to being the late Lucilla Hildred.”

Sarah put down the towel. Lucilla had her black frock by the shoulders and was dancing it to and fro, making it dip and curtsey. Her face was intent and innocent.

“Lucilla—what
happened
?”

Just for a moment the innocent intentness was broken. Something flickered across it. There was an instant when something wavered. Then all that was gone. Lucilla jumped to her feet with a laugh.

“Nothing happened,” she said. “Hadn't you gathered that I was still alive? Now you watch me be a lightning flash!”

She slipped out of her skirt, leaving it on the floor, and peeling off the cardigan, threw it at a chair. It caught on the arm and hung trailing.

Whilst Lucilla washed, Sarah picked up the skirt and reached for the trailing coat, catching it up by the sleeve. She had begun to say, “Untidy child!” but her voice suddenly dried up, because something fell from the pocket of Lucilla's cardigan on to the pink carpet at her feet. To be quite accurate, two things fell. Two little steel screws.

CHAPTER XIX

Sarah looked at the screws. Then she looked at Lucilla, who was drying her hands on the pink towel. She was gay and mischievous. She rolled the towel into a ball, pitched it on to the bed, and began to wriggle into her black georgette frock, which was very tight and slinky, and rather high in the neck. It was the only smart garment she possessed, and it suited her very well.

“Getting into this dress makes me feel exactly like a worm,” she said as soon as her mouth was clear. She wriggled a little more, and the black flares swished down to her ankles. With a pirouette she posed before a long tilted mirror. “Moddom is so slim,” she murmured, and turned with haughty grace to Sarah. “Moddom's hair, is it not
chic
like this? A new fashion, Miss Trent—especially designed for moddom by Signor Horrifico himself. You see how it stands on end all over the head? That is Signor Horrifico's own secret process. All the famous beauties are on their knees to him for it, but it is moddom whom he has selected to demonstrate this new and
chic
coiffure—What's the
matter
, Sarah?”

Sarah had been standing quite still with Lucilla's skirt in one hand and her cardigan in the other. She let go of them now as if they had suddenly become too heavy to hold. Then she stooped, gathered up the two little screws, and held them out on the palm of her hand. She did not speak, but she looked very intently at Lucilla, who had come to a standstill just out of reach. She saw Lucilla look at the screws, and then she saw the colour come sharply to her face. She knew that colour now. It always meant the same thing—a sudden shock of surprise or fear. She would have given a good deal to know which of the two was sending the blood up to the roots of the fair tumbled hair at this moment.

The moment passed, and the flush was passing too, but as it passed, she met Lucilla's eyes and surprised in them a look which startled her. It was a sick, frightened look—the look which someone might have who has been hit too hard, and is uncertain of being able to rally from the blow.

Yet Lucilla did rally. She made some effort—Sarah was aware that it was a great effort—and she said,

“What have you got there?”

It was not quite her usual voice, but to anyone who did not know her well it would have seemed like her usual voice.

Sarah said in a quiet, measured way,

“Two screws, Lucilla.”

Lucilla said, “Yes?”

“Your bicycle screws.”

Lucilla said, “Where were they?”

Sarah said, “In the pocket of your cardigan.”

And with that the reverberations of the dinner gong came up from the hall below. It was a very large gong slung between two carved posts, and it made a great deal of noise. No one had any excuse for not hearing it, or for being late for dinner. In fact to be late for any meal was an unforgivable offence both to Uncle Geoffrey and to Aunt Marina.

Lucilla took the screws and put them into one of the small drawers of the dressing-table. Then she picked up Sarah's brush, smoothed her hair rapidly, and ran out of the room. On the threshold she looked over her shoulder, to see Sarah half way into her dress.

“Hurry,” she said, “or I'll have to say you're dead. It's the only excuse they'll look at.”

The excuse was not needed. The gong was still swinging when Sarah caught her on the stairs. They entered the drawing-room together, to find Geoffrey Hildred looking at his watch.

There are some evenings which seem quite interminable. The clock ticks, but the hands seem to get no nearer bed-time. This was one of those evenings. Geoffrey Hildred retired into
The Times
. Ricky sulked over a book whose pages he would either turn three or four at a time or else leave unturned for half an hour. Lucilla produced a canvas strip with a thunder-and-lightning design stamped upon it. A single orange flash was all that she had so far achieved, but it appeared that it was to be a bag. “For my grandchildren,” she explained with a small resigned sigh, after which she sat in silence, with a medley of orange and brown wools upon her lap, her needle moving very slowly and carefully, her fair head bent and her attention apparently concentrated upon her work.

Sarah detested needlework and never attempted it. She sat by Miss Marina and heard the thrilling story of how Maurice Hildred had cut four teeth before he was five months old—“A most precocious child, Miss Trent, and so very sweet-tempered. I remember when he was four years old he fell and cut himself very badly indeed upon the arm. It was the gardener's fault, for of course he should not have left the edging-shears lying on the path like that—a piece of gross carelessness, and so I told my cousin John Hildred at the time. And we had to have the doctor to Maurice. It was old Dr. Redman, whom we all liked so much. He died just before the Armistice. He was a widower, and he lost his only son in the war. And of course we like Dr. Drayton very much indeed, and I feel that in some ways he understands me better than Dr. Redman did, but after so many years it was a sad break and very upsetting for all his old patients.… Where was I, my dear?”

Sarah was giving her a most flattering attention. Her eyes were positively sparkling with interest, and her voice thrilled as she said,

“You were telling me about the cut on Maurice's arm. Was it very deep?”

“My dear, it was terrible. The point of the shears went right in. But I can't tell you how good he was, hardly crying at all after the first fright was over. Dr. Redman had to take three stitches, and it left such a scar. I can remember saying to his poor mother, ‘Well, my dear, you wanted a girl, but you may be glad that he isn't one, because he'll never lose that scar.' Of course it didn't matter at all for a young man, but it would have looked very bad in evening dress if he had been a girl—a nasty three-cornered jag just above the elbow. And she was most indignant, and declared that she had never wanted a girl at all, but of course she did, and quite natural with two boys already—Henry and Jack were older, you know. But then once Maurice was there, he was such a particularly engaging child that no one could have wished for any change in him.”

Miss Marina dropped half a dozen stitches and let her knitting fall. She began to fumble in a black velvet bag with an oxidised silver handle for the handkerchief which she always needed when she talked about Maurice. Her sandy lashes were wet, and half a dozen round tears rolled down her plump, pale cheeks.

Sarah found the handkerchief and picked up the knitting. Then she had to pick up the stitches too. Geoffrey Hildred looked over the top of
The Times
, cleared his throat as if he was going to say something, but thought better of it and went back to an article on Debt Settlement.

Miss Marina said, “Thank you, my dear. It is stupid of me to talk about Maurice, because it always makes me cry. You see, I remember him as such a very dear little boy. I suppose he was eighteen when he went out to the war, but I had hardly seen him for some years before that. I used to visit his mother a good deal, but she died and he went to school, so I always think of him as the little boy I knew, and it seems so dreadful to think of him—
missing
.” She dabbed her eyes as she spoke. “Henry and Jack were older—it doesn't seem so dreadful for them. And Henry always had rather an aloof disposition. I remember someone saying once that he looked as if no one was quite good enough for him to speak to.”

Sarah had had a question burning her tongue for the last five minutes. She got it out now.

“Were they tall? Lucilla's tall, and Mr. Hildred, and Ricky.”

Miss Marina dropped another stitch.

“Oh, my dear, if you wouldn't mind—I think these polished needles are to blame. I really like the old bone ones better, but they are so unreliable since the war. What was it you asked me? Oh well, Henry was about an inch shorter than Geoffrey, and he was the tallest of the three boys, but I believe he got to stoop very much. And I always think Maurice would have grown—he was still so young. Now let me see … Geoffrey is five foot eleven—so that would make Henry five foot ten—and last time I saw Jack and Maurice they were certainly not quite so tall, but there wasn't a great deal of difference.”

She continued to talk, but Sarah was no longer listening. She therefore missed hearing how Henry had been thrown by the pony that he would ride, and that Jack had had a passion for black currant jam. She was wholly occupied in wondering how she could get John Brown to roll up his sleeve above the elbow. It would have been quite easy if it had been August instead of October. They could have bathed somewhere, and she would have been able to see whether he had an old jagged scar on either of his arms. If he was Maurice Hildred, the scar would be there. If there wasn't any scar, he wasn't Maurice Hildred. A line came between her brows and she tried to see him standing by Geoffrey Hildred. He was not as tall—she was quite sure of that—but she had an idea that there wasn't much in it. Geoffrey Hildred looked taller than he really was.

The evening came to an end at last. Lucilla had completed two more orange zigzags and had begun on something that looked like a dark brown thundercloud. The finished bag would undoubtedly be quite extraordinarily ugly, but on the other hand it was so improbable that it ever would be finished that it really didn't matter very much. When the clock struck ten, Miss Marina put away her knitting, yawned in a ladylike manner behind her white plump hand, and got up, letting her handkerchief fall upon the hearth-rug. This happened every night. Sometimes the knitting fell too, but to-night there was only the hem-stitched linen handkerchief with its scent of
eau-de-Cologne
for Sarah to retrieve. After which Miss Marina kissed her cousin on the cheek, patted Ricky's shoulder with a “Good-night, dear boy,” and offered her own cheek to Lucilla. Everybody said good-night to everyone else.