Touch and Go (6 page)

“Well, the burglar came
this
way—didn't he?” said Lucilla, and then she jumped on her bicycle again and rode up the drive.

Sarah followed her. The drive was newly gravelled and neatly swept. The marks of the burglar's tyres must have been quite easy to see.

They came out upon a wide flat space before the house and left their bicycles leaning against the wall.

There is always something mournful about an empty house. Holme Fallow was beautiful, but it looked dead. The ground-floor windows were shuttered, and those above shut close, and blank. Lucilla looked up, frowning, and then led the way round to the side door which Sarah remembered only too well. That was where the other drive came up, and this was where she had stood in the dark and seen the lighted window spring suddenly into view. Those were the steps which she had mounted.

Silence continued to be golden.

They went along the passage and into the big hall, which was nearly as dark as it had been at night. No—once your eyes got accustomed to the change, it was only dusk that filled it and not darkness. The stairs went up at the far end, and they went up into the light, as if there were a window which lighted them just round the turn. They went up to a small landing, divided, and went on again. The window which lighted them was round the left-hand turn.

Sarah nodded. Yes, of course, that was it—that was the window at which she had seen the light, and the burglar had been coming down the stairs.

Lucilla came close up to her and put a hand on her arm.

“Do you have feelings about houses? What does Holme Fallow feel like?”

Sarah considered. She had come into it happily enough, and then she had been frightened. But that was because of the burglar; it had nothing to do with the house. She tried to put all that out of her thoughts and start fresh. After a moment she said tentatively,

“It's—old—”

“Some of it's sixteenth-century. The front is Queen Anne.”

Sarah tried again.

“It's—friendly—” Some houses weren't friendly, especially empty houses. They made you feel as if you were pushing in upon their private affairs. Holme Fallow was friendly.

“Yes,”
said Lucilla. Her hand dropped from Sarah's arm. “Some day I shall live here.” And with that she went on across the hall and opened the door which had been open when Sarah came that way before.

The room beyond was quite dark now, but Lucilla crossed it without having to grope her way. The next moment a long streak of light broke the dark and widened there. The middle shutter went back with a creaking sound and the daylight came in. There was bright, warm sun outside. Lucilla opened all the other shutters, and dusted her hands on her skirt.

“Snagge's a lazy hound,” she said. “He ought to have all the windows open on a day like this.” Then she turned back to the room and waved a grimy hand. “Family portraits—” They hung round three sides of the room in heavy tarnished frames.

A tall fair youth in the riding-clothes of the eighteen-fifties, and opposite to him something very fair and fragile in ringlets and a crinoline.

“Great-grandfather and great-grandmother at the time of their marriage.” Lucilla's voice was quiet and serious. “She didn't live very long.
He
only died the year I was born.… That's my grandfather. He was their only child, and he was killed out hunting before he was thirty. That was done when he was twenty-one.”

Sarah looked and saw another fair young man with a scarlet coat, and breeches which looked as if they must have been too tight to ride in.

“That's my father and his brothers, when they were all children.”

This picture was the last on the wall facing the windows. It showed John Hildred's three children. Lucilla named them in order of age.

“That's Uncle Henry. He was about five. And that's my father next to him. He was three and a half. And the baby is Uncle Maurice.”

Henry Hildred had his hand on his little brother's shoulder. He stared haughtily out of the picture—a very fair, handsome child with an air of having bought the earth. Jack, in a linen smock, had an apple at which he seemed to look longingly, whilst the baby Maurice, in an embroidered muslin dress, sat placidly on the grass at their feet. They were all fair and rosy, with the same grey-blue eyes. Jack and Maurice were round and chubby of face.

Sarah was looking at the baby.

“I didn't know you had an Uncle Maurice. Your aunt didn't mention him. She talked about Henry and Jack.”

“Jack's my father,” said Lucilla. “She doesn't talk about Maurice much, because it makes her cry, and she wouldn't want to cry when she was interviewing you. She was most awfully fond of him.”

“Is he dead?”

“They don't think so, but of course he must be.”

“Who's
they
, and why don't they know?”

“Well, he was missing in 1918, but Aunt Marina always swore he wasn't dead.”

“But why?”

“Oh, because she just couldn't bear it, I suppose. She thinks he's alive, and what's more Uncle Geoffrey thinks so too.”

“But why? I mean why doesn't he come home if he's alive?”

Lucilla frowned.

“They think he's wandering about in the States, or Canada, or somewhere like that. You know, Uncle Henry kept wandering and wouldn't come back, so that makes it seem more likely. And then a client of Uncle Geoffrey's told him he'd met someone who was most awfully like the Hildreds, and he and Aunt Marina made up their minds it was Maurice. But I'm sure he's dead.”

Dead
.… The word echoed in Sarah's mind as she looked at the picture. What a damnable thing war was. There was Henry, who had been a wanderer on the earth and couldn't face his home, and he was dead. And the jolly round-cheeked little boy with the apple was Jack, and Lucilla's father, and he was dead too, somewhere in France, a long time ago. And there was Maurice, the fat happy baby, and he was either dead like Jack or a wanderer as Henry had been, with shattered nerves perhaps or memory gone.… Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.… Would the world ever be mad enough to plunge into that vortex of blood and misery again.…

“And that's their mother—my grandmother,” said Lucilla, and pulled her round to look at the chimney-piece. The portrait of Mrs. John Hildred looked down the length of the room. Sarah might have seen it a dozen times, but she had kept her eyes away. She had to raise them now and wonder, as she had wondered over and over again, why she should have taken fright and run when the ray of the burglar's torch had touched such a sweet and smiling face.

“I'm supposed to be awfully like her,” said Lucilla. “She was a Hildred too—a cousin from miles away back in the family tree. It's poisonously dull to marry a cousin—don't you think so? But they didn't have time to get bored, he was killed so young. Do you think I'm like her?”

The likeness was evident, though not so startling as it had seemed when the beam illumined the face alone. Seen in daylight, the long flowing dress in the fashion of the nineties, the style of the hair, and the air of gracious maturity all made for difference. Eleanor Hildred had borne her three children when this portrait was painted. She smiled down from it as a young mother smiles, watching her boys at play.

“Yes, you're like her,” said Sarah, and wondered again why she should have panicked and run away.

CHAPTER VIII

Mr. Geoffrey Hildred and his son seemed to be making a stay of some length at the Red House. They went up to town, but they came down again. Sarah concluded that she was on appro, and that Miss Marina hadn't felt equal to vetting her alone. It is fairly grim to have the eyes of a whole family earnestly focussed upon all that you say, or do, or are, from the way you eat your breakfast banana, through your reactions to (
a
) a practical joke, (
b
) winding interminable balls of wool, (
c
) being accidentally banged over the head by Ricky at tennis, down to your capacity for staying the course of Aunt Marina's reminiscences without going to sleep as ten o'clock approached. Sarah hoped that she was comporting herself as well as was to be expected, and that the family interest would shortly become less intense. Miss Marina was becoming attached, and Uncle Geoffrey very assiduous and admiring. But she thought Ricky didn't like her, and she didn't much care whether he did or not. He inclined to moon about after Lucilla, and was probably jealous. Sarah had been extremely glad to hear that it was poisonously dull to marry a cousin.

It was on the third evening that Mr. Hildred mentioned Mr. John Brown. Miss Marina was knitting a grey and white striped muffler, and Lucilla was being taught how to play bridge by the other three. They had finished a rubber and Ricky was shuffling for a new deal, when his father remarked.

“There's a client of mine just come down into this part of the world.”

Miss Marina dropped a stitch. This always happened if she took her attention off the row she was knitting. She said “Oh dear, dear!” in a perfunctory manner; and then, “What did you say, Geoffrey?”

Ricky let the cards fall with rather a bang, and Lucilla kicked him under the table.

“I said a client of mine had just come down to Holme, Marina.”

“Why?” said Miss Marina, her knitting in mid air.

Sarah was also wondering why. There did not seem to be any particular reason why anyone should come to Holme. It had a church, a cemetery, a general shop, some thirty cottages, and an inn called the Cow and Bush.

Mr. Hildred supplied the reason.

“He's an artist and he wants to paint the autumn tints, and he's also a great hand with his camera—does studies of wild life and all that sort of thing.”

“Oh!” said Miss Marina in a worried voice. “Lucilla my dear, I think there are three stitches down. If you wouldn't mind—”

“It's such foul wool!” said Lucilla.

“My dear—what a
word
! Thank you so much. What is this gentleman's name, Geoffrey?”

Ricky dropped the cards again. His long pale face looked as sulky as a long pale face can look.

“His name is Mr. John Brown,” said Geoffrey Hildred—“Mr. John C. Brown. He has, I believe, written a number of books about birds and animals. He's an American over on a visit, and the more money he spends here the better. He seems to be very well off. It's astonishing what some of these writers make. He was consulting me as to his liability to income tax if he stayed on this side. I was perfectly amazed.”

“There's nowhere for him to stay at Holme,” said Miss Marina. “Thank you, my dear, I shall be able to get on nicely now. Oh dear, there's another stitch gone! You left them rather far up the needle. Perhaps Miss Trent—”

The comforter passed to Sarah.

Mr. Hildred replied to the first part of his cousin's speech.

“He's at the Cow and Bush. He says he wants to sample an English village inn, but I should think he would soon have enough of it. I think we might ask him to dine. He's a very pleasant fellow. And Lucilla, my dear, I've given him permission on your behalf to go where he likes on your property. He is hoping to get some good photographs of migratory birds. It's a queer taste, but he seems very keen about it.”

Sarah handed back the comforter with the stitches rammed well down.

“I say, are we going to play another rubber or aren't we?” said Ricky Hildred crossly.

Lucilla giggled a good deal over her lesson. She ran her fingers through her hair and said “Marvellous!” when she had three aces. She scowled and informed the table that her hand was “putrid” when its highest card was a knave. And she revoked whenever it was humanly possible to revoke. She seemed to enjoy the game very much, and was more than loth to go to bed.

Sarah went up when she did. She was feeling pleased with life. Uncle Geoffrey had held her hand in a lingering clasp, and Aunt Marina had called her my dear when she said good-night. Ricky could look as much of a cross spoilt child as he liked; it didn't matter in the least to Sarah Trent.

She was just going to get into bed, when the door was opened with a sort of quick push and Lucilla came in without knocking. She shut the door as quickly as she had opened it and stood with her back to it, her left hand still on the handle. She seemed to be trying for her impudent grin, but it trembled and broke. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and stared defiantly at Sarah.

“What on earth's the matter?” said Sarah.

The child was in her nightgown—blue, to match her room. Her fair hair stood up, and her feet were bare. She went on staring for a moment, and then she relaxed, let go of the handle, and took a running jump on to Sarah's bed, where she snuggled down with the pink eiderdown pulled round her.

Sarah said,
“Well!”
and Lucilla nodded. She was smiling now, but she didn't speak. It struck Sarah that the reason she didn't speak was because she couldn't. There had been no colour at all in her face, but either a little pink was coming back to it now, or else the eiderdown which she was clutching round her gave her some reflected colour. It was bright enough in all conscience.

“Well!”
said Sarah again.

This time Lucilla spoke. She echoed Sarah's
“Well!”
in a voice with a catch in it.

“What's the matter?” said Sarah. The child was giving her cold feet.

“Nothing.”

“Lucilla, has anything frightened you?”

The pale arch of Lucilla's eyebrows lifted a little.

“Of course not!” The eyes under the lifted brows were wide and innocent. She pushed back the eiderdown and stretched.

Sarah had an odd sense of relief from strain. The impudent smile was back again as Lucilla cocked her head on one side and said,

“Isn't this all too pink for words?”

“Why did you come?” said Sarah, sitting down on the edge of the bed.