Touch and Go (23 page)

Sarah knew what was coming now, but John Brown did not.

“Don't, Lucilla!” said Sarah quickly, but all she got was a mournful shake of the head.

“Must. Can't have people saying that the Noble Preserver is a Secret Assassin.”

“Lucilla, what on earth are you talking about?” said John Brown.

“Hasn't Sarah told you where she found the screws? I thought she told you
everything
. You know—the screws that came out of my bicycle. She found them in the pocket of my cardigan when we were dressing for dinner. Didn't you, darling?”

John Brown looked quickly at Sarah, and as quickly away again. He too found Lucilla pale—dreadfully pale. She essayed an impudent laugh.

“I put it across you all pretty well, didn't I? You were all scared stiff, weren't you? There wasn't any danger really. I could ride that old hill in my sleep.”

“I see,” said John Brown—” it was a trick.”

Lucilla nodded.

“And the fall from the balustrade—was that a trick too?”

Lucilla nodded again.

“Perhaps you'll tell us how you managed it, or rather how you would have managed it if I hadn't caught you.”

She jerked up her chin and looked at him defiantly.

“I knew you were there. I screamed first and then tipped over. I was going to hang by my knees until someone caught me. It was just a trick. It's quite easy if you know how.”

“I see—” said John Brown gravely.

Sarah was looking at Lucilla's hands. They were still locked about her knees. They were locked as if the world and all hung on their grip. The knuckles were as white as bone, the fingers straining. What effort was she making, and at what cost? Why?

At John Brown's quietly spoken words the grip relaxed. It seemed as if the effort had spent itself.

“I frightened you all—didn't I?” said Lucilla.

“Very much.”

There was a silence. A sunny stillness with a weight upon it. Lucilla broke it with an exclamation.

“Oh! Just then you did look like someone—you really did!”

“Who did I look like?” said John Brown.

Lucilla unlocked her hands in an excited gesture.

“You looked like my Eleanor grandmamma in the picture at Holme Fallow! You saw it there—in the dining-room, opposite the door as you come in. And that's a compliment if you like, because she's frightfully lovely. She must be of course, because she's like me.” She paused, staring hard, and then went on again. “She was Maurice's mother. Are you sure you're not Maurice?”

John Brown tossed the old brown satchel on to the grass and got up.

“Quite sure,” he said in a tone of finality.

CHAPTER XXVI

Sarah felt as if it had been rather a long day. The nasal singing of the village choir and the sermon on kindness appeared to be quite incredibly removed from the moment when they all said good night and went upstairs. There had been Sunday tea. There had been Sunday supper. Aunt Marina had talked about the family. Uncle Geoffrey had talked about porcelain.

As a matter of fact Uncle Geoffrey had been quite interesting. He had opened the cabinets at the end of the drawing-room and shown her a number of very beautiful things, all of which were Lucilla's property. There was a mandarin's supper set in four tiers, each tier a different colour—egg-shell blue, egg-shell green, rose-pink, and primrose-yellow—each with its own tracery of pæony and pomegranate. On one side of the lid a single wary grasshopper stared at them across four hundred years. There was a collection of snuff-bottles—rose quartz, with a green jade frog for a stopper; lapis, with a blood-red fruit; mutton-fat jade; deep red lacquer. There were about a hundred of them, and every one a very perfect work of art—amber, crystal, onyx, malachite, in the shape of fruit or gourd, the stopper delicately fashioned in a contrasting colour. An eighteenth-century Hildred had brought them back from China.

“Lucilla doesn't care for them,” said Geoffrey Hildred regretfully. “But I hope she will some day.”

Lucilla did not look up from her book.

She followed Sarah into her room when they went upstairs, and Sarah turned on her.

“Now look here, Lucilla, you're not going to stay here and talk. You can sleep in whichever room you like, but you must just pack along and undress.”

“How harsh you are,” said Lucilla plaintively.

“I feel harsh. Go and undress! This day has lasted about a century and a half already.”

Lucilla giggled.

“Aren't you funny? Such a nice day too—no nasty rough accidents and things. And I'm sure I've been a Perfect Pattern of Piety. Ungrateful—that's what I call you, Sarah Trent.”

“Lucilla, will you go to bed!”

“Presently, darling. I've got something awfully important to say to you. You don't want me to go to bed without saying it?”

Sarah took off her dress and hung it up.

“I don't suppose it's important at all.”

“'M—it is—thrillingly important.”

“Then for goodness sake say it!”

Lucilla leaned against the end of the bed, gazed at the cornice, and recited in a voice modelled on the most nasal of the choir-boys, “Un-der the harsh and un-sym-pathet-ic treat-ment of her cru-el gov-er-ness the un-hap-py gy-url quick-ly with-ered a-way.”

“Lucilla, I'll pour cold water over you if you don't stop.”

“Her cru-el-ties—No, angel darling Sarah, I've stopped—I've quite stopped.”

Sarah put down the water-bottle.

“You're a perfect pest,” she said. “
What
do you want to say?”

“It's about Mr. Brown,” said Lucilla in a bubbling voice. “No, Sarah—do listen. I'm in deadly earnest—I really am. You know, he swears he isn't Uncle Maurice, and I'd simply love him to be, because I do think he's a pet besides being my Noble Preserver, but there really was a sort of truthful gleam in his eye when he said he was quite sure he wasn't, especially at the end. Don't you think so?”

Sarah was brushing her hair. She brushed it all over her face and said in the voice of a person who is bored to extinction,

“I don't think, and I won't be made to think.”

“Dull,”
said Lucilla. “Besides, it's not true. Your brain's waving quite brightly really. But you mustn't keep interrupting, because what I was going to say was this. He swears he isn't Uncle Maurice, and I think the gleam really
was
a truthful one, though of course you never can tell, men being deceivers ever, and all that sort of thing.”

“You're talking exactly like Aunt Marina,” said Sarah in a vicious voice.

Lucilla clutched her side with a long-drawn moan of anguish.

“O-oh! What a
stab
! And it's all your fault if I don't get on. Now do be an angel and just listen for a minute—curb the tongue, you know, and all that sort of thing. A snare, my dear Miss Trent—a terrible snare. No, Sarah! Not cold water! I'll scream if you don't put that bottle down—I really will! Angel darling, I'm as good as gold. Butter isn't melting in my mouth. And what I've been trying to say is that if the Noble Preserver isn't Uncle Maurice, perhaps—
perhaps
, I say—”

“Well?” said Sarah. She had tossed back her hair and still held the water-bottle poised.

Lucilla screwed up her face mysteriously, dropped her voice to a thrilling whisper, and said,

“Why shouldn't he be Uncle Henry?”

Sarah put the bottle down slowly and carefully. What fantastic nonsense. She found the last word saying itself quite loudly and emphatically—“
Nonsense
.”

Lucilla nodded.

“Of course, angel. But then, it's all nonsense. Can you put your hand on your heart and say one single sensible thing has happened since you got here? You can't. It's nonsense for him to say he's John Brown, and be able to find his way in the dark all over Holme Fallow. There's that little step down going through to the back of the hall. I sometimes trip over it myself if I'm not thinking. But he didn't. I hid down there when he was
He
, and he came along in the dark and never stumbled. He knew it was there. Isn't that nonsense? And isn't it nonsense for him to look like my Eleanor grandmother?
And he did
—down there by the pool.” She changed her voice suddenly. “Sarah, you don't
know
what a feeling I've got about his being Uncle Henry.”

Sarah's cheeks were burning. She made her voice quiet.

“When did Henry Hildred die?”

“He was supposed to have died about six months ago. I wish he hadn't. Oh, how I do wish he hadn't!”

“Where?”

“Some Pacific island sort of place. I never can remember its name. You know, it could quite easily have been a fake, Sarah. He just travelled, and travelled, and travelled with a servant who'd been with him for ages. Nobody ever saw him, and he never came home. Well, suppose he thought he'd like to come back like a sort of ghost without anyone knowing who he was—”

“Why should he pretend to be dead?” said Sarah.

“I dunno. What's the good of asking silly questions like that?” She pointed solemnly at the ceiling and made her voice deep and quavery. “‘It's a mad world, my masters.' Don't I know a lovely lot of Shakespeare, govvy darling? I think my Uncle Henry ought to be very, very proud of me—don't you? And Holme Fallow belongs to him and not to me—oh cheers! And—and we all live happy ever afterwards. Oh, I do, do,
do
hope he's Uncle Henry!”

A very bright, lovely colour came into Sarah's cheeks.

“What does it matter who he is?” she said.

“Oh,
Sarah
! As far gone as all that!” She clasped her hands and looked upwards in round-eyed adoration. “
Oh, John
—
a cottage with you!
”

Sarah took her by the shoulders and shook her.

“Lucilla, you're a brat. Now I give you fair warning—if you're not out of this room by the time I've counted five, I'll come in the middle of the night when you're asleep and pour cold water slowly down the back of your neck.”

Lucilla uttered a muffled shriek, wrenched herself free, and fled. But a moment later she put her head round the door again and murmured,

“Please, darling, where am I to sleep?”

“Wherever you like.”

“Oh, I like sleeping in here. The pinkness soaks right down into me and does me a lot of good.”

“Beat it!” said Sarah.

Lucilla put out her tongue and shut the door.

When they had changed over and Sarah was alone in the blue room, she found herself no longer in the least sleepy, but quite extraordinarily wide awake. She went and looked at herself in the glass, and was startled at a reflection all bloom, and colour, and shining eyes. Not Maurice, but Henry.… Was it possible? A sardonic voice in her own mind asserted that anything was possible, but that some things were so unlikely that they didn't happen.

If John Brown was Henry Hildred, he had been offering her Holme Fallow, down by the lower pool. Holme Fallow and Sarah Trent.… And she had blushed like a schoolgirl in front of Lucilla and said it didn't matter who he was.… Was it true that it didn't matter? If he was just John Brown, making an up and down living with his sketches and his articles on insects and birds, if he was plain John Brown, rather poor and never likely to be anything else, would she take a risk with him and let herself care? As sure as you care you get hurt. She had kept that in mind all these years, and it had kept her light-hearted and safe. Other people had got hurt, but not Sarah Trent. Was she going to risk being hurt because John Brown could put something into his voice that made her feel glad and sorry, or because the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled? She shook her head and spoke very firmly indeed to the radiant image in the glass. “Sarah, my girl, you're a fool,” she said. And with that she turned away and snapped off the light, blotting out the image and its follies.

The glowing bulb faded into the surrounding darkness. It really was a relief to get rid of all that pale blue, but she wasn't in the least bit sleepy. She heard Ricky pass the door and go along to his own room. Uncle Geoffrey was the one who sat up late. It was only that afternoon that she had told John how early they all went to bed, and how drugged with sleep they were by ten o'clock. “Mr. Hildred sits up till about midnight as a rule. He says his brain works best at night. Mine's boiled long before the evening's over.” She had said that. And John had said—no, she couldn't remember what John had said, though she could remember how he looked when he was saying it.

“Sarah, you're potty,” she said sternly. And as much to break her thoughts as anything else she went over to the east window and looked out.

At first she couldn't see anything at all. She dropped the curtain behind her, opened the lower sash and leaned out with her elbows on the sill. The air was warm and dark. She could distinguish the black line of the trees against the sky, which was not black, but a deep colourless grey. It was still, but there are always sounds in the stillness of the night. Sarah listened to these sounds and was soothed by them—the stirring of a sleepy bird, the falling of a leaf to other leaves which are fallen and withered.

She had begun to feel sleepy again, when she heard another sound, and immediately was awake. Someone had come up the drive and was crossing the gravel. There was no attempt at concealment. It was a man by the sound of the footsteps. He walked with a quick, light tread. She heard him pass under Ricky's window and go round to the front of the house.

Sarah's heart beat hard. She could have sworn that the footsteps were John Brown's, but what in the world could be bringing him up to the Red House at this time of night, she simply could not imagine. It must be close on eleven o'clock, and he knew how early they went to bed. There was an answer to that, but Sarah didn't like the answer. He knew that Geoffrey Hildred usually sat up late. Sarah didn't like the answer at all. Why should he want to see Geoffrey Hildred?