Touch and Go (26 page)

Sarah could not see his face. She loved him very much. She wanted to comfort him, if he needed comforting. He must have needed it then, but there hadn't been anyone to comfort him, no one at all. It hurt her so much that she didn't know how to bear it.

He went on, his voice a little harder.

“I left asking about Lucy to the last. He told me Jack Hildred was killed in July '16. He remembered the date because it was just before the old Vicar died and he came to Holme. I got to Lucy at last. She had married Guy Raimond a month before, and they were on their honeymoon in Devonshire.”

“Oh, John!”

“It was a bit of a landslide—wasn't it? There didn't seem to be anything left. I rang off and tried to think what I'd better do. As I came out of the telephone-box, I walked right into Ronald Eversley. He recognized me at once, and we went round to his rooms and I told him the whole story. Well, telling him helped me to make up my mind. He wanted me to come back, but I pointed out that the mess was quite bad enough without my making it any worse. You see, I did really feel most awfully sorry for Lucy. She'd had an absolutely rotten show—a week's honeymoon, a war-baby, and three years of being a widow. She'd just got reputably and respectably married to Guy Raimond, who was quite a good fellow in his way, and here I was, coming back to smash up her life all over again. I don't want you to think it was pure altruism either. I
was
frightfully sorry for her, but there was my own side of it too. It seemed ages and ages ago since our marriage. It seemed as if it had happened to quite different people. I suppose I ought to have thought about Lucilla, but a baby I'd never seen didn't seem to mean very much to me. I told Ronald Eversley that I was going to stay dead. I told him I was seeing George Eckhard next day, and that we were going to fix up to go round the world together and write a book. I told him I should just go on being John Brown. In the end he saw it was the best thing I could do, and he swore he'd hold his tongue. The only stipulation he made was that I should keep in touch with him, so that if anything unforeseen happened, he could let me know.”

Sarah put out a hand and found his. He said,

“Don't be harrowed, darling. I've liked my life a good deal.”

“I'm not being sorry for
you
.” Her voice was rather choky. “You don't need being sorry for. You've got me and—and Lucilla. I'm sorry for that poor boy who hadn't got anyone.”

John Hildred kissed her.

“You're rather a nice person,” he said, and Sarah laughed.

“Aren't you lucky?”

“
Frightfully
lucky.”

She leaned against his shoulder. It was much more comfortable than sitting yards away, but she hadn't wanted to be too near whilst he told her about Lucy. Not easy for either of them. But it was over now. The rest was hers.

She said, “Go on,” and he told her about going round the world with George Eckhard.

“I enjoyed it awfully, and we wrote our book and made quite a lot of money out of it. Then we did a lecture tour in the States. Then more travels, and more books. I've made some good friends, and I've liked it all. We'll go off round the world some day. I'd like to show you everything.”

Sarah laughed happily.

“It sounds awfully grand,” she said—“as if it belonged to you—John Hildred's world.”

“Well, it is in a way. When you know things and are keen on them, they do belong to you.”

“What made you come back?”

She felt his arm tighten a little.

“Eversley. When Henry died, he wrote to me very urgently about coming home. He said I ought to, and that in the circumstances I could get a divorce from Lucy without it hurting her—her reputation, or position, or anything. She and Raimond could marry, and I could take over Holme Fallow and Lucilla. It wasn't as if there were any other children. He wrote very strongly. He said Raimond hadn't any use for Lucilla and it wasn't being fair to her.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing. I couldn't. I told him I felt bound to stand by what I'd done.” He paused for a minute.

“And then?”

“You know. Lucy and Raimond were killed in a motor smash, and that altered everything. Eversley turned up one day in Philadelphia and told me I'd got to come home. I'm going to tell you what he told me, Sarah, but it's between the two of us. Eversley's on the Stock Exchange and he knows a lot of people—contacts all over the place. He told me he had heard very disquieting rumours about Geoffrey Hildred. Geoffrey had been plunging, and Geoffrey was supposed to be pretty heavily dipped. He said I ought to come home and look into things. You see, Henry never had come home, and Geoffrey had had everything to play with for years. I'm very much afraid that there are going to be shocks all round when I do go into things. Fortunately, the London leases are all due to fall in in the next year or two, and he can't very well have played old Harry with them.”

“So you came home?”

“Yes. I wondered if Geoffrey would recognize me when I walked into his office, but he didn't—I think he really didn't. I got him to do a spot of business for me and then came down here as his client.”

“Why did you burgle Holme Fallow?”

He laughed a little.

“I wanted some photographs—my father and mother, and the old man. They were in my old desk, and I broke it open to get them.”

“I thought it was something like that—only I thought you were Maurice.”

“And Darnac thought I was trying to kill Lucilla. You know, Sarah, that business was a most awful jar. I knew there was some dirty work going on, and I guessed Geoffrey was in a hole, but even now—”

“
Mr. Hildred?
Oh, John!”

“Who else, Sarah? Who else has anything to gain? If Lucilla was out of the way, the property would go to Marina. She's an old woman, and Geoffrey must come next. He could raise as much as he wanted on his expectations. Do you see?”

“He wasn't at the picnic—he was away all Saturday.”

“I know. But either the screws were taken out of Lucilla's bicycle before she started, or else Ricky took them. There was nothing to brake for on the way out, so they may have been gone then. Either Ricky or Geoffrey could have put the screws in her pocket. Then, as regards the business up at Holme Fallow, you will remember that Geoffrey had got back from town before we started. He could have cut across the field-path and got into the house without anyone knowing. If he bumped into anyone—well, he'd changed his mind and come after us. There was really very little risk. I believe he was on the stair below Lucilla just before she fell. He got away, but that shower came on before he reached the Red House. His shoes were wet.”

Sarah sat up straight.

“But Lucilla,” she said—“
Lucilla
. If it's the way you say, Lucilla
knows
. And if she knows, why doesn't she speak? She swears it was all a trick. And she must know. It's quite impossible that she shouldn't know.”

“Yes, she knows,” said John Hildred.

“Then why, John?”

“I don't know, but I think I can guess. There's something she's afraid of.”

“Yes, I've seen that,” said Sarah

“She's plucky, but she's afraid. I'm going to find out what she's afraid of. Meanwhile she ought to be safe from any more
accidents
. It wouldn't help Geoffrey to get her out of the way now that he knows that I'm alive. He does know it, though he wouldn't admit it just now. He knows I'm Jack Hildred all right, and because he knows it Lucilla will be quite safe. That's why I had to see him to-night. Eversley will be back by the end of the week, but I didn't dare wait for him. Lucilla will be all right now.”

A cold shiver passed over Sarah and shook her. Lucilla would be all right.…

“What about you, John?” she said in a quick shaken voice.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Sarah lay awake so long that she thought she would not sleep at all. Her mind was like some brilliantly lighted hall hung with vivid, arresting pictures that filled the eye and filled the imagination. The pictures were pictures of the things which had happened in her life and in John Hildred's life. In a place by themselves the things that had happened to them together.

She could not have said at what point this waking fantasy passed into a dream. There must have been a moment when she crossed the dividing line, but she could not have said when it was. She was walking down a long flight of marble steps into a dark forest. The white marble glimmered strangely beneath the black trees. There was some light, but it did not come from sun or moon, and it got fainter and fainter until she was walking in thick darkness. Her feet had left the marble and went softly upon moss. They went too softly, for the moss clung to them and all at once she knew that she was walking into some deep bog that would hold her, and draw her down, and drown her. She tried to run, but the bog held her feet and she began to sink in it, down, and down, and down, until at last when she opened her mouth to scream the mud flowed in and choked her.

She woke with the bed-clothes over her face. It was still dark, but not far off the dawn. She hoped that she had not screamed. She decided that she would not go to sleep again, turned on the light, and read till Annie brought her tea.

Lucilla was in a silent mood at breakfast. Sarah looked at Geoffrey Hildred and wondered. He was in his most benignant humour—the comfortable, florid countryman to the life, with polite attentions for Miss Marina, an affectionate kiss for Lucilla's pale indifferent cheek, and a gallant compliment for Sarah Trent.

Sarah herself felt as if behind the front which she presented to the family breakfast-table some queer division had taken place, leaving, as it were, a façade and two flats. The façade alone was familiar. It showed the Sarah Trent to whom she and everyone else was accustomed. This Sarah Trent talked, smiled, helped herself to marmalade, and asked for another lump of sugar in her tea. In the two flats behind the façade there were two quite different Sarahs. They appeared to have moved in overnight, and she hadn't got accustomed to either of them. One of them was the wildly, unbelievably happy Sarah was who going to marry John Hildred and be mistress of Holme Fallow. She had the sun streaming in at every window, and sometimes she shouted for joy, and sometimes she went down on her knees and said her prayers. A very upheaved, disturbed, unadjusted Sarah. In the other flat the blinds were all down. There was a Sarah here who was afraid. She had the doors locked and the curtains drawn, and she was afraid. She wanted to run away and stay away. A despicable coward of a Sarah.

Very confusing being three people at once.

Probably everyone except Miss Marina was glad when breakfast was over. Miss Marina liked to linger chattily over her second cup of tea. She told them that Mercer had had a letter from her sister—not the one in Canada, but the one who had married her school-friend's widower two years ago—“Such an extremely disagreeable man, and they were two such nice women, but she seems quite happy. And now she's a step-grandmother, because his eldest daughter who married a young man in the mercantile marine last November has just had twins, a boy and a girl. And Mercer says …”

They did get away at last. Lucilla dragged Sarah upstairs, shut the door of the pink room upon them both, and said,

“Grab your hat, grab anything you want, and come along out! I shall start screaming if I don't get right away for at least three hours. Let's go up to the High Woods and scream together. I don't mind talking the Noble Preserver if you want him to play with.”

They were half way down the garden, when Lucilla began to giggle.

“This isn't the way to the High Woods.”

“It's the way to the lower pool.” Sarah's voice was deep and smooth. Her colour stood high.

“Is the Preserver at the pool? I say, that goes rather well—doesn't it?”

“He might be,” said Sarah, who was wondering whether there was any chance that Lucilla would believe that their meeting with John Brown was a fortuitous one.

Lucilla giggled again.

“For a chaperone, my angel, you do go it a bit, don't you?” She linked her arm in Sarah's, breathed another giggle into her ear, and said in a piercing dramatic whisper,

“What were you doing last night?”

“I was asleep,” said Sarah with commendable calm. “Weren't you?”

“Asleep? No, no—not while my Sarah was in peril. I wandered in just to see if her angel eyes were closed in slumber. As a matter of fact I'd thought of a simply clinching reason for the Preserver being Uncle Henry, and when I rushed to tell you about it you weren't there. And hours, and hours, and hours afterwards I heard your guilty footsteps pass my door. Nice goings on, I don't think! Govvy, you're blushing! And you were perfectly right—the Preserver
is
down at the pool. I believe you had an assignation.”

Sarah said “Yes” in an absent voice. She was trying to control the happy and still unadjusted Sarah who was waving flags out of the window and calling to John Hildred in an extremely forward way.

Lucilla saw the flags at once. Indeed she could hardly have missed them, they flew so bright in Sarah's cheeks. John Hildred saw them too as he came up from the pool to meet them. He looked from one to the other, saw the mischief in Lucilla's eyes, and putting his arm around Sarah, enquired,

“Have you told her?”

Lucilla instantly uttered a shriek of joy, clutched them both, and kissed first Sarah and then John. She continued to hold on to them, laughing and chattering.

“Have you told anyone else? I'll never forgive you if you have, because of course I've seen it coming. You cannot deceive your Aunt Lucilla. Now was it really really truly love at first sight? Because if it was, I must write at once and collect ten bob from Angela Marsden. She said no one ever did fall in love at first sight, and I said they did, and we had ten bob on it. If I couldn't collect a first-hand, authentic, word-of-honour case within the year, she won, but if I got one, I did. So you'll be careful, won't you, because I shall have to put my hand on my heart and swear it's a genuine case.”