Hue and Cry (23 page)

She put her hand into her coat pocket for her purse. Surely—
surely
she had put it in the right-hand pocket with Barbara's drawings. It wasn't there. She felt the left-hand pocket, and it wasn't there either. She shook her coat, she turned the pockets inside out. She shook herself, and rummaged in her bundle. The purse was gone.

Mally sat down on the new boarded floor, still thick with sawdust and shavings, and said out loud to the damp brick walls, “Oh, Lord, I'm beat!”

The purse must have fallen out in the attic when she changed, or in the car. She was a perfect idiot to have left it in the pocket of a coat which had been turned upside down and inside out and used to roll things up into a bundle with.

“I'm an absolute, first-class, utter, prize, born fool!” said Mally firmly. Then she stuck her chin in the air and laughed. “Thank goodness the chocolate didn't drop out too!” She undid it and divided it into three. “Breakfast—lunch—tea. Something's bound to turn up before the evening, so it's no use glooming.”

She ate “breakfast,” and put away “lunch” and “tea” in her jumper pockets. Then she went outside, quenched her thirst with snow, washed her face and hands, and dried them with her handkerchief. All the interminable hours of the day stretched before her. She went back into the sunny room, sat down on the pile of sacks, and tried hard to make a plan.

Half an hour later she had not thought of a plan, but she had remembered that there was a cross-word puzzle amongst Barbara's drawings. It would be something to do. Plans won't always come when you try to make them come. But sometimes, if you stop bothering and think of something else, a really good plan just drops down on you ready-made.

Mally pulled out the bundle of papers and unfolded it. The cross-word puzzle was at the bottom of the pile. She laid it on the top of the drawings and began to read the clues: “Lady Bird”; “A Swift Curler Of Old Times”; “New Child's Holiday Invention”; “Old Hats for New”; “Hard Amber”… She stared at the words. The person who had made the puzzle must have had a passion for capitals; nearly all the words had capital letters.

There were a lot more clues, and they all looked most frightfully difficult. One, farther on, that caught her eye was “An Elephant's Height In Nowgong.” And right across the top of the paper was written, “Heliogabulus was never emperor in Constantinople.”

She frowned at the page and turned it so as to get a better light. The sun must have gone behind a cloud; it seemed to have got much darker just in the last ten minutes. The thought of how much darker it had got edged itself into Mally's mind and suddenly had all her attention. She got up and went to the window.

The bank of fog stood no higher than it had done when she awoke. The space of sky above it was a clear thin blue line tinged with green. The sun was gone. She looked, and could not believe her eyes; went on looking, and had to believe them. The sun was really gone. The wind last night—the wind that had pushed her into the house—had been northeast if she had ever felt a northeast wind in her life. This room on the other side of the house must face southwest, and it was the setting, not the rising sun that had waked her. If she was going to get anywhere at all to-day, it behooved her to make a start and at least reach a main road before the dark closed down and she was lost in it as she had been lost last night.

The shock of her discovery braced her. She felt more awake, more alive, better able to think; and the plan that had eluded her when she racked her brains for it came to her now. She couldn't stay here, and she couldn't freeze in the open, and since she had no money, she could not travel by train; she must just find Ethan Messenger and get him to help her. He was staying with aunts four miles from Curston. It wasn't much to go on, but it was all she had. He had said “my father's sisters,” so they were probably Miss Messengers—no one spoke of married aunts like that. Of course four miles from Curston might be four miles in the opposite direction, “in which case I'm done.” Well, the first thing was to find some human habitation and just ask for Miss Messenger's house. It was risky, but Mally had come to the place where she was bound to take risks or just sit down and starve with cold and hunger.

She went out into the hall, which had become startling dark, and climbed the ladder which led to the upper story. If there were a light anywhere within sight, she would make for that. She went into every room and looked through every window. Trees, fields, snow; but not a twinkle of kindly light anywhere until she came to the last small room and saw from the window a faint, far spark. She very nearly cried out in her relief.

“Even if it's a policeman's house and he arrests me the very first minute he sets eyes on me, I don't care,” said Mally vehemently to herself. “I don't care. Do you hear? I don't
care.
I want to see people, and hear people, and not be alone in this horrible, cold, empty place—
Oh! What's that?”

It was exactly as if some wicked fairy had been listening and had flung Mally her wish with a horrid, mocking laugh. Mally, half-way between the window and the door of the little upstairs room, heard a heavy, stumbling footstep that came nearer and nearer—a man's footstep—, and then a man's voice, hoarse and unpleasant, calling out. For a moment Mally thought that he was calling to her, and all the dreadful stories she had ever heard in her life came into her mind and paralyzed her with terror. It was only for a moment, because another voice called back.

There were two men. They were both horrible. They used dreadful words and they had dreadful voices. She put her fingers in her ears so as not to hear them, and then took them out again quickly, because if she couldn't hear, she wouldn't be able to tell whether they were coming upstairs or not.

“Thank
goodness,
there aren't any stairs! They sound as if they were drunk. Drunken men won't try and climb ladders. At least”—Mally gasped—“At least I—I shouldn't think they would. Oh, don't let them—don't let them—don't
let
them!”

She heard their footsteps go into the room where she had been. She tried to remember whether she had left anything there. The papers had gone back into her pocket. She had left her bundle just by the foot of the ladder. They'd find it in a minute if they looked.

“Don't let them look. Please,
please
don't let them look. It's dark—it's getting darker every minute. They needn't see it—they really, really needn't see it. Oh,
please
don't let them!”

Mally did not say these things out loud, but she said them very fervently in her own mind. She stood with her hands clenched under her chin, and her lips moved stiffly without making any sound. She could hear a match struck. She could hear the sacks being dragged about. She could hear the men's voices, but not what they were saying. The smell of coarse tobacco floated up to her.

After a while the tension relaxed. Mally was a very resilient creature. She passed quickly from an extremity of terror lest the men should come upstairs to a cheerful conviction that they would not come upstairs. She gave herself a little shake and tiptoed back to the window from which she could see that one friendly spark of light. Presently the men would go to sleep, and she would crawl down the ladder and get away. Meanwhile, lunch-time and tea-time both being past, she ate all the rest of her chocolate and felt better.

It was a long, long, weary wait. The last faint gleams of daylight followed the sun, and a very black darkness came down upon the dusk and blotted it out. It got colder and colder and colder. The men downstairs talked intermittently. As a matter of fact, they were playing cards by the light of a filched candle-end, though Mally was not to know that. Presently they quarrelled, and Mally felt terror come leaping back at the sound of their raucous shouts.

At long, long last there was silence.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Whilst Mally was sleeping the dark morning hours away on a pile of sacks in the back room of an empty house, Ethan Messenger was having breakfast with the younger of his two aunts.

Some fifty-five years before, Ethan's grandmother, enraptured with her twin daughters, had cast about her for names which should express her emotions. She considered her ultimate choice of Serena and Angela “very sweet indeed.” Angel Messenger; Serene Messenger—what could be more beautiful and inspiring? Most of her friends and relatives made appropriate response with, “What, indeed?” Only her mother-in-law, a tough old lady who would have liked one at least of the children to be named Martha after herself, had something unpleasant to say:

“Angela—Serena. H'm, my dear Annie, the Messenger women are apt to be plain, and I'd advise you to give the girls good plain names that won't shame them. If Martha's good enough for me, and Annie for you, I should have thought it might be good enough for the next generation.”

Ethan's grandmother was a gentle creature and an obstinate. She said nothing, but she pressed her lips together; and at the font the babies received the names which she had meant them to receive.

Angela and Serena were plain babies, plain children, plain young girls. Now, at fifty-five, they were no plainer than a great many other people, and every one they knew had got used to their names.

On this snowy morning Miss Serena had gone to town, and Miss Angela was giving Ethan his breakfast and hearing in full detail all about last night's ball at Curston.

“It must have been quite a sight. Of course, dear boy, Lady Mooring asked us both; though I suppose she knew that we should not come. At least she would have known that Serena would not come. No one could possibly expect your Aunt Serena to have time for balls—I'm sure the number of committee meetings she attends is quite bewildering. But I sometimes think that perhaps it was rather a mistake—for me, I mean, to give up society in the way I did.”

Ethan looked kindly at his little aunt. She was small, and peaked of feature, with a good deal of wispy hair that had once been monotonously flaxen and was now a yellowish gray. The tip of her nose was always a little pink, and she had a habit of shutting first one eye and then the other, in order to look sideways at it, so that she might see just how pink it was. If it was very pink, she felt depressed; if the light flattered it, her spirits rose and she was capable of mild coquetry. Her small gray eyes were kind, and her smile, when not worried, very sweet indeed.

“Why did you give up society?” asked Ethan.

“Oh, I don't know. Serena didn't care for it. But then, of course, she has all those committees. I can't think how she remembers which is which—but she's so strong-minded. I did like going out. Only there was the war, and of course we're not as well off as we used to be.”

“What committee is it to-day?”

“My dear boy, I'm not sure. I think it's the N.Z.U.K., or else the P.S.T.W.—or perhaps both. Yes, I think she's going to two at least, because it's the second one that may make her miss the last train, in which case Margaret Gooding will put her up. It's so tiresome all our trains being so early. But if she isn't in by half-past ten, I always know she isn't coming. It used to worry me, but I've got accustomed to it. Your Aunt Serena is so strong-minded.”

“Oh, but Aunt Angel, I didn't know you were going to be all by yourself to-night, or I wouldn't have said I'd dine with the Holmeses. Look here, let me ring Mrs. Holmes up. She'd be delighted to have you too—I'm sure she would.”

Miss Angela flushed.

“Dear boy! Oh, no—I couldn't. Why, I haven't got a dress I can dine out in.”

Ethan grinned.

“Mrs. Holmes wouldn't know what you had on. They all rag her about her own clothes, and she only laughs.”

Miss Angela looked at the tip of her nose, and brightened.

“I was at her wedding,” she said in a pleased, reminiscent voice. “She was a fine, fresh-colored girl, but no beauty. And if you'll believe me, she came up the aisle with her wreath crooked and her veil all over one shoulder. Well, it's turned out very happily in spite of Mr. Holmes being twenty years older and never going anywhere—like me.”

“Come to the Holmeses.”

“No, no, I'd rather not. I feel it's rather dreadful of me, but in a way—if you understand what I mean—I quite enjoy an evening to myself. Serena's so political, you know, and she likes me to try and keep up with her. And of course I can't play the piano when she's busy with her reports. And she doesn't really approve of novels. So to-night I thought I'd go through all my old songs. And I've got a novel—it's—it's rather modern, I'm afraid, and——” Miss Angela hesitated and lowered her voice. “My dear boy, now I wonder—I mean there's something I should like to ask you.”

Ethan had visions of being asked to explain the “modern” novel. He blenched. But Miss Angela went on hurriedly:

“You go about so much, I thought I could ask you. It—it's rather
delicate
of course.”

He wondered what on earth was coming.

“You see, I can't ask Serena, and I don't like to ask any one else; but I thought that you——” She dropped her voice still lower. “It's about my hair.”

“Your hair?”

“S'sh! Grace doesn't listen at doors, but she might be passing.”

“But—your hair?”

“S'sh. Yes,
whether I should shingle it.”
This in the very smallest possible whisper. “Oh, dear boy, what d'you think? Could I?”

“I don't see why not.”

Ethan looked at the wispy ends of hair, the jutting hairpins, and tried to picture Aunt Angel with a smooth, neat head, and some little curls over her ears. (Miss Mally Lee wore her hair that way.)

“I don't see why not,” he repeated, and was rewarded with a rapturous smile.

“Don't you let Aunt Serena bully you. You have it off if you want to. Look here, I'll tell you what, you go and pin it up in what's-his-names at the sides, and we'll see what it looks like. And if you like it, I'll run you into Guildford to-morrow, and you shall have it off.”