The Witness on the Roof (13 page)

She threw back the flap of the counter and marshalled Joan into the little parlour behind.

“We got the telegram first thing this morning saying you were coming to-day, but I didn't think you could be here so soon, nor did I reckon on seeing you tall and grand-like—though I might ha' knowed. Married—and to a lord too! Your father has been asking for you terrible often. He has fair wore the life out of me with his ‘Polly —Polly—bring Polly here!'”

“I hope he is better,” Joan said as her stepmother paused.

Mrs. Spencer shook her head.

“There will never be any better for him in this world. The doctor said to me an hour ago, ‘He may last the day out, Mrs. Spencer, or he may not; I can't promise you.' It—it will be terrible hard on me. What will become of me and the children I don't know!” putting the comer of her apron to her eyes.

But there were no real tears, as Joan was quick to see. She remembered how this woman had tyrannized over her father in the old days, how she had driven Evelyn from home and rendered her own childhood miserable, and she felt in no mood to sympathize with her now. She refused the proffered chair decidedly.

“I should like to see my father as soon as possible, Mrs. Spencer.”

Mrs. Spencer was in no wise abashed.

“And so you shall, my dear. I will just run up first and see how he is. But here is somebody that will like to see you. Jim Gregory—you'll remember Gregory, don't you, Polly?—my lady, I mean I should say!”

Joan put out her hand with a pleasant smile to the big, awkward-looking man.

“Of course I remember Gregory. You used to be very good to me. Don't say you have forgotten me.”

Gregory took her hand awkwardly.

Joan decided, as she glanced at his coarse, reddened features and small, roving eyes, that the years had certainly not improved him.

“No, I haven't forgotten you. How should I?” he said slowly. “But I shouldn't have known you. You—you mind me a little of your mother, though,” he added in a lower tone.

Mrs. Spencer had hurried up the narrow stairs; they were alone. Joan turned to him eagerly.

“Oh, did you know my mother? I never thought—”

Gregory gave a short laugh.

“Ay, I mind her well when I was a lad! I was stable boy first, and then third groom when your father was coachman to Sir Robert Brunton. 'Twas there your mother died, and he married her,” with a jerk of his head towards the stairs.

“And you think I am like her?” Joan said with interest.

“Yes. You have a look of her,” Gregory pronounced slowly. “You are taller than she was, and her hair was yellower, but there is a look.”

“Shorter and fairer,” Joan said thoughtfully. “That sounds more like Evelyn. I do wish she had been able to come with me to-day.”

“Evie—ah!” It was almost a groan that broke from Gregory.

Glancing at him in surprise, Joan saw that his rubicund countenance was several degrees paler.

“Yes, Evelyn,” she repeated. “She was ill this morning or she would have been with me. Is there anything the matter with you, Gregory? You don't look well.”

“That is nothing,” he said testily. “An old pain in my side—never take any notice of it. What is that you were saying? Who was it that would ha' come with you? Not—not—”

“I said Evie, my sister Evelyn, Miss Davenant.”

“Evie?” Gregory echoed, gaping at her. “Evie would have come with you—”

“Why, of course she would!” Joan said a trifle impatiently. “Naturally she too is anxious to see our father again.”

Gregory's eyes were still fixed on her; his expression did not alter.

“Where is Evie?”

“You have not heard! How stupid of me!” Joan said with a faint smile. “My grandmother left the property to her—not to me. She is at Davenant Hall now.”

Gregory looked half dazed, she thought. He fingered his neckerchief with trembling fingers.

“Evie, at Davenant Hall?” he muttered slowly. “I don't understand. If you would say it again—”

“Certainly she is at Davenant Hall,” Joan said impatiently.

“Will you come upstairs, now, my dear?” Mrs. Spencer called from the stair head. “Your father is awake. You'll find the way quite easy, and these stairs do try my breath, and he is calling out for you.”

It was somewhat of a relief to get away from Gregory. Joan ran upstairs lightly.

“It is one more flight and then you are up,” Mrs. Spencer said encouragingly. “Gregory would be rare and pleased to see you, I know.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Joan assented doubtfully. “He—he seems rather peculiar. I could not help wondering if he had been drinking.”

“Oh, no!” Mrs. Spencer shook her head. “He may be the worse for drink sometimes in an evening, but never at this time of day; unless”—as an afterthought—“he had a glass or two when he heard you were coming. Here's your father. Amy, you can go away now. Your sister has come.”

Amy, a thin, lanky girl of sixteen or seventeen, got up from the bedside.

“You will remember to give him his draught, mother?”

Joan went forward softly. Was this indeed the father she remembered—this gaunt, haggard man lying in the middle of the four-poster, fighting painfully for every breath? The big face was pale now; in the features sharpened by illness Joan saw a shadow of the good looks that had won Mary Davenant's heart.

He was watching the door anxiously.

“Polly—I want Polly! Who”—as the girl came up to the bed and took his wasted hand in hers—“is this? Not—not—Miss Mary.”

They were alone now. Mrs. Spencer had retreated with her daughter. Joan bent forward and touched the wrinkled forehead with her lips.

“I am Polly—your little Polly, father, don't you know me?”

“You are Polly?” The failing eyes sought hers pitifully. “Ah, well, it was right you should be made a lady of, as your mother was! You were safe enough. I knew the old lady, Mrs. Davenant, would see to that. It—it is Evie as I am worrying about. I ought to have found out where Evie was long afore this. When that lawyer-fellow come down asking questions about her a month ago, I see how I'd been to blame and I made up my mind to look for her. Now—now I'm going to die and that is all at an end, but you—you must find Evie, Polly.”

Joan's eyes were dim with tears as she stooped over him.

“Evie is found, father dear. She is at Davenant Hall. She wanted to come with me to-day, but she is ill.”

He looked up at her with lack-lustre eyes.

“Evie has come home? No, no! She hasn't! You haven't done your duty by Evie, Miss Mary said—she comes to me in the nights, Miss Mary does.”

It was strange to Joan to hear him talk of her mother as he had thought of her no doubt when he was the groom at Warchester and she was his young mistress. It was not as his wife that he recalled her now, but as pretty, dark-eyed Miss Mary Davenant.

He moved his head about restlessly.

“Polly is all right, Miss Mary says. But where is Evie? You ought to have thought of Evie before this. I—I'm going soon, Polly. I shall see her there—Miss Mary. What am I to say to her about Evie?”

“Tell her that Evie is at Davenant Hall—in her old, home—that everything is going to be very well with both her children in the future.”

One of the restless hands began to pluck at the bedclothes.

“Ay, ay! Polly is married to a lord—I see it in the paper. It is Evie—Evie that I am thinking about. You will find her, Polly? Promise—for Miss Mary's sake!”

It was no use trying to make him understand. Joan held his clammy hand in her warm young fingers.

“I—I promise, father. I will take care of Evie. You must not worry about her any more.”

A shade of content crept into the dying eyes.

“She was a bit high-spirited, was Evie, and she did not get on with the missus, but she was rare and good to the little 'un. She allus put little Polly afore herself. You'll remember you have promised to find Evie?”

“I will remember,” Joan answered clearly.

“E
ARTH
to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Joan shivered as the solemn words of the Burial Service sounded in her ears. She looked fixedly at the clergyman standing at the head of the grave, at Mrs. Spencer, heavily veiled in black, clinging to her son Robert's arm and sobbing convulsively. Tim stood at Joan's right, changed by the passage of years from a solemn, podgy-faced baby into a fat, rosy-cheeked urchin of twelve. With the exception of Evelyn, all John Spencer's children had gathered round his grave.

To Joan it had a curious feeling of unreality; she felt as if she were taking part in a play. Life had flowed on quietly during the ten years at Davenant. Now everything seemed changing.

Her father had died on the day of her arrival; his last thought apparently had been for Evelyn, for the daughter he had not seen for fifteen years: Joan had remained at Willersfield for the funeral, in spite of Warchester's remonstrances.

As the clergyman read the last Collects, with their ring of triumphant faith, she was thinking very pitifully of her father, of his pathetic fear that Miss Mary would reproach him for neglecting her children. Joan wondered if that early headstrong marriage of theirs had brought happiness to him any more than to her mother.

She moved forwards with the rest of the mourners for one last look at the coffin. The sun streamed down on the plate. She could read the words “John Spencer, aged fifty-five.” An arm was put within hers, she was drawn gently away; looking up, she met Warchester's eyes.

“Paul!”

“Yes?” He led her away across the grass to where several coaches were awaiting them, for, as Mrs. Spencer phrased it, it had been a very comfortable funeral. “Did you not know that I should come to fetch you home? I have obeyed you long enough by staying at the Towers; but to-day I could not let you be alone, I was grieved that I was not in time to start with you, but we had to wait half an hour outside Birmingham—there had been a collision and the line was blocked. But now I am going to take you back by the next train, and we shall be home in time for dinner.”

“Yes,” Joan acquiesced slowly, “there is nothing more for me to do here, and I shall be glad to be at home.”

Warchester's face lighted up; it was joy enough for him that she should let him care for her, that she should be glad to come back to him. A carriage waited behind the mourning-coaches; he guided her to it.

“We will drive to the station at once.”

“One moment!” Joan stopped to say good-bye to Mrs. Spencer.

“You—you are not going now, my dear?” inquired that lady amid her sobs. “Why, we have not said half I meant to, and I wanted to ask you—”

Warchester frowned.

“If you have anything more to communicate to Lady Warchester it must be written,” he said brusquely. “She is not well, and all this has been too much for her. I am taking her home at once.”

“Oh, yes! I am sure, sir, I mean, my lord”—Mrs. Spencer fumbled with her handkerchief—“it isn't me nor her poor father that would have wished to keep her against her will. I take it as very kind her coming down like this, but—but there was one little thing I wanted to mention—”

“Write to-night, then,” said Warchester impatiently.

He saw that the scene was telling upon Joan and was anxious to put a stop to it. “Lady Warchester will attend to it, as soon as possible.”

Mrs. Spencer cast a vindictive glance at him as he walked away. To a woman of her nature the sight of Joan, high in the world's esteem, with rank, wealth and an adoring husband, must always be an aggravation.

Joan leaned out of the carriage for a few seconds.

“Good-bye, Amy!”

The tall, thin girl, approached rather timidly; it was from her that Joan had learned all the details of her father's illness; she knew that Amy mourned him sincerely.

“Good-bye, Lady—my lady,” the girl stammered confusedly.

Joan stooped down and kissed the thin young cheek impulsively.

“Don't call me that Amy. Remember I am Joan—your sister, Joan. Good-bye, dear!”

Warchester watched his wife closely as they drove to the station. He had been seriously anxious about her of late. Her prolonged fainting fit the previous week, her manner, fitful and variable, had filled him with alarm.

At the station he had engaged a special carriage for her. He would not let her speak until he had seen her ensconced in a corner amid a multiplicity of cushions and wraps. Then as he caught her glance fixed upon him wistfully he came towards her.

“Well, Joan, what is it?”

“Evelyn,” Joan questioned—“I want to hear about her. Is she very ill? How do you like her, Paul?”

Warchester sat down beside her, and, taking her hand, pressed it gently.

“I haven't seen her; I have called twice, but she has remained in bed. Dr. Wilkins says it is nothing serious—more nerves than anything else, I fancy.”

Joan moved restlessly.

“I wish she had been able to come. Poor Father—he was so anxious about her! He did not seem able to believe that she was safe and sound at Davenant. It was pitiable to hear him saying that my mother would say that he hadn't taken care of Evie. I do think she ought to have made an effort to come, don't you?”

Warchester frowned; he was strongly of opinion now that it would have been better if Joan had stayed away. With regard to Evelyn, he knew little and cared less.

“She had not seen him for fifteen years, you know,” he said. “I don't suppose her interest in him was very acute. As for the rest—well, he had not been much of a father to either of you as far as I can make out. It was likely enough he would feel that at the last.”

Joan sighed.

“He—I think he wanted to do the best for us,” she said loyally. “There was not much in his power, remember, Paul. Amy, the eldest of Mr. Spencer's children, is a nice girl. Did you notice her? She is nearly seventeen, and there is not much of a life before her. I should like to do something for Amy.”