Will O’ the Wisp (10 page)

“Oh!” said Eleanor with just a little breath of protest. The story was bringing the boy of six years ago very vividly before her; as David spoke, voice, manner, and expression seemed to grow younger, more impulsive. It was easy to follow the steps by which he had walked, or blundered, into the trap which circumstance had laid for him.

David made an abrupt movement.

“Beastly—wasn't it, that poor kid with no money and not a soul in the world to care what happened to her except me?”

“Weren't there any other relations?”

“An aunt somewhere in England—her mother's sister. Erica wasn't even sure of her address. She thought she lived in London.”

“What happened? What did you do?”

“There was a woman who said she'd been a friend of the aunt's. She took Erica in, and I went off to see my agents.” He paused, turned to the table, and began to straighten some of the papers that lay there. After a moment he said: “There were letters for me, a whole bunch—I'd just missed a mail when I came away, and the St. Kerns had sent it on.” He gave a short, half-angry laugh. “Most of the Family had written to tell me you were married.”

Eleanor cried out. She had had her part, then in making the trap. That hurt very much.

David glanced at her in a detached sort of way.

“It was a knock,” he said. “You won't think I've been holding it up against you—I don't want you to think that. But I want you to understand that it hit me. I was pretty well knocked out of time, and when I came round I was a bit off my balance. I really do want you to understand. You see, it was partly everyone writing like that. Grandmamma's effort was perfectly damnable. All the rest were quite well meaning, but they got me on the raw. You know the sort of thing the Aunts write, and Milly. I felt like knocking their heads together and going off the deep end. My father wrote me a very decent letter, though it made me angry at the time. He sent me some more money and told me not to hurry home if I didn't feel like it. It's a funny thing, you know, Eleanor, the way that things turn out. My father'd have had a fit if he'd known that money was going to pay Erica's passage.”

“Go on,” said Eleanor.

David frowned.

“I didn't plan anything—things just happened. Erica tried to get work, but people said she wasn't strong enough. I went to see her every day. She was a plucky kid, and she didn't tell me the woman was being a beast to her, until one day I came in and heard her slanging the poor little thing. She was a foul-tongued brute, and if she'd been a man, I'd have knocked her down. Erica caught hold of me like a scared child and cried. And the woman said, if I meant fair by her, why didn't I marry her? and I said, ‘I'm going to.'”

There was a silence. After a while David went on.

“We were married. I took passages on the
Bomongo
. I didn't write to my father or anyone. I was awfully glad afterwards that I hadn't. The reason I didn't write wasn't anything to be proud of. I wanted to put it across the Family—to arrive and spring Erica on them. Well, it never came off, as you know. The
Bomongo
went to bits in a gale ten days out from Melbourne. They got off a boat with the women, and it was never heard of. Erica was in it. I was in the last boat, and we were picked up next day. You know all that part. I stayed in Cape Town till there wasn't any chance of the other boat having survived. When everyone had given it up, I came home. As you know, I only just saw my father. I think I'd have told him if there had been time; but there wasn't. And when he was gone there didn't seem to be any reason for telling anyone else.”

“You didn't tell anyone?”

“No—why should I?”

“Not Betty?”

“Betty was taken up with her own affairs. Francis was in the limelight at the moment—he'd just been making England a bit too hot to hold him, and I'd all that on my hands as well as settling my father's affairs.” He hesitated, and then added: “I don't know if you can understand, but it got to feel exactly like a dream—as if it hadn't really happened, you know.”

“Yes, I can understand that.” Eleanor's voice was soft. “David—I do understand—all of it. But not this.” She touched the newspaper cutting. “What does this mean?”

“That's what I don't know.”

“David, if she were alive, you'd have heard long ago.”

“That's what I've said to myself.”

“She'd have written to you. David, she
must
have written to you. You—you hadn't quarrelled?”

“No, no.”

“It must be a coincidence.”

“That's what I said the first time.”

Eleanor exclaimed sharply. She repeated his words:

“The
first
time!”

“Yes.” He leaned over and took up the cutting. “This is the third, Eleanor.”

She sat up straight, looking at him.

“David—when?”

“The first was three years ago. Look here, Eleanor, I'm telling you the whole thing. The Family had begun to think it was time I got married. Grandmamma gave the matter her personal attention. Betty was roped in and proceeded to ask a series of young things to stay. One of them came pretty often. She was a jolly little thing, and we got on awfully well in spite of Grandmamma. As a matter of fact she used to chaff me about it. Well, right in the thick of it all, this advertisement came out for the first time. I tried to find out where it had come from, but of course there was nothing doing. I wrote to the steamship company and to the solicitor I'd been to in Cape Town to ask whether they'd ever heard anything; and they said they hadn't. I couldn't think of anything else to do, and after a bit I put the matter out of my mind.”

“It must have been a coincidence.”

David looked away from her.

“The second one came out after your husband died.”

Eleanor did not speak.

“I tried again to find out. I wrote to Cape Town again, and to the agents at Melbourne and Sydney. They said the same as before—they'd heard nothing.” He paused for a moment and got up. “The third advertisement came out yesterday. Coincidence, Eleanor?”

“David, what do you really think?”

“I don't know what to think. If I'd ordinary initials—no one can pretend that there's likely to be another D. A. St. K. F. with a missing wife. If it's a practical joke, it's cruel and damned pointless. And if Erica's alive, why doesn't she write and say so?”

“How old was she?” said Eleanor irrelevantly.

“Sixteen—I told you she was only a child.”

“You didn't tell me her other name.”

“Moore—Erica Moore.”

“Did you ever try and find the aunt you spoke of?”

David threw out his hand.

“I hadn't an idea how to set about it. She was Aunt Nellie, and her surname was Smith, I shouldn't wonder if there were thousands of Nellie Smiths.”

“I should advertise,” said Eleanor quickly.

“For Nellie Smith?”

“No—for Erica. I should put her name first—Erica Moore, and then say that anyone giving news of her would be rewarded,”

David walked across the room and back.

“Yes,” he said, “yes. It couldn't do any harm.”

He sat down at the table, wrote for a moment and laid the sheet of paper on Eleanor's knee. She read:

“E
RICA
M
OORE
.—Anyone giving information with regard to Erica Moore will be rewarded.”

A fidgeting, hesitating hand fumbled at the door. Betty came halfway across the threshold and spoke querulously:

“I didn't think you could possibly know the time. The dressing-bell went ages ago.”

CHAPTER XIII

Dinner was rather a silent meal. Betty alone upheld the conversation. She had had a letter by the evening post from Dick. She read it aloud, and then, taking it as a text, discoursed upon it.

David, who had heard it all before, produced no remarks. Eleanor, with a slight air of being somewhere else, said “Yes,” and “Did he?” and “How nice, Betty!” Folly, who felt no interest at all in Dicky Lester, watched Betty between her lashes and decided shrewdly that it was not only Dicky's letter that had brought the colour to Betty's cheeks and the edge to her voice. “Jealous cat!” she said to herself.

After dinner David, with the air of a man who has had as much Dicky as he can swallow, introduced a new topic:

“By the way, I quite forgot to say Tommy Wingate's home. I ran into him last night. I've asked him to come down.”

Eleanor looked up smiling, and Betty said “Oh?” in a half-offended tone. “You might have told me at once. Is he coming?”

“Yes—to-morrow. He's eating nuts with an aged uncle to-night, or I'd have brought him with me.”

Folly, on her stool before the fire, looked from Eleanor to David.

“Who is he? Is he nice? Is he young? May I play with him?”

“Ask Eleanor,” said David. “He's her property.”

“Ooh! How exciting! Eleanor, may I flirt with him a little bit, just to keep my hand in?”

Eleanor laughed.

“Tommy will be delighted. He flirts nearly as well as you do.”

“Ooh!” said Folly. She looked out of the corners of her eyes at Betty, and then whisked round and tugged at David's sleeve.

“David, you're not to read the paper. You're to listen and give expert advice. Which of my frocks shall I wear to-morrow so as to strike Eleanor's Tommy all of a heap?”

David laughed in spite of himself.

“It's no good—he's irrevocably Eleanor's.”

Folly caught David's hand and pinched it vigorously.

“I don't want him for keeps. You haven't been listening. Eleanor's lent him to me to flirt with. Haven't you, Mrs. Grundy, darling?” She made an impudent face at Eleanor over her shoulder, then pinched David again, softly this time. “There! I've got Mrs. Grundy's leave! Even Betty can't say anything after that. Shall I wear this frock? Or does it make me look too good? I always think blue gives one a sort of maiden's prayer look. I've got a red frock you haven't seen—but perhaps that would shock him. George said it wasn't respectable.”

David had a quick vision of a little scarlet Folly with green eyes full of laughing, beckoning mischief. He pulled his hand away from the fingers that had begun to stroke the place they had pinched, and said roughly:

“Tommy won't notice what you wear.”

“You seem to have a great many clothes,” said Betty in her most disagreeable voice.

“'M—I have. I like having lots; then I can wear the wicked ones when I feel good, and the little mild angel frocks when I'm going to run amuck.” She blew an impudent kiss at David. “That's the way I keep the balance true.”

“And who pays for the frocks?” said Betty.

Folly gazed at her artlessly.

“Oh, I can always find a man to do that,” she said.

“Folly! How
could
you?” said Eleanor when they had gone upstairs.

“How could I what?”

Eleanor took her firmly by the arm.

“Come into my room. You're a little wretch, and I'm going to scold you.”

Folly skipped on to the bed and sat there with one leg tucked up under her. With the heel of the other she drummed against the brass of the bedstead.

“Folly, you shouldn't—you shouldn't really! I hated to hear you say it.”

Folly drummed.

“Say what? What
did
I say?”

“You said you could always get a man to pay for your clothes.”

“So I can.”

“Folly!”

Folly made large round eyes.

“I'm the cat with the eyes like mill-wheels, and Betty's the witch, and we're all in a fairy story—but I'm not quite sure who's the prince,” she announced.

“Folly, you shouldn't have said it.”

“Why not, if it was true?”

“It wasn't—it isn't.”

Folly blew her a kiss.

“It is—it's perfectly true—I do get a man to pay for my clothes. I get George. And doesn't he grumble?”

She jumped down laughing and flung her arms round Eleanor's neck.

“I took you in! I shocked you! Oh, Mrs. Grundy, what a score! I'm games and games and games up on you!”

Eleanor shook her.

“Folly, it isn't a game. People have beastly minds—they believe that sort of thing quite easily. Betty believed it. You saw how she changed the subject. I only hope—”

“What?” said Folly. Her arms dropped. She looked at Eleanor defiantly. “Well, what do you hope?”

“I hope David didn't believe you.”

Folly stamped her foot; her green eyes blazed out of a very white face. She said:

“I don't care a damn what David thinks!”

With the last word she had the door open and was gone. Her own door slammed and the key turned sharply.

It was a long time before Eleanor got to sleep. She woke with a start. Something had waked her, and for a moment she did not know what it was. Then the little click of the downstairs window came to her mind. That was what had waked her.

She listened intently, and heard the window close; her own window, wide open above it, carried the sound. She ran to it and leaned out. It was much later than it had been the other night, and it was cloudy, with a low mist everywhere. She looked, and could see nothing; and she listened, and could hear nothing at all.

She drew in shivering, more from strain than cold, for the night was soft. As she drew away from the window, she heard something, a faint sound which came from beyond her closed door. She opened it and stood there in the dark.

The passage ran from her door past the head of the stairs to the wing where Betty and David slept. The old schoolroom was there, and a spare bedroom. Folly's room faced the stairs. And it was on the stairs that something was moving.