Will O’ the Wisp (11 page)

With a quickness born partly of fear and partly of a sudden sharp anger, Eleanor put her hand on the switch outside her door and jerked it down. The light at the stair-head came on. The passage shone bright and empty.

Eleanor ran forward noiselessly. Halfway up the stair, with a black cloak thrown round her, stood Folly March, the fingers of her left hand resting on the balustrade, her eyes wide open and blank with fright. She looked up, saw Eleanor, and came up the remaining stairs with a rush.

“Ooh! You nearly killed me! Put the light out—put it out quick!”

She pushed open her own bedroom door, dragged Eleanor in, and turned out the passage light from the switch just outside. Then she shut the door and put on the light in the ceiling.

“Did you want to kill me? You nearly did.”

“Folly, where have you been?”

Folly pulled off her cloak, rolled it into a ball, and flung it across the room.

“'M—” she said. “That's the question!”

She was in her nightgown, a flimsy transparent affair, white, with pink flowers on it. Her little feet were as bare and pink as a baby's.

Eleanor looked at the hem of the flimsy nightgown. It had been drizzling with rain all the afternoon; the mist was breast-high outside; park, and grass, and stone-paved walk must all be dripping wet. The little flowered night-gown was dry and crisp. The little pink feet were dry.

Folly stood looking at her toes. She shot an innocent glance at Eleanor's puzzled face, then she twiddled the toes.

“They're quite dry,” she said with modest pride.

“Folly, where have you been?”

“On a broomstick over the moon.”

“Folly, darling!”

“Didn't you know I was a witch? You can keep beautifully dry on a broomstick. Go to bed, darling. You can. It's quite safe—I never go for more than one broomstick ride at a time. And I really like moonlight best—it's more amusing.”

She put her arm round Eleanor, hugged her, pushed her out of the door, and locked it in her very face.

Eleanor heard a smothered laugh:

“Good-night, Mrs. Grundy.”

The light in Folly's room went out with a click.

CHAPTER XIV

Next day being Saturday, Tommy Wingate came down for the week-end. Miss Folly March seemed to approve of him; she certainly flirted with him to an extent that made Betty look down her nose, and provided a good deal of entertainment for the domestic staff. Tommy played golf with her, sang with her, and danced with her. But Folly was shrewdly aware of the fact that Eleanor had only to beckon him with a glance.

When she did, Tommy's gratitude was patent. He did not flirt with Eleanor; he merely adored. He had never hidden, or desired to hide, his devotion.

On Sunday evening he came down early, and found Eleanor early too. She was standing by the fire, dropping fir-cones on to it and watching them blaze. She wore a white embroidered shawl of China crêpe over her black velvet dress; the long white fringes fell almost to her feet. She turned to him, half laughing, as he came in.

“Don't they smell good? I love the fat green ones. Oh, Tommy! Isn't it good to be home again?”

“It's good to be anywhere that you are,” said Tommy, looking at her through his absurd shining eyeglass. He thought her the most beautiful woman in the world, and the most gracious.

“Thank you, Tommy. It's been ever so nice to see you.”

Tommy leaned against the mantelpiece, one hand on the marble edge.

“You'll see lots of me. Are you going to be in town?”

“For a bit.”

“I can get up for week-ends. You'll let me come and see you?” His jolly eyes were suddenly wistful like the eyes of a dog who begs for what he knows he must not have.

Eleanor looked back at him sweetly and kindly.

“I shall love it,” she said. Then she put her hand on his for a moment. “Nice Tommy! But, Tommy, dear, don't be
too
nice to me.”

“Why not?” said Tommy stoutly.

She just shook her head without speaking.

“I know it's no good now,” he said without looking at her. “But some day—”

Eleanor looked down into the fire. There were tears in her eyes.

“Oh, Tommy, that's all over.”

Tommy squared his shoulders.

“That,” he said, “is nonsense! You're twenty-five aren't you? There's a frightful lot of time ahead of one at twenty-five.”

“Yes,” said Eleanor.

She stooped over the fire and pushed down a log with her hand. Tommy screwed his eyeglass firmly into his eye.

“When you're twenty-five there's no end of time to be happy in. That's what you want to get into your head. The other's all rot. You're meant to be happy, and I want to see you happy. Of course, I'd like it to be me; but if it isn't me, I'd like it to be some good chap who'll make you a thundering good husband.”

“Tommy, dear,
don't!
”

“All right, I won't. You know I'm—well, I'm always there, and I always shall be there. You can bank on that.”

It was at this moment that they both became aware of Folly with her hand on the half-open door. For once in her life she seemed to be a little taken aback. She looked over her shoulder, saw Betty behind her, and ran forward.

She had put on the scarlet frock. It suited the quiet Sunday evening about as well as scarlet paint would suit St. Paul's Cathedral. George March had been justified in his protest. The scarlet tulle left Folly's slim white back bare to the waist and stopped short a good two inches above the knee; there were no sleeves; there was very little bodice. There was, in fact, so little of it at all that if it had not been of a surprisingly vivid colour, it might have been mistaken for an under-garment.

Folly wore
the
curls on a silver ribbon. She also wore a dead white complexion and scarlet lips. Tommy looked at her with interest. Later on, after dinner, she took him away to the far end of the room, seated herself on the arm of a stiff, old-fashioned sofa, and said:

“Tommy, are we friends?”

Tommy didn't sit; he stood beside her with his back to the group by the fire.

“
Rather!
” he said.

“Are we old friends? You know, the sort that can talk home truths to each other?”

Tommy twinkled at her.

“Do you want me to talk home truths to you? Where shall I begin?”

“Stupid!” said Folly, swinging her feet.

She looked over Tommy's shoulder and was delighted to observe that Betty was watching them.

“Who are you calling stupid? I'm the brains of the Army.”

“Then it's got very stupid brains. I'm going to it tell the home truths to you—that is, if we're really friends and you won't go through the roof. Well—shall I?”

“Are you going to tell me I've got a smut on my nose?”

“As if I should bother! It's your nose—you can have as many smuts on it as you like. No—I'm serious! 'M—I
can
be serious, Tommy, so you needn't look at me like that.”

“All right, fire away!”

“Perhaps you'll be angry. All right, here goes.
Don't be a mug
.”

“What d'you mean?”

“I mean, don't be a mug. You are, you know. I came in and heard you.”

“What did you hear?”

“I heard you being a mug. You were telling Eleanor that, whatever happened, you'd always be there, nice and handy for her to trample on when she wanted to.”

Tommy stiffened a little.

Folly kicked her heels and made a face at him.

“There you go! I knew you would. Mind you, I don't suppose you've got a chance anyhow. If she marries anyone, she'll probably marry David. But if you have got the least scrap of a chance, you're simply chucking it away when you talk like that. Who's going to bother about a man who's always there? Go to the pictures and see some nice films about sheikhs—that's what you want. If Eleanor didn't think you were going to be lying about waiting to be picked up for the next hundred years or so, she might—”

Tommy shook his head.

“You don't understand. And look here, I think we'd better go back to the others.”

“Mug!” said Folly, jumping off the sofa.

She went to the piano and played old-fashioned out-of-date song-tunes, all very sentimental and sugary. As she played, she watched the others. Betty and Eleanor on the sofa to the left of the fire; and Tommy with his back to her leaning forward in his chair and talking cheerfully and discursively to Eleanor. Betty had a book. Sometimes she read it; sometimes she listened to Tommy. Every now and then they all laughed.

David sat on the other side of the fire. He was reading. His eyes never left his book, but he did not very often turn a page. Folly looked at him, and looked away. Eleanor's shawl had fallen from her shoulders; it lay on the sofa between her and Betty. Tommy was playing with the fringe, plaiting and unplaiting it.

Folly struck a loud banging chord, jumped up, and ran across to Eleanor. She held her elbows and shivered ostentatiously.

“Eleanor, may I have your shawl?”

“You certainly want it,” said Betty pointedly.

Eleanor smiled and nodded.

Folly caught it up by a handful of fringe, shook it out, and made a little sheeted ghost of herself. Then she trailed across the hearth, picked up her stool, and carried it round to the corner between David and the wall. Here she sat herself down chin in hand and kept silence for a long ten minutes. Then David heard a dejected voice at his elbow:

“David!”

“What is it?”

“Are you angry with me too?”

David looked round. There was something forlorn about this little white ghost with all its flaunting scarlet hidden away. He had never looked at Folly quite as he looked at her now.

“Silly little thing! Who's angry with you?”

“Betty is—and Tommy is. Are you?”

“No.”

“But you didn't like my dress—did you?”

“No, I didn't. Why on earth did you get it?”

A flicker of impudence came and went.

“I got it in Paris, partly because George said I wasn't to, and partly because I thought it was like my name.”

David's eyes laughed.

“Are you as scarlet a folly as all that?”

“'M—sometimes. But I didn't mean that. My name's not really English folly, but French
follet
, and I got it from an old French gentleman, Monsieur Renault, who came and stayed with us when I was five. He heard them call me Flora, and he said it was a name much too serious. Ooh! I can hear him saying it now—‘
beaucoup trop sérieux
.' He said I was
Feu-follet
—Will-o'-the-Wisp. And after that everyone called me Folly. Sometimes I hate him, because I think I might have been ever so good if they'd gone on calling me Flora.”

Her face came just a little way above the arm of David's chair; it was tilted up to him. David looked down at sad green eyes, a white face, and a painted scarlet mouth. Suddenly, vividly, he remembered that he had kissed Folly, and that Folly had kissed him. He pushed his chair back a foot and picked up his book. In another moment he would have kissed her again under Betty's very eyes.

He held the book between them and looked hard at it.
Feu-follet
—Will-o'-the-Wisp—Fire-folly—Wildfire. The words slipped through his mind, each name a little dancing tongue of flame floating over dangerous places—dark, dangerous places where a man might drown.

After a moment Folly moved too. She turned slowly round upon her stool and sat quite still, with one hand propping her cheek, and mournful eyes that looked into the flames—and looked long. The white China shawl fell round her to the ground. It was the colour of ivory, and the raised flowers and birds and butterflies embroidered on it looked as if they were carved in ivory. Folly herself was so still and so white that she too might have been a little ivory figure with the firelight playing on it.

David never looked at her once.

Tommy went off next morning after an early breakfast. David drove him to the station, and came back to find Betty and Eleanor at the toast and marmalade stage, with Folly on the fender-stool alternately eating an orange and reading extracts from the Births, Marriages, and Deaths. She kissed her hand to David as he came in.

“We're all weeping for our Tommy. I'm trying to cheer the others on their way. 'M—Mrs. Mulberry Beam has a son—only she doesn't put it like that. It's, ‘Mrs. Mulberry Beam—Genevra Jones—a son, Theophil Mortimer Delange.' Ooh! What a name! I must have some orange after that!”

“You're simply plastering
The Times
with juice,” said David. “Suppose you hand it over.” Folly dropped her orange and clutched the paper. “I haven't nearly finished. Betty, give him some tea to keep him quiet. 'M—Brown has a boy, and Smith has a girl, and the Robinsons have got twins.”

“Don't you ever read anything except the Births, Marriages, and Deaths?” said David, between amusement and impatience.

“'M—I read the Agony Column. I'm just getting to it: ‘Constantia B—Return the books, and all will be forgiven.' I expect that's thieves really—and this one too: ‘If Ernest has any doubts, J. S. M. will set them at rest.'”

“Come on, give me the paper, Folly!”

“I've
nearly
finished. Betty's poured you out a nice cup of tea. Go and drink it. Here's another: ‘Erica Moore.—Anyone giving information with regard to—'” She stopped and looked across the top of the paper with a puzzled frown. “Erica Moore—Erica
Moore
—I know that name—I've seen it somewhere. Ooh! It says, ‘will be rewarded!' Now if I could only remember about it, I might get a simply enormous reward!”

David had walked to the window. Eleanor looked at him helplessly. She ought to be able to stop Folly; but she couldn't. And then quite suddenly Betty, who was filling the teapot, caught her sleeve in the kettle and pulled it over with a crash.
The Times
was forgotten. Betty, very white, twisted her handkerchief about her wrist and left the room.