Will O’ the Wisp (6 page)

“So I see. Folly looks at you sideways.”

“She doesn't—not like that. David, she doesn't really. Don't you see how rotten it is for a girl when everyone—
everyone
—expects her to go off the rails because her mother did? And she's not like her—she's
not
. She's naughty and she's provoking; but she's not in the least like her mother. David, do you know the woman carried on with that child in the house and didn't care whether she knew about it or not?” She dropped his arm and stepped back with an angry stamp of the foot. “It makes me wild!”

“How old was she?”

“Folly? Fourteen. Can you imagine it? The child hasn't had a chance. George doesn't pretend to care a rap for her. And, David, she's only nineteen now. Do make friends with her.”

David looked at Eleanor in the moonlight. He felt an extreme disinclination to talk about Folly March. Eleanor did not look at him; her eyes were on the bright lake and the dark woods; her thoughts were far away.

“How bright and cold!” she said at last, only just above her breath.

“It's too cold for you. Come in.”

“I didn't mean that.” Then, after a pause: “It's like Indian moonlight frozen.” On the last word her voice fell lower still.

David said, “Did you like India? Do you want to go back?” He had not meant to say it, but the words came.

“No,” said Eleanor quickly. “No!”

He was sorry he had spoken, because she shivered; and yet, having spoken, something pricked him on.

“Eleanor—how has it been—all these years?”

Eleanor winced.

“It's over.”

“My dear, I—was it as bad as that?” He laid a hand on her shoulder and felt it rigid.

“It's over,” she said again.

Someone was coming up the dark steps on their right, softly and with great caution. Just for a moment this someone stood in the shadow looking at the lighted terrace and the two figures standing so close together that they made one figure in the moonlight. Then, quickly and silently, a woman in a black cloak crossed from shadow to shadow and was gone.

David and Eleanor were aware of one another and of the past; they neither saw nor heard. David's hand tightened on Eleanor's shoulder, and he said:

“Why did you do it?”

“I don't know—you were so far away—I don't know—” Then quite suddenly: “That's not true. I do know. I was a fool—girls don't understand very much—he fascinated me—it was like a fever—I didn't think—I just did it. And then—when it was too late—I woke up.”

She shivered and drew away from him, holding her cloak with cold, clenched fingers.

“David—” She choked on the word and began again. “Why did you ask? No—I suppose you've a right to ask.”

“No,” said David. “No.”

She controlled her voice.

“I don't know why I should mind. Everyone knew. There'd been someone else for years. I would have cared for him if it had been possible. It wasn't—and everybody knew.”

David knew something too. Cosmo Rayne had had a reputation; amongst other things, he drank. It was not hard to believe that Eleanor had not found it possible to care. Gay, unscrupulous, a drunkard, trusted even less by men than by women. He felt a pity, which had no words, for Eleanor.

With an effort she turned her eyes from the glittering water.

“Betty and I—we both made rather a mess of things—didn't we?” She paused; something tragic looked out of her eyes. “Betty's got Dick. I lost my baby. Did you know?”

“Yes,” said David.

Eleanor walked away towards the house. She wanted to reach the black shadow, to pass through it to her own dark room, and to cry her heart out. The old mournful pain which never quite left her heart had risen in sudden flood; it overwhelmed her, and she could only just hold back the tears.

She came to the window of Betty's room, groped for the pane, and pushed. The window was shut.

David came up behind her.

“What is it? Are you faint?”

Her hand was on the glass; she leaned against the jamb.

“David, it's shut!”

“You came out this way?”

“Yes.”

“You're sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Then she's slipped in and done us down. It doesn't matter—I've got a key.”

He took her arm in an easy, brotherly fashion, and they came together to the door which led into the garden-room.

David switched on the light.

“Run up and see if you can catch her. She deserves a wigging.”

In the light Eleanor was very pale, but her composure had come back. David's friendly clasp, the bare room full of familiar shabby things, the light—all helped to restore her to her everyday self. There was the old battered croquet set, the fishing rods, the old garden chairs. She said, “Yes, she does,” and ran across the hall and up the stairs to Folly's room.

She did not knock, but opened the door quickly and stood listening. Darkness and silence. Her hand went up and pulled down the switch; the bulb in the ceiling sprang into brilliance. The light shone on one stocking by the washstand and another by the dressing-table; on a pair of shoes in opposite corners of the room; on a scarlet garter hanging from the bedpost; on Folly's scattered garments; and on Folly March in bed, with a pale blue eiderdown snuggled tightly up to her chin.

Eleanor crossed over to the bed and stood there looking down. Folly's black lashes lay smoothly upon Folly's pale smooth cheek; Folly's little red mouth, washed clean of lipstick, was firmly closed; one little ear showed pink against the sleek black hair. She looked very young.

Eleanor put a hand on the blue eiderdown; and all of a sudden Folly cried out and turned, her eyes wide open and an arm flung out. Her cry was the unintelligible murmur of a dream. The wide green eyes were as empty and blank as water; there was no imp in them; there was nothing but sleep.

Eleanor said, “Folly!” and Folly said, “O—oh!” She flung out her other arm and blinked at the light.

“Folly!”

Folly woke up.

“What is it? Is the house on fire? O—oh!” Her yawn was natural enough.

“Folly—have you been out?”

The imps woke up; one peeped rather sleepily at Eleanor.

“Out?”

“Yes—out.”

“Out where?”

“Folly, someone went out of the house and down into the woods. Was it you?”

“'M—” She sat up and locked her arms about her knees. “I said I should like a walk—didn't I?”

“Folly! Was it you?”

“'M—” said Folly again. Her pink diaphanous nightgown slipped from her shoulder. Her eyes were very wicked; she looked sideways at Eleanor. “Perhaps
David
went for a walk. Did he? It's quite proper to go for a walk with one's cousin. Now, if it had been Stingo—”

“Folly! You didn't go to meet that horrible man?”

“David?”

Eleanor shook her.

“Mr. St. Inigo.”

“No one calls him that—he's always Stingo.”

“
Did
you go to meet him?”

Folly unlocked her hands and kissed all ten fingers to Eleanor.

“Darling Mrs. Grundy!” she said. “I
do
love you!”

“
Did
you?”

“Pahssionately!”

As she spoke, she whisked down into the bed and pulled the eiderdown over her head. Her muffled voice reached Eleanor:

“Don't you ask no questions, and you won't be told no lies!”

CHAPTER VII

Folly was as good as gold next day. David went off early to town. Betty and Eleanor drove into Guildford, taking Folly with them. They lunched with Mrs. Norris, a cousin so distant that even the Fordyces might have considered the kinship negligible if she had not been Eleanor's godmother.

Folly, on her best behaviour and prepared to suffer boredom meekly, was a good deal cheered by the discovery that Mrs. Norris had a son living at home. He was a very personable youth, just down from Oxford, and casting about him for a job. He wore a brilliant red tie, and political opinions of an even more ferocious shade. He considered Lenin the greatest man of the century, and discoursed to Folly upon the Soviet system.

Folly listened beautifully. The imps were under lock and key; an innocent yearning for information looked out of her limpid green eyes. Aubrey Norris's admiration for the late M. Lenin became pleasantly merged in admiration for Miss Folly March. Altogether a successful lunch-party.

On the way home Folly asked to stop at a hairdresser's, where she kept the car, a patient Eleanor, and an impatient Betty for about twenty minutes. To Betty's outraged “What
have
you been doing?” she returned a flighty nod and a “Wait and see!”

David got back just in time to dress for dinner. He came into the drawing-room to find Eleanor and Betty there. A moment later Folly skipped down the stairs, whisked into the room, banged the door, and stood just inside it with modestly cast-down eyes. She wore a slip of a pale pink frock; her face was washed quite clean, her mouth had only its natural red; her little black head was bound with a silver fillet; from under the fillet, on either side, hung a cluster of shining black curls.

Betty said, “Good gracious!” and Eleanor said, “Oh Folly, how pretty! I do like it!” David said nothing at all. But something tugged at his heart—perhaps it was one of Folly's imps. He was frowning when she lifted her eyes and looked at him with a little clear colour in her cheeks.

“'M—d'you like it? Aren't I clever to grow them so quickly?” She put up a finger and just touched the curls. “Don't you like them?”

“They're not bad.”

Folly broke at the knees in a charity bob.

“Thank you, David,” she said meekly.

After dinner she sat curled in a chair with a book. Eleanor, passing behind her, caught the title and leant over her shoulder.

“Folly, where
did
you get that? It's a beast of a book. Why do you read it?” The low indignant whisper was pitched for Folly's ear.

Folly smiled at the page she was reading.

“Why
do
you?”

“To please Mrs. Grundy,” said Folly in a voice that was meant to carry across the room. She gazed artlessly at David, who was standing with his back to the fire reading the paper. “
And
Mr. Grundy,” she added.

Eleanor went back to her own chair. She was still picking up the stray threads of her embroidery when Folly ran across the room to David.

“David—”

David looked over the paper frowning.

“What is it?”

“David, Eleanor says this isn't a proper book for me to read.”

She held it out, and the frown became a scowl.

“Where did you pick that up?”

“George had it,” said Folly with downcast eyes.

“George?”

“'M—George March.”

A scandalized Betty cut into the conversation:

“You don't call your
father
George?”

“Always,”
said Folly firmly.

Then she turned back to David.

“Is it as bad as all that? I'm glad I took it away from him. I have to be very careful about George's morals.”

David was torn between a desire to burst out laughing and a most raging desire to pick Folly up and give her a good shaking. He did neither. Instead, he dropped one side of the paper he was holding, took the book out of Folly's hand, and pitched it behind him on to the blazing logs.

“O-oh!” said Folly. “What will George say?”

“I haven't the slightest idea,” said David, and went back to his paper.

Folly made a face at the advertisement sheet of
The Times
, a little ugly, malicious face. Then she ran to Eleanor.

“Darling, give me a nice book to read—the sort I'd read if I was Flora, all about a strong, silent hero and a
fearfully
good heroine who simply adores him and licks his boots.”

Presently, as she sat on a cushion at Eleanor's feet snuggled up over the “nice” book, one of the little bunches of black curls fell off and obscured the page. Folly came out with a monosyllable which the “fearfully good heroine” would not have used.

Betty dropped a card, looked down her nose, and said: “Oh, Folly!”

Eleanor patted the little shorn head, and Folly sighed with ostentation. Then she picked up the curls, sat them up very stiffly on the thin wire mount, tickled Eleanor's hand with them, and finally stuck them bolt upright in the silver ribbon on the top of her head, where they waved like elfish court feathers gone black. Perhaps they were in mourning for Folly's good behaviour.

David did not take the least notice of them or of Folly. When he had finished
The Times
, he plunged into a book. When he said good-night to Folly, he looked over her head at Eleanor.

Folly went upstairs with a little scarlet patch on either cheek. An hour later, Eleanor, coming late from Betty's room, stopped at her door, opened it, and stood there listening. There was such a stillness that she felt her way to the bed and switched on the shaded light beside it.

Folly lay crumpled up with her clenched fists under her chin like a baby; her little face was stained with tears, the black lashes all stuck together by threes and fours in little points; her lips were parted. She seemed to be sunk in the soundest depths of sleep.

Eleanor put out the light and went away troubled.

David came down to his early breakfast next morning to find that Miss Folly March intended to breakfast with him; and not only to breakfast with him, but to accompany him to town.

“What on earth do you want to go to town for?”

“'M—” said Folly. “I like driving up. And, of course”—very sweetly—“I like going with you.”

David surveyed her with disapproval. The scarlet hat and suit he had seen before, but the black patent leather shoes with scarlet heels were a new horror.