Anne Belinda (18 page)

“I've been looking for you ever since I got home.” He hated the pain that clouded her eyes.

“Why?”

“Well, first of all I wanted to find you; and then—well, I suppose I'm obstinate. Everyone seemed so dead set on my not finding you—” He broke off, a little flushed. This was not in the least what he had meant to say.

Anne's clear regard dwelt on him for a moment. Then she said, sadly and clearly:

“They were quite right. I didn't want to be found. I want you to promise me not to tell anyone that you have found me. I want you to leave me alone.”

They walked for a moment in silence. This end of Malmesbury Terrace was very quiet—a row of mid-Victorian houses with veiled windows and an air of decorum. Just beyond was the busy High Street, where the trams slid to and fro with a metallic screech, and cars and vans and a very hardy race of bicyclists competed for the remaining road space.

“I can't leave you alone,” said John in a gruff, angry voice.

“Please,”
said Anne more sadly still.

“No—I can't.”

“Why?” The word broke rather a long pause.

John didn't answer; he didn't know what to say, so he didn't say anything. This is the most exasperating thing that a man can do. Any woman would rather have anything said to her than have to watch her own words sink deeper and deeper into a bog of silence.

Anne coloured sharply and broke in.

“How did you find me? No one knew—and I've only been here two days.”

“I've been looking for you ever since I came home. I—I've been anxious about you; I wanted to be sure you were all right.”

“How did you find out where I was?” Her tone accused him.

To her surprise he grinned suddenly.

“I didn't find you. I'd been straining every nerve trying to, and making a nuisance of myself to everyone. And then, when I didn't know what to do next—there you were. Little Fossick-Yates had bothered me into saying I'd come and see his specimens, and I was most frightfully fed-up with the whole show. And then all of a sudden I found you there.”

“But—how? I—don't understand. How did you, how could you, know it was me?”

“It was your hand.”

“My hand?”

“When it came over my shoulder and you said ‘Barley-water.'”

“But how could you recognize my hand? You've never seen it—you've never seen me.”

“Oh yes, I have.”

They had come to the end of Malmesbury Terrace. The traffic of the full High Street went by them like a river in flood. Anne stopped by the wall of the last grey house.

“When?” she said. “When did you see me? Tell me.”

John felt a curious reluctance to tell her. His colour rose; then a sparkle came into his eyes.

“You promised to cry for me if I was killed.”

“
I
did?”

“Nine years ago—at Waveney.”

“But I never saw you before to-day.”

“You're forgetting yesterday,” said John, “—
and
another time—
and
nine years ago at Waveney, when you promised faithfully that you would cry.”

“I—promised? Oh!” A very faint and far off memory stirred. “Were—you—wounded?”

He nodded.

“I had a crocked leg. It was in '17. I was due to go back in a week, and I thought I'd like to have a look at Waveney—I'd never seen it. And we talked. You asked me if I had any relations, and when I said ‘No,' you seemed awfully bucked and said that was splendid, because then it wouldn't matter about my being killed.”

“Oh, I
didn't!
”

“Yes, you did. You were frightfully serious about it. And then you were afraid you'd hurt my feelings, and you promised you'd be sorry.”

Rather a charming remembering look came over Anne's face. She looked younger—a little shy, confused; but her eyes were arch.

“Was it you? How dreadful of me! But—” The archness died. “Courtney and Tom had gone. We'd been all smashed up. My father never really got over it. I suppose I was thinking how horrible it was for the people who didn't get killed.”

“I suppose you were, poor kid.”

“But still I don't see how you knew me.”

“It was the little mole on your hand. I noticed it the first time I saw you; and somehow I remembered it. And when I saw you again—”

“Last night?”

“No, not last night.”

“When?” She looked a little startled. A few minutes ago he had been just a name—an unknown kinsman who had stepped into her brothers' inheritance through the tragic fortune of war; yet suddenly there was a nine years' memory between them. She was talking to him on a deep, intimate note, and to both of them the intimacy was as natural as if they had shared the same nursery; it was the sense of kinship that was so strong.

“When did you see me again?”

“I don't think I can tell you that. You didn't see me.”

Anne turned so pale that he was shocked. What did she think? What had he made her think? He said quickly:

“Don't! I saw you at Waterdene. You'd had a bit of a shock—you didn't see me.”

Very dimly, Anne remembered that there had been someone. She had held on to someone. She had been faint, and giddy, and blind; and she had held on to someone and said: “Don't let them come!”

“Was that you?”

The roaring traffic went by as they stood on the edge of it. When everyone is busy and hurried, two people can be very much alone.

“Yes. There's nothing for you to worry about. You didn't see me. And I didn't mean to tell you, but you looked as if you thought—as if you thought—”

“Thank you,” said Anne. “You—were—kind.” She drew rather a fluttering breath. Her own thoughts were shaking her; it had come to her suddenly and horribly that he might have seen her in the dock. She moved forward with quickening steps. She hated the place where the thought had come to her.

They came out into the full roar of the High Street.

“Do you know the way?”

“No—I must ask.”

She turned and spoke to a woman with a pram.

“She says we have to cross over. The post office is just where that tram is stopping. I do hate crossings.”

A year inside high walls leaves one sensitive to noise and rush. Anne stepped off the pavement, and had to struggle with a desire to run. Trams were so dreadfully sudden, and the noise they made—the sort of mingled whirr and clang—was like the sound of some relentless, uncontrollable machinery. Anne hated machinery. She had once been taken over a large factory, and she had come out white and shaking.

She had not taken two steps before she felt John's hand under her elbow. He took her across in such a cheerful, businesslike manner that she was unable to be angry. He must have seen that she was a fool about crossings. If she had an ounce of spirit she would be angry with him.

She decided that her spirit was broken, and looked up at him with laughing eyes.

“Noble preserver!” she said, and slipped into the post office with the parcel.

She came back looking rather alarmed.

“It's frightfully late. We must hurry. I mean I must hurry. You'd better not come.”

He piloted her across the road before he answered. It was frightfully nice to be taken over crossings. It was like old times, when the boys used to take her about with them.

On the far pavement she turned to him and said good-bye.

“I'm coming to the bottom of the road.”

“You'd better not.”

“I haven't nearly finished all the things I've got to say. As a matter of fact I haven't begun. Look here, when do you get out? I mean really out, not just a rush round to the post.”

“We have rushed awfully—haven't we?”

“Absolutely flown! Look here, when
do
you go out?”

“Thursdays, I believe.”

“To-day is Thursday.”

“Yes, but you don't get out when you've just come. It'll be next Thursday.”

“How absolutely rotten! What about Sunday? I'm sure parlour-maids go out on Sunday, because I used to go to Sunday supper with my cousin, Letitia Ramsbotham, and she always used to say ‘I've no maids on Sunday, so we'll wait on ourselves.' And I know she had two, and one of them was a parlour-maid.”

Anne burst out laughing.

“What a frightful lot you know! I'm to get every other Sunday afternoon and evening, and it doesn't begin till Sunday week.”

“Well, when does Thursday afternoon begin? I mean what time do you get out?”

“Oh, after lunch, when I've cleared away and washed up.”

“Two o'clock?”

“Goodness no! Nearer three!”

“I'll be at the bottom of the road at half-past two. Look here, you're walking most frightfully fast—I can't keep up.”

Anne took no notice of this. She said: “You'll probably have to wait,” and then coloured. “You oughtn't to meet me.”

“I'm going to.”

“It would be much better if you didn't—much better for both of us. I'm not Anne Waveney any more; I'm Annie Jones.”

“Then I'll meet Annie Jones.”

Anne had spoken without looking at him. Now she turned her head a little, and the ghost of a smile lifted the corners of her mouth.

“Annie Jones will lose her place if she is seen walking out with a wicked baronet.”

“If you're Annie Jones, I'm Annie Jones' cousin. Anyone can walk out with their cousin. Anyhow I've got to see you. There's a whole lot of business to talk over.”

They had come to the lower end of Ossington Road.

“I must go,” said Anne quickly. “But there's one thing—”

“What is it?”

“You—won't—”

“Of course I won't. What is it?”

“You won't tell anyone I'm here?
Promise
you won't tell anyone.”

John looked at her clear and hard.

“You'll have to give me a promise in exchange. I won't tell anyone you're here if you'll give me your word that you won't run away again.”

“I don't want to run away.”

“Promise you won't then.”

“I won't—till after Thursday.”

John took her hand in his. It was too thin. It was much too thin.

“I promise not to tell anyone where you are till after Thursday,” he said.

CHAPTER XXIV

Anne hurried back to the flat. When she had changed into her uniform she went into the tiny kitchen. A rich smell of curry rather more than filled it. There was a newspaper on the floor. The dishes which had been used for lunch were piled higgledy-piggledy in the sink, and the curry saucepan, clogged with congealed sauce, stood on the drip board.

Mrs. Brownling was sitting at the kitchen table playing patience. She was a middle-aged woman with a plump, pale face, vague, shifty eyes, and a fuzz of oddly coloured light hair, which she wore after the fashion of the nineties, in a deep curled fringe with a net over it.

She had served a short sentence for shop-lifting some years before, and now drifted incompetently in and out of the households of the very charitably minded or those who could get no other cook.

“Am I late?” said Anne.

“Black on red—seven—eight—nine—there aren't any tens in this pack. Late? Back in a flash I should have said. And why not stay out whilst you are out?”

“It's tea-time,” said Anne, filling the kettle.

“Ten of clubs—now what in the world's the use of the ten of clubs? Tea-time? Well, there's only him in if it is. You go easy, my dear, and don't flurry yourself. He wouldn't notice if he didn't get his tea this side of midnight. Or if he did notice he wouldn't say anything—not if he was starving.”

Anne laughed.

“I think he's kind.”

“Jack,” said Mrs. Brownling—“jack of spades.” She paused with the card in her hand. “I knew a gentleman once, a friend of my poor husband's, that used to call it the jack of diggers. He was a very amusing gentleman, but not—not
quite,
you know. My marriage was a bit of a comedown altogether, my father being a clergyman and all. Queen of hearts—king of clubs—that finishes that.”

Anne was glad to hear it, for she was wondering where on the littered table she was going to cut bread and butter for tea.

“Sweetly pretty vicarage I was brought up in, too.” Mrs. Brownling began to gather up the cards, which were very dirty, broken-backed, and dog's-eared. “I'm sure I never thought in those days that I'd come down to this.” She began to shuffle the cards in a slow, meditative way. “My husband was in business—did I tell you? Nothing low. But a shop's a shop, and I was brought up a perfect lady. I'm sure I couldn't make a bed, or mend a stocking, or cook a potato when I was twenty.”

Anne arranged the bread and butter which she had cut. She might have remarked that Mrs. Brownling could not cook a potato now. She smiled instead, and began to make the tea.

“Oh, deary me!” said Mrs. Brownling. “You never know your luck—do you? Some go up, and some go down. You take my advice and look out for a comfortable, easy-going widower that's tired of being run by his mother-in-law. That's where a girl can get her chance. And the children needn't be anything of a bother if you know how to manage. Get 'em off to school, and get your house and your husband to yourself. There! That's real good advice.” She shot the cards across the table as she spoke, and laughed a foolish, rather unsteady laugh.

Anne went out of the room with the tray. Mrs. Brownling was a trial. The kitchen table was always littered with her dirty, greasy cards. She could not so much as boil an egg without producing a complete state of disorder; and she never washed up a plate, dish, or saucepan until she had run through the whole stock. Anne had to share a bedroom with her—a bedroom in which most of Mrs. Brownling's personal possessions lay about on the floor. She took an interminable time to dress and undress, and she talked continually, pouring out muzzy, variable tales of former greatness. Sometimes she was the daughter of a clergyman, sometimes of a doctor, or a solicitor. Towards midnight she would occasionally hint at an aristocratic descent crossed by the bar sinister. This flight of fancy invariably ended in tears.