Anne Belinda (6 page)

CHAPTER VI

John came away from Waveney with Mrs. Jones' address in his pocket. He wasn't quite sure what to do about Mrs. Jones. It was obvious that she knew something—probable, in fact, that she could tell him everything that he wanted to know. But the more he thought about it, the less likely did it seem that he, a total stranger, would be able to induce her to say a single word. The thing wanted thinking over, and he made up his mind to sleep on it.

When he got to his hotel, he was informed that he had been twice called on the telephone. The second time a message had been left—Would he call up Horsham ooo as soon as he came in?

He went straight to the telephone box and gave the number. Whilst he waited to get through, he wondered idly who had been calling him. He had never been to Horsham in his life, and could think of nobody there with whom he had the slightest acquaintance. When the bell rang, it was a man's voice that said “Hullo!”

John said, “I was asked to ring up this number. My name's Waveney.” And when the voice answered him it was all at once familiar.

“Oh, Maurice—Lulu Smith speaking. I'm down here to see my uncle, and he's very anxious to speak to you. Just hold on a minute.”

John held on. After a short interval someone else spoke:

“Are you there, Sir John? Mr. Carruthers speaking. I am sorry to have troubled you, but I am anxious to have a few words with you.”

“It's no trouble.”

“Thank you. The fact is—” He broke off. “My nephew Lewis tells me that you had a conversation with him this morning. By the way, I am much interested to learn that you are old friends.”

“Yes, I was most awfully pleased to see him again.”

John began to feel a sense of anticipation; the conversation was the conversation he had had about Anne Belinda.

“Well, Sir John, Lewis' account of that conversation has given me a good deal of concern. You were, I gather, anxious to know the whereabouts of a certain person, and—er—well, I want to ask you to let the matter alone.”

John was silent for a moment. A quick, hot anger prompted him to speech, and he would not speak until he had got the better of it.

“Can you tell me why?”

“Well—not in detail. I can merely assure you that your inquiries are unnecessary.”

“When you say unnecessary, Mr. Carruthers, what exactly do you mean? I am making inquiries because I feel uneasy. The person we are speaking of was, to the best of my belief, left entirely unprovided for. When you say that my inquiries are unnecessary, do you mean that there is any provision which I don't know about?”

“No, not exactly.”

“Then, will you tell me what you do mean?”

He tried, rather unsuccessfully, to keep an aggressive note out of his voice. He thought he detected a shade of reproof in the lawyer's reply:

“It's a little difficult to explain a very delicate matter in a conversation of this kind. May I, however, remind you that the lady has nearer relations than yourself?”

“Possibly,” said John. “The question is, are they doing anything? Are they, for instance, making her an allowance? Can you assure me, of your own knowledge, that she is receiving an allowance from them?”

“Sir John, this is very difficult.”

John took a pull on himself. He was putting the old man's back up, and that was a fool's trick. He spoke with a complete change of tone.

“I don't want to seem intrusive, or anything of that sort. I thought, if there was no provision, that a charge might be made on the estate.”

“I see. It's very generous of you. I don't know quite what to say. I could make the offer on your behalf; but I don't think it is at all likely that it would be accepted. Perhaps you will come and see me when I get back.”

John set his jaw. A month's delay! He said, in a voice full of protest:

“Why can't I meet my cousin? Where is she?”

He heard Mr. Carruthers cough.

“I'm afraid”—more coughing—“I'm afraid that's impossible. But there is another lady who is most anxious to make your acquaintance, Lewis tells me—Mrs. Courtney. She has a flat in Queen's Gate—I'm afraid I forget the number. Lewis met her this afternoon, and she expressed a very strong desire to see you—told him, in fact, that he was to send you to call on her. She's rather an imperious lady, but extremely charming, and a connection of the family.”

“Thanks, I'll go and see her—Yes, another three minutes, please—Mr. Carruthers, is my cousin ill?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Is she abroad?”

“I really can't say.”

“Do you know where she is?”

There was rather a long pause. Then Mr. Carruthers said slowly:

“Yes—I know.”

“You
do
know?”

“Yes.” And with that the line went dead.

John stood for a moment with the receiver in his hand. Then he hung it up and left the box.

At the other end of the line Mr. Carruthers had already rung off. He turned in his chair and showed a disturbed face to his nephew.

“Rather a difficult young man, Sir John Waveney,” he said.

Lewis looked up from
The Times
.

“What's he being difficult about?”

“He wants Anne Waveney's address.”

“Yes, I told you he wanted it. Is there any real reason why he shouldn't have it?”

“Yes, Lewis, there is.”

Lewis Smith whistled.

“Well, I should say he was about the most obstinate devil I've ever come across. So the odds are he'll go on until he gets it.”

Mr. Carruthers gave a short, annoyed cough.

“I've advised him very strongly to let the whole matter drop. You heard me. He seems to have some idea of offering her an allowance from the estate, and, of course, I shall be bound to pass the offer on. That's all very well, but as far as any personal advances go, I've the strongest possible reasons for discouraging them. And I rely on you, Lewis, to do the same.”

“You can't tell me why?”

“No, I'm afraid I can't. You'll just have to take my word for it that young Waveney had better give up any idea of meeting his cousin.”

“If he's got the idea—and he seems to me to have got it pretty strongly—he won't give it up.”

“Surely the young man can take a hint!” Mr. Carruthers' tone was indignant.

Lewis said, “'M—I shouldn't say he could—not unless he's changed a good deal. He's one of those strong, persevering fellows that take a notion into their heads and stick to it through thick and thin. I ought to be the last person to complain of it, because I shouldn't be here now if he wasn't that sort. No one else would have thought it was possible to get me in that time I was wounded at Loos. As a matter of fact, it wasn't possible; but he did it somehow. He's an obstinate fellow, as I told you.”

CHAPTER VII

John had a dinner engagement that evening. His host was the publisher who was producing Peterson's book in England, and the other guests were all men. He had not met any of them before. The talk was of Peterson, of books, and of the wild places of the earth.

After dinner a little man with a beard and a bald head moved up beside John.

“My name,” he said, “is Fossick-Yates—Frederick Fossick-Yates. Does that recall anything to you?”

John wasn't sure. He temporized. There was something distantly familiar about the name, but for the life of him he couldn't pick up the connection.

The little man put his head on one side and regarded him with expectancy; behind his glasses his round, bright, prominent eyes were a good deal like the eyes of a bird that is watching a worm. Before John's hesitation became an embarrassment Mr. Fossick-Yates put an end to it.

“I wrote to Peterson—yes, several letters. It was about three years ago.”

John began to remember a very persistent correspondent who had written a number of letters full of meticulous details about variations from type in European snakes.

“Yes, I remember,” he said.

“Ah! Now, may I ask whether Peterson found my contributions useful?”

“He certainly used some of them—in the sixth chapter, I think. Oh yes, and there was a footnote later on.”

Mr. Fossick-Yates fairly beamed. He shot a cuff and scribbled upon it with a small, neat gold pencil.

“Ah! The sixth chapter?
And
a footnote? I feel very much gratified, Sir John. I suppose you can't remember which of my data—”

“As it happens, I believe I can. The footnote refers to the case, which I think you cited, where the stripe down the viper's back was almost white instead of black.”

Mr. Fossick-Yates snatched off his glasses and began to polish them furiously with his table napkin.

“Splendid!” he said. “Most gratifying—er—most gratifying! I assure you I feel quite overwhelmed. A footnote citing my viper. Can you remember in which chapter it occurs?”

“Fifteen,” said John—“the one on albinism.”

Mr. Fossick-Yates crammed his glasses back upon his nose. The angle they assumed gave his appearance an incongruous touch of abandon. He scribbled once more, and jerked his chair a little nearer.

“Sir John, I must persuade you! I have that very specimen at my house, not two miles away. You will come and see it! Of course, I have other specimens too—albinism has always enthralled me—er—yes, enthralled me. You will give me the pleasure of dining with me. My wife will be charmed to make your acquaintance. You may have heard of her. She was a prominent suffragist—she writes on social subjects. She is
the
Mrs. Fossick-Yates.”

As John walked home, he wondered why on earth he had allowed himself to become entangled with the Fossick-Yates. They would give him an appallingly bad dinner, and he would have to look at all Fossick-Yates' specimens and listen through hours of protracted boredom to Mrs. Fossick-Yates on social subjects. He groaned aloud at the prospect, and cursed his folly. If Frederick Fossick-Yates had been a shade less innocently delighted over his mention in chapter six and the footnote about his viper in chapter fifteen, he would have gone on saying no or having previous engagements till all was blue. As it was, the beaming eyes behind the crooked glasses had betrayed him into this ghastly engagement.

He stopped thinking about Mr. Fossick-Yates, and let his thoughts go back to Anne Belinda. He began very methodically to sort out and file away all the different scraps of information which he had collected. He had not the very slightest intention of taking Mr. Carruthers' advice and letting the matter drop. That he had been advised to let it drop was, in fact, one of his most urgent reasons for not dropping it; at every hint of opposition his determination hardened.

It was years since anything except acute physical discomfort had kept John awake at night. As a rule, when his head touched the pillow, sleep came and remained, deep, peaceful, and dreamless until forcibly disturbed next morning. To-night he lay awake for a long time, trying to fit his scraps together. He held imaginary conversations with Mrs. Jones and with Mr. Carruthers—frightfully leery conversations, in which he extracted information from them which they were quite determined not to give up. The extraordinary ingenuity which he displayed was very encouraging to him; but a dreadful fear that it might evaporate in the daylight kept him from being unduly puffed up.

He must have passed directly from one of these conversations into an uneasy sleep, for quite suddenly he not only heard Mrs. Jones speaking, but he could see her—only she wasn't Mrs. Jones at all, but little Fossick-Yates in petticoats, with his beard, and his glasses all askew, and a wreath of primroses round his bald head. He said, speaking very earnestly, “If you really want to know, I'll tell you—but it's most frightfully confidential. The fact is, it's a yellow streak—not a white one, you understand, but yellow, yellow all through.” When he said yellow the second time he began to throw primroses at John, and they turned into snakes as they touched the ground.

In his dream John began to run like the wind. He ran all up one side of the Amazon, and all down the other. And then all at once quite suddenly he was running down the Valley of the Waveney by a little crystal stream that lost itself in moss. Suddenly he stopped running, because there was nothing to run away from any more. He stood quite still and looked across the stream; and from the other side of it Anne Belinda looked at him and smiled. She wore her old brown holland overall, and her hair fell in two long dark plaits. She smiled at him, and an intense, joyful expectancy stabbed deep, deep into his dream. He didn't know in the least what he expected.

He woke, and found himself sittting straight up in bed, which was very odd indeed. The whole thing was very odd. He lay down in the dark and puzzled over it. It was strange to feel in a dream what he had never felt by day. He had had good times and bad times, but never before had he felt this utter poignancy of joy. It was quite beyond his experience; there was nothing easy or soft about it; it had a keenness that was only just not pain; it was something he did not know. It was a strange thing to find it in a dream.

CHAPTER VIII

John went to call on Mrs. Courtney next day. He was shown into the drawing-room and left there whilst the maid went to find her mistress.

He looked about him with interest. The room was not at all like any room he had seen before. Walls, floor and ceiling, curtains, woodwork, and chair-covers were all of one even shade of grey—and that not the bluish grey which is called French, but the real pure grey which comes from the equal mixture of black and white. Against this neutral background the few contrasting objects took on an added value. There were cushions of half a dozen shades of purple, from violet to cyclamen; there was a bright green clock on the mantelpiece, flanked by tall green candlesticks; on one long, bare wall there hung an etching of a black pine tree bending in the wind.