Kingdom Lost (28 page)

A thrill of terror went through her as she opened her eyes. It couldn't be morning already. No, it was dark. She turned on the light and looked at her watch. It was eleven o'clock.

It was eleven o'clock. Everyone had gone to bed. No one would come near her until the morning. This thought was such a relief that she began to think clearly again. She hadn't been able to think; she had only been able to feel that she must do what Aunt Helena wanted her to do. It was a dreadful feeling. The minute she began to think again, the pressure of Helena Ryven's will lessened. No one would come near her for hours and hours. But in the morning they would come, and Felton and Agnes would dress her in her wedding dress, and she would have to go to church and marry Eustace, because if she didn't—There wasn't any “If.” Aunt Helena would make her do it.

She wondered if everyone had really gone to bed. And as she wondered, she heard something. It was the tap of a heel on the polished floor just outside the door. There was a second tap, and then silence. Someone was there. Someone was standing outside her door listening.

Valentine was leaning on her elbow, with her watch in her hand. The little table with the lamp on it was between her and the door, and she could see the door. She saw the handle move. And in a moment she had put down her watch and buried as much of her face as possible in the pillow. There was no time to turn round; she had to face the light and the door. She shook her hair forward, brought her hands up under her chin, and lay still.

The door was opening slowly, and a voice said, “Valentine—” It was Helena Ryven's voice. She said “Valentine” again in the low, even tone of someone who wants to find out whether you are awake or not.

Valentine's lashes trembled as her eyelids shut closer. She felt cold and sick at the thought of having to talk to Helena again. You can't talk to a person who is asleep. If she was asleep, Helena would go away.

Mrs. Ryven did not speak again. She came into the room without making any sound and stood looking down on Valentine. The lamp cast a circle of light on the dark polished table, and a diffused golden twilight upon Valentine. She was lying on her side, her hair over her face and her brown hands clasped under her chin, and all that Helena could really see was the curve of her cheek and part of her mouth and chin—a red mouth, a pale cheek, a soft round chin.

Helena had come because it was her duty to see that Valentine was all right. She did not know quite why she stayed. Valentine was asleep, and she certainly had no desire to waken her. Yet she stood there watching for five of the longest minutes of Valentine's life. Her anger with Timothy had passed into a deep resentment. She had justified herself and proved him in the wrong, and she ought to be experiencing the feeling that she had earned a night's repose. She felt no repose. Timothy had said things which she could not ever forgive, because they were the things that her own conscience would have said if she had not held it dumb.

She looked at the pale curve of Valentine's cheek, and in the deep silence of the room the dumb thing spoke and said, “It's not fair! It's not fair!”

Helena put her hand on the switch of the lamp, and darkness rushed down upon the silence. Then she went out of the room, walking softly.

The door shut, and Valentine broke into a quivering sigh. Helena had gone away at last, and she wouldn't come back.

She thought about Timothy, as she had thought about him at intervals all day. But it wasn't any good thinking about Timothy. He couldn't help her; he couldn't stop people saying dreadful things about Eustace. No—Timothy couldn't help her. He was kind. If he could help her, he would come. If he didn't come, it was because he knew he couldn't help her.

Valentine went to the window in her night-gown and looked out. She could see the arch of the sky and the dark mass of the woods. It was very dark. There was no moon, and there were no stars. Last night there had been stars, so many, and so far, and so bright.

She leaned over the window-sill to catch the breeze—a faint, chill movement of the heavy air. She looked down and remembered her first night at Holt, and how she had climbed out of the window in the dawn and gone down through the woods to meet Timothy. The air stirred about her uncovered neck and her bare arms; and all at once her thoughts began to move, and bubble, and spring up in her just as the water used to spring up in the cavern.

Why should she stay here at all? If she wasn't here, Aunt Helena couldn't make her marry Eustace. And if she ran away, everyone—
everyone
would know that it wasn't Eustace's fault.

It is really quite impossible to describe the relief which this thought brought to Valentine. She had been driven back into the cage, and the door had been shut upon her; and now, just when she had given up hope, the door swung open of itself. She could get out and go wherever she liked. She needn't stay a moment.

She sprang back from the window, put on the light, and began to dress quickly, quickly, quickly, with such a living, joyful energy that everything she did was like doing something new and beautiful. She wasn't dressing, she was escaping. She put on the dark red dress which she had worn when she went to Waterlow, and the little hat that matched it, and a tweed coat with a fur collar. And she packed a few things in a suit-case that was light enough to carry. The suit-case was in her dressing-room, half packed with things for her to take when she went away to-morrow with Eustace. She wasn't going to go away with Eustace. She wasn't going to be here to-morrow. Lovely—lovely—
lovely
. The word kept singing itself over in her mind.

The thought of Helena Ryven came as suddenly as a shadow. What was she going to say to Aunt Helena? In books people always wrote a note and left it on the pin-cushion when they ran away. But she didn't know what to say. In the end her pencilled note was a very short one. It ran:

D
EAR
A
UNT
H
ELENA
,

It is very kind of Eustace to want to marry me. But I don't want to—I really don't. I only wanted him to have the money, and if it is his, I needn't marry him. So I am going away. Please tell everyone Eustace wanted to marry me, but I wouldn't.

V
ALENTINE
.

She put the note under her pillow because she thought that was a better place than the pin-cushion. She didn't want them to find it in the first minute they came into the room, but a little later when they weren't quite so angry as they would be at first.

She packed her case and let it down out of the window by a long piece of string. There was heaps of string in the dressing-room, because parcels had been coming all day. When she had let down her case, she locked and bolted her bedroom door, and locked the door into the dressing-room. And then she put out the light and climbed out of the window.

CHAPTER XXXIII

Timothy came up to Holt at nine o'clock next morning. He put Bolton's distracted air to the account of the wedding; but when Helena came into her sitting-room, his heart jumped. She looked grey, changed, old.

She shut the door and stood against it.

“Where is she? What have you done with her?”

Timothy was shocked.

“Good Lord, Helena, what's the matter?”

She swallowed and put out her hand.

“Timothy, where is she?”

“Who?”

“Don't you know? Valentine—where is she?”

“Helena! Isn't she here?” Then, as she shook her head, “What's happened?”

“Her door was locked,” said Helena Ryven. “Agnes couldn't make her hear. I told her to leave her a little. Then I went. We had to break open the dressing-room door.”

She tried very hard for composure, but the waiting at that locked door had shaken her. In those few minutes the voice that she had silenced had spoken terrible things. It was not silent now.

Timothy was consumed with anxiety, but he found it in his heart to pity Helena when he felt her hand tremble on his arm—Helena's strong, calm hand.

“Timothy, don't you know where she is?”

“She isn't in her room?”

“No. We broke in the door. She must have got out of the window.” She shuddered. It was she who had passed the frightened maids and looked down from the window, not knowing what she might see below. If she had deserved punishment, that moment rendered it.

“Where's Eustace?” said Timothy.

“Telephoning. He rang you up, but you had started. He's getting through to Ida—she may have gone there.”

“Yes. What about the station?”

“No, they haven't seen her—she can't have gone by train. Timothy—she didn't go to you?”

“No.”

“On your word of honour?”

“I tell you she didn't.”

He made a movement towards the door, and Helena cried out and held his arm.

“Where are you going?”

“To look for her.”

“Timothy—wait! Don't be in such a hurry.”

Her hand shook, but she made a great effort at self-control. After all, nothing had happened. She had only run away as she had done before. They would find her. Nothing could have happened.

As they stood there close to the door, it opened. Bolton almost ran into them. He had Valentine's note in his hand, a little folded sheet. After thirty years of service, Bolton entered a room in a hurry, and presented a note without waiting to put it on a salver.

“Agnes has just found this under the pillow, ma'am,” he stammered.

Helena took it, opened it, and clutched Timothy's arm as she read. Then she drew a long breath.

“It's all right.” And as Bolton withdrew, she let go of Timothy and sat down in the nearest chair. An extraordinary sense of relief swept over her. She repeated the words that had dismissed Bolton, “It's all right.”

Timothy put out his hand.

“May I see?”

And as he took the note, Eustace came in, haggard and distressed.

“She isn't at the Cobbs'. They'll ring us up if they hear anything.”

Timothy handed him the note. He read it, frowning.

“We've been to blame—we've been horribly to blame, I suppose. But why couldn't she say this instead of running away?”

Helena's glance avoided him. It remained fixed on the note in his hand.

“She's all right,” she said. Her voice was louder than usual. “She must be all right.”

“Yes—yes, of course. I'm glad she's written. Of course she's all right. But what are we going to do?” He put a hand behind him and shut the door. “Whom have you told?”

“All the servants know,” said Helena.

“The Ryvens?”

“No—not yet. At least I don't know. I suppose everyone knows. Everyone will have to know.” She stood up in a sort of nervous haste. “We'll have to tell people. But what are we going to say?”

She looked from Eustace to Timothy, and it was Timothy who answered her.

“What's the matter with telling them the truth? If you want my advice I should say, just tell everyone what's happened. If you don't, they'll ferret round until they find out a great many things that never happened at all.”

He went to the door, but Helena stopped him for the second time.

“What are you going to do?”

“I told you. I'm going to look for her. Do you mind if I see Agnes? I want to know what she's got on.”

Agnes was not very helpful. She had been crying, and was still on the verge of being hysterical, as much from excitement as from anxiety. To be the first to discover that a bride has vanished on her wedding day is enough to excite the calmest housemaid who ever made a bed. To Timothy's “Can you tell me what Miss Valentine was wearing?” she responded with a flurry of words punctuated only by a sniff or a hiccuping sob.

“And I'm sure I couldn't say, sir, not to be certain, for there was a whole lot of things as come the day before yesterday, which she chose in London along with Miss Marjory, and she unpacked them herself—leastways I was there part of the time, only Mrs. Ryven called me, so I can't say I took particular notice. But there was hats and dresses, and I consider there was a tweed coat, only I couldn't swear to it, sir.”

“Well, is the tweed coat missing?”

“I couldn't say, sir.”

“Well, suppose you look.”

Agnes looked. Timothy looked too. There was no new tweed coat, and there was no dark red dress such as Valentine had worn on the night that she came to Waterlow.

“Can you tell if there's a hat missing?”

“No, sir, I can't.”

“Or a suit-case?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“Well, think. Come along, Agnes, this is important! You just stop sniffing and think!”

Agnes began to sob.

“I was packing her suit-case last night, and I'm sure I never thought—”

“Where were you packing it?”

“In the dressing-room,” said Agnes with her apron to her face.

Timothy flung open the dressing-room door.

“Where? Show it to me!”

Agnes sniffed, between offence and sensibility.

“It's gone, sir.”

“Sure?”

It was the first thing that Agnes had been sure about. She had left the half packed case on the chair by the window, and it was gone.

Timothy raced down the stairs and put his head in at the sitting-room door. The atmosphere was heavy with gloom. Helena and Eustace faced one another across the hearth-rug in solemn converse.

“I'm off,” said Timothy. “Buck up, Helena! She's taken a suit-case.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

Valentine left the house behind her and entered the thick darkness of the drive. It was very still under the beeches; still, and warm, and so dark that at first she walked slowly and held her free hand stretched out before her. Down by the gate the trees were not so thick. She could just see the white gate-posts as she passed between them and came out on to the road.