The Witness on the Roof (3 page)

Mrs. Spencer shrank back, for once in her life thoroughly cowed.

Her husband was generally of an easy, phlegmatic temperament, but she had always known that he was a man it would be dangerous to rouse—that beneath his apparent placid exterior there slumbered hidden fires. Her common sense came to her aid now. She picked up her basket of dirty clothes and retired to the kitchen.

John Spencer reached down his jar of tobacco from a shelf and sat down in his easy chair, preparatory to enjoying a well-earned rest before he went back to his horses.

He frowned as he filled his pipe. Faulty as he might have been in his dealings with his first wife's children, he was fully conscious that they occupied a place in his heart that the present Mrs Spencer's numerous progeny was never likely to fill. Polly had been talking a lot of nonsense during the night, he said to himself; the child was feverish and overwrought, but he was not going to have mountains made out of molehills. He had been a little touched as well as surprised at the length of the visits his wife had paid to her bedside during the night, but the matter was explained now—women did not mind a bit of trouble if they wanted to satisfy their curiosity.

Just as he reached this point in his reflections there was a knock at the open door.

“Well, what is it?” Spencer called out. Then turning his head and catching sight of the man who stood outside, he got up awkwardly and touched his forehead. “Beg pardon, sir! You were wanting to see me?”

His unexpected visitor glanced at him a moment before he answered. He was a short, dapper man, attired in an immaculate suit; his face, long and rather thin, bore a striking resemblance to a hawk, added to, perhaps, by the gold rimmed pince-nez that was perched high upon the Roman nose; he was clean-shaven save for stubby side-whiskers.

“If you are John Spencer, head coachman to Sir Robert Brunton, I should be glad of a few words with you,” he said.

Spencer touched his forehead again.

“That is me, right enough, sir.”

The stranger walked inside and deposited his hat on the deal table.

“I must introduce myself, though you and I have met before, Mr. Spencer. But there—time has altered us both. You have not forgotten an interview we had in the offices of Hurst and Pounceby, of Obeston?”

Spencer's face distinctly deepened in hue; he shuffled his feet together awkwardly.

“No, I haven't forgotten sir. But you can't be Mr. Hurst.”

The other readjusted his glasses.

“Ah, yes! The progress of years! But I am sure that you will remember that my firm had the honour of representing Mr. Davenant?”

Spencer moved his great foot backwards and forwards along the floor.

“I remember, sir. And he stuck to what you said, then, did Mr. Davenant. Even when my poor wife died he—”

“Ah, well, you must let bygones be bygones!” the lawyer interrupted. “I have brought better news to-day, Mr. Spencer! You heard of the old Squire's death of course?”

“Ay, and Mr. Guy's!”

“And Mr. Guy's son's?” Mr. Hurst added gravely, “You can understand what that means?”

“I don't know as I do,” Spencer said slowly. “I don't see as it will make any difference to me or mine, Mr. Hurst, sir. You told me yourself as he vowed—the old Squire did—as never a penny of his should come to anyone as bore my name.”

Mr. Hurst coughed.

“Many a man says more than he means when he is angry, Mr. Spencer; the approach of death softens most of us. Mr. Davenant left Davenant Hall to his wife for her life; on her, death it was to descend to his son Guy and his heirs; failing them, he desires her to select one of the children of his late daughter, Mary Evelyn, who shall take the name of Davenant and become the heiress of Davenant Hall. Now, as you know, Guy was killed in the hunting field five years after his father's death; two months ago his son George died of typhoid at his school. Thus you see—” pausing suggestively.

Spencer stood still, his big, red face turned expectantly on the lawyer, only his quickened breathing betraying that his silence betokened no lack of interest.

“So that at Mrs. Davenant's death, under the old Squire's will, the Hall will pass, with all the rest of his possessions, to one of your children, whichever Mrs. Davenant selects,” Mr. Hurst went on. “I am here as her representative today. She is naturally anxious—” with a dry cough—“to make the acquaintance of the grandchildren to whom she has been hitherto a stranger.”

“I see what you mean, Mr. Hurst, sir,” John Spencer' said slowly. “Squire has left it so as she can't help herself, else my children might have died same as their poor mother, without a word from her.”

Mr. Hurst took off his glasses and polished them carefully.

“Well, well, Mr. Spencer, as I said before, it seems to me that the time has come to let bygones be bygones. You must remember that there is much to be said on both sides. We have heard that you have formed other ties”—his keen eyes watching the half-open door, behind which Mrs. Spencer was listening eagerly to his words—“you have another family to provide for, for I am instructed by Mrs. Davenant to inform you that she is willing to undertake the maintenance of the children of your first marriage, and to allow you, on condition of their being given up entirely to her, one hundred pounds a year to be paid quarterly.”

“Stop!” Mr. Spencer's face became suddenly redder. “I don't sell my own flesh and blood!” he said roughly. “Never a penny of the Davenants' money have I had, and never a penny of it will I take!”

“But my dear sir—” the lawyer was beginning, when there was a sudden interruption.

Mrs. Spencer threw open the door and came forward.

“You would never be such a fool, John Spencer!” she cried energetically. “Begging your pardon, sir”—with a slight curtsey to Mr. Hurst—“but I could not help hearing what you were saying, and to think of Spencer refusing!”

“I said I should not sell my own flesh and blood!” her husband affirmed stolidly. “No more I shan't!” he went on with dogged determination in his tone, “But it isn't for me to stand in the children's light. Their mother”—with an odd choking sound in his throat—“would have wished it. Mrs. Davenant shall have them, sir—leastways Polly. I don't rightly know where Evie is—she has been away from home for some time, in a place I reckon —but the little one had a letter from her yesterday morning, and she will be coming home fast enough when she hears of this.”

“Ay, I dare say she will! But I think I shall have a word to say to this,” Mrs. Spencer broke in truculently. “It is one thing to let the child go if it is made worth our while, but if Spencer is going to make a fool of himself it is a different matter. I am not going to put myself out to do without Polly.” She looked defiantly at her husband.

Spencer scowled at her and then deliberately turned his back.

“You shall have Polly, sir. It will be for the child's good and it may be as they will let us hear how she goes on sometimes.”

“Certainly, certainly!” the lawyer acquiesced blandly. “This decision does you credit, Mr. Spencer. Probably the child herself will be able to thank you in later years. And now—how soon can she be ready? I have business which will keep me in town to-day, but to-morrow I hope to start for Warchester.”

John Spencer drew a deep breath.

“Polly shall be ready for you to-morrow, sir.”

“Thank you, Mr. Spencer! Thank you!” The lawyer turned to the door. He had seen war in Mrs Spencer's eyes, and he was anxious to avoid a scene. “To-morrow,” he repeated, and made his escape.

Mrs. Spencer turned on her husband in a fury.

“Well, of all the fools, John Spencer! But I shall have something to say to this. I'll see if the police can't stop the child from being took away from me as have always been a mother to her. It is my belief if they hear what's she's seen—ah!”

Spencer had gripped her arm.

“Polly is going, and she's seen nothing! You remember that, woman! How should she, a child like her? Don't you be making a fool of yourself! Polly will go back to her mother's folk and be made a lady of, same as her mother before her, and you will look after the young ones yourself, like other people. I ought to ha' seen as you did before; but it's never too late to mend, and you'll bear in mind what I have said. If I hear as you have spoke I'll—” He did not finish the threat, he kept his face near hers for a moment before he released her arm and pushed her from him.

“Well, I never!” Mrs. Spencer was too thoroughly cowed to say more.

She leaned back against the doorpost in silence, while her husband knocked the ash from his pipe, and then, pulling his cap low over his brow, turned to the stables.

It was raining hard the next day when Polly, crying miserably, bade good-bye to her father and stepmother, and set out with Mr. Hurst for her unknown grandmother's house.

It was a long journey to Warchester, and dusk was gathering when the cab Mr. Hurst had hired at the station turned in at the Hall gates.

“We are nearly there now,” Mr. Hurst remarked cheerfully to his little companion.

The child made no reply; she shrank a little further from him into her corner. So far, even direct questioning had produced nothing from her but monosyllables, and she had refused to eat a morsel of the refreshment Mr, Hurst had ordered for her.

As the cab stopped a footman came down the steps and opened the door. Mr. Hurst lifted his little charge out.

In the hall the butler, an elderly man whose hair had grown white in the service of the Davenants, was waiting to receive them.

“The mistress is in the morning-room, sir. I am to take you to her at once, and the young lady. So this is Miss Mary's child, sir?”

“Yes, Sturgess, this is Miss Mary's child,” Mr. Hurst assented.

He took Polly's cold, thin little hand in his and led her across the hall. Old Sturgess cleared his throat gruffly as he preceded them.

“It seems to bring the old time back, sir,” he observed apologetically.

Mr. Hurst made no reply; he was wondering how the coming interview would end. He, knew that the child who was now clinging nervously to him symbolized the bitterest trouble and humiliation of her life to the lonely old woman who was now awaiting them.

Mrs. Davenant had not been a young woman twenty-one years before when that terrible grief had overtaken her, but assuredly from that time she had become old—all her comely middle-age had fled, her hair had grown white, her face lined and marked, her slight frame bowed, Yet there had been many who had blamed her and said that, in her intense love for her son, she had in a measure neglected her daughter —that she had been harsh and imperious with the girl who, as a child, had always been at her father's heels in the garden and round the stables and as a young woman had been in the habit of taking long, lonely rides. The end had come suddenly; a suitor, favoured by Mrs. Davenant, had been refused by her daughter, there had been a period of bickering, and recrimination, useless insistence on the mother's side, obstinate refusal on the daughter's, and then one morning the neighbourhood had been electrified to hear that Miss Mary Davenant had eloped with her groom.

It had been a terrible scandal of course; thenceforward Mary Davenant's name was never uttered in her old home. It was rumoured in the neighbourhood that more than once she had written to her parents, but that her letters had been returned unopened. It was said that the father was harder than the mother. Be that as it might, it was certain that when Squire Davenant was making his will some tender recollection of the pretty, dark-eyed daughter who had been the joy of his life must have obtruded itself, and for once he had dared to disregard his wife's wishes and to add a clause which stated that, failing his son, Guy, and his heirs, the children of his daughter Mary should succeed to the property. That his independent action had been a bitter pill to his widow, none could doubt, but she had given no sign of her mortification.

The door was thrown open. A little old lady occupied the chair in the centre of the room just under the electric light—a pretty, dainty old lady, whose pink-and-white complexion and elaborately-waved white hair gave her the appearance of a Dresden china shepherdess.

Mr. Hurst led Polly to her at once.

“You see I have fulfilled my commission, Mrs. Davenant.”

“I see.”

The old lady smiled as she looked at the child, who quailed before her gaze. Polly's small, icy fingers instinctively clung to Mr. Hurst's warm hand. Here at least was something tangible, human; anything, she thought vaguely, was better than meeting the gaze of those blue eyes, than being expected to respond to that cold smile.

“So this is my new granddaughter, is it?” Mrs. Davenant said in clear, silvery tones that seemed to hold a ring of her lost youth. “Be good enough to stand aside, Mr. Hurst, and let me look at her!”

Thus adjured, Mr. Hurst had no choice but to obey. He was compelled to disregard the child's mute appeal and release the unwilling fingers.

Polly never forgot her feeling of misery as she stood by herself in the blaze of light, the one incongruous element in the luxuriously furnished room.

So they waited for a moment; the drooping brown eyes raised themselves reluctantly and met the mocking gaze of the blue ones.

The merciless scrutiny included all the child's defects of costume—the shabby, ill-fitting blue cashmere that had been her Sunday best, the big white pinafore peeping out in front from beneath the cloak that had been Mrs. Spencer's and had been cut down for Polly, the child's thin face, the big, frightened eyes, the untidy wisps of hair beneath the sailor-hat, the long thin arms and legs.

Then at last Mrs. Davenant laid her lorgnette down and smiled again.

“So this is the heiress of Davenant Hall! You are a brave man, Mr. Hurst.”