She Came Back Page 8

  Lyndall said, “No.” She stood up, moving slowly and a little stiffly, because if she let them, her knees would tremble. She controlled them very carefully, but the effort made her feel like one of those stiff, jointed dolls.

  When she was on her feet, she said gently,

  “You must do what she wants. You did love her. It will come back again.”

  “Will it? On revient toujours à ses premiers amours. I have always thought that a particularly crass sort of lie. I told you we had gone in opposite directions. Lyn, even now, with evidence that I am bound to accept, I tell you she isn’t Anne to me.”

  “Who is she?”

  “A stranger. I can’t feel that we have ever shared a single experience-not even when she tells me things which only Anne could know.” He moved abruptly. “You are going away?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  There was a long, heavy silence. It weighed on the room, it weighed upon their hearts. Tomorrow she would be gone.

  They had nothing more to say to one another, because that said everything. If he put out his hand it would touch her. But he couldn’t put it out. They were already divided, and with every moment of that silence each could see the other receding, whilst between them thought and feeling wrenched and broke.

  When Milly Armitage came in, neither had moved from where they stood, yet each had travelled a long way.

  CHAPTER 14

  The nine days’ wonder died down in the Press. On the whole it had been discreet. Annie Joyce’s connection with the family, the likeness which had made the mistake in identity possible, was handled tactfully, and presently the affair receded. A week after Anne’s return the telephone bell had ceased to ring, and reporters to clamour for interviews.

  Anne received a ration-book, which also contained clothes coupons, and went up to town to shop with a cheque-book in her handbag and the knowledge that there was a comfortable sum in her account at the bank. She had a very full day mapped out. Clothes were going to be a problem. Twenty coupons of her own-very aggravating to find that she couldn’t spend more than that before the end of January. Fifty produced by Mrs. Ramage, who preferred saving her money to buying what she called “those utilities.” And the prospect of perhaps another forty from the Board of Trade when her case had been considered, which would certainly take time. Eighteen coupons for a coat, the same for a coat and skirt, eleven for a dress, seven for shoes, and then underclothes-the coupons were just going to trickle away like water through a leaky sieve. Impossible to blame Aunt Milly for giving away a dead Anne Jocelyn’s wardrobe to the blitzed, but enraging to the last degree.

  Then she must have her hair waved and set again, and a facial treatment, and a manicure. It was going to be a very full day indeed, but she would have looked forward to it if it hadn’t been for the letter in her bag. She kept telling herself that it was tiresome but no more.

  The matter could be dealt with easily enough. She could have dealt with it herself as far as that went. Easy enough to write, perhaps in the third person, something on the lines of “Lady Jocelyn is afraid that there really is not anything she could add to what has appeared in the papers with regard to the death of Annie Joyce. She does not think-” No, that wouldn’t do-too stiff, too much de haut en bas. It was no good hurting people’s feelings. Quite a simple letter would be best. “Dear Miss Collins, I don’t think I can tell you anything that you do not know already about the death of poor Annie Joyce. The cutting you enclose has all the information that I have myself. I would meet you if I felt that it would serve any useful purpose, but I really think it would only be distressing for us both.” Yes, that would do.

  She had a fleeting regret that she had not written and posted just such a letter. After all, who was to know that Nellie Collins had ever written to her, or she to Nellie Collins? And even as the thought was in her mind, she knew that she couldn’t hide this or anything else, and that the answer she wrote, or whether she wrote an answer at all, was part of a pattern which was none of her designing-a very strict pattern to which she would be most strictly kept. Just for a moment she had something like a black-out. It was a very strange sensation-between one second and the next a shock like the shock of concussion, leaving her numb, dazed, and reluctant. It passed, and afterwards she would have been frightened if she had let herself think about it.

  Fortunately, she had a great many other things to think about. There were still excellent clothes to be got, but you had to look for them, and they were a shocking price. She gave twenty-five pounds for a coat and skirt in a good Scotch tweed, sandy beige with a brown line and a brown fleck- very becoming. Eighteen coupons gone. A pair of brown outdoor shoes, and a pair for the house-fourteen. Six pairs of stockings-another eighteen. She found herself thinking less of the price of a garment than of the number of coupons that had to be given up.

  It was three in the afternoon before she really had time to remember that she had been afraid. She stood hesitating imperceptibly between the rather narrow windows which displayed on the one side a smiling wax model with an elaborately dressed head of golden hair, and on the other a snowy hand with tinted nails lying on a velvet cushion. The back of both windows was curtained in the very bright shade called bleu de roi. The cushion under the hand and the golden-haired lady’s draperies were of an equally bright rose colour. A gold scroll over the door bore the name Félise. Anne Jocelyn pushed down the handle and went in.

  If she had hesitated a little longer, or if she had not hesitated at all, some things might have happened differently, and some might not have happened at all. If she had gone straight in, Lyndall would not have seen her. If she had waited a little longer, Lyndall would have caught her up before she entered the shop, in which case she probably would not have kept her appointment with Mr. Felix, and she might, just possibly she might, have answered Nellie Collins’ letter herself.

  As it was, Lyn’s moment of startled recognition brought her to a standstill on the opposite pavement just too late for her to be sure that it was Anne whom she had seen. And if that was all, it wouldn’t have mattered, but she wasn’t sure whether she herself had been seen by Anne, because the upper half of that door between the two windows was made of looking-glass. The question was, how much did it reflect, and how much could Anne have seen before she pushed open the door and went in? If it was Anne, and she had seen Lyndall looking at her, she would think-well, what would she think? That Lyn wouldn’t cross the road to speak to her? That she had some reason for avoiding her? It would be quite dreadful if she were to think anything like that. There mustn’t be anything of that sort, ever. There wouldn’t be if she could prevent it.

  She had to wait whilst what seemed like an endless stream of traffic went by. By the time she managed to cross over, her courage had gone cold, but it held. She was not yet sure that it was Anne whom she had seen, but she was going to make sure. She had seen a fur coat and a glimpse of blue go into the shop. If there was a fur coat and a blue dress on the other side of that looking-glass door, it wouldn’t take a moment to find out whether Anne was inside them.

  She went in, and saw two women waiting by the counter, and a buxom assistant reaching something off an upper shelf with her back turned to the shop. Neither of the two women was Anne Jocelyn, but neither of them was wearing a fur coat, and quite definitely Lyndall had seen a fur coat go in at the looking-glass door.

  She stood there waiting for the assistant to turn round. But she didn’t turn round. One of the women was explaining just what sort of setting-lotion she wanted, and every time it was possible to get in a word edgeways the buxom girl said they hadn’t got it, but that something else would do just as well, in fact very much better. Lyndall could see that it was likely to go on for ages. On the spur of the moment she walked across the shop and through the curtained archway on the other side of which the cubicles for hairdressing and manicure would be found. If Anne was having her hair done, that was where she would be. I
t wouldn’t take a moment to find out. She could always say she was looking for a friend.

  As soon as she was through the archway she could hear the swish of running water. The cubicles had curtains, not doors. It was quite easy to look through the curtains. A fat woman with a red neck-a thin one with her head over the basin-a little dark girl having a manicure-a permanent wave-another manicure. Not a sign of Anne, not a sign of the fur coat. After all, it had got to be somewhere.

  At the end of the passage between the cubicles was another of those looking-glass doors. She saw her own reflection coming to meet her like a doppelgänger-Lyn Armitage in a grey tweed coat and skirt and a dark red hat, looking scared. It was frightfully stupid to put yourself in the wrong by looking scared. If you were doing something which made you feel not quite so sure of yourself as you would like to be, that was the time to put your chin in the air and look as if you had bought the earth and paid cash down for it.

  She pushed the door as she had pushed the other one, and came into a small square space with a wooden stair running steeply up on the left, a door on the right, and another straight ahead. It was dark after the brightly lighted shop, and it was cold after the warm, steamy heat of the passage between the cubicles. There was a damp, mouldy smell. Quite evidently these were back premises with no allurements for customers. Anne wouldn’t be here. And as the thought went through her mind, she heard Anne Jocelyn’s voice.

  It frightened her, she couldn’t think why. It was only the voice, no words, but she wasn’t sure-no, she wasn’t sure about its being Anne’s voice. If she hadn’t been thinking about Anne just at that moment, perhaps she would never have thought of its being her voice. She took a hesitating step forward. Now that her eyes were getting accustomed to the changed light, she could see that the door in front of her was not quite shut. It wasn’t open, but it hadn’t latched when it was closed. Some doors are very tiresome like that-they latch and spring open again, or they close and do not latch.

  Lyndall put her hand on the panel of the door. She had no design in doing this; it was neither thought nor planned. She saw her hand come up and move the door. It moved quite easily. There was a line of light all down the edge of it like a thin gold wire. She heard the voice which was like Anne’s voice say, “You might just as well let me write to Nellie Collins. She’s quite harmless.” A man’s voice said in a carrying whisper, “That is not for you to say.”

  Lyndall took her hand away from the door and turned round. Her heart had begun to beat with suffocating violence. She felt ashamed and inexplicably frightened. If she let herself move quickly, panic might take hold of her. She must get away. She must move quickly, but she mustn’t make any noise. She was very near to feeling that she couldn’t move at all.

  Warmth and scented steam met her between the cubicles. She passed the curtained archway, and found the scene in the shop unchanged-the two women by the counter, the babble of voices, the assistant, with her back still turned, shifting bottles. She passed out into the street and shut the door behind her. No one had seen her come or go.

  CHAPTER 15

  Pelham Trent was, as Mr. Codrington had called him, a very pleasant fellow. Lyndall Armitage certainly found him so. He dropped in as often as he could at Lilla Jocelyn’s flat, and Lilla was delighted to see him come. As she said to Milly Armitage, “They are just friends. At least, that’s all it is with her-I’m not so sure about him. But it’s exactly what she wants just now-someone to take her out and make her feel she matters.”

  Lyn went out with Pelham Trent. She found him a most agreeable companion and the best of hosts. It was better than sitting at home and feeling as if your world had come to an end. When you felt like that, the thing to do was to get into somebody else’s world as quickly as you could. It was her world which had crashed-hers and Philip’s. Perhaps Anne’s too. But Pelham Trent’s world kept its steady orbit. It was a safe, cheerful world in which you could laugh and have a good time-dance, see a film, a play, or a cabaret, and put off for as long as possible the return to the cold, shattered place where your own warm world had been.

  They did not always go out. Sometimes they stayed in Lilla’s charming drawing-room and talked. Sometimes he played to them. Those rather square hands of his with the strong, blunt fingers were quite extraordinarily agile on the keys of the Steinway baby grand. He would sit there playing one thing after another whilst the two girls listened. When the time came to say good-night he would hold Lyndall’s hand for a moment and say, “Did you like it?” Sometimes she would say, “Yes,” and sometimes she would only look, because when she felt deeply she never found it at all easy to translate her feelings into words. Except with Philip, who nearly always knew what she was thinking, and so, because no words were needed, they came quite easily.

  Music let her into a world which was neither hers nor Pelham Trent’s, though his playing was the gate through which she entered it. It was a world where feeling and emotion were sublimated until they possessed nothing except beauty, where sorrow spent itself in music and loss was solaced. She came back from this world rested and refreshed.

  After all Milly Armitage did not stay on at Jocelyn’s Holt. It was not in her to refuse what Philip asked, but she had never responded to any of her sister-in-law Cotty Armitage’s not infrequent appeals with more alacrity. Cotty enjoyed poor health. For twenty-five years or so she had had recurring attacks to which no doctor had ever been able to give a name. They involved the maximum of trouble to her family with the minimum of discomfort to herself. She had worn a husband into his grave, two daughters into matrimony, and the third to the brink of a breakdown. It was when Olive appeared likely to go over this brink that Cotty took up pen and paper and invited her dearest Milly to visit them. And Milly, incurably soft-hearted, invariably went.

  “Of course what she really wants is for someone to pour a hogshead of cold water over her.”

  “Then why don’t you?” said Lilla, with whom she was lunching on her way through London.

  “Couldn’t lift it, my dear. But someone ought to. Every time I go there I make up my mind to tell her she’s a selfish slave-driver, and that Olive is simply going down the drain, but I don’t do it.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “Olive wouldn’t thank me, for one thing. That’s the awful part of that kind of slave-driving-in the worst cases the victim doesn’t even want to be free. Olive’s like that. You know, Lyndall only just got away in time. She was two years with Cotty after her father and mother died. They were killed together in a motor accident when she was nine and it nearly did her in. She’s sensitive, you know-no armour-plating. Things aren’t awfully easy for people like that. You’re an angel to have her, Lilla.”

  “I love having her, Aunt Milly.”

  Milly Armitage crumbled her bread in a wasteful manner. Lord Woolton would not have approved, nor would Milly herself if she had noticed what she was doing, but she did not. She wanted to say something to Lilla, but she didn’t know how to set about it. She could be warm, generous, and endlessly kind, but she couldn’t be tactful. She sat there in her baggy mustard tweeds with her hair rather wild and her hat at a rollicking angle and crumbled her bread.

  Lilla, in a yellow jumper and a short brown skirt, had that air of having just come out of a bandbox which seems to be the birthright of American women. Her dark curls shone. Everything about her was just right both for herself and the occasion. There was a perfect ordered elegance which appeared as natural as it is in a hummingbird or a flower. Through it all, like the scent of the flower and the song of the bird, there came that friendly warmth which was all her own. She laughed a little now.

  “Why don’t you just say it, Aunt Milly, without bothering how?”

  Milly Armitage’s frown relaxed. A wide rueful smile showed her excellent teeth.

  “I might as well, mightn’t I? I can’t see any good in beating about the bush myself, but people seem to expect it somehow. My mother always said I just blurted things out, an
d so I do. If they’re pleasant, what’s the good of wrapping them up? And if they’re not, well, it’s a good thing to get them off your chest and out of the way. So there it is-Philip and Anne are coming up to town. It’s too much for him going up and down every day. He said so at dinner one evening, and Anne went up to town next day and took a flat. If you ask me, that wasn’t at all what he meant, but he couldn’t very well say anything. She did it in the most tactful way of course. Not being built that way myself, I don’t awfully admire people being tactful-there’s something soapy about it. You know- voice well kept down-gentle-hesitating. She hoped he’d be pleased. She’d been thinking what a bore that going up and down would be in the winter, and when she heard of this flat it seemed too good a chance to lose. They wouldn’t hold it open-someone else was after it-all that kind of thing.” She screwed up her face in an apologetic way. “There-I’ve no business to talk about her like that, have I? But I never did like her, and I never shall.”

  Lilla sat with her chin in her hand looking across the table, her puzzled brown eyes just touched with a smile.

  “Why don’t you like her, Aunt Milly?”

  “I don’t know-I just don’t. She’s a disaster for Philip- she always was-but they might have shaken down together if there hadn’t been this break. But when a man has just begun to realize that he’s made the wrong marriage, and then for three and a half years he thinks he’s got free of it, what do you imagine he’s going to feel like when he finds he’s up to his neck in it again. Even without his having got so fond of Lyn.”

  “Is he fond of Lyn?” The brown eyes were very deeply troubled.

  Milly Armitage nodded.

  “I suppose that’s one of the things I oughtn’t to say. But it’s true. And there wasn’t anything wrong about it until Anne turned up. Lyn is just right for him, and he is just right for her. What do you suppose he is feeling like? I tell you I’m glad to be getting away to Cotty, and I can’t put it stronger than that. You see, the worst part of it is that they’re both trying quite desperately hard-I’ve never seen people trying harder. Anne is trying to get him back by being all the things she was never meant to be. It gives me pins and needles all over to watch her being gentle, and considerate, and tactful, and Philip being controlled and polite. He feels he’s got to make up for not having recognized her at first, but it’s all against the grain. If they’d snap at each other, or have a good red-hot, tearing row, it would be a relief-but they just go on trying.”