“I should rather think she did! Who was the Marquis who kept her in style?”
“I don’t know: might have been almost any Marquis, by what I’ve heard. You wouldn’t think she’d been a regular high-flier, would you? She was: old Flixton told me she was a dasher of the first water when she was young. Devil of a temper, but as full of fun as Clara is. The bottle was her undoing: that’s why it’s low tide with her now, for, according to Clara, she was pretty well-inlaid when she retired! Clara don’t live with her, but she looks after her. Which reminds me that I never did get to Tunbridge Wells, and I must. I owe Clara something for the good times we’ve had together. That’s all over now, and I expect she knows it, but I’ll tell her myself.” He chuckled. “As corky a squirrel as you could wish for! Wrote to beg me to send her an express if I was dead, so that she could get her blacks together!” He drank the rest of his brandy, and set the glass down beside his chair. “Where the deuce was I, when you led me off on to Clara?”
“On the way to Networth, to visit John-Coachman.”
“Oh, yes! Well, I did that all right and tight, and then I took the lane that joins the pike-road at Poundgate. That’s where I overturned—just short of Poundgate, and not fifty yards from Woodland House. Mrs Askham happened to be coming out of the gate, and saw it, and the long and the short of it was that she had me carried up to the house, and—and there I’ve been ever since.” He looked at Kit, warmth in his eyes, “They couldn’t have done more for me if I’d been one of their sons, Kester. I can’t tell you how—how good they are, or how kind! I didn’t know anything about it, of course, but Mr Askham rode off himself to fetch their doctor, and even had the grays led into the stable, and saw to it that they were looked after as well as they would have been here. No broken legs, thank God! And no bad scars—thanks to Mr Askham!”
“Well, that’s good, but why didn’t he send them a message here? He surely must have known how anxious everyone must be!”
“Yes, yes, but he didn’t know who I was! I couldn’t tell them! Mrs Askham was in a regular stew over it, thinking what would be her feelings, if it had happened to Jeffrey, or Philip! They are her two elder sons. I haven’t met Jeffrey: he’s a parson; but Philip was there—a very good fellow! he’s up at Cambridge. Then there’s Ned. He’s still at Rugby, but he’s army-mad. And, in the nursery—”
“Yes, I dare say!” said Kit, ruthlessly interrupting this enthusiastic catalogue. “But what I want to know is why these excellent people didn’t think to take a look inside your card-case! If you were going to see Silverdale—yes, I know about that!—you can’t have forgotten to take it with you!”
“No, no, I did remember to do that!” Evelyn assured him. He cast another of his guilty looks upon his twin, but his eyes were brimful of laughter. “The thing was that there weren’t any cards in it! Now, Kester, don’t comb my, hair! I was in a hurry, but I did remember to assure myself that the case was in my pocket, and—dash it, I won’t let you rake me down! I am your elder brother, and the head of the family, so just you keep your tongue between your teeth!”
“God help the family!” retorted Kit, the laughter reflected in his own eyes. “Of all the paperskulls—! Was there nothing to tell the Askhams who you are?”
“No, what should there be? I’d only my nightbag with me, and you don’t suppose I flaunt about the country with my crest blazoned on my sporting carriages, do you?”
“No, but when you came round? They must have asked you what your name was!”
“Yes, they did—at least, Mrs Askham did, when I came round the first time. I don’t remember it, and they say I slipped off again, but it seems that Mrs Askham asked me what my name was, and though I didn’t answer until she’d asked me several times, in the end I said “Evelyn”. Very likely I thought I was at Harrow, and saying my catechism! I don’t know! But when I really did come to my senses I found they were calling me Mr Evelyn. At first, I didn’t care what they called me. Then, when I got to be more myself, and knew how many days had passed, and that I must have lurched myself with the Stavelys, it didn’t seem to signify. Well, Kester, I was all to pieces, and they didn’t encourage me to talk, because Dr Elstead had warned them not to do so! And later—I didn’t want to tell them.” He paused, studying his right hand, lying in the sling, the flicker of a reminiscent smile playing about the corners of his mouth. After a moment, as Kit waited, in some bewilderment, he looked up, and for the first time in his life met his twin’s eyes with a little shyness in his own. “Kester, when I woke up the second time, and looked round, wondering where the devil I was—I saw an angel!”
“You saw what?”
“Sitting in a chair, and watching me,” said Evelyn, in a rapt voice. “With eyes of such a clear blue—oh, like the sky! and shining—I can’t describe them to you! And the sweetest, tenderest mouth—and pale gold hair, like a halo! I almost thought myself dead, and in heaven! And then she rose up out of the chair, and said, in her soft, pretty voice: “Oh, you are better!” With such a smile as only an angel could have!”
“Oh, did she?” said Kit, no longer bewildered. “As though we weren’t in a bad enough tangle already! And what else did she say?”
“Nothing,” replied Evelyn simply. “She vanished!”
This was rather too much for even the most devoted twin to accept with complaisance. “Stubble it!” commanded Kit wrathfully. “If you don’t stop talking as if you’d rats in your upper storey, Eve, I’ll go back to Vienna tomorrow, and leave you to get yourself out of this hobble as best you may!”
“Kester!” exclaimed Evelyn, in accents of deep reproach.
Kit’s lips quivered, but he said sternly: “Cut line!”
Evelyn laughed. “Well, she seemed to vanish! She went away to fetch Mrs Askham back into the room. She had been set to watch me, you see—they never left me alone until I came to myself, and Nurse had gone off to her dinner, and Mrs Askham had been called away, which was why Patience was there. After that, I only saw her when she brought up a glass of milk for me, or some such thing, and then only for a moment, and never alone, of course, for Mrs Askham guards her strictly, until that curst sawbones—no, I don’t mean that! He was a famous fellow!—until I was allowed to leave my bed. James—Mrs Askham’s man-servant—was used to help me dress, and to support me downstairs, for I was as weak as a cat for days! Fit for nothing but to lie on a sofa, which they carried into the garden for me, and to watch the children at their play!”
“Also to talk to the angel, I collect!” said Kit dryly. “Is she a daughter of the Askhams?”
“The eldest daughter. Yes, then I was able to talk to her, but always—always with Mrs Askham there, or Nurse, or the children! It didn’t signify—they were right to guard her! And though I knew, the instant I clapped eyes on her, that it was bellows to mend with me, she is so—so divinely innocent, Kester, I couldn’t suppose that she felt the same! They might have left us alone for hours: I—I wouldn’t have said a word to her that might have startled her! She’s such a shy little bird—no, not shy, precisely! So open, and confiding! So unaffected, so—”
“Innocent,” supplied Kit, as his besotted twin hesitated for a word.
“Yes,” agreed Evelyn. “Did you—did you ever meet a girl, Kester, who made you feel that—that the only thing you wanted to do in life was to protect her—shield her from so much as a draught?”
“No,” replied Kit. He added tactfully: “Not yet!”