They were safely on the other side of the road before Mirrie ventured out of the shop. She said, “What dreadful dogs!” After which she put her hand in her pocket and turned bright pink.
“My letter-oh, Johnny, my letter! It’s gone!”
He looked at her with laughing eyes.
“It’s all right-I posted it.”
She said, “Oh!” They went over the road together.
When they were on the other side she produced a question.
“Did you look at it? Did it get muddy?”
“I looked at it. It had a paw mark in one corner-Jane’s, I think.”
She didn’t look at him. She was still rather pink. It was very becoming. Johnny said,
“Perhaps I ought to have asked you before I posted it. It struck me there was something wrong about the address.”
“Oh-”
“Your letter was to Miss Brown, wasn’t it? Or wasn’t it?”
“Of course it was!”
“Well, it wasn’t addressed to her. It was addressed to Mr. E. C. Brown, 10 Marracott Street, Pigeon Hill, S.E. That’s a London suburb, isn’t it?”
She looked up at him sideways then, a creature wary of a trap. A squirrel perhaps? No, a kitten playing with a leaf- playing and catching it-playing and being caught. Only he wasn’t so sure that this was play. She gave him a sudden glancing smile and said,
“Didn’t I put Miss Brown’s name on it?”
“You did not.”
She heaved a small sigh.
“I am stupid. But it doesn’t matter-she’ll get it all right. She is staying with her brother.”
“Mr. E. C. Brown?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And she is staying with him in the middle of the school term?”
She said in a voice of soft reproach, “She hasn’t been well.”
He laughed in a manner which left her in no doubt as to his scepticism. Then he said,
“All right, have it your own way, darling. Mr., Mrs., or Miss -I don’t give a damn.”
Her lashes came down.
“You oughtn’t to say damn.”
“And you ought not to write letters to Mr. Brown and tell fibs about them, my poppet. Especially when they are the sort of fibs that wouldn’t deceive a half-witted child.”
They were turning in at the gate as he spoke. She stamped a small angry foot and ran from him, reaching the front door first and banging it in his face. She was half way up the stairs as he crossed the hall, but she stopped and turned when she heard him laughing, her cheeks scarlet and her eyes bright with tears.
“I don’t want to speak to you!”
He blew her a kiss.
“Darling, you needn’t.” Then, as she stamped again and ran up the rest of the way, he called after her,
“It’s all right-I won’t tell. Don’t forget we’re going to a flick.”
He wondered whether she would come, and he wondered about some other things too. Just why had she read him her letter to Miss or Mr. Brown? If for some reason she wanted him to know that Jonathan was prepared to treat her as a daughter, just what would the reason be? Something on the lines of “I’m not a little waif any longer-I’m Jonathan Field’s heiress”? Was she, in fact, extending the baited hook, not only to him but also to the rather supposititious Mr. Brown? And where did all this leave Georgina? Was Jonathan Field going to have two heiresses or only one?
Mirrie came down smiling as the tea bell rang, and they made a party of four to see the film that was showing at the Rex in Lenton.
Chapter X
WHILST THEY WERE out Jonathan Field rang up to say that he would be staying in town for the night. Mrs. Fabian came trailing down the stairs to tell the returning party about it. She was wearing a purple dressing-gown in a flowing style with a long black chiffon scarf which imparted a funerary appearance. Since she had removed the bandeau with which she attempted to control her hair during the daytime, it now straggled wildly and she had to keep putting up a hand to push it back from her forehead and out of her eyes.
“Jonathan will be staying the night in town. I thought I had better come down and tell you. I don’t know if he was speaking from Mr. Maudsley’s office, but the line was extremely bad and I could hardly hear anything he said.”
Johnny laughed.
“Darling, I hope you really did hear whether he was coming back or not, because if you’ve mucked it up and he gets home in the middle of the night to find everything locked and bolted he won’t be at all pleased.”
Mrs. Fabian’s first expression of surprise changed rapidly to one of dismay.
“Oh, my dears, do you think-oh, I can’t believe-but the line was extremely bad. I couldn’t help wondering whether they turn down the current or whatever it is at night.” Johnny said,
“Darling, you’re out of your depth. And anyhow that isn’t the point. Exactly what did Jonathan say?”
She had come to a standstill, and was now draped against the newel after the manner of one of those eighteenth-century ladies so often depicted as leaning over a pillar with an urn upon it. She put a hand to her head with an air of distraction and repeated, “The line was so bad.”
“Darling, you’re not trying. Just begin at the beginning and go right on.”
“Well, he said, ‘Is that you?,’ and when I said it was, he asked where all the rest of you were, so I said you had gone to the cinema in Lenton, and he made a kind of tutting noise as if he was vexed, and I’m not at all sure he didn’t say ‘Damn!’ ”
“We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Go on-you’re doing fine.”
By common consent the other three were leaving her to Johnny. If anyone could get a coherent story out of her, he would be the one to do it. Mirrie had a hand on Anthony’s arm. Georgina sat in the tall carved chair to the right of the door. She had gone with them because she wouldn’t let anyone guess, not even Anthony, at the shock Jonathan Field had given her. It wasn’t a case of more money or less. It was as if the ground had suddenly opened in front of her and swallowed up the foundations upon which her life was built. Nobody must know how dazed and bruised she felt. Anthony said he loved her, but she had thought that Jonathan loved her very much, and now he didn’t seem to love her at all. She wouldn’t have minded what he did for Mirrie-she wouldn’t have minded his being fond of her. But did you have to take love away from one person in order to give it to another? She hadn’t thought so, but it had happened, and there wasn’t anything that she or anyone else could do about it. Nobody must pity her or feel obliged to try and pick up the pieces. She would do that for herself, but she must have time, just a little time, and at the moment she was too tired even to think. She sat up straight, her head against the tall back of the chair, and listened vaguely to Johnny and Cousin Anna. Georgina had called her that when she was three years old. Coming into her mind like this, it was a reminder how deep were the roots that Jonathan Field was tearing up.
The sound of their voices came to her with an effect of distance.
“He said he hadn’t finished his business with Mr. Maudsley. And then I’m sure he said he wouldn’t be home tonight-at least I was sure until you asked me if I was.”
Johnny persevered.
“There must have been something to make you sure, or not sure. What did he say? Think! He used words-what were they?”
“Something about coming home tonight or not coming home tonight. I really cannot be certain which it was. There was a poem I learnt in the schoolroom, and I have forgotten most of it, but one of the verses began,
‘So many things I cannot tell
Linger in memory’s haunted shell.’
“And they do, you know. You remember some things, but you don’t remember others-like putting a sea-shell to your ear and hearing that rushing sound it makes. So I don’t think it’s any use going on about it. Jonathan will have his key, and we just won’t bolt the door. And Mrs. Stokes has got some very nice sandwiches for you all in the dining-room, so do go along and have them.”