Patricia Wentworth: She Came Back

Light overhead, the blue curtains drawn at the windows, a wood fire glowing bright, and over it the white mantelshelf with The Seasons looking down, and over The Seasons, The Girl with a Fur Coat. She looked at her steadily, critically, as she might have looked at her own reflection in the glass. She thought the portrait might very well have been a mirror reflecting her.

There were two people in the room. On the right of the hearth Milly Armitage with a newspaper on her lap and another sprawling beside her on the blue carpet. Untidy, tiresome woman. Never her friend. Of course she would be here. Well dug in. Nous allons changer tout cela. Down on the hearthrug, curled up with a book, that brat Lyndall.

The paper rustled under the sudden heavy pressure of Milly Armitage’s hand, the book pitched forward on to the white fur rug. Lyndall sprang up, stumbling on the folds of her long green skirt, catching at the arm of the empty chair against which she had been leaning. Her eyes widened and darkened, all the colour went out of her face. She stared at the open door and saw Anne Jocelyn stepped from the portrait behind her-Anne Jocelyn, bare-headed, with her gold curls and her tinted oval face, pearls hanging down over the thin blue dress, fur coat hanging open.

In the same moment she heard Milly Armitage gasp. She herself did not seem to be breathing at all. Everything stopped while she looked at Anne. Then irrepressibly, incongruously, there zigzagged into her mind the thought, “Amory painted her better than that.” When this came back to her later it shocked her horribly. After more than three years of privation, suffering, and strain, who wouldn’t look different- older? A rush of feeling blotted out everything except the realization that this was Anne and she was alive. She ran forward with a half articulate cry, and Anne opened her arms. In a moment Lyndall was hugging her, saying her name over and over, the tears running down her cheeks.

“Anne-Anne-Anne! We thought you were dead!”

“I very nearly thought so myself.”

They came across the room together.

“Aunt Milly! How good to see you! Oh, how very, very good to be here!”

Milly Armitage was embraced. Struggling with a horrid rush of completely disorganized emotions, she kissed a cheek which was thinner and considerably more made-up than it had been three years ago. She couldn’t remember ever having been embraced by Anne before. A cool kiss on the cheek was as far as they had ever got or wanted to get. She stood back with a transient feeling of relief and endeavoured to find words. It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of things to say, but even in this moment of shock she had a feeling that she had better not say them. Philip-she mustn’t say or do anything which would hurt Philip. A sense of immeasurable disaster hovered. Three and a half years was a long time to be dead. Anne had come back. Awful to come back and feel that you weren’t wanted any more. “The living close their ranks.” Who said that? It was true-you had to. Under this high-flown strain, something quite homely and commonplace. “Gosh! Why did she have to come back?”

Lyndall was saying, “Anne darling-oh, Anne darling! How lovely that you are alive!”

Mrs. Armitage remembered that she had been brought up to be a gentlewoman. With grim determination she set herself to behave like one.

It was getting on for four o’clock of the following day before Philip Jocelyn came home. He was intercepted in the hall by Milly Armitage.

“Philip-come here-I want to speak to you.”

“What’s the matter?”

She had him by the arm, drawing him down the hall towards the study, which balanced the parlour on the opposite side and was comfortably far away from it. Like most rooms of the name it had never been much studied in, but the walls were lined with books and it had a pleasant lived-in air, with its rust-red curtains and deep leather chairs.

When the door was shut, Philip looked curiously at his Aunt Milly. He was very fond of her, but he wished she would come to the point. Something had obviously happened, but instead of getting on with it and telling him what it was, she was just beating about the bush.

“We tried to get on to you, but they said you’d left the club.”

“Yes-Blackett asked me to go down to his place. What’s the matter? Where’s Lyn? It’s not got anything to do with Lyn?”

“No.”

Milly Armitage said to herself in a distraught manner, “You see-he thought about her at once. He’s fond of her-he’s been getting fonder of her every day. What’s the good of it now? I’m a wicked woman… Oh, lord-what a mix-up!” She rubbed her chin with a shaking hand.

“Aunt Milly, what is it? Anyone dead?”

Mrs. Armitage restrained herself from saying, “Worse than that.” By making a tremendous effort she contrived merely to shake her head.

He said with some impatience, “What is it then?”

Milly Armitage blurted it right out.

“Anne’s come back.”

They were standing close together beside the writing-table. Philip had his coat over his arm and his hat in his hand. He stood there, fair and tall like all the Jocelyns, his face longer and sharper than the type, his eyes the same dark grey as Anne’s, the eyebrows marked like hers but crooked where hers were arched, his hair burnt almost flaxen by the Tunisian sun. After a moment he turned, dropped his hat into a chair, laid his coat across the back, and said softly,

“Would you mind saying that again?”

Milly Armitage felt as if she were going to burst. She said it again, separating the words as if she were speaking to a child,

“Anne-has-come-back.”

“I thought that was what you said-I just wanted to be sure. Would you mind telling me what it means?”

“Philip-don’t! I can’t tell you if you’re like that.”

His crooked brows went up.

“Like what?”

“Inhuman. She’s alive-she’s come back-she’s here.”

His voice grated for the first time as he said,

“Have you gone out of your mind?”

“Not yet, but I expect I shall.”

He said quietly, “Anne’s dead. What makes you think she isn’t?”

“Anne. She walked in on us last night. She’s here-she’s in the parlour with Lyndall now.”

“Nonsense!”

“Philip, if you go on saying that sort of thing to me, I shall scream! I tell you she’s alive-I tell you she’s in the parlour with Lyndall.”

“And I tell you that I saw her die, and I saw her buried.”

Milly Armitage checked an involuntary shudder. She said in an angry voice,

“What’s the good of saying that?”

“Meaning I’m telling lies?”

“She’s in the parlour with Lyndall.”

Philip walked over to the door.

“Then suppose we join them.”

“Wait! It’s no good taking it like that. It’s happened-better let me tell you. Someone rang up in the morning-yesterday morning. Lyn told you on the telephone.”

“Yes?”

“It was Anne. She had just landed from a fishing-boat. She didn’t say who she was-only asked if you were here. Last night at about half-past eight she walked in. It was a most frightful shock. I don’t wonder you can’t believe it. Lyn had been looking at Amory’s picture of her only a little time before, and when the door opened, there she was, just as if she had stepped out of it-the blue dress, the pearls, the fur coat. It was the most frightful shock.”

He turned away and opened the door.

“Anne’s dead, Aunt Milly. I think I’d like to go and see who it is in the parlour with Lyn.”

Neither of them spoke as they went across the hall. It was Philip who opened the door and went in. He saw Lyndall first. She was sitting on the arm of one of the big chairs on the left-hand side of the hearth. She jumped up, and he saw behind her in the chair the blue dress of the portrait-Anne Jocelyn’s going-away dress-Anne Jocelyn’s pearls hanging down over the stuff, Anne Jocelyn’s curled gold hair, the oval face, the dark grey eyes, the arching brows. He stood looking for a time that none of them could have counted. Then he came forward in a quiet, deliberate manner.