Patricia Wentworth - Out of the Past

As she walked along the hot cliff path with her knitting-bag on her arm she reflected that human nature was of all studies the most absorbing. The knitting-bag was a new one presented by her niece Ethel upon the occasion of her birthday. The remnant of chintz from which it had been made was most tasteful, the pattern embracing a great number of flowers all blooming together in a profusion seldom conceded by nature, and the lining an agreeable shade of green. A much appreciated feature was the addition of a row of useful pockets to hold everything from pattern-books to spare needles and balls of wool. Her thoughts followed Ethel Burkett on her journey with affection, picturing with pleasure her prospective reunion with the family from whom she was never willingly parted.

It being by now close on one o’clock, Darsie Anning would be engaged in superintending the dishing-up of lunch. Even with a good refrigerator, food must be a problem in such weather as this, and with a foreign staff you really could not be too particular. Miss Silver was therefore surprised as she crossed the upper landing to see Miss Anning come a little way out of her mother’s bedroom and then turn back again.

“Now, Mother, I really must go and see about your lunch. Marie will bring it up to you.”

Mrs. Arming’s voice sounded fretfully through the half open door.

“I don’t like these foreign girls, Darsie. I keep on telling you, but you don’t do anything about it. My mother had a French maid when I was a girl. She read our letters. I should like you to send Marie away. I don’t like her to be left with me. I don’t know why you don’t stay with me yourself. I don’t want you to go away and leave me.”

Miss Anning came out half way upon the landing and saw Miss Silver. At the sound of a fretful sob she drew her brows together and said, “Oh dear!”

Miss Silver coughed.

“Could I perhaps be of any use? I could sit with your mother until her lunch comes up. I know what a busy time this is.”

Darsie Anning gave a short brisk nod.

“That is very kind of you. Mother, here is Miss Silver come to pay you a visit.”

Mrs. Anning was in a state of unusual agitation. She had a high flush and a wandering eye. Miss Silver was asked with insistence to see that the door was really shut.

“It has a way of springing open, and these girls stand at the crack and listen. Foreigners are all spies-you can’t trust them. But you can’t trust anyone, can you?”

Miss Silver said,

“I should be very sad if I believed that.”

“I have been sad for a long time,” said Mrs. Anning. “My husband died, and Alan went away, and then we had no money, you know. He said he couldn’t marry her because he had no money either. Young people can’t live on nothing, can they? But Darsie has never been the same. People always said how pretty she was, and she used to be so gay. She took away all her photographs, but I hid one in the cover of my needle-book. Would you like to see it?”

The photograph was a snapshot, tucked in between two of the little pinked-out flannel leaves which had been meant to hold needles. It showed a dark girl with a lively laughing face, and a handsome fair young man. Mrs. Anning snatched it away again almost before Miss Silver had time to look at it. Her fingers shook as she put it back into hiding.

“He oughtn’t to have gone away!” she said in a sudden loud voice. “You can’t do things like that and not be punished! You ought to be punished when you do wrong! It says so in the Bible-‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth!’ Perhaps that is why he has come back, so that he may be punished. I thought about that when I heard his voice. I told Darsie it was his voice, and she said no. She oughtn’t to tell lies about it, ought she? As if I wouldn’t know Alan’s voice-Alan Field!”

She was running on in this way, when the door opened. The French girl Marie came in with the tray-a cutlet in aspic, salad, a drink of iced lemonade, all very nicely served. Marie’s eyes took darting glances here and there in the room. She set down the tray upon a small table which stood ready for it and went out again, leaving the door unlatched. Mrs. Anning said loudly and angrily,

“She wants to hear what I am saying about Alan Field! Well, let her hear it! Why should I care? Anyone may hear it, because it is true! He ought to be punished! I told you she listened at doors!”

James Hardwick drove up from the station, and thought that for once in a way the tail end of an English summer was doing itself proud. The weather looked like lasting too. Tomorrow he and Carmona would swim out to the Point and take their time about coming back.

Carmona! In less than ten minutes he would be seeing her again. When he was away from her, this was what he looked forward to-this moment of anticipation when he could savour to the full the thought that he was coming home. Every meeting held the romance and the promise of the first time when they had not really met at all but he had looked across the crowded theatre and loved her.

They turned in at the hot cement drive. He paid off his taxi and walked up the steps between the empty urns and into the hall, which seemed dark and cool after the outside glare. As he set down his suit-case, the grandfather clock at the foot of the stairs was striking seven. It was very large and very ugly, and it struck with a whirring note which had alarmed him very much when he was a little boy. He waited for it to stop, and caught the sound of voices through the open drawing-room door. Esther Field said,

“Oh, no, Alan.”

James stood where he was. Unbelievable that Alan Field should be here in this house. Esther must have been speaking about him, not to him. He went on down the hall and into the room.

There were seven people there having drinks, but the one he saw first was Carmona, in a white dress, with her hat thrown down upon the arm of a chair beside her. Her dark hair was a little ruffled, and she was pale. She had a lemon drink in her hand with lumps of ice in it frosting the glass. He saw her first, but in the next instant he saw Alan Field at her elbow. The others in the room were the Trevors, Adela Castleton, Esther Field, and Pippa Maybury.

Carmona came to meet him. She was much too pale. He put his hand on her shoulder and just touched her cheek with his lips-any husband greeting any wife in the presence of a party of old friends. But inwardly he was the lover who wished them all at Jericho so that he might catch her up in his arms and hold her close. It was the lover who was aware that there was no response. He might have been touching one of those wax models which you see in a shop window. She didn’t look at him. As soon as he had touched her cheek she drew away. Whilst he was speaking to the Trevors, to Adela, and Esther, whilst Pippa Maybury was telling him he must be dying for a drink and mixing him one, she had gone back to her old position and stood there aloof and withdrawn.

He came with his drink in his hand to stand beside her and speak to Alan.

“You here, Field? How very unexpected!”

“Oh, I don’t know. One is bound to come back some time. I had business with Esther, but it shouldn’t take very long. I’m at the Annings’. You will remember Darsie in the old days. Shockingly gone off, poor thing, and no wonder. What a life-trying to scrape halfpennies out of cranky old women! I’d rather shoot myself!”

He put down his glass and turned to Carmona.

“Well, I’m afraid I must be pushing off-they dine at half past seven. In this weather! Esther, old dear, I’ll see you in the morning. Oh, just a moment, Pippa-”

They went out of the long window together. Presently Pippa came back. There was a flush of colour in her cheeks. She was fingering her pearls. The party melted away to change.