What Timmy Did Part 15

But at the time of Colonel Crofton's death, his sister had been truly kind. She had telegraphed 200 to her sister-in-law from Italy, and this sum of ready money had been very useful during that tragic week--and even afterwards, for the insurance people had made a certain amount of fuss after Colonel Crofton's sad suicide, "while of unsound mind," and this had caused a disagreeable delay.

The new tenant of The Trellis House had her lonely dinner brought in to her on a tray, and then, perhaps rather too soon--for she was not much of a reader, and there was nothing to while away the time--she went upstairs to her pleasant, cosy bedroom, and so to bed.

But, try as she might, she found it impossible to fall asleep; for what seemed to her hours she lay wide awake, tossing this way and that. At last she got up, and, drawing aside the chintz curtain across one of the windows, she looked out. The window was open, and in the eerily bright moonlight the upper part of the hill on which Beechfield village lay seemed spread before her. There were twinkling lights in many of the windows--doubtless groups of happy, cheerful people behind them. She felt horribly lonely and depressed as well as wide awake to-night.

In her short, healthy life, Enid Crofton had only had one attack of insomnia. During the ten days that had followed her husband's sudden death--for the inquest had had to be put off for a day or two--she had hardly slept at all, and the doctor who had been so kind a friend during that awful time, had had to give her a strong narcotic. To his astonishment it had had no effect. She had felt as if she were going mad--the effect, so he had told her afterwards, of the awful shock she had had.

To-night she wondered with a kind of terror whether that terrible sleeplessness which had ended by making her feel almost lightheaded was coming back.

She turned away from the window, and, getting into bed again, tried to compose her limbs into absolute repose, as the doctor had advised her to do. And then, just as she was mercifully going to sleep, there floated in, through the open window, a variant on a doggerel song she had last heard in Egypt:--

"The angels sing-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling, They've got the goods for me.

The bells of h.e.l.l ring ting-a-ling-a-ling For you, as you shall see."

Enid Crofton sat up in bed. She felt suddenly afraid--horribly, desperately afraid. As is often the case with those who have drifted away from any form of religion, she was very superst.i.tious, and terrified of evil omens. During the War she had been fond of going first to one and then to another of the fashionable sooth-sayers.

They had all agreed as to one thing--this was that her husband would die, and of course she had thought he would be killed at the Front. But he had come through safe and sound, and more--more _hateful_ than ever.

One fortune-teller, a woman, small, faded, commonplace-looking, yet with something sinister about her that impressed her patrons uncomfortably, had told Enid Crofton, with a curious smile, that she would have yet another husband, making the third. This had startled her very much, for the woman, who did not even know her name, could only have guessed that she had been married twice. Enid Crofton was not given to making unnecessary confidences. With the exception of her sister-in-law, none of the people who now knew her were aware that Colonel Crofton had been her second husband.

She lay down again, and in the now dying firelight, fixed her eyes on the chintz square of the window curtain nearest to her. She shut her eyes, but, as always happens, there remained a square luminous patch on their retinas. And then, all at once, it was as if she saw, depicted on the white, faintly illuminated s.p.a.ce, a scene which might have figured in one of those cinema-plays to which she and her house-mate, during those happy days when she had lived in London, used so often to go with one or other of their temporary admirers.

On the white, luminous background two pretty little hands were moving about, a little uncertainly, over a window-ledge on which stood a row of medicine bottles. Then, suddenly the two pretty hands became engaged in doing something which is done by woman's hands every day--the pouring of a liquid from one bottle into another.

Enid Crofton did not visualise the owner of the hands. She had no wish to do so, but she did see the hands.

Then there started out before her, with astonishing vividness, another little scene--this time with a man as central figure. He was whistling; that she knew, though she could not hear the whistling. It was owing to that surprised, long-drawn-out whistling sound that the owner of the pretty hands had become suddenly, affrightedly, aware that someone was there, outside the window, staring down, and so of course seeing the task on which the two pretty little hands were engaged.

Now, the owner of that pair of now shaking little hands had felt quite sure that no one could possibly see what they were engaged in doing--for the window on the ledge of which the medicine bottles were standing looked out on what was practically a blank wall. But the man whose long, surprised whistle had so suddenly scared her, happened at that moment to be sitting astride the top of the blank wall, engaged in the legitimate occupation of sticking bits of broken bottles into putty. The man was Piper, and doubtless the trifling incident had long since slipped his mind, for that same afternoon his master, Colonel Crofton, had committed suicide in a fit of depression owing to sh.e.l.l shock.

Enid Crofton opened her eyes wide, and the sort of vision, or nightmare--call it what you will--faded at once.

It was a nightmare she had constantly experienced during the first few nights which had succeeded her husband's death. But since the inquest she had no longer been haunted by that scene--the double scene of the hands, the pretty little hands, engaged in that simple, almost mechanical, action of pouring the contents of one bottle into another, and the vision of the man on the wall looking down, slantwise, through the window, and uttering that queer, long-drawn-out whistle of utter surprise.

When at last Mrs. Crofton had had to explain regretfully to clever, capable Piper that she could no longer afford to keep him on, they had parted the best of friends. She had made him the handsome present of twenty-five pounds, for he had been a most excellent servant to her late husband. And she had done more than that. She had gone to a good deal of trouble to procure him an exceptionally good situation. Piper had just gone there, and she hoped, rather anxiously, that he would do well in it.

The man had one serious fault--now and again he would go off and have a good "drunk." Sometimes he wouldn't do this foolish, stupid thing for months, and then, perchance, he would do it two weeks running! Colonel Crofton, so hard in many ways, had been indulgent to this one fault, or vice, in an otherwise almost perfect servant. When giving Piper a very high character Mrs. Crofton had just hinted that there had been a time when he had taken a drop too much, but she had spoken of it as being absolutely in the past. Being the kind of woman she was, she wouldn't have said even that, had it not been that Piper had got disgracefully drunk within a week of his master's death. She had been very much frightened then, though not too frightened to stay, herself, within hail of the man till he had come round, and to make him a cup of strong coffee. When, at last, he was fit to do so, he had uttered broken words of grat.i.tude, really touched at her kindness, and frightfully ashamed of himself.

Lying there, wide awake, in the darkness and utter stillness of Beechfield village, Enid Crofton reminded herself that she had treated Piper very well. In memory of the master whom he had served she had also given him, before selling off her husband's kennel, two prize-winners.

But it is sometimes a mistake to be too kind, for on receiving this last generous gift the man had hinted that with a little capital he could set up dog-breeding for himself! She had had to tell him, sadly but firmly, that she could not help him to any ready money, and Piper had been what she now vaguely described to herself as "very nice" about it, though obviously disappointed.

At the end of their little chat, however, he had said something which had made her feel rather uncomfortable:--"I was wondering, ma'am, whether Major Radmore might perhaps be inclined for a little speculation? I wouldn't mind paying, say, up to ten per cent, if 'e'd oblige me with a loan of five hundred pounds."

She had been astonished at the suggestion--astonished and unpleasantly taken aback. He had surprised her further by going on:--"I believe as what the Major is coming 'ome soon, ma'am. Perhaps then I might venture to ask you to say a word for me? Major Radmore was known in the regiment as a very kind gentleman."

"I'll do what I can, Piper." She had said the words with apparent earnestness, but, deep in her heart, she had thought the request totally unreasonable.

And now it was this conversation which came back to her as she moved restlessly about in her bed. She wondered uneasily whether she had made a mistake. Her capital was very small, and she was now living on her capital, but after all, perhaps it would have been wiser to have given Piper that 500. She was quite determined not to mix up Piper with G.o.dfrey Radmore, but she had a queer, uncomfortable feeling that she had not done with this man yet.

At last she fell into a heavy, troubled, worried sleep--the kind of sleep from which a woman always wakes unrefreshed.

But daylight brought comfort to Enid Crofton, and after she had had her early cup of tea and had enjoyed her nice hot bath, she felt quite cheery again, and her strange, bad night faded into nothingness. She was young, she was strong, above all she was enchantingly pretty! She told herself confidently that nothing terrible, nothing _really_ dreadful ever happens to a woman who is as attractive as she knew herself to be to the s.e.x which still holds all the material power there is to hold in this strange world.

During the last three weeks, she had sometimes wondered uneasily whether G.o.dfrey Radmore realised how very pretty she was. There was something so curiously impersonal about him--and yet last night he had very nearly kissed her!

She laughed aloud, gaily, triumphantly, as she went down to her late breakfast.

CHAPTER XII

At the moment that Enid Crofton was telling herself that everything was going fairly well with her, and that nothing could alter the fact that she was now, and likely to remain for a long time, a woman likely to attract every man with whom she came in contact--G.o.dfrey Radmore, following Janet Tosswill after breakfast into the drawing-room of Old Place, exclaimed deprecatingly:--"I feel like Rip Van Winkle!'

"Do you?" She turned to him and smiled a little sadly. "It's _you_ that have changed, G.o.dfrey. Everything here is much the same. As for me, I never see any change from one year to another."

"But they've all grown up!" he exclaimed plaintively. "You can't think how odd it seems to find a lot of grown-up young ladies and gentlemen instead of the jolly little kids who were in the nursery with Nanna nine years ago. By the way, Nanna hasn't changed, and"--he hesitated, then brought out with an effort, "Mr. Tosswill is exactly the same."

She felt vexed that he hadn't included Betty. To her step-mother's fond eyes Betty was more attractive now than in her early girlhood. "I think the children have improved very much," she said quickly. "Jack was a horrid little prig nine years ago!"

She hadn't forgiven Radmore. And yet, in a sense, she was readjusting her views and theories about him, for the simple reason that he, G.o.dfrey Radmore, had changed so utterly. From having been a hot-tempered, untameable, high-spirited boy, he was now, or so it seemed to her, a cool, restrained man of the world, old for his years. In fact it was he who was now a stranger--but a stranger who had most attractive manners, and who had somehow slipped very easily into their everyday life. Janet liked his deferential manner to the master of the house, she enjoyed his kindly and good-humoured, if slightly satirical dealings with Jack and with pretty Rosamund, and she was very grateful to him for the way he treated queer, little Timmy, her own beloved changeling child.

And now something happened that touched her, and made her suddenly feel as if she was with the old G.o.dfrey Radmore again.

"Look here," he said, in a low, hesitating voice, "I want to tell you, Janet, that I didn't know till yesterday about George. You'll think me a fool--but somehow I always thought of him as being safe in India." And then with sudden pa.s.sion he asked:--"How can you say that everything is the same in Old Place with George not here? Why, to me, George was as much part of Old Place as--as Betty is!"

"We all thought you knew--at least I wasn't sure."

"Thank G.o.d _he_ didn't think so poorly of me as that," he muttered, and then he looked away, his eyes smarting with unshed tears. "Nothing will ever be the same to me again without George in the world."

As she said nothing, he went on with sudden pa.s.sion:--"Every other country in Europe has changed utterly since the War, but England seemed to me, till last night, exactly the same--only rather bigger and more bustling than nine years ago." He drew a long breath. "Timmy and I went into the post-office last evening, and Cobbett asked me to go in, and see his wife. I thought I remembered her so well--and when I saw her, Janet, I didn't know her! Then I asked after her boys--and she told me."

"It's strange that a man who went through it all himself should feel like that," she said slowly.

The door opened suddenly and Rosamund's pretty head appeared: "There's a message come through saying that your car's all right, and that it will be along in about an hour," she exclaimed joyfully. To Rosamund, G.o.dfrey Radmore was in very truth a stranger, and a very attractive stranger at that.

As a rule, after breakfast, all the young people went their various ways, but this morning they were all hanging about waiting vaguely for G.o.dfrey to come and do something with one or all of them. Rosamund was longing to ask him whether he knew any of the London theatrical managers; Tom was wondering whether G.o.dfrey would allow him to drive his car; Dolly and Timmy, as different in everything else as two human beings could well be, each desired to take him into the village and show him off to their friends. The only one of the young people who was not really interested in Radmore was Jack Tosswill. He was engaged just now in looking feverishly for an old gardening book which he had promised to lend Mrs.

Crofton, and he was cursing under his breath because the book had been mislaid.

As Rosamund looked in, her step-mother and Radmore both stopped speaking abruptly, and so after a doubtful moment, she withdrew her head, and shut the door behind her.

"Tell me about George," he said, without looking at her.

"I think Betty would like to tell you," she answered slowly: "Ask her about him some time when you're alone together."

"Where is she now?" he asked abruptly.

"In the kitchen I think--but she won't be long."