Sally Bishop Part 41

"Oh, I was a fool, of course. I wanted ready money, and I didn't want to sell the place--couldn't have sold it. So I let my sister take it over for what the pater had left her. That suited me at the time.

I'm not sorry that I saw far enough to re-purchase if I wanted to."

"You can re-purchase?"

"Lord, yes!"

"But you did not tell me that."

"Didn't I? Oh yes, I can re-purchase; five thousand any day will make this place my own again. That's the sum I took from my sister."

Sally inclined her head to show that she understood, but she made no reply. The cloud had blown back again into her mind. She felt the shadow of it, the chill of it, even in the warm suns.h.i.+ne. It took no definite shape, it brought no definite warning; but she was oppressively conscious of its presence and its weight upon all her thoughts.

Then they entered the drive, swept up between the long beds of brilliant tulips until the house came full in view, and from that moment her little e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of delight and admiration were a pleasure to him and a distraction to her.

"It's a wonderful old place!" she exclaimed. "And doesn't it make it twice as wonderful to think that Queen Elizabeth stayed here when it was just like it is now!" This fact he had told her as they came down, knowing that the childish enthusiasm of her mind would catch hold of it, drive it deep into her imagination and hang thereon a pretty raiment of romance.

"Does add a bit of colour," he admitted with a smile. "I expect she made it pretty expensive for the old gentleman who entertained her.

He probably had to keep quiet for a few months after she'd gone, and lay restrictions on the household expenditure."

Then they drew up before the hall door and Traill helped her to alight.

"I guess we'll make old Mrs. b.u.t.terick give us some lunch first. Are you hungry?" He opened the hall door and stood aside to let her enter.

"Yes, frightfully. I suppose it was the drive."

"All right, just a second; you go round there through the hall to the left--fine old hall, isn't it?--and the first door on the left, that's the dining-room. I shan't be long. I just want to see about getting this filthy coloured taxi out of the light and tell the gardener to get the chauffeur a meal--you wait in the dining-room."

He closed the door again. Sally stood for a moment looking about her.

The old square panelling of oak--black with age--the huge open grate with its logs of wood ready for the burning, the ornaments of pewter--old pewter jugs, old pewter plates with coats of arms embossed upon their surface, all the perfection of it awed her and, with a momentary wave of depression that beat over her feelings of admiration, she felt an interloper in a place that was beyond her wildest dreams of avarice. It was with no little sense of reluctance, even though the antic.i.p.ation of meeting any one never for the moment entered her head, that she made her way slowly to the dining-room, hoping every moment to hear his footsteps following her--giving her, so it seemed, the right to her presence in so luxurious a place. No wonder he loved it. And then, the thought struck at her, would it be any wonder if he re-purchased, as he had said he had the right to do? And if that were to happen--he was making his name now, and it well might--would he bring her here to live with him? Would he perhaps make her his wife? Or would they live, as they lived together now? Or--and the thought drove blood that was cold and chilling through her veins--would it be impossible for them to live so publicly in such a way, and would he then live alone?

She tried to shake herself free of this mood of conjecture, took the handle firmly within her fingers, opened the door, and walked into the room.

The next moment her heart leapt, a live thing within her, then lay still. Every action through her body seemed suspended. She scarcely realized her physical existence at all. It was as though she were conscious only of mind, mind that was filled with perplexity, astonishment, consternation, a mind that was being buffeted by winds from every quarter of the compa.s.s of sensation. And through it all, she struggled to drive words together into sentences, words, that like a flock of witless sheep upon open ground, would not be driven, but ran this way and jumped that in a frolicsome imbecility of purpose.

And there she stood, just within the room, while Mrs. Durlacher with slowly uplifting eyebrows of amazement rose gradually from the comfortable armchair to her feet.

"Aren't you Miss--Miss--?" She tried to catch the name in the air with her fingers.

"Bishop," said Sally, with dry lips.

"Yes, of course, Bishop--Miss Bishop?"

Sally half inclined her head.

"But what--?" she hesitated, knowing that the rest of her sentence must be obvious, yet gaining time to put the matter together--fit it to the whole from its separate parts. This was the girl whom she had met that night in Jack's room--the girl he had called a lady.

They were still acquainted, still friends--greater friends than ever, since he had brought her down with him to Apsley. Were they married?

Married secretly? She was a thousand times better dressed than she had been before. The thought tasted bitter. She swallowed the possibility of it with undeniable courage.

"Have you come down here with my brother?" she asked, still in a.s.sumed bewilderment.

"Yes," replied Sally. "We--we came down in a taxi-cab."

"But he never said he was bringing any one. He wrote. I--I thought he was going to be alone."

Nothing could be said to this. To apologize for her presence there would be ridiculous. Sally said nothing.

"Well," Mrs. Durlacher smiled, brus.h.i.+ng away her surprise with that half-breath of laughter which throws a thin wrapping of amus.e.m.e.nt about a wealth of contemptuous resignation. "I'm afraid we haven't got much of a lunch to offer you. I expect you'll be very discontented with the slight fare I have provided for Jack and myself. He ought to have told me. Do come into the room, won't you? Wouldn't you like to take off your coat?"

So, with that ease of apparent hospitality, she made her guest as uncomfortable as possible, a glutton for the slightest sign of embarra.s.sment from Sally. Her gluttony was well served. The poor child pitiably looked once through the door, straining eager ears for the sound of Traill's footsteps; then she closed it and came to the fireplace, taking the first chair that offered.

The sense that she had fallen into a trap, notwithstanding all the perfect simulation of Mrs. Durlacher's apparently genuine surprise, swept chillingly through her blood. When once she became conscious again of her bodily existence, felt the pulses throbbing in her forehead, and knew that her heart was beating like the m.u.f.fled rattling of a kettledrum, she shuddered. Traill, she knew, had nothing to do with it. If that thought, with the force of conviction behind it, had entered her mind, she would have fled; driven with the curling lash of fear--fear of life itself, fear of everything.

But she did not even contemplate it. It was the woman her instinct mistrusted. She had realized her an enemy before; now, in the purring tones of her tardy welcome, she recognized in her an enemy whose aggressiveness is active, brought into definite play.

Where lay the trap and how it had been set, she could not conjecture; but that a trap was there, she was convinced, and as she had walked unthinkingly into that room, so she had unsuspiciously fallen into the cruel iron jaws of the relentless machine. She sat in that chair by the fire, gazing at the hissing logs as they spat at the flames that licked them, and felt all the powerlessness, all the impotence, that the frightened rabbit knows when it is caught in the device of the snarer.

"Did you come down from Town?" said Mrs. Durlacher, presently.

"Yes."

"It's a nice drive, isn't it?"

"Oh yes, it's lovely."

"Let me see, how long is it since we met last?"

"Three years, I think, perhaps a little more."

"Of course--yes--of course it must be. What a good memory you have!

Would you care to see over the house before lunch? It's rather a charming old place, don't you think so? But of course it's terribly untidy now. I haven't started my house-parties yet, and everything's generally more or less upside down till my husband and I begin to come down regularly. Perhaps you'd prefer to wait till after lunch, though?"

Sally rose willingly to her feet.

"Oh no. Not at all--I should like to see it immensely. I think the hall is perfectly wonderful."

Mrs. Durlacher stood up, her eyes candidly criticizing Sally's dress.

"Yes, it is rather quaint. We'll go through to the library first."

Then, but not until that moment, not until she had pa.s.sed through the white heat of the fire, and had felt her spirit charred, did any help come to her. Traill opened the door abruptly and came into the room. From the set line of his lips, both of them could see that his temper was loose. His shutting of the door, every action, was an expression of feeling to which an innate sense of politeness made him deny speech. He crossed the room without hesitation to join them, shaking hands with his sister.

"They told me you were here, Dolly," he said, all pleasure of meeting her stamped utterly from his voice.

"Well, I suppose they did," she replied with a laugh. "Besides, didn't you see the car? I motored over this morning. That reminds me--" She played with self-possession, it came so easily to her.

"That reminds me. Garrett wants a clean collar. Did you see Garrett?"

"Yes."

"Well, did you ever see such a filthy collar as he's wearing in all your life?"