Down Under (2 page)

“But what did she say, Elfreda? Tell us exactly what she said.”

And Elfreda in tears: “She said, ‘Was there a call for me?'”

“That is not what you said before.” This was Miss Hortensia.

“Well, that's what she meant. She said, ‘Did anyone ring up for me?'”

“You should be accurate. It might be very important. Are you sure that that is what she said?”

In the midst of her misery Elfreda was heartened by a flare of rage. She stamped an angry foot.

“Yes, I am sure! She just looked over her shoulder and she said, ‘Did anyone ring up for me?'”

“And how did she look?” said Miss Hortensia.

Elfreda choked. They might badger, and harry, and confuse her until she didn't know what anyone had said, but she would never forget how Rose Anne had looked, with the pale bright sun shining on her, and the pink, and lilac, and blue of the Michaelmas daisies, and the very bright pink of the dahlias. She choked and ran out of the room, and presently they brought her back and asked her the same questions all over again, and a lot more besides.

But all this was not yet. This was the moment when Rose Anne was coming towards them and the sun was bright on her, and Oliver's love was bright on her. She walked in this double brightness, and it dazzled Elfreda a little and made her want to cry. She ran back to the house, and was scolded because, after all, nothing had been settled about the wreaths. The scolding took place in the dining-room where Miss Hortensia was putting out the best glass. Right in the middle of it the telephone bell rang. The telephone lived in the schoolroom, which had once been Rose Anne's nursery.

The sound of the bell was most welcome. Elfreda had just been going to lose her temper, and it's no good losing your temper—not with aunts anyway. Thank goodness no one could expect you to stay and be scolded with the telephone ringing its head off. She bounded joyfully out of the room, slammed the schoolroom door behind her, and took up the receiver. It might be news of the wreaths—

A man's voice said, “Is that Miss Carew?”

There were endless questions afterwards as to his voice. Elfreda could only say and stick to it that it was a man's voice. It made no more impression on her than that, because her mind was full of Rose Anne, and the wreaths, and Aunt Hortensia being so disagreeable. The voice might have been young or it might have been middle-aged, it might have been rich or it might have been poor, it might have had ginger eyelashes or a bald patch on the top of its head, or it might have been like Gary Cooper. As far as she was concerned it was just a man's voice, and it said, “Is that Miss Carew?”

“Miss Hortensia Carew, or Miss Rose Anne Carew?” said Elfreda briskly. She wasn't going to drag Rose Anne in from the garden if she could help it.

“Miss Rose Carew—”

Elfreda was quite sure he said Rose and not Rose Anne, because that was how she knew that he couldn't be a friend. Rose Anne always had her two names from everyone who knew her, so a person who said Miss Rose Carew must be a stranger. And that was the first hint of the strangeness that was going to break in upon them—just a man's voice on the telephone asking for Miss Rose Carew.

Elfreda dealt firmly with him.

“She's engaged. What is it? I can take a message.”

The voice said, “I'm afraid you can't.” And then, “It doesn't matter—I can ring again,” and right on the top of that the click of the receiver.

Elfreda hung up at her end. She meant to tell Rose Anne at tea, but there was an influx of cousins up from Devonshire for the wedding, Carews and Leighs—Madeline and Robert Carew, and Mary Leigh, who was the other bridesmaid and Madeline's sister, and Hugo Ross,
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who wasn't a cousin but was married to Loveday Leigh, who was somewhere between a fourth and fifth cousin of Rose Anne's and a second cousin twice removed of Madeline's and Mary's. They were all staying at the Angel. So was Oliver Loddon, and there was a great deal of talk about how they had all been fitted in, and how pleased and excited the Garstnets were, and how comfortable Mrs Garstnet made you, and how absolutely thrilled she was about the wedding.

“She's a Devonshire woman, you know, and she was Rose Anne's nurse. She married Mr Garstnet when his first wife died about ten years ago.” This was Elfreda explaining to Hugo Ross, who said, “It all sounds very j-jolly.”

Miss Hortensia stopped in the middle of pouring out a cup of tea for Loveday.

“I was thankful when she left. She had no sense of discipline whatever. She allowed Rose Anne to do anything she liked.”

“Now I thought her a very comfortable woman,” said James Carew. “I don't think you've given me any sugar, Hortensia.”

“It's extremely bad for you, James—Elfreda, pass your uncle the sugar—Mrs Garstnet may have been what you call comfortable, but I can only repeat that I was thankful when she left.”

“I cried myself sick though she was only going as far as the Angel,” said Rose Anne.

“It's a pity the child is so delicate,” said James Carew, stirring his tea. “Poor little Florrie.”

Miss Hortensia sniffed.

“Ruined by indulgence! Just exactly what I always complained of here. Florrie wants treating with firmness. She's a naughty spoilt child, and those crying fits of hers are nothing but temper. She should be whipped for them instead of being cossetted and encouraged. No, James, I know you don't agree with me, but that is my opinion, and as for allowing Rose Anne to be at the Garstnets' beck and call every time Florrie has a tantrum, I consider it the height of folly. Anyhow they'll have to do without her after tomorrow, so perhaps they'll try a little discipline for a change.”

Rose Anne coloured up. She was very fond of Florrie Garstnet, and it troubled her to think of the little creature crying for her when she was far away. She said in a low voice to Madeline,

“She had some sort of fright. No one knows quite what it was, but it started these crying fits. They send for me because she seems to think she's safe when I'm there—I don't know why. It's dreadful to see a child so frightened, but they hope she'll grow out of it. She
is
much better.”

“She wants a good sound whipping,” said Miss Hortensia in her small acid voice. “And as for those two stepsisters of hers, if they had been properly corrected when they were children they wouldn't have grown up the way they have.”

Mr Carew looked up with a frown.

“Really, Hortensia—that's a little drastic. Fanny and Mabel—”

Miss Hortensia broke in scornfully.

“Fanny and Mabel can always get round a man—you don't have to tell me that, James! Red-haired flirts both of them! I'm sure I was thankful when Fanny married, though I was sorry for the young man. And if there wasn't something odd about the whole thing, why wasn't she married here, and why haven't they been back to stay?”

“Beast!” said Elfreda to herself. “She's just doing it out of spite because she knows Rose Anne is fond of Fanny, and that Fanny simply adores Rose Anne. She can't bear people who adore Rose Anne.”

Rose Anne had coloured deeply. She said,

“It's not very long, Aunt Hortensia—it's only a year.”

Miss Hortensia laughed tartly.

“You see what you have to expect, James. Rose Anne will be letting a year or two go by before she thinks of paying you a visit.”

Elfreda forgot all about the telephone call. There was going to be a big family dinner—not only the cousins who had dropped in to tea but an uncle who had gone for a walk, two aunts who were resting, and a grandmother, Mary and Madeline's, who had absolutely refused to stay quietly at home in Torquay though everyone except herself was quite sure that the wedding festivities would be too much for her. She replied to all and sundry that she had been at dear Rosabel's wedding, and that she meant to be at Rose Anne's if she had to walk every step of the way, and she meant to be at the dinner too in her new black velvet and her best old lace, and the diamonds which she had left to Madeline and Mary in her will but had no intention of parting with as long as she could wear them herself. And for the wedding she had a puce taffeta, and a sealskin cape, and a most fashionable hat with a purple ostrich feather shading into one of the discreeter pinks. Old Mrs Leigh had been a beauty, and she could still carry fine clothes with an air. She too was resting at the Angel.

Presently the cousins melted away. Oliver got out his car and went off to Malling to meet his best man. Rose Anne went up to her room. Elfreda ran Aunt Hortensia's errands, thought for the hundredth time how much she disliked her, and was finally told to go away and make herself tidy, a most irritating injunction.

The Vicarage was a long, straggling house with a good deal of passage on either side of which rooms seemed to occur more or less fortuitously. The schoolroom was on the left just before you came to the back stair. The door was not quite shut, and there was a light in the room and someone talking. Elfreda pushed the door a little wider and looked round it.

It was Rose Anne who was talking. She had her back to Elfreda, and she was speaking into the telephone. She said, “I don't see how I can—it's too late.” And then she looked round and saw Elfreda.

“Oh, Rose Anne—I thought you were resting.”

Rose Anne put her hand over the mouthpiece of the receiver.

“I won't be a moment. Shut the door like an angel.”

Elfreda stepped back into the passage and shut the door, but before she could move away she heard Rose Anne say, “I oughtn't to.” And then she thought she heard a “but.” She wasn't sure. She never could be sure.

There were two strokes from the hall clock as she ran upstairs. That was half past six. Dinner was at half past seven. A whole hour to dress in, a whole hour away from Aunt Hortensia. She had a very pretty new frock, pale blue but so beautifully cut that it made her look quite slim, and she was going to do her hair the new way with curls all round the front. It took simply ages, and when it was done she wasn't quite sure whether she liked it. She went along to show it to Rose Anne, but Rose Anne wasn't in her room. Glory—it must be later than she thought, and brides may be late, but bridesmaids definitely not. She heard the bustle and flutter of arriving aunts, and ran down all in a hurry, because old Aunt Marian Leigh would be most frightfully insulted if everyone wasn't there to meet her.

She was only just in time. The black velvet and point lace were emerging from a tremendous fur coat. Aunt Marian was declining to be led upstairs to a bedroom. She kissed Elfreda, made her usual remark about its being a pity she took after the Moores, and then turned to snub Miss Hortensia, who was urging her to come into the drawing-room out of this terrible draught.

“My dear Hortensia, if I thought as much about draughts as you do, I should probably be an invalid by now. Fresh air never hurt anyone, and I am thankful to say—”

She passed into the drawing-room, and Elfreda greeted her daughters—Aunt Agnes, weather-beaten and mannish, with a stiff crop of iron-grey hair and a black satin dress which had cost a good deal some years ago when she was slimmer; and Aunt Maud, very thin and droopy in pale blue lace, with the sort of hair that will neither stay up nor lie down. They were both kind and full of interest in the wedding, Aunt Agnes practical and hearty, Aunt Maud rather sentimental.

Uncle Frank was hearty too. He still alluded to his sisters as “the girls.” He made jokes, and laughed at them with gusto.

Oliver and his best man came in—Captain Russell, a gunner like Oliver and really quite frightfully good-looking. Hugo and Loveday Ross arrived, Loveday in pink, looking a dream. And then Robert, and Madeline and Mary. Trust Mary to be last. And what could possibly have induced her to go and wear black for a wedding party like this? Why did Madeline let her? She was gay enough herself, in a very bright royal blue, and there was Mary, a bridesmaid, as dowdy as a hen, in a dress which was at least two years old and hadn't ever been anything to write home about. “Grim” was Elfreda's verdict.

They all trooped into the drawing-room, everybody talking and laughing. Elfreda found herself next to Captain Russell. She began to feel quite reassured about her hair. He had that sort of way of looking at you. Of course it didn't mean anything, but it was very agreeable and made you feel right on the top of your form.

It was Oliver who said, “Where's Rose Anne?” He said it quite quietly, so that only Elfreda heard.

Elfreda felt a little shock of surprise, because she had taken it for granted that Rose Anne was here, somewhere among the cousins. There were so many of them, and they had all been so busy saying how-do-you-do, that she hadn't had a minute to think about Rose Anne. She said, “Isn't she here?” and Oliver shook his head.

*
See
Fool Errant
.

CHAPTER III

Elfreda looked down the long, bright room. Aunt Marian lecturing Aunt Hortensia—what fun. Aunt Agnes talking about horses to Hugo, whilst Uncle Frank chaffed Loveday. Madeline and Mary were talking to Aunt Maud, and Robert was describing his last round of golf to Uncle James. She caught the words “I was dormy two,” and made a face.

Rose Anne certainly wasn't here, and in about half a minute Aunt Hortensia would tumble to it, and then there would be trouble. She and Oliver and the nice Russell man were quite close to the door. She said,

“I'll go and get her,” and slipped out of the room. Awfully silly of Rose Anne to be late, but even Aunt Hortensia couldn't be very hard on the bride. All the same, the sooner Rose Anne got down the better, because there went the three strokes which made it a quarter to eight, and if the soup was cold, even Uncle James wouldn't be pleased.

She burst into Rose Anne's room, and found it empty. Apalling to think that she mightn't be out of her bath. But the bathroom was empty too. She made a rapid tour of all the other rooms in case Rose Anne should have felt an urge to admire herself in Aunt Hortensia's mirror or to powder her nose at Uncle James's shaving-glass. But all the rooms were empty.