The Secret of Greylands (25 page)

Cynthia was ghastly white now; the colour had faded even from her lips. In contrast her eyes looked unnaturally big and dark. As she still gazed at the pale, mask-like face on the pillows her agitation and her anger grew, and with them a haunting, terrible dread, indefinable as yet even to herself. In that countenance, notwithstanding its contortion, its pallor, it seemed to her that a new and yet a familiar personality was becoming more apparent every moment.

The Cousin Hannah about whom she had speculated, and whose help and sympathy she had claimed, was gone, and in her place there was—what? A chimera! a trick!

The silence grew oppressive. Not a sound was heard but the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner, the quickened breathing of the two women confronting one another.

At length Cynthia spoke; her throat was dry and parched, her lips felt cold and stiff, and she brought her words out with infinite difficulty.

“What—does—it—mean?” she asked, with a slow, painful pause between each word. “Why—did—you—do it?”

There was another silence. Then the woman on the bed opened her mouth. It was the same hoarse, unnatural voice:

“I don't understand! Cynthia, you are making me ill!”

Cynthia held up her hand.

“Not now, please, because I know—it is no use!”

“You know what?”

As she spoke the handle of the door turned. In her absorption Cynthia did not heed it, but pointed to the hands lying on the bed, to the red, inflamed mark on the wrist turned uppermost.

“That told me! I knew it was the same! Oh, I have been blind, blind”—raising her voice with sudden fire—“not to have guessed it before, not to have seen that you are not Cousin Hannah at all—that you are Sybil!”

“Ah!” It was a long-drawn sob, almost a cry. The white hand with its ugly scratch was raised and pointed behind Cynthia.

The girl turned quickly. Gillman stood in the doorway, an evil smile in his blue eyes. He glanced from the woman now cowering amid the pillows, her hands thrown over her face, guilt-stricken, to Cynthia, standing upright before him, her accusing, reproaching eyes fixed upon him.

“Why have you done this?” she demanded passionately. “Where is Cousin Hannah?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“It seems to me that this is scarcely the tone to adopt to me, my dear Cynthia. I cannot guess to what you allude. My wife—” He glanced at the prostrate figure.

“Oh, what is the use of talking like that—what is the use of pretending?” Cynthia broke in hotly. “Don't you see that I know? Sybil”—she bent forward and caught the other woman's sleeve—“tell him that I—”

She was drawn away. Gillman's arms held her back, as though in a vice.

“I cannot allow this. You must leave the room. Cynthia.”

As he released her in the passage the girl staggered back.

“How—how dare you?” she stammered indignantly.

Gillman held up his hand.

“Hush! I will not allow this,” he said in a low stern voice.

Cynthia, half-cowed by his tone, opened her lips to remonstrate, but she shrank back appalled and silenced by the indescribable malice of his glance.

As she cowered away from him, catching at the wall for support, Gillman stepped back into the bedroom and closed the door behind him.

Utterly overwhelmed at the discovery of this duplicity and unable as yet to do more than recognize the stupendous fact that Sybil had been personating her cousin, while Gilman had certainly been a participator in, if not the instigator of, the fraud, Cynthia leaned, white and trembling, against the wall, feeling dazed and well-nigh stunned.

The puzzle that had troubled her so long, that had perplexed Farquhar, was partly elucidated now. The end of the clue to the mystery that had hung like a pall over Greylands from the day of her first coming was in her hands, but at present she could not realize all that her discovery implied.

At length she turned, and, catching feebly at the wall, gasping with terror and bewilderment, made her way to her own room. There she went over to the window, and, leaning against the frame, looked with blank, unseeing eyes into space.

She seemed unable even to think clearly; one phrase seemed to repeat itself over and over again with sledge-hammer force and iteration:

“Sybil is Cousin Hannah; Cousin Hannah is only Sybil!”

In vain she tried to fit in the various events that had puzzled her since her coming to Greylands with this new and astonishing knowledge; her mind could not as yet solve the puzzle or grasp in any way its true significance.

A glimpse of the pine-wood recalled Farquhar to her, but she shivered forlornly as she thought that she could not now go to him for help or counsel. Yet she told herself that it was imperative he should hear of this new development, that she must put her own feelings aside and write to him without delay.

How long she had stood there she never knew, but the shadows on the lawn below were growing longer when there was a low, hesitating tap at her door. It was opened cautiously, and she saw that Sybil stood outside—a very different-looking Sybil from the butterfly creature to whom Cynthia was accustomed. There was an indescribably crushed and dejected aspect about the girl's whole appearance. She was trembling, her hair was disordered, her eyes were swollen by weeping.

“May I come in?” she said timidly, casting an apprehensive glance behind her. “Oh, Cynthia,” as she did not reply, “I must tell you—you must let me explain! Indeed—”

Her words faltered and died away in a sob as she met Cynthia's steady glance. Cynthia had not moved forward to speak to her; she had drawn herself up from the window-frame and stood, straight and tall, silhouetted against the window curtain, her eyes fixed upon Sybil's guilty face.

“That will be difficult, I think,” she said with uncompromising directness.

“Yes, if you look at me like that,” Sybil sobbed; then, before the other girl had realized her intention, she rushed across the room and flung herself down beside her, clasping her round the waist so that Cynthia could not move. “Indeed, indeed, you must listen!” she pleaded with a fresh burst of tears. “I shall die if you do not let me tell you!”

In spite of her anger Cynthia relented a little as she glanced at the pleading eyes, at the quivering lips. Some of her old affection for Sybil asserted itself. Sybil was quick to take advantage of the momentary softening in her face.

“It was all done in fun at first!” she sobbed. “I see now that you think I was mean and deceitful, but indeed, indeed, I did not mean any harm! When—when—Cousin Hannah came back I thought you would be amused!”

Cynthia tried in vain to free herself from the clinging hands.

“Why did you do it? I cannot understand! Where is Cousin Hannah? When did she go away?”

Sybil's tears were coming thick and fast now.

“I will tell you,” she said, her voice choked by sobs. “Indeed, I will tell you everything if—if you will not look at me like that!” hiding her face against Cynthia's brown skirt.

Almost against her will, it seemed to Cynthia, her hand touched the ruffled golden head gently.

“Go on,” she said gently.

“It was like this,” Sybil began, her voice low and broken, her breath catching in a sob every now and then. “Cousin Hannah would come here—you know how determined she always was. Cousin Henry tried his best to persuade her to take a house nearer town, where she could have some society, but she said she did not wish to see anyone—she only wanted to be alone. Then, when they came here, her temper got worse. Cousin Henry thought, though she would not confess it, the loneliness tried her. She was always finding fault with him—and with everything else for that matter—and they could not keep any servants. She wrote to me to come for a long visit—and I suppose you too—but before we, either of us, arrived, she had a violent quarrel with Cousin Henry and went off suddenly without a word of explanation.

“Cousin Henry was terribly upset; he knew that all our relatives had always disliked the match, and he felt sure that they would blame him entirely. Hoping that she would perhaps come back in a day or two, he simply told Mrs Knowles that she was ill and keeping her room. Then you came just before he expected me, and he did not know what to do; finally, as you know, he gave you the same explanation he had given to Mrs Knowles. When I arrived it was a different matter; I had stayed with them before, I knew what Cousin Hannah was, and he told me everything.”

As Cynthia listened her eyes had wandered back to the pine-woods, to the clouds that were massing on the horizon. She did not see that the golden head was raised cautiously, that the blue eyes shot a quick, suspicious glance at her unconscious face. She did not speak, and presently Sybil went on:

“Then, when he told me that he did not know what to do, that if you found she was away and that he had no idea where she was, you would tell the other relatives, and there would be such a bother, perhaps ending in a regular separation. I was so sorry for him. I always liked him better than Cousin Hannah, and I proposed that I should take her place for a week or two, until she came back. I thought it would only be for a short time, and I had always been thought so good at private theatricals and at making up. So that was how it was,” she concluded vaguely.

Cynthia had turned now, and was looking at her with a growing perplexity and something like horror in her dark eyes.

“Do you mean,” she said, her voice trembling, a strange inexplicable chill shaking her whole frame, “that you have been personating Cousin Hannah all the time—that I have never seen her at all?”

In spite of this morning's revelations she had not yet realized the full extent of the fraud practised upon her.

Sybil dried her eyes with a tiny, lace-trimmed handkerchief.

“It has been me all the time,” she replied fretfully. “I thought you knew that. It was weeks before we heard from Cousin Hannah at all, but at length she wrote from Biarritz, and that is why Cousin Henry is selling the house. We are going to join her over there. I shall be glad when all this deception is over and I am really myself again. Half the time now I feel like Cousin Hannah, but I wish you had not found me out, Cynthia. Cousin Henry is so angry; he thinks she—Cousin Hannah—will not like it.”

“Will she ever know?” It seemed to Cynthia that the question rose unbidden to her lips.

Sybil paused, handkerchief in hand, and raised her limpid, candid eyes.

“Why, certainly she will, Cynthia! Cousin Henry will tell her everything as soon as they meet, and that will be soon, for Mr Squires has agreed to take the house as it stands, furniture and everything, except the old family relics, which they would not like to part with, and so Cousin Henry says we will all go over to Biarritz one day next week. He thinks it will be better for you to go with us now. Cousin Hannah said in her letter of this morning that she should like you to come. When you did not know that she had not been here at all, we could not see how it was to be managed, but now everything will be easy. You will come, won't you?”

“I must think—I do not know!”

Something in Sybil's tone jarred upon Cynthia's susceptibilities. Though the explanation sounded fair and plausible, and though she had not yet had time to discover the flaws in it, she had an uneasy feeling that there was more to come, that even now, in spite of Sybil's apparent candour, she was being duped and cajoled.

“Oh, you must!” Sybil went on caressingly. “Then when you meet the real Cousin Hannah she will be able to help and advise you ever so much better than I can. I have been so sorry for you all this time, Cynthia, my poor dear, but I have never dared to tell you.”

The pretty, childish manner was not quite what Cynthia wanted to-day; she drew herself decidedly from the clinging clasp.

“You are very kind,” she said, the restraint in her manner becoming more marked, “but I think we will not talk of that. It is never pleasant to know that one has been deceived. I must think matters over well by myself before I come to any decision. The only thing I can see plainly is that I cannot stay—that I must get away from here at once.”

In spite of her resistance Sybil twined her arms round her once more.

“No, no! I cannot part from you like this. Poor girl! You look so worried and I feel so guilty, for it is all my fault. I made Cousin Henry let me do it—you must not blame him. You must be faint; you have had nothing to eat for hours. Come down now; we are going to have a sort of meat tea.”

Cynthia shuddered violently.

“Oh, I couldn't—indeed, I couldn't! No, Sybil, please do not ask me! I could not meet Mr Gillman now that I know—”

Sybil looked at her consideringly.

“Well, perhaps you will be better alone for the rest of the evening, and to-morrow you shall have a talk with Cousin Henry. I will bring you a cup of tea here.”

Despite Cynthia's remonstrances she went downstairs and presently reappeared with a daintily- arranged tray. Cynthia turned from the food with loathing, but she drank the tea feverishly, and after a time Sybil persuaded her to eat a tiny sandwich. Then the girl begged to be left alone. The house seemed strangely still and silent, she thought; no echo of any sound reached her as she lay on her bed, white and shaken, trying to determine what must be her course of action in the circumstances. Upon one thing only was she decided at all hazards. At risk of exposing herself to his scorn, Farquhar must be informed of what had happened.

The scheme suggested by Sybil that she should go to Biarritz to meet Lady Hannah commended itself even less to her upon reflection than it had done at first, and after much troubled deliberation she made up her mind to return to London without delay and apply to Bolt & Barsly for assistance, informing them, if necessary, of the circumstances in which she had left Greylands. Though she had barely enough money to pay her fare, she had one or two good pieces of jewellery which she had inherited from her mother, and she had made up her mind that in this extremity she must part with them, cherished though they had hitherto been.