The Secret of Greylands (8 page)

“Well?” Lady Hannah went on irritably. “I know I was not a helpless log in those days! You don't remember me?”

“Yes, I do a little,” Cynthia said slowly, “and I have heard of you often.”

“What have you heard?” The tone was abrupt, almost harsh.

Cynthia bent forward.

“Dear Cousin Hannah, principally of your kindness to your relatives, I think. That was what emboldened me to come to you when I was in trouble—that and your letter.” 

There was a moment's silence and then the invalid said slowly:

“Ah, my letter! I had almost forgotten it. I wrote it when I was feeling ill and lonely. Henry is very good to me, but when you are ill a man is not everything, and I wanted some of my own blood, so I wrote to you. You did not come, so I then sent for Sybil. What is your trouble, child? I think—I have a feeling that I ought to know, but my memory is bad, I forget everything now; I—I can't recall it.”

Cynthia's head drooped.

“I—I don't think you have heard of it, Cousin; Hannah, but when you wrote to me you said you were going to give me a present. A great change was coming in my life. I was—”

“You were going to be married,” the low, harsh voice finished. “It is coming back to me now, Cynthia. That is your trouble, child? Your engagement was broken off?”

“No!” said Cynthia in a dull, shamed voice. “It—it was not broken off!”

“What do you mean?” Lady Hannah's tone sounded hopelessly puzzled. “It was not broken off, and yet you are here!”

Cynthia's head sank lower and lower. “An hour after the ceremony I found that he—my husband—had deserted and betrayed my greatest friend. I”—she put up her hand to her throat—“could not bear it. I left him. Then I thought of your letter—it only reached me that morning—and I came here. You will not send me away—you will protect me!”

Lady Hannah drew a deep breath.

“I—I don't know what to say, Cynthia. I never thought of this. He will be looking for you—your husband—and if he finds you, what can I do? I am only a poor weak woman—” beginning to shake violently. “I don't think you ought to have come, Cynthia.”

Cynthia stood up, her hands loosely linked before her; she looked very tall and slim in the flickering firelight.

“If this is how you feel about it, Cousin Hannah, I am sorry I did; but,” faltering, “I was so lonely and so frightened of him—Lord Letchingham. Your letter was very kind, and I thought you really wanted me. Perhaps I ought to have applied to my solicitors in the first place. However, it is not too late to remedy my mistake. I will go back to-morrow.”

“Do not be foolish, child,” Lady Hannah said fretfully. “It is not that. I do want you; but it is such an extraordinary position. I never thought of anything like this. However, you will stay here, while I think what is best to be done. My husband tells me that your trunk was marked ‘Hammond.' I think while you are here you had better keep to that name; it will at least make it more difficult for you to be recognized.”

“There is no need—” Cynthia began, her voice sounding cold and steady; somehow she felt even her cousin's weakness left her untouched; she wished more heartily than ever she had not come to Greylands. “I—if I had put Densham on the box I should have been traced at once, and Hammond seemed the only name I could think of,” she confessed.

“Yes, it is best. Let people think that you and Sybil are cousins. Oh”—with a queer sound between a moan and a sob the invalid slipped down among her pillows—“I feel ill!” she gasped. “Call Henry. I—I think I am dying. Henry, quick, quick!”

Cynthia seized the bell-rope that hung beside the bed and tugged at it violently. Then she poured some water in a tumbler and tried to raise the invalid.

“Dear Cousin Hannah!” she pleaded. “Do let me give you a little—”

Her cousin turned her head away.

“No! No! Not you—Henry!”

At this moment, to Cynthia's great relief, she heard Gillman's step in the passage. He threw the door open.

“You were ringing?” he said. “Is there anything the matter?”

“I am afraid Cousin Hannah is worse,” Cynthia said desperately. “I—she will not let me do anything for her.”

Gillman gave one look at his wife's face, then laid his hand on her arm.

“Come, this will not do, Hannah!” he said quietly. “You know the harm you may do if you over-excite yourself.” Then he turned to Cynthia. “You had better go downstairs; she will become quieter alone with me.”

Something in his tone forbade argument, and Cynthia obeyed in silence. She heard Gillman lock the door behind her and caught the echo of her cousin's voice; then she went slowly back to the dining-room.

There Sybil found her when, half an hour later, she ran downstairs.

“Cousin Hannah was rather tiresome to-night, was she not?” she questioned, perching herself on the arm of Cynthia's chair. “Now I suppose she will keep Cousin Henry with her for hours; nobody can manage her like him, and he is so wonderfully patient with her.”

“Yes, he seems very kind,” Cynthia acquiesced slowly. “He—he is very unlike what I expected.”

Sybil bubbled into airy laughter as she patted the cheek next to her with one pink finger.

“Oh, you are a funny girl, Cynthia! I—really I shall begin to think you are quite deep.”

“C
OME
for a walk this morning, Sybil?”

“Can't!” Sybil playfully shook the flour from her hands in Cynthia's face. “I am going to make a pudding for dinner. There! You didn't know I was so domesticated, did you?”

Cynthia looked at her dispassionately.

“I do not expect it will be much of a pudding! You had better come, Sybil.”

Sybil pouted, as with pursed-up lips she measured out a portion of butter.

“Rude person. No, it is no use teasing, Cynthia. I am going to make a great culinary success to-day, and you will not persuade me to put it aside even to frivol with you.”

“Well, if you are really determined—” With a shrug of her shoulders Cynthia resigned herself to the inevitable. She turned from the big, old-fashioned kitchen to the open door leading into the neglected garden beyond. Notwithstanding the tangled growth of grass, the moss upon the walks, it looked very pretty in the bright sunlight, she thought. Coaxed out by the warmth, here and there a brightly coloured tulip was peeping forth. At the edge of the long, narrow borders the blue forget-me-not and the hardy London Pride were beginning to raise their heads. Farther away, over the tall hedge, she caught a glimpse of the flowering cherry-trees in the orchard. She drew a long breath of the delicious fresh air. “I think it is much too lovely to stay indoors, even to cook. You are very tiresome, Sybil! I wonder”—as a loud howl from the distance reached her—“whether I might take Spot?”

“You will have to take him on the lead if you do,” Sybil responded as, having secured all her ingredients, she began to mix them together with a vigour that spoke volumes for the strength of the muscle in her white, shapely arms. “There he is,” she added, with a backward jerk of her head at the wall. “He will tear back to Cousin Hannah's room if you don't, and he does worry her so.”

Cynthia took the lead down doubtfully.

“I don't suppose he would follow me without, but he won't like it much, poor little dog!”

She went slowly round the house to the out-buildings; as Spot saw her coming towards him his howling changed to noisy demonstrations of joy. He sprang on his hind legs and tried to lick her face; it was with difficulty that she got the chain off and the lead fastened to the collar. When that was accomplished she found, too, that it was no easy matter to persuade him to accompany her; with might and main he tugged at the lead, trying to induce her to return to the house, and it was only by putting forth all her strength that she was able to force him in the opposite direction.

As, almost exhausted, she turned to close the garden-gate she found herself face to face with a stout, hard-featured woman who was looking down on Spot with a bland smile.

“Going to take the poor creature out for a walk, are you, miss?” she observed. “Well, I am sure it is real charity in a manner of saying, for he must feel very lonely, now my lady is laid up.”

“My lady!” Cynthia repeated in surprise. “Oh”—with a flash of enlightenment—“you are Mrs Knowles, are you not?”

“Yes, miss. I hope the poor lady is better now?”

“I hope so,” Cynthia said doubtfully. “Mr Gillman thinks she is.”

Mrs Knowles raised her hands.

“Poor thing! I doubt she will never be herself again. Little I thought when I see'd her only last week as ever was walking in these fields with Spot there how soon she was to be took. As the saying is, one is took and the other left. Now, my poor mother ”

“Mrs Knowles,” Cynthia interrupted, “you are making a mistake. Lady Hannah was not out last week. She was not well enough.”

Mrs Knowles drew herself up with dignity.

“Which, if you know better than me what was on the spot, miss, I have no more to say. Monday in last week, it were. She were in this very meadow, with Spot jumping round her that pleased like; more by token that very day our Janet came back from London, so I couldn't make no mistake about it. ”

“Oh, I thought Mr Gillman told me she had been ill a fortnight, but no doubt I was wrong,” Cynthia said, looking puzzled.

“Which you were, miss, if you thought that,” Mrs Knowles remarked. “Me, not being a person given to making mistakes, and always having a liking for me lady, and she for me, if I may say it without boasting, I was not likely to be out in my reckoning; but I see Mr Gillman looking out for me, so if you will excuse me, miss, I will wish you a pleasant walk.”

She bustled through the gate and up the narrow path. Cynthia turned down the meadow, the unwilling Spot still dragging heavily at the lead.

In vain the girl coaxed and scolded; the dog could not be persuaded to enjoy the walk, and at length, her arms growing tired, she resolved to take him back and make a fresh start alone.

Now that her steps were turned homeward Spot became quieter, and Cynthia had more time for thought. Mrs Knowles had puzzled her a good deal; she knew that she had made no mistake. Gillman had certainly told her that her cousin's seizure had occurred a fortnight previously; yet in this case how would it have been possible for her to be walking in these fields only a week ago? There was evidently a discrepancy somewhere, and, notwithstanding the woman's positive assertion, Cynthia could only suppose that she had made a mistake of a week.

By and by the girl's thoughts wandered off to her own affairs; what was Lord Letchingham doing, she wondered, with an irrepressible shudder as she recalled the scene in the train. That he would be searching for her she had little doubt, and though to the best of her belief she had successfully hidden her traces she feared it was impossible that her secret should remain for ever, and then she shrank like a frightened child from the thought of Lord Letchingham's wrath and its probable consequences.

As her mind became more wholly absorbed her hold on Spot grew insensibly slacker, and after passing through the gate into the garden, the dog, with one wild jerk, freed himself and started off as fast as his legs could carry him, not this time in the direction of the house, but into the belt of dark pine-trees which surrounded Greylands on all sides but one.

Roused from her reflections Cynthia ran after him, only to find her progress obstructed by a tangle of undergrowth and brambles.

As, her face flushed, with dishevelled hair and burrs clinging to her garments, she sprang on to an intersecting path she found herself face to face with Gillman, who was apparently strolling along with bent head and hands clasped behind him, buried in thought.

“What in the world are you doing here?” he inquired, his eyebrows drawn together in a forbidding scowl—a scowl that deepened as he listened to Cynthia's explanation. At its conclusion he muttered a fierce imprecation and hurried away in the direction in which Cynthia fancied the dog had gone.

The girl made her way to the house more slowly. As she opened the side-door she saw Gillman, with Spot, looking cowed and subdued, at his heels, emerge from the pine-grove.

He came up to her quickly; all the anger was gone from his face and he smiled at her openly.

“I beg your pardon,” he began, with a little embarrassed laugh. “I am thoroughly ashamed of my little ebullition of temper, just now; but this fellow”—with a glance at Spot's down-dropped ears and drooping tail—“has a knack of upsetting any attempts of mine in the gardening line. I had just been moving some young oak saplings, and I knew that he would play havoc with them. It is very annoying to see one's work spoilt, you know,” with a winning glance. “That must excuse my hasty departure, and the, I fear, unwarrantable words I used; but you will forgive me when I tell you that I was only just in time to prevent serious mischief—he was making straight for them.”

“Naughty Spot!” said Cynthia, stooping down to pat him. “I can see you have had a scolding. I feel half inclined to give you one myself. It will be a good while before I take you out for a walk again, I can tell you.”

“Now you are going to be fastened up in your kennel again,” said Gillman grimly as the dog showed signs of desiring to bolt into the house. “No, you don't, old boy!”

“How devoted he is to his mistress!” Cynthia remarked as she watched him straining at the leash.

Gillman sighed, and said:

“She was just as fond of him when she was well, but now, in her helpless state, she is afraid that he might jump up on the bed, and I suppose, in her condition, it is quite natural.”

“Ah, yes!” Cynthia said with a shiver. “It must be dreadful to be unable to move.”