Touch and Go

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Touch and Go

Patricia Wentworth

CHAPTER I

“A motherless girl—” said Miss Hildred.

“There is always so much to be considered.” She pushed her pince-nez crooked and added, “No one can take a mother's place.”

Sarah Trent agreed.

The hands of the clock on the mantelpiece pointed to the hour. Seven. They had been at it for a solid thirty-five minutes, and she hadn't the faintest idea whether she was going to get the job or not. She didn't quite see herself being a mother to a girl of seventeen, yet the greater part of the thirty-five minutes had been taken up with a dissertation upon Lucilla Hildred's motherless state.

When Miss Marina Hildred had said a thing once, she invariably said it all over again with embroideries, additions and appendices. Her original statement that she had been unexpectedly called to the guardianship of a young great-niece whose mother and stepfather had been killed in a motor accident was by now so overlaid with anecdote, family history, and explanations which made everything a great deal more difficult, that Sarah had practically stopped trying to follow her. She looked away from the clock and met Miss Marina's eyes. They were large, prominent eyes of a light greyish green with short, colourless lashes. They gazed expectantly at Sarah through the pince-nez which were always crooked.

Sarah was obviously expected to say something. Would she get the job if she said that she would be a mother to Lucilla? Jobs were most damnably difficult to get. Ought she to have made herself look dowdy? A matron's hat? With an inward shudder she said,

“Your niece—”

Miss Marina interrupted.

“Ah—there I must correct you. Lucilla is not really my niece—my great niece I should say.”

“Your great niece—”

Miss Marina put up a plump, wrinkled hand with a good many rings on it.

“Ah no—forgive me. I am afraid that I have misled you. Lucilla calls me Aunt. Her poor father—he was killed in the war. So sad—such a fine young fellow. There is not a photograph of him here or I would show it to you. A terrible sacrifice. Let us hope there will never be another war.… Where was I?… Oh yes—poor dear Jack. He and Henry always called me Aunt—his elder brother, my nephew Henry Hildred from whom Lucilla inherited the property—or at least, as I was explaining, not really my nephew. Their grandfather's first cousin is what I really am—Henry and Jack's grandfather—but of course a good deal younger, because there was five years between my father, Admiral Hildred, and his elder brother, and he was getting on for forty when he married. So I suppose I am first cousin twice removed to Henry and Jack, and first cousin three times removed to Lucilla, but I've always been Aunt Marina to all of them. And of course when Lucy and her husband—I never really knew him well, but he was a most charming man—when they were both killed in that dreadful accident—and you may say what you like, but I can never believe that we were intended to travel at sixty miles an hour. Poor Lucy—this craze for speed! There they were, both killed, and my cousin Mr. Geoffrey Hildred and I left guardians.”

Miss Marina paused for breath. She again appeared to expect Sarah to say something.

Sarah said, “Yes—”

What
did
you say to slabs of genealogy? She hoped her “Yes” didn't sound half-witted. They wouldn't want a half-witted companion or governess, or whatever it was they did want for Lucilla Hildred.

Sarah's voice was one of her strong points. It was full and rather deep. When she said “Yes—” Miss Marina was favourably impressed. Miss Trent listened well. Miss Trent did not talk too much. She did not gush like that Miss Smilax whom Barbara Lawrence recommended, or lay down the law like the Miss Gregory whose testimonials were so unexceptionable and to whom she had taken such a dislike. Miss Trent was a gentlewoman. Miss Trent had a good manner. She began to feel that Miss Trent would do. She must do her duty by Lucilla, but if she had to interview many more people like that Miss Gregory, she felt sure that she would be obliged to send for Dr. Drayton. She felt sure that Mercer would think it necessary. Only an hour ago Mercer had said in quite a worried way, “You're not looking at all your usual, ma'am. I only 'ope as how we shan't have to send for Dr. Drayton.”

A tremor of nervousness passed over her. Mercer hadn't been her maid for fifteen years without knowing just how she ought to look. It wasn't good for her to have so much responsibility and to be answered back as that Miss Gregory had answered her. Miss Trent made no attempt to answer back. A gentlewoman can express sympathy without gushing. She did not consider that Miss Smilax was a gentlewoman. She would not have liked Lucilla to acquire that gushing tone. By no means. She pushed her pince-nez until they slanted from her left eyebrow to her right cheekbone and said,

“You were with Lady Constance Manifold for two years?”

Sarah said “Yes” again, but this time she smiled and added, “You read her letter—didn't you?”

There were three letters lying in Miss Marina's black cashmere lap. She always wore black, but since she was in mourning for Lucy Raimond, once for a few months the wife of that Jack Hildred who had been killed in the war and was not really her nephew but a first cousin twice removed, Mercer had taken off the black silk which had originally trimmed the cashmere and substituted two wide strips of military braid. In Miss Marina's code, which was also Mercer's, braid was mourning and silk was not. Lisse frilling was mourning, and Miss Marina's short neck rose from a white lisse frill. Her face above it was as pale and plump as a well floured scone. The colour of her hair was known only to Mercer, who presented her to the world in a faded auburn wig untinged with grey. In the lobes of her small, close-set ears were a pair of black enamel studs, each set with a small twinkling diamond. The brooch which matched them fastened the lisse below her second chin. Lucy, though never a favourite, was being duly mourned.

The three letters were rather precariously placed, Miss Marina being too stout to have much lap. There was a gray sheet on which Mrs. David Emerson spoke of Miss Trent's kind and sympathetic attention to an invalid child. There was Mrs. Moffat's rather curt and restrained recommendation on dark blue paper with a black initial in one corner. And there was Lady Constance's thick white sheet. Miss Marina took it up and turned it over. In a large sprawling hand Lady Constance spoke very highly of Miss Trent.

“You were with her two years?”

Sarah said “Yes” again.

“She doesn't say in what capacity,” said Miss Marina, turning the sheet.

Sarah smiled. She had a very pretty smile.

“Well,” she said, “I don't know what I was exactly. I didn't go there as a governess—I'm not certificated, you know—and I didn't go there as a nurse, because I never trained as a nurse. Eleanor had been ill, and she wasn't supposed to do lessons, but I read with her, and when she was better I played tennis and golf with her, and taught her to swim and to drive a car. I stayed till she was nineteen.”

“That was Lady Constance's daughter?” said Miss Marina.

“Yes—Eleanor Manifold. All my jobs have been rather like that.”

“Oh—” said Miss Marina. She pursed up her mouth until little wrinkles ran from it in all directions. It sounded very suitable. It really did sound very suitable, only—

“I shouldn't want Lucilla taught to drive a car,” she said in an agitated voice.

“That would be just as you like, of course.”

“Geoffrey doesn't agree with me—my cousin, Mr. Geoffrey Hildred who is Lucilla's other guardian—but after such a terrible accident I could not possibly consent to Lucilla learning to drive. I told my cousin so only yesterday. I hope you agree with me, Miss Trent. I hope I could rely on you to tell Mr. Hildred that it wouldn't do at all. I hope I could rely on you to do that?” The plump, white hands shook a little, and Lady Constance's notepaper crackled.

Sarah said, “I expect it would be better to wait.”

Her deep voice had a soothing sound, and Miss Marina gave a sigh of relief. Miss Trent was an amenable young woman. Miss Trent wouldn't make difficulties. Geoffrey was a very clever man, but he didn't understand her feelings, and he couldn't be expected to understand a young girl like Lucilla. She hoped that he would approve of Miss Trent. It was he who had insisted that Lucilla's companion should be young—“Cheer her up—take her about—make her play games—shake her out of herself. You don't want some old cat of a governess, Marina. You want a nice, jolly girl, old enough to have sense in her head, but not too old to make Lucilla play.”

She looked at Sarah Trent and wondered how old she was. Twenty-four—twenty-five—twenty-six? It was very difficult to tell young women's ages nowadays.
Jolly
didn't seem quite to fit Miss Trent. She wondered if Geoffrey would think her pretty. She herself had never got used to this short hair. She thought Miss Trent's hair was short. She was wearing an odd-shaped cap which showed dark waves on one side and came right down over her ear on the other. Eyes, and brows, and lashes were all of the same dark brown. Miss Trent was as sunburned as it was the fashion to be. Miss Marina looked complacently down at her own pale hands. Miss Trent's hands were very brown indeed. She had a fine bloom and good white teeth, but she was certainly too sunburned. The colour of her skin was one shade of brown, the oddly shaped cap and the neat tweed suit were another, and the hair and eyes a third.

“A decided brunette,” was Miss Marina's verdict. “The Hildreds have always been so fair. It's not unpleasing in its way. I wonder whether Geoffrey—”

She coughed a slight embarrassed cough and said,