Who Pays the Piper? (7 page)

“You said——”

“I gave her a chance before you found the pearls. If she'd owned up then and given them back, I could have believed she had given way to some sudden temptation and been sorry for it ever since. But you saw how it was—she thought she could get away with it. They were cleverly hidden, and she held right on. Well, there it is—she made her choice. And that was the last minute I was going to feel justified in letting her go.”

Susan watched his face, and found no comfort there. He had the look of a man who has made up his mind. There was no anger—she would have had more hope if he had been angry. There was a settled purpose, and that purpose to—send—Cathy—to—prison.… Her lips moved very stiffly.

“You said it was for me to say——”

Dale said, “Yes.”

He turned from her abruptly and went to the glass door by which she had come in. He opened it and stood there, letting the wind blow through. There was a streak of sun between grey clouds. There was a yellow crocus out below the window. He shut the door and came back.

“Yes, it's for you to say, Susan. I've got a duty to society, and a duty to the law, and a duty, as I feel it, to the other members of my household. But there's a duty that one puts before all these. It may be right or it may be wrong, but there it is. It's nature, and you can't go against nature. If a thing like this happens in a man's own family, he's got a right to keep it in the family, and no one can blame him. I shouldn't prosecute my wife's cousin.”

She had known what was coming before it came, but the shock was no less for that. A car on a straight road and another car coming right at it—the inevitable head-on collision. You know just when it will come and where. There is nothing to do but to wait for the crash. It was like that. At first just the hint of danger, then danger looming, coming nearer, nearer. Then the words, “I should not prosecute my wife's cousin.”

Susan walked to a chair and sat down. She closed her eyes and steadied herself as best she could to fight for everything that mattered to her in the world—Cathy, Bill, their little house, Aunt Milly, friends, the place they had lived in not only for her lifetime and Cathy's but for all those generations that had gone before—men and women who had taken their name from King's Bourne, lived out their lives there, and were remembered by cross and slab, by effigy and brass, in the churchyard and in the church under the hill—not many wise, not many noble, but a race of honourable people, faithful in their obligations, gallant in stress, kindly and upright. She had to fight for them, and she went into the battle shocked and dazed, her heart betraying her, because how can you think clearly or know what you should do when you love two people and they pull different ways?

Lucas Dale had never admired her so much as when she lifted eyes that were dark with pain to his and said,

“Will you sit down? I can't stand any longer, and we must talk.”

He moved the chair in which Cathy had sat, leaned back in it, and spoke more gently,

“It rests with you.”

It was some time before she said anything. When she did her voice was steady.

“You have said that you care for me. I think you do. I am very grateful. I shall be grateful to you every day of my life if you will be generous about this.”

“I don't see it that way, Susan. You mayn't think I've got a code, but I have. I won't break it. If this is a family affair it can be settled in the family. If it isn't it's a case for the police. It's for you to say whether it's a family affair or not.”

She took that blow, and came back with a pathetic courage.

“Please, will you let me tell you about Cathy? She isn't strong—she hasn't ever really been strong. About four years ago she had a very bad illness. She very nearly died. They said then that she mustn't ever have any strain or shock. If there were a case and she had to go into court, I think it would kill her. There must be some mistake, and it would come out in the end, but I don't think Cathy would ever get over it. Mr. Dale—if you care for me at all——”

He said harshly, “That's not fair.” And then, “I want you to listen to me. You say if I care for you I'll break through my code. If I was that sort of man I wouldn't be worth caring for you at all. If I'd no more stuffing in me than that, do you think I'd ever have got where I am? Do you know what I was? A charity boy—no father, no mother, no name. You don't get from that to where I am now by being soft, nor by giving up because a thing's hard to get. The harder it's been, the harder I've had to try, but what I've wanted I've got, all through. Don't you think that you can turn me, Susan. No one ever has, and no one ever will—not when I've set my mind on a thing. What I want I get, and what I get I keep.”

There was a pause on that. The room was very still. His last words said themselves over and over in Susan's mind. She broke from them at last. Some colour came to her cheeks. She said in a stronger voice,

“It's not possible—none of it. Cathy couldn't do a thing like that.”

“Who did it then? The pearls were in her bag. She begged you not to open it. Why did she do that? She crouched right down in that chair and hid her face when you began to turn it out.”

“There was a photograph there—a boy she's fond of. She didn't want anyone to know.”

She saw him smile.

“You can't really believe that—or if you can, I can't. What does it matter whose photograph she's got? What's the use, Susan? She did it, and she'll have to stand by it, unless——”

Susan's face burned.

“Blackmail?” she said, and felt her heart stop with terror at the change in his face.

He looked like murder as he jerked her out of her chair and held her facing him.

“Say that again and there will be no unless! Do you want me to ring up the police—now, at once? Because I will if you like—you've only to say so. Well, what is it to be?” He was rough in voice and action. His hands bruised her with their hard strength. But she kept her eyes on his. If she died for it she wouldn't look away.

“Let me go, Mr. Dale.”

He let go of her at once, walked to the writing-table, and reached for the telephone. With his hand on it he looked back at her and said,

“Well—make up your mind.”

Susan looked across to the recess where Cathy lay. She hadn't moved. Perhaps she wouldn't move for hours. She had had these turns before—when her kitten had been killed by a strange dog—when a tramp had frightened her. She had lain stunned and dazed for hours, and afterwards she had been ill. The doctors called it shock. They had said, “Leave it to time.” The word was in Susan's mind as she turned to Lucas Dale. She heard herself saying it out loud,

“I must have time.”

He left the table and came back to her. The gust of anger was gone. He said,

“How much time? I could give you an hour.”

“That's not enough. Cathy is ill. I can't ask her anything until she's well again. It may be days. And sometimes she doesn't remember—she didn't when her kitten was killed. It's shock.”

“I'm afraid I can't give you days—you must see that. I couldn't explain to the police why I had put off reporting the theft of the pearls. I can give you an hour. Would you like me to leave you alone here?”

“Yes, please.”

“Is there anything you would like for yourself or for Cathy?”

She said “No.”

He went out and shut the door.

CHAPTER X

That hour was the strangest one in Susan's life. She could not have told how it went. It was like the time in a dream, when moments lengthen into ages or contract to a dizzy flash. She tried to rouse Cathy, to get an answer from her, but achieved nothing but a dull state of distress without coherent speech. Dr. Carrick had always told them to let her alone and she would sleep it off. In the midst of all that was so unreal she had the clearest picture of Bill's father saying that in his warm, reassuring voice.

She began to walk up and down in the long room. Two windows on to the terrace and the glass door between them. Everything grey and misty outside. The ray of sun had gone. She turned and walked back, leaving the windows behind her. The door on the right, Dale's writing-table, the chimney-breast, the logs on the hearth fallen down in a bed of white ash. Above, on the panelling, Lazlo's picture of Millicent and Laura Bourne. On the left the recess, Cathy's writing-table. Cathy lying motionless on the window-seat very small and frail. She walked on to the end of the room. There was another door on the right. It led by a narrow passage to a back stair.

Susan turned and came back again. Her eyes went to the picture. Millicent and Laura Bourne.… How lovely and serene they looked—Aunt Milly who was a fretful invalid—Laura who was dead.… She thought. “I'm twenty-two. I'm older than she was when she died.” She thought how easy it would be to be dead and not to have to break your heart.

She stood there and thought about Bill——“I've got a right to break my heart for Cathy, but I'm breaking Bill's heart too——” A small, cold voice answered her. It said, “He'll get over it.
Cathy wouldn't
. Men have died and worms have eaten them, but not for love.” Cathy could be broken like a leaf. Bill would suffer, but he wouldn't break. She didn't think about herself at all. There was no feeling there—it was all numb. She thought about Bill, and Cathy, and Aunt Milly. She thought Aunt Milly would crumple up if anything happened to Cathy. She sat down in the big leather chair and stopped thinking.

The door near the windows opened. Mr. Vincent C. Bell looked in. When he saw Susan he came right in.

“When I had the pleasure of meeting you the other day I called you out of your name, so I'm very glad to have the opportunity of saying how do you do all over again. I'm very pleased to meet you, Miss Lenox.”

Susan looked at him vaguely—the man she had met, coming up from the rose garden—Cathy had said he was staying——She said,

“Are you looking for Mr. Dale?”

He said, “Mr. Phipson.”

“If you go out by that other door you will see the back stairs on your left. Mr. Phipson's room is at the end of the long passage at the top of the stairs.”

“Well, there's no hurry,” said Vincent Bell.

Susan said in a tired voice, “My cousin is ill. I am just waiting to take her home. I think if you don't mind——”

He seemed a long way off as he apologized and went.

Susan waited. It was a relief when Dale came into the room. She stood up to meet him and said what she had planned to say.

“You know I am engaged to Bill Carrick——”

“You have been engaged.”

“You know we love each other—very much——”

“I love you too,” said Lucas Dale.

“But I love Bill. I shall always love him.”

“Always is a long time.”

Susan shivered.

“What good will it be to you if I don't love you—if I love Bill?”

He gave her a strange look.

“I think that's my look-out. Are you going to marry me?”

Her control broke.

“Don't make me—don't make me!”

Dale said, “I'm not making you do anything. I've come here to get your answer.”

She said, “I can't!” and saw him go to the table and pick up the telephone.

“Is that your last word? Once I call up the police station there'll be no going back.”

“No—no—don't ring! I didn't mean that. You mustn't ring.”

“Well, I don't want to,” said Dale. “But you'll have to know your own mind, because, you see, I've got to trust you. I've got to be sure that you won't let me down. I've got to take my decision right away. If I don't ring up the police now, it's not going to be easy to ring them up later on, in a day or two, if you come to me and say you've changed your mind. How am I going to guard against that?”

Susan's lips said stiffly, “If I say I'll do it——”

“I could guard myself,” said Dale. “I could get you to sign a statement to say you'd found my pearls in your cousin's bag. But I'm not going to do that—I'm going to trust your word. You see, that's how I think of you. If you gave your word you wouldn't go back on it. Are you going to marry me, Susan?”

“Yes.”

“Next week?”

“No.”

“Yes, Susan—yes.” His voice changed suddenly, softened. “What's the good of putting it off, my dear?”

That was true. It was no good putting it off.

“Well? Is it yes?”

Susan said, “Yes.”

“Is that your word of honour?”

“Yes.”

He went to the bell and pressed it.

“The car is waiting. I'll carry Cathy out.”

CHAPTER XI

Saturday to Sunday—Sunday to Monday. Susan walked in a nightmare. Her mind was clogged and dull. Past, present and future lay under a heavy weight of dread, and there was nothing she could do to break it or get free. Nothing she could do to get free, but endless tasks to take up every moment of her time.

Cathy lay in her bed and neither moved nor spoke. She had to be fed and tended. Aunt Milly cried a good deal, and said darling Cathy had never been really strong and it was very hard to feel resigned. The house had to be kept, meals cooked and served, plates and dishes washed. Susan did everything. She remembered Aunt Milly's fads, she remembered just how Cathy liked her hot milk.

In the middle of the Sunday afternoon she sat down to write to Bill. The post went out at five. If she posted her letter then, he would get it by the second post on Monday morning. That would be all right. He mustn't get it by the first post, because he was to see Gilbert Garnish at nine o'clock and he must be at his very best for that. She sat and looked at the paper for a long time. It had always been so easy to write to Bill, but it wasn't easy now. She wrote: