As the watch slid back into its place beneath his shirt cuff, the man
spoke with an entire change of manner.
“Well, Miss Renata, that was all very stiff and businesslike. You
mustn’t hold it up against me, because I hope we’re going to be friends.
Don’t you want to know your plans?”
Jane looked at him with a little frown.
“My plans?”
“What is going to happen to you. Oh, please, don’t look so grave! It’s
nothing very dreadful. You have heard of Sir William Carr-Magnus?”
“Yes, of course,” said Jane. She hoped that she looked innocent and
surprised.
“Well,” said the man in the fur coat, “I happen to be his secretary, and
that reminds me, I don’t believe you know my name. Your father and his
friends use a ridiculous nickname which sticks to me like a burr ... but
let me introduce myself—Jeffrey Ember, and your friend, if you will have
me.”
The charming smile just touched his face, and then he said in a quiet,
serious way:
“Sir William’s daughter, Lady Heritage, has commissioned me to find her
an amanuensis—companion—no, that’s not quite right either. She doesn’t
want a trained stenographer, or a young person with a business training,
but she wants a girl in the house—some one who’ll do what she’s told,
write notes, arrange the flowers.... I dare say you can guess the sort
of thing. She is willing to give you a trial, and your father has
agreed. As a matter of fact, I’m taking you down there to-day.”
“Oh!” said Jane, because she seemed expected to say something, and for
the life of her she could not think of anything else to say.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to submit to certain restrictions at Luttrell
Marches. You see, Sir William is engaged upon some very important
experiments for the Government, and all the members of his household
have to conform to certain regulations. Their letters must be censored,
and they must not leave the grounds, which are, however, extremely
delightful and extensive. It isn’t much of a hardship, really.”
“Oh no,” said Jane in her best schoolgirl manner.
And there the interview ended.
They made the journey to Luttrell Marches by car, but, after the manner
of Mrs. Gilpin’s post-chaise, it did not pick them up at the door. An
ordinary taxi conveyed them to Victoria Station, and it was in the
station yard that they and their luggage were picked up by the
Rolls-Royce with the Carr-Magnus crest upon the door.
The mist was thinner, and as they came clear of London, the sun came
out. The day warmed into beauty, and the green growth of the countryside
seemed to be expanding before their eyes. So many long hedges running
into a blur, so many miles of road all slipping past. Jane fell fast
asleep, and did not know how long she slept.
It was in the late afternoon that they came into the Marsh country—great
flat stretches of it, set with boggy tussocks and intersected by
straight lanes of water. Purple-brown and green it stretched for miles.
To the right a humped line of upland, but to the left, and as far as the
eye could see in front, nothing but marsh. Then the road rose a little;
the ground was firmer and carried a black pine or two.
They came to a three-cross way and turned sharply to the right. The
ground rose more and more. They climbed a steep hill, zigzagging between
banked-up hedges to make the rise, and came out upon a bare upland.
Ahead of them one saw a high stone wall pierced by iron gates. The car
stopped. Mr. Ember leaned out, and after a pause the gates swung
inwards.
For a mile the drive lay through a flat waste of springing bracken, with
here and there a group of wind-driven trees, then a second gate through
a high fencing topped with wire. An avenue of trees led up to the house,
a huge grey pile set against a sky full of little racing clouds.
Jane felt stiff and bewildered with the long drive. She followed Mr.
Ember up a flight of granite steps and came into the great hall of
Luttrell Marches with its panelled walls and dark old portraits of
half-forgotten Luttrells.
Exactly opposite the entrance rose the stairway which was the pride of
the house. Its beautiful proportions, the grapes and vine leaves of its
famous carvings, were lighted from beneath by the red glow of a huge
open fire, and from above by the last word in electric lighting.
Ember walked straight across the hall and up the stair, and Jane
followed him.
She thought she knew exactly how a puppy must feel when, blinking from
the warmth and straw of his basket, he comes for the first time into the
ordered solemnity of his new master’s house.
And then she looked up and saw The Portrait.
It hung on the panelling at the top of the stair where the long
corridors ran off to right and left, and it took Jane’s breath away—the
portrait of Lady Heritage.
Amory had painted more than a beautiful woman standing on a marble
terrace: he had painted a woman Mercury. The hands held an ivory
rod—diamond wings rose from the cloudy hair. Under the bright wings the
eyes looked out, looked far—dark, splendid, hungry eyes.
“The earth belongs to her, and she despises it,” was Jane’s thought.
She stood staring at the portrait. Nineteen-fifteen, Henry had said—the
year when other women posed with folded linen hiding their hair and the
red cross worn like a blazon. She could think of several famous beauties
who had been painted thus. But this woman wore her diamond wings,
though, even as she wore them, Fate had done its worst to her, for
Anthony Luttrell was a name with other names in a list of missing, and
no man knew his grave.
A sharp clang of metal upon metal startled Jane. She looked quickly to
her right, and saw that a steel gate completely barred the entrance to
the corridor on that side. It had just closed behind a curious
white-draped figure.
“Ah, Jeffrey,” said a voice—a deep, rather husky voice—and the figure
came forward.
Jane saw that it was a woman wearing a long white linen overall, and a
curious linen head-dress, which she was undoing and pushing back as she
walked. She pulled it off as she came up to them, saying, “It’s so hot
in there I can hardly breathe, but too fascinating to leave. You’re
early. Is this Miss Molloy?”
She put out her hand to Jane, and Jane, with her mind full of the
portrait, looked open-eyed at its original.
Afterwards she tried to formulate her sensations, but, at the time, she
received just that emotional shock which most people experienced when
they first met Raymond Heritage.
Beautiful—but there are so many beautiful women. Charming? No, there was
rather something that repelled, antagonised. In her presence Jane felt
untidy, shabby, gauche.
Lady Heritage unbuttoned her overall and slipped it off. She wore a
plain white knitted skirt and jersey. Her fingers were bare even of the
wedding ring which Jane looked for and missed. Her black hair was a
little ruffled, and above the temples, where Amory had painted diamond
wings, there were streaks of grey.
Bewilderment came down on Jane like a thick mist, which clung about her
during the brief interchange of sentences which followed, and went with
her to her room.
It was a queer room with a rounded wall set with three windows and to
right and left irregular of line, with a jutting corner here and a
blunted angle there. It faced west, for the sun shone level in her eyes.
Crossing to the window, as most people do when they come into a strange
room, she looked out and caught her breath with amazement.
The sea—why, it seemed to lie just beneath the windows!
They had driven up from the landward side, and this was her first hint
that the sea was so near.
There was a wide gravel terrace, a stone wall set with formal urns full
of blue hyacinths, the sharp fall of the cliff, and then the sea.
The tide was in, the sun low, and a wide golden path seemed to stretch
almost from Jane’s feet to the far horizon. Overhead the little racing
clouds that told of a wind high up were golden too.
The humped ridge of upland, which Jane had seen as they drove, ran out
to sea on the right hand. It ended in low, broken cliff, and a line of
jagged rocks of which only the points stood clear.
Jane turned from all the beauty outside to the ordered comfort within.
Hot water in a brass can that she could see her face in, a towel of such
fine linen that it was a joy to touch it, this pretty white-panelled
room, the chintzes where bright butterflies hovered over roses and
sweet-peas—she stood and looked at it all, and she heard Renata’s words,
“At Luttrell Marches they will decide whether I am to be eliminated.”
This curious dual sense remained with her during the days that followed.
Life at Luttrell Marches was simple and regular. She wrote letters,
gathered flowers, unpacked the library books, and kept out of Sir
William’s way.
Sir William, she decided, was exactly like his photograph, only a good
deal more so; his eyebrows more tufted, his chin more jutting, and his
eyes harder. For a philanthropist he had a singularly bad temper, and
for so eminent a scientist a very frivolous taste in literature. One of
Jane’s duties was to provide him with novels. She ransacked library
lists and trembled over the results of her labours.
Sir William did not always join the ladies after dinner, but when he did
so he would read a novel at a sitting and ask for more.
Mr. Ember was never absent, and when Lady Heritage talked, it was to him
that her words were addressed. Sometimes she would disappear inside the
steel gate for hours.
Jane soon learnt that the whole of the north wing was given up to Sir
William’s experiments. On each floor a steel gate shut it off from the
rest of the house. All the windows were barred from top to bottom.
She also discovered that the high paling where the avenue began had, on
its inner side, an apron of barbed wire, and it was the upper strand of
this apron which she had seen as they approached from outside.
Sir William’s experiments employed a considerable number of men. These,
she learned, were lodged in the stables, and neither they nor any of the
domestic staff were permitted to pass beyond the inner paling.
On the coast side there was a high wire entanglement—electrified.
There were moments when Jane was cold with fear, and moments when she
told herself that Renata was a little fool who had had nightmare.