Upstairs
Whilst Humblethorne was thus pursuing his investigations in the hall
with that unruffled air of patient determination which had threatened
seriously to upset the equanimity of the overwrought secretary, Evelyn
Temple was upstairs in her friend’s room, sitting beside her whilst
she slept. Celia had consented to stay in bed, but it had taxed all
Evelyn’s influence to achieve so much. The news of her father’s sudden
and terrible end had worked on her, goading her to aimless
restlessness like a spur, and seemed a far acuter sorrow than Evelyn
would have imagined had her imagination ever run into such a morbid
channel.
As she sat holding her friend’s hand, without the comforting strength
of which Celia seemed unable to try to get the rest she so obviously
needed, Evelyn went over in her mind the events of the night. An
insistent knocking had mingled itself with the staging of her dream
until it drowned the dream altogether and she woke to hear some one
knocking in actual fact on her door, shaking it with irregular
violence. As she started up she heard Philip Castle’s voice—at least
it sounded strangely unlike his and yet could belong to no one
else—telling her to open it; she flung on a dressing-gown and obeyed,
and found Philip standing outside, his face working with some strong
emotion, saying in a low, uncertain tone, “I thought I should wake the
whole house before I made you hear. He’s dead!”
She was still so little awake that she could only stare in
uncomprehending amazement and answer, “What are you saying?”
“Sir Roger. He’s dead. In the hall,” he said jerkily.
“Sir Roger dead! Impossible!” she gasped.
“It’s true.”
“Philip! It can’t be!”
Her scepticism, based on the complete inability of a girl whose
experience has run along quiet channels to credit anything terrible as
happening in her own life, had a steadying effect upon him.
“It is true,” he answered less tensely. “I almost stumbled across him
as I was coming up to bed; he is dead beyond possibility of doubt.”
“How horrible!” she exclaimed, every nerve wrung. “What can have
happened?”
“I don’t know. He has a horrible gash in his temple.”
“I don’t understand; did he fall?”
“I am afraid he has been murdered,” he answered slowly.
“Murdered!” The sinister word struck her like a blow and she recoiled
in horror. “In this house! How could he have been?”
“I don’t know. That will all have to be gone into later. Will you
break it to Celia?”
“I suppose I must.”
“And Lady Penterton must be told.”
“I will go and tell Celia now and she must tell her mother.”
“Yes, but whatever you do, don’t let either of them come downstairs.
He was awful enough in life, but now, Evelyn, it’s hideous!”
She shuddered involuntarily, then laid her hand on his arm.
“You’re unnerved, Philip,” she said. “What can I do to help? Shall I
come down as soon as I’ve told Celia? It won’t be so bad for me.”
He drew back almost fiercely. “You!” he cried. “How can you suggest
such a thing? Stay with them. You must, I tell you. I wouldn’t have
you see it for the world. Besides, Fairlie’s there.”
She looked at him a moment. “Very well,” she said quietly. “I’ll go to
Celia now.”
And she had gone along to her friend’s room, which lay separated from
her own only by a room that had once been a nursery, and now was given
over to the two girls as a study and workroom. She tapped lightly on
the door with a rhythm they were in the habit of using to each other,
and opened it, but she had hardly entered before she was met by Celia
who, seizing her arm with a quick, half-imploring gesture, asked in
tones almost of despair, “Evelyn! What is it? How you startled me!”
She had obviously leapt out of bed at the first sound of the tapping;
she was in her nightdress, her hair was flowing loose in some
disorder, and her face looked particularly childlike and even piteous.
Evelyn gathered the slight figure to her and said with the utmost
gentleness, “Darling, you must be brave.”
“I know,” answered Celia, clinging to her, “I’m a pitiful coward, but
I couldn’t sleep, and I—I suppose I lay imagining things; I think—I
think,” her hesitating uncertainty of speech made her seem more
fragile than ever, “I perhaps was dreaming a little; and then when I
heard your rap it made me so frightened. Why have you come? I thought
you would be asleep ages ago.”
“You must be brave, darling,” Evelyn repeated, drawing her down into
the bed and sitting down beside her. “Philip has just woken me to tell
me some bad news.”
“Bad news!” exclaimed Celia, half starting up. “What has happened?
Evelyn, tell me what has happened. Quickly, tell me quickly!”
“Sir Roger——” began Evelyn, wondering whether it would not have been
better to put off telling her until the morning as she was in such a
state of nerves.
“Yes, what has happened?” Celia interposed in an agitated voice.
“Darling, I don’t know how best to tell you. He’s dead.”
“Dead!” Celia rose up, drawing away from her friend’s detaining arm,
her whole body stiffening.
“Yes; I’m afraid it’s very terrible. You had better know the worst.
Philip found him with a wound on his forehead lying dead in the hall.”
“In the hall!” Celia repeated after her, staring down with wild eyes,
full of sick horror. She swayed suddenly and Evelyn only just caught
her as she fainted.
Evelyn lifted her into bed and used every effort to restore her to
consciousness, but it was some little time before she came to herself.
“Lie still,” ordered Evelyn as soon as she opened her eyes again.
“There is no need for you to move.”
“How did it happen?” asked Celia in an agonized whisper. “It’s
horrible.”
“Yes, it is, darling; Philip couldn’t tell me any more than just that
he had found him. I don’t know anything more. Now if you will lie
still I will go and tell your mother.”
“Doesn’t she know?”
“Not yet; I thought you would go and break it to her.”
“Oh, I can’t!” cried Celia, beginning to cry.
“No, I will. Just lie still; I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.”
“Yes, please; I can’t bear it alone.”
Evelyn had then bent and kissed her, and gone along to Lady
Penterton’s room. She knocked on the door and then opened it gently,
saying, “Aunt Eleanor!” She had invented this name years ago to
express her affection for her friend’s mother.
Lady Penterton’s voice answered her sharply, “Who’s that? What is it?”
“It’s Evelyn,” the girl answered soothingly.
“Evelyn? What is it you can want? What is it?”
Evelyn crossed to the bedside in the darkness, and as gently as she
could told the old lady, who clutched her nervously, her dismal news.
The effect was as she rather feared; Lady Penterton, never robust, had
been in feeble health for some time. Now she clung to Evelyn with all
her strength and gave way to dry, gasping sobs, which were terrible to
listen to. At one time she could hardly get her breath and Evelyn
became seriously alarmed; but the paroxysm passed, and gradually she
became calmer and allowed Evelyn to lay her back on her pillow. She
began to speak between tears, which still shook her with their
violence, of things in her married life of years ago, and of the time
of her engagement. For a long time Evelyn sat beside her and
endeavoured to soothe her; but it was not until her maid, who had now
heard of the death, came in that Evelyn felt it possible to leave her.
She had then come back, as she had promised, to Celia hoping that she
would find her asleep and be able to get a little rest herself; but
Celia was sitting up in her chair, wide-eyed, white and restless, and
turned at once at her entrance, saying—
“Oh, Evie, how long you’ve been! I thought you had forgotten to come
back, only I did not hear you pass. Have you heard any more?”
“Poor child,” answered Evelyn tenderly, “why didn’t you stay in bed? I
hoped you’d be asleep; I have only just left Aunt Eleanor. She was
dreadfully upset, but she is a little better now, and Thompson is with
her. Come to bed, dear; you won’t do any one any good by staying up.”
“I couldn’t lie still; I tried,” answered Celia. “Does any one know
how it happened?”
“I haven’t heard anything more. Come, let’s try and rest together; I’m
tired out.” Her appeal on her own behalf had been immediately
successful. They had lain down together and succeeded in getting some
much-needed rest. They had breakfasted upstairs, and then Evelyn had
dressed, promising to remain with Celia if she stayed in bed.
As she sat beside her friend, who seemed fragile indeed in the uneasy
sleep of exhaustion, Evelyn’s lively curiosity as to the mysterious
tragedy which had so suddenly come into their midst was at work. She
had seen neither the body nor the hall, but knew now the general
circumstances; the maid who attended her had naturally been brimming
over with it, and had told her volubly, “she had had it from Mr. Birts
himself that ’ow any one ’ad got in and murdered the master there in
the ’all was an absolute riddle, seein’ as there weren’t nothing to
show for it, no window open, none of the silver gorn nor nothink.”
If that was really so, if there was indeed nothing to show for it, it
could only have come from inside; she did not think of Humblethorne’s
third alternative, namely, possible co-operation inside—she saw the
problem simply in its elemental possibilities, if not from without,
then from within. But there was no one, there could be no one inside
the house who could conceivably be guilty of such an act. So far her
thoughts had gone when, like a leaping flash of light, she remembered
the way Philip had talked the preceding evening, a way she had at once
denounced as melodramatic. Was it conceivable that any real meaning
should then have been attached to it? The apparent absence of motive
beyond general dislike had been perplexing her as it was already
perplexing Humblethorne: he only concluded rather vaguely that there
must have been some grave cause of disagreement between Sir Roger and
the secretary who acted so strangely, and hoped to find something to
justify the conclusion; but she knew of a grave cause. Was it possible
that last night Sir Roger had carried out the threat he had been
holding over Philip’s head and given him his dismissal? And, if so,
what then? Had Philip in sudden passion struck him down? She
remembered the unsettled way he had looked when he came to tell her;
his “I am afraid he has been murdered” beat in her brain. Her vivid
imagination reconstructed the scene of the blow: Sir Roger, just as he
turned to go upstairs to bed, jerking out in his harshest way a
definite dismissal, Philip’s remonstrance leading to argument, angry
words—and a blow?
She would have risen from the bed in agitation, but for Celia’s hand
within hers. The vision she had conjured up seemed for a terrible
moment suddenly real: then as suddenly it seemed absurd. She felt that
Philip might have struck a blow in a gust of anger, but could never
conceal that he had done so. He would, she was convinced, have been
overcome with remorse, and would have confessed the whole story then
and there to her. Her momentary doubt shrivelled as an unclean thing
flung into a fire; she hated herself that she had ever entertained it
for a single instant. Philip was hasty, and high-strung; at the moment
he was also worn out; but whatever he had done, it went outside her
knowledge of him, her long trust and belief in him, that he could be
acting a part to save his own skin. In this thought she understood his
manner; to a man of his temperament to come across such a sight
unexpectedly—he had almost stumbled across the body, he had said—would
be sufficiently unnerving. In unconscious reparation for what she now
termed disloyalty her confidence grew all the stronger in so old and
true a friend.
She stirred, without knowing it, as she dispelled her disquieting and
ungenerous suggestion, and Celia at once awoke. She still looked white
and worn out and turned to Evelyn with a heavy sigh and then lay still
again. “How good of you to sit with me, Evie,” she said at last,
looking across the room in a tired way.
“My dear, what nonsense between us!” exclaimed Evelyn warmly. “Of
course I’m glad to do all I can. But you mustn’t take it so much to
heart. It is a dreadful thing, I know; horrible to think of, but after
all——” She paused and then added gently, “I know just what you are
thinking.”
Celia’s eyes turned upon her suddenly. She did not speak, but her hand
tightened on Evelyn’s.
“You mustn’t blame yourself. You’re thinking, I know,” went on Evelyn,
answering her gaze, “that you found him cold, even cruel, in his
lifetime, and now that he has gone you wish you had loved him more.”
Celia’s eyes dropped: she looked away and said at last in a low,
irresolute tone, “No, it isn’t that. It’s just the awful suddenness. I
didn’t love him; I wouldn’t tell any one else, especially now, but you
know I didn’t. But it is dreadful to think that——” She broke off
abruptly.
“Well, you must try not to think about it any more than you can help.
That’s so easy to say I know, but try.”
“I can’t help it,” said Celia, bursting suddenly into tears. She
controlled herself in a minute with an effort, dried her eyes, and
then said, “You’re quite right; I’m very silly. I will try. I think
I’ll get up and go and see mother now. I haven’t been to see her at
all, have I? Oh, if it had been any way but this—but I mustn’t say
that.”
When she came back Evelyn saw at once that she had overrated the
strength of her new resolution, and was on the point of giving way
completely. She did not speak but sank down into a chair and hid her
face in her hands whilst her shoulders shook with weeping.
“Celia!” exclaimed Evelyn with intentional sharpness. “This will not
do; it is almost ridiculous. Pull yourself together at once.”
Celia raised her face and the expression in her eyes as she looked at
her friend reminded Evelyn of a wounded hare.
“Don’t speak to me like that, Evie,” she said piteously. “I can’t bear
it.”
“Darling, I’m sorry, but you must not go on like this,” replied
Evelyn. “You really, really must show more courage. What has upset you
again?”
“Nothing, only being with mother was very trying. She was very quiet,
but somehow very old. And—oh, Evie, she wants me to send a telegram to
John to come here at once.” There was a sudden sound of hopelessness
in her voice.
“Well, why not?” replied Evelyn, answering the unspoken disagreement.
“There’s no reason now why he shouldn’t come here, and of course he
must be told at once.”
“You don’t understand,” exclaimed Celia, breaking into an irritation
unusual to her.
“No, I don’t,” replied Evelyn. “He’s the only son, and the mere fact
that his father ordered him out of the house years ago is no reason
why he shouldn’t come to his mother and sister at such a time as this.
They’ve never lost their love for him.”
“And never will!” cried Celia vehemently. “But that’s nothing to do
with it.”
“We seem to be talking at cross-purposes,” Evelyn said in the most
matter of fact voice she could manage; she did not know what to make
of Celia in this new, unpliant mood. “Aunt Eleanor wants him, of
course she does, and I should have thought you would have wanted him
just as much.”
Celia looked at her a moment without speaking, a worried, piteous look
which went straight to Evelyn’s heart.
“What is it, Celia?” she asked simply. “Why don’t you want him to
come? We have never talked about him, I know; we couldn’t honourably
after the promise Sir Roger made you and Aunt Eleanor give, but I’ve
always thought he was the one person you loved better than me, and
Aunt Eleanor has never been the same since; joyousness went out of her
somehow when John left. And yet now you don’t want him sent for, when
he could be such a comfort to you both. What is it? Won’t you tell
me?”
Celia had turned to the window whilst her friend was speaking, her
hands clasping and unclasping under an agitation she strained to
subdue. At last she spoke, still looking away, low and faltering,
“Evie, he mustn’t come, he mustn’t.” She turned and continued rapidly,
her eyes wandering over the room refusing to meet the other’s troubled
gaze, her colour coming and going painfully. “You don’t know about
him. Mother and I have never mentioned his name—she had given her word
and would never break it, she’s like that, you know, but I’m not; I
couldn’t let him go out of our lives absolutely whatever I’d promised.
And so I’ve managed to get news of him and told her from time to time,
not by name but so that she could understand. She never answered me; I
could see sometimes how she wanted to; her longing was terrible, but
she wouldn’t because she had promised.” She spoke in a rush of words
as if to forestall criticism.
“Yes, dear, but surely that promise is ended now. You see she thinks
so; she wants him now.”
“But he can’t come, he mustn’t come,” cried Celia passionately. “She’s
not able to stand another shock. I’ve let her suppose he was happy and
doing very well. So he was, but he isn’t now. He’s had a lot of
trouble lately; Margaret and the child are ill and he’s no work and is
practically without a penny. I should have to tell mother, and it has
been her one joy to believe him successful. It would kill her. I
can’t.”
“Then I will,” answered Evelyn firmly. “She’ll want him all the more.”
“No! you mustn’t, promise you won’t! I oughtn’t to have told you!”
Celia spoke with intense agitation and seized her hand. “Promise!”
“It’s your secret, not mine,” answered Evelyn gravely. “But you will
do a great wrong if you don’t tell her, a wrong to both of them. She
ought to know now: and if he wants help it will be her happiness to
give it him.”
“No, no!” cried Celia, her voice breaking into wild sobs. “Later
perhaps, not now. Oh, you don’t understand, Evelyn. I’m afraid, so
terribly afraid. They’ll rake up everything in father’s life, and when
they find out about John they’ll think he had a hand in it; I know
they will. He mustn’t, he mustn’t come here!” She had worked herself
up into such a state that Evelyn realized that it would be harmful to
press what seemed to her so obvious. She replied now to the last wild
words, “Darling, you mustn’t run away with such absurd ideas. To think
that any one could suppose, just because John quarrelled with his
father ages ago—ten years ago, isn’t it?—that he—it’s too silly of
you!”
“It isn’t silly,” replied Celia, weeping. “I may be silly about some
things but not—oh, I can’t bear it! You don’t know; John was——” She
choked her words down sharply, turned away and fought herself back to
some control.
“I will try and rest again a little now,” she said at last wearily.
“Don’t you worry about me, Evelyn; I shall be all right.”
But Evelyn was worried about her, worried and puzzled more than she
cared to own, even to herself. For the first time in her life she did
not feel sure that she altogether understood Celia.