Читать книгу She Came Back - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 6

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It was getting on for four o’clock of the following day before Philip Jocelyn came home. He was intercepted in the hall by Milly Armitage.

“Philip—come here—I want to speak to you.”

“What’s the matter?”

She had him by the arm, drawing him down the hall towards the study, which balanced the parlour on the opposite side and was comfortably far away from it. Like most rooms of the name it had never been much studied in, but the walls were lined with books and it had a pleasant lived-in air, with its rust-red curtains and deep leather chairs.

When the door was shut, Philip looked curiously at his Aunt Milly. He was very fond of her, but he wished she would come to the point. Something had obviously happened, but instead of getting on with it and telling him what it was, she was just beating about the bush.

“We tried to get on to you, but they said you’d left the club.”

“Yes—Blackett asked me to go down to his place. What’s the matter? Where’s Lyn? It’s not got anything to do with Lyn?”

“No.”

Milly Armitage said to herself in a distraught manner, “You see—he thought about her at once. He’s fond of her—he’s been getting fonder of her every day. What’s the good of it now? I’m a wicked woman.... Oh, lord—what a mix-up!” She rubbed her chin with a shaking hand.

“Aunt Milly, what is it? Anyone dead?”

Mrs. Armitage restrained herself from saying, “Worse than that.” By making a tremendous effort she contrived merely to shake her head.

He said with some impatience, “What is it then?”

Milly Armitage blurted it right out.

“Anne’s come back.”

They were standing close together beside the writing-table. Philip had his coat over his arm and his hat in his hand. He stood there, fair and tall like all the Jocelyns, his face longer and sharper than the type, his eyes the same dark grey as Anne’s, the eyebrows marked like hers but crooked where hers were arched, his hair burnt almost flaxen by the Tunisian sun. After a moment he turned, dropped his hat into a chair, laid his coat across the back, and said softly,

“Would you mind saying that again?”

Milly Armitage felt as if she were going to burst. She said it again, separating the words as if she were speaking to a child,

“Anne—has—come—back.”

“I thought that was what you said—I just wanted to be sure. Would you mind telling me what it means?”

“Philip—don’t! I can’t tell you if you’re like that.”

His crooked brows went up.

“Like what?”

“Inhuman. She’s alive—she’s come back—she’s here.”

His voice grated for the first time as he said,

“Have you gone out of your mind?”

“Not yet, but I expect I shall.”

He said quietly, “Anne’s dead. What makes you think she isn’t?”

“Anne. She walked in on us last night. She’s here—she’s in the parlour with Lyndall now.”

“Nonsense!”

“Philip, if you go on saying that sort of thing to me, I shall scream! I tell you she’s alive—I tell you she’s in the parlour with Lyndall.”

“And I tell you that I saw her die, and I saw her buried.”

Milly Armitage checked an involuntary shudder. She said in an angry voice,

“What’s the good of saying that?”

“Meaning I’m telling lies?”

“She’s in the parlour with Lyndall.”

Philip walked over to the door.

“Then suppose we join them.”

“Wait! It’s no good taking it like that. It’s happened—better let me tell you. Someone rang up in the morning—yesterday morning. Lyn told you on the telephone.”

“Yes?”

“It was Anne. She had just landed from a fishing-boat. She didn’t say who she was—only asked if you were here. Last night at about half-past eight she walked in. It was a most frightful shock. I don’t wonder you can’t believe it. Lyn had been looking at Amory’s picture of her only a little time before, and when the door opened, there she was, just as if she had stepped out of it—the blue dress, the pearls, the fur coat. It was the most frightful shock.”

He turned away and opened the door.

“Anne’s dead, Aunt Milly. I think I’d like to go and see who it is in the parlour with Lyn.”

Neither of them spoke as they went across the hall. It was Philip who opened the door and went in. He saw Lyndall first. She was sitting on the arm of one of the big chairs on the left-hand side of the hearth. She jumped up, and he saw behind her in the chair the blue dress of the portrait—Anne Jocelyn’s going-away dress—Anne Jocelyn’s pearls hanging down over the stuff, Anne Jocelyn’s curled gold hair, the oval face, the dark grey eyes, the arching brows. He stood looking for a time that none of them could have counted. Then he came forward in a quiet, deliberate manner.

“Very well staged,” he said. “Let me congratulate you on your make-up and your nerve, Miss Joyce.”