Читать книгу She Came Back - Dora Amy Elles - Страница 9

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Lyndall came out of the parlour and shut the door behind her. For a moment there was a little relief, an illusory feeling of escape. And then Philip came down at the top of his angry stride and took her by the arm and marched her off.

When he had slammed the study door he leaned against it and said,

“Now you’re for it! What are you playing at?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re making a damned fool of yourself!”

Words sprang to her lips but were not allowed to pass them. They horrified her so much that she turned even whiter than she had been before, because she had so nearly said, “I wish I were.” Philip had said she was making a fool of herself, and she had almost said, “I wish I were.” And that would mean she wished that Anne had not come back to trouble them. She couldn’t wish that—she couldn’t ever wish that.

Philip looked at her with what she thought was contempt.

“You’re a damned little fool!” he said. “You’ve done your level best to queer my pitch, you know. What are you doing it for?”

She stood in front of him like a grieving child.

“What have I done?”

He laughed.

“It’s more a case of what haven’t you done. If there was anything she didn’t know, you’ve been down on your knees handing it to her. Haven’t you?”

“You mean about the photographs?” She spoke in a slow, troubled voice.

Philip took her by the wrists.

“Look at me! She isn’t Anne. Anne is dead. No—go on looking at me! Why do you think she is Anne?” His grasp tightened. “Do you really think so?”

She went on looking at him, but she hadn’t any words. He let go of her and stepped back, laughing.

“You’re not sure, are you? You stand there and you don’t say a word. Where have they all gone? You’d find them quick enough if you were really sure. Shall I tell you some of the things you can’t find those words for?” He drove his hands into his pockets and leaned against the door. “At first you were sure—you hadn’t a doubt. It was all ‘Oh, let us be joyful! Anne isn’t dead—she never has been!’”

She hadn’t looked away. She said,

“Yes—”

“And then it wasn’t quite so joyful, was it?” His eyes narrowed as he watched her. “Not—quite—so—joyful. You had to whip it up a bit. That meant tumbling over yourself to do anything she asked.”

“Yes—” again, but this time it wasn’t said by the pale lips. It was the eyes which said it, wincing away from Philip’s.

He said, “If I didn’t love you like hell I’d knock your head off!”

If it was possible to turn any paler, she did so. It may have been only a tensing of the muscles, giving that drawn look to a skin already blanched. Her hands took hold of one another and clung rigidly. She said,

“You mustn’t—”

Only very keen hearing could have caught the words. Philip’s hearing was keen. He said,

“Which?” Then, as her eyes came back to his face in a look of tragic reproach, “Mustn’t love you—or mustn’t knock your head off?”

“You know—”

His smile came, and went again. Just for a moment you could see how it would warm and soften the Jocelyn type. Just for a moment the hard lines about the mouth relaxed and a gleam of humour changed the eyes. It was a very fleeting affair. Before Lyndall could take any comfort from it he was saying,

“You’re quite right—I know. I mustn’t love you because Annie Joyce is putting up an act and pretending to be Anne. That’s it—isn’t it?”

“Because of Anne—because Anne is your wife.” A little louder this time, but the lips hardly moving.

Philip said in an icy, exasperated tone,

“That woman isn’t Anne, and she certainly isn’t my wife! Don’t you suppose I should know? You can’t be married to a woman for a year and not know her. Anne and I knew each other very well. Every time we quarrelled we knew each other a little better. This woman doesn’t know me any better than I know her. We don’t meet anywhere—she is an utter stranger.”

Lyndall’s eyes had been blank with pain. Something stirred in them now—some thought, some consciousness. Then the pain swamped it.

Philip said roughly, “You want to be a little martyr—don’t you? Just because I love you—Anne is alive. Just because she’s going to come between us—Annie Joyce has got to be Anne. Just because it hurts like blazes—you’ve got to do everything you can to put her between us. And I suppose you think I’m going to back you up. Well, I’m not.” He put out a hand. “Come here!” he said.

She came, moving slowly, until the hand fell on her shoulder.

“Did you think I didn’t know what you were up to? First of all, you were sure she was Anne. Then, when you weren’t so sure you thought how wicked it was—how wicked you were to have any doubts about it. And from there you got to thinking you had the doubts because you didn’t really want Anne to be alive—and after that of course you just had to do everything you could to show her and everyone else how glad you were. I don’t know how much damage you’ve done—quite a considerable amount, I should think. And I hope it’ll be a lesson to you not to try and hide things up, because you’ll never make a good liar, and I should always find you out.” He pulled her up against him and held her there, an arm about her shoulders.

She drew a long breath.

“Have I done a lot of harm?”

“I expect so.”

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to.”

“My child, ‘Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart.’”

“You’re being horrid.”

“That was my intention.”

“Philip—how much harm have I done?”

“We shall go on finding out—or, qui vivra verra, if you’d rather have it in French. I expect you’ve probably told her quite a lot of things she ought to have known and didn’t, and wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t been there to oblige.”

“What sort of things?”

“Family things—but she’d have heard most of those from Theresa. Things about the neighborhood—that’s where she’d have been most likely to slip up, and I expect that’s where you came in.”

Lyndall turned in the circle of his arm.

“Philip, that’s not fair. You’ve got to be fair. If Anne had been away all this time and then come back, wouldn’t it be natural for her to ask about everyone—how they are, and where they are, and all that sort of thing?”

“It depends on how it was done. I’d like you to tell me how she did it. Cleverly, I’ve no doubt. She’s a much cleverer person than Anne. Anne wasn’t clever at all. She knew what she wanted, and generally speaking she got it—if she didn’t there was a row. All quite honest and open. She had never had to be anything else. Annie Joyce had. If she wanted to get her own way she had got to be clever about it. I expect she’s had plenty of practice. Now suppose you tell me just how clever she was about the neighbors.”

Lyndall bit her lip.

“Philip, it’s so horrid when you put it that way. It was all quite natural—it was really. She wanted to know which of the places round were empty. Wouldn’t Anne have wanted to know that? And who had lost anyone in the war, and what everyone was doing—well, Anne would have wanted to know all those things.”

“And then you got on to the photograph albums?”

“Philip, that was quite natural too. She asked me why I hadn’t been called up, and I said I was a Wren, but I’d been ill and was having sick leave, and she said she’d love to see a photograph of me in uniform—did Aunt Milly still take her snapshots? And I said she did when she could get the films. And—well, you see—”

Philip saw. The milk was spilled and couldn’t be picked up again. No good crying over it.

She was looking up at him.

“Philip—”

“What is it?”

“Philip—”

“What else have you done?”

“Nothing. I want to say you mustn’t think I agree with what you said. I don’t think anyone could know the things she knows unless she was Anne.”

His brows lifted ironically.

“But then you hadn’t the advantage of knowing my cousin Theresa. I assure you she made it her business to know everything, and Annie Joyce lived with her for seven years or so.”

Lyndall shook her head. She looked as if she were shaking something off.

“You’ve made up your mind. Philip, you mustn’t do that. It makes me go the other way, because somebody has got to be fair. I can’t help thinking about Anne. I loved her very much. I thought she had come back. If she hasn’t, it’s a dreadfully cruel trick. But if she has—if it is really Anne—what are we doing—how are we treating her? I keep thinking of that all the time. To come back home and find that nobody wants you—to find that your own husband doesn’t want you—it’s—it’s the most dreadful thing. I keep thinking about it.”

Philip stepped away from the door, stepped away from Lyndall.

“Stop harrowing yourself. She isn’t Anne.”