CHAPTER XXX
"Now you clear out," said Jane next morning. "Go right off into the garden while I tackle the Antrobus and the halberdiers and the engines of war. It was all my doing, and I'll take what's left of the bother. You've had more than your share, you poor old martyr. I'll do it directly after breakfast."
But it appeared that Miss Antrobus had gone out before breakfast and had not returned. Lucilla wondered miserably whether the anxious reformer had gone to interview the Society for the Protection of Aged Relatives. After breakfast she withdrew to the garden with basket and scissors, and it was here that Mr. Thornton—the one called Bill—came upon her among the early chrysanthemums.
"I say," he began, "about last night. I want you to forget it."
Charles Reade supplied Lucilla with a sufficiently apt quotation.
"Never remind a lady of what you wish her to forget," she said.
"Now that's most awfully good of you," he said. "But I do want to say that I really am not the bounding ass you must be thinking me. The fact is, my profession doesn't bring me the acquaintance of people like you and your cousin. And the war was so damnable—I beg your pardon. And the afterwards. Do you know, we three nearly starved before we got hold of a paying profession—I mean paying engagements? Oh, we're all right now, but—that sort of thing half turns your head. We've slept on the Embankment, we three—yes, really. And now we're all right again it's true. But—anyhow—say you forgive me?"
"Oh, it was only nonsense," said Lucilla, bold in the autumn sunshine; "don't let's fuss. You might carry these into the shop for me, will you?" She pressed a bundle of stiff twiggy, dewy-wet chrysanthemums on him and went on down the row, snipping busily here and there among the foam of flowers, creamy and pink and golden. She cut far more than were needed and carried them to the shop. Here she resolved to stay till Jane should have dealt with Miss Antrobus; though she had a sinking feeling that it would rather be Miss Antrobus who would deal with Jane.
Gladys was there, of course, and all Gladys's talk was of Mr. Thornton—the one called Bill. Unerring instinct, a sort of impish clairvoyance, guided Gladys in all matters pertaining to "walking out" and the sentiments which lead to such perambulations. Lucilla felt hotly that Gladys knew, as well as if she had been present, that there had been "something" last night, something not quite in the usual order of things, between her and "that Mr. Thornton—the one as ain't married."
"When he come in just now," said Gladys, "with them flowers, I knew that instant minute as he'd got something on his mind. Do you think his young lady's been being 'aughty to him, miss?"
"I'm sure I don't know," said Lucilla.
"I should think twice afore I cast him off for ever, if I was her. He's a gentleman, he is—his hair-brushes has silver backs. Oh no, that's Mrs. Thornton, to be sure, but it's all in the family. And he gives me five bob when I sewed on the bows on his evening shoes."
Lucilla defended herself with the heaviest of the account-books.
"Don't talk," she said. "I'm busy. In fact you might as well go and see if you can help Mrs. Doveton. I'll take the shop for an hour or two."
"If I was his young lady I should throw him a kind word. I should throw him a kind word. It don't do to let 'em get too down-hearted," said Gladys. "If they gets too miserable they makes away with themselves sometimes."
"Have any of your sweethearts committed suicide, Gladys?" Lucilla could not help asking.
"I wish you wouldn't use that low word, miss. No, none of the gentlemen I've walked out with ain't gone so far as that. When I said make away with themselves, I meant making away to some other young lady not worth his notice most likely. All right, miss, I'm going. . . ."
She went, and almost at once Miss Antrobus darkened the door.
"Good morning," she said, not smiling. "Can I have ten shillings' worth of flowers for the hospital? Chrysanthemums, I think. Not any white ones, please."
"Have you seen Jane this morning?" Lucilla asked.
"No, I have been out since seven, on business."
Then Lucilla perceived that the gods did not intend this particular piece of work to be for Jane's doing.
"Look here," she said, fumbling with the flowers, "I want to talk to you."
"Yes?" said Miss Antrobus.
"About the aunt," said Lucilla, teasing the wet blossoms.
"Yes? Was there some mistake in the address you gave me last night?"
"No," said Lucilla, "there isn't any mistake; there isn't any address; there isn't any aunt. It was all a silly trick. I was the aunt, dressed up. Jane was looking for you to tell you, but"
Here, prompt as to a cue, Jane came pattering down the very stairs by which she had first tumbled into the garden room.
"I say, Luce, I can't find her anywhere" she began. "Oh!" She ended on a different note and stopped short, face to face with Miss Antrobus.
"I was just telling Miss Antrobus—shut the door, Jane," said Lucilla, pale and determined—"about there not being any aunt really."
"Yes," said Jane, "but I meant to tell you because it was really entirely my fault. My cousin didn't want to do it. She hated doing it. She only did it to please me—to get me out of a hole."
"Your cousin dressed up to please you, and impersonated an aunt—an aunt who does not exist?"
"Yes, I did," Lucilla affirmed. "I used to feel such a pig when you were so nice to me, but I didn't know how to get out of going on with it. I do hope you'll forgive us for playing such a trick on you."
"But why?" said Miss Antrobus. "Why?"
"Because," said Jane—"no, Lucy, it's no good, and I can't help it if it does offend people. This was why, Miss Antrobus. Mrs. Rochester came here being superior and patronising—wanting to see our chaperone. She almost said you wouldn't come here unless there was some old lady. So I thought, 'If Mrs. Rochester wants old ladies I daresay we can supply them.' I was in an awful rage. And I said there was an aunt—Aunt Harriet—just to shut Mrs. Rochester up—and then, of course, there had to be one. And I'm very sorry if you're annoyed about it, but really I can't see that it's done anyone any harm, and if Mrs. Rochester hadn't come here interfering and hinting that we weren't capable of looking after our own affairs it would never have happened."
Miss Antrobus had sat down. Now she bent her head over the flower-table.
"Did Mrs. Rochester say anything about me? Anything special? Cards on the table!" she said sharply, seeing that Lucilla hesitated.
But Jane did not hesitate. "Yes, she did," she answered, "when she thought she'd got an aunt to say them to. She said that you and Mr. Rochester were secretly engaged, and begged the aunt to give you opportunities of sweethearting and to warn us off. So now you know!"
Lucilla turned startled eyes on the speaker. How could Jane know?
Miss Antrobus raised a brave but scarlet face. "Thank you," she said. "That is cards on the table. Now for mine. I used to be fond of Mrs. Rochester. When I was a girl I had a passing fancy for John Rochester, and Mrs. Rochester encouraged it. But the war knocked all that nonsense out of my head, and he never looked the same side of the road as I was—never!"
"But how horrible of Mrs. Rochester!" said Lucilla. "I didn't know there were people like that—out of books."
"Oh, well, it seems there are, a few," said Miss Antrobus drily. "She told me that her Jack had fallen into the toils of a designing girl, a sort of low-class siren, and asked me to come here and put a spoke in the siren's wheel—be a rescue-party, in fact. And for the sake of old times I agreed to come. Besides, I wanted to see a siren. But, of course, when I saw you two, and when I saw John Rochester with you, I understood—well, that Mrs. Rochester was trying it on again. Only I couldn't quite make out the aunt."
"But surely aunts do happen in most families. An aunt was quite probable."
"Oh yes, but not an imitation aunt. I could not think why you were acting that farce."
"Do you mean to say," cried Lucilla, all the actress in her outraged almost beyond endurance, "do you mean to say that you knew I wasn't a real aunt?"
"Of course I did—almost from the first."
"But you went on being so nice to me!"
"That was to try to make you do what you have done—own up."
"And when we wouldn't you tried frightening us?"
"Well, wasn't it fair? A sort of tit for tat? Pouf! how the atmosphere's cleared by a little plain speaking! I say, you two girls—let's be friends, shall we? I believe we shall get on awfully well together now there are no pretences and misrepresentations between us." And as she smiled at them, holding out a hand to each, they saw, for the first time, that which Mr. Dix had described as a sort of radiant goodness shining from her face.
"Yes, rather!" they said; and Jane added, "It's most awfully decent of you not to be ratty with us for playing such a trick on you."
"But," said Lucilla, struck by a sudden thought, "do you think the others spotted the false aunt?"
"Oh no," Miss Antrobus assured her, "not one of them! You acted splendidly. I was the only one that had the least suspicion!"
••••••
That night Lucilla woke suddenly: very wide awake she was—so wide awake that she knew it would be vain to thump the pillow and turn over. She had better read. Or, better still, write up her diary. The brown morocco volume with the shining lock and her name in gilt letters on it had been the guardian's present when she was fifteen. She had neglected it lately. True, many interesting things had happened—things that would have impelled the diarist of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, to pages of chronicle and comment. But there had been nothing which moved nineteen to a record—under lock and key—until . . . Well, anyhow, Lucilla did now feel that she had neglected her diary too long. It was down in the bureau in the drawing-room. Well, she supposed she could fetch it.
She lit her shaded candle, slipped into the silken blue kimono with the apple-blossom embroidery on it—another of the guardian's presents—and, candle in hand, crept down the wide stairs. But as she went, the air from an open window blew out her candle. And then she saw below her a yellow streak of light from the drawing-room door. Someone else was up. At three in the morning? Jane, looking for a book? Gladys, looking for traces of secrets in her particular department of knowledge? An insomnolent P.G.? A burglar? Lucilla crept down the remaining stairs and laid an eye to the crack of the drawing-room door. And it was a burglar!
A strange man sat at the bureau quietly going through the papers on it. A kit-bag lay beside him on the floor, evidently full. And the silver candlesticks and inkstand and the silver Indian things off the mantelpiece—none of them there. Lucilla crept up the stairs again, fleet and noiseless as Diana in the chase, and as she went she thought.
"Call Jane? No good, any more than I am. The servants? Worse than no good. Mr, and Mrs. Thornton? No, a woman might scream if you wakened her suddenly. Mr. Tombs? I think not. Bill Thornton? Yes, I think so."
And she crept along the softly-carpeted corridor towards the young man's room.
"But you can't knock at his door," said Decorum to Lucilla, "because of warning the burglar. You'll have to go right in. That will never do. It wouldn't be proper."
"Don't be silly," said Lucilla to Decorum. "I've something else to think about than things being proper."
And she turned the handle of Bill's door, which opened noiselessly. Not locked, thank goodness! The room was quite dark, but she knew where the bed lay and felt her way to it. Fortunately she was one of those persons who do not lose their sense of direction in the dark. Presently she felt the edge of the bed against her knees and heard the quiet breathing of him who slept there. Did men scream if you waked them suddenly? Well, she must chance that. She reached out her hand to where she thought a shoulder should be, grasped an arm clad in thick silk, and whispered as she grasped it, "Hush!"
Mr. Thornton did not scream. Nor did he move. He answered her whisper with another:
"What's up?"
"It's me. It's Lucilla. There's a burglar."
"Where?"
"In the drawing-room."
"Righto," he whispered. "Cut back to your room. It'll be all right."
"Take care he doesn't shoot you," she said. If you can laugh in a whisper, Bill Thornton did it.
"I've got a revolver," he said; "don't you worry!"
Lucilla felt her way to the door, and she did go back to her own room, but only to get the poker. And she did this without rattling the fireirons. "I should make a good burglar myself," she thought.
She waited in the darkness by the stairhead and perceived the Mr. Thornton who was Bill creeping down, silent as Mercury. Then she followed with her poker, feeling a heroine.
She reached the drawing-room door in time to hear:
"That's right. Any firearms?"
"No," said a strange and husky voice.
"Any more of you?"
"No."
"Empty that bag. And don't rattle the stuff fit to wake the dead."
A faint rattling followed.
"Now turn out your pockets."
Fainter rattlings. Then: "What are you going to do with me, governor?"
"Kick you out!" said Thornton's voice. "If you take my advice you'll chuck this lay. You don't know your own silly business. A bare light! And the door left open! You deserve the stone jug."
"I know I do," said the man, "but this ain't the trade I was brought up to."
"What's your trade?"
"Sign-writer."
"Can't you get a job?"
"Oh yes," said the man, "course I can get a job. Jobs is going about waiting to be got, ain't they? Wish I was back in the trenches, I do. Or else out of it. I'd do myself in to-night if it wasn't for"
"Don't begin about the kids and the missus," said Thornton, "That's what you chap always do when you're caught. Here, take that!" His tone was so fierce that Lucilla cowered on the mat in the darkness, expecting the hard-soft sound of a blow.
But what she heard was a gasp, and then, after the gasp a pause, and then: "Well, if ever you gets into a hole, I hopes someone'll be the gentleman to you as you've been to me to-night."
"Cut all that," said Thornton. "You came in by the staircase window, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir, up the ivy."
"Well, I'll let you out—this way."
They went out by the French window. Lucilla turned to go upstairs, but someone was coming down. A light at the top of the stairs. She backed out into the open doorway of the kitchen, and Mr. Tombs passed within a yard of her and into the drawing-room. She heard Mr. Thornton's footstep on the gravel and Mr. Tombs' voice.
"Hallo, Thornton. What's up?"
"Only a burglar," said Thornton. "I've just seen him out."
"Let him off, eh?"
"Oh well," said Thornton, "you can't be too hard on a poor beggar like that. What's he to do? The very Church itself says you may steal rather than starve."
"Yes," said Tombs, "what is a chap to do? Let's have a cigar and you tell me all about it. Quite an adventure for quiet Cedar Court."
"All right," said the Mr. Thornton who was called Bill.
"I only hope we haven't roused the house. I'll get my cigar case."
As he passed Lucilla's door he breathed, "All right—he's gone."
So he never knew that Lucilla had been prepared to defend him with the poker.