Dorothy Eden (9 page)

“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed Kate, her little ripe mouth open. “It sounds like a college-boy joke.”

Nita gave the smallest giggle. Her look of tension had increased, as if she were full of secret excitement.

“Has someone got a down on you, Julia? Perhaps it was Dove Robinson. Do you remember, we saw her going home?”

“Yes, what was she over here for?” Paul asked.

“To borrow some milk, sir,” Lily answered. “But she was only in the kitchen a minute. Anyway, what could she possibly have wanted to do a thing like that for?”

“I wish you’d say no more about it,” said Julia lightly. “It doesn’t matter in the least. If someone finds it amusing, that’s all right. It didn’t kill me, as I was afraid it was going to.” She laughed, and all at once she was aware that Davey was still in the room watching her with his dark enigmatic eyes. What does he know about it? she wondered suddenly.

Paul banged his fist on the table. “Well, I won’t have it. If it was a mistake, well and good. But I won’t have that sort of joke played in this house.”

He was directing that speech at somebody, Julia divined. Before she could decide who it was a surprising thing happened. The little bundle in the big chair spoke.

“It would be Harry,” Said Georgina in her piping voice. “I heard him talking last night. He kept me awake. He always loved practical jokes. Didn’t he, Kate? Ah yes, there’s no doubt it would be Harry.”

For a moment there was complete silence in the room. Then Nita made a sound halfway between a gasp and a cry. It ended in a laugh, and laughing in that high cracked way she ran out of the room.

N
ITA WAS DISENCHANTED. THAT
was the vague thing about her that Julia had tried to identify. Now it came to her with certainty. That was the reason for her dry forced composure, her sad mouth, the way her black eyes surveyed everyone with cynical amusement. Something had happened to her, but it wasn’t, Julia was sure, grief for the death of a young husband. Grief would have left her soft, tragic-eyed. She was neither of those things. Her thin body was full of some tense emotion that certainly wasn’t grief. Even her hysterical laughter now, as she rushed from the room, was from a distress unrelated to grief.

It could have been caused, Julia thought slowly, by anger or frustration. And if that were truly so it meant that Harry was alive. And not far away.

But if Harry were really alive, why should he want to play stupid malicious jokes on her?

Davey had begun a conversation with Paul about bringing the sheep down from the high country for lambing. Kate was pouring another cup of coffee, slopping it into the saucer as if her hand were shaking. Lily was clattering dishes in the kitchen. Nita had disappeared, but if Harry were mysteriously in the house no doubt she had gone to him. This was the time to look.

Unobtrusively Julia slipped from the room. She knew all the rooms on the ground floor, the kitchen, the library, the big front room where Georgina sat all day, the dining room where they had just finished breakfast, and two or three small rooms at the back that were used for lumber rooms. But upstairs she had not seen all the rooms. She particularly wanted to find the room in which Nita had slept last night. She wanted to know why Nita would not have heard her own baby crying.

There was Georgina’s cluttered stuffy room immediately opposite the head of the stairs, then Kate’s, and beyond that Paul’s. On the other side of the passage was the large guest room that Julia had, then the tiny dressing room in which Timmy had been put. Next to that was the bathroom, and then two rooms that had previously been unoccupied. One of these would be Nita’s. Julia tapped on the door of the first. When there was no answer she cautiously opened the door and found another lumber room, clearly uninhabited for the bed was buried beneath a pile of old boxes and baggage. She went out and tapped on the slightly ajar door of the second. Again there was no answer. She went in and saw the double bed, unmade, and blankets flung back carelessly.

Nita’s bags were on the floor and her cosmetics on the dressing-table. There was no doubt that it was Nita’s room. The only curious thing was that there were two pillows side by side in the bed, and each bore the round indentation of a head.

So that, Julia reflected, was why Nita had not heard Timmy crying. At that instant she had that thought there was a sound behind her. She turned swiftly and saw Nita watching her with narrowed sardonic eyes.

“Something you’re looking for?” she asked.

Julia threw back her head. No narrow-eyed gipsy like Nita was going to frighten her.

“Not something,” she replied coolly. “Someone.” She looked deliberately at the dented pillows. “Where’s Harry?” she asked. “Why does everyone tell me he’s dead when obviously he is here?”

“Who tells you?” Nita asked swiftly.

Who had told her? Only Georgina, and she was in her dotage. Yet it seemed that in a silent subtle way everyone had told her.

“You surely don’t take any notice of a crazy old woman,” Nita said. “And if you think I shared my bed you’re wrong. I’m a restless sleeper. I fling myself all over the place.”

“Then why didn’t you hear Timmy crying? You said you slept soundly.”

“When I go to sleep, I do. Besides there are two rooms between us, and a wind howling in those god-awful trees outside. Would you have heard him? I won’t have him put in that room again. He’ll come in here with me. It was Kate’s fault last night. She was in a bit of a flap at our arrival.”

“Why did you come unexpectedly like that?” Julia asked curiously.

Nita went to the dressing-table, took a cigarette from a packet and leisurely lit it.

“Because I have every right to. Even if I’m only a daughter-in-law, Timmy belongs here.”

“Of course,” Julia agreed, her voice suddenly gentle. “I understand. You were lonely.”

“What do you think?” Nita said furiously. “Left like that, trying to fight my way. Of course I was lonely. Though what I will be here I don’t know,” she added under her breath.

Julia could see her anger and her despair, but still she could interpret no grief in the girl’s defiant face.

“They wish I would go away already,” she muttered. “Can’t you see? Kate looks at me like an interloper every time she raises those baby eyes of hers.”

“Don’t be absurd. As far as I’m concerned you’re welcome here for as long as you like.”

Nita gave her a long look which held that curious mixture of contempt and friendliness.

“And how long do you think you will be here?” she murmured.

Julia laughed. “Until Paul divorces me, I imagine.”

“You have competition,” said Nita airily. “Perhaps Paul will turn out to be a male Borgia.”

Julia thought of the way Paul had kissed her last night, and laughed again, happily. “Are you suggesting it was he who played the trick with the salt?”

“Oh no. He’d be clever enough to give you no warning.” Nita suddenly shrugged tiredly. “We’re talking nonsense. I don’t think I shall burden any of you with my company for long. Now get out while I tidy my room. And don’t be dumb.”

“Dumb?”

“Like getting it into your head that Harry is here. That’s just a piece of imbecile cruelty. If the old lady doesn’t stop it I’ll throttle her.”

Julia thought she understood at last. Nita was too proud to show grief. She preferred to be full of anger and bitterness at the unkind destiny that had robbed her of a young husband. One had to feel deeply sorry for her. She meant to discuss with Paul what could be done for Nita as soon as she got him alone.

But getting him alone seemed to be difficult today. First he was with Davey in the dining room, then he was shut in the library having a long discussion on the telephone. After that again Julia saw him in the garden talking to Nita. He gave her a careless slap across the shoulders, and looked down at her earnestly as if he were reassuring her about something. Julia waited to hear him come in, but when he did Kate waylaid him.

“Is she going to behave?” Julia heard her say in a tense hard voice. It was the voice she had heard outside her bedroom on the night of her arrival, an indication of the unexpectedly fearful uncertain person who dwelt beneath Kate’s frivolous light-hearted surface.

“Yes, indeed. I’ve fixed her,” said Paul. Then he added in irritation, “Why do you get so stewed up? Haven’t I told you there’s no need?”

Julia, on an impulse, went flying down the stairs. “What’s going on here? Is there something I haven’t been told?”

Her appearance took them by surprise. She caught on Kate’s face a naked look, the anxious frightened person looking out beneath the sophisticated make-up, and on Paul’s the disturbing hardness that it had worn last night when she had held up the lighted match to look at him.

In an instant, however, they were themselves again, smiling at her, with Kate saying, “The way you run down those stairs, dear child, you’ll break your neck one day. Look at the colour she has, Paul. It’s not out of a box, either.”

“She’s a pretty thing,” said Paul lightly.

Julia was impatient. “You’re just changing the subject. What were you saying before I came down, something about fixing somebody. Is it about the salt in my tea?”

Paul patted her shoulders. “Perhaps. Forget it, darling. It won’t happen again.”

Into Julia’s mind came vividly the recollection of Paul, a few minutes earlier, patting Nita in a precisely similar way. She drew back rather sharply, then saw his look of hurt surprise and was sorry for her involuntary action.

“Are you cross with us, darling?”

“No, of course not. It was a silly joke, I suppose. But I keep thinking there’s something going on under the surface. All this talk of Harry, for instance. I’m going to live here. Haven’t I a right to know?”

“The talk of Harry,” said Kate sadly, “is only done by poor old Granny. You mustn’t listen to her, dear. She’s crazy.”

“Not all the time,” Julia persisted. “We had a perfectly rational talk last evening.”

“All the time, I’m afraid,” Paul said. “Even when she seems rational.”

Kate was dabbing at her eyes with her handkerchief.

“If only what she said were true—”

“Now, Mother,” said Paul, “don’t get upset. Tell us, Julia, is there anything else that worries you besides Granny’s hallucinations and that poor joke about the salt in your tea?”

Julia looked at him wordlessly. She wanted to burst out with all the vague things that troubled her, the way Paul was not the person she remembered, exciting, yes, but not the quiet comfortable person she had known, the way the house and farm were in such a state of careless disrepair, why Nita had arrived so unexpectedly, bringing her restless unhappiness with her, why Kate, who should have been, by her appearance, a light-hearted superficial person, ambitious only for expensive clothes and luxury, had that frightened person living beneath her sophistication, even more vaguely the thought of those two attractive young women, Dove Robinson and Lily in the kitchen pouring cups of tea, her eyes full of guile. And Davey, the intellectual shepherd who knew a great deal more than he was ever going to tell. Most of all the Paul she didn’t entirely know, with whom she could make love, but to whom she couldn’t talk.

But all she could say flatly was, “The letters.”

“Letters?” Paul’s thick golden eyebrows lifted.

Julia realised that she had not meant to tell anyone about those childish letters, hoping that whoever wrote them would finally give up her ineffectual persecution. Now the information had slipped out, and Kate was looking at her with a polite interest that scarcely covered her apprehension.

“Anonymous letters,” she said, trying to speak lightly. “All of them warning me not to marry you. Are you a Bluebeard or something, darling?”

“When did you get these letters?” Paul asked in a hard clipped voice.

“Oh, they’ve been following me about ever since I arrived in New Zealand.”

“Good heavens! It must be someone who knows my past! But I don’t think I’m that bad. Really I don’t.”

His whimsical sincerity was charming. Why did she not quite believe it? (The lines round Kate’s eyes seemed to have deepened, so that she looked an old woman, in spite of her youthful mouth and her air of amused attention.)

“It’s someone in this house,” Julia said. “One of the letters was slipped under my door this morning.”

“How extraordinary!” Kate gasped. “How impertinent! First the salt in your tea, and now this. Really, Paul, we must do something.”

“Do you mind if I see these documents?” Paul asked.

“I tore the first two up. This is the one that came this morning.” Julia took the crushed scrap of paper from her pocket and smoothed it out. Paul glanced at the crude printing, and suddenly began to laugh in his explosive amused manner, the way he had done when he had tasted the salt in her tea that morning.

“Paul Blaine is no good for you. Don’t be a fool,” he read aloud. “The thing’s elementary.” He deepened his voice dramatically and tapped the paper. “This is the hand of a jealous woman.”

“Oh, Paul, how nasty!” Kate said faintly.

“Yes, it is nasty,” Paul agreed. “All anonymous letters are nasty. But on the other hand it’s a little pathetic, and I suppose unintentionally I’m to blame.”

Kate was recovering her composure. “Yes, indeed, you must be,” she said with asperity. “It’s all that ridiculous flirting you do with the girls. Some day one of them was bound to take it seriously. And see how unpleasant it can be.”

“Then you know who is doing it?” Julia said.

Paul flung out his hands. I’m afraid I can’t be sure just now. But I’ll find out. I’ll fix it.”

Again Julia thought of Nita, and Paul’s light remark a few minutes ago that he would fix her. He was certainly full of confidence. She wasn’t at all sure that he was going to be able to fix everything. Even a clever and plausible tongue might not manage all those women. It was all so bewildering when one remembered the shy person Paul had been three years ago—before Harry had died.… “I think you’re trying to wear your brother’s mantle,” she said shrewdly.

Kate drew in her breath too quickly.