CHAPTER IX—THE FOG

His exit from Orchid Lodge came hurriedly. Mrs. Sheerug had received a letter telling her that her daughter, Madge, and her younger son, Ruddy, were returning from the visit they had been paying. Consequently, one foggy winter’s afternoon with a tip of four shillings from Hal and of half-a-crown from Mrs. Sheerug—six shillings and sixpence in all towards the necessary five pounds—he was wrapped up and conducted the six doors lower down in the charge of Harriet.

It was as though a story-book had been snatched from his hands when he was halfway through the adventure. There were so many things that he wanted to know. It seemed to him that he had lost sight of Vashti for ever.

Jane, his own servant, admitted them. She was greatly excited, but not by his advent. Drawing Harriet into the hall, she at once began to make her her confidante.

“It wasn’t as though they ’adn’t been ’appy,” Jane was saying. “’Appy I They was that ’appy they got on my nerves. There was times when it was fair sick’ning to listen to ’em. Give me the pip, that’s wot it did. It was ’Dearie this’ and ’Jimmie Boy that,’ till it made a unmarried girl that angry she wanted to knock their ‘eads. Silly, I calls it, to be ’ave like that downstairs. Well, that’s ‘ow it was till the missus takes ill, and wot we’d expected didn’t ‘appen. Master Teddy goes ter stay with you; ‘is dear ma is safe in bed; and then she comes, this woman as says she wants to ’ave ‘er portrait painted. ’Er portrait painted!”

Jane beat her hands and sniffed derisively. Catching Teddy’s eye, she lowered her voice and bent nearer to Harriet “’Er portrait painted! It was all me eye and Betty Martin. Direckly I saw ’er I knew that, and I says to myself, ’Yer portrait painted! A fat lot you wants of that, my fine lady.’ And so it’s turned out When I opened the door to ’er fust, I nearly closed it in ’er face, she looked that daingerous. And there’s the missus on ’er back upstairs as flat as a pancake. I can’t tell ’er a thing of wot I suspeck.”

“Men’s all alike,” sighed Harriet, as though speaking out of a bitter marriage experience. “H’it’s always the newest skirt that attracks.”

Jane looked up sharply. It seemed to her that Teddy had grown too attentive. “‘Ere, Miss ’arriet, let’s go down to my kitching and talk this over. More private,” she added significantly. Then to Teddy, who was following, “No, you don’t, Master Theo. You stay ’ere till we comes back.”

High up in the darkness a door opened. Footsteps. They were descending. Huddling himself into an angle of the wall, he waited. A strange woman in a blue starched dress was coming down. As she passed him, he stretched out his hand, “If you please——”

She jumped away, startled and angry. “What a fright you did give me, hiding and snatching at me like that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry! But who are you?”

“I’m Teddy. Where’s—where’s mother?”

The woman’s voice became quiet and professional. “She’s sleeping. When she wakes, I’ll send for you. She’s not been well. I must go now.”

He listened to her footsteps till they died out in the basement. He must find his father. Cautiously he set to work, opening doors, peeping into darkened rooms and whispering, “It’s only Teddy.”

Indoors he had searched everywhere; only one other place was left

The garden was a brooding sea of yellow mist, obscured and featureless. Trees stood up vaguely stark, like cowled skeletons.

He groped his way down the path. Once he strayed on to the lawn and lost himself; it was only by feeling the gravel beneath his tread that he could be sure of his direction. A light loomed out of the darkness—the faintest blur, far above his head. It strengthened as he drew nearer. Stretching out his hands, he touched ivy. Following the wall, he came to a door, and raised the latch.

Inside the stable he held his breath. Stacked against the stalls were canvases: some of them blank; some of them the failures of finished work; others big compositions which were set aside till the artist’s enthusiasm should again be kindled. Leading out of the stable into the converted loft was a rickety stairway and a trap-door. Teddy could not see these things; through familiarity he was aware of their presence.

Voices! One low and grumbling, the other fluty and high up. Then a snatch of laughter. Was there any truth in what Jane had said? The trap-door was heavy. Placing his hands beneath it, he pushed and flung it back. It fell with a clatter. He stood white and trembling, dazzled by the glare, only his head showing.

“What on earth!”

Some one rose from a chair so hurriedly that it toppled over. Then the same voice exclaimed in a glad tone, “Why, it’s the shrimp!”

His father’s arms were about him, lifting him up. Teddy buried his face against the velvet jacket. Though he had been deaf and blind, he would have recognized his father by the friendly smell of tobacco and varnish. Because of that smell he felt that his father was unaltered.

“Turned you out, old chap, did they? I didn’t know you were coming. Perhaps Jane told me. I’ve been having one of my inspirations, Teddy—hard at it every moment while the light lasted. I’d be at it now, if this infernal fog hadn’t stopped me.” He tried to raise the boy’s face from his shoulder. “Want to see what I’ve been doing?”

Teddy felt himself a traitor. His father had had an inspiration—that accounted for Jane’s suspicions and for anything awkward that had occurred. It was always when his father’s soul groped nearest heaven that his earthly manners were at their worst. Odd! Teddy couldn’t understand it; a person like Jane, who wasn’t even related, could understand it still less. But he had let himself sink to Jane’s level. If he had wanted to confess, he couldn’t have told precisely what it was that he had dreaded. So in reply to all coaxing he hid his face deeper in the shoulder of the velvet jacket. Its smoky, varnishy, familiar smell gave him comfort: it seemed to forgive him without words.

“Frightened?” his father questioned. “You were always too sensitive, weren’t you? I oughtn’t to have forgotten you like that. But—I say, Teddy, look up, old man. I really had something to make me forget.”

“I think he’ll look up for me.”

At sound of that voice, before the sentence was ended, he had looked up.

“There!”

Her laughter rang through the raftered room like the shivering of silver bells.

Holding out his hands to her, Teddy struggled to free himself. When force failed, he leaned his cheek against his father’s, “Jimmie Boy, dear Jimmie Boy, let me down.”

“Hulloal What’s this?”

Combing his fingers through his curly black hair, his father looked on, humorously perplexed by this frantic reunion of his son and the strange lady. She bent tenderly, pressing his hands against her lips and holding him to her breast.

“I never, never thought I’d find you,” he was explaining, “never in the world. I searched everywhere. I was always hoping you’d come back. When you didn’t, I tried to ask Harriet, and I nearly asked Mrs. Sheerug.”

“Ah, she wouldn’t tell you,” the lady said.

“I know all about marriage now,” he whispered.

“You do?”

He clapped his hands. “Harriet told me.”

His father interrupted. “How did you and Teddy come to meet, Miss Jodrell?”

Vashti glanced up; her eyes slanted and flashed mischief. It was quite true; any woman would have shared Jane’s opinion—Vashti’s look was “daingerous” when it dwelt on a man. It lured, beckoned and caressed. It hinted at unspoken tenderness. It seemed to say gladly, “At last we are together. I understand you as no other woman can.” It was especially dangerous now, when the bronze hair shone beneath the gray breast of a bird, the red lips were parted in kindness, and the white throat, like a swan floating proudly, swayed delicately above ermine furs. In the studio with its hint of the exotic, its canvases where pale figures raced through woodlands, its infinite yearning after beauty, its red fire burning, swinging lamps and gaping chairs, and against the window the muffled silence, Vashti looked like the materialization of a man’s desire. One arm was flung about the boy, her face leant against his shoulder, brooding out across the narrow distance at the man’s.

“How did we meet!” she echoed. “How does any one meet? In a fog, by accident, after loneliness. Sometimes it’s for better; sometimes it’s for worse. One never knows until the end.” She stood up and drew her wraps about her, snuggling her chin against her furs. “I ought to be going now; your wife must be needing you, Mr. Gurney—— Oh, well, if you want to see me out.”

She dropped to her knees beside Teddy. “Good-by, little champion. Some day you and I will go away together and you must tell me all that you learnt from Harriet about—about our secret.”

When they had vanished through the hole in the floor, Teddy tiptoed over to the trap-door and peered down. With a glance across his shoulder, his father signaled to him not to follow. He ran to the window to get one last glimpse of her, but the fog prevented; all he could see was the moving of two disappearing shadows. He heard the sound of their footsteps growing fainter, and less certain on the gravel.

Left to himself, he pulled from his knickerbockers’ pocket a knotted handkerchief. Undoing it, he counted its contents: Hal’s four shillings and Mrs. Sheerug’s half-a-crown. He smiled seriously. Sitting down on the floor, he spread out the coins to make sure that he hadn’t lost any of them. Six-and-sixpence! To grown people it might not seem wealth; to him it was the beginning of five pounds.