Lonesome Road

Chapter Ten

Richard Treherne came through the hall on the way to breakfast. As he passed the study door, he heard voices. The door was ajar. He pushed it a little way, and then stopped because he heard Cherry say in a taunting voice,

“You should have done what you were told, Car-o-line. I said I’d tell on you if you didn’t give me a rake-off.”

Richard waited to hear what Caroline would say.

She said nothing.

He pushed the door a little wider, and saw her standing at the window with her back to him. Cherry, a little nearer, half turned from him, half turned to Caroline, showed him a malicious profile. Her pale hair caught the light.

“You’d much better pay up,” she said. “I expect you got at least fifty pounds for that ring. You can easily spare me a tenner.”

Caroline did not turn her head. She said, “Why should I?” in a tone of gentle scorn.

Cherry Wadlow laughed.

“Because you’d better. I warned you I’d tell about the ring, and I told. But there’s something else I can tell about too if I don’t get my little rake-off.”

Richard came in, shut the door behind him, and crossed the floor.

“And that’s about enough of that!” he said. “Cherry, in case you don’t know it, blackmail is an indictable offence, and you can get quite a nice long stretch of penal servitude for it.”

She put out her tongue at him like a child.

“And a nice time your darling Caroline would have in the witness-box. ‘You pawned a diamond ring, Miss Ponsonby. I believe it belonged to your mother. You must surely have had a very strong motive for parting with it. Oh, you wanted the money? Now you wouldn’t like to tell the Court what you wanted the money for, would you? No, I thought not-a most natural reluctance.’ There, Dicky- that’s how it would be. Do run me in. I think it would be simply wizard-don’t you, Carrie? Shall I tell him what you wanted the money for?… No? All right, I’ll let you off this time, because though revenge is sweet, I’d really rather have that tenner, so I’m giving you time to think it over.” She slipped her arm through Richard’s. “Wouldn’t you like to kiss me good-morning, darling?”

Richard would have liked to strangle her, but he curbed himself and said in a bored tone,

“Not amusing, Cherry. You’re out of the schoolroom now, though it’s a bit difficult to realize it.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing her change color. She ran out of the room. The door banged.

Caroline said, “It’s wicked to hate people, but I think I hate Cherry.”

“What she wants is a daily dozen,” said Richard- “laid on with a good stiff hair-brush. Maurice the same. Now-what’s all this about? Are you going to tell me?”

The color came into Caroline’s face. She said,

“No.”

Richard took her hands in his own. He said,

“Better tell me, Caroline.”

She said “No” again, but rather faintly.

“Silly to make mysteries, my dear-really silly, when it’s you and me. Don’t you know that you can tell me anything?”

She said “Yes,” and caught her breath and said, “Anything about me. But this isn’t anything about me, Richard.”

‘Thank the Lord for that! But I think you’d better tell me.”

She tried to pull her hands away, and when he held them fast she threw him a piteous look which he found hard to bear.

“Please, Richard-I can’t. Please, Richard, let me go.”

He lifted her hands, kissed them, and let them go.

“Well, don’t let Cherry bully you. And don’t forget I’m here. What do you mean by letting her drag us all into a melodrama before breakfast? The emotions should never be excited before three in the afternoon. Come and eat scrambled eggs and kippers. Particularly kippers. They have a very stabilizing effect.”

Breakfast was not a particularly tranquil meal. The Wadlows, Ernest and Mabel, had obviously cast themselves for the role of martyrs. They asked for coffee in tones of gloom, refused sugar as if it had been poison, and gazed upon Rachel with a steady reproach which she found extremely trying. Maurice sulked openly, whilst Cherry advertized the fact that she was in a bad temper by pushing away her cup of tea with so violent a shove as to send half of it into Caroline’s lap.

For a moment Rachel saw them, not as part of her family, but as four singularly irritating and disagreeable people. For that moment she disliked them extremely, wondered why she had put up with them for so long, and made up her mind to send them packing. Then the moment was over. The Wadlows were family again. You were fond of them, you put up with them, you could never, never, never be rid of them. It was not an enlivening thought.

Ernest ate fruit and cereal, Mabel cereal without fruit. Cherry crumbled toast and upset her tea. Caroline ate nothing at all. The telephone was active.

Maurice answered it the first time, and reported that Cosmo Frith was coming over bag and baggage before lunch.

“He might just as well live here and have done with it.”

“So might any of us for the matter of that,” snapped Cherry.

This was so undeniably true that no one attempted to deny it.

The telephone bell rang again. This time there was a telegram. Richard took it down, laid the message beside Rachel’s plate, and saw her change color. She said,

“Miss Silver will be arriving this afternoon by the five-thirty. I shall have to send Barlow to meet her. It’s my day for Nanny Capper.”

“Who is Miss Silver?” said Cherry, staring.

Rachel hoped she wasn’t sounding nervous. She said,

“I don’t think any of you have met her. She’s a retired governess. Not very exciting, I’m afraid, but I want to have her down here for a bit.”

Cherry pushed back her chair rudely.

“Oh, why not turn the house into a home for the aged and have done with it!” She strolled towards the door with her hands in her pockets, whistling. She was wearing mustard-colored tweeds and a large emerald-green scarf. She stopped just as she was going out of the room, because Maurice was taking another call. He turned with the receiver in his hand.

“Oh! It’s for you. The faithful, or shall we say the unfaithful, Bob.”

Cherry said “Damn!”, and snatched the receiver. With her father and mother watching, she had to keep her face sulkily indifferent while Mr. Robert Hedderwick said in a voice of violent passion,

“Cherry, you’re driving me mad!”

The Wadlows saw her eyebrows lift a little. They heard her say,

“Why?”

The line quivered under the energy with which Mr. Hedderwick told her why. Cherry found it very difficult to go on looking sulky, because this was all most exciting. And gratifying. The fact that Bob Hedderwick was within a few weeks of his marriage to Mildred Ross contributed an added thrill.

“Cherry, I’ve got to see you!”

She said, “All right.”

“Tonight-at the usual place.”

Cherry said, “Well, I don’t know,” and was rewarded by another outburst.

“I tell you I’m going clean off my head! I’ve got to see you and talk it out! You’ve got to come! Say you will!”

Cherry said, “Perhaps,” and rang off.

This was heady stuff for the breakfast table. She had the utmost difficulty in not looking as pleased as she felt. She poured herself out another cup of tea and sipped at it to hide a lurking smile. Meanwhile the telephone bell was ringing again. Richard spoke over his shoulder, his palm against the mouthpiece.

“Personal, private and particular for you, Rachel. G.B. on the line.”

The young people’s complaint about having the telephone in the dining-room came home with force to Rachel as she took the receiver and heard Mr. Gale Brandon say with his agreeable American accent,

“Miss Treherne?”

Of course there was an extension in her bedroom, but it would look so marked if she switched over. No, it wouldn’t do at all. She said,

“Miss Treherne speaking.”

Gale Brandon’s voice became eager.

“Oh, now, Miss Treherne-I wonder if you would do me a favor. I don’t really like to ask you, but I know you’ve got a very kind heart, and if you’ll think that here I am on the wrong side of the Atlantic for getting help from any of my own women folk, well I think that kind heart of yours will urge you very strongly to step into the breach and help me choose my Christmas presents.”

Rachel heard the pleased note in her own voice as she said,

“But it’s much too early. I haven’t even begun to think about mine.”

Gale Brandon’s voice sounded pleased too. She thought, “He’s pleased with himself,” and tried to bang the door on that other thought, “He’s pleased with me.”

He laughed and said, “If I don’t start early I don’t at all. I just stall and quit. Now if you will come into Ledlington with me this morning-I don’t know how much we could do there but we can make a start.”

“Well, I don’t know.”

His voice took a pleading tone.

“I shall be just lost if you won’t. You know, I do lose my head in a store, and I am liable to send a pair of skates to my bedridden Uncle Jacob, or the lastest thing in lipsticks to my Aunt Hephzibah. What I need is guidance. So won’t you just cut out all those things you were going to do and let me call for you in half an hour’s time?”

Several bright thoughts arrived in Rachel’s mind simultaneously. If she went out with Gale Brandon, Ernest and Mabel would not be able to talk to her. Maurice would not be able to talk to her, and she could put off talking to Caroline. She would also avoid Louisa. And she could make quite certain of being out when Mrs. Barber brought Ella Comperton over.

She said with alacrity, “Well, I oughtn’t to, but I will,” and hung up.