The Blind Side

Chapter II

She was still there on the landing when Peter Renshaw came running up the stairs about five minutes later. He was a tall young man-all the Craddock men ran to height-but he had none of his cousin’s claim to good looks. Rather jutting brows, rather prominent cheek bones, rather wide-set eyes, a skin tanned by the Indian sun, a small nondescript moustache, hair that had once been very fair and had never quite made up its mind to go brown-that was Peter Renshaw. He was thirty years of age, held His Majesty’s commission in the Westshire Regiment, and was at present on leave from India.

He stopped on the top step and contemplated his Cousin Lucy with some astonishment. She had her back to him and her face to Ross Craddock’s front door, and she was shaking her fist at it, absolutely and literally shaking her fist. Peter couldn’t recall having ever seen anyone actually shake a fist before. A slight whistle escaped him. Lucy Craddock turned round and showed him a strangely unfamiliar face, tear-stained, heavily flushed, and quite distorted by anger.

“Hullo, Lucinda-what’s up?”

At the sound of his voice she burst out crying. She clung to his arm.

“He’s wicked!” she said, and choked, and sobbed it out again.

Peter unlocked the door of No. 9 and got her inside. If Lucy must have hysterics, let her have them in decent privacy. He put her on the couch which had been her sister’s, pulled up a chair, and said briskly,

“What’s Ross been doing now?”

She was in such a state of agitation that it took him some time to arrive at the facts. He had to disentangle the Mavis motif from the eviction motif, and in the end he wasn’t quite sure which was upsetting poor Lucinda most. Mavis was none of his business, and he certainly wasn’t going to have a row with Ross about her, but the eviction was a different matter. He was quite prepared to fight if there was the faintest chance of success. He patted Lucy’s heaving shoulder and said,

“All right. Now take a breather. No, you’ve cried enough. Here’s my handkerchief. Blow the nose, brace the back, and listen to your Uncle Peter.”

Miss Lucy sniffed against the cold clean linen, dabbed her eyes with a shaking hand, and gazed at him with touching confidence. Peter wouldn’t let her be turned out. Peter would speak to Ross.

“Now,” said Peter, “what I want to know is just this. When Uncle John brought you and Mary here, did you have a lease or anything like that?”

“It’s such a long time ago-I’m sure I never thought-”

“Think now,” he said. “Think as hard as you can. Are you sure there wasn’t a lease?”

“Oh, I don’t know-oh, I’m sure there wasn’t-but if there had been-Mary would have known-and she didn’t always tell me things-of course she ought to have-but she didn’t-”

Peter patted her again.

“Don’t bother. If Mary had anything, I’ll find it-it’ll be somewhere in the welter. But think. Did Uncle John ever write to you about your coming here?”

“Oh, no-he was so kind-he came to see us. We were in very poor lodgings, you know-up in Birmingham -after Papa’s death. He failed, you know-and then he died”-and dear John came and fetched us away and gave us these flats-”

“He gave you the flats? What did he say?”

“Oh, I don’t remember,” said Lucy Craddock, and burst into a fresh flood of tears.

She really knew nothing. It took Peter another quarter of an hour to make quite sure of this. If there was any evidence as to John David’s intention with regard to the flats, it would be somewhere in the muddle of papers Mary Craddock had left for him to sort. He very much feared that there wasn’t going to be any evidence.

“And I don’t know what to do,” said Lucy, sobbing-“because I’ve got my tickets-and I’m all packed up-and the train goes at half past seven-but I can’t go away now-can I?”

“Of course you can! Now look here, Lucinda, you’ve got to pull yourself together and carry on. You promised Mary you’d go away for a change, and you’ve got to keep your promise. Don’t you see it’s the very best thing you can do? If you go away you tie Ross’s hands. He can’t very well put your furniture out in the street, and anyhow I’ll be here to see he doesn’t. And you’ll be giving me time to go through the rest of the papers. There may be something that’ll give you a case. So you see, you couldn’t do anything better than be out of the way for a bit. Now if you’ve still got anything to pack you’d better hop along and get on with it.”

Lucy Craddock stopped crying. She had the relieved, exhausted feeling that comes after prolonged weeping. She wanted to go away and forget all about Ross Craddock. She said,

“Oh, do you think I could? But there’s Mavis too. He’s got a dreadful picture of her in there. She oughtn’t to have let him have it. She ought not to go about with him. He’s a very wicked man. I don’t think I ought to go away and leave her.”

“She is with her father’s people, isn’t she?”

“Yes-the Ernest Greys. She’s very strict, but she hasn’t any influence over Mavis. Besides, she doesn’t know-” She broke off rather short and looked frightened.

“What doesn’t she know?”

Lucy Craddock shook her head in a distracted manner.

“What is there to know?” said Peter.

Lucy shook her head again. Then she burst out,

“He can’t marry her-he doesn’t want to marry her-and he ought to leave her alone. She’s my niece and his own cousin, and it’s not right! And Mrs. Grey has no influence-Mavis doesn’t listen to her.”

“Does she listen to you, Lucinda?” said Peter.

“Oh, no, she doesn’t. I don’t know what girls are coming to. She doesn’t listen to anyone.”

“Then what’s the use of your staying?”

Lucy Craddock jumped up.

“Oh!” she said, “I wish Ross was dead!” She ran out of the room and out of the flat, as if the sound of her own words frightened her.