The Fingerprint

Chapter XI

THE EVENTS of the evening which followed were to be told and re-told, weighed, scrutinized, and called upon to corroborate first one speculative theory and then another. Yet upon the surface, and at the time of their happening, these events were ordinary enough.

Mrs. Fabian’s remark as she entered the drawing-room had been made upon every occasion of Jonathan’s return to the family circle after some brief absence in town-“Well, I hope that you were able to complete your business satisfactorily.”

The words might vary in some slight degree, but the intention remained the same. It was axiomatic that a man who went up to town, whether for the day or for a longer period, did so in order to attend to business, a word to which she attached no positive meaning. On this particular evening the formula was unchanged. She said,

“I do hope that you were able to complete your business satisfactorily.”

To which Jonathan replied, “Yes, thank you.”

And with that the gong sounded and they went into dinner.

When the meal was over they returned to the drawing-room. Stokes brought in the coffee-tray and set it down on a small table before Georgina -all this in accordance with a routine which went back to her sixteenth birthday. She poured the coffee. Jonathan had his black and sweet. He stood beside her, took his cup from her hand, and remained there without turning away or sitting down, and without speaking.

Georgina went on pouring out. Mirrie liked a lot of milk and a lot of sugar. Johnny took his black. Anthony liked about a third milk. Mrs. Fabian discoursed on how coffee should be made, shook her head over Mrs. Stokes’ excellent brew, and drank three cups of it. When Jonathan had had a second cup he went off to the study with the time-honoured excuse that he had letters to write.

A minute or two later Georgina got up and left the room. Stokes saw her go into the study. When she came back to the drawing-room she took up a book. Anthony came over with the evening paper in his hand and sat down beside her. He said in an undertone,

“Why don’t you go to bed? You look all in.”

Georgina turned a page.

“No, I’m all right. We’ll all go presently.”

By this time Johnny was teaching Mirrie picquet. He could be heard telling her that she had no card sense, to which she replied that she didn’t know what it was, and Mrs. Fabian made the comment that serious card games were very fatiguing.

“But we used to play Old Maid, my three aunts and I, and sometimes a visiting cousin, and I used to enjoy it very much -only it vexed me because I was nearly always Old Maid.”

Johnny looked up from his serious game to blow her a kiss and say,

“Darling, it sounds like a riot! And it only goes to show that cards go by contraries, because the aunts didn’t marry and you did.”

Jonathan was still in his study when they went upstairs.

He often sat there until well after midnight, reading or dozing in his chair. At ten o’clock it was Stokes’ habit to take in a tray with a decanter and a syphon, but as often as not they would be left untouched. The entrance of anyone else was neither expected nor desired.

The rest of the party went up to the wide first-floor landing from which a passage led off on either side. Here they said their good-nights. Mrs. Fabian quoted:

“ ‘Early to bed and early to rise

Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.’

“Only of course you can’t take it literally, because I’ve never been wealthy, and I don’t suppose I ever shall be now.”

Johnny kissed her cheek and said,

“Perhaps you didn’t get up early enough.”

And then they separated, Mirrie, Georgina and Mrs. Fabian going to the left, and Anthony and Johnny to the right. For a time there were the sounds of doors opening and shutting and of water running, but all muted by the solid fashion of the walls and the thickness of carpets and curtains. Where the modern house echoes to the dropping of a boot or the sound of a footstep crossing the bedroom floor, Field End absorbed these things and kept its counsel. Stokes and Mrs. Stokes took their way up the back stairs to their third-floor room without the slightest sound coming through by way of wall or ceiling. No one on either floor would hear the opening of the study door or the footstep of the master of the house as he crossed the hall and came up to his own room fronting the stair. Whether he came or did not come, no one in any room heard anything.

Georgina turned out the light, pulled back her curtains, and set the windows wide. She stood in her nightgown and looked out. At first there was nothing but darkness. Then, as her sight adjusted itself, she could see the sky diffusing a faint light through clouds. A light wind moved, and the clouds moved. The garden was all dim, all hidden. There were no stars, there was no moon, and there was no sound except that light moving of the wind.

Quite suddenly the darkness and the silence touched some spring of feeling. Tears came into her eyes and began to run down. It was the first time in those two days that she had had any tears to shed. Everything in her had been shocked and dry. Now the tears flowed and went on flowing. When at last they ceased there was an extraordinary sense of relief. She washed her face and dried it with a soft towel. Then she got into bed and fell deeply and dreamlessly asleep.

Mrs. Fabian was having a particularly vivid dream. She always dreamed, but as a rule by the time she had waked up in the morning and had her tea brought to her by Doris, one of the two girls who came up from the village, the details of what she dreamed had quite disappeared, merely leaving her with some vague impression of happenings beyond her recollection. But now, at any rate whilst she was asleep, everything in the dream was perfectly clear. She was in a sunny garden with her husband, dear James, and his little boy Johnny about four years old. What she couldn’t remember, and it worried her a good deal both at the time and when she thought about it next day, was whether she was married to James, or whether she only knew that she was going to marry him, because even in the dream she knew that they had been married. If it had not been for this uncertainty, which seemed to cast a shade of impropriety over what would otherwise have been most enjoyable, the dream would have been very pleasant indeed. As it was, her thought began to be a good deal disturbed. The sky clouded and everything got dark. She waked suddenly, and the darkness was in her room. Just for a moment she was really frightened. The change had been so sudden from the sunny garden with James and little Johnny to this total darkness with no one there but herself.

Her fear only lasted long enough for her to draw a few frightened breaths and start up on her elbow. As soon as she did that, she could see that a little light was coming in through the window. If the head of her bed had not been against the same wall she would have seen it at once, but she always waked so early if she faced the light. She switched on her bedside lamp and looked at her watch. It was twelve o’clock. She wondered what had waked her. After a minute or two she put out the light and went to sleep again.

Mirrie didn’t dream at all-she hardly ever did. As soon as she got into bed and put her head on the pillow she fell asleep, and stayed asleep for as long as possible. One of the things she had hated most about living with Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace was having to get up at six o’clock. She had to do the stairs and the sitting-room, and make her bed, and sweep and dust her room before breakfast-and breakfast was at half-past-seven. And then there were the breakfast things to wash, and the potatoes to peel, and a chapter to read before going to school. It took her half an hour to get to school. When she was at the Home it was even worse, because there was more to do and less time to do it in. How she had hated it all! Uncle Albert, with his solemn beard and the mouldy bookshop where he spent his days. If the books had even been new, but they weren’t. He went to sales and bought in old rubbishy things which you wouldn’t think anyone could want! And Aunt Grace, pinching and paring and scraping and saying what an expense Mirrie was, and she must get on at school so that she could earn her own living as soon as she possibly could. If it hadn’t been for Sid…

She didn’t really want to think about Sid, who was Sid Turner and Aunt Grace’s step-brother. Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace didn’t approve of him. A step-brother wasn’t really a relation at all. Sid had been in trouble. He got a year for being mixed up in robbing a till. That was when he was only eighteen. Mirrie thought it was horrid to go on holding it up against him all this long time afterwards, but Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace were like that. She had begun by being sorry for Sid, and when he asked her to meet him and do a flick she pretended she was going round to baby-sit for Hilda Lambton’s sister who had married when she was seventeen and had twins. Her name was Floss, and she wouldn’t give you away, because it was the sort of thing she used to do herself.

Mirrie had got to know the Lambtons at school. Hilda and she were the same age, and Floss two years older. It was the old Grammar School they all went to. There were some quite nice girls there. Some of them had pretty clothes, the sort she would have liked to have herself. They didn’t wear them at school of course, because there was a uniform, but some of them went to the same church as Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace, so she saw them on Sundays. That was when they wore their nice clothes, but she had to go on wearing that hideous uniform. When she was seventeen and hadn’t passed those wretched exams, Aunt Grace got her into the Home. They called her Assistant Matron, but she was really there to do the housework. And she still had to get up at six o’clock. Snuggled down warm in her bed at Field End she could remember just how horrid it was to get up in the dark and the icy cold. Not for anything in the world would she go back-not for anything at all. She remembered the day when Jonathan Field had come to the Home and asked to see her. She had been scrubbing and her hands were red. Matron let her have a clean apron and sent her in. She remembered that she was almost crying because she wanted time to brush her hair until it shone, and to put on her Sunday dress. She had a Sunday dress because she couldn’t wear the school uniform any more. You couldn’t wear it after you had left the Grammar School. The Sunday dress came out of a charity bundle. It was ugly, but it was better than this common print, only Matron said she was tidy enough and sent her in. She had no idea of how much more becoming the print dress was, or just how strong an appeal those little red hands and the tearful brown eyes would have for Jonathan Field. She knew that she was like her mother, because Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace had told her so. They also told her that her mother was flighty and had thrown away her chances, but she had no idea that Jonathan Field was one of the chances that had been thrown away. She walked into the room and into another life. There were interviews with Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace, and with the authorities at the Home. And then Mr. Jonathan Field became Uncle Jonathan, and she went down with him to Field End. It was like a fairy story. The door back into the old life was shut, and barred, and bolted. She would never go back through it again, no matter what anyone said, no matter what anyone did. Never, never, never! She was warm, she was relaxed. Her mind was made up and set. The door was locked and bolted. She would never go back. This set purpose went with her into a dreamless sleep.