A.E.W. Mason - The Summons

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"That's terrible!" said Joan. The child with her lovely face set like
flint in the room, the mother creeping out of the house and stumbling
alone into the fly at the door--the picture was vivid before her eyes.
Joan wrung her hands with a little helpless gesture, and a moan upon her
lips. Almost it seemed that these sad things were actually happening to
_her_; so poignantly she felt them.

"Oh, and you had all that long journey back to London, the journey you
had dreamt of for eleven months with your baby at your side--you had now
to take it alone."

Stella Croyle shook her head.

"No! There was just one and only one of my friends--and not at all a
great friend--who had the imagination to understand, as you understand
too, Joan, just what that journey would have meant to me, if anything
had gone wrong, and the kindness to put himself out to make its
endurance a little easier."

Joan drew back quickly.

"Harry Luttrell," she whispered.

"Yes. He had once been stationed at Exeter. He knew Robert Croyle and
the sisters. He guessed what might happen to me. Perhaps he knew that it
was going to happen."

So, when Stella, having pulled down her veil that none might see her
face, was stumbling along the platform in search of an empty carriage,
a hand was very gently laid upon her and Harry Luttrell was at her side.
He had come all the way from London to befriend her, should she need it.
If he had seen her with her little girl, he would have kept out of sight
and himself have returned to London by a later train.

"That was fine," cried Joan.

"Fine, yes!" answered Stella. "You realise that, Joan, and you have
never been in real trouble, or known what men are when kindness
interferes with their comfort. I am not blaming people, but women do get
the worst of it, if they are fools enough--wicked enough if you like, to
do as I did. I knew men--lots of them. I was bound to. I was fair game,
you see."

Joan's forehead wrinkled. The doors of knowledge had been opening very
rapidly for her during the last few minutes. But she was still often at
a loss.

"Fair game. Why? I don't understand."

"I had been divorced. Therefore I wasn't dangerous. Complications
couldn't follow from a little affair with me." Stella explained
bitterly. "I had men on my doorstep always. But not one of these men who
protested and made love to me, would have put themselves out to do what
Harry Luttrell did. It was fine--yes. But for three years I have been
wondering whether Harry Luttrell would not really have been kinder if he
had thought of his own comfort too, and had never travelled to Exeter to
befriend me."

"Why?" asked Joan.

"I should have thrown myself out of the carriage and saved myself--oh,
so much sorrow afterwards," Stella Croyle answered in so simple and
natural a voice that Joan could not disbelieve her.

Joan clasped her hands before her eyes and then gazed again at Stella
sitting in front of her, with pity and wonder. It was so hard for her to
understand that this pretty woman, who made it her business to be gay,
whom she had met from time to time in this house and had chatted with
and forgotten, had passed through so dreadful an ordeal of suffering and
humiliation. She was to look closer still into the mysteries which were
being revealed to her.

Harry Luttrell had held Stella in his arms just as if she had been a
child herself whilst the train rushed through the bleak winter country.
Stella had behaved like a child, now sobbing in a passion of grief, now
mutinous in a passion of rage, now silent and despairing under the
weights that nothing, neither sympathy, nor grief, nor revolt, can lift.

"He took me home. He stayed with me. Oh, it wasn't love," cried Stella.
"He was afraid."

"Afraid!" asked Joan. She wished to know every least detail of the story
now.

"Afraid lest I should take--something ... as I wished to do ... as
during the trouble of the divorce I learned to do."

She related little ridiculous incidents which Joan listened to with a
breaking heart. Stella could not sleep at all after her return. She
lived in a little house with a big garden on the northern edge of
London, and all night she lay awake, listening to the patter of rain on
melancholy trees, and thinking and thinking. Harry Luttrell kept her
from the drugs in her dressing-case. She had no anodyne for her
sorrows--but one.

"You will laugh," said Stella with a little wry smile of her own, "when
I tell you what it was. It was a gramophone. I got Harry to set it
going, whilst I lay in bed--to set it playing rag-time. While it was
playing, I stopped thinking. For I had to keep time in my brain with the
beat of the tune. And so, at last, since I couldn't think, or remember,
I fell asleep. The gramophone saved me"; and again Joan was smitten by
the incongruity of Stella with her life. She had eaten of all that
nature allots to women--love, marriage, the birth of children, the loss
of them--and there she was, to this day half-child, and quite
incompatible with what she had suffered and endured.

"After a fortnight I got quieter of course," said Stella. "And suddenly
a change sadder than anything I have told you took place in me. I
suppose that I had gone through too much on baby's account for me. I
lost something more than my baby, I lost my want to have her with me."

She remained silent for a little while reviewing the story which she had
told.

"There, that's all," she said, rising suddenly. "It's no claim at all,
of course. I know that very well. Harry left me at Stockholm four years
ago;" and suddenly Joan's face flushed scarlet. She had been absorbed in
Stella's sorrows, she had admired that kind action of Harry Luttrell's
which had brought so much trouble in its train. It needed that reminder
that Harry had only left Stella Croyle at Stockholm to bring home the
whole part which Harry had taken in the affair. Now she understood; a
flame of sudden jealousy confused her; and with it came a young girl's
distaste as though some ugly reptile had raised its head amongst
flowers.

"I never saw Harry again until this week, except for a minute outside a
shop one morning in Piccadilly. But he hasn't married during those four
years, so I always kept a hope that we should be somewhere together
again for a few days, and that afterwards he would come back to me."

"That's why you chose this week to come to Rackham Park?"

"Yes," answered Stella Croyle; and she laughed harshly. "But I hadn't
considered you."

Joan looked helplessly at her companion. Stella had not one small chance
of the fulfilment of her hope--no, not one--even if she herself stood a
million miles away. Of that Joan was sure. But how was she to say so to
one who was blind and deaf to all but her hope, who would not listen,
who would not see? Mario Escobar had left his gloves behind him on a
couch. Joan saw them, and remembered to whom they belonged, and her
thoughts took another complexion. Harry Luttrell! What share had she now
in his life? She rose abruptly and pushed back her chair.

"Oh, I'll stand aside," she said, "never fear! We are to talk things
over to-night. I shall say 'No.'"

She had turned again to the window, but a startled question from Stella
Croyle stayed her feet.

"Harry has asked you to marry him?"

"He was going to," Joan faltered. The sense of her own loss returned
upon her, she felt utterly alone, all the more alone because of the
wondrous week which had come to so desolate an end to-night. "Here in
this little room, not two hours ago. But I asked him to wait until
supper time to-night. Here--it was here we stood!"

Joan looked down. Yes, she had been standing in this very spot, the
table here upon her left, that chair upon her right, that trifolium in
the pattern of the carpet under her feet, when Harry Luttrell had taken
her in his arms. What foolish thing was Stella Croyle saying now?

"I take back all that I have said to you. If Harry has spoken to you
already I have lost--that's all. I didn't know," she said. Her cheeks
were white, her eyes suddenly grown large with a horror in them which
Joan could not understand.

"Yes, it's all over. I have lost," she kept repeating in a dreadful
whisper, moistening her dry lips with her tongue between her sentences.

"Oh, don't think that I am standing aside out of pity," Joan answered
her. "To-morrow I shall be impossible as a wife for Harry Luttrell." The
words fell upon ears which did not hear. It would not have mattered if
Stella had heard. Since Harry Luttrell was that night asking Joan to
marry him, the hopes upon which she had so long been building, which
Jenny Prask had done so much to nurse and encourage, withered and
crumbled in an instant.

"I must go back and dance," said Joan with a shiver.

She left Stella Croyle standing in the room like one possessed with
visions of terrible things. Her tragic face and moving lips were to
haunt Joan for many a month afterwards. She went out by the window and
ran down the drive to the spot where she had left Miranda's car half-way
between the lodge and the house. The gates had been set open that night
against the return of the party from Harrel. Joan drove back again under
the great over-arching trees of the road. It was just ten o'clock when
she slipped into the ball-room and was claimed by a neighbour for a
dance.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE RANK AND FILE

Martin Hillyard crammed a year's enjoyment into the early hours of that
night. He danced a great deal and had supper a good many times; and even
the girl who had passed the season of 1914 in London and said languidly,
"Tell me more," before he had opened his mouth, failed to ruffle his
enjoyment.

"If I did, you would scream for your mother," he replied, "and I should
be turned out of the house and Sir Chichester would lose his position in
the county. No, I'll tell you less. That means we'll go and have some
supper."

He led a subdued maiden into the supper-room and from that moment his
enjoyment began to wane. For, at a little table near to hand, sat Joan
Whitworth and Harry Luttrell, and it was clear to him from the distress
upon their faces that their smooth courtship had encountered its
obstacles. A spot of anger, indeed, seemed to burn in Joan's cheeks.
They hardly spoke at all.

Half an hour later, he came face to face with Joan in a corridor.

"I have been looking for you for a long while," she cried in a quick,
agitated voice. "Are you free for this dance?"

"Yes."

Martin Hillyard lied without compunction.

"Then will you take me into the garden?"

He found a couple of chairs in a corner of the terrace out of the
hearing of the rest.

"We shall be quiet here," he said. He hoped that she would disclose the
difficulty which had risen between herself and Harry, and seek his
counsel as Harry's friend. It might be one of the little trifling
discords which love magnifies until they blot out the skies and drape
the earth in temporary mourning. But Joan began at once nervously upon
a different topic.

"You made a charge against Mario Escobar the other day. I did not
believe it. But you spoke the truth. I know that now."

She stopped and gazed woefully in front of her. Then she hurried on.

"I can prove it. He demands news of your movements in the Mediterranean.
If it is necessary I must come forward publicly and prove it. It will be
horrible, but of course I will."

Martin looked at her quickly. She kept her eyes averted from him. Her
fingers plucked nervously at her dress. There was an aspect of shame in
her attitude.

"It will not be necessary, Joan," he answered. "I have quite enough
evidence already to put him away until the end of the war."

Joan turned to him with quivering lips.

"You are sure. It means so much to me to escape--what I have no right to
escape, I can hardly believe it."

"I am quite sure," replied Martin Hillyard.

Joan breathed a long, fluttering sigh of relief. She sat up as though a
weight had been loosed from her shoulders. The trouble lifted from her
face.

"You need not call upon me at all?"

"No."

"I don't want to shirk--any more," she insisted. "I should not
hesitate."

"I know that, Joan," he said with a smile. She looked out over the
gardens to the great line of hills, dim and pleasant as fairyland in the
silver haze of the moonlight. Her eyes travelled eastwards along the
ridge and stopped at the clump of Bishop's Ring which marks the crest of
Duncton Hill, and the dark fold below where the trees flow down to
Graffham.

"You ask me no questions," she said in a low, warm voice. "I am very
grateful."

"I ask you one. Where is Mario Escobar to-night?"

"At Midhurst," and she gave him the name of the hotel.

Martin Hillyard laughed. Whilst the police were inquiring here and
searching there and watching the ports for him, he was lying almost
within reach of his hand, snugly and peacefully at Midhurst.

"But I expect that he will go from Midhurst now," Joan added,
remembering his snarl of fear when the door had opened behind her, and
the haste with which he had fled.

Hillyard looked at his watch. It was one o'clock in the morning.

"You are in a hurry?" she asked.

"I ought to send a message." He turned to Joan. "You know this house, of
course. Is there a telephone in a quiet room, where I shall not be
interrupted or be drowned out, voice and ears by the music?"

"Yes, Mrs. Willoughby's sitting-room upstairs. Shall I ask her if you
may use it?"

"If you please."

Joan left Martin standing in one of the corridors and rejoined him after
a few minutes. "Come," she said, and led the way upstairs to the room.
Martin called up the trunk line and gave a number.

"I shall have to wait a few minutes," he said.

"You want me to go," answered Joan, and she moved towards the door
reluctantly.

"No. But you will be missing your dances."

Joan shook her head. She did not turn back to him, but stood facing the
door as she replied; so that he could not see her face.

"I had kept all the dances after supper free. If I am not in the way I
would rather wait with you."

"Of course."

He was careful to use the most commonplace tone with the thought that it
would steady her. The trouble which this telephone message would finally
dispel was clearly not all which distressed her. She needed
companionship; her voice broke, as though her heart were breaking too.
He saw her raise a wisp of handkerchief to her eyes; and then the
telephone bell rang at his side. He was calling at a venture upon the
number which Commodore Graham had rung up in the office above the old
waterway of the Thames.

"Is that Scotland Yard?" he asked, and he gave the address at which
Mario Escobar was to be found. "But he may be gone to-morrow," he added,
and hearing a short "That's all right," he rang off.

"Now, if you will get your cloak, we might go back into the garden."

They found their corner of the terrace unoccupied and sat for a while in
silence. Hillyard recognised that neither questions nor any conversation
at all were required from him, but simply the sympathy of his
companionship. He smoked a cigarette while Joan sat by his side.

She stretched out her hand towards the Bishop's Ring, small as a button
upon the great shoulder of the Down.

"Do you remember the afternoon when I drove you back from Goodwood?"

"Yes."

"You said to me, 'If the great trial is coming, I want to fall back into
the rank and file.' And I cried out, 'Oh, I understand that!'"

"I remember."

"What a fool I was!" said Joan. "I didn't understand at all. I thought
that it sounded fine, and that was why I applauded. I am only beginning
to understand now. Even after I had agreed with you, my one ambition was
to be different."

Her voice died remorsefully away. From the window further down the
terrace the yellow light poured from the windows and fought with the
moonlight. The music of a waltz floated out upon the yearning of many
violins. There was a ripple of distant voices.

"All this week," Joan began again, "I have found myself standing
unexpectedly in a strong light before a mirror and utterly scared by the
revelation of what I was ... by the memory of the foolish things which I
had done. From one of the worst of them, you have saved me to-night. You
are very kind to me, Martin."

It was the first time he had ever heard her use his Christian name.

"I should like to be kinder, if you'll let me," he said. "I am not
blind. I was in the supper-room when you and Harry were there. It was
for him that you had kept all the last dances free. And you are here,
breaking your heart. Why?"

Joan shook her head. A little sob broke from her against her will. But
this matter was between her and Harry Luttrell. She sought no counsel
from any other.

"Then I am very grieved for both of you," said Hillyard. Joan made a
movement as if she were about to rise. "Will you wait just a moment?"
Martin asked.

He guessed that some hint of Stella Croyle's story had reached the
girl's ears. He understood that she would be hurt, and affronted; that
she would feel herself suddenly steeped in vulgarities; and that she
would visit her resentment sharply upon her lover, and upon herself at
the same time. And all this was true. But Martin was not sure of it. He
meant to tread warily, lest if he stumbled, the harm should be the more
complete.

"I have known Harry Luttrell a long while," he said. "No woman ever
reached his heart until he came home from France this summer. No woman I
believe, could have reached it--not even you, Joan, I believe, if you
had met him a year ago. He was possessed by one great shame and one
great longing--shame that the regiment with which he and his father were
bound up, had once disgraced itself--longing for the day to come when it
would recover its prestige. Those two emotions burnt in him like white
flames. I believe no other could have lived beside them."

Joan would not speak, but she concentrated all her senses to listen. A
phrase which Stella Croyle had used--Harry had feared to become "the
slovenly soldier"--began to take on its meaning.

"On the Somme the shame was wiped out. Led by such men as Harry--well,
you know what happened. Harry Luttrell came home freed at last from an
overwhelming obsession. He looked about him with different eyes, and
there you were! It seems to me a thing perfectly ordained, as so few
things are. I brought him down here just for a pleasant week in the
country--without another thought beyond that. All this week I have been
coming to think of myself as an unconscious agent, who just at the right
time is made to do the right thing. Here was the first possible moment
for Harry Luttrell--and there you were in the path--just as if you
without knowing it, had been set there to wait until he came over the
fields to you."

He turned to her and took her hand in his. He had his sympathies for
Stella Croyle, but her hopes held no positive promise of happiness for
either her or Harry Luttrell--a mere flash and splutter of passion at
the best, with all sorts of sordid disadvantages to follow, quarrels,
the scorn of his equals, the loss of position, the check to advancement
in his profession. Here, on the other hand, was the fitting match.

"It would be a great pity," he said gently, "if anything were now to
interfere."

He stood up and after a moment Joan rose to her feet. There was a tender
smile upon her lips and her eyes were shining. She laid a hand upon his
arm.

"I shall have to get you a wife, Martin," she said, midway between
laughter and tears. "It wouldn't be fair on us if you were to escape."

This was her way of thanking him.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE LONG SLEEP

The amazing incident which cut so sharply into these tangled lives
occurred the next morning at Rackham Park. Some of the house party
straggled down to a late breakfast, others did not descend at all. Harry
Luttrell joined Millie Splay upon the stairs and stopped her before she
entered the breakfast-room.

"I should like to slip away this morning, Lady Splay," he said. "My
servant is packing now."

Millie Splay looked at him in dismay.

"Oh, I am so sorry," she said. "I was hoping that this morning you and
Joan would have something to say to me."

"I did too," replied Harry with a wry smile. "But Joan turned me down
with a bang last night."

Lady Splay plumped herself down on a chair in the hall.

"Oh, she is the most exasperating girl!" she cried. "Are you sure that
you didn't misunderstand her?"

"Quite."

Lady Splay sat for a little while with her cheek propped upon her hand
and her brows drawn together in a perplexity.

"It's very strange," she said at length. "For Joan meant you to ask her
to marry you. She has been deliberately showing you that you weren't
indifferent to her. Joan would never have done that if she hadn't meant
you to ask her; or if she hadn't meant to accept you." She rose with a
gesture of despair.

"I give it up. But oh, how I'd love to smack her!" and with that
unrealisable desire burning furiously in her breast, Lady Splay marched
into the breakfast-room. Dennis Brown and Jupp were already in their
white flannels at the table. Miranda ran down into the room a moment
afterwards.

"Joan's the lazy one," she said, looking round the table. She had got
to bed at half-past four and looked as fresh as if she had slept the
clock round. "What are you going to eat, Colonel Luttrell?"

Luttrell was standing by her at the side table, and as they inspected
the dishes they were joined by Mr. Albany Todd.

"You were going it last night," Jupp called to him, with a note of
respect in his voice. "For a top-weight you're the hottest thing I have
seen in years. Stay another week in our academic company, and we shall
discover so many excellent qualities in you that we shall be calling you
Toddles."

"And then in the winter, I suppose, we'll go jumping together," said Mr.
Albany Todd.

Like many another round and heavy man, Mr. Albany Todd was an
exceptionally smooth dancer. His first dance on the night before he had
owed to the consideration of his hostess. Sheer merit had filled the
rest of his programme; and he sat down to breakfast now in a high good
humour. Sir Chichester stumped into the room when the serious part of
the meal was over, and all the newspapers already taken. He sat down in
front of his kidney and bacon and grunted.

"Any news in _The Times_, Mr. Albany Todd?"

"No! No!" replied Mr. Albany Todd in an abstracted voice, with his head
buried between the pages. "Would you like it, Sir Chichester?"

He showed no intention of handing it over; and Sir Chichester replied
with as much indifference as he could assume,

"Oh, there's no hurry."

"No, we have all the morning, haven't we?" said Mr. Albany Todd
pleasantly.

Sir Chichester ate some breakfast and drank some tea. "No news in your
paper is there, Dennis, my boy?" he asked carelessly.

"Oh, isn't there just?" cried Dennis Brown. "Oppifex and Hampstead
Darling are both running in the two-thirty at Windsor."

Sir Chichester grunted again.

"Racing! It's wonderful, Mr. Albany Todd, that you haven't got the
disease during the week. There's a racing microbe at Rackham."

"But I am not so sure that I have escaped," returned Mr. Albany Todd. "I
am tempted to go jumping in the winter."

"You must keep your old Lords out if you do," Harold Jupp urged
earnestly. "Bring in your Dukes and your Marquises, and we poor men are
all up the spout."

Thus they rattled on about the breakfast table; cigarettes were lighted,
Miranda pushed back her chair; in a minute the room would be deserted.
But Millie Splay uttered a little cry of horror, so sharp and startling
that it froze each person into a sudden immobility. She dropped the
newspaper upon her knees. Her hands flew to her face and covered it.

"What's the matter, Millie?" cried Sir Chichester, starting up in alarm.
He hurried round the table. Some stab of physical pain had caused
Millie's cry--he shared that conviction with every one else in the room.
But Millie lifted her head quickly.

"Oh, it's intolerable!" she exclaimed. "Chichester, look at this!" She
thrust the paper feverishly into his hands. Sir Chichester smoothed its
crumpled leaves as he stood beside her.

"Ah, the _Harpoon_," he said, his fear quite allayed. He knew his wife
to have a somewhat thinner skin than himself. "You are exaggerating no
doubt, my dear. The _Harpoon_ is a good paper and quite friendly."

But Millie Splay broke in upon his protestations in a voice as shrill as
a scream.

"Oh, stop, Chichester, and look! There, in the third column! Just under
your eyes!"

And Sir Chichester Splay read. As he read his face changed.

"Yes, that won't do," he said, very quietly. He carried the newspaper
back with him to his chair and sat down again. He had the air of a man
struck clean out of his wits. "That won't do," he repeated, and again,
with a rush of angry blood into his face, "No, that won't do." It seemed
that Sir Chichester's harmless little foible had suddenly received more
than its due punishment.

The newspaper slipped from his fingers on to the floor, whilst he sat
staring at the white tablecloth in front of him. But no sooner did
Harold Jupp at his side make a movement to pick the paper up than Sir
Chichester swooped down upon it in a flash.

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