The Moving Finger mm-3 Read online

  Megan was a tall awkward girl, and although she was actually twenty, she looked more like a schoolgirlish sixteen. She had a shock of untidy brown hair, hazel-green eyes, a thin bony face, and an unexpectedly charming one-sided smile. Her clothes were drab and unattractive and she usually had on lisle-thread stockings with holes in them.

  She looked, I decided this morning, much more like a horse than a human being. In fact, she would have been a very nice horse with a little grooming.

  She spoke, as usual, in a kind of breathless rush:

  "I've been up to the farm – you know, Lasher's – to see if they'd got any duck eggs. They've got an awfully nice lot of little pigs. Sweet! Do you like pigs? I do. I even like the smell."

  "Well-kept pigs shouldn't smell," I said.

  "Shouldn't they? They all do around here. Are you walking down to the town? I saw you were alone, so I thought I'd stop and walk with you, only I stopped rather suddenly."

  "You've torn your stocking," I said.

  Megan looked rather ruefully at her right leg.

  "So I have. But it's got two holes already, so it doesn't matter very much, does it?"

  "Don't you ever mend your stockings, Megan?"

  "Rather. When Mummie catches me. But she doesn't notice awfully what I do – so it's lucky in a way, isn't it?"

  "You don't seem to realize you're grown up," I said.

  "You mean I ought to be more like your sister? All dolled up?"

  I rather resented this description of Joanna.

  "She looks clean and tidy and pleasing to the eye," I said.

  "She's awfully pretty," said Megan. "She isn't a bit like you, is she? Why not?"

  "Brothers and sisters aren't always alike."

  "No. Of course I'm not very like Brian or Colin. And Brian and Colin aren't like each other." She paused and said, "It's very rum, isn't it?"

  "What is?"

  Megan replied briefly:

  "Families."

  I said thoughtfully,

  "I suppose they are."

  I wondered just what was passing in her mind. We walked on in silence for a moment or two, then Megan said in a rather shy voice,

  "You fly, don't you?"

  "Yes."

  "That's how you got hurt?"

  "Yes, I crashed."

  Megan said, "Nobody down here flies."

  "No," I said, "I suppose not. Would you like to fly, Megan?"

  "Me?" Megan seemed surprised. "Goodness, no. I should be sick. I'm sick in a train even."

  She paused and then asked with that directness which only a child usually displays:

  "Will you get all right and be able to fly again, or will you always be a bit of a crock?"

  "My doctor says I shall be quite all right."

  "Yes, but is he the kind of man who tells lies?"

  "I don't think so," I replied. "In fact, I'm quite sure of it. I trust him."

  "That's all right then. But a lot of people do tell lies."

  I accepted this undeniable statement of fact in silence.

  Megan said in a detached judicial kind of way, "I'm glad. I was afraid you looked bad-tempered because you were crocked up for life – but if it's just natural, it's different."

  "I'm not bad-tempered," I said coldly.

  "Well, irritable, then."

  "I'm irritable because I'm in a hurry to get fit again – and these things can't be hurried."

  "Then why fuss?"

  I began to laugh.

  "My dear girl, aren't you ever in a hurry for things to happen?"

  Megan considered the question. She said, "No. Why should I be? There's nothing to be in a hurry about. Nothing ever happens."

  I was struck by something forlorn in the words. I said gently,

  "What do you do with yourself down here?"

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  "What is there to do?"

  "Haven't you any hobbies? Don't you play games? Haven't you got friends around about?"

  "I'm stupid at games. There aren't many girls around here, and the ones there are I don't like. They think I'm awful."

  "Nonsense. Why should they?"

  Megan shook her head.

  We were now entering the High Street. Megan said sharply:

  "Here's Miss Griffith coming. Hateful woman. She's ways at me to join her foul Guides. I hate Guides. Why dress up and go about in clumps and put badges on yourself for something you haven't really learned to do properly. I think it's all rot."

  On the whole I rather agreed with Megan. But Miss Griffith had descended upon us before I could voice my assent.

  The doctor's sister, who rejoiced in the singularly inappropriate name of Aimée, had all the positive assurance her brother lacked. She was a handsome woman in a masculine weather-beaten way, with a deep voice.

  "Hullo, you two," she bayed at us. "Gorgeous morning, isn't it? Megan, you're just the person I want to see. I want some help. Addressing envelopes for the Conservative Association."

  Megan muttered something elusive, propped up her bicycle against the curb and dived in a purposeful way into the International Stores.

  "Extraordinary child," said Miss Griffith, looking after her. "Bone lazy. Spends her time mooning about. Must be a great trial to poor Mrs. Symmington. I know her mother's tried more than once to get her to take up something – shorthand-typing, you know, or cookery, or keeping Angora rabbits. She needs an interest in life."

  I thought that was probably true, but felt that in Megan's place I should have withstood firmly any of Aimée Griffith's suggestions for the simple reason that her aggressive personality would have put my back up.

  "I don't believe in idleness," went on Miss Griffith. "And certainly not for young people. It's not as though Megan was pretty or attractive or anything like that. Sometimes I think the girl's half-witted. A great disappointment to her mother. The father, you know," she lowered her voice slightly, "was definitely a wrong 'un. Afraid the child takes after him. Painful for her mother. Oh, well, it takes all sorts to make a world, that's what I say."

  "Fortunately," I responded.

  Aimée Griffith gave a "jolly" laugh.

  "Yes, it wouldn't do if we were all made to one pattern. But I don't like to see anyone not getting all he can out of life. I enjoy life myself and I want everyone to enjoy it too. People say to me you must be bored to death living down there in the country all the year around. Not a bit of it, I say. I'm always busy, always happy! There's always something going on in the country. My time's taken up, what with my Guides, and the Institute and various committees – to say nothing of looking after Owen."

  At this minute, Miss Griffith saw an acquaintance on the other side of the street, and uttering a bay of recognition she leaped across the road, leaving me free to pursue my course to the bank.

  I always found Miss Griffith rather overwhelming.

  My business at the bank transacted satisfactorily, I went on to the offices of Messrs. Galbraith, Galbraith and Symmington. I don't know if there were any Galbraiths extant. I never saw any. I was shown into Richard Symmington's inner office which had the agreeable mustiness of a long-established legal firm.

  Vast numbers of deed boxes labeled Lady Hope, Sir Everard Carr, William Yatesby-Hoares Esq., Deceased, etc., gave the required atmosphere of decorous county families and legitimate, long-established business.

  Studying Mr. Symmington as he bent over the documents I had brought, it occurred to me that if Mrs. Symmington had encountered disaster in her first marriage, she had certainly played safe in her second. Richard Symmington was the model of calm respectability, the sort of man who would never give his wife a moment's anxiety. A long neck with a pronounced Adam's apple, a slightly cadaverous face and a long thin nose.

  A kindly man, no doubt, a good husband and father, but not one to set the pulses madly racing.

  Presently Mr. Symmington began to speak. He spoke clearly and slowly, delivering himself of much good sense and shrewd acumen. We sett
led the matter in hand and I rose to go, remarking as I did so:

  "I walked down the hill with your stepdaughter."

  For a moment Mr. Symmington looked as though he did not know who his stepdaughter was, then he smiled.

  "Oh, yes, of course – Megan. She – er – has been back from school some time. We're thinking about finding her something to do – yes, to do. But, of course, she's very young still. And backward for her age, so they say. Yes, so they tell me."

  I went out. In the outer office was a very old man on a stool writing slowly and laboriously, a small, cheeky-looking boy and a middle-aged woman with frizzy hair and pince-nez who was typing with some speed and dash.

  If this was Miss Ginch I agreed with Owen Griffith that tender passages between her and her employer were exceedingly unlikely.

  I went into the baker's and said my piece about the currant loaf. It was received with the exclamations and incredulity proper to the occasion, and a new currant loaf was thrust upon me in replacement – "fresh from the oven this minute" – as its indecent heat pressed against my chest proclaimed to be no less than truth.

  I came out of the shop and looked up and down the street, hoping to see Joanna with the car. The walk had tired me a good deal and it was awkward getting along with my sticks and the currant loaf.

  But there was no sign of Joanna as yet.

  Suddenly my eyes were held in glad and incredulous surprise. Along the pavement toward me there came floating a goddess. There is really no other word for it. The perfect features, the crisply curling golden hair, the tall exquisitely shaped body. And she walked like a goddess, without effort, seeming to swim nearer and nearer. A glorious, an incredible, a breath-taking girl!

  In my intense excitement something had to go. What went was the currant loaf. It slipped from my clutches. I made a dive after it and lost my stick, which clattered to the pavement, and I slipped and nearly fell myself.

  It was the strong arm of the goddess that caught and held me.

  I began to stammer: "Th-thanks awfully, I'm f-f-frightfully sorry."

  She had retrieved the currant loaf and handed it to me together with the stick. And then she smiled kindly and said cheerfully:

  "Don't mention it. No trouble, I assure you," and the magic died completely before the flat, competent voice.

  A nice, healthy-looking, well set-up girl; no more.

  I fell to reflecting what would have happened if the gods had given Helen of Troy exactly those flat accents. How strange that a girl could trouble your inmost soul so long as she kept her mouth shut, and that the moment she spoke the glamor could vanish as though it had never been.

  I had known the reverse happen, though. I had seen a little sad monkey-faced woman whom no one would turn to look at twice. Then she had opened her mouth and suddenly enchantment had lived and bloomed and Cleopatra had cast her spell anew.

  Joanna had drawn up at the curb beside me without my noticing her arrival. She asked if there was anything the matter.

  "Nothing," I said, pulling myself together. "I was reflecting on Helen of Troy and others."

  "What a funny place to do it," said Joanna. "You looked most odd, standing there clasping currant bread to your breast with your mouth wide open."

  "I've had a shock," I said. "I had been transplanted to Ilium and back again."

  I added, indicating a retreating back that was swimming gracefully away:

  "Do you know who that is?"

  Peering after the girl Joanna said that it was Elsie Holland, the Symmington's nursery governess.

  "Is that what struck you all of a heap?" she asked. "She's good-looking, but a bit of a wet fish."

  "I know," I said. "Just a nice kind girl. And I'd been thinking her Aphrodite."

  Joanna opened the door of the car and I got in.

  "It's funny, isn't it?" she said. "Some people have lots of looks and absolutely no S. A. That girl hasn't. It seems such a pity."

  I said that if she was a nursery governess it was probably just as well.

  That afternoon we went to tea with Mr. Pye.

  Mr. Pye was an extremely ladylike plump little man, devoted to his petit point chairs, his Dresden shepherdesses and his collection of period furniture. He lived at Prior's Lodge in the grounds of which were the ruins of the old Priory dissolved at the Reformation.

  It was hardly a man's house. The curtains and cushions were of pastel shades in the most expensive silks.

  Mr. Pye's small plump hands quivered with excitement as he described and exhibited his treasures, and his voice rose to a falsetto squeak as he narrated the exciting circumstances in which he had brought his Italian bedstead home from Verona.

  Joanna and I, both being fond of antiques, met with approval.

  "It is really a pleasure, a great pleasure, to have such an acquisition to our little community. The dear good people down here, you know, so painfully bucolic – not to say provincial. Vandals – absolute vandals! And the insides of their houses – it would make you weep, dear lady, I assure you it would make you weep. Perhaps it has done so?"

  Joanna said she hadn't gone quite as far as that.

  "The house you have taken," went on Mr. Pye, "Miss Emily Barton's house. Now that is charming, and she has some quite nice pieces. Quite nice. One or two of them are really first-class. And she has taste, too – although I'm not quite so sure of that as I was. Sometimes, I am afraid, I think it's really sentiment. She likes to keep things as they were – but not for 'le bon motif' – not because of the resultant harmony – but because it is the way her mother had them."

  He transferred his attention to me, and his voice changed. It altered from that of the rapt artist to that of the born gossip:

  "You didn't know the family at all? No, quite so – yes, through house agents. But, my dears, you ought to have known that family! When I came here the old mother was still alive. An incredible person – quite incredible! A monster, if you know what I mean. Positively a monster. The old-fashioned Victorian monster, devouring her young. Yes, that's what it amounted to. She was monumental, you know, must have weighed seventeen stone, and all the five daughters revolved around her. 'The girls!' That's how she always spoke of them. The girls! And the eldest was well over sixty then."

  "'Those stupid girls!' she used to call them sometimes. Black slaves, that's all they were, fetching and carrying and agreeing with her. Ten o'clock they had to go to bed and they weren't allowed a fire in their bedroom, and as for asking their own friends to the house, that would have been unheard of. She despised them, you know, for not getting married, and yet so arranged their lives that it was practically impossible for them to meet anybody. I believe Emily, or perhaps it was Agnes, did have some kind of affair with a curate. But his family wasn't good enough and Mamma soon put a stop to that!"

  "It sounds like a novel," said Joanna.

  "Oh, my dear, it was. And then the dreadful old woman died, but of course, it was far too late then. They just went on living there and talking in hushed voices about what poor Mamma would have wished. Even re-papering her bedroom they felt to be quite sacrilegious. Still they did enjoy themselves in the parish in a quiet way… But none of them had much stamina, and they just died off one by one. Influenza took off Edith, and Minnie had an operation and didn't recover and poor Mable had a stroke – Emily looked after her in the most devoted manner. Really that poor woman has done nothing but nursing for the last ten years. A charming creature, don't you think? Like a piece of Dresden. So sad for her having financial anxieties – but of course, all investments have depreciated."

  "We feel rather awful being in her house," said Joanna.

  "No, no, my dear young lady. You mustn't feel that way. Her dear good Florence is devoted to her and she told me herself how happy she was to have got such nice tenants."

  Here Mr. Pye made a little bow. "She told me she thought she had been most fortunate."

  "The house," I said, "has a very soothing atmosphere." Mr. Pye darted a qu
ick glance at me.

  "Really? You feel that? Now, that's very interesting. I wondered, you know. Yes, I wondered."

  "What do you mean, Mr. Pye?" asked Joanna.

  Mr. Pye spread out his plump hands.

  "Nothing, nothing. One wondered, that is all. I do believe in atmosphere, you know. People's thoughts and feelings. They give their impression to the walls and the furniture."

  I did not speak for a moment or two. I was looking around me and wondering how I would describe the atmosphere of Prior's Lodge. It seemed to me that the curious thing was that it hadn't any atmosphere! That was really very remarkable.

  I reflected on this point so long that I heard nothing of the conversation going on between Joanna and her host. I was recalled to myself, however, by hearing Joanna uttering farewell preliminaries. I came out of my dream and added my quota.

  We all went out into the hall. As we came toward the front door a letter came through the box and fell on the mat.

  "Afternoon post," murmured Mr. Pye as he picked it up.

  "Now, my dear young people, you will come again, won't you? Such a pleasure to meet some broader minds, if you understand me, in this peaceful backwater where nothing ever happens."

  Shaking hands with us twice over, he helped me with exaggerated care into the car. Joanna took the wheel; she negotiated with some care the circular sweep around a plot of unblemished grass, then with a straight drive ahead, she raised a hand to wave goodbye to our host where he stood on the steps of the house. I leaned forward to do the same.

  But our gesture of farewell went unheeded. Mr. Pye had opened his mail. He was standing staring down at the open sheet in his hand.

  Joanna had described him once as a plump pink cherub. He was still plump, but he was not looking like a cherub now.

  His face was a dark congested purple, contorted with rage and surprise. Yes, and fear, too.

  And at that moment I realized that there had been something familiar about the look of that envelope. I had not realized it at the time – indeed, it had been one of those things that you note unconsciously without knowing that you do note them.

  "Goodness," said Joanna, "what's bitten the poor pet?"