A Case in Camera
station because he had had a new machine to take up with a fellow she
didn't know. On Friday he was chasing off to the Midlands, where he
might have to stay the night, and he did not expect to be back in London
till Saturday afternoon. So he would not be within fifty miles, and even
if a plane did happen to pass over it could not possibly be his.
As a matter of fact a plane did happen to pass over, and she pretended
that it was his. She stood watching, eyes shaded with her hand, lips
smiling and parted, and the young throat long as the flower-trumpet at
the pit of which lies the nectar. Though she had been in a plane (and
"trusted" me not to tell), I don't think that in her heart she regarded
aeroplanes as apparatus at all. They were not things of wood and steel
and oil and petrol that carried a load as a motor-car might have carried
a load. All was the particular skill and daring and unaided cleverness
of that Chummy of hers. I suppose he simply thought of her and flew....
But her little pretense ended in a light sigh when the plane did not
circle, but with unfeeling purposefulness followed the telegraph wire
over the Wolds and was lost to her sight. The young chauffeur of the
air, whoever he was, knew nothing of the kiss that went after him. She
returned to the cottage and the letter-case and began "7."
She knew nothing of the letter that Mollie Esdaile had already received
from Philip, fortunately during her absence with the children. Nor did
she know that Mollie, still in her absence, had run immediately to the
shop-post-office and had telegraphed "_Wire fullest particulars
immediately most anxious_." Chummy (Philip had written) had had a slight
accident, nothing serious, but enough to keep him in bed for a few days.
It would be better (his letter had continued) if this could be kept from
Joan until she, Mollie, heard further from him. If Mollie could also
glance through the newspapers before Joan got hold of them, that also
Philip recommended. For the rest, he had said nothing whatever about
when he himself might be expected at Santon, and Mollie further wondered
whether it was to create a reassuring impression that he had passed on
to tell her how he was having old Dadley round about some
picture-framing, and ended with similar trivial matters. That letter had
come on the Friday afternoon. Saturday had brought neither letter nor
reply to her telegram. She was glad that there was a Sunday delivery at
Santon, which usually awaited them on their return from Church.
(I may say now, by the way, that Philip's caution about the newspapers
was needless. The paper that found its way to Santon about midday was a
London paper, but a Northern edition. Minor accidents in Chelsea are
seen in perspective from the North, and no account of that Chelsea
accident ever did appear.)
Only Joan and the children went to Church on that Sunday morning. Mollie
made some excuse about helping the village girl to prepare the midday
meal. Perhaps she preferred not to read letters and have her own face
read by Joan at the same time.
In the summer, when the door of that diminutive Church usually stands
wide open all through the service, you can see from the back pews the
postman pass on his way to Newsome's, the farthest farm. So there in
Church Joan sat, watching the bees that droned in and out of the open
door, the butterflies that hovered, the cattle that tried to crop inside
the little wire fence. The whiteness of the daisies was faintly shed up
among the old rafters, and the curate's singsong rose and fell
peacefully. The postman passed with the Newsome letters, and repassed
with his empty bag. Then the sluggish old harmonium droned forth the
last hymn, they knelt for the Benediction, and Joan and her charges were
the first to hurry forth out into the sunshine again.
And this time there was a letter for her.
But her brows were already contracted even before she opened it. She
stood, in the white frock and buttercupped hat, against the musk and
geraniums of the sunny window, already wondering what the quite strange
handwriting of the envelope meant, already half afraid to ascertain.
"Is this all----?" she began.
Then with a nervous jerk she tore open the envelope, and a cry broke
from her. The blue eyes were wide frightened rounds.
For if the handwriting on the envelope was strange, that of the shaky
penciled scrawl inside was not quite familiar either. Yet it was
Chummy's. He had had a bit of a spill, he said, but nothing to hurt.
Rather shaken, but nothing broken. She was not to come up, as he would
be out and up again before she could get there.
And that was all. There was no address at the head of the letter, and he
did not say who had addressed the envelope for him, nor why.
"Oh, Mollie, he's hurt!" broke agitatedly from Joan.
Mollie was writing a letter at the little round table where the
workbasket stood. Quietly she rose and passed her arm about the girl.
"Yes, darling, but he's quite all right," she calmed her.
"Have you heard from Philip, then? What is it? What does he say?" the
words came with a rush.
Mollie had not heard from Philip that morning. That was why she was
writing her letter. But she said she had heard from him. She meant the
letter she had received on Friday afternoon.
"And somebody's had to write the address for him!" Joan's voice became
more unsteady still. "Oh, that means he's badly hurt! I must go at
once!"
"Nonsense, dear. Anyway, there are no trains on Sunday. May I see what
he says, or----?"
Joan thrust the weak scribble into her hand. She read it, passed it
back, and then began to unpin Joan's hat.
"Well, that's nothing to be alarmed about," she said. "He says just the
same as Philip. And he tells you you're not to go up. We shall hear all
about it to-morrow."
But she did not tell Joan that it was precisely because there was so
maddeningly little in the letter she had received from Philip on Friday
that, despairing of getting anything plain out of a mere man, the letter
she was now writing was to Audrey Cunningham.
IV
I hope you haven't got the impression that I didn't like Mrs.
Cunningham. Indeed, if half I presently learned about her was true, it
would have been a hard heart that had not shown a very real and
compassionate consideration for her. Young as she was, she had had a
wretched story. As far as I know it it was this:--
The late George Cunningham, having contracted the dangerous habit of
going to bed every night comparatively sober and waking up in the
morning very drunk, had one day arrived at the point when something had
had to be done about it. I assume that he had tried the usual specifics
to no purpose, since he had presently found himself with only two
alternatives left. The first of these was to have done with specifics,
to go boldly forward, and to trust to the strength of his constitution
to land him high, and still dry, among the seasoned octogenarians. The
other was to marry, and to trust that the pure love of an innocent young
girl might work its traditional miracle.
Unfortunately, instead of choosing he had tried both courses at once. An
unjailed criminal of a father had either suggested the match himself or
had failed to throw Cunningham out of the window when it had been
suggested. So at seventeen-and-a-half Audrey Herbert had become the wife
of a man-about-town of forty-two, with a roomy house in St. John's Wood,
a considerable private fortune, and a hole in every one of his pockets.
It had not taken Mrs. Cunningham long to discover that a man who goes to
bed sober and wakes up drunk, frequently does so in other beds than his
own. But her father, to whom she ran, advised her to continue to
exercise her influence for good. He seems to have thought that as long
as Cunningham did not actually strike her the rest must be accepted as
part of marriage-as-it-is. He had passed out of the world in that belief
a couple of years after his daughter's immolation.
Cunningham never struck her. Nor, while it lasted, did he starve her of
money. Twice, when housekeeping debts had pressed, he gave her blank
checks which the bank duly honored. The third time (one of his
mistresses appears to have been the occasion) he gave her a considerably
wider permission.... No, he had never struck her. Instead he had merely
dragged through the mud of alcoholism and unfaithfulness the hope and
belief in men he had found her with, and after five years of it had
died--not a day too soon, as she had discovered on going into his
affairs. When his debts of honor, dishonor and at law had been paid,
about a hundred pounds had remained. With this, her clothes, a few
pieces of furniture bought in from the sale and her experience of
married life, she had become her own mistress again at twenty-three.
Most of the hundred pounds had gone in fees at a School of Dramatic
Art. She was now twenty-seven and on the eve of her second marriage.
I am telling you all this because of the part that Mrs. Cunningham
presently came to play in our Case. I think her unhappy history partly
explained certain things. I would not go so far as to say that with the
exception of Monty Rooke she disliked and distrusted all men, but I
think that the sense of sex-hostility was latent and instinctive in her.
This never took the form of gloom. Quite the other way. Lest it should
be thought for a moment that she mourned for the cur with whom she had
been kenneled, she was rather histrionically bright. She fell naturally
into beautiful attitudes and gestures, which beauty her art enhanced. I
think I mentioned the care she bestowed on her manicuring; in the whole
of her person and dress she was the same, as if to wipe out some
soilure. She was undoubtedly much in love with Monty--who at any rate
was a teetotaller. And, except as I have qualified, I think she liked
the rest of us well enough. But the history was always behind, and, in
my experience, if you like with however natural a reservation, there is
something of the same reserve in the liking you inspire.
So in this sense I was prepared to like Mrs. Cunningham, and without any
qualification whatever was sorry she had had so ghastly a time and
hopeful that her marriage with Monty would expunge the memory of it.
V
And so we come to the episode of the wardrobe that Audrey Cunningham had
bought in from the St. John's Wood sale.
This wardrobe, with a number of dress-baskets and other articles, formed
part of the furniture of the bed-sitting-room in Oakley Street that she
was now on the point of leaving, and it had been Philip Esdaile himself
who had suggested, some time ago, that there was plenty of room for
these belongings in his cellar. Nothing had since been said about it;
Philip says that the matter had entirely slipped from his memory; and
Mrs. Cunningham, having no reason to suppose that he had changed his
mind, had as a matter of fact had the wardrobe put on a light cart and
brought round to Lennox Street the day after the aeroplane accident,
that is to say on the Friday afternoon. Philip himself, coming along the
street at that moment, had found the cart at the gate and Monty and Mrs.
Cunningham considering the best way of getting the wardrobe in.
"Ah, so you've got it round; good," he said. "I don't quite know where
you're going to put it, but we'll find somewhere. Let me give you a
hand."
"I thought you said it was to go into the cellar?" said Mrs. Cunningham.
"Eh?" said Philip. "Did I? I believe I did. Well, let's get it in first.
We can settle that afterwards. Has Dadley come?"
So the wardrobe was got into the hall, where it was left for the present
among Philip's corded and labeled painting-gear.