The man who came back Read online

  But not Harriet. The sight of the beautiful midnight-blue pile, with a wall light shining down on it so that it looked even richer and more delightful than it did in the daytime, reassured her, and as she scrambled through the attic door and heard something become dislodged in the attic behind her and fall with a resounding crash to the floor her pulse-beats quickened. But she was not actively afraid as she descended the stairs.

  She did, however, feel rather like an explorer who had made a somewhat disturbing discovery, and she decided to put it right out of her mind

  32 THE MAN WHO -CAME BACK

  as she hastened down the second flight of stairs and along the corridor to her own room.

  After all, this was rather a large and lonely house for two girls and a small staff of servants to occupy, and she preferred not to think about the portrait as she washed the dust from her hands.

  They had decided not to change for dinner that night, and it was still not quite dark when she descended the main staircase to the drawingroom. The light was glowing softly in the hall, but the drawing-room had been left. unlighted, and the French windows were standing open to the terrace and the^ garden. The heavy silk curtains were stirring gently in a faint breeze from the garden as Harriet crossed the room to close them; but she was no more than half way across the room, which was about thirty feet in length, when someone appeared in the opening of the windows and stood staring at her.

  If everything had been entirely normal, and she had not just returned from a visit to the attics, it was quite unlikely she would have reacted in the way she did. She might have been slightly startled, because the appearance of a tall man whose footsteps made absolutely no sound as he crossed the terrace and then swung in through the open French windows�thus effectively blocking her view of the garden�was a startling occurrence in itself. Visitors normally rang the front door bell, and they knew no one

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 33

  intimately in the locality who could exercise

  the privilege of announcing himself without even

  approaching the front door.

  Therefore, as she afterwards comforted her

  self, she could be forgiven for acting in the way

  she did. But she never quite got over the shock of

  discovering that in certain circumstances she had

  little control over her reactions.

  The man confronting her was tall and dark

  ... and she had been studying his features only

  a few minutes before upstairs in the gloom of the

  attics. It could be that the memory of those

  features had persisted to such an extent that it

  was obsessing her even as she entered the draw

  ing-room; and although she knew Dr. Drew

  fairly well by this time she could not dissociate

  him in her mind from the man upstairs. In fact,

  the man upstairs was far more real than Philip

  Drew. And Philip Drew was wearing a white tie

  and full evening dress, and the white tie became

  a meticulously tied cravat in the semi-light of

  the drawing-room.

  There were no sideboards, and yet she could

  have afterwards sworn that she did see them...

  and she saw the arrogant flash in his eyes, and

  the demanding jut of his chin. The cool curl of

  his mouth.

  She came to a dead halt in the middle of the carpet and uttered a petrified shriek. And when ;that shriek died in her throat she began on another... and it went on and on until he

  34 THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  caught her by the elbows and shook her. "Miss Stiles!"

  His face was alarmingly close, and although the feel of his fingers was real enough she still could not believe in him. For the first time in her life she fainted.

  When she came to her senses she was lying on a couch�-Gay's couch�and the drawing-room was brilliantly lighted. The housekeeper was

  standing a few feet away from her, and Dr.

  Drew was kneeling on the floor beside the couch. Footsteps could be heard crossing the hall as others came to find out what it was that had happened.

  Dr. Drew had his fingers on Harriet's pulse, and he was frowning as she opened her eyes. In the transforming light they were as green as the water in a goldfish tank, as green as glass. And .her eyelashes were long and bright at the tips, and they fluttered nervously. Dr. Drew could see them reflected in the pupils of her eyes, and he could see how distended the pupils themselves were. Whatever it was that had frightened this young woman whom he normally thought of as extremely self-controlled, and a little too conscious of her feminine dignity to lose it altogether, a diffused backwash of it was still clouding her brain, and her pallor was too marked for there

  to have been any deception about her faint. She was still wearing the pale green slacks and the paler green beautifully laundered blouse that

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 35

  she had been wearing when he saw her earlier in the day, and in the midst of his perplexity he found himself thinking of dryads ... and wondered why it had never struck him before that she was not a very substantial example of her sex. And if her sister was a violet-eyed beauty

  . she was not even a classifiable beauty. She was not quite real. Harriet sat up on the couch and thrust back the hair from her forehead.

  "I'm sorry�" She was not quite sure what had happened, but she knew she had made a fool of herself.

  Gay was hurrying into the room wearing

  black chiffon and pearls. She had intended this to be an informal evening, but somehow she

  never liked appearing informally at dinner, or ..at any other time when she was "likely to be |observed. I "What happened?" she demanded. She i looked in an alarmed fashion at her sister.

  | "What's wrong?"

  ^ Philip Drew explained, rising from his kneel| jng position beside the couch and dusting the I'laiees of his immaculate trousers. I "Nothing very much," he told her non-com-

  Imittally. "Your sister fainted." I "Fainted? Harriet?" It was obvious that Gay Jfound it difficult to believe. She simply couldn't Jrecall an occasion when Harriet had fainted or

  36 THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  had anything the matter with her except a cold. Her creamy pallor was deceptive. She was as strong as an ox.

  "The sight of me upset her." The cool curl at the corners of the doctor's mouth was very pronounced, and his speech was mildly drawling.

  Gay turned to Harriet for an explanation.

  "I can't really remember what happened," Harriet lied as convincingly as she could. "But I suppose I was startled because Dr. Drew just stepped in through the window without any warning." She ran nervous fingers through her hair once more. "He�he didn't seem to make any sound."

  The housekeeper thought she had the explanation.

  "Ah!" she exclaimed. "Miss Stiles thought the doctor was a burglar." She nodded in an entirely satisfied manner, being perfectly con

  vinced herself. "But we don't get burglars round here, miss, so you don't have to worry." She launched into an explanation of why, in that part of the world, they were entirely free from burglars.... For a reason which would have convinced no one who lived in constant fear of being

  burgled, because it was apparently founded on'

  the fact that�within living memory, at any rate �Falaise had happily escaped the attention of illicit pilferers. And while she did so the doctor

  approached the piano and deposited a small white box on the gleaming top, and then looked

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 37

  across the room at the mistress of the house and

  explained a trifle curtly:

  "I looked in to bring you these! They are some more of your sleeping tablets. I was afraid you were running low, and didn't want to disturb anyone. By a most unfortunate chance, however, I narrowly avoided giving your sister a heart attack!"
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  Harriet deserted the couch with a certain amount of difficulty, for she felt extraordinarily confused after her temporary aberration, and she realised that the doctor was extremely annoyed at having to admit anything of the kind.

  "It was silly of me," she declared. "Very silly! But I'd been rummaging upstairs in the attics, and I suppose I was a bit nervous."

  "Why? Do attics normally affect you in that way?"

  Philip Drew's cool tones were like the drip of thin ice, and his eyes met hers and she was disconcerted by the resentment and the disapproval in them. And for some curious reason they seemed darker than she had ever seen them, before.

  "Of course not." Her confusion increased, and she groped for words�-and an explanation that would satisfy everyone. "But it was setting dark�"

  "And you're afraid of the dark?"

  "No." The colour was returning to her face in a rush, and it was burning her cheeks�she

  38 THE MAN WHO CAME BACK

  felt as if her skin was on fire. "Not normally! But the ones here are rather tucked away�"

  "Then, darling, why do you have to visit them at the wrong end of the day?" Gay's interruption seemed reasonable.

  Harriet went on endeavouring to explain to Dr. Drew. "I�I was looking for something."

  "And ,a ghost popped up and frightened you!" He smiled contemptuously, being the type who would never under any circumstances believe in ghosts, "I must say you looked rather ethereal yourself when you came across the room to meet me... as if you'd just had a conversation with something or someone not quite of this world. But for the facts that ghosts don't normally wander about in slacks I might quite easily have mistaken you for one, and spared you the experience of coming face to face with me by bolting back into the night."

  "Please." She was trembling a little, and her clear green eyes pleaded with him. "I've said it was silly, and I apologise."

  "But, darling, you don't have to apologise, and Dr. Drew should have rung the bell." But Gay's reproving glance at him was sweetened by a half smile at the back of the violet eyes. "What use are, sleeping tablets if I'm to be scared out of my wits by my sister in the daytime?"

  Then she slipped a protective arm about Har- riet's shoulders.

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK 39

  "However, darling, I forgive you," she assured her.

  Dr. Drew listened to the chiming of the hall clock, and he remembered that he had a dinner engagement.

  "I'm sorry," he said, even more curtly than before, "but I must go; I suggest that you take a couple of your sister's tablets tonight. Miss Stiles, and I'll look in tomorrow and find out whether you're all right. I don't anticipate any aftereffects, but you can never tell." His harsh, unfeeling smile mocked and derided her. "I can't recall having had such an unfortunate effect on anyone before, but there always has to be a first time. And I offer you my apologies for not ringing the bell. I'll do better when I call here tomorrow."

  When he had disappeared through the French window, and they had heard his car starting up on the drive, Gay made a slight, shrugging movement with her shoulders, as if shrugging off an incident that perplexed her, and the housekeeper said she would find out whether dinner was ready to be served. Gay insisted on Harriet drinking a glass of claret when they entered the diningroom, and then waited for the soup course to be removed before returning to the subject of her faint. She confessed that she simply didn't understand it.

  "I've never known you do anything like it before." Despite the fact that she was supposed to

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  be very much an invalid, with very little interest in food, she inspected me fish souffle critically when it was brought to table, and was anxious to know what would follow it. On hearing that it was wild duck, and after the wild duck there would be strawberry shortcake, she grew relaxed and relieved. "You're not a nervous person. I remember you actually tackled a burglar on one occasion, when we were not much more than children."

  "I must have been stouter-hearted then," Harriet mumbled, over a mouthful of souffle.

  "Yes, perhaps. But it really wasn't such an extraordinary thing. Dr. Drew coming in through the French window. I thought he looked extremely attractive in his evening, things. I wonder where he was going," with an interested gleam in her eyes. "There aren't many people around here for whom one would really dress up if one was going out to dinner."

  "Perhaps he wasn't dining with anyone around here," Harriet replied. Gay seemed intrigued by the suggestion^ She helped herself to wine.

  "Of course, it could be that he was taking

  someone out to dinner... out for the evening. He's such an unusual man, very poised and sophisticated, and quite out of his element in a place like this. I think we'll have to invite him

  to dinner one night."

  "You're supposed to be recovering from a

  THE MAN WHO CAME BACK bitter blow," Harriet reminded her. "And widows in the early stages of their widowhood don't normally go in for entertaining their doctor. It would probably look better if you waited awhile." But Gay merely smiled, and turned avidly to the parlourmaid when she brought in the wild duck. "Getting back to your faint..." she said. "No, don't!" Harriet begged. "I don't understand it myself, and I'm not proud of making such a fool of myself." She couldn't understand why at this stage she preferred not to mention to her half-sister her discovery in the attic. For one thing, now that she was no longer in the attic she couldn't quite believe that she had actually stumbled on a portrait in oils that could have been the portrait of Philip Drew dressed up in Regency costume. She preferred to pay another visit to the attic and make certain it was there before she said anything. That evening Gay played patience and she sat , at the piano and ran her fingers idly over the keys. The box of sleeping tablets was still on the piano top. But she had no intention of taking any of the contents. She was not yet in need of soothing medicine ; for her nerves.

  CHAPTER III

  THE next day was one of those days that promise a return to summer, although summer had already sped on its way with golden wings and the thick carpet of leaves in the drive was an indication that autumn had already established

  itself. Harriet took her easel into the orchard, and decided to paint the orchard wall. The stable clock peered above it, and 'she managed to get that into her picture ... that and the weathervane on the top of it, and the riot of Virginia creeper that smothered one of the outhouses. This was a purely conventional picture, for she was not really a modernist. She had a modem approach to her painting, but it was also exquisitely delicate, and her particular forte was the blending of colours. Colour fascinated her ... and she applied it lavishly, but with a certain amount of very clever restraint. She had managed to sell quite a few of her pictures so far, and she was very sorry indeed that she couldn't possibly bfe in London when it was time for her exhibition�for which she had worked hard for months�and had to depend on the kind offices 42

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  of a friend who would report to her later how things had gone.

  For although Gay said she would spare her, she knew very well that when the time came for her to leave for London Gay would become stricken with some fresh form of grief, and she would find it impossible to leave her.

  This morning, in russet slacks and a pale primrose sweater, with her hair flowing loose on her shoulders, she bent lovingly to her task, and was entirely lost in it and the pleasure it afforded her when Dr. Drew found his way to her corner of the orchard and stood inspecting her work before he actually spoke to her.

  "Quite clever." His praise was cool and slightly unwilling, and she tossed back her hair and gazed up at him a little resentfully.

  "You don't have to say that if you don't mean it," she told him. "There are people who like my pictures, and people who don't."

  "I didn't say I like your pictures. But on the other hand, I don't think I dislike them. It would be unreasonable to dislike them. They're like a perfumed bath."


  "What do you mean?"

  "One becomes soaked in the colour. I've no doubt in time one would thoroughly enjoy gazing at pictures like that."

  "Thank you." She spoke stiffly and distantly, and he sank down on the orchard grass and crossed his legs like a cobbler.

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  "I noticed you didn't turn pale when I came up behind you this morning. You didn't even look as if you needed the smelling salts when I commented on your work. Is it because you find me less alarming in the daylight, and it's only when it's dusk that I become fearsome?"

  "Don't be silly." She started to put away her brushes, and he watched her... the movements of her small and exceptionally pretty hands, the graceful turn of her wrists. In the sunshine her hair was a lovely pale colour like bleached

  amber, and her skin was as clear as the dawn.

  "If you think I pretended last night�" she

  shrugged her shoulders�"well, it doesn't really

  matter to me."

  "Oh, I'm quite sure you didn't pretend." He

  offered her a cigarette, but she shook her head.

  "You were out for quite five minutes before you

  opened your eyes. And that scream of yours....

  You must have a very excellent pair of lungs."

  She flushed faintly as she gazed af him.

  "I suppose I ought to apologise," she said.

  "And I will if you like."

  He shook his head.

  "No apology is needed."

  "But it did rather annoy you that I took such

  a marked kind of exception to your unauthorised

  appearance last night?"

  "I'm prepared to admit that it was unauthor

  ised."

  "However, it wasn't all that dark!"