UNDER GREY SKIES AGAIN
Hillyard landed in England athirst for grey skies. Could he have chosen the season of the year which should greet him, he would have named October. For the ceaseless bright blue of sea and heaven had set him dreaming through many a month past, of still grey mornings sweet with the smell of earth and thick hedgerows and the cluck of pheasants. But there were at all events the fields wondrously green after the brown hill-sides and rusty gra.s.s, the little rich fields in the frames of their hedges, and the brown-roofed houses and the woods splashing their emerald branches in the sunlight. Hillyard travelled up through Kent rejoicing. He reached London in the afternoon, and leaving his luggage in his flat walked down to the house in the quiet street behind the Strand whence Commodore Graham overlooked the Thames.
But even in this backwater the changes of the war were evident. The bra.s.s plates had all gone from the door post and girls ran up and down the staircases in stockings which some Allied fairies had woven on Midsummer morning out of cobwebs of dew. They were, however, as unaware as of old of any Commodore Graham. Was he quite certain that he wanted to see Commodore Graham. And why? And, after all, was there a Commodore Graham? Gracious damsels looked blandly at one another, with every apparent desire to a.s.sist this sunburnt stranger. It seemed to Hillyard that they would get for him immediately any one else in the world whom he chose to name. It was just bitterly disappointing and contrarious that the one person he wished to see was a Commodore Graham. Oh, couldn"t he be reasonable and ask for somebody else?
"Very well," said Hillyard with a smile. "There was a pretty girl with grey eyes, and I"ll see her."
"The description is vague," said the young lady demurely.
"She is Miss Cheyne."
"Oh!" said one.
"Oh!" said another; and
"Will you follow me, please?" said a third, who at once became business-like and brisk, and led him up the stairs. The door was still unvarnished. Miss Cheyne opened it, wearing the composed expression of attention with which she had greeted Hillyard when he had sought admission first. But her face broke up into friendliness and smiles, when she recognised him, and she drew him into the room.
"The Commodore"s away for a week," she said. "He had come to the end: no sleep, nerves all jangled. He is up in Scotland shooting grouse."
Hillyard nodded. His news could wait a week very well, since it had waited already two years.
"And you?" he asked.
"Oh, I had a fortnight," replied Miss Cheyne, her eyes dancing at the recollection. It was her pleasure to sail a boat in Bosham Creek and out towards the Island. "Not a day of rain during the whole time."
"I think that I might have a month then, don"t you?" said Hillyard, and Miss Cheyne opined that there would be no objection.
"But you will come back in a week," she stipulated, "won"t you? The Commodore will be here on Thursday, and there are things acc.u.mulating which he must see to. So will you come on Friday?"
"Friday morning," Hillyard suggested.
Thursday was the day on which he should have travelled down to Rackham Park, but if he could finish his business on Friday morning, he would only lose one day.
"Friday morning then," said Miss Cheyne, and made a note of it.
Hillyard had thus a week in which to resume his friendships, arrange to write, at some distant time, a play, revisit his club and his tailor, and revel, as at a pageant, in the fresh beauty, the summer clothes, the white skin and clean-limbed boyishness of English girls. He went through, in a word, the first experiences of most men returned from a long sojourn in other climes; and they were ordinary enough. But the week was made notable for him by one small incident.
It was on the Monday and about five o"clock in the afternoon. He was walking from the Charing Cross Road towards Leicester Square, when, from a doorway ahead of him, a couple emerged. They did not turn his way but preceded him, so that he only saw their backs. But he had no doubt who one of the couple was. The fair hair, the tall, slim, long-limbed figure, the perverse sloppiness of dress which could not quite obscure her grace of youth, betrayed the disdainful prodigy of Rackham Park. The creator of Linda Spavinsky swam ahead of him. Had he doubted her ident.i.ty, a glance at the door from which she had emerged would have dispelled the doubt. It was the entrance to a picture gallery, where, cubes and curves having served their turn and gone, the rotundists were having an innings. Everybody and everything was in rounds, palaces and gardens and ships and Westminster Bridge, and men and women were all in circles. The circle was the principle of life and art. Joan Whitworth would be drawn to the exhibition as a filing to a magnet. Undoubtedly Joan Whitworth was ahead of Hillyard and he began to hurry after her.
But he checked himself after a few paces. Or rather the aspect of her companion checked him. His appearance was vaguely familiar, but that was all. It was not certainly Sir Chichester Splay, for the all-sufficient reason that the Private View had long gone by; since the very last week of the exhibition was announced in the window. Moreover, the man in front of him was younger than Sir Chichester.
The couple, however, crossed the road to the Square Garden, and Hillyard saw the man in profile. He stopped so suddenly that a man walking behind him banged heavily against his back. The man walked on and turned round after he had pa.s.sed to stare at Hillyard. For Hillyard stood stock still, he was unaware that any one had run into him, in all his body his lips alone moved.
"Mario," he whispered. "Mario Escobar!"
The man who had been so far the foremost in his thoughts during the last weeks that he never thought that he could have failed to recognise him.
Mario Escobar! And with Joan Whitworth. Millicent Splay"s letter flashed back into his memory. The distress which he had seemed to hear loud behind the written words--was this its meaning and explanation? Joan Whitworth and Mario Escobar! Certainly Joan knew him! He was sitting next to her on the night when "The Dark Tower" was produced, sitting next to her, and talking to her. Sir Charles Hardiman had used some phrase to describe that conversation. Hillyard was strangely anxious to recapture the phrase. Escobar was talking to her with an air of intimacy a little excessive in a public place. Yes, that was the sentence.
Hillyard walked on quickly to his club.
"Is Sir Charles Hardiman here?" he asked of the hall porter.
"He is in the card-room, sir."
Martin Hillyard went up the stairs with a sense of relief. His position was becoming a little complicated. Mario Escobar was B45, and a friend of Joan Whitworth, and a friend of the Splays. There was one point upon which Martin Hillyard greatly needed information.
Hardiman, a little heavier and broader and more obese than when Hillyard had last seen him, was sitting by a bridge table overlooking the players. He never played himself, nor did he ever bet upon the game, but he took a curious pleasure in looking on, and would sit in the card-room by the hour engrossed in the fall of the cards. The sight of Hillyard, however, plucked him out of his occupation.
"So you"re back!" he cried, heaving himself heavily out of his chair and shaking hands with Martin.
"For a month."
"I hear you have done very well," Sir Charles continued. "Have a whisky-and-soda."
"Thanks."
Hardiman touched the bell and led the way over to a sofa.
"Lucky man! The doctor"s read the Riot Act to me! I met Luttrell in the Mall this morning, on his way back from Buckingham Palace. He had just been given his D.S.O."
Hardiman began to sit down, but the couch was low, and though he began the movement lazily, it went suddenly with a run, so that the springs of the couch jumped and tw.a.n.ged and his feet flew from beneath him.
"Yes, he has done splendidly," said Martin. "His battalion too. That"s what he cares about."
Sir Charles needed a moment or two after he had set down to recover his equipoise. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief.
"Luttrell told me you were both off to Rackham Park this week for Gatwick."
"That"s right! But I shan"t get down until Friday afternoon," said Hillyard.
The waiter put the gla.s.s of whisky-and-soda at his side, and he took a drink from it.
"Perhaps you are going too," he suggested.
Hardiman shook his head.
Hillyard was silent for a minute. Then he asked another question.
"Do you know who is going to be there beside Luttrell and myself?"
Sir Charles smiled.
"I don"t know, but I fancy that you won"t find him amongst the guests."
Hillyard was a little startled by the answer, but he did not betray the least sign of surprise. He pursued his questions.
"You know whom I have in my mind?"
"I drew a bow at a venture," answered Sir Charles.