The Vanity Box/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
Maud said that she would die if left alone that night, and her maid would be worse than no one as a companion; Josephine was a coward, and had such bloodcurdling ideas. Terry must come and lie in the bed by Maud's side—not to sleep, of course, because it would be impossible for either to sleep; but to talk—to talk of poor Milly Hereward, and of what to write to Ian in the morning, when they had heard more details, and could tell better what to say.
They did talk: or rather Maud talked, and Terry answered, a night-light making gray twilight in the curtained room, because Maud could not bear the dark. But soon after one, silence began to punctuate straggling sentences; silence at first short, then long; and presently slow, regular breathing told Terry that she was left to watch alone.
At least she was free to think, to ask herself questions and to try and answer them. Lying by Maud's side, tensely alert in mind, she reviewed each minute of the afternoon, from that of her arrival at Friars' Moat, to that when she had bidden Ian Hereward good-bye.
Only—it was difficult to think clearly. One thought would rush in upon another before the first had time to travel to its logical conclusion. She went back to the moment when the footman had opened the door, and she had asked for Lady Hereward. "Her ladyship went out to lunch with Sir Ian," the servant had said. Then just as she had refused to wait, and was starting away, Ian had come. At first glance she had found him little changed; but by and by, when a slight flush had died away from his face, the illusion of youth faded with it. She had thought he looked worn, and haggard, not as happy as so fortunate a man ought to be.
There was no real reason, she told herself, why the sight of her should have made him sad. As she had said to him, "it was all so long ago." If he had felt no remorse then, why should he suddenly feel it now? He had fallen so desperately in love with Milly that he had thrown all other considerations but that love under his feet and trampled on them. Yet—and yet—what anguish had been in his eyes and tone to-day! His groan when he had broken out with, "Oh, God, Terry!" sounded in her ears still. Never since had she ceased to hear it echoing, alone in her own room, at dinner afterward with Maud, and—more despairing yet through the telling of the butler's story. Could it be possible that Ian's marriage had not proved a success, after all he had sacrificed to make it? Miss Ricardo could scarcely believe that it had been a failure, for as a young girl she had worshipped Millicent Latham, and could easily imagine that a man could adore her. Once Terry had heard some one say, "Milly Latham is an acquired taste, but once the taste is acquired, it's bound to last." She had recalled that speech when she heard of Sir Ian's engagement to his distant cousin; and she recalled it again now.
Milly had seemed to forget all about Terry in the midst of sunshine and marriage; but, in the peculiar circumstances (of which Terry believed her one-time friend to have remained in ignorance), it was better that she should forget. Things being as they were, their intimacy could not have gone on. But now Terry's heart yearned over the dead woman.
"Poor, poor Milly!" She wondered if she had ever thought of Ian's wife unkindly or unjustly? She trusted that she had not. To harbour harsh thoughts would indeed have been unjust, for nothing had been Milly's fault. Ian no doubt had been silent about the past, and Terry herself had kept the secret well. A few hints she might have given in letters at the time, perhaps, before she had known Ian would be leaving India for England. She had mentioned meeting a "cousin of Milly's"; Milly had written back to know "what he was like," and Terry had described him rather enthusiastically, as she had seen him then. That was all. Poor Milly! Ian had been swept off his feet at first sight of her; and Maud said now that they were devoted to each other. Yet that "Oh, God, Terry!" What did it mean, that stifled cry of the heart?
Teresina Ricardo would have given a great deal if she had been able to stop her ears and shut out the echo of that cry; but it was inside her head, and could not be shut out.
Her imagination, whose vividness was a curse as well as a blessing in her life, clearly sketched a woman's figure walking under great trees in a wood. Then, another figure grew out of shadows, and followed. Whose figure?
Terry had a horrible feeling, born of over-wrought nerves, that if she looked long enough at the picture, she would see whose the shadowy figure was, and know the awful secret of the murder. But she dared not know. She did not want to know. Justice would find out in time. She would not be in the secret if she could: and she thought with a strange pang of Miss Verney. That girl had been in the woods. She had said so. What had she seen? What did she know? Something had happened to blanch her cheeks, to redden her eyes, and give her the look of a hunted deer. What thing? At all events, Miss Verney's agitation and her confession—no, no, not that word in this connection!—her statement, rather, that she had been in the woods, made up a mysterious coincidence. If she had met her lover there—if it were true that he hated Lady Hereward—but Terry broke the thought almost fiercely in her brain. She was angry with herself for letting it steal in. Maud's description of Sir Ian's namesake—his cousin in blood—was not the description of a murderer, it seemed to Terry. She had liked what Maud said of him; the young man, bravely if obstinately waging his tight against the world which denied him a place; yet here she was suspecting him, vulgarly, just like any inmate of the servants' hall. Besides, no one could really hate Milly. She was always kind, always unselfish, even to those she did not like; so Maud said.
Thus the night passed; a white night for Terry Ricardo, and a white night for the world, bathed in moonlight. Yet in the forest, whose Gothic aisles were paved with ebony and ivory moonshine and shadow, there were sounds other than the whispering of pines and beeches, or the rustling of tiny wood-folk among the feathery bracken. Dark figures of men moved under the trees; lanterns flashed like the yellow eyes of spying cats; low voices murmured solemnly, or broke out in exclamations at the sudden bell-note of dogs baying; for the police had brought bloodhounds to Riding Wood, and were trying to trace the murderer of Lady Hereward.