"Of course I have."

"And will you be married soon?" went on her inquisitor.

"Yes, very soon," she cried hysterically. "As soon as possible!"

"Then you will have to leave Beechfield."

She told herself with a kind of pa.s.sionate rage that the child had no right to ask her such a silly, obvious question, and yet she answered at once: "Of course I shall leave Beechfield."

"And you will never come back?"

"I shall never, _never_ come back." And then she added, almost as if in spite of herself, and with a kind of strange, bitter truthfulness very foreign to her: "I don't like Beechfield--I don't agree that it's a pretty place--I think it's a hideous little village."

There was a pause. She was seeking for a phrase in which to say "Good-bye," not so much to Timmy as to all the others.

"Will you go away to-morrow?" he asked, this time boldly. And she answered, "Yes, to-morrow."

"Perhaps I'd better not tell any of them at Old Place?" It was as if he was speaking to himself.

She clutched at the words.

"I would far rather you did not tell them--I will write to them from London. Can I trust you not to tell them, Timmy?"

He looked at her oddly. "Jack and Rosamund will be sorry," he said slowly. And then he jerked his head--his usual way of signifying "Good-bye" when he did not care to shake hands.

Turning round he walked out of the room, and she heard the front door bang after him, as also, after a moment or two, the outside door set in the garden wall.

Enid Crofton got up. Though she was shaking--shaking all over--she walked swiftly across her little hall into the dining-room. There she sat down at the writing-table, and took up the telephone receiver. "9846 Regent."

It was the number of Harold Tremaine's club. She thought he would almost certainly be there just now.

She then hung up the receiver again, and, going to the door which led into the kitchen, she opened it: "Don't bring in my supper yet.

I'll ring, when I'm ready for it." She then went back to the little writing-table and waited impatiently.

At last the bell rang.

"I want to speak to Captain Tremaine. Is he in the Club? Can you find him?"

She felt an intense thrill of almost superst.i.tious relief when the answer came: "Yes, ma'am. He's in the Club. I'll go and fetch him."

She remembered with relief that Tremaine had told her that no one could overhear, at any rate at his end, what was being said or answered through the telephone--but she also remembered that it was not the same here, in The Trellis House.

Judging others by herself, as most of us do in this strange world, she felt sure that her two young servants were listening behind the door.

Still, in a sense there was nothing Enid Crofton liked better than pitting her wits against other wits. So when she heard the question, "Who is it?" she simply answered, "Darling! Can't you guess?"

In answer to his rapturous a.s.sent, she said quietly, "I've made up my mind to do what you wish."

And then she drank in with intense delight the flood of eager, exultant words, uttered with such a rush of joy, and in so triumphant a tone, that for a moment she thought that they must be heard, if not here, then there, if not there, then here. But, after all, what did it matter? She would have left this hateful place for ever to-morrow!

And then came a rather difficult moment. She did not wish to tell her servants to-night that she was leaving The Trellis House to-morrow, and yet somehow she must convey that fact to Tremaine.

As if he could see into her mind, there came the eager question, "Can you come up to-morrow, darling? The sooner, the better, you know--"

She answered, "I will if you like--at the usual time."

He said eagerly, "You mean that train arriving at 12.30--the one I met you by the other day?"

And again she said, "Yes."

He asked a little anxiously, "How about money, my precious pet? Are you all right about money?"

For once her hard, selfish heart was touched and she answered truly: "You need not bother about that."

And then there came a whispered, "Call me darling again, darling."

And she just breathed the word "Darling" into the receiver, making a vague resolution as she did so that she would be, as far as would be possible to her, a good wife to this simple-hearted, big baby of a man who loved her so dearly.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Timmy went straight home. He entered the house by one of the back ways and crept upstairs. Late that afternoon he had gratified Nanna by sharing her high tea, and so he was not expected in the dining-room.

He felt intensely excited--what perhaps an older person would have called uplifted. He wandered about the corridors of the roomy old house, his hands clasped behind his back, thinking over and exulting in his great achievement. He felt just a little bit uneasy as to the contents of the letter Mrs. Crofton had said she would write explaining her departure. As to certain things, Timmy Tosswill was still very much of a child. He wondered why their enemy, for so he regarded her, should think it necessary to write to anyone, except perhaps to Rosamund, who, after all, had been her "pal." He was disagreeably aware that his mother would not have approved of the method he had used to carry out what he knew to be her ardent wish, and he wondered uncomfortably if Mrs. Crofton would "give him away."

At last he opened the door of what was now his G.o.dfather's bedroom, and walked across to the wide-open window. All at once there came over him a feeling of wondering joy. He seemed to see, as in a gla.s.s darkly, three figures pacing slowly along the path which bounded the wide lawn below.

They were G.o.dfrey Radmore, Betty, and with them another whom he knew was his dear brother, George. George, whom Timmy had never seen since the day, which to the child now seemed so very long ago, when, rather to his surprise, his eldest brother had lifted him up in his arms to kiss him before going out to France at the end of his last leave. And as he gazed down, tears began to run down his queer little face.

At last he turned away from the window, and as he went towards the door he saw the outline of a paper pad on the writing table which in old days George and G.o.dfrey had shared between them.

Blinking away his tears, he took up the pad, and carried it down the lighted pa.s.sage to his own room. There he sat down, and with a pencil stump extracted from his waistcoat pocket, he wrote:

Dear Mum,

This is from Timmy. I hope you don't still feel the pierce.

Your affectionate son, Timothy G.o.dfrey Radmore Tosswill.

He put the bit of paper into a grubby envelope in which he had for some time kept some used French stamps; then, licking down the flap, he left his room and went into his mother's, where he propped up the envelope on the fat pin-cushion lying on her dressing-table, remembering the while that so had been propped an anonymous letter written many years before by a vengeful nursery maid, who had been dismissed at Nanna's wish.

Monday morning opened badly for more than one inmate of Old Place. Dolly and her lover had discovered with extreme surprise that one hundred pounds would only achieve about a fifth of that which they considered must be done before his vicarage would be fit for even the most reasonable of brides. With Dolly this had produced an extremely disagreeable fit of bad temper--of temper indeed so bad that it had been noticed by G.o.dfrey Radmore, who had followed Janet into the drawing-room after breakfast to ask what was the matter.

Jack Tosswill had gone off as early as he felt he decently could go, to The Trellis House, only to find its mistress gone--and gone, which naturally much increased his disappointment and anger, only ten minutes before his arrival! He had interviewed both servants, they only too willing, for his infatuation was by now known to the whole village. But what they had to say gave him no comfort--indeed, it was almost exactly what the house-parlourmaid had said last week, when Enid had gone off to town, leaving no address behind her. This time, however, she had said she would telephone from town.