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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
WHEN Mrs Verne put down her large yet shapely foot, and informed her step-daughter that it was her duty to marry Tim Sutton, Doris Verne naturally declared that she would do nothing of the sort.
Asked for her reasons, Doris answered that, since Mr Sutton was not fit to be accepted as a soldier, he was equally unfit to be her husband, and that in any case nothing would induce her to marry a man named Timothy.
Mrs Verne's will was as strong as that of her step-daughter. She told Doris that Tim was devoted to her, and that she was treating him abominably. Doris, knowing perfectly well that this was true, retorted that it was not her fault if little men like that came dangling after her.
The clash could have but one result. Doris left her home at Carne Regis, and secured war work at the Admiralty, for which she was paid thirty shilling a week. She had about thirty pounds a year of her own. She lived in one room in a Bloomsbury lodging-house, and tried to believe that she was very happy and very independent.
To do Mrs Verne justice, she had offered to make Doris an allowance, but this Doris refused. Proper pride she called it, but the day after she had sent the refusal she would have given a good deal to recall it.
For a girl who has been accustomed to a really comfortable home two pounds a week is genteel poverty. With war prices always rising, Doris was often hard put to it to get sufficient food, to pay her landlady and her 'bus fares, and at the same time to dress decently.
She had always prided herself on her appearance, and it was detestable to live on the edge of shabbiness. Many and many an evening, as she sat alone in her bare little room, she secretly regretted her treatment of Tim. But pride came to her rescue, and she deliberately put him out of her mind. Doris had come to town without introductions, and had no friends except among the girls at the office, so it was at holiday time that the pinch came hardest. She had no one to stay with, and could not afford to go away by herself.
Her first Christmas alone in town was a horror, and she vowed to herself that she would never again undergo such an ordeal.
All the following year she screwed and scraped, and December found her with seven pounds in her pocket, and a fixed determination to get out of town.
Mrs Verne always spent Christmas at Torquay. Doris, in a fit of home sickness, suddenly made up her mind that she would go down to Carne Regis, and have a look at her old home, if only from the outside.
She got away on the 23rd, and after a cold and crowded journey found lodgings suited to her slender purse with a Mrs Jupp, who lived at Cornwood, two miles from Carne. Doris would not go to Carne village itself. She was afraid of running into old acquaintances. Hard times had not yet knocked the pride out of her.
Next morning it rained wretchedly, but in the afternoon the weather cleared, and Doris, concealing her pretty figure under a mackintosh, set out on her tramp to Carne.
The road was muddy, the air bitingly cold. Doris was not warmly clad, nor—to say the truth—any too well fed. Also, she felt abominably lonely. Her spirits sank and sank until, by the time she had reached her destination, she felt like nothing so much as seating herself on the nearest stile and indulging in the luxury of a good cry.
Once more it was pride that came to the rescue, and, reaching the drive gate, she stopped and peered through the trees at her old home. The blinds were down, no smoke rose from the chimneys, and to Doris it seemed that the picturesque old house looked utterly desolate and forlorn.
Yet it was home, and she stared and stared at it, and longed to go inside and see the dear old-fashioned rooms, where, in her father's lifetime, she had had so many happy times.
But that, of course, was out of the question, and at last she was turning reluctantly away when she heard steps coming down the drive.
It was a woman, and Doris recognised her instantly as Mrs Bolding, the cook, who remained as caretaker.
The last thing Doris wished was to be recognised, and slipping away, she climbed a stile leading into the shrubbery. From this post of vantage she saw Mrs Bolding go straight down the road , and gathered that she was on her way to the village, no doubt to have tea with, some crony.
Doris's heart leaped. The house was empty, and here was her chance. It was thousand chances against that broken fastening to the window of the china pantry having ever been noticed or mended. Many a time, as a child, had Doris climbed in that way.
She waited until Mrs Bolding's foot-steps had died in the distance, then hurried round to the back. The window was rather high, but by standing on an old sawhorse which she found in the wood shed she reached it, and sure enough the sash was as easily raised as ever.
Once inside she stopped, panting a little. She had a sort of feeling that she was doing something quite illegal, yet at the same time rather exciting.
She listened a little, but the only sound she could hear was the tick of the old eight-day clock in the kitchen.
Into the kitchen she made her way. It was deliciously warm, and the same faint spicy odor that she remembered so well clung to it. The fire in the range crackled gently, and threw a gleam on the polished coppers and brasses on the falls.
A cat curled in front of the fire got up, arched its back, and came towards her, purring. She stooped and stroked it.
Then she left the kitchen, and wandered through the house. She peeped into the long drawing-room with its French windows all shuttered, and the furniture draped in dust sheets; she looked at the portrait of her father which hung over the chimney-piece in the library. Then she went upstairs, and presently found herself in her own old room.
Everything was just as she had left it except that the furniture had been carefully covered up. She looked at the dainty carpet, and the pretty flowered paper on the walls. All seemed so large and clean and spacious after her horrid little diggings in Bloomsbury.
There was a lump in her throat, and she dropped into a big chintz-covered chair, and tried hard to squeeze back the tears that would rise to her eyes. Something inside her seemed to whisper. "Doris, you've been a fool. Why don't you say that you are sorry? Then, even if you stick to your war work, you can come here in your holidays."
But Doris was not quite ready yet to eat humble pie. She fought the weakness with all her might, struggling to get back to her usual frame of mind. She might have succeeded better if she had not been quite so — hungry.
Suddenly she realised that it was fast growing dusk. Also that she had that two mile walk before she could hope for a cup of tea. Just then she was feeling very badly in need of tea.
She got up quickly.
As she did so she heard a sound below. It was the click of a latch.
It gave her an awful start. Mrs Bolding must have come back. The good woman would have seen the sawhorse under the pantry window. What would she be thinking? And how on earth was she (Doris) to escape unseen?
For a moment she stood listening behind the half-open door, then hearing nothing more she came quietly out and tip-toed down the stairs. She thought she might be able to dodge Mrs Bolding and slip unnoticed out of the back door.
There was no one in the hall. Doris stopped and listened again. All of a sudden she heard steps in the back passage which led from the kitchen to the hall. Like a flash, she hid herself behind a tall oaken screen which stood close to the wall.
Next moment the baize door leading from the passage into the hall was pushed slowly open, and someone came through. Doris's heart gave a great thump, then seemed to stop.
It was not Mrs Bolding; it was a man.
A man whom she had never seen before. A tall, lean man in shabby clothes, who carried a small but heavy-looking leather bag, and looked this way and that, with cunning, little, deep-set eyes.
Ugly eyes they were, but his face was worse. His mouth was like a rat-trap, his nose thin and pointed, and the skin was drawn tight over high cheek-bones.
Inside the hall this man stopped and listened. Doris hardly breathed. Her knees shook under her, and an icy chill crept down her spine.
Satisfied apparently that the house was empty, the man came forward, passing so near to Doris that, by stretching out her arms, she could have touched him.
He opened the dining-room door and went in leaving the door open behind him.
Doris needed no one to tell her what he was after. There was a safe in the dining-room wall, which held the silver. It came to her that once, long ago, she had suggested to her step-mother that it was a risk to leave silver in the house while they were away. But Mrs Verne had pooh-poohed the suggestion. She had equal faith in the safe and in Mrs Bolding.
Besides, she had said, burglars worked in towns, not in remote country places.
It was only a flash—this thought. Doris's whole mind was concentrated on the problem of escape.
But the dining-room door was between the screen and the baize door, and it was only by the latter that she could get away. There was the hall door, of course, but that was locked, bolted and chained, and the sound of opening it could he heard all over the house.
The dining-room door opened inwards. If it had opened outwards it might have been possible to slam it and lock it. This being out of the question, Doris knew that she had to cross the opening. What was more, she felt that she must not delay. That horrible chill was spreading and numbing her from head to foot. She was certain that if she left it too long, she would collapse and faint.
A slight grating sound came from within the dining-room. Slight, yet sounding extraordinarily loud in the silent, empty house. By this Doris knew that the burglar had begun operations on the safe. Her heart was throbbing painfully, her feet and hands felt like ice, and she had that horrible nightmare feeling that she was chained to the spot and could not move.
But this was her chance, and, summoning all her resolution, she stepped softly out of her hiding place.
The grating sound ceased. Doris stood with one hand pressed to her heart, not daring to move. But after a moment it began again, and she went forward.
Flitting like a ghost across the hall, she reached the baize door in safety, drew it cautiously open, and slipped through, closing it behind her.
Safe! It seemed almost too good to be true, but Doris did not wait to consider this. She would not feel really safe until well outside the house, and she fled on tip-toe down the dark passage.
She put her foot on something soft. There was a squall which rent the air, and Doris stumbling forward, came down with a crash on hands and knees, on the bare boards.
Regardless of hurts, or of the unfortunate cat upon which she had trodden, Doris sprang to her feet, and dashed in blind panic for the back door.
It was shut and looked. It was only when she tried to move the safety catch that she found her right wrist was sprained. She fumbled with it far a frantic moment, gave it up as hopeless, spun round and made for the china pantry.
As she crossed the passage between it and the kitchen, footsteps came rattling down it. A harsh voice ordered her with an oath to stop.
She flung herself into the pantry, banged the door behind her, and had just enough presence of mind left to lock it. Lucky, indeed, for her that she did so, for next instant a man's weight crashed against the door.
There was burst of language winch almost deprived Doris of her few remaining wits. But the fellow was too clever to waste his time on a locked door. As Doris scrambled wildly on to the sill, she heard him running for the back door.
Hampered by her hurt wrist, it took her some seconds to squeeze through the window; then, as she could not use the wrist, there was nothing for it but to jump.
It was a good six feet, and she landed in a heap. She had hardly picked herself up before the back door was flung open and the man darted at her.
She screamed once; once only—she had not breath for more. Then she was running for dear life. The back drive was thickly hedged with evergreens, so thickly that the road was not visible from it. And Doris knew that she could never reach the road before she was caught.
Her pursuer did not waste his breath in threats, but Doris heard his steps rattling over the loose gravel, and getting near every moment. In the old days she had been a tennis player and able to run well. But the life she had been leading for the last eighteen months—that and the agony of terror she had been through in the last ten minutes, had sapped her strength. She felt herself failing. Her head was spinning, her lungs ached, black specks danced before her eyes.
Her one idea was to reach the road. If she could do that she felt that the burglar might give up the chase. At present, knowing as he did that she was the only person to interfere with his designs, his one idea must be to catch her and either drag her back to the house, or else knock her over the head.
Closer he came and closer. As she neared the point where the back drive met the front, she could almost feel his hot breath on the back of her neck.
With a last effort she reached the corner and ran straight into a pair of khaki clad arms which opened to receive her.
"Hulloa! What are you doing?" came a crisp voice.
Then as the burglar, unable to stop himself, came charging almost on top of them, the man in khaki swung Doris aside as quickly as he had caught her.
"Oh—ho!" he said, "that's the game, is it?" and jumped at the burglar.
The latter spun round like a coursed hare, and headed hack up the drive with the soldier hard at his heels. Doris, dizzy and breathless, stood clinging to a laurel branch and looking after them.
"Oh, my goodness!" she grasped. "It's Tim!"
Tim it was, but a Tim twice the breadth of the neat little dandy whom Doris seemed to remember. And the way in which he was chasing that burglar was an eye-opener for the girl who had once despised him.
The fellow never had a chance. Before he had done twenty steps Tim Sutton was on him—on him with a flying jump which sent the ugly beggar sprawling on his face on the gravel.
"All right gov'nor," Doris heard him whine. "It's a cop. I give up."
"I should rather think you do," observed Sutton as he deftly twisted the man's arms back behind him and tied his wrists together with handkerchief. Leaving him where he lay, he got up, and came back to Doris.
"It's all right, Doris," he said calmly. "He can't hurt you now."
Doris tried to speak, but could not get out a word. Now that the strain was over, she felt horribly as if she was going to faint.
Tim saw her whitening cheeks, realised that she was swaying as she stood, and quickly slipped his arm around her.
"I—I can't," Doris answered hoarsely. Then quite how it happened—she never knew. She was tight in his arms, her head was on his shoulder, and the tears which she had so long repressed were running down her cheeks and making little dark patches on Tim Sutton's tunic.
Like a sensible man, he let her have her cry out before he moved or spoke. Then when her sobs ceased, he took her quickly back to the house.
AN hour later Mrs Bolding got the fright of her life when, returning up the drive, she saw lights shining through the kitchen window. She crept up and looked through. Side by side, on two window chairs a man and a girl sat in front of the kitchen fire. He was holding her hand, and she was looking at him with a happy smile.
Mrs Bolding drew a deep breath.
"Well, I never!" she said half aloud. "If it isn't Miss Doris and Mr Tim!"
She smiled broadly.
"Won't the mistress be pleased?" she continued. "I don't think as anyone could have given her a Christmas present as she'd think more of."
Then she thrust her latch key into the key hole, and proceeded to open the door as slowly and noisily as was well possible.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.