Love at first sight then? Yes, of course it was, but doesn’t all true love come quick and sharp like that? Perhaps to friends whose friendship has stood stolid and unromantic through the years, there comes this sudden uplift, and the gray old tree has bloomed at last. Or perhaps the warm sun of a single day has rushed the growth through bud to flower.
However it may have been, whether I had somehow skipped a stage, or whether the peculiarly harrowing circumstances in which we had met had quickened my perceptions—I knew with an exhilarating certainty that I was in love with Janet.
Time stood still when I looked at Janet. The sunny garden became a drab uninteresting desert when Janet was away. Cut the rose from the tree and what an ungainly plant is left! Raze the great cathedral to the ground and what a mean little town of twisted narrow streets! Yes, I was in love with Janet. She was my rose and my shining tower.
Five o’clock came floating down as I sat there dreaming. She must have been gone for far more than the five minutes she had mentioned, for nearly half an hour. I would go and try to find her. Or was she coming to me now? Would she look at me, could I hold her eyes with mine again? My pulses quickened at the thought. But it was only Margaret who came hurrying toward me across the lawn.
“Mrs. Kenley wants you,” she said. “Oh, Mr. Jeffcock, please do come at once. We’ve found out something—something absolutely thrilling—it’s the end!”
“Where? How do you mean?” I asked her.
“I can’t tell you now, but Mrs. Kenley wants you up in the box-room where I found the paper this afternoon. She told me to come and find you. She said that you were to help her and would come.”
So Janet had taken her into our partnership. I don’t know what line of argument I took, or why I arrived at such a conclusion, but I remembered having an instinctive feeling that the curtain had been rung up for the final scene. What, I wondered, would be the setting and who the villain of the piece? Ralph? Kenneth? Ethel? Or The Tundish? I visualized my table and the numbers I had set down against each. Margaret at any rate seemed to have been correctly assessed or Janet would never have given away the fact that she and Allport were working together. No single thought of suspicion disturbed my dull and stupid brain.
As we made our way back to the house, she told me that I was to join her on the upper landing in a minute. If I met any of the others I was to pretend that I was going to my room. She was breathing quickly, and, looking at her sidewise, I could see how wildly excited and hot she was. She mopped her face as we walked along, and I could feel my own excitement welling up in sympathy with hers.
There was no one about when we reached the house and I succeeded in joining her on the upper landing a minute later without having attracted attention to my movements. I was aglow with the thought that I was to help and work with my Janet. Margaret was waiting for me at the foot of the little stairway that leads to the disused attics. She was smiling and held her fingers to her lips enjoining silence. Yet again I was impressed with her utter lack of feeling and her unconquerable desire to attract. Even at such a time she was looking arch, enjoying the situation.