The Dower House Mystery (12 page)

Amabel looked around her, and was shaken by a spasm of inward laughter as she thought of Daphne's commissions. She sent her telegram to Agatha. She then bought three common paraffin lamps with tin reflectors, a drum of oil, and three stout iron bolts. The oil and the lamps were to be sent up before dark; the bolts she took away in her pocket together with a handful of screws done up in the blue paper which had come off a packet of candles.

She walked home. The world seemed a good deal brighter than it had been in the morning. The row of crooked kisses had been very fortifying—and it would be nice to have Agatha. Never before had a visit from Agatha presented so pleasant a prospect.

When Julian appeared at tea-time, he found her in very good spirits, and firm in her refusal to have Fearless back.

“I wish your sister were coming to-night,” he said. The concern in his voice pleased her, though she laughed it away.

“I was foolish and strung up this morning. I feel quite different about it all now, I do really. I think I was getting rather intense. After all, as you said, the whole thing was probably due to a stray cat—and I got fussed. I'm rather ashamed of myself. I'm going to turn over a new leaf and start fresh.”

There was no response from Julian. He stood by the hearth, looking gravely into the fire.

“Go down to the Berkeleys for to-night,” he said, and frowned at her “No, I'd rather not.”

“I wish you'd give the whole thing up and go home.” This was after a pause of some minutes' duration.

“Thank you,” said Amabel. “My house is let, and I haven't got a home to go to.”

Julian relapsed into thought.

“Will you let me come and sleep here tomorrow night?” he said after a while.

“Yes, of course.”

When he was going he asked again:

“You're sure you won't go to the Berkeleys?”

“Quite sure. I've been putting bolts on the doors, and I shall simply bolt myself in and refuse to open my door whatever happens.”

“Where have you put the bolts?”

“On this door,”—she pointed to her bedroom—“and the one through into your Aunt Georgina's room. I'll see if I can't make it stay shut to-night.” A little shiver crept over her, and she laughed to drive it away.

Julian seemed loth to go.

“I see you've put oil lamps in this passage and the hall,” he said.

“Yes, I want light, and electric light is too expensive to keep on all the time. Besides, it seems to have a trick of going out at the critical moment, so I thought I'd try these. They're hideous but useful.”

Julian said good-night, and then turned back again.

“You'll call me up if you want anything?”

“Yes, I will, really; but I shan't need to; I'm going to sleep.”

Amabel watched him down the stair and heard the front door close behind him. Then she went back into the sitting-room and read Daphne's letter again.

Chapter XIV

Amabel's prophecy was fulfilled. She went to bed at ten, leaving an oil lamp burning in the passage, and a second one turned down low in the corner of her room. She bolted both doors, and slept from the moment that her head touched the pillow until Jenny's knock woke her.

“Please, ma'am, Ellen's here,” said Jenny, putting down the cup of tea which she had been carrying at rather a dangerous angle.

“What!” said Amabel.

“Please, ma'am, Ellen's here,” said Jenny, obviously flustered. And, before she could say more, Ellen herself pushed past her into the room—Ellen in workaday attire, hatless and gloveless.

“Ellen!” gasped Amabel.

With a lofty air, Ellen waved Jenny from the room and shut the door. She then came close up to the bed and observed in a low, thrilling voice:

“Sooner than 'ave it on my conscience, I come back.”

“But when? How?”

Just for a moment it seemed to Amabel as if some mysterious agency were picking up her dogs and her maids, and just dropping them again promiscuously.

“Sooner than 'ave it on my conscience, I come back last night,” said Ellen in still deeper and more thrilling tones. She paused, and a look of pride overspread her features. “
Lodger wanted single lady or gent,”
she added.

“Look here, Ellen,” said Amabel, “begin at the beginning. I can't keep my head when you start at the end. When did you come?”

“Last night I come,” said Ellen with some offence. “Miss Lee being suited, and a widow with a child is what I wouldn't take into my 'ouse, though I know there's many that does it nowadays—”

“Do you mean that Miss Lee wouldn't keep you?”

Ellen tossed her head.

“Glad and thankful she'd be to keep me, and gladder and thankfuller she'll be before she's anyways through with that widow woman and her child, which Gwendoline is a name I 'ates.”

“Was the child's name Gwendoline?”

“Victorier Gwendoline,” said Ellen gloomily, “and as much at 'ome as you please. So when my conscience says to me ‘Why did you leave 'er? Why did you go and leave 'er, Ellen?' I takes it as a sign. I thinks to myself ‘None of your bare-faced brats for me. I'll 'ave a room in the village, and come up and do for you, ma'am.'
Lodger wanted single lady or gent
—it struck my eye when I was a-driving to the station, and I come back last night and took it.” She paused for breath, caught Amabel's hand in both of hers, and changed her tone. “Oh, my dear ma'am, I couldn't leave you, really.” A tear dropped on the eiderdown.

Agatha Moreland arrived by the three o'clock train. Amabel met her, and they drove up together in the mouldy cab. On the bridge they passed Julian, walking. Mrs. Moreland, who had been leaning out to look at the Millers' bungalow, exclaimed:

“Who's the frightfully good-looking man?”

Amabel glanced out of the other window.

“Mr. Forsham.”

“Any relation of Julian Forsham?”

“It is Julian Forsham,” said Amabel.

“Do you know him?”

“Of course I do. I'm living in his brother's house.” She paused and added, “Julian is coming to stay for the week-end.”

“With you?” Agatha's surprise was rather amusing.

“With
us,”
said Amabel, laughing a little. She thought it better to continue after a while with, “He's an old friend, you know. Both he and the Berkeleys were here when I was here before. It's very nice to meet them all again.”

Once they had arrived at the house, Agatha's own concerns were too much to the fore to admit of an undue curiosity about Amabel's. She made no confidences, but talked incessantly, and with a scarcely veiled uneasiness, about her husband. Cyril liked this, and Cyril liked that, and Cyril thought it was a mistake to do the other, and so on, and so forth. It transpired that amongst the things which Cyril liked were race-meetings and night clubs. “And I do loathe races—so horribly cold and draughty, the weather always simply beyond words—, and of course I don't dance.”

Amabel suppressed a smile because of the real trouble underlying this rather self-evident statement. Agatha Moreland was a handsome and imposing person, with a figure built on rigidly massive lines. She was five years older than Amabel, and looked fifteen, in spite, or perhaps because of, beautifully tinted golden hair.

Amongst the things of which Cyril disapproved was what he termed the bourgeois habit of husband and wife paying visits together; hence his absence and Agatha's week-end with her sister.

Julian came up to dinner—a meal shared by Agatha could never be supper. He found Amabel alone, and was glad to get a few words with her.

“I wanted to ask what your sister knows about the house and your tenancy.”

“Oh, nothing,” said Amabel quickly, “nothing at all, except that I was offered the house on very favourable terms and was glad of the opportunity of seeing some old friends.”

Mrs. Moreland came in before there was time for more. She wore a jetted tea-gown, black but magnificent; and, like most fair women of ample proportions, appeared at her best rather décolletée. “Agatha always makes me feel as if I had been ironed out flat,” Amabel once told Daphne. She had rather that feeling now. There was so much of Agatha—hair, pearls, shoulders—and assurance of manner.

They waited on themselves, and the meal was a friendly one. When they had cleared away, Julian opened Miss Georgina's piano.

“It's been kept in order, I know,” he said. “I was thinking this afternoon that perhaps you would play on it—you used to.”

“I hardly ever play now. Nobody does unless they're frightfully good.”

“Are you fond of music, Mr. Forsham?” asked Agatha.

“I don't know,” said Julian. “I hate concerts, and people doing things frightfully well—it's all so public and unreposeful. I like the sort of music my mother used to make in the firelight—I always think firelight and music go together.”

He turned to Amabel and said, “Please,” and, rather as if he took her answer for granted, he turned out all the lights except the one by the piano.

Amabel sat down and played old scraps of songs, old fragments of dance music, a piece of a nocturne, Scotch and Irish melodies, just as they came. She had a pretty touch, and, though she did not know it, she made a pleasant picture with the light falling on her through a soft yellow shade.

As a log fell and the flame leaped on the hearth, Agatha caught a glimpse of Julian's face. He was looking at Amabel, and it was this look which arrested her attention. In the course of her prosperous life Agatha had been a good deal deferred to, admired, and courted; but no man had ever worn quite that look for her—the look that sees the woman and the ideal, and sees them as one. It was a look at once unmistakable and revealing.

Agatha Moreland felt an odd pang of envy. Her thoughts went to the man of whom she was not sure. She forgot Julian Forsham altogether. If Agatha forgot Julian, Julian had certainly forgotten Agatha. The shabby room was full of the enchantment of home, an enchantment at once simple and potent—not the Book of Verses underneath the Bough—not the far land and the unclouding sun, but England and the drip of rain from the eaves. The room he had known from boyhood; the old melodies; and the glow of wood-ash on the open hearth—these things were romance. He had certainly forgotten Agatha, for he said,

“You've played—now sing. Sing the thing that you sang the night before you went away. I've never heard anyone sing it since.”

Amabel did not speak. She touched a note or two softly. It did not come into her mind how much it would confess if she sang the song that he had not named. It was part of a memory which had never grown old. She sang Brahms' Cradle Song softly and just as she might have sung it to a sleepy child—as she had often sung it to Daphne:

“With the dawn, if God will, thou shalt waken to joy.”

The words sounded a second time, and died away. Amabel was thinking of Daphne now, of Daphne wakening to joy. Nothing mattered—everything was worth while if it meant happiness for Daphne.

Later on that evening, Agatha came into her sister's room, handsome and mountainous in pale blue satin and white fur. She leaned on the foot of the bed.

Amabel put down Daphne's letter. She had not been exactly reading it, for she knew it by heart.

“I told you I'd heard from Daphne.”

“Yes,” said Agatha firmly. “Once at the station, twice in the cab, and about two dozen times since.”

“Nonsense, Agatha!” But Amabel coloured and laughed.

“Daphne is all right,” said Agatha Moreland. “I haven't come in here to talk about Daphne, who is about the luckiest girl I know. Jimmy Malleson has taken this trip simply and solely on her account. I happen to know that he really means business; and he'll be a son-in-law after your own heart.”

“You're sure?”

“Absolutely. But, as I said, I've not come in here to talk about Daphne.” She put her elbows on the rail of the bed, clasped her hands under her chin, and looked meaningly at Amabel. “I've come in here to talk about you. I want to know all about Julian Forsham.”

Amabel felt at a serious disadvantage. It is very difficult to be dignified in bed.

“
Who's Who
will tell you.” She told herself furiously that she ought to have outgrown blushing years ago.

“
Who's Who
? Fiddlesticks!” said Agatha. “As if I cared a threepenny bit about Hittite tombs and Chaldæan thingumabobs! What I want to know is, is he the old romance come to life again?—the man you turned down to marry Ethan? I never knew his name. Was it Julian Forsham?”

Amabel's head lifted. Really, Agatha could be very ill-bred.

“We're very old friends,” she began.

Mrs. Moreland laughed aloud.

“Good gracious, Amy, how Victorian you are! Anyone can see that the man's in love with you.” She stopped there because of what she saw in her sister's face.

“Agatha! Really!” Her voice was not quite steady.

All at once Agatha sighed heavily.

“Well, my dear, it's your affair,” she said, “and I won't butt in. At any rate, you'll have the satisfaction of being
sure
that it's you he wants and not your money—
sure
,” she repeated. She stood up straight and looked aside. “You don't know what it is not to be sure. You'll never know—and you may thank God for it. No, please don't say anything. I'm a fool; but you're safe.” She pressed a handkerchief to her face for a moment and went quickly to the door; but, just as she reached it, she turned, came back again, and spoke, her voice amazingly softened:

“I really only wanted to say that I'd be very glad if it was Julian Forsham. You—you haven't had much of a show up to now. That's all.”

When she was gone, Amabel lay for a long time, thinking. The fact, patent to all the world except Agatha, that Cyril Moreland—described by Daphne as “that little worm”—had married her in order to be comfortably provided for for life, had now begun to dawn upon Agatha herself. Poor Agatha!