The Dower House Mystery (6 page)

“Oh, I'll have him,” said Amabel—and then, “Poor Mrs. Brown, I was afraid there was something.” Her thoughts went to the little girls with the blue check pinafores and cork-screw curls. “Poor Annie,” she said with half a sigh.

Ellen sniffed the sniff of virtue.

They went to bed early. Miss Harriet's bed was very comfortable, and Amabel was tired.

Ellen, standing in the doorway between the two rooms, bade her mistress good-night, and then lingered.

“What is it?” said Amabel at last—and was aware of offence.

“Oh, nothing,” said Ellen; but she stood with the door in her hand, and did not go.

Amabel looked at her sleepily.

“It's really time you were in bed, Ellen,” she said. And then enlightenment came to her. “Leave the door open if you like, and then if I want anything, I can call out to you.”

Ellen rallied her dignity.

“I wouldn't like to think as you wanted anything, or was nervous,” she said.

“No, I know. Oh, Ellen, I'm so dreadfully sleepy.
Do
go to bed.”

“And if you should wake up—”

“I shan't. I'm going to sleep, and sleep, and sleep. But you can leave the door open.”

Amabel would probably not have stirred till daylight if it had not been for the abominable conduct of Marmaduke. She was tired enough to sleep through his preliminary twistings and turnings; but when he left his basket and began to scrabble at the edge of her bed, she woke, cuffed him, and then went to sleep again. But this time the sleep was a troubled one. Through its veils she was aware of Marmaduke sniffing and whining. Then suddenly he barked, and she was broad awake, tingling all over, her hands stretched out in the darkness, feeling for the unaccustomed switch.

The light showed Marmaduke's basket overturned, his bedding on the floor, and himself leaning dejectedly against the door that led into the passage. When Amabel scolded him he growled, backed away from her, and retreated to a dark corner where his eyes looked like emeralds. Put back in his basket and slapped, he tucked his nose under his tail and appeared to be wrapped in slumber.

Amabel lay awake for an hour, listening to all the tiny sounds which edge the silence in any old house—sounds imperceptible by day, and well-nigh imperceptible by night. Sleep came back to her slowly.

Chapter VI

Mrs. Brown sat up in bed, with a very clean pillow behind her and a very clean sheet turned down over the faded eiderdown which had been a wedding present from Miss Harriet Forsham. There was a starched white cap on her head and a cross-over shawl of crimson wool about her shoulders. The shawl had a white crochet border done in shell pattern.

Mrs. Brown herself was pale and plump. She had mild, kind eyes, and a surprisingly firm mouth.

“Now, just to think of its being you!” she said. “When Mr. Forsham wrote and said that a lady had taken the house, I no more thought of its being the young lady that we was all so fond of—and then last night, when Jenny come down and said that you remembered us—well, I
was
puzzled! And now, just to think of its being you!” She paused, beamed upon Amabel, and said, “I should have known you, my dear,—yes, I should have known you for sure.”

“That's very nice of you,” said Amabel. “Twenty years is a long time.”

“Oh, my dear,
yes
. The old ladies gone; Forsham Old House let—and that's a thing I never thought to see; and you a widow—deary me! Have you any children, ma'am, may I ask?”

“One,” said Amabel. “Daphne is just grown up. She has gone to Egypt for the winter with some friends.”

Mrs. Brown sighed heavily.

“Ah well, children's a trouble,” she said. “If we don't have 'em we fret for 'em, and if we do, they're just a trouble. There was a time when I thought I'd go to my grave single—I married late, you know, when Mr. George and Mr. Julian was out of the nursery, and the longing for children come over me so that I couldn't bear it. And I took Brown, and many's the time. I've wished I hadn't.”

“Oh, Mrs. Brown,” said Amabel, “but you wouldn't be without Jenny, would you?”

Mrs. Brown's mild eyes filled with tears.

“Jenny's a good girl—I'm not saying a word against Jenny,” she said. “But, oh, my dear, I can't look at her and not think of Annie.”

“I remember Annie,” said Amabel gently. She took Mrs. Brown's hand and held it. The fingers closed hard on hers.

Only sixteen—and he didn't marry her—and she ran away—and we've never heard since.” The words came in a slow whisper. The pressure on Amabel's fingers increased. “It's hard, my dear, it's hard,” said Mrs. Brown.

Amabel came away feeling sad and a little conscience-stricken. Mr. Berry's suspicions of Mrs. Brown and Jenny were too ridiculous for words. She was ashamed of having listened to them. The two women seemed to her extraordinarily simple and pathetic in their isolation and the sorrow which brooded over them. Ellen's explanation of the tenants' flight seemed every moment more reasonable—the passages smelt of blue mould; the garden rotted in the rain; the rooms were darkened by curtains of neglected ivy.

“George Forsham always was a fool. How in the world he
expected
to let a house in such a state of neglect! I think I'll write and tell him that new wall-papers and chintzes will exorcise his ghosts.”

There was a good fire in the little sitting-room, but she stirred it and added another log. She was surprised at the absence of Marmaduke, who adored a fire. Presently she went in search of Ellen.

Marmaduke had had his dinner and been turned into the garden for a stroll.

“And seeing 'e 'asn't been tearing the doors down, I made certain that you'd let him in, ma'am.”

“No, I haven't seen him. Ellen, he'd never stay out in the rain like this. Where can he be?”

“'E's a dratted nuisance, neither more nor less,” said Ellen gloomily. But she went to the door, nevertheless, and stood there calling for ten minutes or more. “He'll come back presently,” she said at last.

But the hours passed, and Marmaduke did not come back.

Whilst Amabel and Ellen were searching high and low for Marmaduke, Julian Forsham was tramping along the muddy lane between the gardener's cottage, in which he had that morning installed himself, and Wood End where the Berkeleys lived. He reflected as he walked that if Forsham still held for him a hint of home, it was thanks to Susan and Edward Berkeley.

He found them in the smoking-room, and felt his welcome, though neither of them offered him any conventional greeting. Edward Berkeley looked up from a treatise on earth-worms and said, “Hullo, Julian!” Lady Susan, sitting cross-legged in front of the fire with six rose catalogues spread out before her and a much corrected list in her hand, merely nodded and said, “You're just in the nick of time. Come and disentangle this horrible list with me. You needn't sit on the floor unless you like.”

“Hullo, Edward!” said Julian. “I don't believe you've moved since I saw you last—three years ago, isn't it? Susan, not
more
roses!”

Susan Berkeley moved two catalogues, and he sat down on the floor beside her.

“It's the new sorts,” she said.

“It's vice,” said Julian.

“But I don't buy any clothes.”

Julian threw back his head and laughed.

“My dear Susan, that makes it worse, not better. You ought to buy clothes. A woman who doesn't buy clothes is a monster of virtue.”

Lady Susan patted her worn tweed skirt affectionately.

“Pre-war,” she said. Then, with the chuckle that Julian loved, “You see, if I spend money on roses, there's beauty—months and months of it,—the sort of thing that makes you say ‘Thank God' right out loud in front of your gardener; whereas no one's going to say ‘Thank God' if they see me in a new dress. It's all a question of values.”

Julian looked at the square figure and strong, plain face, and smiled suddenly, charmingly.

“My dear Susan, I always say ‘Thank God' when I see you,” he said; and Susan Berkeley actually blushed.

When they had straightened out the list, Julian took the catalogues and put them firmly away in a drawer.

“From duty to pleasure,” he said. “Gossip is now the order of the day. As a returned wanderer, I am naturally thirsting to know who is born, and married, and bankrupt. To begin with”—he sat down on the floor again and made himself comfortable with a cushion—“to begin with, I hear George has jockeyed some unfortunate old lady into taking the Dower House.”

“Susan is going to call on her,” said Edward Berkeley.

“What Edward really means,” said Lady Susan crossly, “is that I've had a letter from George in his most eighteenth-century grand seigneur style, ordering me to go and call on her. She's a Mrs. Grey, by the by; and she'll probably have run away from the damp and the general discomfort long before I get the length of calling.”

Edward Berkeley turned a leaf.

“Did you know that there were fifty known varieties of British earth-worms, and that in 1865 only eleven had been identified?—Susan will go and call on her to-morrow,” he added.

“You shall come with me, Julian.”

“I? Jamais de la vie. To all intents and purposes, my good Susan, I'm not here at all—I'm in Italy.”

Lady Susan snorted.

“Don't you flatter yourself. Do you imagine there's a single soul in the village that doesn't know you're here? When did you come? This morning? Well, old Bell told Mary all about it when he came with the milk at three. So that's that!”

Julian ran his hands through his hair.

“I shall not call,” he said firmly. “No one shall make me. By the way, who's been building the comic bungalow by the bridge?”

“People of the name of Miller—brother and sister. He's an artist—away a good deal. She gardens. I like Anne Miller.”

“Any other new comers?”

“There's Nita King,” said Lady Susan in a gloomy voice.

“Who is Nita King?”

“She's a widow. She says she's a cousin of Edward's.”

Edward lifted his eyes from his pamphlet.

“My dear,” he said quietly. “Since I had eight great-uncles, and they all had families of fifteen and upwards, why should she not be my cousin? Personally, I see no reason to suppose that she is not a grand-daughter of my Uncle John's ninth son. I believe his name was Albert.”

“Well, hers is Nita. She's a red-haired serpent,” said Lady Susan.

Julian grinned.

“I have a passionate adoration for red hair,” he declared.

“Tell her so. Tell her the first time you meet her. She won't mind; she's that sort. Only don't blame me if you find you've got engaged to her without quite knowing how.”

Edward Berkeley turned another leaf, and spoke without looking up:

“She has most undeniable ankles.”

Julian's eyes danced.

“Where does this exciting lady live?” he inquired.

Lady Susan got up, opened the drawer which Julian had shut, extracted all her rose catalogues, and came back with them to the hearth-rug.

“Mr. Bronson lent her the Lodge for a time. He seemed to think he was obliging Edward. At the moment, I believe, she's staying up at the Old House.”

“And the Bronsons?”

“The girl's just grown up—a handsome, shy lump at present. Mr. Bronson is just the same. People like him, you know—he's generous without making too much of a splash. As a matter of fact, he's a great deal better liked than George ever was. Pity you weren't the elder brother, Julian.” She opened one of her catalogues, became immersed for a moment, and the ninquired, “Do you know Mabel Morse?”

“Good Lord, no! How should I? Is she another of Edward's cousins?”

“She's a rose,” said Lady Susan in tones of indignant scorn. “I'm sick of people, and I'm going to talk roses. I give you fair warning. If you don't like it, go and talk to Edward. He's just joined a thing called the Incorporated Vermin Repression Society and College of Pestology, and he can't find anyone who will listen whilst he explains its aims.”

“I'd rather talk about Mabel,” said Julian hurriedly.

He dined with the Berkeleys, and came back to his cottage late. The rain had ceased. The moon looked down on rising mist. As he paused at the door for a moment, he heard a woman's voice calling in the distance, and stood still to listen.

What queer tricks memory plays us. Years pass. The silted dust of every day gathers upon old thoughts and feelings, and the incidents with which those thoughts and feelings were associated. And then suddenly, after ten years, fifteen, twenty, the past may come alive again at a word, a touch—a who knows what?

Julian stood, and heard a woman calling; and the sound took him back twenty years. The brief, long buried romance of his boyhood came vividly to his memory. All the romantic side of his nature thrilled to it pleasantly, whilst that other Julian, man of the world—a little tired, a little blasé, a little disillusioned—stood by, as it were, and made sarcastic comment.

The voice called again, and Julian began to move towards the sound. He remembered a May night, all moonlight and apple-blossom. He remembered Amabel Ferguson, and how desperately he had cared for her then. Moonlight and apple-blossom, and Amabel's voice calling to the old retriever beloved of his aunts. The memory, robbed of pain, was as pleasant as a dream. Strange how the pain went out of things, leaving just a ghost behind. He came to the very tree where they had kissed—that one unpremeditated kiss which had lain so heavy on Amabel's conscience. The branches had been weighed down with their drifts of scented blossom then. They were almost leafless now, and the rain dripped from them.

He wondered a little about Amabel as he stood there. She had married the old professor; but beyond that he knew nothing. Joan Berkeley, who had been her friend, had gone to China, and there was no link. That was as it should be. One should certainly never meet one's first love again. Moonlight and apple-blossom are the right setting for romance. The anti-climax of twenty years after is its destruction. He had never had the slightest desire to see Amabel again.