A LADY IN BLACK
BY
FLORENCE WARDEN
_Author of “The House on the Marsh,” “A Terrible Family,”
“Adela’s Ordeal,” “A Perfect Fool,” “A Sensational
Case,” etc._
THE TRADE SUPPLIED BY
THE INTERNATIONAL NEWS COMPANY,
LONDON. NEW YORK. LEIPSIC.
[COPYRIGHT.]
Copyright, 1895,
by
The International News Company.
[_All Rights Reserved._]
CONTENTS.
I.--A Mystery Somewhere
II.--A Penitent
III.--An Invitation and a Warning
IV.--Was It a Recognition?
V.--A Startling Visit
VI.--Mr. Banks
VII.--A Strange Fancy
VIII.--A Haunted House
IX.--A Picture
X.--The Picking Up of Some Silver Threads
XI.--An Interview with Mr. Banks
XII.--A Horrible Secret
XIII.--Mrs. Dale’s Version of the Story
XIV.--No Mercy
XV.--Some Explanations
A LADY IN BLACK.
CHAPTER I.
A MYSTERY SOMEWHERE.
“And besides, you know, my dear Mrs. Rose, there is generally
something wrong about a woman who dresses so very well.”
So spoke Mrs. Bonnington, the Vicar’s wife, laying down the law; a law
indeed, which most English women are ready to take for granted. Mrs.
Rose, a tall, thin, pale lady who had “nerves,” and who, on this
bright April morning, wore a woollen shawl half off her shoulders as
she sat in the warm sun by the dining-room window, assented readily.
“That’s what I always say. Especially a widow. I’m sure if anything
were to happen to my husband,” went on Mrs. Rose euphemistically, “the
last thing I should think about would be my dress. I should be far too
unhappy to trouble myself about the fit of my dresses or the shape of
my bonnets.”
Now this was perhaps true, as Mrs. Rose, though she spent as much
money and as much thought upon her clothes as her compeers, never
succeeded in looking as if her clothes had been made for her, or as if
the subject of “fit” were of any importance.
Mrs. Bonnington shook her head with vague disquietude, and resumed her
homily.
“I assure you the matter has caused me a good deal of anxiety. You
know how solicitous both the Vicar and I are about the tone of the
parish.”
“I do indeed,” murmured Mrs. Rose sympathetically.
“You know how hard we work to keep up a high standard. Why, everybody
knows that it was through us that those objectionable people at Colwyn
Lodge went away, and how we would do anything to rid the place of
those terrible Solomons at Stone Court!”
At the other end of the room, a young face, with gray eyes full of
mischief, was turned in the direction of Mrs. Bonnington with a
satirical smile. Mabin Rose, the overgrown, awkward step-daughter of
Mrs. Rose, who hated the Vicar’s wife, and called her a busybody and a
gossip, brought her darning nearer to the table and dashed headlong
into the fray.
“Papa wouldn’t thank you if you did drive the Solomons out of the
parish, as you did the people at Colwyn Lodge, Mrs. Bonnington,” broke
in the clear young voice that would be heard. “He says Mr. Solomon is
the best tenant he ever had, and that he wishes that some of the
Christians were like him.”
“Hush, Mabin. Go on with your work, and don’t interrupt with your rude
remarks,” said Mrs. Rose sharply. “I am quite sure your father never
said such a thing, except perhaps in fun,” she went on, turning
apologetically to her visitor. “Nobody is more anxious about ‘tone’
and all those things than Mr. Rose, and he was saying only yesterday
that he would rather I didn’t call upon this Mrs. Dale until something
more was known about her.”
Again the young face at the other end of the table looked up
mutinously; but this time Mabin controlled her inclination to protest.
She looked down again, and began to darn furiously, to the relief of
her feelings, but to the injury of the stocking.
Mrs. Bonnington went on:
“You were quite right. It’s not that I wish to be uncharitable.”
“Of course not,” assented Mrs. Rose with fervor.
“But a woman like yourself, with daughters to take care of, cannot be
too careful. Young people are so easily led away; they think so much
of the mere outside. They are so easily dazzled and taken in by
appearances.”
Mabin grew red, perceiving that this little sermon by the way was
directed at herself. Her step-sisters, Emily and Ethel, one of whom
could be heard “practising” in the drawing-room, were not the sort of
girls to be led away by anything.
“But why shouldn’t a nice face mean something nice?” put in the rash
young woman again.
The fact was that Mabin had been charmed with the sweet pink-and-white
face and blue eyes of Mrs. Dale, their new neighbor at “The Towers,”
and was mentally comparing the widow’s childlike charms with the
acidulated attractions of the Vicar’s dowdy wife.
“And why,” pursued Mabin, as both the elder ladies seemed to pause to
gain strength to fall upon her together, “shouldn’t she be just as
sorry for her husband’s death because she looks nice over it? It
seemed to me, when she sat near us at church on Sunday, that she had
the saddest face I had ever seen. And as for her corrupting us by her
‘tone,’ she won’t have anything to do with any of us. Mrs. Warren has
called upon her, and the Miss Bradleys and Mrs. Peak and a lot more
people, and she’s always ‘not at home.’ So even if she is wicked, I
should think you might let her stay. Surely she can’t do us much harm
just by having her frocks better made than the rest of us.”
When Mabin had finished this outrageous speech, there was an awful
pause. Mrs. Rose hardly knew how to administer such a reproof as
should be sufficiently scathing; while Mrs. Bonnington waited in
solemn silence for the reproof to come. Mabin looked from her
step-mother’s face to that of the Vicar’s wife, and thought she had
better retire before the avalanche descended. So she gathered up her
work hastily, running her darning-needle into her hand in her
excitement, muttered an awkward apology and excuse for her
disappearance at the same time, and shot out of the room in the
ungainly way which had so often before caused her stepmother to
shudder, as she did now.
When the door had closed upon the girl, closed, unfortunately, with a
bang, Mrs. Bonnington sighed.
“I am afraid,” she said, unconsciously assuming still more of her
usual clerical tone and accent, “that Mabin must be a great anxiety to
you!”
Mrs. Rose sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, wearily.
“If you could realize _how_ great an anxiety,” she murmured in a
solemn tone, “you would pity me! If it were not that Mr. Rose gives
his authority to support mine in dealing with her, she would be
absolutely unmanageable, I assure you.”
“A froward spirit! And one singularly unsusceptible to good
influences,” said the Vicar’s wife. “However, we must persevere with
her, and hope for a future blessing on our labors, even if it should
come too late for us to be witnesses of her regeneration.”
“I am sure I have always done my best for her, and treated her just as
I have my own children. But you see with what different results! The
seed is the same, but the soil is not. I don’t know whether you knew
her mother? But I suppose Mabin must take after her. She is utterly
unlike her father.”
“She is indeed. Mr. Rose is such a particularly judicious, upright
man. The Vicar has the highest respect for him.”
Mrs. Bonnington paused, to give full effect to this noble encomium.
Mrs. Rose acknowledged it by a graceful bend of the head, and went on:
“The great failing about poor Mabin is that she is not womanly. And
that is the one thing above all that my husband asks of a woman. Let
her only be womanly, he always says, and I will forgive everything
else. Now my own girls are that, above everything.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mrs. Bonnington with decision; “but that is just the
fault of our age, Mrs. Rose. Girls are no longer brought up to be
contented to be girls. They must put themselves on the same footing
with their brothers. Mabin is in the fashion. And no doubt that is all
she desires. You see how this Mrs. Dale has caught hold of her
imagination, by nothing but her fashionable clothes!”
Mrs. Rose put on a womanly air of absolute helplessness:
“Well, what can I do?” said she.
Mrs. Bonnington came a little nearer.
“In the case of this Mrs. Dale,” said she in a lower voice, “go on
just as you have begun. Do not call upon her. Do not have anything to
do with her. To tell you the truth, it was about her that I came to
see you this morning. She has already brought mischief into our own
peaceful home. She is a dangerous woman.”
“Dear me! You don’t mean that!” said Mrs. Rose with vivid interest.
“Unhappily I do. My son Rudolph came back from his ship only ten days
ago, and already he can think of nothing but this Mrs. Dale.”
“After having had the unpardonable insolence to leave your call
unreturned, she has got hold of your son?” gasped Mrs. Rose.
“Well, not exactly that, as far as I know,” admitted the Vicar’s wife.
“He says he has never spoken to her. And the dear boy has never told
me an untruth before.”
“But if this dreadful woman has entangled him, of course she might
make him say anything!” cried Mrs. Rose in sympathetic agonies.
“I should not like to accuse a fellow-woman of doing that,” replied
Mrs. Bonnington, severely; “but I think it is a bad and unnatural
sign, when my son, who has never taken the least notice of any of the
young girls in the neighborhood, becomes absorbed, in a few days, in
the doings of a person who is a complete stranger to him and who calls
herself a widow.”
“Then don’t you think,” purred Mrs. Rose, with the eagerness of one
who scents a scandal, “that she _is_ a widow?”
There was a pause. And Mrs. Bonnington spoke next, with the
deliberation of one who has a great duty to perform.
“I should be very sorry to have it said of me that I was the first to
start a rumor which might be thought unchristian or unkind,” she said
with a deprecatory wave of the brown cotton gloves she wore in the
mornings. “But I have thought it my duty to make inquiries, and I
deeply regret to say that I have found out several things which lead
me to the conclusion that this person has settled down in our midst
under false pretences.”
“You don’t say so!”
“You shall judge for yourself. In the first place, although she calls
herself Mrs. Dale, the initials on some of her linen are ‘D. M.’ Now
M. does not stand for ‘Dale,’ does it?”
“Perhaps her maiden name began with M.,” suggested Mrs. Rose.
“My informant tells me,” went on Mrs. Bonnington, as if offended by
the interruption, “that in her old books, school-books and work of
that sort, there is written the name ‘Dorothy Leatham.’ So that she
seems to have passed already by three different names. I leave it to
your own common sense whether that is not a curious circumstance,
considering that she is still young.”
“It is certainly curious, very curious. And--and--”
Mrs. Rose hardly liked to ask on what authority her visitor made these
statements, which savored strongly of the back-stairs. She had hardly
paused an instant before Mrs. Bonnington rushed into further details:
“And now here is another thing which is very strange: her servants
have none of them been with her long. They were all engaged together,
three months ago in London, not by Mrs. Dale herself, but by an old
lady whose name nobody seems to know. Now isn’t that rather
remarkable? They all came down here, and had the place ready for their
mistress, before they so much as saw her.”
Mrs. Bonnington leaned back in her chair, and drew on her brown cotton
gloves further. Mrs. Rose wondered again as to the source of this
information. She felt a little ashamed of listening to all this
gossip, and was less inclined than her friend to take a suspicious
view of the case, strange though it was. So she contented herself with
murmured interjections, to fill up the pause before Mrs. Bonnington
went on again:
“However, I have got a clew to where she came from, for a van-load of
furniture came down before she arrived, and it came from Todcaster.”
“Todcaster!” echoed Mrs. Rose. “Then we shall soon know something more
about her. Mr. Rose’s old friend, Mrs. Haybrow, is coming down to see
us early next month. She lived near Todcaster when she was a girl, and
she often goes back to the old place, and keeps in touch with all the
people about there.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Bonnington, rising from her chair, and speaking in a
rather more stilted tone than at first, with the consciousness that
her news had hardly been received as she had expected, “I sincerely
trust we may find we have been mistaken. No one will rejoice more
unfeignedly than I if she proves to be indeed what she gives herself
out to be. Indeed, if she had received me frankly at the outset, I
would have shown her such Christian sympathy as one soul can give to
another without asking any questions. And it is only in the interests
of our young people that I lift up my voice now.”
The Vicar’s wife then took her leave, and went on her way to complete
her morning rounds. She was rather a terrible person, this little,
faded middle-aged woman with the curate’s voice and the curate’s
manner, uniting, as she did, a desperate interest in other people’s
affairs with a profound conviction that her interference in them could
only be for good. But she had her good points. A devoted, submissive,
and worshipful wife, she modified her worship by considering herself
the Vicar’s guardian angel. A parish busybody and tyrant, she never
spared herself and could show true womanly kindness to such of her
husband’s parishioners as were not of “a froward spirit.”
Unluckily, she had not the power of conciliating, but had, on the
contrary, a grand talent for raising up antagonism in unregenerate
minds like those of the unfortunate Mabin.
The young girl had been both sorry and ashamed at her own loss of
temper. Not that an outburst such as that she had indulged in was any
unusual thing. Like many young girls of spirit under injudicious rule,
Mabin was in a state of perpetual friction with those around her. Her
step-mother was not intentionally unkind; but poor Mabin had to suffer
from the constant comparison of her unruly and independent self with
her quiet and insipid half-sisters.
And the worst of it was that her father was even less indulgent than
his wife to her waywardness. A stiff, straight-laced, narrow-minded
man, accustomed to be looked up to and deferred to by the female
members of his household, he disapproved in the strongest manner both
of the erratic moods of his eldest daughter, and of her longing for
independence. It was from him, indeed, that Mabin chiefly suffered.
She looked upon the cold, handsome, aquiline face of her father with
something very much like horror, and the mere fact that he approved
only of submissive “womanly” women seemed to goad her into the very
rebelliousness and independence which shocked him so deeply.
At the same time that he disapproved of her, however, Mr. Rose did not
hesitate to avail himself of his daughter’s bright wits; and if any
task requiring a little thought or a little judgment presented itself,
it was always upon Mabin’s shoulders that he put the burden.
He had even gone so far, protesting loudly the while against the
“unfeminine” practice, as to allow Mabin to ride a bicycle; and it was
on this machine that the girl was expected to go into Seagate two or
three times a week, to fetch him his books and magazines from the
local library.
As Mrs. Bonnington descended the steps of the big stone house, and,
emerging from the portico, made her way down the broad gravel path to
the gate, she met Mabin coming out by the side gate among the
evergreens with her bicycle by her side.
Now if there was one thing more detestable in the eyes of the Vicar’s
wife than another, it was a bicycle. But this detestation increased
tenfold when the rider of the obnoxious machine was a woman. It was
her one grievance against upright Mr. Rose that he allowed his
nineteen-year-old daughter to “career about the country” on the
abominable thing.
She uttered an involuntary “Ugh!” of disgust as the thing almost
touched her uplifted skirts.
“I beg your pardon. I hope I didn’t run against you. I am so clumsy,”
said Mabin with studied politeness.
“You can’t expect to be anything but clumsy while you use such a thing
as that!” said Mrs. Bonnington severely. “I wish for your own sake it
would get broken, that you might never be seen in an attitude so
unbecoming to a gentlewoman again.”
“Is it you who tell your sons to throw stones at it when I am riding
past the Vicarage?” said Mabin, trying to speak civilly, while the
blood rose to her cheeks. “Walter struck the hind wheel two days ago,
and now I have to walk as long as I am within stone’s-throw of your
garden wall.”
“I have heard nothing about it,” said Mrs. Bonnington icily.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Mabin, keeping her tone in check. “But
I see Rudolph has taken to riding one too since he’s been back. So if
they throw stones at me, I can have my revenge upon him,” she
concluded darkly.
“If girls unsex themselves, they can’t expect to be treated with the
chivalry they used to receive,” said Mrs. Bonnington, as, not caring
to continue the encounter with the rebellious one, she turned her
back, and went down the hill.