A STARTLING VISIT.
Mrs. Rose was not a woman of acute perceptions, but even she was
vaguely conscious that there was something not quite satisfactory
about the account Mrs. Haybrow had given of her visit to “The Towers.”
Surely it was very strange that, after being so sure that Mrs. Dale
was an old friend of hers, she should have discovered that she was
mistaken! And again, if the pretty widow had really proved to be a
stranger, why should Mrs. Haybrow, tired as she was after her journey,
have stayed at “The Towers” so long?
And besides, Mrs. Rose could not help thinking that she had heard some
name like “Dolly Leatham” before, although she had forgotten that it
was from the lips of Mrs. Bonnington, and that it had been part of the
backstairs gossip which Mr. Rose would have been angry with her for
encouraging.
Mrs. Rose was a person in whose mind few facts long remained in a
definite shape. Accustomed to have all mental processes performed for
her by her husband, she lived in a state of intellectual laziness, in
which her faculties had begun to rust. Mr. Rose had complete
confidence in Mrs. Haybrow, who was indeed a staid, solid sort of
person who inspired trust. If, therefore, Mr. Rose trusted to Mrs.
Haybrow’s judgment, and Mrs. Haybrow saw no objection to Mabin’s
visit, surely there was no need to fatigue one’s self by hunting out
obstacles to a very convenient arrangement.
And so it fell out that, when Mrs. Haybrow’s visit was over, and the
Roses started for Switzerland, Mabin saw them all off at the station,
and then returned to “Stone House,” to pack up the few things she had
left out which she would want during her stay at “The Towers.”
She had reached the portico, and was going up the steps of her home
with leisurely steps, rather melancholy at the partings which had been
gone through, and with a few girlish fears about her visit, when the
door of the house was opened suddenly before she could ring the bell,
and the parlormaid, one of the two servants who, at the request of the
new tenant, had been left behind, appeared, with her finger to her
lips.
Mabin stopped on the top step and looked at her with surprise.
Langton came out, and spoke in a whisper:
“Shall I pack up your things, and send them in to Mrs. Dale’s
to-night, Miss Mabin? Mr. Banks has come, and he seems such a queer
sort of gentleman, I don’t quite know how to take him yet. He came
upon us quite sudden, almost as soon as the ’bus with the luggage had
turned the corner, and asked sharp-like, if they were all gone. And I
said ‘Yes,’ and he seemed relieved like, and so I didn’t dare to
mention you were coming back to fetch your things.”
Mabin stared gloomily at Langford, who was evidently anxious to get
rid of her.
“What’s the matter with him? Do you think it is Mr. Banks, and not
some man who’s got into the house by pretending to be he?”
“Lor’, Miss Mabin, I never thought of that!” cried poor Langford,
turning quite white.
She had evidently entertained faint suspicions of her own, for at this
suggestion she was about to fly into the house in search of the
new-comer, and perhaps to brand him as an impostor, when Mabin,
smiling at her alarm, caught hold of her to detain her.
“No, no, you silly girl. Of course it’s all right. It’s sure to be all
right. He’s probably eccentric, that’s all. Doesn’t he look the kind
of person you would expect?”
“Oh, yes, Miss Mabin, he’s every inch a gentleman. But--” She
hesitated, apparently unable to put into appropriate words the
impression the new tenant had made upon her.
“But what?”
“He is rather--rather strange-looking. I--I think he looks as if he
wouldn’t live long. His face has a sort of gray look, as if-- Well,
Miss Mabin, it’s a queer thing to say, but he looks to me
half-scared.”
“Mad?” suggested Mabin, more with her lips and eyebrows than with her
voice.
Langford nodded emphatically.
“Oh, dear!”
Then Mabin was silent, trying to recollect all that she had heard in
the family circle about the gentleman who was so anxious to take the
house. And she found that it did not amount to much. A rich man, a
bachelor, of quiet habits, who disliked unnecessary fuss and noise,
and whose references Mr. Rose’s lawyer had declared to be
unimpeachable--this was the sum of the family knowledge of Mr. Banks.
“Did he come quite alone?” asked Mabin, in spite of the mute
entreaties of Langford that she would take herself off.
“Yes, Miss Mabin, quite alone. And he said his luggage would be sent
on.”
After a short pause, during which Mabin made up her mind that there
was nothing to be done but to accept the new-comer as the genuine
article until he proved to be an impostor, she turned reluctantly to
go.
“Good-by, Langford. Bring me my things, and mind you don’t forget to
feed my canary. And you might come and see me sometimes in the
evening, when you can get away. I think I shall be lonely.”
And indeed there were tears in the eyes of the girl, who was already
homesick now that she found herself thus suddenly denied admittance at
the familiar portal.
It was in a very sober and chastened mood that the young girl arrived,
a few minutes later, at the gate of “The Towers,” but the welcome she
received would have put heart into a misanthrope.
Mrs. Dale was waiting in the garden, her pretty, fair face aglow with
impatience to receive her friend. She drew the arm of Mabin, who was
considerably taller than herself, through hers, and led her at once
into the house, to the room which Mabin had been in before.
The table was laid for luncheon, and Mabin observed with surprise that
there were two places ready, although she had not promised to come
till the afternoon.
“There!” cried Mrs. Dale, triumphantly, pointing to the table, “was I
not inspired? The fact is,” she went on, with a smile which was almost
tearful, “I was so anxious for you to come that I had begun to tell
myself that I should be disappointed after all, so I had your place
laid to ‘make believe,’ like the children. And now you are really
here. Oh, it seems too good to be true!”
Mabin was pleased by this reception, as she could not fail to be, but
she was also a little puzzled. She was conscious of no attractions in
herself which could explain such enthusiasm on her account.
“I am afraid,” she said shyly, “that I shall turn out a bitter
disappointment. You can’t know much about girls, Mrs. Dale, or you
would feel, as they all do at home, that there is a time, which I am
going through now, when a girl is just as awkward and as stupid and as
generally undesirable as she can possibly be.”
“Hush, hush, child! You don’t know anything about it. Don’t you know
that girls are charming, and that part of their charm lies in that
very belief that they are ‘all wrong,’ when as a matter of fact they
are everything that is right?”
“Ah! You were never gawky and awkward!”
“I wasn’t tall enough to be gawky, as you like to call yourself. But
five years ago, when I was eighteen, I was just as miserable as you
try to make yourself, believing myself to be in everybody’s way. It
led to awful consequences in my case,” added Mrs. Dale, the excitement
going quite suddenly out of her face and voice, and giving place to a
look and tone of dull despair. Mabin, who had been made to take off
her hat, put her hand in that of the little widow.
“Come and see if you like your room,” said Mrs. Dale, springing
quickly toward the door, with a rapid change of manner. “I must tell
you frankly I am afraid you won’t, because this place has been
constructed haphazard, without any regard to the comfort or
convenience of the unfortunate people who have to live in it. Every
fireplace is so placed that the chimney must smoke whichever way the
wind is, and every window is specially adapted to let in the rain,
when there is any, and the wind, when there isn’t.”
Mrs. Dale led the way as she spoke from the dining-room, and Mabin
followed.
Mrs. Dale certainly exaggerated the defects of the house, but that it
was inconvenient could not be denied. The side nearest to the road,
where the dining-room was, had once been the whole house. It had a
basement, and out of the warren of small rooms of which it had once
consisted, a fairly large hall and a few fair-sized rooms had been
made.
The newer but not very new portion of the house had no basement, and
it was by a short flight of steps that you descended from the hall
into the drawing-room, and by another short flight that you ascended
to the bedroom floor. Here the same irregularity was apparent. A
corridor ran through the house from end to end on this floor, broken
where the new part joined the old by half a dozen steep steps.
It was to a bedroom on the higher level at the old end of the house
that Mrs. Dale conducted Mabin.
“Why, it’s a lovely room!” cried the girl, surprised to find herself
in a big, low-ceilinged corner room lighted by three windows, and
looking out, on one side, to the road, with a view of fields and sea
beyond, and on the other to the garden at the back of the house, where
apple-trees and gooseberry-bushes and the homely potato occupied the
chief space, while the nooks were filled with the fragrant flowers of
cottage gardens, with sweet-william and sweet-pea, mignonette and
wallflower.
“Do you really think so? I’m so glad. I went over to Seagate the other
day and got some cretonne for the curtains and the easy-chair. The old
chintz there was in the room would have given you the nightmare.”
Mabin had not recovered from her first impression of astonishment and
admiration. The dingy dining-room, with its mahogany and horsehair,
had not prepared her for this. A beautiful rug lay in front of the
fireplace, which was filled with a fresh green fern.
“This will be put in the corridor outside at night,” Mrs. Dale was
careful to explain.
The hangings of the little brass bedstead were of cretonne with a
pattern of gray-green birds and white flowers on a pale pink ground:
these hangings were trimmed with lace of a deep cream tint. The rest
of the furniture was enamelled white, with the exception of a dainty
Japanese writing-table in one window, and a low wicker arm-chair in
another.
But it was not so much in these things as in the care and taste with
which all the accessories had been chosen, the silver candlesticks and
tray on the dressing-table, the little Sèvres suit on the
mantelpiece, that a lavish and luxurious hand was betrayed. Mabin’s
delighted admiration made Mrs. Dale smile, and then suddenly burst
into tears.
“Don’t look at me, don’t trouble your head about me, child,” she
cried, as she turned away her head to wipe her eyes. “It was my
vanity, the vanity I can’t get rid of, that made me want to show you I
know how to make things pretty and nice. I made the excuse to myself
that it was to please you, but really I know it was to please myself!”
“But why shouldn’t you please yourself and have pretty things about
you?” asked Mabin in surprise. “Is there any harm in having nice
things, if one has the money to buy them and the taste to choose them?
I suppose it helps to keep the people that make them.”
“That is what I used to say to myself, dear,” said Mrs. Dale with a
sigh. “But now I don’t buy pretty things any more--for--for a reason.”
And again a look of deep pain swept across her face. But at Mabin’s
interested look she shook her head. “No, no,” she added, in a
frightened whisper, “I wouldn’t tell you why for all the world!”
“But you wear pretty clothes! Or is it only that you look so pretty in
them?” suggested Mabin, blushing with the fear that she was blundering
again.
Mrs. Dale shook her head smiling slightly: “I have my frocks made to
fit me, that’s all,” she said simply. “And as for these,” she touched
the flashing rings on her fingers, “I wear them because I’m obliged
to.”
Which was all sufficiently puzzling to the young girl, who, having
washed her hands, was drying them on a towel so fine that this use
seemed to her a sacrilege. She refrained from further remark, however,
upon the luxury in which she found herself installed, and as the
luncheon bell rang at that moment the two ladies went downstairs
together.
But after the beautiful appointments of her room, Mabin was struck by
the contrast afforded by the rest of the house, which was furnished in
the usual manner, with worn carpeting in the corridor and on the
stairs, and with cheap lamps on brackets and tables in the hall and
passages.
At luncheon Mrs. Dale was again in high spirits. She chattered away
brightly for the amusement of her young companion, who, entirely
unaccustomed to so much attention, was happier than she ever
remembered to have been in her life before. Mrs. Dale did not spare
the eccentricities in walk and dress of the ladies in the neighborhood
any more than they had spared hers.
“I don’t know how you can ever be dull when such funny things come
into your head!” cried simple Mabin, wiping her eyes over a hearty fit
of laughing.
Mrs. Dale grew suddenly grave again.
“Ah, nothing is amusing when one is by one’s self, or when one
has--thoughts!” she ended in a low voice, with a different word from
the one which had been in her mind. “And now let me show you my den.
No, it is not a boudoir; it is nothing but a den. Come and see.”
She opened a door which led from the dining-room at once into a small
room, even more bare, more sombre than the other. It had evidently
once served the purpose of a library or study, for there was a heavy
old bookcase in one corner and a row of empty book-shelves in another.
And there was the usual horsehair sofa.
By the one window, however, there was a low and comfortable, though
shabby wicker chair.
“I have had this other door fastened up and the cracks filled in,”
said Mrs. Dale, showing a door opposite to the one by which they had
entered. “It goes down by a flight of break-neck stairs into the
drawing-room, a loathsome dungeon into which I never penetrate. The
draught used to be strong enough to blow me away. So I thought,” she
went on with curious wistfulness, “I might just have that done.”
Again Mabin wondered at the penitential tone; again she glanced up.
But Mrs. Dale recovered herself more quickly this time, and putting
the girl gently into the wicker chair, while she curled herself up on
the horsehair sofa, she drew Mabin out and encouraged the girl by
sympathetic questions, and by still more sympathetic listening, to lay
bare some of the recesses of her young heart.
The afternoon passed quickly; and when Mrs. Dale, springing suddenly
off the sofa after a silence, ran away into the dining-room to ask
about certain dainties which she had ordered from town for Mabin’s
benefit, but which had failed to arrive that morning, the girl was
left in a state of happy excitement, thinking what a picture the
little golden-haired creature had made as she sat curled up on the
sofa, and wondering how she could have been so ungrateful as to
imagine she could be anything but happy under the same roof with Mrs.
Dale.
Mabin looked idly out of the window, and craned her neck to see if she
could catch a glimpse of the sea. But this was the north side of the
house, and the sea was on the southwest; so she failed. But as she
looked out, she saw a fly drive slowly up the road, and was surprised
to find that the solitary occupant, an elderly lady with gray hair,
and a hard, forbidding face, stared at her fixedly through a pair of
gold eyeglasses as if she felt some personal interest in her. Mabin
felt herself blush, for she was sure she had never seen the lady
before.
Just as she drew her head in she heard the cab stop at the front gate.
Mrs. Dale’s voice, talking brightly to the parlormaid, came to Mabin’s
ears through the door, which had been left ajar. Then she heard a
knock at the front door, and the parlormaid went to answer it.
“Mabin, come here,” cried Mrs. Dale from the next room. “I want to
show you----”
The words died on her lips; and Mabin, who was in the act of coming
into the dining-room in obedience to her call, stopped short, and,
after a moment’s consideration of what she ought to do, retreated into
the smaller room and shut the door behind her.
But she had been in time to witness a strange meeting. For the elderly
lady whom she had seen in the cab had appeared at the outer door of
the dining-room as she had shown herself at the inner one, and it was
at the sight of her that Mrs. Dale had stopped short in her speech,
with a look of abhorrence and terror on her face.
The elder lady spoke at once, in a harsh, commanding voice. She was
very tall, erect, and stately, handsomely dressed in black, altogether
a commanding personality. Her voice rang through the room, and reached
Mabin’s ears, striking the girl with terror too.
“I am afraid I have taken you by surprise.”
“I suppose,” answered Mrs. Dale in a low voice, “that was what you
intended to do.”
“I am sorry to see you meet me in that spirit. I have come with every
wish for your good. I think it is not right that you should be left
here by yourself, as you hold no intercourse, of course, with the
people of the neighborhood.”
There was a pause, which Mrs. Dale would not break.
“I propose, therefore,” went on the elder lady, “to stay with you
myself, at least for a little while.”
Mrs. Dale, who had remained standing, as her visitor did also, turned
upon her quickly:
“That I will not put up with.”
“That is scarcely courteous, surely?”
“There is no question of lip-courtesy between you and me. You, and no
one else, have been the cause of all that has happened, and I refuse,
absolutely refuse, to stay under the same roof with you for a single
day.”
In the mean time poor Mabin, frightened and uncertain what to do, had
in the first place put her hands to her ears so that she might not
play the part of unwilling eavesdropper. But as the voices grew too
loud for her to avoid hearing what the ladies said, she made a frantic
rush for the door, and presented herself, breathless, blushing, in the
doorway.
“Oh, I--I can’t help hearing what you say!” cried she, glancing from
the forbidding face of the visitor to Mrs. Dale, who looked prettier
than ever in her anger.
“My dear, it doesn’t matter,” said Dorothy gently.
But the elder lady broke in:
“It does matter very much. This is not a fit house for a young girl
while you live in it.”
And turning to Mabin, she said with a sudden burst of vindictive
feeling: “Go home at once to your proper guardians. The woman you are
now with is a----”
Before she could utter the word which was ready to her lips, Mrs. Dale
interrupted her. Springing between the other two women with a low cry,
she addressed the elder lady with such a torrent of passion that both
Mabin and the visitor could only listen without an attempt to stop
her.
“You shall not say it! You shall not tell her?! You know that she was
safe with me, as if she had been in her own home. You have spoilt her
happiness with me, because you knew it made me happy. But you shall
not contaminate her with your wicked words. Go, child.” She seized
Mabin by the arm, and ran with her to the outer door of the
dining-room. “Run away. I will find you when this woman is gone.”
And the next moment Mabin found herself in the hall, with the
dining-room door closed.