Miss Wharf at Home
The best houses in Marport were situated on the Cliffs. They
stood a considerable way back and had small plots of ground
before them cultivated or not, according to the taste of those
who owned them. Some of these gardens were brilliant with
flowers, others had nothing but shrubs in them, presenting
rather a sombre appearance, and a few were bare sun-burnt grass
plots, with no adornment whatsoever. A broad road divided the
gardens from the grassy undulations of the cliffs, and along
this thoroughfare, rolled carriages, bicycles, and motor-cars
all day during the season. Then came the grass on the cliff-tops
which stretched for a long distance, and which was dotted with
shelters for nervous invalids. At one end there was a round
band-stand where red-coated musicians played lively airs from the
latest musical comedy. Round the stand were rows of chairs hired
out at twopence an afternoon, and indeed, all over the lawns,
seats of various kinds were scattered. At the end of the grass,
the cliffs sloped gradually and were intersected with winding
paths, which led downward to the asphalt Esplanade which ran
along the water's edge, when the tide was high, and beside
evil-smelling mud when the tide was out. And on what was known
as the beach--a somewhat gritty strand,--were many bathing
machines. Such was the general appearance of Marport which the
Essex people looked on as a kind of Brighton, only much better.
Miss Sophia Wharf owned a cosy little house at the far end of
the cliffs, and just at the point where Marport begins to melt
into the country. It was a modern house comfortably furnished
and brilliant with electric lights. The garden in front of it
was well taken care of, there were scarlet and white shades to
the windows and flower boxes filled with blossoms on the sills.
Everyone who passed remarked on the beauty of the house, and
Miss Wharf was always pleased when she heard them envy her
possessions. She liked to possess a Naboth's Vineyard of her
own, and appreciated it the more, when others would have liked
to take it. She had an income of one thousand a year and
therefore could live very comfortably. The house (Ivy Lodge was
it's highly original name) was her own, bought in the days when
Marport was nothing but a fishing village. She knew everyone in
the neighbourhood, was a staunch friend to the vicar who was
high church and quite after her own heart in the use of banners,
incense, candles and side-altars, and on the whole was one of
the leading ladies of the place. She had the reputation of being
charitable, but this was owing to Miss Pewsey who constantly
trumpeted the bestowal of any stray shilling being by her
patroness.
Miss Wharf was a lady of good family, but had quarrelled with
her relatives. She was a tall, cold, blonde woman who had once
been handsome and still retained a certain portion of good
looks, in spite of her forty and more years. She lived with her
niece Olivia the child of a sister long since dead, and with
Miss Pewsey, to whom she gave a home as a companion. But Miss
Wharf well knew, that Lavinia Pewsey was worth her weight in
gold owing to the way she praised up her good, kind, devoted,
loving, sweet, friend. The adjectives are Miss Pewsey's own, but
some people said that Sophia Wharf did not deserve to have them
attached to her. The lady had her enemies, and these openly
declared, as the Major had done, that she was a mass of granite.
Other people, less prejudiced, urged that Miss Wharf looked
after Olivia, who was a penniless orphan. To which the grumblers
retorted that Miss Wharf liked someone to vent her temper on,
and that the poor girl, being too pretty, did duty as a whipping
boy. This was possibly true, for Olivia and her aunt did not get
on well together. In her own way the girl looked as cold as Miss
Wharf, but this coldness was merely a mask to hide a warm and
loving nature, while Miss Wharf was an ice-berg through and
through. However, on the whole, Sophia Wharf was well liked, and
took care to make the most of her looks and her moderate income
and her reputation as a charitable lady. And Miss Pewsey was the
show-woman who displayed her patroness's points to their best
advantage.
The drawing-room of Ivy Lodge was a flimsy, pretty, feminine,
room, furnished in a gim-crack fashion, of the high art style.
The floor was waxed, and covered with Persian praying mats, the
chairs were gilt and had spindle legs the settee was Empire, the
piano was encased in green wood and adorned with much brass, the
sofa was Louis Quinze and covered with brocade, and there were
many tables of rose-wood, dainty and light, heaped high with
useless nick-knacks.
The walls of pale green were adorned with water-colour pictures,
and many mirrors draped with Liberty silk. Everywhere were large
bowls of flowers, miniatures of Miss Wharf at various times of
her life, curiosities from China and Japan and the near East,
and all sorts of odds and ends which Miss Wharf had collected on
her travels. Not that she had been to the East, for the
evidences of civilisation in those lands came from Dr. Forge and
Major Tidman, but Miss Wharf had explored Germany, Switzerland
and Italy and consequently had brought home cuckoo-clocks,
quaint carvings, pictures of the Madonna, Etruscan idols and
such like things with which every tourist loads himself or
herself. The result was, that the drawing-room looked like a
curiosity shop, but it was considered to be one of the prettiest
drawing-rooms in Essex.
Miss Wharf looked too large and too substantial for the frail
furniture of the room. She had a double chin and was certainly
very stout. Very wisely she had a special arm-chair placed in
the window--from which she could see all that was going on,--and
here she sat working most of the day. She was great on doing
fancy articles for bazaars, and silk ties for such gentlemen as
she admired, for Miss Wharf, old maid as she was, liked male
society. The Major was her great admirer, so was young Walker,
Lady Jabe's nephew. Sophia was not very sure of this last gentleman, as
she shrewdly suspected--prompted by Miss Pewsey--that he admired Olivia.
Rupert also admired Olivia and wanted to marry her, a proceeding which
Miss Wharf objected to. Miss Pewsey supported her in this, for both
women were envious of the youth which had passed from them for ever.
But Miss Wharf had also another reason, which Miss Pewsey knew, but of
which Olivia was ignorant. Hitherto Sophia had kept it from the girl
but this afternoon in a fit of rage she let it out. The explosion did
not come at once, for Lady Jabe was in the room drinking tea, and Miss
Pewsey was flitting about, filling odd vases with flowers. Olivia sat
on the settee very straight and very cold, looking dark and handsome,
and altogether too splendid a woman for her aunt to tolerate.
"Can't you do something?" said Miss Wharf turning her jealous
eyes on the girl. "I should think you must be tired, twiddling
your thumbs all day."
"I'll do whatever you wish me to do," said Olivia coldly.
"Then help Lavinia with the flowers."
Olivia rose to do so, but Miss Pewsey refused her assistance in
a shrill speech spoken as usual between her teeth and with an
emphasis on every other word.
"Oh no dear, dear, Sophia," cried Miss Pewsey, "I have just
finished, and I may say that my eye for colour is better than
Olivia's--you don't mind my saying so, darling," she added to
the girl.
"Not at all," replied Miss Rayner who detested the sycophant. "I
never give the matter a thought."
"You _should_ think," said Lady Jabe joining in heavily. She was
a tall masculine-looking woman with grey hair and bushy grey
eyebrows, and with an expression of face that suggested she
should have worn a wig and sat on the bench. She dressed in
rather a manly way, and far too young for her fifty years. On
the present occasion she wore a yachting-cap, a shirt with a
stand-up, all round, collar and a neat bow; a leather belt and a
bicycling skirt of blue serge. Her boots and shoes were of
tanned brown leather, and she carried a bamboo cane instead of a
sunshade. No one could have been more gentlemanly. "You should
think," added she once more, "for instance you should think of
marriage."
Miss Wharf drew herself up in her cold way. "I fancy that
Olivia, few brains as she has, is yet wise enough not to think
of marriage at twenty."
"It would not be much good if I did," said Olivia calmly. "I
have no money, and young men want a rich wife."
"Not all," said Lady Jabe, "there's Chris----"
"Chris is out of the question," said Miss Rayner quickly.
"And pray why is he?" asked Sophia in arms at once. She never
liked Olivia to have an opinion of her own.
"Because I don't love him."
"But Chris loves you," said Lady Jabe, "and really he's getting
a very good salary in that Tea-merchant's office. Chris, as you
are aware, Olivia, is foreign corresponding clerk to Kum-gum Li
& Co. He knows Chinese," finished Lady Jabe, with tremendous
emphasis.
"Oh," Miss Pewsey threw up her claws, "how delicious to be made
love to in Chinese. I must really ask Mr. Walker what is the
Chinese for 'I love you.'"
"Olivia prefers to hear it in English," said Miss Wharf,
spitefully.
"Quite so, aunt," retorted her niece, her colour rising, "but
don't you think we might change the subject. It really isn't
very interesting."
"But indeed I think it is," said Lady Jabe smartly, "I come here
to plead the cause of poor Chris. His heart is breaking. Your
aunt is willing to----"
"But I am not," said Miss Rayner quickly, "so please let us say
no more about the matter. Mr. Walker can marry Lotty Dean."
"But she's a grocer's daughter," said Lady Jabe, who was herself
the widow of an oil-merchant, "and remember my title."
"Lotty isn't going to marry you, Lady Jabe."
"Nor Chris, if I can help it," said the other grimly.
Miss Wharf was just about to crush Olivia with a particularly
disagreeable remark, when the door opened and two gentlemen
entered. One was Christopher Walker, a slim, boyish-looking
young fellow, in that callow stage of manhood which sees beauty
in every woman. The other, who followed, was Miss Pewsey's
nephew.
There was nothing immature about him, although he was but twenty
eight years of age. Clarence Burgh was tall, thin, dark and had
the appearance of a swashbuckler as he swaggered into the room.
His black eyes snapped with an unholy light and his speech
smacked too much of the Lands at the Back of Beyond, where he
had passed the most part of his life. He was an expert rider,
and daily rode a bucking squealing, kicking stallion up and down
the road, or took long gallops into the country to reduce the
fire of the unruly beast. Burgh was bad all through, daring,
free, bold, and had a good deal of the untamed savage about him;
but he was emphatically a man, and it was this virile atmosphere
about him, which caused his withered aunt to adore him. And indeed
Miss Wharf admired him also, as did many of the women in Marport.
Clarence looked like a buccaneer who would carry a woman off, and
knock her down if she objected to his love-making. Women like that
sort of dominating lord of the world, and accordingly Mr. Burgh had
nothing to complain of, so far as feminine admiration went, during
his sojourn in Marport. But he had set his affections on Olivia, and
hitherto she had shrunk from him. All the same, brute as he was, she
admired him more than she did effeminate Chris Walker, who smacked of
the city and of a feather-bed-four-meals-a-day existence.
"Oh," squeaked Miss Pewsey, flying to the hero and clasping him
round the neck, "how very, very sweet of you to come."
"Hadn't anything else to do," said Clarence gracefully, casting
himself into a chair. All his movements were graceful like those
of a panther. "How are you Miss Wharf--Miss Rayner--Lady Jabe. I
guess you all look like a garden of spring flowers this day."
"But flowers we may not pluck," sighed Chris prettily.
Burgh looked at him with contempt. "I reckon a man can pick what
he has a mind to," said he drily, and then shifted his gaze to
see how Olivia took this speech. To his secret annoyance, she
did not let on, she heard him.
"Will you have some tea, Mr. Burgh," asked Miss Wharf.
"Thanks. It seems to be the sort of thing one must drink here."
"You drank it in China didn't you?" asked Lady Jabe.
Burgh turned quickly. "Who told you I had been in China?" he
asked.
"My nephew Chris. He heard you talking Chinese to someone."
The dark young man looked distinctly annoyed. "When was that?"
he asked Chris.
"Two weeks ago," replied the other, "you were standing at the
corner of the Mansion House talking to a Chinaman. I only caught
a word or two in passing."
"And I guess you didn't understand," said Clarence derisively.
"There you are wrong. I am in a Chinese firm, and know the
language. As a matter of fact I write their foreign letters for
them."
"The deuce you do," murmured Burgh looking rather disturbed; but
he said no more on the subject, and merely enquired if the
ladies were prepared for the ball at the Bristol which was to
take place in six days. "I hear it's going to be a bully
affair."
"Oh charming--charming," said Miss Pewsey. "Major Tidman is one
of the stewards. I asked him for a ticket for you Clarence
dear."
"I'll go, if Miss Rayner will dance with me."
"I don't know that I am going myself," said Olivia quietly.
"Nonsense," said her aunt sharply, "of course you are going.
Everyone is going--the best ball of the season."
"Even poor little me," said Miss Pewsey, with her elderly head
on one side.
"Huh," said the irreverent Clarence, "ain't you past hoppin'
aunt?"
"I can look on and admire the younger generation dear."
"It will be a splendid ball," prattled Chris sipping his tea and
devouring very crumbly cake, "the Glorious Golfers are going to
spend a lot of money in decorating the rooms. I met Mr.
Ainsleigh. He is going--a rare thing for him. He goes nowhere as
a rule."
Miss Wharf glanced sharply at her niece, but beyond a faint
flush, she could detect no sign of emotion. "People who are as
poor as young Ainsleigh, can't afford to go out," she said
deliberately. "I think the wisest thing that young man could do,
would be to marry a rich girl," and she again looked at Olivia.
"He is certainly very handsome," said Lady Jabe pensively, "very
much like his mother. She was a fine-looking woman, one of the
Vanes of Heathersham."
"I remember her," said Miss Wharf, her colour rising, "and I
never thought she was good-looking myself."
"Not to compare to you dear," said the sycophant.
But this time Miss Pewsey made a mistake. The remark did not
seem to please Miss Wharf. "I don't care for comparisons," she
said sharply, "its bad taste to make them. I like Mr. Ainsleigh,
but I don't approve of his idling."
"He has never been brought up to do anything," said Lady Jabe.
"Then he ought to turn his hands to making money in some way.
That place is mortgaged and at any time may be sold. Then he
won't have a roof over his head."
"I have never met Ainsleigh," said Burgh musingly, "I guess I'd
like to have a jaw along o' him. Wasn't his father murdered in
China?"
Miss Wharf became suddenly pale. "It is said that he was, but I
don't believe it."
"Then he's alive," said Clarence pertinaciously, and looking at
her.
"No. He's dead, but he died of dysentery, according to Dr. Forge
who was with him when he died--somewhere in the north I
believe."
Burgh evidently stored this in his memory and looked keenly at
the woman whose bosom rose and fell and whose colour came and
went under his steady gaze. Miss Pewsey saw that the persistent
look was annoying her patroness, and touched her nephew's arm
gently. The touch recalled Burgh to his senses and he looked
away. This time his eyes rested on Olivia. Her colour was high
and apparently she had been listening with interest to the
conversation. "Huh," thought the swashbuckler, "and it was about
young Ainsleigh," and he stored this in his memory also.
To make a sensation, which he dearly loved to do, Chris Walker
announced that he would bring a distinguished visitor to the
ball of the Glorious Golfers. "He's a Chinaman," said he
pompously, "and was mixed up in the Boxer rebellion."
None of the ladies seemed impressed, as none of them knew
anything about the Boxers, or their rebellion. But Burgh looked
up. "Who is he anyhow?" he demanded, compressing his lips.
"A Chinese gentleman called Tung-yu."
"What a very extraordinary name," said Miss Pewsey, and suddenly began
to take a deep interest in matters Chinese. While she chatted with
Chris who was willing to afford her all information. Burgh folded his
arms and leaned back apparently thinking deeply. His face was not
pleasant to behold. Olivia saw the evil look and shivered. Then she
rose and was about to steal from the room, when her aunt called to
her sharply. "Don't go Olivia I want to speak with you."
"And I want to take my usual walk," said Lady Jabe rising and
settling her collar, "Chris?"
A tap on the shoulder brought the slim young man to his feet,
and giving his arm to his masculine aunt the two departed. Burgh
rose also. "I guess I'll make tracks also?" he said smartly.
"Walker, you and I can have a yarn together, later."
Miss Pewsey followed her nephew to the door.
"Do you wish to ask young Mr. Walker more about Tung-yu?" she
asked.
Clarence wheeled round quickly. "What do you know of him aunt?"
"It's such a strange name," simpered Miss Pewsey, looking very
innocent, "and I am interested in China. You were out there a
long time Clarence."
"Amongst other places, yes. I hung round a bit."
"Then you must tell me all about the natives," said Miss Pewsey,
"I want to know of their robes and their fans and--"
"Fans," said Burgh starting: but Miss Pewsey with an artificial
laugh flitted back into the room, leaving him uneasy and
non-plussed. He walked away frowning darkly.
Olivia would have walked away also frowning, as she was
indignant at the way in which her aunt had spoken of Rupert. But
Miss Wharf gave her no chance of leaving the room or the house.
Olivia had never seen her aunt so pale or upset. She looked as
white as chalk, and controlled her emotion with difficulty.
Lavinia Pewsey glanced at the two, guessed there was about to be
a row, and glided away. She always kept out of trouble.
"Now," said Miss Wharf when they were alone, "I want an
explanation."