MRS. BELASSIS VISITS LADYWELL.
It was on a Tuesday morning that Maud said good-bye to her brother, and
saw him set out for Yorkshire; and on the Wednesday morning, whilst
riding out through the great avenue, she was surprised to see her Aunt
Celia, walking in her resolute way up to the house.
Mrs. Belassis seldom visited Ladywell, and never before had she been
there at so unseasonable an hour. Maud looked wonderingly at her, and
stopped her horse, as she met the business-like figure.
‘Do you want anybody, Aunt Celia?’ she asked. ‘You will only find Aunt
Olive at home. Phil has gone into Yorkshire, but he will be back this
evening. Can I do anything for you?’
‘Your brother is away, is he?’ asked Mrs. Belassis, as though
surprised. In reality she was perfectly well aware of the fact. Had her
nephew been at home, she would not have taken the trouble to pay this
visit.
‘Yes; but he comes back to-night. Can I give him any message?’
Mrs. Belassis seemed to consider.
‘Well, as I am so near I will go on and see your Aunt Olive,’ she said
indifferently. ‘I had a question I wished to ask Philip; but that
can wait. I will not interrupt you, my dear. I hope you will have a
pleasant ride.’
Maud rode on, a disdainful look crossing her pretty face.
‘I wonder if Aunt Celia is up to anything,’ she mused. ‘She generally
is when she smiles and says “my dear,” and puts on her gracious air.
How I do loathe Aunt Celia! I do believe she is worse than Uncle
Belassis. I am afraid she is Phil’s enemy—not that that matters
much, for she couldn’t do him any harm. Sometimes I fancy Phil has
something on his mind; but I don’t see that he need. I wonder why he
said yesterday that he was sure Aunt Olive and I would always stand
his friends, through thick and thin. I should think I just would!’ and
Maud’s eyes flashed. ‘I’d stand by him whatever happened—whatever he’d
said or done, or whatever people said of him. There’s nobody like my
Phil. I love his little finger better than all the rest of the world
put together. If ever he is in any danger, won’t I show him how I love
him!’
Maud’s whole face glowed, and she urged her horse to a gallop in her
generous enthusiasm, and rode far and fast that day.
Mrs. Belassis walked boldly up to the house. She did not ring the bell,
although she was on anything but intimate terms with the household at
Ladywell; she preferred to walk straight into the great hall, where she
paused and looked about her.
Nobody was in sight. Neither manservant nor maidservant, bond nor
free, had observed her entrance, and with a certain snake-like look of
satisfaction, she quietly crossed the hall, and entered a small room
which looked over the garden, and which generally went by the name of
‘Phil’s den.’
Once inside this room, she closed the door softly and stealthily, and
looked for a moment as though she would have locked it too; but on
second thoughts she seemed to decide against doing so, and muttering,
‘It might look suspicious if anyone should come,’ turned away.
The room was not large, and was furnished quite in bachelor fashion,
with a shabby but luxuriously easy leather chair, a multitude of pipes
and cigar-boxes; one small table beside the easy-chair, which was
strewn with newspapers and smoking apparatus, and a large writing-table
full of drawers which stood in the window. The walls were adorned by
guns and fishing-tackle, and by some engravings which showed greater
taste for art, and less for sport, than do most bachelors’ pictures. It
was a snug, cosy room; and the presence of a second and much daintier
armchair, in the opposite corner, seemed to indicate that Maud liked at
times to be her brother’s ‘den companion.’
Mrs. Belassis’ keen eye took all this in at a glance. She saw in
a moment where lay her work, and she seated herself in a quiet
business-like way at the writing-table.
‘It will be rather odd,’ she muttered to herself, ‘if amongst all his
papers I do not find something to give me a clue, if there is anything
wrong, and I’m not generally deceived when I take an idea into my head.’
Mrs. Belassis set to work in a methodical way. She began with the small
drawers at the top of the table, and turned the contents rapidly over,
spreading out the papers and glancing quickly over them. She did not
seem to find anything of any interest amongst these, and in ten minutes
that part of her search was completed.
It was with greater deliberation that she commenced to open the larger
drawers on either side of her; and her face was more set, her eyes more
curious than ever, as this task proceeded.
First came papers and memoranda connected with the Ladywell property,
bills, receipts, correspondence as to cattle, hay, poultry, and the
thousand and one transactions necessitated by a farm and estate. Tor
was not a specially orderly man, but he had a method of classification
with his papers, which enabled him to lay his hand readily upon
anything he wanted.
A few minutes’ study convinced Mrs. Belassis that there was nothing to
be gained by a minute inspection of these papers, so they were replaced
in their drawer, and the next one opened.
This contained private bills and correspondence, and Mrs. Belassis
looked as if she anticipated considerable information from the heap of
papers she drew out.
‘Extravagant!’ she muttered more than once; a dark look crossing her
face as she came across receipted bills for dresses, jewellery, and
finery of all kinds for Maud, and handsome silks and laces, in which
she knew her sister Olive had appeared.
Still, amongst all these bills and papers she did not seem to find
what she wanted, although more than enough to annoy and anger her. The
letters were all addressed to ‘Philip Debenham, Esq.,’ and were for
the most part petitions from charitable institutions, notices from
picture-dealers, or offers of everything for nothing from companies
and tradespeople.
These papers were replaced in their drawer, and the search continued.
The third drawer upon that side was locked, so with rather a
significant smile Mrs. Belassis tried the first on the next side. This
opened readily enough, but merely contained a supply of writing-paper,
envelopes, stamps, and pens, which, by its orderly appearance, seemed
to have been given over to Maud’s willing care. The drawer below
contained the farm-books, the garden-book and the stable-book, which
had been kept with scrupulous exactness by old Mr. Maynard, and which
his successor had taken some apparent pains to keep in their old
accuracy under a new _régime_.
The third drawer, again, was locked.
‘These must be the two that I want,’ said Mrs. Belassis under her
breath; and again she glanced towards the door, as though she would
have liked to lock it, but considered it more prudent to abstain.
A looker-on might have been tempted to wonder how Mrs. Belassis
proposed to get at the contents of those locked drawers. Was she going
to force the locks? Not at all. Whatever her husband might be, Mrs.
Belassis was never clumsy. What she undertook to do, was done neatly,
and even artistically.
Ladies of some social standing do not usually visit their friends’
houses with skeleton-keys hidden away in their pockets; but it was
nothing more nor less than this useful little implement that Mrs.
Belassis drew out now; and with the snake-like look more visible than
ever in her eyes, she set about her task.
Kneeling down upon the floor, she soon had the first drawer open, and
had taken from thence the documents it held.
There was Phil’s cheque-book first of all, and then a few papers folded
and held together by an elastic band. There was a bag, which evidently
held some money, and behind all these some papers and relics, which
were evidently all that had come to him from the effects of the father
and mother. Belassis had taken care that such mementoes should be but
few.
The cheque-book first claimed Mrs. Belassis’ earnest attention. She
studied the counterfoils closely, and then began comparing the sums
with the amounts upon the bills she had previously found. Naturally
they corresponded accurately enough; but what Mrs. Belassis noticed was
this, that for at least six bills (all presents for Maud) which were
specified to have been settled ‘by cheque,’ no counterfoil was to be
found: and this fact seemed significant of something, though of what
she could not yet say.
Next the family relics were contemptuously turned over, and put back in
their place, and Mrs. Belassis now commenced the study of the papers
enclosed by the elastic band.
There were but two of them after all, though one was of a bulk and
importance that gave it the substance of half a dozen ordinary letters.
The crabbed characters were familiar to her eye, and it did not need
the colossal signature ‘T. M. Maynard’ to tell her that it had been
penned by her late uncle, the former master of Ladywell.
It was, in fact, nothing less than the dead man’s letter to his nephew,
Philip Debenham, which Tor had read in the little hotel at Hornberg.
With a subdued exclamation of curiosity and satisfaction, Mrs. Belassis
sat down to read the document; and as she did so, her face assumed an
expression not at all agreeable to look upon. She read the paper not
once, but twice; and the venomous expression deepened upon her face,
until it grew positively hideous in its intensity.
Then she turned the paper over and over, and opened out its stiff
folds, although the writing had only occupied the first page, and in so
doing her attention was caught by a few pencilled words written on the
inside, as if by an afterthought. And she was convinced by the manner
in which the paper opened, that hers had been the first hand which had
unfolded it. An eager yet dark look crossed her face, as she took in
the sense of that after-message.
‘Your father once gave me to understand that he had drawn up a more
equitable will, and had hidden it away somewhere in my library. I told
him he had better take it out and give it to a lawyer to keep. And I
think he must have taken it out—and destroyed it; for I never could
find it, though I took the trouble to make a thorough search. He was
just a muddler with his affairs, and a dreamer too. You may be sure he
made away with the will in a moment of weakness; but of course if you
choose to search for it, you can—you won’t find it.’
As she took in the import of these words, Mrs. Belassis fairly
trembled. The anger which had disfigured her face before, gave way now
to a look more nearly approaching terror; and then, after a few minutes
of deep thought, she folded the paper once more and put it in her
pocket.
‘I will show it to Alfred. He must see it. Then the pencilled words
shall be erased, and I will take an early opportunity to return the
paper. There are a hundred chances to one that it will not be missed.
Now for the other.’
The other was Maud’s eager letter to her brother, written to him at
Hornberg, to announce her delight and eager anticipation. The terms in
which it was couched were not calculated to soothe Mrs. Belassis, and a
look of bitter hatred crossed her face.
‘The little reptile, the little toad—making mischief from the very
first! Oh, but I will be even with her! She shall learn to rue the day
when first she tried to poison her brother’s minds against us—putting
all sorts of suspicions into his head. Faugh! the ingratitude of the
little viper!’
Mrs. Belassis folded the letter, and flung it into the drawer after
the other things, and then she viciously locked it. Her mind was so
much disturbed by her late discoveries, that she was almost tempted
to pursue her researches no further, confident that she had found
the most important papers in existence. But the dogged stubbornness
of her character prevailed over her preoccupation and dismay, and
she remembered that although she had found something of the greatest
importance, she had not found anything of the character she had
hoped—nothing to compromise her nephew, or to verify the very dim
suspicion that had entered into her head. What that suspicion was she
would have found it hard to say; all that she told even herself as yet
was that there was ‘something odd’ about Phil, and that she believed
there was ‘some mystery’ going on. So far, however, she had found
nothing to encourage such an idea, and with a certain sense of having
been baffled, she opened the sixth and last drawer.
There were not many papers here; but there was a second cheque-book,
and upon the inside of the cover was written ‘Tor’s cheque-book.’
There was also a bank-book labelled ‘Torrington Torwood, Esq.;’ and
rapid reference to the former showed Mrs. Belassis that the missing
counterfoils of cheques she knew to have been written by Phil, were to
be found, not in his, but in Mr. Torwood’s cheque-book.
This was something of a facer, and she felt a triumphant joy in finding
anything so like a mystery. She did not pause now to try and unravel
it, but passed on to the other contents of the drawer.
There were two letters from a certain ‘Marjory Descartes,’ asking Phil
to go over to ‘Whitbury’ to settle some business for Mr. Torwood, and
there were one or two business communications from agents or bankers,
referring to Phil some question about Mr. Torwood’s affairs. These
were read with a certain sense of disappointment, as they seemed to
show that Phil was openly acting as his friend’s agent; but hope rose
again when a deeper dive into the drawer brought out a little packet
of papers, some quite old and yellow, which proved to be I O U’s for
various sums, all signed ‘Philip Debenham.’
‘Moneys Mr. Torwood lent him, evidently,’ mused Mrs. Belassis. ‘Oh,
then Phil’s friend was not quite so disinterested, after all, as we
were led to think. I thought there was something odd about it. But
how comes Phil to have these papers now? There is no evidence that he
has redeemed them. It is a large sum—nearly £3,000, I should say. His
cheque-book shows no mention of Mr. Torwood, and I should have heard
from Alfred, I think, if he had handed over any very large sum whilst
the securities were being settled. I don’t understand why he keeps them
if they are redeemed, and why he has not a receipt for the amount if it
is paid. If not, how comes he by the papers at all?’
Certainly, what with one thing and what with another, Mrs. Belassis had
ample food for meditation; but she had stayed so long that she feared
to linger. She locked up the drawer, and was preparing to leave, when
Maud came suddenly in, in her riding-habit.
‘Aunt Celia, you here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Have you been here all this
while? Aunt Olive says she has never even seen you. What can you have
been doing all this time? Two whole hours!’
Maud looked both excited and suspicious. This was her house, and she
was mistress; and she considered that her Aunt Celia had taken a great
liberty in making her way in unobserved, and shutting herself up in
Phil’s den. Her face showed as much very plainly.
Mrs. Belassis looked at her with her cold smile.
‘Do not act and speak like a spoilt child, my dear. It is not becoming
to a young mistress. I fear you are forgetting the lessons I instilled
into your mind at Thornton House.’
‘Oh, there is no fear of my forgetting your lessons or Thornton House
either,’ cried Maud, with what sounded very like defiance in her tone.
‘But I hope I have shaken off the effects of that yoke. What I want to
know is, why you have been shut up in Phil’s room for two hours—in his
_private_ room.’
Mrs. Belassis looked at the indignant Maud with a smile of cool disdain.
‘As this is your brother’s house, over which you preside, I will
condescend to reply, otherwise I should decline to answer such an
insolent interrogation. After I left you I made a tour of the gardens
and hot-houses, which I am never invited to inspect, of course, owing
to the kind politeness of the mistress of Ladywell. After I had enjoyed
the sweetness of the flowers and trees for above an hour, I came
here to write a note to Philip; but what I wrote did not satisfy me,
and I tore up the letter and determined to wait till I could see him
personally. Just as I was about to leave the room my niece entered, and
here we are now, face to face. Are you satisfied?’
‘I don’t know,’ answered Maud; ‘but I hear what you say. Are you going?
Good-bye. If you care to see Aunt Olive she is in the drawing-room. We
shall have lunch in an hour.’
‘I will go home, thank you,’ said Mrs. Belassis coldly. ‘Good-bye, my
dear.’
Maud watched her cross the hall, a distrustful and angry light in her
eyes.
‘She always gets the best of it with me. I can never be politely
cutting to Aunt Celia, as Phil is. I am always rude, and she makes me
feel like a schoolgirl. How I detest her! I wonder why she came. I know
what she said was all lies. What can she have been up to? I wonder what
that letter to Phil was that she wrote and destroyed. Did she write a
letter at all?’ Maud went forward and carefully looked about for torn
fragments of paper, but could find none.
‘If she wrote it she took it away in her pocket,’ said Maud; and then
she opened the ink-bottle and saw that it had been washed out that
morning and not refilled. Mrs. Belassis had certainly written no letter
there that day. What she had done, the girl was at a loss to imagine.
All that she could tell was that her aunt’s visit was certain to mean
mischief of some kind.
Mrs. Belassis had ample food for reflection on her homeward way, and
very earnestly did she strive to form some theory as to the respective
position of Phil and his friend, so as to prove, if possible, that the
former was acting in a reprehensible manner.
At last an idea was hit upon which seemed to satisfy her; at any rate,
it gave a semblance of reality to her suspicions.
‘I believe he has got his friend shut up in a lunatic asylum
somewhere—unless he has put him out of the way altogether; and he
is playing a double game—sometimes Torwood and sometimes himself. I
suppose he was Torwood abroad, whilst he was the rich man; and here
he is Debenham; thus reaping the benefits of both characters. Perhaps
Mr. Torwood’s mind has been failing of late, so that he has learned to
depend upon Philip; yes, that is very likely. And now that he has money
of his own, he has just disposed of his friend anyhow—no doubt in a
madhouse—and is figuring about here as a great man, and spending his
friend’s money as well as his own. Oh, you’re a nice young man, Philip
Debenham! No wonder you keep your friend at a distance, and don’t
trouble yourself about him. No wonder nobody can get to know anything
definite about the “Tor” who was once all your talk. A very nice thing
it will be for you when I bring it home to you! Oh yes, you will enjoy
that very much; and I wonder what the law will say to these little
transactions with Torwood’s money;’ and in this strain Mrs. Belassis
kept on, her spirits rising and her confidence in her theory increasing
with every step she took. But when she felt in her pocket, and her
hand came in contact with the stiff paper it held, her face changed
suddenly, and the old look of rage and fear returned.
‘If old Maynard is right, if there is another will, and if that will is
ever found—then we shall be ruined! Why did I ever marry such a fool as
Alfred Belassis? I could do anything if it were not for his clumsiness!’