THE MILL HOUSE
MYSTERY
BY
FLORENCE WARDEN
AUTHOR OF “THE INN BY THE SHORE,” “THE HOUSE ON
THE MARSH,” ETC.
LONDON
JARROLD & SONS, WARWICK LANE, E.C.
CONTENTS.
I. AN ACCIDENT
II. RHODA PEMBURY’S DISCOVERY
III. TEN YEARS AFTER
IV. RHODA RETURNS TO MILL-HOUSE
V. LADY SARAH’S RECOGNITION
VI. JACK ROTHERFIELD
VII. THE SCARRED HAND
VIII. THE MISSING SNUFF-BOXES
IX. RHODA’S WATCHFULNESS
X. THE STOLEN “ROMNEY”
XI. THE PICTURE RECOVERED
XII. LADY SARAH’S DUPLICITY
XIII. SIR ROBERT SEEKS ADVICE
XIV. JACK ROTHERFIELD’S EFFRONTERY
XV. SELF-ACCUSATIONS
XVI. A FRUSTRATED ELOPEMENT
XVII. SIR ROBERT’S PLANS
XVIII. THE COMPANION’S ORDEAL
XIX. OTHERWISE THAN INTENDED
XX. SIR ROBERT’S SECRET
THE
MILL HOUSE MYSTERY
CHAPTER I.
AN ACCIDENT
The July sun was pouring floods of blinding, glaring light upon the
town of Dourville, which, lying in a great chasm between two high
white lines of cliff, and straggling under the foot of them to east
and west, bears witness, in its massive castle, and in its old relics
of stone buildings among the commonplace iron frames and plate-glass
windows of the new, to the notable part it has taken in England’s
history.
The long straight road that goes northwards up through the town and
out of the town, rising, at first by slow degrees, and latterly by a
steep ascent, to a point from which one can look down upon town and
sea, soon leaves small shops for queer old-fashioned rows of houses;
and these in their turn give place to roomy old residences of greater
pretension.
At the back of one of these, a sombre, plain building, roomy rather
than dignified, there stretches a splendid expanse of garden and
pleasaunce, where a stream runs among meadows and lawns in a direct
line towards the sea.
This stream once supplied the power that worked a great paper-mill,
which was the foundation of the prosperity of the Hadlow family. But
three generations back, the reigning Hadlow, more enterprising than
his predecessors, had speculated outside his little world, had
prospered, and finally blossomed into the great philanthropist, whose
magnificent endowment of certain royal charities had earned him a
baronetcy.
Rich as the family had grown, the Hadlows clung to the old nest with a
pertinacity which had in it something of dignity; and only the
condition in which the grounds were kept, nothing in the appearance of
the house itself, would have betrayed that now, under the third
baronet, the place was the property of a man of great wealth.
The trees grew thickly within the high dark wall that shut the grounds
in from the road. And under their shade Sir Robert Hadlow, in a light
linen suit and shady planter’s hat, could saunter at his ease in the
heat of the day. A man of middle height, slight and almost boyish in
figure, with a close-trimmed dark beard and large, mild, grey eyes,
Sir Robert Hadlow, at thirty years of age, looked rather older by
reason of the quiet gravity of his manners and the leisurely dignity
of his movements.
A man of leisure, he had devoted himself early and enthusiastically to
the study of the antiquities of the neighbourhood in which he was
born; and something of the far-away look of the student softened and
mellowed the expression of his eyes, and gave a certain measured
dignity to his gait.
Stopping from time to time to peep between the branches of the
lilac-bushes at the stream as it sparkled in the bright sunlight
beyond, he was sauntering towards the house, when a succession of
piercing screams, followed by the shouts of men, reached his ears from
the road outside.
“Stop her!” “Look out!” “She’ll be killed!”
These, among others, were the cries which came to Sir Robert’s ears as
he hurriedly made his way to one of the wooden doors in the high wall,
and inserting into the lock his own private key, let himself through
into the public street.
Looking up the road, to the left, he saw the figure of a woman, in a
light dress, coming swiftly down the hill on a bicycle, of which it
was evident that she had lost control. A glance to the right showed
him a traction engine coming slowly up the hill with a couple of
waggons trailing behind it, and the confused cries of the bystanders
called his attention to the fact that it was a collision between this
and the bicycle which they all feared.
Stepping forward into the road, and watching the light machine
vigilantly as it came quickly down upon him, Sir Robert prepared for
his rather risky attempt to save the woman from her danger. As the
bicycle reached him he turned to run with it down the hill, at the
same time seizing the handlebar with so much dexterity that he neither
stopped the machine nor threw off its rider.
The woman was muttering incoherent thanks in a faint voice, and Sir
Robert became suddenly conscious that there was a fresh danger to be
averted.
“Keep your head. Steady! Hold tight! You’re all right,” he cried as he
still ran with the bicycle, upon which he was now acting as a brake.
But his words fell on ears that scarcely heard; and before he could
bring the machine absolutely to a standstill, when he was within three
or four yards of the traction-engine, which had been stopped, the
rider fell to the ground with a moan.
There was a crowd round the group already, and there were shrieking
women and curious men streaming towards the spot, where Sir Robert,
with an air of authority, was giving directions to such of the more
intelligent among the crowd as seemed likely to be of use in the
emergency. Thus, he sent one man for a doctor and another for his own
servants, while he himself knelt down by the roadside, and raised the
unconscious victim of the accident.
She had struck her head against the kerb-stone, and one side of it was
cut and bleeding.
“Poor child! She isn’t dead. She’ll be all right presently,” said Sir
Robert, answering the alarmed comments of the women who pressed round
him. “I’m going to have her taken into my house, where the doctor will
see her.”
The accident had occurred within twenty yards of the entrance to Sir
Robert’s house, and five minutes later the baronet and his butler were
carrying the unconscious girl under the little portico and up the
staircase into a pleasant room at the back of the house, overlooking
the grounds and the flowing stream.
A couple of children, a boy and a girl, the orphaned nephew and niece
of Sir Robert and permanent members of his household, watched the
arrival from the upper staircase with eager interest.
“Look at the blood, Minnie!” observed the boy, in an awestruck
whisper. “And look at her eyes--all shut!” he added with thrilling
interest.
The girl, younger and more tender-hearted, began to cry.
“She’s dead!” sobbed she. “Oh, George, don’t yook at her. She’s been
killded.”
“No, she hasn’t,” said he sturdily. “Uncle Robert won’t let her die.”
Their hissing whispers had by this time attracted attention, and
Bessie, the old family nurse in whose charge they were, beckoned to
them from below with an austere frown.
“If you don’t both go back into the nursery this minute----”
There was no need to say more: in an instant the scampering of small
feet, followed by the banging of an upper door, showed that the young
people, who were known in the household as The Terrors, were for the
moment quelled.
In the meantime the victim of the accident had been laid upon a bed in
a darkened room, and Bessie and her master were looking at her with
sympathetic interest.
“Why, the poor dear’s but a lass, sir,” said the sympathetic Bessie,
as she loosened the girl’s clothes and peered keenly into the pale
face.
“Yes, not more than eighteen or nineteen, I should think,” said Sir
Robert. “She had a narrow escape. Search her clothes, Bessie, for some
indication as to her name and address. Her people will be alarmed
about her, whoever she is, and whoever they may be.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll have a hunt as soon as the doctor’s here.”
She had not to wait long. And by the time the doctor had come,
examined the patient, and reported that the victim was suffering from
concussion of the brain and must be kept quiet, that she had sustained
an injury to the right wrist and severe bruises, the old nurse had
made a search of the girl’s pockets, and had discovered an opened
letter in one of them directed to “Miss Rhoda Pembury” at an address
in Deal.
This was enough for Sir Robert, who telegraphed at once to the
address, to the name of Pembury, to the effect that Miss Rhoda had met
with a slight accident, but that she was safe and going on well.
Within a couple of hours the girl’s father and mother had arrived at
the Mill-house, and proved to be a London physician and his wife, who
were staying at Deal with their family, of whom Rhoda was the eldest.
They were deeply grateful to Sir Robert, who insisted that they should
leave their daughter where she was until she was fully recovered, a
suggestion which poor Mrs. Pembury, the harassed mother of half a
dozen children, gratefully accepted, it being arranged that Dr.
Pembury should cycle over every day to see how his daughter was
getting on.
Within a few days Rhoda, very pale still, and with deep dark lines
under her large, plaintive, blue eyes, was sitting at the window of
the room that had been assigned to her, permitted for the first time
to leave her bed.
She was a tall, thin slip of a girl, not yet fully developed, but
languid and almost sickly of appearance by reason of the rapidity of
her recent growth. At seventeen she was five feet seven inches in
height, with a lean, fair-skinned face, a mass of pale golden hair
that looked as if a silver veil had been thrown over it, and a look of
listlessness that told of weakly health.
She confessed to Bessie that she had only had her hair “up” within the
last month, and that, in her present enfeebled condition, she
preferred to leave it loose again, tied with a black ribbon, to the
fatigue of doing it herself, or even of having it done for her.
So that she looked like a child as she sat at the open window, with
her white dressing-gown on, and her head thrown back against the
pillows provided for her.
In the garden below were two figures, upon whom her attention was
fixed with interest so deep that Bessie watched her in furtive
surprise, wondering at the look of vivid excitement which was making
the blue eyes glow and the white skin flush.
The old nurse looked out, and saw that the objects of the girl’s
interest were Sir Robert Hadlow, sauntering in the grounds in his
linen coat and broad-brimmed hat, and his handsome young ward, Jack
Rotherfield, a tall, well-made man of two and twenty, whose
dark-skinned, beardless face and curly black hair and dark eyes had
earned him the reputation of the handsomest man in Kent.
The expression upon the girl’s face, as she gazed out at the two men,
was so unmistakably one of admiration of the most vivid kind, that
Nurse Bessie smiled indulgently.
“A good-looking fellow, isn’t he?” she said with a nod in the
direction of the two figures.
To her surprise, the girl turned towards her with a look of ecstasy in
her thin face.
“Good-looking!” she echoed in an awestruck tone. “Oh, don’t call him
that! He’s so much more than that! It seems to me,” she added, in a
low voice, as again her eyes wandered in the direction of the two
gentlemen, “that I’ve never seen, no, and never even imagined, any
face either so handsome or--so--noble. It’s because he’s so good, so
much better and greater than other men that he is so handsome.”
The old nurse sat amazed and perplexed by this enthusiasm, which
exceeded so far even her own warmth of admiration. She did not dare to
smile, although the girl’s tone was so outrageously, childishly
vehement as to throw her into considerable astonishment.
“Well, Mr. Rotherfield is generally thought to be nice-looking,” she
said, “but I don’t know as he’s all you take him for.”
The girl’s fair face, out of which the glow of colour brought by her
enthusiasm had already faded a little, looked at her with a frown of
slight perplexity.
“Mr. Rotherfield? Who is that?” she asked.
Old Bessie stared.
“Why, the gentleman you’ve admired so much, the young gentleman that’s
walking with Sir Robert. That’s his ward, Mr. Rotherfield.”
A deeper flush than had yet appeared in Rhoda’s face now spread
quickly over it, and she lowered her eyelids quickly.
“I didn’t notice him,” she said. “I was speaking about Sir Robert.”
The old nurse uttered a low cry of surprise.
Then a smile, indulgent, amused, appeared on her face.
“Well, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard him called so
nice-looking,” she said. “He’s very well, of course, and he’s got a
good face, and a nice face, but I’ve never heard tell he was
considered handsome.”
The girl looked up again, the most innocent surprise in every feature.
“Not handsome!” she said under her breath. “Why, it seems to me I
never saw any face so--so beautiful! He’s like a picture, not like any
man I ever saw before. To look at him makes me feel humiliated at the
thought that I should have been the means of causing him to hurt
himself, and yet it makes me proud too to think that he should have
done what he did for me!”
Beginning timidly, the girl grew more and more enthusiastic as she
went on, till she ended with fire in her blue eyes, and sat with her
lips parted in a sort of ecstasy, gazing out of the window at the
figure of the wholly unconscious gentleman who was now sauntering back
towards the house.
Sir Robert, who had hurt his arm in his efforts to stop the runaway
bicycle, carried it in a sling, and Rhoda’s eyes softened and filled
with tears as she noted the fact.
The old nurse’s face began to grow prim.
“You mustn’t let Lady Sarah hear you speaking so admiring of her
intended, or she’ll be jealous,” said she.
A sudden shadow passed over the girl’s face.
“Lady Sarah! Who is she?” she asked quickly, in a stifled voice.
Bessie peered at her rather anxiously.
“Dear, dear, miss, you mustn’t get so excited about it, or I shall
feel I didn’t ought to have told you so much,” she said.
A faint, mechanical smile appeared on Rhoda’s face.
“Nonsense,” she said. “Of course I’m not excited, only interested. Who
_is_ Lady Sarah?”
The nurse hesitated a moment, but seeing that a red spot was beginning
to burn in each of the invalid’s cheeks, she decided that it would be
better to tell her what she wanted and have done with it.
“Lady Sarah,” she said, gravely and deliberately, hoping that the
style and title of the persons she was about to mention would duly
impress her hearer, “is the youngest daughter of the Marquis of
Eridge, and she is engaged to be married to Sir Robert Hadlow, who is
madly in love with her.”
A look of dismay, so ingenuous, so complete as to be touching,
appeared on Rhoda’s face. Then she glanced quickly at the nurse,
reddened deeply, and subduing her feelings, whatever those might be,
answered in a matter-of-fact tone, in words which surprised Bessie.
“The Marquis of Eridge! Oh, yes, I know. He was made bankrupt two
years ago, and he has four of the most beautiful daughters possible.”
Bessie was taken aback by the completeness of the girl’s information.
“I’m sure I don’t know anything about the Marquis’s affairs,” she
said, somewhat stiffly. “But a Marquis is a Marquis, and Lady Sarah is
a most beautiful young lady. And Sir Robert is crazy about her, and to
look at her it’s no wonder. But you’ll see her for yourself, I dare
say, before you go away. She lives up in the Vale, at the Priory, and
she and Lady Eridge are here most days when Sir Robert doesn’t go to
the Priory.”
Rhoda bent her head without speaking. And the nurse, though she
reproached herself for the feeling and said to herself that it was
‘rubbish,’ felt a momentary wonder whether it would not have been
better for Sir Robert, with his studious habits and his grave
demeanour, to have loved an earnest, simple little girl like the
blue-eyed, fair-haired Rhoda with the devotion in her eyes, rather
than the brilliant and slightly disturbing creature whom he had chosen
for his wife.