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BEAUMAROY HOME FROM THE WARS
BY ANTHONY HOPE
METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1919_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DOCTOR MARY'S PAYING GUEST 1
II. THE GENERAL REMEMBERS 13
III. MR. SAFFRON AT HOME 27
IV. PROFESSIONAL ETIQUETTE 39
V. A FAMILIAR IMPLEMENT 53
VI. ODD STORY OF CAPTAIN DUGGLE! 66
VII. A GENTLEMANLY STRANGER 80
VIII. CAPTAIN ALEC RAISES HIS VOICE 94
IX. DOCTOR MARY'S ULTIMATUM 107
X. THAT MAGICAL WORD MOROCCO! 123
XI. THE CAR BEHIND THE TREES 138
XII. THE SECRET OF THE TOWER 151
XIII. RIGHT OF CONQUEST 163
XIV. THE SCEPTRE IN THE GRAVE 178
XV. A NORMAL CASE 192
XVI. DEAD MAJESTY 206
XVII. THE CHIEF MOURNERS 220
XVIII. THE GOLD AND THE TREASURE 234
BEAUMAROY HOME FROM THE WARS
CHAPTER I
DOCTOR MARY'S PAYING GUEST
"Just in time, wasn't it?" asked Mary Arkroyd.
"Two days before the--the ceremony! Mercifully it had all been kept very
quiet, because it was only three months since poor Gilly was killed. I
forget whether you ever met Gilly? My half-brother, you know?"
"Only once--in Collingham Gardens. He had an _exeat_, and dashed in one
Saturday morning when we were just finishing our work. Don't you
remember?"
"Yes, I think I do. But since my engagement I'd gone into colours--oh,
of course, I've gone back into mourning now!--and everything was
ready--settlements and so on, you know. And rooms taken at Bournemouth.
And then it all came out!"
"How?"
"Well, Eustace--Captain Cranster, I mean----Oh, I think he really must
have had shell-shock, as he said, even though the doctor seemed to doubt
it! He gave the Colonel as a reference in some shop, and--and the bank
wouldn't pay the cheque. Other cheques turned up too; and in the end the
police went through his papers, and found letters from--well, from her,
you know. From Bogota. South America, isn't it? He'd lived there ten
years, you know, growing something--beans, or coffee, or coffee-beans,
or something--I don't know what. He tried to say the marriage wasn't
binding, but the Colonel--wasn't it providential that the Colonel was
home on leave? Mamma could never have grappled with it! The Colonel was
sure it was, and so were the lawyers."
"What happened then?"
"The great thing was to keep it quiet. Now wasn't it? And there was the
shell-shock--or so Eustace--Captain Cranster, I mean--said, anyhow. So,
on the Colonel's advice, Mamma squared the cheque business and--and they
gave him twenty-four hours to clear out. Papa--I call the Colonel papa,
you know, though he's really my stepfather--used a little influence, I
think. Anyhow it was managed. I never saw him again, Mary."
"Poor dear! Was it very bad?"
"Yes! But--suppose we had been married! Mary, where should I have been?"
Mary Arkroyd left that problem alone. "Were you very fond of him?" she
asked.
"Awfully!" Cynthia turned up to her friend pretty blue eyes suffused in
tears. "It was the end of the world to me. That there could be such men!
I went to bed. Mamma could do nothing with me. Oh, well, she wrote to
you about all that."
"She told me you were in a pretty bad way."
"I was just desperate! Then one day--in bed--the thought of you came. It
seemed an absolute inspiration. I remembered the card you sent on my
last birthday--you've never forgotten my birthdays, though it's years
since we met--with your new address here--and your 'Doctor,' and all the
letters after your name! I thought it rather funny." A faint smile, the
first since Miss Walford's arrival at Inkston, probably the first since
Captain Eustace Cranster's shell-shock had wrought catastrophe--appeared
on her lips. "How I waited for your answer! You don't mind having me, do
you, dear? Mamma insisted on suggesting the P.G. arrangement. I was
afraid you'd shy at it."
"Not a bit! I should have liked to have you anyhow, but I can make you
much more comfortable with the P.G. money. And your maid too--she looks
as if she was accustomed to the best! By the way, need she be quite so
tearful? She's more tearful than you are yourself."
"Jeanne's very, very fond of me," Cynthia murmured reproachfully.
"Oh, we'll get her out of that," said Mary briskly. "The tears, I mean,
not the fondness. I'm very fond of you myself. Six years ago you were a
charming kitten, and I used to enjoy being your 'visiting governess'--to
say nothing of finding the guineas very handy while I was waiting to
qualify. You're rather like a kitten still, one of those blue-eyed
ones--Siamese, aren't they?--with close fur and a wondering look. But
you mustn't mew down here, and you must have lots of milk and cream.
Even if rations go on, I can certify all the extras for you. That's the
good of being a doctor!" She laughed cheerfully as she took a cigarette
from the mantelpiece and lit it.
Cynthia, on the other hand, began to sob, prettily and not in a noisy
fashion, yet evidently heading towards a bout of grief. Moreover, no
sooner had the first sound of lamentation escaped from her lips, than
the door was opened smartly and a buxom girl, in lady's-maid uniform,
rushed in, darted across the room, and knelt by Cynthia, sobbing also
and exclaiming, "Oh, my poor Mees Cynthia!"
Mary smiled in a humorous contempt. "Stop this!" she commanded rather
brusquely. "You've not been deceived too, have you, Jeanne?"
"Me, madame? No. But my poor Mees----"
"Leave your poor Mees to me." She took a paper bag from the mantelpiece.
"Go and eat chocolates."
Fixed with a firm and decidedly professional glance, Jeanne stopped
sobbing and rose slowly to her feet.
"Don't listen outside the door. You must have been listening. Wait till
you're rung for. Miss Cynthia will be all right with me. We're going for
a walk. Take her upstairs and put on her hat for her, and a thick coat;
it's cold and going to rain, I think."
"A walk, Mary?" Cynthia's sobs stopped to make way for this protest. The
description of the weather did not sound attractive.
"Yes, yes. Now off with both of you! Here, take the chocolates, Jeanne,
and try to remember that it might have been worse."
Jeanne's brown eyes were eloquent of reproach.
"Captain Cranster might have been found out too late--after the
wedding," Mary explained with a smile. "Try to look at it like that.
Five minutes to get ready, Cynthia!" She was ready for the weather
herself, in the stout coat and skirt and weather-proof hat in which she
had driven the two-seater on her round that morning.
The disconsolate pair drifted ruefully from the room, though Jeanne did
recollect to take the chocolates. Doctor Mary stood looking down at the
fire, her lips still shaped in that firm, wise, and philosophical smile
with which doctors and nurses--and indeed, sometimes, anybody who
happens to be feeling pretty well himself--console or exasperate
suffering humanity. "A very good thing the poor silly child did come to
me!" That was the form her thoughts took. For although Dr. Mary Arkroyd
was, and knew herself to be, no dazzling genius at her profession--in
moments of candour she would speak of having "scraped through" her
qualifying examinations--she had a high opinion of her own common sense
and her power of guiding weaker mortals.
For all that Jeanne's cheek bulged with a chocolate, there was open
resentment on her full pouting lips, and a hint of the same feeling in
Cynthia's still liquid eyes, when mistress and maid came downstairs
again. Without heeding these signs, Mary drew on her gauntlets, took her
walking-stick, and flung the hall door open. A rush of cold wind filled
the little hall. Jeanne shivered ostentatiously; Cynthia sighed and
muffled herself deeper in her fur collar. "A good walking day!" said
Mary decisively.
Up to now, Inkston had not impressed Cynthia Walford very favourably. It
was indeed a mixed kind of a place. Like many villages which lie near to
London and have been made, by modern developments, more accessible than
once they were, it showed chronological strata in its buildings. Down by
the station all was new, red, suburban. Mounting the tarred road, the
wayfarer bore slightly to the right along the original village street;
bating the aggressive "fronts" of one or two commercial innovators, this
was old, calm, serene, grey in tone and restful, ornamented by three or
four good-class Georgian houses, one quite fine, with well-wrought iron
gates (this was Dr. Irechester's); turning to the right again, but more
sharply, the wayfarer found himself once more in villadom, but a
villadom more ornate, more costly, with gardens to be measured in
acres--or nearly. This was Hinton Avenue (Hinton because it was the
builder's wife's maiden name, Avenue because avenue is genteel). Here
Mary dwelt, but by good luck her predecessor, Dr. Christian Evans, had
seized upon a surviving old cottage at the end of the avenue, and,
indeed, of Inkston village itself. Beyond it stretched meadows, while
the road, turning again, ran across an open heath, and pursued its way
to Sprotsfield, four miles distant, a place of greater size where all
amenities could be found.
It was along this road that the friends now walked, Mary setting a brisk
pace. "When once you've turned your back on the Avenue, it's heaps
better," she said. "Might be real country, looking this way, mightn't
it? Except the Naylors' place--oh, and Tower Cottage--there are no
houses between this and Sprotsfield."
The wind blew shrewdly, with an occasional spatter of rain; the withered
bracken lay like a vast carpet of dull copper colour under the cloudy
sky; scattered fir trees made fantastic shapes in the early gloom of a
December day. A sombre scene, yet wanting only sunshine to make it flash
in a richness of colour; even to-day its quiet and spaciousness, its
melancholy and monotony, seemed to bid a sympathetic and soothing
welcome to aching and fretted hearts.
"It really is rather nice out here," Cynthia admitted.
"I come almost every afternoon. Oh, I've plenty of time! My round in the
morning generally sees me through--except for emergencies--births and
deaths, and so on. You see, my predecessor, poor Christian Evans, never
had more than the leavings, and that's all I've got. I believe the real
doctor--the old-established one--Dr. Irechester, was angry at first with
Dr. Evans for coming; he didn't want a rival. But Christian was such a
meek, mild, simple little Welshman, not the least pushing or ambitious;
and very soon Dr. Irechester, who's quite well off, was glad to leave
him the dirty work--I mean," she explained, smiling, "the cottages and
the panel work--National Insurance, you know--and so on. Well, as you
know, I came down as _locum_ for Christian--he was a fellow-student of
mine--and when the dear little man was killed in France, Dr. Irechester
himself suggested that I should stay on. He was rather nice. He said,
'We all started to laugh at you, at first, but we don't laugh
now--anyhow, only my wife does! So, if you stay on, I don't doubt we
shall work very well together, my dear colleague.' Wasn't that rather
nice of him, Cynthia?"
"Yes, dear," said Cynthia, in a voice that sounded a good many miles
away.
Mary laughed. "I'm bound to be interested in you, but I suppose you're
not bound to be interested in me," she observed resignedly. "All the
same, I made a sensation at Inkston just at first. And they were even
more astonished when it turned out that I could dance and play lawn
tennis."
"That's a funny little place," said Cynthia, pointing to the left side
of the road.
"Tower Cottage, that's called."
"But what a funny place!" Cynthia insisted. "A round tower, like a
Martello tower, only smaller, of course; and what looks just like an
ordinary cottage--or small farmhouse--joined on to it. What could the
tower have been for?"
"I'm sure I don't know. Origin lost in the mists of antiquity! An old
gentleman named Saffron lives there now."
"A patient of yours, Mary?"
"Oh no! He's well off--rich, I believe. So he belongs to Dr. Irechester.
But I often meet him along the road. Lately there's always been a
younger man with him--a companion, or secretary, or something of that
sort, I hear he is."
"There are two men coming along the road now."
"Yes, that's them--the old man and his friend. He's rather striking to
look at."
"Which of them?"
"The old man, of course. I haven't looked at the secretary. Cynthia, I
believe you're beginning to feel a little better!"
"Oh no, I'm not! I'm afraid I'm not, really!" But there had been a
cheerfully roguish little smile on her face. It vanished very promptly
when observed.
The two men approached them, on their way, no doubt, to Tower Cottage.
The old man was not above middle height, indeed scarcely reached it;
but he made the most of his inches, carrying himself very upright, with
an air of high dignity. Close-cut white hair showed under an
old-fashioned peaked cap; he wore a plaid shawl swathed round him, his
left arm being enveloped in its folds; his right rested in the arm of
his companion, who was taller than he, lean and loose-built, clad in an
almost white (and very unseasonable-looking) suit of some homespun
material. He wore no covering on his head, a thick crop of curly hair
(of a colour indistinguishable in the dim light) presumably affording
such protection as he needed. His face was turned down towards the old
man, who was looking up at him and apparently talking to him, though in
so low a tone that no sound reached Mary and Cynthia as they passed by.
Neither man gave any sign of noticing their presence.
"Mr. Saffron, you said? Rather a queer name, but he looks a nice old
man; patriarchal, you know. What's the name of the other one?"
"I did hear; somebody mentioned him at the Naylors'--somebody who had
heard something about him in France. What was the name? It was something
queer too, I think."
"They've got queer names and they live in a queer house!" Cynthia
actually gave a little laugh. "But are you going to walk all night, Mary
dear?"
"Oh, poor thing! I forgot you! You're tired? We'll turn back."
They retraced their steps, again passing Tower Cottage, into which its
occupants must have gone, for they were no longer to be seen.
"That name's on the tip of my tongue," said Mary in amused vexation. "I
shall get it in a moment!"
Cynthia had relapsed into gloom. "It doesn't matter in the least," she
murmured.
"It's Beaumaroy!" said Mary in triumph.
"I don't wonder you couldn't remember that!"