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HAPPY HOUSE
The BARONESS VON HUTTEN
HAPPY HOUSE
by
The BARONESS VON HUTTEN
Author of "Pam," "Pam Decides," "Sharrow," "Kingsmead," etc.
[Illustration]
New York
George H. Doran Company
Copyright, 1920,
By George H. Doran Company
_TO MISS LILY BETTS_
MY DEAR LILY: _We three, one of us in a chair, and two of us upside down
on the grass-plot, have decided that this book must be dedicated to you,
in memory of how we did not work on it at Sennen Cove, and how we did
work on it here. So here it is, with our grateful love, from_
_Your affectionate_
_Richard, and Hetty, and B. v. H._
PENZANCE
HAPPY HOUSE
CHAPTER I
Mrs. Walbridge stood at the top of the steps, a pink satin slipper in
her hand, looking absently out into the late afternoon. The July
sunlight spread in thick layers across the narrow, flagged path to the
gate, and the shadows under the may tree on the left were motionless, as
if cut out of lead. The path was strewn with what looked like
machine-made snowflakes, and a long piece of white satin ribbon had
caught on the syringa bush on the right of the green gate, and hung like
a streak of whiter light across the leaves. Someone inside the house was
playing a fox-trot, and sounds of tired laughter were in the air, but
the well-known author, Mrs. Walbridge, did not hear them. She was
leaning against the side of the door, recklessly crushing her new grey
frock, and her eyes were fixed on the gate in the unseeing stare of
utter fatigue. Presently the music stopped and the sudden silence seemed
to rouse her, for, with a deep sigh and a little shake of the head that
was evidently characteristic, she turned and went slowly into the house.
A few minutes later a brisk-looking young man in a new straw hat came
down the street and paused at the gate, peering up at the fanlight to
verify his whereabouts. Number eighty-eight did not seem to satisfy
him, but suddenly his eyes fell on the gate. On its shabby green were
painted the words, very faded, almost undecipherable, "Happy House," and
with a contented nod the young man opened the gate and went quickly up
the steps. No one answered his ring, so he rang again. Again the silence
was unbroken, but from somewhere far off he heard the sound of laughter
and talking, and, peering forward into the little hall, he took a small
notebook from his pocket and wrote a few words in it, whistling softly
between his teeth. He was a freckled-faced young man with a tip-tilted
nose, not in the least like the petals of a flower, and with a look of
cheery cheekiness. After a moment he went into the passage and thrust
his head into the open drawing-room door. The room was filled with
flowers, and though the windows were wide open, it smelt close, as if it
had already been full of people. The walls were covered with pink and
white moiré paper, whose shiny surface was broken by various pictures.
Watts's "Hope" in a gilt frame dominated the mantelpiece; a copy of "The
Fighting Téméraire" faced it, and there were a good many photographs
elaborately framed, grouped, like little families, in clusters. Between
the windows hung an old, faded photogravure of "The Soul's Awakening,"
and "Alone at Last" revealed its artless passion over a walnut
chiffonier laden with small pieces of china. The young man in the straw
hat, which was now pushed far back on his sweat-darkened fair hair,
stood in the middle of the room and looked round, scratching his head
with his pencil. His bright eyes missed nothing, and although he was
plainly a young man full of buoyant matter-of-factness, there was scorn,
not unkindly, but decided, in his merry but almost porcine eyes as he
made mental notes of his surroundings.
"Poor old girl," he muttered. "Hang that 'bus accident. I wish I'd been
here in time for the party----" Then his shrewd face softened as the
deeper meaning of the room reached him. It was ugly; it was commonplace,
but it was more of a home than many a room his journalistic activities
had acquainted him with. By a low, shabby, comfortable-looking arm-chair
that stood near the flower-filled grate was a dark-covered table on
which stood five photographs, all in shiny silver or leather frames. Mr.
Wick stood over the table tapping his teeth softly with his pencil, and
moving his lips in a way that produced a hollow tune. "So that's the
little lot," he said to himself in a cheerful, confidential voice.
"Three feminines and two masculines, as the Italians say. And very nice
too. Her own corner, I bet. Yes, there's her fountain pen." He took it
up and made a note of its make and laid it carefully down. There was a
little fire-screen in the shape of a banner of wool embroidery on the
table. "That's how she keeps the firelight out of her eyes when she's
working in the winter. Poor old girl. What ghastly muck it is, too----
Good thing for her the public likes it. Now, then, what about that bell?
Guess I'll go and have another tinkle at it." He started to the door,
when it was pushed further open and the owner of the house came in. Mr.
Wick knew at the first glance that it was the owner of the house. A
fattish, middle-aged man in brand new shepherd's plaid trousers and a
not quite so new braided morning-coat.
"Hallo! I--I beg your pardon----" the new-comer began, not at all in
the voice of one who begs pardon. Mr. Wick waved his hand kindly.
"Oliver Wick's my name," he explained. "I come from _Round the Fire_ for
an account of the wedding, but I got mixed up with a rather good 'bus
smash in Oxford Street, and that's why I'm late."
"Oh, I see. Want a description of the wedding, do you? Clothes and so
on? I'm afraid I'm not much good for that, but if you'll come into the
garden I'll get one of my daughters to tell you. Some of the young
people are still there, as a matter of fact."
Mr. Walbridge had stopped just short of being a tall man. His
figure had thickened and spread as he grew older and his hips were
disproportionately broad, which gave him a heavy, clumsy look. In his
reddish, rather swollen face were traces of what had been great beauty,
and he had the unpleasant manner of a man who consciously uses his charm
as a means to attain his own ends.
"Come into the dining-room first and have a glass of the widow," he
suggested, as he led the way down the narrow passage towards an open
door at the back of the house.
Mr. Wick, who had no inhuman prejudice against conviviality, followed
him into the dining-room and partook, as his quick eyes made notes of
everything on which they rested, of a glass of warmish, rather doubtful
wine.
"I suppose Mrs. Walbridge will give me five minutes?" the young man
asked, setting down his glass and taking a cigarette from the very shiny
silver case offered him by his host. Mr. Walbridge laughed, showing the
remains of a fine set of teeth artfully reinforced by a skilled
dentist.
"Oh, yes. My wife will quite enjoy being interviewed. Women always like
that kind of thing, and, between you and me and the gate-post," he
poured some champagne into a tumbler and drank it before he went on,
"interviewers don't come round quite as they used in her younger days."
Mr. Wick despised the novels of the poor lady he had come to interview,
but he was a youth not without chivalry, and something in his host's
manner irritated him.
"She has a very good book public, anyhow, has Violet Walbridge. You
mustn't mind me calling her that. I shouldn't call Browning Mr.
Browning, you know, or Victoria Cross Miss Cross."
Walbridge nodded. "Oh, yes, they're pretty stories, pretty stories,
though I like stronger stuff myself. Just re-reading 'L'Assommoir'
again. Met Zola once when I was living in Paris. Always wondered how he
smashed his nose. Well, if you're ready, let's come down into the garden
where the ladies are."
The garden of Happy House was a long narrow strip almost entirely
covered by a grass tennis court, and bounded by a narrow, crowded,
neglected herbaceous border. As he stood at the top of the steep flight
of steps leading down to where the group of young people were sprawled
about in dilapidated old deck-chairs or on the grass, Mr. Wick's quick
eyes saw the herbaceous border, and, what is more, they understood it.
It was a meagre, squeezed, depressed looking attempt, and the young man
from Brondesbury knew instinctively that, whereas the tennis court was
loved by the young people of the family, the wild and pathetic flowers
belonged to the old lady he had come to interview. Somehow he seemed to
know, as he told his mother later, quite a lot about Violet Walbridge,
just through looking at her border.
The sun was setting now, and a little wind had come up, stirring the
leaves on the old elm under whose shade, erratic and scant, the little
group were seated. Three or four young men were there, splendid, if
rather warm, in their wedding garments, and several young women and
girls, the pretty pale colours of their fine feathers harmonising
charmingly with the evening. At the far end of the garden a lady was
walking, with a blue silk sunshade over her shoulder. As the two men
came down the steps Mr. Walbridge pointed to her.
"There's my wife," he said. "Shall I come and introduce you?"
"No, thank you. No, no, I'll go by myself," the young man answered
hastily, and as he went down across the lawn he heard a girl's voice
saying laughingly: "Reporter to interview Mrs. Jellaby." The others
laughed, not unkindly, but their laughter lent to Mr. Wick's approach to
Mrs. Walbridge a deference it might otherwise not have had. She had not
heard him coming, and was standing with her back to him, her head and
shoulders hidden by the delphinium-blue sunshade, and when she turned,
starting nervously at the sound of his voice, he realised with painful
acuteness that delphinium blue is not the colour to be worn by daylight
by old ladies. Her thin, worn face, in which the bones showed more than
in any face he had ever seen, was flooded with the blue colour that
seemed to fill all the hollows and lines with indigo, and her large
sunken eyes, on which the upper eyelids fitted too closely, must have
been, the young man noticed, beautiful eyes long ago. They were of that
most rare eye-colour, a really dark violet, and the eyebrows on the very
edge of the clearly defined frontal bone were slightly arched and well
marked over the temples. When he had told her who he was and his errand,
she flushed with pleasure and held out her hand to him, and he, whose
profession is probably second only to that of dentistry in its
unpopularity, was touched by her simple pleasure.
"My Chief thought the public would be interested in the wedding. He
tells me this daughter--the bride, I mean--was the original of--of--one
of your chief heroines."
Violet Walbridge led the way to an old, faded green garden seat, on
which they sat down.
"Yes, she's the original of 'Rose Parmenter,'" she helped him out
gently, without offence at his having forgotten the name. "I wish you
had seen her. But you can say that she was looking beautiful, because
she was----"
Mr. Wick whipped out his notebook and his beautifully sharpened pencil,
contrived a little table of his knees, and looked up at her.
"'Rose Parmenter'--oh, yes. That's one of your best-known books, isn't
it?"
"Yes, that and 'Starlight and Moonlight.' They sold best, though 'One
Maid's Word' has done very well. That," she added slowly, "has been done
into Swedish, as well as French and German. 'Queenie's Promise' has been
done into six languages."
Her voice was very low, and peculiarly toneless, but he noticed a little
flush of pleasure in her thin cheeks--a flush that induced him, quite
unexpectedly to himself, to burst out with the information that a friend
of his sister--Jenny _her_ name was--just revelled in his companion's
works. "Give me a box o' chocs," Kitty will say, "and one of Violet
Walbridge's books, and I wouldn't change places with Queen Mary."
Without being urged, Mrs. Walbridge gave the young man details he
wanted--that her daughter's name was Hermione Rosalind; that she was the
second daughter and the third child, and that she had married a man
named Gaskell-Walker--William Gaskell-Walker.
"He belongs to a Lancashire family, and they've gone to the Lakes for
their honeymoon." The author waved her thin hand towards the group of
young people at the other end of the lawn. "There's the rest of my
flock," she said, her voice warming a little. "The tall man who's
looking at his watch is my other son-in-law, Dr. Twiss of Queen Anne
Street, Cavendish Square. He married my eldest daughter, Maud, four
years ago. Their little boy was page to-day. He's upstairs asleep now."
As she spoke one of the girls in the group left the others and came
towards her and Wick.
"This is your daughter, too?" the young man asked, a little throb of
pleasure in his voice.
"Yes, this," Mrs. Walbridge answered, taking the girl's hand, "is my
baby, Griselda. Grisel, dear, this is Mr.--Mr.----"
"Wick," said the young man. "Oliver Wick."
"You've come to interview Mum?" Miss Walbridge asked, a little
good-natured raillery in her voice.
The young man bowed. "Yes. I represent _Round the Fire_, and my Chief
thought that the public would be interested in an account of the
wedding----" His eyes were glued to the young girl's face. She was very
small, and, he thought to himself, the blackest white girl he had ever
seen; so dark that if he had not known who she was he might have
wondered whether she were not the whitest black girl--her hair was
coal-black and her long eyes like inkwells, and her skin, smooth as
vellum, without a touch of colour, was a rich golden brown. She was
charmingly dressed in canary-coloured chiffon, and round her neck she
wore a little necklet of twisted strands of seed pearls, from which hung
a large, beautifully cut pearl-shaped topaz.
"I came to tell you, Mum," she went on, glancing over her shoulder at
one of the upper windows, "that Hilary's awake and bawling his head off,
and Maud wants you to go up to him."
Mrs. Walbridge rose and Wick noticed, although he could not have
explained it, how very different were her grey silk draperies from the
yellow ones of her daughter. She had, moreover, sat down carelessly, and
the back of her frock was crushed and twisted.
"It's my little grandson," she explained. "He's always frightened when
he wakes up. I'll go to him. Perhaps you'd like my daughter to show you
the wedding presents, Mr. Wick."
Oliver Wick was very young, and he was an ugly youth as well, but
something about him held the girl's attention, in spite of his being
only a reporter. This something, though she did not know it, was power,
so it was perfectly natural that the little, spoilt beauty should lead
him into the house to the room upstairs where the presents were set
forth. His flowery article in the next number of _Round the Fire_
expressed great appreciation of the gifts, but there was no detailed
account of them, and that was because, although he looked at them and
seemed to see what he was looking at, he really saw nothing but Miss
Walbridge's enchanting little face.
"Do you ever read any of Mum's novels?" the girl asked him at last, as
they stood by the window, looking down over the little garden into the
quiet, tree-bordered road.
The young man hesitated, and she burst out laughing, pointing a finger
of scorn at him.
"You've not?" she cried. "Own up. You needn't mind. I'm sure I don't
blame you; they're awful rubbish--poor old Mum! I often wonder who it is
_does_ read them."
As she finished speaking, the door into the back room opened, and Mrs.
Walbridge came out, carrying the little boy who had been crying. His
long, fat legs, ending in shiny patent leather slippers, hung limply
down, and his towsled fair head leant on her shoulder. He was dressed in
cavalier costume of velvet and satin, and his fat, stupid face was
blotted and blurred with tears. He looked so very large and heavy, and
Mrs. Walbridge looked so small and old and tired that the young man went
towards with his arms held out.
"Let me carry him down for you," he said. "He's too heavy----"
Griselda laughed. "My mother won't let you," she said gaily. "She always
carries him about. She's much stronger than she looks."
Mrs. Walbridge didn't speak, but, with a little smile, went out of the
room and slowly downstairs. Her daughter shrugged her shoulders.
"Mum's not only superannuated as to novels," she announced, smoothing
her hair in front of a glass; "she's the old-fashioned mother and
grandmother. She won't let us do a thing."
Her bright beauty had already cast a small spell on the young man, but
nevertheless he answered her in a flash:
"Do you ever try?"
She stared for a moment. In spite of his journalistic manner and what is
really best described as his cheek, Oliver Wick was a gentleman, and the
girl had instinctively accepted him as such. But at the abrupt, frank
censure in his voice she drew herself up and assumed a new manner.
"Now that you've seen the presents," she said, in what he knew she
thought to be a haughty tone, "I think I must get back to my friends."
He grinned. "Righto! Sorry to have detained you. But I haven't quite
finished my talk with Mrs. Walbridge. I'm sure she won't mind giving me
a few tips about her next book. Our people love that kind of
thing--_eat_ it."
He cast his eye about the pleasant sunny room, and then, as he reached
the door, stopped.
"I suppose this is _your_ room?" he asked, with bland disregard of her
manner.
"What do you mean?"
"Well--different kinds of pictures, you know; brown wallpaper, and
that's a good Kakemono. Hanabosa Iccho, isn't it?"
Miss Walbridge's face expressed surprise too acute to be altogether
courteous.
"I--I don't know," she said. "I know it's a very good one. Mother bought
it for Paul--that's my brother--he's very fond of such things--for his
birthday and at Christmas--his room is being painted, so some of his
things are in here."
The young man looked admiringly at the grey and white study of monkeys
and leaves.
"I've got an uncle who collects them," he said, "and that's a jolly good
one. I suppose that Mrs. Walbridge goes in for Japanese art too?"
"Poor mother!" The girl laughed. "She doesn't know a Kakemono from a
broomstick. Paul found that one at some sale and asked her to give it to
him."
They went slowly down the stairs, the girl's pretty white hand sliding
lightly along the polished rail in a way that put all thought of
Japanese art out of the young man's active mind. He was going to be a
great success, for he had the conquering power of concentrating not only
his thoughts but his feelings on one thing at a time; and for the moment
the only thing in the world was Griselda Walbridge's left hand.