CHAPTER X
There are few places in a civilized country more desolate than a big, empty country railway station: such a station as that at Newmarket—an amusing, bustling sight on a race day; strangely still and deserted, even on a fine summer day, when there's nothing doing in the famous little town; and, in the depth of winter, extraordinarily forlorn. The solitariness and the desolation were very marked on the early afternoon of New Year's Eve which saw Varick striding up and down the deserted platform waiting for Dr. Panton, and Dr. Panton's inseparable companion, a big, ugly, intelligent spaniel called Span.
Varick had more than one reason to be grateful to the young medical man with whom Fate had once thrown him into such close contact; and so this last spring, when Panton had had to be in London for a few days, Varick had taken a deal of trouble to ensure that the country doctor should have a good time. But his own pleasure in his friend's company had been somewhat spoilt by something Panton had then thought it right to tell him. This something was that his late wife's one-time companion, Miss Pigchalke, had gone to Redsands, and, seeking out the doctor, had tried to force him to say that poor Mrs. Varick had been ill-treated—or if not exactly ill-treated, then neglected—by her husband, during her last illness.
"I wouldn't have told you, but that I think you ought to know that the woman has an inexplicable grudge against you," he had said.
"Not inexplicable," Varick had answered quietly. "For Julia Pigchalke first came as governess to Wyndfell Hall when my wife was ten years old, and she stayed on with her ultimately as companion—in fact as more friend than companion. Of course I queered her pitch!"
And then, rather hesitatingly, he had gone on to tell Dr. Panton that he was now paying his enemy an annuity of a hundred a year. This had been left to Miss Pigchalke in an early will made by his poor wife, but it had not been repeated in the testatrix's final will, as Mrs. Varick had fiercely resented Miss Pigchalke's violent disapproval of her marriage.
Panton had been amazed to hear of Varick's quite uncalled-for generosity, and he had exclaimed, "Well, that does take the cake! I wish I'd known this before. Still, I don't think Miss Pigchalke will forget in a hurry what I said to her. I warned her that some of the things she said, or half-said, were libellous, and that it might end very badly for her if she said them again. She took the line that I, being a doctor, was privileged—but I assured her that I was nothing of the kind! Still, she's a venomous old woman, and if I were you I'd write her a solicitor's letter."
That little conversation, which had taken place more than six months ago, came back, word for word, to Varick's mind, as he walked sharply up and down the platform, trying to get warm. It was strange how Miss Pigchalke and her vigorous, unpleasant personality haunted him. But he had found in his passbook only this morning that she had already cashed his last cheque for fifty pounds. Surely she couldn't, in decency, go on with this half-insane kind of persecution if she accepted what was, after all, his free and generous gift every six months?
The train came steaming in, and only three passengers got out. But among them was the man for whom Varick was waiting. And, at the sight of the lithe, alert figure of Dr. Panton, and of the one-time familiar form of good old Span, Varick's troubled, uncomfortable thoughts took wings to themselves and flew away.
The two men's hands met in a firm, friendly grasp. "This is jolly," said the younger of the two, as they walked out to the big car. "And I'm ever so much obliged to you for letting me bring Span!"
And Panton did think it very jolly of Varick to have left his guests, and come all this way through the cold to meet him. It was good of him, too, to have let him bring his dog.
As they drove slowly through the picturesque High Street of the famous town, Varick's friend looked about him with keen interest and enjoyment. He had an eager, intelligent, alert mind, and he had never been to Newmarket before.
Once they got clear of the town, and were speeding through the pleasant, typically English country lanes which give Suffolk a peculiarly soothing charm Span (who was a rather large liver-and-white spaniel), lying stretched out sedately at their feet, Varick suddenly asked carelessly: "No more news of my enemy, Miss Pigchalke, I suppose?"
Panton turned to him quickly in the rushing wind: "Yes, something has happened. But I didn't think it worth writing to you about. An extraordinary advertisement appeared about a month ago in one of the popular Sunday papers, and Mrs. Bilton—you remember the woman—?"
Varick shook his head. He looked exceedingly disturbed and annoyed, and the man now sitting by his side suddenly regretted that he had said anything about that absurd advertisement.
"Mrs. Bilton was the woman whom I recommended to you as a charwoman, soon after you were settled down at Redsands."
"Yes, I remember the name now. What of her?"
"She came up to see me one evening about a month ago, and she brought the paper—the News of the World I think it was—with her."
"Yes," said Varick shortly. "Yes—go on, Panton. What was in the advertisement?"
"The advertisement simply asked for information about you and your doings, past and present, and offered a reward for any information of importance. It was very oddly worded. What I should call an amateur advertisement. Mrs. Bilton came up to consult me as to whether she should write in answer to it. Of course I strongly advised her to do nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact"—Dr. Panton chuckled—"I have reason to believe she did write, but I need hardly say that, as far as she was concerned, nothing came of it!"
"I wish you could remember exactly how the advertisement was worded?" said Varick. It was clear that he felt very much disturbed.
"I'm sorry I didn't keep a copy of it; all I can tell you is that it asked for information concerning the past life and career of Lionel Varick, sometime of Redsands and Chichester."
"Chichester?" repeated Varick mechanically.
The name of the Sussex cathedral town held for him many painful, sordid memories. His first wife, the woman whose very existence he believed unknown to everyone who now knew him, with the exception of Blanche Farrow, had been a Chichester woman. It was there that they had lived in poverty and angry misery during the last few weeks of her life.
"Yes, that's all I remember—but I've put it more clearly than the advertisement did."
"What an extraordinary thing!" muttered Varick.
"I don't know that it's so very extraordinary. It was that woman Pigchalke's doing, obviously. As I told you the last time we met, I felt that she would stick at nothing to annoy you. She's quite convinced that you're an out-and-out villain."
Dr. Panton laughed. He really couldn't help it. Varick was such a thoroughly good fellow!
"I wonder," said Varick hesitatingly, "if I could get a copy of that Sunday paper? I feel that it's the sort of thing that ought to be stopped—don't you, Panton?"
"I'm quite sure it didn't appear again in the same paper, or I should have heard of it again. That one particular copy did end by going the whole round of Redsands. I went on hearing about it for, I should think,—well, right up to when I left home."
A rush of blind, unreasoning rage was shaking Varick. Curse the woman! What a brute she must be, to take his money, and go on annoying him in this way. "I wish you'd written and told me about it when it happened," he said sombrely.
The doctor looked at him, distressed. "I'm sorry I didn't, if you feel like that about it!" he exclaimed. "But you were so put out when I told you of the woman's having come to see me, and it was so obvious that the advertisement came from her, that I thought I'd say nothing about it. I wouldn't have told you now, only that you mentioned her."
Varick saw that his friend was very much disturbed. He made a determined effort over himself. "Never mind," he said, trying to smile. "After all, it's of no real consequence."
"I don't know if you'll find it any consolation to be told that that sort of thing is by no means uncommon," said Panton reflectively. "People, especially women, whose minds for any reason have become just a little unhinged, often take that sort of strange dislike to another human being. Sometimes for no reason at all. Every medical man would tell you of half-a-dozen such cases within his own knowledge. Fortunately, such half-insane people generally choose a noted man—the Prime Minister, for instance, or whoever happens to be very much in the public eye. If the persecution becomes quite intolerable there's a police-court case—or the individual is quite properly certified as insane."
And then something peculiar and untoward happened to Lionel Varick. The words rose to his lips: "That horrible woman haunts me—haunts me! I can never get rid of her—she seems always there—"
Had he uttered those words aloud, or had he not? He glanced sharply round, and then, with relief, he made up his mind that he had not uttered them, for the man sitting by his side was looking straight before him, with a pleased, interested expression on his plain, intelligent face.
Varick pulled himself together. This would never do! He asked himself, with a touch of acute anxiety, whether it were possible that he was losing his nerve? He had always possessed the valuable human gift of being able to control, absolutely, his secret feelings and his emotions.
"Did I tell you that Miss Brabazon is here?" he asked carelessly.
And the other exclaimed: "I'm glad of that. I formed a tremendously high opinion of that girl last year. By the way, I was surprised to hear, quite by accident, the other day, that she's a lot of money. I don't quite know why, but I formed the impression that it was her friend who was well-to-do—didn't you?"
"I never thought about it," said Varick indifferently. "By the way, Miss Brabazon's old aunt, a certain Miss Burnaby, is here too. It's rather a quiet party, Panton; I hope you won't be bored."
"I'm never bored. Who else have you got staying with you?"
Varick ran over the list of his guests, only leaving out one, and, after a scarcely perceptible pause, he remedied the omission.
"Then there's Miss Farrow's niece; she was called after her aunt, so her real name is Blanche—"
"'Known to her friends as Bubbles,'" quoted Dr. Panton, with a cynical inflection in his voice.
"How do you know that?" exclaimed Varick.
"Because there was a portrait of the young lady in the Sketch last week. She seems to be a kind of feminine edition of the Admirable Crichton. She can act, dance, cook—and she's famed as a medium in the psychic world—whatever that may mean!"
"I see you know all about her," observed Varick, smiling.
But though he was smiling at his friend, his inner thoughts were grim thoughts. He was secretly repeating to himself: "Chichester, Chichester? How can she have got hold of Chichester?"
Dr. Panton went on: "I'm glad I'm going to meet this Miss Bubbles—I've never met that particular type of young lady before. Though, of course, it's not, as some people believe, a new type. There have always been girls of that sort in the civilized world."
"It's quite true that the most curious thing about Bubbles," said Varick thoughtfully, "is a kind of thought-reading gift. I fancy she must have inherited it from an Indian ancestress, for her great-great-grandfather rescued a begum on her way to be burnt on her husband's funeral pyre. He ultimately married her, and though she never came to England. Bubbles' father, a fool called Hugh Dunster, who's lost what little money he ever had, is one of her descendants. There's something just a little Oriental and strange in Bubbles' appearance."
"This is 'curiouser and curiouser,' as Alice in Wonderland used to say!" exclaimed Panton. "Do you think I could persuade Miss Bubbles to give an exhibition of her psychic gifts?"
The speaker uttered the word "psychic" with a very satiric inflection in his pleasant voice.
Varick smiled rather wryly. "You're quite likely to have an exhibition of them without asking for it! The first evening that my guests were here she held what I believe they call a séance, and as a result Miss Brabazon's uncle, old Burnaby, not only bolted from the room, but left Wyndfell Hall the next morning."
"What an extraordinary thing!"
"Yes," said Varick, "it was an extraordinary thing. I confess I can't explain Bubbles' gift at all. At this séance of hers she described quite accurately long dead men and women—"
"Are you sure of that, Varick?"
"Of course I am, for she described my own mother."
There was a pause.
"Being a very intelligent, quick girl, she naturally helps herself out as best she can," went on Varick reflectively.
"Then you're inclined to think her thought-reading is more or less a fraud?" cried Panton triumphantly.
"Less, rather than more, for she's convinced me that she sees into the minds of her subjects and builds up a kind of—of—"
"Description?" suggested the doctor.
"More than that—I was going to say figure. She described, as if she saw them standing there before her, people of whom she'd never even heard—and the descriptions were absolutely exact. But if you don't mind, Panton—"
He hesitated, and the other said, "Yes, Varick?"
"Well, I'd rather you leave all that sort of thing alone, as far as Bubbles Dunster is concerned. Both Miss Farrow and I are very anxious that she shouldn't be up to any more of her tricks while she's here. People don't half like it, you see. Even I didn't like it."
Somehow it was a comfort to Varick to talk freely about Bubbles to a stranger—Bubbles had got on his nerves. He would have given a good deal to persuade her to leave Wyndfell Hall; but he didn't know how to set about it. In a sense she was the soul of the party. The others all liked her. Yet he, himself, felt a sort of growing repugnance to her which he would have been hard put to it to explain. Indeed, the only way he could explain it—and he had thought a good deal about it the last few days—was that she undoubtedly possessed an uncanny power of starting into life images which had lain long dormant in his brain.
For one thing—but that, of course, might not be entirely Bubbles' fault—Milly, his poor wife, had become again terribly real to him. It was almost as if he felt her to be alive, say, in the next room—lying, as she had been wont to lie, listening for his footsteps, in the little watering place where they had spent the last few weeks of her life.
He could not but put down that unpleasant, sinister phenomenon to the presence of Bubbles, for he had been at Wyndfell Hall all the summer, and though the place had been Milly's birthplace—where, too, she had spent her melancholy, dull girlhood—no thought of her had ever come to disturb his pleasure in the delightful, perfect house and its enchanting garden. Of course, now and again some neighbour with whom he had made acquaintance would say a word to him indicating what a strange, solitary life the Faunceys, father and daughter, had led in their beautiful home, and how glad the speaker was that "poor Milly" had had a little happiness before she died. To these remarks he, Varick, would of course answer appropriately, with that touch of sad reminiscence which carries with it no real regret or sorrow.
But during the last few days it had been otherwise. He could not get Milly out of his mind, and he had come to feel that if this peculiar sensation continued, he would not be able to bring himself to stay on at Wyndfell Hall after the break-up of his present party.
This feeling of his dead wife's presence had first become intolerably vivid in the village school-room during the children's Christmas Day treat. At one time—so the clergyman had told him—Milly had had a sewing-class for the village girls in that very room; but the class had not been a success, and she had given it up after a few weeks. That was her only association with the ugly little building, and yet—and yet, once he had got well into his speech, he had suddenly felt her to be there—and it was not the gentle, fretful, adoring Milly he had known, but a Presence which seemed filled with an awful, clear-eyed knowledge of certain secret facts which his reasoning faculties assured him were only known to his own innermost self.
CHAPTER XI
A turn in the road brought them within sight of Wyndfell Hall, and—"What a singular, wonderful-looking old place!" exclaimed Dr. Panton.
And, indeed, there was something mysteriously alluring in the long, gabled building standing almost, as it were, on an island, among the high trees which formed a screen to the house on the north and east sides. It was something solemn, something appealing—like a melodious, plaintive voice from the long-distant past, out of that Old Country which was the England of six hundred years ago.
"You've no idea how beautiful this place is in summer, Panton—and yet the spring is almost more perfect. You must come again then, and make a really good, long stay."
"Span will enjoy a swim in the moat even now," said the doctor, smiling. They were going slowly over the narrow brick bridge, and so up to the deep-eaved porch.
A butler and footman appeared as if by magic, and the sound of laughing voices floated from behind them. There was a pleasant stir of life and bustle about the delightful old house, or so it seemed to the guest.
He jumped out of the car behind his host, then he turned round. "Span!" he called out. "Span!"
But the dog was still lying on the floor of the car, and he made no movement, still less any attempt to jump down.
"What an extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Span's master. "Come down, Span! Come down at once!"
He waited a moment; then he went forward and tried to drag the dog out. But Span resisted with all his might. He was a big spaniel, and Panton, from where he stood, had no purchase on him. "There's something wrong with him," he said with concern. "Wait a moment, Varick—if you don't mind."
He got up into the car again and patted Span's head. The dog turned his head slowly, and licked his master's hand.
"Now, Span, jump out! There's a good dog!"
But Span never moved.
At last Panton managed to half-shove, half-tumble the dog out. "I've only known him behave like this once before," he muttered, "and that was with a poor mad woman whom I was once compelled to put up in my house for two or three days. He simply wouldn't go near her! He behaved just as he's doing now."
Span was lying on the ground before them, inert, almost as if dead. But his eyes, his troubled, frightened eyes, were very much alive.
Varick went off into the house for a moment. He had never liked dogs; and this ugly brute's behaviour, so he told himself, annoyed him very much.
Span got up and shook himself, almost as if he had been asleep.
Panton bent down. "Span," he said warningly, "be a good dog and behave yourself! Remember what happened to you after the poor lunatic lady went away."
And Span looked up with that peculiar, thoughtful look which dogs sometimes have of understanding everything which is being said to them.
Span had been beaten—a very rare experience for him—after the mad lady had left the doctor's house. But whether he understood or not the exact reference to that odious episode in his happy past life, there was no doubt that Span did understand that his master regarded him as being in disgrace; and it was a very subdued dog that walked sedately into the hall where most of the party were gathered together ready to greet the new-comer.
Miss Farrow was particularly cordial, and so was Helen Brabazon. She and Dr. Panton had become real friends during Mrs. Varick's illness, and they had been at one in their affection for, and admiration of, Lionel Varick during that piteous time. To the doctor (though he would not have admitted it, even to himself, for the world) there had been something very repugnant about the dying woman. Though still young in years, she might have been any age; and she was so fretful and so selfish, hardly allowing her husband out of her sight, while utterly devoted to him, of course, in her queer, egoistic way—and to Miss Brabazon, her kind new friend. The doctor had soon realized that it was the pity which is akin to love which had made Helen become so attached to poor Milly Varick—intense pity for the unhappy soul who was going to lose her new-found happiness. Milly's pathetic cry: "I never had a girl friend before. You can't think how happy it makes me!" had touched Helen to the heart.
Standing there, in that noble old room hung with some beautiful tapestries forming a perfect background to the life and colour which was now filling it, Panton was surprised to find how vividly those memories of last autumn came surging back to him. It must be owing to this meeting with Miss Brabazon—this reunion with the two people with whom he had gone through an experience which, though it so often befalls a kind and sympathetic doctor, yet never loses its poignancy—that he was thinking now so intensely of poor Mrs. Varick.
It was Helen Brabazon who had introduced the new-comer to Miss Farrow, for Varick had disappeared, and soon Dr. Panton was looking round him with interest and curiosity. Most of the people whom he knew to be staying at Wyndfell Hall were present, but not the girl his friend had described—not the girl, that is, whose portrait he had seen in the Sketch. Just as he was telling himself this, a door opened, and two people came through together—a tall, fair, smiling young man, and a quaint, slender figure, looking like a child rather than like a woman, whose pale, yet vivid little face was framed in thick, dark brown, bobbed hair, and whose large, bright eyes gleamed mischievously.
Bubbles had chosen to put on this afternoon a long, rose-red knitted jumper over a yellow skirt, and she looked as if she had stepped out from some ancient Spanish religious procession.
"Bubbles," called out her aunt, "this is Dr. Panton. Come and be introduced to him."
Then something very odd happened. Varick joined his new guest at the very same moment that the girl came forward with hand outstretched and a polite word of welcome on her lips; but, before she could speak, Span, who had been behaving with so sedate a dignity that the people present were scarcely conscious of his existence, gave a sudden loud and horrible howl.
His master, disregarding Bubbles' outstretched hand, seized the dog by the collar, rushed with him to the door giving on to the porch, and thrust him out into the cold and darkness.
Span remained quite quiet when on the wrong side of the door. There might have been no dog there.
"I'm so sorry," said Panton apologetically, as he came again towards the tea-table. "I can't think what's the matter with the poor brute. He's almost perfect manners as a rule."
He turned to Miss Brabazon, who laughingly exclaimed: "Yes, indeed! Span's such an old friend of mine that I feel quite hurt. I thought he would be sure to take some notice of me; but I didn't even know he was there till he set up that awful, unearthly howl."
"I think it's very cruel to have turned the dog out into the cold," Bubbles said in her quick, decided way. "There's nothing about dogs I don't know, Doctor—Doctor—"
"—Panton," he said shortly.
"Oh, Panton? May I go out to him, Dr. Panton?" There was a challenge in her tone.
Panton answered stiffly: "By all means. But Span's not always pleasant with complete strangers; and he prefers men, Miss Dunster."
"I think he'll be all right with me."
Bubbles went and opened the door, and a moment later they heard her low, throaty voice talking caressingly to the dog. Span whined, but in a gentle, happy way.
"He's quite good now," she called out triumphantly.
Varick turned to the company: "Will you forgive me for a moment?" he said. "I forgot to say a word to my chauffeur about our plans for to-morrow." And as he went through one door, Bubbles, followed by the now good and repentant Span, appeared through another.
"He's a darling," she cried enthusiastically. "One of the nicest dogs I've ever met!"
She sat down, and endeared herself further to Span by giving him a large piece of cake.
And Dr. Panton, looking at the charming group—for the lithe, dark-haired girl in her brilliant, quaint garment, and the dog over which she was bending, made a delightful group—told himself grudgingly that Miss Bubbles was curiously attractive: far more attractive-looking than he would have thought her to be by the portrait published in the Sketch—though even that had been sufficiently arresting to remain in his mind for two or three days. Was there really something Eastern about her appearance? He would never have thought it but for those few words of Varick's. Many English girls have that clear olive complexion, those large, shadowy dark eyes, which yet can light up into daring, fun, and mischief.
But, alas! the story of Span—even this early chapter of the story of his stay at Wyndfell Hall—had not a happy ending. As Varick came forward again among his guests, Span once more set up that sharp, uncanny howl, and this time he cringed and shivered, as well as howled.
Span's master, with an angry exclamation, again dragged the now resisting dog across to the door which led into the outer porch. After he had shut the door, and Span's howls were heard subsiding, he turned to the others apologetically. "I'm really awfully sorry," he exclaimed. "If this sort of thing goes on I'll have to send him home to-morrow."
Poor Panton looked thoroughly put out and annoyed. But Bubbles came to his rescue—Bubbles and the young man whom the doctor now knew to be Bill Donnington.
"Come on, Bill! We'll take him round to the kitchen. You don't mind, do you?"
Span's owner shook his head; devoted though he was to his dog, he felt he could well do without Span for a while.
After Bubbles and Donnington had disappeared together, their eager voices could be heard from the paved court-yard which connected two of the wings of Wyndfell Hall. Span was barking now, barking eagerly, happily, confidently. And when the two young people reappeared they were both laughing.
"He's taken to the cook tremendously," said Bubbles. "And he's even made friends—and that's much more wonderful—with the cat. He went straight up to her and smelt her, and she seemed to be quite pleased with the attention."
She turned to Dr. Panton: "I'll go out presently and see how he's getting on," she added.
He looked at her gratefully. She really was a nice girl! He had thought that she would be one of those disagreeable, forward, self-sufficing, modern young women, who are absorbed only in themselves, and in the effect they produce on other people. But Miss Bubbles was not in the least like that.
Helen Brabazon whispered, smiling: "Isn't Bubbles Dunster a dear, Dr. Panton? She's not like anyone I ever met before—and that makes her all the nicer, doesn't it?"
CHAPTER XII
About an hour after Dr. Panton's arrival, the whole of the party was more or less scattered through the delightful old house, with the exception of Lionel Varick, who had gone off to the village by himself.
But the four ladies finally gathered together in the hall to put in the time between tea and dinner.
Miss Burnaby was soon nodding over a book close to the fire, while Helen Brabazon and Blanche Farrow had brought down their work. This consisted, as far as Helen was concerned, of a complicated baby's garment destined for the Queen's Needlework Guild. Blanche, sitting close to Helen, was bending over a frame containing the intricate commencement of a fruit and bird petit-point picture, which, when finished, she intended should form a banner screen for this very room.
Three seven-branched silver candlesticks had now been lighted, and formed pools of soft radiance in the gathering dusk.
After wandering about restlessly for a while, Bubbles ensconced herself far away from the others, in the old carved wood confessional, which had seemed in Donnington's eyes so incongruous and unsuitable an object to form part of the furnishings of a living room.
To Blanche Farrow, the confessional, notwithstanding the beauty of the carving, suggested an irreverent simile—that of a telephone-box. She told herself that only Bubbles would have chosen such an uncomfortable resting-place.
But when stepping up into what had once been the priest's narrow seat, Bubbles called out that it was delightfully nice and quiet in there, as well as dark—for there still hung over the aperture through which she had just passed a curtain of green silk brocade embroidered with pale passion flowers.
There followed a period of absolute silence and quietude in the room. Then the door leading from the outside porch opened, and Varick came in. "I hope I'm not intruding," he exclaimed in his full, resonant voice; and the ladies, with the exception of Bubbles, who remained invisible, looked up and eagerly welcomed him.
During the last few days he had made a real conquest of Miss Burnaby, who, with the one startling exception of the emotion betrayed by her at the séance, secretly struck both him and Blanche Farrow as the most commonplace human being with whom either had ever come in contact.
"I'm quite warm," he said, in answer to the old lady's invitation to come up to the fire. "I had to go down to the village Post Office to see why the London papers hadn't arrived. But I've got them all now."
He came over to where she was sitting and handed her a picture paper. Then he retreated, far from the fire, close to a table which was equi-distant from the confessional and the door giving access to the staircase hall. Bringing forward a deep, comfortable chair out of the shadows, he sat down, and opening one of the newspapers he had brought in, began to read it with close attention.
On the table at his elbow, there now stood what looked to Helen's eyes like a bouquet of light. But this only made the soft darkness which filled the further side of the great room seem more intense to those sitting near the fireplace.
They were all pleasantly tired after the doings of the day; and soon Blanche's quick ears caught a faint, regular sound issuing from the far-off confessional. Bubbles, so much was clear, had fallen asleep.
And then, not for the first time in the last few days, the aunt began considering within herself the problem of her niece. Blanche had begun to like Donnington with a cordiality of liking which surprised herself. His selfless love for the girl touched her more than she had thought it possible for anything now to touch her worldly heart. And whereas she would naturally have considered a marriage between the penniless Donnington and brilliant, clever, popular Bubbles as being out of the question, she was beginning to feel that such a marriage might be, nay, almost certainly was, the only thing likely to ensure for Bubbles a reasonably happy and normal life. Blanche Farrow knew enough of human nature to realize that the kind of love Bill Donnington felt for her strange little niece was of a high and rare quality. It was very unlike the usual selfish, acquisitive love of a man for a maid. It was more like the tender, watching, tireless devotion certain mothers have for their children—it was infinitely protecting, infinitely forgiving, infinitely understanding.
Blanche sighed, a long, deep sigh, as she told herself sadly that no one had ever loved her like that—not even her old friend Mark Gifford. He had loved her long; in fact he rarely saw her, even now, without asking her to marry him. Also he had been, in his own priggish way, a very, very good and useful friend to her. But still, Blanche knew, deep in her heart, that Mark Gifford disapproved of her, that he often misunderstood her, that he was ashamed of the strength of the attraction which made him still wish to make her his wife, and which had kept him a bachelor. As long as this old friend had known her he had always written her a Christmas letter. The letter had not come this Christmas, and she had missed it. But Mark had no idea of where she was, and—and after all, perhaps his faithful friendship had waned at last from lack of real response.
And then, while thinking these rather melancholy, desultory thoughts, Blanche Farrow suddenly experienced a very peculiar sensation. It was that of finding herself as if impelled to look up from the embroidery-frame over which she was bending.
She did look up; and for a moment her heart—that heart which the way of her life had so atrophied and hardened—seemed to stop beating, for just behind Lionel Varick, whose head was still bent over his newspaper with a complete air of unconcern, interest, and ease—stood, or appeared to stand, two shadowy figures.
She shut her eyes; then opened them again—wide. The figures were still there, and they had grown clearer, more definite, especially the countenance of each of the two wraith-like women who stood, like sentinels, one on either side of the seated man.
Blanche gazed at them fixedly for what seemed to her an eternity of time. But even while, in a way, she could not deny the evidence of her senses, she was telling herself that she was really seeing nothing—that this extraordinary experience was but another exercise of Bubbles' uncanny power.
And as she, literally not believing the evidence of her senses, stared at the two immobile figures, her eyes became focussed on the face of the woman standing to Varick's right. There was a coarse beauty in the mask-like-looking countenance, but it was a beauty now instinct with a kind of stark ferocity and rage.
At last she slowly concentrated her gaze on the other luminous figure. Though swathed from neck to heel in what Blanche told herself, with a peculiar feeling of horror, were old-fashioned grave-clothes, the second woman yet looked more real, more alive, than the other. Her face, if deadly pale, was less mask-like, and the small, dark eyes gleamed, while the large, ill-shaped mouth seemed to be quivering.
And then, all at once, the form to Varick's right began to dissolve—to melt, as it were, into the green-grey and blue tapestry which hung across the farther wall of the hall.
But while this curious phenomenon took place, the woman swathed in her grave-clothes remained quite clearly visible....
Suddenly Helen Brabazon started to her feet; she uttered a loud and terrible cry—and at that same moment Blanche saw the more living and sinister of the two apparitions also become disintegrated, and quickly dissolve into nothingness.
Lionel Varick leapt from his chair. His face changed from a placid gravity to one of surprise and distress. "What is it?" he cried, coming forward. "What is it, Miss Brabazon—Helen?"
The girl whom he addressed fell back into her chair. She covered her face with her hands. Twice she opened her lips and tried to speak—in vain. At last she gasped out, "It's all right now. I'll be better in a minute."
"But what happened?" exclaimed Varick. "Did anything happen?"
"I think I must have gone to sleep without knowing it—for I've had a terrible, terrible—nightmare!"
Miss Burnaby got up slowly, deliberately, from her chair near the fire. She also came up to her niece.
"You were working up to the very moment you cried out," she said positively. "I had turned round and I was watching you—when suddenly you jumped up and gave that dreadful cry."
"Do tell us what frightened you," said Varick solicitously.
"Please don't ask me what I saw—or thought I saw; I would rather not tell you," Helen said in a low voice.
"But of course you must tell us!" Miss Burnaby roused herself, and spoke with a good deal of authority. "If you are not well you ought to see a doctor, my dear child."
Helen burst into bitter sobs. "I thought I saw Milly, Mr. Varick—poor, poor Milly! She looked exactly as she looked when I last saw her, in her coffin, excepting that her eyes were open. She was standing just behind you—and oh, I shall never, never forget her look! It was a terrible, terrible look—a look of hatred. Yet I cared for her so much! You know I did all that was possible for one woman to do for another during those few weeks that I knew her?"
Lionel Varick's face turned a curious, greyly pallid tint. It was as if all the natural colour was drained out of it.
"Where's Bubbles?" he asked, in a scarcely audible voice.
For a moment no one answered him, and then Blanche said quietly: "Bubbles is over there, in the confessional, asleep."
He turned and walked quickly over to the carved, box-like confessional, and drew aside the green-embroidered curtain.
Yes, the girl lay there asleep—or was she only pretending? Her breast rose and fell, her eyes were closed.
Varick took hold of her arm with no gentle gesture, and she awoke with a cry of surprise and pain. "What is it? Don't do that!" she said in a hoarse and sleepy tone.
And then, on seeing who it was, she smiled wryly. "Is it forbidden to get in here?" she asked, still speaking in a heavy, dull way. "I didn't know it was,"—and stumblingly she stepped down out of the confessional.
Varick scowled at her, and made no answer to her question. Together they walked over to where the other three were standing—Miss Burnaby still gazing at her niece, with an annoyed, frightened expression on her face.
As Bubbles and Varick came up to her, Helen got up from the chair in which she had sunk back. She held a handkerchief to her face, and was making a great effort to regain her self-control and composure.
"Please forgive me, Mr. Varick. I oughtn't to have told you what I thought I saw—for I'm sure it was only a dream, a horrible, startling dream. But—but you made me tell you, didn't you?"
She looked up into his pale, convulsed face with an anguished expression. "I think I'll go upstairs now, and rest a little before I dress for dinner," and then she walked across the room, and out of the door, with a steady step.
Bubbles stretched out her arms with a weary gesture. "What's all this fuss about?" she asked. "I feel absolutely done—done—done! Not at all as if I'd had a good long sleep. I wonder how long I was asleep?"
"You didn't sleep very long," said her aunt dryly—"not half-an-hour in all. I should advise you, Bubbles, to follow Miss Brabazon's example—go up and have a good rest, before getting ready for dinner."
Bubbles turned away. She walked very slowly, with dragging steps, to the door; and a moment later Miss Burnaby also left the room.
Varick walked over towards the fireplace. He held out his hands to the flames—he felt cold, shiveringly cold.
He turned, as he had so often done in the past, for comfort to the woman now standing silent by his side, and who knew at once so much and so little of his real life.
"I wonder what really happened?" he muttered. "It was a most extraordinary thing! I've seldom met anyone so little hysterical or fanciful as—as is Miss Brabazon." And then: "Why, Blanche," he exclaimed, startled, "what's the matter?"
There was a look on her face he had never seen there before—a very troubled, questioning, perplexed look.
"I saw something too, Lionel," she said in a low voice; "I—I saw more than Helen Brabazon admits to having seen."
"You saw something?" he echoed incredulously.
"Yes, and were it not that I am an older woman, and have more self-control than your young friend, I should have cried out too."
"What did you see?" he asked slowly.
"What I think I saw—for I am quite convinced that I saw nothing at all, and that the extraordinary phenomenon or vision, call it what you will, was only another of Bubbles' tricks—what I saw—" She stopped dead. She found it extraordinarily difficult to go on.
"Yes?" he said sharply. "Please tell me, Blanche. What is it you saw, or thought you saw?"
"I thought I saw two women standing just behind your chair," she said deliberately.
Varick made a violent movement—so violent that it knocked over a rather solid little oak stool which always stood before the fire. "I beg your pardon!" he exclaimed; and, stooping, picked the stool up again. Then, "What sort of women?" he asked; and though he tried to speak lightly, he failed, and knew he failed.
"It isn't very easy to describe them," she said reluctantly. "The one was a stout young woman, with a gipsy type of face—that's the best way I can describe it. But the other—"
She waited a full minute, but Varick did not, could not, speak.
She went on:
"The other, Lionel, looked more like—well, like what a ghost is supposed to look like! She was swathed in white from head to foot, and she appeared—I don't quite know how to describe it—as if at once alive and dead. Her face looked dead, but her eyes looked alive."
"Had you ever seen either of these women before—I mean in life?"
He had turned away from her, and was staring into the fire.
"No; I've never seen anyone in the least like either of them."
Varick moved a few steps, and then, as if hardly knowing what he was doing, he began turning over the leaves of the picture paper Miss Burnaby had been reading.
"Do you suppose that Helen Brabazon saw exactly what you saw?" he asked at last.
"No, I'm sure she didn't; for the younger-looking woman had already disappeared, it was as if she faded into nothingness, before Helen Brabazon called out,"—there was a hesitating, dubious tone in Blanche's voice. "But of course we can't tell what exactly she did see. She may have seen something—someone—quite different from what I thought I saw."
Varick began staring into the fire again, and Blanche felt intolerably nervous and uncomfortable. "I think, Lionel, that I must speak to Bubbles very seriously!" she said at last. "I haven't a doubt now that she really has got some uncanny power—a power of stirring the imagination—of making those about her think they see visions."
"But why should she have chosen that you should see such—such a vision as that?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
"Ah, there you have me! I can't imagine what should prompt her to do such a cruel, unseemly thing."
"You think it's quite impossible that Bubbles personated either of these—these"—he hesitated for a word, and Blanche answered his only half-asked question very decidedly.
"If there'd been only one figure there, I confess I should have thought that Bubbles had in some way dressed up, and 'worked it.' You know how fond she used to be of practical jokes? But there were two forms—absolutely distinct the one from the other."
Lionel Varick took a turn up and down the long room. Then he came and stood opposite to her, and she was shocked at the change in his face. He looked as if he had been through some terrible physical experience.
"I wish you'd arrange for her to go away, at once—I mean, to-morrow. Forgive me for saying such a thing, but I feel that nothing will go right while Bubbles is at Wyndfell Hall," he exclaimed.
Blanche looked what he had never seen her look before—offended. "I don't think I can get her away to-morrow, Lionel. She's nowhere to go to. After all, she gave up a delightful party to come here and help us out."
"Very well," he said hastily. "Perhaps I ought not to have suggested anything so inhospitable"—he tried to smile. "But I will ask you to do me one favour?"
"Yes," she said, still speaking coldly. "What is it?"
"I want you to ask Miss Brabazon and her aunt to keep what happened this afternoon absolutely to themselves."
"Of course I will!" She was relieved. "I don't think either of them is in the least likely to be even tempted to speak of it."