The Brightener
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I read fast, and when I'd finished, looked up at Terry. "If you have a secret to tell, I'm ready with advice and sympathy," said my eyes.
"When the Princess Avalesco was Margaret Revell, I was in love with her," Terry Burns answered them. "I adored her! She was seven or eight years older than I, but the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Of course she wouldn't look at me! I was about as important as a slum child to her. In America, the Revells were like your royalties. She was a princess, even then – without a title. To get one, she sold herself. To think that she should answer that fool advertisement of ours! Heavens! I'm like Tantalus. I see the blessed water I'd give my life to drink, held to my lips, only to have it snatched away!"
"Why snatched away?" I questioned.
"'Why?' Because if there were a moated grange, I could meet her. Her husband's dead. You know he was killed before Roumania'd been fighting a week. Things are very different with me, too, these days. I'm a man – not a boy. And I've come into more money than I ever dreamed I'd have. Not a huge fortune like hers, but a respectable pile. Who knows what might have happened? But there's no moated grange, and so – "
"Why shouldn't there be one?" I broke in. And while he stared blankly, I hurried on. I reminded Captain Burns of what I had said yesterday: that there were houses of that description, more or less, in England, real houses! – my own, for instance. Courtenaye Abbey was out of the question, because it was let to my cousin Jim, and was being shown to the public as a sort of museum; but there were other places. I knew of several. As Captain Burns was so rich, he might hire one, and let it to the Princess Avalesco.
For a moment he brightened, but a sudden thought obscured him, like a cloud.
"Not places with twisted chimneys!" he groaned.
This brought me up short. I stubbed my brain against that twisted chimney! But when I'd recovered from the blow, I raised my head. "Yes, places with twisted chimneys! At least, one such place."
"Ah, Hampton Court. You said the only other twisted chimney was there."
"The advertisement said that."
"Well – "
"It's a pity," I admitted, "that I thought of the twisted chimney. It was an unnecessary extravagance, though I meant well. But it never would have occurred to me as an extra lure if I hadn't known about a house where such a chimney exists. The one house of the kind I ever heard of except Hampton Court."
Terry sprang to his feet, a changed man, young and vital.
"Can we get it?"
"Ah, if I knew! But we can try. If you don't care what you pay?"
"I don't. Not a – hang."
I, too, jumped up, and took from my desk a bulky volume – Burke. This I brought back to my chair, and sat down with it on my lap. On one knee beside me, Terry Burns watched me turn the pages. At "Sc" I stopped, to read aloud all about the Scarletts. But before beginning I warned Terry: "I never knew any of the Scarletts myself," I said, "but I've heard my grandmother say they were the wickedest family in England, which meant a lot from her. She wasn't exactly a saint!"
We learned from the book what I had almost forgotten, that Lord Scarlett, the eleventh baron, held the title because his elder brother, Cecil, had died in Australia unmarried. He, himself, was married, with one young son, his wife being the daughter of a German wine merchant.
As I read, I remembered the gossip heard by my childish ears. "Bertie Scarlett," as Grandmother called him, was not only the wickedest, but the poorest peer in England according to her – too poor to live at Dun Moat, his place in Devonshire, my own county. The remedy was marriage – with an heiress. He tried America. Nothing doing. The girls he invited to become Lady Scarlett drew the line at anything beneath an earl. Or perhaps his reputation was against him. There were many people who knew he was unpopular at Court; unpopular being the mildest word possible. And he was middle-aged and far from good-looking. So the best he could manage was a German heiress, of an age not unsuited to his own. Her father, Herr Goldstein, lived in some little Rhine town, and was supposed to be rolling in marks (that was six or seven years before the war); however, the Goldsteins met Lord Scarlett not in Germany but at Monte Carlo, where Papa G. was a well-known punter. Luck went wrong with him, and later the war came. Altogether, the marriage had failed to accomplish for Bertie Scarlett's pocket and his place what he had hoped from it. And apparently the one appreciable result was a little boy, half of German blood. There were hopes that, after the war, Herr Goldstein's business might rise again to something like its old value, in which case his daughter would reap the benefit. Meanwhile, however, if Grandmother was right, things were at a low ebb; and I thought that Lord Scarlett would most likely snap at an offer for Dun Moat.
Terry was immensely cheered by my story and opinion. But such a ready-made solution of the difficulty seemed too good to be true. He got our advertisement, and read it out to me, pausing at each detail of perfection which we had light-heartedly bestowed upon our moated grange. "The twisted chimney and the moat aren't everything," he groaned. "Carp and water-lilies we might supply, if they don't exist; peacocks, too. Nearly all historic English houses are what the agents call 'rich in old oak.' But what about those 'exquisite oriels,' those famous fireplaces, those stairways, those celebrated ceilings, and corbels – whatever they are? No one house, outside our brains, can have them all. If anything's missing in the list she'll cry off, and call T. B. a fraud."
"She'll only remember the most exciting things," I said. "I don't see her walking round the house with the 'ad.' in her hand, do you? She'll be captured by the tout ensemble. But the first thing is to catch our hare – I mean our house. You 'phone to the companion, Mrs. Dobell, at once. Say that before you got her letter you'd practically given the refusal of your place to someone else, but that you met the Princess Avalesco years ago, and would prefer to have her as your tenant, if she cares to leave the matter open for a few days. She'll say 'yes' like a shot. And meanwhile, I'll be inquiring the state of affairs at Dun Moat."
"How can you inquire without going there, and wasting a day, when we might be getting hold of another place, perhaps, and – and building a twisted chimney to match the 'ad.'?" Terry raged, walking up and down the room.
"Quite simply," I said. "I'll get Jim Courtenaye on long-distance 'phone at the Abbey, where he's had a telephone installed. He doesn't live there, but at Courtenaye Coombe, a village close by. However, I hear he's at the Abbey from morn till dewy eve, so I'll ring him up. What he doesn't know about the Scarletts he'll find out so quickly you'll not have time to turn."
"How do you know he'll be so quick?" persisted Terry. "If he's only your forty-fourth cousin he may be luke-warm – "
I stopped him with a look. "Whatever else Jim Courtenaye may be, he's not luke-warm!" I said. "He has red hair and black eyes. And he is either my fiercest enemy or my warmest friend, I'm not sure which. Anyhow, he saved my life once, at great trouble and danger to himself; so I don't think he'll hesitate at getting a little information for me if I pay him the compliment of calling him up on the 'phone."
"I see!" said Terry. And I believe he did see – perhaps more than I meant him to see. But at worst, he would in future realize that there were men on earth not so blind to my attractions as he.
While Terry 'phoned from the Carstairs' flat to the companion of Princess Avalesco, I 'phoned from mine to Jim. And I could not help it if my heart beat fast when I in London heard his voice answering from Devonshire. He has one of those nice, drawly American voices that do make a woman's heart beat for a man whether she likes him or hates him!
I explained what I wanted to find out about the Scarletts, and that it must be "quite in confidence." Jim promised to make inquiries at once, and when I politely said: "Sorry to give you so much bother," he replied, "You needn't let that worry you, my dear!"
Of course, he had no right to call me his "dear." I never heard of it being done by the best "forty-fourth cousins." But as I was asking a favour of him, for Terry Burns' sake I let it pass.
These Americans, especially ex-cowboy ones, do seem to act with lightning rapidity. I suppose it comes from having to lasso creatures while going at cinema speed, or else getting out of their way at the same rate of progress! I expected to hear next morning at earliest, but that evening, just before shutting-up time for post offices, my 'phone bell rang. Jim Courtenaye was at the other end, talking from the Abbey.
"Lord and Lady Scarlett are living at Dun Moat," he said, "with their venomous little brute of a boy; and they must be dashed hard up, because they have only one servant in their enormous house, and a single gardener on a place that needs a dozen. But it seems that Scarlett has refused several big offers both to sell and let. Heaven knows why. Perhaps the man's mad. Anyhow, that's all I can tell you at present. They say it's no good hoping Scarlett will part. But I might find out why he won't, if that's any use."
"It isn't," I answered. "But thanks, all the same. How did you get hold of this information so soon?"
"Very simply," said Jim. "I ran over to the nearest town, Dawlish, in the car, and had a pow-wow with an estate agent, as if I were wanting the house myself. I'm just back."
"You really are good!" I exclaimed, rather grudgingly, for Grandmother and I always suffered in changing our opinions of people, as snakes must suffer when they change their skins.
"I'd do a lot more than that for you, you know!" he said.
I did know. He had already done more – much more. But my only response was to ring off. That was safest!
Next morning Terry Burns and I took the first train to Devonshire, and at Dawlish hired a taxi for Dun Moat, which is about twelve miles from there.
We were going to beard the Scarlett lion in his den!
CHAPTER V
THE KNITTING WOMAN OF DUN MOAT
"I must and shall have this place!" Terry said, as our humble taxi drove through the glorious old park, and came in sight of the house.
There were the old-world gardens; the statues; the fountains (it was a detail that they didn't fount!); there were the white peacocks (moulting); there was the moat so crammed with water-lilies that if the Scarletts had eaten the carp, they would never be missed. There were the "exquisite oriels," and above all, there was the twisted chimney!
An air of tragic neglect hung over everything. The grass needed mowing; the flowers grew as they liked. Glass was even missing from several windows. Still, it was miraculously the twin of the place we had described in our embarrassingly perfect "ad."
As we stood in front of the enormous, nail-studded door, and Terry pressed again and again an electric bell (the one modern touch about the place), he had the air of waiting a signal to go "over the top."
"You look fierce enough to bayonet fifty Boches off your own bat!" I whispered.
"Lady Scarlett is a Boche, isn't she?" he mumbled back. And just then – after we'd rung ten times – an old woman opened the door – a witch of an old woman; a witch out of a German fairy-book.
The instant I saw her, I felt that there was something wrong about this house. From under wrinkled lids the woman peered out, ratlike; and though her lips were closed – leaving the first word to us – her eyes said, "What the devil do you want? Whatever it is, you won't get it, so the sooner you go the better."
We had planned that I should start the ball rolling, by mention of my grandmother's name. But Terry was bursting with renewed interest in life, and the woman was answering his question before I had time to speak. "Let the place? No, sir! His lordship refuses all offers. It is useless to make one. He does not see strangers."
"We are not strangers," I rapped out with all Grandmother's haughtiness. "Tell Lord Scarlett that the Princess di Miramare, grand-daughter of Mrs. Raleigh Courtenaye, wishes a few words with him."
That was the way to manage her! She came of a breed over whom for centuries Prussian Junkers had power of life and death; and though she spoke English, it was with the precise wording of one who has learned the language painfully. In me she recognized the legitimate tyrant, and yielded.
We were admitted with reluctance into a magnificent hall which magically matched our description: stone-paved, with a vaulted roof, and an immense oriel window the height of two stories. While our gaze travelled from the carved stone chimney-piece to ancient suits of armour, and such Tudor and Jacobean furniture as remained unsold, a slight sound attracted our attention to the "historic staircase," with its "dog-gates."
A woman was coming down. She had knitting in her hand, and had dropped one of her needles. It was that which made the slight noise we'd heard; and Terry stepped quickly forward to pick it up.
His back was turned to me as he offered the stiletto-like instrument to its owner, so I could not see his face. But I could imagine that charming smile of his, as he looked up at the figure on the stairs. Just so might Sir Walter Raleigh have looked when he'd neatly spread his cloak for Queen Bess; and if he had happened to ask a favour then, it would have been hard for the sovereign to resist!
The woman coming downstairs did not resemble any portrait of the Virgin Queen. She was stout and short-necked; and with her hard, dark face, her implacable eyes, and her knitting, was as much like Madame Defarge in modern dress as a German could be. But even Madame Defarge was a woman! And probably she used her influence now and then in favour of some handsome male head, preferring to see female ones pop into the sawdust!
Her face softened slightly as she accepted the needle, and stiffened again as I came forward.
"My husband is occupied," she said, in much the same stilted English as that of her old servant. "He sends his compliments to the Princess di Miramare and her friend, and hopes both will excuse him. If it is an offer for our place you have come to make, I must refuse in his name. We do not wish to move."
Her tone, her expression, gave to her words the solemnity of an oath sworn by a houseful of Medes and Persians.
It seemed that there was nothing left for us to do, save bow to Lady Scarlett's decision, and retire defeated to our taxi. But I felt that my reputation as a Brightener was at stake, with Terry's hopes. If we failed, instead of brightening I should have blighted him for ever! That couldn't, shouldn't be!
All there was of me yearned for an inspiration, and it came.
"My friend, Captain Burns, wouldn't ask you to move," I heard myself saying. "He's so anxious to have Dun Moat that he'd offer you any rent within reason, and would invite you to select some retired rooms for yourselves, where you might live undisturbed by the tenant. This house is so large it occurs to me that such an arrangement wouldn't be uncomfortable."
Terry flashed me a look of amazement, which turned to acquiescence; and the surprise on Lady Scarlett's face was encouraging. Evidently no one else had made such a suggestion. She seemed not only astonished, but tempted.
For a moment she reflected; then admitted that my proposal was a new one. She would submit it to her husband. They would talk it over if we cared to wait. We did care to; and the lady vanished like a stout ghost into the dimness of stony shadows.
Terry said that he felt his head growing gray, hair by hair, with suspense; but when Lady Scarlett came back at last no change could be seen by the naked eye.
"My husband and I will consider your proposal," she said, "provided the price is satisfactory, and taking it for granted that we agree on the rooms for our occupation. We should want those known as the 'garden court suite.' And we should ask one hundred and fifty pounds a week, for a possible term of ten weeks, on the proviso that we could terminate the tenancy with a fortnight's notice at any time after the first month."
I was dumbfounded. The place, unique and beautiful as it was, had been allowed to run down so disastrously, and everything outside and inside seemed to be in such a state of disrepair, that it was worth at most a rent of thirty guineas a week. Terry might call himself rich, but surely he'd not consent to being rooked to that extent, in order to be landlord to his love. I expected him to protest, to bargain, and beat the lady down. But he brushed the financial question away like a cobweb, and began to haggle about the rooms.
"The money part will be all right," he said. "But I want a lady to come here – a lady who's been ill. She must have the prettiest rooms there are: something overlooking the moat, with jolly oriel windows and plenty of old oak."
Lady Scarlett smiled. "There is no obstacle to that! The suite I specify is at the far end of the house, in a comparatively modern wing, and most people would think it the least desirable. We like it because it is compact and private. We can keep it going with one servant. It is called the 'garden court suite' because it is built round a small square. There is a separate outside entrance, as well as one door communicating with the house. The suite has generally been occupied by a bachelor heir."
As she talked, Terry reflected. "Look here, Lady Scarlett!" he exclaimed, just contriving not to break in. "I've half a mind to confide in you. The truth is, I want to pose as the owner of this place. I suppose you wouldn't sell it?"
"We could not if we would," replied the daughter of the German wine-seller. "It is entailed and the entail cannot be broken till our son comes of age."
"That settles that! But you said beforehand, nothing would induce you to turn out – "
"No money you could offer: not a thousand, not ten thousand a week – at least, at present. The garden court suite is the one solution."
"Well, so be it! But – I beg your pardon if I'm rude – could you – er – seem not to be there? Could I say I'd lent the rooms to someone I didn't like to turn out? If you'd consent, I'd make it two hundred a week."
Lady Scarlett's blackberry-and-skim-milk eyes lit. "You want the lady to believe that you have bought Dun Moat?"
For answer, he told her of our advertisement, and the result. I thought this a mistake. You'd only to look at the woman to see that she'd no sense of humour; and to confide in a person without one is courting trouble. Besides, I still had that impression of something wrong. I had no definite suspicion; but why had the Scarletts, poor as they were, determined to stick to the house? However, I could no more have stopped Terry Burns when he got going than I could have stopped a torrent by throwing in rose-petals. Which shows how he had changed. The worry a few days ago would have been to get him going!
As Lady Scarlett listened she knitted, with strong, predatory hands. Language, they say, is used to conceal thought. So, it occurred to me, is knitting. I felt, watching her as a wise mouse should watch a cat, that she was making up her mind to some action more beneficial to herself than Terry. But for my life I couldn't guess what. She seemed to weave a knitted screen between my mind and hers!
In the end, however, she announced that for two hundred pounds a week her family could – to all intents and purposes – blot itself temporarily out of existence, in the suite of the garden court. The American lady might believe them to be poor relations of Captain Burns, or even servants, for all she cared! Having arrived at this conclusion, she proposed fetching her husband, that an agreement of an informal kind might be drawn up. Again she vanished; and when Lord Scarlett appeared, it was alone.
There were a number of ancestral portraits hanging on the walls of the great hall: fox-faced men, most of them, with a prevailing, sharp-nosed, slant-eyed type; and "Bertie" Scarlett was no exception to the rule. As he came deliberately down the stairway which his wife had descended, I remembered a scandal of his youth that Grandmother had sketched. He'd been in a crack regiment once, and though desperately poor had tried to live as a smart man about town. At some country-house party he'd been accused of cheating at baccarat. The story was hushed up, but he had left the army; and people – particularly royalties – had looked down their noses at him ever since. His tweeds were shabby now, and he was growing middle-aged and bald; all the same he had the air of the leading man in a cause célèbre. I hadn't liked his wife, and I liked him as little!
He made the same point as hers: that the agreement might be terminated by him (not by the tenant) with a fortnight's notice, given at any time after the first month. This was a queer proviso, as queer as the family resolve to remain on the spot. And it seemed to me that one was part and parcel of the other, though I couldn't see the link which united the two.
As for Terry, he puzzled over none of these things. He wanted the place even on preposterous terms. When Lord Scarlett had drawn up an agreement, his signature flashed across the paper like a streak of lightning, so wild was he to rush back to London bearing the news to his princess. Lord Scarlett – sure of his mad client – offered to have the agreement polished up in legal form without further bother for Captain Burns, and we were free to go.
Terry could talk of nothing on the way home but his marvellous luck. Hang the money! He'd have paid twice as much, if need be. The next thing was to smarten the place: buy some more "historic" furniture to fill the gaps made by sales, send down a decorator to see what beds, etc., needed renovating, have an expert look at the drains and the central heating (long unused) which had been put in with German money, engage a staff of servants for indoors and out; get hold of two or three young peacocks whose tails hadn't moulted.
"If I don't care how much I spend, don't you think we can make an earthly paradise of the place in a week?" he appealed.
"We?" I echoed. "Why, I thought my part was played!"
His grieved eyes reproached me. What? After going so far, I was going to desert him in the midst of the woods? He begged me to stand by him till all was ready to receive the Princess. If I didn't, something was sure to go wrong.
Well, once a Brightener, always a Brightener, I suppose! And acting on this principle I yielded. I promised to stop for a week at Dawley St. Ann, a village within a mile of Dun Moat (there's a dear old inn there!), and superintend preparations for the beloved tenant. When she was safely installed, I would go home – or elsewhere, and Terry could take my rooms at the inn. Being her neighbour as well as landlord, he'd easily find excuses to see the Princess every day, and thus get his money's worth of Dun Moat.
All this was settled before we reached London; and the first thing Terry thought of on entering the flat (mine, not his!) was to ring up the Savoy. The answer came quickly; and I saw a light of rapture on his face. The Princess herself was at the telephone!
CHAPTER VI
THE LIGHTNING STROKE
It was amazing what Terry and I accomplished in the next few days, I at Dawley St. Ann, close to Dun Moat, he flashing back and forth between there and London!
My incentive and reward in one consisted of the all but incredible change for the better in him. Terry's, was the hope of meeting the Adored Lady; for he had not met her yet. Her voice thrilled him through the telephone, saying that of course she "remembered Terry Burns," but it was her companion, Mrs. Dobell, who received him at the Savoy. She it was who carried messages from the still-ailing Princess Avalesco to him, and handed on to the Princess his vague explanations as to how he had acquired Dun Moat. But Terry had seen, in the two ladies' private sitting room at the hotel, an ivory miniature of the Princess, and its beauty had poured oil on the fire of his love. At what period in her career it had been painted he didn't know, not daring or caring to ask Mrs. Dobell; but one thing was sure – it showed her lovelier than of old.