"Nice end of a honeymoon I"m having!" Jim grumbled. "With my wife thinking and talking all the time about another fellow."
"My darling, adored man!" I exclaimed. "You know perfectly well that you"re the background and undercurrent and foundation of all my thoughts, every minute of the day and night. And this "other fellow" is _dying_."
Yes; "darling, adored" were my adjectives for Jim Courtenaye, whom I had once abused.
All the same, if a cat may look at a king, a bride may just glance at a man who isn"t her bridegroom.
"Ruling pa.s.sion strong in--marriage, I suppose," said Jim. "I bet you"d like to try your hand at "brightening" that chap--though judging from his face, he"s almost past even your blandishments. _I_ wouldn"t be past "em--not in my _coffin_! But it isn"t every blighter who can love as I do, you minx."
"And "tisn"t every blighter who has such a perfect woman to love," I capped him with calm conceit.
"But I wish I _could_ "brighten" that poor fellow. Or else I wish that someone else would!"
And at this instant my wish was granted in the most amazing way!
A girl appeared--but no, I mustn"t let her arrive upon the scene just yet. First, I must explain that Jim and I were on shipboard, coming back to England from America, where we had been having the most wonderful honeymoon. Jim had taken me out West, and showed me the places where he had lived in his cowboy days. We had ridden long trails together, in the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and in the Yosemite Valley of California. I had never imagined that life could be so glorious, and our future together--Jim"s and mine--stretched before us like a dream of joy. We were going to live in the dear old Abbey which had been the home of the Courtenayes for hundreds and hundreds of years, and travel when we liked. Because we were so much in love and so happy, I yearned to make a few thousand other people happy also--though it did seem impossible that any one on earth could be as joyous as we were.
This was our second day out from New York on the _Aquitania_, and my spirits had been slightly damped by discovering that two fellow-pa.s.sengers if not more were extremely miserable. One of these lived in a stateroom next to our suite. In my cabin at night I could hear her crying and moaning to herself in a fitful sleep. I had not seen her, so far as I knew, but I fancied from the sound of those sobs that she was young.
When I told Jim, he wanted to change cabins with me, so that I should not be disturbed. But I refused to budge, saying that I _wasn"t_ disturbed. My neighbour didn"t cry or talk in her sleep all through the night by any means. Besides, once I had dropped off, the sounds were not loud enough to wake me. This was true enough not to be a fib, but my _realest_ reason for clinging to the room was an odd fascination in that mysterious sorrow on the other side of the wall; sorrow of a woman I hadn"t seen, might perhaps never see, yet to whom I could send out warm waves of sympathy. I felt as if those waves had colours, blue and gold, and that they would soothe the sufferer.
Her case obsessed me until, in the sunshine of a second summer day at sea, the one empty chair on our crowded deck was filled. A man was helped into it by a valet or male nurse, and a steward. My first glimpse of his face as he sank down on to carefully placed cushions made my heart jump in my breast with pity and protest against the hardness of fate.
If he"d been old, or even middle-aged, or if he had been one of those colourless characters dully sunk into chronic invalidism, I should have felt only the pity without the protest. But he was young, and though it was clear that he was desperately ill, it was clear, too, in a more subtle, psychic way, that he had not been ill long; that love of life or desire for denied happiness burned in him still.
Of course Jim was not really vexed because I discussed this man and wondered about him, but my thoughts did play round that piteously romantic figure a good deal, and it rather amused Jim to see me forget the mystery of the cabin in favour of the cushioned chair.
"Once a Brightener, always a Brightener, I suppose!" he said. Now that I"d dropped my "Princesshood" to marry James Courtenaye, I need never "brighten" any one for money again. But I didn"t see why I should not go sailing along on a sunny career of brightening for love. According to habit, therefore, my first thought was: What _could_ be done for the man in the cushioned chair?
Maybe Jim was right! If he hadn"t been young and almost better than good-looking, my interest might not have been so keen. He was the wreck of a gorgeous creature--one of those great, tall, muscular men you feel were born to adorn the Guards.
The reason (the physical reason, not the psychic one) for thinking he hadn"t been ill long was the colour of the invalid"s face. The pallor of illness hadn"t had time to blanch the rich brown that life in the open gives. So thin was the face that the aquiline features stood out sharply; but they seemed to be carved in bronze, not moulded in plaster.
As for the psychic reason, I found it in the dark eyes that met mine now and then. They were not black like those of my own Jim, which contrasted so strikingly with auburn hair. Indeed, I couldn"t tell whether the eyes were brown or deep gray, for they were set in shadowy hollows, and the brows and thick lashes were even darker than the hair, which was lightly silvered at the temples. Handsome, arresting eyes they must always have been; but what stirred me was the violent _wish_ that seemed actually to speak from them.
Whether it was a wish to live, or a haunting wish for joy never gratified, I could not decide. But I felt that it must have been burnt out by a long illness.
I had only just learned a few things about the man, when there came that surprising answer to my prayer for someone to "brighten" him. My maid had got acquainted with his valet-nurse, and had received a quant.i.ty of information which she pa.s.sed to me.
"Mr. Tillett"s" master was a Major Ralston Murray, an Englishman, who had gone to live in California some years ago, and had made a big fortune in oil. He had been in the British Army as a youth, Tillett understood, and when the European war broke out, he went home to offer himself to his country. He didn"t return to America till after the Armistice, though he had been badly wounded once or twice, as well as ga.s.sed. At home in Bakersfield, the great oil town where he lived, Murray"s health had not improved. He had been recommended a long sea journey, to j.a.pan and China, and had taken the prescription. But instead of doing him good, the trip had been his ruin. In China he was attacked with a malady resembling yellow fever, though more obscure to scientists. After weeks of desperate illness, the man had gained strength for the return journey; but, reaching California, he was told by specialists that he must not hope to recover. After that verdict his one desire was to spend the last days of his life in England. Not long before a distant relative had left him a place in Devonshire--an old house which he had loved in his youth. Now he was on his way there, to die.
So this was the wonderful wish, I told myself. Yet I couldn"t believe it was all. I felt that there must be something deeper to account for the burning look in those tortured eyes. And of course I was more than ever interested, now that his destination proved to be near Courtenaye Abbey.
Ralston Old Manor was not nearly so large nor so important a place historically as ours, but it was ancient enough, and very charming.
Though we were not more than fifteen miles away, I had never met the old bachelor, the Mr. Ralston of my day. He was a great recluse, supposed to have had his heart broken by my beautiful grandmother when they were both young. It occurred to me that this Ralston Murray must be the old man"s namesake, and the place had been left him on that account.
Now, at last, having explained the man in the cushioned chair, I can come back to the moment when my wish was granted: the wish that, if not I, someone else might "brighten" him.
CHAPTER II
MRS. BRANDRETH
You know, when you"re on shipboard, how new people appear from day to day, long after you"ve seen everyone on the pa.s.senger list! It is as if they had been dropped on deck from stealthy aeroplanes in the dark watches of the night.
And that was the way in which this girl appeared--this girl who worked the lightning change in Major Murray. It didn"t seem possible that she could have come on board the ship nearly two days ago, and we not have heard of her, for she was the prettiest person I"d ever seen in my life.
One would have thought that rumours of her beauty would have spread, since _someone_ must have seen her, even if she had been shut up in her cabin.
Heads were turned in her direction as she came walking slowly toward us, and thanks to this silent sensation--like a breeze rippling a field of wheat--I saw the tall, slight figure in mourning while it was still far off.
The creature was devastatingly pretty, too pretty for any one"s peace of mind, including her own: the kind of girl you wouldn"t ask to be your bridesmaid for fear the bridegroom should change his mind at the altar!
"Jim," I exclaimed, "the prettiest girl in the world is now coming toward you."
"Really?" said he. "I was under the impression that she sat beside me."
I suppose I must have spoken rather more loudly than I meant, for my excited warning to Jim caught the ear of Major Murray. My deep interest in the invalid had woven an invisible link between him and me, though we had never spoken, nor even smiled at each other: for sympathy inevitably has this effect. Therefore his hearing was attuned to my voice more readily than to others in his neighbourhood. He had apparently been half asleep; but he opened his eyes wide just in time to see the girl as she approached his chair. Never had I beheld such a sudden change on a human face. It was a transfiguration.
The man was very weak, but he sat straight up, and for a moment all look of illness was swept away. "Rosemary!" he cried out, sharply.
The girl stopped. She had been pale, but at sight of him and the sound of his voice she flushed to her forehead. I thought that her first impulse was to escape, but she controlled it.
"Major Murray!" she faltered. "I--I didn"t dream of--seeing you here."
"I have dreamed many times of seeing you," he answered. "And I wished for it--very much."
"Ah," thought I, "_that_ is the real wish! _That"s_ what the look in his eyes means, not just getting back to England and dying in a certain house. Now I _know_."
Everyone near his chair had become more or less interested in Murray, romantic and pathetic figure that he was. Now, a middle-aged man whose chair was near to Murray"s on the right, scrambled out of a fur rug. "I am off to the smoking room," he said. "Won"t you" (to the girl) "take my chair and talk to your friend? I shall be away till after lunch, maybe till tea-time."
I fancied that the girl was divided in her mind between a longing to stay and a longing to flee. But of course she couldn"t refuse the offer, and presently she was seated beside Major Murray, their arms touching. I could hear almost all they said. This was not eavesdropping, because if they"d cared to be secretive they could have lowered their voices.
Soon, to my surprise, I learned that the girl was married. She didn"t look married, or have the air of being married, somehow, and in the conversation that followed she contradicted herself two or three times.
Perhaps it was only because I confused my brain with wild guesses, but from some things she said one would think she was free as air; from others, that she was tied down to a rather monotonous kind of existence.
She spoke of America as if she knew it only from a short visit. Then, in answer to a question of Murray"s, she said, as if reluctantly, that she had lived there, in New York, and Baltimore, and Washington, for years.
It was quite evident to me--whether or not it was to Murray--that Mrs.
Brandreth (as he called her after the first outburst of "Rosemary!") disliked talking of herself and her way of life. She wanted to talk about Major Murray, or, failing that subject, of almost anything that was remote from her own affairs.
I gathered, however, that she and Murray had known each other eight years ago or more, and that they had met somewhere abroad, out of England. There had been an aunt of Rosemary"s with whom she had travelled as a young girl. The aunt was dead; but even the loss of a loved relative didn"t account to my mind for this girl"s sensitiveness about the past.
"They must have been engaged, these two, and something happened to break it off," I thought. "But _he_ can bear to talk of old times, and she can"t. Odd, because she must have been ridiculously young for a love affair all those years ago. She doesn"t look more than twenty-one now, though she must be more, of course--at least twenty-four. And he is probably thirty-two or three."
I am often what Jim calls "intuitive," and I had a strong impression that there was something the beautiful Mrs. Brandreth was desperately anxious to conceal, desperately afraid of betraying by accident. Could it have to do with her husband? I wondered. She seemed very loth to speak of him, and I couldn"t make out from what she said whether the man was still in existence. Her mourning--so becoming to her magnolia skin, great dark eyes, and ash-blonde hair--didn"t look like widow"s mourning.
Still, it might be, with the first heaviness of crepe thrown off. Or, of course, the girl"s peculiar reticence might mean that there had been, or was to be, a divorce.
I didn"t move from my deck-chair till luncheon time, but I had to go then with Jim; and we left Mrs. Brandreth ordering her food from the deck steward. She would have it with Major Murray, who, poor fellow, was allowed no other nourishment than milk.