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From out the Vasty Deep

by Marie Belloc Lowndes · English · Gutenberg #11581 · 421,867 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: From out the Vasty Deep

Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes


        
Release date: March 1, 2004 [eBook #11581]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11581

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM OUT THE VASTY DEEP ***

FROM OUT THE VASTY DEEP

BY

MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

1921



TO

A.H. FASS


The owner of the real "Wyndfell Hall"

            in memory of
    many happy hours spent there
      by his friend the writer




  Glendower:

    "_I can call spirits from the vasty deep_."

  Hotspur:

    "_Why, so can I; or so can any man: But will they come, when you
    do call for them_?"

                                  Henry IV.




FROM OUT THE VASTY DEEP




CHAPTER I


"I always thought that you, Pegler, were such a very sensible woman."

The words were said in a good-natured, though slightly vexed tone; and a
curious kind of smile flitted over the rather grim face of the person to
whom they were addressed.

"I've never troubled you before in this exact way, have I, ma'am?"

"No, Pegler. That you certainly have not."

Miss Farrow looked up from the very comfortable armchair where she was
sitting--leaning back, with her neatly shod, beautifully shaped feet
stretched out to the log fire. Her maid was standing a little to the
right, her spare figure and sallow face lit up by the flickering,
shooting flames, for the reading-lamp at Miss Farrow's elbow was heavily
shaded.

"D'you really mean that you won't sleep next door to-night, Pegler?"

"I wouldn't be fit to do my work to-morrow if I did, ma'am." And Miss
Farrow quite understood that that was Pegler's polite way of saying
that she most definitely did refuse to sleep in the room next door.

"I wish the ghost had come in here, instead of worrying you!" As the
maid made no answer to this observation, her mistress went on, turning
round so that she could look up into the woman's face: "What was it
exactly you _did_ see, Pegler?" And as the other still remained silent,
Miss Farrow added: "I really do want to know! You see, Pegler--well, I
need hardly tell you that I have a very great opinion of you."

And then, to the speaker's extreme surprise, there came a sudden change
over Pegler's face. Her pale countenance flushed, it became discomposed,
and she turned her head away to hide the springing tears.

Miss Farrow was touched; as much touched as her rather hard nature would
allow her to be. This woman had been her good and faithful friend, as
well as servant, for over twelve years.

She sprang up from her deep chair with the lightness of a girl, though
she was over forty; and went and took the other's hand. "Pegler!" she
exclaimed. "What's the matter, you dear old thing?"

But Pegler wrenched away her hand, rather ungraciously. "After two such
nights as I've had," she muttered, "it's no wonder I'm a bit upset."

Excellent maid though she was--Miss Farrow had never known anyone who
could do hair as Pegler could--the woman was in some ways very
unconventional, very unlike an ordinary lady's maid.

"Now do tell me exactly what happened?" Miss Farrow spoke with a mixture
of coaxing and kindly authority. "What do you think you saw? I need
hardly tell you that _I_ don't believe in ghosts." As the maid well
knew, the speaker might have finished the sentence with "or in anything
else." But that fact, Pegler being the manner of woman she was, did not
detract from the affection and esteem in which she held her lady. You
can't have everything--such was her simple philosophy--and religious
people do not always act up to their profession. Miss Farrow, at any
rate in her dealings with Pegler, was always better than her word. She
was a kind, a considerate, and an intelligent mistress.

So it was that, reluctantly, Pegler made up her mind to speak. "I'd like
to say, ma'am," she began, "that no one said nothing to me about that
room being haunted. You was the first that mentioned it to me, after I'd
spoken to you yesterday. As you know, ma'am, the servants here are a job
lot; they don't know nothing about the house. 'Twasn't till to-day that
one of the village people, the woman at the general shop and post
office, let on that Wyndfell Hall was well known to be a ghosty place."

There was a pause, and then Pegler added: "Still, as you and I well
know, ma'am, tales don't lose nothing in the telling."

"Indeed they don't! Never mind what the people in the village say. This
kind of strange, lonely, beautiful old house is sure to be said to be
haunted. What _I_ want to know is what _you_ think you saw, Pegler--"
The speaker looked sharply into the woman's face.

"I don't like to see you standing, ma'am," said Pegler inconsequently.
"If you'll sit down in your chair again I'll tell you what happened to
me."

Miss Farrow sank gracefully down into her deep, comfortable chair.
Again she put out her feet to the fire, for it was very cold on this
23rd of December, and she knew she had a tiring, probably a boring,
evening before her. Some strangers of whom she knew nothing, and cared
less, excepting that they were the friends of her friend and host,
Lionel Varick, were to arrive at Wyndfell Hall in time for dinner. It
was now six o'clock.

"Well," she said patiently, "begin at the beginning, Pegler. I wish
you'd sit down too--somehow it worries me to see you standing there.
You'll be tempted to cut your story short."

Pegler smiled a thin little smile. In the last twelve years Miss Farrow
had several times invited her to sit down, but of course she had always
refused, being one that knew her place. She had only sat in Miss
Farrow's presence during the days and nights when she had nursed her
mistress through a serious illness--then, of course, everything had been
different, and she had had to sit down sometimes.

"The day before yesterday--that is the evening Miss Bubbles arrived,
ma'am--after I'd dressed you and you'd gone downstairs, and I'd unpacked
for Miss Bubbles, I went into my room and thought how pleasant it
looked. The curtains was drawn, and there was a nice fire, as you know,
ma'am, which Mr. Varick so kindly ordered for me, and which I've had the
whole week. Also, I will say for Annie that even if she is a temporary,
she is a good housemaid, making the girls under her do their work
properly."

Pegler drew a long breath. Then she went on again: "I sat down just for
a minute or two, and I turned over queer--so queer, ma'am, that I went
and drew the curtains of one of the windows. Of course it's a much
bigger room than I'm generally accustomed to occupy, as you know, ma'am.
And I just threw up the window--it's what they call a guillotine
window--and there I saw the water, you know, ma'am, in what they call
the moat--"

"Yes," said Miss Farrow languidly. "Yes, Pegler, go on."

"As I looked down, ma'am, I had an awful turn. There seemed to me to be
something floating about in the water, a little narrow thing like a
child's body--and--and all on a sudden a small white face seemed to look
up into mine! Oh, it was 'orrible!" Pegler did not often drop an aitch,
but when she did so forget herself, she did it thoroughly.

"As I went on looking, fascinated-like"--she was speaking very slowly
now--"whatever was down there seemed to melt away. I didn't say nothing
that evening of what had happened to me, but I couldn't keep myself from
thinking of it. Well, then, ma'am, as you know, I came and undressed
you, and I asked you if you'd like the door kept open between our two
rooms. But you said no, ma'am, you'd rather it was shut. So then I went
to bed."

"And you say--you admit, Pegler--that nothing _did_ happen the night
before last?"

Pegler hesitated. "Nothing happened exactly," she said. "But I had the
most awful feeling, ma'am. And yes--well, something did happen! I heard
a kind of rustling in the room. It would leave off for a time, and, then
begin again. I tried to put it down to a mouse or a rat--or something of
that sort."

"That," said Miss Farrow quietly, "was probably what it was, Pegler."

As if she had not heard her lady's remark, the maid went on: "I'd go
off to sleep, and then suddenly, I'd awake and hear this peculiar
rustle, ma'am, like a dress swishing along--an old-fashioned, rich, soft
silk, such as ladies wore in the old days, when I was a child. But that
dress, the dress I heard rustling, ma'am, was a bit older than that."

"What _do_ you mean, Pegler?"

The maid remained silent, her eyes were fixed; it was as if she had
forgotten where she was.

"And what exactly happened last night?"

"Last night," said Pegler, drawing a long breath, "last night, ma'am--I
know you won't believe me--but I saw the spirit!"

Miss Farrow looked up into the woman's face with an anxious, searching
glance.

She felt disturbed and worried. A great deal of her material
comfort--almost, she might have truly said, much of her happiness in
life--depended on Jane Pegler. In a sense Blanche Farrow had but two
close friends in the world--her host, Lionel Varick, the new owner of
Wyndfell Hall; and the plain, spare, elderly woman standing now before
her. She realized with a sharp pang of concern what Pegler's mental
defection would mean to her. It would be dreadful, _dreadful_, if Pegler
began seeing ghosts, and turning hysterical.

"What was the spirit like?" she asked quietly.

And then, all at once, she had to suppress a violent inclination to
burst out laughing. For Pegler answered with a kind of cry, "A 'orrible
happarition, ma'am!"

Miss Farrow could not help observing a trifle satirically: "That
certainly sounds most unpleasant."

But Pegler went on, speaking with a touch of excitement very unusual
with her: "It was a woman--a woman with a dreadful, wicked, spiteful
face! Once she came up close to my bed, and I wanted to scream out, but
I couldn't--my throat seemed shut up."

"D'you mean you actually saw what you took to be a ghost?"

"I did see a ghost, ma'am; not a doubt of it! She walked up and down
that room in there, wringing her hands all the time--I'd heard the
expression, ma'am, but I'd never seen anyone do it."

"Did anything else happen?"

"At last she went over to the window, and--and I'm afraid you won't
believe me, ma'am--but there seemed no curtains there any more, nothing
but just an opening into the darkness. I saw her bend over--" An
expression of terror came over the woman's face.

"But how could you _see_ her," asked Miss Farrow quickly, "if there was
no light in the room?"

"In a sort of way," said Pegler somberly, "the spirit was supplying the
light, as it were. I could see her in the darkness, as if she was a lamp
moving about."

"Oh, Pegler, Pegler!" exclaimed Miss Farrow deprecatingly.

"It's true, ma'am! It's true as I'm standing here." Pegler would have
liked to add the words "So help me God!" but somehow she felt that these
words would not carry any added conviction to her mistress. And, indeed,
they would not have done so, for Miss Farrow, though she was much too
polite and too well-bred ever to have said so, even to herself, did not
believe in a Supreme Being. She was a complete materialist.

"And then, ma'am, after a bit, there it would begin, constant-like, all
over again."

"I don't understand...."

"I'd go to sleep, and tell myself maybe that it was all a dream--argue
with myself, ma'am, for I'm a sensible woman. And then all at once I'd
hear that rustle again! I'd try not to open my eyes, but somehow I felt
I must see what was happening. So I'd look at last--and there she'd be!
Walking up and down, walking up and down, her face--oh, ma'am, her face
staring-like most 'orrible--and wringing her hands. Then she'd go over
to the window, lean out, and disappear, down into the black water!"

In a calmer tone Pegler added: "The moat used to be much bigger and
deeper than it is now, ma'am--so they all say."

"All?" said Miss Farrow sharply. "Who do you mean by 'all'?"

"The people about the place, ma'am."

"I can't help wishing, Pegler, that you hadn't told this strange story
to the servants. You see it makes it so awkward for Mr. Varick."

Pegler flushed uncomfortably. "I was that scared," she murmured, "that I
felt I must tell somebody, and if you tell one, as I did, you tell all.
I'm sorry I did it, ma'am, for I'm afraid I've inconvenienced you."

"It can't be helped," said Miss Farrow good-naturedly. "I know you
wouldn't have done it if you could have helped it, Pegler. But of course
in a way it's unlucky."

"I've pointed out to them all that there never is but one room haunted
in a house as a rule," said the maid eagerly, "and I think they all
quite sees that, ma'am. Besides, they're very pleased with Mr. Varick.
You know what he did to-day, ma'am?"

"No," said Miss Farrow, looking up and smiling, "what did he do?"

"He called them all together, without distinction of class, so to speak,
ma'am, and he told them that if he was pleased with the way in which his
Christmas party went off, he'd give them each a five-pound note at the
end of the month. It made them forget the haunted room, I can tell you,
ma'am!" She added grudgingly, "He _is_ a kind gentleman, and no
mistake."

"Indeed he is! I'm glad that you see that now, Pegler." Miss Farrow
spoke with a touch of meaning in her voice. "I did a very good turn for
myself when I got him out of that queer scrape years ago."

"Why yes, ma'am, I suppose you did." But Pegler's tone was not as hearty
as that of her lady.

There was a pause. "Then what have you settled to do about to-night?"

"If you don't mind, ma'am--I'm arranging to sleep in what they call the
second maid's room. There is a bell through, ma'am, but you'll have to
go into the next room to ring it, for you know, ma'am, that it's the
next room that ought to have been your room by rights."

"I wish now that I'd taken it and put you in here," said Miss Farrow
ruefully.

"They're going to keep up a good fire there. So when you go in you won't
get a chill."

"That does seem luxurious," said Miss Farrow, smiling. She loved luxury,
and it was pleasant to think that there should be a fire kept up in an
empty room just so that she shouldn't feel a chill when she went in for
a moment to ring for her maid!

"By the way, I hope there's a fireplace in your room, Pegler"--the words
were uttered solicitously.

"No, there isn't, ma'am. But I don't mind that. I don't much care about
a fire."

"There's no accounting for taste!"

Miss Farrow took up her book again, and Pegler, as was her way, slid
noiselessly from the room--not through the door leading into the haunted
chamber, but out on to the beautiful panelled landing, now gay with
bowls of hothouse flowers which had come down from London that morning
by passenger train, and been brought by car all the way from Newmarket.




CHAPTER II


The book Miss Farrow held in her hand was an amusing book, the latest
volume of some rather lively French memoirs, but she put it down after a
very few moments, and, leaning forward, held out her hands to the fire.
They were not pretty hands: though small and well-shaped, there was
something just a little claw-like about them; but they were very white,
and her almond-shaped nails, admirably manicured, gleamed in the soft
red light.

Yes, in spite of this stupid little _contretemps_ about Pegler, she was
glad indeed that circumstances over which she had had rather more
control than she liked to think had made it impossible for her to go out
to Monte Carlo this winter. She had been sharply vexed, beside herself
with annoyance, almost tempted to do what she had never yet done--that
is, to ask Lionel Varick, now so delightfully prosperous, to lend her a
couple of hundred pounds. But she had resisted the impulse, and she was
now glad of it.

After all, there's no place like dear old England at Christmas time. How
much nicer, too, is a bachelor host than a hostess! A bachelor host? No,
not exactly a bachelor host, for Lionel Varick was a widower. Twice a
widower, if the truth were known. But the truth, fortunately, is not
always known, and Blanche Farrow doubted if any other member of the
circle of friends and acquaintances he had picked up in his
adventurous, curious life knew of that first--now evidently by him
almost forgotten--marriage. It had taken place years ago, when Varick
was still a very young man, and to a woman not of his own class. They
had separated, and then, rather oddly, come together again. Even so, her
premature death had been for him a fortunate circumstance.

It was not Varick who had told Blanche Farrow of that painful episode of
his past life. The story had come to her knowledge in a curious,
accidental fashion, and she had thought it only fair to tell him what
she had learned--and then, half reluctantly, he had revealed something
of what he had suffered through that early act of folly. But they had
only spoken of it once.

Varick's second marriage, Miss Farrow was almost tempted to call it his
real marriage, the news of which he had conveyed to his good friend in a
laconic note, had surprised her very much.

The news had found her far away, in Portugal, where, as just a few
English people know, there is more than one Casino where mild gambling
can be pursued under pleasant conditions. Blanche Farrow would have been
hurt if someone had told her that in far-away Portugal Lionel Varick and
his affairs had not meant quite so much to her as they would have done
if she had been nearer home. Still, she had felt a pang. A man-friend
married is often a man-friend marred. But she had been very glad to
gather, reading between the lines of his note, that the lady in question
was well off. Varick was one of those men to whom the possession of
money is as essential to life as the air they breathe is to most human
beings. Till this unexpected second marriage of his he had often been
obliged to live on, and by, his wits.

Then, some months later--for she and Varick were not given to writing to
one another when apart, their friendship had never been of that
texture--she had received a sad letter from him saying that his wife was
seriously ill. The letter had implied, too, that he ought to have been
told, before the marriage had taken place, that his wife's family had
been one riddled with consumption. Blanche had written back at once--by
that time she was a good deal nearer home than Portugal, though still
abroad--asking if she could "do anything?" And he had answered that no,
there was nothing to be done. "Poor Milly" had a horror of sanatoriums,
so he was going to take her to some quiet place on the south coast. He
had ended his note with the words: "I do not think it can last long now,
and I rather hope it won't. It is very painful for her, as well as for
me." And it had not lasted very long. Seven weeks later Miss Farrow had
read in the first column of the _Times_ the announcement: "Millicent,
only daughter of the late George Fauncey, of Wyndfell Hall, Suffolk, and
the beloved wife of Lionel Varick."

She had been surprised at the addition of the word "beloved." Somehow it
was not like the man she thought she knew so well to put that word in.

That was just over a year ago. But when she had met Varick again she had
seen with real relief that he was quite unchanged--those brief months of
wedded life had not apparently altered him at all. There was, however,
one great difference--he was quite at ease about money. That was
all--but that was a great deal! Blanche Farrow and Lionel Varick had at
any rate one thing in common--they both felt a horror of poverty, and
all that poverty implies.

Gradually Miss Farrow had discovered a few particulars about her
friend's dead wife. Millicent Fauncey had been the only child of a
rather eccentric Suffolk squire, a man of great taste, known in the art
world of London as a collector of fine Jacobean furniture, long before
Jacobean furniture had become the rage. After her father's death his
daughter, having let Wyndfell Hall, had wandered about the world with a
companion till she had drifted across her future husband's path at an
hotel in Florence.

"What attracted me," Lionel Varick had explained rather awkwardly on the
only occasion when he had really talked of his late wife to Blanche
Farrow, "was her helplessness, and, yes, a kind of simplicity."

Blanche had looked at him a little sharply. She had never known Lionel
attracted by weakness or simplicity before. All women seemed attracted
by him--but he was by no means attracted by all women.

"Poor Milly didn't care for Wyndfell Hall," he had gone on, "for she
spent a very lonely, dull girlhood there. But it's a delightful place,
and I hope to live there as soon as I can get the people out to whom it
is now let. 'Twon't be an easy job, for they're devoted to it."

Of course he had got them out very soon, for, as Blanche Farrow now
reminded herself, Lionel Varick had an extraordinary power of getting
his own way, in little and big things alike.

It was uncommonly nice of Lionel to have asked her to be informal
hostess of his first house party! Unluckily it was an oddly composed
party, not so happily chosen as it might have been, and she wondered
uneasily whether it would be a success. She had never met three of the
people who were coming to-night--a Mr. and Miss Burnaby, an
old-fashioned and, she gathered, well-to-do brother and sister, and
their niece, Helen Brabazon. Miss Brabazon had been an intimate friend,
Miss Farrow understood the only really intimate friend, of Lionel
Varick's late wife. He had spoken of this girl, Helen Brabazon, with
great regard and liking--with rather more regard and liking than he
generally spoke of any woman.

"She was most awfully kind to me during that dreadful time at Redsands,"
he had said only yesterday. And Blanche had understood the "dreadful
time" referred to the last weeks of his wife's life. "I've been to the
Burnabys' house a few times, and I've dined there twice--an infamously
bad cook, but very good wine--you know the sort of thing?"

Remembering that remark, Blanche now asked herself why Lionel had
included these tiresome, old-fashioned people in his party. Then she
told herself that it was doubtless because the niece, who lived with
them, couldn't leave them to a solitary Christmas.

Another guest who was not likely to add much in the way of entertainment
to the party was an enormously rich man called James Tapster. Tapster
was a cynical, rather unpleasant person, yet on one occasion he had
helped Varick out of a disagreeable scrape.

If the host had had his way there would also have been in the party a
certain Dr. Panton. But at the last moment he had had to "chuck." There
was a hope, however, that he might be able to come after Christmas. Dr.
Panton was also associated with the late Mrs. Varick. He had attended
her during the last long weeks of her life.

Blanche Farrow's face unconsciously brightened as she remembered Sir
Lyon Dilsford. He was an intelligent, impecunious, pleasant kind of man,
still, like his host, on the sunny side of forty. Sir Lyon was "in the
City," as are now so many men of his class and kind. He took his work
seriously, and spent many hours of each day east of Temple Bar. By way
of relaxation he helped to run an Oxford College East-End Settlement. "A
good chap,"--that was how Blanche summed him up to herself.

Lionel had asked her if she could think of any young people to ask, and
she had suggested, with some hesitation, her own niece, Bubbles Dunster,
and Bubbles' favourite dancing partner, a young man called Bill
Donnington. Bubbles had arrived at Wyndfell Hall two days ago.
Donnington had not been able to leave London till to-day.

Bubbles? Blanche Farrow's brows knit themselves as she thought of her
niece, namesake, and godchild.

Bubbles was a strange girl, but then so many girls are strange nowadays!
Though an only child, and the apple of her widowed father's eyes, she
had deliberately left her home two years ago, and set up for herself in
London, nominally to study art. At once she had become a great
success--the kind of success that counts nowadays. Bubbles' photograph
was always appearing in the _Sketch_ and in the _Daily Mirror_. She was
constantly roped in to help in any smart charity affair, and she could
dance, act, and sell, with the best. She was as popular with women as
with men, for there was something disarming, attaching, almost elfish,
in Bubbles Dunster's charm. For one thing, she was so good-natured, so
kindly, so always eager to do someone a good turn--and last, not least,
she had inherited her aunt's cleverness about clothes! She dressed in a
way which Blanche Farrow thought ridiculously _outré_ and queer, but
still, somehow, she always looked well-dressed. And though she had never
been taught dressmaking, she could make her own clothes when put to it,
and was always willing to help other people with theirs.

Hugh Dunster, Bubbles' father, did not often favour his sister-in-law
with a letter, but she had had a letter from him three days ago, of
which the most important passage ran: "I understand that Bubbles is
going to spend Christmas with you. I wish you'd say a word to her about
all this spiritualistic rot. She seems to be getting deeper and deeper
into it. It's impairing her looks, making her nervous and almost
hysterical--in a word, quite unlike herself. I spoke to her some time
ago, and desired her most earnestly to desist from it. But a father has
no power nowadays! I have talked the matter over with young Donnington
(of whom I sometimes suspect she is fonder than she knows), and he quite
agrees with me. After all, she's a child still, and doesn't realize what
_vieux jeu_ all that sort of thing is. I insisted on reading to her
'Sludge, the Medium,' but it made no impression on her! In a sense I've
only myself to thank, for I used to amuse myself in testing her amazing
thought-reading powers when she was a little girl."

Bubbles had now been at Wyndfell Hall two whole days, and so far her
aunt had said nothing to her. Somehow she felt a certain shyness of
approaching the subject. In so far as she had ever thought about it--and
she had never really thought about it at all--Miss Farrow regarded all
that she knew of spiritualism as a gigantic fraud. It annoyed her
fastidiousness to think that her own niece should be in any way
associated with that kind of thing. She realized the temptation it must
offer to a clever girl who, as her father truly said, had had as a child
an uncanny power of thought-reading, and of "willing" people to do what
she liked.

Blanche Farrow smiled and sighed as she stared into the fire. How the
world had changed! She could not imagine her own father, though he had
been far less conventional than was Hugh Dunster, talking her over with
a young man.

Poor Bill Donnington! Of course he was devoted to Bubbles--her slave, in
fact. Blanche had only seen him once; she had thought him sensible,
undistinguished, commonplace. She knew that he was the third or fourth
son of a worthy North-country parson--in other words, he "hadn't a bob."
He was, of course, the last man Bubbles would ever think of marrying.
Bubbles, like most of her set, was keenly alive to the value of money.
Bubbles, as likely as not, would make a set, half in fun, half in
earnest, at James Tapster!

To tell the truth, Miss Farrow had not forgotten Bubbles when she had
assented to Lionel Varick's suggestion that rich, if dull-witted, James
Tapster should be included in the party.

       *       *       *       *       *

In what was called the moat garden of Wyndfell Hall, twilight was
deepening into night. But Lionel Varick, who was now pacing up and down
the broad path which followed the course of the moat, could still see,
sharply outlined against the pale winter sky, the vision of tranquil
beauty and the storehouse of archaeological and antiquarian interest
which was now his home.

By his special orders the windows had been left uncurtained. There were
lights in a great number of the rooms--indeed, the lower part of the
house was brilliantly illuminated. But as the windows in the beautiful
linen-panelled hall were diamond-paned, the brilliance was softened, and
there was something deliriously welcoming, almost fairy-like, in the
picture the old house presented to its new owner's eager gaze.

After a while he stayed his steps near the narrow brick bridge which
spanned the moat where a carriage road connected the domain of Wyndfell
Hall with the outside world, and, as he stood there in the gathering
twilight, he looked a romantic figure. Tall and well-built, he took,
perhaps, an almost excessive care over his dress. Yet there was nothing
effeminate or foppish about his appearance.

A follower of that now forgotten science, phrenology, would have been
impressed by Lionel Varick's head. It was large and well-shaped, with a
great deal of almost golden hair, now showing a white thread or two,
which did not, however, detract from his look of youth. He had a fine
broad forehead; deep, well-set grey eyes; and a beautiful, sensitive
mouth, which he took care not to conceal with a moustache. Thus in
almost any company he would have looked striking and distinguished--the
sort of man of whom people ask, "Who is that standing over there?"

Varick was a man of moods--subject, that is, to fits of exultation and
of depression--and yet with an amazing power of self-control, and of
entirely hiding what he felt from those about him.

To-night his mood was one of exultation. He almost felt what Scots call
"fey." Something seemed to tell him that he was within reach of the
fruition of desires which, even in his most confident moments, had
appeared till now wildly out of any possibility of attainment. He came,
on both his father's and his mother's side, of people who had lived for
centuries the secure, pleasant life of the English county gentry. But
instead of taking advantage of their opportunities, the Varicks had gone
not upwards, but steadily downwards--the final crash having been owing
to the folly, indeed the far more than folly, as Lionel Varick had come
to know when still a child, of his own father.

Lionel's father had not lived long after his disgraceful bankruptcy. But
he had had time to imbue his boy with an intense pride in the past
glories of the Varick family. So it was that the shabby, ugly little
villa where his boyhood had been spent on the outskirts of a town famous
for its grammar-school, and where his mother settled for her boy's sake
after her husband's death, had been peopled to young Varick with visions
of just such a country home as was this wonderful old house now before
him.

No wonder he felt "fey" to-night. Everything was falling out as he had
hoped it would do. He had staked very high--staked, indeed, all that a
man can stake in our complex civilization, and he had won! In the whole
wide world there was only one human being who wished him ill. This was
an elderly woman, named Julia Pigchalke, who had been his late wife's
one-time governess and companion. She had been his enemy from the first
day they had met, and she had done her utmost to prevent his marriage to
her employer. Even now, in spite of what poor Milly's own solicitor
called his "thoughtful generosity" to Miss Pigchalke, the woman was
pursuing Varick with an almost insane hatred. About six months ago she
had called on Dr. Panton, the clever young medical man who had attended
poor Mrs. Varick during her last illness. She had formulated vague
accusations against Varick--accusations of cruelty and neglect of so
absurd a nature that they refuted themselves. Miss Pigchalke's behaviour
was the more monstrous that she had already received the first fifty
pounds of the hundred-pound pension her friend's widower had arranged to
give her.

In a will made before her marriage, the late Mrs. Varick had left her
companion two thousand pounds, and though the legacy had been omitted
from her final will, Varick had of his own accord suggested that he
should allow Miss Pigchalke a hundred a year. She had begun by sending
back the first half-yearly cheque; but she had finally accepted it!
To-night he reminded himself with satisfaction that the second fifty
pounds had already been sent her, and that this time she would evidently
make no bones about keeping the money.

Making a determined effort, he chased her sinister image from his
thoughts, and turned his mind to the still attractive woman who was
about to act as hostess to his Christmas party.

His keen face softened as he thought of Blanche Farrow. Poor, proud,
well-bred and pleasant, poor only in a relative sense, for she was the
only unmarried daughter of an Irish peer whose title had passed away to
a distant cousin. Miss Farrow could have lived in comfort and in
dignity on what income she had, but for one inexplicable failing--the
more old-fashioned and severe of her friends and relatives called it a
vice.

Soon after she had come into the enjoyment of her few hundreds a year,
some rich, idle acquaintance had taken Blanche to Monte Carlo, and
there, like a duck to water, she had taken to play! Henceforth
gambling--any kind of gambling--had become her absorbing interest in
life. It was well indeed that what fortune she had was strictly settled
on her sisters' children, her two brothers-in-law being her trustees.
With one of them, who was really wealthy, she had long ago quarrelled.
With the other, now a widower, with only a life interest in his estate,
she was on coldly cordial terms, and sometimes, as was the case now,
acted as chaperon to his only child, her niece and namesake, Bubbles
Dunster.

Blanche Farrow never begged or borrowed. When more hard hit than usual,
she retired, alone with her faithful maid, to some cheap corner of the
Continent; and as she kept her money worries to herself, she was well
liked and popular with a considerable circle.

Such was the human being who in a sense was Lionel Varick's only close
friend. They had met in a strange way, some ten years ago, in what Miss
Farrow's sterner brother-in-law had called a gambling hell. And, just as
we know that sometimes Satan will be found rebuking sin, so Blanche
Farrow had set herself to stop the then young Lionel Varick on the
brink. He had been in love with her at that time, and on the most
unpleasant evening when a cosy flat in Jermyn Street had been raided by
the police, he had given Blanche Farrow his word that he would never
play again; and he had kept his word. He alone knew how grateful he had
cause to be to the woman who had saved him from joining the doomed
throng who only live for play.

And now there was still to their friendship just that delightful little
touch of sentiment which adds salt and savour to almost every relation
between a man and a woman. Though Blanche was some years older than
Lionel, she looked, if anything, younger than he did, for she had the
slim, upright figure, the pretty soft brown hair, and the delicate,
finely modelled features which keep so many an Englishwoman of her type
and class young--young, if not in years, yet young in everything else
that counts. Even what she sometimes playfully called her _petit vice_
had not made her haggard or worn, and she had never lost interest in
becoming, well-made clothes.

Blanche Farrow thought she knew everything there was to know about
Lionel Varick, and, as a matter of fact, she did know a great deal no
one else knew, though not quite as much as she believed. She knew him to
be a hedonist, a materialist, a man who had very few scruples. But not
even to herself would she have allowed him to be called by the ugly name
of adventurer. Perhaps it would be truer to say--for she was a very
clever woman--that even if, deep in her heart, she must have admitted
that such a name would have once suited him, she could now gladly tell
herself that "all that" lay far behind him. As we have seen, he owed
this change in his circumstances to a happy draw in the lottery of
marriage, a draw which has so often turned an adventurer of sorts into a
man of substance and integrity.




CHAPTER III


There is generally something a little dull and formal during the first
evening of a country house party; and if this is true when most of the
people know each other, how far more so is it the case with such a party
as that which was now gathered together at Wyndfell Hall!

Lionel Varick sat at one end of the long oak refectory table, Blanche
Farrow at the other. But though the table was far wider than are most
refectory tables (it was believed to be, because of its width, a unique
specimen), yet Blanche, very soon after they had sat down, told herself
that there was something to be said, after all, for the old-fashioned,
Victorian mahogany. Such a party as was this party would have sorted
themselves out, and really enjoyed themselves much more, sitting in
couples round an ordinary dining-table, than at this narrow, erstwhile
monastic board. Here they were just a little bit too near together--too
much _vis-à-vis_, so Blanche put it to herself with a dissatisfied
feeling.

But soon things began going a little better. It had been her suggestion
that champagne should be offered with the soup, and already it was
having an effect. She was relieved to see that the oddly assorted men
and women about her were brisking up, and beginning to talk, even to
laugh, with one another.

On the host's right sat Miss Burnaby. She was at once quaint and
commonplace looking, the most noticeable thing about her being the fact
that she wore a cap. It was made of fine Mechlin lace threaded with
pale-blue ribbon, and, to the woman now looking at her, suggested an
interesting survival of the Victorian age. Quite old ladies had worn
such caps when she, Blanche Farrow, was a child!

The rest of Miss Burnaby's costume consisted of a high black silk dress,
trimmed with splendid point lace.

Miss Burnaby was evidently enjoying herself. She had taken a glass of
sherry, was showing no fear of her champagne, and had just helped
herself substantially to the delicious sole which was one of the special
triumphs of the French _chef_ who had come down for a month to Wyndfell
Hall. He and Miss Farrow had discussed to-night's menu together that
morning, and he had spoken with modest enthusiasm of this _Sole à la
Cardinal_....

On the other side of the host sat Helen Brabazon.

Blanche looked at the late Mrs. Varick's one intimate friend with
critical interest. Yes, Miss Brabazon looked Somebody, though a somewhat
old-fashioned Somebody, considering that she was still quite a young
woman. She had good hair, a good complexion, and clear, honest-looking
hazel eyes; but not her kindest friends would have called her pretty.
What charm she had depended on her look of perfect health, and her
alert, intelligent expression of face. Miss Farrow, who was well read,
and, indeed, had a fine taste in literature, told herself suddenly that
Miss Brabazon was rather her idea of Jane Austen's Emma! Her dark-blue
velvet dress, though it set off her pretty skin, and the complexion
which was one of her best points, yet was absurdly old, for a girl.
Doubtless Miss Brabazon's gown had been designed by the same dressmaker
who had made her mother's presentation dress some thirty years before.
Such dressmakers are a quaint survival of the Victorian age, and to them
old-fashioned people keep on going from a sense of loyalty, or perhaps
because they are honestly ignorant of what strides in beauty and
elegance other dressmakers have made in the last quarter of a century.

The hostess's eye travelled slowly round the table. How ludicrous the
contrast between Helen Brabazon and Bubbles Dunster! Yet they were
probably very much of an age. Bubbles, who looked such a child, must now
be--yes, not far from two-and-twenty.

Miss Farrow checked a sigh. She had been twenty-one herself--but what a
charming, distinguished, delightful twenty-one--when she had formed one
of a little group round the font of St. Peter's, Eaton Square. She
remembered what an ugly baby she had thought Bubbles, and how she had
been anything but pleased when someone present facetiously observed that
god-mother and godchild had very much the same type of nose and ears and
mouth!

To-night Bubbles was wearing an eccentric, and yet very becoming
garment. To the uninitiated it might have appeared fashioned out of an
old-fashioned chintz curtain. As a matter of fact, the intricate flower
pattern with which it was covered had been copied on a Lyons loom from
one of those eighteenth century embroidered waistcoats which are rightly
prized by connoisseurs. The dress was cut daringly low, back and front,
especially back, and the girl wore no jewels. But through her "bobbed"
hair was tucked a brilliant little silk flag, which carried out and
emphasized the colouring of the flowers scattered over the pale pink
silk of which its wearer's gown was made.

Bubbles, in that staid and decorous company, looked as if she had
wandered in from some gay Venetian masquerade.

She was now sitting between the millionaire, James Tapster, and her own
friend, Bill Donnington. When she had heard that she had been placed
next Donnington, Bubbles had pouted. "I'd rather have had Sir Lyon," she
exclaimed, "or even the old 'un!"--for so she irreverently designated
Helen Brabazon's uncle, Mr. Burnaby.

But Blanche Farrow had been firm. Sir Lyon must of course be on her own
right hand, Mr. Burnaby on her left. It is always difficult to arrange a
party of four ladies and five men. She had suggested more than one other
pleasant woman to make up the party to ten, but Varick had had some
objection to each--the objection usually taking the line that the person
proposed would not "get on" with the Burnabys.

Blanche again wondered why their host had been so determined to have
Helen Brabazon at his first house-party, if her coming meant the
inclusion of her tiresome uncle and aunt? And then she felt a little
ashamed of herself. One of the best points about Lionel Varick was his
sense of gratitude to anyone who had done him a good turn. Gratitude had
been the foundation of their own now many-year-long friendship.

The food was so very good, there was so much of it, and doubtless those
who had journeyed down to Wyndfell Hall to-night were all so hungry,
that there was rather less talk going on round the table than might have
been expected. But now and again the hostess caught a fleeting
interchange of words. She heard, for instance, old Miss Burnaby
informing young Donnington that she had been a good deal on the
Continent as a young woman, and had actually spent a year in Austria a
matter of forty years ago.

As the meal went on, Miss Farrow gradually became aware that Bubbles
provided what life and soul there was in the dull party. But for
Bubbles, but for her infectious high spirits and vitality, how very
heavy and stupid the meal they were now ending would have been! She
asked herself, for perhaps the twentieth time in the last three-quarters
of an hour, why her friend had brought together such a curious and
ill-assorted set of people.

At last she looked across at Miss Burnaby, and gradually everyone got
up.

Varick was at the door in a moment, holding it open, and, as they filed
by him, managing to say a word to each of the four ladies. "Bravo,
Bubbles!" Blanche heard him whisper. "You're earning your Christmas
present right royally!" and the girl's eyes flashed up into her host's
with a mischievous, not over-friendly glance. Miss Farrow was aware that
Bubbles did not much care for Lionel Varick. She rather wondered why.
But she was far too shrewd not to know that there's no accounting either
for likings or dislikings where a man and a woman are concerned.

As she shepherded her little party across the staircase lobby, she
managed to mutter into her niece's ear: "I want you to take on Miss
Burnaby for me, Bubbles--I'm anxious to make friends with Helen
Brabazon."

There are times when what one must call for want of a better term the
social rites of existence interfere most unwarrantably with the
elemental happenings of life. But on this first evening at Wyndfell Hall
the coming of coffee and of liqueurs proved a welcome diversion. Miss
Burnaby smiled a pleased smile as she sipped the Benedictine which a
footman had poured into a tall green-and-gold Bohemian liqueur-glass for
her. She, at any rate, was enjoying her visit. And so, Blanche Farrow
decided, was the old lady's niece, for "How beautiful and perfect
everything is!" exclaimed the girl; and indeed the room in which they
now found themselves was singularly charming.

But somehow Miss Farrow felt that the speaker was not alluding so much
to the room, as to the way everything was being done, and her heart
warmed to the girl, for she was really anxious that Lionel's first party
should be a success.

When they had settled themselves in the lovely, delicately
austere-looking white parlour, as it was called, which again suggested
to Blanche Farrow the atmosphere of Jane Austen's "Emma," Bubbles
dutifully sat herself down by Miss Burnaby. Soon she was talking to that
lady in a way which at once fascinated and rather frightened her
listener. Bubbles had a very pretty manner to old people. It was
caressing, deferential, half-humorously protecting. She liked to shock
and soothe them by turns; and they generally yielded themselves gladly,
after a little struggle, both to the shocking and to the soothing.

Miss Farrow and Helen Brabazon sat down at the further end of the
delightful, gladsome-looking room. It was hung with a delicate, faded
Chinese paper; and against the walls stood a few pieces of fine white
lacquer furniture. The chairs were painted--some French, some
Heppelwhite. Over the low mantelpiece was framed a long, narrow piece of
exquisite embroidery.

"I suppose you have often stayed here?" began Miss Farrow civilly.

Helen Brabazon looked at her, surprised. "I've never been here before!"
she exclaimed. "How could I have been? I've only known Mr. Varick for,
let me see,"--she hesitated--"a very little over a year."

"But you were a great friend of his wife's--at least so I understood?"

Blanche concealed, successfully, her very real astonishment. She had
certainly been told by Lionel that Miss Brabazon and "poor Milly" had
been intimate friends; that this fact was, indeed, the only link between
Miss Brabazon and her host.

The girl now sitting opposite to her flushed deeply, and suddenly
Blanche Farrow realized that there was a good deal of character and
feeling in the open, ingenuous face.

"Yes, that's true. We became great friends"--a note of emotion broke
into the steady, well-modulated voice--"but our friendship was not an
old friendship, Miss Farrow. I only knew Milly--well, I suppose I knew
her about ten weeks in all."

"Ten weeks in all?" This time Blanche Farrow could not keep the surprise
she felt out of her voice. "What an extraordinary mistake for me to have
made! I thought you had been life-long friends."

Helen shook her head. "What happened was this. A friend of mine--I mean
a really old friend--had a bad illness, and I took her down to
Redsands--you may know it, a delightful little village not far from
Walmer. I took a house there, and Mr. and Mrs. Varick had the house next
door. We made friends, I mean Mr. Varick and myself, over the garden
wall, and he asked me if I would mind coming in some day and seeing his
wife. I had a great deal of idle time on my hands, so very soon I spent
even more time with the Varicks than I did with my friend, and she--I
mean poor Milly--became very, very fond of me."

There was a pause. And then the younger woman went on: "And if we knew
each other for such a short time, as one measures time, I on my side
soon got very fond of Milly. Though she was a good deal over
thirty"--again the listener felt a thrill of unreasoning
surprise--"there was something very simple and young about poor Milly."

The speaker stopped, and Blanche, leaning forward, exclaimed: "I am
deeply interested in what you tell me, Miss Brabazon! I have never liked
to say much to Lionel about his wife; but I have always so wondered what
she was really like?"

"She simply adored Mr. Varick," Helen answered eagerly. "She worshipped
him! She was always making plans as to what she and 'Lionel' would do
when she got better. I myself thought it very wrong that all of them,
including Dr. Panton, entered into a kind of conspiracy not to let her
know how ill she was."

"I think that was right," said Blanche Farrow shortly. "Why disturb her
happiness--if indeed she was happy?"

"She was indeed!--very, very happy!" cried Helen. "She had had a
miserable life as a girl, and even after she was grown up. When she met
Mr. Varick, and they fell in love at first sight, she'd hardly ever
seen a man to speak to, excepting some of her father's tiresome old
cronies--"

"Was she pretty?" asked Blanche abruptly.

"Oh, no,"--the other shook her head decidedly. "Not at all pretty--in
fact I suppose most people would have called her _very_ plain. Poor
Milly was sallow, and, when I knew her, very thin; but I believe she'd
never been really strong, never really healthy." She hesitated, and then
said in a low voice: "That made Mr. Varick's wonderful devotion to her
all the more touching."

Blanche Farrow hardly knew what to say. "Yes, indeed," she murmured
mechanically.

Lionel devoted to a plain, unhealthy woman? Somehow she found it quite
impossible to believe that he could ever have been that. And yet there
was no doubting the sincerity of the girl's accents.

"Both Dr. Panton and I used to agree," Helen went on, "that he didn't
give himself enough air and exercise. I hired a car for part of the
time, and used to take him out for a good blow, now and again."

"And what did Mrs. Varick really die of?" asked Blanche Farrow.

"Pernicious anaemia," answered Helen promptly. "It's a curious,
little-known disease, from what I can make out. The doctor told me he
thought she had had it for a long time--or, at any rate, that she had
had it for some years before she married Mr. Varick."

There was a pause.

"I wonder why they didn't come and live here?" said Miss Farrow
thoughtfully.

"Oh, but she hated Wyndfell Hall! You see, her father's whole mind had
been set on nothing but this house, and making it as perfect as
possible. It was in a dreadful state when he inherited it from an old
cousin; yet he was offered, even so, an enormous sum for some of the
wonderful oak ceilings. But he refused the offer--indignantly, and he
set himself to make it what it must have been hundreds of years ago."

"He hardly succeeded in doing that," observed Blanche Farrow dryly. "Our
ancestors lived less comfortably than we do now, Miss Brabazon. Instead
of beautiful old Persian carpets, there must have been rushes on all the
floors. And as for the furniture of those days--it was probably all made
of plain, hard, unpolished wood."

"Well, at any rate,"--the girl spoke with a touch of impatience--"Milly
hated this place. She told me once she had never known a day's real
happiness till her marriage. That's what made it seem so infinitely sad
that it lasted such a short time."

"I suppose," said the other slowly, "that they were married altogether
about seven months?"

"I fancy rather longer than that. She was quite well, or so she thought,
when she married. They travelled about for a while on the Continent, and
she told me once she enjoyed every minute of it! And then her health
began to give way, and they took this house at Redsands. They chose it
because Mr. Varick knew something of the doctor there--he didn't know
him very well, but they became very great friends, in fact such friends
that poor Milly left him a legacy--I think it was five hundred pounds.
Dr. Panton was most awfully good to her, but of course he hadn't the
slightest idea that she was leaving him anything. I never saw a man more
surprised than he was when I told him about it the day of her death.
Mr. Varick asked me to do so, and he was quite overcome."

She smiled. Five hundred pounds evidently did not seem very much to Miss
Brabazon.

"I suppose she had a good deal of money?"

The late Mrs. Varick's friend hesitated a moment, then answered at last,
"I think she had about twenty thousand pounds--at least I know that that
sum was mentioned in the _Times_ list of wills."

The other was startled--disagreeably startled. She had understood, from
something Lionel had said to her, that he now had five thousand a year.
"This place must be worth a good deal," she observed. She told herself
that perhaps the late Mrs. Varick had left twenty thousand pounds in
money, and that the bulk of her income had come from land.

"Yes, but unfortunately poor Milly couldn't leave Wyndfell Hall to Mr.
Varick. He only has a life interest in it."

Helen Brabazon spoke in a curiously decided way, as if she were used to
business.

Blanche was again very much surprised. She had certainly understood that
this wonderful old house and its very valuable contents belonged to
Lionel Varick absolutely. "Are you sure of that?" she began--and then
she stopped speaking, for her quick ears had detected the sound of an
opening and shutting door.




CHAPTER IV


After a few moments the five men sorted themselves among the ladies. Old
Mr. Burnaby and young Donnington went and sat by Bubbles, the
gloomy-looking James Tapster also finally sidling uncertainly towards
her. Sir Lyon civilly devoted himself to Miss Burnaby; and Lionel Varick
came over to where Blanche Farrow was sitting, and said something to her
in a low voice.

Thus was Helen Brabazon for the moment left out in the cold. She turned,
and opening a prettily bound book which was on a table close to her
elbow, began to read it.

Varick looked dubiously at his silent guest. Leaning again towards Miss
Farrow he whispered: "I don't know what one does on such occasions,
Blanche. Ought not we to have a round game or something?"

She smiled into his keen, good-looking face. "You _are_ a baby! Or are
you only pretending, Lionel? Everyone's quite happy; why should we do
anything?"

"As a matter of fact, both Mr. Burnaby and Miss Burnaby spoke before
dinner as if they expected to be entertained in some way."

"I'll think something out," she said a little wearily. "Now go and do
your duty--talk to Miss Brabazon!"

She got up and moved slowly towards the fireplace, telling herself the
while, with a certain irritation, that Lionel was not showing his usual
alert intelligence. It was all very well to invite this young woman who
had been so kind to poor Milly; and the fact that she and her tiresome
old uncle and aunt were, if Lionel was right, very wealthy, was not
without a certain interest. But still--!

Blanche, with a certain grim, inward smile, remembered a story she had
thought at the time rather funny. That of a lady who had said to her
husband, "Oh, do come and see them, they are so very rich." And he had
answered, "My dear, I would if it were catching!"

Unfortunately, Blanche Farrow had only too much reason to know that
wealth is not catching. Also, to one with her brilliant, acute mind,
there was something peculiarly irritating in the sight of very rich
people who didn't know how to use their wealth, either to give
themselves, or others, pleasure. Such people, she felt sure, were Mr.
and Miss Burnaby--and doubtless, also, their heiress, Helen Brabazon.

"Bubbles!" she exclaimed imperiously, under her breath. "Come here for a
minute." And Bubbles, with a touch of reluctance, got up and left the
three men to whom she was talking.

As she came towards her, her aunt was struck by the girl's look of
ill-health and unease.

"I wish you could think of something that would stir us all up," she
said in a low voice. And then, in a lower voice still, for her niece was
now close to her, "The Burnabys look the sort of people who would enjoy
a parlour game," she said rather crossly.

And then, all of a sudden, Bubbles gave a queer little leap into the
air. "I've got it!" she exclaimed. "Let's hold a séance!"

"A séance?" repeated Blanche Farrow in a dubious tone. "I don't think
Miss Burnaby would enjoy that at all."

"Oh, but she would!"--Bubbles spoke confidently. "Didn't you hear her at
dinner? She was telling Sir Lyon about some friend of hers who's become
tremendously keen about that sort of thing. To tell you the truth,
Blanche" (these two had never been on very formal terms together, and in
a way Bubbles was much fonder of her aunt than her aunt was of her)--"To
tell you the truth, Blanche," she repeated, "ever since I arrived here
I've told myself that it would be rather amusing to try something of the
kind. It's a strange old house; there's a funny kind of atmosphere about
it; I felt it the moment I arrived."

The other looked at her sharply. "I've always avoided that sort of
thing, and I don't see it doing you much good, Bubbles! You know how
your father feels about it?"

Miss Farrow did not often interfere in other people's affairs, but she
had suddenly remembered certain phrases in her brother-in-law's letter.

"Daddy has been put up to making a fuss by a goody-goody widow who's
making up to him just now." Bubbles spoke lightly, but she looked vexed.

Blanche Farrow felt sorry she had said anything. Bubbles was behaving
very nicely just now. It was the greatest comfort to have her here. So
she said, smiling, "Oh, well, I shan't regret your trying something of
the kind if you can galvanize these dull folk into life."

"I'll do more than that," said Bubbles easily. "I'll give them creeps!
But, Blanche? I want you to back me up if I say I'm tired, or don't want
to go on with it."

Blanche Farrow felt surprised. "I don't quite understand," she
exclaimed. "Aren't we going to do table-turning?"

"No," said the girl deliberately. "We're going to have a séance--a
sitting. And I'm going to be the medium."

"Oh, Bubbles! Is that wise?" She looked uncomfortably into the girl's
now eager, flushed face. "D'you think you know enough about these people
to be a success at it this very first evening?"

Bubbles' gift of thought reading would of course come in; also the girl
was a clever actress; still, that surely wouldn't take her very far with
a set of people of whom she knew _nothing_.

"The only one I'm afraid of," said Bubbles thoughtfully, "is Mr.
Burnaby. He's such a proper old thing! He might really object--object on
the same ground as Daddy's tiresome widow does. However, I can but try."

She pirouetted round, and quickly drew with her foot a gilt footstool
from under an Empire settee. She stood upon it and clapped her hands.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" she cried. "This is a time of year when ghosts
are said to walk. Why shouldn't we hold a séance, here and now, and call
up spirits from the vasty deep?"

"But will they come?" quoted Sir Lyon, smiling up into her eager,
sensitive little face.

Sir Lyon was quite enjoying Lionel Varick's Christmas house-party. For
one thing, he was interested in his host's personality. In a small way
he had long made a study of Lionel Varick, and it amused him to see
Varick in a new rôle--that of a prosperous country gentleman.

Suddenly Bubbles found an ally in a most unexpected quarter. Helen
Brabazon called out: "I've always longed to attend a séance! I did once
go to a fortune-teller, and it was thrilling--."

Bubbles stepped down off her footstool. She had the gift--which her aunt
also possessed--of allowing another to take the field.

"If it was so exciting," said Lionel Varick dryly, "I wonder that you
only went once, Miss Brabazon."

Helen's face grew grave. "I'll tell you about it some day," she said in
a low voice; "as a matter of fact, it was just before you and I first
met."

"Yes," said Varick lightly. "And what happened? Do tell me!"

Helen turned to him, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "She described
Milly--I mean the fortune-teller described Milly, almost exactly. She
told me that Milly was going to play a great part in my life."

And then she felt sharply sorry she had said as much or as little as she
had said, for her host's face altered; it became, from a healthy pallor,
a deep red.

"Forgive me!" she exclaimed. "Forgive me! I oughtn't to have told you--"

"Don't say that. You can tell _me_ anything!"

Blanche Farrow, who had now moved forward to the fireplace, would again
have been very much surprised had she heard the intense, intimate tone
in which Lionel Varick uttered those few words to his late wife's
friend.

Helen blushed--a deep, sudden blush--and Sir Lyon, looking at her across
the room, told himself that she was a remarkable-looking girl, and that
he would like to make friends with her. He liked the earnest,
old-fashioned type of girl--but fate rarely threw him into the company
of such a one.

"It is quite unnecessary for any of you to move," observed Bubbles in a
business-like tone; "but we are likely to obtain much better results if
we blow out the candles. The firelight will be quite enough."

And then, to everyone's surprise, Miss Burnaby spoke. Her voice was
gentle and fretful. "I thought that there always had to be a medium at a
séance," she observed; "when I went with a friend of mine to what she
called a Circle, there was a medium there, and we each paid her
half-a-crown."

"Of course there must be a medium," said Bubbles quickly. "And _I_ am
going to be the medium this time, Miss Burnaby; but it will be all free
and for nothing--I always do it for love!"

Varick looked at his young guest with a good deal of gratitude. He had
never numbered himself among the girl's admirers. To him Bubbles was
like a caricature of her aunt. But now he told himself that there was
something to say, after all, for this queer younger generation who dare
everything! He supposed that Bubbles was going to entertain them with a
clever exhibition of brilliant acting. Lionel Varick was no mean actor
himself, and it was as connoisseur, as well as expert, that he admired
the gift when it was practised by others.

Spiritualism, table-turning, and fortune-telling--he bracketed them all
together in his own mind--had never interested him in the least. But he
realized dimly what a wonderful chance this new fashionable craze--for
so he regarded it--gives to the charlatan. He had always felt an
attraction to that extraordinary eighteenth century adventurer,
Cagliostro, and to-night he suddenly remembered a certain passage in
Casanova's memoirs.... He felt rather sorry that they hadn't planned
out this--this séance, before the rest of the party had arrived. He
could have given Bubbles a few "tips" which would have made her task
easy, and the coming séance much more thrilling.

The company ranged themselves four on each side.

Miss Burnaby sat on one side of the fireplace, her brother on the other.
Next to the old lady was Sir Lyon; then Helen Brabazon; last their host.

On the opposite side, next to Mr. Burnaby, sat the fat-visaged James
Tapster; by him was Blanche Farrow, looking on the proceedings with a
certain cynical amusement and interest, and next to Blanche, and nearest
to where Bubbles had now established herself on one of those low chairs
which in England is called a nursery chair, and in France a _prie-dieu_,
was young Donnington. He, alone of the people there, looked
uncomfortable and disapproving.

After they had all been seated, waiting they hardly knew for what, for a
few moments, Bubbles leapt from her low chair and blew out all the
candles, a somewhat lengthy task, and one which plunged the room into
almost darkness. But she threw a big log of wood on the fire, and the
flames shot up, filling the room with shafts of rosy, fitful light.

There was a pause. Varick said something in a rather cheerful,
matter-of-fact voice to Miss Brabazon, and Bubbles turned round sharply:
"I'm afraid we ought to have complete silence--even silence of thought,"
she said solemnly.

Blanche Farrow looked at the girl. What queer jargon was this? In the
wavering light thrown by the fire Bubbles' face looked tense and rather
strained.

Was it possible, Blanche asked herself with a touch of uneasiness, that
the child was taking this seriously--that she _believed_ in it at all?
Her father thought so, but then Hugh Dunster was such an old fool!

The moments ran by. One or two of the chairs creaked. James Tapster
yawned, and he put up his hand rather unwillingly to hide his yawn. He
thought all this sort of thing very stupid, and so absolutely
unnecessary. He had enjoyed listening to Miss Bubbles' cheerful,
inconsequent chatter. It irritated him that she should have been dragged
away from him--for so he put it to himself--by that unpleasant,
supercilious woman, Blanche Farrow. It was a pity that a nice girl like
Miss Bubbles had such an aunt. Only the other day he had heard a queer
story about Miss Farrow. The story ran that she had once been caught in
a gambling raid, and her name kept out of the papers by the influence of
a man in the Home Office who had been in love with her at the time.

And then he looked up, startled for once--for strange, untoward sounds
were issuing from the lips of Bubbles Dunster. The girl was leaning
forward, her elbows on her knees, crouched upon the low chair, her
slight, sinuous little figure bathed in red light. She was groaning,
rocking herself backwards and forwards convulsively. To most of those
present it was a strange, painful exhibition--painful, yet certainly
thrilling!

Suddenly she began to speak, and the words poured from her lips with a
kind of breathless quickness. But the strange, uncanny, startling thing
about it was that the voice which uttered these staccato sentences was
not Bubbles' well modulated, drawling voice. It was the high, peevish
voice of a _child_--a child speaking queer, broken English. Everyone
present, even including Varick and Blanche Farrow, who both believed it
to be a clever and impudent piece of impersonation, was startled and
taken aback by the extraordinary phenomena the girl now presented. Her
eyes were closed, and yet her head was thrust forward as if she was
staring at the big, now roaring, wood fire before her.

Rushing out through her scarcely open lips, came the sing-song words:
"Why bring Laughing Water here? Laughing Water frightened. Laughing
Water want to go away. Laughing Water hates this house. Please, Miss
Bubbles, let Laughing Water go away!" And Bubbles--if it was
Bubbles--twisted and turned and groaned, as if in agony.

And then, to the amazement of all those who were there, young
Donnington, his face set in grim lines, suddenly addressed Bubbles, or
the little pleading creature that appeared to possess the girl: "Don't
be frightened," he said soothingly. "No one's going to hurt Laughing
Water. Everyone in this room is good and kind."

In answer, there broke from Bubbles' lips a loud cry: "No, no, no! Bad
people--cruel people--here! Bad spirits, too. Bad chair. Laughing Water
sitting on torture chair! Miss Bubbles change chair. Then Laughing Water
feel better."

Bubbles got up as an automaton might have got up, and Donnington,
pushing forward one of the painted chairs, drew the low, tapestry
covered _prie-dieu_ from under her.

She gave a deep, deep sigh as she sat down again. Then she turned
herself and the chair round till she was exactly facing Varick. In a
voice which had suddenly become much more her own voice she addressed
him, speaking slowly, earnestly: "I see a lady standing behind you. She
is very stern-looking. She has a pale, worn face, and dark blue eyes.
They are very like your eyes. Her hair is parted in the middle; it is
slightly grey. She must have passed over about fifteen to twenty years
ago. I think it is your mother. She wants to, she wants to--" Bubbles
hesitated, and then, speaking now entirely in her own voice, she
exclaimed with a kind of gasp--"to warn you of danger."

Varick opened his lips, and then he closed them. He felt shaken with an
over-mastering emotion, as well as intense surprise, and, yes, of fierce
anger with the girl for daring to do this--to him.

But Bubbles began again, staring as if at something beyond and behind
him. "Now there's another figure, standing to your left. She is still
near the earth plane. I cannot place her at all. She is short and stout;
her grey hair is brushed back from her forehead. I do not feel as if you
had known her very long."

Her voice died away, then suddenly became stronger, more confident:
"Your mother--if it is your mother--is trying to shield you from her."

She remained silent for a while. She seemed to be listening. Then she
spoke again: "I get a word--what is it?--not _Ardour? Aboard?_ No, I
think it's _Arbour_!"

She gazed anxiously into Varick's pale, set face. "She says, 'Remember
the _Arbour_.' D'you follow me?"

She asked the question with a certain urgency, and Bubbles' host nodded,
imperceptibly.

Then she left him, dragging her chair along till she was just opposite
Helen Brabazon.

"I see a man standing behind you," she began; "he is dressed in rather
curious, old-fashioned cricketing clothes."

A look of amazement and understanding passed over Helen's face.

Bubbles went on, confidently: "He is a tall, well-set-up man. He has
light brown hair and grey eyes. He is smiling. I think it is your
father. Now he looks grave. He is uneasy about you. He is sorry you came
here, to Wyndfell Hall. Do you follow me?"

But Helen shook her head. She felt bewildered and oppressed. "I wonder,"
she said falteringly, "if he could give me a sign? I do so long to know
if it is _really_ my dear, dear father."

Blanche Farrow turned a little hot. It was too bad of Bubbles to do the
thing in this way!

"He says--he says--I hear him say a word--" Bubbles stopped and knit her
brows. "'Girl, girl'--no, it isn't 'girl'--"

"Girlie?" murmured Helen under her breath.

"Yes, that's it! 'Girlie'--he says _'girlie_.'"

Helen Brabazon covered her face with her hands. She was deeply moved.
What wonderful thing was this? She told herself that never, never would
she allow herself to speak lightly or slightingly of spiritualism again!
As far as she knew, no one in that room, not even her uncle or aunt, was
aware that "girlie" had been her long dead father's pet name for his
only child.

And then, quite suddenly, Bubbles' voice broke into a kind of cry. "Take
care!" she said. "Take care! I see another form. It has taken the place
of your father. I think it is the form of a woman who has passed over,
and who loved you once, but whose heart is now full of hatred. D'you
follow me? Quick! quick! She's fading away!"

Helen shook her head. "No," she said in a dull voice, "I don't follow
you at all."

She felt acutely, unreasonably disappointed. There was no one in the
world who had first loved and then hated her, or who _could_ hate her.
She cast her mind back to some of her schoolfellows; but no, as far as
she knew they were all still alive, and there was not one of them to
whom these exaggerated terms of love and hatred could be applied.

Bubbles dragged her chair on till she was just opposite Sir Lyon
Dilsford.

He put up his hand: "Will you kindly pass me by, Laughing Water?" he
said, in his full, pleasant voice. "I'm an adept, and I don't care for
open Circles. If you don't mind, will you pass on?"

And Bubbles dragged on her chair again over the Aubusson carpet.

She was now opposite Miss Burnaby, and the old lady was looking at her
with an air of fear and curiosity which strangely altered her round,
usually placid face.

"I see a tall young man standing behind you," began Bubbles in a
monotonous voice. "He has such a funny-looking long coat on; a
queer-shaped cap, too. Why, he's dripping with water!"

And then, almost as if in spite of herself, Miss Burnaby muttered: "Our
brother John, who was drowned."

"He wants me to tell you that he's very happy, and that he sends you
your father's and mother's love."

Bubbles waited for what seemed quite a long time, then she went on
again: "I see another man. He is a very good-looking man. He has a high
forehead, blue eyes, and a golden mustache. He is in uniform. Is it an
English uniform?"

Miss Burnaby shook her head.

"I think it's an Austrian uniform," said Bubbles hesitatingly; then she
continued, in that voice which was hers and yet not hers, for it seemed
instinct with another mind: "He says, 'My love! My love, why did you
lack courage?'"

The old lady covered her face with her hands. "Stop! Please stop," she
said pitifully.

Bubbles dragged her chair across the front of the fire till she was
exactly opposite Mr. Burnaby.

For a few moments nothing happened. The fire had died down. There was
only a flicker of light in the room. Then all at once the girl gave a
convulsive shudder. "I can't help it," she muttered in a frightened
tone. "Someone's coming through!"

All the colour went out of the healthy old man's face. "Eh, what?" he
exclaimed uneasily.

Like Mr. Tapster, he had thought all this tomfoolery, but while Bubbles
had been speaking to, or at, his sister, he had felt amazed, as well as
acutely uncomfortable.

And then there burst from Bubbles' lips words uttered in a broken,
lamenting voice--a young, uncultivated woman's voice: "I did forgive
you--for sure. But oh, how I've longed to come through to you all these
years! You was cruel, cruel to me, Ted--and I was kind to you."

Then followed a very odd, untoward thing. Mr. Burnaby jumped up from his
chair, and he bolted--literally bolted--from the room, slamming the door
behind him.

Bubbles gave a long, long sigh, and then she said feebly: "I'm tired. I
can't go on any longer now." She spoke in her natural voice, but all the
lilt and confidence were as if drained out of it.

Someone--perhaps it was Donnington, who had got up--began re-lighting
the candles.

No one spoke for what seemed a long time. And then, to the infinite
relief of Varick and Miss Farrow, the door opened, and the butler
appeared, followed by the footmen. They were bringing in various kinds
of drinks.

The host poured out and mixed a rather stiff brandy and soda, and took
it over to Miss Burnaby. "Do drink this," he said solicitously. "And
forgive me, Miss Burnaby--I'm afraid I was wrong to allow this--this--"
he did not know quite what to say, so he ended lamely, "this séance to
take place."

Then he poured out another stiff brandy and plain water and drank it
himself.

Donnington turned to Miss Farrow. "I have never known Bubbles so--so
wonderful!" he exclaimed in a low voice. "There must be something in the
atmosphere of this place which made it easier than usual."

Blanche Farrow looked at him searchingly. "Surely you don't believe in
it?" she whispered incredulously. "Of course it was a mixture of
thought-reading and Bubbles' usual quickness!"

"I don't agree with you--I wish I could." The young man looked very pale
in the now bright light. "I thoroughly disapprove of it all, Miss
Farrow. I wish to God I could stop Bubbles going in for it!"

"I agree with you that it's very bad for her."

The girl had gone away, right out of the circle. She was sitting on a
chair in the far corner of the room; her head, bent over a table, rested
on her arms.

"She'll be worn out--good for nothing to-morrow," went on Donnington
crossly. "She'll have an awful night too. I might have thought she'd be
up to something of the sort! One of the servants told her to-night that
this house is haunted. She'll be trying all sorts of experiments if we
can't manage to stop her. It's the only thing Bubbles really lives for
now, Miss Farrow."

"I'm afraid it is"--Blanche felt really concerned. What had just taken
place was utterly unlike anything she had ever imagined. And yet--and
yet it didn't amount to very much, after all! The most extraordinary
thing which had happened, to her mind, was what had been told to old
Miss Burnaby.

And then all at once she remembered--and smiled an inward, derisive
little smile. Why, of course! She had overheard Miss Burnaby tell her
neighbour at dinner that as a girl she had stayed a winter in Austria.
How quick, how clever Bubbles had been--how daring, too! Still, deep in
her heart, she was glad that her niece had not had time to come round to
where she, herself, had been sitting. Bubbles knew a good deal about her
Aunt Blanche, and it certainly would not have been very pleasant had the
child made use of her knowledge--even to a slight degree.... Miss Farrow
went up to the table on which now stood a large lacquer tray, and poured
herself out a glass of cold water. She was an abstemious woman.

"I think some of us ought to go up to bed now" she said, turning round.
"It isn't late yet, but I'm sure we're all tired. And we've had rather
an exciting evening."

There was a good deal of hand-shaking, and a little talk of plans for
the morrow. Bubbles had come over, and joined the others, but she was
still curiously abstracted.

"Where's Mr. Burnaby?" she asked suddenly. "Wasn't he at the séance?"

"He's gone to bed," said his sister shortly.

Her host was handing the old lady a bedroom candle, and she was looking
up at him with a kind of appeal in her now troubled and bewildered face.

"I feel I owe you an apology," he said in a low voice. "Bubbles Dunster
has always possessed extraordinary powers of thought-reading. I remember
hearing that years ago, when she was a child. But of course I had no
idea she had developed the gift to the extent she now has--or I should
have forbidden her to exercise it to-night."

After the three other women had all gone upstairs, Blanche Farrow
lingered a moment at the bottom of the staircase; and Varick, having
shepherded Sir Lyon, young Donnington, and James Tapster into the hall,
joined her for a few moments.

"Bubbles is an extraordinary young creature," he said thoughtfully. "I
shouldn't have thought it within the power of any human being to impress
me as she impressed me to-night. What a singular gift the girl has!"

Somehow Blanche felt irritated. "She has a remarkable memory," she said
dryly. "And also the devil's own impudence, Lionel." And then she told
him of the few words she had overheard at dinner of the winter Miss
Burnaby had spent in Austria a matter of forty years ago.

"Yes, that's all very well! But it doesn't account for her absolutely
correct description of my mother, or--or--"

"Yes?" said his companion sharply.

"Well--of her mention of the word 'arbour.' The last time I saw my
mother alive was in the arbour of our horrible little garden at
Bedford."

"That," said Blanche thoughtfully, "was, I admit, pure thought-reading.
Good-night, Lionel."

Varick remained standing at the foot of the staircase for quite a long
while.

Yes, it had been thought-reading, of course. But very remarkable, even
so. It was years since he had thought of that last painful talk with his
mother. She had warned him very seriously of certain--well,
peculiarities of his character. The long-forgotten words she had used
suddenly leapt into his mind as if written in letters of fire: "Your
father's unscrupulousness, matched with my courage, make a dangerous
combination, my boy."

As he lit a cigarette, his hand shook a little, but the more he thought
of it, the more he told himself that for all that had occurred with
relation to himself to-night there was an absolutely natural
explanation.

Take the second figure Bubbles had described? It was obviously that of
the woman on whom he had allowed his mind to dwell uneasily, intensely,
this afternoon. She was his only enemy--if you could call the crazy
creature who had been poor Milly's companion an enemy.

The odious personality of the absurdly named Julia Pigchalke was still
very present to him as he turned and joined his men guests in the
beautiful camber-roofed and linen-panelled room known as the hall. She
was the one fly, albeit a very small fly, in the ointment of his deep
content.




CHAPTER V


It was a good deal more than an hour later--in fact nearer twelve than
eleven o'clock--when young Donnington got up from the comfortable chair
where he had been ensconced, and put down the book which he had been
reading.

All the other men of the party, with the exception of old Mr.
Burnaby--who had gone to bed for good after his dramatic bolt from the
drawing-room--had disappeared some time ago. But Donnington had stayed
on downstairs, absorbed in a curious, privately printed book containing
the history of Wyndfell Hall.

Suddenly his eyes fell on the following passage:

    "Every piece of the furniture in 'the White Parlour,' as it is still
    called, is of historic value and interest. To take but one example.
    A low, high-backed chair, covered with _petit point_ embroidery,
    is believed to have been the _prie-dieu_ on which the Princesse
    de Lamballe knelt during the whole of the night preceding her terrible
    death. In a document which was sold with the chair in 1830, her
    servant--who, it appears, had smuggled the chair into the
    prison--recounts the curious fact that the poor Princess had a
    prevision that she was to be _torn in pieces_. She spent the last
    night praying for strength to bear the awful ordeal she knew lay
    before her."

Donnington shut the book. "That's strange!" he muttered to himself as
he got up.

After putting the book back in the bookcase where he had found it, he
stood and looked round the splendid apartment with a mixture of interest
and delighted attention.

Yes, this wonderful old "post and panel" dwelling was the most beautiful
of the many beautiful old country houses with which he had made
acquaintance in the last two or three years; and it was awfully good of
Bubbles to have got him asked here! Even if she hadn't actually
suggested he should come, he knew that of course he owed his being here
to her.

The queer, enigmatic, clever girl had the whole of Donnington's
steadfast heart. Since he had first met Bubbles--only some eighteen
months ago, but it now seemed an eternity--all life had been different.

At first she had at once repelled, attracted, and shocked him. He had
been much taken aback when she had first proposed coming to see him,
unchaperoned, in the modest rooms he occupied in Gray's Inn. Then, after
she had twice invited herself to tea, her constant comings seemed quite
natural. Sometimes she would be accompanied by a friend, either another
girl or a man, and they would form a merry, happy little party of three
or four. But of course he was far, far happiest when she came alone.
Almost from the first moment there had been a kind of instinctive
intimacy between them, and very soon she had learnt to rely on him--even
to take his advice about little things--and to come to him with all her
troubles.

Bubbles Dunster had already been what Donnington in his own mind called
"deeply bitten" with spiritualism before they had met; yet he had known
her for some considerable time before she had allowed him to know it.
Even now she tried, ineffectually, to keep him outside all that
concerned that part of her life. But, as he once had told her with more
emotion than he generally betrayed, he would have followed her down to
hell itself.

There came a cloud over his honest face as he thought of what had
happened this very evening. And yet, and yet he had to admit that even
now he could never make up his mind--he never knew, that is, how far
what took place was due to a supernatural agency, or how much to
Bubbles' uncanny quickness and cleverness.

What was more strange, considering how well he knew her, Donnington did
not really know how much she herself believed in it all. As a
rule--probably because she knew how anxious and troubled he felt about
the matter--Bubbles would very seldom discuss with him any of the
strange happenings in which she was so absorbed. And yet, now and again,
almost as if in spite of herself, she would ask him if he would care to
come to a séance, or invite him to witness an exceptionally remarkable
manifestation at some psychic friend's house.

It had early become impossible for him, apart from everything else, to
accept the easy "all rot" theory, for Bubbles' occult gifts were really
very remarkable and striking. They had become known to the now large
circle of intelligent people who make a study of psychic phenomena, and
among them, just because she was an "amateur," she was much in request.

But it had never occurred to him, from what he had been told of the
party now gathered together, that there would be the slightest attempt
at the sort of thing which had happened to-night. He felt sharply
irritated with Miss Farrow, whom he had never liked, and also with
Lionel Varick. He knew that Bubbles' father had written to her aunt; he
had himself advised it, knowing, with that shrewd, rather pathetic
instinct which love gives to some natures, that Bubbles thought a great
deal of her aunt--far more, indeed, than her aunt did of her. He told
himself that he would speak to Miss Farrow to-morrow--have it out with
her.

Rather slowly and deliberately, for he was a rather slow and deliberate
young man, he put out the lights of the three seven-branched
candlesticks which illumined the beautiful old room; and, as he moved
about, he suddenly became aware that nearly opposite the door giving
into the staircase lobby was a finely-carved, oak, confessional-box.
What an odd, incongruous ornament to have in a living-room!

The last bedroom candlestick had gone, and temporarily blinded by the
sudden darkness, he groped his way up the broad, shallow stairs to the
corridor which he knew ultimately led to his room.

He was setting his feet cautiously one before the other on the landing,
his eyes by now accustomed to the grey dimness of a winter night, for
the great window above the staircase was uncurtained, when _Something_
suddenly loomed up before him, and he felt his right arm gripped.

He gave a stifled cry. And then, all at once, he knew that it was
Bubbles--only Bubbles! He felt her dear nearness rushing, as it were,
all over him. It was all he could do to prevent himself from taking her
in his arms.

"Bill? That _is_ you, isn't it?" she asked in a low whisper. "I'm so
frightened--so frightened! I should have come down long ago--but I
thought some of the others were still there. Oh! I wish I'd come down!
I've been waiting up here so long--and oh, Bill, I'm very cold!" She was
pressing up close to him, and he put his arm round her--in a protecting,
impersonal way.

"I wish we could go and sit down somewhere," she went on plaintively.
"It's horrible talking out here, on the landing. I suppose it wouldn't
do, Bill, for you to come into my room?"

"No, that wouldn't do at all," he said simply. "But look here,
Bubbles--would you like to go downstairs again, into the hall? It's
quite warm there,"--he felt that she was really shivering.

"I'm cold--I'm cold!"

"Put on something warmer," he said--or rather ordered. "Put on your fur
coat. Is it downstairs? Shall I go and fetch it?"

She whispered, "It's in my room--I know where it is. I know exactly
where Pegler put it."

She left him standing in the corridor, and went back into her room. The
door was wide open, and he could see that she was wearing a white
wrapper covered with large red flowers--some kind of Eastern, wadded
dressing-gown. He heard a cupboard door creak, and then she came out of
the room dragging her big fur coat over her dressing-gown; but he saw
that her feet were bare--she had not troubled to put on slippers.

"Go back," he said imperiously, "and put some shoes on, Bubbles--you'll
catch your death of cold."

How amazing, how incredible, this adventure would have appeared to him
even a year ago! But it seemed quite natural now--simply wilful Bubbles'
way. There was nothing Bubbles could do which would surprise Donnington
_now_.

"Don't shut your door," he muttered. "It might wake someone up. Just
blow out the candles, and leave the door open."

She obeyed him; and then he took her arm--again blinded by the sudden
obscurity in which they were now plunged.

"I hate going downstairs," she said fretfully. "Somehow I feel as if
downstairs were full of Them!"

"Full of _them_?" he repeated. "What on earth do you mean, Bubbles?"

And Bubbles murmured fearfully: "You know perfectly well what I mean.
And it's all my fault--all my fault!"

He whispered rather sternly back: "Yes, Bubbles, it _is_ your fault. Why
couldn't you leave the thing alone just for a little while--just through
the Christmas holidays?"

"I felt so tempted," she muttered. "I forget who it was who said
'Temptation is so pleasing because it need never be resisted.'"

He uttered an impatient exclamation under his breath.

"Let's sit down on the staircase," she pleaded, "I'm warmer now. I think
this would be a nice place to sit down."

She sank down on one of the broad, low steps just below the landing, and
pulled him down, nestling up close to him. "Oh, Bill," she whispered,
"it _is_ a comfort to be with you--a real comfort. You don't know what
I've gone through since I came up to bed. I felt all the time as if
Something was trying to get at me--something cruel, revengeful,
miserable!"

"You ate too much at dinner," he said shortly. "You oughtn't to have
taken that brandy-cherries ice."

They had very soon got past the stage during which Donnington had tried
to say pretty things to Bubbles.

"Perhaps I did"--he felt the gurgle of amusement in her voice. "I was
very hungry, and the food here is very good. It must be costing a lot of
money--all this sort of thing. How nice to be rich! Oh, Bill, how _very_
nice to be rich!"

"I don't agree," he said sharply. "Varick doesn't look particularly
happy, that I can see."

"I wonder if Aunt Blanche would marry him _now_?"

"I don't suppose he'd give her the chance--now."

It wasn't a very chivalrous thing to say, or hear said, and Bubbles
pinched him so viciously that he nearly cried out.

"You're not to talk like that of my Aunt Blanche. Quite lately--not
three months ago--someone asked her to marry him for the thousandth
time! But of course she said no--as I shall do to you, a thousand times
too, if we live long enough."

She waited a moment, then said slowly: "Her man's rather like you. He's
very much what you will be, Bill, in about thirty years from now--a
plain, good, priggish old fellow. Of course you know who it is? Mark
Gifford, of the Home Office. Aunt Blanche only keeps in with him because
he's very useful to her sometimes."

And then she added, with a touch of strange cruelty, "Just as _I_ shall
always keep in with you, Bill, however tiresome and disagreeable you may
be! Just because I find you so useful. You're being useful now; I don't
feel frightened any more."

She drew herself from the shelter of his strong, protecting arm, and
slid along the polished step till she leant against the banister. He
could just see the whiteness of her little face shining out of the big
fur collar.

"If you're feeling all right again," he said rather coolly, "I think
we'd both better go to bed. Speaking for myself, I feel sleepy!"

But she was sliding towards him again, and again she clutched his arm.
"No, no," she whispered. "Let's wait just a little longer, Bill. I--I
don't feel quite comfortable in that room. I wonder if they'd give me a
new room to-morrow? It's funny, I'm not a bit frightened at what they
call the haunted room here--the room that's next to Aunt Blanche's, in
the other wing of the house. A woman who killed her little stepson is
supposed to haunt that room."

"I know," said Donnington shortly. "I've been reading about it in a book
downstairs. _I_ shouldn't care to sleep in a room where such a thing had
been done--ghost or no ghost!"

And then Bubbles said something which rather startled him. "Bill," she
whispered, leaning yet closer to him, "_I_ raised that ghost two nights
ago."

"What do you mean?" he asked sternly.

"I mean that Aunt Blanche and that tiresome Pegler of hers had already
been here a week and nothing had happened. And then--the first night I
was in the house the ghost appeared!"

She was shivering now, and, almost unwillingly, he put his arm round
her again. "Rot!" he exclaimed. "Don't let yourself think such things,
Bubbles--"

"I know you don't believe it, Bill, but I _have_ got the power of
raising Them."

"I don't know whether I believe it or not," he said slowly. "And I--I
sometimes wonder if _you_ believe it, Bubbles, or if you're only
pretending?"

There was a pause. And then Bubbles said in a strange tone: "'Tisn't a
question of believing it now, Bill. I _know_ it's true! I wish it
wasn't."

"If it's true," he said, "or even if you only believe it's true, what on
earth made you do what you did to-night?"

"It was so deadly," she exclaimed, "so deadly dull!" She yawned. "You
see, I can't help yawning even at the recollection of it!"

And in the darkness her companion smiled.

"I felt as if I wanted to wake them all up! Also I felt as if I wanted
to know something more about them than I did. Also"--she hesitated.

"Yes?" he said questioningly.

"I rather wanted to impress Aunt Blanche." The words came slowly,
reluctantly.

"I wonder what made you want to do that?" asked Donnington dryly.

"Somehow--well, you know, Bill, that sort of cool unbelief of hers
stings me. She's always thought I make it all up as I go along."

"You do sometimes," he said in a low voice.

"I used to, Bill--but I don't now: it isn't necessary."

He turned rather quickly. "Honest Injun, Bubbles?"

"Yes. Honest Injun!" There was a pause. "What do you think of Varick?"
she suddenly whispered.

"I think _Mr._ Varick," answered Donnington coldly, "is a thoroughly
nice sort of chap. I like his rather elaborate, old-fashioned manners."

"He's a queer card for all his pretty manners," muttered Bubbles; and
somehow Donnington felt that something else was on the tip of her tongue
to say, but that she had checked herself, just in time.

"I wish," he said earnestly, "I do wish, Bubbles, that you and I could
have a nice, old-fashioned Christmas. They sent up to-night to know if
Mr. Varick would allow some of his holly to be cut for decorating the
church--why shouldn't we go down to-morrow and help? Do, Bubbles--to
please me!"

"I will," she said penitently. "I will, dearest."

Donnington sighed--a short, quick sigh. He could remember the exquisite
thrill it had given him when she had first uttered the word--in a crowd
of careless people. Now, when Bubbles called him "dearest" it did not
thrill him at all, for he knew she said it to a great many people--and
yet it always gave him pleasure to hear her utter the dear, intimate
little word to him.

"Get up and go to bed, you naughty girl!" he said good-humouredly, but
there was a great deal of tenderness in his low, level tone.

She rose quickly to her feet. All her movements were quick and lightsome
and free. There was a touch of Ariel about Bubbles, so Bill Donnington
sometimes told himself.

They walked up the few shallow steps together, she still very close to
him. And then, when they were opposite her door, she exclaimed, but in
a very low whisper: "Now you must say the prayer with me--for me!"

"The prayer? What _do_ you mean, Bubbles?"

"You know," she muttered:

  "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
   Bless the bed that I lie on--

"What's after that?" she asked.

He went on, uttering the quaint words very seriously, very reverently:

  "Four corners to my bed,
   Four Angels round my head;
   One to watch and one to pray,
   One to keep all fears away"--

"No," she exclaimed fretfully. "'One to keep my soul in bed.' That's
what _I_ say. I don't want my poor little soul to go wandering about
this beautiful, terrible old house when I'm asleep. Good-night, Goody
goody!"

She put up her face as a child might have done, and he bent down and
kissed her, as he might have kissed a wilful, naughty child who had just
told him she was sorry for something she had done.

"God bless you," he said huskily. "God bless and keep you from any real
harm, Bubbles my darling."




CHAPTER VI


As regarded Lionel Varick, the second day of his house-party at Wyndfell
Hall opened most inauspiciously, for, when approaching the dining-room,
he became aware that the door was not really closed, and that Mr.
Burnaby and his niece were having what seemed to be an animated and even
angry discussion.

"I don't like this place, and I don't care for your fine friend, Mr.
Varick--" Such was the very unpleasant observation which the speaker's
unlucky host overheard.

There came instant silence when he pushed open the door, and Helen with
heightened colour looked up, and exclaimed: "My uncle has to go back to
London this morning. Isn't it unfortunate? He's had a letter from an old
friend who hasn't been in England for some years, and he feels he must
go up and spend Christmas with _him_, instead of staying with us here."

Varick was much taken aback. He didn't believe in the old friend. His
mind at once reverted to what had happened the night before. It was the
séance which had upset Mr. Burnaby--not a doubt of it! Without being
exactly unpleasant, the guest's manner this morning was cold, very
cold--and Varick himself was hard put to it to hide his annoyance.

He had taken a great deal of trouble in the last few months to
conciliate this queer, disagreeable, rather suspicious old gentleman,
and he had thought he had succeeded. The words he had overheard when
approaching the dining-room showed how completely he had failed. And now
Bubbles Dunster, with her stupid tomfoolery, was actually driving Mr.
Burnaby away!

But Mr. Burnaby's host was far too well used to conceal his thoughts,
and to command his emotions, to do more than gravely assent, with an
expression of regret. Nay more, as some of the others gradually lounged
in, and as the meal became a trifle more animated, he told himself that
after all Mr. Burnaby might have turned out a spoil-sport, especially
with regard to a secret, all-important matter which he, the convener of
this curiously assorted Christmas party, had very much at heart.

Even so, for the first time in their long friendship, he felt at odds
with Blanche Farrow. She ought to have stopped the séance the moment she
saw whither it was tending! His own experience of Bubbles' peculiar gift
had been very far from agreeable, and had given him a thoroughly bad
night. That strange, sinister evocation of his long-dead mother had
stirred embers Varick had believed to be long dead--embers he had done
his best, as it were, to stamp out from his memory.

Another thing which added to his ill-humour was the fact that Bubbles,
alone of the party, had not come down to breakfast. In such matters she
was an absolute law unto herself; but whereas during the first two days
of the girl's stay at Wyndfell Hall her host had been rather glad to
miss her at breakfast--it had been a cosy little meal shared by him and
Blanche--he now resented her absence. He told himself angrily that she
ought to have been there to help to entertain everybody, and to cheer up
sulky James Tapster. The latter had asked: "Where's Miss Bubbles?" with
an injured air--as if he thought she ought to be forming part of the
excellent breakfast.

Mr. Burnaby was determined to get away from Wyndfell Hall as soon as
possible, and by eleven o'clock the whole party, excepting Bubbles, was
in the hall, bidding him good-bye. And then it was that Varick suddenly
realized with satisfaction that both Miss Burnaby and Helen regarded the
departure of their kinsman with perfect equanimity. Was it possible that
Helen was _glad_ her uncle and guardian was leaving her alone--for once?
The thought was a very pleasant one to her present entertainer and host.

Even so, after he and Blanche Farrow turned away from the porch where
they had been speeding the parting guest, she noticed that Varick looked
more annoyed, more thoroughly put out, than she had ever seen him--and
she had seen him through some rather bad moments in the long course of
their friendship!

"I hope Bubbles won't try on any more of her thought-reading
tomfoolery," he said disagreeably. "What happened last night has driven
Mr. Burnaby away."

"I think you're wrong," said Blanche quickly. "I'm certain he received
the letter of which he spoke."

"I don't agree with you"; and it was with difficulty that Varick
restrained himself from telling her what he had overheard the unpleasant
old man say to his niece.

"I think we shall get on all the better without him," said Blanche
decidedly.

She vaguely resented the way in which Varick spoke of Bubbles. After
all, the girl had come to Wyndfell Hall out of the purest good
nature--in order to help them through with their party.

"Oh, well, I daresay you're right." (He couldn't afford to quarrel with
Blanche.) "And I forgot one thing. I've heard from Panton--"

"You mean your doctor friend?" she said coldly.

"Yes, and he hopes to be here sooner than he thought he could be. He's a
good chap, Blanche"--there came a note of real feeling into Varick's
voice--"awfully hard-worked! I hope we'll be able to give him a good
time."

"He'll have to sleep in the haunted room."

"That won't matter. He wouldn't believe in a ghost, even if he saw one!
Be nice to him, for my sake; he was awfully good to me, Blanche."

And Blanche Farrow softened. There was a very good side to her friend
Lionel. He was one of those rare human beings who are, in a moral sense,
greatly benefited by prosperity. In old days, though his attractive,
dominant personality had brought him much kindness, and even friendship,
of a useful kind, his hand had always been, as Blanche Farrow knew well,
more or less against every man. But now?--now he seemed to look at the
world through rose-coloured glasses.

He glanced at the still very attractive woman standing by his side, his
good-humour quite restored. "A penny for your thoughts!" he said
jokingly.

Blanche shook her head, smiling. Not for very much more than a penny
would she have told him the thought that had suddenly come, as such
thoughts will do, into her mind. That thought was, how extraordinary had
been Varick's transformation from what a censorious world might have
called an unscrupulous adventurer into a generous man of position and
substance--all owing to the fact that some two years ago he had drifted
across an unknown woman in a foreign hotel!

Even to Blanche there was something pathetic in the thought of "poor
Milly," whose birthplace and home this beautiful and strangely perfect
old house had been. It was Milly--not that sinister figure that Pegler
thought she had seen--whose form ought to haunt Wyndfell Hall. But there
survived no trace, no trifling memento even, of the dead woman's
evidently colourless personality.

And as if Varick had guessed part of what was passing through her mind,
"Any news of the ghost, Blanche?" he asked jokingly. "How's my friend
Pegler this morning?"

"Pegler's quite all right! I'm the person who ought to have seen the
ghost--but of course I neither saw nor heard anything."

As they came through into the hall where the rest of the party were
gathered together, Blanche heard Helen Brabazon exclaim: "This is a most
wonderful old book, Mr. Varick! It gives such a curious account of a
ghost who is supposed to haunt this house--the ghost of a most awfully
wicked woman who killed her stepson by throwing him into the moat, and
then drowned herself--"

Mr. Tapster, who seldom contributed anything worth hearing to the
conversation, suddenly remarked: "The ghost has been seen within the
last two days by one of the servants here."

"Who told you that?" asked Varick sharply.

"My valet; I always hear all the news from him."

Helen clapped her hands. "How splendid!" she cried. "That makes
everything simply perfect!" She turned her eager, smiling face on
Lionel Varick, "I've always longed to stay in a haunted house. I wish
the ghost would appear to me!"

"Don't wish that, Miss Brabazon."

It was Sir Lyon's quiet voice which uttered those five words very
gravely.

Sir Lyon liked Helen Brabazon. She was the only one of the party, with
the exception of Bill Donnington, whom he did like. He was puzzled,
however, by her apparent intimacy with their attractive host. How and
where could Varick have come across the Burnabys and their niece? They
had nothing in common with his usual associates and surroundings. In
their several ways they were like beings from different planets.

Sir Lyon knew a great deal about Lionel Varick, though he had seen
nothing of him during the few months Varick's married life had lasted.
Like Miss Farrow, Sir Lyon was honestly glad that his present host,
after turning some dangerous corners, had drifted, by an amazing series
of lucky bumps, into so safe and pleasant a haven. There are certain
people, who, when unsatisfied, and baulked of whatever may be their
hidden desires, are dangerous to their fellows. Such a man, Sir Lyon was
secretly convinced, had been Lionel Varick. Such, evidently, was he no
longer.

"Would you like to see the haunted room?" He heard Varick ask the
question in that deep, musical voice which many people found so
attractive. Helen eagerly assented, and they disappeared together.

Sir Lyon and Bill Donnington went off to the library, and for a few
moments Blanche Farrow and Miss Burnaby were alone together in the hall.
"Your niece seems to have very remarkable psychic gifts," said the old
lady hesitatingly.

And Blanche suddenly remembered--Why, of course! Miss Burnaby had been
one of the people most strongly affected by what had happened the night
before; she must choose her words carefully. So, "Bubbles has a
remarkable gift of thought-reading," she answered quietly. "Personally I
am quite convinced that it's not anything more."

"Are you?" There was a curious, questioning look on Miss Burnaby's
usually placid face. "D'you think then, that what happened last night
was _all_ thought-reading?"

"Certainly I think so! But I admit that perhaps I am not a fair judge,
for I haven't the slightest belief in what Bubbles would call
occultism."

"I know a lady who goes in for all that sort of thing," said Miss
Burnaby slowly. "My brother disapproves of my acquaintance with her. She
once took me to what is called a Circle, and, of course, I could not
help feeling interested. But the medium who was there was not nearly as
remarkable as Miss Dunster seems to be; I mean she did not get the same
results--at any rate, not in my case."

"I'm afraid what happened last night rather upset you," said Blanche
uncomfortably. "I know it would have annoyed me very much if the same
thing had happened to me."

"It is true that I was, as a girl, engaged to an Austrian officer. We
were very devoted to one another, but my dear father refused his
consent. So what occurred last night brought back many painful
memories."

Miss Burnaby spoke very simply, but there was a note of deep sadness in
her voice, and Blanche told herself that she had been wrong in regarding
her as simply a dull, conventional, greedy old woman.

"I'm very sorry now that I allowed Bubbles to do it," she exclaimed.
"I'm afraid it upset your brother, too, very much?"

Again there came a curious change over Miss Burnaby's face. She
hesitated perceptibly--and then answered: "I would not say so to any of
the younger people here, of course. But, as a matter of fact, my brother
had a very unpleasant experience as a young man. He fell in love, or
thought he fell in love, with a young woman. It was a very unfortunate
and tragic affair--for, Miss Farrow, the unhappy young person killed
herself! I was very young at the time, and I was not supposed to know
anything about it. But of course I did know. Poor Ted had to give
evidence at the inquest. It was dreadful, _dreadful_! We have never
spoken of it all these many years we have lived together. You realize,
Miss Farrow, that the young person was not in our class of life?"--the
old lady drew herself up stiffly.

Blanche felt much relieved when, at that moment Bubbles appeared. She
made a delightful, brilliant, Goya-like picture, in her yellow jumper
and long chain of coral beads. But she looked very tired.

"Have all the others gone out?" she asked languidly. And before Blanche
could answer, Miss Burnaby, murmuring something about having letters to
write, quickly left the room. The sight of the girl affected her
painfully; but it also intensified her longing for what she had heard
called "a private sitting."

"Lionel is showing Miss Brabazon over the house. She's very much
thrilled over Pegler's experience. I can't make that girl out--can you,
Bubbles?"

Miss Farrow drew nearer to the fire. "She's such a queer mixture of
shrewdness and simplicity," she went on. "She doesn't seem ever to have
gone anywhere, or seen anyone, and yet she's so--so mature! I believe
she's exactly your age."

"I feel about a hundred to-day," said Bubbles wearily.

Blanche was wondering how she could open on the subject about which
she'd promised to speak to the girl. Somehow she always very much
disliked speaking to Bubbles of what she called, in her own mind, "all
that unhealthy rot and nonsense!" And yet she must say something--she
had promised Lionel Varick to do so.

Bubbles' next words gave her no opening.

"I have no use for Helen Brabazon," she said pettishly. "A very little
of her would bore me to death. But still, I amused myself at dinner last
night thinking what I should do if I had all her money."

"All her money?" repeated Blanche, puzzled.

"Don't you know that she's one of the richest girls in England?"

"Is that really true?"--Blanche felt surprised, and more than surprised,
keenly interested. "How d'you know, Bubbles? Lionel never told me--."

Bubbles gave a quick, queer look at her aunt. "Mr. Tapster told me all
about her last night," she answered. "I suppose because he's so rich
himself he takes a kind of morbid interest in other rich people. He said
that she's the owner of one of the biggest metal-broking
businesses--whatever that may mean--in the world. But her uncle and
aunt have never allowed her to know anyone or to see anyone outside
their own tiresome, fuggy old lot. They've a perfect terror of
fortune-hunters, it seems. The poor girl's hardly ever spoken to a
man--not to what _I_ should call a man! I'm surprised they allowed her
to come here. I heard her tell Sir Lyon last night at dinner that this
was the first time she'd ever paid what she called a country visit.
Apparently Harrogate or Brighton is those awful old people's idea of a
pleasant change. Up to now Miss Helen's own idea of heaven seems to have
been Strathpeffer."

"How very strange!" But Blanche Farrow was not thinking of Helen
Brabazon's possible idea of heaven as she uttered the three words.

Bubbles chuckled. "I touched the old gentleman up a bit yesterday,
didn't I, Blanche?"

This gave her aunt the opportunity for which she was seeking. "You did!
And as a result he made up some cock-and-bull excuse and went back to
London this morning. Lionel is very much put out about it."

"I should have thought Lionel would have been glad," said Bubbles, and
there came into her voice the touch of slight, almost insolent, contempt
with which she generally spoke of Lionel Varick.

"He was very far from glad; he was furious," said Blanche gravely.

"I only did it because he said he wanted his guests entertained," said
Bubbles sulkily.

And then, after there had been a rather long silence between them, she
asked: "What did _you_ think of it, Blanche? You'd never been at a
séance before, had you?"

Miss Farrow hesitated. "Of course I was impressed," she acknowledged.
"I kept wondering how you did it. I mean that I kept wondering how those
people's thoughts were conveyed to your brain."

"Then you didn't believe that I saw anything of the things I said I
saw?" said Bubbles slowly. "You thought it was all fudge on my part?"

Her aunt reddened. "I don't quite know what you mean by saying that. Of
course I don't believe you saw the--the figures you described so
clearly. But I realized that in some queer way you must have got hold of
_the memory_ of your victims. Lionel admits that you did so in his
case."

"Does he indeed?" Bubbles spoke with sharp sarcasm.

There rose before her a vision of her host's pale, startled face. In
some ways he had been the most inwardly perturbed of her last night's
sitters, and she, the medium, had been well aware of it.

"I wonder," she said suddenly and inconsequently, "if Lionel has some
enemy--I mean a woman--in his life, of whom his friends know nothing?"

Blanche looked dubiously at the girl. "That's the sort of thing one can
never know about a man," she said slowly.

"The woman I mean"--Bubbles was going on rather quickly and breathlessly
now--"is not a young woman. She's about sixty, I should think. She has a
plain, powerful face, with a lot of grey hair turned off her forehead."

"Have you ever seen such a person with Lionel?" asked Miss Farrow.

"No, not exactly."

"What _do_ you mean, Bubbles?"

"I can't quite explain what I mean. Even before the séance I seemed to
_feel_ her last night. I suppose _you_ would say I saw her in his
mind--in what some people would call his inner consciousness."

Blanche stared at the girl uncomfortably. "D'you mean you can always see
what people are thinking of?" she exclaimed.

Bubbles burst out laughing. "Of course I can't! You needn't feel
nervous." She went up to her aunt, and thrust her hand through the
other's arm. "Don't be worried, old thing"--she spoke very
affectionately. "I've promised Bill that I'll put everything of the kind
he and father disapprove of away--just while I'm here! But still,
Blanche--"

Miss Farrow had never seen the girl in this serious, thoughtful mood
before. "Yes," she said. "Yes, Bubbles?"

"Oh, well, I only just wanted to quote something to you that's rather
hackneyed."

"Hackneyed?" repeated Miss Farrow.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, my dear, than are dreamt of
in _your_ philosophy."

Blanche Farrow felt a little piqued. "I've never doubted that," she said
curtly.




CHAPTER VII


Meanwhile, one of the subjects of their discussion was thoroughly
enjoying her tour of Wyndfell Hall; and as she entered each of the
curious, stately rooms upstairs and down, Helen Brabazon uttered an
exclamation of pleasure and rather naïve admiration. Not a corner or a
passage-way but had some fine piece of old furniture, some exquisite
needle-picture or panel of tapestry, in keeping with the general
character of the ancient dwelling place.

Her cicerone would have enjoyed their progress more had it not been that
his companion frequently referred to his late wife. "How strange that
Milly did not love this wonderful old house!" she exclaimed. And then,
when they had gone a little further on, she suddenly asked: "I wish
you'd tell me which was Milly's room? Surely she must have been happy
here sometimes!"

But the new master of Wyndfell Hall had never even thought of asking
which had been his wife's room. And, on seeing the troubled, embarrassed
look which crossed his face while he confessed his ignorance, Helen felt
sharply sorry that she had asked the question. To his relief, she spoke
no more of Milly, and of Milly's association with the house which so
charmed and attracted her.

One of the strangest, most disturbing facts about our complex human
nature is how very little we know of what is passing in another's mind.
Helen Brabazon would have been amazed indeed had she seen even only a
very little way into her present companion's secret thoughts. How
surprised she would have been, for instance, to know that the only thing
about herself Varick would have liked altered was her association with
that part of his life to which he never willingly returned, even in his
thoughts. The part of his life, that is, which had been spent by his
dying wife and himself at Redsands. It was with nervous horror that he
unwillingly recalled any incident, however slight, connected with those
tragic weeks. And yet Helen, had she been asked, would have said that he
must often dwell on them in loving retrospect. She honestly believed
that the link between them, even now, was a survival of what had been
their mutual affection for the then dying woman, and the touching
dependence that same woman had shown on their joint love and care.

As they wandered on together, apparently on the most happily intimate
terms of liking and of friendship, about the delightful old house, there
was scarce a thought in Lionel Varick's mind that would not have
surprised, disturbed, and puzzled his companion.

For one thing, he was looking at Helen Brabazon far more critically than
he had looked at any woman for a very long time, telling himself, rather
ruefully the while, that she was not the type of girl that at any time
of his life would have naturally attracted him. But he was well aware
that this was his misfortune, not his fault; and he did like her--he did
respect her.

How strange it was to know that in her well-shaped little hand there lay
such immense potential power! Varick fully intended that that little
hand should one day, sooner rather than later, lie, confidingly, in
his. And when that happened he intended to behave very well. He would
"make good," as our American cousins call it; he would go into public
life, maybe, and make a big name for himself, and, incidentally, for
her. What might he not do, indeed--with Helen Brabazon's vast fortune
joined to her impeccable good name! He did not wish to give up his own
old family name; but why should they not become the Brabazon-Varicks? So
far had he actually travelled in his own mind, as he escorted his young
lady guest about the upper rooms and corridors of Wyndfell Hall.

As he glanced, now and again, at the girl walking composedly by his
side, he felt he would have given anything--_anything_--to have known
what was behind those candid hazel eyes, that broad white brow. Again he
was playing for a great stake, and playing, this time, more or less in
the dark....

His mind and memory swung back, in spite of himself, to his late wife.
Milly Fauncey had liked him almost from the first day they had met. It
had been like the attraction--but of course that was the very last
simile that would have occurred to Varick himself--of a rabbit for a
cobra. He had had but to look at the self-absorbed, shy, diffident human
being, to fascinate and draw her to himself. The task would have been
almost too easy, but for the dominant personality of poor Milly's
companion, Julia Pigchalke. She had fought against him, tooth and claw;
but, cunning old Dame Nature had been on his side in the fight, and, of
course, Nature had won.

Miss Pigchalke had always made the fatal mistake of keeping her ex-pupil
too much to herself. And during a certain fatal three days when the
companion had been confined to her hotel bedroom by a bad cold, the
friendship of shy, nervous Milly Fauncey, and of bold, confident Lionel
Varick, had fast ripened, fostered by the romantic Italian atmosphere.
During these three days Varick, almost without trying to do so, had
learnt all there was to learn of the simple-minded spinster and of her
financial circumstances. But he was not the man to take any risk, and he
had actually paid a flying visit to London--a visit of which he had
later had the grace to feel secretly ashamed--for it had had for object
that of making quite sure, at Somerset House, that Miss Fauncey's
account of herself was absolutely correct.

Yes, the wooing of Milly Fauncey had been almost too easy, and he knew
that he was not likely to be so fortunate this time. But now the prize
to be won was such an infinitely greater prize!

He told himself that he mustn't be impatient. This, after all, was only
the second day of Helen Brabazon's stay at Wyndfell Hall. Perhaps it was
a good thing that her cantankerous old uncle had betaken himself off.
Misfortune had a way of turning itself into good fortune where Lionel
Varick was concerned; for he was bold and brave, as well as always ready
to seize opportunity at the flood.

When, at last, they had almost finished their tour of the house, and he
was showing her into the haunted room, she clapped her hands
delightedly. "This is exactly the sort of room in which one would expect
to meet a ghost!" she exclaimed.

The room into which she had just been ushered had, in very truth, a
strange, unused, haunted look. Very different from that into which Helen
had just peeped. For Miss Farrow's present bed-chamber, with its
tapestried and panelled walls, its red brocaded curtains, and carved oak
furniture, the whole lit up by a bright, cheerful fire, was very cosy.
But here, in the haunted room next door, the fire was only lit at night,
and now one of the windows over the moat was open, and it was very cold.

Helen went over to the open window. She leant over and stared down into
the dark, sullen-looking water.

"How beautiful this place must be in summer!" she exclaimed.

"I hope you will come and see it, this next summer."

Varick spoke in measured tones, but deep in his heart he not only hoped,
but he was determined on something very different--namely, that the girl
now turning her bright, guileless, eager face to his would then be
installed at Wyndfell Hall as his wife, and therefore as mistress of the
wonderful old house. And this hope, this imperious determination, turned
his mind suddenly to a less agreeable subject of thought--that is, to
Bubbles Dunster.

Had he known what he now knew about Bubbles' curious gift, he would not
have included her in his Christmas party. He felt that she might become
a disturbing element in the pleasant gathering. Also he was beginning to
suspect that she did not like him, and it was a disagreeable, unnerving
suspicion in his present mood.

"What do you think of Bubbles Dunster?" he asked.

"Oh, I like her!" cried Helen. "I think she's a wonderful girl!" And
then her voice took on a graver tinge: "I couldn't help being very much
impressed last night, Mr. Varick. You see, my father, who died when I
was only eight years old, always called me 'Girlie.' Somehow that made
me feel as if _he was really there_."

"And yet," said Varick slowly, "Bubbles told you nothing that you didn't
know? To my mind what happened last night was simply a clever exhibition
of thought-reading. She's always had the gift."

"The odd thing was," said Helen, after a moment's hesitation, "that she
said my father didn't like my being here. _That_ wasn't
thought-reading--"

"There's something a little queer--a little tricky and malicious
sometimes--about Bubbles," he said meaningly.

Helen looked at him, startled. "Is there really? How--how horrid!" she
exclaimed.

"Yes, you mustn't take everything Bubbles says as gospel truth," he
observed, lighting a cigarette. "Still, she's a very good sort in her
way."

As he looked at her now puzzled, bewildered face, he realized that he
had produced on Helen's mind exactly the impression he had meant to do.
If Bubbles said anything about him which--well, which he would rather
was left unsaid--Helen would take no notice of it.




CHAPTER VIII


The party spent the rest of the morning in making friends with one
another. Mr. Tapster had already singled out Bubbles Dunster at dinner
the night before. He was one of those men--there are many such--who,
while professing to despise women, yet devote a great deal of not very
profitable thought to them, and to their singular, unexpected, and often
untoward behaviour!

As for Sir Lyon Dilsford, he was amused and touched to discover that, as
is so often the case with a young and generous-hearted human being,
Helen Brabazon had a sincere, if somewhat vague, desire to use her money
for the good of humanity. He was also touched and amused to find how
ignorant she was of life, and how really child-like, under her staid and
sensible appearance. Of what she called "society" she cherished an utter
contempt, convinced that it consisted of frivolous women and idle
men--in a word, of heartless coquettes and of fortune-hunters. To Helen
Brabazon the world of men and women was still all white and all black.
Sir Lyon, who, like most intelligent men, enjoyed few things more than
playing schoolmaster to an attractive young woman, found the hour that
he and Miss Brabazon spent together in the library of Wyndfell Hall
speed by all too quickly. They were both sorry when the gong summoned
them to luncheon.

After a while Varick had persuaded Miss Burnaby to put on a hat and
jacket, and go for a little walk alone with him, while Blanche Farrow
went off for a talk with young Donnington. Bubbles was the subject of
their conversation, and different as were the ingenuous young man and
his somewhat cynical and worldly companion, they found that they were
cordially agreed as to the desirability of Bubbles abandoning the
practices which had led to Mr. Burnaby's abrupt departure that morning.

"Of course, I think them simply an extension of the extraordinary
thought-reading gifts she had as a small child," observed Blanche.

"I wish I could think it was only that--I'm afraid it's a good deal more
than mere thought-reading," Donnington said reluctantly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Luncheon was a pleasant, lively meal; and after they had all had coffee
and cigarettes, Bubbles managed to press almost the whole party into the
business of decorating the church. Their host entered into the scheme
with seeming heartiness; but at the last moment he and Blanche Farrow
elected to stay at home with Miss Burnaby.

The younger folk started off, a cheerful party--James Tapster, who, as
the others realized by something he said, hadn't been into a church for
years (he said he hated weddings, and, on principle, never attended
funerals); Sir Lyon, who was always at anyone's disposal when a bit of
work had to be done; Helen Brabazon, who declared joyfully that she had
always longed to decorate a country church; Bubbles herself, who drove
the donkey-cart piled high with holly and with mistletoe; and
Donnington, who pulled the donkey along.

Suffolk is a county of noble village churches; but of the lively group
of young people who approached it on this particular Christmas Eve, only
Donnington understood what a rare and perfect ecclesiastical building
stood before them. He had inherited from a scholarly father a keen
interest in church architecture, and he had read an account of Darnaston
church the night before in the book which dealt with Wyndfell Hall and
its surroundings.

They were met in the porch by the bachelor rector. "This is really
kind!" he exclaimed. "And it will be of the greatest help, for I've been
sent for to a neighbouring parish unexpectedly, and I'm afraid that I
can't stop and help you."

As the little party passed through into the church, more than one of
them was impressed by its lofty beauty. Indeed, the word which rose to
both Sir Lyon's and Donnington's lips was the word "impressive." Neither
of them had ever seen so impressive a country church.

When lifted from the donkey-cart the little heap of holly and other
greenery looked pitifully small lying on the stone floor of the central
aisle; and though everyone worked with a will, there wasn't very much to
show for it when Mr. Tapster declared, in a cross tone, that it must be
getting near tea-time.

"It's much more nearly finished than any of you realize," said Bubbles
good-humouredly. "I've done this sort of thing every year since I was
quite a kid. Bill and I will come down after tea and finish it up. We
shan't want _you_."

"I shouldn't mind coming back," exclaimed Helen Brabazon. "I've enjoyed
every minute of the time here!"

But Bubbles declared that she didn't want any of them but Bill. All she
would ask the other men to do would be to cut down some trails of ivy.
She explained that she always avoided the use of ivy unless, as in this
case, quantity rather than quality was required.

So they all tramped cheerfully back to Wyndfell Hall.

Tea was served in the library, and the host looked on with benign
satisfaction at the lively scene, though Blanche Farrow saw his face
change and stiffen, when his penetrating eyes rested in turn for a long
moment on Bubbles' now laughing little face. Perhaps because of that
frowning look, she drew the girl after her into the hall. "Come in here
for a moment, Bubbles--I want to speak to you. I've just heard Helen
Brabazon say something about raising the ghost. No more séances while
I'm in command here--is that understood?"

And Bubbles looked up with an injured, innocent expression. "Of course
it's understood! Though, as a matter of fact, Miss Burnaby has already
asked me to give her a private sitting."

"You must promise me to refuse, Bubbles--" Miss Farrow spoke very
decidedly. "I don't know how you do what you did last night, and, to
tell you the truth, I don't care--for it's none of my business. But
there was one moment this morning when I feared that horrid Mr. Burnaby
was going to take his sister and his niece away--and that really would
have been serious!"

"Serious?" queried Bubbles. "Why serious, Blanche? We should have got on
very well without them."

Her aunt looked round. They were quite alone, standing, for the moment,
in a far corner of the great room, near the finely carved confessional
box, which seemed, even to Blanche Farrow, an incongruous addition to
the furniture.

"You're very much mistaken, Bubbles! Lionel would have never forgiven
you--or me. He attaches great importance to these people; Helen Brabazon
was a great friend of his poor wife's." She hesitated, and then said
rather awkwardly: "I sometimes wish you liked him better; he's a good
friend, Bubbles."

"I should think more a bad enemy than a good friend," muttered the girl,
in so low a voice that her aunt hardly caught the ungracious words.

That was all--but that was enough. Blanche told herself that she had now
amply fulfilled the promise she had made to Lionel Varick when the two
had stood speeding their parting guest this morning from Wyndfell Hall.
Even quite at the end Mr. Burnaby had been barely civil. He seemed to
think that there had been some kind of conspiracy against him the night
before; and as they watched the car go over the moat bridge, Varick had
muttered: "I wouldn't have had this happen for a thousand pounds!" But
he had recovered his good temper, and even apologized to Blanche for
having felt so much put out by the action of a cantankerous old man.

The others were now all streaming into the hall, and Bubbles would
hardly allow the good-natured Sir Lyon and Bill Donnington to finish
their cigarettes before she shooed them out to cut down some ivy. Varick
looked annoyed when he heard that the decorations in the church were not
yet finished. "Can't we bribe some of the servants to go down and do
them?" he asked. "It seems a shame that you and Donnington should have
to go off there again in the cold and darkness."

But in her own way Bubbles had almost as strong a will as had her host.
She always knew what she wanted to do, and generally managed to do it.
"I would much rather finish the work myself, and I think Bill would
rather come too," she said coolly.

So once more the little donkey-cart was loaded up with holly and trails
of ivy, and the two set off amid the good-natured comments and chaff of
the rest of the party. James Tapster alone looked sulky and annoyed. He
wondered how a bright, amusing girl like Bubbles Dunster could stand the
company of such a commonplace young man as was Bill Donnington.

As they reached the short stretch of open road which separated Wyndfell
Hall from the church, Bubbles felt suddenly how cold it was.

"I think we shall have snow to-morrow," said Donnington, looking round
at his companion. He could only just see her little face in the
twilight, and when they finally passed through the porch in the glorious
old church, it seemed, for the first few moments, pitch-dark.

"I'll tell you what I like best about this church," said the girl
suddenly.

"For my part," said Donnington simply, "I like everything about it."

He struck a match, and after a few minutes of hard work, managed to
light several of the hanging oil lamps.

"What I like best," went on Bubbles, "are the animals up there."

She pointed to where, just under the cambered oak roof, there ran a
dado, on which, carved in white bas-relief, lions, hares, stags, dogs,
cats, crocodiles, and birds, formed a singular procession, which was
continued round the nave and choir.

"Yes, I like them too," assented Donnington slowly. "Though somehow I
did feel this afternoon that they were out of place in a church."

"Oh, how can you say that?" cried the girl. "I love to think of them
here! I'm sure that at night they leap joyfully down, and skip about the
church, praising the Lord."

"Bubbles!" he exclaimed reprovingly.

"Almost any animal," she said, with a touch of seriousness, "is nicer,
taking it all in all, than almost any human being." And then she quoted
in the deep throaty voice which was one of her greatest charms:

  "A robin redbreast in a cage
  Puts all Heaven in a rage."

"The one _I_ should like to see put over every manger is:

  "A horse misus'd upon the road
  Calls to Heaven for human blood,"

said Donnington.

"Oh!" she cried, "and Bill, surely the best of all is:

  "A skylark wounded on the wing,
  A cherubim doth cease to sing."

Donnington smiled. "I suppose I'm more practical than you are," he said.
"If I were a schoolmaster, I'd have inscribed on the walls of every
classroom:

  "Kill not the moth or butterfly,
  For the Last Judgment draweth nigh."

They worked very hard during the half-hour that followed, though only
the finishing touches remained to be done. Still, it meant moving a
ladder about, and stretching one's arms a good deal, and Bubbles
insisted on doing her full share of everything.

"Let's rest a few minutes," she said at last, and leading the way up the
central aisle, she sat down wearily in one of the carved choir stalls.

Then she lifted her arms, and putting her hands behind her neck, she
tipped her head back.

The young man came and sat down in the next stall. Bubbles was leaning
back more comfortably now, her red cap almost off her head. There was a
great look of restfulness on her pale, sensitive face.

She put out her hand and felt for his; after a moment of hesitation he
slid down and knelt close to her.

"Bubbles," he whispered, "my darling--darling Bubbles. I wish that here
and now you would make up your mind to give up everything--" He stopped
speaking, and bending, kissed her hand.

"Yes," she said dreamily. "Give up everything, Bill? Perhaps I will. But
what do you mean by everything?"

There was a self-pitying note in her low, vibrant voice. "You know it is
given to people, sometimes, to choose between good and evil. I'm
afraid"--she leant forward, and passed her right hand, with a touch of
tenderness most unusual with her, over his upturned face and curly
hair--"I'm afraid, Bill, that, almost without knowing it, I chose evil,
'Evil, be thou my good.' Isn't that what the wicked old Satanists used
to say?"

"Don't you say it too!" he exclaimed, sharply distressed.

"I know I acted stupidly--in fact, as we're in a church I don't mind
saying I acted very wrongly last night."

Bubbles spoke in a serious tone--more seriously, indeed, than she had
ever yet spoken to her faithful, long-suffering friend. "But a great
deal of what happens to me and round me, Bill, I can't help--I wish I
could," she said slowly.

"I don't quite understand." There was a painful choking feeling in his
throat. "Try and tell me what you mean, Bubbles."

"What I mean is clear enough"--she now spoke with a touch of impatience.
"I mean that wherever I am, _They_ come too, and gather about me. It
wasn't my fault that that horrible Thing appeared to Pegler as soon as I
entered the house."

"But why should you think the ghost Pegler saw--if she did see it--had
anything to do with you? Wyndfell Hall has been haunted for over a
hundred years--so the village people say."

"Pegler saw nothing till I came. And though I struggle against the
belief, and though I very seldom admit it, even to myself, I know quite
well, Bill, that I'm never really alone--never free of Them
unless--unless, Bill, I'm in a holy place, when they don't dare to
come."

There was a tone of fear, of awful dread, in her voice. In spite of
himself he felt impressed.

"But why should they come specially round _you_?" he asked uneasily.

"You know as well as I do that I'm a strong medium. But I'll tell you,
Bill, something which I've never told you before."

"Yes," he said, with a strange sinking of the heart. "What's that,
Bubbles?"

"You know that Persian magician, or Wise Man, whom certain people in
London went cracked over last spring?"

"The man you _would_ go and see?"

"Yes, of course I mean that man. Well, when he saw me he made his
interpreter tell me that he had a special message for me--"

Bubbles was leaning forward now, her hands resting on Bill's shoulders.
"I wonder if I ought to tell you all he said," she whispered. "Perhaps I
ought to keep it secret."

"Of course you ought to tell me! What was the message?"

"He said that I had rent the veil, wilfully, and that I was often
surrounded by the evil demons who had come rushing through; that only by
fasting and praying could I hope to drive them back, and close the rent
which I had made."

"I shouldn't allow myself to think too much of what he said," said Bill
hoarsely. "And yet--and yet, Bubbles? There may have been something in
it--."

He spoke very earnestly, poor boy.

"Of course there was a great deal in it. But they're not always demons,"
she said slowly. "Now, for instance, as I sit here, where good, simple
people have been praying together for hundreds of years, the atmosphere
is kind and holy, not wicked and malignant, as it was last night."

She waited a moment, then began again, "I remember going into a cottage
not long ago, where an old man holds a prayer meeting every Wednesday
evening--he's a Dissenter--you know the sort of man I mean? Well, I felt
extraordinarily comforted, and _left alone_."

Her voice sank to a low whisper. "I suppose"--there came a little catch
in her voice--"I suppose, Bill, that I am what people used to call
'possessed.' In old days I should have been burnt as a witch. Sometimes
I feel as if a battle were going on round me and for me--a battle
between good and evil spirits. That was what I was feeling last night,
before you came up. I couldn't rest--I couldn't stay in bed. I felt as
if I must move about to avoid--"

"To avoid what?" he asked.

"--Their clutchings."

Her voice dropped. "I've been in old houses where I seemed to know
everything about every ghost!"--she tried to smile. "People don't change
when they what we call die. If they're dull and stupid, they remain dull
and stupid. But here in Wyndfell Hall, I'm frightened. I'm frightened of
Varick--I feel as if there were something secret, secret and sinister,
about him. I seem to hear the words, 'Beware--beware,' when he is
standing by me. What do _you_ think about him, Bill? There are a lot of
lying spirits about."

"I haven't thought much about Varick one way or the other," said
Donnington reluctantly. "But I should have thought he was a good
chap. See how fond Miss Farrow is of him?"

"That doesn't mean much," she said dreamily. "Blanche doesn't know
anything about human nature--she only thinks she does. She's no
spiritual vision left at all."

"I'm sorry you have that feeling about Varick," said Bill uncomfortably.

"Varick is never alone," said Bubbles slowly. "When I first arrived, and
he came out to the porch to meet me, there was Something standing by
him, which looked so real, Bill, that I thought it really was a woman of
flesh and blood. I nearly said to him, 'Who's that? Introduce me.'"

"D'you mean you think you actually see spirits, even when you're not
setting out to do so, Bubbles?" asked. Bill.

She had never said that to him before. But then this was the first time
she had ever talked to him as freely and as frankly as she was talking
now.

"Yes, that's exactly what I do mean," she said. "It's a sort of power
that grows--and oh, Bill, I'd do anything in the world to get rid of it!
But this woman whom I saw standing by Lionel Varick in the porch was not
a spirit. She was an astral body; that is, she was alive somewhere else:
it was her thoughts--her vengeful, malicious thoughts--which brought her
here."

"I can't believe that!" he exclaimed.

"It's true, Bill. Though I never saw an astral body before, I knew that
Thing to be one--as soon as I realized it wasn't a real woman standing
there."

"What was she like?" he asked, impressed against his will.

"An ugly, commonplace-looking woman. But she had a powerful, determined
sort of face, and she was staring up at him with a horrible expression:
I could see that she hated him, and wished him ill--"

"Have you ever seen the--the Thing again?"

Yes, of course I have. The same astral body was there last night. It was
from her that his mother was trying to shield him."

"But you've never seen this astral body--as you call it--excepting on
those two occasions?"

Bubbles hesitated. "I've only seen her clearly twice. But during the
week that I've been here, I've often felt that she was close to Lionel
Varick."

"And what's your theory about her? Why does she hate him, I mean?"

"My theory--?" the girl hesitated again. "I should think it's someone he
was fond of when he was a young man, and whom he treated badly. She's
ugly enough now--but then women do change so."

"Bubbles," he uttered her name very seriously.

"Yes, Bill?"

"Surely you can stop yourself seeing these kind of strange, dreadful,
unnatural things?"

Bubbles did not answer all at once. And then she said: "Yes--and no,
Bill! It sometimes happens that I see what you would call a ghost
without wishing to see it; yet I confess that sometimes I _could_ stop
myself. But it excites and stimulates me! I feel a sort of longing to be
in touch with what no one else is in touch with. But I'll tell you one
thing"--she was pressing up closer to him now, and his heart was
beating.... If only this enchanted hour could go on--if only Bubbles
would continue in this gentle, sincere, confiding mood--

"Yes," he said hoarsely, "what will you tell me?"

"I never see anything bad when I'm with you. I think I saw your Guardian
Angel the other day, Bill."

He tried to laugh.

"Indeed I did! Though you are so tiresome and priggish," she whispered,
"though often, as you know, I should like to shake you, still, I know
that you've chosen the good way; that's why our ways lie so apart,
dearest--"

As she uttered the strange words, she had slid down, and was now lying
in his arms, her face turned up to his in the dim light....

Their ways apart? Ah, no! He caught her fiercely to his heart, and for
the first time their lips met in a long, clinging kiss.

Then, all at once, he got up and pulled Bubbles on to her feet. "We must
be going back to the house," he said, speaking with a touch of hardness
and decision which was rare in his dealings with the girl.

"Watch with me, and pray for me," she muttered--and then: "You don't
know what a comfort you are to me, Bill."

A wild wish suddenly possessed him to turn and implore her, now that she
was in this strange, gentle, yielding mood, to marry him at once--to
become his wife in secret, under any conditions that seemed good to her!
But he checked the impulse, drove it back. He felt that he would be
taking a mean advantage if he did that now. She had once said to him: "I
_must_ marry a rich man, Bill. I should make any poor man miserable."

He had never forgotten that, nor forgiven her for saying it--though he
had never believed that it was true.

Almost as if she was reading into his mind, Bubbles said wistfully: "You
won't leave off caring for me, Bill? Not even if I marry somebody else?
Not even--?" She laughed nervously, and her laugh, to Donnington a
horrible laugh, echoed through the dimly lit church. "Not even," she
repeated, "if I bring myself to marry Mr. Tapster?"

He seized her roughly by the arm. "What d'you mean, Bubbles?" he asked
sternly.

"Don't do that! You hurt me--I was only joking," she said, shrinking
back. "But you are really _too_ simple, Bill. Didn't it occur to you
that Mr. Tapster had been asked here for me?"

"For you?" He uttered the words mechanically. He understood now why men
sometimes murder their sweet-hearts--for no apparent motive.

"He's not a bad sort. It isn't his fault that he's so repulsive. It
wouldn't be fair if he was as rich as that, and good-looking, and
amiable, and agreeable, as well--would it?"

They were walking down the church, and perhaps Bubbles caught a glimpse
into his heart: "I'm a beast," she exclaimed. "A beast to have spoiled
our time together in this dear old church by saying that to you about
Mr. Tapster. Try and forget it, Bill!"

He made no answer. His brain was in a whirlwind of wrath, of suspicion,
of anger, of sick jealousy. This was the real danger--not all the
nonsense that Bubbles talked about her power of raising ghosts, and of
being haunted by unquiet spirits. The real danger the girl was in now
was that of being persuaded into marrying that loathsome Tapster--for
his money.

He left her near the door while he went back to put out the lights. Then
he groped his way to where she was standing, waiting for him. In the
darkness he looked for, found, and lifted, the heavy latch. Together
they began pacing down the path between the graves in the churchyard,
and then all of a sudden he put his hand on her arm: "What's that?
Hark!" he whispered.

He seemed to hear issuing from the grand old church a confused, musical
medley of sounds--a bleating, a neighing, a lowing, even a faint
trumpeting, all mingling together and forming a strange, not unmelodious
harmony.

"D'you hear anything, Bubbles?" he asked, his heart beating, his face,
in the darkness, all aglow.

"No, nothing," she answered back, surprised. "We must hurry, Bill. We're
late as it is."




CHAPTER IX


It had been Bubbles' happy idea that the children of the tiny hamlet
which lay half-a-mile from Wyndfell Hall, should have a Christmas tree.
Hers, also, that the treat for the children was to be combined with the
distribution of a certain amount of coal and of other creature comforts
to the older folk.

All the arrangements with regard to this double function had been made
before the party at Wyndfell Hall had been gathered together. But still,
there were all sorts of last things to be thought of, and Lionel Varick
and Bubbles became quite chummy over the affair.

Blanche Farrow was secretly amused to note with what zest her friend
threw himself into the rôle of country squire. She thought it a trifle
absurd, the more so that, as a matter of fact, the people of Wyndfell
Green were not his tenants, for he had only a life interest in the house
itself. But Varick was determined to have a good, old-fashioned country
Christmas; and he was seconded in his desire not only by Bubbles, but by
Helen Brabazon, who entered into everything with an almost childish
eagerness. Indeed, the doings on Christmas Day brought her and Bubbles
together, too. They began calling each other by their Christian names,
and soon the simple-minded heiress became as if bewitched by the other
girl.

"She's a wonderful creature," she confided to that same wonderful girl's
aunt. "I've never known anyone in the least like Bubbles! At first I
confess I thought her very odd--she almost repelled me. But now I can
see what a kind, good heart she has, and I do hope she'll let me be her
friend."

"I think you would be a very good friend for Bubbles," answered Blanche
pleasantly. "You're quite right as to one thing, Miss Brabazon--she has
a very kind, warm heart. She loves to give people pleasure. She's quite
delightful with children."

The speaker felt that it would indeed be a good thing if Bubbles could
attach herself to such a simple yet sensible friend as was this
enormously rich girl. "And if you really like Bubbles," went on Blanche
Farrow deliberately, "then I should like just to tell you one or two
things about her."

Helen became all eager, pleased attention. "Yes?" she exclaimed. "I wish
you would! Bubbles interests me more than anyone I ever met."

"I want to tell you that I and Bubbles' father very much regret her
going in for all that--that occultism, I believe it's called."

"But you and Mr. Varick both think it's only thought-reading," said
Helen quickly.

Blanche felt rather surprised. It was acute and clever of the girl to
have said that. But no doubt Miss Burnaby had repeated their
conversation.

"Yes; I personally think it's only thought-reading. Still, it's
thought-reading carried very far. The kind of power Bubbles showed the
night before last seems to me partly hypnotic, and that's why I
disapprove of it so strongly."

"I agree," said Helen thoughtfully. "It was much more than ordinary
thought-reading. And I suppose that it's true that she thought she saw
the--the spirits she described so wonderfully?"

"I doubt if even she thought she actually saw them. I think she only
perceived each image in the mind of the person to whom she was
speaking."

"I suppose," asked Helen hesitatingly, "that you haven't the slightest
belief in ghosts, Miss Farrow?"

"No, I haven't the slightest belief in ghosts," Blanche smiled. "But I
do believe that if a person thinks sufficiently hard about it, he or she
can almost evolve the figure of a ghost. I think that's what happened to
my maid the other night. Pegler's a most sensible person, yet she's
quite convinced that she saw the ghost of the woman who is believed to
have killed her little stepson in the room next to that in which I am
now sleeping."

And then as she saw a rather peculiar look flit over her companion's
face, she added quickly: "D'you think that you have seen anything since
you've been here, Miss Brabazon?"

Helen hesitated. "No," she said. "I haven't exactly seen anything.
But--well, the truth is, Miss Farrow, that I do feel sometimes as if
Wyndfell Hall was haunted by the spirit of my poor friend Milly, Mr.
Varick's wife. Perhaps I feel as I do because, of course, I know that
this strange and beautiful old house was once her home. It's pathetic,
isn't it, to see how very little remains of her here? One might, indeed,
say that nothing remains of her at all! I haven't even been able to find
out which was her room; and I've often wondered in the last two days
whether she generally sat in the hall or in that lovely little
drawing-room."

"I can tell you one thing," said Blanche rather shortly, "that is that
there is a room in this house called 'the schoolroom.' It's between the
dining-room and the servants' offices. I believe it was there that Miss
Fauncey, as the people about here still call her, used to do her
lessons, with a rather disagreeable woman rejoicing in the extraordinary
name of Pigchalke, who lived on with her till she married."

"That horrible, horrible woman!" exclaimed Helen. "Of course I know
about _her_. She adored poor Milly. But she was an awful tyrant to her
all the same. She actually wrote to me some time ago. It was such an odd
letter--quite a mad letter, in fact. It struck me as so queer that
before answering it I sent it on to Mr. Varick. She wanted to see me, to
talk to me about poor Milly's last illness. She has a kind of crazy
hatred of Mr. Varick. Of course I got out of seeing her. Luckily we were
just starting for Strathpeffer. I put her off--I didn't actually refuse.
I said I couldn't see her then, but that I would write to her later."

"Lionel mentioned her to me the other day. He allows her a hundred a
year," said Blanche indifferently.

"How very good of him!" in a very different tone of voice she said
musingly: "I have sometimes wondered if the room I'm sleeping in now was
that in which Milly slept as a girl. Sometimes I feel as if she was
close to me, trying to speak to me--it's a most queer, uncanny, horrid
kind of feeling!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Blanche and Bubbles knew from experience that Christmas Day in the
country is not invariably a pleasant day; but they had thought out every
arrangement to make it "go" as well as was possible. They were all to
have a sort of early tea, and then those who felt like it would proceed
to the village schoolroom, and help with the Christmas Treat.

An important feature of the proceedings was to be a short speech by
Lionel Varick. Blanche had found, to her surprise and amusement, that he
had set his heart on making it. He wanted to get into touch with his
poorer neighbours--not only in a material sense, by distributing gifts
of beef and blankets; that he had already arranged to do--but in a
closer, more human sense. No one she had ever known desired more
ardently to be liked than did the new owner of Wyndfell Hall.

The programme was carried out to the letter. They all drank a cup of tea
standing in the hall when dressed ready for their expedition. Everyone
was happy, everyone was in a good humour--excepting, perhaps, Bill
Donnington. The few words Bubbles had said concerning Mr. Tapster had
frightened, as well as angered him. He watched the unattractive
millionaire with jealous eyes. It was only too clear that Bubbles had
fascinated James Tapster, as she generally did all dull and
unimaginative people. But Donnington, perforce, had to keep his jealous
feelings to himself; and after they had all reached the school-room of
the pretty, picturesque little village, he found he had far too much to
do in helping to serve the hungry children and their parents with the
feast provided for them, to have time for private feelings of fear,
jealousy and pain.

A small platform had been erected across one end of the room. But the
programme of the proceedings which were to take place thereon only
contained two items. The first of these took most of the Wyndfell Hall
house-party completely by surprise; for Bubbles and her aunt had kept
their secret well.

Tables had been pushed aside, benches put end to end; the whole
audience, with Lionel Varick's guests in front, were seated, when
suddenly there leapt on to the platform the strangest and most
fantastic-looking little figure imaginable!

For a moment no one, except Bill Donnington, guessed who or what the
figure was. There came a great clapping of hands and stamping of
feet--for, of course, it was Bubbles! Bubbles dressed up as a witch--red
cloak, high peaked hat, short multi-coloured skirt, high boots and
broom-stick--all complete!

When the applause had died down, she recited a quaint little poem of her
own composition, wishing all there present the best of luck in the
coming year. And then she executed a kind of fantastic _pas seul_,
skimming hither and thither across the tiny stage.

Everyone watched her breathlessly: Donnington with mingled admiration,
love, and jealous disapproval; James Tapster with a feeling that perhaps
the time had come for him to allow himself to be "caught" at last; Helen
Brabazon with wide-eyed, kindly envy of the other girl's cleverness;
Varick with a queer feeling of growing suspicion and dislike.

Finally, Bubbles waved her broom-stick, and more than one of those
present imagined that they saw the light, airy-looking little figure
flying across the hall, and so out of a window--.

The whole performance did not last five minutes, and yet few of those
who were present ever forgot it. It was so strange, so uncanny, so
vivid. Bill Donnington heard one of the village women behind him say:
"There now! Did you ever see the like? She was the sort they burnt in
the old days, and I don't wonder, either."

After this exciting performance the appearance of "the squire," as some
of the village people were already beginning to call him, did not
produce, perhaps, quite the sensation it might have done had he been the
first instead of the second item on the programme. But as he stood
there, a fine figure of a man, his keen, good-looking face lit up with a
very agreeable expression of kindliness and of good-will, a wave of
appreciation seemed to surge towards him from the body of the hall.

Poor Milly's father had been the sort of landowner--to the honour of
England be it said the species has ever been comparatively rare--who
regarded his tenants as of less interest than the livestock on his home
farm. What he had done for them he had done grudgingly; but it was even
now clear to them all that in the new squire they had a very different
kind of gentleman.

Varick was moved and touched--far more so than any of those present
realized. The scene before him--this humble little school-room, and the
simple people standing there--meant to him the fulfilment of a life-long
dream. And that was not all. As he was hesitating for his first word,
his eyes rested on the front bench of his audience, and he saw Helen
Brabazon's eager, guileless face, upturned to his, full of interest and
sympathy.

He also felt himself in touch with the others there. Blanche, looking
her own intelligent, dignified, pleasant self, was a goodly sight. Sir
Lyon Dilsford, too, was in the picture; but Varick felt a sudden pang of
sympathy for the landless baronet. Sir Lyon would have made such a
good, conscientious squire; he was the kind of man who would have helped
the boys to get on in the world--the girls, if need be, to make happy
marriages. James Tapster looked rather out of it all; he looked his
apathetic, sulky self--a man whom nothing would ever galvanize into real
good-fellowship. How could so intelligent a woman as Blanche think that
any money could compensate a clever, high-spirited girl like Bubbles for
marrying a James Tapster? Varick was glad Bubbles was not "in front."
She was probably divesting herself of that extraordinary witch costume
of hers behind the little curtained aperture to his left.

And then, all at once, he realized that Bubbles was among his audience
after all! She was sitting by herself, on a little stool just below the
platform. He suddenly saw her head, with its shock of dark-brown hair,
and there came over him a slight feeling of discomfort. Bubbles had
worked like a Trojan. All this could not have happened but for her; and
yet--and yet Varick again told himself that he could very well have
dispensed with Bubbles from his Christmas house party. There was growing
up, in his dark, secretive heart, an unreasoning, violent dislike to the
girl.

All these disconnected thoughts flashed through his mind in something
under half-a-minute, and then Varick made his pleasant little speech,
welcoming the people there, and saying he hoped there would ensue a long
and pleasant connection between them.

There was a great deal more stamping of feet and handclapping, and then
gradually the company, gentle and simple, dispersed.

Miss Farrow still had long and luxuriant hair, and perhaps the
pleasantest half-hour in each day had come to be that half-hour just
before she dressed for dinner, when Pegler, with gentle, skilful
fingers, brushed and combed her mistress's beautiful tresses, and
finally dressed them to the best advantage.

On Christmas night this daily ceremony had been put off till Miss
Farrow's bed-time, when, after a quiet, short evening, the party had
broken up on the happiest terms with one another.

As Blanche sat down, and her maid began taking the hairpins out of her
hair, she told herself with a feeling of gratification that this had
been one of the pleasantest Christmas days she had ever spent.
Everything had gone off so well, and she could see that Varick had
enjoyed every moment of it, from his surprise distribution of little
gifts to his guests at breakfast, to the last warm, grateful hand-shake
on the landing outside her door.

"Were you in the school-room, Pegler?" she asked kindly. "It was really
rather charming, wasn't it? Everyone happy--the children and the old
people especially. And they all _so_ enjoyed Miss Bubbles' dressing up
as a witch!"

"Why, yes," said Pegler grudgingly. "It was all very nice, ma'am, in a
way, and, as you say, it all went off very well. But there's a queer
rumour got about already, ma'am."

"A queer rumour? What d'you mean, Pegler?"

"Quite a number of the village folk say that Mr. Varick's late lady, the
one who used to live here--" Pegler stopped speaking suddenly, and went
on brushing her mistress's hair more vigorously.

"Yes, Pegler?"--Miss Farrow spoke with a touch of impatience. "What
about Mrs. Lionel Varick?"

"Well, ma'am, I don't suppose you'll credit it, but quite a number of
them do say that her sperrit was there during this afternoon. One woman
I spoke to, who was school-room maid here a matter of twenty years back,
said she saw her as clear as clear, up on the platform, wearing the sort
of grey dress she used to wear when she was a girl, ma'am, when her
father was still alive. None of the men seem to have seen her--but quite
a number of the women did. The post-mistress says she could have sworn
to her anywhere."

"What absolute nonsense!"

Blanche felt shocked as well as vexed.

"It was when Mr. Varick was making that speech of his," said Pegler
slowly. "If you'll pardon me, ma'am, for saying so, it don't seem
nonsense to me. After what I've seen myself, I can believe anything.
Seeing is believing, ma'am."

"People's eyes very often betray them, Pegler. Haven't you sometimes
looked at a thing and thought it something quite different from what it
really was?"

"Yes, I have," acknowledged Pegler reluctantly. "And of course, the
lighting was very bad. Some of the people hope that Mr. Varick's going
to bring electric light into the village--d'you think he'll do that,
ma'am?"

"No," said Miss Farrow decidedly. "I shouldn't think there's a hope of
it. The village doesn't really belong to him, Pegler. It was wonderfully
kind of him to give what he did give to-day, to a lot of people with
whom he has really nothing to do at all."

And then, after her maid had gone, Blanche lay in bed, and stared into
the still bright fire. Her brain seemed abnormally active, and she found
it impossible to go to sleep. What a curious, uncanny, uncomfortable
story--that of "poor Milly's" ghost appearing on the little platform of
the village school-room! There seems no measure, even in these
enlightened days, to what people will say and believe.

And then there flashed across her a recollection of the fact that
Bubbles had been there, sitting just below Lionel Varick. Strange,
half-forgotten stories of Indian magic--of a man hung up in chains
padlocked by British officers, and then, a moment later, that same man,
freed, standing in their midst, the chains rattling together,
empty--floated through Blanche Farrow's mind. Was it possible that
Bubbles possessed uncanny powers--powers which had something to do with
the immemorial magic of the immemorial East?

Blanche had once heard the phenomenon of the vanishing rope trick
discussed at some length between a number of clever people. She had paid
very little attention to what had been said at the time, but she now
strained her memory to recapture the sense of the words which had been
uttered. One of the men present, a distinguished scientist, had actually
seen the trick done. He had seen an Indian swarm up the rope and
disappear--into thin air! What had he called it? Collective hypnotism?
Yes, that was the expression he had used. Some such power Bubbles
certainly possessed, and perhaps to-day she had chosen to exercise it by
recalling to the minds of those simple village folk the half-forgotten
figure of the one-time mistress of Wyndfell Hall. If she had really done
this, Bubbles had played an ungrateful, cruel trick on Lionel Varick.

Blanche at last dropped off to sleep, but Pegler's ridiculous yet
sinister story had spoilt the pleasant memories of her day, and even her
night, for she slept badly, and awoke unrefreshed.




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 fac

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