|
THE GREY ROOM
THE GREY ROOM EDEN PHILLPOTTS CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE HOUSE PARTY
II. AN EXPERIMENT
III. AT THE ORIEL
IV. "BY THE HAND OF GOD"
V. THE UNSEEN MOVES
VI. THE ORDER FROM LONDON
VII. THE FANATIC
VIII. THE LABORS OF THE FOUR
IX. THE NIGHT WATCH
X. SIGNOR VERGILIO MANNETTI
XI. PRINCE DJEM
XII. THE GOLDEN BULL
XIII. TWO NOTES
CHAPTER I
THE HOUSE PARTY
The piers of the main entrance of Chadlands were of red brick and
upon each reposed a mighty sphere of grey granite. Behind them
stretched away the park where forest trees nearly shorn of their
leaves at the edge of winter still answered the setting sun with
fires of thinning foliage. They sank away through stretches of
brake fern and already amid their trunks arose a thin blue
haze - breath of earth made visible by coming cold. There was frost
in the air and the sickle of a new moon hung where dusk of evening
dimmed the green of the western sky.
The guns were returning and eight men with three women arrived at
the lofty gates. One of the party rode a grey pony and a woman
walked on each side of him. They chattered together and the
little company of tweed - clad people passed into Chadlands Park and
trudged forward where the manor house rose half a mile ahead.
Then an old man emerged from a lodge hidden behind a grove of
laurel and bay within the entrance and shut the great gates of
scroll iron. They were of a flamboyant Italian period and more
arrestive than distinguished. Panelled upon them and belonging
to a later day than they had been imposed two iron coats of arms
with crest above and motto beneath - the heraldic bearings of the
present owner of Chadlands. He set store upon such things but
was not responsible for the work. A survival himself and steeped
in ancient opinions his coat won in a forgotten age interested
him only less than his Mutiny medal - his sole personal claim to
public honor. He had served in youth as a soldier but was still
a subaltern when his father died and he came into his kingdom.
Now Sir Walter Lennox fifth baronet had grown old and his
invincible kindness of heart his archaic principles his great
wealth and the limited experiences of reality for which such
wealth was responsible left him a popular and respected man. Yet
he aroused much exasperation in local landowners from his
generosity and scorn of all economic principles; and while his
tenants held him the very exemplar of a landlord and his servants
worshipped him for the best possible reasons his friends weary
of remonstrance were forced to forgive his bad precedents and a
mistaken liberality quite beyond the power of the average
unfortunate who lives by his land. But he managed his great manor
in his own lavish way and marvelled that other men declared
difficulties with problems he so readily solved. That night after
a little music the Chadlands' house party drifted to
the billiard - room and while most of the men after a heavy day
far afield were content to lounge by a great open hearth where a
wood fire burned Sir Walter who had been on a pony most of the
time declared himself unwearied and demanded a game.
"No excuses Henry" he said; and turned to a young man lounging
in an easy - chair outside the fireside circle.
The youth started. His eyes had been fixed on a woman sitting
beside the fire with her hand in a man's. It was such an attitude
as sophisticated lovers would only assume in private but the pair
were not sophisticated and lovers still though married. They
lacked self - consciousness and the husband liked to feel his wife's
hand in his. After all a thing impossible until you are married
may be quite seemly afterwards and none of their amiable elders
regarded their devotion with cynicism.
"All right uncle!" said Henry Lennox.
He rose - a big fellow with heavy shoulders a clean - shaven
youthful face and flaxen hair. He had been handsome save for a
nose with a broken bridge but his pale brown eyes were fine and
his firm mouth and chin well modelled. Imagination and reflection
marked his countenance.
Sir Walter claimed thirty points on his scoring board and gave a
miss with the spot ball.
"I win to - night" he said.
He was a small very upright man with a face that seemed to belong
to his generation and an expression seldom to be seen on a man
younger than seventy. Life had not puzzled him; his moderate
intellect had taken it as he found it and through the magic
glasses of good health good temper and great wealth judged
existence a desirable thing and quite easy to conduct with credit.
"You only want patience and a brain" he always declared. Sir
Walter wore an eyeglass. He was growing bald but preserved a pair
of grey whiskers still of respectable size. His face indeed
belied him for it was moulded in a stern pattern. One had guessed
him a martinet until his amiable opinions and easy - going
personality were mainfested. The old man was not vain; he knew that
a world very different from his own extended round about him. But
he was puzzle-headed and had never been shaken from his life-long
complacency by circumstances. He had been disappointed in love as
a young man and only married late in life. He had no son and was
a widower - facts that to his mind quite dwarfed his good fortune
in every other respect. He held the comfortable doctrine that
things are always levelled up and he honestly believed that he had
suffered as much sorrow and disappointment as any Lennox in the
history of the race.
His only child and her cousin Henry Lennox had been brought up
together and were of an age - both now twenty - six. The lad was
his uncle's heir and would succeed to Chadlands and the title;
and it had been Sir Walter's hope that he and Mary might marry.
Nor had the youth any objection to such a plan. Indeed he loved
Mary well enough; there was even thought to be a tacit
understanding between them and they grew up in a friendship which
gradually became ardent on the man's part though it never ripened
upon hers. But she knew that her father keenly desired this
marriage and supposed that it would happen some day.
They were however not betrothed when the war burst upon Europe
and Henry then one - and twenty went from the Officers' Training
Corps to the Fifth Devons while his cousin became attached to the
Red Cross and nursed at Plymouth. The accident terminated their
shadowy romance and brought real love into the woman's life while
the man found his hopes at an end. He was drafted to Mesopotamia
speedily fell sick of jaundice was invalided to India and on
returning to the front saw service against the Turks. But chance
willed that he won no distinction. He did his duty under dreary
circumstances while to his hatred of war was added the weight of
his loss when he heard that Mary had fallen in love. He was an
ingenuous kindly youth - a typical Lennox who had developed an
accomplishment at Harrow and suffered for it by getting his nose
broken when winning the heavy - weight championship of the public
schools in his nineteenth year. In the East he still boxed and
after his love story was ended the epidemic of poetry-making took
Henry also and he wrote a volume of harmless verse to the
undying amazement of his family.
For Mary Lennox the war had brought a sailor husband. Captain
Thomas May wounded rather severely at Jutland lost his heart to
the plain but attractive young woman with a fine figure who nursed
him back to strength and as he vowed had saved his life. He
was an impulsive man of thirty brown-bearded black-eyed and
hot-tempered. He came from a little Somerset vicarage and was the
only son of a clergyman the Rev. Septimus May. Knowing the lady
as "Nurse Mary" only and falling passionately in love for the
first time in his life he proposed on the day he was allowed to
sit up and since Mary Lennox shared his emotions also for the
first time he was accepted before he even knew her name.
It is impossible to describe the force of love's advent for Mary
Lennox. She had come to believe herself as vaguely committed to
her cousin and imagined that her affection for Henry amounted to
as much as she was ever likely to feel for a man. But reality
awakened her and its glory did not make her selfish since her
nature was not constructed so to be; it only taught her what love
meant and convinced her that she could never marry anybody on
earth but the stricken sailor. And this she knew long before he
was well enough to give a sign that he even appreciated her
ministry. The very whisper of his voice sent a thrill through her
before he had gained strength to speak aloud. And his deep tones
when she heard them were like no voice that had fallen on her ear
till then. The first thing that indicated restoring health was
his request that his beard might be trimmed; and he was making love
to her three days after he had been declared out of danger. Then
did Mary begin to live and looking back she marvelled how horses
and dogs and a fishing-rod had been her life till now. The
revelation bewildered her and she wrote her emotions in many long
pages to her cousin. The causes of such changes she did not indeed
specify but he read between the lines and knew it was a man and
not the war that had so altered and deepened her outlook. He had
never done it and he could not be angry with her now for she had
pretended no ardor of emotion to him. Young though he was he
always feared that she liked him not after the way of a lover. He
had hoped to open her eyes some day but it was given to another to
do so.
He felt no surprise therefore when news of her engagement reached
him from herself. He wrote the letter of his life in reply and
was at pains to laugh at their boy-and-girl attachment and lessen
any regret she might feel on his account. Her father took it
somewhat hardly at first for he held that more than sufficient
misfortunes to correct the balance of prosperity in his favor
had already befallen him. But he was deeply attached to his
daughter and her magical change under the new and radiant
revelation convinced him that she had now awakened to an emotional
fulness of life which could only be the outward sign of love. That
she was in love for the first time also seemed clear; but he would
not give his consent until he had seen her lover and heard all
there was to know about him. That however did not alarm Mary
for she believed that Thomas May must prove a spirit after Sir
Walter's heart. And so he did. The sailor was a gentleman; he
had proposed without the faintest notion to whom he offered his
penniless hand and when he did find out was so bewildered that
Mary assured her father she thought he would change his mind.
"If I had not threatened him with disgrace and breach of promise
I do think he would have thrown me over" she said.
And now they had been wedded for six months and Mary sat by the
great log fire with her hand in Tom's. The sailor was on leave
but expected to return to his ship at Plymouth in a day or two.
Then his father-in-law had promised to visit the great cruiser for
the Navy was a service of which he knew little. Lennoxes had all
been soldiers or clergymen since a great lawyer founded the race.
The game of billiards proceeded and Henry caught his uncle in the
eighties and ran out with an unfinished fifteen. Then Ernest
Travers and his wife - old and dear friends of Sir Walter - played
a hundred up the lady receiving half the game. Mr. Travers was a
Suffolk man and had fagged for Sir Walter at Eton. Their
comradeship had lasted a lifetime and no year passed without
reciprocal visits. Travers also looked at life with the eyes of a
wealthy man. He was sixty-five pompous large and rubicund - a
"backwoodsman" of a pattern obsolescent. His wife ten years
younger than himself loved pleasure but she had done more than
her duty in her opinion and borne him two sons and a daughter.
They were colorless kind-hearted people who lived in a circle of
others like themselves. The war had sobered them and at an early
...
|
