The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley Part 25

"I've seen four thousand ladies walking about the sands at Trouville in far scantier attire."

"That's in France, isn't it?" inquired Eliza.

"Yes, but France is a more civilized country than England."

Eliza sniffed, sure sign of battle.

"Not it," she vowed. "I've read things about the carryin' on there as made me blood boil. Horse-racin' on Sundays, an' folks goin' to theaters instead of church. France more civilized than England, indeed! What'll you be sayin' next?"

"I'll be saying that if our little friend behaves himself I shall ask him to dine here tomorrow."

"He's axed himself, Mr. Trenholme, an' he's bringing another one, a big fellow, who knows how to use a carvin'-knife, he says. What would you like for dinner?"

Trenholme fled. That question was becoming a daily torment. The appearance of Furneaux had alone saved him from being put on the culinary rack after luncheon; having partaken of one good meal, he never had the remotest notion as to his requirements for the next.

He wandered through the village, calling at a tobacconist's, and looking in on his friend the barber. All tongues were agog with wonder. The Fenley family, known to that district of Hertfordshire during the greater part of a generation, was subjected to merciless criticism. He heard gossip of Mr. Robert, of Mr. Hilton, even of the recluse wife, now a widow; but every one had a good word for "Miss Sylvia."

"We don't see enough of her, an' that's a fact," said the barber. "She must find life rather dull, cooped up there as she is, for all that it's a grand house an' a fine park. They never had company like the other big houses. A few bald-headed City men an' their wives for an occasional week end in the summer or when the coverts were shot in October--never any nice young people. Miss Sylvia wept when the rector's daughter got married last year, an' well I knew why--she was losin' her only chum."

"Surely there are scores of good families in this neighborhood?"

"Plenty, sir, but nearly all county. The toffs never did take on the Fenleys, an', to be fair, I don't believe the poor man who's dead ever bothered his head about them."

"But Miss Manning can not have lived here all her life? She must have been abroad, at school, for instance?"

"Well, yes, sir. I remember her comin' home from Brussels two years ago. But school ain't society. The likes of her, with all her money, should mix with her own sort."

"Is she so wealthy, then?"

"She's Mr. Fenley's ward, an' the servants at The Towers say she'll come in for a heap when she's twenty-one, which will be next year."

Somehow, this item of gossip, confirming Eliza's statement, was displeasing. Sylvia Manning, nymph of the lake, receded to some dim alt.i.tude where the high and mighty are enthroned. Biting his pipe viciously, Trenholme sought the solitude of a woodland footpath, and tried to find distraction in studying the effects of diffused light.

Returning to the inn about tea time, he was angered anew by a telegram from the magazine editor. It read:

_News in Pictures_ wants sketches and photographs of Fenley case and surroundings. Have suggested you for commission. Why not pick up a tenner? Rush drawings by train.

"That's the last straw," growled Trenholme fiercely. He raced out, bought a set of picture postcards showing the village and the Tudor mansion, and dispatched them to the editor of _News in Pictures_ with his compliments. Coming back from the station, he pa.s.sed the Easton lodge of The Towers. A daring notion seized him, and he proceeded to put it into practice forthwith. He presented himself at the gate, and was faced by Mrs. Bates and a policeman. Taught by experience to beware of strangers that day, the keeper's wife gazed at him through an insurmountable iron palisade. The constable merely surveyed him with a professional air, as one who would interfere if needful.

"I am calling on Miss Sylvia Manning," announced Trenholme promptly.

"By appointment, sir?"

"No, but I have reason to believe that she would wish to see me."

"My orders are that n.o.body is to be admitted to the house without written instructions, sir."

"How can Miss Manning give written instructions unless she knows I am here?"

"Them's my orders," said Mrs. Bates firmly.

"But," he persisted, "it really amounts to this--that you decide whether or not Miss Manning wishes to receive me, or any other visitor."

Mrs. Bates found the point of view novel. Moreover, she liked this young man's smile. She hesitated, and temporized.

"If you don't mind waitin' a minute till I telephone----" she said.

"Certainly. Say that Mr. John Trenholme, who was sketching in the park this morning, asks the favor of a few words."

The guardian of the gate disappeared; soon she came out again, and unlocked the gate.

"Miss Manning is just leavin' the house," she said. "If you walk up the avenue you'll meet her, sir."

Now, it happened that Trenholme's request for an interview reached Sylvia Manning at a peculiar moment. She had been shocked and distressed beyond measure by the morning's tragedy. Mortimer Fenley was one of those men whom riches render morose, but his manner had always been kind to his ward. A pleasant fiction enabled the girl to regard Mr. and Mrs. Fenley as her "uncle" and "aunt," and the tacit relationship thus established served to place the financier and his "niece" on a footing of affectionate intimacy. Of late, however, Sylvia had been aware of a splitting up of the family into armed camps, and the discovery, or intuition, that she was the cause of the rupture had proved irksome and even annoying.

Mortimer Fenley had made no secret of his desire that she should marry his younger son. When both young people, excellent friends though they were, seemed to shirk the suggestion, though by no means actively opposing it, Fenley was angered, and did not scruple to throw out hints of coercion. Again, the girl knew that Hilton Fenley was a rival suitor, and meant to defy his father's intent with regard to Robert.

Oddly enough, neither of the young men had indulged in overt love-making. According to their reckoning, Sylvia's personal choice counted for little in the matter. Robert seemed to a.s.sume that his "cousin" was merely waiting to be asked, while Hilton's att.i.tude was that of a man biding his time to s.n.a.t.c.h a prize when opportunity served.

Sylvia herself hated the very thought of matrimony. The only married couples of her acquaintance were either hopelessly detached, like Fenley and his wife, or uninteresting people of the type which the village barber had etched so clearly for Trenholme's benefit.

Whatsoever quickening of romance might have crept into such lives had long yielded to atrophy. Marriage, to the girl's imaginative mind, was synonymous with a dull and prosy middle age. Most certainly the vague day-dreams evoked by her reading of books and converted into alluring vistas by an ever-widening horizon were not sated by the prospect of becoming the wife of either of the only two young men she knew.

There was a big world beyond the confines of Roxton Park. There were interests in life that called with increasing insistence. In her heart of hearts she had decided, quite unmistakably, to decline any matrimonial project for several years, and while shrinking from a downright avowal of her intentions, which her "uncle" would have resented very strongly, the fact that father and sons were at daggers drawn concerning her was the cause of no slight feeling of dismay, even of occasional moments of unhappiness.

She had no one to confide in. For reasons beyond her ken Mortimer Fenley had set his face against any of her school friends being invited to the house, while Mrs. Fenley, by reason of an unfortunate failing, was a wretched automaton that ate and drank and slept, and alternated between brief fits of delirium and prolonged periods of stupor induced by drugs.

Still, until a murderous gunshot had torn away the veil of unreality which enshrouded the household, Sylvia had contrived to avoid a crisis. All day, during six days of the week, she was free in her own realm. She had books and music, the woods, the park, and the gardens to occupy busy hours. Unknown to any, her favorite amus.e.m.e.nt was the planning of extensive foreign tours by such simple means as an atlas and a set of guide books. She had a talent for sketching in water color, and her own sanctum contained a dozen or more copious records of imaginary journeys ill.u.s.trated with singular accuracy of detail.

She was athletic in her tastes, too. She had fitted up a small gymnasium, which she used daily. At her request, Mortimer Fenley had laid out a nine-hole links in the park, and in her second golfing year (the current one) Sylvia had gone around in bogey. She would have excelled in tennis, but Robert Fenley was so much away from home that she seldom got a game, while Hilton professed to be too tired for strenuous exercise after long days in the City. She could ride and drive, though forbidden to follow any of the local packs of fox-hounds, and it has been seen that she was a first-rate swimmer.

Brodie, too, had taught her to drive a motor car, and she could discourse learnedly on silencers and the Otto cycle.

On the whole, then, she was content, and hugged the conceit that when she came of age she would be her own mistress and order her life as she chose. The solitary defect of any real importance in the scheme of things was Mortimer Fenley's growing insistence on her marriage to Robert.

It was astounding, therefore, and quite bewildering, that Robert Fenley should have hit on the day of his father's death to declare his prosaic pa.s.sion. He had motored back from London about four o'clock.

Hurrying to change his clothing for the attire demanded by convention in hours of mourning, he sent a message to Sylvia asking her to meet him at tea. Afterwards he took her into the garden, on the pretext that she was looking pale and needed fresh air. There, without the least preamble, he informed her that the day's occurrences had caused him to fall in unreservedly with his father's wishes. He urged her to agree to a quiet wedding at the earliest possible date, and pointed out that a prompt announcement of their pact would stifle any opposition on Hilton's part.

Evidently he took it for granted that if Barkis was willing, Peggotty had no option in the matter. He forgot to mention such a trivial element as love. Their marriage had been planned by the arbiter of their destinies, and who were they that they should gainsay that august decision? Why, his father's death had made it a duty that they owed to a sacred memory!

Though Sylvia's experience of the world was slight, and knowledge of her fellow creatures rather less, Cousin Robert's eagerness, as compared with his deficiencies as a wooer, warned her that some hidden but powerful motive was egging him on now. She tried to temporize, but the more she eluded him the more insistent he became.

At last, she spoke plainly, and with some heat.

"If you press for my answer today it is 'No,'" she said, and a wave of color flooded her pale cheeks. "I think you can hardly have considered your actions. It is monstrous to talk of marriage when my uncle has only been dead a few hours. I refuse to listen to another word."

Perforce, Robert had left it at that. He had the sense to bottle up his anger, at any rate in her hearing; perhaps he reflected that the breaking of the ice would facilitate the subsequent plunge.

Far more disturbed in spirit than her dignified repulse of Fenley had shown, Sylvia reentered the house, pa.s.sing the odd-looking little detective as she crossed the hall. She took refuge in her own suite, but determined forthwith to go out of doors again and seek shelter among her beloved trees. Through a window, as her rooms faced south, she saw Robert Fenley pacing moodily in the garden, where he was presently joined by the detective.

Apparently, Fenley was as ungracious and surly of manner as he knew how to be, but Furneaux continued to chat with careless affability; soon the two walked off in the direction of the lake. That was Sylvia's chance. She ran downstairs and was at the door when a footman came and said that Mrs. Bates wanted her on the telephone.