Marry a Stranger (8 page)

She hung up abruptly, and Stacey put down the receiver and felt herself trembling a little. Why, she wondered, hadn’t Martin told her anything at all about the Fountains, and in particular about his cousin by marriage? And why hadn’t he told her something—when she had asked him—about Fountains Court?

CHAPTER SEVEN

It w
as
already dusk when they crept quietly up to the door of the house, and Martin switched off his engine. After that the silence about them seemed absolute, like something living and vital which pressed upon them from the tall trees which bordered the drive. And when an owl hooted suddenly Stacey, although accustomed from her cradle to the slightly sinister noises of those strange birds who prefer the shadows of the night time to the glory of the daylight, almost jumped in her seat beside the wheel of the car.

But despite the gloom, and the hush which now struck her as strange after many weeks in London, she could smell the freshness in the air which came in at the open car window, and there was a sensation of open spaces beyond the clustering trees. Before they had turned in at the drive gates the road, which had dipped and climbed all the way from Beomster, had afforded her glimpses of the far-off Welsh hills, brooding like grave giants through the sunset’s afterglow, and now, although a sudden sharp shower of rain had caused the sky to darken prematurely, she knew that there was wild beauty on all sides of her, and a softer beauty, too, in the nearness of flowers hidden in the dusk.

She could smell roses, and the spicy odor of phlox and clove-pinks. There was the heavier scent of lilies, and—it might have been honeysuckle wafted on the rain-cooled air.

The door of the house was shut, and it looked like the stout door of a church, crossed with bands of iron, and studded with nails. A bell-chain hung beside it, antiquated, the type that would echo eerily all round the house when it received a hearty tug. Stacey had an impression of windows, deep set in sombre stone and half shrouded with green stuff, looking down at her like eyes, and in one of them there suddenly appeared a light.

It was a light above the staircase, as she realized afterwards, and must have been switched on from the landing above it just after their car came to rest at the foot of the short flight of steps. Martin threw open his door and climbed out, stretching luxuriously after the long, cramped journey which had only been broken by a stop for dinner. He went round to pull the bell-chain, but before he reached it the door opened and a tall, thin woman stood framed against a background of highly polished oak furniture and oak-lined walls bathed in the mellow rays of discreetly shaded electric light.

“So you’ve arrived, Martin!” said the woman quietly, and kept her hands locked together over the front of her faded, flowered-silk evening gown, which she wore with an equally faded velvet bridge coat as a protection against the slight chill of the evening.

“Hello, Jane!” Dr. Guelder exclaimed. He gave her his most attractive smile, the kind which softened his eyes and lifted that one dark eyebrow a little, and then held out his hand. She gave him hers after the barest half-second or so of hesitation, but her thin, colorless features remained unredeemed by any sign of a smile. “I expect my telegram gave you a bit of a shock, didn’t it? But my letter, when it reached you, must have explained everything more satisfactorily.”

“Your letter explained everything
quite
satisfactorily,” she answered, with emphasis on the one word.

“Good!” he exclaimed, rather more curtly. “Then you’re all ready to receive us?”

“I'm as ready as the short amount of notice you gave me has permitted me to be,” she told him without altering her tone. She looked towards the car, and the shadowy outline of Stacey’s head inside it. “Your wife—Mrs. Guelder has probably found it a tiring journey?”

Stacey opened the car door quietly, and descended just as quietly on to the gravel of the driveway. Martin, as if suddenly conscious of her, turned to her quickly and lightly laid hold of her arm. He drew her to the foot of the steps and presented her to his cousin, or his former cousin, that is, by his earlier marriage.

“Jane, this is Fountains’ new mistress—and Stacey, this is Miss Fountain, who has looked after the place all the time I’ve been in London. She’s particularly fond of it because it was once her own home. In fact, she’s lived here all her life—or very nearly!”

“I was brought to this house when I was two years old,” Jane Fountain told Stacey with an icy note in her voice. “I came as an orphan and I stayed as a much-loved daughter. I grew up here under the happiest circumstances, and therefore I think it is little to be wondered at that I have a great love for the place.’

“Why, of course not,” Stacey answered, and although she was so tired that she could have swayed on her feet she did genuinely understand the other
’
s attitude—the defensive attitude of one who was afraid that her days were numbered, and that something treasured and valued was likely to be crested from her. She smiled at her uncertainly in the light streaming out from the hall, but there was no answering smile on Jane Fountain s face, and she did not even move aside from the doorway to permit this white-faced stranger to enter. But Martin Guelder, with tightened lips and eyes that took
in
all of his bride’s fatigue, all but carried her up the steps and into the brightness of the hall, and dragged forward an unyielding oak settle for her to sink down
upon.

Miss Fountain looked a little surprised when she got a better glimpse of the new Mrs. Guelder, so slight and obviously young that she might almost have been her new husband’s daughter. He, tall and elegant in his unprofessional and beautifully-cut grey suit, seemed to tower above her as he stood beside the settle, and he bent down and removed from her dark curls the little hat that was a mere cap of deeply purple pansies held together by a shred of ribbon and a wisp of veiling. Then he shook his head at the shadows under her eyes, and the pale lips from which every evidence of lipstick seemed to have vanished as if it had never been applied.

“It’s bed for you, Mrs. Guelder, and almost at once,” he said crisply. He looked at the woman who had long considered herself the chatelaine of the house. “I hope you haven’t bothered about dinner for us, Jane. We stopped and had it on the road, but if my wife’s room is ready I’d like to get her up to it as quickly as possible. As you can see, she is not exactly in a robust state of health, and a little care and coddling will be essential for some weeks. Which room have you given her?”

Miss Fountain’s face was a mask as she replied: “Naturally I haven’t given her the room you once occupied, but the main guest-room overlooking the flower garden at the back is quite definitely the most pleasant. There is a view of the Welsh hills from there also. And the little dressing room next door you will probably like to have as your own dressing room
—
”

“Never mind such unimportant matters as dressing rooms!” he exclaimed impatiently. “The main thing is to get her upstairs.”

He looked down at Stacey, and her face started to flame because he had referred to her as Mrs. Guelder
and
his wife in a matter of seconds, and it sounded so utterly strange to her. For she could not believe that she was really married to him—that the simple ceremony in the Registrar’s Office that morning had given him the right to order all her movements in future, and given her the right to look to him if she felt like it for support in every emergency. His arm about her as he led her to the stairs was a perfectly legal and lawful arm; he had the right to swing her up off her feet, as he did, and hold her lying like a blown leaf against his chest while he carried her up the shallow, shining oaken treads of the staircase to the room which had been set apart for her on the first floor. There he set her down in a large armchair near the window, through which the last of the light was filtering wanly, and she looked around at heavy crimson hangings and the furniture which had the patina that only centuries of continuous high polish could have bestowed on it, and thought that she was going to be a little overawed by her new surroundings.

Not that they were altogether luxurious, as could be seen immediately the light was switched on—a cold, pendant light like a candelabra—for that same rich crimson brocade had been repeatedly darned, and the plain red Wilton carpet was almost threadbare in places. But the dressing table, with its triple mirrors, was enormous, and so was the wardrobe which seemed to touch the ceiling. There was a lot of old-fashioned silver on the dressing table—perfume bottles and trinket boxes and a handsome, heavily-backed mirror with its accompanying brushes and combs—and it was reflected somewhat eerily in the triple mirrors. The bed was huge and ornate, of the half-tester variety, and the curtains were looped back with heavy cords like bell-ropes.

There was a door in the farther wall which, she thought, might admit to the dressing room; but it seemed very far away, for the room was huge, like everything in it, with great windows overlooking the garden.

Miss Fountain, who had accompanied them upstairs, gave a twitch to the curtains, and they sprang together with a noisy rattle of curtain rings. Then she looked around her as if making sure that the room contained all that it should contain for the comfort of the new mistress, and for the first time a curious kind of half-satisfied smile appeared on her face.

“You’ll find the bed very comfortable,” she said. “It’s a feather bed, of course. We are not very modern here at Fountains.”

Stacey said nothing, but Martin Guelder seemed to be frowning slightly as he also looked about the room. He took a turn or two about it, fingering the antique silver on the dressing table, and eyeing a choicely worked sampler on the wall above the fireplace which exhorted him in sombre colors to
“Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth!”

“This room is quite close to a bathroom, isn’t it?” he asked his cousin abruptly.

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “That is one of its advantages,” and she sounded almost smug.

He turned to the girl, small and overworked-looking, who was struggling upstairs with the suitcases.

“Will you bring a tray with a light supper on it upstairs here to Mrs. Guelder?” he requested.

“
I’ll
see to that,” Miss Fountain said smoothly.

The doctor turned back to his bride of only a few hours. He smiled at her in a way she felt was meant to be reassuring—perhaps heartening—and she tried to smile back at him as if there was no heavy load of apprehension weighing like a stone at her heart, and no chill, shivery feeling of depression and unease communicated to her by the large, gloomy room, and accentuated, no doubt, by the fact that she was very tired indeed. And although he did not know it, it took all her strength of will to prevent her from putting forth her hand and clinging to his coat sleeve and begging him not to leave her alone in that room just yet—not even alone with Miss Fountain!

Which would have caused Miss Fountain to look very much amazed, of course, and perhaps slightly supercilious. And Martin would probably have felt uncomfortable, and not known quite what to do.

As it was, he studied her with a certain amount of anxiety because she looked so large-eyed and as pale as a waxwork, and he said gently: “You’ve had an exhausting day, but you’ll feel better in the morning. Have your supper and get to bed as quickly as you can. I’ll come in and give you something that will make certain that you sleep before I go to bed myself, and in the meantime, if you want anything, just ring.” He tested the bell beside the bed. “This does work, I suppose?” he enquired of Miss Fountain.

“Unless the mice have been at it, it rings like all the others,” she answered, in her remote tones.

He gave her a curious look.

“There is one bell which will be certain to ring, and that is in my old bedroom. I think we’d better shift my wife into there.”

“But it’s not aired,” she said quickly, defensively.

“Then you can get it aired tomorrow, and tonight, if you want anything, Stacey, I shall be sleeping in the room next door—the dressing room!” Stacey felt tremendous relief well over her.

“I shan’t want anything,” she assured him. “I shall be quite all right.”

Miss Fountain’s barely noticeable eyebrows ascended a little.

“Then, if you won’t be sleeping in this room, you’ll want the bed made up in the dressing room? I’d better tell Hannah Biggs to get on with it.”

“Do,” he said curtly, and stooped to unfasten Stacey’s suitcases.

Stacey saw the curious expression that came and went in Jane Fountain’s face. She looked first at the man who had been her cousin Fenella’s husband, with his sleek head, his own carefully controlled expression, and his well-shaped, expeditious hands dealing with the suitcase. And then she looked at Stacey, drooping obviously in the hard armchair, rather like a pale flower that was wilting, and despite her youth, and the smartness of her little silk suit, and the corduroy velvet coat that she wore over it, of the same misty mauve shade as her gloves and the gauzy scarf that was wound about her throat, with absolutely no sign of assurance or confidence in anything at the moment. Even the way she looked at her husband was timorous, uncertain—nothing at all to do with ordinary shyness.

And he wanted the bed made up in the dressing room!

Well, if he wanted it made up, she was paid a salary to look after his house in his absence, and she would see to it that he had no reasonable cause for complaint. But as to getting his old bedroom ready for this newcomer!
...
This
interloper!
...