The Reluctant Widow (12 page)

She was about to mount the stairs to her bedchamber when she recollected that the visitor had entered by a side door. She could not go to bed with any degree of comfort while a

door stood unlocked into the house, so she turned back and went to see which door it might be.

But the most zealous search failed to discover any door that was unbolted, a circumstance that puzzled her sadly. It began to seem as though the gentleman had prevaricated a little and had in fact made his entrance by way of a window. But Elinor, going with her candle from room to room, could find none that was not secure, and her surprise gave place to a feeling of great uneasiness. Some natural explanation of the visitor’s presence there must be, she told herself, but she could not think of one, and at last went up to bed with a heart that beat rather fast. Had the young man been less amiable and apologetic she would have been much inclined to have roused the household, but she could not believe that his motive in entering so mysteriously had been sinister, and as he must by now have ridden away, there could be little object in waking Barrow to go after him. But however amiable he might be, it was no very pleasant thought that strangers could apparently enter the house at will and in despite of bolted doors and windows. Elinor was glad to see a key in the lock of her own bedroom door and had no hesitation in turning it.

She lay awake for some time in the firelight, listening intently, but no sound disturbed the silence of the house, and she fell asleep at last and slept soundly until morning.

Chapter VII

Elinor lost no time on the following morning in acquainting both the Barrows with what had occurred during the night. Barrow instantly professed himself ready to swear through an inch board that he had secured every door and window against intruders, but Mrs. Barrow said in a very wifely spirit that he took no care for anything, and if her eye was not upon every task none was performed.

“But it is true that when I went to find and lock the door I could not discover any that was unbolted,” Elinor said. “Indeed, I have been puzzling my head over it, for I cannot imagine how anyone can have entered the house. Is there some door I do not know of? And yet—” “Never trouble your head, ma’am!” Mrs. Barrow told her robustly. “Depend upon it, the man climbed in through one of the windows! But I am put about that such a thing should have happened, and I wish you had roused me, for I would have sent my fine gentleman about his business very speedily.”

“There was not the least need for me to rouse you. I do not mean to say that the gentleman caused me annoyance, for he was very civil and quite as taken aback as I was myself.”

“Well, it queers me who it may have been, ma’am,” Mrs. Barrow declared. “Not but what—I wonder, was it the Honorable Francis Cheviot, perhaps? Him as is son to Lord Bedlington, which is uncle to poor Mr. Eustace.”

“I do not know. It was stupidly done of me, but I forgot to ask him what his name was.” “A dentical fine gentleman?” said Barrow. “Nursed in cotton, as they say?” “N-no. At least, I do not know. He had an air of fashion, but he did not look to be a dandy precisely. He was dark, and quite young. Oh, he spoke with a slight foreign accent!” “Oh, him!” said Barrow disparagingly. “That’ll be the Frenchy, that will. I’ve seen him before, but I disremember that he ever came climbing in at the window.”

“A Frenchman! Why, yes, he uttered a French oath, now you put me in mind of it! Pray, who is he?”

“He came with Mr. Francis one time,” mused Barrow. “He had some outlandish name but I don’t know what it was. Came to England in a basket of cabbages, he did.” “Came to England in a basket of cabbages!”

“Adone-do, Barrow!” said his wife indignantly. “It was no such thing, ma’am!” “It was what Mr. Eustace told me,” argued Barrow. “The Frenchy being naught but a baby, and went into the basket as snug as a mouse in a cheese, I dare say.” “It was a cart full of cabbages, and to be sure he did not come all the way to England in it! It was at the start of that nasty revolution they had, ma’am, and they do say there was no way for decent folks, and the quality and such, to get away but by smuggling themselves out of

the town in all manner of disguises, and such shifts.”

“Ay, no end to the outlandish tricks them Frenchies get up to,” nodded Barrow. “Not but what I don’t believe all I hear, and I always reckoned that was a loud one.”

“An émigré family! I see!” Elinor said. “I should have guessed it, indeed.” “I don’t know what kind of a family it might be,” said Barrow cautiously, “but what should take him to come visiting Mr. Eustace at that hour of night? I never saw him above a couple of times in my life, and for all he’s a Frenchy he came in at the front door like a Christian.” “I think he said that he was visiting friends in the neighborhood.”

Barrow seemed inclined to cavil at this. He scratched his chin. “Well, he’s not visiting his lordship, that’s sure. Nor he’s not at the Priory, for old Sir Matthew, he’s tedious set against all Frenchies. And he won’t be at Elm House, for a decenter couple of ladies than Miss Lynton and Miss Elizabeth you won’t find, and to be having gentlemen to stay is what they wouldn’t do. And if it’s the Hurst he meant, Mr. Frinton and his lady has gone up to London and won’t be back this se’nnight.”

“Likely he came from the Hill,” suggested Mrs. Barrow comfortably. “I’m sure it’s no matter.” “Ay, likely he did,” agreed Barrow. “There’s no saying what they’ll do, them as live on the Hill.”

Having expressed himself suitably as a Weald man, he seemed to think the problem settled, and went off to make an inventory of all the silver in the house.

Elinor let the subject drop and was soon immersed in household details with Mrs. Barrow. But when that lady had sailed off kitchenward her thoughts reverted to the episode, and while she set about the several tasks that lay nearest to her hand she found herself still puzzling over it.

At eleven o’clock the sound of hoofbeats on the carriage drive made her look out of the window. She saw the Honorable Nicholas Carlyon trotting up to the house on a stylish bay, a crossbred dog, half lurcher, half mastiff, bounding along beside his horse. He caught sight of her and waved his whip, calling out, “How d’ye do? Ned told me I should come over to see if you were tolerably comfortable.”

“I am much obliged to you both!” she returned. “Do but take your horse to the stables and I will come down and let you in!”

By the time he had done this she was already standing on the porch. He came striding along, and at once pulled off his hat and said, “Good morning, ma’am! Shall you object to Bouncer? I will leave him outside if you wish, only if I do I dare say he will be off hunting, and the thing is that Sir Matthew Kendal’s preserves abut onto this land, and he don’t above half like to have Bouncer on them.”

“No, indeed, that would never do,” she said. “I have not the least objection to him, for you must know I have been used to dogs all my life. Pray bring him in with you!” He looked gratified and called the dog to heel. Barrow, who happened to be crossing the hall at that moment, looked with a good deal of reproach at his mistress and gave it as his considered opinion that if Master Nicky was to bring His dogs in, spanneling the floors, there could be no sense in summoning the gardener’s wife up to scrub them. The intelligent hound, however, lifted a lip at him, and he made off, muttering.

“My brother has gone off somewhere in his chaise, Mrs. Cheviot,” announced Nicky, following his hostess into the bookroom. “Oh! You do not like it when one calls you by that name! Well, you know, I have been thinking, and if you should not dislike it excessively I believe I should call you Cousin Elinor. For you are our cousin, are you not?” ‘“By marriage, I suppose I must be,” acknowledged Elinor. “I do not dislike you to call me so, at all events—Cousin Nicholas.”

“Oh, no! I wish you will not call me Nicholas!” he protested. “No one ever does, except John sometimes, when he reads me one of his lectures! Ned never does so. Why, how you have changed everything here already! I declare, this is first-rate!”

She invited him to sit down by the fire. He declined partaking of any refreshment but was anxious to know if there were any way in which he could be of use to her. “For you must

know that I am quite at leisure,” he told her. “And Ned said I could make myself useful.” She did not feel that his assistance in sorting linen would be of much practical help, but it occurred to her that he might be able to throw light on the identity at least of her midnight visitor. She described the encounter to him, therefore. He listened with much interest and at the end said that his cousin Eustace had been a very loose screw and that any friends of his were likely to prove ugly customers. But he was less concerned with the Frenchman’s name than with the manner of his entry.

“Too smoky by half, Cousin!” he said. “A fellow don’t go creeping into a man’s house at midnight if he’s up to any good. Depend upon it, Eustace was concerned in some devilry or other!”

“I hope you may be wrong!” she said. “For if you are not I dare not think of the odd persons who may seek to gain admittance here in the expectation of finding him!” “Very true. Are you quite sure there was no door left open?”

“I could not find one. It is the strangest thing! I own I cannot be at my ease over it.” “I’ll tell you what it is, Cousin Elinor!” said Nicky, his eyes sparkling. “I should not be at all surprised if there were a secret way into the house we do not know of!” She regarded him in considerable dismay. “No, pray do not put such uncomfortable notions into my head!” she begged.

“Yes, but I dare say there is,” he insisted. “You know, it was used to be said that Charles the Second hid in this house after Worcester. Ned says that’s all fudge, and he was never within ten miles of Highnoons, but only fancy if it were so!”

“Only fancy!” echoed Elinor in a hollow tone.

Nicky jumped to his feet and began to walk round the room inspecting the walls. “I dare say there may be a sliding panel somewhere, just as I saw in some old house or another, with a passage into the garden.”

“It is not in this room,” said Elinor firmly. “He did not enter here—and I wish you will not talk in such a way! I shall not sleep a wink all night!”

“No, indeed! I should think you would not!” Nicky agreed. “We must find it, of course! By Jove, this is capital sport!”

Nothing would do for him but to be allowed to search the house. Elinor went with him, torn between amusement at his enthusiasm and a horrid fear that he might indeed discover a hidden door. The dog Bouncer accompanied them, hopeful of rats, but presently grew disgusted with the lack of sport and lay down, yawning cavernously. Nicky tapped all the paneling in the ground-floor rooms without producing the hollow note he so ardently desired to hear, and Elinor was just beginning to breathe again when he insisted on going upstairs. She felt that it was unlikely that a secret way into the house should be found in any of the bedrooms, but Nicky said he had seen one that started from a cheese room at the very top of a house.

“Good God, there is a large loft here which was very likely used as a cheese room in former times!” Elinor cried, quite aghast.

“Is there, by Jupiter?” Nicky exclaimed. “I’ll go up there this instant!” She did not accompany him, and he presently reappeared, slightly cast down at having been unable to discover even as much as a priest’s hole in the cheese room. He put Elinor so forcibly in mind of the schoolboy brothers of several of her late pupils that she very soon abandoned all formality with him, an arrangement which seemed to suit him very well. His conviction that the large cupboard built into the wall of her bedchamber was just the place where one might reasonably expect to find a hidden trap door provoked her into apostrophizing him as an odious boy, a form of address to which he seemed to be accustomed, for he grinned and said, “I know, but what sport if it were so, Cousin Elinor! Only consider!”

“I am considering it,” she said. “And let me tell you, Nicky, that if you are trying to make my flesh creep you are wasting your time. Recollect that I have been a governess, and governesses, you know, have no romantic notions and seldom indulge themselves with

swooning or the vapors!”

“Oh, don’t they just!” he retorted. “My sisters once had one who was forever swooning! We told her the Hall was haunted, and Gussie—my sister Augusta, you know—dressed up in a sheet, and Harry and I clanked chains and made the most famous groaning noises! She did not stay with us above a month.”

“I am astonished she stayed with you so long,” said Elinor. “I had thought my lot a hard one, but I perceive I have considerable cause to be thankful that at least I was never hired to instruct your sisters.”

He laughed. “Oh, we should not have served you so, for you are not at all like a governess. May I go in this room?”

“Do, by all means!” she said cordially. “If you should find any skeletons behind the wainscoting, do not hesitate to call me! I shall be in the stillroom, at the end of the corridor.” She parted from him and went off to check the stores. She was engaged in arranging a row of preserve jars on a shelf when she heard Nicky shout to her in a voice of great excitement. She stepped out into the corridor, saying calmly, “You have discovered a skull. How delightful it is, to be sure!”

“No, no, I have not, but only come and see, Cousin Elinor! I’m not gammoning you! Only come!”

“Very well, but I do not scruple to tell you that my expectations are high, and nothing less than a skull will do for me.”

He led her into a small, square apartment, wainscoted to the ceiling and containing little besides a bed, a carved chest, and two chairs. “You’re quizzing me, but you will not do so when you have seen what I have discovered! Now, look about you, Cousin! You would not suppose that there was anything out of the ordinary here, would you?” “I should not,” she agreed. “But having closely inspected this house I am aware that there is a concealed cupboard on the right of the fireplace. In fact, it is by no means perfectly concealed, and has been used, I fancy, as a wardrobe.”