The Warrielaw Jewel, page 6
“I knew she was going,” I said, looking still more longingly at the London train, as I reflected on the smallness of Edinburgh and its society.
“I only caught a glimpse of her,” said Miss Wise. “She goes off like this every year or so, and makes no farewells and writes no letters, I believe. So very sensible! See if you can cheer her up.”
Miss Wise hurried on, and I strolled doubtfully on to the platform, looking into the carriage windows till I saw Miss Warrielaw. No, I decided, when I discovered her. Jessica was not, in my maid Christina’s phrase, apt for conversation. She was sitting, her head averted from the platform with an air of dejection and weariness which invited no comment. A gleam of sunshine shot through the glass roof of the station as I hesitated, and against the dark background of the cushions I saw clearly every white and gold hair in the curled, bristling fringe under its net and every line and mark of her pallid face. It was, I decided, the fact that all Warrielaws had light eyebrows and light hair which made their eyes so pale and startling. Then, as I gazed furtively, she suddenly pulled a black veil down from her black pudding-bowl hat and drew her black cape round her shoulders. Evidently she desired privacy, and as the carriage was empty so far, she would probably get it. At least I would not disturb her, and I went in search of my rod through the crowds hustling to less important trains.
“She did look wretched,” I said to John at lunch. I had attended a Good Friday service in the interval, but the picture of the lonely old woman was haunting my mind. “I expect Mary was horrid to her if she really took that wretched jewel away to sell.”
“Probably Jessica held her own! They’re more than a match in a quarrel. I’d give Jessica odds on any day. And I expect Mary is repenting by now. Look here, Betty, I wish you’d run down to Warrielaw and cheer the poor old thing up this afternoon. Dennis could drive you down—”
“He won’t be back, I expect. His car is sure to have had an accident! But, John, I’ll walk down. It’s only about five miles from the tram terminus, isn’t it? And ‘all Morrisons are fond of walking.’ Then you can come and pick me up about six o’clock, and pat her back and say things are all right.”
John smiled upon my energy, so soon after lunch I took a tram out of Edinburgh, and, at the terminus, got out and set off on my way, repenting a little of my errand. The night had been wet and stormy, but the rain had left off at mid-day and now the sun was shining, and a west wind was blowing clouds across the sky like the lambs chasing each other in the meadows. The road stretched between great fields with low hedges, and it was so uninteresting that I walked quickly. It was only when, at about three o’clock, I reached the ruined lodge which guarded the neglected open gates of Warrielaw, that I remembered Mary was lunching at Erleigh, seven miles away, and couldn’t be back for another hour at least. I thought of turning to my left and walking all round the outside of the park, through the few houses which made up the village of Warrielaw, to the back gates. But these gates were, I knew, kept by a lodge-keeper, and from all I knew of the ways of the place, it was quite possible that they were locked or impassable. Only vans came through them after providing for the village, and to-day those vans would be few and far between. I was tired, and the lane looked long and dull, and I was not going to risk finding no entrance at the other end. I decided to walk up the long avenue to the front door, and take refuge with Effie till Mary returned or John came for me. And all these decisions I made as idly and carelessly as I had made my original plan of walking down, without the faintest premonition of the importance they were to have in so many lives.
Through the high budding beech trees of the rough avenue I soon caught sight of the front of the house. The threatening clouds behind it dwarfed and flattened the long, shabby, pretentious front and cracked pediment and porticoes. But for the open French windows, I decided, it would have been a perfect emblem of a dull, sallow, blind old lady scowling at the world. Everything was so quiet and dull that I started when a cock crowed in a distant cottage. It was easy to imagine, now the sun was obscured, that it was breaking the dawn in a sleeping world.
It was easier still when I rang the bell. There was no sound of Effie’s feet scuffling along the hall, and the yapping of the spaniels sounded far away, as if they were shut up in the stables. I rang again and again, but there was no reply. Effie, like everyone else, was apparently out. I looked into the great drawing-room with its swathed mirrors and furniture, but all was silence. I meditated walking in and sitting down, but the Warrielaws were not people, I decided, who welcomed, or pardoned, informality. There was just a chance that Effie was in the garden getting vegetables, so I walked down the steps and round the front of the house. Here, on the left of the house, the carriage sweep dwindled into a path amongst a sea of rhododendrons: they were so thick that I could only just make out the path between them, and beneath their branching boughs, which led to a door in the great dilapidated stone walls surrounding the garden. It creaked open noisily, but within it everything was still. In front of me was a small area dug for vegetables and cultivated by Jessica: beyond was a tangle of broken pergolas, high waving weeds, colossal rose bushes and moss-grown paths. Through this garden, and a further walled garden distinguished by acres of broken-down glass-houses, the path led, I knew, to a gate in the main road, much used by the Misses Warrielaw. But that gate was probably locked, I reflected, and the gardens in their decay were unspeakably dismal, so I turned to go back. And it was at that moment that I heard the sound of a car starting at the back of the house, and it was then, I think, that I remembered that Effie had gone off the night before with Annie and presumably had not returned.
As I said before, cars were few and far between in those days on lonely country roads, and it was not likely that a van was at the door. There would be no one at the back to answer it, anyhow, and it was then I realised that the Warrielaws had fallen back into their foolish habit of leaving the house empty and unguarded. It was extraordinary to me that they should do so after the scare of burglary only two months ago. At that very moment a van driver might be exploring the back regions, though he would not, I imagined, find anything to steal in that parsimonious kitchen. Still, as I was here, it might be as well to show that someone was about, so I turned back from the gardens, down the rhododendron tunnel into the drive, made my way past the front of the house and plunged into the rhododendron and laurel tangle on the west side of the mansion. Here the shrubs grew close to the wall, pressing over the path, and I noticed the joining up of the Palladian front to the old house. Deep-set windows looked out under crows’-feet from the thick stone walls of the old building, with gables above them and a turret at one corner. It was strange to think that anyone could have tampered with that little sedate home of history; and then, as I emerged from the shrubbery, I saw again the nefarious work of the Warrielaw of one hundred years before. The distance between the house and the back drive was not more than a hundred yards, but a wide sweep to the left led to the stables, where Mr. Warrielaw’s love for pomp and expansion had had its way. A great cracked yellow arch with a stone coat of arms lay between an empty lodge on one side and a coach house on the other. Within was a vast courtyard; and behind this showy, dilapidated front, around the ragged courtyard beyond the gates, lay a warren of stalls and laundry buildings and outhouses, all backed by a series of low outhouses, potting-frames and tool-sheds. A colony of the unemployed might have been housed in them: a colony of old tins and refuse was there already. And then I looked quickly from this absurd monument of past glories, for my eye was caught by the flash of something moving. The semi-circular sweep from the house to the stables swept on to the back lodge gates. Through them was disappearing the car which I had heard in the garden. It was, I recognised with the keen eyes of the owner-driver of the period, a Lanchester car of aristocratic origin: some caller must have arrived at the back before I had come myself, and shown at the back far more persistence than I had in the front. I had not heard anything as I walked down the drive, so for twenty minutes at least someone must have pealed the back-door bell. How like any old Edinburgh lady, determined to make her call! One trace, however, she had left of herself: as the car turned through the back lodge gates a paper fluttered from it. The wind caught it and swept it merrily towards the stables.
Girls who have grown up with brothers have as a rule one virtue to their credit. They learn to respect confidences and to regard correspondence as sacred. I walked to the stable-yard and picked up the paper. It was an envelope, innocent of stamp or address, but containing, obviously, some enclosure. If it was valuable the owner would return to look for it: if not, it was unnecessary to leave it fluttering about—though indeed a Bank holiday crowd let loose in it could hardly have increased the disorder of the stable-yard! Without bothering to consider the question seriously, I stuck the paper inside the nearest opening, on to the sill of a broken window in the coach house. It would be safe and out of the way there.
As I came away from the stable arch, I felt a sudden scud of rain. The wind dropped, and in a moment the clouds seized their chance and the drops fell in torrents. From the back lodge chimneys came a faint streak of smoke, and I ran there and knocked on the door, hoping for shelter. Never would I arrive unexpectedly at Warrielaw House again!
A hoarse voice bade me “Come away in,” and I opened the door. “Our family boasts of one aged retainer”—so I remembered Neil had remarked. “She is a gate-keeper who cannot open gates.” On a bed in perilous proximity to the fire, flanked by a table covered with dirty crockery, three broken chairs occupied by cats, and dim bits of furniture in dark corners which suggested rats, lay Mrs. Lee, the lodge-keeper. Her only greeting was an histrionic groan which seemed like the frowstiness and evil odours made audible.
“Hoots, Effie, I’m sair put aboot but I couldna get up to the hoose,” said she, her head still averted. “My rheumatics have been that bad the day that I wasna fit to budge. The doctor was in this morning, as he’ll tell you, and he’s told my niece to come over to me when she’s through with her washing. I’m real upset, but if a’ the windows are open at the hoose, and there was thieves and robbers in every room, step up to it I couldna.”
“It isn’t Effie,” I said, rather timid at introducing myself. “I came down to call and I couldn’t find anyone in.”
The remark fell flat. Mrs. Lee’s further qualifications for her post were, it appeared, almost total blindness and deafness. She raised herself slightly in bed, from a marvellous assortment of flannel rags, to ask me to repeat my message. It took me several minutes to convey my story, and all she said at the close was that I must be weary of waiting, and if I’d join her in a cup of tea she’d be thankful if I’d take the pot off the hob. Turning from me, she buttered a bit of bread lavishly from the supplies on her table, and pointed to a dresser where I could find some very dusty cups. As no protests of mine could reach her, as the rain was streaming down and it seemed cruel to hurt the poor old thing’s feelings, I dusted two cups surreptitiously, and sat down to the strange party with my face towards the window, my ears and eyes alert for any sign of John’s car. Mrs. Lee seemed to enjoy company. She regaled me with a long tale of how Effie had gone off the night before to see her niece, who was expecting, with an interminable obstetrical digression on the subject of Effie’s niece, Ellen Hay, and that daft sister of hers, Annie, who was just as well off the place. Effie had gone off the evening before; Miss Jessica was awa’ by the early train. Miss Mary and Miss Rhoda had planned to be awa’ early to Erleigh, walking, Effie had told her, and had urged her to go up after nine o’clock and see the house was closed properly, as the Warrielaws would never think of it. After a long disquisition from her on the folly of the Warrielaws’ passion for fresh air, one which I could indeed sympathise with in the dreadful atmosphere preferred by Mrs. Lee, I realised that the rain was over. I looked at my watch. Mrs. Lee’s recital had, like most Scottish sermons, dragged itself out for nearly half an hour. It was now nearly four o’clock, and I might surely expect my hostess or Effie in a few minutes. I got up and escaped, with profuse thanks from Mrs. Lee for the shilling I offered. At her request I pulled to the rusty old gates of the back entrance and locked them. Then I paddled round cautiously through the puddles and dripping shrubs to the front of the house. To my surprise the drive was empty no longer.
But it was not John’s car which stood there, though it was one I knew. Large cars with handsome chauffeurs were even then in those days a common enough sight in Edinburgh, but the owner-driver was the cynosure of all his or her acquaintances. This small and elegant De Dion two-seater (it appeared elegant to me then) was well known to the inhabitants of Edinburgh. Cora Murray had, indeed, only driven it about the streets for the last three weeks, but they had been weeks full of surprise and terror for many nervous pedestrians and the entire staff of the tramways’ companies. Her efforts had, as Neil said, lent a new fervour to prayers in the churches against murder and sudden death. It was wonderful to find that Cora had negotiated the drive safely, but still more surprising that she should be at Warrielaw at all. Jessica had forbidden her the place, and I could not imagine that Mary would remove the ban. Perhaps, however, like Rhoda, Cora found the younger aunt easier to manage. Meanwhile evidently she had felt no scruples about making her way into the empty house. Possibly Effie was home again, and I ran up the steps and rang the bell once or twice. But there was still no answer and no sign of Cora. The rain had begun again, so I opened the door of Cora’s car and got in. I had no hesitation about treating her informally. Since her call in Moray Place we had met more than once and she was always friendly. I did not care about her; at the age of twenty a girl does not usually have much use for a nerve-ridden woman of thirty. But I admired her exquisite frocks and careful make-up, her charming house and indiscreet conversation, from a distance. And, as I thought of Cora, in the stuffy, scented atmosphere of her beautifully-lined car, I succumbed to a bad habit of my youth. For the first half of my life I was always able to fall into a comfortable doze if I sat unoccupied for more than five minutes. John disapproved of the practice, which was indeed exercised frequently in his Presbyterian place of worship, but I could not cure myself. To-day my head nodded almost at once and I fell asleep.
The hand of the clock had moved to a quarter past four before I awoke with a start, at an inrush of fresh air. Cora herself was opening the door of the car.
“Oh, I’m sorry I startled you,” I cried.
It is alarming to find any human being unexpectedly not two inches from you, but the queer truth flashed across me vaguely that Cora’s face looked white and her hands were trembling before she realised my presence. Then the colour rushed into her cheeks and her queer light eyes flamed in anger.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
I stammered out my story as I got out of the car, almost alarmed by the fury in her voice.
“How long have you been here?”
“In your car? Oh, about a quarter of an hour. What is the matter?”
“Oh, nothing,” snapped Cora. “Only I’m dreadfully worried at home and I’ve come down here on a fool’s errand. I had to sack my wretched little under-housemaid to-day and send her packing, and my own woman insisted on having the Easter week-end at home just because I’m taking her to Cannes next week to please my tiresome doctor. You know what servants are! They all seemed about to give notice at the prospect of managing the house for a week short-handed, the lazy, incompetent fools! I knew Annie had just left or was just leaving Warrielaw, and I also knew, I may add, that both aunts were out to-day, or I wouldn’t have dared to put my nose into what was my mother’s own home, my own home once, Betty! I felt it a chance, too, to have a look round!”
Cora’s manner was thawing rapidly, as it always did on the subject of her grievances.
“But it’s all gone wrong. First my beastly car stuck at the front lodge and I was hours getting it to start. And I’ve looked everywhere for the maids and there isn’t a sign of them. And the whole house is unlocked and open as far as I can see!”
“Effie and Annie are at Carglin with a married niece, I believe. Miss Warrielaw said they were going there when I saw her yesterday.”
“I might go there and get hold of her,” said Cora. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me here, Betty! I’ve been ordered off the place, as you know, and Charles would have a fit if he heard I’d been down like this. He doesn’t understand that I have a feeling about it I can never have about anywhere else in the world!”
Cora was smiling quite amiably by now though her face was still white and her hands shaking. It was hard for me to imagine, I reflected, the intensity of the passion which the Scots feel for their own homes and possessions. Surely Cora had enough in her life, with her wealthy and devoted husband and her freedom from every sort of financial or social anxiety! In her exquisite red coat and frock with its rich astrakhan trimmings, and her little Paris hat of red velvet, she looked wholly out of keeping with the desolate and decaying house behind her.
“Well I must go! Remember to keep quiet, my dear!” Cora smiled at me ingratiatingly as she got into her car, but suddenly her face changed. From her arm slipped a red suede bag with an enamel clasp and monogram and a tiny lock after the fashion of those less trustful days. It fell at my feet on the gravel and as I picked it up I was reminded unpleasantly of Neil’s phrase for his cousin—a panther in a Paris frock. Her eyes were blazing with passion and she snatched it from me as if I were a confirmed pickpocket.
“It’s all right! It hasn’t burst open!” I said.
I was surprised it had not, for the sides were distended.
“Of course not—it’s locked!” she said.
“Take care,” I said, as she put it down on a cream-coloured rug by her side. “It’s damp and it’s staining your rug with the pink dye.”
