The Brightener. Williamson Charles Norris
it of weakness or lack of backbone because it doesn't struggle nobly to go on ticking and striking. It is not sternly commanded to wind itself. Unless somebody takes that trouble off its hands, it stays stopped. Whereas, if a girl or a young, able-bodied woman runs down (that is, comes suddenly to the end of everything, including resources), she mayn't give up ticking for a single second. She must wind herself, and this is really quite as difficult for her to do as for a clock, unless she is abnormally instructed and accomplished.
I am neither. The principal things I know how to do are, to look pretty, and be nice to people, so that when they are with me they feel purry and pleasant. With this stock-in-trade I had a perfectly gorgeous time in life, until – Fate stuck a finger into my mechanism and upset the working of my pendulum.
I ought to have realized that the gorgeousness would some time come to a bad and sudden end. But I was trained to put off what wasn't delightful to do or think of to-day, until to-morrow; because to-morrow could take care of itself and droves of shorn lambs as well.
Grandmother and I had been pals since I was five, when my father (her son) and my mother quietly died of diphtheria, and left me – her namesake – to her. We lived at adorable Courtenaye Abbey on the Devonshire Coast, where furniture, portraits, silver, and china fit for a museum were common, every-day objects to my childish eyes. None of these things could be sold – or the Abbey – for they were all heirlooms (of our branch of the Courtenayes, not the Americanized ex-cowboy's insignificant branch, be it understood!). But the place could be let, with everything in it; and when Mr. Carstairs was first engaged to unravel Grandmother's financial tangles, he implored her permission to find a tenant. That was before the war, when I was seventeen; and Grandmother refused.
"What," she cried (I was in the room, all ears), "would you have me advertise the fact that we're reduced to beggary, just as the time has come to present Elizabeth? I'll do nothing of the kind. You must stave off the smash. That's your business. Then Elizabeth will marry a title with money, or an American millionaire or someone, and prevent it from ever coming."
This thrilled me, and I felt like a Joan of Arc out to save her family, not by capturing a foe, but a husband.
Mr. Carstairs did stave off the smash, Heaven or its opposite alone knows how, and Grandmother spent about half a future millionaire husband's possible income in taking a town house, with a train of servants; renting a Rolls-Royce, and buying for us both the most divine clothes imaginable. I was long and leggy, and thin as a young colt; but my face was all right, because it was a replica of Grandmother's at seventeen. My eyes and dimples were said to be Something to Dream About, even then (I often dreamed of them myself, after much flattery at balls!), and already my yellow-brown braids measured off at a yard and a half. Besides, I had Grandmother's Early Manner (as one says of an artist: and really she was one), so, naturally, I received proposals: lots of proposals. But – they were the wrong lots!
All the good-looking young men who wanted to marry me had never a penny to do it on. All the rich ones were so old and appalling that even Grandmother hadn't the heart to order me to the altar. So there it was! Then Jim Courtenaye came over from America, where, after an adventurous life (or worse), he'd made pots of money by hook or by crook, probably the latter. He stirred up, from the mud of the past, a trumpery baronetcy bestowed by stodgy King George the Third upon an ancestor in that younger, less important branch of the Courtenayes. Also did he strive expensively to prove a right to Courtenaye Abbey as well, though not one of his Courtenayes had ever put a nose inside it and I was the next heir, after Grandmother. He didn't fight (he kindly explained to Mr. Carstairs) to snatch the property out of our mouths. If he got it, we might go on living there till the end of our days. All he wanted was to own the place, and have the right to keep it up decently, as we'd never been able to do.
Well, he had to be satisfied with his title and without the Abbey; which was luck for us. But there our luck ended. Not only did the war break out before I had a single proposal worth accepting, but an awful thing happened at the Abbey.
Grandmother had to keep on the rented town house, for patriotic motives, no matter what the expense, because she had turned it into an ouvroir for the making of hospital supplies. She directed the work herself, and I and Shelagh Leigh (Shelagh was just out of the schoolroom then) and lots of other girls slaved seven hours a day. Suddenly, just when we'd had a big "hurry order" for pneumonia jackets, there was a shortage of material. But Grandmother wasn't a woman to be conquered by shortages! She remembered a hundred yards of bargain stuff she'd bought to be used for new dust-sheets at the Abbey; and as all the servants but two were discharged when we left for town, the sheets had never been made up.
She could not be spared for a day, but I could. By this time I was nineteen, and felt fifty in wisdom, as all girls do, since the war. Grandmother was old-fashioned in some ways, but new-fashioned in others, so she ordered me off to Courtenaye Abbey by myself to unlock the room where the bundle had been put. Train service was not good, and I would have to stay the night; but she wired to old Barlow and his wife – once lodge-keepers, now trusted guardians of the house. She told Mrs. Barlow (a pretty old Devonshire Thing, like peaches and cream, called by me "Barley") to get my old room ready; and Barlow was to meet me at the train. At the last moment, however, Shelagh Leigh decided to go with me; and if we had guessed it, this was to turn out one of the most important decisions of her life. Barlow met us, of course; and how he had changed since last I'd seen his comfortable face! I expected him to be charmed with the sight of me, if not of Shelagh, for I was always a favourite with Barl and Barley; but the poor man was absent-minded and queer. When a stuffy station-cab from Courtenaye Coombe had rattled us to the shut-up Abbey, I went at once to the housekeeper's room and had a heart-to-heart talk with the Barlows. It seemed that the police had been to the house and "run all through it," because of reports that lights had flashed from the upper windows out to sea at night – "signals to submarines!"
Nothing suspicious was found, however, and the police made it clear that they considered the Barlows themselves above reproach. Good people, they were, with twin nephews from Australia fighting in the war! Indeed, an inspector had actually apologized for the visit, saying that the police had pooh-poohed the reports at first. They had paid no attention until "the story was all over the village"; and there are not enough miles between Courtenaye Abbey and Plymouth Dockyard for even the rankest rumours to be disregarded long.
Barley was convinced that one of our ghosts had been waked up by the war – the ghost of a young girl burned to death, who now and then rushes like a column of fire through the front rooms of the second floor in the west wing; but the old pet hoped I wouldn't let this idea of hers keep me awake. The ghost of a nice English young lady was preferable in her opinion to a German spy in the flesh! I agreed, but I was not keen on seeing either. My nerves had been jumpy since the last air-raid over London, consequently I lay awake hour after hour, though Shelagh was in Grandmother's room adjoining mine, with the door ajar between.
When I did sleep, I must have slept heavily. I dreamed that I was a prisoner on a German submarine, and that signals from Courtenaye Abbey flashed straight into my face. They flashed so brightly that they set me on fire; and with the knowledge that, if I couldn't escape at once, I should become a Family Ghost, I wrenched myself awake with a start.
Yes, I was awake; though what I saw was so astonishing that I thought it must be another nightmare. There really was a strong light pouring into my eyes. What it came from I don't know to this day, but probably an electric torch. Anyhow, the ray was so powerful that, though directed upon my face, it faintly lit another face close to mine, as I suddenly sat up in bed.
Instantly that face drew back, and then – as if on a second thought, after a surprise – out went the light. By contrast, the darkness was black as a bath of ink, though I'd pulled back the curtains before going to bed, and the sky was sequined with stars. But on my retina was photographed a pale, illumined circle with a face looking out of it – looking straight at me. You know how quickly these light-pictures begin to fade, but, before this dimmed I had time to verify my first waking impression.
The face was a woman's face – beautiful and hideous at the same time, like Medusa. It was young, yet old. It had deep-set, long eyes that slanted slightly up to the corners. It was thin and hollow-cheeked, with a pointed chin cleft in the