From Out the Vast Deep: Occult & Supernatural Thriller. Marie Belloc Lowndes
ingenuous face.
“Yes, that’s true. We became great friends”—a note of emotion broke into the steady, well-modulated voice—“but our friendship was not an old friendship, Miss Farrow. I only knew Milly—well, I suppose I knew her about ten weeks in all.”
“Ten weeks in all?” This time Blanche Farrow could not keep the surprise she felt out of her voice. “What an extraordinary mistake for me to have made! I thought you had been life-long friends.”
Helen shook her head. “What happened was this. A friend of mine—I mean a really old friend—had a bad illness, and I took her down to Redsands—you may know it, a delightful little village not far from Walmer. I took a house there, and Mr. and Mrs. Varick had the house next door. We made friends, I mean Mr. Varick and myself, over the garden wall, and he asked me if I would mind coming in some day and seeing his wife. I had a great deal of idle time on my hands, so very soon I spent even more time with the Varicks than I did with my friend, and she—I mean poor Milly—became very, very fond of me.”
There was a pause. And then the younger woman went on: “And if we knew each other for such a short time, as one measures time, I on my side soon got very fond of Milly. Though she was a good deal over thirty”—again the listener felt a thrill of unreasoning surprise—“there was something very simple and young about poor Milly.”
The speaker stopped, and Blanche, leaning forward, exclaimed: “I am deeply interested in what you tell me, Miss Brabazon! I have never liked to say much to Lionel about his wife; but I have always so wondered what she was really like?”
“She simply adored Mr. Varick,” Helen answered eagerly. “She worshipped him! She was always making plans as to what she and ‘Lionel’ would do when she got better. I myself thought it very wrong that all of them, including Dr. Panton, entered into a kind of conspiracy not to let her know how ill she was.”
“I think that was right,” said Blanche Farrow shortly. “Why disturb her happiness—if indeed she was happy?”
“She was indeed!—very, very happy!” cried Helen. “She had had a miserable life as a girl, and even after she was grown up. When she met Mr. Varick, and they fell in love at first sight, she’d hardly ever seen a man to speak to, excepting some of her father’s tiresome old cronies—”
“Was she pretty?” asked Blanche abruptly.
“Oh, no,”—the other shook her head decidedly. “Not at all pretty—in fact I suppose most people would have called her very plain. Poor Milly was sallow, and, when I knew her, very thin; but I believe she’d never been really strong, never really healthy.” She hesitated, and then said in a low voice: “That made Mr. Varick’s wonderful devotion to her all the more touching.”
Blanche Farrow hardly knew what to say. “Yes, indeed,” she murmured mechanically.
Lionel devoted to a plain, unhealthy woman? Somehow she found it quite impossible to believe that he could ever have been that. And yet there was no doubting the sincerity of the girl’s accents.
“Both Dr. Panton and I used to agree,” Helen went on, “that he didn’t give himself enough air and exercise. I hired a car for part of the time, and used to take him out for a good blow, now and again.”
“And what did Mrs. Varick really die of?” asked Blanche Farrow.
“Pernicious anaemia,” answered Helen promptly. “It’s a curious, little-known disease, from what I can make out. The doctor told me he thought she had had it for a long time—or, at any rate, that she had had it for some years before she married Mr. Varick.”
There was a pause.
“I wonder why they didn’t come and live here?” said Miss Farrow thoughtfully.
“Oh, but she hated Wyndfell Hall! You see, her father’s whole mind had been set on nothing but this house, and making it as perfect as possible. It was in a dreadful state when he inherited it from an old cousin; yet he was offered, even so, an enormous sum for some of the wonderful oak ceilings. But he refused the offer—indignantly, and he set himself to make it what it must have been hundreds of years ago.”
“He hardly succeeded in doing that,” observed Blanche Farrow dryly. “Our ancestors lived less comfortably than we do now, Miss Brabazon. Instead of beautiful old Persian carpets, there must have been rushes on all the floors. And as for the furniture of those days—it was probably all made of plain, hard, unpolished wood.”
“Well, at any rate,”—the girl spoke with a touch of impatience—“Milly hated this place. She told me once she had never known a day’s real happiness till her marriage. That’s what made it seem so infinitely sad that it lasted such a short time.”
“I suppose,” said the other slowly, “that they were married altogether about seven months?”
“I fancy rather longer than that. She was quite well, or so she thought, when she married. They travelled about for a while on the Continent, and she told me once she enjoyed every minute of it! And then her health began to give way, and they took this house at Redsands. They chose it because Mr. Varick knew something of the doctor there—he didn’t know him very well, but they became very great friends, in fact such friends that poor Milly left him a legacy—I think it was five hundred pounds. Dr. Panton was most awfully good to her, but of course he hadn’t the slightest idea that she was leaving him anything. I never saw a man more surprised than he was when I told him about it the day of her death. Mr. Varick asked me to do so, and he was quite overcome.”
She smiled. Five hundred pounds evidently did not seem very much to Miss Brabazon.
“I suppose she had a good deal of money?”
The late Mrs. Varick’s friend hesitated a moment, then answered at last, “I think she had about twenty thousand pounds—at least I know that that sum was mentioned in the Times list of wills.”
The other was startled—disagreeably startled. She had understood, from something Lionel had said to her, that he now had five thousand a year. “This place must be worth a good deal,” she observed. She told herself that perhaps the late Mrs. Varick had left twenty thousand pounds in money, and that the bulk of her income had come from land.
“Yes, but unfortunately poor Milly couldn’t leave Wyndfell Hall to Mr. Varick. He only has a life interest in it.”
Helen Brabazon spoke in a curiously decided way, as if she were used to business.
Blanche was again very much surprised. She had certainly understood that this wonderful old house and its very valuable contents belonged to Lionel Varick absolutely. “Are you sure of that?” she began—and then she stopped speaking, for her quick ears had detected the sound of an opening and shutting door.
Chapter 4
After a few moments the five men sorted themselves among the ladies. Old Mr. Burnaby and young Donnington went and sat by Bubbles, the gloomy-looking James Tapster also finally sidling uncertainly towards her. Sir Lyon civilly devoted himself to Miss Burnaby; and Lionel Varick came over to where Blanche Farrow was sitting, and said something to her in a low voice.
Thus was Helen Brabazon for the moment left out in the cold. She turned, and opening a prettily bound book which was on a table close to her elbow, began to read it.
Varick looked dubiously at his silent guest. Leaning again towards Miss Farrow he whispered: “I don’t know what one does on such occasions, Blanche. Ought not we to have a round game or something?”
She smiled into his keen, good-looking face. “You are a baby! Or are you only pretending, Lionel? Everyone’s quite happy; why should we do anything?”
“As a matter of fact, both Mr. Burnaby and Miss Burnaby