Читать книгу The Lonely Church - Fergus Hume - Страница 8

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Eric said nothing to Hal about the strange speech which Miss Bellona had made him in the porch: but he thought a great deal about it. Why had she warned him? How did she come to know his name. The recognition of Mother Mandarin had been explained, but how to account for Miss Bellona’s knowledge? He questioned Ferris.

“Have you a photograph of mine?” he asked.

“No. You never would give me one,” replied Ferris in an injured tone. “I do call it a—”

“Did you tell Miss Bellona that I was coming to Moncaster?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“Did you describe my looks to her?”

“I did not. She knows nothing about you or that I have such a friend as yourself. Of course she will know by this time, as I wrote asking Mrs. Bellona if I could bring you to the party.”

“Could she have seen the letter before we went to the service?”

“No, I didn’t post it till I came out.”

“H’m!” said Baker reflectively. “I wonder how she knew. No, don’t bother, Hal, there’s a good chap I’ve nothing to tell you,” he hesitated then continued. “But I’m anxious to meet your beauty.”

“Yours you mean—your Juliet,” said Ferris, and the conversation ended for the time being.

Eric was extremely puzzled, to account for Miss Bellona’s knowledge of his appearance, and still more perplexed that she should make so strange a speech to him. He had never been in Moncaster before, and saw no reason why he should leave it. Was he in danger? and if so from what quarter would it come? He determined to ask Miss Bellona when he met her at the party. In any case he was resolved to stand his ground. Baker was not the man to be daunted by shadows, or by any real danger for the matter of that.

Hal Ferris proved to be an excellent host. He gave Eric good dinners, and made him comfortable in every way. Also he took him to the Club, where Baker was introduced to several old fogies, who asked him if he was in the army and took no further interest in him when they found he wasn’t. Also there were casual meetings on the street, and it was on one of these occasions that Hal presented his friend to a gigantic fresh-coloured lady, who could have made two of the delicate little man. This was Miss Matty Dame, the beloved of the little musician. She was a jolly, bouncing, hail-fellow sort of girl, with a hearty voice, and a free manner. When they left her, Eric could not help expressing his surprise at Hal’s choice.

“You don’t mean to say you’ll marry her,” he said.

“Why not. She is a lady, and likes me.”

“But she is so big and you—”

Hal stood on his tip-toes. “I’m not so very small,” he expostulated.

“Too small for her,” retorted Eric, with a shrug. “But I suppose it’s Nature, that little men should marry big women. She’ll be master.”

“Oh dear me no. She has a most gentle nature.”

“What! with those grenadier looks, and that stentorian voice?”

“Eric! She is the sweetest flower that blows.”

“Of the peony species I grant you,” bantered Baker. Then seeing that Ferris, who was a touchy little man, seemed offended, he apologised, “I beg pardon, old man, but the long and the short of it—eh?”

“We can’t all be Miss Bellona’s,” snapped Ferris.

“No, by Jove. She’s the beauty of the world.”

“Eric if you sing in the street—I’ll be taken for one of your pupils. Never mind my pocket, Don Juan, you shall marry your Boadicea, and I’ll be best man.”

Hal looked apprehensively at his handsome friend. “Don’t cut me out,” he said plaintively.

“I might,” said Eric wickedly, “I like peonies.”

But Ferris really seemed wounded by this aimless chatter, so Baker held his peace. He was fond of the little Dresden-china man, and knew how sensitive was his nature. He therefore told Hal that his heart was wrapped up in Miss Bellona, that he didn’t care for the full-blown tulip, and that he would praise Ferris to his inamorata so that she might be disposed to accept his hand. “Not that she needs much pressing,” said Eric smiling.

At this moment they were walking along the embankment, which was the fashionable promenade of Moncaster. Here the river ran between stone walls, and was increased in volume thereby. A three-arched bridge was thrown across to the other side, whereon was built the more modern portion of the city. The embankment was extremely handsome, and along it ran three lines of lime and sycamore trees, under the boughs of which Moncaster lovers whispered soft nothings. At present the trees were almost leafless, but the thin line of green running along the branches hinted at spring. Few people were on the promenade as the day was chilly; but suddenly Ferris uttered an exclamation. “There’s Merston,” he said.

“Where?” asked Eric, curious to see the man whom Pansey loved. At least, from the hint given by Tyler, he presumed that she loved him or he loved her.

“The chap getting out of the boat.”

“Oh!” said Baker, craning over the wall, “can you get to Old Dexleigh by the river?”

“I suppose you can, as it flows past the ruined village.”

Ferris nodded.

“It’s only seven miles by river,” he explained.

“And ten by road,” mused Eric, storing this fact in his memory, for he did not know but what it might prove useful.

“People are fond of picnicing at Old Dexleigh in summer,” went on Hal. “The church makes a jolly place to eat one’s luncheon in. Here comes Merston. Hullo, old chap!

The approaching man was not very tall, but strongly and broadly built. His face was clean shaven, and his hair red. He had a lowering expression, and looked a truculent bull-dog of the true British breed. Eric could fancy that such a scowling brute—as he looked—could well hold his own against Mr. Tyler. All the same he rather pitied Pansey for having such a lover. The man was too close a copy of her respectable father. But perhaps she liked being beaten.

“Day, Ferris,” jerked out Merston, who was sparing of words and courtesy, “goin’ on th’ river?”

“No. Have you been to Old Dexleigh?”

Merston scowled. “What the deuce has that to do with you?” he asked, then seeing from the astonished expression on Hal’s face that he had made the remark in all innocence, he apologised. “Beg pardon! but I’ve got a beastly headache from rowing too long. I was at Hornby Mill, eight miles up,” and he stared at Baker.

“My friend, Mr. Baker,” said Ferris, “Mr. Merston!”

“Glad to meet you,” growled the red-headed man. “Stayin’ here?”

“For a time. It’s a pretty place.”

“Dull hole. The country round about’s beastly.”

“I can’t agree with you,” said Eric dryly. “I walked here, and thought the scenery charming.”

“Walked here!” echoed Mr. Merston, and then a delighted expression overspread his vacuous features.

“Gad, sir,” said he, “you’re the man who punched Tyler.”

“I had that honour. How’s his eye?”

Merston roared, and looked admiringly at Eric’s inches. “By Jove,” he said with genuine pleasure, “I should have liked to see you pitch into the brute. He can fight too.”

“Got no science, Mr. Merston.”

“And you have, I should say from the way you pasted him.”

Baker laughed. “I’m used to dealing with that sort of animal,” he replied lightly. “You see I’m an engineer, and in South America and other parts, one requires to use one’s fists at times. Besides my interference was really justifiable. Tyler was beating his daughter.”

Merston scowled again, and clenched a large fist. “I’d hammer him myself if I saw that,” he said between his teeth, “but he’d better take care. She’s got gipsy blood in her, and is just the sort of girl to stick a knife into him.”

“Someone told me you were engaged to marry her,” said Hal suddenly.

The man turned on him savagely. “It’s a lie. Men of my position don’t marry gipsy wenches.”

“Well, if you don’t marry her, your rival will.”

“My rival!” The blood rushed to Merston’s face, and he seemed to swell with fury, “Who the” adjective, “is my rival?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Ferris smoothly; “only I did hear another chap was hanging round after Pansey.”

Merston was about to burst forth with a volley of words unpublishable, but with a mighty effort he restrained himself, and turning abruptly on his heel, walked away. Ferris laughed.

“I gave him his gruel that time,” said Hal maliciously.

“But I say,” said Eric, as they resumed their walk, “is there really another chap after the girl?”

“Yes. I heard that Julian Harding—?”

“What, the man who is engaged to that angel?”

“The identical person.” Ferris paused while Eric expressed his wrath at Mr. Harding’s taste. “You see he doesn’t love her overmuch, nor does she care much for him.”

“Then why are they engaged?”

“It’s a family arrangement between old Harding and Mrs. Bellona. I think Julian’s a scamp myself. He’s hand and glove with Merston, who is no great shakes.”

“Then Merston must know that Harding is his rival.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Harding is as clever as Merston is stupid. If he likes Pansey, he can keep it dark—so can she. It’s my opinion that she cares for neither of them, but she gets all she can out of them. She’s a straight girl too.”

“That conduct doesn’t sound very straight.”

“Oh, she’s clever enough to make hay while the sun shines. I heard that she’s really sweet on a gipsy chap, her cousin on the mother’s side. A fellow called Jerry Lovel—”

“That’s a gipsy name sure enough.”

“I believe the late Mrs. Tyler was a Romany. However Jerry and Pansey are as thick as thieves—”

“And perhaps are thieves.”

“If occasion serves. However, I said before and I say again, the girl is quite straight and only plays Harding off against Merston, but it’s Jerry she cottons to all the time.”

“How the deuce do you know all this gossip?” asked Baker amused.

“Mother Mandarin told me most of it,” said Ferris with a side-look at his friend.

“That mysterious old woman. Humph! Seems to me, Hal, that she’s trying to make bad blood with her cackle.” Eric shook his head. “I do not understand what it’s all about. There’s some mystery connected with these matters, and I’m mixed up in it.”

“In what way?”

“I can’t say, but—” Eric shook his head again. “I’ll give you my opinion after Mrs. Bellona’s garden party.”

No more was said at the moment as Ferris was now engaged in the serious occupation of pricing a fish. But after dinner on that same night the conversation was resumed. The curtains were drawn, the fire was burning briskly, and the two men had drawn in their chairs. On a small table between them was coffee and a box of cigarettes. These were for Ferris, as Eric preferred his beloved pipe. The room looked cosy and comfortable, and as the lamp was shaded with a pink silk shade a red glow was spread throughout the apartment. Eric would have been happy and comfortable had he not been so perplexed. But these continual mysteries of which he had no knowledge worried him not a little. He felt like a man who walks in the dark without being able to guard against unknown dangers. Yet Baker was by no means a nervous or apprehensive man.

“You’re not yourself to-night,” said Ferris observing his friend to be unusually silent.

Eric explained so much of his fears as he thought fit, but these did not include the mysterious warning of Miss Bellona. “And I don’t know what to make of it all,” he finished, staring at the fire.

“Is there nothing in your life?” began Ferris meditatively.

“Nothing,” interrupted Eric with a shrug. “I’m not what you call a good young man, but I have never done anything shady. The life pages of my thirty years can be shown to anyone, not too prudish.”

“What about your parents?” asked Hal still pursuing his shadow.

“I know very little about them, and what I do know was told to me by my uncle Wilfred.”

“I didn’t know you had an uncle.”

“It was not necessary to tell you. I talk a lot but I can keep my own council when necessary. Besides my uncle and I have very little in common. He is a port wine gentleman, more like a debauched rake of the Regency than a man of to-day. He brought me up, when my parents died, but I never had much respect for him.”

“Did your parents die young,—I mean when you were young?”

Eric stared hard at the fire and pulled at his pipe. “So far as I am concerned they could not have died much younger. I was a posthumous child. My father died six months before I was born.”

“And your mother?”

“She died in giving birth to me!”

“Then you know nothing about them.”

“Only what my uncle Wilfred told me. He was my mother’s brother.

“Wilfred what?”

“Blundel.—Wilfred Blundel, a small squire of Blundel Hall in Essex.”

“Is he married?”

“No—the old rip. He prefers his bottle to his wife. Finishes a couple every night, and goes to bed sober.”

Hal shivered, being addicted himself to temperance drinks. “What a head he must have.”

“He’s got no brains if that’s what you mean. If it wasn’t for his confessor, Father Prue, he’d have drunk himself into the family vault long ago.”

“Are you his heir?”

“No, he has left what he has—and that’s precious little—to the church. Father Prue saw to that. When he dies there’s an end to the Blundels of Wargrove, and not much loss either. My mother was the best of them, rest her soul.”

“Well,” said Ferris reflectively, “there’s not much mystery about this. Your uncle brought you up?”

“He permitted me to stop at the Hall, if you call that being brought up. My earliest recollection is of a walled garden with peach and nectarine trees, and a fat woman who was my nurse. She was replaced by a thin-lipped shrew whom I hated. I believe she was of French extraction, and I dreaded her shrill voice. How that Hortense did tyrannize over me, poor little devil. I had a miserable childhood.”

“Then you went to school?”

Eric nodded. “To Rugby. I liked that, and got on very well, especially in mathematics and athletics. I spent my holidays with various chums, and rarely went back to the hall. When I did, old Blundel was always the same frowning, purple-faced brute. He was desperately afraid of Father Prue though,” finished Eric with a grin.”

“And when you left school?”

“You are determined to have my whole history, Hal,” said the young man good-naturedly. “Well I studied for my profession, and was sent out to a fever swamp in Africa with a survey party. I believe my uncle got me that billet. I came back alive, however, and then he sent me to South America, into the wilds where I was nearly killed. After that I concluded that his choice of localities was too dangerous, so I went on my own. I’ve been all over the world as you know, and on the whole I have done pretty well. I hope to retire at the age of forty and marry.”

“Judith?”

“If she’ll have me, and Harding doesn’t carry off the prize.”

Ferris was silent for a few moments.

“I say, Eric,” he asked after some reflection, “was your uncle glad to see you back?”

“I don’t think he was ever glad to see me in his life. But Father Prue certainly was not. Why do you ask?”

“It strikes me,” said Ferris slowly, “that you were sent to those places to be got rid of.”

Baker stared. “To be got rid of,” he repeated, “why do you say that?”

“Well, both the places you were sent to were dangerous, and it seems that neither the priest nor your uncle were pleased to see you back.”

“They had small love for me,” said Eric shrugging. “But why should they wish me harm? I inherited three hundred a year from my father so that was not enough to tempt either into a crime. Besides Father Prue’s a good sort although he’s got a hard nature. No, Hal, I don’t think your surmise is a good one.”

“Well,” said Ferris with a yawn, “it’s only a fancy. What was your father?”

“Oh, a wanderer without a profession. He was always travelling in South America, which seemed to be his favourite locality from what my uncle told me. I inherit his gipsy blood.”

“Is that all you know of your parents?”

“Everything! A very dull history isn’t it.”

“You are a Romanist, ain’t you?

“Yes! Why do you ask?”

“Well, Mrs. Bellona is a Romanist also!”

“There’s nothing extraordinary about that.”

“No, I don’t say that there is. But I was thinking that since you love Miss Bellona, it’s a pity she doesn’t follow the religion of her mother. She belongs to the Anglican communion.”

“I thought so when I saw her in the cathedral. It’s a pity, but I daresay religion will be no obstacle. Lots of Romanists marry Protestants. But of course all this is moonshine. I may not really be in love, as I fancy myself, and on the face of this, my expressing myself about a woman I know so little of in this love-lorn way is bosh. Besides, as she is engaged to Harding, there will be no chance for me.”

“Unless Harding marries that gipsy girl.”

“Merston will stop that. He is desperately in love with Pansey. I can see that. But I expect she’ll keep to her own set, and become the wife of Jerry Lovel.”

“Well,” said Ferris, “from all you have told me there doesn’t seem to be anything in your life likely to mix you up in any mystery.”

“I am beginning to be of that opinion myself,” said Eric. “After all, I know how Mother Mandarin came to speak my name. You told her about me and she recognised me. But Miss Bellona—” he shook his head.

“Ah, you think there’s a mystery about her,” said Hal. “Well, I have kept back a piece of news to the last. Have you seen your uncle?”

“No. He doesn’t want me.”

“Have you heard from him?”

“Not a line. Why do you ask?”

“Well,” said Hal, slowly, “Mrs. Bellona is a Romanist.”

“You said that before.”

“Quite so, but what I did not say is that her confessor is Father Prue, the priest you talk about.”