Chapter Seven
Interim – “Flu.”
The Carstairs abode was a large, dull, ugly villa in a large, dull, ugly suburb – one of those depressing suburbs that is neither town nor country but has the disadvantages of both and the advantages of neither. But it was cheerfulness itself compared with the locality through which Melian’s cab was now slowly jogging. The squalor of the greasy streets; the dank, thick atmosphere; the hoarse, scarcely human yells and the incessant rumble and clatter attendant on that sort of locality are too well known to need any describing.
Leaning back in the mouldy vehicle, she set her mind to go over the events of the last few hours. Had she been ill advised, hasty – she asked herself? Their behaviour at the very last had seemed to show they were not such ill-meaning people. Yet, as she looked back she knew that relations between them had been getting more and more strained. For some reason or other Mrs Carstairs had been growing more and more short in her manner towards her, and now she knew that reason. The old woman had had her suspicions all along, but the discovery of the climax brought things to a head. But the whole thing was ludicrous, and all about a little booby like that – Melian’s lip curled as she thus rather unjustly characterised the distant cause of all the bother.
The drive was long and the cab slow. She had time to let her thoughts go further back from her present troubles – the future was not a welcome subject, looked at sitting alone there in that mouldy box on wheels, and in the dark at that. Her earlier life had been a sufficiently happy one. She had seen a great deal of the world and developed her artistic instincts. Then had come losses; and speculations, instead of mending things, made them worse. Her father was lacking in the business capacity, while her other parent was under the impression that one pound sterling was endowed with the purchasing power of three, and acted consistently upon that conviction. So means dwindled till there was very little left.
Things had reached this point when one day her father started off on a railway journey to a place some hours distant. He was mysterious as to the object of it, but declared that they would none of them be the worse if it failed, whereas if it succeeded, they would be considerably the better. He seemed in a hopeful mood, and in fairly good spirits, and when at the big, dingy terminus, where she was seeing him off, he handed her a couple of accident insurance tickets, which he had just purchased; he seemed fairly bubbling over with fun.
“See these?” he had said. “All right. They cost a shilling apiece, and represent 1,000 pounds apiece if I’m – er – totally smashed up. So, you see, I’m more valuable to you dead than alive. I used to think it was the other way about. But take care of them, I’ve signed them, and all, so it’d be quite safe. Put them away carefully. Two thousand pounds, remember.”
“I’ve a great mind to tear them across and throw them on to the line,” the girl had answered, looking at him with filling eyes and quivering lips. But he laughed gaily.
“Don’t do that, little one. They cover minor injuries too, only those mean less dibs. You know. So much a leg, so much an arm, so much a finger – and so on. It’s a rum world – and you never can tell. So stick to those tickets till I come back. Now, good-bye, my darling little one. Here, let go – the train’s moving, by George!”
She was very nearly tightening her hold, so that it would be physically impossible for him to free himself until the train had gone, but she did not. With eyes blinded with tears she waved to him from the platform as he leaned half out of the window watching to see the last of her, and he was gone. Yet he would be back the day after to-morrow at the latest. She had often seen him off on such journeys before.
“I am a little fool,” she said to herself as she walked away.
About two hours later, when in the middle of its longest non-stop run, Marston Seward fell from the train.
There were headlines in the evening paper posters, but somehow or other Melian did not notice these. It was not until the next day, when they opened their morning paper, that the tragedy rose up and hit them between the eyes – name, description, everything, for by this time identification had been easily obtained. Melian hardly knew how she lived through that stunning blow – perhaps because it was a stunning one. But the shock was too much for her mother – the shock only, for there was little if any affection between her and the dead man. Brain fever supervened and she died.
Her illness made an alarming inroad into the scanty resources remaining to them. Hard material necessities had to be met. Hitherto the girl had shrunk with shuddering horror from turning to account those fatal insurance tickets, the price of her father’s blood. She could not claim it. Oh God! the thought of it? But she might have spared herself any qualms on this head. The railway company flatly and uncompromisingly repudiated all liability. The insurance was against accident not suicide. They were in a position to prove, and to prove indisputably that for any one to have fallen from the particular coach of which Seward was an occupant, and that by accident, was a sheer impossibility. The door handles were all in good order; if anything, rather stiff to turn than otherwise. They could prove too, that the said door handles were properly secured at the last station the train had passed through. And worst of all, they were in a position to produce a platform inspector who had passed the pair at the moment of the utterance of those fatal words: “You see, I’m more valuable to you dead than alive. I used to think it was the other way about.” The official had heard the words distinctly, and after the tragedy had himself voluntarily come forward with the information. At the time they had struck him as uttered jokingly, but in the light of the subsequent event they took on a far different aspect. In short, Seward had bungled the whole business. He died as he had lived, and his last act was one of perfectly inexcusable bungle. “More valuable to you dead than alive,” had been his words, and in the result his daughter was left alone in the world, as nearly as possible penniless.
Alone! Yes – for she had no relations, except one, away in India, and for certain reasons the last person on earth to whom she would apply under any circumstances whatever. She had no real friends, only acquaintances who could be of no great service to her, but eventually, thanks to the inherent spirit and pluck which buoyed her up, she managed to find means of supporting herself. And all this had befallen rather more than two years previously to when we first see her, being, more or less politely, shown the door at the Villa Carstairs.
Now, shut up in the mouldy darkness of the slow, Jolting vehicle, it all came back to her again, and she had to hurriedly brush away the warm tears which the recollection – always vivid – had evoked, as the cab drew up with a jolt at her friend’s lodgings. But she met with what she most needed, a cordial welcome. Even the cabman, a rubicund old fellow with a bulbous nose and a rumbling voice, forebore to claim so much as a penny over his legal fare when he caught a full view of her face under the street lamp, and a gratuity of threepence, smilingly tendered, was met by a hearty “Thankee kindly, missie.”
Cumnor Lodge, the Carstairs villa, though dull and heavy outside, within was characterised by a considerable degree of solid comfort. But this narrow hallway and the nondescript combination of smells of sink-cum-cabbage, with a slatternly landlady and a still more slatternly servant, waiting to give a hand upstairs with the luggage as well as to satisfy a natural curiosity as to what the visitor would be like, struck her with a very real chill. Would it be her lot to inhabit such a place, was the thought that instinctively shot through her mind? But the impression was partly neutralised when she found herself within her friend’s tiny but snug sitting-room, with its bright fire, and hissing kettle, and tea and its appurtenances all so dear to the feminine eye. Violet Clinock was a bright, pleasing type of girl, with dark hair, and honest grey eyes, not exactly pretty, but rather near being so. But with all her natural cheerfulness, there was intertwined an impression of one who was perfectly well able to take care of herself. In fact she rather prided herself upon this, and upon being an independent bachelor girl who could always make her own way. She was a country parson’s daughter – one of many – under which circumstances she flattered herself she had done the right thing in striking out on her own.
“This shop’s rather dingy in the daytime, dear,” she explained as the two were seated comfortably in the really cosy little room, and the tea and muffins and other things dear to the feminine appetite were in full force. “But I’m not much here in the daytime, and at night, once I get inside it doesn’t matter. The main thing is it’s cheap – very. Not nasty either, for I do every mortal thing for myself. Heaven help me if I left it to anybody else. Well, I’ve been saving up, with an eye to running a typing shop on my own. It isn’t my ambition to remain for ever in a position to take orders from other people, I can tell you. Well, and why did you leave your last crowd? Had a row?”
“Sort of. It takes two to make a row, and there wasn’t much of that on my side,” answered Melian. “I just let the old woman talk, but she didn’t get what she wanted. I got the key of the street instead – so, here I am. By the way,” she added, waxing grave. “I don’t know where I’m going to be. That’s a pair of shoes of another pattern.”
“Oh, with all your high accomplishments,” laughed the other. “Why any one would jump at you.”
“Would they? They’re welcome to skip, then. But even ‘high accomplishments’ are no good without references.”
“Without references? But you can get – Oh, I see. The old cat won’t give you any.”
Melian nodded.
“The beastly old cat!” pronounced Violet. “She ought to be compelled to.”
“Well, she can’t be, and that’s all I’ve got to do with it. So there you are.”
“Let’s see. You’re no good at our job, are you, Melian?” said the other, drumming the tips of her fingers together meditatively.
“Unfortunately I’ve never learned it.”
“That’s a pity.” In her romantic little soul she was beginning to weave a web of destiny for Melian, and the meshes thereof were glittering. A secretarial post in some flourishing office, and if her beautiful friend did not promptly enslave an opulent junior partner, why then it was her own fault. But then, unfortunately, her said “beautiful friend” had never learned typing.
They chatted on, about everything and nothing, and bedtime came.
“I turn in early,” explained Violet, “because I have to turn out early, and get to my job. You’ll have to turn in with me, dear, to-night at any rate. To-morrow, if you want a room to yourself, I dare say Mrs Seals can fix you up. But they’re all rather kennels I’m afraid. I’ve got the pick of the basket.”
“Don’t you worry about me, Violet. It’s something to have some one to come to when you get the key of the street door given you, I can tell you,” answered Melian, seriously. And then they went to bed and talked each other to sleep.
There followed then, sad, disappointing, heart weary days for poor Melian. She answered advertisements in person, and by letter. She went to all sorts of places, in and around London, in course of such answers. Sometimes she was sympathetically received, twice she was insulted, but that was where she found the dominant male had been advertiser under cover of what looked like one of her own sex. But in the genuine cases disappointment awaited – and but that she was free from vanity or self-consciousness she might easily have read the real nature of the verdict – “Far too pretty.”
Oh, the weariness of those daily tramps, and bus and tram journeys, through more or less hideous, drab, depressing streets in the dull, deadly depressing winter murk invariably characteristic of London during the young end of the year! Oh, the weight of it upon the mind, as she realised, instinctively, that it was not a case of try again, but that for some reason or other her case seemed utterly hopeless. She put it to her friend. But the latter, though she shrewdly suspected the reason, shrank from saying so.
Of her, Melian saw little or nothing during the daytime, Violet Clinock was thorough, and stuck to her job, with an eye to material improvement. But in the evening they would foregather, and the daily tale of worn out disappointment would unfold itself, and after the wretched, soul-wearying effort of the day Melian could not but realise the warmth and comfort and companionship which it ended up with; and this in a measure heartened her for the next.
She had taken a small bedroom at the top of the squalid house – a mere attic, but the two girls “chummed” together for the rest of their arrangements. But a fortnight went by, then three weeks, and still with the same result. Melian Seward was just where she was at the time of leaving Cumnor Lodge. There seemed to be no room in the world for her. Her slender savings, in spite of every possible economy, were dwindling. When they had done dwindling – what then?
And then the result of the cold, dank, and often wet, questings around after a means of livelihood, combined with lowness of spirits, and a sorely disturbed mind, came. She was laid low with a bad bout of influenza. The hydra-headed fiend was hard on the ramp, seeking whom he might devour, and finding it too in plenty. And among his countless victims was Melian Mervyn Seward.
And she could not afford to be ill; for is not illness a luxury for the rich?
But through it all her friend tended her with wholehearted and loyal camaraderie. Of course she suggested a doctor.
“A doctor? Heavens, Violet! I can’t afford such luxuries,” Melian burst forth fiercely. “The only thing I can afford is to die – and the sooner the better.” And then she became delirious, and imagined she was standing on the platform of the gloomy, dingy terminus, amid its vibration of hissing, shrieking engines, discussing those hateful, fateful railway insurance tickets with her dead father. But whether she would have a doctor or not, Violet was determined she should, and sent for one accordingly.
He, on arrival, looked grave.
“Has she any relations, Miss Clinock?”
“Oh, good Heavens! You don’t say it means that?” And the business girl was startled for the moment out of her normal take-things-as-they-come attitude.
“No, no, no. But – they ought to know. She’s in a very low state, I’m bound to inform you. There’s something on her mind – something hard and heavy on her mind – and that’s all against her – all against everything.”
“Lord! I wish I knew what to do. But she’s very ‘close.’ Between ourselves, doctor – of course, strictly between ourselves – ” The other nodded. “I believe she has one or two. But she must have quarrelled with them, or they with her, for if ever I got on to the subject she takes me up mighty sharp, I can tell you. And I don’t believe in forcing people’s confidences or prying into their affairs.”
“No, no. Of – course not. Still, do all you can in that direction. You may find opportunities, you know – or make them. Good-evening, I am very busy just now, there’s a record lot of ‘flu’ about, as I dare say you know. I’ll look round in the morning.”
Chapter Eight
Violet’s Discovery
“In the morning,” the doctor had said. What a deal of difference those three words can cover. In this instance Melian had passed a quiet night, thanks to his prescription, but was very down and listless. Violet Clinock had decided to take a day off on purpose to look after her, and with that intent had “expressed” a note down to her place of business to intimate that fact. Now she sat at breakfast, alone, with the morning paper propped up against her coffee pot.
As she read, a name caught her eye. “Seward Mervyn.” She stared. “Seward Mervyn” again. Yes it was. And then running her glance down the paragraph and up again, she saw that it was headed: “Clancehurst – The Heath Hover Mystery.” Thus it ran:
“The remains of the unidentified stranger, who met his death so mysteriously at Heath Hover, the residence of Mr Seward Mervyn, were buried yesterday afternoon in Clancehurst churchyard. No friends or relatives were forthcoming, but Mr Mervyn, unwilling that one who had been a guest of his – though from first to last unknown to himself – should be buried by the parish, generously came forward, and together with Dr Sandys and a few other generous leading townspeople, raised sufficient to cover all expenses, and also attended the funeral. Up till now no light whatever has been thrown upon this strange occurrence which has baffled alike all the researches of medical science and the exhaustive investigations of the police. Inspector Nashby of Clancehurst, together with an official from Scotland Yard are in charge of the case from the latter point of view.”
Violet stared at the paragraph and read it through again. Now it all came back. She had read about it before, but it had not fixed itself upon her memory. Even the name had failed to effect this then for she had not seen Melian for some time, and in the busy life she led, “out of sight out of mind” could not but hold good to a certain extent. But now the name seized her attention at once. “Seward Mervyn?” And she knew that Melian’s second name was Mervyn, Clearly this must be a relation. And the doctor had asked her about Melian’s relations.
She read no more of the paper. Her shrewd, busy little brain was at work. This must be a relation, probably an uncle or a cousin. Clearly her duty was to communicate with him. Clancehurst was only about an hour and a half from London. The day was young – should she go down herself and interview him personally? But against that she did not care to leave her friend alone at this stage. Should she write? Perhaps that would be the best course. But she had better question Melian first as to her relative, while saying nothing about any intention on her part to communicate with him. Having thus decided, she went up to her friend’s room, taking the paper with her.
Melian was awake, but drowsily so. Her blue eyes were wide open, but had a pathetic and lack-lustre look, and her hair, partly loosened, made a tumbled halo of gold against the pillow. Yes, she had slept well – she said – only rather wished she could go on sleeping for ever.
“By the way,” went on Violet, casually, after having talked a little about things in general. “Have you got a relation named Seward Mervyn?”
“Oh yes! He’s my uncle. He’s out in India.”
“Is he? Well have you any other relation of the name?”
“No. Not that I know of. In fact I can’t have – or I should have known it.”
“Well then, this one isn’t out in India at all. He’s in England, and not very far from London at that. In fact, only about an hour and a half by rail, if as much.”
Melian stared, then raised herself on one elbow.
“What on earth are you talking about, Violet?” she said. “I tell you he’s in India.”
“Well, people come back from India sometimes, don’t they?”
“Yes. But I’ve no interest in this one, nor he in me. He has never shown any at any rate. I don’t want him to either. He wasn’t at all nice to my father. He disapproved of his sister marrying him, and, in fact, he disapproved of him entirely. No. I couldn’t bring myself to be civil even if I were to see him.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“No.”
The word jerked out fiercely. Violet Clinock could see that her friend was getting excited, and that was bad.
“Then don’t be in too great a hurry to pass judgment. Life is – I’m not going to say, ‘too short,’ as the silly old chestnut runs, when if anything it’s long enough – but too busy, too hard, to keep grinding away at ancient grievances, even if they are not entirely or partly imaginary. It’s just possible that this relation of yours may have been a bit misunderstood. Anyway give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“Where did you say he is?” said Melian listlessly.
“Clancehurst – or near it, rather,” glancing again at the newspaper. “Heath Hover, they call his place.”
“That sounds rather nice,” murmured the invalid.
“It’s a jolly part of the country I can tell you,” went on Violet, emphatically. Her plot seemed somehow to look hopeful. “I’ve been near that part, and I’d give something for a week or two down there now with my bike, even though it is winter. The glow of the heather, and the green and gold of the waving woods is something to see, I tell you.”
“In winter?” smiled Melian artlessly.
“No, you goose. I’m talking about summer and autumn.”
“Oh!”
“Shall I read you the paragraph?”
“Yes, do.”
The other did so, and then went on to tell her all about the original mystery, which now came back to her memory. Melian listened, and grew more and more interested.
“It’s funny how the thing should have escaped my attention,” she said. “But I didn’t see the papers regularly at the Carstairs’. Sometimes a day or two would go by – or even longer.”
Melian grew no better. Violet could not stay in to look after her every day, for she was entirely dependent upon her work, and were she to lose this, why then they would both be in the same boat. So during the day she was dependent on the slatternly landlady – who though well meaning and kind according to her lights, was yet slatternly, and very vulgar in her ideas. So the girl would lie there by the hour, feeling too weak and listless even to read, with no more cheering a prospect to look out upon than a vista of black chimney stacks and chimney cowls, taking weird shapes against the grey murk of the London sky. And what was there to cheer her? Nothing. Even when she did get well her small savings would have vanished, or dwindled to vanishing point, in the incidental expenses of her illness alone, apart from the liquidation of her medical attendant’s claim. The girl felt very wretched, very despairing, as she lay there day after day in her loneliness. And in the evening when her friend returned and tried to cheer her, the process grew more and more difficult.
“This won’t do,” said the doctor, one morning, coming into Violet’s little sitting-room with a very grave face. “Is there nowhere that Miss Seward could go to for a complete change of air and scene?”
Violet shook her head sadly. She thought of the dwindling purse, and of her friend’s sinking despondency. She thought also of her friend’s pride. And then an idea came to her.
“There is only one thing I can think of, doctor,” she said suddenly, “and even that may bring forth nothing. But if I tell you, it is entirely in confidence you understand.”
“Why that of course,” answered the doctor. He was a youngish man, very hardworking, in a hard-worked and poorly paying practice, and like most members of his profession had more than an ordinary share of intelligent human sympathy. He guessed pretty accurately at one of the causes for worry which kept back his patient upstairs – in fact the main cause – and had been puzzling how to hint, delicately, that so far as he was concerned, that cause need not count.
Then Violet told him of the existence of Melian’s unknown relative and how the girl refused to communicate with him, through some notion of – probably mistaken – pride. At the mention of the name and locality Dr Barnes brightened up at once.
“By George, so that’s her relative!” he said. “I should think I had heard of that case. Why it was a puzzler – baffled all our people most effectually. It isn’t likely to be forgotten either in the profession. Here is a man who dies suddenly and mysteriously, and even our experts can find no definite cause of death. But, there. I’m talking ‘shop.’ Let’s get back to Miss Seward. She ought certainly to make herself known to this relative of hers – he seems a kind sort of man if only by the way he has interested himself in the burial of this unknown stranger. Her uncle too. That’s near enough. Make her write to him. I tell you in all seriousness that she is getting into a very critical state. The only thing for her is a thorough change of air and scene. You know what a hydra-headed beast ‘flu’ is, and its Protean after effects. Well, a splendid type of girl like Miss Seward is far too scarce to spare any effort to save from possible week of that sort. You must make her write to him.”
“But if she won’t? She’s got a pretty strong will of her own, I can tell you.”
The doctor looked at her for a moment in silence. Then he said:
“In that case write yourself.”
Violet clapped her hands.
“Good – and good again?” she cried. “Just the very thing I’d thought of doing, and now I’ve got your authority behind me, why, I will.”
Again the doctor looked at her in silence for a moment. Then he said:
“I will take upon myself to advise you further, Miss Clinock. Do so at once, on your own responsibility. Say nothing to our patient – and so spare her the worry of argument and counter-argument, which would be in the last degree bad for her at this stage. She will thank you for it afterwards, believe me; and then, if the answer should not be satisfactory, which I can hardly think – she will be spared that additional disappointment too. But I tell you, purely professionally, that a change to a quiet country place like Clancehurst, and its pure, splendid air, would be the saving of her. Good-bye. I needn’t look round to-morrow unless you send for me.”
“I’ll do it at once, this very night,” answered Violet briskly. “Good-bye, doctor. You have taken something of a weight off my mind.”
The next day Violet Clinock took “off,” though not without some qualms of trepidation. She had been taking several “off” of late, and her employers were getting a bit short. They were rather “fed up” with her sick friend and the absences entailed, and half hinted that a typing secretary unburdened with sick friends was more in their line, and in fact plenty were there ready and waiting. But Violet was shrewd enough to know her own value, which was really considerably beyond that of salary received. However, she fingered the reins delicately.
That day she devoted to Melian, and the general cheering of her up. The next or the one after that, at the furthest, should bring a reply to her diplomatically, but at the same time very humanly, expressed missive to a perfect stranger.
“You must buck up, Melian,” she would say. “Why, if the worst came to the worst didn’t old Carstairs say that he would be a friend to you if ever you were in want of one?”
“Pooh! He didn’t mean it. It was only something to say – a sort of well rounded figure of speech to get rid of me comfortably,” announced Melian cynically – her illness and growing straits had rendered her cynical. “And even if he did, that old cat of his would soon want to know the reason why, I can tell you.”
“I don’t know. Very likely she has come round, since she’s had time to think things over.”
“Come round! Let her come round – or square. Turning one out like that – at an hour’s notice and all about nothing. They’re a cad crowd anyhow, and as the old chestnut says – you can’t look for anything from a pig but a grunt. But even they may find their own turn come next. Old Carstairs’ job isn’t such a cocksure business, but very much ‘up to-day down to-morrow.’ I’ve heard him say so himself many a time, and give instances of it too.”
“Well dear, it’s a rum world, and to quote another moss-grown chestnut – you never know your luck. Now I’ve got a notion things are going to turn for you, and in a little while you’ll be all on the up grade.”
Melian did not answer. Even the up grade indicated meant a dreary vista of unceasing drudgery, giving the best of her life – her young life – to the totally unappreciated service of other people, and that for a mere living wage. Surely she was cut out for something rather different. But her friend would not allow her to get into a despondent vein. She switched the topic of conversation off to other matters, and her efforts were rewarded, for the invalid forgot the standing woes and grievances, and being of an imaginative temperament, soon found herself talking brightly, and even laughing. Decidedly here was a marked improvement, concluded the watcher, thankfully.
In due course, and exactly to the time Violet had calculated, came a letter. The girl’s eyes brightened as they lit upon the Clancehurst postmark on the large square envelope, and she could only just restrain herself from rushing into her friend’s room, after the early morning postal delivery.
“Melian, here’s a letter for you,” – throwing it down on the bed.
“Letter? What? I’ve no one to get letters from – unless it’s another from that silly little booby, Dicky Carstairs,” she added bitterly. “Only, how should he write to me here? Oh, I suppose it’s only one of the deferred answers to one of my applications. ‘Will write and let you know.’ You know the rigmarole – ‘Mrs Stick-in-the-mud is exceedingly sorry’ – and all that sort of thing. Well, let’s see.”
The while Violet had been on tenter-hooks lest the other should spot the Clancehurst postmark, and perhaps decline, in her absurd pride, to open the letter at all. But Melian tore open the envelope leisurely and listlessly, and then her brows contracted as she took in the contents of the large square sheet – and the excited watcher saw a flush of red suffuse the sweet, delicate face. This was what she read.
“Heath Hover, Near Clancehurst.
“My dear Melian, —
“I am deeply distressed, and more than glad at what I hear about you; the first that you have been so ill, the second that it has given me the opportunity of coming into touch with you at all. I had no idea where you were – I have not been very long back from India, remember – and neither you nor anybody else has ever communicated with me, or given me any information at all with regard to you. But I am only too thankful that now – though late in the day – I have such.