From Out the Vast Deep: Occult & Supernatural Thriller. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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she, Blanche Farrow, was a child!
The rest of Miss Burnaby’s costume consisted of a high black silk dress, trimmed with splendid point lace.
Miss Burnaby was evidently enjoying herself. She had taken a glass of sherry, was showing no fear of her champagne, and had just helped herself substantially to the delicious sole which was one of the special triumphs of the French chef who had come down for a month to Wyndfell Hall. He and Miss Farrow had discussed to-night’s menu together that morning, and he had spoken with modest enthusiasm of this Sole à la Cardinal. . . .
On the other side of the host sat Helen Brabazon.
Blanche looked at the late Mrs. Varick’s one intimate friend with critical interest. Yes, Miss Brabazon looked Somebody, though a somewhat old-fashioned Somebody, considering that she was still quite a young woman. She had good hair, a good complexion, and clear, honest-looking hazel eyes; but not her kindest friends would have called her pretty. What charm she had depended on her look of perfect health, and her alert, intelligent expression of face. Miss Farrow, who was well read, and, indeed, had a fine taste in literature, told herself suddenly that Miss Brabazon was rather her idea of Jane Austen’s Emma! Her dark-blue velvet dress, though it set off her pretty skin, and the complexion which was one of her best points, yet was absurdly old, for a girl. Doubtless Miss Brabazon’s gown had been designed by the same dressmaker who had made her mother’s presentation dress some thirty years before. Such dressmakers are a quaint survival of the Victorian age, and to them old-fashioned people keep on going from a sense of loyalty, or perhaps because they are honestly ignorant of what strides in beauty and elegance other dressmakers have made in the last quarter of a century.
The hostess’s eye travelled slowly round the table. How ludicrous the contrast between Helen Brabazon and Bubbles Dunster! Yet they were probably very much of an age. Bubbles, who looked such a child, must now be—yes, not far from two-and-twenty.
Miss Farrow checked a sigh. She had been twenty-one herself—but what a charming, distinguished, delightful twenty-one—when she had formed one of a little group round the font of St. Peter’s, Eaton Square. She remembered what an ugly baby she had thought Bubbles, and how she had been anything but pleased when someone present facetiously observed that god-mother and godchild had very much the same type of nose and ears and mouth!
To-night Bubbles was wearing an eccentric, and yet very becoming garment. To the uninitiated it might have appeared fashioned out of an old-fashioned chintz curtain. As a matter of fact, the intricate flower pattern with which it was covered had been copied on a Lyons loom from one of those eighteenth century embroidered waistcoats which are rightly prized by connoisseurs. The dress was cut daringly low, back and front, especially back, and the girl wore no jewels. But through her “bobbed” hair was tucked a brilliant little silk flag, which carried out and emphasized the colouring of the flowers scattered over the pale pink silk of which its wearer’s gown was made.
Bubbles, in that staid and decorous company, looked as if she had wandered in from some gay Venetian masquerade.
She was now sitting between the millionaire, James Tapster, and her own friend, Bill Donnington. When she had heard that she had been placed next Donnington, Bubbles had pouted. “I’d rather have had Sir Lyon,” she exclaimed, “or even the old ’un!”—for so she irreverently designated Helen Brabazon’s uncle, Mr. Burnaby.
But Blanche Farrow had been firm. Sir Lyon must of course be on her own right hand, Mr. Burnaby on her left. It is always difficult to arrange a party of four ladies and five men. She had suggested more than one other pleasant woman to make up the party to ten, but Varick had had some objection to each—the objection usually taking the line that the person proposed would not “get on” with the Burnabys.
Blanche again wondered why their host had been so determined to have Helen Brabazon at his first house-party, if her coming meant the inclusion of her tiresome uncle and aunt? And then she felt a little ashamed of herself. One of the best points about Lionel Varick was his sense of gratitude to anyone who had done him a good turn. Gratitude had been the foundation of their own now many-year-long friendship.
The food was so very good, there was so much of it, and doubtless those who had journeyed down to Wyndfell Hall to-night were all so hungry, that there was rather less talk going on round the table than might have been expected. But now and again the hostess caught a fleeting interchange of words. She heard, for instance, old Miss Burnaby informing young Donnington that she had been a good deal on the Continent as a young woman, and had actually spent a year in Austria a matter of forty years ago.
As the meal went on, Miss Farrow gradually became aware that Bubbles provided what life and soul there was in the dull party. But for Bubbles, but for her infectious high spirits and vitality, how very heavy and stupid the meal they were now ending would have been! She asked herself, for perhaps the twentieth time in the last three-quarters of an hour, why her friend had brought together such a curious and ill-assorted set of people.
At last she looked across at Miss Burnaby, and gradually everyone got up.
Varick was at the door in a moment, holding it open, and, as they filed by him, managing to say a word to each of the four ladies. “Bravo, Bubbles!” Blanche heard him whisper. “You’re earning your Christmas present right royally!” and the girl’s eyes flashed up into her host’s with a mischievous, not over-friendly glance. Miss Farrow was aware that Bubbles did not much care for Lionel Varick. She rather wondered why. But she was far too shrewd not to know that there’s no accounting either for likings or dislikings where a man and a woman are concerned.
As she shepherded her little party across the staircase lobby, she managed to mutter into her niece’s ear: “I want you to take on Miss Burnaby for me, Bubbles—I’m anxious to make friends with Helen Brabazon.”
There are times when what one must call for want of a better term the social rites of existence interfere most unwarrantably with the elemental happenings of life. But on this first evening at Wyndfell Hall the coming of coffee and of liqueurs proved a welcome diversion. Miss Burnaby smiled a pleased smile as she sipped the Benedictine which a footman had poured into a tall green-and-gold Bohemian liqueur-glass for her. She, at any rate, was enjoying her visit. And so, Blanche Farrow decided, was the old lady’s niece, for “How beautiful and perfect everything is!” exclaimed the girl; and indeed the room in which they now found themselves was singularly charming.
But somehow Miss Farrow felt that the speaker was not alluding so much to the room, as to the way everything was being done, and her heart warmed to the girl, for she was really anxious that Lionel’s first party should be a success.
When they had settled themselves in the lovely, delicately austere-looking white parlour, as it was called, which again suggested to Blanche Farrow the atmosphere of Jane Austen’s “Emma,” Bubbles dutifully sat herself down by Miss Burnaby. Soon she was talking to that lady in a way which at once fascinated and rather frightened her listener. Bubbles had a very pretty manner to old people. It was caressing, deferential, half-humorously protecting. She liked to shock and soothe them by turns; and they generally yielded themselves gladly, after a little struggle, both to the shocking and to the soothing.
Miss Farrow and Helen Brabazon sat down at the further end of the delightful, gladsome-looking room. It was hung with a delicate, faded Chinese paper; and against the walls stood a few pieces of fine white lacquer furniture. The chairs were painted—some French, some Heppelwhite. Over the low mantelpiece was framed a long, narrow piece of exquisite embroidery.
“I suppose you have often stayed here?” began Miss Farrow civilly.
Helen Brabazon looked at her, surprised. “I’ve never been here before!” she exclaimed. “How could I have been? I’ve only known Mr. Varick for, let me see,”—she hesitated—“a very little over a year.”
“But you were a great friend of his wife’s—at least so I understood?”
Blanche concealed, successfully, her very real astonishment. She had certainly been told by Lionel that Miss Brabazon and “poor Milly” had been intimate friends; that this fact was, indeed,