THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ETHEL LINA WHITE. Ethel Lina White
Читать онлайн книгу.
other—what?" demanded Stephen.
"Mrs. Newton."
"Mrs. Newton Warren is a respectable married lady. She will naturally pass the evening in the company of her lawful husband, working out mathematical problems.
"Did you have a good tea?"
Helen did not hear the question, for she suddenly glimpsed an exciting possibility.
"Did Miss Warren have her tea up in the bedroom?" she asked.
"I suppose so," replied Stephen.
"Then she's been up there for ages. I wonder if I might, offer to relieve her?"
"If you do," advised Stephen, "see that she's supplied with cushions. Unless, of course, you're expert in dodging."
"But does she always throw things at people?" asked Helen incredulously.
"It's the only way she knows of expressing her temperament."
"Well, it doesn't matter. I think she sounds so alive for an old woman. I admire that."
"You'll be disillusioned," prophesied Stephen. "She's a vile-tempered old cuss, with horrible manners. When I was presented to Her Majesty, she was eating an orange, and she spat out all the pips—to impress me."
He broke off to laugh at a sudden recollection.
"All the same," he said, "I'd love to have seen her chuck the basin at that pie-faced nurse."
"But, surely, that was an accident. She couldn't have known she was going to hit her."
Mrs. Oates looked up, with streaming eyes, from her task of peeling onions.
"Oh, no, miss," she said. "Lady Warren wouldn't miss. When she was younger, she spent all her time tramping over the fields, shooting rabbits and birds. They said she went to bed with her gun."
"Then she's been here a long time?" asked Helen.
She believed that her curiosity was about to be given a real meal, for Mrs. Oates' manner hinted at gossip.
Stephen rolled a cigarette, the cat purred on the rug, the mouse washed his face in the safety of his hole. Inside was firelight and tranquillity—outside, the rising storm.
A gust of wind smashed against the corner of the house, and spattered the unbarred shutter, before the passage window, with the remnants of its original fury. Slowly, as though pushed open by invisible fingers, the casement swung outwards over the garden. The house was open to the night.
It looked in, through the gap, and down the darkness of the passage. Its far end stretched away into shadows. Round the bend, was the warren of the offices—a honeycomb of cells, where a man could hide.
Inside the kitchen, Mrs. Oates electrified her audience.
"They do say," she said dramatically, "as old Lady Warren shot her husband."
"No," gasped Stephen and Helen together.
"Yes," declared Mrs. Oates. "It's an old wives' tale now, but my mother told me all about it. Old Sir Roger was just such a one as the Professor, quiet, and always shut up with his books. He made a lot of money with some invention. He built the Summit, so as to have no neighbours. And Lady Warren couldn't abide It. She was always jawing him about it, and they had one awful quarrel, in his study. She was overheard to threaten to shoot him for vermin. A few minutes later he was found shot dead, with her rook rifle.
"Looks pretty bad," murmured Stephen.
"Yes, everyone thought she'd stand in the Dock," agreed Mrs. Oates. "There was some nasty questions asked at the Inquest. She said as how it was an accident, and her clever lawyer got her off. But there was so much feeling about it that she went abroad—though she'd have gone, anyhow, as she fair hated the house."
"Was it shut up afterwards?" asked Helen.
"No, the Professor left Oxford, and came here, and he's been just the same as his father before him—always staying in, and never going out. Old Lady Warren only came back when she said she was ill."
"What's the matter with her?" asked Helen.
Mrs. Oates pursed up her lips and shook her head.
"Temper," she said firmly.
"Oh, but Mrs. Oates, she must be ill, to have a nurse, and for the doctor to keep her in bed."
"He reckons she's less trouble there. And she reckons she can give more trouble there. It's a fair game for her to drive the nurses away, so as to get fresh ones in to bully."
"But Miss Warren told me that the Professor was anxious about her heart," persisted Helen.
"Ah, but a man don't forget the mother, that bore him," declared Mrs. Oates, lapsing into sentiment.
"But she's only his step-mother," objected Stephen. "She has no children. Still, she must be expected to croak because the vultures are gathering. Simone told me that the old girl has made a will, leaving her money to charities. She has a nasty perverted taste, and, apparently, likes Newton. Anyway, she makes him an allowance, which will cease at her death. That's why he's down here."
"His pa sent for him," explained Mrs. Oates.
Helen thought of the Professor's glacial eye and Miss Warren's detached manner. It was impossible to believe that they were swayed by financial considerations.
"Hullo," said Stephen suddenly, as he swung himself up on the table. "What's this?"
He drew from under him a wooden bar, which Helen took from him, rather guiltily.
"Sorry," she said. "It belongs to the shutter in the passage. I'm glad you reminded me of it. I'll try and fix the window."
After what she had heard, she felt eager to finish the job, and get upstairs, to the blue room, as quickly as possible. She made a makeshift fastening with some string and a peg, and then hurried back to the kitchen.
To her surprise, Stephen was peeling onions with Mrs. Oates.
"She always makes me work," he complained. "It's her way of explaining a man in the kitchen, when Oates comes home. I say, isn't he very late? I bet you a fiver he's run off with the pretty new nurse."
Mrs. Oates snorted.
"If she's like the last, she'd have to hold his nose, to get him to kiss her. Are you really going to sit with Lady Warren, miss?"
"I am going to ask if I may," replied Helen.
"Then, take my warning, and be on the watch out against her. It's my belief she's not as helpless as they make out, by a long way. I'm sure she can walk, same as me. She's got something up her sleeve. Besides, have you heard her voice, when she forgets?" Helen suddenly remembered the bass bellow from the sick room. Here was a situation choked with mystery and drama. In her eagerness to be in the thick of it she almost ran to the door.
"I've tied up the window," she said. "Now, we're safely locked up, for the night."
CHAPTER V. THE BLUE ROOM
As Helen mounted the stairs to the blue room, she felt an odd stir of expectancy. It took her back to childish days, when she neglected her toys in favour of an invisible companion—Mr. Poke.
Although she played by herself for hours, in a corner of the communal sitting room, it was plain to her parents, that she was not indulging in a solitary game. She did everything with a partner.
And at twilight, when the firelight sent tall shadows flickering on the walls, she carried on an interminable conversation with her hero.
At first, her mother disliked the uncanny element in the society affected by her small daughter; but when she realised that Helen had discovered the best and cheapest of playfellows—imagination—she