by Mark Hansom
S
ix months passed — six months that were uneventful except for the gradual strengthening of the ties that joined Sylvia and me — and I almost ceased to feel the effects of my recent experiences. I had not forgotten them, nor could I overcome the sense of tragedy when I thought of Christopher’s early death. But I did not now feel the horror of that time. Most important of all, I had managed, I think, to dismiss the superstitious fears that had been born of the coincidence of my jealous outburst on the eve of the tragedy.
Time had enabled me to dismiss these fears, and I was lulled into peace. As though the supernatural takes account of time!
It now seemed that the mystery of Christopher’s death was to remain for ever a mystery. Jepson had been subjected to a further examination by the authorities; but the case, which had started off with a violent outcry against the perpetrator of such a bestial outrage, gradually fell away from the public interest and in time it was all but forgotten.
And the only good result of the whole ghastly business — an insignificant trifle! — was that the lessee of the building in Jermyn Street was compelled to fix burglar-bars to the windows.
One bright morning in late April I was strolling through the Park when I was accosted by a voice that made me wheel round sharply.
I had been thinking of Sylvia (it was seldom nowadays that she was far from my thoughts) and was trying to decide whether it was now time to make the inevitable proposal to her. I had little doubt about what her answer would be. I had hitherto refrained from forcing myself upon her out of respect for Christopher’s memory; but six months is a long time in the lives of young people, and I had judged that she would not take my advances amiss. I had been seeing her almost daily during the winter — except for two months while she was abroad with Lady Somerton — and I knew that of the many young men of her acquaintance I was the one who stood first in her favour. But it would not do to delay too long or I might find someone stepping in before me. Young Sydney Wetherhouse, for instance — Professor Wetherhouse’s son, a shy young boy just lately down from Oxford — I could see by his manner that he was completely infatuated by Sylvia’s beauty and that at any time his infatuation might even get the better of his extreme shyness.
“Hello, old chappie!” exclaimed the voice that made me wheel round so sharply. “And how the devil are you?”
It was my cousin Mick.
I did not answer for a moment. I could only stare in consternation, while he overtook me with all his old blatant swagger, looking me up and down meanwhile with smiling, insolent freedom.
This was the cousin who was now in possession of the family estates.
“And how is old Makepeace?” my cousin went on, falling into step beside me, his hands stuck easily into the trouser pockets of his light tweed suit. “Still scratching about trying to make ends meet? It was a bitter blow for Makepeace,” he went on, “when I booted him out. Almost as bitter as for you, my dear cousin Martin.”
Two years — for it was two years since I had seen Mick — had done nothing to abate his unreasonable hatred of me, a hatred that had survived since our childhood days and that had always been shown by semi-humorous, condescending taunts.
“You see where virtue leads,” he continued. “You remember all those old women — Makepeace included — who used to ask me why I couldn’t be nice and polite — like dear little Martin. And why I didn’t sit on the edge of the chair and speak when I was spoken to — like dear little Martin. And why I didn’t go to Sunday school — like dear little Martin. And why I wasn’t a damned little hypocrite — like dear little Martin . . . But how are you, anyway? You look moderately flourishing. I will admit. Probably you’ve had a good bit of experience in the art of making a little go a long way.”
I ought to have turned and walked away from him; but such a gesture would have been lost on Mick. He would simply turn and walk away along with me. He had a queer sense of fun, and it had always given him immense pleasure to amuse himself at my expense. I found it best to say as little as possible.
“What are you doing these days?” I asked.
“Spending money,” he replied. “But the savour has somehow gone out of life for me.”
“Oh! How is that?”
“Well, you see, when the family fortune, which we all thought to be yours, turned out to be not yours at all but mine, I was able to pay off all my debts. That left a blank in my existence — a hollow-ness, a real sorrow. I began to droop. I couldn’t feel the zest for things which I had felt previously. And the worst of it is that I can’t recover the fine old rapture. I keep on spending, but I can’t get into debt at all, at all.”
“It should be easy enough,” I remarked, smiling.
“Oh, I’ve no doubt I’ll manage it in time,” he said with the utmost seriousness. “You come after me, don’t you? I mean in the matter of the fortune. On my decease, you know. The cold, pallid corpse business. When I’m laid to rest you come into the fortune. That’s something pleasant to reflect upon. But I shouldn’t reflect too hopefully, if I were you. There mightn’t be any fortune to come into. The last years of my life might be brightened by the thought that I have at last managed to get into debt. No, I shouldn’t reflect too hopefully.”
As we strolled along I, too, put my hands in my trouser pockets, and thereby did my best to show that I was in no whit disconcerted by his whimsical taunts.
“So you aren’t married yet?” I asked.
“No,” said he. Then he stopped in his saunter and looked at me quizzically. I knew that some further whimsicality was coming. “But thanks for the reminder,” he said. “Of course you are interested in whether I am married or not. Should I marry and have children it will completely put the lid on your expectations. Why didn’t I think of that by myself? . . . I told you just now not to reflect too hopefully. I tell you now not to reflect at all. I’m going to marry the first pretty girl 1 see.”
I laughed companionably. He vastly exaggerated my interest in his fortune. He was welcome to it, for my tastes were simple and I had enough for my needs. I had not, at that time, considered how much I should want in order to maintain Sylvia in the comfort to which she was apparently accustomed.
“And the first pretty girl you see,” I remarked, “might run you into debt and so brighten things up for you long before the last years of your life.”
“Well said, dear cousin Martin!” he exclaimed. “Really, you are making some valuable suggestions this morning. You are becoming quite brilliant and worldly. I am quite beginning to take to you . . . And while we are on the subject of your development — emergence from the nursery stage, you know — what’s all this I’ve been hearing about you and the celebrated Miss Vernon?”
I started at that; and my attempt at sang-froid was in danger of falling to pieces. I knew that my cousin’s semi-humorous manner sprang from a very real bitterness towards me. It was quite true that in our very young days I was held up as a paragon of docility and correct behaviour, and though I had long since outgrown that, Mick had never forgotten. And I knew that out of sheer love of discomfiting me he would recklessly destroy anything that I had set my heart upon.
“And what have you been hearing,” I asked, “about the celebrated Miss Vernon and me? Is she very celebrated, by the way?”
“Is she! Rather! I’m told that royalty is interested in her. But that’s probably an exaggeration. Anyway, I should like to congratulate you.”
“You’ve nothing to congratulate me upon,” I assured him, trying, for my own protection, to make as little of the matter as possible.
“Cut out the humility!” he said, with a touch of genuine impatience. “I know all about you and Miss Vernon. The two of you are only waiting for a decent time to elapse after the murder of that young fellow Knight so that you can be married. Has it ever occurred to you to ask yourself how the dickens you’re going to maintain her? Not that it’s any business of mine, you understand.”
“The question,” I repli
ed, still trying to turn his mind away from the matter of Sylvia, “is whether I am going to maintain her at all. That depends on two things: firstly, on whether I intend to ask her to allow me to maintain her; and, secondly, on what she might say should I ask her. I haven’t considered the question. You seem to know a lot more about me than I know myself.”
“Of course I do! Always did! And it worries me to think of the way the two of you will have to scrape and screw to keep up an appearance. She has no money of her own, I’m told. That fact has put quite a number of blue-blooded but penurious youths out of court. But it doesn’t deter you, who have never been noted for your sagacity. And — might I add? — it doesn’t deter me. I told you that my income grows faster than I can spend it.”
I laughed, trying hard not to take him seriously; but I could not keep my uneasiness at bay.
“You are welcome to enter the lists with all the others, I suppose,” I commented, “and have a shot at winning the hand of the lady.”
“Of course I am,” he seconded. “More than that, it is my duty to enter the lists. I must try to save the lady from the horror of a descent from a Park Lane mansion to a flat in the Brompton Road — a flat run by old Makepeace . . . And I told you,” he went on, gazing ahead of him with a queer expression of sudden satisfaction on his face, “that, on your suggestion, I should marry the first pretty girl I met. Here she is.”
I, too, looked up. Not fifty paces away, coming towards us at an easy walk, was Sylvia.
I had known that she was in the Park. They had told me so when I called at the house less than an hour earlier, and I had been strolling about in the expectation of meeting her. But I had not reckoned on Mick’s appearing, and I would have given much to be able to avoid her. But that was now impossible.
Mick’s jaunty satisfaction on that occasion strikes me now as infinitely pathetic. Mick’s happiness was secure in the promise of being able to shoulder me out of the way. It never occurred to him that he was taking the first step in another tragedy. Of course it didn’t. Such a thought never occurred even to me.
“The irony of it!” he whispered. “To think that you must introduce me! For you must, you know, Martin. You can’t very well avoid it.”
And I introduced them.
Sylvia flushed as she looked up at this debonair cousin of mine.
“I could tell at once that you were related,” she said as we turned and fell into step, one on either side of her.
“Am I so very like Martin?” asked Mick. “Thanks for the compliment, Miss Vernon. That’s one of the few things our family has been noted for — the persistence of the family likeness. Even Mad Roderick had it.”
“And who was Mad Roderick?”
“Mad Roderick — circa 1600: that’s all I know,” Mick replied. “His portrait is in the family gallery. Remember how I used to frighten you, Martin, by trying to pull a face like Mad Roderick’s? . . . By the way, I saw you in Rome about a month ago, Miss Vernon.”
This remark surprised me, and I was not sure whether my cousin were telling the truth or whether he had accidentally heard that Sylvia had been in Rome.
“Where?” she asked, deliciously intrigued. “What was I doing?”
“It was in the Piazza di something-or-other. You were just walking past.”
“And you knew me?”
She had frailties. She turned her head and glanced up into his face, and when her eyes almost immediately sought the path again she was smiling and blushing at the same time.
“I didn’t,” he said. “But I took the liberty of finding out who you were. You’ll forgive me, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know whether I shall. It was a liberty, as you admit.”
“Call it rather compulsory curiosity,” he replied.
As for me, I was quite out of it, and I strolled along feeling very sheepish and raw. I prided myself on having some skill at conversation of this sort, but, compared with my cousin, I was a mere ploughboy.
“You never told me, Martin,” said Sylvia, “that you had a cousin in London.”
“I didn’t know. I met Mick only half an hour ago — for the first time in two years.”
“Were you looking for me?”
“I was mooning about — yes.”
“Well, you must both come in and have lunch. It will be about on the table by the time we get back. You must have a great deal to say to each other after such a long time.”
Needless to say, Mick accepted. Had I had my wits about me I should have said that I had an appointment elsewhere, and Sylvia could hardly then take my cousin home alone. But I missed the opportunity.
Not that it would have mattered, for I see now that events would have gone on their inevitable course notwithstanding every puny human effort to divert them.
Still abreast we left the Park by the Grosvenor Gate, and in a moment or two were going up the marble steps towards the hall of the mansion that I now knew so well.
But the honours of the occasion lay with my cousin. It was he who was doing the talking, and he was keeping Sylvia amused with so much ease and freedom that one would think he had known her for years.
I was intensely depressed and out of humour.
CHAPTER V
A Queer Bedroom
W
hen lunch was over, my cousin insisted upon taking me to see his new flat up near Baker Street.
He had, he told us, absorbed the ideas of half a dozen nations during his travels, and at the moment his flat was his hobby and he ventured to believe that it was unique.
He spoke with the pride of the connoisseur, and, with Sylvia sitting there, I could not be so ungracious as to tell him that I was not in the least bit interested in his flat. Sylvia had no suspicion of the intense animosity that existed between my cousin and me.
His manner towards me had changed since the meeting with Sylvia. An observer might have thought that he and I were on the friendliest possible terms, and the way in which he put his hand on my shoulder as he went down the steps towards Park Lane might have misled anybody.
But I was not deceived. At this early stage of his acquaintanceship with Sylvia I would be useful to him. He could only keep in touch with her through me. But I went with him. I did not want to antagonize him further at the moment, for I had made up my mind to put the inevitable question to Sylvia at the very first opportunity, and I did not want to disturb the position in the meantime.
Mick’s flat was all that he had stated it to be. I saw at once that his fortune must be enormous, and that he must, as he had whimsically said, be doing his best to run through it.
The flat was on the top floor of the building. The top-floor flats were small and airy and the bottom-floor flats were large and close; so, he told me, he had conceived the idea of having two top-floor flats converted into one and thus obtaining a place that was large and that was, at the same time, exposed to such invigorating air as London could provide. He had heard, he said, that a factory with a tall chimney was about to be erected on a waste piece of ground near at hand. If there were any truth in the rumour, which he doubted, he would, he said, buy up the factory immediately on its completion and have it demolished again. This, as he pointed out with the extremely serious expression that accompanied his most facetious ideas, would be a splendid way of getting rid of quite a lot of money.
“So you go in for fresh air nowadays?” I questioned.
He had already shown me one or two of the rooms, and was probably thinking that I was feeling envious because of the evidence everywhere of his extreme wealth.
“Yes,” he said. “I acquired the taste for fresh air when I was in Australia. Come and see my bedroom. It is, I think, the only one of its kind in London.”
When I saw the bedroom I agreed with him.
It seemed that he had had the whole of the outer wall knocked down and rebuilt a good eight or ten feet within the room, thus leaving a good-sized verandah kind of place almost wholly exposed to the weather. In this out-door room stood
a camp-bed.
“Those who don’t think I am mad,” he said as we entered this unique bedroom, “think I am a confirmed invalid of some sort. You see that part of this room is actually the gallery that the tradesmen use. At first it disconcerted them, but I have now arranged with the milkman to give me a nudge when he passes in the morning. A shilling a week that costs me. It goes a very small way towards demolishing my fortune, but it keeps him from expressing his opinions on my sanity.”
I laughed. Mick could be very agreeable and amusing when it suited him.
“And you have a good view from here,” I said, walking forward to the iron railing of the gallery and looking across towards the parks. “I didn’t know there was such a mass of trees in London.”
“Oh, a splendid view!” he agreed. “And some day, if money can perform the miracle, I’m going to have a tree planted down there.”
He looked over the railing at the concrete courtyard, a hundred feet below.
I, too, looked, instinctively drawing back as I did so.
Galleries similar to the one we were on ran at intervals across the building, getting smaller and less easily discernible as the eye travelled downwards — and, at the bottom, the courtyard, with a clearly defined but diminutive woman washing out a bucket with a mop near what seemed to be a drain. The bucket slipped from the woman’s hand and rolled over, and it had ceased to roll before the sharp clatter of galvanized metal ascended faintly to our ears.
“You see,” said my cousin, leaning heavily on the rail, “concrete is so uninspiring. That’s why I want a tree.”
He took me indoors again and showed me his books and kept me interested until tea-time. He was refraining admirably from his habit of being maliciously humorous at my expense. In fact, I was almost deceived by his manner and was inclined to think that his startling threats about whisking Sylvia right from under my eyes had been made merely to tease and annoy me.