He thought as he looked at her neat, aristocratic writing that it was very different from Magnolia’s somewhat flamboyant style.
But having no wish to criticise, he opened his mother’s letter and read,
“My darling son,
I was so delighted to receive a letter from you yesterday from Casablanca to tell me you were on your way home.
I have been desperately anxious to get in touch with you, and it seemed almost an answer to my prayers that you should have written to tell me that it will not be long before you are in England again.
What is important is that as soon as you receive this letter you should come home immediately.
I know that you will be extremely upset to learn that your cousin Raymond had a fall out riding three days ago. The fall left him with serious injuries and sadly I have just learnt that he died this morning from them, despite his doctor’s doing all they could to save him.
Apparently the accident happened during some wild midnight steeplechase in which he was taking part when staying with a friend. As you know it is the kind of jape your cousin loved, but I think all the competitors had enjoyed a very good dinner and perhaps had too much to drink.
Now poor Raymond is dead, and Dr. Gregory, who came to tell me, also brought the grave news that your Uncle Arthur has had a heart attack.
He has not been well for the last few months owing to the fact that he is so overweight. On top of this, the news of Raymond’s accident has been too much for him.
He is in a coma and although still alive Dr. Gregory says frankly there is little chance of his recovering.
You will therefore understand, dearest Warren that you are needed here urgently, and I can only pray that you will get this letter quickly. Please telegraph me when you receive it.
I am so sorry that your homecoming should be spoilt by such unhappy news and the sense of loss, which we will both feel. I know that there was a special bond between you and your uncle, and he was very fond of you as well as proud.
At the same time, I know that you will take over your responsibilities and perform them conscientiously with the same dignity and compassion that was so characteristic of your father.
Bless you, my darling son – I am waiting anxiously to hear from you.
Your devoted and affectionate mother,
Elizabeth Wood.
If Warren had been shocked and surprised by Magnolia’s letter, his mother’s left him gasping.
He could not believe it possible that his cousin Raymond, so young and full of life, should be dead or that his Uncle Arthur should not be expected to live.
He realised that in consequence his whole life had changed, while at the same time he could hardly credit that what his mother was telling him was true.
He had never in his wildest dreams ever thought of himself as being the Marquis of Buckwood. Just as he knew it had never crossed his father’s mind that he might have inherited instead of his brother.
Lord John had no ambitions of that sort, nor had he an ounce of envy in his whole body.
“No one could be a better head of the family than Arthur,” he would say frequently.
When he was ill and aware that he might not recover from what had been a very serious operation, Lord John had said to Warren,
“Look after your mother, and help Arthur in every way you can. I know that he relies on you.”
“Yes, of course, Papa,” Warren replied.
His father had given him a faint smile.
“You are a good son, Warren,” he said faintly. “I have always been very proud of you!”
As he remembered his father’s parting words, Warren could not help wishing that he could have taken his brother’s place.
Then he found himself wondering who would help him to carry on as Head of the family.
He was well aware how many Woods there were who would look to him for help and guidance and to do honour to the family name.
Just for a moment the immensity of the task that had suddenly been thrust upon him seemed almost overwhelming.
There were not only huge estates in many parts of England for which he would be responsible, but also orphanages, almshouses, schools and so many charities that the list of them, as he knew, filled three pages of foolscap.
There were also the hereditary duties of the Marquis of Buckwood at Court, and he was well aware that Queen Victoria had a soft place in her heart for his uncle and frequently had demanded his presence at Windsor Castle so that she could ask his advice.
When Warren thought of the Queen, it was almost as if he drew himself to attention.
He not only respected but also fervently admired Her Majesty and he recognised how much the expansion, prosperity and prestige of the British Empire owed to her presence and the manner in which she inspired those who served her.
Then he remembered how urgent was his mother’s need of him and he looked at her letter again and found that she had written it three days previously.
‘I must leave for England first thing in the morning,’ he told himself and thought he would ask the concierge for the times of the boat trains from the Gare du Nord.
He would at the same time ask for a telegraph form with which he could relieve his mother’s anxiety by saying he was on his way.
Then as he pushed aside the rest of his correspondence he saw that the hotel had written a date on his mother’s envelope which told him it had arrived yesterday, two days after she had written it.
Written quite clearly was, “June 27th” with the seven crossed in the foreign fashion.
It was then an idea came to him and he picked up Magnolia’s blue envelope, which lay on the floor at his feet.
Written on that, also by the hotel, was “June 27th”.
For a moment he stared at it as if he could hardly believe his eyes.
Then he referred to Magnolia’s letter on which there was engraved the date quite clearly, “October 20th 1893”.
Then he understood and for a moment the cynical lines around his mouth made him look older and almost unpleasant.
He told himself it was what he might have expected – that Magnolia, the moment Raymond was dead, had tried to make sure of him.
Because the idea of such perfidy made him feel murderous he threw her letter down on the floor, and walking to the window stood looking out with unseeing eyes.
The sun was sinking and the last dying glow over the roofs of Paris was breathtakingly beautiful.
But Warren was only seeing Magnolia’s lovely face as she concocted her plot to make herself the Marchioness of Buckwood by hook or by crook.
He wanted to kill her.
How could any woman he had once loved behave in such an appalling manner or imagine that he would be deceived by such lies?
He knew as he stood there that the last vestige of feeling he had for Magnolia had finally been driven out of him as if by the thrust of a knife.
Now he knew that even if she was kneeling at his feet and looking up at him imploringly with her large, dark, liquid eyes, his only impulse would be to strike her.
He felt he could almost see her crafty brain at work when she realised that having lost Raymond she must now win back Warren at all costs.
She had, therefore, concocted what had seemed a very clever plan of sending him a letter which purported to have been written almost as soon as he had gone abroad.
If the hotel had not been so punctilious about marking the post as it arrived, he might never have guessed that what she had written was not a genuine change of heart when she had learnt that he had left England.
In order to make sure that he was not making a mistake, he looked at the other letters he had received and saw on each one of them the date of their arrival scrawled by the concierge.
He had not himself actually given instructions regarding his mail to the Secretary of White’s Club, but he knew that Edward had ordered his own letters to be sent to Paris and he supposed he had made the same arrangement for hi
m.
The only person to whom he himself had given this address was his mother, and he wondered how Magnolia had extracted the information from her without her being suspicious of what she was about to do.
Then he had another idea and, looking amongst the pile of letters now scattered on the floor, he found one he suspected might be there.
It was dated, as his mother’s had been, three days earlier and was from his uncle’s Solicitors in the neighbouring County town. He guessed it was from them that Magnolia had obtained his address in Paris and that they had got it from his mother.
The Solicitors’ letter was signed by a Partner he knew well, who had been a friend of his father’s.
He conveyed his deepest sympathy and his regret at having to inform him of his cousin Raymond’s death.
He asked him to return as soon as he received the letter, as it was important he should attend to all the matters appertaining to the estate which at the moment his uncle was unable to do.
It was quite obvious from what Warren read that the Solicitor, like his mother, thought there was no hope for the Marquis and he felt as if they were placing the burden of authority on his shoulders almost before his uncle was buried.
Then, as he laid the Solicitors’ letter tidily on a table, he deliberately put his foot down hard on Magnolia’s sheet of blue writing paper, pressing it brutally into the carpet.
The moon was high in the sky and the stars were shining like diamonds as Warren walked along the bank of the River Seine.
When he was in Africa with Edward, they had sometimes talked of what they would do when they came back to civilisation.
“We will stay a few days in Paris, old boy,” Edward had said. “I have always found it is the right place to ‘bridge the gap’ between the primitive and the sophisticated.”
Warren had looked at the desert stretching away to a lazy horizon so that it was difficult to know where the sand ended and the sky began.
“I suppose,” he said mockingly, “you are thinking of the Moulin Rouge and Maxim’s!”
“When I am on a journey like this,” Edward replied, “I find myself almost forgetting what an attractive woman looks like! I would certainly welcome one of the sirens from Maxim’s at the moment and enjoy seeing the girls kicking their legs in the ‘can-can’ at the Moulin Rouge.”
Warren had laughed.
Then he said,
“What I would like is a glass of cold champagne! If I have to drink water out of a goat’s skin very much longer, I think I shall go mad!”
“You would certainly go mad without it!” Edward retorted, glancing up at the blazing sun overhead.
They had been trekking for nearly four days and, as Warren had said, the water they drank from the goat’s skin grew daily more and more unpleasant.
“Tomorrow we will be able to replenish our stores,” Edward said. “Although I am afraid it will not be like the food we could enjoy at one of those expensive restaurants in the Palais Royal. And after all the privations you are suffering at the moment, your clothes will need inches taken in before you can wear them again.”
Warren had laughed, but he knew when he changed for dinner tonight that Edward had been right.
His clothes, if they were to fit as perfectly as they had before he had left for Africa, would certainly need the attention of an experienced tailor.
At the same time his muscles were harder and he had a feeling, although of course it was absurd, that his shoulders were broader.
But he knew the endless hours of riding on either one of the desert horses or on a camel had resulted in his body becoming athletically stronger, despite the fact that the food he had eaten had been more to keep him alive than for enjoyment.
In spite of all he had to ponder over, he could not help appreciating the excellent dinner he had eaten at a small restaurant not far from the hotel.
He remembered thinking vaguely that if he had not been so worried about what was waiting for him at home, he might have looked up a very attractive lady with whom he had spent several delightful evenings when he had stayed in Paris previously.
When he had passed through the City with Edward on his way to Africa, he had merely deposited his clothes at the hotel and because he was feeling so knocked out by Magnolia he had let Edward choose what they should do that evening.
They had started at the Folies Bergeres, but he had left Edward at Maxim’s without even dancing with one of the extremely alluring hostesses.
Although in Africa he had had very different ideas about what he would do on this first night in Paris, now he only wanted to think and he had therefore eaten alone and, as it was warm, decided to take a walk before he retired to bed.
The hotel had found him an express train which connected with a steamer leaving Calais at midday, and he calculated that if he was fortunate he could arrive at his mother’s late the following evening.
He therefore telegraphed her to say that he would be with her at about ten o’clock, but not to worry if it was later.
It was all a question of timing, but in the summer there was less chance of being delayed on the cross Channel steamer than there was at other times of the year when the sea might be rough.
Tonight there was not even a breath of wind or the rustle of leaves in the trees that bordered the river.
Warren, walking slowly beneath them, thought the moonlight shining on the great buildings and turning their roofs to silver was very different from the moonlight that had percolated through the palm trees of an oasis where they had slept when they could find one.
At other times when they erected their tent amongst stones and rough shrubs, they had had to be wary of snakes, scorpions and the innumerable unpleasant insects which all seemed to have an irresistible desire to creep into his sleeping bag or down the back of his neck.
He thought now with a twisted smile that the clip-clop of the horses’ hoofs moving down the tarmac surfaced roads were very different from the grunts of the camels and the coarse manner in which their Arab servants would clear their throats before they spat.
‘This is civilisation,’ he thought.
He felt as if it was like silk in which he could wrap himself after wearing sackcloth for a long time.
He crossed over a bridge so that he could look at Notre Dame with the moon shining on the Seine beneath it. He was remembering how when he had first come to Paris as a very young man, he had stayed on the Left Bank because everything there was so much cheaper.
He recalled how on leaving his hotel and walking towards the Seine, the first thing he had seen was Notre Dame and he had found the ancient Cathedral irresistibly romantic.
Now, he leaned his arms on the cool stones of a wall which bordered the great river and watched a barge with its red and green lights reflected in the water, passing slowly downstream.
It was then he became aware that there was somebody below him on the towpath that had been built for the horses that pulled every barge that passed through Paris towards its destination.
Without really paying attention, he noticed the slim figure of what appeared to be a very young girl moving along the edge of the water and looking down into it.
Strangely she was not wearing a hat or even a shawl over her head and the moonlight seemed to touch her hair with silver.
Warren watched her while he was still thinking about himself, noticing that she had a grace that made her move almost as if she was walking on the water rather than on the ground, and that her waist was very small.
Then, as she reached the shadows of the bridge, she stood looking down with a curious intentness.
Almost unconsciously, but with the perception of a man who has lived with danger and becomes aware of it almost before it happens, Warren knew what she was about to do.
It was not that she moved or even bent forward – she just stood looking into the water, and he was aware almost as if someone had told him that she was choosing her moment.
Without really thinking,
without considering that he did not wish to be involved, Warren walked quickly to the opening in the wall just beside the bridge from which steps led down to the towpath.
They ended only a few feet from where the girl was standing.
Moving silently because he was wearing soft-soled evening pumps, Warren reached her side.
Deep in her thoughts she was unaware of him and he said quietly, so as not to startle her,
“Faites attention, mademoiselle! Ici la Seine est dangereuse.”
He watched her as he spoke, and the girl stiffened. Then, in a voice as if the words were jerked from between her lips, she said,
“Go – away! Leave me – alone!”
To Warren’s surprise she spoke in English and he answered in the same language,
“How can you think of doing anything so foolish?”
“Why should you – care?”
“Some Gendarme is bound to see you and then you will be in trouble.”
He still spoke very quietly and now the girl turned to look at him.
In the shadows he was aware of a small, white pointed face with two huge eyes that seemed to fill it.
She looked at him and he thought, although he was not sure, that she was surprised that he was in evening dress.
Then she said, still speaking in English,
“Go away! It is no – business of – yours!”
“As we are of the same nationality, I find that hard to believe.”
“Please – please – leave me alone!”
Now her voice held a hopeless pleading note in it and he said,
“You say it is none of my business, but because I am English I should feel obliged, if I saw a dog or a cat struggling in the river, to try to save it, and I have no wish to get wet!”
“Then let me die in my – own way – without – interference!”
Her words were very low and, Warren thought, there was a lost note in them that had not been there before.
“So you want to die,” he said reflectively. “That is what I wanted to do nine months ago, but a friend prevented me from doing so and now I am glad to be alive.”
Revenge of the Heart Page 3