Marry a Stranger

by Susan Barrie

  “So you’ve arrived, Martin!” said the woman quietly, and kept her hands locked together over the front of her faded, flowered-silk evening gown, which she wore with an equally faded velvet bridge coat as a protection against the slight chill of the evening.

  “Hello, Jane!” Dr. Guelder exclaimed. He gave her his most attractive smile, the kind which softened his eyes and lifted that one dark eyebrow a little, and then held out his hand. She gave him hers after the barest half-second or so of hesitation, but her thin, colorless features remained unredeemed by any sign of a smile. “I expect my telegram gave you a bit of a shock, didn’t it? But my letter, when it reached you, must have explained everything more satisfactorily.”

  “Your letter explained everything quite satisfactorily,” she answered, with emphasis on the one word.

  “Good!” he exclaimed, rather more curtly. “Then you’re all ready to receive us?”

  “I'm as ready as the short amount of notice you gave me has permitted me to be,” she told him without altering her tone. She looked towards the car, and the shadowy outline of Stacey’s head inside it. “Your wife—Mrs. Guelder has probably found it a tiring journey?”

  Stacey opened the car door quietly, and descended just as quietly on to the gravel of the driveway. Martin, as if suddenly conscious of her, turned to her quickly and lightly laid hold of her arm. He drew her to the foot of the steps and presented her to his cousin, or his former cousin, that is, by his earlier marriage.

  “Jane, this is Fountains’ new mistress—and Stacey, this is Miss Fountain, who has looked after the place all the time I’ve been in London. She’s particularly fond of it because it was once her own home. In fact, she’s lived here all her life—or very nearly!”

  “I was brought to this house when I was two years old,” Jane Fountain told Stacey with an icy note in her voice. “I came as an orphan and I stayed as a much-loved daughter. I grew up here under the happiest circumstances, and therefore I think it is little to be wondered at that I have a great love for the place.’

  “Why, of course not,” Stacey answered, and although she was so tired that she could have swayed on her feet she did genuinely understand the other’s attitude—the defensive attitude of one who was afraid that her days were numbered, and that something treasured and valued was likely to be crested from her. She smiled at her uncertainly in the light streaming out from the hall, but there was no answering smile on Jane Fountain s face, and she did not even move aside from the doorway to permit this white-faced stranger to enter. But Martin Guelder, with tightened lips and eyes that took in all of his bride’s fatigue, all but carried her up the steps and into the brightness of the hall, and dragged forward an unyielding oak settle for her to sink down upon.

  Miss Fountain looked a little surprised when she got a better glimpse of the new Mrs. Guelder, so slight and obviously young that she might almost have been her new husband’s daughter. He, tall and elegant in his unprofessional and beautifully-cut grey suit, seemed to tower above her as he stood beside the settle, and he bent down and removed from her dark curls the little hat that was a mere cap of deeply purple pansies held together by a shred of ribbon and a wisp of veiling. Then he shook his head at the shadows under her eyes, and the pale lips from which every evidence of lipstick seemed to have vanished as if it had never been applied.

  “It’s bed for you, Mrs. Guelder, and almost at once,” he said crisply. He looked at the woman who had long considered herself the chatelaine of the house. “I hope you haven’t bothered about dinner for us, Jane. We stopped and had it on the road, but if my wife’s room is ready I’d like to get her up to it as quickly as possible. As you can see, she is not exactly in a robust state of health, and a little care and coddling will be essential for some weeks. Which room have you given her?”

  Miss Fountain’s face was a mask as she replied: “Naturally I haven’t given her the room you once occupied, but the main guest-room overlooking the flower garden at the back is quite definitely the most pleasant. There is a view of the Welsh hills from there also. And the little dressing room next door you will probably like to have as your own dressing room—”

  “Never mind such unimportant matters as dressing rooms!” he exclaimed impatiently. “The main thing is to get her upstairs.”

  He looked down at Stacey, and her face started to flame because he had referred to her as Mrs. Guelder and his wife in a matter of seconds, and it sounded so utterly strange to her. For she could not believe that she was really married to him—that the simple ceremony in the Registrar’s Office that morning had given him the right to order all her movements in future, and given her the right to look to him if she felt like it for support in every emergency. His arm about her as he led her to the stairs was a perfectly legal and lawful arm; he had the right to swing her up off her feet, as he did, and hold her lying like a blown leaf against his chest while he carried her up the shallow, shining oaken treads of the staircase to the room which had been set apart for her on the first floor. There he set her down in a large armchair near the window, through which the last of the light was filtering wanly, and she looked around at heavy crimson hangings and the furniture which had the patina that only centuries of continuous high polish could have bestowed on it, and thought that she was going to be a little overawed by her new surroundings.

  Not that they were altogether luxurious, as could be seen immediately the light was switched on—a cold, pendant light like a candelabra—for that same rich crimson brocade had been repeatedly darned, and the plain red Wilton carpet was almost threadbare in places. But the dressing table, with its triple mirrors, was enormous, and so was the wardrobe which seemed to touch the ceiling. There was a lot of old-fashioned silver on the dressing table—perfume bottles and trinket boxes and a handsome, heavily-backed mirror with its accompanying brushes and combs—and it was reflected somewhat eerily in the triple mirrors. The bed was huge and ornate, of the half-tester variety, and the curtains were looped back with heavy cords like bell-ropes.

  There was a door in the farther wall which, she thought, might admit to the dressing room; but it seemed very far away, for the room was huge, like everything in it, with great windows overlooking the garden.

  Miss Fountain, who had accompanied them upstairs, gave a twitch to the curtains, and they sprang together with a noisy rattle of curtain rings. Then she looked around her as if making sure that the room contained all that it should contain for the comfort of the new mistress, and for the first time a curious kind of half-satisfied smile appeared on her face.

  “You’ll find the bed very comfortable,” she said. “It’s a feather bed, of course. We are not very modern here at Fountains.”

  Stacey said nothing, but Martin Guelder seemed to be frowning slightly as he also looked about the room. He took a turn or two about it, fingering the antique silver on the dressing table, and eyeing a choicely worked sampler on the wall above the fireplace which exhorted him in sombre colors to “Boast not thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth!”

  “This room is quite close to a bathroom, isn’t it?” he asked his cousin abruptly.

  “Oh, yes,” she answered. “That is one of its advantages,” and she sounded almost smug.

  He turned to the girl, small and overworked-looking, who was struggling upstairs with the suitcases.

  “Will you bring a tray with a light supper on it upstairs here to Mrs. Guelder?” he requested.

  “I’ll see to that,” Miss Fountain said smoothly.

  The doctor turned back to his bride of only a few hours. He smiled at her in a way she felt was meant to be reassuring—perhaps heartening—and she tried to smile back at him as if there was no heavy load of apprehension weighing like a stone at her heart, and no chill, shivery feeling of depression and unease communicated to her by the large, gloomy room, and accentuated, no doubt, by the fact that she was very tired indeed. And although he did not know it, it took all her strength of will to pr
event her from putting forth her hand and clinging to his coat sleeve and begging him not to leave her alone in that room just yet—not even alone with Miss Fountain!

  Which would have caused Miss Fountain to look very much amazed, of course, and perhaps slightly supercilious. And Martin would probably have felt uncomfortable, and not known quite what to do.

  As it was, he studied her with a certain amount of anxiety because she looked so large-eyed and as pale as a waxwork, and he said gently: “You’ve had an exhausting day, but you’ll feel better in the morning. Have your supper and get to bed as quickly as you can. I’ll come in and give you something that will make certain that you sleep before I go to bed myself, and in the meantime, if you want anything, just ring.” He tested the bell beside the bed. “This does work, I suppose?” he enquired of Miss Fountain.

  “Unless the mice have been at it, it rings like all the others,” she answered, in her remote tones.

  He gave her a curious look.

  “There is one bell which will be certain to ring, and that is in my old bedroom. I think we’d better shift my wife into there.”

  “But it’s not aired,” she said quickly, defensively.

  “Then you can get it aired tomorrow, and tonight, if you want anything, Stacey, I shall be sleeping in the room next door—the dressing room!” Stacey felt tremendous relief well over her.

  “I shan’t want anything,” she assured him. “I shall be quite all right.”

  Miss Fountain’s barely noticeable eyebrows ascended a little.

  “Then, if you won’t be sleeping in this room, you’ll want the bed made up in the dressing room? I’d better tell Hannah Biggs to get on with it.”

  “Do,” he said curtly, and stooped to unfasten Stacey’s suitcases.

  Stacey saw the curious expression that came and went in Jane Fountain’s face. She looked first at the man who had been her cousin Fenella’s husband, with his sleek head, his own carefully controlled expression, and his well-shaped, expeditious hands dealing with the suitcase. And then she looked at Stacey, drooping obviously in the hard armchair, rather like a pale flower that was wilting, and despite her youth, and the smartness of her little silk suit, and the corduroy velvet coat that she wore over it, of the same misty mauve shade as her gloves and the gauzy scarf that was wound about her throat, with absolutely no sign of assurance or confidence in anything at the moment. Even the way she looked at her husband was timorous, uncertain—nothing at all to do with ordinary shyness.

  And he wanted the bed made up in the dressing room!

  Well, if he wanted it made up, she was paid a salary to look after his house in his absence, and she would see to it that he had no reasonable cause for complaint. But as to getting his old bedroom ready for this newcomer!... This interloper!...

  Her lips tightened as she went out of the room. Martin Guelder straightened and went over and switched on the bedside light. He smiled at Stacey as the mellow gleam dissipated some of the harshness of the other light.

  “That more cheerful?” he enquired.

  “Yes, thank you,” she answered gratefully.

  When he had left her alone she started to remove her coat, and unwound the gauzy scarf from about her neck. She ran a comb through her hair, and as she looked at herself in the central mirror of the dressing table it was just as if a pale grey ghost looked back at her.

  A light tap came at the door, and when she called “Come in,” the little maid, Hannah Biggs, entered.

  “Miss Fountain said I was to help you unpack,” she said.

  Stacey looked at her carefully. She was not much more than sixteen, and her eyes were large with interest at the sight of the gossamer underthings that were escaping from one of the suitcases that was now open in the middle of the floor.

  “Oh, but that’s not at all necessary, thank you,” she returned, smiling at Hannah gently.

  “Isn’t it?” Hannah looked disappointed. “The gentleman’s bed is made up in the next room, and your supper’ll be up in a moment. Are you sure I can’t help?”

  “Quite sure, thank you,” Stacey answered firmly. Hannah seized the opportunity to study her in her turn. She had read a good deal about brides and the way they looked on the first night of their honeymoon, but there was nothing in the appearance of this one to suggest that her reading had been correct. For one thing, it was not exactly a honeymoon, when it was spent at the home of the bride’s husband, and for another—although she realized that this young woman who had become mistress of Fountains was undoubtedly most attractive, indeed quite lovely if she had a little more color, and her eyes had less of a blank, unseeing look in them—there was nothing of the radiance of a bride about her. There was no radiance at all. But her clothes were perfect.

  Hannah had brought up the little hat composed of velvet pansies, and she laid it reverently on the bed.

  “Very good, Miss—I’m sorry, Madam! Miss Fountain said I was to be sure and call you Madam.”

  Stacey looked faintly amused. “Never mind, Hannah. You’re bound to make a few mistakes sometimes.”

  When the girl had gone—reluctantly—Stacey slipped out of her suit and put a dressing gown on and went along cold corridors to look for a bathroom. She had decided that she was too tired for a bath, but now she changed her mind, and when she had had it she went back to her room to find that someone had switched on the electric fire and placed a supper tray on a little table near to it. There was a plate of sandwiches and a glass of hot milk which was cooling rapidly. Stacey ignored the sandwiches but picked up the glass of milk, and while she stood sipping it and staring at the fire she thought of Mrs. Elbe, now many miles away in London, and the nightly glasses of hot milk which she had brought her, to say nothing of her comforting pots of tea.

  Stacey decided that she missed Mrs. Elbe sorely. There was something robust and heartening about her. Stacey liked her very much indeed, and was a little sorry that, clad in her best black, and with a pink carnation pinned to the lapel of her coat, and a jaunty silk rose in her hat, she had found it necessary to look a little perplexed during the marriage ceremony at the Registrar’s that morning. For it had never been properly borne in on Mrs. Elbe that it was not quite a normal marriage, and the sight of the girl whose health she had been building up looking, despite her wedding finery, much more as if she were being hauled up before a magistrate for some offence instead of an amiable gentleman who was uniting her to the man she had chosen for a husband, disturbed Mrs. Elbe. And the sight of the doctor, too—quite devastatingly handsome, as she thought dotingly, in his superlatively cut suit—looking a trifle grim and impatient, as if anxious to have the whole ceremony cut short—when it was short enough, in all conscience!—and not behaving quite like himself even at the little luncheon party which followed, and scarcely noticing his new wife—save occasionally to look at her sharply and ask her whether she felt all right!—had not seemed quite natural either.

  Unfortunately she had not seen them in the car on the journey to Herefordshire, when Stacey had relaxed for the first time for days, and Martin Guelder had metaphorically wiped the sweat of relief from his brow and grinned at Stacey because it was all over. And Stacey had perfectly understood that he could not have enjoyed the morning’s ceremony one bit—any more than she had, because she had always wanted to be married in a church—and he had once been married in a church, and it had been a very different sort of a marriage to the one he had contracted that morning. It had been a marriage to a woman with whom he was in love very much in love!—and altogether normal. His whole future had seemed rosy, and he had had everything to look forward to. But on this occasion!...

  On this occasion all he had to look forward to was and inexperienced girl of twenty-one to run his home, a girl whom he would probably not see for long intervals at a time, seeing that his work was in London. And she...? What had she to look forward to...?

  But, nevertheless, she had enjoyed that journey in the car, although conscious of increasing weari
ness and a certain amount of reaction setting in after the morning, and when they had stopped for dinner at Beomaster she had enjoyed the halt even more. Even though she had only toyed with the roast chicken and its various trimmings, refused the sweet, and drunk one glass of champagne because he insisted and because it was her wedding night. Her wedding night! ...

  “Here’s to you!—here’s to both of us!” he said, lifting his glass and studying her over the top of the bubbles which danced beneath the softened rays of the picturesque wall lights on the panelled walls of the ancient hostelry. “Being married won’t always seem so strange. You’ll get used to the idea in time!”

  Would she? she wondered. Would she get used to her kind of marriage? And for one panic-stricken moment she wondered why she had been so unwise as to agree to marry him when he had asked her, and why it had never occurred to her that she would be simply storing up unhappiness for herself. But perhaps it had occurred to her, only somehow she hadn’t had the strength of will to let him go, when the opportunity was hers to tie him up to her for life!

  Her eyes were so large and wild and frightened for a moment that his expression changed. He put down his glass and laid a hand over hers.

  “Don’t let it frighten you,” he said gently. “You’re quite safe with me, you know—you always will be safe!”

  And she was even more afraid that he hadn’t the least idea of her feelings, what she was thinking at that moment. He had the wrong idea entirely...