Marry a Stranger

by Susan Barrie

  She heard again Miss Fountain’s spiteful, angry voice in the rose gardens, and remembered her harsh indictment of Martin. She also remembered that Miss Fountain had said that Martin had no real use for a wife, “except to look pretty at the head of his table, and to introduce to his friends!” And those had been Martin’s own words, more or less, when he had asked her to marry him. “I want a wife who can act the part of a hostess for me!” That was what he had said.

  But he had also loved Fenella madly!

  He did not love Stacey, and in fact he had also told her that “that sort of thing” was over for him. He did not desire a normal marriage. Therefore if Fenella, whom he had loved, had found him wanting, what might not a wife for whom he had no love discover in time that her future was to be completely bereft of?

  Stacey sank down on the window seat and went on watching the river, sparkling like diamonds in the sunshine. And then when the sun went in the river instantly became dull and lifeless. Stacey shivered a little. But at least Martin had told her what he wanted. Fenella, apparently, had had every reason to expect something different. And she had done something rash!

  What was the secret of Fenella? What did Miss Fountain mean when she said that it was Martin who had sent her to her death?

  CHAPTER TEN

  When Martin’s first telephone call came through to her Stacey was seated waiting for it in the library. Miss Fountain was engaged at her petit-point near the big window, filled with armorial bearings, through which the light of the setting sun had been streaming, making a kind of golden sea of the highly polished floor boards.

  Stacey did not jump when she heard the shrilling of the telephone in the hall, but she got up quietly and went out. Miss Fountain did not even pause in her careful needlework.

  Stacey picked up the receiver and said, “Hello” into it. She heard the doctor’s voice answering her, calm, assured, a light and pleasant baritone.

  “Mrs. Guelder? Oh, is that you, Stacey? You see I’m keeping my word!”

  Stacey sank down on to a chair beside the hall table. She was trembling a little, and the receiver shook in her hands.

  “I’ve been thinking about you,” she said—which was a vast understatement. “I hope you had a good journey back to London?”

  He told her that he had had a very good journey, and that Mrs. Elbe had enquired after her. He did not also tell her that Mrs. Elbe had appeared considerably surprised because he had returned from his honeymoon so soon. He was up to his ears in work—his appointment book showed few gaps. And he hoped she was settling down. His tone was cool, conversational, friendly. He might have been speaking to her, she thought, from Mars. And after she had told him, not knowing whether he would be interested or not, but because she had so few items of news to impart, that she had managed to persuade Mrs. Moss to stay on and do the cooking for them, he suddenly recalled that he had seen Vera Hunt that morning, and that she was quite like her old self. “I think she must have been suffering from the strain of overwork, and being short-staffed, that last morning we met, when I whisked you out of her shop,” he told her. “Anyway, she hopes we’re all three going to be friends, and I said I hoped so, too. I told her she’d have to come down and see us when we’re fit to receive the outside world!”

  “Of course,” Stacey answered, but her throat felt suddenly dry. Had Vera told him that she had rung her, Stacey, the night before her wedding?

  “Are you and Jane getting on all right together?” he asked.

  “We’re getting on quite well,” Stacey answered, not quite truthfully, for the day had passed with little or no conversation between them.

  “Good!” he exclaimed. The pips went for the second time. Stacey said: “I mustn’t keep you hanging on.”

  “Mustn’t you?” There was a laugh in his voice. “What an economical wife I have!”

  When she returned to the library Jane Fountain was folding up her petit-point, and she looked up at Stacey and studied her expression with quite noticeable intentness. Stacey looked serious to the point of gravity. There was no lightness or brightness in her eyes.

  “Your lord and master is well, I hope?” Jane enquired smoothly. “His patients, no doubt, mobbed him on his return to London?”

  “He is very busy,” Stacey told her.

  “As usual!” Jane exclaimed. “Poor Martin, no time for recreation!” But there was a little light that seemed to dance almost wickedly in her eyes as she looked across at Stacey. “By the way,” she said, “there used to be an attractive, blonde young woman who came and stayed here once or twice. What happened to her?”

  “You mean Miss Hunt?” Stacey suggested. “As a matter of fact he saw her today.”

  “Did he? And you don’t mind?”

  “Mind? Why should I?” Stacey bit her lip, realizing that she was being goaded.

  “Well, my dear”—Miss Fountain spread her thin hands, and made an almost French gesture with her shoulders—“she struck me as being remarkably attractive—almost the same type of fairness as Fenella’s, except, of course, that Fenella had dark eyes, a most unusual combination and it also struck me that she liked him...”

  Stacey stood up.

  “I think I’ll go to bed,” she said.

  Miss Fountain smiled at her inscrutably.

  “Do, if you feel tired. Personally I never feel tired before midnight, and Fenella could have danced a night away and been fresh the next morning. She had wonderful vitality, which no doubt accounted for her extraordinary charm. It made itself felt everyone felt it. And even when she was tired she never let you know. She would have died rather than wear her heart on her sleeve, or invite sympathy. Sympathy was detestable to her. She had a kind of gay camouflage which perhaps only I knew was camouflage.”

  “That was admirable,” Stacey said, realizing that her disappointment because something she had vaguely hoped for—although she could not have told what or why!—from Martin’s telephone call had not been there was showing in her face, and that it might even wear a faintly stricken appearance. Perhaps it was because she realized that Vera might soon be dining with him again—alone. But whatever it was she did not, apparently, have Fenella’s fortitude. She only wanted to get away up to her bedroom and try to forget Miss Fountain’s evil, smiling face, so she said goodnight to her mechanically and moved towards the door.

  “Oh, goodnight!” Miss Fountain called after her, her thin lips twitching a little at the corners. “Don’t let the preoccupations of the medical profession depress you. Martin has sense enough not to overdo things. All work and no play, you know! ...”

  But by the time Martin was almost due to come again for another weekend Miss Fountain’s moments of slightly acid good humor were decidedly fewer. Stacey, partly to divert herself and partly to carry out her side of the bargain which she and Martin had made, had made a much more comprehensive inspection of the house, as a result of which changes had already come about. The drawing room door was now kept unlocked, and it was Stacey who now arranged the flowers in the vases. She had tried out the piano and found it even more of a joy than she had anticipated, and while Miss Fountain sat at her needlework in the library in the evenings after dinner, or laid out patience cards, Stacey filled the magic hour of twilight, before it was necessary to switch on a light, with snatches of Chopin and Schubert, Brahms and Debussy.

  Miss Fountain was secretly a little amazed by her proficiency, but she would never have allowed her to guess this. And in any case she did not approve of the austere silence of Fountains, to which she had for so long become accustomed, being shattered by rippling melody and heart-stirring chords of music before which even the gloom and the shadows of the old house seemed to take flight.

  Then Stacey decided quite definitely that the Yellow Bedroom should be used as a guest room, and stripped it of all the personal possessions of Fenella Guelder. It took a certain amount of courage to do this, because she was aware of the violent antagonism it would arouse in the breast of Jane Fountai
n, and also there was something, to her, a little like sacrilege in disturbing Fenella’s dainty personal toys, when Fenella had once been the mistress of the house. But she knew that if she did not disturb them the Yellow Room would in time become something of a nightmare to her, and if she did not disturb them immediately she never would disturb them at all. She consulted Miss Fountain as to what should be done with the various articles, and but for the fact that she could not bear to see desecrating hands laid on her dead cousin’s things, Miss Fountain would have disdained offering any advice. But as it was she suggested that they be handed over to her for safe keeping, and all but the photograph of Martin she locked away in secret drawers of her own. The photograph she suggested Stacey might like herself, and somewhat to her surprise Stacey accepted it. For, after all, it was Martin—years younger, of course, but Martin just the same. And when she had it in her hands alone in her own room, Stacey looked at it for a long, long time, and then carefully shut it away in the wardrobe. She did not want Martin to know that she cherished his photograph—he would probably be very much amused.

  So the Yellow Room became the most important guest room in the house, and Stacey next turned her attention to her own room. She went into Beomster on the bus—since they had no car, and the buses ran several times a day—and at a house furnisher’s there she selected several things to replace the unattractive ones in her room. The half-tester bed she decided to keep, since it was comfortable and beautifully carved, but she had new curtains and a coverlet made for it, and new curtains for the windows, and bought a carpet to replace the old threadbare one. And the great ugly wardrobe gave place to a smaller one, and a beautiful walnut tallboy which quite captivated her fancy. She was most careful over her purchases, and did not expend more than she felt was strictly necessary, if she was to be reasonably comfortable, and when all the new things she bought had arrived and been placed in her room she was so satisfied with it that she even invited Miss Fountain to see it. But Miss Fountain merely looked disdainful, and expressed no approval.

  The dining room, too, she decided could do with a new carpet, and she made up her mind to suggest it to Martin, when he arrived, and new curtains, if he agreed, at the deep-set mullioned windows. After all, if he wished to entertain, his house must have some sort of a correct atmosphere, and unused as it had been for so long there was much that needed doing before it could provide a fitting background for visitors. Especially if the visitors were as fastidious as Vera Hunt was likely to be!

  When Martin arrived he looked, Stacey thought, rather tired, after driving all the way from London. He had had a busy fortnight, too, and as he sank into a chair, and she hastened to provide him with a drink—he watched her with a faintly amused look in his eyes as she measured the old brown sherry into a glass, for she had remembered that he disliked dry sherry—he said, with rather a sigh in the words: “There’s something to be said for a country house a little nearer to London than this one is! One of these days we’ll sell this place.”

  Stacey looked at him, moving over to sit near to him, her own glass of sherry in her hand, in order to keep him company—Miss Fountain had not yet appeared to greet him—and she thought that there were little lines of weariness etched at the corners of his mouth, and he lay in a completely relaxed attitude in his chair.

  “But you—I thought that you liked this house,” she said. “Otherwise why have you kept it on all these years?”

  “I really couldn’t tell you,” he answered, looking around him at the furniture which he could plainly see had received an extra polish in his absence, and her arrangement of a bowl of deep red roses on the heavy oak table. Pictures, a mirror on the wall—all shone. And there was a little table beside his chair with cigarettes and matches and an ash tray placed conveniently to his hand.

  He looked at her and smiled suddenly.

  “You’ve been busy, I can see,” he said. “And you look much better. If you and Jane have fought at all you must have won the first round.”

  Jane came in and accorded him an acid little bow. Tessa was lying at full length in front of the wood fire which had been lighted since tea. Jane had to step round her to get to her usual chair beside the little table on which reposed her embroidery bag, and the expression on her face gave away very plainly how much she disapproved of having the dog in the house.

  After dinner Stacey took Martin into the drawing room, and he could see that she had been busy here, too. Everything looked spick and span, and the curtains were well looped back to admit the evening light. There was music lying on the piano top, and instead of flowers in the grate there was a tiny fire.

  “I thought perhaps you’d like to sit here in the evenings instead of in the library,” she said shyly, looking up at him. “It’s such a very attractive room.”

  “Is it?” He seemed to be looking around him, as if he scarcely remembered it, and Stacey, whose heart had been hammering away in double-quick time ever since he had arrived shortly after tea, noticed his eyes wandering to the portrait which hung in quite a prominent position on the end wall, with the light from the windows falling directly upon it. He went on looking up at it for so long in silence, while the brown, wilful eyes gazed back at him as if deliberately tantalizing him—or, perhaps they were saying, Stacey thought, realizing it was rather a wild fancy: “I’ve escaped you now, and I no longer have any need of you!”—until Stacey began to feel as if her breath was suspended, and there was an ache in her chest because she dared not move, or lower her own eyes, or do anything to distract him. And at length he said quietly, casually, looking away from the portrait and at the piano: “I see somebody's been playing recently. Was it you?”

  “Yes,” she answered, in a husky kind of little whisper, and he dropped down rather heavily into a chair.

  “Then play to me,” he requested her. “Play something light and diverting, not heavy or gloomy. I am not in the mood for gloom.”

  And as she obediently sat down on the piano stool she felt her heart racing in a kind of panic, for it must have been the portrait which had disturbed him. Her heart stopped racing and became a leaden weight inside her, for if the portrait had so much power to affect him, what sort of power had the woman herself been able to exercise over him when she was alive? How badly did he still miss her?

  The chair he had selected—probably deliberately—had its back to the portrait, but she was sure that he was overwhelmingly conscious of it there behind him on the wall, the last stab of sunset light making a deliberate attack on Fenella’s exquisite, peach-like complexion, on her shining golden hair, and that exciting exotic mouth. Whether it was her imagination or not Stacey was unable to decide, but she thought that he was sitting rather rigidly upright, waiting for her to begin playing the piano, and he had not even lighted a cigarette. The cigarette was in his hand, extracted from his case, and he was staring down at it thoughtfully.

  Stacey began to play, sparkling extracts from romantic operettas, lilting waltz tunes, gay ballads. Nothing too sentimental, or likely to arouse sentiment. She grew gradually more confident as her fingers flew over the keys, loving the feel of them as she always did, her own heart lightened almost magically by the irresistible quality of her music, her head of dark, soft curls held a little higher, her slender shoulders squaring themselves after twenty minutes or so of playing. And if she had been able to look behind her she would have been surprised to see that her “treatment” was working so well that he was now sitting watching her, still not smoking, but leaning forward and studying the flying movements of her hands, the flash of her shell-pink finger nails, the graceful whiteness of her wrists. And by the time she was finished he knew not only that her hands were extraordinarily lovely, and that his plain gold wedding ring looked very well indeed on the third finger of her left hand, but that the rest of her, clothed in something filmy and grey which billowed above the piano stool, was as unsubstantial as mist, and as pleasing as the childish white fichu from which her slender neck escaped.


  “That was really splendid!” he exclaimed, when her fingers were lying relaxed in her lap. “I’d no idea you were such an accomplished pianist!”

  A little, pleased flame of color sprang up in her cheeks, and turned even her ears pink.

  “I love playing,” she said simply.

  “Then I’m glad you’ve got the piano,” he told her. “At least it’s something to keep you amused while I’m not here.”

  He was not there for long. He could only stay one night that weekend, which made it seem a terribly short visit. But as soon as he left Stacey started looking forward to his next visit, and counting the days until he came again. And in that way the first few weeks of her married life passed over her head, and to her they seemed unreal weeks, weeks that were simply wished away because there was only one thing about them that was real, and vital, and which meant anything to her at all—and that was the coming of Martin Guelder. And each time he went away again she stepped back into her unreal world.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Until gradually she got to know a few people in the district. She was returning from a long tramp across open country one afternoon when the days were beginning to shorten noticeably, and in the air there was the smell of autumn, compounded of ripening fruit and dry leaves and the last of the corn being carried to safety from the lovely, fertile area around her, and she had Tessa with her as her companion, when she saw that there was a car parked outside the entrance to Fountains Court.