The House with the Twisted Chimneys/Chapter 1

O you want to be a life preserver as well as a brightener, Elizabeth, my child?” asked Mrs. Carstairs.

“Depends on whose life,” I replied, making a lovely blue smoke ring before I spoke and another when I'd finished. For what's the good of being over twenty-one and the war widow of an Italian prince—even though you've never been anybody's wife!—if you mayn't be up to a cigarette's every trick?

I hoped to shock Mrs. Carstairs, in order to see what the nicest old lady on earth would look like when scandalized. But I was disappointed. She was not scandalized. She asked for a cigarette, and took it—my last.

“The latest style in my country is to make your smoke ring loop the loop, and do it through the nose,” she informed me calmly. “I can't do it myself yet, but Terry Burns can.”

“Who's Terry Burns?” I asked.

“The man whose life ought to be preserved.”

“It certainly ought,” said I, “if he can make smoke rings loop the loop through his nose. Oh, you know what I mean!”

“He hardly takes enough interest in things to do even that, nowadays,” sighed the old lady from New York, or was it Boston?

“Good heavens, what's the matter with the man, senile decay?” I flung at her. “Terry isn't at all a decayed name.”

“And Terry isn't a decayed man. He's about twenty-six, if you choose to call that senile. He's almost too good-looking. He's not physically ill. And he's got plenty of money. All the same, he's likely to die quite soon, I should say.”

“Can't anything be done?” I inquired, really moved.

“I don't know. It's shell shock. You know what that is. He's come to stay with us at Haslemere, poor boy, because my husband was once in love with his mother—the same time I was worshiping his father. Terry came to us before, here in London in nineteen-fifteen, on leave soon after he volunteered. But, even in nineteen-fifteen he wasn't exactly radiating happiness, because of disappointment in love or something, but he was just boyishly cynical then. He was the most splendid specimen of a young man! He was his father over again, although Henry says he's like his mother! Either way, I was looking forward to nursing him at Haslemere and seeing him improve every day. But, my dear, I can do nothing! He has got so on my nerves that I had to make an excuse to run up to town or I should simply have—slumped. The sight of me slumping would have been terribly bad for the poor boy's health. It might have finished him.”

“So you want to exchange my nerves for yours,” I said. “You want me to nurse your protégé till I slump. Is that it?”

“It wouldn't come to that with you,” argued the ancient darling. “You could bring back his interest in life. I know you could. You'd think of something. Remember what you did for Roger Fane!”

As a matter of fact, I had done a good deal more for Roger Fane than dear old Caroline knew or would ever know. But if Roger owed anything to me, I owed him and all he had paid me in gratitude and bank notes to Mrs. Carstairs.

“I shall never forget Roger Fane, and I hope he won't forget me,” I said. “Shelagh won't let him! But he hadn't lost interest in life. He just wanted life to give him Shelagh Leigh. She happened to be my best pal, and because her people were snobs I had to help him. But this Terry Burns of yours—what can I do for him?”

“Take him on and see,” pleaded the old lady.

“Do you wish him to fall in love with me?” I suggested.

“He wouldn't, if I did. He told me the other day that he'd loved only one woman in his life, and he should never care for another. Besides, I mustn't conceal from you, this would be an unsalaried job. The ship would be salvaged in spite of itself.”

“Oh, indeed?” said I, slightly piqued, “I don't want his love, or his old money, either! But—well—I might just go and have a look at him, if you'd care to take me to Haslemere with you. No harm in seeing what can be done, if anything. I suppose, as you and Mr. Carstairs between you were in love with all his ancestors, and he resembles them, he must be worth saving, apart from the loops. Is he English or American or what?”

“American on one side and what on the other,” replied the old lady. “That is, his father, whom I was in love with, was American. The mother, whom Henry adored, was French. All that's quite a romance. But it's ancient history. And it's the present we're interested in. Of course I'd 'care' to take you to Haslemere. But I have a better plan. I've persuaded Terry to consult the nerve specialist, Sir Humphrey Hale. He's comparatively easy to persuade, because he'd rather yield a point than bother to argue. That's how I got my excuse to run up to town: to explain the case to Sir Humphrey and have my flat made ready for Terence to live in while he's being treated.”

“Oh, that's it!” I said, and thought for a minute.

My flat is in the same house with the Carstairs', a charming old house in which I couldn't afford to live if Dame Caroline—title given by me, not his gracious majesty—hadn't taught me the gentle, well-paid art of brightening. If you don't know the story of Roger Fane, Shelagh Leigh, and me, Princess de Miramare, née Elizabeth Courtenaye, you can't know what a brightener is, because Mrs. Carstairs invented the métier, or profession, expressly for my benefit.

You might imagine that a brightener was some sort of a patent polisher for stoves, metal, or even boots. But you would be mistaken. I am the one and only brightener!

You see, the Courtenayes of Courtenaye Abbey have thought themselves rather swells, ever since the year ten-ninety-nine, when they began in England. All the women of the race are supposed to have been beauties, some more, some less. My grandmother, who brought me up, was more, and she was interested in me because I was her image at my age. She married me to Paolo di Miramare, of the Royal Italian Air Force, and arranged the wedding in such a way that he would have to go back to the front about an hour after. I never saw him again. And grandmother, who was ill at the time, died of chagrin and heart failure when I just missed inheriting a fortune. Mr. Carstairs was her solicitor. Fortunately for me, he and his American wife were in Rome. While there, the great inspiration came to Caroline.

To be a paid companion was too ignominious for a Miramare, née Courtenaye, and too tame for Elizabeth of that ilk. If you are girl or woman, you can't respectably engage yourself as a companion to a man except by marriage. But you can brighten the life of one, or, indeed, several, of that sex. You can even procure social advantages for munition millionaires. And brighteners, if young, beautiful, and of high position, are worthy of their hire. Now, perhaps, you have an inkling of Mrs. Carstairs' idea.

But all this isn't what I was thinking about when I said, “Oh, that's it?” I was attempting to track that benevolent female fox, Caroline Carstairs, to the farthest fastness of her mental lair. When I flattered myself that I'd succeeded, I spoke again.

“I see what you're up to, Madame Machiavelli,” I warned her. “You and your husband are so fed up with the son of your ancient loves that he's spoiling your holiday in your country house. You've been wondering how on earth to shed him, anyhow for a breathing space, without being unkind. So you thought if you could lure him to London and lend him your flat”

“Dearest, you are an ungrateful young beastess! Besides, you're only half right. It's true, poor Henry and I are worn out from sympathy. Our hearts are squeezed sponges and have completely collapsed. Not that Terry complains. He doesn't. Only he is so horribly bored with life and himself and us that it's killing all three. I had to think of something to save him. So I thought of you.”

“But you thought of Sir Humphrey Hale. Surely, if there's any cure for Mr.”

“Captain”

“Burns, Sir Humphrey can”

“He can't. But I had to use him with Terry. I couldn't say, 'Go live in our flat and meet the Princess de Miramare.' He would believe the obvious thing and be put off. You are to be thrown in as an extra, a charming neighbor who, as a favor to me, will see that he's all right. When you've got him interested—not in yourself, but in life—I shall explain, or confess, whichever you choose to call it. He will then realize that the fee for his cure ought to be yours, not Sir Humphrey's, though naturally you wouldn't accept one. Sir Humphrey has already told me that, judging from the symptoms I've described, it seems a case beyond doctor's skill. You know, Sir H. has made his pile, and doesn't have to tout for patients. But he's a good friend of Henry's and mine.”

“You have very strong faith in me!” I laughed.

“Not too strong,” said she.

The Carstairs' servants had gone with them to the house near Haslemere, but if Dame Caroline wanted a first-rate cook at a moment's notice, she would wrangle one even if there were only two in existence and both engaged. The patient had his own valet, so with the pair of them and a charcreature of some sort, he would do very well for a few weeks. Nevertheless, I hardly thought that in the end he would be braced up to the effort of coming, and I should not have been surprised to received a wire:

Which shows that, despite all past experiences, I little knew my Caroline!

Captain Burns, late of the American Flying Corps, did come. What is more, he called at my flat before he had been fifteen minutes in his own. This he did because Mrs. Carstairs had begged him to bring a small parcel which he must deliver by hand to me. She had telegraphed asking me to stop at home, quite a favor, but I couldn't refuse, as I'd tacitly promised to brighten the man. So there I sat, in my favorite frock, when he was ushered into the drawing-room.

Dame Caroline had told me that “Terry” was good-looking, but her description had left me cold, and, somehow or other, I was completely unprepared for the real Terry Burns,

Yes, “real” is the word for him! He was so real that it seemed odd I had gone on all my life without having known there was this Terence Burns. Not that I fell in love with him. Just at the moment I was much occupied in trying to keep alight an old fire of resentment against a man who had saved my life—a “forty-fourth cousin four times removed,” as he called himself—Sir James Courtenaye. But when I say “real” I mean Terry was one of those few persons who would seem important to you if you even passed him in a crowd. You would tell yourself regretfully that there was a friend you'd missed making, and you would have had to resist a strong impulse to rush back and speak to him at any price.

If, at the first instant of meeting, I felt this strong personal magnetism or charm or whatever it was, though the man was physically at lowest ebb, what would the sensation have been with him at his best?

He was tall and very thin, with a loose-boned look, as if he ought to be lithe and muscular; but he came into the room listlessly, his shoulders drooping, as if it were an almost unbearable bore to put one foot before another. His pallor was of the pathetic kind which gives an odd kind of transparence [sic] to deeply tanned skin, almost like a light shining through. His hair was a bronzy brown, so immaculately brushed back from his square forehead as to remind one of a helmet, except that it rippled all over. And he had the most appealing eyes I ever saw.

They were not dark, tragic ones like Roger Fane's. I thought that, when he was well and happy, they must have been full of light and joy. They were slate gray, with thick black lashes, true Celtic eyes, and they were dull and tired now—not sad, only devoid of interest in anything.

It wasn't flattering that they should be devoid of interest in me. I am used to seeing men's eyes light up with a gleam of surprise, when they see me for the first time. This man's eyes didn't. I seemed to read in them:

“Yes, I suppose you're very pretty. But that's nothing to me, and I hope you don't want me to flirt with you, because I haven't the energy or even the wish.”

I'm sure that, vaguely, this idea was about what was in his mind, and that he intended getting away from me as soon as would be decently polite after finishing his errand. Still, I wasn't in the least annoyed. I was only sorry for him, not because he didn't want to be bothered with me, but because he didn't want to be bothered with anything. Millionaire or pauper, I didn't care. I was determined to brighten him in spite of himself. He was too dear and delightful a fellow not to be happy with somebody some day. I couldn't sit still and let him sink down and down into the depths. But I should have to go carefully or do him more harm than good. I could see that. If I attempted to be amusing, he would crawl away a battered wreck.

What I did was to show no particular interest in him. I took the tiny parcel Mrs. Carstairs had ordered him to bring, and asked casually if he'd care to stop in my flat till his man had finished unpacking.

“I don't know how you feel,” I said, “but I always hate the first hour in a new place, with a servant fussing about, opening and shutting drawers and wardrobes. I loathe things that squeak.”

“So do I,” he answered dreamily. “Any kind of noise.”

“I shall be having tea in a few minutes,” I mentioned. “If you don't mind looking at magazines or something while I open Mrs. Carstairs' parcel and write to her, stay and have tea. I should be pleased, but don't feel you'll be rude to say no. Do as you like.”

He stayed, probably because he was in a nice easy-chair, and it was simpler to sit still than get up, so long as he needn't make conversation. I left him there, while I went to my desk at the far end of the room. The wonderful packet which must be given into my hand by his contained three beautiful new potatoes, the size of marbles, out of the Carstairs kitchen garden! I bit back a giggle, hid the rare jewels in a drawer, and scribbed [sic] any nonsense I could think of to Dame Caroline, till I heard tea coming. Then I went back to my guest. I gave him tea and other things. There were late strawberries and some Devonshire cream, which had arrived by post that morning anonymously. Sir James Courtenaye, the red-haired cowboy baronet to whom I'd let the ancestral abbey, was in Devonshire. But there was no reason why he should send cream or anything else. Still, there it was. Terry Burns, it appeared, had never happened to taste the Devonshire variety before. He liked it. And when he had disposed of a certain amount, during which time we hardly spoke, I offered him my cigarette case.

For a few moments we both smoked in silence. Then I said:

“I'm disappointed in you.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because you haven't looped any loops through your nose.”

He actually laughed! He looked delightful when he laughed.

“I was trying something of the sort one day, and failing,” I explained. “Mrs. Carstairs said she had a friend who could do it, and his name was Terence Burns.”

“I've almost forgotten that old stunt,” he smiled indulgently. “Think of Mrs. Carstairs remembering it! Why, I haven't had time to remember it myself, much less try it out, since I was young.”

“That is a long time ago!” I ventured, smoking hard.

“You see,” he explained quite gravely, smoking harder, “I went into the war in nineteen-fifteen. It wasn't our war then, but I had a sort of feeling it was everybody's war. And besides, I'd fallen out of love with life about that time. War doesn't leave a man feeling very young, whether or not he's gone through what I have.”

“I know,” said I. “Even we women don't feel as young as we hope we look. I'm twenty-one, and feel forty.”

“I'm twenty-seven and feel ninety-nine,” he capped me.

“Shell shock is—the devil!” I sympathized. “But men get over it. I know lots who have.” I took another cigarette and pushed the case toward him.

“Perhaps they wanted to get over it. I don't want to, particularly, because life had rather lost interest for me before that. I'm afraid that was one reason I volunteered. Not very courageous! I don't care now whether I live or die. I didn't care then.”

“At twenty-two! Why, you weren't grown up!”

“You say that, at twenty-one?”

“It's different with a girl. I've had such a lot of things to make me feel grown up.”

“So have I, God knows.” By this time he was smoking like a chimney. “Did you lose the one thing you'd wanted in the world? But I mustn't ask that. I don't ask it.”

“You may,” I vouchsafed, charmed that—as one says of a baby—he was “beginning to take notice.” “No, frankly, I didn't lose the one thing in the world I wanted most, because I've never quite known yet what I did or do want most. But not knowing leaves you at loose ends, if you're alone in the world, as I am.” Then, having said this, just to indicate that my circumstances conduced to tacit sympathy with his, I hopped like a sparrow to another branch of the same subject. “It's bad not to get what we want, but it's dull not to want anything.”

“Is it?” Burns asked almost fiercely. “I haven't got to that yet. I wish I had. When I want a thing, it's in my nature to want it for good and all. I want the thing I wanted before the war now as much as ever. That's the principal trouble with me, I think: the hopelessness of everything, the uselessness of the things you can get.”

“Can't you manage to want something you might possibly get?” I asked.

He smiled faintly.

“That's much the same advice that the doctors have given, the advice this Sir Humphrey Hale of the Carstairs will give to-morrow, I'm sure. 'Try to take an interest in things as they are.' Good heavens, that's just what I can't do.”

“I don't give you that advice,” I said, “It's worse than useless to try and take an interest. It's stodgy. What I mean is, if an interest, alias a chance of adventure, should blow along, don't shut the door on it. Let it in, ask it to sit down, and see how you like it. But then, maybe you wouldn't recognize it as an adventure if you saw it at the window!”

“Oh, I think I should do that!” he defended himself. “I'm man enough yet to know an adventure when I see it. That's why I went into the war. But the war's finished, and so am I, pretty well. I don't see why any one bothers about me. I wouldn't about myself, if they'd let me alone!”

“There I'm with you,” said I. “I like to be let alone, to go my own way. Still, people unfortunately feel bound to do their best. Mrs. Carstairs has done hers. If Sir Humphrey gives you up, she'll thenceforward consider herself free from responsibility, and you free to ',' whatever that means! As for me, I've no responsibility at all. I don't advise you! In your place I'd do as you're doing. Only I've enough fellow feeling to let you know, in a spirit of comradeship, if I hear the call of an adventure— There, you did the stunt all right that time! A lovely loop the loop! I wouldn't have believed it! Now watch, please, while I try!”

He did watch, and I fancy that in spite of himself he took an interest! He laughed out, quite a spontaneous “Ha, ha!” when I began with a loop and ended with a sneeze.

It seems too absurd that a siren should lure her victim with a sneeze instead of a song. But it was that sneeze that did the trick. Or else my mumness now and then and not seeming to care a tinker's anything whether he thought I was pretty or a fright. He warmed toward me visibly during the loop lesson, and I was as proud as if a wild bird had settled down to eat out of my hand.

That was the beginning, and a commonplace one, you'll say! It didn't seem commonplace to me; I was too much interested. But even I did not dream of the developments ahead!