The House with the Twisted Chimneys/Chapter 6

It was amazing what Terry and I accomplished in the next few days, I at Dawley St. Ann, close to Dun Moat, he flashing back and forth between there and London!

My incentive and reward in one consisted of the all-but-incredible change for the better in him; Terry's was the hope of meeting the adored lady, for he had not met her yet. Her voice thrilled him through the telephone, saying that of course she “remembered Terry Burns,” but it was her companion, Mrs. Dobell, who received him at the Savoy. She it was who carried messages from the still-ailing Princess Avalesco to him and handed on to the princess his vague explanations as to how he had acquired Dun Moat. But Terry had seen, in the ladies' private sitting room at the hotel, an ivory miniature of the princess, and its beauty had poured oil on the fire of his love. At what period in her career it had been painted he didn't know, not daring or caring to ask Mrs. Dobell; but one thing was sure: it showed her lovelier than of old.

Seeing the boy on the way to such a cure as twenty Sir Humphrey Hales could never have produced, I was happy while wrestling for his sake with the servant problem, placing new “antique” furniture in half-empty rooms, and watching neglected lawns rolled to velvet. But not once during my daily pilgrimages to Dun Moat did I catch sight of Lord or Lady Scarlett or their old, witchlike servant. True to their bargain, they had officially ceased to exist; and my own tangible reminder of the family was a glimpse of a little boy who stared through a closed window of the “suite of the garden court.”

I'd been passing that way to criticize the work of the gardeners, and looked up to admire the twisted chimney, which rose practically at the junction of the oldest part of the house with the newest. Just for an instant a small, hatchet face peered at me, and vanished as if its owner had been snatched away by a strong hand; but I had time to say to myself, “Like father like son!” And I smiled in remembering that Jim Courtenaye had called the Scarletts' heir a “venomous little brute.”

At last came the day when the Princess Avalesco, Mrs. Dobell, and a maid were to motor down and take possession of Dun Moat. Terry—much thanked through the telephone for supplying the place with servants—was on the spot before them. He had dashed over to see me at Dawley St. Ann, where I was packing for my return to town. He looked extremely handsome, and had excitedly offered to run back and tell me “all about her” before I had to take my train.

“I shall go with you to the station,” he said. “You've been the most gorgeous brick to me! You've given me happiness and new life. And the one thing which could make to-day better than it is would be your stopping on.” I merely smiled at this, for I'd pointed out that my continued presence would be misunderstood by the Princess Avalesco, and he reluctantly agreed. So, when he had gone to meet his wonder of the world, I continued to pack.

Very likely he would forget such a trifle as the time for my train, I thought, and if he did turn up it would be at the last minute. I was surprised, therefore, when, after an hour, I saw him whirling up to the inn door in the one and only village taxi.

A moment later I was bidding him enter my sitting room. A question trembled on my lips, but the sight of his face choked it into a gasp.

Terry came in and flung himself into a chair.

“Good heavens, what's happened?” I ventured.

He did not answer at first. He only stared. Then he found his voice.

“I don't know how to tell you what's happened,” he groaned. “You'll despise me. You'll want to kick me out of your room.”

“I won't!” I spoke sharply to bring him to himself. “What is it? Hasn't she come?”

“She has come. That's it!”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, my dear princess, I—I don't love her any more.”

If I hadn't been sitting on a chair, I should have collapsed onto one, or the floor.

“You don't love her?” I faltered.

“No. And that's not all. It's perhaps not even the worst.”

“If you don't tell me at once, I shall scream!”

“I hardly know how. I—oh, good lord! I've fallen in love with some one else.”

I must now make a confession as shameful as his. My mind jumped to the conclusion that Terry Burns was referring to me. I expected him to explain that, on seeing his ideal after these many years, he found that, after all, it was his faithful pal he loved! I was conceited enough to think this quite natural, though regrettable, and my first impulse was to spare us both the pain of such an avowal.

“Good gracious!” I warded him off. “So hearts can really be caught in the rebound? “But what I most want to know is, why have you unloved Princess Avalesco?”

“It's most horribly disloyal and beastly of me. If you must know, it's because she's lost her beauty and has got fat. I wouldn't have believed that a few years could make such a difference. And she can't be thirty-five! But she's a mountain. And her hair looks jolly queer. I think it must have come out with some illness, and she's got on her head one of those things you call a combination.”

“We don't! We call it a transformation,” I corrected him in haste. “Oh, this is awful! Think of the fortune you've spent to offer Dun Moat to your ladylove for a few weeks, only to discover that she isn't your ladylove! What a waste! I suppose now you'll go up to London”

“No,” said Terry; “I shall stay here, And I can't feel that the money's wasted in taking Dun Moat. Just seeing such a face as I've seen is worth every sovereign.”

“Face?” I echoed.

“Yes. I told you I'd fallen in love, You must have guessed it was with some one at Dun Moat, as I've been nowhere else.”

I hadn't guessed that! But I wasn't going to let him know that my guesses had come home to roost!

“It can't be Mrs. Dobell,” I said, “because you've seen her before, and she's old. Has the princess got a beautiful Cinderella for a maid, and”

“No—no!” Terry protested. “I almost wish it were like that. It would be humiliating but simple. The thing that's happened, this lightning stroke, is far from simple. I may have gone mad, or I may have fallen in love with a ghost.”

Relieved of my first suspicions, I pressed him to tell the story in as few words as possible.

It seemed that Terry had arrived at Dun Moat before the princess, and to pass the time he began strolling about the gardens. His walk took him all around the rambling old house, and something made him glance suddenly up at one of the windows. There was no sound, yet it was as if a voice had called. And at the window stood a girl.

She was looking down at him. And though the window was high and overhung with ivy, Terry's eyes met hers. It was, he repeated, *“a lightning stroke!”

“She was rather like what Margaret Revell used to be years ago, when I was a boy and fell in love with her,” Terry went on. “I mean, she was that type. And though she looked even lovelier than Margaret in those days—lots lovelier, and younger, too—I thought it must be Margaret, anyway. You see, there didn't seem to be any one else it could be. And at that distance, behind window glass, and after all these years, how could I be sure? I said to myself: 'Gee, the auto must have come and I've missed hearing it! She's making her tour of the house without me!' I couldn't stand that, so I sprinted for the door, And I was just in time to meet the motor drawing up in front of it. Great Heligoland! The shock I got when—at that moment of all others, my eyes dazzled with a dream—I saw the real Princess Margaret! Somehow I blundered through the meeting with her and didn't utterly disgrace myself. But I made an excuse about taking a friend to a train, and bolted as soon as I could. I didn't come straight here. I went back to the window where I'd seen the face, the vision, the ghost, whatever it was. No one was there. A curtain was pulled across, And I remembered then that I'd always seen it covered. Say, princess, do you think I'm going mad, just when I hoped I was cured? Was it the spirit of Margaret Revell's lost youth I saw, or—or”

“At which window was the—er—being?” I cut in.

“It was close under the twisted chimney.”

“Ah! In the wing where the Scarletts are, the suite of the garden court!”

“Yes. I forgot, when I thought it must be Margaret, that the window was in the Scarletts' wing. Of course Margaret couldn't have gone there! Princess, you're afraid to tell me, but you do think I'm off my head!”

“I don't,” I assured him. “Just what I think I hardly know myself. But I shouldn't wonder if you'd stumbled onto the key of the mystery.”

“What mystery?”

“The mystery of Dun Moat; the mystery of the Scarletts; why they wouldn't let or sell the place until I happened to think of bribing them with the suggestion that they should stay on. Captain Burns, it wasn't a ghost you saw, never fear! It was a real, live person, the incarnate reason why at all costs the Scarletts must stay at Dun Moat.”

Terry blushed with excitement.

“Oh, if I could believe you, I should be almost happy! If that girl—that heavenly girl!—exists at Dun Moat, and I'm the tenant, I shall meet her. I”

He went on rhapsodizing until the look in my eyes pulled him up short.

“What is it?” he asked. “Don't you approve of my wanting to meet her? Don't you”

“I approve with all my heart,” I said. But I'm wondering—wondering! Why are the Scarletts hiding a girl? Has she done something that makes it wise to keep out of sight? Or is it that they don't wish her to be seen?”

“Madam, the porter is asking if your luggage is ready to go down,” announced a maid.

“Luggage?” Terry and I stared at each other. I had forgotten that I was going to London.

“But you can't leave me now!” he implored.

“I've changed my mind,” I explained to the maid. “I shall take another train!”