The Mystery of Mrs. Brandreth/Chapter 1

ICE end of a honeymoon I'm having!” Jim grumbled. “With my wife thinking and talking all the time about another fellow.”

“My darling, adored man!” I exclaimed. “You know perfectly well that you're the background and undercurrent and foundation of all my thoughts every minute of the day and night. And this 'other fellow' is dying.”

Yes, “darling, adored man” were my adjectives for Jim Courtenaye, whom I had once abused. But he was no longer my “forty-fourth cousin four times removed.” He was my very own husband and the pivot of my world.

All the same, if a cat may look at a king, a bride may just glance at a man who isn't her bridegroom.

“Ruling passion strong in marriage, I suppose,” said Jim. “I bet you'd like to try your hand at 'brightening' that chap, though judging from his face, he's almost past even your blandishments. I wouldn't be past 'em, not in my coffin! But it isn't every man who can love as I do, you minx.”

“And it isn't every man who has such a perfect woman to love,” I capped him with calm conceit. “But I wish I could 'brighten' that poor fellow. Or else I wish that some one else would!”

And at that very instant my wish was granted in the most amazing way!

A girl came—but no, I mustn't let her appear upon the scene quite yet. First I must explain that Jim and I were on shipboard, coming back to England from America, where we had been having the most wonderful honeymoon. Jim had taken me out West, and showed me the places where he had lived in his cowboy days. We had ridden long trails together, in the Grand Cañon of Arizona, and in the Yosemite Valley of California. I had never imagined that life could be so glorious, and our future together, Jim's and mine, stretched before us like a dream of joy. We were going to live in the dear old Abbey which had been the home of the Courtenayes for hundreds and hundreds of years, and travel when we liked. Because we were so much in love and so perfectly happy, I yearned to make at least a few thousand other people happy also, though it did seem impossible that any one else on earth could be as happy as we were.

This was our second day out from New York on the Acquitania, and my spirits had been slightly damped by discovering that two fellow passengers, if not more, were extremely unhappy. One of them lived in the stateroom next to our suite. At night in my cabin I could hear her crying and moaning to herself in a fitful sleep. I had not seen her, so far as I knew, but I fancied from the sound of those sobs that she was young.

When I told Jim, he wanted to change cabins with me, so that I should not be disturbed. But I refused to budge, saying that I “wasn't disturbed.” My neighbor didn't cry or talk in her sleep all through the night by any means. Besides, once I had dropped off, the sounds were not loud enough to wake me. This was true enough not to be a fib, but my realest reason for clinging to the room was an odd fascination in that mysterious sorrow on the other side of the wall; the sorrow of a woman I hadn't seen, might perhaps never see, yet to whom I sent out warm waves Of sympathy. I felt as if those waves had colors, blue and gold, and that they would soothe the sufferer.

Her case obsessed me until, in the sunshine of a second summer day at sea, the one empty chair on the crowded deck was filled. A man was helped into it by a valet or male nurse, and a steward. My first glimpse of his face as he sank down on to carefully placed cushions made my heart jump in my breast with pity and protest against the hardness of fate.

If he'd been old, or even middle-aged, or if he had been one of those colorless characters dully sunk into chronic invalidism, I should have felt only the pity without the protest. But he was young, and though it was clear that he was desperately ill, it was clear, too, in a more subtle, psychic way, that he had not been ill long, and that love of life or desire for denied happiness burned in him still.

Of course Jim was not really vexed because I discussed this man and wondered about him. But my thoughts did play around that piteously romantic figure a good deal, and it rather amused Jim to see me forget the mystery of the cabin in favor of the cushioned chair.

“Once a brightener, always a brightener, I suppose!” he said, which was a joking reference to the profession I had adopted when I was the penniless Princess di Miramare, twenty-one years old and a widow without having been a wife. It was perhaps a quaint profession, but not only did I make a good living by it for nearly two years, but I contrived to snatch from despair several clients, paying and nonpaying. Now that I'd dropped my “princesshood” to marry the head of my own family, Sir James Courtenaye, I need never brighten any one for money again. But I didn't see why I should not go sailing along on a sunny career of brightening for love. According to habit, therefore, my first thought was: what can be done for the man in the cushioned chair?

Maybe Jim was right! If he hadn't been young and almost better than good-looking, my interest might not have been so keen. He was the wreck of a gorgeous creature, one of those great, tall, muscular men you feel were born to adorn the guards.

The reason—the physical reason, not the psychic one—for thinking he hadn't been ill long was the color of the invalid's face. The pallor of illness hadn't had time to blanch the rich brown which life in the open gives. So thin was the face that the aquiline features stood out sharply, but they seemed to be carved in bronze, not molded in plaster. As for the psychic reason, I found it in the dark eyes which met mine now and then. They were not black like those of my own Jim, which contrasted so strikingly with his auburn hair. Indeed, I couldn't tell whether the eyes were brown or deep gray, for they were set in shadowy hollows, and the brows and thick lashes were even darker than the hair, which was lightly silvered at the temples. Handsome, arresting eyes they must always have been; but what stirred me was the almost violent wish which seemed actually to speak from them.

Whether it was a wish to live, or a haunting wish for joy which had never been gratified, I could not decide. But I felt that it would have been burnt out by a long illness.

I had only just learned a few things about the man, when there came that surprising answer to my prayer for some one to brighten him. My maid had got acquainted with the valet-nurse, and had received a quantity of information which she passed to me.

Mr. Tillet's master was a Major Ralston Murray, an Englishman, who had gone to live in California some years ago, and had made a great fortune in oil, He had been in the British army as a youth, Tillet understood, and when the European war broke out, he went home to offer himself to his country. He didn't return to America until after the armistice, though he had been badly wounded once or twice, as well as gassed. At home in Bakersfield, the great oil town where he lived, Murray's health had not improved. He had been recommended a long sea journey, to Japan or China, and had taken the prescription. But instead of doing him good, the trip had been his ruin. In China he was attacked with a malady resembling yellow fever, though more obscure to scientists. After weeks of desperate illness, the man had gained strength for the return journey, but reaching California he was told by specialists that he must not hope to recover. After that verdict, his one desire was to spend his last days in England. Not long before, a distant relative had left him a place in Devonshire, an old house which he had loved in his youth, Now he was on his way there, to die.

So this was the wonderful wish! Yet I couldn't believe it was all. I felt that there must be something deeper to account for the burning look in those tortured eyes. And, of course, I was more than ever interested, now that his destination proved to be near Courtenaye Abbey. Ralston Old Manor was not nearly so large, nor so important a place historically, as ours, but it was ancient enough and very charming. Though we were not more than fifteen miles away, I had never met the old bachelor, Mr. Ralston, of my day. He was a great recluse, supposed to have had his heart broken by my beautiful grandmother when they were both young. It occurred to me that this Ralston Murray must be the old man's namesake, and the place had been left him on that account.

Now, at last, having explained the man in the cushioned chair, I can come back to the moment when my wish was so surprisingly granted: the wish that if not I, some one else might brighten him.