The Brightener

"Mrs. Brandreth?" I had to interrupt. "Rosemary was already – "

"No, no! The aunt's name was Mrs. Brandreth. The man Rosemary married a few weeks later was the nephew of her aunt's American husband. When I asked Rosemary to be my wife, I heard the whole story. Rosemary told me herself. The aunt, Mrs. John Brandreth, came to England to visit her sister. It wasn't long after her husband had died, and she wasn't strong, so the nephew – Guy Brandreth – travelled with her. He was a West Point graduate, it seems; probably you know that West Point is the American Sandhurst? He was still in the Army and on long leave. He and the aunt both stayed at Mrs. Hillier's house in Surrey, and – I suppose you can guess what happened?"

"A – love affair?" I hesitated.

"Yes. It didn't take Brandreth long to make up his mind what he wanted, and to go for it. He proposed. Rosemary said 'Yes.' It was her first love. But Brandreth had been practically engaged to an American girl – a great heiress. He hadn't much himself beyond his pay, I fancy. Money was an object to him – but Rosemary's beauty bowled him over, and he lost his head. Bye and bye, when he began to see the light of common sense again, and when he realized that Rosemary wouldn't have a red cent of her own, he weakened. There was some slight lover's quarrel one day. Rosemary broke off the engagement for the pleasure of hearing Brandreth beg to be taken back. But he didn't beg. He took her at her word and went to London, where the American girl had arrived. That same night he wrote Rosemary that, as she didn't want him, he had offered himself to someone who did. So ended the love story – for a time. And that's where I came in."

"Rosemary went to Italy?" I prompted him.

"Yes. Her aunt felt responsible, and carried the girl away to help her to forget. Rosemary told me this, but thought she had 'got over it,' and said she would marry me if I wanted her. Of course, I did want her. I believed – most men would – that I could teach her to love me. She was so young. And even then I wasn't poor. I could give her a good time! The poor child was keen on letting Brandreth know she wasn't mourning his loss, and she'd heard he was still in London with his fiancée and her millionaire papa. So she had our engagement announced in the Morning Post and other London papers."

"Well – and then?" I broke into a pause.

"Guy Brandreth couldn't bear to let another fellow have the girl. He must have loved her really, I suppose, with what was best in him. Anyhow, he asked for his release from the heiress, and found out from Mrs. Hillier where her daughter was. As soon as he could get there, he turned up at the Villa d'Este, where Rosemary and her aunt were staying then."

"And you – were you there?"

"No. If I had been, perhaps everything would have been different. I was in the Army, and on leave, like Brandreth. I had to go back to my regiment, but Rosemary'd promised to marry me on her eighteenth birthday, which wasn't far off. I'd made an appointment to go and see Mrs. Hillier on a certain day. But before the day came a telegram arrived from the aunt, Mrs. Brandreth, to say that Rosemary had run away with Guy.

"It was a deadly blow. I went almost mad for a while – don't know what kept me from killing myself, except that I've always despised suicide as a coward's way out of trouble. I chucked the Army – had to make a change – and went to California, where an old pal of mine had often wanted me to join him. I knew that Brandreth was stationed down south somewhere, so in California I should be as far from him and Rosemary as if I stayed in England. Well – now you know the story – for I never saw Rosemary or even heard of her from that time till the other day on board this ship. Does what I've told help you at all to understand the condition she wants me to make about her name, in my will?"

"No, it doesn't," I had to confess. "You must just —trust Rosemary, Major Murray."

"I do," he answered, fervently.

"I wish I did!" I could have echoed. But I said not a word, and tried to remember only how sweet Rosemary Brandreth was.

Before it was time for us to witness the will I repeated to Jim all that Murray had told me, and watched his face. His eyebrows had drawn together in a puzzled frown.

"I hope she isn't going to play that poor chap another trick," he grumbled. "It would finish him in an hour if she did."

"Oh, she won't!" I cried. "She loves him."

I was sure I was right about that. But I was sure of nothing else.

CHAPTER V

THE MAN WITH THE BRILLIANT EYES

Jim and I witnessed Ralston Murray's will, which left all he possessed to "Mrs. Rosemary Brandreth." No reference was made in the document to the fact that Rosemary was engaged to marry him.

Next day we landed, and Murray was so buoyed up with happiness that he was able to travel to London without a rest. He stayed at a quiet hotel in St. James's Square, and we took Rosemary Brandreth with us to the Savoy. Murray applied for a special licence, and the marriage was to take place in town, as soon as possible, so that they two might travel to Devonshire as husband and wife. Jim and I both pined for Courtenaye Abbey, but we wouldn't desert our new friends. Besides, their affairs had now become as exciting to us as a mystery play. There were many questions we asked ourselves and each other concerning obscure and unexplained details. But – if Murray didn't choose to ask them, they were no business of ours!

Jim consulted a firm considered to be among the smartest solicitors in London; and thanks to their "smartness," by hook or by crook the difficulty of the codicil was got over.

The wedding was to take place at Major Murray's hotel, in the salon of his suite, as he was not able to go through a ceremony in church. Jim and I were the only invited guests; but at the last moment a third guest invited himself: the cousin to whom the Ralston property would have gone if its owner hadn't preferred Ralston Murray for his heir.

It seemed that the distant relatives had always kept up a correspondence – letters three or four times a year; and I imagine that Murray made the disappointed man a consolation allowance, though he hinted at nothing of the kind to me. In any case, Doctor Paul Jennings (who lived and practised at Merriton, not far from Ralston Old Manor) reported unofficially on the condition of the place at stated intervals. Murray had wired the news of his arrival in England to Jennings, and that he would be bringing a wife to Devonshire; whereupon the doctor asked by telegram if he might attend the wedding. Neither Murray nor the bride-elect could think of any reason why he should not come, so he was politely bidden to be present.

I was rather curious about the cousin to whom Murray had referred on shipboard; and as the acquaintanceship between the two men seemed to be entirely impersonal, I thought it "cheeky" of Jennings to wangle himself to the wedding. Jim agreed with me as to the cheekiness. He said, however, that the request was natural enough. This poor country doctor had heard, no doubt, that Murray was doomed to death, and had accordingly hoped great things for himself. There had seemed to be no reason why these great things shouldn't happen: yet now the dying man was about to take a wife! Jennings had been too impatient to wait till the couple turned up in Devonshire to see what the lady was like.

"Besides," Jim went on (with the shrewdness I always accused him of picking up in America), "besides, the fellow probably hopes to make a good impression on the bride, and so get taken on as family physician."

"He'll be disappointed about that!" I exclaimed, with a flash of naughty joy, for somehow I'd made up my mind not to like Doctor Jennings. "Major Murray has promised Rosemary and me to consult Beverley Drake about himself. It's the most perfect thing that Sir Beverley should be in Exeter! Not to call him to the case would be tempting Providence!"

Jim doesn't know or care much about doctors, but even he knew something of Sir Beverley Drake. He is the man, of course, who did such wonders in the war for soldiers who'd contracted obscure tropical diseases while serving in Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, Salonika, and so on.

You could bet pretty safely that a person named Drake would be of Devonshire extraction, and you would not lose your money on Beverley of that ilk.

He had spent half his life in the East, and hadn't been settled down as a Harley Street specialist for many years when the war broke out. Between 1914 and 1919 he had worn himself to a thread in France, and had temporarily retired from active life to rest in his native town, Exeter. But he had known both my wonderful grandmother and old Mr. Ralston. He wasn't likely to refuse his services to Ralston Murray. Consequently, I didn't quite see Doctor Paul Jennings getting a professional foothold in Major Murray's house, no matter what his personal charm might be.

As it turned out, the personal charm was a matter of opinion. Jennings had the brightest eyes and the reddest lips ever seen on a man. He was youngish, and looked more like a soldier than a doctor. Long ago some Ralston girl had married a Jennings; consequently, the cousinship, distant as it was. But though you can't associate Spain with a "Jennings," there was Spanish blood in the man's veins. If you had met him in Madrid, he would have looked more at home than as a doctor in a Devonshire village. Not that he had stuck permanently to the village since taking up practice there. He had gone to the Front, and brought back a decoration. Also he had brought back a French wife, said to have been an actress.

I heard some of these things from Murray, some from Jennings himself on the day of the wedding. And they made me more curious about the man than I should have been otherwise. Why, for instance, the Parisian wife? Do Parisian women, especially actresses, marry obscure English doctors in country villages which are hardly on the map?

No. There must be a very special reason for such a match; and I sought for it when I met Paul Jennings. But his personality, though attractive to many women, no doubt, wasn't quite enough to account for the marriage. I resolved to look for something further when I got to Devonshire and met Mrs. Jennings.

You wouldn't believe that a wedding ceremony in a private sitting room of an old-fashioned hotel, with the bridegroom stretched on a sofa, could be the prettiest sight imaginable; but it was. I never saw so charming or so pathetic a picture!

Jim and I had sent quantities of flowers, and Doctor Jennings had sent some, too. Rosemary and I arranged them, for there was no conventional nonsense about this bride keeping herself in seclusion till the last minute! Her wish was to be with the man she loved as often as she could, and to belong to him with as little delay as possible.

We transformed the room into a pink-and-white bower, and then taxied back to the Savoy to dress. There had been no time for Rosemary to have a gown made, and as she had several white frocks I advised her to wear one which Murray hadn't seen. But no! She wouldn't do that. She must be married in something new; in fact, everything new, nothing she'd ever worn before. The girl seemed superstitious about this: and her pent-up emotion was so intense that the least opposition would have reduced her to tears.

Luckily she found in a Bond Street shop an exquisite model gown just over from Paris. It was pale dove-colour and silver, and there was an adorable hat to match. The faint gray, which had a delicate suggestion of rose in its shadows, enhanced the pearly tints of the bride's complexion, the coral of her lips, and the gold of her ash-blonde hair. She was a vision when I brought her back to her lover, just in time to be at his side before the clergyman in his surplice appeared from the next room.

To see her kneeling by Murray's sofa with her hand in his sent the tears stinging to my eyes, but I wouldn't let them fall. She looked like an angel of sweetness and light, and I reproached myself bitterly because I had half suspected her of mercenary plans.

Once during the ceremony I glanced at Doctor Jennings. He was gazing at the bride as I had gazed, fixedly, absorbedly, with his brilliant eyes. So intent was his look that I wondered its magnetism did not call Rosemary's eyes to his; but she was as unconscious of his stare as he of mine. He must have admired her; yet there was something deeper than admiration; and I would have given a good deal to know what it was – whether benevolent or otherwise. His expression, however, told no tale beyond its intense interest.

There was a little feast after the wedding, with an imposing cake, and everything that other, happier brides have. It seemed a mockery to drink health to the newly married pair, knowing as we did that Ralston Murray had been given three months at most to live. Yet we drank, and made a brave pretence at all the conventional wedding merriment; for if we hadn't laughed, some of us would have cried.

An hour later Major and Mrs. Murray started off on the first stage of their journey to Devonshire. They went by car, a magnificent Rolls-Royce rather like a travelling boudoir; and in another car was Murray's nurse-valet, with the comfortable elderly maid I had found for Rosemary.

They were to travel at a moderate pace, to stay a night at Glastonbury, and go on next morning to Ralston Old Manor, which they expected to reach early in the afternoon. As for Jim and me, we were too keen on seeing the dear old Abbey together, as our future home, to waste a minute more than need be en route, no matter how beautiful the journey by road.

Our packing had been done before the wedding, and we were in a fast express tearing westward an hour after the Murrays had set off by car.

Ours had been such a long honeymoon – months in America – that outsiders considered it over and done with long ago. We two knew that it wasn't over and done with, and never would be, but we couldn't go about proclaiming that fact; therefore we made no objection when Doctor Jennings proposed travelling in the train with us. We reflected that, if he were in the same train he would be in the same compartment, and so it happened; but, though I didn't warm to the man, I was interested in trying to study the character behind those brilliant eyes.

Some people's eyes seem to reveal their souls as through clear windows. Other eyes conceal, as if they were imitation windows, made of mirrors. I thought that Paul Jennings' were the mirror windows; but he had a manner which appeared almost ostentatiously frank. He told us of the difficulties he had had in getting on, before the war, and praised Ralston Murray's generosity. "Ralston would never tell you this," he said, "but it was he who made it possible for me to marry. He has been awfully decent to me, though we hardly know each other except through letters; and I only wish I could do something for him in return. All I've been able to do so far is very little: just to look after the Manor, and now to get the place ready for Murray and his bride: or rather, my wife has done most of that. I wish I were a great doctor, and my joy would be to put my skill at Ralston's service. But as it is, he'll no doubt try to get an opinion from Beverley Drake?"

Jennings put this as a question rather than stating it, and I guessed that there had been no talk on the subject between him and Murray. But there could be no secret: and Jim answered promptly that we were staying in Exeter on purpose to see Sir Beverley. We'd made an appointment with him by telegram, Jim added, and would go on the rest of the way, which was short, by car. Even with that delay we should reach the Abbey in time for dinner.

"My wife is meeting me at Exeter, as I have business there," Doctor Jennings replied. "She will come to the train. I hope you will let me introduce her to you, Lady Courtenaye?"

I murmured that I should be charmed, and felt in my bones that he hoped we would invite them to motor with us. Jim glanced at me for a "pointer," but I looked sweetly blank. It would not have taken us far out of our way to drop the Jenningses at Merriton. But I just didn't want to do it. So there!

All the same, I was curious to see what the Parisian wife was like; and at Exeter we three got out of the train together. "There she is!" exclaimed Jennings suddenly, and his face lit up.