Vision House

She gave the Frenchwoman a key (which had been handed her by Garth) to use in the morning, when the time came for early tea, a bath, and being dressed. Then, when the maid had departed with a click of the outer door, an idea sprang into the mind of Marise. At first she thought it would not do. Then she thought it would. And the more she thought in both directions, the more she was enmeshed by the idea itself.

Only half an hour had elapsed since Garth went to his room. The man wouldn't be human, after what they'd passed through, if he had gone to bed. Marise was sure he had done no such thing: and she fancied that she caught a faint whiff of tobacco stealing through the keyhole of that stout locked door between their rooms.

At last she could no longer resist the call of the blood – or whatever it was. She switched on the light again, jumped up, and looked for a dressing-gown. Bother! Céline hadn't brought one – had taken it for granted she would use that wonderful thing which Garth's taste – or the taste of some hidden guide of his – had provided.

Well, what did it matter, anyhow? She would slip it on – and the sparkling gold and silver mules, too. She glanced in the long Psyche mirror. She did look divine! Even a rock-carved statue couldn't deny that! Gathering up the jewels, she unlocked the door which led into the hall, and tapped at the door of Garth's room, adjoining her own.

"If you're not in bed," she called, "come out a minute, will you? I've something important to say."

All that was minx in Marise was revelling in the thought that presently Garth would suffer a disappointment. He would imagine that she wished to plead for grace from him. Then, before he could snub her, she'd give him the snub of his life – just as he had given her, Marise Sorel, the shock of hers!

Garth did not answer at once. The girl was hesitating whether to call him again, when his voice made her start. It sounded sleepy! "I am in bed," he said. "What do you want? Is it too important to wait till morning?"

"It's merely that I wished to put the jewels which were left in the salon into your charge," Marise replied with freezing dignity. "I do not think they are safe there."

"Wouldn't they be safe enough with you?" came grumpily – yes, grumpily! – through the closed door.

"No doubt. But I don't wish to have the responsibility, as I don't care to accept them…"

"Oh, I see! Well, if that's your decision, it doesn't matter whether they're safe or not. Leave the things in the corridor if your room's too sacred for them. If that's all you want, I shall not get out of bed."

What a man!

"One would think you were a multi-millionaire!" Marise couldn't resist that one last, sarcastic dig. "So I may be for all you know. Do what you like with the silly old jewels."

Marise threw the cases on the floor as loudly as she could. She knew that the outer door was locked, and that Céline would be the first person in, when morning came, so the act wasn't as reckless as it seemed. But it was a relief to her nerves at the moment.

The filmy dressing-gown, the sparkling mules, the hair down, the general heartbreaking divineness, were wasted.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DREAM

Marise slept little, in what was left of that strange wedding night.

She tried to think of Tony Severance, who must be suffering tortures through his love and fears for her. But somehow he had lost importance. He had become a figure in the background. Her thoughts would turn their "spot light" upon the man in the adjoining room.

Was he asleep? Was he awake? Was he thinking about her, and if so, what? Why had he married her? If it was for love, as she had fancied at first, could he have treated her as he had? That was hard to believe! Yet it was harder to believe his motives wholly mercenary.

"Perhaps that's because I'm vain," the girl told herself. And she remembered, her cheeks hot, how Garth had accused her of vanity and selfishness. He'd said that she took no interest in anything which didn't concern Marise Sorel. She had been angry then, and thought him unjust and hard. But in her heart she knew that he had touched the truth. She was vain and selfish. And she was hard, too, just as hard to him as he to her.

"He has made me so!" she excused herself. "I was never hard to anyone else before, in all my life."

But she could not rest on this special pleading. What right had she to be hard to this man? She had asked him to marry her. His crime was that he had granted her wish and consented to play this dummy hand; and now the deed was done he was not grovelling to her or to Tony Severance. How much more British he seemed, by the by, than dark, Greek Tony, of subtle ways!

At luncheon, talking with Pobbles, he had spoken of Yorkshire as his county. Marise wondered what he had meant. But, of course, she would not ask. John Garth's past was no affair of hers. Still, she couldn't stop puzzling about him. She puzzled nearly all night. He was turning out such a different man from the man she had vaguely imagined! In fact, he was different from any man she had ever met, off the stage or on.

Staring into darkness as the hours passed, Marise felt that she could not wait for Céline. She'd get up at dawn, dress, and flit to her own room in Mums' suite. But no! She couldn't do that. She hadn't a key to that suite. She would have to pound on the door, and other people beside Mums and Céline would hear. There would be gossip – which she'd sacrificed much already to avoid.

Dreading the long night of wakefulness, the girl suddenly dropped fast asleep, and began at once to dream of Garth. Zélie Marks was in the dream, too, and – dreams are so ridiculous! – Marise was jealous. What had happened between the two she didn't know; but she would have known in another instant, for Zélie was going to confess, if a rap had not sounded at the door and made her sit up in a fright. Marise was just about to cry, "You can't come in!" when she realised that it was the peculiar double knock of Céline.

The Frenchwoman was prompt, though the night had seemed so long. Her mistress sipped hot, fragrant Orange Pekoe from an eggshell cup, and in a whisper bade Céline move quietly, not to rouse Monsieur Garth in the next room.

"Oh, Mademoiselle – Madame!" said the maid.

"Monsieur has gone out, early as it is. His door is wide open."

Marise must have slept more soundly than she knew. She hadn't heard a sound.

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Céline about the jewel-cases – if they were lying in the corridor. But she couldn't put such a question! The maid would be too curious – she would fancy there had been some vulgar quarrel instead of – instead of – well, Marise hardly knew how to qualify her own conduct.

"I'm afraid I was vulgar," she thought, like a child repenting last night's misdeeds. "It was horrid of me to throw those lovely things on the floor. Poor fellow, he must have spent a fortune —somebody's fortune (whose, I wonder?) – on those pearls, and diamonds and emeralds, and all the rest. Yet I never said one word of gratitude. I was never such a brute before!.. I'm sure it must be his fault. Still – I don't like myself one bit better than I like him."

As Garth had gone out, there was no great need for haste. Céline had brought all that was needed, and Marise might dress – as well as repent – at leisure. But she was wild with impatience to know whether the jewels were lying where she had thrown them. While Céline was letting the bath-water run, the girl peeped out into the flower-scented corridor. The jewel-cases had gone!

This discovery gave her a slight shock. She had more than half expected to see them on the floor, and had wondered what she would do if they were there – whether she would pick them up and decide to accept the gifts after all, with a stiff, yet decent little speech of gratitude. "I'm sure you meant to do what I would like, and I don't wish to hurt your feelings," or something of that sort.

Now, what should she do? The probability was that Garth himself had retrieved his rejected treasures. But there was just a chance – such horrors happened in hotels! – that a thief had pussy-footed into the suite to search for wedding presents, and had found them easily in an unexpected place. That would be too dreadful! Because, if she – Marise – held her tongue, Garth would always believe that she had annexed the things, and had chosen to be sulkily silent.

"I shall have to bring up the subject somehow, the next time we meet – whenever that may be!" she thought ruefully.

When Mrs. Garth arrived in the maternal suite, it was about the hour when Miss Sorel had been in the habit of slipping, half-dressed, from bedroom to salon. It was the time, also, when Miss Zélie Marks was accustomed to present herself, and begin her morning tasks: sharpening pencils, sorting letters, etc. But to-day the salon was unoccupied. The letters lay in a fat, indiscriminate heap, just as Céline had received them from one of the floor-waiters.

Mrs. Sorel was still in bed, and still suffering from last night's headache, which had increased, rather than diminished. She burst into tears at sight of Marise, but was slowly pacified on hearing the story of the night.

"He was afraid to – " she began; but the girl broke in with the queerest sensation of anger. "He wasn't afraid – of anything! Whatever else he may have been, he wasn't afraid. I don't believe the creature knows how to be afraid."

Mrs. Sorel did not insist. She didn't wish to waste time discussing Garth. She wanted to talk of Tony. There was a letter from him. It had come by hand, early – sent as he was starting. Of course he hadn't dared write to Marise direct, but there was an enclosure for her.

"You had better read it now," advised Mums. "At any moment that man may turn up, asking for you, and trying to make some scene."

Marise took the crested envelope that had come inside her mother's note from Tony; but somehow or other she felt an odd repulsion against it. She didn't care to read what Tony had to say to Mrs. John Garth at parting; and she had an excuse to procrastinate because, just then, the telephone sounded in the salon adjoining.

"Will you go, dearest? Or shall I ring for Céline?" Mums asked.

Marise answered by walking into the salon and picking up the receiver. Her heart was beating a little with the expectation of Garth's voice from – somewhere. Their own suite, perhaps? But a woman was speaking.

"Is it you, Mrs. Sorel?" was the question that came. And the heart-beats were not calmed, for Marise recognised the contralto tones of Miss Marks, the villainess of her dream.

"No, it's I, Miss Sorel," she answered. "What's the matter? Aren't you coming as usual?"

"I am sorry, no, I can't come," replied the voice across the wire. "I thought that now – you're married, Mrs. Garth, and going away before long, I should no longer be required. But in any case I – "

"If we hadn't required your services we should have told you, and given you two weeks' salary in lieu of notice," snapped Marise professionally.

"I hardly supposed you had time to think about me, everything was so confused yesterday," Zélie excused herself. "Anyhow, Mrs. Garth, I must give notice myself, for I've had news which will take me out of New York at once. I've got to start by the next train. It doesn't matter about money. I was paid up only a few days ago. We were just starting fresh – "

"I'm sure my mother will wish to pay, and insist upon doing so," said Marise. "When does your train go?"

"I'm not certain to the minute," hedged Miss Marks. "But I have to pack. I – "

"That won't prevent your receiving an envelope with what we owe you in it," persisted Marise. "I suppose you're 'phoning from your flat?"

"Yes – no. Yes. But I'll be gone before a messenger could get here. Please don't trouble."

"Very well, give me your address at the town where you're going," Marise said. "We can post you on a cheque."

"I can't do that, I'm afraid," objected Miss Marks. "I shall be moving about from place to place for awhile. It's really no use, Mrs. Garth, thank you – though of course it's kind of you to care. Please say good-bye to Mrs. Sorel for me. You've both been very good."

"I wish you'd sent us word last night," said Marise, whose eyes were bright, and whose hand, holding the receiver, had begun to throb as if she had a heart in her wrist.

"I didn't know last night. The news I spoke of came this morning."

"It must have come early!"

"It did. Good-bye, Mrs. Garth."

"Wait just a second. Are you going – West?"

"Ye-es. For awhile."

"You can't tell me where?"

"Oh, several places. Not far from my old home."

"Did you ever mention where that was?"

But no answer came. Either they had been cut off, or Zélie Marks had impudently left the telephone.

The dream came back to Marise – the dream where Garth and the stenographer had been whispering together in a room where Marise could not see them.

"I believe he's with her now," the girl thought. "I believe when he went out this morning he went straight to her. He's told her to do something, and she intends to do it."

To that question, "Are you going West?" Zélie had hesitatingly responded, "Ye-es." What did it mean?

CHAPTER XXIV

ACCORDING TO MUMS

That same afternoon, Mary Sorel began a letter to Severance, a letter embroidered with points of admiration, dashes, underlinings, and parentheses.

"Dear Tony," she wrote, for she felt the warm affection of an Egeria, mingled with that of a mother-in-law elect, for him: and it pleased all that was snobbish in her soul to have this intimate feeling for an earl.

"Dear Tony, I shall be cabling you about the time you land, according to promise. But I promised as well to write a sort of diary letter, giving you all the developments day by day, and posting the document at the end of the week. Well, this is the first instalment, written – as you'll see by the date – on the day of your sailing.

"How I wish I had better news to give you! But don't be alarmed. Things are not going as we hoped, yet they might be worse. And now you are prepared by that preface, I'll try to tell you exactly the state of affairs!

"At least, I shall be able to explain a mystery that puzzled and worried us both yesterday, after the – I suppose in lieu of a better word I'm bound to call it 'marriage'! Neither you nor I could understand precisely how That Man had got my poor child so under his thumb, when by rights he should have been under her foot!

"What he does is this: he simply threatens at every turn to go away and tell everyone, including newspaper men, the whole story from beginning to end. You might think with an ordinary person that this was all bluff. Because, if the story hurt you and Marise, and even me, it would hurt him as much. But whatever he may be (and he might be almost anything!) he is not an ordinary person. He appears perfectly reckless of his own reputation. Apparently he cares not enough to lift his finger, or let it fall, for the opinion of others, no matter who. If he said he would do some dreadful thing it wouldn't be safe to hope he was merely making an idle threat. He would do it, I'm sure he would!

"That's the secret of his power over our poor little Marise, and I must admit, to a certain extent over me.

"I have been having a long talk with him about the future – the immediate future, I mean, of course, for the more distant future I hope and believe will be controlled by you!

"When I reproached the man for browbeating my daughter, he actually retorted that we had no right to try and pin him to a certain line of conduct, and not pay him for it! Shameless! But that sample will show you what we are going through. I shall indeed rejoice for every reason when you are restored to us. You have told me that your cousin Œnone has what amounts to a million of American dollars, all her own, and that her father intends giving you another million on your marriage to her; so you will be in a position to complete your bargain with this Fiend. In order to obtain the money, he will have to keep his part of the agreement.

"Yes, 'Fiend' is the word. Indeed, I used it aloud this afternoon in addressing him, so utterly did he enrage me. He will not allow Marise to go with me to Los Angeles and accept the loan of Bell Towers, which you so kindly placed at our disposal till your return with your poor little invalid, Œnone. He has a house of his own, out West, it seems – Arizona or somewhere wild-sounding. I believe it's near the Grand Canyon – wherever that is! And heaven alone knows what it's like – the house, I mean, not the Canyon, which I am told is an immense abyss miles deep, full of blood-red rocks or something terrific.

"Garth insists that the unhappy child shall accompany him to this desolate spot, which is more or less on the way to California. The alternative he puts before her is of course the eternal (I nearly said, 'infernal'!) one, of deserting his bride with a blast of trumpets. Neither you, nor Marise, nor I, can afford to let this happen! Almost anything would be preferable at a crisis so delicate for you with your uncle. Especially as Marise vows that, alone with her, the monster is not so formidable. In fact, she says she can account for his conduct at these times only by supposing that he does not like her, or is in love with someone else.

"I wonder, by the way, do you know at all if he has any money? My impression, when he so easily accepted your somewhat original offer, was that he had none. But he made Marise several handsome presents of jewellery, which must have cost a great deal, if he paid cash! Perhaps he used his V.C. to get them on tick– if such a thing is possible! Marise refused, quite definitely, she tells me, to take these gifts from him. To-day, she chanced to ask Garth how he had disposed of them after her refusal. Though she put the question most tactfully, even remarking that she was sorry for some little abruptness when returning the jewel-cases (I don't know details!), the man denied her right to ask what he had done. Marise persisted, however, in that sweet little determined way she has, and Garth at length flung out in reply that he had given the things to another person. Imagine it! Marise's wedding presents!

"Nothing more was to be got out of him, however. Instinct whispers to me that the child suspects a certain young woman of having received the jewels. (Why, such a thing is almost like being a receiver of stolen goods, since surely they're the property of Marise. Not that she wants or would look at them again!) She did not tell me this. It is my own heart – the heart of a mother– which speaks. All she said was, that Garth wouldn't mention the name of the receiver, and resented her 'catechising' him. He put the matter like this: If she'd given him wedding presents, and he practically trampled them under foot, with scorn, wouldn't she consider herself free to do what she liked with the objects? Wouldn't she wish to get rid of them and never see them again? Wouldn't her first thought be to give them away? And how would she feel if he wanted to know what she'd done with the things?

"To the three first questions, Marise found herself obliged to answer 'Yes.' (She has an almost abnormal sense of justice for a woman, you know!) To the fourth, she replied in an equally self-sacrificing way, so in the end the man triumphed. But it was this business of the wedding presents which (as I've explained to you now) he deliberately took back (we Americans call this being an 'Indian giver'!) that has made Marise think he's in love with someone.

"I may have guessed the person in her mind; but, as you will feel no interest in that side of the subject, I'll not bore you by dwelling on it at present. The interest for you in Garth's being in love with a woman who is not our Marise (no matter who!) is obvious. If the child is right in her conjectures, she is also right, no doubt, in asserting that she need have no fear the man will lose his head.

"In reading over what I have just written, I see that I may have given you a wrong impression. It sounds as if I had resigned myself to see Marise go off to live alone with Garth in his house by the abyss. Which is not the case, of course. I shall be with her. That is, I shall be most of the time – the best bargain I can drive! Except that, naturally, Céline will always be with her. And if Garth is a Demon, Céline can be a dragon. She has learned this art from Me. She is absolutely faithful, and devoted to your interests. In order to make sure of her services when needed in any possible emergency, I have more or less confided in her, which I think was wise.

"Now, before I write further, I will set your mind at rest as far as possible.

"Garth has used the power he holds to the uttermost, and no entreaties on the part of author or manager have moved him. Marise is to give up the part of Dolores in a fortnight, and Susanne Neville begins rehearsing to-morrow! Poor Sheridan, poor Belloc! Poor play! Poor public! My daughter is immediately after to start for the West with her 'husband' – and maid! I wished to be of the party, but Garth brutally inquired if 'that sort of thing was done in the smart set' – mothers-in-law accompanying bridal pairs on their honeymoon? If I wanted gossip, there would be a good way to get it, he said. He is continually throwing gossip in our faces, whenever we propose anything he doesn't like!

"After a most exhausting (to me) argument, it was settled that I should remain in New York for a few days after their departure, and that I should then leave also, going straight on to Los Angeles. There I will open beautiful Bell Towers, and see that all is ready for your advent, with the invalid. Meanwhile Marise is to visit some sort of female named Mooney, an adopted mother of Garth. She lives near a town called Albuquerque, which if I don't forget is in New Mexico. You can perhaps look it up on the map. Garth appears to have cause for gratitude to this woman, who is an elderly widow. He has spent some years (I don't know how many, and do not care!) in that State and the neighbouring one of Arizona; and I gather from one or two words he let drop that he gave Mrs. Mooney the house she now owns. In any case, he said he must pay her a visit, not having seen her since the time when he joined the British forces at the beginning of the war. And if he went, his wife would have to go with him!

"The man evidently expected that Marise would object; but in the circumstances the idea seemed quite a good one! You see why, of course, dear Tony? This old woman will be an extra chaperon for our girl, whose wild impulsiveness has brought so much worry and trouble to us all. Garth cannot make scenes before his foster-mother, for the very shame of it!

"After a short visit there, he will take Marise and Céline to his own place: and you may be sure I shall not be long in joining my child, to give her my protection!

"Do, my dear son-to-be, hurry on your marriage. You must cable me the moment you get this, when you are likely to arrive, addressing me here, where I shall still be at that time. All our difficulties will end when you are able to hand Garth the million dollars. (I quite understand it would be imprudent to send a cheque or a letter to him. Who knows what desperate thing he might do when he had got the money?) The one safe thing will be a conversation, and the money in bonds. Then, as you suggested, you can dictate a document for Garth to sign, compromising to him but not to you. You can also dictate terms – as you would have done from the first, if Marise had not tried to punish you – by punishing herself! But oh, let it be soon – soon! The strain is telling upon my nerves – and no doubt the nerves of Marise, though she is singularly reserved with me, I regret to say – one would almost think sulky, poor child!