The Brightener

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 colour of the invalid's face. The pallor of illness hadn't had time to blanch the rich brown that 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 moulded in plaster. As for the psychic reason, I found it in the dark eyes that met mine now and then. They were not black like those of my own Jim, which contrasted so strikingly with 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 violent wish that seemed actually to speak from them.

Whether it was a wish to live, or a haunting wish for joy never gratified, I could not decide. But I felt that it must 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 someone to "brighten" him. My maid had got acquainted with his valet-nurse, and had received a quantity of information which she passed to me.

"Mr. Tillett's" master was a Major Ralston Murray, an Englishman, who had gone to live in California some years ago, and had made a big fortune in oil. He had been in the British Army as a youth, Tillett understood, and when the European war broke out, he went home to offer himself to his country. He didn't return to America till 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 and 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 the last days of his life 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, I told myself. 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, the 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 granted: the wish that, if not I, someone else might "brighten" him.

CHAPTER II

MRS. BRANDRETH

You know, when you're on shipboard, how new people appear from day to day, long after you've seen everyone on the passenger list! It is as if they had been dropped on deck from stealthy aeroplanes in the dark watches of the night.

And that was the way in which this girl appeared – this girl who worked the lightning change in Major Murray. It didn't seem possible that she could have come on board the ship nearly two days ago, and we not have heard of her, for she was the prettiest person I'd ever seen in my life. One would have thought that rumours of her beauty would have spread, since someone must have seen her, even if she had been shut up in her cabin.

Heads were turned in her direction as she came walking slowly toward us, and thanks to this silent sensation – like a breeze rippling a field of wheat – I saw the tall, slight figure in mourning while it was still far off.

The creature was devastatingly pretty, too pretty for any one's peace of mind, including her own: the kind of girl you wouldn't ask to be your bridesmaid for fear the bridegroom should change his mind at the altar!

"Jim," I exclaimed, "the prettiest girl in the world is now coming toward you."

"Really?" said he. "I was under the impression that she sat beside me."

I suppose I must have spoken rather more loudly than I meant, for my excited warning to Jim caught the ear of Major Murray. My deep interest in the invalid had woven an invisible link between him and me, though we had never spoken, nor even smiled at each other: for sympathy inevitably has this effect. Therefore his hearing was attuned to my voice more readily than to others in his neighbourhood. He had apparently been half asleep; but he opened his eyes wide just in time to see the girl as she approached his chair. Never had I beheld such a sudden change on a human face. It was a transfiguration.

The man was very weak, but he sat straight up, and for a moment all look of illness was swept away. "Rosemary!" he cried out, sharply.

The girl stopped. She had been pale, but at sight of him and the sound of his voice she flushed to her forehead. I thought that her first impulse was to escape, but she controlled it.

"Major Murray!" she faltered. "I – I didn't dream of – seeing you here."

"I have dreamed many times of seeing you," he answered. "And I wished for it – very much."

"Ah," thought I, "that is the real wish! That's what the look in his eyes means, not just getting back to England and dying in a certain house. Now I know."

Everyone near his chair had become more or less interested in Murray, romantic and pathetic figure that he was. Now, a middle-aged man whose chair was near to Murray's on the right, scrambled out of a fur rug. "I am off to the smoking room," he said. "Won't you" (to the girl) "take my chair and talk to your friend? I shall be away till after lunch, maybe till tea-time."

I fancied that the girl was divided in her mind between a longing to stay and a longing to flee. But of course she couldn't refuse the offer, and presently she was seated beside Major Murray, their arms touching. I could hear almost all they said. This was not eavesdropping, because if they'd cared to be secretive they could have lowered their voices.

Soon, to my surprise, I learned that the girl was married. She didn't look married, or have the air of being married, somehow, and in the conversation that followed she contradicted herself two or three times. Perhaps it was only because I confused my brain with wild guesses, but from some things she said one would think she was free as air; from others, that she was tied down to a rather monotonous kind of existence. She spoke of America as if she knew it only from a short visit. Then, in answer to a question of Murray's, she said, as if reluctantly, that she had lived there, in New York, and Baltimore, and Washington, for years.

It was quite evident to me – whether or not it was to Murray – that Mrs. Brandreth (as he called her after the first outburst of "Rosemary!") disliked talking of herself and her way of life. She wanted to talk about Major Murray, or, failing that subject, of almost anything that was remote from her own affairs.

I gathered, however, that she and Murray had known each other eight years ago or more, and that they had met somewhere abroad, out of England. There had been an aunt of Rosemary's with whom she had travelled as a young girl. The aunt was dead; but even the loss of a loved relative didn't account to my mind for this girl's sensitiveness about the past.

"They must have been engaged, these two, and something happened to break it off," I thought. "But he can bear to talk of old times, and she can't. Odd, because she must have been ridiculously young for a love affair all those years ago. She doesn't look more than twenty-one now, though she must be more, of course – at least twenty-four. And he is probably thirty-two or three."

I am often what Jim calls "intuitive," and I had a strong impression that there was something the beautiful Mrs. Brandreth was desperately anxious to conceal, desperately afraid of betraying by accident. Could it have to do with her husband? I wondered. She seemed very loth to speak of him, and I couldn't make out from what she said whether the man was still in existence. Her mourning – so becoming to her magnolia skin, great dark eyes, and ash-blonde hair – didn't look like widow's mourning. Still, it might be, with the first heaviness of crêpe thrown off. Or, of course, the girl's peculiar reticence might mean that there had been, or was to be, a divorce.

I didn't move from my deck-chair till luncheon time, but I had to go then with Jim; and we left Mrs. Brandreth ordering her food from the deck steward. She would have it with Major Murray, who, poor fellow, was allowed no other nourishment than milk.

When we came back on deck it was to walk. We had been below for an hour or more, but the girl and the man were still together. As Jim and I passed and repassed those chairs, I could throw a quick glance in their direction without being observed. Mrs. Brandreth's odd nervousness and shy distress seemed to have gone. The two were talking so earnestly that a school of porpoises might have jumped on deck without their knowing that anything out of the way had happened.

Later in the afternoon, the owner of Mrs. Brandreth's chair appeared; but when she would blushingly have given up her place, he refused to take it. "I've only come to say," he explained, "that one seat on deck is the same to me as any other. So why shouldn't I have your chair, wherever it is, and you keep mine? It's very nice for the Major here to have found a friend, and it will do him a lot of good. I'm a doctor, and if I were his physician, such society would be just what I should prescribe for him."

Mrs. Brandreth had a chair, it seemed, though she said she'd come on board so tired that she had stayed in her cabin till this morning. Whether or not she were pleased at heart with the proposal, she accepted it after a little discussion, and Murray's tragic eyes burned with a new light.

I guessed that his wish had been to see this beautiful girl again before he died. The fact that he was doomed to death no doubt spiritualized his love. He no longer dreamed of being happy in ways which strong men of his age call happiness; and so, in these days, he asked little of Fate. Just a farewell sight of the loved one; a new memory of her to take away with him. And if I were right in my judgment, this was the reason why, even if Mrs. Brandreth had a husband in the background, these hours with her would be hours of joy for Murray – without thought of any future.

That evening, as Jim and I were strolling out of our little salon to dinner, the door of the cabin adjoining mine opened, and it was with a shock of surprise that I saw Mrs. Brandreth. So she was my mysterious neighbour who cried and moaned in her sleep!.. I was thrilled at the discovery. But almost at once I told myself that I ought to have Sherlocked the truth the moment this troubled, beautiful being had appeared on deck.

Mrs. Brandreth was in black, of course, but she had changed into semi-evening dress, and her white neck was like swansdown in its folded frame of filmy black gauze. Over the glittering waves of her ash-blonde hair she had thrown a long black veil of embroidered Spanish lace, which fell nearly to her knees, and somehow, before she could close the door, a gust blew it back, shutting in the veil. The girl was struggling to free herself when Jim said, "Let me help you."

Naturally, she had to thank him, and explain how she ought to have fastened her window, as ours was the windy side of the ship to-night. She and I smiled at each other, and so our acquaintance began. I guessed from the veil that she was dining in Murray's company, and pictured them together with the deck to themselves, moonlight flooding the sea.

Next day the smile and nod which Mrs. Brandreth and I exchanged won a pleasant look from Major Murray for me. We began speaking soon after that; and before another day had passed Jim or I often dropped into the empty chair, if Mrs. Brandreth was not on deck. Murray was interested to know that we would be neighbours of his, and that I was the grand-daughter of the famous beauty his old bachelor cousin had loved.

I remember it was the night after my first real talk with him that I met Mrs. Brandreth again as we both opened our doors. Jim was playing bridge or poker with some men, and hadn't noticed the dressing bugle. I was ready, and going to remind him of the hour; yet I was charmed to be delayed by Mrs. Brandreth. Hitherto, though friendly when we were with our two men, or only one of them, she had seemed like a wild bird trying to escape if we happened to be alone. It was as if she were afraid I might ask questions which she would not wish to answer. But now she stopped me of her own accord.

"I – I've been wanting to tell you something," she began, with one of her bright blushes. "It's only this: when I'm tired or nervous I'm afraid I talk in my sleep. I came on board tired out. I had – a great grief a few months ago, and I can't get over the strain of it. Sometimes when I wake up I find myself crying, and have an impression that I've called out. Now I know that you're next door, I'm rather worried lest I have disturbed you."

I hurried to reassure her. She hadn't disturbed me at all. I was, I said, a splendid sleeper.

"You haven't heard anything?" she persisted.

I felt she would know I was fibbing if I did fib, so it wasn't worth while. "I have heard a sound like sobbing now and then," I admitted.

"But no words? I hope not, as people say such silly things in their sleep, don't they? – things not even true."

"I think I've heard you cry out 'Mother!' once or twice."

"Oh! And that is all?"

"Really, that's all – absolutely!" It was true, and I could speak with such sincerity that I forced belief.

Mrs. Brandreth looked relieved. "I'm glad!" she smiled. "I hate to make myself ridiculous. And I'm trying very hard now to control my subconscious self, which gets out of hand at night. It's simply the effect of my – grief – my loss I spoke of just now. I'm fairly normal otherwise."

"I hope you're not entirely normal!" I smiled back. "People one speaks of as 'normal' are so bromidic and dull! You look far too interesting, too individual to be normal."

She laughed. "So do you!"

"Oh, I'm not normal at all, thank goodness!"

"Well, you're certainly interesting – and individual – far more than I am."

"Anyhow, I'm sympathetic," I said. "I'm tremendously interested in other people. Not in their affairs, but in themselves. I never want to know anything they don't want me to know, yet I'm so conceited, I always imagine that I can help when they need help – just by sympathy alone, without a spoken word. But to come back to you! I have a lovely remedy for restlessness at night; not that I need it often myself, but my French-Italian maid carries dried orange leaves and blossoms for me. She thinks tisanes better than doctor's medicines. May she make some orange-flower tea for you to-night at bedtime?"

Mrs. Brandreth had shown signs of stiffening a little as I began, but she melted toward the last, and said that she would love to try the poetic-sounding tea.

It was concocted, proved a success, and she was grateful. Perhaps she remembered my hint that I never wanted to know things which my friends didn't want me to know, because she made some timid advances as the days went on. We had quite intimate talks about books and various views of life as we walked the deck together; and I began to feel that there was something else she longed to say – something which rose constantly to her lips, only to be frightened back again. What could it be? I wondered. And would she in the end speak, or decide to be silent?

CHAPTER III

THE CONDITION SHE MADE

I think she meant to be silent, but desperation drove her to speak, and she spoke.

I had a headache the last day out but one, and stayed in my cabin all the afternoon. It seems that Mrs. Brandreth asked Jim if she might visit me for a little while, and he consented.

I was half dozing when she came, with a green silk curtain drawn across the window. I suggested that she should push this curtain back, so that we might have light to see each other.

"Please, no!" she said. "I don't want light. I don't want to be seen. Dear Lady Courtenaye – may I really call you 'Elizabeth,' as you asked me to do? – I need so much to talk to you. And the darker it is, the better."

"Very well – Rosemary!" I answered. "I've guessed that you are worried – or not quite happy. There's nothing I should like so much as to help you if I could. I believe you know that."

"Yes, I know – I feel it," she said. "I want your advice. I think you're the only person whose advice I would take whether I liked it or not. I don't understand why that is so. But it is. You're probably younger than I am – "

"I'm getting on for twenty-three," I informed the girl, when I had made her sit down beside my bed.

"And I'm nearly twenty-six!"

"You look twenty-one."

"I'm afraid I look lots of things that I'm not," she sighed, in a voice too gloomy for the half-joking words. "Oh, now that I'm trying to speak, I don't know how to begin, or how far to go! I must confess one thing frankly: and that is, I can't tell you everything."

"Tell me what you want to tell: not a word more."

"Thank you. I thought you'd say that. Well, suppose you loved a man who was very ill – so ill he couldn't possibly get well, and he begged you to marry him – because then you might be in the same house till the end, and he could die happily with you near: what would you do?"

"If I loved him enough, I would marry him the very first minute I could," was my prompt answer.

"I do love him enough!" she exclaimed.

"But you hesitate?"

"Yes, because – Oh, Elizabeth, there's a terrible obstacle."

"An obstacle!" I echoed, forgetting my headache. "I can't understand that, if – forgive me – if you're free."

"I am free," the girl said. "Free in the way you mean. There's no man in the way. The obstacle is – a woman."

"Pooh!" I cried, my heart lightened. "I wouldn't let a woman stand between me and the man I loved, especially if he needed me as much as – as – "

"You needn't mind saying it. Of course you know as well as I do that we're talking about Ralston Murray. And I believe he does need me. I could make him happy – if I were always near him – for the few months he has to live."

"He would have a new lease of life given him with you," I ventured.

The girl shook her head. "He says that the specialists gave him three months at the most. And twelve days out of those three months have gone already, since he left California."

For an instant a doubt of her shot through me. Ralston Murray had been a get-rich-quick oil speculator, so I had heard, anyhow, he was supposed to be extremely well off. Besides, there was that lovely old place in Devonshire, of which his widow would be mistress. I knew nothing of Rosemary Brandreth's circumstances, and little of her character or heart, except as I might judge from her face, and voice, and charming ways. Was I wrong in the judgment I'd impulsively formed? Could it be that she didn't truly care for Murray – that if she married him in spite of the mysterious "obstacle," it would be for what she could get?

Actually I shivered as this question asked itself in my mind! And I was ashamed of it. But her tone and look had been strange. When I tried to cheer her by hinting that Murray's lease of life might be longer because of her love, she had looked frightened, almost horrified.

For the first time I deliberately tried to read her soul, whose sincerity I had more or less taken for granted. I stared into her eyes through the green dusk which made us both look like mermaids under water. Surely that exquisite face couldn't mask sordidness? I pushed the doubt away.

"All the more reason for you to make radiant the days that are left, if you're strong enough to bear the strain," I said. And Rosemary answered that she was strong enough for anything that would help him. She would tell Ralston, she added, that she had asked my advice.

"He wanted me to do it," she said. "He thought I oughtn't to decide without speaking to a sweet, wise woman. And you are a sweet, wise woman, although you're so young! When you are better, will you come on deck and talk to Ralston?"

"Of course I will, if you think he'd care to have me," I promised. And it was extraordinary how soon that headache of mine passed away! I was able to talk with Ralston that evening, and assure him that, in my opinion, he wasn't at all selfish in wanting Rosemary Brandreth to "sacrifice" herself for him. It would be no sacrifice to a woman who loved a man, I argued. He had done the right thing, it seemed to me, in asking Mrs. Brandreth to marry him. If Jim were in his place, and I in Rosemary's, I should have proposed if he hadn't!

But while I was saying these things, I couldn't help wondering underneath if she had mentioned the "obstacle" to Ralston, and if he knew precisely what kind of "freedom to marry" her freedom was – whether Mr. Blank Brandreth were dead or only divorced?

Somehow I had the strongest impression that Rosemary had told Major Murray next to nothing about herself – had perhaps begged him not to ask questions, and that he had obeyed for fear of distressing – perhaps even losing – the woman he adored.

"Of course, I shall leave her everything," he announced, when Mrs. Brandreth had strolled away with Jim in order to give me a few minutes alone with Major Murray. "While she's gone, I'd like to talk with you about that, because I want you to consult your husband for me. Rosemary can't bear to discuss money and that sort of thing. I had almost to force her to it to-day; for you see, I haven't long at best – and the time may be shorter even than I think. At last I made her see my point of view. I told her that I meant to make a new will, here on shipboard, for fear I should – Well, you understand. I said it would be in her favour, as Rosemary Brandreth, and then, after we were married – provided I live to marry her, as I hope to do – I ought to add a codicil or something – I don't quite know how one manages such things – changing 'Rosemary Brandreth' to 'my wife, Rosemary Murray.'"

"Yes," I agreed. "I suppose you would have to do that. I don't know very much about wills, either – but I remember hearing that a legacy to a wife might be disputed if the will were in her favour as an engaged girl, and mentioning her by her maiden name."

"Brandreth isn't Rosemary's maiden name," he reminded me. "That was Hillier. But it's the same thing legally. And disputes are what I want to avoid. Still, I daren't delay, for fear of something happening to me. There's a doctor chap in Devonshire, who would have inherited Ralston Old Manor and the money that goes with it if my cousin hadn't chosen to leave all he had to me instead. I believe, as a matter of fact, he's my only living relative. I haven't seen him many times in my life, but we correspond on business. Every penny I possess might go to Paul Jennings, as well as the Ralston property – by some trick of the law – if I don't tie it up for Rosemary in time. You see why I'm impatient. I want you and Sir Jim to witness a will of sorts this very night. I shall sleep better if it's done. But – there's a funny thing, Lady Courtenaye: a whim of Rosemary's. I can't see light on it myself. Perhaps you could lead up to the subject, and get her to explain."