Marry a Stranger (10 page)

“It is,” Miss Fountain agreed complacently. “It was her room—and that is
her
portrait!”

Stacey looked up at it. She saw a young woman with a mane of long, light hair tumbling about her, forming a kind of cloak about her bare shoulders, and a vivid oval face great dark eyes and a mouth as scarlet as blood. It was a wilful mouth, and they were wilful eyes, and the shine upon her hair seemed almost real. She wore some sort of a nebulous dark evening dress, and there was a white flower like a camelia tucked in at the base of the brief corsage.

“She was utterly lovely,” Miss Fountain exclaimed, almost reverently. “In fact, I never saw anyone who could equal her.”

“And her name was Fenella?” Stacey asked.

“Fenella Guelder, yes—Fenella Fountain before her marriage.”

“And this was the room she liked best?”—looking round it again.

“This was the drawing room of her old home, and she tried to refurnish it in keeping when the doctor bought the house. I never allow anyone to interfere with it nowadays, and I always keep flowers in it, just as she liked. She always surrounded herself with masses of flowers. Her bedroom is lovely, too—would you like to see it?”

“Is that the bedroom I am to occupy tonight?” Stacey enquired, after a moment of silence.

Miss Fountain’s faintly blue lips disappeared in a line so thin that they might not have existed at all, and her eyes went cold and fathomless as pools.

“I have instructions to get it ready,” she admitted.

“Then I would certainly like to see it,” Stacey said.

Her heart was hammering rather strangely as she climbed the stairs behind Miss Fountain to the room she knew she would never occupy. She could never sleep in a room in which Fenella Fountain had slept, and yet she was bu
rn
ingly curious to see it. If it was anything like the drawing room it would be a room of charm and personality, and so it was—as she could see immediately the door was flung open.

It was a white and yellow room. The yellow was the yellow of a tea-rose, the white spilled over the floor in the form of a white carpet, and papered the walls with a satiny sheen, and curtained the windows in thick white brocade—without any da
rn
s!—beneath a pelmet of draped white velvet. The yellow quilted the bed-head and covered the chairs and encompassed the dressing table in a petticoat of net over ivory satin. As a result the room was all sunlight, as bright and gay as the morning itself, with an outlook over the neglected rose garden. In June, when the roses were at their best, their scents must be carried into this room in almost overpowering strength and fill it like a bowl of
potpourri.

Stacey noticed little personal knick-knacks about the room, such as a photograph of Martin—Martin, obviously, when he was much younger, but easily recognizable as Martin—in a silver frame beside the bed, gold-backed hair brushes on the dressing table, and a flagon of perfume, and even a gold lipstick case lying carelessly in the cut-glass toilet tray. And there was a little white suede-covered address book apparently flung down carelessly on a table in the window, and beside it a framed snapshot of two people lying sun bathing on a beach—Fenella and Martin on honeymoon?

Stacey turned away abruptly and walked back to the door.

“There will be no need for you to get this room ready for me tonight,” she said, in a slightly muffled voice. “I shall not sleep in it. I will keep the room I have.”

Miss Fountain’s voice in answer sounded like the smooth, purring voice a cat would have if it could
speak

“I think you are wise,” she observed. “This room is full of memories, and like the drawing room, I keep it untouched. Why, even the wardrobes are still full of Fenella’s clothes
...
” She slid back the smooth, white-painted door of one of them, which had been built into the wall, and revealed a long row of dresses, most of them in black or pastel shades, fresh as when they were newly bought, if perhaps a little out of fashion. An odor like violets collected in a mass and dried in the sun stole out from amongst them. “I send them to be cleaned regularly and looked after,” Miss Fountain announced, as if it was a most praiseworthy thing to do. “They are in
perfect order.”

Stacey was a little revolted. It was like turning a dead person’s room into a museum, and if Fenella Guelder had possessed relatives surely her clothes might have been sent to them? But she realized that Jane Fountain—apparently the relative who had thought the most of her—would have been utterly shocked by this suggestion.

“I always keep the door locked,” Miss Fountain said, turning the key and putting it in her pocket. “I feel that her things are safer.”

Stacey said nothing. She felt that she wanted to get away from Miss Fountain, and she was hurrying back to the stair-head along the corridor.

“Of course,” Miss Fountain murmured, still keeping at her heels, “there are other rooms in the house which you might like better than the one you are occupying now—smaller rooms, perhaps a little more cosy. Fenella had two or three rooms done up specially for guests, and they are quite ni
c
e. But I thought the large room with the dressing room
—
Well, it seemed the most convenient, and at one time it
was
the best bedroom in the house
—
”

“It will do very well for the time being,” Stacey told her, and was delighted, when they reached the hall, to see Martin coming in through the wide open doorway, with a beautiful specimen of a young red setter following close at his heels. Miss Fountain pursed up her mouth when she saw the animal, but Stacey went forward at once to caress it, and she looked up at Martin with softened eyes.

“What a lovely creature!” she exclaimed. “What do you call it?”

“Tessa,” he answered. “She’s the daughter of Miranda, who inhabits the stables. I’ve just taken them both for a long walk, but Miranda’s gone back for a rest after her exertions. Tessa’s still ready for anything.”

“Oh, she’s perfect,” Stacey murmured, kneeling beside the animal and stroking it and looking into its intelligent golden eyes. “But why keep them in the stables instead of the house? Can’t this one stay here?”

“Of course, if you want to make a companion of it. She’s a young dog, and she’ll probably take to you.”

Tessa was plainly signifying that she had taken to Stacey by proceeding to lick her face most methodically, but Miss Fountain, in the background, had objections to raise.

“The dogs
always
sleep over in the stables,” she said. “I don’t usually permit them in the house.”

“But if Mrs. Guelder wishes to keep them in the house that’s a different thing, isn’t it?” Martin suggested coldly, and without waiting for any further conversation took Stacey by the arm and led her into the library. It was a large room, neglected like a large portion of the house, to which he had once planned to do great things; but at least there were plenty of books there, and it had comfortable, deep armchairs.

“I haven’t asked you how you slept last night?” he said then, looking down carefully into Stacey’s face.

She rewarded the enquiry with a smile which no longer had any tiredness in it.

“Very well, thank you,” she assured him, “thanks to your pills! But I haven’t even said good morning to you!”

“Neither have I said good morning to you. Good morning, Mrs. Guelder!”

“Good morning, Dr. Guelder!”

They both laughed. He took her arm again and drew her over to the window, which was standing open on to a kind of flagged terrace.

“Come out and get a breath of fresh air before lunch. The air here is wonderful, as you don’t need me to tell you.”

At lunch she tried to introduce the subject of changing bedrooms. Miss Fountain, to Stacey’s intense relief, apparently preferred to take her midday meal alone, in the little room she had earmarked as a kind of sitting
-
room-sanctum of her own—or else she was merely endeavouring to be tactful and leave them alone together. But Stacey was much more inclined to believe that tact was not included in her make-up, and that it was simply because she did not wish to join them that she took her lunch alone. Whether she would also decide not to join them for dinner they would have to wait to find out.

“Miss Fountain has been showing me something of the house,” she began, feeling her way. “It’s very big and rambling.”

“Yes, much too big
and
much too rambling. I’ve often thought of selling it.”

“But it’s a wonderful situation.”

“There are other houses much more convenient in equally wonderful situations, and very much nearer to London,” he told her, smiling at her as he suspended a jug of water above the glass beside her plate. “Water is very unexciting, but apparently it’s all there is in the house at the moment. You’ll have to go into the question of housekeeping with Jane, and do some ordering on your own account. And before I forget, you must change that bedroom you
occupied last night
—
”

“Oh, but I’d much prefer to keep it,” she answered swiftly. “I’ve seen the others, and I prefer—that one.”

“Do you?”—looking at her a little curiously.

“Yes.” She bit her lip, and felt the color rise in her cheeks. She had not so far told him about the telephone call Vera Hunt had made to her on the night before she was married, and so far as he was aware she knew little or nothing about his former wife. He himself had introduced the topic only once, and that was when they were sitting beside the river in his car, and just before he asked her to marry him. But something shrewd in his look now made her wonder what he was thinking. “It may be a bit large, and perhaps not too well furnished, but it really has a wonderful view, and—anyway, I’d like it,” she finished lamely.

“There are other rooms beside the Yellow Room, you know,” he told her, gravely watching her. “Fenella—my former wife—had one or two of them done up rather well when we were thinking of doing a lot of entertaining. Couldn’t you choose one of them?”

She shook her head, so determined not to change her room that she surprised even herself.

“I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” she said.

“Of course I don’t mind, you silly child!” He helped himself to more water. “But you’re a little out of the way in that corridor, you know, and we haven’t made certain that the mice haven’t been at the bell-rope”—his eyes twinkling a little. “However, we could do that without much delay, and if your mind is quite firmly made up you’d better get in touch with a firm of house-furnishers in Beomster and get them to supply something more suitable in the way of equipment for the room. It will give you something to do, choosing something new and attractive.”

She was about to deny that she wished any changes made or any expense incurred on her account when he interrupted her: “After tonight I shan’t be here for another fortnight, and you will have a lot of time on your hands that you may find a little difficult to kill until you get to know a few people in the neighborhood. Unfortunately I’ve been away in London so much that I’ve forgotten most of them, but you’ll probably receive a few calls in the course of the next week or so. And in the intervals you can start plan
ning
your room—if you’re
quite
determined to have nothing to do with the Yellow Room?”

“Quite,” she answered hastily, but her face had fallen noticeably at his announcement that he would be leaving her the following day. Somehow she had not expected him to go away so soon, although of course his life was simply full of engagements and appointments that she could not expect him to cancel on her account. He was a busy London doctor—an important consultant—and no doubt it had been difficult enough for him to snatch even these two days away from his well-filled program. But to be left alone with Miss Fountain!
...

“Very well, just as you think best,” he told her. “But in case you’re rather dreading the prospect, Jane isn’t at all bad when you get to know her. She’s always been a bit stiff and starchy, and on her dignity, but she’s grateful to me for providing her with a home—a home she positively dotes on, for some extraordinary reason!—and she’ll be grateful to you, too, when she realizes you’re not going to turn her out. Although, of course, if you found her impossible to live with we should have to ask her to go.”

“Oh, no,” Stacey said at once, “I wouldn’t want that at all.” But she wished she could tell him about the Yellow Room, and how it was kept locked, and about the clothes in the wardrobe, and the flowers in the white drawing
room that was also kept locked.

“Well, I didn’t think you would.” He gave her one of his nicest smiles. “But don’t hesitate to let her know that you’re mistress here, and if you want to make any alterations just make them. I give you
carte blanche
with the house-fu
rn
ishers. I shall probably want to bring down a few friends a little later on, and I’d like the place to look as nice as possible.”

“Of course,” she answered, but she hoped she would see more of him before he brought his friends. Why, this was only their first lunch together in their own home, and he wouldn’t even be here tomorrow!

The rest of that day seemed to pass on wings. As the afternoon turned dull and cold they had a fire lighted in the library for tea, and Stacey quite enjoyed dispensing it from a handsome silver teapot and fragile porcelain cups which must once have belonged to the Fountain family, since the teapot bore their crest. And she enjoyed toasting crumpets in front of the fire, and watching Martin lying back comfortably in his deep leather chair and eating them, apparently quite content, while Tessa—not yet banished to the stables—lay on the rug and blinked in the warmth and was obviously just as content.