There are few places in a civilized country more desolate than a big, empty country railway station: such a station as that at Newmarket—an amusing, bustling sight on a race day; strangely still and deserted, even on a fine summer day, when there's nothing doing in the famous little town; and, in the depth of winter, extraordinarily forlorn. The solitariness and the desolation were very marked on the early afternoon of New Year's Eve which saw Varick striding up and down the deserted platform waiting for Dr. Panton, and Dr. Panton's inseparable companion, a big, ugly, intelligent spaniel called Span. Varick had more than one reason to be grateful to the young medical man with whom Fate had once thrown him into such close contact; and so this last spring, when Panton had had to be in London for a few days, Varick had taken a deal of trouble to ensure that the country doctor should have a good time. But his own pleasure in his friend's company had been somewhat spoilt by something Panton had then thought it right to tell him. This something was that his late wife's one-time companion, Miss Pigchalke, had gone to Redsands, and, seeking out the doctor, had tried to force him to say that poor Mrs. Varick had been ill-treated—or if not exactly ill-treated, then neglected—by her husband, during her last illness. "I wouldn't have told you, but that I think you ought to know that the woman has an inexplicable grudge against you," he had said. "Not inexplicable," Varick had answered quietly. "For Julia Pigchalke first came as governess to Wyndfell Hall when my wife was ten years old, and she stayed on with her ultimately as companion—in fact as more friend than companion. Of course I queered her pitch!" And then, rather hesitatingly, he had gone on to tell Dr. Panton that he was now paying his enemy an annuity of a hundred a year. This had been left to Miss Pigchalke in an early will made by his poor wife, but it had not been repeated in the testatrix's final will, as Mrs. Varick had fiercely resented Miss Pigchalke's violent disapproval of her marriage. Panton had been amazed to hear of Varick's quite uncalled-for generosity, and he had exclaimed, "Well, that does take the cake! I wish I'd known this before. Still, I don't think Miss Pigchalke will forget in a hurry what I said to her. I warned her that some of the things she said, or half-said, were libellous, and that it might end very badly for her if she said them again. She took the line that I, being a doctor, was privileged—but I assured her that I was nothing of the kind! Still, she's a venomous old woman, and if I were you I'd write her a solicitor's letter." That little conversation, which had taken place more than six months ago, came back, word for word, to Varick's mind, as he walked sharply up and down the platform, trying to get warm. It was strange how Miss Pigchalke and her vigorous, unpleasant personality haunted him. But he had found in his passbook only this morning that she had already cashed his last cheque for fifty pounds. Surely she couldn't, in decency, go on with this half-insane kind of persecution if she accepted what was, after all, his free and generous gift every six months? The train came steaming in, and only three passengers got out. But among them was the man for whom Varick was waiting. And, at the sight of the lithe, alert figure of Dr. Panton, and of the one-time familiar form of good old Span, Varick's troubled, uncomfortable thoughts took wings to themselves and flew away. The two men's hands met in a firm, friendly grasp. "This is jolly," said the younger of the two, as they walked out to the big car. "And I'm ever so much obliged to you for letting me bring Span!" And Panton did think it very jolly of Varick to have left his guests, and come all this way through the cold to meet him. It was good of him, too, to have let him bring his dog. As they drove slowly through the picturesque High Street of the famous town, Varick's friend looked about him with keen interest and enjoyment. He had an eager, intelligent, alert mind, and he had never been to Newmarket before. Once they got clear of the town, and were speeding through the pleasant, typically English country lanes which give Suffolk a peculiarly soothing charm Span (who was a rather large liver-and-white spaniel), lying stretched out sedately at their feet, Varick suddenly asked carelessly: "No more news of my enemy, Miss Pigchalke, I suppose?" Panton turned to him quickly in the rushing wind: "Yes, something has happened. But I didn't think it worth writing to you about. An extraordinary advertisement appeared about a month ago in one of the popular Sunday papers, and Mrs. Bilton—you remember the woman—?" Varick shook his head. He looked exceedingly disturbed and annoyed, and the man now sitting by his side suddenly regretted that he had said anything about that absurd advertisement. "Mrs. Bilton was the woman whom I recommended to you as a charwoman, soon after you were settled down at Redsands." "Yes, I remember the name now. What of her?" "She came up to see me one evening about a month ago, and she brought the paper—the News of the World I think it was—with her." "Yes," said Varick shortly. "Yes—go on, Panton. What was in the advertisement?" "The advertisement simply asked for information about you and your doings, past and present, and offered a reward for any information of importance. It was very oddly worded. What I should call an amateur advertisement. Mrs. Bilton came up to consult me as to whether she should write in answer to it. Of course I strongly advised her to do nothing of the kind. As a matter of fact"—Dr. Panton chuckled—"I have reason to believe she did write, but I need hardly say that, as far as she was concerned, nothing came of it!" "I wish you could remember exactly how the advertisement was worded?" said Varick. It was clear that he felt very much disturbed. "I'm sorry I didn't keep a copy of it; all I can tell you is that it asked for information concerning the past life and career of Lionel Varick, sometime of Redsands and Chichester." "Chichester?" repeated Varick mechanically. The name of the Sussex cathedral town held for him many painful, sordid memories. His first wife, the woman whose very existence he believed unknown to everyone who now knew him, with the exception of Blanche Farrow, had been a Chichester woman. It was there that they had lived in poverty and angry misery during the last few weeks of her life. "Yes, that's all I remember—but I've put it more clearly than the advertisement did." "What an extraordinary thing!" muttered Varick. "I don't know that it's so very extraordinary. It was that woman Pigchalke's doing, obviously. As I told you the last time we met, I felt that she would stick at nothing to annoy you. She's quite convinced that you're an out-and-out villain." Dr. Panton laughed. He really couldn't help it. Varick was such a thoroughly good fellow! "I wonder," said Varick hesitatingly, "if I could get a copy of that Sunday paper? I feel that it's the sort of thing that ought to be stopped—don't you, Panton?" "I'm quite sure it didn't appear again in the same paper, or I should have heard of it again. That one particular copy did end by going the whole round of Redsands. I went on hearing about it for, I should think,—well, right up to when I left home." A rush of blind, unreasoning rage was shaking Varick. Curse the woman! What a brute she must be, to take his money, and go on annoying him in this way. "I wish you'd written and told me about it when it happened," he said sombrely. The doctor looked at him, distressed. "I'm sorry I didn't, if you feel like that about it!" he exclaimed. "But you were so put out when I told you of the woman's having come to see me, and it was so obvious that the advertisement came from her, that I thought I'd say nothing about it. I wouldn't have told you now, only that you mentioned her." Varick saw that his friend was very much disturbed. He made a determined effort over himself. "Never mind," he said, trying to smile. "After all, it's of no real consequence." "I don't know if you'll find it any consolation to be told that that sort of thing is by no means uncommon," said Panton reflectively. "People, especially women, whose minds for any reason have become just a little unhinged, often take that sort of strange dislike to another human being. Sometimes for no reason at all. Every medical man would tell you of half-a-dozen such cases within his own knowledge. Fortunately, such half-insane people generally choose a noted man—the Prime Minister, for instance, or whoever happens to be very much in the public eye. If the persecution becomes quite intolerable there's a police-court case—or the individual is quite properly certified as insane." And then something peculiar and untoward happened to Lionel Varick. The words rose to his lips: "That horrible woman haunts me—haunts me! I can never get rid of her—she seems always there—" Had he uttered those words aloud, or had he not? He glanced sharply round, and then, with relief, he made up his mind that he had not uttered them, for the man sitting by his side was looking straight before him, with a pleased, interested expression on his plain, intelligent face. Varick pulled himself together. This would never do! He asked himself, with a touch of acute anxiety, whether it were possible that he was losing his nerve? He had always possessed the valuable human gift of being able to control, absolutely, his secret feelings and his emotions. "Did I tell you that Miss Brabazon is here?" he asked carelessly. And the other exclaimed: "I'm glad of that. I formed a tremendously high opinion of that girl last year. By the way, I was surprised to hear, quite by accident, the other day, that she's a lot of money. I don't quite know why, but I formed the impression that it was her friend who was well-to-do—didn't you?" "I never thought about it," said Varick indifferently. "By the way, Miss Brabazon's old aunt, a certain Miss Burnaby, is here too. It's rather a quiet party, Panton; I hope you won't be bored." "I'm never bored. Who else have you got staying with you?" Varick ran over the list of his guests, only leaving out one, and, after a scarcely perceptible pause, he remedied the omission. "Then there's Miss Farrow's niece; she was called after her aunt, so her real name is Blanche—" "'Known to her friends as Bubbles,'" quoted Dr. Panton, with a cynical inflection in his voice. "How do you know that?" exclaimed Varick. "Because there was a portrait of the young lady in the Sketch last week. She seems to be a kind of feminine edition of the Admirable Crichton. She can act, dance, cook—and she's famed as a medium in the psychic world—whatever that may mean!" "I see you know all about her," observed Varick, smiling. But though he was smiling at his friend, his inner thoughts were grim thoughts. He was secretly repeating to himself: "Chichester, Chichester? How can she have got hold of Chichester?" Dr. Panton went on: "I'm glad I'm going to meet this Miss Bubbles—I've never met that particular type of young lady before. Though, of course, it's not, as some people believe, a new type. There have always been girls of that sort in the civilized world." "It's quite true that the most curious thing about Bubbles," said Varick thoughtfully, "is a kind of thought-reading gift. I fancy she must have inherited it from an Indian ancestress, for her great-great-grandfather rescued a begum on her way to be burnt on her husband's funeral pyre. He ultimately married her, and though she never came to England. Bubbles' father, a fool called Hugh Dunster, who's lost what little money he ever had, is one of her descendants. There's something just a little Oriental and strange in Bubbles' appearance." "This is 'curiouser and curiouser,' as Alice in Wonderland used to say!" exclaimed Panton. "Do you think I could persuade Miss Bubbles to give an exhibition of her psychic gifts?" The speaker uttered the word "psychic" with a very satiric inflection in his pleasant voice. Varick smiled rather wryly. "You're quite likely to have an exhibition of them without asking for it! The first evening that my guests were here she held what I believe they call a sÉance, and as a result Miss Brabazon's uncle, old Burnaby, not only bolted from the room, but left Wyndfell Hall the next morning." "What an extraordinary thing!" "Yes," said Varick, "it was an extraordinary thing. I confess I can't explain Bubbles' gift at all. At this sÉance of hers she described quite accurately long dead men and women—" "Are you sure of that, Varick?" "Of course I am, for she described my own mother." There was a pause. "Being a very intelligent, quick girl, she naturally helps herself out as best she can," went on Varick reflectively. "Then you're inclined to think her thought-reading is more or less a fraud?" cried Panton triumphantly. "Less, rather than more, for she's convinced me that she sees into the minds of her subjects and builds up a kind of—of—" "Description?" suggested the doctor. "More than that—I was going to say figure. She described, as if she saw them standing there before her, people of whom she'd never even heard—and the descriptions were absolutely exact. But if you don't mind, Panton—" He hesitated, and the other said, "Yes, Varick?" "Well, I'd rather you leave all that sort of thing alone, as far as Bubbles Dunster is concerned. Both Miss Farrow and I are very anxious that she shouldn't be up to any more of her tricks while she's here. People don't half like it, you see. Even I didn't like it." Somehow it was a comfort to Varick to talk freely about Bubbles to a stranger—Bubbles had got on his nerves. He would have given a good deal to persuade her to leave Wyndfell Hall; but he didn't know how to set about it. In a sense she was the soul of the party. The others all liked her. Yet he, himself, felt a sort of growing repugnance to her which he would have been hard put to it to explain. Indeed, the only way he could explain it—and he had thought a good deal about it the last few days—was that she undoubtedly possessed an uncanny power of starting into life images which had lain long dormant in his brain. For one thing—but that, of course, might not be entirely Bubbles' fault—Milly, his poor wife, had become again terribly real to him. It was almost as if he felt her to be alive, say, in the next room—lying, as she had been wont to lie, listening for his footsteps, in the little watering place where they had spent the last few weeks of her life. He could not but put down that unpleasant, sinister phenomenon to the presence of Bubbles, for he had been at Wyndfell Hall all the summer, and though the place had been Milly's birthplace—where, too, she had spent her melancholy, dull girlhood—no thought of her had ever come to disturb his pleasure in the delightful, perfect house and its enchanting garden. Of course, now and again some neighbour with whom he had made acquaintance would say a word to him indicating what a strange, solitary life the Faunceys, father and daughter, had led in their beautiful home, and how glad the speaker was that "poor Milly" had had a little happiness before she died. To these remarks he, Varick, would of course answer appropriately, with that touch of sad reminiscence which carries with it no real regret or sorrow. But during the last few days it had been otherwise. He could not get Milly out of his mind, and he had come to feel that if this peculiar sensation continued, he would not be able to bring himself to stay on at Wyndfell Hall after the break-up of his present party. This feeling of his dead wife's presence had first become intolerably vivid in the village school-room during the children's Christmas Day treat. At one time—so the clergyman had told him—Milly had had a sewing-class for the village girls in that very room; but the class had not been a success, and she had given it up after a few weeks. That was her only association with the ugly little building, and yet—and yet, once he had got well into his speech, he had suddenly felt her to be there—and it was not the gentle, fretful, adoring Milly he had known, but a Presence which seemed filled with an awful, clear-eyed knowledge of certain secret facts which his reasoning faculties assured him were only known to his own innermost self. |