The House at Bell Orchard Page 16

  Seeing her thus closely, he was horrified by the change a few days had wrought in her. The light-brown hair fell tangled and unkempt, framing an ashen face in which her eyes, staring as wildly as the eyes of a trapped creature, were ringed by shadows as dark as bruises, and the hands which clutched at his coat were shaking pitifully. She was panting as though from some tremendous exertion, and the words she gasped out tumbled over each other, breathless and disjointed.

  “Help me, for the love of pity! Do not be angry with me! They mean to kill me as they killed my father. He told me—the Jacobite, the man with red hair. He came to warn me, but Miles killed him, with a sword, from behind. I saw him do it, and now he will kill me, too. Oh, save me from him, please!”

  Kneeling beside her on the topmost stair, an arm about her, he covered one of the frantic, trembling hands with his own.

  “My dear, no one shall harm you,” he said gently. “Do not be afraid.”

  “But you do not understand! They are not Jacobites at all, though they told Papa they were, and took his money for King James, but they kept it for themselves. Then they killed him so that he could not betray them. Now Miles says that he will marry me, but he is a murderer! He killed the man with red hair!”

  Below, in the hall, Dorothy started towards the stairs, but Mrs. Fenshawe, emerging from the parlour, brushed past her without ceremony and mounted the flight ahead of her. Charmian, looking past Piers’ shoulder, saw her approaching, and with a whimper of terror clung to him more tightly than before.

  “Charmian, my love!” Lavinia’s voice was kindly and indulgent, the voice of one who reasons with a frightened, disobedient child. “You should not have left your room. What must your friends think to see you roaming about the house so scantily clad? Come, I will take you back to bed!”

  “I do not think she has the strength to stand, much less to walk,” Piers said grimly, and rose, lifting Charmian in his arms. “Show me the way, ma’am, and I will carry her.”

  “No! Please, no!” Fright and exhaustion combined now to render Charmian more incoherent than ever. “I must not go back there. They will kill me!”

  Lavinia spread out her hands in a helpless gesture, and then turned, beckoning Piers to follow her. With Dorothy, a horrified and bewildered onlooker, at his heels, he obeyed, bearing Charmian easily along the corridor she had traversed with such painful effort to reach him. Martha Godsall, who had returned to Miss Tarrant’s room by way of the backstairs, to find with horror that the door was open and the prisoner gone, heard their approach and came hurrying out to meet them. Lavinia waved her back into the room and stood aside for Piers to enter.

  Charmian was sobbing hopelessly, so overcome by the failure of her bid for freedom, but as he laid her down upon the bed she flung her arms about his neck, clinging to him with the strength of utter desperation. Through her thin garment he was painfully aware of the violence of her trembling, the panic-stricken thumping of her heart.

  “Do not leave me here, for the love of God!” Her voice rose hysterically in a last, frantic effort to convince him. “No one else can help me, no one! Oh, please, please!”

  “No one is going to harm you,” he said again. His voice was gentle, and so was the touch with which he disengaged her clinging arms. “My poor girl, you are in no danger, that I promise you!”

  Mrs. Fenshawe was close beside them, ready to frustrate Charmian’s attempt to clutch at him again as he moved away. Holding the distraught girl firmly by the wrists, she said over her shoulder:

  “My thanks to you, Sir Piers. Martha and I can manage her now, for there is a medicine here which will quieten her. Pray take your sister downstairs again, and I will join you there directly.”

  He nodded and went to the doorway, where Dorothy was standing, staring at the scene within the room in wide-eyed dismay. Taking her arm, he drew her out into the corridor and Martha Godsall shut the door firmly behind them, but as they moved away, Charmian’s frantic voice came clearly to their ears.

  “No, I will not take it! You are trying to poison me!” Then, rising to a heartrending scream of terror and despair: “Piers! Piers!”

  Dorothy gasped and would have halted, but her brother’s hand on her arm forced her on. Looking up at him, she saw that he had turned very white, and that there was a look in his face she had never seen there before, but he did not pause, nor would he allow her to do so. So they came again to the parlour, where she wrenched herself free and dropped into the nearest chair, covering her face with her hands. Piers stood beside her, one hand gripping the back of the chair, but he did not speak and it was plain that his thoughts were not upon her.

  Only a very few minutes passed before Mrs. Fenshawe followed them into the room. She went straight to Dorothy and laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “My poor child,” she said, “I would have given anything to prevent this happening. You see now what I have tried to spare you.”

  “I can scarcely believe it, even now!” Dorothy lifted a white, shocked face towards her; her voice was shaking. “Will she always be so?”

  Lavinia sighed. “Who can tell? If her malady follows the same pattern as her mother’s, this darkness will lift after a while and she will be as she was before, but it will return again, more and more frequently, until death brings the only release. If God is merciful, it will not be too long delayed.”

  With a sudden abrupt movement Piers turned away, but when he spoke his voice was calm and controlled.

  “Once again, Mrs. Fenshawe, we must ask your pardon and take our leave. If there is any way in which I can render you further assistance, pray inform me of it. Come, Dorothy!”

  This time his sister obeyed him without protest, apparently still overcome by what she had seen and heard. From the parlour window Mrs. Fenshawe watched them ride away, and then dropped into a chair with a sigh of relief. She felt exhausted, but satisfied. Charmian’s unexpected appearance, her wild looks and wilder words, had convinced Piers Wychwood of her madness as no mere words could ever have done. In fact, although it had given her several moments of violent shock and misgiving, everything had happened for the best.

  Dorothy was very subdued during the homeward ride, and they were approaching the ford before she spoke at all. Then she said in a trembling voice:

  “Oh, Piers, it is all so dreadful, and I would never have believed it, if we had not seen her! Poor, poor Charmian! I could weep for her!”

  Her brother, who had also ridden thus far in preoccupied silence, roused himself to glance at her. “Spare your tears,” he said briefly, “for ’tis to be hoped she will stand in no need of them.”

  Dorothy stared. “But, Piers, it must be true! She looked so strange, so wild! And we both heard her accuse Mrs. Fenshawe of trying to kill her!”

  He did not reply at once, but put his horse at the steep slope leading to the ford. There was a set expression in his face.

  “Has it not occurred to you,” he said grimly at length, “that the accusation may be justified?”

  This was too much for Dorothy, who had so often been accused of exaggeration. As the horses splashed through the shallow water she said indignantly:

  “No, it had not, but what occurs to me now is that you have taken leave of your senses! Mercy on us! why should anyone attempt such a thing, Miles wants to marry her, not murder her!”

  “Perhaps he intends to do both!” Piers said in a low voice. “You did not hear what Charmian said to me when I first reached her, before Lavinia Fenshawe came on the scene. No,” he added as she turned eagerly towards him, “I shall not tell you what it was, for if it is true, then ’tis better that you know nothing of it. But this I will say—I believe that she is in deadly danger, and it is partly my fault. If I had paid heed to what she once tried to tell me, this whole damnable situation would never have come about!”

  The fierce self-reproach in his voice kept Dorothy silent, preventing the questions which were hovering on her lips. As they began to climb the hill towards Wy
chwood Chase, however, the full import of what he had said dawned upon her. She reined in her horse and said urgently:

  “Piers, if she is in danger, we must go back at once! Oh, how could you abandon her in that heartless fashion, when she cried so to you to help her?”

  He halted also, and turned on her with a white-faced, savage fury which was totally foreign to his nature as she knew it. Never in all her life had she seen him so gripped by emotion.

  “You little fool, what else could I do? Did you expect me to carry her off there and then? Force my way out of the house and ride off with her across my saddle? A fine to-do that would have caused!”

  “What matter for that? At least Charmian would have been safe, for Mrs. Fenshawe could not have stopped you.”

  “No, she could not have stopped me, but she would have had the whole parish in an uproar before we had crossed the river—and the law would be on her side, make no doubt of that! Charmian would have been back at Bell Orchard within the hour, and us likely facing a charge of abduction, and probably saddled with a challenge from Miles into the bargain. If I am to help her at all, I had to pretend to believe Mrs. Fenshawe’s story.”

  Dorothy, considerably chastened by these facts which, undeniable though they were, would never have occurred to her, hurriedly asked his pardon, but added miserably: “You are right, of course, but Charmian is in no state to realize it. She will think we have completely abandoned her.”

  “Do you imagine it was easy for me to do it?” Piers asked bitterly. “To pay no heed when she cried out to me for help, to walk out of the house as though I neither understood nor cared? It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and yet I had to do it. To betray any suspicion at all could only increase her danger, and if all that she said is true, then she is in mortal peril already.”

  “Then what are we to do?” Dorothy was almost weeping with frustration and dismay. “How can we help her?”

  “I can think of only one way, and I had determined to use it even before we saw Charmian today.” Piers urged his horse forward again along the winding path. “I have no right to interfere, and so I must find someone who has. I shall go at once to Richmond, to the old gentleman of whom Charmian has told us, who was her father’s close friend for many years. He will know if there is any truth in this tale concerning her mother, and if, as I firmly believe, it is all a pack of lies, there will be cause enough for him to intervene. I shall ask him to return with me immediately.”

  “That will take so long,” Dorothy protested. “Is there no other way?”

  “None that I can think of. There is not one scrap of proof to offer in support of Charmian’s accusation, and who, seeing her as she is today, would believe that it is justified? If we did not know her, and were not already suspicious, would we have done so?”

  She sighed and shook her head. “I suppose not,” she agreed unhappily. “Oh, Piers, what can they be doing to her? She looked so ill!”

  “That old beldam, Granny Godsall, could probably tell us that,” Piers said grimly, “for I’ll warrant the medicine Mrs. Fenshawe spoke of is one of her damned witch-brews! But there is no hope of proving it. Godsall has no liking for me, and none of them would betray the Fenshawes.” His hand tightened suddenly on the rein, so that his horse stamped and snorted protestingly, and when he spoke again his voice shook with pain and anger. “By God, I will make them pay for this, for all that they have made her suffer!”

  He spurred forward again, and Dorothy followed him without further argument, but she could not help feeling vaguely dissatisfied with her brother’s intention to seek aid from Mr. Brownhill. To her it seemed a very tame and unadventurous way of dealing with the crisis, for her mind ran more to such measures as a secret, midnight entry into Bell Orchard and the spiriting away of the prisoner to a place of safety—measures in which she would have been more than willing to take an active part.

  But even if all the difficulties could have been overcome, she knew that Piers would never agree to so reckless a scheme. Not even the undoubted depth of his feelings or his consuming anxiety would deflect him from the path of practical common sense.

  Arriving at the Chase, Piers sent his sister to tell Lady Wychwood what had happened, while he made his preparations for the journey to Richmond. These were brief. He took no servant and only the merest necessities, but because any appearance of undue haste would cause comment which might drift as far as Bell Orchard and arouse suspicion there, he casually let it be known that he was riding to visit his friend, Tom Merrill. Then he went to take leave of his mother and Dorothy before setting out at a leisurely pace in the direction of Mr. Merrill’s home, which fortunately lay upon the road he must follow to reach his real destination.

  Once away from the immediate vicinity of Wychwood, however, the casual pose was soon cast aside, and it was a very grim and purposeful young man who rode northwards at a pace which would greatly have gratified his sister had she been there to see it. Only Piers himself knew what it cost him thus to turn his back upon Bell Orchard and the frightened girl who lay imprisoned there, deliberately to ignore the frantic appeal for help which seemed to ring still in his ears. To do so did violence to his deepest feelings, while the thought of the despair into which his seeming indifference must have cast her wrung his heart, but he knew there was no other way. The Fenshawes were as clever as they were unscrupulous, and for Charmian’s sake he dare make no move against them until he was sure of success.

  He rode hard, sparing neither himself nor his mount, hiring a fresh horse as soon as his present one showed signs of flagging, and reached Richmond in the early evening. He had little difficulty in finding his way to Mr. Brownhill’s house, but there a bitter disappointment awaited him. The old gentleman and his wife were away from home, and not expected back until late the next afternoon.

  Piers was obliged to spend the night at an inn in the town, driven almost to distraction by the delay and by the thought of the ordeal which Charmian was undergoing so many miles away. Twice during the following day he went to the Brownhills’ house, hoping against hope that they had returned earlier than expected, and twice was disappointed. On his third visit, however, towards the end of the afternoon, he found a coach standing before the door, and was informed by the servant who answered his knock that Mr. and Mrs. Brownhill had that moment arrived home.

  Convinced by the visitor’s persistence that his business was extremely urgent, the servant ushered him at once into the presence of his master and mistress, who had already been informed of his previous visits and were therefore somewhat curious. The name of Wychwood conveyed nothing to them, and both looked with some perplexity at this tall young man with the pleasant, serious face and air of quiet authority. He bowed punctiliously as Mr. Brownhill came forward to greet him, to present him to his wife, and then to inquire, in a faintly puzzled tone, how he could be of service to him.

  “That, sir, is a trifle difficult to explain,” Piers replied frankly, “though it may perhaps simplify matters if I tell you first that I am a near neighbour of Colonel Fenshawe, of Bell Orchard in Sussex.”

  These words produced a greater effect than he had looked for. Mrs. Brownhill uttered an exclamation, and her husband said quickly:

  “Bell Orchard? Then, sir, perhaps you can give us news of a young friend of ours, Miss Tarrant, who we believe is at present a guest there.”

  “You believe?” A quick frown accompanied the words. “Are you not certain of it?”

  Mr. Brownhill moved his hands in an eloquent gesture. “We know that Colonel Fenshawe and his wife took Miss Tarrant to Sussex shortly after her father’s death, and we received a letter from her soon after her arrival there, but we have heard nothing since.”

  “I have written to her several times, and received no reply,” Mrs. Brownhill put in anxiously. “It is not like Charmian to be so neglectful! Pray, sir, can you tell us if she is still there, and if all is well with her? We have been greatly concerned.”

 
“Miss Tarrant is certainly at Bell Orchard,” Piers replied, “for I saw her there only yesterday, but I fear, ma’am, that I can give you little reassurance as to her well-being. You are not her only friends to be concerned about her. That is why I am here.”

  She broke into dismayed and anxious questioning, but was silenced by her husband’s uplifted hand. Mr. Brownhill, shrewdly regarding Piers, said quietly:

  “I believe, my dear, that we shall sooner know what is amiss if we permit Sir Piers to tell us without interruption. Pray be seated, sir! We are all attention.”

  Piers accepted the invitation with a word of thanks, and embarked at once upon his story. He told it in a deliberately calm and matter-of-fact way, but in spite of this they listened with deepening horror, and Mrs. Brownhill was soon openly weeping. When he related how Lavinia Fenshawe had told him that Charmian’s mother had died insane, she could contain herself no longer, but said with tearful indignation:

  “That is a wicked, wicked lie! Mrs. Tarrant died in an accident, poor young creature, as a score of people hereabouts will tell you. A team of runaway horses in the town one day—she thrust Charmian out of danger but could not escape it herself. Oh, that evil woman! I did not trust her, and should never have allowed her to take the child away!”

  “Do not blame yourself, ma’am,” Piers said grimly. “I have known the Fenshawes all my life, and until a few days ago I harboured no suspicions concerning them. Why, then, should you?”

  “Such regret and self-reproach,” Mr. Brownhill put in, “is merely a waste of time which would be better spent in deciding upon a course of action. It is difficult to know how much of what Charmian told Sir Piers yesterday is true, and how much due to fright and disordered health, but it is plain that she is being kept at Bell Orchard against her will.”