CHAPTER III

MISS WHARF AT HOME

The best houses in Marport were situated on the Cliffs. They stood a

considerable way back and had small plots of ground before them

cultivated or not, according to the taste of those who owned them. Some

of these gardens were brilliant with flowers, others had nothing but

shrubs in them, presenting rather a sombre appearance, and a few were

bare sun-burnt grass plots, with no adornment whatsoever. A broad road

divided the gardens from the grassy undulations of the cliffs, and along

this thoroughfare, rolled carriages, bicycles, and motor-cars all day

during the season. Then came the grass on the cliff-tops which stretched

for a long distance, and which was dotted with shelters for nervous

invalids. At one end there was a round band-stand where red-coated

musicians played lively airs from the latest musical comedy. Round the

stand were rows of chairs hired out at twopence an afternoon, and

indeed, all over the lawns, seats of various kinds were scattered. At

the end of the grass, the cliffs sloped gradually and were intersected

with winding paths, which led downward to the asphalt Esplanade which

ran along the water's edge, when the tide was high, and beside

evil-smelling mud when the tide was out. And on what was known as the

beach--a somewhat gritty strand,--were many bathing machines. Such was

the general appearance of Marport which the Essex people looked on as a

kind of Brighton, only much better.

Miss Sophia Wharf owned a cosy little house at the far end of the

cliffs, and just at the point where Marport begins to melt into the

country. It was a modern house comfortably furnished and brilliant with

electric lights. The garden in front of it was well taken care of, there

were scarlet and white shades to the windows and flower boxes filled

with blossoms on the sills. Everyone who passed remarked on the beauty

of the house, and Miss Wharf was always pleased when she heard them envy

her possessions. She liked to possess a Naboth's Vineyard of her own,

and appreciated it the more, when others would have liked to take it.

She had an income of one thousand a year and therefore could live very

comfortably. The house (Ivy Lodge was it's highly original name) was

her own, bought in the days when Marport was nothing but a fishing

village. She knew everyone in the neighbourhood, was a staunch friend to

the vicar who was high church and quite after her own heart in the use

of banners, incense, candles and side-altars, and on the whole was one

of the leading ladies of the place. She had the reputation of being

charitable, but this was owing to Miss Pewsey who constantly trumpeted

the bestowal of any stray shilling being by her patroness.

Miss Wharf was a lady of good family, but had quarrelled with her

relatives. She was a tall, cold, blonde woman who had once been handsome

and still retained a certain portion of good looks, in spite of her

forty and more years. She lived with her niece Olivia the child of a

sister long since dead, and with Miss Pewsey, to whom she gave a home as

a companion. But Miss Wharf well knew, that Lavinia Pewsey was worth her

weight in gold owing to the way she praised up her good, kind, devoted,

loving, sweet, friend. The adjectives are Miss Pewsey's own, but some

people said that Sophia Wharf did not deserve to have them attached to

her. The lady had her enemies, and these openly declared, as the Major

had done, that she was a mass of granite. Other people, less prejudiced,

urged that Miss Wharf looked after Olivia, who was a penniless orphan.

To which the grumblers retorted that Miss Wharf liked someone to vent

her temper on, and that the poor girl, being too pretty, did duty as a

whipping boy. This was possibly true, for Olivia and her aunt did not

get on well together. In her own way the girl looked as cold as Miss

Wharf, but this coldness was merely a mask to hide a warm and loving

nature, while Miss Wharf was an ice-berg through and through. However,

on the whole, Sophia Wharf was well liked, and took care to make the

most of her looks and her moderate income and her reputation as a

charitable lady. And Miss Pewsey was the show-woman who displayed her

patroness's points to their best advantage.

The drawing-room of Ivy Lodge was a flimsy, pretty, feminine, room,

furnished in a gim-crack fashion, of the high art style. The floor was

waxed, and covered with Persian praying mats, the chairs were gilt and

had spindle legs, the settee was Empire, the piano was encased in green

wood and adorned with much brass, the sofa was Louis Quinze and covered

with brocade, and there were many tables of rose-wood, dainty and light,

heaped high with useless nick-knacks.

The walls of pale green were adorned with watercolour pictures, and many

mirrors draped with Liberty silk. Everywhere were large bowls of

flowers, miniatures of Miss Wharf at various times of her life,

curiosities from China and Japan and the near East, and all sorts of

odds and ends which Miss Wharf had collected on her travels. Not that

she had been to the East, for the evidences of civilisation in those

lands came from Dr. Forge and Major Tidman, but Miss Wharf had explored

Germany, Switzerland and Italy and consequently had brought home

cuckoo-clocks, quaint carvings, pictures of the Madonna, Etruscan idols

and such like things with which every tourist loads himself or herself.

The result was, that the drawing-room looked like a curiosity shop, but

it was considered to be one of the prettiest drawing-rooms in Essex.

Miss Wharf looked too large and too substantial for the frail furniture

of the room. She had a double chin and was certainly very stout. Very

wisely she had a special arm-chair placed in the window--from which she

could see all that was going on,--and here she sat working most of the

day. She was great on doing fancy articles for bazaars, and silk ties

for such gentlemen as she admired, for Miss Wharf, old maid as she was,

liked male society. The Major was her great admirer, so was young

Walker, Lady Jabe's nephew. Sophia was not very sure of this last

gentleman, as she shrewdly suspected--prompted by Miss Pewsey--that he

admired Olivia. Rupert also admired Olivia and wanted to marry her, a

proceeding which Miss Wharf objected to. Miss Pewsey supported her in

this, for both women were envious of the youth which had passed from

them for ever. But Miss Wharf had also another reason, which Miss Pewsey

knew, but of which Olivia was ignorant. Hitherto Sophia had kept it from

the girl but this afternoon in a fit of rage she let it out. The

explosion did not come at once, for Lady Jabe was in the room drinking

tea, and Miss Pewsey was flitting about, filling odd vases with flowers.

Olivia sat on the settee very straight and very cold, looking dark and

handsome, and altogether too splendid a woman for her aunt to tolerate.

"Can't you do something?" said Miss Wharf turning her jealous eyes on

the girl. "I should think you must be tired, twiddling your thumbs all

day."

"I'll do whatever you wish me to do," said Olivia coldly.

"Then help Lavinia with the flowers."

Olivia rose to do so, but Miss Pewsey refused her assistance in a shrill

speech spoken as usual between her teeth and with an emphasis on every

other word. "Oh no dear, dear, Sophia," cried Miss Pewsey, "I have just

finished, and I may say that my eye for colour is better than

Olivia's--you don't mind my saying so, darling," she added to the girl.

"Not at all," replied Miss Rayner who detested the sycophant. "I never

give the matter a thought."

"You _should_ think," said Lady Jabe joining in heavily. She was a tall

masculine-looking woman with grey hair and bushy grey eyebrows, and with

an expression of face that suggested she should have worn a wig and sat

on the bench. She dressed in rather a manly way, and far too young for

her fifty years. On the present occasion she wore a yachting-cap, a

shirt with a stand-up, all round, collar and a neat bow; a leather belt

and a bicycling skirt of blue serge. Her boots and shoes were of tanned

brown leather, and she carried a bamboo cane instead of a sunshade. No

one could have been more gentlemanly. "You should think," added she once

more, "for instance you should think of marriage."

Miss Wharf drew herself up in her cold way. "I fancy that Olivia, few

brains as she has, is yet wise enough not to think of marriage at

twenty."

"It would not be much good if I did," said Olivia calmly. "I have no

money, and young men want a rich wife."

"Not all," said Lady Jabe, "there's Chris----"

"Chris is out of the question," said Miss Rayner quickly.

"And pray why is he?" asked Sophia in arms at once. She never liked

Olivia to have an opinion of her own.

"Because I don't love him."

"But Chris loves you," said Lady Jabe, "and really he's getting a very

good salary in that Tea-merchant's office. Chris, as you are aware,

Olivia, is foreign corresponding clerk to Kum-gum Li & Co. He knows

Chinese," finished Lady Jabe, with tremendous emphasis.

"Oh," Miss Pewsey threw up her claws, "how delicious to be made love to

in Chinese. I must really ask Mr. Walker what is the Chinese for 'I love

you.'"

"Olivia prefers to hear it in English," said Miss Wharf, spitefully.

"Quite so, aunt," retorted her niece, her colour rising, "but don't you

think we might change the subject. It really isn't very interesting."

"But indeed I think it is," said Lady Jabe smartly, "I come here to

plead the cause of poor Chris. His heart is breaking. Your aunt is

willing to----"

"But I am not," said Miss Rayner quickly, "so please let us say no more

about the matter. Mr. Walker can marry Lotty Dean."

"But she's a grocer's daughter," said Lady Jabe, who was herself the

widow of an oil-merchant, "and remember my title."

"Lotty isn't going to marry you, Lady Jabe."

"Nor Chris, if I can help it," said the other grimly.

Miss Wharf was just about to crush Olivia with a particularly

disagreeable remark, when the door opened and two gentlemen entered. One

was Christopher Walker, a slim, boyish-looking young fellow, in that

callow stage of manhood which sees beauty in every woman. The other, who

followed, was Miss Pewsey's nephew.

There was nothing immature about him, although he was but twenty eight

years of age. Clarence Burgh was tall, thin, dark and had the appearance

of a swashbuckler as he swaggered into the room. His black eyes snapped

with an unholy light and his speech smacked too much of the Lands at the

Back of Beyond, where he had passed the most part of his life. He was an

expert rider, and daily rode a bucking squealing, kicking stallion up

and down the road, or took long gallops into the country to reduce the

fire of the unruly beast. Burgh was bad all through, daring, free, bold,

and had a good deal of the untamed savage about him; but he was

emphatically a man, and it was this virile atmosphere about him, which

caused his withered aunt to adore him. And indeed Miss Wharf admired him

also, as did many of the women in Marport. Clarence looked like a

buccaneer who would carry a woman off, and knock her down if she

objected to his love-making. Women like that sort of dominating lord of

the world, and accordingly Mr. Burgh had nothing to complain of, so far

as feminine admiration went, during his sojourn in Marport. But he

had set his affections on Olivia, and hitherto she had shrunk from him.

All the same, brute as he was, she admired him more than she did

effeminate Chris Walker, who smacked of the city and of a

feather-bed-four-meals-a-day existence.

"Oh," squeaked Miss Pewsey, flying to the hero and clasping him round

the neck, "how very, very sweet of you to come."

"Hadn't anything else to do," said Clarence gracefully, casting himself

into a chair. All his movements were graceful like those of a panther.

"How are you Miss Wharf--Miss Rayner--Lady Jabe. I guess you all look

like a garden of spring flowers this day."

"But flowers we may not pluck," sighed Chris prettily.

Burgh looked at him with contempt. "I reckon a man can pick what he has

a mind to," said he drily, and then shifted his gaze to see how Olivia

took this speech. To his secret annoyance, she did not let on she heard

him.

"Will you have some tea, Mr. Burgh," asked Miss Wharf.

"Thanks. It seems to be the sort of thing one must drink here."

"You drank it in China didn't you?" asked Lady Jabe.

Burgh turned quickly. "Who told you I had been in China?" he asked.

"My nephew Chris. He heard you talking Chinese to someone."

The dark young man looked distinctly annoyed. "When was that?" he asked

Chris.

"Two weeks ago," replied the other, "you were standing at the corner of

the Mansion House talking to a Chinaman. I only caught a word or two in

passing."

"And I guess you didn't understand," said Clarence derisively.

"There you are wrong. I am in a Chinese firm, and know the language. As

a matter of fact I write their foreign letters for them."

"The deuce you do," murmured Burgh looking rather disturbed; but he said

no more on the subject, and merely enquired if the ladies were prepared

for the ball at the Bristol which was to take place in six days. "I hear

it's going to be a bully affair."

"Oh charming--charming," said Miss Pewsey. "Major Tidman is one of the

stewards. I asked him for a ticket for you Clarence dear."

"I'll go, if Miss Rayner will dance with me."

"I don't know that I am going myself," said Olivia quietly.

"Nonsense," said her aunt sharply, "of course you are going. Everyone is

going--the best ball of the season."

"Even poor little me," said Miss Pewsey, with her elderly head on one

side.

"Huh," said the irreverent Clarence, "ain't you past hoppin' aunt?"

"I can look on and admire the younger generation dear."

"It will be a splendid ball," prattled Chris sipping his tea and

devouring very crumbly cake, "the Glorious Golfers are going to spend a

lot of money in decorating the rooms. I met Mr. Ainsleigh. He is

going--a rare thing for him. He goes nowhere as a rule."

Miss Wharf glanced sharply at her niece, but beyond a faint flush, she

could detect no sign of emotion. "People who are as poor as young

Ainsleigh, can't afford to go out," she said deliberately. "I think the

wisest thing that young man could do, would be to marry a rich girl,"

and she again looked at Olivia.

"He is certainly very handsome," said Lady Jabe pensively, "very much

like his mother. She was a fine-looking woman, one of the Vanes of

Heathersham."

"I remember her," said Miss Wharf, her colour rising, "and I never

thought she was good-looking myself."

"Not to compare to you dear," said the sycophant.

But this time Miss Pewsey made a mistake. The remark did not seem to

please Miss Wharf. "I don't care for comparisons," she said sharply,

"its bad taste to make them. I like Mr. Ainsleigh, but I don't approve

of his idling."

"He has never been brought up to do anything," said Lady Jabe.

"Then he ought to turn his hands to making money in some way. That place

is mortgaged and at any time may be sold. Then he won't have a roof over

his head."

"I have never met Ainsleigh," said Burgh musingly, "I guess I'd like to

have a jaw along o' him. Wasn't his father murdered in China?"

Miss Wharf became suddenly pale. "It is said that he was, but I don't

believe it."

"Then he's alive," said Clarence pertinaciously, and looking at her.

"No. He's dead, but he died of dysentery, according to Dr. Forge who was

with him when he died--somewhere in the north I believe."

Burgh evidently stored this in his memory and looked keenly at the woman

whose bosom rose and fell and whose colour came and went under his

steady gaze. Miss Pewsey saw that the persistent look was annoying her

patroness, and touched her nephew's arm gently. The touch recalled Burgh

to his senses and he looked away. This time his eyes rested on Olivia.

Her colour was high and apparently she had been listening with interest

to the conversation. "Huh," thought the swashbuckler, "and it was about

young Ainsleigh," and he stored this in his memory also.

To make a sensation, which he dearly loved to do, Chris Walker announced

that he would bring a distinguished visitor to the ball of the Glorious

Golfers. "He's a Chinaman," said he pompously, "and was mixed up in the

Boxer rebellion."

None of the ladies seemed impressed, as none of them knew anything about

the Boxers, or their rebellion. But Burgh looked up. "Who is he anyhow?"

he demanded, compressing his lips.

"A Chinese gentleman called Tung-yu."

"What a very extraordinary name," said Miss Pewsey, and suddenly began

to take a deep interest in matters Chinese. While she chatted with Chris

who was willing to afford her all information, Burgh folded his arms and

leaned back apparently thinking deeply. His face was not pleasant to

behold. Olivia saw the evil look and shivered. Then she rose and was

about to steal from the room, when her aunt called to her sharply.

"Don't go Olivia I want to speak with you."

"And I want to take my usual walk," said Lady Jabe rising and settling

her collar, "Chris?"

A tap on the shoulder brought the slim young man to his feet, and giving

his arm to his masculine aunt the two departed. Burgh rose also. "I

guess I'll make tracks also?" he said smartly. "Walker, you and I can

have a yarn together, later."

Miss Pewsey followed her nephew to the door. "Do you wish to ask young

Mr. Walker more about Tung-yu?" she asked.

Clarence wheeled round quickly. "What do you know of him aunt?"

"It's such a strange name," simpered Miss Pewsey, looking very innocent,

"and I am interested in China. You were out there a long time Clarence."

"Amongst other places, yes. I hung round a bit."

"Then you must tell me all about the natives," said Miss Pewsey, "I want

to know of their robes and their fans and--"

"Fans," said Burgh starting: but Miss Pewsey with an artificial

laugh flitted back into the room, leaving him uneasy and non-plussed. He

walked away frowning darkly.

Olivia would have walked away also frowning, as she was indignant at the

way in which her aunt had spoken of Rupert. But Miss Wharf gave her no

chance of leaving the room or the house. Olivia had never seen her aunt

so pale or upset. She looked as white as chalk, and controlled her

emotion with difficulty. Lavinia Pewsey glanced at the two, guessed

there was about to be a row, and glided away. She always kept out of

trouble.

"Now," said Miss Wharf when they were alone, "I want an explanation."