The Mystery of Mrs. Brandreth/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
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 I stopped 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.
“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 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 ill, so ill he couldn't possibly get well, and he begged you to marry him so that you might be in the same house till the end, and he could die happily because you were 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 asked 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 immensely rich. 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 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 wonderful 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 too hastily. 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 be his wife. 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 obtacle to Ralston, and if he knew precisely what kind of “freedom to marry” her freedom was, whether Mr. Blank Brandreth were dead or 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 favor, as Rosemary Brandreth, and then, after we were married—provided I live to marry her, as I hope to do—I would 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 favor 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 would lead up to the subject, and get her to explain.”
“What is the funny thing?” I asked.
“Why, at first she implored me not to leave money to her, actually begged, with tears in her eyes. However, I explained that if she didn't get what I have, a stranger would, which would make me unhappy. My being 'unhappy' settled the matter for her! But she made a queer condition. If she allowed me to leave everything to her, the legacy must be arranged somehow without altering it to her married name when she is my wife. It must be in favor of 'Rosemary Brandreth,' not 'Rosemary Murray.' I begged her to tell me why she wanted such an odd thing, and she said it was a prejudice she had about women changing their names and taking their husbands' names. Well, as a matter of fact, I believe a woman marrying can keep her own name, legally, if she likes. Taking the husband's name is a custom, not a necessity for women, I remember hearing. But I'm not sure. Sir Jim may know. If not, he'll find out for me. I haven't much strength, and it would be the greatest favor if he would get some first-rate legal opinion about carrying out this wish of Rosemary's.”
“Tim will be glad to do anything he can,” I said warmly. “We shall be neighbors, you know.”
“Yes, thank Heaven!” he exclaimed. “I used not to think about such things, but I do feel as if you two had been sent me in my need, by Providence. There was the wonderful coincidence of Rosemary being on my ship—at least, one calls it a 'coincidence,' but it must be something deeper and more mysterious than that. Then, finding such friends as you and Sir Jim, neighbors on deck, and neighbors on shore. I can't tell you the comfort it is to know that Rosemary won't be left alone when—I'm gone.”
“Count on us,” I repeated, “now and later.”
“I do,” Murray answered. “As for the present, my first will in favor of Rosemary Brandreth will be clear sailing. It is the second one, or the codicil, after marriage, that raises a question. I suppose I needn't worry about that till the time comes, yet I do. I want to be sure that Rosemary is safe. I wish you could persuade her not to stick to the point she's so keen on.”
“If you can't persuade her, it's not likely that I can,” I objected. I tried to keep my voice quite natural, but something in my tone must have struck him,
“You have an idea in your mind about this condition Rosemary makes!” he challenged.