Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Musaicum Books
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
Marie Belloc Lowndes' 'The Story of Ivy' is a gripping murder mystery that delves into the complexities of human nature and the consequences of one's actions. Set in Victorian England, the novel follows the devious Ivy Lexton as she schemes her way into a wealthy marriage before resorting to more sinister means to secure her future. Lowndes masterfully weaves suspense and psychological depth into the narrative, keeping readers on the edge of their seats until the shocking conclusion. With its richly detailed prose and compelling plot twists, 'The Story of Ivy' stands out as a classic example of early 20th-century crime fiction. Readers will be captivated by the intricate character development and moral dilemmas presented in this haunting tale. Marie Belloc Lowndes' own experiences as a writer and journalist provide valuable insight into the era's societal norms and the darker aspects of human behavior, adding depth and authenticity to the story. Fans of psychological thrillers and historical mysteries will find 'The Story of Ivy' a captivating read that offers both entertainment and thought-provoking commentary.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 426
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
THE STORY OF IVY
(Murder Mystery)
Published by
Books
Table of Contents
Prologue
“Tell me something about the Lextons, Mary. Where did you pick them up?” asked Lady Flora Desmond of her hostess, Mrs. Hampton. “As I looked at Mrs. Lexton during dinner, I thought I had never seen a prettier face. When I was a child, your little friend would have been what people then called a professional beauty.”
“She certainly is very pretty, and a regular honey-pot! Look at her now, with Miles Rushworth?”
The speaker nodded towards the wide-open French window of the high-ceilinged, oval eighteenth-century sitting-room. She and two other women were sitting there together after dinner, on the Saturday evening of what Mrs. Hampton thought promised to be a very successful week-end party.
The window gave access to a broad stone terrace. Beyond the terrace lay a wide lawn, bathed in bright moonlight, and across the lawn sauntered very slowly two figures, that of a tall man, and that of a slender woman dressed in a light-coloured frock. They were moving away from the beautiful old country-house where they were both staying as guests, making for an avenue of beeches.
Mary Hampton went on, speaking not unkindly, but with a certain tartness: “He took her out in his motor after tea, so she might have left him alone after dinner.”
“You oughtn’t to complain, my dear! You told me this morning that you had asked the Lextons this week-end so that they could make friends with your millionaire,” observed Joan Rodney.
She was a sharp-tongued, clever spinster who enjoyed putting her friends right, and telling them home truths. Much was forgiven to Miss Rodney because she was, if sharp-tongued, fundamentally kind-hearted.
“My millionaire, as you call him, is one of the finest amateur billiard-players in England. I made Jack get hold of the best of the young ‘pros.’ He could only spare us this evening, and now that all the men, and two of the women, are either playing or watching the play in the billiard-room, Miles is philandering with Ivy Lexton in the garden!”
“Not philandering, Mary,” observed Lady Flora, smiling. “Mr. Rushworth never philanders.”
“Well! You know what I mean. It’s my fault, of course. I ought to have known that no party would be big enough to hold Ivy Lexton and another attraction. Last time she was here she snatched such a nice boy from his best girl, and stopped, I’m afraid, a proposal.”
Lady Flora looked sorry. A plain woman herself, she admired, without a touch of envy, physical beauty more than she admired anything else in the world.
“I don’t suppose Mrs. Lexton can help attracting men. It’s human nature after all——”
Quoted Joan Rodney, with a sharp edge to her voice:
“It’s human nature but, if so, oh! Isn’t human nature low?”
“Little Ivy isn’t exactly low; at least I hope not,” observed little Ivy’s hostess reflectively. “But I do feel that there’s a curiously soulless quality about her. Though she’s not what people call clever, there’s something baffling about Ivy Lexton. I liked her much better when I first knew her.”
“She mayn’t be what silly people call clever, but she’s plenty of what used to be called ‘nous,’” said Miss Rodney drily. “She engineered her stroll with Mr. Rushworth very cleverly to-night. Your husband was determined to get him into the billiard-room——”
“She had a good excuse for that, Joan. As I told you yesterday, Jervis Lexton has been looking out for something to do for a long while.”
Mrs. Hampton turned to her other friend. “It suddenly occurred to me, Flora, that Miles Rushworth, who must have many jobs in his gift, might find Jervis Lexton something to do. Ivy knows that I asked them both for this week-end on purpose that they might meet him. It isn’t easy to get hold of him for this kind of party.”
“Have you known the Lextons long, Mary?” asked Lady Flora.
She felt genuinely interested in Mrs. Jervis Lexton. The quiet, old-fashioned, some would have said very limited, middle-aged widow, and lovely, restless, self-absorbed, and very modern Ivy Lexton, had “made friends.”
“I have known Jervis ever since he was born. His father was a friend of my father’s. But I had not seen him for years till I ran across him, in town, about three months ago. The last time I had seen him was early in the war, when his father had just died, and he had been given a fortnight’s leave. He’s what Jack calls quite a good sort; but it’s bad for a young man to become his own master at twenty. He seems to have married this lovely little thing when he was twenty-two. That’s six years ago.”
“They seem to get on very well,” observed Lady Flora.
“I think they do, though I’m afraid they’ve muddled away most of his money in having what Ivy considers a good time. He must have come into a fair fortune, for his father had sold their place just before the war.”
“What fools young people seem to be today—I mean compared to the old days!” exclaimed Joan Rodney harshly.
She went on: “John Oram—you know, Mary, the big solicitor—once told me that of ten men who sell their land at any given time, only two have anything of the purchase-price left at the end of ten years.”
“Jervis Lexton won’t be one of those two men,” said his hostess regretfully. “Ivy told me today that they’re fearfully hard up.”
“People often say that when it is laughably untrue! It’s the fashion to pretend one’s poor. Mrs. Lexton dresses beautifully. She must spend a great deal of money on her clothes,” interjected Joan Rodney.
“I’m afraid there was no pretence about what Ivy told me this morning. She looked really worried, poor little thing! I do hope she will get something good for Jervis out of Miles Rushworth.”
“She makes most of her frocks herself; it’s so easy nowadays,” said Lady Flora. And then she added: “She was telling me today about her girlhood. Her father failed in business, through no fault of his own, and for a little while she was on the stage——”
“Only a walking-on part in a musical comedy,” observed Joan Rodney, “if what her husband, who strikes me as an honest young fellow, told me is true. However, I’m surprised, even so, that she didn’t do better for herself in what I have heard described as the straight road to the peeresses’ gallery, to say nothing of ‘another place.’”
“Joan! Joan!” cried Mrs. Hampton deprecatingly.
Miss Rodney got up and came across to where her hostess sat under a heavily-shaded lamp.
She put her left elbow on the marble mantelpiece, and looking down into the other’s now upturned face, “I don’t like your little friend,” she said deliberately. “I’ve been studying her closely ever since she arrived on Thursday afternoon, though she didn’t seem aware of my existence till after lunch today. When I was in America last year, they’d invented a name for that sort of young woman. She’s out, all the time, for what she can get. ‘A gold-digger’—that’s the slang American term for that kind of young person, Mary. I know what I’m talking about.”
“How can you possibly know?”
“By instinct, my dear! If I were you I should give pretty Mrs. Lexton a very wide berth.”
And then, rather to the relief of the other two, she exclaimed, “Having done what’s always foolish—that is, said exactly what I think—I’m off to watch the champion billiard-player.”
After she had left the room, Mrs. Hampton said slowly, “It’s sad to hear a good woman, for Joan is really a good woman, say such cruel, unkind things.”
“It’s odd, too, for no one can show more real understanding sympathy when one’s in trouble,” answered Lady Flora in a low voice. She was remembering a time of frightful sorrow in her own life, when Joan Rodney had been one of the few friends whose presence had not jarred on her.
“Ah, well! She’s devoted to you. Also, you’re an angel, Flora, so there’s no great merit in being kind to you. What Joan Rodney can’t forgive in another woman is youth, happiness——”
“And, I suppose, beauty,” interjected Lady Flora. “Yet to me there is something so disarming, so pathetic, about Mrs. Lexton.”
“Then Joan has such a poor opinion of human nature,” went on Mrs. Hampton in a vexed tone. “You heard with what delight she quoted that horrid little bit of doggerel. Still, quite between ourselves, Flora, I must admit that, in a sense, she is more right than she knows about Ivy Lexton.”
Lady Flora looked dismayed. “In what way, Mary?”
“Ivy is very fond of money, or rather of spending it. In fact she is idiotically extravagant. She is dancing mad, and belongs to the two most expensive night clubs in town. It’s her fault that they’ve frittered away a lot of Jervis Lexton’s capital. Also, there’s a side to her, for all her pretty manners, that isn’t pretty at all.”
“How d’you mean?” and the other looked puzzled.
Mrs. Hampton hesitated. Then she smiled a little ruefully. “My maid told me that when Ivy arrived she was quite rude to Annie—you know, my nice old housemaid?—because there was no bottle of scent on her dressing-table! There was one, it seems, last time she was here. It had been left by some visitor—I don’t undertake to provide such luxuries.”
“That doesn’t sound very nice, certainly,” Lady Flora looked naïvely surprised.
“Then, if I’m to be really honest, my dear, there’s no doubt that one reason why Joan Rodney has taken such a ferocious dislike to Ivy Lexton is owing to the fact that I stupidly told Ivy this morning of Joan’s marvellous bit of luck—I mean of that big legacy from the American cousin. I’m afraid that’s why Ivy, who behaved all yesterday as if Joan hardly existed, began at once to make up to her! But pretty ways are very much lost on our Joan.”
She began to laugh. She really couldn’t help it, remembering the way her friend had received the younger woman’s overtures of friendship.
Lady Flora looked disturbed, for she was one of those rare human beings to whom it is a pain to think ill of anybody.
“After all, Joan’s money is of no good to anyone but herself, Mary? I don’t see why you should suppose poor little Mrs. Lexton made up to her because of that legacy.”
The other looked at her fixedly.
“Ivy Lexton has a good deal in common with the heroine of Jack’s favourite drawing-room story.”
“What story?” asked Lady Flora. Her host’s rather sly sense of humour had never appealed to her, though they were quite good friends.
“The story of the lady who said to her husband, ‘Oh, do let’s go and see them; they’re so rich!’ to be met with the answer, ‘My dear, I would if it was catching!’”
Lady Flora looked a little puzzled. “He was quite right. Money is not catching, though I suppose most people wish it were.”
“A great many people are convinced that it is, Flora, and our little Ivy is among them. I’m sure she feels that if she rubs herself up against it close enough, a little will certainly come off. And I’m not sure, in her case, that she’s not right!”
But Lady Flora could be obstinate in her mild way.
“I like Mrs. Lexton,” she said gently. “I’m going to call on her when we’re all in town again. She’s promised to take me to a nice quiet night club. I’ve always longed to see one. I want my sister-in-law, I mean Jenny, to know her. Jenny loves young people. She gives amusing little dances——”
“I think you’ll make a mistake if you introduce Ivy to the Duchess.”
“I don’t see why, my dear? After all, Mary, your little friend has been very sweet to me, and that though she knows I’m really poor.”
The other woman gave a quick look at her friend. Sometimes she thought Flora Desmond too good, too simple, even for human nature’s daily food.
Chapter one
The July sun shone slantwise into the ugly, almost sordid-looking bedroom where Ivy Lexton, still only half dressed, had just begun making up her lovely face in front of a tarnished, dust-powdered toilet-glass.
It was nine o’clock in the morning; an hour ago she had had her cup of tea and—mindful of her figure—the hard biscuit which was the only thing she allowed herself by way of breakfast. Her husband, hopelessly idle, easy-natured, well-bred Jervis Lexton, was still fast asleep in the little back bedroom his wife called his dressing-room, but which was their box-room and general “glory-hole.”
Everything that had been of any real value there had gradually disappeared in the last few weeks, for Ivy and Jervis Lexton, to use their own rueful expression, were indeed stony-broke.
Yet they had started their married life, six years before, with a capital of sixty-eight thousand pounds. Now they were almost penniless. Indeed, what Ivy called to herself with greater truth than was usual “her little all,” that is, a pound note, and twelve shillings and sixpence in silver, lay on the stained, discoloured mahogany dressing-table before which she was now standing.
How amazed would her still large circle of friends and acquaintances have been had they learnt how desperate and how hopeless was her own and her husband’s financial position. Yesterday she had even tried to sell two charming frocks brought back for her by a good-natured friend from Paris. But she had only been offered a few shillings for the two, so she had brought them home again.
And now, as her eyes fell on the pound note and tiny heap of silver, they filled with angry tears. How she loathed these sordid, hateful lodgings! What a terrible, even a terrifying thing, it was to have fallen so low as to have to live here, in two shabby, ill-kept bedrooms, where there wasn’t even a hanging cupboard for her pretty clothes, and where the drawers of the painted deal chest of drawers would neither shut nor open.
The Lextons had come there for two reasons. One, a stupid reason, because their landlady was the widow of a man who had been employed as a lad in the stables of Jervis Lexton’s father. A better reason was that, owing to there being no bathroom in the house, the rooms were amazingly, fantastically cheap. The Lextons had already been camping here, as Ivy’s husband put it, for some months, but they rarely gave any of their friends their address. Jervis still belonged to a famous club to which some of his rich men acquaintances would have given much to belong; and Ivy had a guinea subscription to a small bridge club from which her letters were forwarded each day.
There came a knock at the bedroom door. It was a funny, fumbling knock, and she knew it for that of the landlady’s little boy.
Flinging a pale pink lace-trimmed wrapper round her, “Come in,” she called out sharply.
The child came in, holding in his grubby hand two letters.
She took them from him, and quickly glanced at the envelopes. The one, inscribed in a firm masculine handwriting to her present, Pimlico, address, she put down on the dressing-table unopened. She knew, or thought she knew, so well what it contained.
There had been a time, not so very long ago, when Ivy Lexton’s beautiful eyes would have shone at the sight of that handwriting. A time when she would have torn that envelope open at once, so that her senses could absorb with delight the ardent protestations of love written on the large plain sheet of paper that envelope contained.
But she no longer felt “like that” towards her daily correspondent, Roger Gretorex. Also she was going to see him this morning in the hope, nay, the certainty, that he would help to tide over this horrid moment of difficulty, by giving her whatever money he could put his hands on.
Gretorex was of a very different stamp from the men who had up to now fallen in love with her. He worshipped her with all his heart and soul, while yet conscious that he was now doing what, before he had been tempted, he would have unhesitatingly condemned in another man. As to that, and other matters of less moment, he was what Ivy Lexton felt to be ludicrously old-fashioned, and she had soon become weary of him, and satiated with the jealous devotion he lavished on her.
Also, Roger Gretorex was poor; not poor as Ivy’s husband had become, largely through his own fault and hers, but through that of his father, a great Sussex squire, who had gambled and muddled away his only son’s inheritance. That was why Gretorex was a doctor, and not what the woman he loved would have liked him to be, an idle young man of means.
The other envelope was addressed in a woman’s flowing hand, and it had been sent on from Ivy’s bridge club.
The writer of the many sheets this thick, cream-laid envelope contained was named Rose Arundell. She was a well-to-do, generous, rather foolish young widow, who had taken a great fancy to lovely Mrs. Jervis Lexton. Mrs. Arundell had been, nay, was, a most useful friend, and a look of dismay shadowed Ivy Lexton’s face as she read on and on, till she reached the end of the long letter.
Wednesday afternoon.
Ivy, darling, I have the most astounding news to tell you!
I’ll begin at the beginning. Besides, I can’t help thinking—for I know you’re rather worried just now, poor dear—that it may be of help to you. D’you remember my telling you last time we met at that tiresome fête where we couldn’t see each other for a moment alone, that I’d had a wonderful adventure? That I’d been to a fortune-teller? Her name is Mrs. Thrawn. She lives at No. 1 Ranelagh Reach on the Embankment. Her fee is a pound—and I feel inclined to send her a thousand pounds when I think of what she has done for me!
I don’t mind telling you now that I was on the point of taking that silly boy, Ronny. No one knows but myself how horribly lonely I’ve been. Well, I thought I’d go and see this Mrs. Thrawn and hear what she’d got to say; for, after all, I didn’t love Ronny, and I always had a dreadful suspicion it was my money he liked, rather than me.
Well, my dear, I went off trembling. But I can’t tell you how wonderful she was! She described Ronny and warned me against him. Then she said that an extraordinary change was coming over my life, and that if I would only be patient and wait, everything I had most longed for would come to pass. She was most awfully kind—really kind. She said that if I was sensible and did what she said—I mean refuse Ronny—I should take a long journey very soon to a place that she, Mrs. Thrawn, knew well and loved; and that I should be very, very happy there. That place was India, as I knew, for the woman who first told me about Mrs. Thrawn said she was the widow of a missionary!
And then, oh, Ivy, what do you think happened? I wonder if you remember all I told you about the soldier who was my first love? The man whom my mother would not let me marry and who did so splendidly in the war? He’s home on leave from India, where he has a splendid appointment. We ran across one another in the street, and I asked him to come and see me. You can guess the rest!
His leave is up by the end of next week. We shall be married very quietly on Thursday, and sail for India on Friday.
I’m in a whirl, as you can imagine. I’d love to have you at my wedding, darling, for you really are my dearest friend. But he doesn’t want anyone there who didn’t know us both in the old days, before the war. He hasn’t a bean, but, thank God, I’ve plenty for us both!
Your devotedRose.
Ivy Lexton put the long letter she had just read down on the dressing-table. Then she took up the other, still unopened, envelope, and stuffed it into her bag. After all she could read the letter it contained in the omnibus, on her way to see Roger Gretorex. He had taken over for a friend a slum practice in Westminster, and he lived in what Ivy called a horrid little street named Ferry Place.
She turned again towards the looking-glass, and began once more making up her face at the point where she had been interrupted. She was so used to the process that she worked quickly, mechanically, though taking a great deal of intelligent care, far more care than did most of her young married women friends.
With regard to everything that concerned herself, Ivy Lexton was quick, uncannily shrewd, and instinctively clever. She knew how to exploit to the very best advantage her exceptional physical beauty, her natural charm of manner, and, above all, her extraordinary allure for men.
And yet, so unsuspicious is human nature in that stratum of the financially, easy, agreeably self-absorbed, and pleasure-loving world in which Ivy played a not unimportant part, that all the men, and many of the women, who came across her in that world, would have told you that Ivy Lexton was “a dear little thing,” “a regular sport,” “a good plucked one,” and “a splendid wife to that rotter Lexton.”
When she had finished what was always to her an interesting and pleasant task, she stood still, and did nothing, for a moment. She longed to get away from this hateful room and this horrible house, yet Roger Gretorex would not be free of his poorer patients for quite a long while. This was the more tiresome as she always went into his tiny mid-Victorian house by the back way, through the surgery, which gave into a blind alley.
Suddenly her eyes fell on “her little all.” Why shouldn’t she take that pound note, and call on Rose Arundell’s wonderful fortune-teller on her way to Ferry Place? After all, she, too, might have an unexpected bit of luck waiting for her round the corner.
She slipped on a cool pale-pink cotton frock given her by that same generous friend who was now, to her regret, going out of her life. Then she jammed a little brown straw hat on her fair, naturally wavy, shingled head, and, tiptoeing down the carpetless stairs, she hurried through the dirty hall into the sunshiny street.
Ranelagh Reach consisted of a row of six early nineteenth-century houses on that part of the Embankment which forms a link between Westminster and Chelsea. Two of the houses had evidently been taken over lately by well-to-do people, for they had been repainted, and their window-boxes were now filled with ivy-leaved geraniums. The four other houses were shabby-looking and dilapidated, and it was in one of these that there dwelt the woman who had taken as her professional name that of Janet Thrawn. The blinds of No. 1 were down, the brown paint on the front door had peeled, and the steps had evidently not been “done” for days. Everything looked so poverty-stricken that Ivy felt surprised when a very neat and capable-looking maid opened the door in answer to her pull at the old-fashioned bell. She had expected to see a slatternly little girl.
“I’ve come to see Mrs. Thrawn; Mrs. Arundell sent me.”
“I’m not sure that Mrs. Thrawn can see you, miss, unless you’ve made an appointment. But please come in, while I go and see.”
The inside of the little house was in its way as much of a surprise as the maid; it was very different from what the outside would have led the visitor to expect. There was a fine Persian rug on the floor of the narrow hall, and plenty of light came in from a window half-way up the staircase. Affixed to the red walls were plaster casts of hands, forming a curious, uncanny kind of decoration.
After the maid had gone upstairs Ivy Lexton felt a sudden impulse “to cut and run.” A pound note meant a great deal to her just now. But as she was turning towards the front door, the woman came down the steep stairs of the old house.
“Mrs. Thrawn will see you,” she said. Then she turned and preceded the visitor up the staircase.
As they reached the landing the maid murmured:
“Mrs. Thrawn won’t be a moment.”
Ivy Lexton looked round her nervously. There were evidently two rooms on this floor—the front room, of which the blinds were down, and a back room, of which the door was masked by a heavy embroidered green silk curtain. On the patch of wall which formed the third side of the landing was a dark oil painting, bearing on its tarnished gold frame the inscription in black letters, “The Witch.” The subject was that of a white-haired woman being burnt alive, while an evil-looking crowd gloated over the hideous sight.
There came the tinkle of a bell.
“Mrs. Thrawn will see you now,” said the woman shortly, drawing back the curtain to show a door already ajar.
“Come in!” called a full, resonant voice.
Feeling excited and curious, for this was the first time she had ever been to a fortune-teller, Ivy brushed past the maid.
Then she felt a pang of disappointment. The room before her was so very ordinary—just an old-fashioned back drawing-room, containing one or two good pieces of furniture, while on the chimney-piece stood a row of silver-gilt Indian ornaments.
Even the soothsayer, the obvious owner of this room, impressed her client as being almost commonplace. At any rate there was nothing mysterious or romantic about her appearance. She was a tall, powerful-looking woman, nearer sixty than fifty. Her grey hair was cut short, and she was clad in an old-fashioned tea-gown, of bright blue cashmere, which fell from her neck to her feet in heavy folds.
The most remarkable feature of Mrs. Thrawn’s face was her eyes. They were light hazel, luminous, compelling eyes, and as Ivy Lexton advanced rather timidly towards her they became dilated, as if with a sudden shock of gripping, overwhelming surprise.
Yet nothing could have appeared at once more simple and more attractive than this lovely girl who wanted to take a peep into the future. Ivy Lexton looked almost a child in her flesh-coloured cotton frock and the simple pull-on brown hat which framed her exquisite little face.
Making a determined effort over herself, Mrs. Thrawn withdrew her astonished and, indeed, affrighted, glance from her visitor, and said coldly, “I cannot give you long this morning, for I have an appointment”—she looked at her wrist-watch—“in twenty minutes. I suppose you know my fee is a pound, paid in advance?”
Ivy felt a touch of resentment. Only twenty minutes for a whole pound? Yet she was beginning to feel the compelling power of the woman, and so, slowly, she took the one-pound note that remained to her out of her bag.
Mrs. Thrawn slipped the note into one of the patch pockets of her gown, and motioned her visitor to a low stool, while she sat down, herself, in a big arm-chair opposite. For a moment Ivy felt as she had felt when as a little girl she was going to be scolded.
“We will begin with your hands. No! Not like that. Your left hand first, please, and the back to start with.”
As she took Ivy’s hand in her cool firm grasp Mrs. Thrawn said quietly, “I need not tell you that you have amazing powers of—well, keeping your own counsel, when it suits you to do so.”
Then she turned the hand she held over, and taking a small lens out of the pocket where now lay Ivy’s one-pound note, she closely scrutinised the lines criss-crossing the rosy palm.
“You’ve the most extraordinary fate-line that I’ve ever seen—and that’s saying a very great deal,” she observed.
“What I want to know,” began Ivy eagerly, “is——”
“Whether there is going to be any change for the better in your life?”
The fortune-teller waited a moment, and, lifting her head, she gave her client a long measuring look. “Yes, there is going to be a great change in your life. But as to whether it will be for the better or for the worse——?”
Mrs. Thrawn hesitated for what seemed to the other a long time. But at last she exclaimed, “From your point of view I should say ‘for the better,’ for I see money, a great deal of money, coming your way.”
Ivy turned crimson, so great were her surprise and joy.
“Will it be soon?” she asked eagerly.
“Very soon—in a few hours from now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure.”
Mrs. Thrawn lifted her great head, and again she looked at her visitor fixedly.
“May I speak plainly? Will you try not to be offended at what I’m going to say?”
“Nothing you say could offend me,” cried Ivy in her prettiest manner. “You don’t know how happy you’ve made me!”
“I do know. But, though I don’t suppose you will ever believe it, money is not everything, Mrs.——”
“—Lexton.”
The name slipped out. After all, why shouldn’t she tell Mrs. Thrawn her name? Yet she was sorry she had done so a few moments later, for the fortune-teller, leaning forward, exclaimed harshly:
“Now for the powder after the jam! I sense that you are engaged in an illicit love affair fraught to you, and to others also, with frightful danger.”
Once more Ivy’s face crimsoned under her clever make-up, but this time with fear and dismay. Her eyes fell before the other woman’s hard scrutiny.
“Wrong is, of course, a matter of conscience, and I know you think you have nothing to be ashamed of. But you are leading a fine soul astray, and evil influences are gathering round you.”
“I know that I’ve done wrong,” faltered Ivy, frightened and perplexed by Mrs. Thrawn’s manner, rather than by her warning.
The other said sharply, “You know nothing of the sort! You’ve not got what I call a conscience, Mrs. Lexton. But a conscience nowadays is a very old-fashioned attribute. Many a young woman would hardly know what to do with one if she had it!”
Ivy did not know what to answer, and felt sorry indeed that she had let this censorious, disagreeable person know her name.
“For your own sake,” went on Mrs. Thrawn earnestly, “break with this man who loves you. For one thing, ‘it’s well to be off with the old love before you are on with the new.’”
“Then there is going to be another man in my life?” Ivy asked eagerly.
“I see a stranger coming into your life within a few hours from now. Whether his valuable friendship for you endures will entirely depend on yourself.”
Mrs. Thrawn got up from her chair.
“As we haven’t much time, I will now look into the crystal.”
She drew down the blind of the one window in the room, and, going across to the writing-table, she took off it a heavy, round glass ball which looked like, and might indeed have been sold for, a paper-weight. Then, moving forward a small, low table, she put it between herself and her visitor.
“Don’t speak,” she said quickly. “Try to empty your mind of all thought.”
Bending her head, she gazed into the crystal, and what seemed to Ivy Lexton a long time went by.
In reality, it might have been as long as two minutes before Mrs. Thrawn began speaking again, this time in a quick, muffled voice.
“I see you both now, you and the dark young man on whom you will bring unutterable misery and shame, and who will bring you distress and disappointment, if you do not break with him now, today. The safe way is still open to you, Mrs. Lexton, but soon it will be closed, and you will find yourself in a prison of your own making, and trapped—trapped like a rat in a sinking ship.”
Again there was a long, tense silence, and again Ivy began to feel vaguely frightened.
The prediction of shame and misery to another meant very little, if indeed anything, to her. But distress and disappointment to herself? Ah! that was another thing altogether. Ivy very much disliked meeting with even trifling disappointments.
Mrs. Thrawn looked up. All the brilliance had gone out of her curious, luminous eyes.
“I fear you will not follow the better way,” she said slowly. “Indeed, I sense that you are making up your mind not to follow it, unless the doing so falls in with your other plans. I see this dark young man’s destiny closely intertwined with your life. He will bear the scars you are about to inflict on him to his grave, and that whether he lives but a few months, or a long lifetime. You do not what you call love him any more. But he loves you as you have never yet been loved, and never will be.”
Her voice softened and became low and pitiful, for the girl who was now gazing at her with a surprised, frightened expression on her exquisite face looked too young to be what the soothsayer believed her to be, that is, already doomed, unless she altered her whole way of life, to suffer terrible things.
“As woman to woman, let me give you a word of advice, Mrs. Lexton. For your own sake try to follow it.”
“I will!” cried Ivy sincerely.
“Do not be afraid of poverty——” And then, as she saw the other’s instinctive recoil, “Poverty does not touch the likes of you with its cold finger,” and Mrs. Thrawn gave an eerie laugh. “If you are wise, if you do what is still open to you to do, you will have ups and downs, but the ups will predominate, and there will always be some man, even when you become what I should call an old woman, who will be proud, yes, proud, to be your banker.”
“Do you see something nice coming for me soon in that glass ball?” asked Ivy nervously.
She longed, secretly, to be told something more of the new man who was coming into her life.
Mrs. Thrawn bent over the cloudy crystal. Then she muttered:
“The pictures are forming. They are coming thick and fast. And—but no, I will not tell you what I see, for what I am seeing may not concern you at all. It may concern the future of the woman who is now on my doorstep——”
And, as she said the word “doorstep,” the old-fashioned house-bell pealed through the house.
Mrs. Thrawn rose and put her crystal back on the writing-table. Then she pulled up the blind.
“We’ve only a few moments left. But I’m going, for my own satisfaction,” she interjected in a singular tone, “to tell your fortune by the cards.”
As she spoke she took a pack of cards out of the drawer of her writing-table, and sank down again into her chair.
“Now, cut.”
After Ivy had obeyed, the soothsayer rapidly dealt out the cards. Then she put down her finger on the queen of hearts.
“This card stands for you,” she dragged her finger along. “And here is the king of diamonds, the man who is coming into your life, and who will give you money, much money. Even so——” she shook her head, “you will never be able to count on him as you can count on the man who is still bound to you, and whom I bid you cast out of your life at once—at once.”
She swept the cards together and rose from her chair.
“I saw trouble in your hand; I saw trouble in the crystal; I saw great trouble in the cards. Yet, Mrs. Lexton, you are not a woman who troubles trouble before trouble troubles you. Even so, unless you follow my advice about your present lover, I see misfortune galloping towards you like a riderless horse.”
“But you do still believe that I’m going to get a lot of money?” Ivy asked pleadingly. “Did the cards tell you that also?”
“Yes, the cards told me that also.”
From outside the door came the sound of footsteps.
“One last word—one last warning. When you came into this room you were not alone, Mrs. Lexton.”
Ivy stared at her. What could Mrs. Thrawn mean? Of course she had been alone!
“You were accompanied, surrounded, by a huge mob of men and women, invisible to you, but visible to me. Are you an actress?”
“I was an actress, for a little while, before I married,” said Ivy, smiling. “And I’d love to go back on the stage, but only as a leading lady, of course.”
“Given certain eventualities, you will become of great moment, of absorbing interest, to hundreds of thousands of people. Men and women will fight over you—the newspapers will record your every movement.”
Ivy smiled self-consciously. This last unexpected prediction gave her a thrill of pleasurable excitement. What could it mean but a triumphant return to the stage, of which she had been hitherto only a humble and transient ornament?
“There is a woman already in your life—I see her now standing behind you. She is a grey-haired, worn-looking old woman. If you fail to do what I advise you to do, she will play an overwhelming part in your destiny. Indeed it is she who may determine your fate.”
Then she turned, and taking a tiny silver-gilt bell off the mantelpiece she rang it sharply.
The door opened, and the maid pulled aside the heavy curtain. There was no stranger waiting on the landing. Ivy looked so surprised that the woman smiled. “Mrs. Thrawn doesn’t like her clients to cross one another. The lady who has just come in is waiting in the front room.”
As Mrs. Thrawn’s late visitor walked quickly down the Embankment towards the place for which she was bound, she felt more really light-hearted than she had felt for, oh! such a long time. Money coming her way—and a new man in her life? That was all Ivy Lexton really remembered of that curious interview. The warnings Mrs. Thrawn had given her she put down to the soothsayer’s conventional outlook on life.
As for the woman’s advice concerning Roger Gretorex, she ought to have known, being a fortune-teller, that she, Ivy, had already made up her mind to break with her secret lover. She could not, however, break with him today, for two reasons. First, she was going to ask him for a little money, and secondly, he was giving a theatre-party this evening. She, Ivy, her friend Rose Arundell, and Jervis Lexton were to be Gretorex’s guests, and he was taking them on, after the play, to supper at the Savoy. That had been settled days ago.
Rose Arundell? She told herself vexedly that Rose would certainly “chuck.” In fact it was plain that Rose had forgotten all about to-night’s engagement, or she would have mentioned it in her letter. They would be three instead of four. But perhaps, after all, that didn’t really matter, for Jervis was quite fond of Roger.
There was, however, a fly, albeit a small fly, in the ointment. There was no such person, there never had been, or, it seemed to her, could be, in her life, as a worn-looking, grey-haired woman. This fact made her feel a little doubtful, a little anxious, as to the truth of the fortune-teller’s other predictions.
Chapter two
“Why, there’s Mr. Rushworth! Do go over and ask him to join us for coffee.”
Ivy Lexton was smiling at her husband—a delicious, roguish smile. As he smiled back, he told himself with conscious satisfaction that his little wife was far the prettiest woman here to-night.
Her sleekly brushed-back auburn hair, white skin, violet eyes, and slender rounded figure were wont to remind those few of her admirers familiar with the art of Romney of a certain portrait of Nelson’s Emma, spinning.
Ivy’s husband was pleasantly aware that she was not only the prettiest, but also one of the smartest looking, of the women supping at the Savoy to-night. This was the more commendable, from simple Jervis Lexton’s point of view, as they were so hard up—stony-broke, in fact.
He generally did at once anything Ivy asked him to do, but now he waited for a few moments.
“D’you mean that chap we met at the Hamptons? I don’t see him.”
“Don’t be stupid, darling! He’s over in that corner, with two dowdy-looking women, looking bored to death. I’m sure he’ll be delighted to join us for coffee.”
There had come an edge of irritation in her seductive voice. Ivy had a peculiar and very individual intonation, and many a man had found it the most enchanting voice in the world.
At last Lexton rose, just a thought unwillingly. He had been enjoying himself to-night, forgetting the money anxieties which had at last become desperately pressing, while listening to his wife’s gay chatter concerning the well-known people who were also supping at the Savoy this July night.
The young man liked a party of just three friends much better than the big noisy suppers to which he sometimes escorted his wife. In a way it was funny that their host, a grim-looking young doctor named Roger Gretorex, was their friend, for even Lexton realised that, though he and Gretorex were both country-bred, and belonged to the now vanishing old county gentry class, they had nothing else in common.
The host had hardly said a word during the whole evening, either at the theatre, or since they had come on here. So taciturn had he been that Lexton supposed the poor chap was glum because the pretty widow, Mrs. Arundell, whom they were to have brought with them to make a fourth, had fallen out. He knew that Ivy suspected that Gretorex liked Mrs. Arundell quite a little bit. If so, the young man was out of luck, for he was the last sort of chap an attractive widow was likely to fancy.
As he threaded his way between the crowded round tables, there came over Jervis Lexton a queer and very definite feeling of unwillingness to obey his wife. He remembered that he and Ivy had met this man, Miles Rushworth, about three weeks ago at a week-end country house party, and that Ivy had taken quite a fancy to him. But he, Jervis, remembered that he himself had not taken to Rushworth. For one thing, he had thought the man too damn clever and pleased with himself.
Rushworth was, however, an enormously rich man, and Ivy had spent most of the Saturday evening of that long week-end out in the moonlit garden, pacing up and down with him. Late that same night she had told her husband, excitedly, that her new friend had said he thought he could find what Lexton had long been looking for—an easy, well-paid job.
But Ivy’s husband, simple though he might be, had learnt a thing or two since they had joined the ranks of what some call “the new poor.” One was that, though his wife could twist most men round her little finger, it didn’t follow she could make them do much to help him. This time he had been so far wrong that on the Monday morning this chap Rushworth, after motoring them both back to town, when saying good-bye had muttered something to Ivy as to “setting your husband on his feet again.” But this had happened a good three weeks ago, and their new acquaintance had given no further sign of life.
After Lexton had risen from the little round table, the two he had left sitting there kept silence for what seemed, to the woman, a long time. Then suddenly Gretorex exclaimed, in a low tense voice, “How I hate hearing you call that man ‘darling’!”
Ivy Lexton made no answer to that statement. She was picking up the tiny crumbs left by her fairy bread from the side of her plate, and arranging them in a diamond pattern on the tablecloth. But, though she seemed intent on her babyish task, she was angrily, impatiently aware that her companion was gazing at her with unhappy, frowning eyes. His words had cut across her pleasant thoughts—her joyful relief at having seen Miles Rushworth, at knowing that in a few moments he would be here, with her.
“I’m sorry I made this plan about to-night,” she said at last, scarcely moving her lips. “It was stupid of me.”
“It was more than stupid of me to agree to it,” muttered Gretorex savagely. “I’ve never been more wretched in my life than I’ve been to-night!”
She told herself, with a touch of contempt, that what he had just said was not only stupid, but utterly untrue. Why should the presence of her good-humoured, easy-going husband make Roger wretched? But she kept her feeling of irritation in check.
She glanced round at him—it was a pleading, tender glance—and his heart leapt. How wondrous beautiful she was, and—how divinely kind!
And then a curious thing happened to Roger Gretorex. In that softly illumined, flower-scented, luxurious London restaurant, it was as if he saw in a vision the wistful and plain, if intelligent, face of a girl he had known the whole of her short life. Her name was Enid Dent, and she was now twenty-one. Had he not met Ivy Lexton seven months ago, he and Enid Dent would now have been engaged to be married . . . .
So strong was the half-hallucination that he shut his eyes. When he opened them again the vision was gone, and he was hearing the voice which meant more to him than any other voice would ever mean to him in this world murmur gently, “It hasn’t been exactly cheerful for me.”
Impulsively he exclaimed, “You’re an angel, and I’m a selfish brute, Ivy——”
She smiled, but it was a mirthless smile.
“Not a brute, Roger, only just a little selfish. I was a fool to ask you to ask us to-night——”
For the first time this evening Ivy Lexton had uttered a few true, sincere words. She knew now that it had been a stupid act on her part to bring her husband and this strong-natured, not over good-tempered, young man who loved her together this evening. But after all they had to meet now and again! Poor Jervis quite liked Roger Gretorex. Why couldn’t Roger like Jervis, too?
Ivy was really fond of her husband. He was so kindly, so unsuspicious, on the whole so easy to manage, and still so absolutely devoted to her. And yet of late she often thought, deep in her heart, what a glorious life she might be leading now, if Jervis, less or more devoted, had granted her, two years ago, an arranged divorce. There had been a rich young man who had adored her. But Jervis had angrily refused to fall in with her scheme. It had led, in fact, to their only real quarrel. But “all that” was now forgiven and forgotten.
She stole a look at the occupants of the other tables and, as she did so, she felt a sharp stab of envy. They all seemed so prosperous, so care-free! Each woman had that peculiar, indefinable appearance which only a happy sense of material security bestows, each man, in his measure, looked like a lord of life. . . . But what was this Roger Gretorex was saying as he bent towards her? “I sometimes wonder if you really know, dearest, how much I love you?”
The ardent words were whispered low, but she heard them very clearly, and she smiled. Though she was growing very weary of Roger Gretorex, it is always sweet to a woman to feel she is loved as this man loved her.
Still, she felt relieved when she saw her husband, and the three she had sent him for, threading their way through the narrow lane left between the beflowered tables.
Miles Rushworth was leading the little company. He was the kind of man who always does lead the way. Though he was now only two or three tables off, Ivy realised that he had not yet seen her, and so she was able to cast on him a long measuring glance.
Mary Hampton, the woman at whose house they had met, had said that he was a millionaire. The word millionaire fascinated Ivy Lexton. And then all at once she told herself that it was Rushworth, of course it must be, who was the stranger coming into her life.
Miles Rushworth was tall and well built but, had he not kept himself in good condition, he would have been a stout man. He had a healthy, almost a ruddy, complexion; brown eyes; what is called a good nose; a large, firm mouth; and perfect teeth. His short-clipped brown hair was already slightly streaked with grey, though he was only thirty-six.
He was not in, and did not care to be in, what to herself Ivy called “society.” Neither was he nearly so much a man of the world as was, for instance, her own rather foolish husband. Yet Miles Rushworth had that undeniable air of authority, that power of making himself attended to at once, which always spells brains and character, as well as what old-fashioned folk call a good conceit of oneself.
She glanced also, with quick scrutiny, at Rushworth’s guests. They were probably a mother and daughter, and, though dowdily dressed, obviously well-bred women. The older lady was wearing a black lace gown of antiquated make; the lace was caught at her breast with an early-Victorian brooch made of fine diamonds. Hung round her long, thin neck was an emerald necklace. The girl had a pleasant, animated face, and a good figure. Her long hair was still dressed as it had been when she was eighteen—a fact that marked her age as being about seven-or eight-and-twenty. She was wearing an unbecoming pale mauve dress, and there came over Ivy a fear that she might be a widow. Lovely Ivy Lexton shared the elder Mr. Weller’s opinion concerning widows.
