CHAPTER X.
The Red House at Holloway was, like its owner, a contradiction and an anomaly. It had lain for many years in Chancery, neglected and uncared-for, and the Baroness had purchased it for a song. She was very fond of driving bargains, and sometimes she was horribly taken in. She had been known to buy a house for two thousand pounds for a mere caprice, and exchange it, six months afterwards, for a dinner service. But as a rule she was too shrewd to be cheated, for her income was not a tenth part of what she represented. When she had concluded her bargain for the Red House, which she did after a single survey of the premises, and entered on possession, she found it would take double the sum she had paid to put it into proper repair. It was a very old house of the Georgian era standing in its own grounds of about a couple of acres, and containing thirty rooms, full of dust, damp, rats, and decay. The Baroness, however, having sent for a couple of workmen from the firm, to put the tangled wilderness which called itself a garden, into something like order, sent in all her household gods, and settled down there, with William and two rough maid servants, as lady of the Manor. The inside of the Red House presented an incongruous appearance. This extraordinary woman, who could not sound her aspirates and could hardly write her own name, had a wonderful taste for old china and pictures, and knew a good thing from a bad one. Her drawing-room was heaped with valuables, many of them piled on rickety tables which threatened every minute to overturn them upon the ground. The entrance hall was dingy, bare, and ill-lighted, and the breakfast-room to the side was furnished with the merest necessities. Yet the dressing-table in the Baroness’s sleeping apartment was draped in ruby velvet, and trimmed with a flounce of the most costly Brussels lace, which a Princess might not have been ashamed to wear. The bed was covered with a duvet of the thickest satin, richly embroidered by her own hand, whilst the washing-stand held a set of the commonest and cheapest crockery. Everything about the house was on the same scale; it looked as though it belonged to people who had fallen from the utmost affluence to the depths of poverty. Harriet Brandt was terribly disappointed when she entered it, Bobby’s accounts of the magnificence of his home having led her to expect nothing short of a palace.
The Baroness had insisted on her accompanying them to England. She had taken one of her violent fancies to the girl, and nothing would satisfy her but that Harriet should go back with her husband and herself to the Red House, and stay there as long as she chose.
“Now look ’ere,” she said in her rough way, “you must make the Red ’Ouse your ’ome. Liberty ’All, as I call it! Get up and go to bed; go out and come in, just when you see fit—do what you like, see what you like, and invite your friends, as if the ’ouse was your own. The Baron and I are often ’alf the day at the boot shop, but that need make no difference to you. I daresay you’ll find some way to amuse yourself. You’re the daughter of the ’ouse, remember, and free to do as you choose!”
Harriet gladly accepted the offer. She had no friends of her own to go to, and the prospect of living by herself, in an unknown city, was rather lonely. She was full of anticipation also that by means of the Red House and the Baroness’s influence, she would soon hear of, or see, Captain Pullen again—full of hope that Madame Gobelli would write to the young man and force him to fulfil the promises he had made to her. She did not want to know Prince Adalbert or Prince Loris—at the present moment, it was Ralph and Ralph only, and none other would fill the void she felt at losing him. She was sure there must be some great mistake at the bottom of his strange silence, and that they had but to meet, to see it rectified. She was only too glad then, when the day for their departure from Heyst arrived. Most of the English party had left the Lion d’Or by that time. The death of Mrs. Pullen’s child seemed to have frightened them away. Some became nervous lest little Ethel had inhaled poisonous vapours from the drainage—others thought that the atmosphere was unhealthy, or that it was getting too late in the year for the seaside, and so the visitors dwindled, until the Baroness Gobelli found they were left alone with foreigners, and elected to return to England in consequence.
Harriet had wished to write to Captain Pullen and ask for an explanation of his conduct, but the Baroness conjured her not to do so, even threatened to withdraw her friendship, if the girl went against her advice. The probabilities were, she said, that the young man was staying with his sister-in-law wherever she might be, and that the letter would be forwarded to him from the Camp, and fall into the hands of Mrs. Pullen, or Miss Leyton. She assured Harriet that it would be safer to wait until she had ascertained his address, and was sure that any communication would reach him at first hand.
“A man’s never the worse for being let alone, ’Arriet,” she said. “Don’t let ’im think ’e’s of too much consequence and ’e’ll value you all the more! Our fellows don’t care for the bird that walks up to the gun. A little ’olesome indifference will do my gentleman all the good in the world!”
“O! but how can I be indifferent, when I am burning to see him again, and to hear why he never wrote to say that he could not come to Brussels,” exclaimed Harriet, excitedly. “Do you think it was all falsehoods, Madame Gobelli? Do you think that he does not want to see me any more?”
Her eyes were flashing like diamonds—her cheeks and hands were burning hot. The Baroness chuckled over her ardour and anxiety.
“He! he! he! you little fool, no, I don’t! Anyone could see with ’alf an eye, that he took a fancy for you! You’re the sort of stuff to stir up a man and make ’im forget everything but yourself. Now don’t you worry. ’E’ll be at the Red ’Ouse like a shot, as soon as ’e ’ears we’re back in London. Mark my words! it won’t be long before we ’ave the ’ole lot of ’em down on us, like bees ’umming round a flower pot.”