Valencia went to bed, but it was a long time before she slept, and when at last she did sleep, her slumbers were light and troubled. She woke suddenly in the end—the grey dawn was breaking, and through her open windows she heard the hooting of owls—ominous and fearsome sound—in the woods beyond the park. Something impelled her to rise, throw up her blinds, and look out of the window. Her room faced the east; far away across the park and the low range of hills beyond the fringe of old woodland that enclosed it, a broad belt of red was slowly widening. And already thrush and blackbird were piping in the coverts, and a lark was rising from the home meadow.
Somewhere in the neighbouring plantations a shot suddenly rang out: its echoes sounded loud from the thick woods. Valencia was wondering what took their one gamekeeper abroad so early when a tap came at her door; the door opened, and Harry looked in. One glance at his face told her his news. She went hurriedly towards him, a question in her eyes. Harry bent his head in answer.
“In his sleep,” he whispered.
CHAPTER IV
MARKENMORE HOLLOW
About half a mile to the north-east of Markenmore Court, flanked by a narrow, deep-set lane that ran up from the main road of the village to the overhanging downs, and backed by the woods and coverts which lay between the foot of those downs and the level lands beneath, stood a small, comfortable, picturesque old house called The Warren. It had been built in the middle of the eighteenth century by the fifth baronet, Sir Geoffrey Markenmore, as a residence for his steward, and had been occupied by successive stewards until recent years, when they were relegated to a more convenient house in the centre of the village. Since then The Warren had been let to tenants; its position, its fine outlook over park, meadows, and sea made it a desirable property for any man of quiet tastes. Its present occupant was Mr. Samuel Fransemmery, a middle-aged bachelor, by profession a barrister-at-law, who, once taking a holiday in these regions, had found The Warren to let and had immediately snapped it up on a twenty-one years’ lease. It was, indeed, the very place for which Mr. Fransemmery had been looking for some time; barrister though he was (of the Middle Temple) he had scarcely ever held a brief in his life, and the law had no particular attraction for him. Nor was he in any way dependent upon it: he possessed very ample private means, which enabled him to gratify his particular tastes to the full. Those tastes were simple. Mr. Fransemmery’s days were passed in collecting books and antiquities, doing a little flower-cultivation in his charming gardens, and taking long walks in the country. He was a bit of a botanist, and a bit of a geologist: what with one thing and another his time went pleasantly—and uneventfully.
In outward appearance, Mr. Fransemmery was a cheerful little person. Somewhat under medium height, he was inclined to portliness; like many little men, he carried himself very erect, and was proud of the fact that he was as straight of back and square of shoulder at fifty as he had been at twenty-five. His clean-shaven face was round and rosy; his eyes were bright behind his big gold-mounted spectacles; he had beautiful teeth and plentiful light-brown hair; scrupulous to a fault about his personal appearance, he always looked, said the village folk, as if he had just come out of a band-box, by which they meant that he was perfectly groomed. There was, indeed, an air of perpetual youth and freshness about Mr. Fransemmery: each spring seemed to find him younger than the last. People chaffed him about his juvenility; if he ever troubled himself to explain it, he did so by solemnly repeating the old saying—“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Mr. Fransemmery, since his arrival at The Warren, and his beginning of a truly rural existence, had always gone to bed at half-past nine o’clock and risen with the lark.
He was up with the lark on this particular morning; was rising, as a matter of fact, at the very moment wherein, half a mile away at Markenmore Court, Harry Markenmore was quietly telling his sister Valencia that their father had died in his sleep. Mr. Fransemmery, of course, knew nothing of that; his thoughts were not of death but of life. He, too, drew his blinds and saw the red dawn, and heard the thrushes and blackbirds in the neighbouring plantations; he smelled the scent of the spring-tide, and longed to be out of doors. It was his custom to go for a long walk every morning before his nine-o’clock breakfast; he was going to keep to it this morning. But first there were things to be done. His servants were never up before six: Mr. Fransemmery did things for himself. He was a great man for labour-saving devices; in his house at any hour of the day or night, hot water was ready in any sleeping chamber. Accordingly Mr. Fransemmery could get his bath and his shaving water by merely twisting a tap; he had a patent stove, too, in his own bedroom whereon he would make tea or coffee in a few minutes. So now, long before his housekeeper, his parlourmaid, and his housemaid had opened their eyes, he was bathing, shaving, dressing, and in due time sipping his fragrant Mocha and nibbling digestive biscuits. At precisely six o’clock, clad in a smart suit of grey tweed, and shod in stout shooting boots, strong enough to meet the searching morning dews, he went downstairs, picked up an ashplant stick in his hall, and putting a rakish-looking cap on his head, set out across the high lands across The Warren.
Mr. Fransemmery’s first steps took him out of his own trim surroundings and across a little well-stocked orchard—planted by himself—to the lane which ran up from Markenmore to the crest of the downs. This was one of those lanes peculiar to the south of England, and rarely found elsewhere. It was deep-set in the land; high banks on either side shut it in; each bank was topped by an equally high hedgerow of hawthorne, holly, and elder-bush, liberally mixed with bramble, gorse, and honeysuckle. The road-surface, rough and rutty, lay deep down beneath these prodigalities of vegetation; in winter it was usually a mass of mud; in summer it was ankle-deep in dust. But Mr. Fransemmery did not propose to follow the lane: he descended into it by a rustic stairway of logs, set in the bank, crossed the ruts at the bottom, and ascended the opposite bank by a similar series of steps. There he climbed a stile and betook himself along a narrow footpath hedged in on either side by laurel shrubs; this led him to the palings of a smart little garden at the back of which stood a commodious dwelling house, Woodland Cottage, the residence of Mrs. Braxfield. And there, on a bit of open ground at the side of the garden, flinging corn to her fowls, Mr. Fransemmery saw Mrs. Braxfield herself.