Marie Belloc Lowndes - THE HEART OF PENELOPE (Murder Mystery)

'I noticed that the tables were laid for a considerable company, and soon there walked slowly in some forty men and women, all dressed in what seemed to me a very peculiar manner. There were many more women than men, and they sat at separate tables, Mrs. Oglethorpe taking the head of the one, while her husband, with my uncle at his right hand, presided over the other. The food was plain, but of good quality; it was eaten in silence, and while we ate the daughter of the house, Adelaide Oglethorpe, sat on a high rostrum and read aloud from a book which I have since ascertained to have been Mr. William Law's "Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life."

'This reading surprised me very much, and, boy-like, I wondered anxiously whether the girl was to be deprived of her evening meal; but after we had finished supper she put a mark in the book she had been reading, and, as the others all walked out, took her place at a little table I had before scarcely noticed, and there, waited on most assiduously by her father, she enjoyed a meal rather more dainty in character than that which the rest of us had eaten. Looking back, George,' observed Mr. Gumberg thoughtfully, 'I think I may say that this was the first time in my life that I realized how even the most rigid human beings sometimes fall away, and this almost unconsciously, from their own standards.

'We only stayed at Oglethorpe one night, and perhaps that is why I recollect so well all that took place. Before we left, my uncle, to the evident gratification of our host, advised me to copy the various inscriptions about the house, notably one which had greatly taken his fancy, and which was inscribed above the writing-table where Mrs. Oglethorpe apparently spent many of the earlier hours of each day. This saying ran: " Charity is the meed of all; familiarity the right of none. " Our hostess, of whom I stood in great awe, bade her little daughter show me the schoolroom, observing that there I should most probably notice texts and inscriptions more suited to my understanding. Miss Oglethorpe's room was strangely different from the others I had seen; and, with a surprise which I was unable to conceal, I saw hanging in a prominent place over the mantelpiece a painting of a beautiful young woman pressing a little child to her bosom, while below the gold frame was written the familiar verse: " Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven. " Adelaide Oglethorpe evidently noticed my surprise, for she explained diffidently that this painting represented her father's mother and himself as a child: further, that this lady having been a most virtuous and excellent wife and mother, Mr. Oglethorpe had not dealt with her portrait as he had done with those of his own and his daughter's less reputable forebears.'

Mr. Gumberg ceased speaking. Downing's eyes were still fixed on the rudely coloured caricature of Rosina Bellamont and her admirers.

'And so this woman,' he said, 'became a mother in Israel? Well, I suppose such things do happen now and then.'

'Rather more often now than then,' Mr. Gumberg declared briskly. 'My uncle used to describe to me, when I had come to a riper age, what a stir the marriage made. Why, they even said the King—William IV., you know—sent for Oglethorpe and remonstrated with him. Of course, a Bellamont can always find a man to make an honest woman of her, but she seldom has the good fortune to bear off such a prize as was John Oglethorpe. That wasn't, however, the most amazing part of the story. Within a few months of her marriage Mrs. Oglethorpe fell under the influence of a preacher—a second Fletcher of Madeley. But she was evidently not the woman to rest content with being a mere disciple, and so, with the active help of her husband, she set herself to build up that strange kind of religious phalanstery which I have described to you, and in which the future Lady Wantley was born and bred. Rosina Bellamont was one of those women who are born to good fortune as the sparks fly upward, and her luck did not desert her in the one matter in which she could hardly have counted on it——'

Downing looked up. 'You mean the marriage of her daughter?' he said.

'Of course I do,' returned the old man vigorously. 'In those days peers didn't hold forth at Exeter Hall—in fact, Wantley was the first of that breed; and by great good fortune, chance—I suppose it was chance, eh, George?—brought him to Oglethorpe. The odd thing was his going there at all; once there, 'twas natural he should feel attracted.'

'I suppose Lady Wantley is like her daughter?' said Downing.

'God bless my soul, no! Lady Wantley's an Oglethorpe. Penelope's a——' The old man did not finish his sentence, but turned it off with: 'She's quite unlike her mother. Pity she wasn't a boy. The present man's no good to 'em—I mean to Lady Wantley and Penelope. Why should he be? He wasn't fairly treated. Of course he got Marston Lydiate, for that's entailed; but the place in Dorset, Monk's Eype, and all the money, were left away to the girl, although I did my best for him. Wantley spoke to me about it, but I couldn't move him; and then he was hardly cold before Penelope married her millionaire! A marriage, George, a marriage——' Words failed Mr. Gumberg. For the third time he repeated, 'A marriage'—his old eyes gleamed maliciously—'which was no marriage! You understand, eh? Mensa non thorus —that was the notion. Common among the early Christians, I believe. Well, no one can say what the end of it would have been, for nature abhors a vacuum; but the poor monkish creature died, caught small-pox from a foreign sailor, and the bewitching girl was left all the Robinson millions!'

'Then I suppose you advised restitution to young Lord Wantley?'

Mr. Gumberg chuckled. He evidently thought his guest intended a grim joke. 'The sort of thing a trustee would suggest, eh, George?' But Downing was apparently quite serious.

'I don't see why not,' he said. 'Do you mean that Lord Wantley is penniless?'

Mr. Gumberg nodded. 'Something very like it,' he declared. 'Of course, the old man—though he was twenty years younger than I am now when he died—had some show of reason for the unfair thing he did. People always have. When he, and I suppose Lady Wantley, realized that they were not likely to have a son, he gave his heir—his third cousin, I fancy—the family living of Marston Lydiate, and years afterwards the man became a Romanist! Wantley chose to consider himself very much injured. He never saw his cousin again, and for years never took any notice of the boy—in fact, not till the ex-parson was dead.'

'Is young Lord Wantley a Roman Catholic?' asked Downing indifferently.

'No, he's not,' said Mr. Gumberg. 'The other day I heard him described as "a stickit Papist," and I suppose that's about what he is. But where's your interest in these people, George?' Mr. Gumberg asked suddenly. 'You don't know 'em, do you?'

Downing hesitated. He was in the mood in which men feel almost compelled to make unexpected and amazing confidences, but the words which were so nearly being said were never uttered.

Cutting across his hesitation, his half-formed impulse of taking his old friend into his confidence, came the exclamation: 'Why, of course! You've met her! When I heard from you at Pol les Thermes I felt sure there was someone else there that I knew, but I couldn't think who it was at the moment. However, that don't matter now, for it seems you've found each other out! I didn't say too much, George, did I? She is a beautiful creature?'

Mr. Gumberg's assertion was not without a note of interrogation. He sometimes felt an uneasy suspicion that his standards, especially in the matter of feminine loveliness, were not always blindly accepted by the generations that had succeeded his own. But Downing's answer reassured him.