in which harriet fabos tells of her brother’s return to deepdene hall in suffolk.
i have been asked to write very shortly what i know of general fordibras and of my brother’s mysterious departures from england in the summer of the year 1904. god grant that all is well with him, and that these lines will be read by no others than the good friends who have not forgotten me in my affliction!
it was, i think, in the december of the previous year that he first met the general in london, as i understood from him, at a fashionable bazaar at kensington. this circumstance he related to me upon his return; and a sister’s interest in joan fordibras could not be but a growing one. i recollect that the general drove over one day in the spring from newmarket and took luncheon with us. he is a fine, stately man, with a marked american accent, and a manner which clearly indicates his french birth. the daughter i thought a pretty winsome child; very full of quaint sayings and ideas, and so unlike our english girls. ean had spoken of her so often that i was not prepared for the somewhat distant manner in which he treated her. perhaps, in my heart, i found myself a little relieved. it has always been a sorrow to me to think that one i had loved so well as brother ean might some day find my affection for him insufficient.
general fordibras, it appears, makes a hobby of yachting. he lives but little in america, i understand, but much in paris and the south. ean used to be very fond of the sea, but he has given it up so many years that i was surprised to hear how much a sailor he can be. his own pet things—the laboratory, the observatory in our grounds, his rare books, above all, his rare jewels—were but spoken of indifferently. general fordibras is very little interested in them; while his daughter is sufficiently an american to care chiefly for our antiquities—of which i was able to show her many at deepdene. when they left us, it was to return to london, i understood; and then to join the general’s yacht at cherbourg.
ean spoke little to me of these people when they were gone. i felt quite happy that he made no mention of the daughter, joan. very foreign to his usual habits, however, he was constantly to and fro between our house and london; and i observed, not without some uneasiness, that he had become a little nervous. this was the more remarkable because he has always been singularly fearless and brave, and ready to risk his own life for others upon the humblest call. at first i thought that he must be out of health, and would have had dr. wilcox over to see him; but he always resents my attempts to coddle him (as he calls it), and so i forbore, and tried to find another reason.
there is no one quicker than a sister who loves to detect those ailments of the heart from which no man is free; but i had become convinced by this time that ean cared nothing for joan fordibras, and that her absence abroad was not the cause of his disquietude. of other reasons, i could name none that might be credibly received. certainly, money troubles were out of the question, for i know that ean is very rich. we had at deepdene none of those petty parochial jealousies which are the cause of conflict in certain quarters. our lives were quiet, earnest, and simple. what, then, had come to my brother? happy indeed had i been if i could have answered that question.
the first thing that i noticed was his hesitation to leave me alone at the manor. for the first time for some years, he declined to attend the annual dinner of his favourite club, the potters.
“i should not be able to catch the last train down,” he said one morning at breakfast; “impossible, harriet. i must not go.”
“why, whatever has come to you, ean?” said i. “are you getting anxious about poor old me? my dear boy, just think how often i have been alone here.”
“yes, but i don’t intend to leave you so much in future. when the reasons make themselves known to me, they shall be known to you, harriet. meanwhile, i am going to live at home. the little jap stops with me. he is coming down from town to-day, so i hope you will make arrangements for him.”
he spoke of his japanese servant okyada, whom he brought from tokio with him three years ago. the little fellow had served him most faithfully at his chambers in the albany, and i was not displeased to have him down in suffolk. ean’s words, however, troubled me greatly, for i imagined that some danger threatened him in london, and a sister’s heart was beating already to discover it.
“cannot you tell me something, ean?”
he laughed boyishly, in a way that should have reassured me.
“i will tell you something, harriet. do you remember the bronze pearls that were stolen from my flat in paris more than three years ago?”
“of course, ean; i remember them perfectly. how should i forget them? you don’t mean to say?——”
“that i have recovered them? no—not quite. but i know where they are.”
“then you will recover them, ean?”
“ah, that is for to-morrow. let okyada, by the way, have the room next to my dressing-room. he won’t interfere with my clothes, harriet. you will still be able to coddle me as much as you please, and, of course, i will always warm the scissors before i cut my nails in winter.”
he was laughing at me again—a little unjustly, perhaps, as i have always believed that influenzas and rheums come to those who allow anything cold to touch the skin—but this is my old womanish fancy, while ean is not altogether free himself from those amiable weaknesses and fads which take some part in all our lives. he, for instance, must have all his neckties of one colour in a certain drawer; some of his many clothes must go to the press upon one day and others upon the next. he buys great quantities of things from his hosier, and does not wear one half of them. i am always scolding him for walking about the grounds at night in his dress clothes; but he never does so without first warming his cloth cap at the fire, if it be winter. i make mention of these trifles that others may understand how little there is of real weakness in a very lovable, manly, and courageous character. beyond that, as the world knows well, ean is one of the greatest linguists and most accomplished scholars in all europe.
now, had i been clever, i should have put two and two together and have foreseen that what ean really feared was another attempt upon the wonderful collection of rare jewels he has made—a collection the existence of which is known to very few people, but is accounted among the most beautiful and rare in the country. ean keeps his jewels—at least he kept them until recently—in a concealed safe in his own dressing-room, and very seldom was even i permitted to peep into that holy of holies. here again some eccentricity of a lovable character is to be traced. my brother would as soon have thought of wearing a diamond in his shirt front as of painting his face like an indian; but these hidden jewels he loved with a rare ardour, and i do truly believe that they had some share in his own scheme of life. when he lost the bronze pearls in paris, i know that he fretted like a child for a broken toy. it was not their value—not at all. he called them his black angels—in jest, of course—and i think that he believed some of his own good luck went with them.
this was the state of things in the month of may when okyada, the japanese, came from london and took up his residence at the manor. ean told me nothing; he never referred again to the subject of his lost pearls. much of his time was spent in his study, where he occupied himself with the book he was writing upon the legends of the adriatic. his leisure he gave to his motor and his observatory.
i began to believe that whatever anxiety troubled him had passed; and in this belief i should have continued but for the alarming events of which i now write. and this brings me to the middle of the summer—to be exact, the fifteenth day of june in the year 1904.
