Evening star., 1939-01-15
THIS WEEK MAGAZINE


in a coach. They wear ermine.
Gerald's car had battered tenders.
She was drugged with glamour. and 1t
blinded her to everything else. Colin did not
50 much ask her to marry him, as inform her
she was going to.
But - Gerald i. - she faltered.
Tell him." said Colin, quietly. As lit were
nothing.
Gerald behaved splenddly.
'Ifit's what you want, Little If you think
this is the way you are going to be happlest,
then it goes with me.
Colin was a pretty frigid lover, but she
put that down to his delicacy and high breed
ing Any doubts she might have had were
deadened by chorus of sisters and cousins
OF boy and girl friends. YOU'LL live in castle
You'll drive in coach. You'll see the Queen.
On lucky, lucky Meryl.'
Hlyard was doing newspaper work. Hesald:
You can give me the lowdown on the Har-
binger ghost Meryl Then we'll all make our
fortunes What you've got to do is worm the
secret out of Colin and tell it to me. What a
film it would make! Maybe l could come over
and make it. Gee, that certainly is an idea.
1t wasn't, somehow, a very jolly wedding.
They arrived at Foina on gray day.
Rough reeds scraped against one another.
making strange harsh rustling. The sea was
suen and gray, and oh, the wind! 1t did not
howl or moan so much as mutter. Round the
castle towers and battlements it stalked, and
was never still.
Nothing was quite what Meryl had ex-
pected Long before she had unpacked and
settled into her icy apartments, the glamour
had CONCEALED into reality.
The castle was gray stone, within and
without. Gray as if chunks of the sea had
been solidfed to build it. The stone walls
sweated little and smet of old mushroom.
From the gay young atmosphere of the
Long Island farm she came to a world of the
old. Cummins, the butler was eighty. He
could still stand up, but only just. The house
keeper said she was seventy three but when
MeryI looked at her she guessed she was out
with her reckoning. Millie. the housemaid,
being only sixty, was called The Girl.
What Meryl had been totally unprepared
for was the appalling poverty. She had
thought splendor and riches went together.
The big stone dining hall was lit only by
candlelight, showing up Colin in his kilt, and
Meryl in her smart Fifth Avenue dresses,
dining tremendously on very little served
with great deal of ancestral silver. From the
walls, the painted faces of by-gone Har-
bingers looked down. All with those strange
pale eyes, All immensely alike.
Colin had never been very genial person.
Back here in his own surroundings he was not
better, but worse Love- she had told herself,
would thaw him. She had pictured them,
hand in hand. exploring his amazing prop
erty. But Colin did not know anything about
love, and there was no adventure in him.
Everything except the one wing they lived
in was shut up, closed off by green baize
door,
The place is tumbled down, not safe.
Better not 60 there, he warned her. 1t gave
her delicious thrill. like Bluebeard.
is it true there is haunted chamber
there, and some grizzly story you get told
when you are twenty-one and must never let
out of the family" she asked, remembering.
He looked at her, "Rumor has it one of my
female ancestors bore son to the Devil,
my dear"
Colin! What story" She wanted to
laugh, but somehow it stuck in her throat.
He said. quietly. you don't know your
v>lo o1