by Ruskin Bond
From then on Miss Blombell never let her eye wander too far from the folders and on the table. The special one lay at the end of the table, and it was easy to keep it under survey. In rough order, it brought reactions of amusement, irritability or bored indifference; but Miss Blombell was convinced that something very odd lay within it.
About half an hour before she went off duty, Colin Mather came in. Even with the shortage of newsprint, Miss Blombell knew all about the Mather divorce, and under her counter she kept twenty cigarettes a day for Mrs. Mather, who was living at the Splendide with her two small children. They were a glamorous couple, and in the days before the war the society periodicals ran pictures of them at Ascot, first nights, the Riviera, and sitting on shooting sticks in Scotland. The marriage had gone up in smoke during the war, and they had been separated for nearly a year. They never met except in the company of a lawyer; they were obviously bitter towards each other, and their wounded vanities wrestled for supremacy. Their friends had sided fairly evenly, and clearly neither of them was entirely without blame. Mrs. Mather was now receiving attentions from a stately admirer who never proceeded further than the foyer when he called for her or brought her back to the hotel. He was rich and calm and dreary, and Miss Blombell took especial pleasure in pointing to her "No Cigarettes" sign when he paused at her counter.
Colin Mather, on the other hand, she rather admired. He had been a Commando, and even in civilian clothes cut rather a dash. He had the sort of face that advertise pipe tobacco, and had begun to grey at the temples. Perhaps, he was a little ordinary, too; but not as much so as the new admirer, and Miss Blombell, faithful until then to Mrs. Mather's cause, felt her loyalties beginning to shift anchor. A few minutes later Mrs. Mather appeared from the lift, followed by her lawyer, and they made their way to where he was standing and exchanged cool, formal greetings. Miss Blombell had observed that Mr. Mather had opened and closed the folder casually, just before he saw his wife, and when they sat down he took the chair that the young private had used.
An air of impeccable impartiality hung over them. They were clearly finishing up some trivial agenda to a clause in the divorce suit; they both looked bored and passive, nodding faintly as the lawyer paused for confirmation, and letting their attentions wander with elaborate negligence in any direction save towards each other.
Colin Mather spoke, addressing himself deliberately to the lawyer, and the lawyer hesitated and looked at Mrs. Mather for guidance. Mrs. Mather replied in quiet and unruffled terms, addressing her husband directly, and wearing the expression of a patient governess. It was apparent that disagreement was now in the air, and though they never betrayed their feelings by expression, or lifted their voices from a casual conversational level, the breach was becoming wider as they spoke; and at last Mrs. Mather shrugged resignedly and turned away, and Colin began stubbing out his cigarette as if it had turned on him and bitten his finger. The lawyer's attitude had obviously stiffened, too, and his lips were thin and severe, though he still spoke more in sorrow than in anger.
Colin Mather then began talking in a rapid undertone, clearly pulling at the cupboard door to expose a skeleton or two; and now his wife caught some of his anger and began to reply with equal heat. The lawyer coughed, and they both stopped short, embarrassed. She half rose. The lawyer detained her, and she sat again, unwillingly. The tension refused to abate, however. Her husband, leaning back in exaggerated ease to show himself master of the situation, brushed the folder with his elbow. For a moment his anger grappled with some other emotion. Then he picked up the folder and handed it to her without a word. She took it half-suspiciously, hesitated a moment, and then opened it.
Miss Blombell's view was obscured for a few seconds by a passing group of matrons, and when she could see the trio again, to her amazement Mrs. Mather had begun to cry. She pushed the folder back into her husband's hand, and opened her bag in search of a handkerchief. The lawyer looked uncomprehendingly at them both. Colin Mather returned the folder to the table and then slowly and tentatively he held out his hand. Slowly, she put out her own towards him, and for a moment they sat like children, gazing at each other wistfully. Then she rose, still holding his hand, and they walked together towards the lift, leaving the lawyer to his own devices.
Miss Blombell's curiosity was now at fever pitch; she felt she must see what was in the folder before she was another minute older, or scream. But Mrs. Platty, who took over when she went off duty, was late, and she was marooned behind her counter.
A cold, thin dowager had paused by the table now, in a fruitless search for a magazine. When she came to the end folder, her brow darkened, and after a moment's private debate she came across the foyer and handed the folder to Miss Kittering.
"You might be interested to know of this vandalism," she said acidly. "Someone has been doing some vulgar scrawling in here."
"I'm afraid I have nothing to do with these folders, madam," Miss Kittering replied aloofly. "I suggest that you register your complaint with one of the managers——"
Miss Blombell edged over from her side of the booth and, controlling her eagerness with an effort, held out her hand.
"If you'd care to leave it with me, madam, I'll see that it reaches the manager," she said politely.
"Some people might think it a matter of small consequence," said the dowager, handing over the folder, "but a thing like this can contribute harmfully to disrespect of private property. It's not the sort of thing one expects to find in a hotel of this standard."
She turned and moved away. Indifferent to Miss Kittering's surprised stare, Miss Blombell opened the folder. It was empty, like the others; but in deeply scored pencil, in large block letters, was written inside its cover, "I LOVE YOU, LOVE YOU, LOVE YOU SO!"
The Duenna
BY MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES
A skilful story-teller, Mrs. Lowndes often brought a touch of the supernatural to her stories. Two lovers rendezvous at a lonely retreat, but one of them is filled with a sense of foreboding...
I
Laura Delacourt, after a long and gallant defence of what those who formed the old-fashioned world to which she belonged would have called her virtue, had capitulated to the entreaties of Julian Treville. They had been friends—from tomorrow they would be lovers.
As she lay enfolded in his arms, her head resting on his breast, while now and again their lips met in a trembling, clinging kiss, the strangest and, in some ways, the most incongruous thoughts flitted shadow-wise through her mind, mingled with terror at the possible though not the probably, consequence of her surrender.
Her husband, Roger Delacourt, was thirty years older than herself. Though still a vigorous man, he had come to a time of life when even a vigorous man longs instinctively for warmth; so he had left London the day after Christmas Day to join a friend's yacht for a month's cruise in the Mediterranean. And now, just a week later, the wife whom he considered a negligible quantity in his self-indulgent, still agreeable existence, had consented to embark on what she knew must be a perilous adventure in a one-storeyed stone house, well named The Folly, built by Julian Treville's great-grandfather.
Long, low, fantastic—it stood at the narrow end of a wide lake on the confines of his property; and a French dancer, known in the Paris of her day as La Belle Julie, had spent there a lifetime in exile.
Though Laura in her lover's arms felt strangely at peace, her homing joy was threaded with terror. Constantly her thoughts reverted to her child, David, who, till the man who now held her so closely to him had come into her life, had been the only thing that made that then mournful life worth living.
The boy was spending the New Year with his mother's one close woman friend and her houseful of happy children, so Laura hoped her little son did not miss her. At any other time the thought that this might be so would have stabbed her with unreasonable pain, but what now filled her heart with shrinking fear was the dread thought of David's father, and of the punishment he would exact if he found her o
ut.
Like so many men of his type and generation Roger Delacourt had a poor opinion of women. He believed that the woman tempted always falls. But, again true to type, he made, in this one matter, an exception as to his own wife. That Laura might be tempted was a possibility which never entered his shrewd and cynical mind; and had he been compelled to admit the temptation, he would have felt confident as to her power of resistance. So it was that she faced the awful certainty that were she ever "found out," immediate separation from her son, followed by a divorce, would be her punishment.
She had been a child of seventeen when her mother had elected to sell her into the slavery of marriage with the voluptuary to whom she had now been married ten years. For three years she had been her husband's plaything, and then, suddenly, when their boy was about two years old, he had tired of her. Even so, they lived, both in London and in the country, under the same roof, and many of the people about them thought the Delacourts got on better than do most modern couples. They were, however, often apart for weeks at a time, for Roger Delacourt still hunted, still shot, still fished, with unabated zest, and his wife did none of these things.
As time went on, Laura's joyless life was at once illumined and shadowed by her passionate love for her child, for all great love brings with it fear. A year ago, by his father's decree, David had been sent to a noted preparatory school, leaving his young mother forlornly lonely. It was then that she had met Julian Treville.
By one of those odd accidents of which human life is full, he and she had been the only two guests of an aged brother and sister, distant connections of Laura's own, in a Yorkshire country house. Cousin John and Cousin Mary had watched the sudden friendship with approval. "Dear Laura Delacourt is just the friend for Julian Treville," said old Mary to old John. She had added, pensively, "It is so very nice for a nice young man to have a nice married woman as a nice friend."
That had been eight months ago, and since then Treville had altered the whole of his life for Laura's sake, she, till today, taking everything and giving nothing, as is so often the way with a woman who believes herself to be good….
During their long drive the lovers scarcely spoke; to be alone together, as they were now, was sufficient bliss.
Treville had met her at a distant railway junction where a motor had been hired in the name of "Mrs. Darcy." This was part of the plan which was to make the few who must perforce know of her presence at The Folly believe her there as the guest of Treville's stepmother, who was now abroad.
Darcy had been Laura's maiden name, and it was the only name she felt she had the right to call herself. She and her lover were both amateurs in the most dangerous and most exciting drama for which a man and woman can be cast.
The hireling motor had brought them across wide stretches of solitary downland, but now they were speeding through one of the long avenues of Treville Place, their journey nearly at an end.
His neighbours would have told you that Julian Treville was a reserved, queer kind of chap. Laura Delacourt was the first woman he had ever loved; and even now, in this hour of unexpected, craved-for joy, he was asking himself if even his great love gave him the right to make her run what seemed an exceedingly slight risk of detection and consequent disgrace.
Each felt a sense of foreboding, though Laura's reason told her that her terrors were vain, and that it was conscience alone that made her feel afraid. Every possible danger had been countered by her companion. Her pride, her delicacy, her sense of shame—was it false shame?—had been studied by him with a selfless devotion which had deeply moved her. Thus he was leaving her to spend a lonely evening, tended by the old Frenchwoman, who, together with her husband, waited on The Folly's infrequent occupants.
The now aged couple in their hot youth had been on the losing side in the Paris Commune of 1871. They had been saved from imprisonment, possibly worse, by Julian Treville's grandmother, a lawless, high-minded Scotchwoman who called herself a Liberal. She had brought them to England, and for fifty odd years they had lived in a cottage a quarter of a mile from The Folly. There was small reason, as Treville could have argued with perfect truth, to be afraid of this old pair. But Laura did feel afraid, and so it had been arranged between the lovers that only tomorrow, after she had spent at The Folly a solitary night and day, would he, at the close of a day's hunting, share "Mrs. Darcy's" simple dinner….
The motor stopped, and the man and woman, who had been clasped in each other's arms, drew quickly apart.
"We have to get out here," muttered Treville, "for there is no carriage-way down to The Folly. I'll carry your bag."
Keeping up the sorry comedy she paid off and dismissed the chauffeur.
In the now fading daylight Laura saw that to her left the ground sloped steeply down to the shores of a lake whose now grey waters narrowed to a point beyond which there stood a low, pillared building. It was more like an eighteenth-century orangery than a house meant for human habitation. Eerily beautiful, and yet exceedingly desolate, to Laura The Folly appeared unreal—a fairy dwelling in that Kingdom of Romance whither her feet had never strayed, rather than a place where men and women had joyed and sorrowed, lived and died.
"If only I could feel that you will never regret that you came here," Treville whispered.
She answered quickly, "I shall always be glad, not sorry, Julian."
He took her hand and raised it to his lips. Then he said: "Old Célestine will have it that The Folly is haunted by La Belle Julie. You're not afraid of ghosts, my dearest?"
Laura smiled a little wanly in the twilight. "Far more afraid of flesh and blood than ghosts," she murmured. "Where do Célestine and her husband live, Julian?"
"We can't see their cottage from here; but it's quite close by." His voice sank: "I've told them that you're not afraid of being in the house alone at night."
They went down a winding footpath, she clinging to him for very joy in his nearness, till they reached the stone-paved space which lay between the shore of the lake and the low grey building. And then, suddenly, while they were walking towards the high front door, Laura gave a stifled cry, for a gnome-like figure had sprung, as if from nowhere, across their path.
"Here's old Jacques," exclaimed Treville vexedly. "He always shows an excess of zeal!"
The little Frenchman was gesticulating and talking eagerly, explaining that fires had been burning all day in the three rooms which were to be occupied by the visitor. He further told, at unnerving length, that Célestine would be at The Folly herself very shortly to instal "Madame."
When the old chap had shuffled off, Julian Treville put a key in the lock of the heavy old door; taking Laura's slight figure up into his strong arms, he lifted her over the threshold straight into an enchanting living-room where nothing had been altered for over a hundred years.
She gave a cry of delight. "What a delicious place, Julian! I never thought it would be like this——"
A long fire threw up high flames in the deep fireplace, and a lighted lamp stood on a round, gilt-rimmed, marble table close to a low and roomy, if rather stiff, square arm-chair. The few pieces of fine Empire furniture were covered with faded yellow satin which had been brought from Paris when Napoleon was ironing out the frontiers of Europe, for the Treville of that day had furnished The Folly to please the Frenchwoman he loved. The walls of the room were hung with turquoise silk. There was a carved-wood gilt mirror over the mantelpiece, and on the right-hand wall there hung an oval pastel of La Belle Julie.
Hand in hand they stood, looking up at the lovely smiling face.
"According to tradition," said Treville, "that picture was the only thing the poor soul brought with her when she left France. The powdered hair proves it must have been done when Julie was in her teens, before the Revolution. My great-great-grandfather fell in love with her when she must have been well over thirty——"
Then, dropping the mask he had worn since they had left the motor, "Laura!" he exclaimed; "Beloved! At last—at last!"
He said at last in a low, shaken voice, "And now I suppose that I must leave you?…"
Her lips formed the words telling him that he had been over-scrupulous in his care for her, that they might as well brave the curious eyes of old Célestine tonight as tomorrow. And then, before she could utter them, there came the sound of steps on the stone path outside.
"It's Célestine, come before her time," muttered Treville.
The front door opened and Laura, turning round quickly, saw a tall, thin, old woman, clad in a black stuff dress; a white muslin cap lay on her white hair, and over her shoulders a fur cape.
Standing just within the door, which she had shut behind her, she cast a long, measuring glance at her master, and at the lady who had come to spend a week at The Folly at this untoward time of the year.
It was a kindly, even an indulgent, glance, but it made Laura feel suddenly afraid.
"I come to ask," exclaimed Célestine in very fair English, "if Madame is comfortable? Is there anything I can do for Madame besides laying the table and cooking Madame's dinner?"
"I don't think so—everything is delightful," murmured Laura.
The old woman, taking a few steps forward, vanished into what the newcomer was soon to learn was the dining-room.
Treville said wistfully, "And now I must leave you——"
Laura whispered faintly, "I am a coward, Julian."
He answered eagerly, "I would not have you other than you are."
She took his hand in hers, and laid it against her cheek.
"It's because of David—only because of David—that I feel afraid."
And as she said the word "afraid," the old Frenchwoman came back into the room. "Would Madame like me to come in to sleep each night?" she asked.