The Rupa Book of Love Stories & Favourite Fairy Tales (2 in 1)

by Ruskin Bond

  Treville answered for Laura. "Mrs. Darcy prefers being here alone. She will live as does my stepmother, when she is staying at The Folly."

  He turned to Laura. "I will say goodnight now, but after I come in from hunting tomorrow I'll come down, as you have kindly asked me to do, to dinner."

  She answered in a low voice, "I shall be so glad to see you tomorrow evening."

  "By the way——"he waited a moment.

  Why did Célestine stand there, looking at them? Why didn't she go away, as she would have hastened to do if his companion had been his stepmother?

  But at last he ended his sentence with "—there's a private telephone from The Folly to my study, if you have occasion to speak to me."

  After her lover had left her with a quiet clasp of the hand, and after old Célestine had gone off, at last, to her own quarters, Laura sat down and covered her face with her hands; she felt both happy and miserable, exultant and afraid.

  At last, she threw a tender thought to La Belle Julie, who had given up everything that to her should have seemed worth living for, in a material sense, to follow the man she loved into what must have been a piteous exile. And yet Laura felt tonight that she too would have had that cruel courage, had she not been the mother of a child.

  She got up at last, and walked across the room, wondering how lovely Julie had fared during the long, weary hours she must have waited here for her lover.

  Would the Treville of that day have done for his Julie what Julian had done for his Laura tonight? Would he have respected her cowardly fears? She felt sure not. Julie's Treville might have gone away, but Julie's Treville would have come back. Well, she knew that Laura's Treville would not return tonight.

  And then she turned round quickly, for across the still air of the room had fallen the sound of a deep sigh.

  Swiftly, Laura went across to the door, masked by a stiff curtain of tapestry, which led into the corridor linking the various rooms of The Folly.

  She lifted the curtain, and slipped out into the dimly lit corridor, but there was no one there.

  Coming back into the sitting-room she sat down again by the fire, convinced that her nerves had played her a trick, and once more she found herself thinking of La Belle Julie. She felt as if there was a bond between herself and the long dead dancer; the bond which links all poor women who embark on the danger-fraught adventure of secret, illicit love.

  II

  That evening Célestine proved that her hand had not lost its French cunning. But Laura was too excited, as well as too tired, to eat. The old woman made no comment as to that, but when at last she found with delight that "Mrs. Darcy" spoke excellent French, she did tell her that if she heard strange sighs, or maybe a stifled sob, she was not to feel afraid, as it would only be the wraith of La Belle Julie expatiating her sin where that sin had not only been committed but exulted in.

  But it was not the ghost of Julie of whom Laura was afraid—it was Célestine, with her gleaming brown eyes and shrewd face, whom she feared. She breathed more easily when the old Frenchwoman was gone….

  The bedchamber where she was to sleep had also been left unaltered for a hundred years and more. It was hung with faded lavender silk, and on the floor lay an Aubusson carpet, while at the farther end of the room was the wide, low, Directoire bed which had been brought from the Paris of the young Napoleon.

  The telephone of which Treville had told her stood on a table close to her pillow. How amazed would Julie have been to hear that a day would come when a woman lying in what had been her bed would be able to speak from there to her lover—the man who, like Julie's own lover, was master of the great house which stood over a mile away from The Folly.

  Célestine had forgotten to draw the heavy embroidered yellow silk curtains, and Laura walked to the nearest window and looked out on to the gleaming waters of the lake.

  Across to the right rose dense clumps of dark ilexes; to the left tall trees, now stripped of leaves, stood black and drear against the winter sky.

  The telephone bell tinkled. She turned and ran across the room, and then she heard Julian Treville's voice as strong, as clear, as love-laden, as if he were with her here, tonight.

  The next day's sun illumined a beautiful soft winter morning, and Laura felt not only tremblingly happy, but also what she had not thought to feel—at peace. She went for a walk round the lake, then enjoyed the luncheon Célestine had prepared for her. Célestine, so much was clear, was set on waiting on her far more assiduously than she did on her own mistress, old Mrs. Trevilie.

  About three o'clock Laura went again out of doors, to come in, an hour later, to find the lamp in the drawing-room lit, though it was not yet dark.

  She went through into her bedroom, and then she heard the telephone ring—not loudly, insistently, as it had rung last night, but with a thin, tenuous sound.

  Eagerly she went over to the side of the bed and took off the receiver, and then, as if coming from infinitely far away, she heard Julian Treville's voice.

  "Are you there, my darling? I am in darkness, but our love is my beacon, and my heart is full of you," and his voice, his dear voice, sank away

  Then he was home from hunting far sooner than he had thought to be? This surely meant that very soon he would be here.

  She took off her hat and coat put on a frock Julian had once said he loved to see her wear, and then went back to wait for his coming in the sitting-room. But the moments became minutes, and the minutes quarters of an hour, and the time went by very slowly.

  At last a key turned in the lock of the front door, and she stood up—then felt a pang of bitter disappointment, for it was only the old Frenchwoman who passed through into the room.

  Célestine shut the door behind her, and then she came close up to where Laura had sat down again, wearily, by the fire.

  "Madame!" she exclaimed. And then she stopped short, a tragic look on her pale withered face.

  Laura's thoughts flew to her child. She leapt up from her chair. "What is it, Célestine? A message for me?"

  Very solemnly Célestine said the fearful words: "Prepare for ill news."

  "Ill news?" Oh! how could she have left her child? "What do you mean?" cried Laura violently.

  "There is no message come for you. But—but—our good kind master, Mr. Treville, is dead. He was killed out hunting today. I was in the village when the news was brought." She went on, speaking in quick gasps: "His horse—how say you?——" she waited, and then, finding the word she sought, "stumbled," she sobbed.

  Laura for a moment stood still, as if she had not heard, or did not understand the purport of the other's words, and then she gave a strangled cry, as Célestine, gathering her to her gaunt breast, said quickly in French, "My poor, poor lady! Well did I see that my master loved you—and that you loved him. You must leave The Folly tonight, at once. They have already telegraphed for old Mrs. Treville."

  III

  An hour later Laura was dressed, ready for departure. In a few minutes from now Célestine would be here to carry her bag to the car which the old Frenchwoman had procured to take her to the distant station where Julian Treville had met her yesterday? It seemed aeons of time ago.

  Suddenly there came a loud knock on the heavy door, and at once she walked across the room and opened it wide.

  Nothing mattered to her now; and when Roger Delacourt strode into the room she felt scarcely any surprise, and that though she had believed him a thousand miles away.

  "Are you alone, Laura?" he asked harshly.

  There was a look of savage anger in his face. His vanity—the vanity of a man no longer young who has had a strong allure for women—felt bruised in its tenderest part.

  As she said nothing, only looking at him with an air of tragic pain and defiance, he went on, jeeringly, "No doubt you are asking yourself how I found out where you were, and on what pretty business you were engaged? I will give you a clue, and you can guess the rest for yourself. I had to come back unexpectedly to Englan
d, and the one person to whom you gave this address—I presume so you might have news of the boy—unwittingly gave you away!"

  She still said nothing, and he went on bitterly: "I thought you—fool that I was—a good woman. But from what I hear I now know that your lover, Julian Treville, is no new friend. But I do not care, I do enquire, how often you have been here—"

  "This is the first time," she said dully, "that I have been here."

  And then it was as if something outside herself impelled her to add the untrue words, "I am not, as you seem to think, Roger, alone——" for with a sharp thrill of intense fear she had remembered her child.

  "Not alone?" he repeated incredulously. And then he saw the tapestried curtain which hung over the door, opposite to where he stood, move, and he realised that someone was behind it, listening.

  He took a few steps forward, and pulled the curtain roughly back. But the dimly illumined corridor was empty; whoever had been there eavesdropping had scurried away into shelter.

  He came back to the spot where he had been standing before. Baffled, angry, still full of doubt, and yet, deep in his heart, unutterably relieved. Already, a half-suspicion that Laura was sheltering some woman friend engaged in an intrigue had flashed into his mind, and the suspicion crystallised into certainty as he looked loweringly into her pale, set face. She did not look as more than once, in the days of his good fortunes, he had seen a guilty wife look.

  Yes, that must be the solution of this queer secret escapade! Laura, poor fool! had been the screen behind which hid a pair of guilty lovers. Thirty years ago a woman had played the same thankless part in an intrigue of his own.

  "Who is your friend?" he asked roughly.

  Her lips did not move, and he told himself, with a certain satisfaction, that she was paralysed with fear.

  "How long have you and your friend been here? That, at least, you can tell me."

  At last she whispered what sounded like the absurd answer, "Just a hundred years."

  Then, turning quickly, she went through the door which gave into the dining-room, and shut it behind her.

  Roger Delacourt began pacing about the room; he felt what he had very seldom come to feel in his long, hard, if till now fortunate, life, just a little foolish, but relieved—unutterably relieved—and glad.

  The Folly? Well named indeed! The very setting for a secret love-affair. Beautiful, too, in its strange and romantic aloofness from everyday life.

  He went and gazed up at the pastel, which was the only picture in the room. What an exquisite, flower-like face! It reminded him of a French girl he had known when he was a very young man. Her name had been Zélie Mignard, and she had been reader-companion to an old marquise with whose son he had spent a long summer and autumn on the Loire. From the first moment he had seen Zélie she had attracted him violently, and though little more than a boy, he had made up his mind to seduce her. But she had resisted him, and then, in spite of himself, he had come to love her with that ardent first love which returns no more.

  Suddenly there fell on the air of the still room the sound of a long, deep sigh. He wheeled sharply round to see that between himself and the still uncurtained window there stood a slender young woman—Laura's peccant friend, without a doubt!

  He could not see her very clearly, yet of that he was not sorry, for he was not and he had never been—he told himself with an inward chuckle—the man to spoil sport.

  Secretly he could afford to smile at the thought of his cold, passionless wife acting as duenna. Hard man as he was, his old heart warmed to the erring stranger, the more so that her sudden apparition had removed a last lingering doubt from his mind.

  She threw out her slender hands with a gesture that again seemed to fill his mind with memories of his vanished youth, and there floated across the dark room the whispered words "Be not unkind." And then—did she say, "Remember Zélie?"

  No, no—it was his heart, less atrophied than he had thought it to be, which had evoked, quickened into life, the name of his first love, the French girl who, if alive, must be—hateful, disturbing thought—an old woman today.

  Then, as he gazed at her, the shadowy figure swiftly walked across the room, and so through the tapestry curtain.

  He waited a moment, then slowly passed through the dining-room, and so into the firelit bedroom beyond.

  His wife was standing by the window, looking as wraithlike as had done, just now, her friend. She was staring out into the darkness, her arms hanging by her side. She had not turned round when she had heard the door of the room open.

  "Laura!" said her husband gruffly. And then she turned and cast on him a suffering alien glance.

  "I accept your explanation of your presence here. And, well, I apologise for my foolish suspicions. Still you're not a child! The part you're playing is not one any man would wish his wife to play. How long do you—and your friend—intend to stay here?"

  "We meant to stay ten days," she said listlessly, "but as you're home, Roger, I'll leave now, if you like."

  "And your friend, Laura, what of her?"

  "I think she has already left The Folly."

  She waited a moment, then forced herself to add, "Julian Treville was killed today out hunting—as I suppose you know."

  "Good God! How awful! Believe me, I did not know—"

  Roger Delacourt was sincerely affected, as well he might be, for already he had arranged, in his own mind, to go to Leicestershire next week.

  And, strange to say, as the two travelled up to town together, he was more considerate in his manner to his wife than he had been for many years. For one thing, he felt that this curious episode proved Laura to have more heart than he had given her credit for. But, being the manner of man and of husband he happened to be, he naturally did not approve of her having risked her spotless reputation in playing the part of duenna to a friend who had loved not wisely but too well. He trusted that what had just happened would prove a lesson to his wife and, for the matter of that, to himself.

  Binya Passes By

  BY RUSKIN BOND

  The author looks back on a love of long ago. 'It isn't time that's passing by; it is you and I…'

  While I was walking home one day, along the path through the pines, I heard a girl singing.

  It was summer in the hills, and the trees were in new leaf. The walnuts and cherries were just beginning to form between the leaves.

  The wind was still and the trees were hushed, and the song came to me clearly; but it was not the words—which I could not follow—or the rise and fall of the melody which held me in thrall, but the voice itself, which was a young and tender voice.

  I left the path and scrambled down the slope, slipping on fallen pine needles. But when I came to the bottom of the slope the singing had stopped and no one was there. "I'm sure I heard someone singing," I said to myself; but I may have been wrong. In the hills it is always possible to be wrong.

  So I walked on home, and presently I heard another song, but this time it was the whistling thrush rendering a broken melody, singing of dark, sweet secrets in the depths of the forest.

  I had little to sing about myself, as the electricity bill hadn't been paid, and there was nothing in the bank, and my second novel had just been turned down by another publisher. Still, it was summer, and men and animals were drowsy, and so too were my creditors. The distant mountains loomed purple in the shimmering dust-haze.

  I walked through the pines again, but I did not hear the singing. And then for a week I did not leave the cottage, as the novel had to be rewritten, and I worked hard at it, pausing only to eat and sleep and take note of the leaves turning a darker green.

  The window opened on to the forest. Trees reached up to the window. Oak, maple, walnut. Higher up the hill, the pines started, and further on, armies of deodars marched over the mountains. And the mountains rose higher, and the trees grew stunted until they finally disappeared and only the black spirit-haunted rocks rose up to meet the everlasting snows. Thos
e peaks cradled the sky. I could not see them from my windows. But on clear mornings they could be seen from the pass on the Tehri road.

  There was a stream at the bottom of the hill. One morning, quite early, I went down to the stream, and using the boulders as stepping-stones, moved downstream for about half a mile. Then I lay down to rest on a flat rock, in the shade of a wild cherry tree, and watched the sun shifting through the branches as it rose over the hill called Pari Tibba (Fairy Hill) and slid down the steep slope into the valley. The air was very still and already the birds were silent. The only sound came from the water running over the stony bed of the stream. I had lain there ten, perhaps fifteen minutes, when I began to feel that someone was watching me.

  Someone in the trees, in the shadows, still and watchful. Nothing moved; not a stone shifted, not a twig broke; but someone was watching me. I felt terribly exposed; not to danger, but to the scrutiny of unknown eyes. So I left the rock and, finding a path through the trees, began climbing the hill again.

  It was warm work. The sun was up, and there was no breeze. I was perspiring profusely by the time I got to the top of the hill. There was no sign of my unseen watcher. Two lean cows grazed on the short grass; the tinkling of their bells was the only sound in the sultry summer air.

  That song again! The same song, the same singer. I heard her from my window. And putting aside the book I was reading, I leant out of the window and started down through the trees. But the foliage was too heavy, and the singer too far away for me to be able to make her out. "Should I go and look for her?" I wondered. Or is it better this way—heard but not seen? For having fallen in love with a song, must it follow that I will fall in love with the singer? No. But surely it is the voice, and not the song that has touched me… Presently the singing ended, and I turned away from the window.

  A girl was gathering bilberries on the hillside. She was fresh-faced, honey-coloured; her lips were stained with purple juice. She smiled at me. "Are they good to eat?" I asked.

  She opened her fist and thrust out her hand, which was full of berries, bruised and crushed. I took one and put it in my mouth. It had a sharp, sour taste. "It is good," I said. Finding that I could speak haltingly in her language, she came nearer, said, "Take more then," and filled my hand with bilberries. Her fingers touched mine. The sensation was almost unique; for it was nine or ten years since my hand had touched a girl's.