The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping

by Warwick Deeping

  Luigi pretended to sulk.

  “What did I tell you, but you thought me a liar. A nice state of things when a quiet old man has his house turned upside down after dark.”

  “Basta,” said the sergeant far less cheerfully, “he is in the town somewhere, and we shall find him.”

  The little bookseller said nothing, but banged the door on them.

  About the time that Trevanion was making his escape from Monte Verde, the woman Maria had thrown a dark shawl over her head and slipped down through the garden of the Villa Lunetta to a place where the wall had fallen and never been repaired. Someone was waiting for her there, someone who chuckled softly, and took his kisses as he pleased.

  “Ten gold pieces, my love, for you, and twenty for me. It is only necessary that you should not meddle; that you should be asleep or deaf.”

  The woman agreed.

  “And no harm shall come to the child?”

  “Harm! If it will harm her to become a countess—well, the answer is ‘Yes!’ But my noble friend is an original, and goes about his wooing like a romancer.”

  “And when will it happen?”

  “When the moon is full.”

  “And the old man?”

  “He can become the count’s librarian at Castella Nero. As for me, Mrs. Mischief, I shall be in great favour.”

  “You are an old rascal,” she said, laughing.

  Just as dawn was breaking, Nigel Trevanion came to the edge of the beech wood over against Sandro’s farm.

  Trevanion took no chances. He went down through the cornfield on his hands and knees, crawled through the garden hedge and sat down to wait with his back against the house wall. It was not long before he heard someone stirring in the house. A shutter was thrown open, and a man’s head appeared, the head of Sandro the farmer taking stock of the morning.

  Trevanion gave a soft whistle and held up two fingers. Sandro stared hard at him a moment, nodded, and disappeared from the window.

  They went into a corner of the orchard together and talked.

  “The Austrian is after me, padrone. I slipped out of Monte Verde last night. They have been told that I have taken the road to Rome. If you can hide me here for two days?”

  “That should be easy.”

  “And it is necessary that I should see the Little Lady without going to the Villa Lunetta. Von Mirenbach must not know that I am near.”

  Sandro meditated a moment.

  “I have a strange hiding-place that no one knows of save myself. As for the Little Lady, I can go and tell her that Giuseppe is ill.”

  “And who is Giuseppe?”

  “My boy of six. He is a great favourite. As to my men, they would be in the fields, and even if they discovered anything they would hold their tongues.”

  IV

  About nine o’clock that morning Sandro walked into the courtyard of the Villa Lunetta, and found Maria at work at her wash-tub under the big fig tree.

  Now Sandro had no great love for Maria; they had quarrelled more than once, and Sandro’s wife, who had a quick eye for a jade, had warned him against her.

  “Good day to you, Maria.”

  She looked at him with her hard black eyes and went on with her washing.

  “Is the signorina in the house?”

  “She may be. You know what the signorina is. She may be anywhere.”

  “Then I will go in and see for myself, since you are too busy.”

  He turned towards the house, but Maria followed him.

  “Since when have you become a gentleman to walk as you please into the house of a Lombardi?”

  “Hold your tongue, Maria. Am I to stand and wait on your whims and temper? My boy has the fever, and the signorina cured him last leaf fall with a touch of her hand.”

  “Black magic, perhaps.”

  “White magic, you slut. The Little Lady has the hand of a saint.”

  Rosamunda was alone in the great salon. She looked up at Sandro, smiling.

  “Good morning, padrone.”

  “Good morning, signorina.”

  Maria hung in the doorway, alert and meddlesome, but Sandro waited till she had gone.

  “Giuseppe has the fever, signorina. He cries out for you, because your touch healed him last leaf fall. Perhaps you will come to the farm?”

  “Poor Giuseppe! I will come now, Sandro. I will walk back with you.”

  She jumped up, and reached for her big sun-hat that lay on the couch.

  They were half way to the farm before Sandro told her the truth, and in the telling of it saw her eyes grow big and shadowy and the colour deepen in her cheeks.

  “The Signor Nigel! And Giuseppe is not ill! But why is there danger, Sandro? Who would do us any harm?”

  “This English lord can explain things better than I can, signorina, even though he speaks in Italian. I judge a man by his eyes.”

  When they came to the house Sandro’s wife was waiting for them, a big, sunny woman with a soft voice and wise eyes.

  Sandro glanced at his wife, and Catarina understood. She led Rosamunda across the little courtyard, under a stone arch and into the orchard. There was a well in the orchard, its mouth surrounded by a stone well-head, and covered by a shelter of timber and thatch. It was half hidden by a trellis of vines so that the well-head was almost concealed by a curtain of leaves.

  “He is there, signorina. It is a secret.”

  Trevanion had heard their voices. He was leaning against the stone coping, looking rather dusty and unshaven, and with a green smear on one sleeve, but his eyes were the eyes of a lover, and Rosamunda saw little else. She went and stood beside him behind the screen of vines, her sweet face serious and questioning, her eyes looking straight into his.

  “What does it mean?”

  “I could not keep my promise to you, Rosamunda, and since I could not come to you, I asked Sandro to bring you to me.”

  “And you are hiding here?”

  “Yes, in the well, if necessary.”

  “The well!”

  “There is a funny little chamber opening from it, and it is quite dry and warm.”

  “But why are you hiding?”

  “Because the Austrian, Otto von Mirenbach, considers me in the way, and would like me in one of his prisons; but I do not mean to be put out of the way, Rosamunda, till the full moon is done with.”

  She looked troubled.

  “The full moon! Always it is the full moon! My father is stranger than ever. It is his wish, Nigel, that I should bathe in the Satyr’s Pool at midnight on the night of the full moon.”

  “And you will do it?”

  “Yes, if it will please him. For what is there to fear? I have asked Maria to come with me.”

  Trevanion opened his lips to speak, and then smothered the words that were on his tongue. Why should he shock her innocence, tell her that lewd fable, and make her afraid of the thing that lurked in the woods? No harm could come to her so long as he was free to watch, and if von Mirenbach trusted to guile, guile was the sword to meet him with.

  “Rosamunda.”

  He took her hands.

  “I want you to trust me, dear.”

  “I trust you,” she answered him simply.

  “If anything should happen to me, trust Sandro, and no one else; he is good and brave and will protect you. Tell no one that I am here.”

  Her face drew near to his.

  “But why are you in danger? Why should the Austrian hate you? I do not understand.”

  “Perhaps some day soon I will tell you,” he said; “but do not worry your heart about me. If Sandro should come again to the Villa and say that Giuseppe is sick, go with him at once, and leave everything to Sandro.”

  And then, quite suddenly, she drew very close and put up her face to be kissed.

  “How good you are. I feel that you are being good to me, even though I do not understand. Have men such secrets?”

  He held her hands, and kissed her forehead.

  “Someti
mes, yes; we lay our cloaks in the mud, dear, so that your feet may not be soiled. Trust me; that is all I ask of you. And now, you must go.”

  Sandro walked back with her to the Villa Lunetta, and when he returned to the farm he found von Mirenbach’s sbirri there, drinking wine, and resting in the shade. An Austrian officer was in charge of the band, a bluff, good-natured booby who sat himself down in the kitchen and suffered Catarina to cook him an omelette and bring him a bottle of Asti. He was bored with his business, and scoffed at it quite frankly.

  “Good day, padrone. Your good lady has saved my life, for I was choked with dust and with the bad language of my men.”

  Sandro sat down and stared at him stolidly.

  “You are very welcome, captain. There are no brigands in these parts, surely?”

  “Brigands!” the Austrian laughed; “nothing so exciting, padrone, nothing but some scarecrow of an Englishman, who is supposed to have political views that do not please us. He escaped out of Monte Verde, and my orders were to make sure that he is not in these woods. I suppose you have no six feet of English madness hidden on your farm?”

  Sandro stared.

  “Is it likely, captain! But I ask you to search the place.”

  “I will take your word, padrone.”

  “No sir; I would have you search the place. A man has to be careful these days. The fellow might be in my barn, or hiding among the faggots, and I never know it.”

  So the farm was searched, Sandro himself going with the captain and showing a serious interest in the affair. No one thought of looking down the well in the orchard, and they would have seen nothing if they had, save a length of brown rope disappearing into the darkness. The Austrian scoffed at the fuss he had been ordered to make, mounted his horse, and marched off with his men.

  The day passed very slowly for Trevanion. He lay on a bundle of straw in that quaint hiding-place of his, watching the glimmer of light in the dark throat of the well, and listening to the faint drip of water below. The inaction irked him, for he was a man in love, cooped up, blind for the moment, the sport of a quick imagination.

  About dusk Sandro came to the well, and whispered down it.

  “Signor?”

  “Hallo!”

  “It is very quiet. I have been up to the woods. The Austrian and his sbirri must have gone on to Musa.”

  The brown rope tightened to Trevanion’s weight. His head and shoulders appeared.

  “Hallo! it is growing dark. I am going up to the woods, Sandro. Supposing you come with me.”

  “I am ready; but some wine and a little supper? I have it here.”

  “Excellent. I don’t like your ‘guest’s hole,’ padrone. It makes one think too much.”

  It was growing dark when Trevanion and the farmer struck the fringe of the woods.

  They moved on, Sandro in front a little, with a cudgel over his shoulder, striding slowly in a world of puzzling shadows.

  Suddenly Sandro stopped, and Trevanion stopped with him like a man jerked by a string.

  “Listen!”

  From somewhere, very faint and near, came a queer sound of piping, very wayward and strange.

  Big Sandro was stiff and bristling like a dog.

  “Cæsare—perhaps?”

  Trevanion had held his breath to listen.

  “I think not,” he said; “it is the goat-god calling the moon.”

  “Sst, signor, but you do not believe such things?”

  “I believe what I see.”

  They went on again, for the piping had ceased, and when next they heard it the sound seemed much nearer. Then an abrupt silence fell, a silence that was more uncanny than that wayward music without a tune.

  Sandro was sweating.

  “Did you notice anything, signor?”

  “I saw nothing.”

  “No; but the creature must have been quite close to us and we never heard the sound of its feet. It was running too, for the sound came to us very fast.”

  Trevanion was puzzled, but he was less superstitious than the Italian.

  “Where are we now?” he asked.

  “About two furlongs from the Pool, so far as I can judge.”

  They came at last to the open ride that led down to the big chestnut wood above the Satyr’s Pool. They lay down there, close together, between the roots of a great tree, and heard that Pan’s music break out again at no great distance. It seemed to come from behind them in little trills and bird notes that suggested the beginnings of a melody, and then broke into mad fooling. Big Sandro crossed himself, and twisted round so as to face the sound, but it died away again, and they could hear nothing but the stream running.

  Presently the moon rose and added a new mystery to the woodland, and with the moonlight came a new and grotesque figure, the black shape of an old man with long hair, dancing like a madman and playing on a pipe.

  Sandro nudged Trevanion.

  “It is Cæsare. Did I not say it was Cæsare?”

  “Listen. Tell me what you hear.”

  And Sandro shivered, for there was another piping in the wood, the piping that had haunted them since nightfall, and it seemed to answer Cæsare as one bird answers another.

  “There is an evil spirit here, signor.”

  “Sst, make no noise. If it is the goat-god we may see him.”

  Old Cæsare went skipping past them, and was lost among the trees.

  “That old man has sold himself to a devil, signor.”

  “I have seen that devil by daylight, Sandro, and it may be that he is of the same flesh as you and I.”

  They saw no more of Cæsare, though that capricious piping still sent an occasional shiver of mystery through the moonlit woods. Trevanion was lying with his chin resting on his crossed forearms, very wakeful and alert, and full of shrewd surmises.

  “Your bed is waiting for you, padrone. I shall stay here to-night.”

  “You are not afraid, signor?”

  “Not yet. And I can sleep in that precious hole of yours to-morrow. Go back by way of the stream; you will see me soon after daybreak.”

  Trevanion had learnt the patience of a hunter, and his patience brought him his reward at the end of that long night’s vigil. The luck of the day, too, was with him, a luck that had always been his since boyhood. Just when the world was on the edge of dawn and the great trees were growing grey, he heard a sudden cracking of dead wood behind him, and something very like an honest, human oath.

  In the grey light of the dawn he saw a man scramble down the trunk of a tree, and make off into the wood.

  Trevanion waited ten minutes, listening, watching before he moved. Then he raised himself cautiously, and went forward, keeping his eyes fixed on that particular tree. About seven feet up the trunk a black gash showed in the bark, broadening upwards till it lost itself in the spread of the main limbs.

  Trevanion’s eyes gave a gleam of light. He went up to the tree, got his right hand in the cleft, worked himself up, and discovered a part of the mystery. The tree was hollow.

  He knelt there, looking down into the dark hollow, and thinking. This was the piper’s post, where a man could lie hidden, and by a cunning use of his instrument make his music seem far and near. He could blow hard and soft, smother the sound deep in the bowels of the tree, or climb up and let his piping float out as from a musician’s gallery. Trevanion smiled.

  Before he left for Sandro’s farm he looked about him and found what he desired, a big oak tree standing a little apart, its branches nearly touching the ground. The main fork of the tree was like a great nest where a man could lie curled up and concealed. The hollow chestnut could be watched, and when Trevanion had made sure of this, he walked back through the woods to Sandro’s farm.

  V

  Rosamunda came to the farm of her own free will that morning. Trevanion was asleep in his ‘guest’s hole,’ and to wake him Catarina had to let the bucket clatter against the well wall.

  “Hallo, signor!”

  “Who’s
there?”

  “A visitor, signor.”

  Catarina went off smiling, with her bucket of water.

  Trevanion’s face was very close to Rosamunda’s when he reached the top of the rope, and he hung there a moment like a lover at a window. She stretched out her hands to him with an impulsive welcome that had the sweetness of a caress, and Trevanion caught one of her hands and kissed it.

  “Why are you here, Rosamunda? Has anything happened?”

  “No; but I was troubled, and I could not sleep last night!”

  “And why?”

  “Because I was thinking of you here, and of your danger.”

  “Dear heart, I was never happier in my life, and safe here in Sandro’s farm. Have you any news for me from the Villa Lunetta?”

  “None; but that father cannot rest or eat. He wanders all day, talking to himself. He has the same strange wish that I should go down to the pool to-morrow at midnight.”

  “And you will go?”

  “Yes, to please him. What harm can it do to satisfy a mad whim? I have spoken to Maria, and she will come.”

  Trevanion had swung himself on to the wall. She was so dear to him now that even the thought of touching her seemed very wonderful. She made him think of some soft, trustful bird, but her eyes were the eyes of a woman.

  “You must not come to the farm again, Rosamunda, unless you are in trouble.”

  “Then I shall not see you.”

  “Yes, you will see me, for I do not think that I could live now without seeing you. When the full moon is past, we shall begin our fairy story.”

  “Always the full moon! I am beginning to hate the full moon!”

  “Cara mia,” he said to her, “trust me for two more days. That is all I ask of you.”

  It was Sandro who kept watch that night, lying under the arbutus trees near the Satyr’s Pool with an old musket for company. He saw nothing but Cæsare wandering like a sleep-walker and staring at the moon; nor did he hear any sounds of the pipes in the woods across the valley. Sandro was back at the farm well before daybreak. Trevanion had to be roused so that he could reach the woods before dawn and get to his post.