She Painted Her Face

by Dornford Yates

  Since this meant that the Duchess was come, the tense situation was less relieved than submerged, and all eyes were turned to the archway which led to the drive.

  A liveried groom appeared, backing…

  Then a long limousine turned slowly into the courtyard and moved to the foot of the steps – and there were Elizabeth smiling and the Duchess of Whelp leaning back, with the air of a Lord Chief Justice up on his Bench.

  The chauffeurs sat still, uncovered, while a footman opened the door and the Count stood bowing and waiting for the Duchess to put out a hand.

  In silence Old Harry surveyed him. Then she spoke clear and loud.

  “There is something different about you. We’re both of us older, of course, but it’s deeper than that. The flesh is Esau’s flesh, but the spirit… ” White to the lips, the Count looked ready to swoon. “It’s very strange. I should never have said you were Brief.”

  Somehow the man made answer.

  “In twenty-four years, madam—”

  “No, no, it’s not that. The leopard grows old, but he never changes his spots. Never mind. Here’s your daughter back. She has escaped – this time: but I think you should warn all your servants, within and without, to expect another attempt – well, any time now.”

  With that, having set two balls rolling before she had fairly arrived, Old Harry got to her feet and stepped out of the car and, declining the arm the Count offered, walked up to the head of the steps. There she stopped and looked round.

  “Ah, Richard,” she said. “And John Herrick, I’m glad to see you again.”

  We went to her side at once, and she gave us her hand to be kissed – and then, but not until then, Elizabeth left the car.

  The Count was not there to greet her. (He was in fact attempting without success to present ‘my nephew, Percy’ to the Duchess of Whelp.) But as her foot touched the ground, the servants went forward with Bertram, to welcome her home.

  It was a moving scene, for they were all bowing and bobbing and one of the women was crying and another was holding Elizabeth’s hand to her breast – and poor Bertram had dropped his wand and was down on one knee, with the hem of the coat she was wearing pressed tight to his lips. I never saw devotion so honest in all my life, and the Duchess was plainly pleased, for she smiled and nodded approval and, wholly ignoring Virgil, addressed the Count.

  “Since when was blood thicker than daughters?” was all she said.

  Then she turned, to enter the hall, where Parish was somehow waiting, to lead her up to her rooms.

  The reception was over, and we were alone in the hall, when, as though from nowhere, a maid appeared at our side.

  “Her ladyship begs that you will take tea in her suite.”

  “At once?” said Herrick, rising.

  “At once, sir. If you follow me, I will show you the way.”

  She waited for me to rise, and then, with a delicate deference, took the lead.

  Her demeanour was point-device: her appearance, beyond reproach: she breathed efficiency. She was dark and by no means ill-favoured, and I would have said discreet, but for a curious expression about her lips – Leonardo da Vinci could have caught it, for the woman was not smiling, and yet the smile was there.

  I followed her thoughtfully, because I knew who she was. And that was Elsa – Elizabeth’s personal maid.

  She led us the way we had gone some forty-five minutes before – that is, by the staircase-turret Elizabeth always used; and, as we went, I paid what attention I could to the doors which shut the turret from the rest of the house. Of these there were three – one which gave to a lobby upon the ground floor, one which gave to the picture-gallery upon the first floor, and one which opened directly into Elizabeth’s bedroom upon the second floor. These doors, which were small but massive, could be neither bolted nor barred, but below each old-fashioned latch was a good Yale lock. The bolts of these locks were not shot, but were at present held back by catches within the locks: but, once the catches were down, none could have passed the doors unless they had been admitted or possessed the appropriate key. (I have made it clear before now that the turret had also a door which gave to the terrace without, that this door had a Yale lock, but could also be barred.) All the locks were within the turret, except the last: and that was in Elizabeth’s bedroom.

  Her sitting-room door was open, and as we entered the bedroom I heard Elizabeth’s voice.

  “I have said that, because of my fall, I cannot remember what happened for several hours: that, after that, I was cared for by people I did not know and that, by their advice, I sought the Duchess of Whelp. I may say that these people knew you and that, though they had not been engaged to, er, care for my health, nobody could have been kinder – or more insistent that I should not return to Brief.”

  “If you think,” said Virgil, as I walked into the room…

  Elizabeth turned and smiled.

  “Do sit down,” she said. “The inquest is nearly done.”

  In some agitation, the Count of Brief got to his feet, and Percy surveyed us with murder in both of his eyes.

  “‘If you think,’ you were saying,” said Elizabeth.

  “Thank you,” said Percy, calmly. “If you think you can get away with a tale like that—”

  “D’you mind getting out of this room?”

  There was a pregnant silence.

  Then I walked to the door to the landing and opened it wide.

  The Count of Brief glanced at his watch,

  “My God, I’m late,” he said, and fairly ran out of the room.

  “‘Adjourned’, not ‘done’,” said Percy, and with that he turned on his heels and followed the other out.

  As I shut the door —

  “‘Such men are dangerous’,” said Herrick, and put on Elizabeth’s hat…

  For a quarter of an hour we talked. Then she and I left for the stables, and Herrick went to the tower.

  But long before then, my inventory was complete.

  The door to the landing had a Yale lock, but no bars.

  There was no mark upon Caesar, and if his legs had been tender, he now was perfectly sound. The grooms had noticed nothing when he came in. Two other good-looking hunters were each let out of his box, and Elizabeth bade me choose one “for tomorrow at seven o’clock.” And then she gave her orders, and we went down to the garden and up to the belvedere.

  There was that about her which turned this into a bower.

  Sitting sideways, half on and half off the grey of the parapet, backed by the living green of the jealous boughs, a stave of the evening sunshine touching her lovely hair, she seemed to have found her true setting for the very first time: yet this was a fanciful notion, soon to be falsified, because wherever she went, her surroundings appeared to become her as never before. I cannot pay her a finer compliment.

  For all that, sitting there on the stone, for me she embodied for ever those pretty princesses that live in the fairy tales, that lean from turret-windows and gallop down forest-glades, and I found myself the youth that was seeking his fortune, to whom the princess was gracious – because the great tradition must be observed.

  “How d’you do, Richard Exon?”

  I took her hand and kissed it.

  “The better for seeing you.”

  “Does that mean that you have missed me?”

  “Yes,” said I. “At every hour of the day.”

  Elizabeth nodded contentedly.

  “I like to hear you say it,” she said…

  I wrenched my mind from her beauty to other things.

  “Was that Elsa who fetched us?” I said.

  “It was.”

  “Are you sure of her? I’m not mad about her, myself.”

  Elizabeth laughed.

  “My dear, you see a robber in every bush. Elsa is a maid in a thousand – and true as steel.”

  “Is she going to sleep in your suite?”

  She nodded.

  “By your request.”

&nb
sp; “I – I didn’t specify Elsa,” said I, uneasily.

  Elizabeth knitted her brows.

  “Richard, be reasonable. You’ve seen her for less than two minutes: and I have known her well for nearly four years. And if anyone is to sleep there, it must be she. If I were to choose someone else, I might as well say to Elsa ‘I don’t trust you.’”

  “Yes, I see that,” I sighed. “All the same, you will lock your doors?”

  “All five,” said Elizabeth.

  “Where are the keys?”

  “There’s only the one you know – the one you brought me on Friday, with the rest of my things. That’s a master key and fits all five of the locks.”

  There was a little silence.

  Then —

  “I wish we were at Raven,” I said – and spoke as I thought.

  “Ah, Raven,” said Elizabeth, softly, “with the low of the cows in the meadows and the leap of the fish in the stream – and Winter in his shirtsleeves, cleaning my buckskin shoes. But Brief is too high and mighty – I think that it always was. And Tracery, too. I was not meant for such things.”

  “Yes, you were,” said I. “You were born to the stalled ox – but not to hatred therewith… If this belvedere was at Raven, you’d think it a paradise. And what could be more lovely than the Golden Ride at sunrise? Or the terrace at Tracery under a westering moon? Served without hatred, the stalled ox is splendid fare: but a dinner of herbs would be ruined, if Percy sat at the board.”

  A hand came to rest on my shoulder.

  “You say I was born to all this. Did I seem out of place at Raven?”

  “You could never seem out of place. But – well, Raven is Brenda’s home. She was born and bred to Raven, as you were to this.”

  “And my happiness does not count?”

  “My dear,” said I, “it’s all that I’m thinking of. But I…have been through the mill. The flesh makes certain demands – according to the condition to which you were born. Think of the winter at Raven – and then at Brief. You take for granted a thousand important things. I did that once…in a very much smaller way. Red Lead Lane was a nightmare: it is a nightmare today. But if I had been still at Oxford, a weekend at Red Lead Lane would have been an amusing experience…”

  “I wish I’d been there, with you both. And all the time I was here, being waited on hand and foot. And sometimes you went hungry, whilst I was being fed by a chef who gets five hundred a year.” She stood up there, and took my lapels in her hands. “I owe you money, don’t I?”

  “I suppose you do,” said I, “but it’s not worth talking about.”

  “Well, I’m not going to pay it back. I’m proud to be in your debt. I’d like everyone to know it. What I really owe you can’t be reduced to pounds: if it could, I could never pay it – and you know that as well as I. But this I can pay: but I won’t. I asked you to lend me money, and now I won’t pay you back. You’ve piled such mountains between us that let this lift up his head – a sordid, little molehill of forty p-paper pounds.”

  Before this outburst, I stood like a man transfixed, with the breath of her lips on my face, and her eyes, two pools of starlight, reflecting a tiny image I knew was mine.

  So for one hungry moment…

  Then she clapped her hands to her face and burst into tears.

  I would like to be shown the man that would not have gathered her weeping into his arms – and have done his poor best to comfort such beauty in such distress. And for me her hairs were numbered…

  Be that as it may, I know she was in my arms, and the world was rocking about me, and stars that I could not see shot out of their spheres, to make another heaven.

  I do not know what I said: I think I did no more than say over her name: but, after a little, she wiped the tears from her eyes and put an arm round my neck.

  “D’you love me, Richard?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I cannot tell you how much.”

  “And will you always love me?”

  “Always, my darling.”

  “And, after this, you will treat me as your equal? And not kneel down and look up, with your eyes on my face?”

  “I – I will try to, Elizabeth.”

  “And you will not do me honour? John Herrick may kiss my hand: but you and I – Won’t you ask me if I love you, my darling?”

  “I – I’m afraid to, my sweet,” I faltered, and held her close.

  “Oh, Richard, I’ve made so much running. I made you kiss me on Friday, and time and again I’ve given you lead after lead. Yet no one could call me forward, who’d seen the look in your eyes. You’ve cried out that you love me with them a thousand times. You told me the truth, my darling, the moment you knew it yourself – when you’d broken into the tower, and I was up at the window and you were holding on to the cage. But I loved you before that.”

  “I loved you when first I saw you – I know that now.”

  “If I hadn’t been knocked out, I could say the same. It was because I loved you that I let you carry me off. And that’s why I stayed at Raven, instead of returning to Brief.”

  I felt rather dazed. The whole thing was out of order – to put it no higher than that. I had, of course, known that she liked me, and, if I am to be honest, I believed she had let me kiss her because she knew that I loved her and what it would mean to me. But I had never dreamed that she loved me… And now here we were, with desperate issues before us and life and death and fortune flung into the scales, and she and I in the toils of a passionate love affair, which both of us knew was hopeless, which nobody else must suspect.

  On a sudden impulse, I picked her up and set her down on the parapet where she had sat before: and then I stood before her, holding her hands in mine.

  “Listen,” I said. “This is all wrong, and you know it – but I don’t care. If you are mad, I’m human. If I’m given my heart’s desire, I cannot throw it away. But I will not have you injured by – your extravagance. And so we must keep our secret at any cost.”

  “Yes, yes, I see that. This other stuff must be dealt with – for better or worse. And then…”

  “If Old Harry consents, I will ask you to be my wife.”

  The beautiful eyes grew wide.

  “Since when has the Duchess of Whelp—”

  “Since Friday,” said I. “You have no father or mother: by doing as you have done, you have set her up in their place. For your sake, she has left her retirement and taken the field: she could do no more, if you were her only child: and you cannot take such services from such a personage, and then deny her the rights of a patroness.”

  “What d’you think my father would say, if he were alive?”

  “I know what he’d say,” said I, “if he were the Count of Brief.”

  Elizabeth sighed.

  “You do make things hard, don’t you? If you were a racehorse, my darling, you’d have to run in a hood. Still, at least I’ve managed to get you on to the course. And it’s bound to be a walk-over – if only you don’t run out.”

  “I’ll never do that,” said I.

  But I did not say that, as both of us very well knew, fence we never so wisely, I must be disqualified. Instead, I stooped and kissed her exquisite mouth, and then drew her up to her feet and into my arms…

  “Why do you love me, Elizabeth?”

  “Because you are strong and gentle and like the things I like. Because you are natural. Because you are Richard Exon, and I cannot help myself. And now you tell me.”

  “Because there is no one like you. Because you have the look of a queen and the way of an Eve. Because your airs and graces are those of the dawn and the dew. Because, with it all, you are human. Because you lift up my heart.”

  The softest light came stealing into her eyes.

  “I like the last reason best.”

  And there again a feeling of unreality rose as a wave, and I wondered if it was true that Elizabeth Virgil was actually in my arms, if her eager, parted lips were truly so close upon mine, if it was
indeed my image that hung in her peerless eyes. Then the wave sank down unbroken, and I knew that these things were facts.

  I believe I began to tremble.

  “I have no words,” I said hoarsely. “I can only say that I love you with all my soul.”

  Elizabeth put up her hands, to frame my face.

  “I ask no more,” she whispered, and drew down my head to hers.

  As though inspired by the Count of Brief’s evil genius, Old Harry saw fit that evening to wear such a mask as made the blood run cold. Her right hand and her mirror, between them, had taught her terrible things. She had so painted her face that she made me think of some chieftain, arrayed for war, and had tired her head with ear-rings – two monstrous, pear-shaped diamonds that dangled as lustres do, and shuddered brilliance with every movement she made. These things, with her splendid features and piercing eyes, would have dismayed an opponent before she had opened her mouth, and, when she came into the room, I must confess to a feeling of great relief that I was to fight with her and not upon the opposite side.

  Here let me say that the game which she played was so cunning that I was soon out of my depth: add to which that she spoke in German which I could not understand. But, since I later knew all, I will set down directly what happened, because my own reactions have nothing to do with the tale.

  Old Harry had had Herrick’s note. She, therefore, laid herself out to entice the Count on to the ground which Virgil had said was forbidden, three hours before. In a word, she set out to make him put a rope round his neck – a seemingly hopeless task…but not to the Duchess of Whelp, for she turned the rope into a garland, and, after a little, he put the pretty thing on. She handed him memories and then demanded them back; she said he must see her diary; she made the desert of danger bloom with goodwill; arm in arm, they wandered over its borders… By the time that the entrée was served, the Count was most deeply committed – and Virgil, whom I was watching; could hardly sit still.

  And then, without any warning, Old Harry let fly. Above our subdued conversation, her voice rang out.