It was almost dark as she crossed the meadow, but over the hills was a lemon-colored light against which their rocky summits stood in frowning relief. But even this light was rapidly fading.
She set out at a brisk pace, making for the belt of fir trees. Every now and then she paused and glanced nervously over her shoulder as though to make sure that she was unobserved. She was not, however, breaking any rule of the house, for, provided the servants did not go beyond the lodge gates, which were closed every evening at sundown, and which could only be opened from the switch on Dr. Edwardes’ desk, or from the lodge where there was someone on duty only during the day, they were free to go where they liked within the limits of the meadow.
That she should be nervous was less remarkable than her being there at all. No other girl in the village would have dared as much. Ever since she could remember the villagers had shunned the castle and its grounds, and had avoided its inmates, a taboo which had only been broken by herself and a few other men and women, attracted by the high wages paid by the doctor. But even these bold spirits, who were ready to brave the obscure terrors of the place by day, never ventured out of doors by night. And of late there had been stories in the village, stories which had renewed its faith in an ancient evil. It was known that in that valley the Devil had once had special powers. She had often heard her grandfather tell of a dreadful visitation in his early youth when the whole countryside had been swept as by an evil wind and strange rites had been performed up and down the valley, but more especially within that very circle of rock which hedged the castle.
It was dark by the time she reached the trees, and she paused for one final glance round before plunging beneath them, so dark indeed that, had she not known the path so well, she must have lost her way.
The color had died from the sky and the stars were showing, while behind the Dent Noire hung the new moon. Germaine bobbed hastily three times to the slender crescent, and wished with all her might. She wished that Pierre would be true to her and not run off to Thonon or Annecy and take up with some other girl, as he always threatened to do when they quarreled. They had quarreled the last time they had met, and her mind was full of doubts and fears as she stumbled on beneath the firs, her feet brushing softly through the needles.
She was late too, and Pierre hated to be kept waiting. She knew that she was a fool to be thus abject, for everyone said that Pierre was good for nothing—a great strong fellow, who had come unharmed through the war, but was still content with looking after the tiny property of his old father. He had no ambition, the village had decided; besides, he was a sullen man and close-fisted. He never took her to town or bought her things, and when they met he would talk of nothing but the sicknesses of Sarah and Deborah, his fat Savoyard cows, except when he was angry; and then he would swear to go away and leave the land he so dearly, but inarticulately, loved, and become a chauffeur.
But she did not care what he did or what they said of him. She loved him, and as she moved forward now in the darkness her body ached for his arms and her mouth for his rough kisses, for the hands that held her so urgently and the harsh voice that broke under his passion.
She was now on the path that ran all round the circle of hills in a great horseshoe, barred at each end by the steel fence, with its close mesh.
She laughed a little to herself. That was her special secret, shared only with Pierre, who had been so clever and contrived it all. For these two had made a gap in the fence unknown to anyone. It had taken Pierre two days with wire cutters and a file. He had cut a little flap in the mesh, and when she lifted it up he could crawl through to her. In the daytime no one would ever notice it, so skillfully was it hidden, though it was less than ten yards from the end of the path.
She had by this time reached the clearing and was only a hundred yards away from the fence. The clearing was a tiny space, not twenty yards across. You came upon it suddenly just as you seemed to be approaching the thickest part of the fir wood. There was nothing in the clearing but an old white stone in the middle. She could just distinguish it, gray against the darker turf surrounding it, as she moved quickly past, panting a little, for she had come at a sharp pace. She came that way tonight because it was shorter by some two hundred yards than the path, and because she was late and full of her meeting with Pierre. Normally nothing would have induced her to come near it after dark. She crossed the clearing quickly, and a moment later she was among the fir trees again. Fifty yards farther on she stopped and listened.
She heard nothing but her own heart, for Pierre had not yet arrived. Up to that moment she had been so full of Pierre and of her eagerness to reach the meeting place in time that there had been no room for any other feeling. He was the journey’s end; he filled the darkness; he would be the next shadow that waited in the path; and, as she almost ran into the wood, it was as though she were running into his embrace.
But the wood was now no longer the covert in which he waited; the shadows about her were suddenly alien; the tree that stood darkly at her side was itself a presence. She was humanly alone and yet she was encompassed by shapes that scared her with their blank indifference. And between her and the castle with its fellowship lay the little clearing with the ancient stone. She knew now that some secret part of herself, even when she had been full of her lover, had been afraid as she had passed that empty space. The panic which had unconsciously quickened her breathing as she had moved again so softly into the covert now came to the surface. She knew now that she was afraid; that she would never again cross that space alone. Sooner would she stand there rooted forever, facing the night, with a nameless anguish in her heart, and a fear that spread like a pool upon the floor of her soul.
And soon it became intolerable. For just one further instant perhaps she would be able to keep control, to remain herself, Germaine, who had come to meet her lover. And then she would be a driven thing, the body and soul of her fear, with a voice that screamed, and feet that ran and stumbled.
But just at that moment from somewhere in front came a stealthy sound, which changed the world—three bars of “Madelon” whistle softly below the breath.
“Pierre,” she cried, and stumbled forward sobbing and with arms outstretched. A great wave of happiness spread in her, choking her so that she could not speak. She groped in front of her. Her hands touched a sleeve. A voice, a little above her in the darkness, said softly:
“At last, chérie. Where have you been all this time?”
Now she was in his arms, held so close that she almost cried out at the pain.
But tonight he could not hold her close enough, for there she was safe and he made the world human again with his kisses. She gave little cries and gasps of pleasure. Presently, however, when the first rapture was passed, she began to struggle.
“No, no,” he said, and his voice was harsh and troubled.
“You have kept me waiting long enough.”
He had never kissed her like that before. She had never let him. She had instinctively kept him at arm’s length, not from conscience but from an unreasoning instinct of defense which she could neither explain nor understand. But tonight it was different. She had been late, and she had thought she was alone, and there he had been waiting for her the whole time, to be suddenly her refuge and a great relief. And it was all so dark and she could see nothing—only feel him and be aware of his great strength and the futility of her resistance.
So after a while she ceased to struggle, allowing his kisses once again to drown even the memory of her recent terror, and she scarcely noticed what path they were taking as he led her forward, away from the fence by which he had been waiting, back along the path by which she had come, back to the little patch of fragrant needles at the edge of the clearing, where they had lain hid together once before when they had heard footsteps and had been frightened.
Not even when they had reached the edge of the clearing, and she stood with him where she dared not have ventured alone, did she remember her panic of a sho
rt while ago. She was conscious of nothing but the man who held her and the harsh voice that broke upon her name, and she closed her eyes that she might be the more secluded in her pleasure.
There could never be anything in her world again but this seclusion. There was no more room for fear or misgiving. Then suddenly she was aware of a change in him.
He had stiffened and the hand on her shoulder gripped her so fiercely that she gave a little cry of pain, but the grip was not relaxed, and she heard a harsh whispering, not close as before, but above her, breathed out into the night.
“Sacred God, what is that!”
She opened her eyes. He was looking away from her into the clearing. His arms trembled like a leaf, and she felt all the strength go out of him. And suddenly, she too was afraid, and seemed unable to breathe. She thrust an arm about his neck and pulled herself up, so that she was half sitting and half lying against the tree, and then she looked out over his shoulder, following the direction of his eyes.
The clearing was not dark as when she had left it. There was a light in it, small and flickering, and of a bluish color, somewhere above the white stone. It hissed and spat a moment, and then something rose up from the middle of the clearing, a tall black shadow that moved upwards in one great gesture, lifting sable arms. She saw the glimmer of a white object caught between them. The arms dropped suddenly above the stone. There was a beating of wings, and the white thing jerked, a soft thud, then the sound of a steel striking stone, and a voice that said a single sentence in an unknown tongue.
The white thing was lifted wildly into the air again, and torn before her eyes so it was scattered above the stone and fell in a whirl of snowy pinions. Then the light went out.
And Pierre was on his knees beside her, muttering prayers to Our Lady and his patron saints with a fierce, mechanical intensity.
She flung her arms about him, needing him as a refuge from her terror.
“Save me, Pierre,” she whispered. “Take me away.”
But he was blind and deaf, and seemed unaware of her presence. Each was alone with a fear that held them in an implacable solitude of their own.
IV
The dawn rose late within that circle of hills. First the darkness went pale behind the mountain wall and the shadow of the wall itself was cut more clearly upon the sky. The light for a while was colorless, but the sun, hidden behind the wall, was soon able to reach the clouds or the more distant edges of the valley which from darkest purple lightened into warm russet, then into tender rose till at last the valley itself assumed colors of its own. The pastures were green, a white house stood upon the brown earth.
But still the circle at the head of the valley was in shadow and the little clearing in the midst of the firs was as yet unvisited. Then the sun looked over the shoulder of the mountain and the light poured over into the clearing as into a bowl. The turf was green and the firs were dark, and the stone in the midst of it was gleaming white.
But the white surface was that morning flecked with red, and on the green turf were white feathers and fragments which gleamed under the sun. And in the midst of the clearing a lean cat, bright orange against the vivid green, was nosing one of the fragments, about which a small army of warrior ants was busy.
Chapter Five
I
Early next morning Constance was sitting on the western end of the castle terrace. Behind her was the wall of the chapel, pierced by a rose window of exquisite design, said to have been copied from the window in Santa Lucia at Syracuse. One of the de Landry in the service of King Roger of Sicily had seen it, and caused it to be reproduced in his own home. Just beneath the window were two white painted seats, on one of which Constance was sitting in the company of Miss Truelow.
In front of them stretched a rose garden, built in the Italian manner, the rose trees being planted in green painted tubs. Down the center of the garden ran a little stream, trickling from the mouth of a wineskin held by a leaden satyr and confined to a stone bed bordered by red salvia and moss.
No one was in the garden, but just beyond the pergola which bounded it on the west Constance could see Miss Collett, the patient who believed herself to be growing backwards, and who had now reached the age of ten. She was an elderly lady, nearer sixty than fifty, dressed in a childish frock of linen, with a pink bow in her gray hair. She was playing battledore and shuttlecock all by herself, with the intense absorption of a child.
Constance would have liked to go and talk to her, but the other woman at her side in the black taffeta was claiming her attention. Miss Truelow, it seemed, was in need of a friend, and Constance, though she rather tended to fight shy of this particular patient, was pleased at her approach.
It seemed to show that she was gradually gaining the confidence of these people, without which, she knew, no hope of a cure could be entertained.
Accordingly, she sat in the sun and did her best to listen.
“I need hardly assure you,” Miss Truelow was saying, “that I have never given him the least encouragement. The attachment which he has formed for me is quite spontaneous.”
It was to Doctor Murchison that she referred, and Constance, looking in perplexity at the prim figure beside her, was at a loss for an answer. For the moment, however, none was required. Miss Truelow was apparently quite content so long as she had someone in whom she could confide.
“At first,” she went on, “I was reluctant to believe it, though, of course, it has happened before. I had trouble with that Hyacinth boy not long ago—most attentive he was, so that I never allowed him to find me alone. I fear that with the doctor it will be serious. He was telling me this morning of a dream that he had last night. He came to a flight of steps that led up to the door of a tiny church. And suddenly he began to climb.”
Her eyes were glittering, and all at once she had begun to breathe rapidly, her fingers tightly clenched.
Constance put a hand on her arm.
“Surely, Miss Truelow,” she said, “you must be mistaken. Doctor Murchison never told you that.”
“Yes, my dear, he did, and what is more, I know that the dream was true, for I was in the church myself.”
She ended impressively in the tone of one who was giving the clue to a mystery.
“You will realize,” went on Miss Truelow, “that this puts me in a very awkward position. That is why I spoke to you. I wanted to ask your advice. What do you think I ought to do?”
As Constance considered her reply, the seat on which she sat vibrated, and she heard music, muffled as from a distance. It came from the organ in the chapel behind her, which was odd, for she knew that Doctor Murchison kept it locked. The player, whoever it was, had, however, no misgivings on the subject, for a great volume of sound swept out into the sunlight. Constance welcomed the diversion, as it gave her a chance to lead Miss Truelow away from her fixed idea.
“I wonder who that is playing the organ,” she said.
But Miss Truelow was not to be deterred.
“Please tell me what you think I ought to do, Miss Sedgwick,” she replied, laying a thin hand on the arm of her companion.
“Well,” said Constance slowly, “I don’t think I should worry too much about it for the moment.”
As Constance spoke, the thin hand tightened on her arm.
“There is a further complication,” said Miss Truelow.
“Indeed?”
“Yes,” said Miss Truelow, “surely you must have noticed it.”
Constance observed a change on her patient’s face. It had darkened perceptibly.
“Haven’t you observed how carefully she avoids him?” Miss Truelow suddenly inquired.
“You mean?”
“Why, Miss Archer, of course. She is frantic with jealousy, and one of these days something terrible will happen.”
She paused a moment and added suddenly:
“This morning she was alone in the garden, and she picked a spray of white roses. We all know what that means.”
“S
urely,” objected Constance, hoping to soothe her patient, “you must be mistaken about Miss Archer. She often gathers roses for the chapel.”
Miss Truelow drew back, her eyes grew hard. She removed her pince-nez with hands that trembled.
“Very well,” she said, “you leave me to take my own precautions. But I hope that you will give orders that Miss Archer is on no account to be allowed in the kitchen.”
“The kitchen?” Constance repeated in bewilderment.
“I do not wish to be poisoned,” said Miss Truelow, and rising with immense dignity she added:
“It’s a fine day, and I think I shall take a turn in the garden.”
She strode rapidly away, and as she did so a childish lamentation came from beyond the pergola where Miss Collett, in pursuit of her shuttlecock, had tripped over a flower bed and fallen heavily on her face. She was now screaming like a child, more frightened than hurt.
Miss Truelow was already going to the help of Miss Collett, and Constance paused, uncertain whether to follow. She saw Miss Truelow, however, assist Miss Collett to her feet, pat her affectionately on the shoulder, and begin to brush her down. She felt, therefore, that her own intervention was unnecessary, and, leaving the bench, she made for the chapel door, wishing to find out who was inside.
She drew back the heavy curtain which covered the door. It was not very light in the interior, for the biggest window in the chapel was the rose window, the others being mere slits, the building having been originally included within the defenses of the castle.
It was a small place, not more than fifty feet long, and built entirely of stone. At the east end stood the altar, a plain slab with the six candles upon it. There were a dozen rush-bottomed chairs in the nave, and beside one of these, close to the wooden rails shutting of the sanctuary from the rest of the church, stood a dark figure.
The House of Dr. Edwardes Page 6