Still She Wished for Company

by Margaret Irwin

  “Molly, what is it?” cried Juliana. “I am sure something dreadful has happened.”

  “Oh, Miss, the most dreadful, alarming thing that ever could have happened—and in this house, too!” She had an absurd feeling that she knew what the girl was going to say, that she was only waiting for her to confirm it. But of course she did not; and how tiresome Molly was, standing there gasping and sobbing and repeating—” In this house—never should have thought it possible—all be murdered in our beds next.”

  “ Will you tell me what has happened, girl?” said Juliana, with more severity than she had ever yet addressed her maid.

  “Indeed, Miss, nobody knows yet what it is that’s happened, but all that’s certain is that the Frenchman went to his master’s room with his chocolate, all just as usual, this morning and drew the bed curtains and “—she paused with a deep, dramatic breath—” there was no one in the bed.”

  “No one in the bed?”

  “No, Miss. Monsieur the Duke has disappeared.”

  Juliana lay back on her pillows with an extraordinary sense of relief. Somehow she had expected Molly to say something quite different, she did not know what exactly, but she was glad to hear that all that had happened was that Monsieur le Due had disappeared.

  “He is sure to come back,” she said. “Probably he did not go to bed at all last night but set out on some adventure.”

  “Oh no, Miss, he went to bed most certainly, for the Frenchman put him to bed as usual, and such a work as it is, too, he tells us, having to rub cream into his face each night with his finger-tips to keep away the wrinkles, and the dressing table a litter of cosmetic jars, for all the world as though he were a lady; but there it is, he put him to bed and drew the curtains.”

  “He may have got up and dressed afterwards,” said Juliana. “It is what he would have done if he did not wish his movements to be known.” She was not shy of discussing this with her maid. Such escapades were recognized to be not infrequent amusements among idle young gentlemen.

  “But it’s not so,” said Molly, “for all his clothes are there in the room where the Frenchman—I never can get my tongue round his name—put them last night, he says, and all that the Monsieur put on, if he did get up and put them on, was his blue night-rail and the turban night-cap that he wears when he sits up in bed to do his embroidery, the nasty, lady-like creature, and his slippers and his sword and the candlestick that stands by his bed, that’s gone too, but everything else just as it should be. They have searched the house, every room, every nook and cranny, for there’s no knowing but that he might have come in drunken after a debauch, as you very properly suggested, Miss, and fallen asleep in any odd corner like the gentleman Bessie Pratt, of Mud Green, was maid to, who would be found sound asleep in the broom cupboard with his head in the dustpan after a night of it at the Saracen’s Head, but then, no gentleman, surely, not even a foreigner, could step down in the middle of the night to an inn, or anywhere else for that matter, in his bed gown and night-cap. No, he’s been carried clean off out of this very house by one as we know nothing of, the devil himself, maybe, and who’s to be the next, that’s what I want to know. If we can’t lie safe in our beds——”

  “Oh, Molly,” sighed Juliana in weariness.

  “There, my poor lamb, my pretty, I’ve frightened you, and you who are to be betrothed to the French duke, if all they say downstairs is true, but it’s good riddance to bad foreign rubbish, that’s what I say, and why shouldn’t a young lady marry a countryman of her own when there’s many a one that would eat their hearts out for her. And to think that you haven’t had your chocolate yet!”

  She bustled off to get it, while Juliana, with closed eyes, wondered what dreams she had had last night that had seemed so much more important than even the events of this morning. But she could remember nothing since she had gone to bed the previous night, after saying good-night to them all in the drawing-room as usual. She remembered how she had thought that Monsieur le Due had been looking at her and Lucian as they had said good-night. So that was the last time she had seen him, for she did not think he would come back—no, she was sure he would not come back.

  There was a tap at the door and Lucian came in with the chocolate.

  “I met Molly on the stairs,” he said, “and told her I would bring it you and see how you are. She seemed concerned for you. Has this news upset you?”

  He leaned against the foot of the bed and looked at her with brilliant, smiling eyes. He was paler than usual yet he seemed positively to exude life and vigour. He had evidently dressed in haste and his unpowdered hair fell loose on his shoulders. Juliana wished he would not look at her so piercingly. She felt even more tired than she had done before and, just as he had handed her the chocolate, she had shivered unaccountably so that she was still quite cold.

  “I do not feel upset,” she said. “It sounds very mysterious, but no doubt there is some quite simple explanation.”

  “No doubt,” said Lucian.

  “Have they searched the grounds yet?”

  “They are now doing so. Two discoveries have already been made. The candlestick, which was missing from his bedside this morning, has been found near the garden door by the drawing-room, and the maids say it was unfastened this morning, though they declare it was left locked last night. Also, one of his bedroom slippers has just been discovered in the little summer-house down in the park. It certainly appears that he left the house of his own free will some time last night or this morning. I have given orders for the lake to be dragged next. It will be done this morning.”

  Juliana, who was leaning back with her eyes shut again, had a sudden clear glimpse of the face of Monsieur le Due, small, as though it were at some distance, with the eyes not quite closed and a thin, red rim showing beneath the lids. She wondered if that was what people looked like who were drowned.

  “You are not drinking your chocolate,” said Lucian.

  She tried to do so but it required a great deal of effort. He sat beside her on the bed and insisted on feeding her with the spoon. Again she felt that strange shrinking as he laid his hand on her shoulder to steady her while she took the chocolate, and she thought he must have felt her shiver. But he did not seem to notice it, and was talking and laughing merrily over his success as a sick nurse. She began to laugh, too. Every time that she opened her mouth to speak, he popped the spoon in and she had to close it. It became a contest between them, but Lucian was always too quick for her. That strange, foolish feeling had disappeared. Lucian was just the same as always; how silly it had been of her to fancy there was anything different in him. He did not care at all about the disappearance of one who was supposed to be his friend; but she had not expected him to care. It was she who had not been herself, but she was now, as she listened to Lucian’s nonsense.

  “It is annoying of Saint Aumerle to disappear at this moment,” he said. “I am in love, and that is no mood to make me relish a search for his insignificant person.”

  “In love! Oh, brother, with whom?”

  “Why, with a girl not half as lovely as yourself, and yet she is a little like you, too, and yet she is so different it is inconceivable that she should be in the same world—maybe she is not.”

  “Maybe you talk the strangest stuff, brother. Who is this girl, and are you very much in love?”

  “Oh, so-so. Not enough to keep me awake at nights, yet enough to dream of her when I am asleep. To tell you the truth, that is all I know of her, for she is an odd, capricious hussy who laughs in my face when I am dreaming, and will not favour me with a meeting when I am awake (though by your good offices I had almost secured one). Oh, she is a pert piece, and yet she is a little in love with me, too, for she will not let me alone.”

  “But who is she, Lucian? Pray tell me more of her.”

  “Who is she? I often wonder. Open your mouth again.”

  “But where did you first meet her?”

  “Sister, you should not speak with a silver spoo
n in your mouth—it is one of the first principles of etiquette. Well, I began to meet her in my boyhood, and my first clear recollection of doing so was when I happened to be sitting on a throne of carved ivory and gold, watching the tortures of my enemies. At that moment they were that sheep-faced fool we had then as a tutor, Mr. Tebbit, and George, with whom I had just quarrelled, and the tortures had reached a peculiarly satisfactory point when I turned to see that tiresome and ridiculous child beside me. She was crowned also, and on a throne, but knowing that it was in play, and thus turning these elaborate executions to play also, and preventing my belief and pleasure in them.”

  “Oh, but what was it? A dream?”

  “What should it be but a dream? There was little else I cared to do, those long hours in the library, either awake or asleep. Tebbit slept sound enough I can tell you. Oh, my dreams were a sufficient occupation! I was an Oriental despot, a Roman emperor, a mediaeval magician. I indulged in pleasures and powers that raised me above the race of men and made me equal to the gods of the old fables.

  “And into these gorgeous and horrible fancies, fancies that would quicken into apparent life and reality in my sleep, there would frequently appear this incongruous and absurd little figure in skimpy skirts up to her knees and untidy hair flying loose—and she would smile at me and all my dream company with an engaging air of friendliness, though I assure you it did not engage me then. Open your mouth.”

  “But, brother, I cannot understand. Surely you must have met her before you dreamed of her?”

  “Why should I not dream of her first and hope to meet her afterwards? There is good authority for it in the fables. Your mouth, sister, your mouth! That is right—a round, red O. Now the chocolate is going down your throat—I can see you swallow it. What a tiny throat it is, and the little hollow at the base—you should keep the chocolate there to fill it out.”

  “Dear Lucian, tell me some more. Why did she not engage you then?”

  “What—a brat of a girl, an interloper, a nuisance! Her occasional intrusion into my most unbridled orgies was as disconcerting—to me—as the other untimely entry I told you of.

  “But she would not comprehend that, though a dream, it was all quite serious; in fact, she would not comprehend that it was my dream and not hers. She treated me as an equal companion in an enchanting game, where I had been accustomed to reign as sole despot of my semi-infernal kingdom.

  “Imagine what the hussy once had the impudence to tell me! ’ I make up stories to myself, too,’” said she, ’ but mine are not as good as yours, and there is so little time at school.’

  “At school! At school She compared my voluptuous and terrible imaginings, forsooth, to the stories that a school-girl makes up to herself!”

  “Then, brother, when did you begin to like her?”

  “Oh, how can I tell? She improved, for as I grew older she did, too. Besides, she provided a contrast that began to be piquant. She was like a raw and not very ripe apple in the midst of a banquet of cloying delicacies. Why will you not open your mouth?”

  “Indeed, I can take no more.”

  “So? It is a pity. I was going to tell you one thing more.”

  “Oh, tell me, tell me.”

  “Not till you open your mouth. That is well. It was when I was still a boy. I had fallen sound asleep over my books at the library table and thought that she came softly in and sat down beside me and showed me a silly game on paper that one played by making noughts and crosses, and we laughed over it a great deal, and then she put her arm round my neck and told me to wake up and finish my lessons and run out of doors.

  “I awoke with a start after that and could hardly believe I had not just seen a dark blue skirt whisk out through the door. It reminded me of another brat who once crept in with a cake for me under her apron. Do you remember her?”

  “Yes, brother.”

  “But she,” continued Lucian, “had stood at the door, afraid, and had I not turned and called her she would have stolen out again without speaking to me. This other girl was different.”

  “Did you—prefer her—for being so?”

  Juliana wished she could have prevented those breaks in her voice. It was no wonder that Lucian was smiling so at her. Did he despise her for her former cowardice, her present jealousy?

  “I think I am learning to prefer my sweet sister to any creature in the world,” he said, “but you must remember that this other creature has the advantage not to be in the world.”

  He was holding out the last spoonful of chocolate and now popped it into her mouth. Her lips closed on it, her laughing eyes raised to Lucian, reassured by the tenderness of his tones rather than his words. If Lucian had thought her a coward he did not appear to like her the worse for it now.

  His fantastic talk of dreams had distracted her mind completely for the moment from the business of Monsieur le Due. Her glance wandered round the room as her brother stood up with the empty cup in his hand; it fell on the brocade shoes she had worn last night, now left carelessly on the rose and grey rug by the dressing table. They arrested her attention and she remained looking fixedly at them. For an instant’s flash she thought she had seen them, not dropped there on their sides on the rug, but placed primly together on a dark floor lit up by a patch of moonlight, and she seemed to hear Monsieur le Due’s high, monotonous voice.

  “What has frightened you?” asked Lucian, and then in the same breath—” Oh, you are looking at your little green and silver shoes! They have a dissipated air, have they not— positively exhausted! What were they doing last night do you think, while you were asleep? Perhaps they were dancing downstairs in the library, all by themselves, in a round, silver pool of moonlight. Or do you think they were even more adventurous and tripped out into the park, down to the summer-house, and saw what it was that happened to my friend Saint Aumerle? Or have they been farther yet, over a hundred years away?”

  Juliana could not help laughing, though the reference to the Duke shocked her, since all was still dark and uncertain about him. But it was like Lucian to make fun of everything; he never minded making himself appear ridiculous and even childish.

  “How absurd, brother!” she said. “You have talked all this morning as though we lived in a fairy tale!”

  “And how do you know we do not?” he demanded. “Is not life sometimes a fairy tale, a very fantastic fairy tale? I assure you that in my better moments I find it so.”

  When, by Lord Chidleigh’s orders, they dragged the lake that morning, they found the body of the French duke, in his blue night-rail, with a heavy flag-stone tied round his neck. In his throat was a small wound caused by a sword or knife, or other sharp instrument, which the doctor declared to have been the cause of his death. The flag-stone was soon identified as coming from a pile of flags which had been laid together near the summer-house for the purpose of paving the paths in one of the formal gardens.

  Lucian had not told Juliana the full extent of the discoveries in the summer-house. A small marble table in it had been overturned, and there were a few blood-stains on the bench that went round the walls. It was Lucian who discovered these stains, which had been hidden by a cushion. The grass just outside the door had been pressed and flattened as though some heavy weight had been dragged across it not many hours since.

  It seemed certain that Monsieur de Saint Aumerle had left the house by the garden door near the drawing-room, some time after he had retired to bed, and that he had gone down to the summer-house in the park in his bed-gown and slippers, leaving the candle with its tinder-box near the door for his return. It was at once assumed that he had had an assignation with some village or gipsy girl, that being the only circumstance that could conceivably take a man out of his bed in the middle of the night to go down to a summer-house in the park. The general opinion was that he had there been stabbed, either by some jealous rival or, perhaps, by the lady herself who may have failed to appreciate the quality of his attentions. The murderer must then have conceived
the crude idea of concealing the body by throwing it into the lake, and conveyed it there either by carrying it or trundling it in a wheel-barrow. There were certainly marks of a wheel-barrow on the ground between the summer-house and the lake, but this did not help very much as barrows had been wheeled all over the grounds just lately during the reconstruction of the formal garden.

  Lord Chidleigh at once instituted the strictest search for the murderer. It was considered significant that a small band of gipsies who had camped for the last week on Tindsley Common, about three miles off, had departed early that morning, none knew where. It was known that one of them was a strikingly beautiful girl. But how had Monsieur met her? His habits were secluded and Chrysole absolutely forswore any negotiations on his part of this delicate matter. Further, he refused to believe that his master would have taken the trouble to walk down to the summer-house for any girl on earth. But in their turn, everybody else refused to believe him.

  “We knew he could not really be like that,” they said. “It was a mere affectation. No man stays in bed and does embroidery for choice. Depend upon it, it was a cloak to hide his real concerns. Yes. I always thought——”

  When Lady 3hidleigh told Juliana that the Duke’s body had been found in the lake, the girl said stupidly, “No, it is not so. He was not drowned.”

  Lady Chidleigh agreed that he had probably been killed first, but asked what she had meant by saying that. Juliana, however, could only say that she did not know, but she was sure it was not so. And she began to cry. Her mother was concerned, and wondered if she could possibly have felt any attachment to her cold and indifferent suitor, or if it were merely her missed opportunities of grandeur that had upset her. But Juliana, with her hands pressed against her tired and smarting eyelids, saw only a pair of green and silver shoes placed close together in a patch of moonlight that shone on the dark floor.