The last familiar face Mary saw as she left Monte Carlo was that of the
hunchbacked dwarf at St. Roman. He was hobbling away from his pitch to
go home, and from the window of the closed landau Mary waved a hand to
him as the horses trotted by.
"Who was that?" Eve asked, leaning forward, then throwing herself back
as if she wished not to be seen.
"Only the dwarf beggar at the bridge," Mary answered.
"Oh, only a beggar!" Lady Dauntrey settled herself comfortably again.
The voice of the waves came up with the wind in a ceaseless moan, and
for the first time Mary hated the sound of the sea. It was like the
wailing of a great company of mourning women. Far above the road,
Roquebrune clock struck seven. It was scarcely night, but darkness
loomed ahead like a black wall, toward which the horses hurried yet
could never pass. In this wall glittered square peepholes of light,
which were windows of houses at Cap Martin--Angelo's house among others.
When with a turn of the road the bright spots vanished, Mary was
overwhelmed with homesickness, such pangs as children suffer. She did
not wish to be in the Villa Mirasole, but leaving it behind in the
darkness and travelling toward the unknown made her feel that she was
shut out in the night alone, far from Vanno, far from all that could
remind her of him.
"Remember eternal!" She thought with a superstitious pang of the tablet
and of the parted lovers.
Marie had "seen pigeons," and said that they meant sorrow and
separation. The girl had written of this to Vanno, only a few hours ago,
in a spirit of laughter, but she had been young and happy then. Now she
felt deserted and old. She was not glad to have the Dauntreys with her.
She would rather have been going alone to the Château Lontana. Eve's
figure sitting beside her, Lord Dauntrey's opposite, with his back to
the horses, looked black against blackness. They spoke seldom and they
were like dreams of the night, which had taken life. Mary remembered how
she had dreamed of Eve, and how glad she had been to wake. But now she
was awake and Eve was by her side. It was like a garden game the big
girls had made her play when she was the youngest child in the
convent-school. They had wound long, thick strings round her waist and
ankles; then they had made her run, and when she had gone a certain
distance they drew her back, slowly and firmly, or with violence,
according to their mood. This had been a torture to the imaginative
little girl, and Sister Marie-des-Anges, seeing it one day, ordered the
older children to stop, and the game had been forbidden. This benevolent
edict had given Mary a warm sense of being protected; but there was no
one to protect her now.
If the girl had been happy, she could have laughed at these memories,
coming up in connection with the two silent, dark figures of the man and
woman she was to shelter in her house; but in her perplexity their
presence made the desolation of the night more desolate.
Mentone streets were empty and the shops shut: only hotel and villa
windows were bright. The carriage passed through the town, and beyond
the last houses of Garavan the night was blacker than before.
They came to the Italian frontier, broken off from the rich slopes of
France by the deep Gorge of St. Louis, resonant with singing water. Mary
knew how by daylight the mountains of Italy loomed cold in contrast to
the warm cultivation of the western hills, bare as a series of stone
shelves at an antiquary's, spread with a few rags of faded green to show
off some sparsely scattered jewels. But in the night she could see
nothing, and could hear only the moan of sea and wind, mingled strangely
with the high complaining voice of hidden streams. On the mountainside
twinkled the feeble lights of Grimaldi, a poor rock-town once the
fortress house of Monaco's princes; and after another plunge into the
darkness of folding hills and olive groves they passed La Mortola. Not
more than a mile or two beyond the village and the sleeping garden,
Mary, with her face always at the window, said:
"Now we are coming to the Château Lontana!"
Eve and her husband both leaned forward, straining their eyes to make
out a height rising above the road, and the black shape of a house with
towers which seemed cut in the purple curtain of the sky. There were
black nunlike forms of cypress trees also, which stood grouped together
as if looking down thoughtfully from their tall slopes, and old,
wide-branching olives were filmy as a gray cloud in the darkness.
The Monte Carlo coachman evidently knew the place, for he slowed down
without being asked, and stopped in front of a large double gate of iron
between glimmering columns of pale stone. This was the entrance from the
road; but an avenue ran steeply up the rocky slope, twisting in zigzags
to reach the house. Jumping down from his box the man tried the gates,
expecting to find them locked, but they yielded to a stout push, and a
moment later he drove in. The horses, tired from breasting the wind on
many hills, went up the incline slowly, the wheels grating over small
stones on the ill-kept drive. Mary thought the noise of hoofs and wheels
so sharp and unmistakable that she looked to see some eye of light
suddenly open in the black face of the house. It was not yet nine
o'clock, and the caretaker could hardly have gone to bed. But there was
no sign of life; and the dark château among crowding trees might have
stood in silence and desolation for a century of sleep, like the lost
palace of the enchanted beauty.
A flight of marble steps went up to a colonnaded terrace, and Lord
Dauntrey mounted first to ring the bell.
"Perhaps the caretaker has given herself a holiday, and we can't get in
after all," he gloomily suggested. His wife did not answer; but Mary,
sitting beside the silent woman, heard her breathing fast. This betrayal
of anxiety seemed tragic. "Poor Lady Dauntrey!" the girl said to herself
in pity. "Here is her one hope of shelter. She's afraid it may fail."
And Mary tried to be glad that whatever happened it was in her power to
help the unlucky couple.
The carriage lights gilded the marble stairs, showing cracks and a
green, mossy growth under each shallow step. There was a heavy fragrance
of datura flowers, sickly sweet, that mingled with a scent of moss and
mouldy, unkempt growing things, touching the imagination like the
perfume of sad memories.
Lord Dauntrey rang again and again the old-fashioned bell whose
insistent voice could be heard jangling through the house. At last, when
he had rung four times, a wavering light suddenly streaked with yellow
the glass crescent above the door. There was a noise of a chair falling,
a bolt slipping back, a key turning rustily; and through these sounds of
life the shrill yap, yap of a little dog cut like sharp crackings of a
whip. The door opened a few inches, and the yellow light haloed a dark
head.
"Who is it?" a woman's voice called out in bad Italian, through the
shrill bursts of barking.
Lord Dauntrey could neither speak nor understand Italian; but already
Mary was halfway up the steps. "It is the Signorina Grant, of whom you
have heard," she explained. "You know from the lawyer that Captain
Hannaford has given his place to me?"
"Ah, the Signorina at last!" exclaimed the voice, with an accent of joy.
"Be thou still, little ten times devil!" The door opened wide, and a
gust of wind would have blown out the flame of the lamp in the woman's
hand had she not hastily stepped back into the shelter of a vestibule,
at the same time squeezing the miniature wolf-hound under her arm, so
that its yap was crushed into a stricken rumble.
Lady Dauntrey now began to ascend the steps, and the coachman, anxious
to get home, alertly dismounted the two pieces of baggage. He brought
the small trunk and big dressing-bag up to the door, plumping them down
on the marble floor of the terrace so noisily that the dog again
convulsed itself with rage. The price the man asked was paid without
haggling; he and Lord Dauntrey between them dragged Mary's possessions
into the vestibule, and the door was shut. As the girl heard the sounds
of hoofs trotting gayly away, she would have given much to call after
the driver, to spring into the carriage and let herself be taken
anywhere, if only she need not stay with the Dauntreys and the yapping
dog in this desolate house, which was a dead man's gift to her.
Her spirits faintly revived when the lamplight had shown her the richly
coloured dark face of the woman with the dog. It was a young face,
though too full and heavy chinned to be girlish: and from under an
untidy crown of black hair two great yellow-brown eyes, faithful and
lustrous as a spaniel's, gazed with eager curiosity at the Signorina. If
the caretaker of the Château Lontana had been old and forbidding Mary's
cup of misery would have overflowed, but the pleased smile of this
red-lipped, full-bosomed, healthy creature gave light and warmth to the
house.
"Welcome, Signorina," she said in the guttural Italian of one accustomed
to a _patois_. "It has been very lonely here since the poor Captain
ceased to come. The lawyer from Ventimiglia said perhaps the new
mistress would arrive and surprise me one day, but the time seemed long,
alone with the dog. Will the Signorina and her friends come in? Think
nothing of the baggage. I am strong and can carry it without help. What
a pity I did not know of the good fortune this night would bring! There
is nothing to eat but a little black bread, cheese, and lettuce with
oil: to drink, only coffee or some rough red wine of the country, and
fires nowhere except in the kitchen. But I have pleased myself by
keeping the best rooms prepared as well as I could. Fires are laid in
three of the fireplaces, and three beds can be ready when a warming pan
full of hot embers has been passed between the sheets. It was the poor,
good Captain himself who told me to be prepared. He too seemed to think
that the Signorina might come with friends, and talked to me of it the
last day he was here."
As the woman rambled on, she led the way into a large hall opening out
from the vestibule. In the dim light cast by her lamp the high
ceilinged, white-walled, sparsely furnished space was dreary as a
snow-cave, and as cold; but Mary could see that by day there might be
possibilities of stately charm. She forced herself to praise the hall in
order to please the caretaker, whose eyes begged some word of
admiration.
"Oh, there are many beautiful rooms, Signorina," the Italian woman said.
"In sunlight they are lovely. To-morrow, if the Signorina permits, I
will show her all over the house, and tell her what things the Captain
liked best. But night is the bad time here. I do not know how I should
get on were it not for my dog, which the Captain allowed me to bring
down from my home in the mountains."
"Ask her if she speaks or understands French," said Eve.
Mary obeyed.
"Ah, Signorina, unfortunately I have but little French. It was all I
could do to learn Italian well. With us up there, we have a _patois_,
but the curé of our village makes the children study Italian. Afterward
we are glad. Such French as we have, we pick up later by ourselves."
"Where is your village?" Mary inquired.
"Very far away, Signorina, and very high up, where the snows lie always
in winter. It is a town built on a rock where in oldest days once stood
a temple of Baal. Our houses are very ancient, and they stand back to
back like soldiers fighting. The Signorina cannot conceive how wild we
are there. And the dogs are wild, too. They often run away from the
village when they are young and go to live with the wolves, farther up
the mountain. Then they regret sometimes; and when the smell of cooking
mounts on the wind, the poor animals creep down as far as they dare, to
sit on a ridge of rock where they can see people moving below. But they
can never come back, for the wolves would be angry and run after, to
kill them in revenge. Look at my dog, how like a baby wolf he is. All
our dogs are born with the faces of wolves. I have an aunt at home who
is a witch. The whole village fears her, for she curses those she hates,
and works wicked spells. Me she hates worst of all because I refused to
live in her house when I was young. I had to run away at last with my
dog, or she would have murdered me, in spite of the curé. He sent me to
a woman he knew, who had been cook in this house. When I came she had
died, and the place was already sold. But I met the Captain and he
engaged me to be caretaker."
"He told me," Mary said, "that your name was Apollonia, and that you
were honest and good."
"He spoke to me of the Signorina, too," answered the young woman. "He
described her as very beautiful, like a saint or an angel, with kind,
sweet eyes, and hair like the sun in a mist. That is why, when I saw the
Signorina to-night, I knew she must be the right one. If it had been the
other lady who came first to the house, I should not have believed she
was the Captain's Signorina. It is very strange, but her eyes are the
eyes of my aunt who is the witch. I hope the Signorina will not be
offended with me for saying this of her friend, for I can not help
remarking it. My aunt is not old, though older than that Signora. And
she is handsome; but of course the Signora is much handsomer and grander
than a poor peasant woman."
"I think," said Mary, willing to change the subject, "that we had better
see our rooms, and have the fires lighted. Give my friends the best
there is--two rooms adjoining, and I will take what is left. We shall
stay with you a few days--perhaps more. We can't settle our plans quite
yet."
"The longer, the better for me, Signorina," Apollonia replied. She
smiled at her new mistress; but when her look turned to Lady Dauntrey
she secretly "made horns" with the first and last fingers of the hand
that held the dog; the sign which Italians and Arabs use to keep off the
evil eye.
She opened doors, holding her smoky lamp high, and with the air of a
hospitable queen (such as most Italian peasant women have), she showed
to the Signorina the splendours of her domain. They were, to be sure,
but tarnished and dilapidated splendours, nevertheless Mary began to
understand even in the gloom of night how these great rooms, peopled now
with shadows, had appealed to Hannaford. She could guess what the view
from windows and garden must be like, and had she come to the house in
happier circumstances she would have looked forward to seeing
everything in morning sunshine. As it was, she wished for one thing
only: for the moment when she could be alone, to think, and write her
letter to Vanno.
Mary and her guests refused food but accepted coffee, made quickly and
well by Apollonia. They drank from cracked or chipped but beautiful cups
of old Sèvres, and shivered in an immense Empire dining-room, while
Apollonia lighted fires and warmed beds in the "best rooms" upstairs,
which they had not yet mustered courage to visit. Lady Dauntrey became
more cheerful over the hot coffee, and atoned to her husband for past
taunts and reproaches by a manner of almost deprecating affection. Mary
had never seen her so soft and sweet. She was a different woman, and
even her expression was changed. The girl could not help remembering
what Apollonia had said about the "witch-eyes"; but she thought the
Italian would not have found a likeness to the terrible aunt could she
now have seen Lady Dauntrey for the first time. Mary was glad of the
change for Lord Dauntrey's sake, because, though he was weak, perhaps
unworthy, she pitied him with a pity akin to pain.
When Apollonia came back to say that all was ready for the night, the
three followed her up the wide and beautifully designed marble staircase
which led to the first and second stories.
There was no question of choice in apportioning the three "best rooms,"
prepared for occupation, because two adjoined each other, with a door
between; and these suggested themselves naturally for Lord and Lady
Dauntrey. The third and smaller room was at a distance, and had only one
door, which opened to the hall; but there was a great French window
leading to a balcony and evidently looking southward, over the slopes of
the garden down to the sea.
"This was the room the poor Captain loved," Apollonia announced;
"therefore it is right the Signorina should have it for her own. He
hoped she might choose it, I know. Sometimes he spent a night here,
toward the last. Perhaps he can see the Signorina at this moment, and if
he can, I am sure he is very happy."
Had there been a possibility of changing from that room to any other in
the house, even the worst and meanest, Mary would have changed gladly;
but she could not take one of the rooms she had given the Dauntreys; and
to order another got ready would have seemed heartless to Apollonia,
whose quick intuition would have told her the reason.
Mary resigned herself to sleep in the room where Hannaford had thought
and dreamed of her.
* * * * * * *
When they had bidden their hostess good-night, and their doors were
locked, Lord and Lady Dauntrey stood together for a moment at one of the
long windows of the larger room. This Eve had taken, and on the bed with
the high, carved walnut back lay the night-dress borrowed from Mary.
Through torn clouds a few stars glittered like coins in a gashed purse,
and very far away to the west, at the end of all things visible, was a
faint, ghostly gleam which meant the dazzling lights of the Casino and
its terrace, at Monte Carlo.
Lady Dauntrey rested against her husband's shoulder, as if his
companionship were dear and essential to her. She had done this often
before their marriage and shortly after; but not once for many months
now. It seemed to him that he could remember every one of the caresses
which had bound him to her as with ropes from which he could not, and
did not desire to, escape. A long time ago in South Africa, when she had
first made him love her, she had been pleased when he called her his
"beautiful tigress." She had kissed him for the name, and said that of
all animals she adored tigers; that she believed she had been a tigress
once; and when they were rich--as they would be some time--he must buy
her a splendid tiger skin to lie on. This very day the tigress thought
of her had been in his heart, but not as a loving fancy. She had seemed
to him cruel and terrible as a hungry animal despising her mate because
he fails to bring her prey as food. He had said to himself in shame and
desolation of soul that she had never cared for him really, but only for
what he might give; and because he had disappointed her, giving little,
she hated and would perhaps leave him, to better herself. Now the touch
of her shoulder against his breast, and the tired, childlike tucking of
her head into his neck, warmed his blood that had run sluggishly and
cold as the blood of a prisoner in a cell. New courage flowed back to
his heart. Vague thoughts of suicide flapped away like night-birds with
the coming of light. If Eve cared for him still he had the incentive to
live.
"That place seems to haunt us," she murmured, as they stood together in
seeming love and need of one another. He knew what she meant. Their eyes
were on the distant glimmer of Monte Carlo. "Its influence follows us."
"From here the lights look pure white, like the lights of some
mysterious paradise, seen far off across the sea," Dauntrey said.
"No," his wife answered; "to me they're more like the light that comes
out of graves at night time; the strange, phosphorescent light of
decayed, dead things. We've done with that lure light forever, haven't
we?"
"I suppose so!" A sigh of yearning and regret heaved his breast, under
the nestling head. "If you're going to be kind to me again, Eve, I can
do anything and go anywhere."
"Good!" she said in the soft, purring tone which had made him think of
her as a beautiful tigress, when their life together lay before them. "I
_will_ be kind, very kind, if only you'll prove that you really love me.
You never have proved it yet."
"Haven't I? I thought I had, often--to-day, even----"
"Oh! don't let's go back to that. I can't bear to think of it. We
weren't ourselves--either of us. If I was cross, forgive me, dear."
"I deserved it all," he said, pressing her against his side. "Now you're
making me a man again."
"You must be a man--a strong man--if you want me to love you as I once
did, and as I _can_ love. Oh, and I can--I can love! You don't know yet
how much."
"What shall I have to do?" he asked. "Do you mean anything in
particular, or----"
"Yes, I mean something in particular."
"I'll do it, darling, whatever it may be. I feel the strength."
She wrapped him in her arms and clung to him, talking softly, with her
lips against his hollowed cheek, so that her breath fluttered softly
past it with each half-whispered word.
"That's a promise," she said. "I won't let you break it. But you won't
want to break it. I'll love you so much--enough to make up for
everything. Enough to keep you from remembering those lights over
there."
"They're nothing to me," he assured her. "I don't believe I'll ever want
to see them again. There are other places where I can do better than at
Monte Carlo. Baccarat's a safer game than roulette or trente et
quarante, I begin to think, and I could adapt the system----"
"Never mind the system now! You'll have to go back to Monte to-morrow to
get your eighty pounds, and a cheque cashed for Mary Grant--a big one,
I hope. Then you can redeem some of our things. One trunk for each of us
will be enough, for I want to go a long way off and travel quickly."
"Where do you want to go?" Dauntrey asked, indulgently, in a dreaming
voice, as if her love and the force of her fierce vitality were
hypnotizing him. He spoke as if he were so near happiness again that he
would gladly go anywhere, to find it once more with Eve.
"I haven't made up my mind about that yet."
"Oh, I thought you had! You always make up your mind so quickly when you
want anything."
"I've been putting my mind to what we must do first, before we go away.
There _is_ a thing to do; and it will have to be done soon, or it will
be too late."
Her tone was suddenly sharp as a knife rubbed against steel.
"What thing?" her husband asked, startled out of his dream.
Instantly she softened again and clung to him and round him more closely
than before. "Darling," she said, "you've just told me that you'd do
anything for my sake."
"So I would. So I will."
"Sometimes men are ready to do anything except the one thing the women
who love them ask them to do."
"It won't be like that with me, Eve. Try me and see."
"I will. I want you to go with me far, far away, where we've never been
before, to make a new life, and belong only to each other. But before
we go, so that we can be happy and not wretched, miserable beggars,
we--not you alone--but we two together must do what will give us money
to start all over again. And listen to this, dearest: it will be a thing
which will draw us so closely together that we'll be one in body and
soul forever and ever, in this world and the next."
"You almost frighten me," Dauntrey said.
"Don't be frightened," she implored, her mouth close to his. "If you're
frightened, you'll fail me--and then it's all over between us."
"All over between us!"
"Yes, because if you fail, you break your solemn promise, and you're not
the man I thought you were--not the man I can love. I'll go out of your
life and find some one who is stronger, because I've got too much love
in me to waste."
"What do you want me to do?"
"To find a plan, at once--to-morrow, after you come back--for us to get
Mary Grant's jewels and all the money you bring to her from Monte Carlo,
and then to go safely away--together, where we can be happy."
"Good God!" He broke loose from her clinging arms, and pushed her off.
"You want me to murder the girl!"
They faced one another in the dreary glimmer of the two candles. For an
instant neither spoke, but each could hear the other breathing in the
semi-darkness.
"What a horrible thought!" Eve flung herself upon him again and caught
his hands, which had been hot as they clasped hers but had suddenly
grown cold, as a stone is chilled when the sun leaves it in shadow. He
did not snatch his hands away, but they gave no answering pressure. He
bowed his head like a man who is very tired, having come to the end of
his strength.
"Have we sunk to this?" he groaned under his breath, yet Eve caught the
words.
"Wait! You've misunderstood me," she reassured him eagerly. "I don't
want you to--take her life. Only--we must have money, and those jewels
of hers--she doesn't need them. We do. And we're _meant_ to have them,
else why should we have been thrown in her way just at the right moment?
Why should we be now in this lonely house, no one knowing that we're
here? It's Destiny. I saw that when she spoke about the jewel-case.
Didn't you guess what was in my mind?"
"I was past guessing," Dauntrey said. "I had enough to think of without
putting problems to myself."
"It's lucky my brain kept awake. That was why I proposed driving here
instead of coming by train, where somebody might have seen us: that was
why I wouldn't call for the luggage at Mrs. Winter's."
"Do you dream for a moment that if--if there were any inquiry the police
wouldn't be able find out we were in this thing?" Dauntrey asked in
bitter impatience. "How like a woman!"
"I'm not so simple. If we're clever, there won't be an inquiry. And even
if there were any accident, we should be all right. There'd be nothing
against us. And we'd be out of the way before the fuss began. They
couldn't even get at us as witnesses."
"What's in your mind? You talk as if you had some definite plan."
"I have. But it depends on you. Surely with all your knowledge, you know
a drug that can temporarily weaken a person's will? There must be
something that girl could take which would make her willing to follow
our suggestions? She's in such a nervous condition, a sudden illness
would seem quite natural. Once she was in the right state, I could
persuade her to give us her jewels and some cheque. Then we wouldn't let
the grass grow under our feet. We'd be off--and in no danger."
"There's no drug of that sort," said Dauntrey.
"I don't believe you. Oh, say there is! I don't know what I may be
driven to do, with my own hands, if you refuse to help me."
"I tell you there's no such thing--that isn't dangerous to life."
She caught at this admission. "What is the thing in your mind?" she
whispered tensely.
"A plant that grows in this garden," he admitted sullenly. "You must
have smelt the perfume when we drove in."
"Datura! I remember. The Kaffirs make a decoction of it in South Africa.
They think it's a love potion."
"Yes, that's what I mean. There are two ways of using it. One way it's a
deadly poison. The other makes those who take the stuff stupid. But even
so it's dangerous. I've seen one or two victims of that experiment who
didn't come back to their senses, but remained dull and melancholy,
caring for nothing and nobody."
"That's a risk we must run," said Eve, with the briskness of hope and a
decision arrived at. "It's simply providential!"
"Good Lord, what a word to use!"
"It slipped out. I suppose, after all, I'm conventional. Providence and
destiny are the same. Think how everything has worked up to this. Even
the datura in the garden!"
"It can stay there!" Dauntrey blurted out, savagely.
With a hand on each of his shoulders, she held herself off from her
husband at arm's length, looking him straight in the eyes with her
level, compelling gaze.
"I swear to you," she said slowly, giving each word its full value,
"that if you won't do this for me, I will kill Mary Grant, and go away
with her jewels, to lead my own life without you. If you choose you can
denounce me. But in no other way, unless you help, and so save her life,
can you prevent me from keeping my word. I love you now, and if you're
brave enough to get fortune and a new start for us at this small risk,
I'll love you all the rest of my life as no woman ever loved a man. If
not----"
"I'll do it!" he answered, the blood streaming up to his face.
She laced her fingers round his neck and drew him against her bosom. For
a moment they stood thus, very still, clasped in each other's arms, her
lips pressed to his.