She nodded. "Yes, it depends. They are two separate periods. They have
nothing to do with each other. Which is long? Which is short? Even now
I cannot say."
She was silent for a minute, brooding. Then she said with a little
smile, "It is such a long time since I have talked with anyone--such a
long time! I do not apologize. You came to my shutter. You wished to
look through my window. And that is what you are always doing, is it
not? Pushing aside the shutter and looking through the window into the
truth of people's lives. If they will let you. And often if they will
not let you! It would be difficult to hide anything from you. You would
guess--and guess right."
Mr. Satterthwaite had an odd impulse to be perfectly sincere. "I am
sixty-nine," he said. "Everything I know of life I know at second hand.
Sometimes that is very bitter to me. And yet, because of it, I know a
good deal."
She nodded thoughtfully. "I know. Life is very strange. I cannot
imagine what it must be like to be that--always a looker-on."
Her tone was wondering. Mr. Satterthwaite smiled. "No, you would not
know. Your place is in the center of the stage. You will always be the
prima donna."
"What a curious thing to say."
"But I am right. Things have happened to you--will always happen to
you. Sometimes, I think, there have been tragic things. Is that so?"
Her eyes narrowed. She looked across at him.
"If you are here long, somebody will tell you of the English swimmer
who was drowned at the foot of this cliff. They will tell you how young
and strong he was, how handsome, and they will tell you that his young
wife looked down from the top of the cliff and saw him drowning."
"Yes, I have already heard that story."
"That man was my husband. This was his villa. He brought me out here
with him when I was eighteen, and a year later, he died--driven by the
surf on the black rocks, cut and bruised and mutilated, battered to
death."
Mr. Satterthwaite gave a shocked exclamation. She leaned forward, her
burning eyes focused on his face. "You spoke of a tragedy. Can you
imagine a greater tragedy than that? For a young wife, only a year
married, to stand helpless while the man she loved fought for his
life--and lost it--horribly."
"Terrible," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He spoke with real emotion.
"Terrible. I agree with you. Nothing in life could be so dreadful."
Suddenly she laughed. Her head went back. "You are wrong," she said.
"There is something more terrible. And that is for a young wife to
stand there and hope and long for her husband to drown."
"But, good God," cried Mr. Satterthwaite, "you don't mean--"
"Yes, I do. That's what it was really. I knelt there--knelt down on the
cliff and prayed. The Spanish servants thought I was praying for his
life to be saved. I wasn't. I was praying that I might wish him to be
spared. I was saying one thing over and over again, 'God, help me not
to wish him dead. God, help me not to wish him dead.' But it wasn't
any good. All the time I hoped--hoped--and my hope came true."
She was silent for a minute or two and then she said, very gently, in
quite a different voice, "That is a terrible thing, isn't it? It's the
sort of thing one can't forget. I was so terribly happy when I knew he
was really dead and couldn't come back to torture me any more."
"My child," said Mr. Satterthwaite, shocked.
"I know. I was too young to have that happen to me. Those things
should happen to one when one is older--when one is more prepared
for--for beastliness. Nobody knew, you know, what he was really like.
I thought he was wonderful when I first met him and was so happy and
proud when he asked me to marry him. But things went wrong almost at
once. He was angry with me--nothing I could do pleased him--and yet I
tried so hard. And then he began to like hurting me. And above all to
terrify me. That's what he enjoyed most. He thought out all sort of
things--dreadful things. I won't tell you. I suppose, really he must
have been a little mad. I was alone here, in his power, and cruelty
began to be his hobby." Her eyes widened and darkened. "The worst was
my baby. I was going to have a baby. Because of some of the things he
did to me--it was born dead. My little baby. I nearly died too--but I
didn't. I wished I had."
Mr. Satterthwaite made an inarticulate sound.
"And then I was delivered--in the way I've told you. Some girls who
were staying at the hotel dared him. That's how it happened. All the
Spaniards told him it was madness to risk the sea just there. But he
was very vain--he wanted to show off. And I--I saw him drown--and was
glad. God oughtn't to let such things happen."
Mr. Satterthwaite stretched out his little dry hand and took hers. She
squeezed it hard as a child might have done. The maturity had fallen
away from her face. He saw her without difficulty as she had been at
nineteen.
"At first it seemed too good to be true. The house was mine and I could
live in it. And no one could hurt me any more! I was an orphan, you
know, I had no near relations, no one to care what became of me. That
simplified things. I lived on here--in this villa--and it seemed like
heaven. Yes, like heaven. I've never been so happy since, and never
shall again. Just to wake up and know that everything was all right--no
pain, no terror, no wondering what he was going to do to me next. Yes,
it was heaven."