'Qui, la moitié et la plus belle moitié de la vie est cachée à
l'homme qui n'a pas aimé avec passion.'--STENDHAL.
'Madrid la antesala del cielo.'
_Spanish Saying._
I
Above, close to the window of a high narrow room which had once been the
Catholic Lord Wantley's oratory, and which was next to the bedroom
always occupied by Penelope herself, sat in the darkness Mrs. Mote.
The window directly overlooked the flagged terrace, the leafy scented
gardens, and the sea, and there were members of Mrs. Robinson's
household who considered it highly unfitting that an apartment so
pleasantly situated should be the 'own room' of the plain, sturdy little
woman who, after having been Penelope Wantley's devoted and skilful
nurse for close on twenty years, had been promoted on her nursling's
marriage to be her less skilful but equally devoted maid.
Mrs. Mote had never been what we are wont to call a pleasant woman. She
was over thirty when she had first entered Lord and Lady Wantley's
service as nurse to their only child, and as the years had gone on her
temper had not improved, and her manner had not become more
conciliating. Even in the days when Penelope had been a nervous,
highly-strung little girl, Lady Wantley had had much to bear from
'Motey,' as the nurse had been early named by the child. Very feminine,
under a hard, unprepossessing exterior which recalled that of Noah's
wife in Penelope's old-fashioned Noah's ark, Motey instinctively
disliked all those women--and, alas! there were many such, below and
above stairs--who were more attractive than herself.
Lady Wantley, beautiful, beloved, and enjoying, even among many of the
servant's own sort, a reputation for austere goodness and spiritual
perfection, was for long years the object of poor Motey's special
aversion. Singularly reticent, and taking pride in 'keeping herself to
herself,' the woman never betrayed her feelings, or rather she did so in
such small and intangible ways as were never suspected by the person
most closely concerned. Lady Wantley recognised the woman's undoubted
devotion to the child to whom she was herself so devoted, and she simply
regarded Mrs. Mote's sullen though never disrespectful behaviour to
herself as one of those unfortunate peculiarities of manner and temper
which often accompany sterling worth. Lord Wantley had been so far
old-fashioned that he disliked going anywhere without his wife, and the
mother had felt great solace to leave her daughter in such sure hands;
but she had sacrificed excellent maids of her own, and innumerable
under-servants, to the nurse's peculiar temper and irritability.
There had been a moment, Penelope being then about seventeen, when Mrs.
Mote's supremacy had trembled in the balance. The trusted nurse had
played a certain part in the girl's first love affair, acting with a
secretiveness, a lack of proper confidence in her master and mistress,
which had made them both extremely displeased and angry, and there had
been some question as to whether she should remain in their service.
Mrs. Mote never forgot having overheard a short conversation between the
headstrong girl and her mother. 'If you tell me it must be so, I will
give up David Winfrith,' Penelope had declared, sobbing bitterly the
while; 'but if you send Motey away I will throw myself into the sea!'
All this was now, however, ancient history. Mrs. Mote had been forgiven
her plunge into vicarious romance, and a day had come, not, however,
till after Lord Wantley's death, when Penelope's mother had admitted to
herself that perhaps Motey had been more clear-sighted than herself. In
any case, the old nurse had firmly established her position as a member
of the family. She and Lady Wantley had grown old together, and even
before Penelope's marriage the servant had learnt to regard her mistress
not only with a certain affection, but with what she had before been
unwilling to give her--namely, real respect. To her master she had
always been warmly attached, and she mourned him sincerely, being
pathetically moved when she learnt that he had left her, as 'a token of
regard and gratitude,' the sum of five hundred pounds.
The phrase had touched her more than the money had done. Motey, as are
so many servants, was lavishly generous, and she had helped with her
legacy several worthless relations of her own to start small businesses
which invariably failed. These losses, however, she bore with great
philosophy. Her home was wherever her darling, her 'young lady,' her
'ma'am,' happened to be, and her circle that of the family with whose
fortunes hers had now been bound up for so many years.
Mrs. Robinson's faithful affection for this old servant was one of the
best traits in a somewhat capricious if generous character, the more so
that the maid by no means always approved of even her mistress's most
innocent actions and associates. Thus, she had first felt a rough
contempt, and later a fierce dislike, of poor Melancthon Robinson.
There were two people, both men, whom Motey would have been willing to
see more often with her mistress.
The one was David Winfrith, who, if now a successful, almost it might be
said a famous man, had played a rather inglorious part in Penelope's
first love affair. The other was young Lord Wantley, of whom the old
nurse had constituted herself the champion in the days when her master
and mistress had merely regarded the presence of the nervous, sensitive
boy as an unpleasant duty.
Mrs. Mote's liking for these two young men was completely subordinate to
her love for her nursling; she would cheerfully have seen either of them
undergo the most unpleasant ordeal had Penelope thereby been saved the
smallest pain or hurt. In fact, it was because she well knew how stanch
a friend Winfrith could be, and how useful, in perhaps a slightly
whimsical way, Lord Wantley had more than once proved himself in his
cousin's service, that she would have preferred to see more of these two
and less of certain others.
Ah, those others! There had always been a side of Mrs. Robinson's nature
which thirsted for sentimental adventure, and yet of the three women who
in their several ways loved her supremely--her mother, Cecily Wake, and
the old nurse--only the last was really aware of this craving for
romantic encounter. Mrs. Mote had too often found herself compelled to
stand inactive in the wings of the stage on which her mistress was wont
to take part in mimic, but none the less dangerous, combat, for her to
remain ignorant of many things, not only unsuspected, but in a sense
unthinkable, by either the austere mother or the girl friend.
Perhaps this blindness in those who yet loved her well was owing to the
fact that, in the ordinary sense of the term, Penelope was no flirt.
Indeed, those among her friends who belonged to a society which, if
over-civilized, is perhaps the more ready to extend a large measure of
sympathy to those of its number who feel an overmastering impulse to
revert, in affairs of the heart, to primitive nature, regarded the
beautiful widow as singularly free from the temptations with which they
were themselves so sorely beset.
Doubtless because she was herself so physically perfect, physical
perfection held for Penelope none of that potent, beckoning appeal it so
often holds for even the most refined and intelligent women. Rather had
she always been attracted, tempted, in a certain sense conquered, by the
souls of those with whom her passion for romance brought her into
temporary relation. Even as a girl she had disdained easy conquest, and
at all times she had been, when dealing with men, as a skilful musician
who only cares to play on the finest instruments. Often she was
surprised and disturbed, even made indignant, both by the harmonies and
by the discords she thus produced; and sometimes, again, she made a
mistake concerning the quality of the human instrument under her hand.
II
As Mrs. Mote sat by her open window, her eyes seeking to distinguish
among those walking on the terrace below the upright, graceful form of
her mistress, she deliberately let her thoughts wander back to certain
passages in her own and Mrs. Robinson's joint lives. In moments of
danger we recall our hairbreadth escapes with a certain complacency;
they induce a sense of sometimes false security, and just now this old
woman, who loved Penelope so dearly, felt very much afraid.
The memory of two episodes came to still her fears. Though both long
past, perhaps forgotten by Penelope, to Mrs. Mote they returned to-night
with strange, uncomfortable vividness.
The hero of the one had been a Frenchman, of the other a Spaniard.
As for the Frenchman, Motey thought of him with a certain kindness, and
even with regret, though he, too, as she put it to herself, had 'given
her a good fright.' The meeting between the Comte de Lucque and Mrs.
Robinson had taken place not very long after Melancthon Robinson's
death, in that enchanted borderland which seems at once Switzerland and
Italy.
The French lad--he was little more--was stranded there in search of
health, and Penelope had soon felt for him that pity which, while so
little akin to love, so often induces love in the creature pitied. She
allowed, nay, encouraged, him to be her companion on long painting
expeditions, and he soon made his way through, as others had done before
him, to the outer ramparts of her heart.
For a while she had found him charming, at once so full of surprising
naïvetés and of strange, ardent enthusiasms; so utterly unlike the
younger Englishman of her acquaintance and differing also greatly from
the Frenchmen she had known.
Brought up between a widowed mother and a monk tutor, the young Count
was in some ways as ignorant and as enthusiastic as must have been that
ancestor of his who started with St. Louis from Aiguesmortes, bound for
Jerusalem. His father had been killed in the great charge of the
Cuirassiers at the Battle of Reichofen, and Penelope discovered that he
above all things wished to live and to become strong, in order that he
might take a part in 'La Revanche,' that fantasy which played so great a
rôle in the imagination of those Frenchmen belonging to his generation.
But when one evening Mrs. Robinson asked suddenly, 'Motey, how would you
like to see me become a French Countess?' the nurse had not taken the
question as put seriously, as, indeed, it had not been. Still, even the
old servant, who regarded the fact of any man's being made what she
quaintly called 'uncomfortable' by her mistress as a small,
well-merited revenge for all the indignities heaped by his sex on
hers--even Motey felt sorry for the Count when the inevitable day of
parting came.
At first, Penelope read with some attention the long, closely-written
letters which reached her day by day with faithful regularity, but there
came a time when she was absorbed in the details of a small exhibition
of the very latest manifestations of French art, and the Count's letters
were scarcely looked at before they were thrown aside. Then, suddenly he
made abrupt and most unlooked-for intrusion into Mrs. Robinson's life,
at a time when the old nurse was accustomed to expect freedom from
Penelope's studies in sentiment--that is, during the few weeks of the
years which were always spent by Mrs. Robinson working hard in the
studio of some great Paris artist.
Penelope had known how to organize her working life very intelligently;
she so timed her visits to Paris as to arrange with a French painter,
who was, like herself, what the unkind would call a wealthy amateur, to
take over his flat, his studio, and his servants.
During nine happy weeks each spring Mrs. Robinson lived the busy
Bohemian life which she loved, and which, she thought, suited her so
well; but Mrs. Mote was never neglected, or, at least, never allowed
herself to feel so, and occasionally her mistress found her a useful, if
over-vigilant, chaperon. Mrs. Mote was on very good terms with the
French servants with whom she was thus each year thrown into contact.
Their easy gaiety beguiled even her grim ill-temper, and, fortunately,
she never conceived the dimmest suspicion of the fact that they were all
firmly persuaded that she was the humble, but none the less authentic,
'mère de madame'!
Now in the spring following her stay in Switzerland, not many days after
she had settled down to work in Paris, Mrs. Robinson desired the
excellent _maître d'hôtel_ to inform Mrs. Mote that she was awaited in
the studio. 'Motey, you remember the French count we met in Switzerland
last year?' Before giving the maid time to answer, she continued: 'Well,
I heard from him this morning. He asks me to go and see him. He says he
is very ill, and I want you to come with me.' Penelope spoke in the
hurried way usual to her when moved by real feeling.
Then, when the two were seated side by side in one of the comfortable,
shabby, open French cabs, of which even Mrs. Mote recognized the charm,
Penelope added suddenly: 'Motey--you don't think--do you doubt he is
really ill? It would be a shabby trick----'
'All gentlemen, as far as I'm aware, ma'am, do shabby tricks sometimes.
There's that saying, "All's fair in love and war"; it's very
advantageous to them. I don't suppose the Count's heard it, though; he
knew very little English, poor young fellow!' But Motey might have
spoken more strongly had she realized how very passive was to be on this
occasion her rôle of duenna.
At last the fiacre stopped opposite a narrow door let into a high blank
wall forming the side of one of those lonely quiet streets, almost
ghostly in their sunny stillness, which may yet be found in certain
quarters of modern Paris. Penelope gave her companion the choice of
waiting for her in the carriage or of walking up and down. Mrs. Mote did
not remonstrate with her mistress; she simply and sulkily expressed
great distrust of Paris cabmen in general, and her preference for the
pavement in particular. Then, with some misgiving, she saw Mrs. Robinson
ring the bell. The door in the wall swung back, framing a green lawn,
edged with bushes of blossoming lilac, against which Penelope's white
serge gown was silhouetted for a brief moment, before the bright vision
was shut out.
First walking, then standing, on the other side of the street, finally
actually sitting on the edge of the pavement, but not before she had
assured herself even in the midst of her perturbation of spirit that it
was spotlessly clean, the old nurse waited during what seemed to her an
eternity of time, and went through what was certainly an agony of
fright.
The worst kind of fear is unreasoning. Mrs. Mote's imagination conjured
up every horror; and nothing but the curious lack of initiative which
seems common to those who have lived in servitude held her back from
doing something undoubtedly foolish.
At last, when she was making up her mind to something very desperate
indeed, though what form this desperate something should take she could
not determine, there fell on her ears, coming nearer and nearer, the
sound of deep sobbing. A few moments later the little green door,
opening slowly, revealed two figures, that of Mrs. Robinson, pale and
moved, but otherwise looking much as usual, and that of a stout,
middle-aged woman, dressed in black, who, crying bitterly, clung to her,
seeming loth to let her go.
Very gently, and not till they were actually standing on the pavement
outside the open door, did Penelope disengage herself from the trembling
hands which sought to keep her. Motey did not understand the words, 'Mon
pauvre enfant, il vous aime tant! Vous reviendrez demain, n'est ce pas,
madame?' but she understood enough to say no word of her long waiting,
to give voice to no grumbling, as she and her mistress walked slowly
down the sunny street, after having seen the little green door shut
behind the short, homely figure, lacking all dignity save that of grief.
In those days, as Mrs. Mote, sitting up there remembering in the
darkness, recalled with bitterness, Mrs. Robinson had had no confidante
but her old nurse, and Penelope had instantly begun pouring out, as was
her wont, the tale of all that had happened in the hour she had been
away.
'Oh, Motey, that is his poor mother! It is so horribly sad. He is her
only child. Her husband was killed in the Franco-Prussian War when she
was quite a young woman, and she has given up her whole life to him. Now
the poor fellow is dying'--Penelope shuddered--'and I have promised to
go and see him every day till he does die.'
III
It was with no feeling of pity that Mrs. Mote now turned in her own mind
to the second episode.
A journey to Madrid in search of pictured dons and high hidalgos had led
Mrs. Robinson to make the acquaintance of a Spanish gentleman, a certain
Don José Moricada; and the old Englishwoman, with her healthy contempt
of extravagance of behaviour and language, could now smile grimly as she
evoked the striking individuality of the man who had given her the worst
quarter of an hour she had ever known.
At the time of their first meeting Don José had seemed to Penelope to
embody in his single person all the qualities which may be supposed to
have animated the noble models whose good fortune it was to be
immortalized by Velasquez; indeed, he ultimately proved himself
possessed to quite an inconvenient degree of the passion and living
fervour which the great artist, who was of all painters Penelope's most
admired master, could so subtly convey.
With restrained ardour the Don had placed himself, almost at their first
meeting, at the beautiful Englishwoman's disposal, and Penelope had
seldom met with a more intelligent and unobtrusive cicerone. At his
bidding the heavy doors of old Madrid mansions, embowered in gardens,
and hidden behind gates which had never opened even to the most
courteous of strangers, swung back, revealing treasures hitherto
jealously hidden from the foreign lover of Spanish art. Together they
had journeyed to the Escurial in leisurely old-world fashion, driving
along the arid roads and stony tracks so often traversed at mule gallop
by Philip of Arragon; and the mouldering courts of the great
death-haunted palace through which her Spanish gallant led Mrs. Robinson
had rarely seen the passage of a better contrasted couple.
Softer hours were spent in the deserted scented gardens of Buen Retiro,
and not once did the Spaniard imply by word or gesture that he expected
his companion's assent to the significant Spanish proverb, _Dame ye
darte he_ (Give to me, and I will give to thee).
Penelope had never enjoyed a more delicate and inconsequent romance, or
a more delightful interlude in what was then a life overfull of unsought
pleasures and of interests sprung upon it. In those days Mrs. Robinson
had not found herself. She was even then still tasting, with a certain
tearfulness, the joys of complete freedom, and those who always lie in
wait, even if innocently, to profit by such freedoms, soon called her
insistently back to England.
They had an abettor in Mrs. Mote, whose long-suffering love of her
mistress had seldom been more tried than during the sojourn in Spain,
spent by the maid in gloomy hotel solitude, or, more unpleasing still,
in company where she felt herself regarded by the Spaniard as an
intolerable and somewhat grotesque duenna, and by her mistress as a
bore, to be endured for kindness' sake. But the boredom of her old
nurse's companionship was not one which Penelope often felt called upon
to share with her indefatigable cavalier, and, as there came a time when
Don José and Mrs. Robinson seemed to the old nurse to be scarcely ever
apart, Mrs. Mote often felt both angry and lonely.
Suddenly Penelope grew tired, not of Spain, but of Madrid, perhaps also
of her Spanish friend, especially when she discovered, with annoyance,
that he had arranged, if not to accompany her, at least to travel on
the same days as herself first to Toledo, and thence to Seville. Also
something else had happened which had proved very distasteful to Mrs.
Robinson.
The English Ambassador, an old friend of her parents, and a man who, as
he had begun by reminding Penelope at the outset of their detestable
conversation, was almost old enough to be her grandfather, had called on
Mrs. Robinson and said a word of caution.
The word was carefully chosen; for the old gentleman was not only a
diplomatist, but he had lived in Spain so many years that he had caught
some of the Spanish elusiveness of language and courtesy of phrase.
Penelope, with reddening cheek, had at first made the mistake of
affecting to misunderstand him. Then, with British bluntness, he had
spoken out. 'Spaniards are not Englishmen, my dear young lady. You met
your new friend at my house, and so I feel a certain added
responsibility. Of course, I know you have been absolutely discreet;
still, I feel the time has come when I should warn you. These Spanish
fellows when in love sometimes give a lot of trouble.' He had jerked the
sentence out, angry with her, angrier perhaps with himself.
The day before Mrs. Robinson was leaving Madrid, and not, as she
somewhat coldly informed Don José Moricada, for Toledo, there was a
question of one last expedition.
On the outskirts of the town, in an old house reputed to have been at
one time the country residence of that French Ambassador, Monsieur de
Villars, whose wife had left so vivid an account of seventeenth-century
Madrid, were to be seen a magnificent collection of paintings and
studies by Goya. According to tradition, they had been painted during
the enchanted period of the Don Juanesque artist's love passages with
the Duchess of Alba, and very early in her acquaintance with the
Spaniard Penelope had expressed a strong desire to see work done by the
great painter under such romantic and unusual circumstances. And Don
José had been at considerable pains to obtain the absent owner's
permission. His request had been acceded to only after a long delay, and
at a moment when Mrs. Robinson had become weary both of Madrid and of
her Spanish gallant's company.
It seemed, however, churlish to refuse to avail herself of a favour
obtained with so much difficulty. For awhile she had hesitated; not only
did the warning of the old Ambassador still sound most unpleasantly in
her ears, but of late there had come something less restrained, more
ardent, in the attitude of the Spaniard, proving only too significantly
how right the old Englishman had been. But even were she to return
another year to Madrid, the opportunity of visiting this curious old
house and its, to her, most notable contents, was not likely to recur.
The appointment for the visit to Los Francias was therefore made and
kept; but when Don José, himself driving the splendid English horses of
which he was so proud, called at the hotel for Mrs. Robinson, he found,
to his angry astonishment, that her old nurse, the maid he so disliked,
was to be of the company.
During the drive, Mrs. Mote, in high good-humour at her approaching
release from Madrid, noticed with satisfaction that her mistress's
Spanish friend seemed preoccupied and gloomy, though Mrs. Robinson's
high spirits and apparent pleasure in the picturesque streets and byways
they passed through might well have proved infectious.
At last Los Francias was reached; and after walking through deserted,
scented gardens, where Nature was disregarding, with triumphant success,
the Bourbon formality of myrtle hedges, marble fountains, and sunk
parterres, the ill-assorted trio found themselves being ushered by a
man-servant, with great ceremony, into a large vestibule situated in the
centre of a house recalling rather a French château than a Spanish
country-house.
In answer to a muttered word from the Spaniard, Mrs. Mote heard her
mistress answer decidedly: 'My maid would much prefer to come with us
than to stay here with a man of whose language she doesn't know a word.
Besides, this is _not_ the last time. I hope to come back some day, and
you will surely visit England.'
On hearing these words Don José had turned and looked at his beautiful
companion with a curious gleam in his small, narrow-lidded eyes, and a
foreboding had come to the old servant.
The high rooms, opening the one into the other, still contained shabby
pieces of fine old French furniture, of which the faded gilding and
moth-eaten tapestries contrasted oddly with the vivid, strangely living
paintings which seemed ready to leap from the walls above them. The
heavy stillness, the utter emptiness, of the great salons oddly affected
the old Englishwoman, walking behind the other two; she felt a vague
misgiving, and was more than ever glad to remember that in a few days
Mrs. Robinson would have left Madrid.
Suddenly, when strolling through the largest, and apparently the last of
the whole suite of rooms, Mrs. Mote missed her mistress and Don José.
Had they gone forward or turned back? She looked round her, utterly
bewildered, then spied in the wall a narrow aperture to which admission
was apparently given by a hinged panel, hung, as was the rest of the
salon, with red brocade.
This, then, was where and how the other two had disappeared. She felt
relieved, even a little ashamed of her unreasoning fear.
For a moment she hesitated, then stepped through the aperture into a
narrow corridor, shaped like an S, and characteristic--but Motey knew
nothing of this--of French château architecture; for these curiously
narrow passages, tucked away in the thickness of the wall, form a link
between the state rooms of many a great palace and the 'little
apartments' arranged for their owner's daily and familiar use.
The inner twist of the S-shaped corridor was quite dark, but very soon
Mrs. Mote found that the passage terminated with an ordinary door,
through which, the upper half being glazed, she saw her mistress and the
Spaniard engaged in an apparently very animated conversation.
The room in which stood the two she sought was almost ludicrously unlike
those to which it was so closely linked by the passage in which the
onlooker was standing. Perhaps the present owner of the old house, or
more probably his wife, had found the Goyas oppressive company, for here
no pictures hung on brocaded walls; instead, the round, domed room,
lighted only from above, was lined with a gay modern wall-paper, of
which the design simulated a fruitful vine, trained against green
trellis-work. Modern French basket furniture, the worse for wear, was
arranged about a circular marble fountain, which, let into the tiled
floor, must have afforded coolness on the hottest day.
Memories of former occupants, and of another age, were conjured up by a
First Empire table, pushed back against the wall; and opposite the door
behind which the old nurse stood peering was the entrance, wide open, to
a darkened room, while just inside this room Mrs. Mote was surprised to
see a curious sign of actual occupancy--a small, spider-legged table, on
which stood a decanter of white wine, a plate of chocolate cakes, and a
gold bowl full of roses.
But these things were rather remembered later, for at the time the old
woman's whole attention was centred on her mistress and the latter's
companion. Mrs. Robinson, her back turned to the darkened room beyond,
was standing by a slender marble pillar, rimmed at the top with a
tarnished gilt railing; a long grey silk cloak and boat-shaped hat,
covered with white ostrich feathers, accentuated her tall slenderness,
for in these early days of widowhood Penelope was exquisitely,
miraculously slender. With head bent and eyes cast down, she seemed to
be listening, embarrassed and ashamed, to Don José Moricada. One arm and
hand, the latter holding a glove, rested on the marble pillar, and her
whole figure, if instinct with proud submissiveness, breathed angry,
embarrassed endurance.
As for the Spaniard, always sober of gesture, his arms folded across his
breast in the dignified fashion first taught to short men by Napoleon,
he seemed to be pouring out a torrent of eager, impassioned words, every
sentence emphasized by an imperious glance from the bright dark eyes,
which, as Mrs. Mote did not fail to remind herself, had always inspired
her with distrust.
The unseen spectator of the singular scene also divined the
protestations, the entreaties, the reproaches, which were being uttered
in a language of which she could not understand one word.
For a few moments she felt pity, even a certain measure of sympathy for
the man. To her thinking--and Mrs. Mote had her own ideas about most
matters--Penelope had brought this torrent of words and reproaches on
herself; but when the old nurse heard the voice of the Spaniard become
more threatening and less appealing, when she saw Mrs. Robinson suddenly
turn and face him, her head thrown back, her blue eyes wide open with
something even Motey had never seen in them before--for till that day
Penelope and Fear had never met--then the onlooker felt the lesson had
indeed lasted long enough, and that, even at the risk of angering her
mistress, the time had come when she should interfere. Her hand sought
and found the handle of the door. She turned and twisted it this way and
that, but the door remained fast, and suddenly she realized that
Penelope was a prisoner.
In this primitive, but none the less potent, way had the Spaniard made
himself, in one sense at least, master of the situation--the old eternal
situation between the man pursuing and the woman fleeing.
Caring little whether she was now seen or not, Mrs. Mote pressed her
face closely to the glass pane. She looked at the lithe sinewy figure of
Penelope's companion with a curiously altered feeling; a great sinking
of the heart had taken the place of the pity and contempt of only a
moment before.
For awhile neither Penelope nor Don José saw the face behind the door.
Mrs. Robinson had turned away, and had begun walking slowly round the
domed hall, her companion following her, but keeping his distance. At
last, when passing for the second time the open door leading to the
darkened room beyond, she had looked up, uttered an exclamation of angry
disgust, and had slackened her footsteps, while he, quickening his, had
decreased the space between them....
When, in later life, Penelope unwillingly recalled the scene, her memory
preferred to dwell on the grotesque rather than on the sinister side of
the episode. But at the moment of ordeal--ah, then her whole being
became very literally absorbed in supplication to the dead two who when
living had never failed her: her father and Melancthon Robinson.
They may have been permitted to respond, or perhaps a more explicable
cause may have brought about a revival of pride and good feeling in the
Spanish gentleman; for when there came release it seemed as if Mrs. Mote
was the unwitting _dea ex machina_.
The two, moving within panther and doe wise, both saw, simultaneously,
the plain, homely face of Mrs. Robinson's old nurse staring in upon
them, and the sight, affording the woman infinite comfort and courage,
seemed to withdraw all power from the man, for very slowly, with
apparent reluctance, Don José Moricada turned on his heel, and unlocked
the door.
The maid did not reply to the rebuke, uttered in a low tone, 'Oh, Motey,
we've been waiting for you such a long time.' Instead, she turned to the
Spaniard. 'My lady is tired, sir. Surely you've showed her enough by
now.'
He bent his head, silently opening again the glazed door and waiting for
them to pass through, as his only answer.
But Penelope's nerve had gone. She was clutching her old nurse's arm
with desperate tightening fingers. 'I can't go through there, Motey,
unless'--she spoke almost inaudibly--'unless you can make him walk
through first.'
Mrs. Mote was quite equal to the occasion. 'Will you please go on, sir?
My mistress is nervous of the dark passage.'
Again the Spaniard silently obeyed the old servant, and Penelope never
saw the look, full of passionate humiliation and dumb craving for
forgiveness, with which he uttered the words--though they brought vague
relief--explaining that he was leaving his groom to drive her and her
maid back to the hotel alone.
During the moments which followed, Mrs. Robinson, looking straight
before her, spoke much of indifferent matters, and pointed out to Mrs.
Mote many an interesting and characteristic sight by the roadside; but
both the speaker's knee and the hands clasped across it trembled
violently the while, and when they were at last safely back again in the
hotel, after Mrs. Robinson had said some gracious words to Don José
Moricada's English groom, and had given him more substantial tokens of
her gratitude for the many pleasant drives she had taken with his noble
master, a curious thing happened.
Having prepared the bath which had been her mistress's first order when
they found themselves in their own rooms, Motey, now quite her stolid
self again, on opening the sitting-room door, found her mistress engaged
in a strange occupation. Mrs. Robinson, still standing, was cutting the
long grey silk cloak, which she had been wearing but a moment before,
into a thousand narrow strips. The maid's work-basket, a survival of
Penelope's childhood--for it had been the little girl's first
birthday-gift to her nurse--had evidently provided the sharp cutting-out
scissors for the sacrifice.
To a woman who has done much needlework there is something dreadful,
unnatural, in the wanton destruction of a faithful garment, and Mrs.
Mote stood looking on, silent indeed, but breathing protest in every
line of her short figure. But Penelope, after a short glance, had at
once averted her eyes, and completed her task with what seemed to the
other a dreadful thoroughness.
Then the relentless scissors attacked the charming hat. Each long white
plume was quickly reduced to a heap of feathery atoms, and the
exquisitely plaited straw was slashed through and through. 'You can give
all the other things I have worn to-day to the chambermaid,' Mrs.
Robinson said quickly, 'and Motey--never, never speak of--of--our stay
here, in Madrid I mean, to me again. We shall leave to-night, not
to-morrow morning.'
And now, looking down below, seeing the moving figures pacing slowly all
together, then watching two of the shadowy forms detach themselves from
the rest, and wander off into the pine-wood, then back again, down the
steps which led to the lower moonlit terraces and so to the darker
sea-shore, Mrs. Mote felt full of vague fears and suspicions.
Again she felt as if she were standing behind a door, barred away from
her mistress. But, alas! this time it was Penelope who had turned the
key in the lock, Penelope pursuing rather than pursued, and longing for
the moment of surrender.