THE PHILTRE
"Going to give myself a holiday to-morrow, Ma, and take Miss Innes
skating on the Hotwells Lough," said Ninian when they were assembled at
their midday dinner. "Isn't that a good plan?"
Madam looked furtively first at him then at the girl, as though trying
to surprise the expression on both faces. "The question seems to me to
be--does Miss Innes think it a good plan?" said she.
Olwen thus appealed to was in her usual difficulty. She had learned that
Madam did not like her to say "No" to her son's invitations. On the
other hand, she was always very careful not to seem anxious to forsake
her duties and go off with the young man. It had lately become the rule
for them to go out together of an afternoon, since Madam still kept to
the house. The skating was, however, to be a whole day's expedition.
Added to the girl's doubts as to the propriety of spending so much time
in his society, was the distasteful memory of the thing she had found
that morning. She was diligently telling herself that it did not
matter. Why _should_ it matter? She had never thought highly of Mr.
Guyse. The knowledge that he had grossly slurred the truth, if he had
not actually lied, in his account to her of what had passed between
himself and Miss Martin was simply a conclusive proof that she had been
from the first right to distrust him, and that she must revert with him
to their former more distant terms, since he might and almost certainly
would misinterpret her present attitude of friendliness.
Friendliness! Of course it was nothing more. It could not be more.
The most cursory consideration of the facts sufficed to show how
impossible a thing it was that the impoverished young master of the Pele
should contemplate marriage with his mother's companion.
Rose Kendall had thirty thousand pounds. Though her first attempt at a
reconciliation had been coldly received, it was not likely that it would
be her last. She was probably glad that her discarded suitor had not
been ready to jump down her throat; but she would not, for that reason,
give up hope; and by degrees her efforts must be crowned with success.
To put it plainly, the Guyse family could not afford to let thirty
thousand pounds go a-begging.
This being understood, why should the knowledge of Ninian's treachery to
one woman deprive another of a day's pleasure in a life which could not
but be described as monotonous?
Rather did it insure her safety, since it must harden her heart against
the young scamp's nonsense.
These considerations all passed through the mind of Madam's companion as
she gently replied: "I think the expedition will take too long. We
should be too many hours absent."
"How did you intend to go, Nin?" asked Madam. "There's nowhere to put up
the horse."
"I know. But Miss Innes is some walker. My idea is to set out early
with a package of sandwiches and drive there, taking Ezra with us to
bring the horse back. We will skate for a couple of hours or so--I
should think that would be long enough--and then eat our lunch and walk
home. It is well inside ten miles, the roads are in good condition, and
if we start back about two we should get home to supper."
"That sounds feasible," said Madam, "and I could spare Miss Innes if she
likes to go."
Ninian looked at Olwen, and seeing her hesitation, insinuated what he
knew would be an inducement. "The Lough is only about half a mile from
the Roman Wall." said he. "There's a mile-castle close by."
"Oh! I have always wanted so much to see the Roman Wall!" cried Olwen
impetuously.
"And, please, Teacher, you might continue my education by instructing me
a little bit about it," put in the incorrigible meekly.
"Well, my dear, the decision rests with you," said Madam in an odd
voice.
Sunia was standing just behind her mistress's chair. As Olwen raised her
eyes to answer she encountered the soft gaze of the clear
coffee-coloured eyes.
She felt inclined to say straight out: "It is of no use your trying to
hypnotise me." That being impossible, she merely declared:
"I think I must stay at home and go on with my work in the library."
"Tell you what it is," said Ninian confidentially to Madam. "She's
afraid. She thinks that if she spends a whole day with me she'll
succumb to my fascinations; and from the bottom of her school-marm heart
she disapproves of me."
"Everything is feudal here at the Pele," was Olwen's instant retort.
"We even keep a court jester."
Madam laughed. "She's a match for you, Ninian."
"Is she?" said Ninian, his bold eyes fixed fully upon the girl.
Olwen did not change countenance, but she could not meet his look. His
previous words had had their intended effect. She was not going to
"funk," as she put it to herself.
"You will have plenty of time for the library; but the frost will not
keep," observed Madam.
"Then if you approve, Madam, I should like to go." Sunia let loose a
soft sigh of relief.
When Miss Innes entered her room that night she knew by the weird
perfume that the ayah had been at her divinations. The little pots
stood in the ashes, and a faint blue smoke, fragrant and making a
troubling appeal to the emotions, lingered on the air.
"Oh, Sunia, in mischief again!" said she, laughing, as she came in.
Sunia rose, in her lithe, soundless fashion, and stood gazing upon the
girl. "Change coming," she murmured. "Change in missee's life. A great
change." Her wide eyes were mournful, and she shook her head. "I not
see well this night," she remarked; a thing she usually said when her
incantations had not shown the desired result She fussed and petted the
girl beyond her wont that night, massaging her limbs, rubbing her feet
in anticipation of the next day's walk. She liked Olwen's little pink
feet, and often spoke in admiration of them. When at last the girl was
tucked up in bed, the ayah brought her a glass containing a small
draught of pale amber fluid.
"What's that?" said Olwen sharply.
"Something ole ayah want missee take," murmured the woman coaxingly.
She added that it was a tonic--a strengthening draught which would
invigorate her for the morrow's walk. Olwen was very sleepy, and
half-hypnotised by her toilet and by the mystic fragrance of the air.
Yet the sight of that little draught gave a shock to her pulses and put
her on her guard.
It was as though something or some one quite near whispered a word in
her ear--_philtre_!
Sunia had not said a word about Ninian, but she had seemed depressed, as
though she feared that things were not going right. That she should
prepare a love potion was by no means unlikely.
Not for worlds--not for anything that life might have to offer, would
Olwen drink it. Yet she felt that it would be wiser not to refuse it
openly.
"Thanks, ayah dear. Put it there. I am going to read my chapter, and
then I will drink it last thing before I go to sleep."
"Missee drink it now, I wash the glass."
"All right, I will. Get me a clean hanshif, please, out of my
drawer--one of those at the back--underneath."
The moment the woman's back was turned, as she bent her head to search
in the drawer, Olwen took up the glass resolutely. She felt afraid, but
knew she had but an instant in which to act. With steady hand she
poured the drug away into an earthen vase containing flowers which stood
upon her bed table. When Sunia turned, she was holding the empty glass
tilted against her lips. The single drop that passed them reminded her
of Chartreuse liqueur, which Mr. Holroyd had made her taste one New
Year's Eve. It was exquisite, but fiery.
When the woman had gone away she slipped out of bed and poured away the
tainted water from the flowers.
Owing to the nature of the stairs and the difficulty of carrying pails
up and down, each room had a kind of sink or semi-circular stone basin
in the outer wall for the reception of waste water. This enabled her to
dispose of the highly perfumed fluid, and to wash out the vase with
disinfectant. This done she lay down in bed, trembling.
Why should Sunia wish her to love Ninian? The only answer that rose to
her mind was too horrible for her to accept. The ayah had been
invariably good to her, invariably respectful. That she should be
seeking to compass her downfall was unthinkable. Yet what else could be
her object?
Olwen knew well that Sunia had the most exalted ideas of the rank and
station of her sahib, and of what was due to him in the way of a wife.
That she could deliberately wish him to marry his mother's companion was
preposterous. Then it must be true that she desired the girl to fall a
victim.
There came a sense of insecurity--of suspicion--of terror even. There
was something uncanny in this place, something unaccountable in these
people. She ought not to have remained. She ought to leave. It was no
place for her. Curled up in the downy softness of her bed, the
firelight flickering upon the thick curtained walls, and on the courses
of harsh, savage stone visible above them, she wondered how she dare
sleep in such a place. Misgivings thronged upon her mind--the warnings
she had received, the way in which Sunia spied upon her. The idea that
she was a prisoner in the Pele stole over her--a premonition that,
should she try to leave, they would prevent her.
After a while calmer thoughts succeeded. Such an idea as her captivity
was merely silly. For what reason, what conceivable reason, should the
Guyses have designs upon her, a young, harmless, powerless creature; but
one, as she reflected with satisfaction, who had a home and relatives to
back her.
Sunia was perhaps a little cracked, having been born with the traditions
of the ayah, trained for generations to wait upon, almost to venerate,
the conquering race. In her lonely, dull existence the coming of the
young girl had been an event. It might have slightly disturbed her
mental balance. Thinking back upon all Ninian's eccentricity, Olwen
could not recall a single word, a single look of his which had suggested
vicious desires. He had been impertinent, even rude--never offensive in
that other sense. He merely laughed at Sunia. Madam also, odd as she
was, had never seemed to her to be morally delinquent. Although the
confidence between them which her short illness had begun had not
continued since she was about again, still Olwen had the impression of
friendliness, of some amusement. She thought she could say without
conceit that Madam found her likeable.
By the time she fell asleep she was reproaching herself with folly.
Sunia and Sunia's tricks might be ignored. Ninian had in fact offered to
tell the woman to let her alone. She wished she had accepted the offer.
Her refusal was based partly upon the feeling that things might be
uncomfortable in the house were the ayah her enemy, and partly, she
owned it with shame, upon her own pleasure in being waited upon hand and
foot. Until this devoted service began she had no idea how much it
would appeal to her. So Spartan had been her upbringing that the mere
idea of personal attendance had a startling novelty. Now, after one
short month, she was beginning to wonder how she would get on without
Sunia's ministrations.
... Well, she had poured away the philtre! ...
... So that was all right! ...
She sank away into dreamland.
Next morning, when she and young Guyse met in the dining-room for
breakfast, his breezy, early morning manner made her ashamed of her
over-night panic. Something in Sunia's spells must, she thought, have
been responsible for such horrible thoughts.
Admitted that Ninian had minimised his own blame-worthiness where Lily
Martin was concerned--what had that to do with Olwen Innes? She had
assured him that it was no concern of hers.
In the days wherein Olwen looked back upon this phase in her life, she
wondered that she could have quieted her fears thus easily. At the time
there seemed so many other things to think about.
Ninian ground her skates beautifully, and as she was particular about
this, she had to watch the process. Then there was lunch to pack into
his rucksack, her own bad-weather coat to roll up and sling across her
back, various small things to arrange, before walking through the
courtyard and out across the Bull-drop, to where Ezra stood holding
Deloraine's head beside the dogcart.
Ezra was told to get up behind, the two young people settled themselves
comfortably, and off they spun, due south, striking after a couple of
miles a good road leading right across the fells.
The gay morning had made them both a little wild. They hardly talked a
word of sense all the way to the Lough.
Olwen had not expected to find this place so solitary. It was, she
thought, the most desolate spot she had ever seen. It lay in the lee of
a lofty, almost precipitous crag, standing up from the rolling fells in
dark ferocity. No human habitation was in sight anywhere along to the
horizon.
The road passed within a half-mile of the water, and at the nearest
point they stopped, possessed themselves of their skates and their
dinner, and dismissed Ezra.
The scramble over fawn-coloured tussocks of grass, with muddy ice
between, proved enough to warm all their blood. At the Lough's edge
Ninian adjusted first her skates, then his own. With a curt order to
her to wait till he returned, he went coursing all around the surface of
the ice, making sure of its trustworthiness. It was absolutely safe,
and he came rushing back, his eyes sparkling with the joy of the rapid
motion.
"Simply great," he said, "come along!"
In a moment she was up, and they were off together, hands crossed, feet
moving in unison, bodies swaying to the delight of it all. The ice was
like black armour, as Olwen said, fantastically smooth, except where at
the edges the withered reeds drooped their heads and made it lumpy here
and there.
They were like a couple of children, playing all kinds of silly tricks.
First they wrote each other's names with all kinds of flourishes. Then
they did figures of eight, following each other's line of marks within
an inch or two. Then rocking turns, and finally waltzing round and
round.
They had brought sticks with a view to the walk home, and presently
Ninian produced a little ball out of his pocket, and they played a kind
of hockey.
It seemed impossible that the morning should have slipped away so
imperceptibly. When Ninian proclaimed it to be lunch-time, Olwen could
not believe it.
Both were glowing with health and enjoyment as at last they came
reluctantly to the edge of the Lough, removed their skates, and looked
about for a good place in which to eat their lunch.