Читать книгу The Serpent In The Garden - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 11

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In the white villa above the Point des Sirènes, screened by its many trees, the green shutters were drawn and all was very still. The glare of the sun on the distant sparkling sea was almost intolerable. But the villa stood aloof and secretive, shielded from the glare. The mystery of it, of which the dwellers in Ste Marguérite were so well aware, seemed to be almost intensified by the light of day, as though a veil of solitude had been of set purpose wrapped about it.

The garden that immediately surrounded it was ablaze with flowers and loud with the hum of bees. Climbing roses and blossoming creepers were everywhere, trailing from pillars along the façade, smothering the porch. They were the embroidery on the veil. They helped to screen.

The slow deep murmur of the sea came up through the quiet pines almost like the sound of a requiem. Everywhere there hung a stillness, a hush, that seemed ominous.

And Peter, who had come deliberately to storm the citadel, found himself walking with wary steps, as though he feared to break a spell. The gate at the entrance had been locked, but he had found a vulnerable place in the surrounding wall and had climbed over without much difficulty. But now that he was actually inside, the sense of intrusion was strong upon him. He was by no means sure that Pierre would have countenanced that means of securing an entrance. He might have counselled a preliminary letter and a further three days of inactivity. But Peter had come to the end of his patience and he had no intention of postponing the venture any longer. He was burning to know how Gabrielle had fared in this place of sinister repute and he was determined to satisfy himself as to her welfare at least.

Approaching the portico, he stiffened a little and made his tread more pronounced. After all, they were related. He had a right to seek her out.

But when he reached the white door, with the green-shuttered windows on all sides, something that was vaguely uncanny made him pause. He stared at the black hanging bellpull and hesitated. It was so like a palace of enchantment—or had it become by some malison a prison?—that he could not bring himself without a definite effort to disturb its grim silence. He stood and listened, as one on the threshold of some tragic discovery. What did those white walls hide?

He raised his hand at length and pulled the dangling handle. A bell clanged somewhere in the house, not loudly, but with a deep, fateful sound. He glanced around at the shielding palms that stood like sentinels along the path by which he had come. But the last vague echoings of the bell died away, and neither from within nor without came there any answer. The silence fell again like an all-enveloping mantle, and again he heard the dirgelike wash of the tideless sea.

A curious sensation of unreality came upon Peter—a feeling that was mixed with awe. The whole place was an enigma—almost of the nature of a fantasy. He might have been dreaming the entire adventure. But here his staunch commonsense asserted itself. He remembered the three days of patience that had been imposed by Pierre, and with the memory his patience came to an end. He caught at the bellpull for the second time.

Again the melancholy notes resounded with a quivering resonance through the villa. It was like a monastic bell, solitary, persistent, somehow despairing. He was convinced beforehand that it would bring forth no response.

But in this he was wrong. Before the spell of silence had completely engulfed the place again there came from somewhere within a sound of shuffling feet. Their approach was deliberate, maddeningly so to his keyed-up senses, but he controlled his impatience, realizing that all semblance of impetuosity must be kept out of sight. He was a normal visitor, come upon a normal errand; and the detail of having climbed the wall to accomplish it must be thrust into the background. There must be nothing in the least headlong or unusual about him. He must be composed and wary, ready for any emergency.

He heard the scrape of bolts being withdrawn, and then the lifting of the latch. The door opened a few inches and a face peered forth. It was the face of an old old woman, and it looked as if it might have been made out of crumpled brown paper. The eyes were black and almost incredibly bright, like the eyes of a monkey. They travelled swiftly up and down him with a species of hostile inquisitiveness.

Peter hesitated momentarily, and then, feeling uncertain as to her nationality, spoke firmly in English. “I have called to see Miss Dermot. Is she at home?”

The beady eyes continued to run to and fro over him at baffling speed, but the mouth, sunken yet hard, remained uncompromisingly closed. He felt that in another moment the door might be shut in his face.

But having ventured so far, he had no intention of being sent empty away. He took out his pocketbook, extracted ten francs and a visiting card, and offered them with a smile. He noticed that during this operation the hostility gave place to another expression more favourable to his cause though scarcely more friendly. A clawlike hand came forth and received his offering, and with a brief nod the brown-faced old woman withdrew.

The door was left ajar, but a heavy curtain of oriental tapestry hung within, hiding the interior from any prying eyes. He remained in the portico where the odour of a thousand flowers, exotic, overpowering, seemed to crowd out all vitality from the air, leaving it languorous and unrefreshing.

Several minutes passed. He began to think himself forgotten, and had started a mental debate as to his next move when there came again the shuffling tread, and the folds of the curtain were pulled aside.

He saw the old woman against the shadows. She was beckoning to him imperiously. Without more ado he pushed open the door and entered.

She slithered behind him in her slippered feet and in a moment the door was shut again. He heard her shoot the bolts while he stood in what seemed to him almost complete darkness after the glare outside.

Then she brushed past him, drew back the curtain again the space of a foot or so and motioned to him to follow.

He did so, and as the curtain fell into place behind him he found himself in a dim, cool passage in which all light was filtered through green shutters. Again that feeling of unreality came upon him. It was as though he walked in a dream. The old woman moving in front was like a witch out of a fairy tale.

And then, suddenly it seemed, they were at the end of the passage, and she opened a door in the gloom. He caught a glimpse of the slats of sunlit shutters and heard again the secret murmuring of the sea. A few muffled words were spoken, and then his guide stood back, ushering him forward.

He entered a room that was filled with a green twilight, and it came to him with a sense of shock that it was like stepping into a grave. There was a vaultlike stillness in the atmosphere that smote him with a ghostly chill.

The door closed behind him, and he looked about him expectantly, half hoping that Gabrielle might move forward out of the shadows to greet him. But he was disappointed. No greeting reached him.

His eyes found and dwelt upon the only occupant of the room—a woman with a strange Madonnalike beauty who sat still in a great easy chair near one of the shuttered windows and looked at him with eyes of so startling an earnestness that they seemed to pierce through to his very soul.

She was the first to speak, and that after a considerable silence during which he sought in vain for words. For there was something of tragedy in that quiet room that demanded the most elemental simplicity. It was no moment for subterfuge or for the conventionalities of ordinary intercourse. It was to Peter as though he stood by a deathbed, and her voice, low and husky, seemed to proclaim the semblance as actual fact.

“So you have come!” she said. “I have been hoping—praying—that you might, though the chance seemed so small—so small. Ah well, I know now—now—that God answers prayer, if—if only one can pray hard enough.”

She paused, and he was aware of a hand held out to him—a trembling, uncertain hand. He bent swiftly and took it.

“You are—Peter Dunrobert,” she said, “—my Gabrielle’s cousin. Won’t you sit down so that we can talk?”

He found his voice. “You are Gabrielle’s mother,” he said, and took the chair beside her to which she motioned him. “She reached you safely, I hope?”

“Oh yes, she is with me.” She spoke in the same low voice; it was as if she feared the exertion of raising it. Her sunken eyes still searched his face. They held a look that stirred him to a deep compassion. “She told me about you, how kind you had been. He—the count—brought her straight here.”

“I’m glad of that,” said Peter with a touch of grimness.

She continued to watch him with a sort of mute entreaty. “I was taken ill,” she said. “I could not go to meet her as I had intended. He—Gaspare—went in my place. I had no one else to send. I did not know—I could not guess—that you would be there.”

It was as though she were pleading with him, fearing some harsh judgment, and striving to range him on her side.

“Of course not!” Peter said. “How could you know? It was really an odd coincidence.” He hesitated momentarily, and then, “I don’t suppose you remember me, do you?” he asked. “I saw you once—many years ago.”

“I do remember,” she said. “Your honest, wide-apart eyes—they made an impression upon me, though you were so small.”

“It’s a strange chance,” said Peter with more assurance, “that we should meet again like this.”

“Ah! I do not believe in chance.” Almost under her breath she answered him. “It isn’t chance that has sent you. I have been praying that you might come. I have been an unbeliever for years, but now—with the night drawing on—I am beginning to see—something that I have never seen before. Someone is holding up a light in the darkness. Someone is guiding me.” She paused with her hand to her heart. Then with obvious effort: “It was not chance that sent you to—my Gabrielle,” she said. “It was not chance that brought you here today.”

“It was not,” said Peter.

She laid her wasted hand upon his arm and a strange light shone in her eyes. “Oh, how good it is,” she said, “to speak once more with an honest English gentleman! Do you know you remind me somehow of—my husband?”

“I believe he was rather a wonderful man,” Peter said, not quite certain how to answer this.

Her hand pressed upon him. He could feel through his sleeve that it was burning. “Yes, he was wonderful,” she said. “He was more. He was safe—honourable. He gave me that which might have turned my world into a paradise. But in my blindness—my wickedness—I threw it all away. I chose instead a dream—an illusion, a shining bubble of emptiness. Well, that is all over.” Her beautiful face quivered for a moment, but she controlled it. “The chance will never be mine again—in this world. You know what I did and what I became. And I have been punished bitterly—bitterly.”

Some impulse he could not check moved Peter to ask: “Why did you never go back? Wouldn’t he—couldn’t he——” He broke off. “Oh, forgive me! I shouldn’t have said it.”

“You may say anything you like to me,” she said gently. “I didn’t go back because he died before I repented. After that, I felt more or less bound. There was my child. It would have meant destitution for her too. I had no near relatives. I could not ask my husband’s people for help.”

“If I’d only known!” Peter said impetuously.

“My dear boy, you were still a lad at school. Besides, it would have been impossible—utterly impossible.” But her eyes held gratitude none the less, and he thought he saw in them a gleam of tears. “No, I sowed tares instead of wheat, and it was just that I should reap my harvest.” Her hand slipped slowly from his arm. “I should not be saying this to you,” she said, “if I had only myself to think of.”

He bent towards her, for it seemed for an instant as if she were receding from him, growing shadowy amongst the shadows of the room. “I can help in some way,” he said. “Tell me how!”

She lay looking at him as though on the verge of exhaustion. “I don’t know—if you can,” she said, almost in a whisper. “But—there is no one else who could. You see, the time is so short—so very short. It is right that I should suffer. I deserve it, God knows. But—my one fear is—that my sin may be visited—upon her. That is my great dread now. If—that—were only taken away, I could die in peace—die gladly.”

“I see,” Peter said very gently.

In the silence he saw her throat working; she put her hand up to still it. “I tell myself”—her words were very faint; he had to stoop nearer to catch them—“that that is why you have been sent—to—to—perhaps to save her from evil. But am I right, I wonder? Or is it—just another of my blunders?”

The piteous question moved him deeply. All the strangeness of the situation had faded into insignificance beside the fact that he saw before him a woman who was very near to death and in great distress of mind. For there was no mistaking the nature of the shadow that overhung her. There was death in her face. He saw it clearly, and because of it he answered her instantly and swiftly, as he would have held water to one dying of thirst.

“I will do anything in my power to help you—anything whatever.”

“Ah!” She drew a sharp breath and flinched as if at a stab of pain. “How good you are! And you would keep your word. I can see that. Do you know she is here—here in the very midst of evil—and she has not seen it? She is untouched as yet. Her eyes have not been opened. She has not seen—the serpent in the garden.” A sudden shudder caught her, and she closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them again they were heavy with suffering. “She does not even know yet that I am leaving her. I have managed—somehow—to hide it from her. I am clinging on for her sake—because—when I am gone—there will be no one to protect her. Oh, do you understand how terribly afraid I am for her, and what it means to find someone—suddenly—who might help?”

“I think I do,” Peter said slowly. “But—she will have to be told—something. She can’t be left in ignorance, poor kid.”

“How naturally you say that!” The flicker of a smile crossed her drawn face. “But don’t you see how necessary it is for her to leave me? And do you imagine for one moment that she would do that if she knew?”

Peter gave her a very direct look. “I think you’ll find it difficult to get her to do that in any case,” he said.

She pressed her hands together. “But not impossible! That is where—perhaps—you can help if you really will. But you are so young. It makes it difficult.”

“Don’t forget I’m a sort of relation!” said Peter sturdily.

“I know.” She spoke gratefully. “And she likes you and trusts you. She believes that you were sent to meet her. I believe it too—though not by me.”

“I can partly explain that,” Peter said. “I am by way of being a journalist. I went to meet the boat at Calais, and she spoke to me as she came down the gangway. I saw that she was an inexperienced traveller and offered my help. The rest—followed.”

He paused, wondering if this explanation would suffice. She accepted it without question. “You were very good to her. She told me. And afterwards, when you reached Paris, I’m afraid Gaspare was rather suspicious and not too polite. He is like that. He jumped to the conclusion that you had come all the way from England with her, and she did not undeceive him. That I quite understood. He is very fiery and can be difficult at times. It was natural that she preferred to be with a countryman of her own.”

“But I suppose you told her,” Peter said, “that you had not sent me?”

She shook her head. “You will think me very deceitful, but I was convinced that you would follow her here. And so I simply said that there had been a misunderstanding.”

“And the count? What did you say to him?” asked Peter.

“He still thinks that you travelled with her from England. I had to leave it at that for her sake.” Again he saw the ghost of a smile in her eyes. “I don’t think that there was much harm in that, and it saved discussion.”

“It certainly simplifies things for me,” said Peter. “Do you think—if I apologize for any roughhouse language I may have used—he will admit me here as a family friend?”

“Would you apologize?” she said on a note of surprise.

“If there’s anything to be gained by it—certainly,” said Peter squarely.

He saw the tension gradually passing from her. She looked exhausted yet unutterably relieved. “What a help you are—already!” she said. “Of course I do not say that he would welcome you but I don’t think he would wish to appear unreasonable. I am sure he would like an apology.”

Peter almost laughed. “Very well. I’ll do that as a beginning. And then—as regards Gabrielle! If I were able to find some post for her in England, and then—well, then kept a fatherly eye on her, is that the sort of thing you would like?”

Her eyes lightened wonderfully, and he saw in a moment of revelation how lovely she had once been. “Could you do such a thing?” she said. “Is there the faintest chance of it?”

“If she would agree,” Peter said, “and if I could find out what she would really like to do, I would get busy about it. I know plenty of people. It ought not to be very difficult.”

“That is wonderful of you,” she said. “But you will want money. I have always provided for her. All I have—jewels—everything is hers.”

Peter broke in with a touch of gruffness. “Oh, please—not that! I’ve got money too. My father was a rich man. Let her think it comes from you by all means! But I couldn’t—I mean I’d rather not——” He stopped abruptly.

She had put her hand over her eyes. “I understand,” she said.

He looked at her, and his heart smote him. “Listen!” he said suddenly. “I expect you’ll think me mad. I don’t care what you think. Why don’t you leave this man—send him about his business? I’ll provide for you—look after you both.”

She kept her eyes covered. “You don’t know what you are saying. It is quite—quite impossible.”

“Why?” demanded Peter doggedly. “You say you can trust me, and, as a matter of fact, I make rather a point of being trustworthy. Why won’t you leave him? He’s a scoundrel, and you know it.”

A low sob came from her, a wrung sound that made him curse himself for his clumsy floundering in a situation that required the utmost tact and delicacy of touch.

“Oh, I say, forgive me!” he said. “I ought not to have said all that. I hadn’t the faintest right. But I only want to help.”

“I know,” she said gently. “I know. Believe me, I do fully understand that. But what you suggest is impossible. I gave myself to him—unconditionally—long ago, and in his own fashion he has loved me. I belong to him until he finally throws me aside.”

Peter suppressed the forcible words that clamoured within him. She was obviously nearing the end of her strength, and he was beginning to wonder if he had already stayed too long.

But even while the thought hung in his mind she looked up at him again with eyes from which all emotion was steadfastly banished.

“I have no words to thank you,” she said. “Your kindness is simply overwhelming. But I want you—please—to give it all to my little girl. Her need of it is very great. There are dangers of which I cannot even speak to you to which she might be exposed at any time. If you can do anything, let it please be soon!”

“It shall be,” Peter said. “Where is she now? Can I go and find her?”

“She is in the garden, down on the terrace or by the sea. But first—before you go”—she leaned forward, holding out both her hands—“oh, will you promise me one thing—only one thing—and that is not to let her know—never to let her know? It’s the only pain left that I don’t think I could bear.”

Peter held the imploring hands very firmly. “Of course I will never let her know!” he said. “But—are you sure she has no suspicion?”

“She has not the faintest. She believes that the count is a very busy man—as indeed he is—with many calls upon his time, and that I am just his paid secretary. I want her”—her voice shook—“I want her always to believe that, even after I am gone. I feel that I shall know; wherever I am, I shall know. And oh, it hasn’t been so easy all these years. I have had to think of her as well. Oh, never let her know! Never let her suspect!”

Peter was looking at her with his straight, level gaze. “She shall never know,” he said, “if I can prevent it.”

There was firm resolution in his tone. He spoke as a man whose word was his bond. And as she heard him, great tears welled suddenly in her eyes and rolled down her drawn face. She could not speak, but in those tears there was more than gratitude.

Peter released her hands gently and stood up. He was moved himself but he did his best to hide it.

“Thank you,” he said, “for the trust you have placed in me. I will do my best—always—to be worthy of it. Shall I leave you now? May I go into the garden and perhaps come back and see you again afterwards?”

She made a blind gesture of acquiescence. He saw that for the moment her self-control was gone and he judged that it would be kinder to leave her.

So, quietly, he turned away to the door by which he had entered and passed out into the passage beyond.