Читать книгу The Short Stories of Warwick Deeping - Warwick Deeping - Страница 17

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Maestro Lombardi had been very restless all that day, and about sunset Rosamunda heard the sound of strange laughter, laughter that made her afraid. Going out to see the meaning of it, she found her father skipping up and down the terrace, laughing and beating time with his flute to some quite mad and imaginary music.

“Thrice Blessed Virgin, it is the night of the great god. To-night the pride of your father will be complete. Pan comes, my daughter; Pan the great lover!”

She shrank away and fled into the house.

“I am afraid, Maria, afraid of something that I can feel but cannot see or hear. There is a something in my father’s madness.”

“It is the moon, signorina; nothing but the moon.”

“Maria, I shall not go down and bathe in the pool to-night.”

“S-sh, s-sh, it is nothing but fancy! I will go with you, signorina, and it is best to humour the old man.”

“You will not leave me, Maria.”

“Cara mia, why should I leave you?”

Trevanion spent quite five minutes in getting out and away from that oak tree. He had waited till it was dark, and then slipped down the trunk with the caution of a man creeping from a prison and with an enemy on the alert hardly thirty paces away. He had had to leave his sword in that crow’s nest, for the thing would have cumbered him, but he had kept his pistols.

He got on his feet as soon as he judged it safe, and made his way down through the open woods towards the Satyr’s Pool. It was very dark now, but he was glad of the darkness. Reaching the valley, he turned slightly towards the left and walked on very slowly, pausing often to listen. It was his plan to strike the half-dry stream that was the overflow from the pool, and work up it till he reached the pool itself, for should any of the Austrian’s people be on the watch, there was less chance of his blundering into them if he followed the stream.

The plan worked well. He crawled the last fifty yards, till his hands touched the flattish rocks around the pool and he saw the level gleam of the water with the silver point of a star reflected in it here and there. He remembered that a stunted old laurel grew on the south side of the pool. It was visible as a bunch of blackness, and he crawled to it and crept in under the branches. As he squirmed himself comfortable, his hand touched something hard and round and heavy. It was an old water-worn stone about the size of a six-pound shot, a thing that persuaded his fingers that it might have its uses where pistols were not to be trusted.

The night was extraordinarily still, and when the moon heaved a yellow rim over the edge of the world the night seemed even more eerily silent. Trevanion felt like a taut wire. He had raised himself on his elbows, for he could judge now how he was placed with regard to his field of vision. The foliage of the laurel hung short of the ground, much like a tent with the “flies” looped up, and Trevanion had no reason for quarrelling with his luck. He found that he could see most of the valley ahead of him, the fringe of the woods on his right, and on his left the white wall, wooden gate and the end of the stairway leading up to the villa. The laurel hid him in its smother of black shadow. He could not have been more cunningly placed.

The first sounds he heard that night were the shrill notes of a pipe and bursts of faun-like laughter. The laughter sent a little shiver of emotion through him. It was so mad, so unrestrained, so gloating, so naively exultant. Then old Cæsare appeared crowned with vine leaves, and dancing in the moonlight.

On the terrace of the Villa Lunetta the madman began piping under his daughter’s window. Rosamunda was seated on her bed, filled with a dread of some vague horror, a kind of ghost fear that made her eyes look like the eyes of a frightened child.

She went to the window.

“Father!”

He stretched out his arms to her.

“Hail, virgin; hail, fortunate and sacred one!”

Then she heard Maria’s voice in the room.

“Tst, it is near midnight, cara mia, and when the play is over and the old gentleman happy, we can please ourselves and get to bed. To-morrow he will be himself again. It is the moon.”

“I cannot go, Maria!”

“Courage, signorina; it is just a child’s game played to please a child. I have brought you a cup of warm wine.”

“You will stop with me, Maria?”

“Have I not promised?”

That warm wine had poppy seeds crushed in it, but Rosamunda drank it and suspected nothing.

Maria threw a cloak over the girl’s shoulders, and they passed out of the house, across the moonlit terrace, and down the steps between the black ilexes and pines. Cæsare had vanished, and they heard his piping and his laughter in the valley below, and when Trevanion saw him he was capering up and down like a faun calling on another faun to come and romp in the moonlight. Trevanion forgot the madman for a moment, for he heard a sound of women’s voices and saw figures moving down the steps. They came out through the little gate, Rosamunda first, the woman following her, and from the uncertain and almost shrinking way she moved Trevanion knew that Rosamunda was afraid.

His heart went out to her with fierce tenderness, but he lay still and bided his time.

Then Cæsare came into his view again, a figure that had grown silent and attentive and strangely sinister. He had drawn near and yet stood aloof, arms folded, head cocked, very straight and stiff. Trevanion could have sworn that his ears were pricked and that there was a mad leer on his face.

A quick glance to the right showed him an empty sweep of moonlit ground ending in the blackness of the woods.

Nothing moved there. Pan still tarried.

“Maria!”

Rosamunda’s voice brought Trevanion’s eyes back to the pool. She was standing on the flat rock which she always used, and Maria had taken her cloak. Trevanion saw her white hands unfastening the laces of her dress, and she had shaken her hair free so that it hung in a cloud.

“Maria!”

“Cara mia?”

“Have you the towel? It will be so cold, Maria, and I feel so sleepy.”

“Tut, tut! Go in to your knees and no further, signorina. It should satisfy the old man.”

The dark dress dropped and lay in a ring about her feet. She was in white now; her hands seemed to fumble, and her face was like the face of one dazed. Trevanion was on his knees, tense, awed, counting this night a sacrament, love, pity, and a great anger stirring in his heart. He was watching Maria, the woman, for the whole vile wickedness of the thing seemed to hang upon her treachery.

“Maria, are you there?”

“Behind you.”

“Take my necklace. It’s all so strange; I feel I am falling asleep.”

“Tut, tut! It will soon be over.”

The last white drapery fell about Rosamunda’s feet, and as it fell Trevanion saw the woman start, turn quickly, and move stealthily away. She threw a half-frightened look behind her as she went, and that glance of hers gave Trevanion his warning.

“Good God!”

For old Cæsare had sent up a strange, exultant cry, and was standing like a man in an ecstasy, staring at the goat-god of his dreams. It had come leaping from the woods, and was within a stone’s throw of the pool before Trevanion turned and saw it, a great creature of hair and nakedness with horns showing black on its forehead. So close was it that Trevanion uttered the oath of a man who has been caught asleep at his post. He groped for that stone of his, and broke out into the moonlight.

He was late, late by two score yards, and that cry of Rosamunda’s was like a bitter cry of accusation. He had one glimpse of her in the creature’s arms, a white figure that drooped and struggled feebly, head drawn back, hair hanging. Trevanion made never a sound, but his eyes were the eyes of a man who meant to kill.

Cæsare’s Pan had thrown the girl to the ground and was bending over her, when he heard the sound of a man running and glanced up. His eyeballs shone white in the moonlight. His lower lip seemed to droop and to show his teeth.

“Von Mirenbach!”

That challenge answered. The thing’s hand went to its hairy belly, and drew out something that flashed. He was up and striking at Trevanion, but Trevanion was too quick for the Austrian. His hand whirled; the stone found Pan’s face and that god of hair and of horns fell forward and lay still.