Chapter IX: Part 9

“I tell him we shall be at Touggourt to-morrow night, and shall stay there a week. He answers that his heart is there with Oreïda.”

“What! Does his lady-love live at Touggourt?”

“Yes; she is a dancer.”

Smaïn smiled. He did not understand French, but he knew we were speaking of his love affair, and he was not afflicted with shyness. As he accompanied us to the village he played again, and I read his nature in the soft sounds of his flute.

All that day he stayed with us, and nearly all that day he played. Even when he guided me through the village, where, between terraced houses, pretty children—the girls in deep purple, with yellow flowers stuck in their left nostrils, the boys in white—danced with a boisterous grace round brushwood fires, his flute was at his lips, and his fingers fluttered ceaselessly. And as night drew on the music was surely more amorous, and I seemed to see Oreïda drawing near over the sands.

Smaïn was but sixteen, tall and slim as a reed, with a poetic face and lustrous, languid eyes. I imagined Oreïda a child too—one of those flowers of the desert that blossom early and fade ere noontide comes. Sometimes such flowers are very beautiful. As I heard the flute of Smaïn in the pale yellow twilight I knew that Oreïda was beautiful—with one of those exquisite, lithe figures, whose movements make a song; with long, narrow dark eyes, mysterious pools of light and shadow; with thick hair falling loosely round a low, broad forehead; and perfect little hands, made for the dance of the hands that the Bedouin loves so well.

All this I knew from the sound of Smaïn’s flute. I told it to Safti, and bade him ask Smaïn if it were not true.

Smaïn’s reply was:

“She is more beautiful than that; she is like the young gazelle, and like the first day after the fast of Ramadan.”

Then he played once more while the moon rose over the palm gardens, and Safti, lighting his pipe of keef with tender deliberateness, remarked placidly:

“He would like to come with us to Touggourt and to die there at Oreïda’s feet, but his father, Said-ben-Kouïdar, wishes him to remain at Sidi-Matou and to pack dates. He is young, and must obey. Therefore he is sad.”

The smoke rose up in a cloud round Smaïn and his flute, and now I thought that, indeed, there was a wild pathos in the music. The moon went up the sky, and threw silver on the palms. The gay cries from the village died down. The gardeners lay upon the earth divans under the palmwood roofs, and slept. And at last Smaïn bade us good-bye. I saw his white figure glide across the great open space that the moon made white as it was. And when the shadows took him I still heard the faint sound of his flute, calling to his heart and to the distant Oreïda through the magical stillness of the night.

The next day we reached Touggourt, and in the evening I went with Safti and the Caïd of the Nomads to the great café of the dancers in the outskirts of the town. At the door Arab soldiers were lounging. The pipes squealed within like souls in torment. In the square bonfires were blazing fiercely, and the whole desert seemed to throb with beaten drums. Within the café was a crowd of Arabs, real nomads, some in rags, some richly dressed, all gravely attentive to the dancers, who entered from a court on the left, round which their rooms were built in terraces, and danced in pairs between the broad divans.

“Tell me when Oreïda comes,” I said to Safti, while the Caïd spread forth his ample skirts, and turned a cigarette in his immense black fingers.

The dancers came and went. They were amazing trollops, painted until, like the picture of Balzac’s madman, they were chaotic, a mere mess of frantic colours. Not for these, I thought, did Smaïn play his flute. The time wore on. I grew drowsy in the keef-laden air, despite the incessant uproar of the pipes. Suddenly I started—Safti had touched me.

“There is Oreïda, Sidi.”

I looked, and saw a lonely dancer entering from the court, large, weary, crowned with gold, tufted with feathers, wrinkled, with greedy, fatigued eyes, and hands painted blood-red. She was like an idol in its dotage. Over her spreading bosom streamed multitudes of golden coins, and many jewels shone upon her wrists, her arms, her withered neck. She advanced slowly, as if bored, until she was in the midst of the crowd. Then she wriggled, stretched forth her hands, slowly stamped her feet, and promenaded to and fro, occasionally revolving like a child’s top that is on the verge of “running down.”

“That is not Oreïda,” I said to Safti, smiling at his absurd mistake. For this was the oldest and ugliest dancer of them all.

“Indeed, Sidi, it is. Ask the Caïd.”

I asked that enormous potentate, who was devouring the withered lady with his eyes. He wagged his head in assent. Just then the dancer paused before us, and thrusting forward her greasy forehead, enveloped us with a sphinx-like smirk. As I hastily pressed a two-franc piece above her eyebrows Safti addressed her animatedly in Arabic. I caught the word “Smaïn.” The lady smiled, and made a guttural reply; then, with a somnolent wink at me, she waddled onward, flapping the blood-red hands and stamping heavily upon the earthen floor.

“Smaïn loves that!” I said to Safti.

“Yes, Sidi. Oreïda is famous, and very rich. She has houses and many palm-trees, and she is much respected by the other dancers.”

A week later Safti and I were again at Sidi-Matou, on our way homeward through the desert. The moon was at the full now, and when we rode up to the Bordj the open space in front of it, between us and the village, was flooded with delicate light. Against it one tree, which looked like Paderewski grown very old, stood up with tousled branches. In the village bonfires flared, and the dark figures of skipping children passed and re-passed before them. We heard youthful cries echoing across the sands. Soon they faded. The lights went out, and the wonderful silence of night in the desert came in to its heritage.

I sat on the edge of an old stone well before the Bordj, while Safti smoked his keef. Near midnight, quivering across the sands, came the faint sound of a flute moving from the village towards the deep obscurity of the palm gardens. I knew that air, those trills, those little runs, those grace notes.

“It is Smaïn,” I said to Safti.

“Yes, Sidi. He will play all night alone among the palms. He is in love.”

“But with Oreïda! Is it possible?”

“Did he not say that she was like the first day after the fast of Ramadan? When an African says that his heart is big with love.”

The flute went on and on, and I said to myself and to the moon, as I had often said before:

“He that is born in the Sahara is an impenetrable mystery.”

_THE SPINSTER_

I had arrived at Inley Abbey that afternoon, and was sitting at dinner with Inley and his pretty wife, whom I had not seen for five years, since the day I was his best man, when we all heard faintly the tolling of a church bell. Lady Inley shook her shoulders in a rather exaggerated shudder.

“Someone dead!” said her husband.

“It’s a mistake to build a church in the grounds of a house,” Lady Inley said in her clear, drawling soprano voice. “That noise gives me the blues.”

“Whom can it be for?” asked Inley.

“Miss Bassett, probably,” Lady Inley replied carelessly, helping herself to a bonbon from a little silver dish.

Inley started.

“Miss Sarah Bassett! What makes you think so?”

“Oh, while you were away in town she got ill. Didn’t you know?”

“No,” said Inley.

I could see that he was moved. His dark, short face had changed suddenly, and he stopped eating his fruit. Lady Inley went on crunching the bonbon between her little white teeth with all the enjoyment of a pretty marmoset.

“Influenza,” she said airily. “And then pneumonia. Of course, at her age, you know⸺ By the way, what is her age, Nino?”

“No idea,” said Inley shortly.

He was listening to the dim and monotonous sound of the church bell.

Lady Inley turned to me with the childish, confidential movement which men considered one of her many charms.

“Miss Bassett is, or was, one of those funny old spinsters who always look the same and always ridiculous. Dry twigs, you know. One size all the way down. Very little hair, and no emotions. If it weren’t for the sake of cats, one would wonder why such people are born. But they’re always cat-lovers. I suppose that’s why they’re so often called old cats.”

She uttered a little high-pitched laugh, and got up.

“Don’t be too long,” she said to me carelessly as I opened the dining-room door for her. “I want to sing ‘Ohé Charmette’ to you.”

“I won’t be long,” I answered, thinking what exquisite eyes she had.

She turned, and went out in her delicious, thin way. No wonder she had made skeletons the rage in London. When I came back to the dinner-table Inley was sitting with both his brown hands clenched on the cloth. His black eyes—inherited from his dead mother, who had been one of the Neapolitan aristocracy—were glittering.

“What is it, Nino?” I asked as I sat down.

We had been such intimate friends that even my five years’ absence abroad had not built up a barrier between us.

“I wonder if it is Miss Bassett?” he said, looking at me earnestly.

“But was she a great friend of yours?” I said. “If Lady Inley’s description of her is accurate, I can hardly imagine so.”

“Vere doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“Then Miss Bassett⸺”

“Oh, she does look like that; dried up, unemotional, tame, English, even comic.”

“The regular spinster, eh?”

“She looks it. But, damn it all, Vere has no business to say she has no emotions, to wonder why such people are born. But she doesn’t know—Vere doesn’t know.”

His agitation grew, and was inexplicable to me. But I knew Inley, knew that he was bound to tell me what was on his mind. He could be reserved, but not with me. So I took a cigar, cut the end off it deliberately, struck a match, lighted it, and began to smoke in silence. He followed my example quickly, and then said:

“Vere talks like that, and, but for Miss Bassett, Vere would have been murdered two years ago.”

I started, and dropped my cigar on the table.

“Murdered!”

“Yes; and I⸺”

He fixed his eyes on me, and put his hand up to his throat. Nino was half Neapolitan, and I saw a man being hanged. I picked up my cigar with a hand that slightly shook.

“But,” I said, “I always thought Lady Inley and you were very happy together.”

It sounded banal, even ridiculous, but I hardly knew what to say. I was startled. The tolling of the bell, too, was getting on my nerves.

“One doesn’t write such things,” he said. “You’ve been abroad for years.”

“It’s all right now?”

He nodded.

“I suppose so. Vere has never had the least suspicion.”

He drew his chair closer to mine, and was about to go on speaking when the servants came in with the coffee.

“Who’s the bell tolling for, Hurst?” he said to the butler.

“I couldn’t say, my lord.”

When the servants had gone Inley continued, at first in a calmer voice:

“Miss Bassett lived in the red cottage just beyond the gate of the South Lodge from time immemorial. You generally came to us in Scotland, I know, but I should think you must have seen her.”

Suddenly a recollection flashed upon me—a recollection of a long, flat figure, a drab face, thin hair coming away from a wrinkled forehead under a mushroom hat, flapping, old-fashioned golden earrings.

“Not the person I used to call ‘the Plank’?” I said.

“Did you?”

He thought for a moment.

“Yes; I believe you did. I’d forgotten.”

“She was always in church twenty minutes before the service began, and always dropped her hymn-book coming out if there were visitors in the Abbey pew!”

“Yes, yes; that’s it. Miss Bassett is very nervous in little ways.”

“I remember her now perfectly. And you say she⸺”

I looked at him, and hesitated.

“She saved Vere’s life and, indirectly, mine. I’ll tell you now we’re together again at last. I shall never tell Vere.”

He looked towards the windows, across which dark blue silk curtains were drawn, as if he could see the passing-bell swinging in the old square tower. Then he turned to me.

“You know how mad I was about Vere. It’s always like that with me. Unless I’m stone I’m fire. After we were married I got even madder. Having her all to myself was like enchantment, and in Italy, too, my other native land.”

I thought of Lady Inley’s eyes.

“I can understand,” I said.

“Of course, when we got back it had to be different. Friends came in, and she was run after and admired and written about. You know the publicity of life in modern London.”

“City of public-houses and society spies.”

“I bore it, because it’s supposed to be the thing. And Vere rather likes it, somehow. So I let her have her fun, as long as it was fun. I didn’t intend it should ever be anything else.”

He frowned. When he did that, and his thick eyebrows nearly met, he looked all Italian.

“We did the usual things—Paris, Ascot, Scotland, and so on—till Vere had to lie up.”

“Your boy?”

“Yes; Hugo came along. I was glad when that was over. I thought she was going to die. You knew Seymour Glynd?”

“Life Guards? Killed hunting a year ago?”

Inley nodded.

“He was a great deal with us soon after Hugo’s birth. I thought nothing of it. I’d known the fellow all my life. But then one nearly always has.”

He laughed bitterly.

“To cut that part short, two years ago in autumn we had Glynd staying with us down here for shooting. There were some others, of course—Mrs. Jack, Bobbie Elphinton, and Lady Bobbie—but you know the lot.”

“I did.”

“Ah,” he said, “you’ve been well out of it these years. Well, the shoot was to break up on a Friday, and I’d arranged to go to town that day with the rest. Vere didn’t intend to come. She said she was feeling tired, and was going to have a Friday to Monday rest cure. That’s the thing, you know, nowadays. You get a Swedish _masseuse_ down to stay, and go to bed and drink milk. Vere had engaged a _masseuse_ to come on the Friday night. On the Thursday, the day before we were all going to town, Glynd hurt his foot getting over a fence into a turnip field—at least I thought so.”

He stopped.

“Everyone thought so, I believe—except, of course, Vere. I wonder if they did, though?” he added moodily. “Or whether I was the only—But what does it matter now? Glynd said he only wanted a couple of days’ rest to be all right again, and asked me if he might stay on at the Abbey till the Monday. Of course I said ‘Yes; if he wouldn’t want a hostess.’ Because Vere said to me, when she heard of it, that she must have her rest cure all the same. Glynd swore he’d be quite happy alone. So he stayed, and the rest of us came up to town on the Friday. Well, on the Saturday morning I was walking across the park when I met the Swedish _masseuse_ who was to have gone down to Vere on the Friday night. I knew her, because Vere had often had her before in London. ‘Hullo!’ I said. ‘You ought to be down at Inley Abbey with my wife.’ ‘No, my lord,’ she said. ‘Why not?’ ‘I’ve had a wire from Lady Inley not to go.’ ‘A wire!’ I said. ‘When did you get it?’ ‘On Thursday night, my lord.’ ‘You mean last night?’ I said, thinking Vere must have changed her mind after we had left. ‘No,’ said the woman; ‘on Thursday night, late.’ Then I remembered that, after Glynd had hurt his foot and asked to stay, Vere had gone out alone for a drive in her cart, to get a last breath of air before the rest cure. She must have sent the telegram herself then. All of a sudden I seemed to understand a lot of things.”

He had let his cigar out, and now he noticed that he had. He tossed it into the fire.

“I said ‘Good-morning’ to the woman quite quietly, went back to the house, and told my man I shouldn’t be at home that night.”

He put his hand on my arm.

“I felt perfectly calm. Wasn’t that strange?”

I nodded.

“There was a train from town reaching Ashdridge Station at nine o’clock at night. I took it. I didn’t care to go to Inley Station, where everybody would know me, and wonder what I was up to. I didn’t take any luggage. My man asked if he should pack, and I said ‘No.’ I didn’t dine. I was at Paddington three-quarters of an hour before the train was due to start. At last it came in to the platform. Going down I read the evening papers just like any man going home from business. Soon after we got away from London I saw there was rain on the carriage windows. That seemed to me right. We were a little late at Ashdridge. It was still wet, and I had my coat collar turned up. I don’t believe they recognised me there. I set out to walk to Inley.”

“What did you mean to do?”

“I told you before.”

I looked into his face, and believed him. Then I thought of Lady Inley’s childish, delicate beauty, of her slightly affected manner, the manner of a woman who has always been spoilt, whose paths have been made very smooth. And here she was living, apparently happily, with a man who had deliberately travelled down in the night to kill her. How ignorant we are!

“You are condemning me,” Inley said, with a touch of hot anger.

“I was only thinking⸺”

“Yes?”

“That we don’t know each other much in the greatest intimacy.”

“That’s what I thought then.”

He said that in a way which suddenly put me on his side. He must have seen the change in my feelings, for he went on, with his former unreserve:

“I walked fast in the dark. I didn’t think very much, but I remember that all the trees—there’s a lot of woodland, you know, between Ashdridge and Inley—seemed alive. Everything seemed to me to be alive that night. I’ve never had that sensation before or since.”

I realised what the condition of the man had been when he said that, as if I were a doctor and a patient had told me the symptom which put me in possession of his malady.

“When I reached Inley it was late, and the long village street was deserted. There were lights in the inn and in the schoolmaster’s house, but there were no people about. I got through without meeting a soul, and came on towards the gates of the Abbey.”

“You meant to go into the house?”

“Yes. I was sure—somehow I was sure; but I intended to see before I acted, merely for my own justification. But I was quite sure, as if Vere herself had told me everything. Soon after I had got clear of the village I heard a sound of wheels behind me. I stood up against the hedge, and in a minute or two a fly passed me going slowly. I saw the driver’s face. It wasn’t a man from Inley. Evidently the fly had come from a distance. It was splashed with mud, and the horse looked tired. I followed it till it came to the turning just below Miss Bassett’s cottage, where there’s a narrow lane going to Charfield through the woods. It went a little way down this lane, and stopped. I waited at the turning. I could see the light from the lamps shining on the wet road, and in the circle of light the driver’s breath. He bent down, and I saw him looking at a big silver watch. Then he put it back. But he didn’t drive on. I knew what he was waiting for. Vere was going with—with Glynd. That was more than I had ever thought of, that she would go. I put my hand into my pocket, took out my revolver, and went on till I was close to the red cottage. By this time the rain had stopped. I came up to within a few yards of the Abbey gates, stood for a moment, and then returned till I was at the wicket of Miss Bassett’s garden. It’s bounded by a yew hedge, beyond which there is a path shaded by mulberry-trees. The hedge is low. The path is dark. It was a blackguardly thing to do, but I thought of nothing except myself, my wrong, and how I was to wipe it out. I opened the wicket, came into the path, and stood there under the mulberry-trees behind the hedge. Here I was in cover, and could see the road. I held my revolver in my hand, and waited. It never struck me that Miss Bassett might be up. I saw no light in the cottage, and I had a sort of idea that people like her went to bed at about eight. While I was standing there listening I felt something rub against my legs. It made me start. Then I heard a little low noise. I looked down, and there was a great cat holding up its tail and purring. Its pleasure was horrible to me. I pushed it away with my foot, but it came back, bending down its head, arching its back, and pressing against me. I was thinking what to do to get rid of it when I heard a shrill, husky voice call out:

“‘Johnny—John-nee!’

“It was Miss Bassett. I held my breath, and pushed away the cat.

“‘Johnny, Johnny—John-nee!’ went the voice again.

“The cat wouldn’t leave me. God knows why it wished to stay. I was determined to get rid of it, so I put the revolver down on the path, picked the cat up in my arms, and dropped it over the hedge into the road. Just as I had caught up the revolver again I was confronted by Miss Bassett. She had come in slippers up the path in the dark to look for her cat.”

I uttered a slight exclamation.

Inley went on: “She had a handkerchief tied over her cap and under her chin, and a small lantern in her hands, on which she wore black mittens. I can see her now. We stood there on the path for a minute staring at each other without a word. The light from the lantern flickered over the revolver, and I saw Miss Bassett look down at it.”

He stopped, poured out a glass of water, and drank it off like a man who has been running.

“Didn’t she show surprise—fear?” I asked.

“Not a bit. Women are so extraordinary, even old women who’ve never been in touch with life, that I’m certain now she understood directly her eyes fell on the revolver.”

“What did she do?”

“After a minute she said: ‘Lord Inley, I’m looking for my cat. Have you seen him?’

“‘Yes,’ I said; ‘he’s run into the house.’

“It was a lie, but I wanted her to go in. I had slipped the revolver back into my pocket, and tried to assume a perfectly simple, natural air. I fancied it would be very easy to impose on Miss Bassett when I heard her question. It sounded so innocent, as if the old lady was full of her pet. I even thought, perhaps, she had not known what the revolver was when she looked at it.

“‘Did he run into the house?’ she said, still looking at me from under her wrinkled eyelids.

“‘Yes; when you came out. He was here on the path with me. You called “Johnny!” and he ran off there between the mulberry-trees.’

“All the time I was speaking to her I had an eye to the road, and my ears were listening like an Indian’s when he puts his head to the ground to hear the pad of his enemy.

“Miss Bassett stood there quietly for a moment as if she were considering something. She looked prim. I remember that even now—prim as a caricature. It was only a moment, but it seemed to me an hour. ‘If they should come,’ I thought, ‘while she is out here!’ The sweat came out all over my face with impatience—an agony of impatience. I longed to take the old lady by the shoulders, push her into the cottage, lock her in, and be alone, able to watch the bit of road from the Abbey gates to the wicket. But I could do nothing. I was obliged to repress every sign of agitation. It was devilish.”

He got up with a sudden jerk from his chair, and stood by the fire. Even the telling of that moment had set beads of moisture on his square, low forehead.

“At last she spoke again.

“‘I wonder if you’d mind coming in for a minute to help me see if Johnny really is in the house?’ she said.

“I don’t know what I should have done—refused, I believe, refused her with an oath, for I began to feel mad; but just at that instant up came the cat once more, purring like fury, and lifting up his tail. He made straight for me, and began to rub himself against my legs again.

“‘Oh!’ said Miss Bassett, ‘there he is! Naughty Johnny, naughty boy! Lord Inley, perhaps you’d be so good as just to lift him up and put him inside the door for me. I always have such a job to get him to come in of a night. He likes hunting in the woods. Doesn’t he, the naughty Johnny?’

“‘Now’s my chance to get rid of her!’ I thought.

“I bent down, picked the cat up, and went along the path towards the cottage, Miss Bassett following close behind me. The cat was an immense beast, awfully heavy, and just as I turned out of the yew path to go up to the cottage door he began struggling to get away, and scratching. I held on to him, but it wasn’t easy, and I got my hand torn before I dropped him down inside the little hall. Away he ran, towards the kitchen, I suppose. Miss Bassett was very grateful, but I cut her gratitude short.

“‘Very glad to have been able to help you,’ I said. ‘Good-night.’

“‘Good-night, Lord Inley,’ she said.

“I thought her voice sounded a little bit odd when she said that, and I just glanced at her funny old face, lit up by the lantern she was holding in one mittened hand. She didn’t look at me this time as she had in the garden. Then I went out, and she immediately shut the door.

“‘Thank God!’ I thought, and I hurried to the wicket. I didn’t dare stay in the garden now. Seeing her had made me realise my blackguardism in coming in at all, considering my reason. I resolved to hide in the field at the corner where the road turns off to Charfield. As I opened the wicket, instinctively I put my hand into my pocket for my revolver.”

He bent down, looking full into my eyes.

“It wasn’t there.”

“Miss Bassett!” I exclaimed.

“In a moment I realised that Miss Bassett must have grasped the situation; that her asking me to carry in her cat was a ruse, and that while the beast was struggling between my hands she must have stolen the revolver from behind. I say I knew that, and yet even then, when I thought of her look, her manner, the sort of nervous old thing she was, I couldn’t believe what I knew. Then I remembered her voice when she said ‘Good-night’ to me in the passage, her eyes looking down instead of at me, and that she was only holding the lantern in one hand, whereas in the garden she was using two. She must have had the revolver in her other hand concealed in the folds of her dress. I ran back to the cottage door, and knocked—hard. Not that I thought she’d open. I knew she wouldn’t, but she did directly. I could hardly speak. I was afraid of myself just then. At last I said:

“‘Miss Bassett, you know what I want.’

“‘You can’t have it,’ she said, looking straight at me.

“I kept quiet for a second, then I said:

“‘Miss Bassett, I don’t think you know that you’re running into danger.’ For I felt that there was danger for her then if she went against me. She knew it, too, perhaps better than I did. I saw her poor old hands, all blue veins, beginning to tremble.

“‘You can’t have it, Lord Inley,’ she repeated.

“There wasn’t the ghost of a quiver in her voice.

“‘I must, I will!’ I said, and I made a movement towards her—a violent movement I know it was.

“But the old thing stood her ground. Oh, she was a gallant old woman.

“‘Do what you like to me,’ she said. ‘I’m old. What does it matter? She’s young.’

“Then I knew she understood.

“‘You’ve seen them together!’ I said. ‘Since I went!’

“She wouldn’t say. Not a word. I was mad. I forgot decency, everything. I took her. I searched her for the revolver. I searched her roughly—God forgive me. She trembled horribly, but never said a word. It wasn’t on her. She must have hidden it somewhere in that moment when she was alone in the cottage. That was another ruse to keep me searching in there while—But I saw it almost directly. I broke away, and rushed out and down the road. Something seemed to tell me they had passed. I got into the lane that leads to Charfield. The fly was gone. Then, all of a sudden, I felt perfectly calm. I turned, and went up to the Abbey gates. I knocked them up at the lodge. The keeper came out. When he saw me he said:

“‘You, my lord! However did you know?’

“‘Go on!’ I said. ‘Know what?’

“‘About Master Hugo?’

“I didn’t say one way or the other.

“‘The doctor says it’s a bitter bad quinsy, but there’s just a chance. Her ladyship’s nearly mad. It only came on a few hours ago quite sudden.’

“I went up to the Abbey, and found Vere by the child’s bed. She looked flushed, and was breathing hard, as if she had just been running.”

He stopped, and took out his cigar-case.

“Running!” I said.

“She had parted finally from Glynd in front of Miss Bassett’s cottage,” he said. “He told me that afterwards.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then he spoke more calmly.

“I went up to town when the child was safe, and had it out with Glynd. They had meant to go that night. It was the boy who stopped her. She took it as a judgment. You know how women are. Glynd swore she was stopped in time. You understand?”

“Yes.”

“He didn’t lie to me.”

“And your wife?”

“I never spoke of it to her. I saw her with the boy, and—well, I saw her with the boy, and what she was to him when he was close to death.”

His voice went for a moment. Then he added:

“I told her I’d had a presentiment Hugo was ill. She believed me, I think. If not, she’s kept her secret.”

Just then the dining-room door opened, and Lady Inley put in her pretty head.

“Are you never coming?” she said with her little childish drawl.

I got up, and went towards her.

“By the way, Nino,” she added, “the bell was for poor, funny old Miss Bassett. What will her cat do, I wonder?”

As I followed her towards the drawing-room I heard Inley’s voice mutter behind me:

“_Requiescat in Pace._”

PANCRAZIA’S HAIR

One autumn I was in Sicily, making a number of mountain excursions, visiting remote villages hidden in rocky clefts, or perched boldly on spurs in the eye of the sun, sleeping occasionally at night in humble rooms to which the gobbling turkey and the audacious pig were no strangers. Among my many memories of those free and happy days one stands out—the memory of a tress of splendid black hair.

On an afternoon, near sunset, I rode up to the edge of a hamlet of huddled dwellings, where stood a large, old church, Arabic-Norman in style, and here I dismounted to rest and fill my eyes and heart with the wonder and the glory of Nature.

As I gazed I remember thinking: “How small humanity is!”

A fat old priest shuffled up to recall me from my reveries. He cleared his throat, saluted me, and begged me to come and see his church.

We went into the sacristy, and presently stood before an immense and mouldy cupboard. After much struggling with a rusty key the doors were opened, and I was confronted by a large wooden statue of the Madonna and Child, covered with fading but still hideous colours, and flecked with the dust of ages.

I scarcely noticed the statue, however, for my eyes had fallen upon something else—a great plait of glorious black hair, thick, long, twisted with reverent care, strong strand through strand, tied at the top and bottom by bows of rose-red satin. It hung to the wrist of the Madonna, and was touched by the little outstretched foot of the infant Jesus.

I looked inquiringly at the priest.

“That is Pancrazia’s hair, signore.”

“Pancrazia’s hair! Who is, or was, Pancrazia?”

An expression came into the priest’s face that transformed it—a look so human, so tender, even so mystical, that suddenly I loved this old man in his rusty soutane and his wrinkled, patched boots.

I sat down on a wooden box that stood just below the statue, and the priest told me the story of the tress of hair.

I give it in his words, so far as I remember them. But I cannot give the look in his eyes while he was speaking, or the almost childishly beautiful simplicity and sincerity of his manner.

“Pancrazia was never a handsome girl, but always she looked a good girl. And then she had the most beautiful hair in the village, or, indeed, in all the country round. When she was a child it was full of gleams of gold, but the underneath was always dark; and, as she grew, the darkness of it crept up, till all over her head the hair was black. Only in the front, by her temples, there remained little feathers of gold, which fell down near her kind, pious eyes—eyes that could be merry, too, and laugh as readily as the eyes of the wicked and the wanton.

“Pancrazia was not one of the melancholy who must cry when they pray. She thought it no wrong to smile at the Madonna; and I have seen her run out of school in the summer days, and blow kisses to the Mother of God—where the shrine is by the gateway of the village—as a child might to her own mother coming down to meet her over the rocks, with, maybe, the little pig trotting alongside. Why not, signore? She had confidence in the Madonna; and what is more beautiful than the confidence which runs out of a young heart like a stream out of a hazel wood? The Madonna loved it, you may be sure.

“As Pancrazia grew up, despite her piety—she was the purest-minded child I ever blessed—the natural feelings grew with her. They come early, signore, in sunny places; and, thank God, the sun is never long away from us here. She began to know there’s a life for a maiden that follows after the child’s life.

“Ah, signore, I watched over the girl as I have watched over a flower growing in my little garden—you must see my little garden, signore, before you go.

“Often I thought: ‘What a mother she will make!’ And sometimes I would run over the boys of the village to choose a husband for her when she should be a bit older. But somehow it always ended the same way: I never could settle on the husband.

“Well, signore, you know what girls are. She didn’t wait for me to choose, though nobody respected me as she did. She didn’t think so much of herself as I thought of her. And while I was saying to myself: ‘Giovanni won’t do, and Stefano won’t do, and Paolo’s not the one, and may the Madonna preserve her from Giorgio!’ she says to herself: ‘Angelo!’ Not a word more, you may be certain. I can hear her say it, and see her lips smiling over the word—‘Angelo!’

“I’d come to him, in my numbering, and I’d said to myself: ‘Angelo won’t quite do.’ Not that he was a bad boy. And he was a handsome one; strong, merry, and could play the guitar and dance the tarantella, and sing ‘O sole mio!’ till you could hear it from Acireale to Capo Sant’ Alessio pretty near. But— Well, in my eyes, nobody would do for Pancrazia.

“In her heart, all the same, she chose Angelo, and it seemed that in his he chose her. When I saw him with her one twilight by the shrine at the gateway, and saw her kneel down, while he stood beside her, and crossed himself and looked at her as she was praying—for him, signore, you may be sure, knowing women—I understood how it was, and I said to myself: ‘Perhaps the Madonna has done the numbering too, and stopped at Angelo.’

“And so I left it, trusting all was right for that pure child, even in this world of sin.

“Angelo was a seaman, and was often away. One night when I was in my garden watering my roses—they are worth seeing, as you will know presently, signore—I saw Angelo and Pancrazia coming up to the gate together. I set down the pot of water. Pancrazia was smiling, and he looked brave—you know how a boy of courage looks when he’s just found someone who wants to be taken care of, signore?

“I understood, but I pretended not to, and said innocently: ‘What is it, my children?’

“Then she told me, while he just stared at her, with his eyes getting graver at every word she said. They were going to be husband and wife, and I was the first to know it. Angelo had to go away in the morning to Messina. He’d got a job to sail on an orange boat to the Lipari Islands, and was to be away two months in all. For those two months the secret was to be kept among us three.

“It was Pancrazia’s wish. She didn’t want to face the village talk till Angelo could stay beside her. There was always something more retiring about her than about the other girls. It seemed to go with her purity. I blessed them both, and, when I’d finished watering my roses, I prayed for them and for their children.

“Angelo went away in the morning, and Pancrazia kept up bravely. The village folk gossiped and laughed, and spoke of the faithlessness of the men of the sea, but Pancrazia only smiled to herself. And I smiled too. You see, we knew what had been settled, but they, poor, silly souls, were ignorant. Yet, as it turned out, I don’t know⸺”

“Time went on, and one evening, after a month had gone, Pancrazia came rushing into my garden like a mad thing, with a bit of paper in her hand. Angelo was desperately ill with fever far away in Lipari, and the orange boat had had to sail from there and leave him. I scarcely knew Pancrazia. There was a passion in her I’d never suspected, although I know the fires that slumber in us, who are almost the sucking children of Etna, signore, as you might say.

“‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ she kept on crying out.

“‘Pray,’ I said. ‘Pray, my child, to the Madonna della Rocca.’

“When she left me it was night. Very late I walked out to the wall above the precipice to look at Etna and the stars, and there, beyond the gateway, on the stones before the shrine, I saw a figure kneeling, and I heard a little noise of sobbing. I went, and whispered:

“‘You must not cry thus when you pray, Pancrazia. The Madonna will think you doubt her.’

“Then, signore, the sobbing stopped.

“A week went by, two weeks, and then came news that Angelo was worse, was dying out there in the islands. That day Pancrazia came again to my house. She was calm, signore, calm, and her face white and still as a pan of milk.

“‘Padre,’ she said, ‘shut the door.’

“I shut it.

“‘Padre,’ she said, ‘I’m going to give something to the Madonna della Rocca, and no one is to know but you. Will you promise never to tell?’

“I promised solemnly, as she desired.

“‘Come with me to the church now, padre.’

“I went with her. She had in her hands a length of red ribbon, and there was a scissors hanging at her waist.

“When we were in the church she shut the door, and said:

“‘Unlock the cupboard in the sacristy, please, padre.’

“We went into the sacristy, and I unlocked this cupboard, and looked at her.

“‘What is it you are giving to the Madonna, my child?’ I asked.

“She never said a word, but took the scissors from her waist, and before I could stop her she had cut off her beautiful hair. Not that I would have prevented her; no, signore, but it was her one beauty, except the look of goodness in her face. And somehow it seemed to me that the Madonna would have wished— But she was right. We should keep back nothing. She tied the ribbons as they are now, and hung the hair up there upon the Madonna’s hand, and knelt down, and told her that she offered it for Angelo, in the hope that her love of him might be regarded in heaven, and that his life might be spared. That was all.

“She put a shawl over her poor head, and we came out.

“Well, presently there was a fine to-do in the village. When the folk saw Pancrazia’s head they stared, and asked, and laughed. And the children pointed, and cried out. And the boys—I beat the boys, signore, and never asked forgiveness. But Pancrazia wouldn’t say a word.

“Pancrazia’s offering found favour with the Madonna, signore. Her prayer was heard. Angelo recovered, and returned.”

The old priest paused. His face was working. The mystical expression I had observed in his eyes was replaced for a moment by a very different look. After a silence he continued:

“No one knew then what we all knew later: that he had been nursed back to life—those were Angelo’s words, and a lie, signore, for his recovery was the miracle of the Madonna—by a woman of the islands, and that already his heart was going out to this stranger. He had come back, though, to keep his word. That I know. But when he saw Pancrazia’s poor, shorn head he thought again of the island woman, and⸺”

The old man coughed, and paused.

“Signore,” he resumed in a loud voice, “when Pancrazia saw his look, and that his heart was turned by such a thing, she would not say where, and why, the hair was gone. And I—I had promised. Angelo was but a lad, his passions were hot, the lust of the eye was awake within him, and—God and the Madonna forgive him!—where he should have seen the heart he⸺”

He paused again.

“Signore, he went back to the islands, and married the woman who had nursed him in Lipari.”

“And Pancrazia?” I asked. “Did she not—pardon me if I hurt you—but did she not cease to pray to the Madonna?”

“Cease to pray!” said the old man, and again the mystical look was in his eyes.

He drew out his watch, then softly he whispered:

“Come, signore!”

We went out to the wall above the precipice. Here there is an old gateway, arching the narrow track by which I had ascended. Just beyond it, under the towering rocks, is a shrine with a crude picture of the Madonna and Child. Now, as the old priest pointed with his finger, I saw on the step before the shrine a plain, dark woman kneeling. A handkerchief was folded over her head, and fell upon her shoulders. Her hands were clasped. Her lips were moving. She was absorbed, and did not see us.

“That is Pancrazia!” whispered the priest. “She has never married. Each day at this hour she comes here. Do you know why?”

“To ask for⸺”

“She is asking for nothing. She is blessing the Madonna.”

“Blessing the Madonna!”

“For having answered her prayer.”

“But⸺”

“Signore, when Pancrazia gave her hair to the Madonna della Rocca she did not think of self. She only asked that her love might be regarded in heaven, and that Angelo’s life might be spared. Her prayer was granted. Angelo lives. And each day at this hour Pancrazia comes here to give thanks to God, and to praise and bless the Holy Madonna della Rocca.”

I said nothing, but I thought as I watched the praising woman,

“How great humanity is!”

Transcriber’s Notes:

• Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
• Text enclosed by pluses is in small caps (+small caps+).
• Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
• Illustration facing page 90 added to LOI