Chapter XX: 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.