She Fell Among Thieves (14 page)

The bends hereabouts were legion and, though I was sure I was gaining, two minutes or more went by before I whipped round a corner
to see the car I was chasing at rest in the midst of the way
. It was perhaps a hundred and fifty yards off, and Mansel was down in the road and seemed to be sharing a map with Vanity Fair.

Pass them I could not, for the road was very narrow and the car was not to one side. Stop where I was, I dared not: any moment they might look back. But, happily, the gradient was steep. In a flash I had thrown out the clutch and was sliding back round the corner, out of their view.

I applied my brakes and wiped the sweat from my eyes.

The thing was plain. Vanity Fair was uncertain which was the way she sought. Lafone knew only the footpath. Mansel, posing as Wright, knew nothing at all. What I could not understand was what had occurred to unsettle Vanity Fair. There was but one road she could take, and that was the road she was on. Six miles ahead there was a turning, but that was the only one.

It was then that I noticed the track beside which I had stopped.

At once I guessed what I afterwards learned was the truth. Though Vanity Fair had made this journey before, hitherto she had made it by night, and Jean, who had been her chauffeur, had known the road: since now she must find for herself a way which though she had travelled, she never had seen, her heart was all ready to misgive her and the sudden sight of the track had made her mistrust the road.

This was not surprising, for the track, though now it was grass-grown, had once been a road. And, in fact, her sense of direction was very sound, for the track led straight to Carlos, but the road ran round in a loop. I knew this, because I had seen it – I had travelled this way by day. And something else I knew –
that the spur on which Jenny was resting was in the loop, between the track and the road
.

An instant later the Rolls was descending the track with the rush of a lift…

As I say, I had marked the track and the way it ran. At first, I knew, it fell down to the foot of the mountain-side: then for a while it ran level: and then it toiled up to Carlos in a series of bitter zigzags too steep for a car to use. But I was not bound for Carlos. Somewhere on the track I must stop – and climb up to the road.

It was, of course, a chance in a million: but if I could climb up to Jenny before Vanity Fair and Mansel had rounded the last of the bends which hid her from view… The point was where to climb up.

I was down on the level now and could venture to raise my eyes.

To the left, far above me, I made out the line of the road: between this and the track, the mountain-side was grassy, but otherwise bare. If only –

Here a sturdy fellowship of box bushes obscured my view. As I cleared them, I glanced up again. From below, the spurs looked different: there didn’t seem to be spurs. Surely I –

The Rolls was half off the track. I wrenched her back to safety, tore round a horse-shoe bend and looked up again.

And then I saw the white of her frock…three hundred feet above me…by the side of the road.

As I hoped and prayed, I had cut off the ragged corner and had gained at least a mile on Vanity Fair. But I still had to get to Jenny, three hundred feet up.

In a flash I was out of the car and had flung myself at that smiling mountain-side…

I might have done better to shout or to sound the horn, but I was afraid to do either, lest I should attract the attention of Vanity Fair. In such surroundings a cry can be heard for miles. So I put forth all my strength to beat the car that was coming, that Mansel himself was urging, that had for its load the ruin of all his hopes.

I do not know what was the gradient. I only know that before I had gone ten paces, I was helping my feet with my hands. I will not say that I was climbing – when I slipped, I never fell more than two or three feet: but the pace at which I was mounting exceeded the limit which Nature has set for man. My offence was instantly punished: gravity hung like a mill-stone about my neck.

Three hundred feet up.

The beauty about me seemed to have lost its charm: the shining grass had grown shiny: the smile of the mountain-side had changed to a grin: the sky above me was brazen: the gulf below was gaping: the gaze of the new-risen sun had become a glare. And a pack of flies rose with me, bold and merciless insects, disputing my face and my head and driving me half-way to madness because I had no time to put them to flight.

Three hundred feet up.

My eyes were dim with sweat, my muscles seemed to be failing, a stitch was like a sword in my side. My heart was slamming and pounding, as though it were not my heart, but some big drum-stick within me beating on the wall of my chest: my chest was a heaving drum, tight and stretched and strained beyond bursting point: my one idea was to breathe, yet every breath that I drew was a separate agony: I was sobbing rather than breathing – there seemed to be no air left, and the sunlight was black about me and the tops of the mountains seemed to be closing in.

Jenny was fifty yards off. Her lovely head was up and her eyes were fixed on the road. Goliath was lying beside her, and Carson and Bell were sitting a little behind. I tried to shout, and could not. My voice was gone.

Somehow or other I covered another ten yards. Such progress was frightful, belonging to hideous dreams. I was achieving the hopeless, doing what could not be done. I could not,
and yet I had to
… My brain reeled into reminiscence. Once when I was a child and was seriously ill, I had been similarly placed. And then I had waked, to find my mother beside me and a nurse with dry pyjamas at the foot of the bed. I could see the room and their faces and the comfortable flicker of the fire which Wheatley’s
Cries of London
were giving back. And then –

The mountain was tilting. The steep was assuming an angle that no man could climb. I began to slip back…

There I dislodged some pebble, and Jenny and Bell looked round.

I raised an arm and beckoned and tried to say ‘Come’.

Then I let myself go to the left – and slipped and rolled and tumbled into the gully that yawned by the side of the spur.

Thirty seconds, perhaps, had gone by.

The four were gathered about me.

Jenny was down on her knees with my head in her lap: Bell was kneeling beside me, using his hat to fan the flies from my face: and Carson was holding Goliath, who seemed very pleased to see me and would, I think, have been happy to do what he could to help Bell.

Nobody spoke, for I was far past speaking and the others had only a question upon their lips.

And then the question was answered.

As I lay there, heaving and sobbing, I heard the snarl of a car that had rounded a corner up on the road above.

For a moment it rose steadily.

Then the car passed over the culvert and its uproar began to fade.

And before it had faded, it died – as abruptly as it had begun. Another bend had been rounded, and the danger was past.

I saw the servants’ eyes meet.

Then –

‘By God, sir,’ said Carson, quietly, ‘I give you best.’

‘Might have broken your heart, sir,’ said Bell, and wiped the foam from my lips.

But Jenny knitted her brows.

‘You know,’ she said gravely, ‘you oughtn’t to run so fast.’

Then she laid a cool hand on my forehead and pushed back my wringing-wet hair.

That day we passed in the forest south-east of Bordeaux. It seemed better so. Jenny had seen quite enough of a waking world. And I slept and told her stories and slept again. All this with an easy mind. I might be without the law. But Vanity Fair could hardly go to the police.

And at half-past eleven that night I made over my charge to Jill, a dainty, grey-eyed goddess, with the way of a maid.

Nearly five days had gone by, and I was en route for Jezreel. I did not look forward to my visit, but I could not sleep at Anise, while Mansel was fighting with beasts two hundred miles off.

Bell was not with me. I had left him to play armed guard to Jenny and Jill. Carson was in touch with his master – ‘somewhere in France’.

If Mansel knew of my coming, he had not heard it from me: but Vanity Fair might have told him – I had telegraphed from Bayonne.

For my return to Jezreel I had good excuse.

First, I had been invited: at my hotel at Bayonne I had found a week-old letter from Vanity Fair.

…
Jezreel is more dull than before, so please repeat your visit, as soon as you tire of Spain…

Secondly, I had heard from Titus – a letter very much to the point.

Dear Bill,

I remember Gaston de Rachel, and so does Blanche. His looks were dead against him, but he proved to be a debonair cove whom everyone liked. He was going abroad to seek a valuable wife. He was the sort of fellow who never has any money, but never sinks lower than the Ritz. You know what I mean. He knew how to behave, and certainly used his knowledge so far as we were concerned. I’ve no idea what became of him, once we’d berthed.

Yours ever,

Titus.

P.S. – Blanche has just remembered the best thing of all – if you want a good idea of the Count. He had a double on board, in the shape of a table-steward – of all unfortunate things. I give you my word you couldn’t tell them apart. It might have been most embarrassing: but de Rachel took the bull by the horns and made it the joke of the voyage. One night he actually took the fellow’s place – put on his kit, you know: and nobody knew the difference till de Rachel burnt his hand with a plate and said what he thought. He declared he’d take the man as his servant when we got to Galveston. He may have, for all I know.

It seemed right for Virginia’s sake, that Vanity Fair should know that her future son-in-law was using his master’s name – for that that was the truth I had not a shadow of doubt. The Count of Rachel was dead. He had died, unwept and unknown, in a foreign land. And his servant had seen his chance and stepped into the dead man’s shoes.

And that brings me to Virginia.

So far as she was concerned, I felt ill-at-ease. Virginia had asked me not to come back to Jezreel. She had so framed her request that not to grant it would be the act of a cad. And I was not going to grant it…

My action, of course, was not so bad as it seemed. In fact, it was not bad at all. Virginia wished to befriend me – no more than that. She knew it, and so did I. But I could not tell her I knew it. There was the rub.

I remembered David Garrick and how he had feigned to be drunk, to disgust the maiden he loved. The comparison brought me cold comfort. I did not love Virginia; but she had gone out of her way to do me, as she believed, a very good turn. I had no desire to disgust her or anyone else.

Of such were my thoughts as I drove from Bayonne to Jezreel.

For Vanity Fair I was ready. Thanks to the guide I had purchased, I knew the city of Burgos inside out. To explain Bell’s absence was easy – the heat in Spain had been furious, and when he had ailed for two days I had sent him home. (His sister was to post me a letter in two days’ time, reporting her brother’s progress, to bear out the lie.)

I was not obeying orders, as I had promised to do. My coming might even confound some plan that Mansel had set. But that was a risk I had made up my mind to take. Mansel was my very good friend, and though he was playing the hand, it was right that I should be within call. Because he was in her service, he was to a great extent at the mercy of Vanity Fair. Any moment she might give him an order which, though he did not know it, might cost him his life. And though he might suspect it, unless he was to throw in his hand, he was bound to obey. And Mansel, I knew, would never throw in his hand.

Then there was Jenny. For her sake alone, it was right I should go to Jezreel. The child was mad about Mansel. Had anything happened, I could not have faced her eyes.

I was not needed at Anise. There I had left an idyll straight out of Theocritus – one nymph teaching another how to govern the fountain over which she was born to preside. The relation of charge and duenna had never begun to exist. From the first the two were co-equal, for Jill was a playmate born. Though she was, in fact, the Duchess of Padua and was, I was sure, most happy in that estate, she took to the life at Anise as the lizard takes to the rocks. So far as I saw, she never ‘handled’ Jenny: she was herself too natural to make pretence: but she had command of a language that Jenny could understand. Set a child to teach a child… Within thirty-six hours Jenny’s memory was playing like a fountain, while the years she had passed in the pleasance bade fair to take the place of her ‘dreams’. I will swear that you could see her mind grow. But her heart, like the spots of the leopard, was not to be changed, and Jill had wired for her babies, ‘to make up a four’.

So much for the sonnet: now for the satire to come.

At half-past three I slipped into and out of Perin, and twenty minutes later stole into the dim courtyard of the Château Jezreel.

Vanity Fair was changed.

Her manner was as easy as ever, her dignity was as compelling, the flash of her smile as swift. Of her soul she was still the mistress: but her unslaked thirst for vengeance had set its mark on her flesh. She, Vanity Fair, had been bearded – as never before…
and those that had done it went free
. The reflection fed upon her vitals: it burned in her steel-grey eyes, and sat, stiff and square, in her face. There was no doubt about it. Behind her lips, her teeth were continually clenched.

Perhaps, because of my guilt, I imagined vain things. Be that as it may, I read in her aspect the judgment which she was impatient to give. I confess that it shook me.

‘And so you’ve come back, Mr Chandos.’

I bowed.

‘For a day or two, if you please. I’m afraid I’m rather restless. I can’t stay long in one place.’

‘You must make a great effort this time. I’m uncommonly glad to see you, and that’s the truth.’

I bowed again.

‘Candle disappointed you, madam.’

‘The light that failed,’ said Vanity Fair. ‘But I’m thankful he failed in Paris, and not in Jezreel. That would have been too much. Would you like “the corner suite”, or will it revive distasteful memories?’

‘Not in my head,’ said I.

Vanity Fair laughed.

‘And Spain,’ she said. ‘Did you go any further than Burgos?’

‘So far was too far,’ said I. ‘The heat was violent. My servant went down, and I had to send him home.’

I saw her brain pounce upon the statement: the suspicion with which she was quick, leaped into and out of her eyes. Then she touched the bell by her side.

When the butler appeared –

‘Marc will valet Mr Chandos.’ She turned to me. ‘Will you give him your keys?’

In silence I gave up my keys: there was nothing else to be done.

I should, of course, have foreseen that this was bound to occur, but it was so long since I had gone without Bell that I had not perceived that his absence would fairly fling open a door to Vanity Fair. I had no objection to Marc’s unpacking my clothes: but to have him ‘attached to me for duty’ was not at all to my taste. Once again I was being treated exactly as I deserved.

As the appointment depressed me, so it cheered Vanity Fair. As though she had sipped some cordial, the muscles of her jaw had relaxed.

For a quarter of an hour we chatted of unimportant things. Then I took out Titus’ letter…

‘Madam,’ I said, ‘this letter is an answer to a letter I ventured to write to a friend. It is, I think, my duty to give it to you to read.’

Vanity Fair raised her eyebrows. Then she took the letter and read it without a word.

At last –

‘Was this why you came?’ she said.

I shook my head.

‘I should have come anyway, madam.’

She folded the letter thoughtfully.

‘I’m glad of that. Otherwise you would have wasted your time. I never met his late master, but Gaston seems what he is. Did you really think that I took him for anything else?’

I felt rather dazed.

‘Then – then you know?’ I stammered.

‘Of course I know.’ She handed the letter back. ‘So, let me say, does Virginia. Don’t look so surprised. She’s not my daughter for nothing. Living dogs have their uses, you know – especially when they’re mistaken for lions that are dead. Don’t think that I’m not obliged – you’ve done very well. And I’m rather relieved that you know. But I’m sure that you’ll keep your counsel – if for no other reason, because it is also mine. And I have a weakness for having my counsel kept. Gaston believes that he has imposed upon me. I should hate him to be disabused – before his time.’

‘Of course,’ I said somehow. I stuffed the letter away. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’

‘That’s a good fault. Ideas are dangerous. And now go and change. Nobody knows you’re here, so your entrance at tea should be effective. Gaston’s nose, for instance, will assume a remarkable hue. A sort of dusky violet. And Below will gobble with emotion. It takes people different ways.’

I drove the Rolls round to the garage before I went to my room.

Mansel came out of a coach-house, as I came into the yard.

He was at my side in an instant. I thought that he looked rather tired.

‘Very glad to see you back, sir. Your servant with you again?’

‘No,’ said I. ‘The heat in Spain got him down and he’s had to go home.’

‘I’m sorry for that, sir. I hope you’re all right yourself.’

‘Couldn’t be better, thanks.’ I dropped my voice to a murmur. ‘There’s a letter behind my cushion. I’ve shown it to her, but she said that the news was stale.’

‘Just there, if you please sir,’ said Mansel. ‘No. Up the line… That’ll do, sir. I’ll see that she’s carefully washed.’

With that, he opened my door.

As I stepped out, he spoke in a very low voice.

‘Don’t say any more, but look out for a servant called Marc. He’s a dangerous man.’

I strove to look unconcerned.

‘Good day, Wright.’

‘Good day, sir.’

I made my way back to the courtyard and entered the vestibule. From this a flight of giant steps rose up to the hall. As I came to their foot, Virginia appeared at their head.

She started and stood stock still, with her eyes upon mine and one of her hands to her throat.

‘Well, Virginia,’ I said awkwardly.

Without a word, she turned on her heel and left me.

When I came to the head of the flight, she had disappeared.

Marc was an excellent valet. He was also a heavyweight and stood about six feet two. Yet his movements were never clumsy. His tread was light, his eye was swift, and his touch was steady and sure. He had about him the grace of a man in training. I had no doubt at all that he knew how to fight. As I afterwards learned, he had been a mental nurse.

‘You needn’t wait,’ I told him. ‘If I should want you, I’ll ring.’

He bowed and was gone – not before I had seen in his eyes that this was not according to plan.

One thing was in my favour. My pistol was in my dispatch-case, of which I had kept the key. And the lock was a very good lock.

Neither Virginia nor Gaston was present at tea – to Vanity Fair’s annoyance and my relief.

She made no bones about it.

‘Still, there’s always dinner,’ she murmured. ‘He can’t miss that.’

There was doom in her tone.

Even Acorn looked down his nose, and Below choked over his tea. I there and then decided to drink two cocktails that evening, instead of one.

Be sure I needed them.

Gaston’s greeting was meant to be casual.

As he turned away, Vanity Fair’s clear voice seemed to cut the air.

‘I once saw a vulgar, rich man extend two fingers – a supererogatory act: that he was a cad was already obvious enough. Learn of him, Gaston. Condescension must be bred in the bone.’

‘Do you say I am vulgar?’ blurted Gaston.

‘Intensely,’ said Vanity Fair. ‘There’s a fan in the Actaeon salon. When you’ve done with it, I should like it. It’s rather hot.’

As Gaston lurched out of the chamber, Virginia came in.

Her welcome was one of abandon. Almost it made me believe that it was not she I had seen at the head of the steps. I returned it thankfully – while Vanity Fair sat smiling, with a hand to her mouth.

‘With a hand to her mouth.’

That is a tiny detail: but if I am to present her picture, a duty of which I am sometimes inclined to despair – that detail is eloquent. Her facial control was absolute. No one had ever less need to cover her mouth. But the gesture was made to be seen by Virginia and me. We knew that we were play-acting. Vanity Fair knew it, too – and she meant us to know that she knew.

In fact, though I saw the gesture, Virginia did not. Her back was half turned. But that I had seen it was enough for Vanity Fair. At least, she believed it enough. But she was not among the prophets. Had Virginia seen that gesture, I doubt that I should have lived to tell this tale.

Dinner was served.

‘Now that he’s back, the question is how to keep him,’ said Vanity Fair.

‘I believe he went,’ said Virginia, ‘because there was nothing to do.’

‘Don’t be a fool,’ said her mother. ‘If that were so, Mr Chandos would not have returned.’

‘The truth is I’m restless,’ said I.

‘I know. I heard you say so. Do you shoot at all?’

I saw Below shift in his stall and lay hold of his glass.

I shook my head.

‘I’ve never cared about shooting.’

‘That’s a pity,’ said Vanity Fair. ‘You might have gone out with Gaston. He haunts some woods hereabouts in shooting-boots and an unbecoming confection of Harris tweed. He takes a gun with him.’

Again the chaplain shifted. I heard him begin to blow.

Gaston was fool enough to pick up the glove.