The Leithen Stories (55 page)

To Vernon, shy, placid, a devotee of all the conventions, it was beginning to seem a monstrous thing to enter this strange house at the bidding of two servants, primed with a crazy tale, to meet an owner who had given no sign of desiring his presence. A woman, too – apparently a young woman. The thing was hideously embarrassing, the more so as he suddenly realised that he was barefooted, and clad in his old jersey and corduroys. I think he would have drawn back except for the sight of the faggots – that and the woman's challenge to his courage. He had been ‘dared' like a schoolboy, and after twenty-four hours fighting with storms and the shattering of the purpose of a lifetime he was in that half-truculent, half-reckless mood which is prone to accept a challenge. There was business afoot, it appeared, ugly business.

‘Go on. I will see your mistress,' he said.

With a key the old man unlocked the door. The lock must have been recently oiled, for it moved easily. The three now climbed a staircase which seemed to follow the wall of a round tower. Presently they came into a stone hall with ancient hangings like the banners in the church. From the open frame of the lantern a second was kindled, and the two lights showed a huge desolate place with crumbling mosaics on the floor and plaster dropping from the walls and cornices. There was no furniture of any kind and the place smelt damp and chilly like a vault.

‘These are unused chambers,' the woman said, and her voice was no longer hushed but high-pitched with excitement. ‘We live only on the landward side.'

Another heavy door was unlocked, and they entered a corridor where the air blew warmer, and there was a hint of that indescribable scent which comes from human habitation. The woman stopped and consulted in whispers with the old man. Now that she had got Vernon inside, her nervousness seemed to have increased. She turned to him at last:

‘I must prepare my mistress. If Monsieur will be so good he will wait here till I fetch him.'

She opened a door and almost pushed Vernon within. He found himself in black darkness, while the flicker of the lantern vanished round a bend in the corridor.

FROM HIS POCKET Vernon drew his electric torch and flashed it round the room in which he found himself. It was the extreme opposite of the empty stone hall, for it was heavily decorated and crowded with furniture. Clearly no one had used it lately, for dust lay on everything and the shutters of the windows had not been unbarred for months. It had the air, indeed, of a lumber-room, into which furniture had been casually shot. The pieces were for the most part fine and costly. There were several Spanish cabinets, a wonderful red-lacquer couch, quantities of Oriental rugs which looked good, and a litter of Chinese vases and antique silver lamps.

But it was not the junk which filled it that caught Vernon's eye. It was the walls which had been painted and frescoed in one continuous picture. At first he thought it was a Procession of the Hoursor the Seasons, but when he brought his torch to bearonit he saw that it was something very different. The background was a mountain glade, and on the lawns and beside the pools of a stream figures were engaged in wild dances. Pan and his satyrs were there, and a bevy of nymphs, and strange figures half animal, half human. The thing was done with immense skill – the slanted eyes of the fauns, the leer in a contorted satyr face, the mingled lust and terror of the nymphs, the horrid obscenity of the movements. It wasa carnival of bestiality that stared from the four walls. The man who conceived it had worshipped darker gods even than Priapus.

There were other things which Vernon noted in the jumble of the room. A head of Aphrodite, for instance – Pandemia, not Urania. A broken statuette of a boy which made him sick. A group of little figures which were a miracle in the imaginative degradation of the human form. Not the worst relics from the lupanars of Pompeii compared with these in sheer subtlety of filth. And all this in a shuttered room stifling with mould and disuse.

There was a door at the farther end which he found unlocked. The room beyond was like a mortuary – the walls painted black and undecorated save for one small picture. There was a crack in the shutters here, and perhaps a broken window, for a breath of the clean sea air met him. There was no furniture except an oblong piece of yellow marble which seemed from the rams' heads and cornucopias to be an old altar. He turned his torch on the solitary picture. It represented the stock scene of Salome with the head of John the Baptist, a subject which bad artists have made play with for the last five hundred years. But this was none of the customary daubs, but the work of a master – a perverted, perhaps a crazy, genius. The woman's gloating face, the passion of the hands caressing the pale flesh, the stare of the dead eyes, were wonderful and awful. If the first room had been the shrine of inhuman lust, this had been the chapel of inhuman cruelty.

He opened another door and found himself in a little closet, lined to the ceiling with books. He knew what he would find on the shelves. The volumes were finely bound, chiefly in vellum, and among them were a certain number of reputable classics. But most belonged to the backstairs of literature – the obscenities of Greek and of silver Latin, the diseased sidewalks of the Middle Ages, the aberrations of the moderns. It was not common pornography: the collection had been made by someone who was a scholar in vice.

Vernon went back to the first room, nauseated and angry. He must get out of this damned place, which was, or had been, the habitation of devils. What kind of owner could such a house possess? The woman had said that it was a young girl, as virtuous as the Virgin. But, great God! how could virtue dwell in such an environment.

He had opened the door to begin his retreat when a lantern appeared in the corridor. It was the woman, and with a finger on her lips she motioned him back into the room.

‘My mistress is asleep,' she said, ‘and it would not be well to wake her. Monsieur will stay here tonight and speak with her in the morning?'

‘I will do nothing of the kind,' said Vernon. ‘I am going back to my boat.'

The woman caught his involuntary glance at the wall paintings and clutched his arm. ‘But that is not her doing,' she cried. That was the work of her father, who was beyond belief
wicked. It is his sins that the child is about to expiate. The people have condemned her, but you surely would not join in their unjust judgement.'

‘I tell you I will have nothing to do with the place. Will you kindly show me the way back?'

Her face hardened. ‘I cannot. Mitri has the key.'

‘Well, where the devil is Mitri?'

‘I will not tell … O Monsieur, I beseech you, do not forsake us. There has been evil in this House enough to sink it to hell, but my mistress is innocent. I ask only that you speak with her. After that, if you so decide, you can go away.'

The woman was plainly honest and in earnest, and Vernon was a just man. He suddenly felt that he was behaving badly. There could be no harm in sleeping a night in the house, and in the morning interviewing its owner. If it was a case of real necessity he could take her and her maid off in his boat … After all there might be serious trouble afoot. The sight of those hideous rooms had given him a sharp realisation of the ugly things in life.

He was taken to a clean, bare little attic at the top of the house which had once no doubt been a servant's quarters. Having been up all the previous night, his head had scarcely touched the rough pillow before he was asleep. He slept for ten hours, till he was awakened by Mitri, who brought him hot water and soap and a venerable razor with which he made some attempt at a toilet. He noticed that the fog was still thick, and from the garret window he looked into an opaque blanket.

He had wakened with a different attitude towards the adventure in which he found himself. The sense of a wasted youth and defrauded hopes had left him; he felt more tightly strung, more vigorous, younger; he also felt a certain curiosity about this Greek girl who in an abominable house was defying the lightnings.

Mitri conducted him to the first floor, where he was taken charge of by the Frenchwoman.

‘Do not be afraid of her,' she whispered. ‘Deal with her as a man with a woman and make her do your bidding. She is stiff-necked towards me, but she may listen to a young man, especially if he be English.'

She ushered Vernon into a room which was very different from the hideous chambers he had explored the night before. It was poorly and sparsely furnished, the chairs were chiefly
wicker, the walls had recently been distempered by an amateur hand, the floor was of bare scrubbed boards. But a bright fire burned on the hearth, there was a big bunch of narcissus on a table set for breakfast, and flowering branches had been stuck in the tall vases beside the chimney. Through the open window came a drift of fog which intensified the comfort of the fire.

It was a woman's room for on a table lay some knitting and a piece of embroidery, and a small ivory housewife's case bearing the initials ‘K.A.'. There were one or two books also, and Vernon looked at them curiously. One was a book of poems which had been published in London a month before. This Greek girl must know English; perhaps she had recently been in England … He took up another volume, and to his amazement it was a reprint of Peter Beckford's
Thoughts on Hunting
. He could not have been more surprised if he had found a copy of the
Eton Chronicle
. What on earth was the mistress of a lonely Aegean island doing with Peter Beckford?

The fire crackled cheerfully, the raw morning air flowed through the window, and Vernon cast longing eyes on the simple preparations for breakfast. He was ferociously hungry, and he wished he were now in the boat, where the Epirote would be frying bacon …

There was another door besides that by which he had entered, and curiously enough it was in the same position as the door in the room of his dream. He angrily dismissed the memory of that preposterous hallucination, but he kept his eye on the door. By it no doubt the mistress of the house would enter, and he wished she would make haste. He was beginning to be very curious about this girl … Probably she would be indignant and send him about his business, but she could scarcely refuse to give him breakfast first. In any case there was the yacht … There was a mirror above the mantelpiece in which he caught a glimpse of himself. The glimpse was not reassuring. His face was as dark as an Indian's, his hair wanted cutting, and his blue jersey was bleached and discoloured with salt water. He looked like a deckhand on a cargo boat. But perhaps a girl who read Beckford would not be pedantic about appearances. He put his trust in Peter—

The door had opened. A voice, sharp-pitched and startled, was speaking, and to his surprise it spoke in English.

‘Who the devil are you?' it said.

He saw a slim girl, who stood in the entrance poised like a runner, every line of her figure an expression of amazement. He had seen her before, but his memory was wretched for women's faces. But the odd thing was that, after the first second, there was recognition in her face.

‘Colonel Milburne!' said the voice. ‘What in the name of goodness are you doing here?'

She knew him, and he knew her, but where – when – had they met? He must have stared blankly, for the girl laughed.

‘You have forgotten,' she said. ‘But I have seen you out with the Mivern, and we met at luncheon at Wirlesdon in the winter.'

He remembered now, and what he remembered chiefly were the last words he had spoken to me on the subject of this girl. The adventure was becoming farcical.

‘I beg your pardon,' he stammered. ‘You are Miss Arabin. I didn't know—'

‘I am Miss Arabin. But why the honour of an early morning call from Colonel Milburne?'

‘I came here last night in a yacht.' Vernon was making a lame business of his explanation, for the startled angry eyes of his hostess scattered his wits. ‘I anchored below in the fog, and an old man came out in a boat and asked me to come ashore. There was a woman on the beach – your maid – and she implored my help – told a story I didn't quite follow—'

‘The fog!' the girl repeated. ‘That of course explains why you were allowed to anchor. In clear weather you would have been driven away.'

She spoke in so assured a tone that Vernon was piqued.

‘The seas are free,' he said. ‘Who would have interfered with me? Your servants?'

She laughed again, mirthlessly. ‘My people. Not my servants. Continue. You came ashore and listened to Élise's chatter. After that?'

‘She said you were asleep and must not be wakened, but that I should speak to you in the morning. She put me up for the night.'

‘Where?' she asked sharply.

‘In a little room on the top floor.'

‘I see. “Where you sleeps you breakfasts.” Well, we'd better have some food.'

She rang a little silver handbell, and the maid, who must have been waiting close at hand, appeared with coffee and boiled eggs. She cast an anxious glance at Vernon as if to inquire how he had fared at her mistress's hands.

‘Sit down,' said the girl when Elise had gone, ‘I can't give you much to eat, for these days we are on short rations. I'm sorry but there's no sugar. I can recommend the honey. It's the only good thing in Plakos.'

‘Is this Plakos? I came here once before – in 1914 – in a steam yacht. I suppose I am in the big white house which looks down upon the jetty. I could see nothing last night in the fog. I remember a long causeway and steps cut in the rock. That must have been the road I came.'

She nodded. ‘What kind of sailor are you to be so ignorant of your whereabouts? Oh, I see, the storm! What's the size of your boat?'

When he told her, she exclaimed. ‘You must have had the devil of a time, for it was a first-class gale. And now on your arrival in port you are plunged into melodrama. You don't look as if you had much taste for melodrama, Colonel Milburne.'

‘I haven't. But is it really melodrama? Your maid told me a rather alarming tale.'

Her eyes had the hard agate gleam which he remembered from Wirlesdon. Then he had detested her, but now, as he looked at her, he saw that which made him alter his judgement. The small face was very pale, and there were dark lines under the eyes. This girl was undergoing some heavy strain, and her casual manner was in the nature of a shield.

‘Is it true?' he asked.

‘So-so. In parts, no doubt. I am having trouble with my tenants, which I am told is a thing that happens even in England. But that is my own concern, and I don't ask for help. After breakfast I would suggest that you go back to your yacht.'

‘I think you had better come with me. You and your maid. I take it that the old man Mitri can fend for himself.'

‘How kind of you!' she cried in a falsetto, mimicking voice. ‘How extraordinarily kind! But you see I haven't asked your help, and I don't propose to accept it … You're sure you won't have any more coffee! I wonder if you could give me a cigarette? I've been out of them for three days.'

She lay back in a wicker chair, rocking herself and lazily blowing smoke clouds. Vernon stood with his back to the fire and filled a pipe.

‘I don't see how I can go away,' he said, ‘unless I can convince myself that you're in no danger. You're English, and a woman, and I'm bound to help you whether you want it or not.' He spoke with assurance now, perhaps with a certain priggishness. The tone may have offended the girl, for when she spoke it was with a touch of the insolence which he remembered at Wirlesdon.

‘I'm curious to know what Elise told you last night.'

‘Simply that you were imprisoned here by the people of Plakos – that they thought you a witch and might very likely treat you in the savage way that people used to treat witches.'

She nodded. ‘That's about the size of it. But what if I refuse to let anyone interfere in a fight between me and my own people? Supposing this is something which I must stick out for the sake of my own credit? What then, Colonel Milburne? You have been a soldier. You wouldn't advise me to run away.'