CHAPTER IV
SUNSHINE OUTSIDE, BUT ICE AT THE CORE
For the next four days I watched Lota’s movements.
After our morning saunter – she was far too weak now to go further than the terraced paths near the villa, and our sauntering was of the slowest – my poor friend would retire to her room for what she called her afternoon rest, while the carriage, rarely used by herself, conveyed her aunt and me for a drive, which our low spirits made ineffably dreary. Vainly was that panorama of loveliness spread before my eyes – I could enjoy nothing; for between me and that romantic scene there was the image of my perishing friend, dying by inches, and obstinately determined to die.
I questioned Lota’s maid about those long afternoons which her mistress spent in her darkened room, and the young woman’s answers confirmed my suspicions.
Miss Hammond did not like to be disturbed. She was a very heavy sleeper.
‘She likes me to go to her at four o’clock every afternoon to do her hair, and put on her teagown. She is generally fast asleep when I go to her.’
‘And her door locked?’
‘No, the door is very seldom locked at four. I went an hour earlier once with a telegram, and then the door was locked, and Miss Hammond was so fast asleep that she couldn’t hear me knocking. I had to wait till the usual time.’
On the fourth day after my inspection of the shutters, I started for the daily drive at the accustomed hour; but when we had gone a little way down the hill, I pretended to remember an important letter that had to be written, and asked Miss Elderson to stop the carriage, and let me go back to the villa, excusing my desertion for this afternoon. The poor lady, who was as low-spirited as myself, declared she would miss me sadly, and the carriage crept on, while I climbed the hill by those straight steep paths which shortened the journey to a five minutes’ walk.
The silence of the villa as I went softly in at the open hall door suggested a general siesta. There was an awning in front of the door, and the hall was wrapped in shadow, the corridor beyond darker still, and at the end of this corridor I saw a flitting figure in pale grey – the pale Indian cashmere of Lota’s neat morning frock. I heard a key turn, then the creaking of a heavy door, and the darkness had swallowed that pale grey figure.
I waited a few moments, and then stole softly along the passage. The door was half open, and I peered into the room beyond. It was empty, but an open door facing the fireplace showed me another room – a room lined with bookshelves, and in this room I could hear footsteps pacing slowly to and fro, very slowly, with the feeble tread I knew too well.
Presently she turned, put her hand to her brow as if remembering something, and hurried to the door where I was standing.
‘It is I, Lota!’ I called out, as she approached me, lest she should be startled by my unexpected presence.
I had been mean enough to steal a march upon her, but I was not mean enough to conceal myself.
‘You here!’ she exclaimed.
I told her how I had suspected her visits to these deserted rooms, and how I had dreaded the melancholy effect which their dreariness must needs exercise upon her mind and health.
‘Do you call them dreary?’ she asked, with a curious little laugh. ‘I call them charming. They are the only rooms in the house that interest me. And it was just the same with my grandfather. He spent his declining days in these queer old rooms, surrounded by these queer old things.’
She looked round her, with furtive, wandering glances, at the heavy old bookshelves, the black and white cabinets, the dismal old Italian tapestry, and at a Venetian glass which occupied a narrow recess at the end of the inner room, a glass that reached from floor to ceiling, and in a florid carved frame, from which the gilding had mostly worn away.
Her glance lingered on this Venetian glass, which to my uneducated eye looked the oldest piece of furniture in the room. The surface was so clouded and tarnished that although Lota and I were standing opposite it at a little distance, I could see no reflection of ourselves or of the room.
‘You cannot find that curious old glass very flattering to your vanity,’ I said, trying to be sprightly and careless in my remarks, while my eyes were watching that wasted countenance with its hectic bloom, and those too brilliant eyes.
‘No, it doesn’t flatter, but I like it,’ she said, going a little nearer the glass, and then suddenly drawing a dark velvet curtain across the narrow space between the two projecting bookcases.
I had not noticed the curtain till she touched it, for this end of the long room was in shadow. The heavy shutters which I had seen outside were closed over two of the windows, but the shutters had been pushed back from the third window, and the casements were open to the still, soft air.
There was a sofa opposite the curtained recess. Lota sank down upon it, folded her arms, and looked at me with a defiant smile.
‘Well, what do you think of my den?’ she asked.
‘I think you could not have chosen a worse.’
‘And yet my grandfather liked these rooms better than all the rest of the house. He almost lived in them. His old servant told me so.’
‘An elderly fancy, which no doubt injured his health.’
‘People choose to say so, because he died sooner than they expected. His death would have come at the appointed time. The day and hour were written in the Book of Fate before he came here. The house had nothing to do with it – only in this quiet old room he had time to think of what was coming.’
‘He was old, and had lived his life; you are young, and life is all before you.’
‘All!’ she echoed, with a laugh that chilled my heart.
I tried to be cheerful, matter of fact, practical. I urged her to abandon this dismal library, with its dry old books, airless gloom, and northern aspect. I told her she had been guilty of an unworthy deceit in spending long hours in rooms that had been especially forbidden her. She made an end of my pleading with cruel abruptness.
‘You are talking nonsense, Helen. You know that I am doomed to die before the summer is over, and I know that you know it.’
‘You were well when you came here; you have been growing worse day by day.’
‘My good health was only seeming. The seeds of disease were here,’ touching her contracted chest. ‘They have only developed. Don’t talk to me, Helen; I shall spend my quiet hours in these rooms till the end, like my poor old grandfather. There need be no more concealment or double dealing. This house is mine, and I shall occupy the rooms I like.’
She drew herself up haughtily as she rose from the sofa, but the poor little attempt at dignity was spoilt by a paroxysm of coughing that made her glad to rest in my arms, while I laid her gently down upon the sofa.
The darkness came upon us while she lay there, prostrate, exhausted, and that afternoon in the shadow of the steep hill was the first of many such afternoons.
From that day she allowed me to share her solitude, so long as I did not disturb her reveries, her long silences, or brief snatches of slumber. I sat by the open window and worked or read, while she lay on the sofa, or moved softly about the room, looking at the books on the shelves, or often stopping before that dark Venetian glass to contemplate her own shadowy image.
I wondered exceedingly in those days what pleasure or interest she could find in surveying that blurred shadow of her faded beauty. Was it in bitterness she looked at the altered form, the shrunken features – or only in philosophical wonder such as Marlborough felt, when he pointed to the withered old form in the glass – the poor remains of peerless manhood and exclaimed: ‘That was once a man.’
I had no power to withdraw her from that gloomy solitude. I was thankful for the privilege of being with her, able to comfort her in moments of physical misery.
Captain Holbrook left within a few days of my discovery, his leave having so nearly expired that he had only just time enough to get back to Portsmouth, where his regiment was stationed. He went regretfully, full of fear, and
his last anxious words were spoken to me at the little station on the sea shore.
‘Do all you can to bring her home as soon as the doctor will let her come,’ he said. ‘I leave her with a heavy heart, but I can do no good by remaining. I shall count every hour between now and April. She has promised to stay at Southsea till we are married, so that we may be near each other. I am to find a pretty villa for her and her aunt. It will be something for me to do.’
My heart ached for him in his forlornness, glad of any little duty that made a link between him and his sweetheart. I knew that he dearly loved his profession, and I knew also that he had offered to leave the army if Lota liked – to alter the whole plan of his life rather than be parted from her, even for a few weeks. She had forbidden such a sacrifice; and she had stubbornly refused to advance the date of her marriage, and marry him at San Remo, as he had entreated her to do, so that he might take her back to England, and establish her at Ventnor, where he believed she would be better than in her Italian paradise.
He was gone, and I felt miserably helpless and lonely without him – lonely even in Lota’s company, for between her and me there were shadows and mysteries that filled my heart with dread. Sitting in the same room with her – admitted now to constant companionship – I felt not the less that there were secrets in her life which I knew not. Her eloquent face told some sad story which I could not read; and sometimes it seemed to me that between her and me there was a third presence, and that the name of the third was Death.
She let me share her quiet afternoons in the old rooms, but though her occupation of these rooms was no longer concealed from the household, she kept the privilege of solitude with jealous care. Her aunt still believed in the siesta between lunch and dinner, and went for her solitary drives with a placid submission to Lota’s desire that the carriage and horses should be used by somebody. The poor thing was quite as unhappy as I, and quite as fond as Lota; but her feeble spirit had no power to struggle against her niece’s strong will. Of these two the younger had always ruled the elder. After Captain Holbrook’s departure the doctor took his patient seriously in hand, and I soon perceived a marked change in his manner of questioning her, while the stethoscope came now into frequent use. The casual weekly visits became daily visits; and in answer to my anxious questions I was told that the case had suddenly assumed a serious character.
‘We have something to fight against now,’ said the doctor; ‘until now we have had nothing but nerves and fancies.’
‘And now?’
‘The lungs are affected.’
This was the beginning of a new sadness. Instead of vague fears, we had now the certainty of evil; and I think in the dreary days and weeks that followed, the poor old aunt and I had not one thought or desire, or fear, which was not centred in the fair young creature whose fading life we watched. Two English nurses, summoned from Cannes, aided in the actual nursing, for which trained skill was needed; but in all the little services which love can perform Miss Elderson and I were Lota’s faithful slaves.
I told the doctor of her afternoons spent in her grandfather’s library; and I told him also that I doubted my power, or his, to induce her to abandon that room.
‘She has a fancy for it, and you know how difficult fancies are to fight with when anyone is out of health.’
‘It is a curious fact,’ said the doctor, ‘that in every bad case I have attended in this house my patient has had an obstinate preference for that dull, cold, room.’
‘When you say every bad case, I think you must mean every fatal case,’ I said.
‘Yes. Unhappily the three or four cases I am thinking of ended fatally; but that fact need not make you unhappy. Feeble, elderly people come to this southern shore to spin out the frail thread of life that is at breaking point when they leave England. In your young friend’s case sunshine and balmy air may do much. She ought to live on the sunny side of the house; but her fancy for her grandfather’s library may be indulged all the same. She can spend her evenings in that room, which can be made thoroughly warm and comfortable before she enters it. The room is well built and dry. When the shutters are shut and the curtains drawn, and the temperature carefully regulated, it will be as good a room as any other for the lamp-light hours; but for the day let her have all the sunshine she can.’
I repeated this little lecture to Lota, who promised to obey.
‘I like the queer, old room,’ she said, ‘and, Helen, don’t think me a bear if I say that I should like to be alone there sometimes, as I used to be before you hunted me down. Society is very nice for people who are well enough to enjoy it, but I’m not up to society, not even your’s and auntie’s. Yes, I know what you are going to say. You sit like a mouse, and don’t speak till you are spoken to; but the very knowledge that you are there, watching me and thinking about me, worries me. And as for the auntie, with her little anxious fidgettings, wanting to settle my footstool, and shake up my pillows, and turn the leaves of my books, and always making me uncomfortable in the kindest way, dear soul – well, I don’t mind confessing that she gets on my nerves, and makes me feel as if I should like to scream. Let me have one hour or two of perfect solitude sometimes, Helen. The nurse doesn’t count. She can sit in the room, and you will know that I am not going to die suddenly without anybody to look on at my poor little tragedy.’
She had talked longer and more earnestly than usual, and the talking ended in a fit of coughing which shook the wasted frame. I promised that all should be as she wished. If solitude were more restful than even our quiet companionship, she should be sometimes alone. I would answer for her aunt, as for myself.
The nurses were two bright, capable young women, and were used to the caprices of the sick. I told them exactly what was wanted: a silent unobtrusive presence, a watchful care of the patient’s physical comfort by day and night. And henceforth Lota’s evenings were spent for the most part in solitude. She had her books, and her drawing-board, on which with light, weak hand she would sketch faint remembrances of the spots that had charmed us most in our drives or rambles. She had her basket overflowing with scraps of fancy work, beginnings of things that were to have no end.
‘She doesn’t read very long, or work for more than ten minutes at a time,’ the nurse told me. ‘She just dozes away most of the evening, or walks about the room now and then, and stands to look at herself in that gloomy old glass. It’s strange that she should be so fond of looking in the glass, poor dear, when she can scarcely fail to see the change in herself.’
‘No, no, she must see, and it is breaking her heart. I wish we could do away with every looking-glass in the house,’ said I, remembering how pretty she had been in the fresh bloom of her happy girlhood only six months before that dreary time.
‘She is very fond of going over her grandfather’s papers,’ the nurse told me. ‘There is a book I see her reading very often – a manuscript book.’
‘His diary, perhaps,’ said I.
‘It might be that; but it’s strange that she should care to pore over an old gentleman’s diary.’
Strange, yes; but all her fancies and likings were strange ever since I had entered that unlucky house. In her thought of her lover she was not as other girls. She was angry when I suggested that we should tell him of her illness, in order that he might get leave to come to her, if it were only for a few days.
‘No, no, let him never look upon my face again,’ she said. ‘It is bad enough for him to remember me as I was when we parted at the station. It is ever so much worse now – and it will be – oh, Helen, to think of what must come – at last!’
She hid her face in her hands, and the frail frame was convulsed with the vehemence of her sobbing. It was long before I could soothe her; and this violent grief seemed the more terrible because of the forced cheerfulness of her usual manner.
CHAPTER V
‘SEEK NOT TO KNOW’
We kept early hours at the villa. We dined at seven, and at eight Lota withdrew to the room wh
ich she was pleased to call her den. At ten there was a procession of invalid, nurse, aunt, and friend to Lota’s bedroom, where the night nurse, in her neat print gown and pretty white cap, was waiting to receive her. There were many kisses and tender good-nights, and a great show of cheerfulness on all sides, and then Miss Elderson and I crept slowly to our rooms – exchanging a few sad words, a few sympathetic sighs, to cry ourselves to sleep, and to awake in the morning with the thought of the doom hanging over us.
I used to drop in upon Lota’s solitude a little before bedtime, sometimes with her aunt, sometimes alone. She would look up from her book with a surprised air, or start out of her sleep.
‘Bedtime already?’
Sometimes when I found her sleeping, I would seat myself beside her sofa, and wait in silence for her waking. How picturesque, how luxurious, the old room looked in the glaring light of the wood, which brightened even the grim tapestry, and glorified the bowls of red and purple anemones and other scentless flowers, and the long wall of books, and the velvet curtained windows, and shining brown floor. It was a room that I too could have loved were it not for the shadow of fear that hung over all things at the Orange Grove.
The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories, Volume Two Page 8
