The Chink in the Armour/Chapter 18
CHAPTER XVIII
Sylvia pushed open the little white gate of the Châlet des Muguets and began walking up the path which lay through the neglected, untidy garden.
To eyes accustomed to the exquisitely-kept gardens of an English country town, there was something almost offensive in the sight presented by the high, coarse grass and luxuriant unkemptness of the place, and once more Sylvia wondered how the Wachners could bear to leave the land surrounding their temporary home in such a state.
But the quaint, fantastic-looking, one-storeyed châlet amused and rather interested her, for it was so entirely unlike any other dwelling with which she was acquainted.
To-day a deep, hot calm brooded over the silent house and deserted-looking garden; the chocolate-coloured shutters of the dining-room and the drawing-room were closed, and Sylvia told herself that it would be delightful to pass from the steamy heat outside into the dimly-lighted, sparsely-furnished little "salon," there to have a cup of tea and a pleasant chat with her friends before accompanying them in the cool of the early evening to the Casino.
Sylvia always enjoyed talking to Madame Wachner. She was a little bit ashamed that this was so, for this cosmopolitan woman's conversation was not always quite refined, but she was good-natured and lively, and her talk was invariably amusing. Above all, she knew how to flatter, and after a chat with Madame Wachner Sylvia Bailey always felt pleased both with herself and with the world about her.
There was very little concerning the young Englishwoman's simple, uneventful life with which Madame Wachner was not by now acquainted. She was aware for instance, that Sylvia had no close relations of her own, and that, like Anna Wolsky, Mrs. Bailey knew nobody—she had not even an acquaintance—living in Paris.
This fact had enlisted to a special degree Madame Wachner's interest and liking for the two young widows.
Sylvia rang the primitive bell which hung by the door which alone gave access, apart from the windows, to the Châlet des Muguets.
After some moments the day-servant employed by Madame Wachner opened the door with the curt words, "Monsieur and Madame are in Paris." The woman added, in a rather insolent tone, "They have gone to fetch some money," and her manner said plainly enough, "Yes, my master and mistress—silly fools—have lost their money at the Casino, and now they are gone to get fresh supplies!"
Sylvia felt vexed and disappointed. After what had been to her a very exciting, agitating conversation with Count Paul, she had unconsciously longed for the cheerful, commonplace talk of Madame Wachner.
As she stood there in the bright sunlight the thought of the long, lonely, hot walk back to the Villa du Lac became odious to her.
Why should she not go into the house and rest awhile? The more so that the Wachners would almost certainly return home very soon. They disliked Paris, and never stayed more than a couple of hours on their occasional visits there.
In her careful, rather precise French, she told the servant she would come in and wait.
"I am sure that Madame Wachner would wish me to do so," she said, smiling; and after a rather ungracious pause the woman admitted her into the house, leading the way into the darkened dining-room.
"Do you think it will be long before Madame Wachner comes back?" asked Sylvia.
The woman hesitated—"I cannot tell you that," she mumbled. "They never say when they are going, or when they will be back. They are very odd people!"
She bustled out of the room for a few moments and then came back, holding a big cotton parasol in her hand.
"I do not know if Madame wishes to stay on here by herself? As for me, I must go now, for my work is done. Perhaps when Madame leaves the house she will put the key under the mat."
"Yes, if I leave the house before my friends return home I will certainly do so. But I expect Madame Wachner will be here before long."
Sylvia spoke shortly. She did not like the day-servant's independent, almost rude way of speaking.
"Should the master and mistress come back before Madame has left, will Madame kindly explain that she insisted on coming into the house? I am absolutely forbidden to admit visitors unless Madame Wachner is here to entertain them."
The woman spoke quickly, her eyes fixed expectantly on the lady sitting before her.
Mrs. Bailey suddenly realised, or thought she realised, what that look meant. She took her purse out of her pocket and held out a two-franc piece.
"Certainly," she answered coldly, "I will explain to Madame Wachner that I insisted on coming in to rest."
The woman's manner altered; it became at once familiar and servile. After profusely thanking Sylvia for her "tip," she laid the cotton parasol on the dining-table, put her arms akimbo, and suddenly asked, "Has Madame heard any news of her friend? I mean of the Polish lady?"
"No," Sylvia looked up surprised. "I'm sorry to say that there is still no news of her, but, of course, there will be soon."
She was astonished that the Wachners should have mentioned the matter to this disagreeable, inquisitive person.
"The lady stopped here on her way to the station. She seemed in very high spirits."
"Oh, no, you are quite mistaken," said Sylvia quickly. "Madame Wolsky did not come here at all the day she left Lacville. She was expected, both to tea and to supper, but she did not arrive"
"Indeed, yes, Madame! I had to come back that afternoon, for I had forgotten to bring in some sugar. The lady was here then, and she was still here when I left the house."
"I assure you that this cannot have been on the day my friend left Lacville," said Mrs. Bailey quickly. "Madame Wolsky left on a Saturday afternoon. As I told you just now, Madame Wachner expected her to supper, but she never came. She went to Paris instead."
The servant looked at her fixedly, and Sylvia's face became what it seldom was—very forbidding in expression. She wished this meddling, familiar woman would go away and leave her alone.
"No doubt Madame knows best! One day is like another to me. I beg Madame's pardon."
The Frenchwoman took up her parasol and laid the house key on the table, then, with a "Bon jour, Madame, et encore merci bien!" she noisily closed the door behind her.
A moment later, Sylvia, with a sense of relief, found herself in sole possession of the Châlet des Muguets.
Even the quietest, the most commonplace house has, as it were, an individuality that sets it apart from other houses. And even those who would deny that proposition must admit that every inhabited dwelling has its own special nationality.
The Châlet des Muguets was typically French and typically suburban; but where it differed from thousands of houses of the same type, dotted round in the countrysides within easy reach of Paris, was that it was let each year to a different set of tenants.
In Sylvia Bailey's eyes the queer little place lacked all the elements which go to make a home; and, sitting there, in that airless, darkened dining-room, she wondered, not for the first time, why the Wachners chose to live in such a comfortless way.
She glanced round her with distaste. Everything was not only cheap, but common and tawdry. Still, the dining-room, like all the other rooms in the châlet, was singularly clean, and almost oppressively neat.
There was the round table at which she and Anna Wolsky had been so kindly entertained, the ugly buffet or sideboard, and in place of the dull parquet floor she remembered on her first visit lay an ugly piece of linoleum, of which the pattern printed on the surface simulated a red and blue marble pavement.
Once more the change puzzled her, perhaps unreasonably.
At last Sylvia got up from the hard cane chair on which she had been sitting.
There had come over her, in the half-darkness, a very peculiar sensation—an odd feeling that there was something alive in the room. She looked down, half expecting to see some small animal crouching under the table, or hiding by the walnut-wood buffet behind her.
But, no; nothing but the round table, and the six chairs stiffly placed against the wall, met her eyes. And yet, still that feeling that there was in the room some sentient creature besides herself persisted.
She opened the door giving into the hall, and walked through the short passage which divided the house into two portions, into the tiny "salon."
Here also the closed shutters gave the room a curious, eerie look of desolate greyness. But Sylvia's eyes, already accustomed to the half-darkness next door, saw everything perfectly.
The little sitting-room looked mean and shabby. There was not a flower, not even a book or a paper, to relieve its prim ugliness. The only ornaments were a gilt clock on the mantelpiece, flanked with two sham Empire candelabra. The shutters were fastened closely, and the room was dreadfully hot and airless.
Once more Sylvia wondered why the Wachners preferred to live in this cheerless way, with a servant who only came for a few hours each day, rather than at an hotel or boarding-house.
And then she reminded herself that, after all, the silent, gaunt man, and his talkative, voluble wife, seemed to be on exceptionally good terms the one with the other. Perhaps they really preferred being alone together than in a more peopled atmosphere.
While moving aimlessly about the room, Sylvia began to feel unaccountably nervous and oppressed. She longed to be away from this still, empty house, and yet it seemed absurd to leave just as the Wachners would be returning home.
After a few more minutes, however, the quietude, and the having absolutely nothing to do with which to wile away the time, affected Sylvia's nerves.
It was, after all, quite possible that the Wachners intended to wait in Paris till the heat of the day was over. In that case they would not be back till seven o'clock.
The best thing she could do would be to leave a note inviting Madame Wachner and L'Ami Fritz to dinner at the Villa du Lac. Count Paul was to be in Paris this evening, so his eyes would not be offended by the sight of the people of whom he so disapproved. Madame Wachner would probably be glad to dine out, the more so that no proper meal seemed to have been prepared by that unpleasant day-servant. Why, the woman had not even laid the cloth for her employers' supper!
Sylvia looked instinctively round for paper and envelopes, but there was no writing-table, not even a pencil and paper, in the little drawing-room. How absurd and annoying!
But, stay—somewhere in the house there must be writing materials.
Treading softly, and yet hearing her footsteps echoing with unpleasant loudness through the empty house, Sylvia Bailey walked past the open door of the little kitchen, and so to the end of the passage.
Then something extraordinary happened.
While in the act of opening the door of Madame Wachner's bed-room, the young Englishwoman stopped and caught her breath. Again she had suddenly experienced that unpleasant, eerie sensation—the sensation that she was not alone. But this time the feeling was far more vivid than it had been in the dining-room.
So strong, so definite was Sylvia's perception of another presence, and this time of a human presence, in the still house, that she turned sharply round—
But all she saw was the empty passage, cut by a shaft of light thrown from the open door of the kitchen, stretching its short length down to the entrance hall.
Making a determined effort over what she could but suppose to be her nerves, she walked through into the Wachners' bed-room.
It was very bare and singularly poorly furnished, at least to English eyes, but it was pleasantly cool after the drawing-room.
She walked across to the window, and, drawing aside the muslin curtains, looked out.
Beyond the patch of shade thrown by the house the sun beat down on a ragged, unkempt lawn, but across the lawn she noticed, much more particularly than she had done on the two former occasions when she had been in the house, that there lay a thick grove of chestnut trees just beyond the grounds of the Châlet des Muguets.
A hedge separated the lawn from the wood, but like everything else in the little property it had been neglected, and there were large gaps in it.
She turned away from the window
Yes, there, at last, was what she had come into this room to seek! Close to the broad, low bed was a writing-table, or, rather, a deal table, covered with a turkey red cloth, on which lay a large sheet of ink-stained, white blotting-paper.
Flanking the blotting-paper was a pile of Monsieur Wachner's little red books—the books in which he so carefully noted the turns of the game at the Casino, and which served him as the basis of his elaborate gambling "systems."
Sylvia went up to the writing-table, and, bending over it, began looking for some notepaper. But there was nothing of the sort to be seen; neither paper nor envelopes lay on the table.
This was the more absurd, as there were several pens, and an inkpot filled to the brim.
She told herself that the only thing to do was to tear a blank leaf out of one of L'Ami Fritz's note-books, and on it write her message of invitation. If she left the little sheet of paper propped up on the dining-table, the Wachners would be sure to see it.
She took up the newest-looking of the red note-books, and as she opened it she suddenly felt, and for the third time, that there was a living presence close to her—and this time that it was that of Anna Wolsky!
It was an extraordinary sensation—vivid, uncanny, terrifying—the more so that Sylvia Bailey not only believed herself to be alone in the house, but supposed Anna to be far from Lacville. …
Fortunately, this unnerving and terrifying impression of an unseen and yet real presence did not endure; and, as she focussed her eyes on the open book she held in her hand, it became fainter and fainter, while she realised, with a keen sense of relief, what it was that had brought the presence of her absent friend so very near to her.
There, actually lying open before her, between two leaves of the little note-book, was a letter signed by Anna Wolsky! It was a short note, in French, apparently an answer to one Madame Wachner had sent reminding her of her engagement. It was odd that the Wachners had said nothing of this note, for it made Anna's conduct seem stranger than ever.
Opposite the page on which lay the little letter, Monsieur Wachner had amused himself by trying to imitate Anna's angular handwriting.
Sylvia tore out one of the blank pages, and then she put the note-book and its enclosure back on the table. She felt vaguely touched by the fact that the Wachners had kept her friend's last letter; they alone, so she reminded herself, had been really sorry and concerned at Anna's sudden departure from the place. They also, like Sylvia herself, had been pained that Madame Wolsky had not cared to say good-bye to them.
She scribbled a few lines on the scrap of paper, and then, quickly making her way to the dining-room, she placed her unconventional invitation on the round table, and went out into the hall.
As she opened the front door of the Châlet des Muguets Sylvia was met by a blast of hot air. She looked out dubiously. She was thoroughly unnerved—as she expressed it to herself, "upset." Feeling as she now felt, walking back through the heat would be intolerable.
For the first time Lacville became utterly distasteful to Sylvia Bailey. She asked herself, with a kind of surprise, of self-rebuke, why she was there—away from her own country and her own people? With a choking sensation in her throat she told herself that it would be very comfortable to see once more the tall, broad figure of Bill Chester, and to hear his good, gruff English voice again.
She stepped out of the house, and put up her white parasol.
It was still dreadfully hot, but to the left, across the lawn, lay the cool depths of the chestnut wood. Why not go over there and rest in the shade?
Hurrying across the scorched grass to the place where there was an opening in the rough hedge, she found herself, a moment later, plunged in the grateful green twilight created by high trees.
It was delightfully quiet and still in the wood, and Sylvia wondered vaguely why the Wachners never took their tea out there. But foreigners are very law-abiding, or so she supposed, and the wood, if a piece of no-man's land, was for sale. Up a path she could see the back of a large board.
It was clear that this pretty bit of woodland would have been turned into villa plots long ago had it been nearer to a road. But it was still a stretch of primeval forest. Here and there, amid the tufts of grass, lay the husks of last autumn's chestnuts.
Sylvia slowly followed the little zigzag way which cut across the wood, and then, desiring to sit down for awhile, she struck off to the right, towards a spot where she saw that the brambles and the undergrowth had been cleared away.
Even here, where in summer the sun never penetrated, the tufts of coarse grass were dried up by the heat. She glanced down; no, there was no fear that the hard, dry ground would stain her pretty cotton frock.
And then, as she sat there, Sylvia gradually became aware that close to her, where the undergrowth began again, the earth had recently been disturbed. Over an irregular patch of about a yard square the sods had been dug up, and then planted again.
The thought passed through her mind that children must have been playing there, and that they had made a rude attempt to destroy their handiwork, or rather to prevent its being noticed, by placing the branch of a tree across the little plot of ground where the earth had been disturbed. It was this broken branch, of which the leaves had shrivelled up, that had first drawn her attention to the fact that someone must have been there, and recently.
Her thoughts wandered off to Bill Chester. He was now actually journeying towards her as fast as boat and train could bring him; in a couple of hours he would be in Paris, and then, perhaps, he would come out to Lacville in time for dinner.
Sylvia had not been able to get a room for him in the Villa du Lac, but she had engaged one in the Pension Malfait—where she had been able to secure the apartment which had been occupied by Anna Wolsky, whose things had only just been moved out of it.
She could not help being sorry that Bill would see Lacville for the first time on a Sunday. She feared that, to his English eyes, the place, especially on that day, would present a peculiarly—well, disreputable appearance!
Sylvia felt jealous for the good fame of Lacville. Out in the open air her spirits had recovered their balance; she told herself that she had been very happy here—singularly, extraordinarily happy. …
Of course it was a pity when people lost more money than they could afford at the Casino; but even in England people betted—the poor, so she had been told, risked all their spare pence on horse racing, and the others, those who could afford it, went to Monte Carlo, or stayed at home and played bridge!
After all, where was the difference? But, of course, Bill Chester, with his tiresome, old-fashioned views of life, would think there was a great difference; he would certainly disapprove of the way she was now spending her money. …
Something told her, and the thought was not wholly unpleasing to her, that Bill Chester and the Comte de Virieu would not get on well together. She wondered if Count Paul had ever been jealous—if he were capable of jealousy? It would be rather interesting to see if anything or anyone could make him so!
And then her mind travelled on, far, far away, to a picture with which she had been familiar from her girlhood, for it hung in the drawing-room of one of her father's friends at Market Dalling. It was called "The Gambler's Wife." She had always thought it a very pretty and pathetic picture; but she no longer thought it so; in fact, it now appeared to her to be a ridiculous travesty of life. Gamblers were just like other people, neither better nor worse—and often infinitely more lovable than were some other people. …
At last Sylvia got up, and slowly made her way out of the wood. She did not go back through the Wachners' garden; instead, she struck off to the left, on to a field path, which finally brought her to the main road.
As she was passing the Pension Malfait the landlady came out to the gate.
"Madame!" she cried out loudly, "I have had news of Madame Wolsky at last! Early this afternoon I had a telegram from her asking me to send her luggage to the cloak-room of the Gare du Nord."
Sylvia felt very glad—glad, and yet once more, perhaps unreasonably, hurt. Then Anna had been in Paris all the time? How odd, how really unkind of her not to have written and relieved the anxiety which she must have known her English friend would be feeling about her!
"I have had Madame Wolsky's room beautifully prepared for the English gentleman," went on Madame Malfait amiably. She was pleased that Mrs. Bailey was giving her a new guest, and it also amused her to observe what prudes Englishwomen could be.
Fancy putting a man who had come all the way from England to see one, in a pension situated at the other end of the town to where one was living oneself!