Fire Below (23 page)

‘She was not like other women,’ I said. ‘I told her plainly that I loved you again and again.’

‘That was very – very strict of you, Richard.’

‘My darling, I had to. I could not let her be nice to me without knowing where she stood.’

The magnificent eyes lighted, and I felt absurdly rich.

‘I am very fortunate,’ said Leonie.

The thing was too hard for me, so I gave it up and kissed the beautiful mouth.

‘Did you…kiss her like that?’

‘Once. I’m so glad I did. It was just at the last.’

Leonie nodded gravely.

‘That’s right. I’m so glad you did, too.’

‘I did not mean to be unfaithful,’ I said.

‘Neither you were, my darling. You gave her something that was mine – something that was not yours to give. You drew a cheque upon my personal account. Do you think that I question your signature? Do you think I would not honour it blindly, as you would mine? I asked you, because I am a woman, and women are very curious where the man they love is concerned.’

I put my arms about her and held her close to my heart.

‘There is no one like you,’ I said, ‘in all the world.’

‘Lelia was like me,’ said Leonie.

‘She was – in her way. I think that that was the reason why I liked her so well. And now, as I tell you, she seems to belong to you, and if I am to focus her clearly, I have to shut my eyes.’

My wife put her arms round my neck and looked at the sky.

‘I think,’ she said, ‘you have added her love for you to mine. I have never loved you so well.’

Then again she gave me her lips, and we went on our way.

Four hours had passed, and George and I sat on the terrace of Madame Dresden’s house.

The night was warm and starlit, and the breeze that had risen at sundown had died away. In the distance some band was playing, and now and again a slant of music stole to our ears; but Vigil is quiet of nights, and, except for that sound and the brush of tyres upon the boulevard at the end of the twinkling street, we might have been deep in the country which we had left. From time to time the measured tread of a sentry rose from the pavement beyond the garden wall, and the dog lying couched by my side would lift his head. The rooms behind us were dark, and the lights of Marya’s bedroom were laying two squares of silver upon the dew of the lawn. Leonie and she were there, talking. Now and again the shadow of one or the other would darken for a moment one of the pools of light. Bell was below stairs, asleep: and Rowley and Jameson were on their way to Littai – the former to fetch us some clothes, and the latter to order the lodge against our return.

‘When we left you,’ said George, ‘at the mill, Rowley took Marya’s line, and I made straight for the house. Marya and I had left by the door in the cloister, and so I knew how to get in. I had a look round about first, but as Grieg didn’t stand up and wave, I had to hope for the best. I got it, almost at once – in the shape of the biggest let-off I shall ever have. I’d just started across the turf when a bullet hit the barrel of my pistol which lay as usual in the right-hand pocket of my coat. It hurt all right – it was like the kick of a horse – and of course I thought I’d been hit: but that didn’t stop my running, and I was within that cloister before you could think. When I found that I wasn’t bleeding, I thought I must be funny like that: I couldn’t believe I wasn’t wounded, but I couldn’t think why I was standing, feeling rather bored and thirsty, instead of writhing in pain and biting bits out of the flags. Then I had a look at my pistol and got it in one. That bulwark was done in all right, but I couldn’t really complain. Where the bullet went on, I don’t know. The point is, it wasn’t in my groin. All the same, I was pretty well fixed. I was disarmed, and Grieg knew all about me and where I was. And as this was not at all what I wanted, I thought very fast. Then I entered the house, whipped to the hall and shouted Marya’s name in a tone which suggested that I’d less than a minute to live. When she didn’t answer, I knew that she wasn’t there. The blood and tears in my voice would have fetched a she-bear. So I entered the dining-room, threw a window open, got out, shut it and bolted like any rabbit across the girdle of turf. Then I picked a good covert and sat down to think.

‘Considering the new position, I found it good. That of course, was because I was comparatively safe. As a matter of hard fact, the position was exactly the same. But because my hide appeared to be more secure, I found it immensely improved. Of such is courage. Never mind. Grieg didn’t know I was disarmed. All he knew was that he had missed me and given himself away. I thought it unlikely that he would enter the house. He believed me to be in possession, and possession – complete with pistol – is more than nine points of the law. If he didn’t enter the house, he couldn’t ring up the police and tell them to pick him up. I found it extremely likely that he would withdraw. The neighbourhood was unhealthy. He had lost you and Rowley, and now he had as good as lost me. What was more, by opening fire he had, so far as he knew, put all of us wise about him. His game was to make himself scarce. His game was to walk to Vardar, or some such place, take the rest he needed and turn up all bright and smiling at dusk and the bridle-path. And that, I believe, is what he did. I never saw him again. What was so trying was that I never saw Marya.

‘To do as I then tried to do needed at least six men – two to watch the house, two to scour the park and a couple of connecting-files. For two long hours I hovered between these duties like a lost soul: then, when I knew that Grieg must have left if he had any hope of reaching the path before dusk, I let the house go and started further afield.

‘For all the good I did, I might have stayed where I was. I not only didn’t find Marya, but I finished by losing myself. Talk about a dark night… It was Rowley that found her just as night was falling, utterly lost, of course, and only too ready and willing to do as he said. But as soon as he started to take her back to the mill, he knew that in darkness like that he could never find the way: so, while they had time, he steered for one of the drives. Rowley’s no fool. He was afraid of the house, but Marya had to have shelter and he was going to put her to sleep in Grieg’s car.

‘When he found the car gone, he told me he could have cried. But Marya was ready to drop, so he chanced his luck and took her into the house. He found some woman-servant and made her get ready a bedroom and light a fire, and when he had seen Marya eat, he sat down outside her door, pistol in hand. And I spent the night in the open, for the simple and excellent reason that I was in the open when night came down.

‘I’ll pass over the next eight hours. How many times I fell I’ve no idea, but when for the second time I’d walked bung into a tree, I lay down on one of its roots and tried to forget. I failed signally. My memory was brutally active, and my imagination was worse. I was like a sick man, seated between two hearties who take it in turns to slap him upon the back. After several years, the sky began to grow pale…

‘Well, Rowley saw me from a window at seven o’clock, and five minutes later I was in Maryas bedroom and being desired to go out. I consented – on one condition. That was that she was dressed in ten minutes’ time.

‘“What for?” says Marya.

‘“Well,” said I, “you can’t cross the park like that.”

‘“I’m not crossing the park,” says she. “I’m staying here.”

‘“We shall leave in ten minutes,” said I. “Not ten and a half. Dress or not, as you please. But at least put on your slippers. Not that you weigh very much, but I’m rather frail this morning, and Rowley’s tired.”

‘Then I withdrew.

‘I went to the chapel and found the register. One glance was more than enough. Marya’s writing was that of a child of six, and the rite had been witnessed by Andrew, whose surname appeared to be Jove. I had meant to cut out the page, but I changed my mind, took the book to a fireplace and burned it leaf by leaf. It was very thin, and the leather cover was limp and burned with the rest.

‘I found Marya cold with rage, but I found her dressed, and half an hour later we were back at the mill.

‘Well, there’s nothing much more to tell. Marya was wild with me, but, now that I knew she was safe, I was wild with her. When she spoke of “her husband”, I said that if you hadn’t killed him, I damned well would, and that if Rowley wiped my eye, I’d kill him, too. And I told her I’d burned the book and was going to poison the priest. I told her that, thanks to her folly, you’d had to go out alone, and I asked her to try and guess why you hadn’t come back. In a word, I was extremely brutal. And, such is woman, brutality had its reward. When it was evening again and I suggested that I should take her back to “her husband’s” house, she burst into tears, said she was sure Grieg had killed you and added that, if he had, she’d kill herself. I give you my word, Grieg’s star had fairly set. The mill fairly reeked of murder. And if he’d looked in at that moment to ask the time, I believe we should have fought for his body like so many beasts of prey. Thus was order restored. But when you didn’t fetch up, I was frightened to death. By this morning we’d given up hope: that you were either dead or under arrest was painfully clear: with the optimism of his class, Rowley favoured your decease. But in any event the only thing we could do was to try and get Marya out and then come back. Of course she stuck in her toes, but the farmer’s wife from whom I’d been drawing rations was getting inquisitive, and the mill as a residence left a great deal to be desired. I decided to move tonight. The bridle-path, via Gola and Ramon the smith. And then you blew in at sunset and called it off.’

Lelia was buried at two o’clock the next day. Two royal cars were berthed in the shade of the chestnuts without the old churchyard, and Leonie, Marya and a sad-faced lord-in-waiting stood by the open grave. And with them, the Lord President of the Council of Riechtenburg. Though Lelia’s uncle and two cousins were all her kin, the peasants came in for miles to honour their dead; and, when the service was done, Sully pronounced the oration with the silver tongue for which he was justly famed.

Lelia, it seemed, was well known in the countryside. The postman being infirm and the post in those parts being a casual business, she had often carried his letters, rain or shine; and though she seldom used villages other than her own, there was not a farm for miles round which was not familiar with her beauty and pleasant ways. If she had had swains, I never heard of them, and it was the good-wives that sobbed the loudest when they passed by the grave. And that was, I think, a rare tribute to a maiden of Lelia’s years.

When all was over, I followed the royal cars to Janes, and there Leonie descended and all of us changed at an inn. There we bade goodbye to Sully, who passed his word to visit Littai within the month, and then we drove to Gola, with the servants following after in George’s car.

Ramon, the smith, was at work in the little forge, and Marya and I alighted to bring him out to the Rolls.

When we said the Grand Duchess was come to thank him for what he had done, the poor man was quite overwhelmed, but five minutes later Leonie and he were discussing the craft of shoeing as though he had been in her service a score of years. His wife being out, Leonie would not leave till she had come in, and whilst we were waiting, the letter of indemnity arrived.

By the time we were ready to go, all the village of Gola was standing without the forge, and, a second demonstration being more than I felt I could bear, I took my leave of Ramon and made my way out of the crowd and down the road. And there they took me up a furlong away, George driving the car and cursing and dabbing his eyes and swearing that I could have no conception of ‘the brutal assault upon the feelings which an outburst of devotion commits’.

Then I took the wheel again, and we came into sight of Elsa at five o’clock.

The frontier-post had clearly been told to expect us and ordered to speed our party upon its way, for the cars were not examined, but the guard was out and waiting to pay my wife the compliments due to her rank.

Slowly we passed the guard-room. Then I drove on to the bridge and into Austria.

It was a curious moment – I think, for all of us, and to me it seemed as though I had ended some chapter which did not at all belong to the book of my life, but was now to go up to some shelf and lie there alone for ever until the Judgement Day. And that made me think of Grieg and remember that the water we were crossing was that which a few miles up had been raging about his grave.

Here I should say that the Coroner of Vardar had told me that Grieg’s body would never be given up, but would be held and pounded, as I was used by the mill-race against the wheel, until the flesh fell away and the bones broke loose and were scattered about the bed.

Fifteen minutes later we sailed by
The Broken Egg…

When we were forty miles from Littai, the sun went down. At that moment our road lay high on the breast of a hill, and seeing in the foliage a gap that gave to the west, I brought the car to a standstill and sat looking back to the country from which we had come.

Below us lay new-mown meadows, with the swathes as the scythe had left them, in long straight lines; beyond, stood a miniature hamlet which the sober cast of evening was melting into the landscape before our eyes; and, far in the distance, overtopping all other country, rose up those sable mountains which kept the bridle-path. Above them, the sky was flaming, and every peak and ridge stood up a sombre monument against the red.

Whilst I was gazing, as though to correct my humour, not twenty feet away a nightingale burst into song. I never found music so grateful, and, as I listened, it seemed to round our venture and add another fable to Aesop’s treasury.

Twice over that lonely bird sang his rare song, whilst we sat still and heard him and forgot the world. And had he sung for an hour, I think we must have waited until he had done, for all his song was for us, and, so far as I was concerned, the comfort his notes distilled was beyond all price.

Half an hour later I switched the headlights on, and, twenty minutes after, we ran through the village of Littai and on to the lodge.