Storm Music (1934) (21 page)

"So you see that cup will make a most appropriate gift. But I'm so afraid that your cousin may refuse to accept it that, before I ask him to do so, I want to have it engraved with his crest. And that's where you can help me I must have something of his that bears his crest, to give to the engraver to copy. A cigarette-case or a flask. Perhaps it's on the backs of his brushes. You see, without that I'm stuck. At the present moment I don't even know what his crest is."

I wrinkled my brow.

"Strangely enough," said I, "it's the same as your own— a leopard. But that doesn't mean—"

"What?"

The word flamed.

As the saying goes. I almost leapt out of my skin: and turned to find her staring—tense, wide-eyed and staring, white to the lips.

And then I knew I was lost. I had learned her crest from Pharaoh in that room, and Pharaoh was wrong: and I had repeated the error which Pharaoh had made.

"I— I thought," I stammered. "I had an idea—"

"The badge of Yorick is an oak tree." She whispered rather than spoke "We've never displayed the leopard for more than two hundred years."

The sibilant accusation struck me dumb.

She was round now and was kneeling, with her arms held close to her breast and her hands to her throat. Her breath was whistling in her nostrils and her eyes seemed to pierce my brain.

Helplessly I shrugged my shoulders. "I suppose I must have—"

"My God," she breathed, "you were there."

As my eyes went down, she clapped her hands to her head. "My God!" she cried. "It was you! You, John,
you
and not Bugle that ..."

I pulled out my note-case and took out her master key

As I laid it down by her side—

"Sabre killed Bugle," I said "His body's down in the moat. None of them saw it happen, so I walked into the castle and took his place."

Helena sat back on her heels, finger to lip. Her eyes were still wide, still staring: she seemed to be murmuring something I could not hear.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean you to know."

At that a tremor ran through her: then, with a sudden movement, she flung herself down on her face and burst into tears.

For a moment I sat hesitant. Then something snapped within me.

I lifted her up and gathered her into my arms.

With my face pressed tight against hers—

"Don't cry, Nell," I said. "I can't bear it. And—and please don't send me away."

"I'm not sending you away," she sobbed. She caught at my coat. "And I'll tell you another thing. I'd never have let you go. If all else had failed, I was going down to the station."

I held her off and looked into her tear-stained face.

"But, Nell, just now you—"

"I wanted to know if you loved me. I had to be sure of that. But now . . ." She hid her face in my coat. "Oh, John, my darling, you've made me feel so humble, so cheap and—"

I stopped her beautiful mouth.

"How d'you think I feel, Nell? How d'you think I felt when I stood in that secret chamber and heard you buying my safety— the life and health of the man who'd just turned you down?"

A child looked into my eyes.

"Shall we ... take each other back, John?"

"Yes, please, Nell," I said quietly.

With a little sigh of contentment she slid an arm round my neck.

Our respective tales had been told, my disaffection forgiven, our grace had been said, and we were now standing together at the edge of the lawn. We had started to return to the car, but now with one consent we had stopped to look again upon the beauty which, we were to leave.

It seemed so strange that life and death and fortune had lain in that peaceful setting, awaiting a sweet June dayspring to leap to their battle stations, thence to dispute the fate of six human beings, not one of whom, till that morning, had so much as suspected the existence of such a spot. A century of dawns and sundowns had found and left it sleeping, as it was sleeping now : and then in a twinkling the earth had opened, the brook had played storm music and . . .

"To think," said Helena, "that I treated you as a child."

"The truth is," said I, "we're both children: and children hate to be treated as children, you know."

Helena lifted her head, to survey the blue of the sky. The eager look in her face would have made a sick man well.

"I wasn't," she said. "I was a woman all right. But I think—it's all your own doing, you know— but I think, my dear, you'll have a child for a wife."

There is not much more to be told. My cousin's reception of the truth was more than handsome: and I really believe that Barley would not have exchanged the knowledge that I had caused Pharaoh's death for all the gold that lay in the cellars of Yorick or anywhere else. But old Florin's simple tribute would have warmed any man's heart.

"Sir, you have done my duty. And that, by the grace of God; for I myself could never have done it so well."

It was he who said at once that Bugle's body would be found held down by the grill that kept foreign matter from passing into the waste-pipes that led from the moat. Sure enough, there it was. Its removal and the subsequent rites were grisly enough: but the four of us did the business without any help, because, having got so far, it seemed a pity that we should explode a theory which Yorick— and Yorick's neighbours— had been at such pains to digest.

When my cousin broached the question of getting rid of the gold, Helena made no objection, but only begged his assistance to carry through a transaction she dared not attempt alone. This to our great surprise, till we learned that her solemn trust was now at an end, because her father had said that on her marriage the gold must be re-invested or lodged at a bank. And this in due course was done. My cousin arranged the affair with a famous house and within six weeks, a fortnight before we were wed, the bullion was out of the cellar and Helena mistress of a fortune which was considerably greater than that which her father laid up.

A LETTER from the Count of Yorick afforded us infinite pleasure and deserves to be set out in full:

Dear Helena,

I hope you are very well. I am not at Yorick because I was bitten by a mad dog and a good Summarrytone brought me straight here. I would like to thank him for that. He saved my life, you know. Fancy a mad dog worrying me. I think I must just have gone out for a walk or something and then it just leeped upon me and worried me and I knew no moar. And this is the only one place that I could have been saved from going mad. It makes you get hot all over. By the way I'm off liquor. Achohol, I mean. They make me heeling drinks here with virtue in them and I fairly lapp them up. And the wound's heeling like a little child. They say liquor's very dangerous for hiderofobea. I nearly died, you know. All the wile the good Summarrytones were taking me to the monnastery, it was touch and go moar than once. The madness was in my vanes. It makes you go hot. But I'm all right now. They say I can get up for a little wile on Sunday and look at the flours. I shall like that. I see the vannity of life now all right. There is a good monk here called Father Bernard. Of course they are all good: but he is the best. He says all is vannity and that the pumps of the world are void. You know there's a lot in that. Well, I must end now. But I thought you might wunder where I was. What a escape! Fancy a mad dog like that ranging about seaking whom he might devower. I tell you, I hadn't a chance. He just leeped upon me, nashing their fangs. I can see it now.

Your loving brother,

Valentine. P.S.

What about Faning? I rather hope he's gone. If not, perhaps you could fire him out. He swore Spencer was your evil genie, but I thought Spencer had a good eye. Sour grapes, I guess. I suppose you knew what you were doing.

The reformation this letter foreshadowed was more than we could believe, but I am bound to record that it was fairly fulfilled. The shock or the fear of death or, perhaps, his curious communion with that honest and kindly fellowship of simple souls wrought in the Count an astonishing change of heart. The weeds that had choked his qualities withered and died, and though I was most apprehensive of our relation, twenty-four hours' acquaintance had made us the best of friends.

His postscript brings me to Pharaoh. Of that unconscionable scoundrel I have but little to say. That the man was most swift and daring I cannot deny, but I think that his deadly reputation was to him the highwayman's mare. Carefully fed and cherished, it was this that carried him into and out of engagements without a scratch; but when at last he was standing upon his own feet, even I was able to show that, if his eye was quicker, at least his spine was as brittle as that of another man. For all that, he was bold and efficient and something more. Ill served, dogged by misfortune, he nevertheless contrived almost to wring a victory out of defeat. So far as I know, he only made one mistake—and that was to kill young Florin: so far as I know, he had but one slice of luck—and that was, on binding Helena, to find that she had in her hand her master key.

The portrait my cousin had painted will always rank for me as one of the greatest triumphs a painter ever achieved. This is not because he had rendered a beautiful likeness, nor yet because he had captured the leaping spirit that lived in the lovely flesh: but because he had marked, as I had, that the precious eager look was out of his subject's face and had painted it in from memory out of a grateful heart.

Though my life is secure and happy beyond belief, the events of those terrible days are cut as in stone upon my mind. But I would not forget them, if I could: for out of their wrack and turmoil I won my beautiful wife. Often and often I read their grim inscription and gaze at the riotous pageant which this calls up. I see that dreadful labour down in the sparkling dell and Dewdrop finger the paper that I let fall: I tread The Reaping Hook's stairs and I hear—as I shall hear to my dying day—the deadly voice of Pharaoh behind the door: I see him enter the room with Valentine's hand upon his shoulder and I hear him whistling for Sabre with my heart in my mouth: I hear the Carlotta coming with the rush of a mighty wind, and I hear the cough of the Rolls as her engine failed: I hear Rush plying Bugle to make my blood run cold, I hear Pharaoh bullying Freda, and I see the flame of the pistol that saved his life: I see the awful change in my darling's face, and I turn to see Pharaoh smiling behind my back: I smell the fragrance of the valley that knew no sun, and I see the smear of blood upon Helena's delicate leg: and then I see her stricken and trembling in Pharaoh's power, and I hear the roar of our pistols and I see the man spent with hatred, staring into my eyes ...

It is written, Out of the eater came forth meat. I can only say I have found this saying most true. The goddess Aphrodite rose from the foam of the sea: but Helena Spencer came out of the wrath of a tempest that had risen to smite us both. Together, saving each other, we rode out that frightful storm—the remembrance of which is not grievous, for our desperately perilous passage, side by side, has bound us more closely together than the sharing of any joys.

The End.