‘Why me?’
‘I’m not sure your friend would serve. Please sit down,’ she said to Lena. ‘And wait.’
‘Why won’t I serve?’ enquired Lena.
‘There is a condition which must be complied with. You’ll be perfectly safe,’ she added somewhat contemptuously, ‘Both of you. Now,’ she said to Griselda, ‘follow me.’
Griselda followed her up the wide staircase and into a gallery on the first floor, which seemed to run the length of the house and was filled with tapestries, there being apparently no other furniture of any kind except a carpet, though it was difficult to be sure in the dim light. Beyond the gallery were several large dark rooms filled with dust-sheets. Then there was a high double door.
The woman opened one of the doors very softly, disclosing artificial light within; and with an authoritative gesture from the wrist, indicated that Griselda should pass by and enter. The light in the room within enabled Griselda for the first time clearly to see her face. She looked imperious but sad; like one leading a dedicated life.
The room Griselda now entered was hung with black, which kept out all daylight. It was illumined by several hundred candles assembled on a frame such as Griselda had seen set before images in Catholic cathedrals; but larger, and formed of fantastically twisting golden limbs. The light fell upon a single enormous picture standing out against the black hangings: in an elaborate rococo frame, it depicted an Emperor or conqueror at his hour of triumph, borne by a white horse up a hill into a city, apotheosed alike by the paeans of his followers weighed down with loot, and by the plaints of the mangled, dying, and dispossessed. Opposite the picture was an immense four-poster bed, hung like a catafalque with black velvet curtains which descended from a golden mailed fist mounted in the centre of the canopy high up under the extravagantly painted ceiling. The carpet was of deep black silk. In the air was faint music.
The writhing candelabrum stood near one of the posts at the foot of the bed. While leaving all but the bed and the picture shadowy, it lighted up the room’s occupant. Griselda at once recognized him. That look of a censorious Buddha, those clear yellow eyes, were, indeed, not to be forgotten. The man in the bed was Sir Travis Raunds. He looked older than ever, and horribly ill, but he was turning the pages of a black folio volume containing coats of arms exquisitely illuminated on vellum.
As Griselda entered, the sick man looked up from his escutcheons.
‘Ah, my dear,’ he said in a high musical voice, ‘in a world as near its end almost as I am, you at least do not fall short. You are as lovely as any of the dear women who performed your office for my ancestors. Kneeclass="underline" there, where there is light.’ He pointed to a patch of carpet, and Griselda knelt before his bed in the candlelight. Though the black curtains kept out the sun, the candles made the room very hot.
‘Thank you. Now give me your hand.’ He made a slight, weak gesture. ‘You are perfectly safe. It will only be for a minute. Though time was—’ But his remarks were tiring him, and he broke off with a Buddha-like smile.
Griselda extended her left hand. He took it in long thin white fingers, like those of a high-born skeleton, and lightly drew her towards him. She found that a stool stood beside the bed and seated herself upon it.
‘How are you, Sir Travis?’ she asked gently.
‘Listen, my dear. Listen to your answer.’
Griselda listened. The music was as of a very large orchestra very far off: too far off for any particular melody or instruments to be recognized.
‘What is it?’
The dying man seemed to hear more than she did. ‘“’Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, now leaves him.”’ He was listening intently.
‘Sir Travis,’ said Griselda, ‘tell me about life.’
‘Lord Beaconsfield told me that men are governed either by tradition or by force. I have since found it to be true.’
‘But,’ said Griselda, a little disappointed, ‘that’s a rule for governing other people. What about yourself?’ She noticed that the distant music was ebbing.
‘You do not need to govern yourself, my dear, if you succeed in governing other people.’
Suddenly Griselda thought of something: something that it was past belief she had not thought of before.
‘Sir Travis,’ she said, eagerly; too eagerly for a sick-room.
He did not answer.
‘Sir Travis!’ She almost shook his hand and arm.
But Sir Travis’s mind was elsewhere. ‘Tell Venetia,’ he said smiling wickedly, ‘that I’m leaving her for ever.’ And his high musical voice died away.
‘Sir Travis!’
‘One more thing only,’ said a voice from the shadows. ‘And then you will be free to go.’
A young man in a dark suit stood before Griselda on the other side of the huge bed. He was small and looked French. He seemed to hold some small object clasped in each of his hands.
‘I thought we were alone.’ Griselda looked over her shoulder. There was no sign of the tall woman, but the door through which she had entered, had disappeared behind the black hangings.
The young man smiled slightly; then stretching out his hands across the bed, opened the palms. In each lay a large gold piece, which glittered in the candlelight.
‘You know what to do?’ His alien mien was confirmed by a slight accent.
‘Is he dead? How do you know?’
‘I know.’
Looking at the man in the bed, Griselda knew too.
‘Poor Sir Travis!’
‘Of course. It is very sad.’
Griselda lifted the hand which had just held hers and laid it on the bed. She had never before touched a corpse. She almost expected the hand to be cold: it was much more shocking that it proved as warm as in life.
‘You know what to do?’ The young man still held out the gold pieces.
‘I think so,’ said Griselda. ‘But why me?’
‘It is all that remains. Then you can go.’
Griselda took the pieces from his hand.
‘They’re five-pound pieces! And quite new!’
‘Sir Travis made a special arrangement with the Mint.’
‘For this?’ Griselda’s voice sank in awe.
‘For what else? Gold coins are no longer taken in shops. Only pieces of paper.’
‘They’re beautiful.’
But the young man indicated the slightest touch of impatience.
Very carefully and tenderly, Griselda laid the gold pieces on the dead man’s eyelids.
‘Thank you, mademoiselle,’ said the young man, indicating the slightest touch of relief. ‘Now if you will follow me.’
Coming round the bed, he drew a section of the black hangings, and Griselda followed him back to the dim hall.
At the top of the stairs, the tall woman awaited them in the shadows.
‘Is all in order, Vaisseau?’
‘But naturally.’ His tone was as proud as hers.
‘And she can go?’
‘Immediately.’
Lena stood below. ‘Is everything all right, Griselda?’
Griselda squeezed her hand. ‘There’s nothing to keep us, Lena. Let us go.’
The tall woman and the young man silently, and almost invisibly, watched them go back into the hot sun.
Outside was a strange disturbance. The hatchment had gone and the dwarf, it seemed, with it; but looking round for the origin of an unaccountable noise which filled the summer air, the two women saw him crouched on the paving stones in a corner behind the porch. He was not weeping, since there were no tears; he was crying like an animal, but like no known animal, for, as they now perceived, he had hitherto been dumb.
They looked up from the distressing sight and saw that high above them, beneath the immense mailed fist, hung the hatchment, polished and varnished and renewed, until in the afternoon sunshine it shone the very pennant of death triumphant.
XXV