第69章

A profound stillness reigned in the Casa Gould. The master of the house, walking along the corridor, opened the door of his room, and saw his wife sitting in a big armchair -- his own smoking armchair -- thoughtful, contemplating her little shoes. And she did not raise her eyes when he walked in.

`Tired?' asked Charles Gould.

`A little,' said Mrs Gould. Still without looking up, she added with feeling, `There is an awful sense of unreality about all this.'

Charles Gould, before the long table strewn with papers, on which lay a hunting crop and a pair of spurs, stood looking at his wife: `The heat and dust must have been awful this afternoon by the waterside,' he murmured, sympathetically. `The glare on the water must have been simply terrible.'

`One could close one's eyes to the glare,' said Mrs Gould. `But, my dear Charley, it is impossible for me to close my eyes to our position;to this awful . . .'

She raised her eyes and looked at her husband's face, from which all sign of sympathy or any other feeling had disappeared. `Why don't you tell me something?' she almost wailed.

`I thought you had understood me perfectly from the first,' Charles Gould said, slowly. `I thought we had said all there was to say a long time ago. There is nothing to say now. There were things to be done. We have done them; we have gone on doing them. There is no going back now.

I don't suppose that, even from the first, there was really any possible way back. And what's more, we can't even afford to stand still.'

`Ah, if one only knew how far you mean to go,' said his wife, inwardly trembling, but in an almost playful tone.

`Any distance, any length, of course,' was the answer, in a matter-of-fact tone, which caused Mrs Gould to make another effort to repress a shudder.

She stood up, smiling graciously, and her little figure seemed to be diminished still more by the heavy mass of her hair and the long train of her gown.

`But always to success,' she said, persuasively.

Charles Gould, enveloping her in the steely blue glance of his attentive eyes, answered without hesitation:

`Oh, there is no alternative.'

He put an immense assurance into his tone. As to the words, this was all that his conscience would allow him to say.

Mrs Gould's smile remained a shade too long upon her lips. She murmured:

`I will leave you; I've a slight headache. The heat, the dust, were indeed--I suppose you are going back to the mine before the morning?'

`At midnight,' said Charles Gould. `We are bringing down the silver tomorrow. Then I shall take three whole days off in town with you.'

`Ah, you are going to meet the escort. I shall be on the balcony at five o'clock to see you pass. Till then, good-bye.'

Charles Gould walked rapidly round the table, and, seizing her hands, bent down, pressing them both to his lips. Before he straightened himself up again to his full height she had disengaged one to smooth his cheek with a light touch, as if he were a little boy.

`Try to get some rest for a couple of hours,' she murmured, with a glance at a hammock stretched in a distant part of the room. Her long train swished softly after her on the red tiles. At the door she looked back.

Two big lamps with unpolished glass globes bathed in a soft and abundant light the four white walls of the room, with a glass case of arms, the brass hilt of Henry Gould's cavalry sabre on its square of velvet, and the water-colour sketch of the San Tome gorge. And Mrs Gould, gazing at the last in its black wooden frame, sighed out:

`Ah, if we had left it alone, Charley!'

`No,' Charles Gould said, moodily; `it was impossible to leave it alone.'

`Perhaps it was impossible,' Mrs Gould admitted, slowly. Her lips quivered a little, but she smiled with an air of dainty bravado. `We have disturbed a good many snakes in that Paradise, Charley, haven't we?'

`Yes, I remember,' said Charles Gould, `it was Don Pepe who called the gorge the Paradise of snakes. No doubt we have disturbed a great many.

But remember, my dear, that it is not now as it was when you made that sketch.' He waved his hand towards the small water-colour hanging alone upon the great bare wall. `It is no longer a Paradise of snakes. We have brought mankind into it, and we cannot turn our backs upon them to go and begin a new life elsewhere.'

He confronted his wife with a firm, concentrated gaze, which Mrs Gould returned with a brave assumption of fearlessness before she went out, closing the door gently after her.

In contrast with the white glaring room the dimly lit corridor had a restful mysteriousness of a forest glade, suggested by the stems and the leaves of the plants ranged along the balustrade of the open side. In the streaks of light falling through the open doors of the reception-rooms, the blossoms, white and red and pale lilac, came out vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a stream of sunshine; and Mrs Gould, passing on, had the vividness of a figure seen in the clear patches of sun that chequer the gloom of open glades in the woods. The stones in the rings upon her hand pressed to her forehead glittered in the lamplight abreast of the door of the sala .

`Who's there?' she asked, in a startled voice. `Is that you, Basilio?'

She looked in, and saw Martin Decoud walking about, with an air of having lost something, amongst the chairs and tables.

`Antonia has forgotten her fan in here,' said Decoud, with a strange air of distraction; `so I entered to see.'

But, even as he said this, he had obviously given up his search, and walked straight towards Mrs Gould, who looked at him with doubtful surprise.

` Senora ,' he began, in a low voice.

`What is it, Don Martin?' asked Mrs Gould. And then she added, with a slight laugh, `I am so nervous today,' as if to explain the eagerness of the question.

`Nothing immediately dangerous,' said Decoud, who now could not conceal his agitation. `Pray don't distress yourself. No, really, you must not distress yourself.'

Mrs Gould, with her candid eyes very wide open, her lips composed into a smile, was steadying herself in the doorway with a little bejewelled hand.