The mysterious Mr. Quin
not as though I had anyone in the world belonging to me--"
"If you had?" asked Mr. Satterthwaite sharply.
Cosdon drew a deep breath. "I don't know. Even then, I think, this way
would be best. But anyway--I haven't--"
He stopped abruptly. Mr. Satterthwaite eyed him curiously. Incurably
romantic, he suggested again that there was, somewhere, some woman. But
Cosdon negatived it. He oughtn't, he said, to complain. He had had, on
the whole, a very good life. It was a pity it was going to be over so
soon, that was all. But at any rate he had had, he supposed, everything
worth having. Except a son. He would have liked a son. He would like to
know now that he had a son living after him. Still, he reiterated the
fact, he had had a very good life.
It was at this point that Mr. Satterthwaite lost patience. Nobody, he
pointed out, who was still in the larval stage, could claim to know
anything of life at all. Since the words "larval stage" clearly meant
nothing at all to Cosdon, he proceeded to make his meaning clearer.
"You have not begun to live yet. You are still at the beginning of
life."
Cosdon laughed. "Why, my hair's gray. I'm forty--"
Mr. Satterthwaite interrupted him. "That has nothing to do with it.
Life is a compound of physical and mental experience. I, for instance,
am sixty-nine, and I am really sixty-nine. I have known, either at
first or second hand, nearly all the experiences life has to offer.
You are like a man who talks of a full year and has seen nothing but
snow and ice! The flowers of spring, the languorous days of summer,
the falling leaves of autumn--he knows nothing of them--not even that
there are such things. And you are going to turn your back on even the
opportunity of knowing them."
"You seem to forget," said Anthony Cosdon dryly, "that in any case, I
have only six months."
"Time, like everything else, is relative," said Mr. Satterthwaite.
"That six months might be the longest and most varied experience of
your whole life."
Cosdon looked unconvinced. "In my place," he said, "you would do the
same."
Mr. Satterthwaite shook his head. "No," he said simply. "In the first
place, I doubt if I should have the courage. It needs courage, and I am
not at all a brave individual. And in the second place--"
"Well?"
"I always want to know what is going to happen tomorrow."
Cosdon rose suddenly with a laugh. "Well, sir, you've been very good in
letting me talk to you. I hardly know why--Anyway, there it is. I've
said a lot too much. Forget it."
"And tomorrow, when an accident is reported, I am to leave it at that?
To make no suggestions of suicide?"
"That's as you like. I'm glad you realize one thing--that you can't
prevent me."
"My dear young man," said Mr. Satterthwaite placidly, "I can hardly
attach myself to you like the proverbial limpet. Sooner or later
you would give me the slip and accomplish your purpose. But you are
frustrated at any rate for this afternoon. You would hardly like to go
to your death leaving me under the possible imputation of having pushed
you over."
"That is true," said Cosdon. "If you insist on remaining here--"
"I do," said Mr. Satterthwaite firmly.
Cosdon laughed good-humoredly. "Then the plan must be deferred for
the moment. In which case I will go back to the hotel. See you later
perhaps."
Mr. Satterthwaite was left looking at the sea.
"And now," he said to himself softly, "what next? There must be a next.
I wonder--"
He got up. For a while he stood at the edge of the plateau looking down
at the dancing water beneath. But he found no inspiration there, and
turning slowly he walked back along the path between the cypresses and
into the quiet garden. He looked at the shuttered, peaceful house and
he wondered as he had often wondered before who had lived there and
what had taken place within those placid walls. On a sudden impulse
he walked up some crumbling stone steps and laid a hand on one of the
faded green shutters.
To his surprise it swung back at his touch. He hesitated a moment, then
pushed it boldly open. The next minute he stepped back with a little
exclamation of dismay. A woman stood in the window facing him. She wore
black and had a black lace mantilla draped over her head.
Mr. Satterthwaite floundered wildly in Italian interspersed with
German--the nearest he could get in the hurry of the moment to Spanish.
He was desolated and ashamed, he explained haltingly. The Signora must
forgive. He thereupon retreated hastily, the woman not having spoken
one word.
He was halfway across the courtyard when she spoke--two sharp words
like a pistol crack. "Come back!"
It was a barked-out command such as might have been addressed to a dog,
yet so absolute was the authority it conveyed that Mr. Satterthwaite
had swung round hurriedly and trotted back to the window almost
automatically before it occurred to him to feel any resentment. He
obeyed like a dog. The woman was still standing motionless at the
window. She looked him up and down appraising him with perfect calmness.
"You are English," she said. "I thought so."
Mr. Satterthwaite started off on a second apology. "If I had known you
were English," he said, "I could have expressed myself better just
now. I offer my most sincere apologies for my rudeness in trying the
shutter. I am afraid I can plead no excuse save curiosity. I had a
great wish to see what the inside of this charming house was like."
She laughed suddenly, a deep rich laugh. "If you really want to see
it," she said, "you had better come in."
She stood aside, and Mr. Satterthwaite, feeling pleasurably excited,
stepped into the room. It was dark, since the shutters of the other
windows were closed, but he could see that it was scantily and rather
shabbily furnished and that the dust lay thick everywhere.
"Not here," she said. "I do not use this room."
She led the way and he followed her, out of the room across a passage
and into a room the other side. Here the windows gave on the sea and
the sun streamed in. The furniture like that of the other room was poor
in quality, but there were some worn rugs that had been good in their
time, a large screen of Spanish leather and bowls of fresh flowers.
"You will have tea with me," said Mr. Satterthwaite's hostess. She
added, reassuringly, "It is perfectly good tea and will be made with
boiling water."
She went out of the door and called out something in Spanish, then she
returned and sat down on a sofa opposite her guest. For the first time,
Mr. Satterthwaite was able to study her appearance.
The first effect she had upon him was to make him feel even more gray
and shriveled and elderly than usual by contrast with her own forceful
personality. She was a tall woman, very sunburned, dark and handsome,
though no longer young. When she was in the room the sun seemed to be
shining twice as brightly as when she was out of it, and presently
a curious feeling of warmth and aliveness began to steal over Mr.
Satterthwaite. It was as though he stretched out thin, shriveled hands
to a reassuring flame. He thought, _She's so much vitality herself that
she's got a lot left over for other people._
He recalled the command in her voice when she had stopped him and
wished that his protégée Olga could be imbued with a little of that
force. He thought, _What an Isolde she'd make! And yet she probably
hasn't got the ghost of a singing voice. Life is badly arranged._ He
was, all the same, a little afraid of her. He did not like domineering
women.
She had clearly been considering him as she sat with her chin in her
hands, making no pretense about it. At last she nodded as though she
had made up her mind.
"I am glad you came," she said at last. "I needed someone very badly to
talk to this afternoon. And you are used to that, aren't you?"
"I don't quite understand."
"I meant people tell you things. You knew what I meant! Why pretend?"
"Well--perhaps--"
She swept on, regardless of anything he had been going to say. "One
could say anything to you. That is because you are half a woman. You
know what we feel--what we think--the queer, queer things we do."
Her voice died away. Tea was brought by a large, smiling Spanish girl.
It was good tea--China--Mr. Satterthwaite sipped it appreciatively.
"You live here?" he inquired conversationally.
"Yes."
"But not altogether. The house is usually shut up, is it not? At least
so I have been told."
"I am here a good deal, more than anyone knows. I only use these rooms."
"You have had the house long?"
"It has belonged to me for twenty-two years--and I lived here for a
year before that."
Mr. Satterthwaite said rather inanely, or so he felt, "That is a very
long time."
"The year? Or the twenty-two years?"
His interest stirred, Mr. Satterthwaite said gravely, "That depends."
She nodded. "Yes, it depends. They are two separate periods. They have
nothing to do with each other. Which is long? Which is short? Even now
I cannot say."
She was silent for a minute, brooding. Then she said with a little
smile, "It is such a long time since I have talked with anyone--such a
long time! I do not apologize. You came to my shutter. You wished to
look through my window. And that is what you are always doing, is it
not? Pushing aside the shutter and looking through the window into the
truth of people's lives. If they will let you. And often if they will
not let you! It would be difficult to hide anything from you. You would
guess--and guess right."
Mr. Satterthwaite had an odd impulse to be perfectly sincere. "I am
sixty-nine," he said. "Everything I know of life I know at second hand.
Sometimes that is very bitter to me. And yet, because of it, I know a
good deal."
She nodded thoughtfully. "I know. Life is very strange. I cannot
imagine what it must be like to be that--always a looker-on."
Her tone was wondering. Mr. Satterthwaite smiled. "No, you would not
know. Your place is in the center of the stage. You will always be the
prima donna."
"What a curious thing to say."
"But I am right. Things have happened to you--will always happen to
you. Sometimes, I think, there have been tragic things. Is that so?"
Her eyes narrowed. She looked across at him.
"If you are here long, somebody will tell you of the English swimmer
who was drowned at the foot of this cliff. They will tell you how young
and strong he was, how handsome, and they will tell you that his young
wife looked down from the top of the cliff and saw him drowning."
"Yes, I have already heard that story."
"That man was my husband. This was his villa. He brought me out here
with him when I was eighteen, and a year later, he died--driven by the
surf on the black rocks, cut and bruised and mutilated, battered to
death."
Mr. Satterthwaite gave a shocked exclamation. She leaned forward, her
burning eyes focused on his face. "You spoke of a tragedy. Can you
imagine a greater tragedy than that? For a young wife, only a year
married, to stand helpless while the man she loved fought for his
life--and lost it--horribly."
"Terrible," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He spoke with real emotion.
"Terrible. I agree with you. Nothing in life could be so dreadful."
Suddenly she laughed. Her head went back. "You are wrong," she said.
"There is something more terrible. And that is for a young wife to
stand there and hope and long for her husband to drown."
"But, good God," cried Mr. Satterthwaite, "you don't mean--"
"Yes, I do. That's what it was really. I knelt there--knelt down on the
cliff and prayed. The Spanish servants thought I was praying for his
life to be saved. I wasn't. I was praying that I might wish him to be
spared. I was saying one thing over and over again, 'God, help me not