Some slight tinge of anxiety still remained with him. Using his favorite metaphor of a drama, he hoped that he had spoken his few lines correctly. For they were very important lines.
But thinking it over, his artistic judgment was satisfied. On his way up to the cliff, Cosdon would try that shutter. It was not in human nature to resist. A memory of twenty-odd years ago had brought him to this spot; the same memory would take him to the shutter. And afterward?
"I shall know in the morning," said Mr. Satterthwaite, and proceeded to change methodically for his evening meal.
* * * * *
It was somewhere round ten o'clock that Mr. Satterthwaite set foot once more in the garden of La Paz. Manuel bade him a smiling "Good morning," and handed him a single rosebud which Mr. Satterthwaite put carefully into his buttonhole. Then he went on to the house. He stood there for some minutes looking up at the peaceful white walls, the trailing orange creeper, and the faded green shutters. So silent, so peaceful. Had the whole thing been a dream?
But at that moment one of the windows opened and the lady who occupied Mr. Satterthwaite's thoughts came out. She came straight to him with a buoyant, swaying walk, like someone carried on a great wave of exultation. Her eyes were shining, her color high. She looked like a figure of joy on a frieze. There was no hesitation about her, no doubt or tremors. Straight to Mr. Satterthwaite she came, put her hands on his shoulders, and kissed him--not once but many times. Large, dark, red roses, very velvety--that is how he thought of it afterward. Sunshine, summer, birds singing--that was the atmosphere into which he felt himself caught up. Warmth, joy, and tremendous vigor.
"I'm so happy," she said. "You darling! How did you know? How _could_ you know? You're like the good magician in the fairy tales."
She paused, a sort of breathlessness of happiness upon her.
"We're going over today--to the Consul--to get married. When John comes, his father will be here. We'll tell him there was some misunderstanding in the past. Oh! he won't ask questions. Oh! I'm so happy--so happy--so happy."
Happiness did indeed surge from her like a tide. It lapped round Mr. Satterthwaite in a warm, exhilarating flood.
"It's so wonderful to Anthony to find he has a son. I never dreamed he'd mind or care." She looked confidently into Mr. Satterthwaite's eyes. "Isn't it strange how things come right and end all beautifully?"
He had his clearest vision of her yet. A child--still a child--with her love of make-believe--her fairy tales that ended beautifully with two people "living happily ever afterward."
He said gently, "If you bring this man of yours happiness in these last months, you will indeed have done a very beautiful thing."
Her eyes opened wide--surprised. "Oh!" she said. "You don't think I'd let him die, do you? After all these years--when he's come to me. I've known lots of people whom doctors have given up and who are alive today. Die? Of course he's not going to die!"
He looked at her--her strength, her beauty, her vitality--her indomitable courage and will. He too had known doctors to be mistaken. The personal factor--you never knew how much and how little it counted.
She said again, with scorn and amusement in her voice, "You don't think I'd let him die, do you?"
"No," said Mr. Satterthwaite at last, very gently. "Somehow, my dear, I don't think you will."
Then, at last, he walked down the cypress path to the bench overlooking the sea and found there the person he was expecting to see. Mr. Quin rose and greeted him--the same as ever, dark, saturnine, smiling and sad.
"You expected me?" he asked.
And Mr. Satterthwaite answered, "Yes, I expected you."
They sat together on the bench.
"I have an idea that you have been playing Providence once more to judge by your expression," said Mr. Quin presently.
Mr. Satterthwaite looked at him reproachfully. "As if you didn't know all about it."
"You always accuse me of omniscience," said Mr. Quin, smiling.
"If you know nothing, why were you here the night before last--waiting?" countered Mr. Satterthwaite.
"Oh! that--"
"Yes, that."
"I had a--commission to perform."
"For whom?"
"You have sometimes fancifully named me an advocate for the dead."
"The dead," said Mr. Satterthwaite, a little puzzled. "I don't understand."
Mr. Quin pointed a long lean finger down at the blue depths below. "A man was drowned down there twenty-two years ago."
"I know--but I don't see--"
"Supposing that, after all, that man loved his young wife. Love can make devils of men as well as angels. She had a girlish adoration for him, but he could never touch the womanhood in her--and that drove him mad. He tortured her because he loved her. Such things happen. You know that as well as I do."
"Yes," admitted Mr. Satterthwaite. "I have seen such things--but rarely--very rarely."
"And you have also seen, more commonly, that there is such a thing as remorse--the desire to make amends--at all costs to make amends."
"Yes, but death came too soon."
"Death!" There was contempt in Mr. Quin's voice. "You believe in a life after death, do you not? And who are you to say that the same wishes, the same desires, may not operate in that other life? If the desire is strong enough--a messenger may be found."
His voice trailed away.
Mr. Satterthwaite got up, trembling a little. "I must get back to the hotel," he said. "If you are going that way--"
But Mr. Quin shook his head. "No," he said. "I shall go back the way I came."
When Mr. Satterthwaite looked back over his shoulder, he saw his friend walking toward the edge of the cliff.
HARLEQUIN'S LANE
Mr. Satterthwaite was never quite sure what took him to stay with the Denmans. They were not of his kind--that is to say, they belonged neither to the great world, nor to the more interesting artistic circles. They were Philistines, and dull Philistines at that. Mr. Satterthwaite had met them first at Biarritz, had accepted an invitation to stay with them, had come, had been bored, and yet strangely enough had come again and yet again.
Why? He was asking himself that question on this twenty-first of June, as he sped out of London in his Rolls Royce.
John Denman was a man of forty, a solid, well-established figure, respected in the business world. His friends were not Mr. Satterthwaite's friends, his ideas even less so. He was a man clever in his own line but devoid of imagination outside it.
_Why am I doing this thing?_ Mr. Satterthwaite asked himself once more--and the only answer that came seemed to him so vague and so inherently preposterous that he almost put it aside. For the only reason that presented itself was the fact that one of the rooms in the house (a comfortable, well-appointed house) stirred his curiosity. That room was Mrs. Denman's own sitting room.
It was hardly an expression of her personality because, so far as Mr. Satterthwaite could judge, she had no personality. He had never met a woman so completely expressionless. She was, he knew, a Russian by birth. John Denman had been in Russia at the outbreak of the European War; he had fought with the Russian troops, had narrowly escaped with his life at the outbreak of the revolution, and had brought this Russian girl with him, a penniless refugee. In face of strong disapproval from his parents he had married her.
Mrs. Denman's room was in no way remarkable. It was well and solidly furnished with good Hepplewhite furniture--a trifle more masculine than feminine in atmosphere. But in it there was one incongruous item: a Chinese lacquer screen--a thing of creamy yellow and pale rose. Any museum might have been glad to own it. It was a collector's piece, rare and beautiful.
It was out of place against that solid English background. It should have been the keynote of the room with everything arranged to harmonize subtly with it. And yet Mr. Satterthwaite could not accuse the Denmans of lack of taste. Everything else in the house was in perfectly blended accord.
He shook his head. The thing, trivial though it was--puzzled him. Because of it, so he verily believed, he had come again and again to the house. It was, perhaps, a woman's fantasy--but that solution did not satisfy him as he thought of Mrs. Denman--a quiet, hard-featured woman, speaking English so correctly that no one would ever have guessed her a foreigner.
The car drew up at his destination and he got out, his mind still dwelling on the problem of the Chinese screen. The name of the Denmans' house was Ashmead, and it occupied some five acres of Melton Heath, which is thirty miles from London, stands five hundred feet above sea level, and is, for the most part, inhabited by those who have ample incomes.
The butler received Mr. Satterthwaite suavely. Mr. and Mrs. Denman were both out--at a rehearsal--they hoped Mr. Satterthwaite would make himself at home until they returned.
Mr. Satterthwaite nodded and proceeded to carry out these injunctions by stepping into the garden. After a cursory examination of the flower beds, he strolled down a shady walk and presently came to a door in the wall. It was unlocked and he passed through it and came out into a narrow lane.