THE TERRACES OF NIGHT Read online

She was so earnest and emphatic in her denials that MacIntosh had no choice but to accept them, albeit in his secret heart he concluded she was lying to him, afraid of his reporting her to her mistress for using the garden as a tryst. If she spoke the truth, then it must have been Frau Hellner herself wandering about, although he had never seen her dressed in anything but rusty black, and the figure he had glimpsed in the garden most certainly wore some light-coloured sort of dress. However, the matter was unimportant; he dismissed it from his mind, ate an excellent breakfast, and in the excitement of a long tramp up to a mountain hamlet where he obtained some excellent sketches and snapshots, forgot it altogether.

  He came home extra late that night, and as he undressed, footsore and weary, but drowsily content, longing for the embrace of the cool flaxwoven sheets, scented with fragrant wildsalbei from their drying in the fields, he remembered the morning’s talk, and sent up a whimsical prayer that Friedl or her mistress might for one night at least refrain from disturbing him, and that he might be spared another of these increasingly disquieting dreams. He was tired-out, having tramped eighteen miles, and dropped off into death-like sleep the moment his weary head touched the pillow—but again, like waiting hawks, pounced down the dreams, dreams, confused, bewildered, disturbing! Voices that whispered—a sensation of utter misery and despair—the scent of clover in the sun, a gay young man’s voice singing some Tyrolean Volksliede, the fluttering glimpse of a flowered cotton frock that was vaguely familiar . . . all these and a thousand other fugitive impressions seemed, as it were, to muster all together to make a concerted attack upon his consciousness.

  Even in his sleep he fought confusedly against them, resentful, annoyed, yet they returned to the attack again and again, headed, it seemed, by the vaguely sensed presence of a little woman, grey-faced, faded, instinct, despite her shadowiness, with some imperious urge that brought her, despite his blundering efforts at retreat, nearer and ever nearer to him. . . . What did she want with him? Alarmed yet angry, in his dream he turned at last, trying to pierce through the mists that swirled entangling about him . . . turned to face her, have it out at once and for all?.

  The effort was so strongly made that he awoke with a jerk, staring vaguely about him, wondering whether he was yet dreaming—and decided he must be, for there out upon the balcony, faint but distinct in the moonlight, was the figure of the mysterious little woman, still before him! She stood bending over a magazine that lay upon the wicker table—a thin sad little shadow, pathetically and grotesquely garbed in an ultra-youthful frock of flowered stuff, frilled and girlish—the whole figure was wavering, indefinite as a wisp of cloud, yet it was there, clear against the dark background of the clump of trees beyond.

  With a huge shock MacIntosh leaped up in bed, fully awake at last and mortally alarmed—and as he sat up the figure vanished, like a curl of smoke upon the wind, and the balcony was empty, silent, but for a leaf of the paper faintly stirring as if ghostly fingers still played with it. Getting out of bed, MacIntosh padded out upon the balcony—not without a shiver of apprehension—and examined the paper. It was, as with a curious cold foreboding he had known it would be, the old number of Weldon’s that he had found the first time he sat on the balcony; and open at the page of the flowered frock.

  It was a considerably scared young man that went soberly down the village next day and asked for accommodation at the ‘Fürstenhaus’—for after the night’s experience he had taken a very definite dislike to the room with the balcony! But to his dismay he found it still impossible to obtain possession of his room. The Engländerin was still ill—and as for the other inns in the valley, it was the height of the season, there was not a room to be had in the place for love or money. Herr Sichel was grovellingly apologetic, but that was little help to MacIntosh, who turned away indecisively, biting his lip, annoyed, yet totally at a loss what to do.

  As he turned away he was hailed by a little dark-bearded man, seated in a sunny corner of the porch—the village doctor, with whom he had had an occasional game of cards after supper at the ‘Fürstenhaus’. A pleasant little fellow, Dr Carl Raff, and the Englishman brightened up as he saw him.

  ‘That you, MacIntosh? Come and have a beer with me—and tell me why you want to leave the “Rosenhaus”.’

  Rather to his own astonishment, as he had not definitely realised his own need of a confidant until one was, as it were, thrust upon him, MacIntosh not only accepted the offer of a drink, but found himself within five minutes of sitting down, in full flood of unburdening his soul anent the ‘Rosenhaus’, his own growing dislike of it, and finally his amazing experience of the night before. Little Doctor Raff listened quietly, smoking a meerschaum as darkly coloured as his own close-cut beard, resting his chin upon a small nervy hand; at the end he nodded, without a trace of the scoffing laughter the Englishman had half nervously expected—enormously relieved, MacIntosh laughed awkwardly as he finished the story.

  ‘You don’t mind my telling you all this—it really sounds such awful rot! Yet it seems to have sort of cleared things up a bit, to talk about it—do you think it was all a dream, or am I developing hallucinations, or what?’

  Doctor Raff shook his head.

  ‘No,’ he said deliberately. ‘I don’t think so. I think you actually saw—what you thought you saw. I think you are what they all an unconscious psychic—and that the figure you saw was there with a definite purpose. In sleep she has evidently been trying to get in touch with you for some time. . . .’

  ‘The devil she has!’ said MacIntosh, between a laugh and a shiver. ‘That explains the dreams—I’ve dreamt some woman was chasing me, trying to tell me something, almost ever since I came here . . . only in the dream I was frightened, and tried to get away.’

  ‘I think,’ said the doctor soberly, ‘that she is trying to tell you still! Are you plucky enough to let her do so, if I back you up?’

  ‘Why, yes—if you think it’s the right thing to do,’ said MacIntosh, a trifle bewildered. ‘But why should I . . . wouldn’t it be the best thing to just leave the place—get away? Sounds funky, but honestly—I’m not keen on another night like the last. Ghosts aren’t in my line!’ The little German nodded in sympathy.

  ‘I quite understand—you can, of course, go away if you will. Yet I feel if you will be good enough to try and let this poor restless soul express—whatever she is trying to express—you may succeed, perhaps, in righting some wrong or correcting some injustice. You see, I believe in the possibility of the return of spirits greatly oppressed, and I cannot help thinking that there is some grave reason behind this persistent “attack” upon you. It is, of course, partly due to your own gift of mediumship that “senses” things—though I cannot deny that this season the “Rosenhaus” has not been popular with visitors here. For the last two months there have been strange stories whispered about it. . . .’

  MacIntosh looked up, alert.

  ‘Then it’s known as haunted! I say, do tell me what you know about it?’

  The doctor hesitated, then shook his head.

  ‘No. I’d rather tell you later on—when we have solved the mystery. You see, anything I may tell you might colour the clearness of your own impressions, and that might spoil things—I’ll tell you everything afterwards. Now, if you’ll accept a shakedown for tonight in the very small house I share with my sister, just down the road, I propose that tomorrow night we go to the “Rosenhaus”. And—we shall see what we may see. . . .’

  * * * * *

  It was well after eleven o’clock the following night that the two friends stole softly down the dusty lane that ran past the ‘Rosenhaus’. The tall narrow house, with its steep roof and frieze of carved woodwork beneath, was shuttered and silent, standing back among the tangled green of its garden, staring, as it were, with hooded eyes over the silvery waves of the cornfield, towards the silent mountains that etched themselves like a Japanese silhouette in black against the star-patterned violet of the sky.

  Despite the
fortification of a stiff dose of brandy, to say nothing of companionship, it was with a considerable secret sinking of the heart that MacIntosh ensconced himself beside the little doctor in the shadow of the hedge beneath his own window—the balcony above showed dark and empty, lit only by the errant moonbeams, lightening and darkening as the clouds drifted athwart the face of the moon. In silence they sat there waiting until the distant clang of the tiny Kirchen Glocke told the hour of midnight . . . and straight on its dying echo, came the sound of another bell! The distant tinkle, clear from the watching hills beyond, of a cowbell . . . and glancing up, MacIntosh drew in his breath sharply, shakily, for the balcony was no longer empty!

  A small thing wavered there, faint as a cloud, yet distinct—a little grey-faced middle-aged woman in a girlish flowered gown with a flaunting bow of red ribbon at the throat, stood at the wooden railing looking out towards the mountains, from whence came the sound of the cowbell—even as the two friends stared, she vanished, and MacIntosh drew a breath of relief, but the doctor gripped his hand fiercely as he whispered.

  ‘Keep steady—here she comes again! Now keep your head—and follow!’

  Round the corner of the house she came, a mere shadow upon the shadow-filled dusk, flitting hurriedly, nervously, glancing backwards as she came as if alarmed, her pale hair and pale gown fluttering as she moved. . . . MacIntosh found his throat dry, found himself pressing back hard against the hedge, shivering, as this strange and terrifying visitation from another world passed them, bringing with it, it seemed, a draught of air cold as the tomb itself; yet he did not lack courage, and as she paused, hesitated, then flitted through the gap in the hedge beneath the linden trees into the cornfield, he scrambled to his feet and followed although his whole soul crept and quivered in terror within him.

  Up along the hedge they followed her, up the dusty lane, their footsteps muffled in the deep white dust, before them the flickering little figure hurrying as if to a ghostly tryst. Sometimes they lost her, so faint and elusive was she against the warring light and shade, the moonlight and the shadows . . . but as fast as they lost track of her, she would appear again, far ahead, a pale wisp of a thing no more substantial than a drift of cigarette smoke in a darkened room.

  Far and fast she led them, from the lane to a fieldpath, from the fieldpath to untrodden meadows deep in scented grasses—beyond the meadows to rough boggy country, straight towards the foot of the great wooded mountains that, fencelike, ring Pertisau and its valley round—both men were panting and weary when at last, following the pale thing that led them, they crossed a final strip of marshland, thick with reeds and bulrushes, and there before them rose the mountain-side, clothed in virgin forest, dark, impenetrable, a vast green wall rising steeply up to heaven. Then for a moment both halted to take breath. Far ahead of them the little shadow paused, a wavering opalescent thing, filmy yet distinct in her flowered gown, shining like a soap-bubble against the heavy darkness of the trees beyond—as she paused she turned, as if to look back at the two men, thus facing them fully for the first time, and MacIntosh uttered a shrill cry of horror.

  ‘Oh, my God! It’s not ribbon at all. . . .!’

  As he spoke she vanished, as a bubble vanishes, in the blink of an eyelid—with a sudden reckless courage, despite his thumping heart, Raff plunged after her, and began to root about furiously in the dark tangle of undergrowth where she had disappeared, calling at the top of his voice to MacIntosh, who, all unnerved, still hung back shivering like a leaf.

  ‘Come on—bring your flashlight, quickly! Keep a stiff upper lip to the end—she has told us what she wanted. Look here!’

  His heart in his mouth, MacIntosh stared down at the parted bushes. There, clear in the narrow shaft of white light from his electric torch, lay the body of a woman, clutching a sheet of paper in one thin hand. A little middle-aged woman, clad in an ultra-girlish gown of flowered cotton stuff, flounced and short-sleeved . . . but where MacIntosh had thought to see a bow of crimson ribbon at the base of the lean little throat, shone out a ghastly blotch of red, where, through a cruel gash, life had bled away among the moss and flowers. And beside her lay a Tyrolean hunting knife, its steel rusted to brown. . . .

  Reverently extracting the paper from between the limp fingers, the doctor glanced down the single scribbled sheet, and placing it carefully inside his wallet, nodded soberly.

  ‘As I thought, MacIntosh—she came to right a wrong. Now young Emil Diesenkrantz can go free of the charge of her murder, since this note proves—poor little soul!—her suicide. . . .’

  * * * * *

  ‘And now,’ said MacIntosh firmly, ‘now that it’s all over—perhaps you’ll tell me the whole story from the beginning. Who was she—how did she die—and how did the person called “Emil” come to be mixed up in it?’

  The two friends sat talking in the shadow of the wide porch of the ‘Fürstenhaus’. It was three days since the tragic discovery in the woods, and the life of the little community was resuming its normal course; the poor little body laid to rest beneath the kindly yews in the lakeside churchyard, a certain young farmer released from Pertisau jail, and the ‘Rosenhaus’ likewise released—for so it proved, to the great relief of Frau Hellner—from the haunting of the pathetic little grey shadow that was once a living, loving woman.

  At his friend’s question Raff stared before him for a moment before he replied.

  ‘I’ll tell you now—the whole story,’ he said soberly. ‘It’s a tragedy of the Indian summer of a woman’s life. I knew her well. She was a Miss Lettice Onnaway—a gentle, shy little middle-aged governess who had never been out of England in her life until this summer, and she came here with two children to look after. Their parents were wealthy idle people, who did not like to be bothered with children, and they put them for the summer at the ‘Rosenhaus’, with her in charge. Yes—they had your rooms, and I often used to see her sitting sewing on the balcony as I passed.’

  He paused for a moment, and went reflectively on.

  ‘She was about forty-five or fifty, I suppose—the last sort of woman one would have pictured falling crazily in love with a boy, but I suppose it is impossible to say at what age a woman becomes absolutely cold to the lure of sex. And I suppose, too, that to a woman who has never known love it comes with a more terrific force than with women who are more accustomed to handling the emotions . . . anyway I am quite sure that before she came here little Miss Onnaway had not only never had an affair with a man, but not even dreamt of having one. Her very clothes showed it—she wore grey alpaca or dark blue linen, and Plimsoll shoes, and scraped her hair back from her face—mouse-coloured, dusty sort of hair, with a tendency to curl if she would have let it, but she wouldn’t, any more than she would put powder on her nose. She wasn’t altogether plain, you understand—just insignificant; a nobody; a frumpy little faded woman who did not care what she looked like . . . till all of a sudden I began to notice a change! She took to loosening her hair, doing it less tightly; cut down or left open the high collars of her dresses, shortened her skirts—then one day she went down to Jenback and bought some shoes with high heels, and powder and perfume, and a string of blue beads, and a length of white cottony stuff, cheap but pretty enough, with sprigs of little coloured flowers all over it. She came up with it to my place, and my sister helped her cut it out from a pattern in Weldon’s Journal. My sister made rather a friend of her, she seemed so lonely—that’s how I know all these details. Then . . .’ he broke off and frowned a little, hesitating.

  ‘Go on,’ said MacIntosh eagerly. ‘I want to hear the whole story.’

  ‘Well,’ said the doctor soberly. ‘Just about that time there started rumours in Pertisau. Whispering and murmurs about little Miss Onnaway and a certain local lad, Emil Diesenkrantz, a farmer’s son, less than half her age. He was supposed to be the cause of her sudden outbreak into youthful ways and garments—things that went about as well with her pathetic forty-odd years and greying hair as a boy’s blazer woul
d go with my years and waist-measurement! This youth was her lover, they said—when she was supposed to take the children, her charges, out to play or walk, she would leave them all alone, and slip away . . . at first it seemed too silly for words, but then I began to get suspicious in my turn, for this boy Emil, a gay devil-may-care lad of barely twenty, suddenly began to flaunt all manner of presents! A silver engraved cigarette-case and lighter; and English stick, ties, handkerchiefs, a Bond Street scarf—and I began to put two and two together! Mind you, I might not have done so quite so quickly, but I was called in to doctor Emil’s father at that time and saw the young man quite often. . . . I snubbed him once, when he was ostentatiously flourishing the cigarette-case to a group of his cronies at the ‘Fürstenhaus’ bar, but it had no effect on him. He was a handsome lad, petted by all the girls, and inordinately vain—yet I am certain he never meant any real harm. He was merely a thoughtless foolish boy, playing with fire he could in no wise comprehend.

  ‘So it went on, a sordid pathetic liaison that could have but one end—yet it lasted a couple of months. Stimulated, on the boy’s side, by gratified vanity at having made a conquest of an Englishwoman, who, like all of her race, governess or no, was reputed rich and was certainly bewilderingly generous—also, it may be that perhaps for a little he was waked to genuine responsiveness of her obvious adoration for him; and on hers moved by who knows what strange tangle of fierce emotions, desperate yearning love and long-stifled passion—the pathetic eagerness of a sex-starved woman to clutch at the vanishing skirts of Romance before it is too late. She shut her eyes deliberately to the utter absurdity of any lasting association between her fading middle-age and his audacious youth . . . they were seen together daily in the woods, beside the lake, at all hours, but preferably at night. He would signal to her, from the woods beyond, with a cowbell, and she would slip down, go out through the gap in the hedge and up the road to meet him. . . .’