The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

She still said nothing, and he went on bitterly: “I thought you – fool that I was – a good woman. But from what I hear I now know that your lover, Julian Treville, is no new friend. But I do not care, I do not enquire, how often you have been here—”

“This is the first time,” she said dully, “that I have been here.”

And then it was as if something outside herself impelled her to add the untrue words, “I am not, as you seem to think, Roger, alone—” for with a sharp thrill of intense fear she had remembered her child.

“Not alone?” he repeated incredulously. And then he saw the tapestried curtain which hung over the door, opposite to where he stood, move, and he realized that someone was behind it, listening.

He took a few steps forward, and pulled the curtain roughly back. But the dimly illumined corridor was empty; whoever had been there eavesdropping had scurried away into shelter.

He came back to the spot where he had been standing before. Baffled, angry, still full of doubt, and yet, deep in his heart, unutterably relieved. Already a half-suspicion that Laura was sheltering some woman friend engaged in an intrigue had flashed into his mind, and the suspicion crystallised into certainty as he looked loweringly into her pale, set face. She did not look as more than once, in the days of his good fortunes, he had seen a guilty wife look.

Yes, that must be the solution of this queer secret escapade! Laura, poor fool! had been the screen behind which hid a pair of guilty lovers. Thirty years ago a woman had played the same thankless part in an intrigue of his own.

“Who is your friend?” he asked roughly.

Her lips did not move, and he told himself, with a certain satisfaction, that she was paralysed with fear.

“How long have you and your friend been here? That, at least, you can tell me.”

At last she whispered what sounded like the absurd answer, “Just a hundred years.”

Then, turning quickly, she went through the door which gave into the dining-room, and shut it behind her.

Roger Delacourt began pacing about the room; he felt what he had very seldom come to feel in his long, hard, if till now fortunate, life, just a little foolish, but relieved – unutterably relieved – and glad.

The Folly? Well named indeed! The very setting for a secret love-affair. Beautiful, too, in its strange and romantic aloofness from everyday life.

He went and gazed up at the pastel, which was the only picture in the room. What an exquisite, flower-like face! It reminded him of a French girl he had known when he was a very young man. Her name had been Zélie Mignard, and she had been reader-companion to an old marquise with whose son he had spent a long summer and autumn on the Loire. From the first moment he had seen Zélie she had attracted him violently, and though little more than a boy, he had made up his mind to seduce her. But she had resisted him, and then, in spite of himself, he had come to love her with that ardent first love which returns no more.

Suddenly there fell on the air of the still room the sound of a long, deep sigh. He wheeled sharply round to see that between himself and the still uncurtained window there stood a slender young woman – Laura’s peccant friend, without a doubt!

He could not see her very clearly, yet of that he was not sorry, for he was not and he had never been – he told himself with an inward chuckle – the man to spoil sport.

Secretly he could afford to smile at the thought of his cold, passionless wife acting as duenna. Hard man as he was, his old heart warmed to the erring stranger, the more so that her sudden apparition had removed a last lingering doubt from his mind.

She threw out her slender hands with a gesture that again seemed to fill his mind with memories of his vanished youth, and there floated across the dark room the whispered words, “Be not unkind.” And then – did she say “Remember Zélie?”

No, no – it was his heart, less atrophied than he had thought it to be, which had evoked, quickened into life, the name of his first love, the French girl who, if alive, must be – hateful, disturbing thought – an old woman today.

Then, as he gazed at her, the shadowy figure swiftly walked across the room, and so through the tapestry curtain.

He waited a moment, then slowly passed through the dining-room, and so into the firelit bedroom beyond.

His wife was standing by the window, looking as wraith-like as had done, just now, her friend. She was staring out into the darkness, her arms hanging by her side. She had not turned round when she had heard the door of the room open.

“Laura!” said her husband gruffly. And then she turned and cast on him a suffering alien glance.

“I accept your explanation of your presence here. And, well, I apologize for my foolish suspicions. Still, you’re not a child! The part you’re playing is not one any man would wish his wife to play. How long do you – and your friend – intend to stay here?”

“We meant to stay ten days,” she said listlessly, “but as you’re home, Roger, I’ll leave now, if you like.”