THE NIGHT WIND HOWLS Page 9

  ‘Not the love of a day, dear Lavender,’ he whispered, ‘but the devotion of two centuries—two hundred years in the shadow of death. You and I alone know the truth. Those who are playing cards and chatting inside the house are only dream people of the past haunting a place they knew and loved. Time for them has stood still. They know nothing of the passing years, the changing scene. With us it is different. I have but the semblance of flesh and blood myself, but I am real as you. Love conquers time and eternity, and we shall find happiness if you dare to brave the unknown with me.’

  ‘Ralph,’ I replied. ‘I have waited so long for you to come again. Once I sought you in death, but only lost you in the mazes of the underworld. I had to return to earth to find you and regain your love.’

  His arms were around me and his lips on mine. I touched his cheek and looked up into his sad, brown eyes. We kissed once more, and then returned to the house. As we were entering he said, ‘Nearly two centuries ago I told you I had written a song for you and you sang it in this very room. It is our fate that things must be repeated and so I tell you again that I have written a song which I invite you to sing.’

  ‘And the song, my dear,’ I answered, ‘is called “Lavender Love”.’

  ‘Ah! So you remember,’ he cried. ‘You recall the way you sang it that afternoon—sang it so divinely that your father and the others left their cards to listen to your sweet voice?’

  ‘In this moment I remember it all. Place the music before me again and I will sing as I did in the past.’

  He led me to the harpsichord and put a sheet of music on the stand before me, and without any hesitation I was singing the song he had written for me so long ago:

  You are the Queen of the summer,

  Roses fresh kissed by the dew,

  Blooming so fair

  Cannot compare

  Lavender love, with you.

  When in the hush of the night-time

  Bright stars high above

  Bathe the flowers in a magic glow

  I’ll dream of a garden we used to know,

  Dear little Lavender love.

  Lavender dreams of lavender time

  And Lavender love of you.

  Lonely years may come and go

  Yet ever in my heart I’ll know

  Where the sweetest blossoms grow:

  Roses droop and fade away,

  Memories of yesterday

  Haunt the paths we used to stray,

  Lavender love of mine.

  You are the fragrance of springtime,

  Queen of a world divine.

  Years are between

  The dear might-have-been,

  Lavender, sweetheart mine.

  Ever I’ll dream of your kisses,

  See your dear eyes shine:

  And, when the ev’ning sun is low,

  We’ll meet in that garden of long-ago,

  Lady of lavender time.

  Suddenly, in the second refrain, I seemed to forget both the words and the tune. The sun was setting, the room was dark with shadows, and I was quite alone trying to pick out a forgotten melody upon a broken instrument that had not been played for two centuries.

  V

  They watch my every movement and it becomes increasingly difficult to steal away to the old house. For a week I was unable to visit it, and when I did get there the guests had all departed. My father was in his study and I could see from the frown upon his brow that something had disturbed him. I was not left long in doubt. He began to upbraid me for daring to encourage the love of a ‘penniless play-actor’. He vowed that Ralph should never set foot in the house again, and advised me to forget him and be ready to accept Sir Matthew Congreve as my husband.

  I flared up at him and refused to put Ralph out of my heart.

  ‘Father,’ I cried, ‘I cannot let him go again. You separated us two hundred years ago, and that separation meant death. Now I have been reborn into the world and he has come back from the shadows, so surely we must find our happiness at last.’

  He looked at me strangely. ‘Lavender,’ he said more gently, ‘you are distraught. What is all this talk of hundreds of years, of death, and separation?’

  ‘Don’t you understand?’ I pleaded. ‘You are only a dream—a ghost from the past, but I am real. You are still in the eighteenth century, and I am living in the twentieth. This house is an empty shell, the garden is weed-choked and overgrown, and only my love for Ralph and his love for me is real.’

  ‘My dear,’ he stammered. ‘You must be mad. This is the year 1782, and we are in my house, Marchester Towers. What is this ridiculous talk of the twentieth century, of ghosts, and dreams?’

  It was too much. I knew I could never expect him to understand. But I was saved the necessity of a reply, for just then a servant entered and laid a letter on the desk. I watched my father open it, and saw him start with horror.

  ‘It is from Garrick,’ he said in a dull voice. ‘Ralph Hilton will never trouble us again. It seems that some foolish fellow bandied your name about at a Vauxhall fête. Ralph challenged him to a duel, and in the encounter your lover was killed.’

  So it had happened again in my dreamland just as it had happened in the past. My lover was lost to me once more: death had stolen him from me. I laughed at the injustice of fate, at the trick it had played upon me for the second time. I laughed until the tears ran down my cheeks, and the echo of my unnatural merriment disturbed the peace of that empty house.

  VI

  They found me in the deserted room and carried me back to the new mansion erected by Sir Roderick in 1784. I was ill for weeks and they watched me night and day. Even when I was well enough to walk in the garden they still watched me carefully—so carefully that I have only just contrived to slip away from them and visit the old house.

  In the wild garden the roses are in bloom and trails of honeysuckle hang from the bushes. By the sundial he met me, and there was a wound in his breast from which the red blood dripped and splashed upon the green grass. He smiled at me—such a sad sweet smile, but uttered no word. Yet I know what he wants. I must play and sing the song he wrote for me so long ago, and through its magic we shall be together again.

  Upon the old harpsichord I am writing these words, and I know that in life and in death I shall seek my lover until, at last, we gain our happiness.

  You who have been kind to me in this life remember that for me there is no peace in death, and maybe I shall come again. Always I shall be Lavender McLaren until we find the way to happiness—until his ring is upon my finger and I am Lavender Hilton.

  NOTE BY SIR JOHN McLAREN

  This strange story was written down by my dear daughter, Lavender McLaren. Since her eighteenth birthday she had behaved in a peculiar manner, and often visited the old family mansion on the other side of the park.

  A month or so ago, after she had been missing for some hours, we discovered her in the old house, roaming about in a demented state. At first the doctors despaired of saving her reason, but gradually her health seemed to return. We were advised never to leave her alone and, on no account, to permit her to wander beyond the garden unaccompanied. But, on the 2nd of July, she eluded her attendant and made her way to the old house.

  I was informed of her flight and followed at once. As I neared the place I heard the music of a harpsichord and my daughter’s voice singing the song she has written down in her manuscript. It took me some time to find my way into the building and, in the music room, I found my dear Lavender lying dead across the keys of the ancient instrument.

  Hurrying away to get help I fancied I saw my daughter standing with a young man by the old sundial. She smiled at me very sweetly and happily, and then the two of them disappeared. It may have been a curious illusion but, after reading her story, I am inclined to think that she has perhaps found the peace she so earnestly desired.

  The Mask of Death

  ‘SI, SEÑOR,’ SAID Don Iñigo, nodding his white head, ‘you have come to the right
person, for in all Seville I doubt if you could find another who could tell you the story of that house. You see, the tragedy happened over sixty years ago, and men have short memories.’

  I had called upon the old man to seek information about a villa in the Calle de Pablo. For over a month that house had intrigued me. At one time it must have been a beautiful place, and its broken loggia was still overrun with a riot of roses. But it had evidently been unoccupied for years, and I noticed that people who passed it after nightfall always made a hurried sign of the cross as they glanced up, half-fearfully, at the broken windows.

  ‘When I was a boy,’ went on Don Iñigo, ‘the Villa Rosita, as the house was called, was the home of a young Russian artist named Radmazov. He painted a little, but his main work was the modelling of masks. In this he possessed an uncanny skill, and fashionable people came, even from so far as Madrid, to have their features reproduced in clay or wax by his clever fingers. I have been told that specimens of his work are still to be seen in the Prado, but of this I cannot speak with certainty.

  ‘The artist had no servant living on the premises, but my mother cleaned the house and cooked his food, and I was employed to polish the shoes and run errands. I seldom saw Radmazov, but occasionally I would climb on to the loggia and, by peeping through the window of the studio, see him fashioning a plaster cast of some beautiful woman’s face. Often a woman would stay the night with him, and in the morning my mother, much to her disgust, would have to prepare breakfast for both Radmazov and his guest.

  ‘Sometimes, when business was slack, he would go down to the Plaza and pick up some woman of the streets. Always she must be fair of face, for a mask was made from her features before any love-making took place. In the morning, when such a woman had spent the night with him, he would come downstairs as soon as he heard my mother about in the kitchen and shout, “There’s a bitch in my bed. Give her ten pesetas and get rid of her. I’m going to the studio.”

  ‘I tell you these things, señor, to show you what type of man this Radmazov was. Women always declared him to be a devil in human guise, and my mother was terribly frightened of him. He had the strangest eyes I have ever seen. They were intensely black with tiny points of red in them, and seemed to smoulder like live coals. If ever I encountered his glance I felt afraid.

  ‘He hated religion and spat whenever he passed a priest in the street. Once my mother hung a small crucifix on the wall of the kitchen, for she was a pious woman and often whispered a prayer whilst she was working. When the Russian saw the cross he behaved like a madman, foaming at the mouth and uttering the most horrible blasphemies. He tore the little symbol from the wall and hurled it through the window.

  ‘The artist’s studio was a holy of holies. Only clients were permitted to cross its threshold, and Radmazov cleaned it himself. He said that, with all the masks about the place, a duster might cause damage beyond repair. So we were forbidden to enter the room, and but for the limited view I gained by my occasional glances through the window, I knew nothing of it.

  ‘In August, during the week of the Assumption, we have, as you know, a fair in Seville and everyone keeps holiday. It was on the evening of the festival in 1874 when Radmazov visited the fair and there saw Luisa the gypsy for the first time. The girl was only eighteen, as graceful as a silver birch and as beautiful as a rose. It was her second visit to the town, and on the previous occasion she had left behind many aching hearts. Not that Luisa ever gave anything to a man. She was too much of a gypsy for that, but she did smile upon them and sometimes exchanged a joke.

  ‘Radmazov saw Luisa and fell in love with her at once. During the remaining days of the fair he was never far from her pitch, and his piercing eyes followed her every movement as she danced to the music of the guitars. Then, on the last night, he invited her to drink with him. I could see that her first inclination was to refuse, but she looked into his eyes and seemed to lose, in one brief moment, all her gay coquetry. She reminded me of a tiny bird fascinated by a snake. The Russian took her arm and they went off to old Fernando’s cafe in the Calle Major. It was there Benito found them. Benito was gypsy matador, and it seemed that he was to be Luisa’s husband when she felt like marrying. He objected to her drinking with the busnó, and there was an unholy row. In his jealous rage Benito drew a knife and would have killed Radmazov had not Luisa interposed herself between them. She received a slight flesh wound in her arm and was hurried off to hospital. The police arrived too late to catch Benito and he was miles away from Seville before morning dawned.

  ‘Instead of taking the events of the night as a warning to have nothing more to do with the gypsy, Radmazov was at the hospital early in the morning loaded with flowers and fruit. He had got it into his head that Luisa had saved his life at the risk of her own, when all she had really done was to prevent her lover committing a murder. The girl’s hurt was slight and she was discharged from the hospital that day. Then the Russian wanted to take her home with him to the house in the Calle de Pablo. But she laughed in his face and told him that a gypsy girl could have nothing to do with a busnó. That made him mad and he swore that one day she should be his. Luisa laughed again, but she was a little frightened. She returned to her own people, and within an hour they had left town.

  ‘Days passed and Radmazov kept to the house. He refused all commissions to make masks and only left the studio for his meals. I had been peeping through the window again, so I knew what he was doing. He was at work on the greatest masterpiece he had ever created—a mask of Luisa. At last the thing was finished and coloured, and looking at it, señor, I could have almost sworn that I was gazing at the actual face of the gypsy. And then, night after night, I saw the artist’s shadow passing backwards and forwards across the window, and every now and again, he would stop and gesticulate as if he were talking to some person within the room.

  ‘Curiosity was always my besetting sin, señor, and one night I climbed into the loggia and listened at the window. The curtains, although drawn, did not quite meet, and I could see a small portion of the room. There was the mask of Luisa propped up on the table and every now and again Radmazov paused in his walk and addressed it. I put my ear to the window and heard him say, “Luisa, you shall come to me when I am ready for you. By all the powers of hell I have sworn to have you in the end.” And then it seemed that the mask smiled a queer, inscrutable smile, and the painted eyes gleamed with an unholy light.

  ‘Well, weeks grew into months. Almost a year passed by and the Eve of the Assumption came round again. That evening the Russian dismissed my mother at an early hour, but I hung about round the house to see if anything exciting was going to happen. About nine o’clock a man wrapped in a black cloak accosted me and asked to be directed to the Villa Rosita. I pointed out the house and watched him knock on the door. It was opened almost immediately and he passed inside.

  ‘Up into the loggia I climbed and peered through the window. I saw Radmazov usher the stranger into the room and assist him to remove his cloak. Then, with a gasp of horror, I recognised the man. He had once been a priest at the church of Our Lady of Flowers, but for some reason known to the authorities, had been disgraced and driven from the town.

  ‘The room had been changed. A kind of altar was at one end and on it stood the mask of Luisa flanked by candles of unbleached wax—just like those used at funerals.

  ‘The priest performed some ceremony before the table and there was a lot of mumbling. Then Radmazov opened a basket and produced a black cock. I couldn’t see what they did with the bird, but there was a scream like an animal in pain. Then I heard the Russian cry, “Is all well? Shall I possess her?”

  ‘ “All is well,” answered the priest. “She shall be yours for a year and a day.”

  ‘ “And after that?” asked Radmazov.

  ‘ “You must be prepared to pay the price,” was the answer.

  ‘ “I’ll pay it in full,” shouted the artist. “The devil shall have his due if he treats me fairly.”

>   ‘By that time, señor, I was trembling with fright and hardly capable of climbing to the ground. Somehow I managed to get away, and for the sake of company, joined the crowds in the Plaza. The gay booths and amusements were already erected, and there was Luisa, looking just as beautiful and just as brazen as ever. I wanted to warn her of danger, but felt that she would laugh at me.

  ‘The fair opened after High Mass on the feast day, and I spent all my spare time near Luisa. Radmazov did not appear until the third evening, and then he walked straight up to the gypsy and fixing her with his terrible eyes, said: “Señorita, as you must already know, I am the greatest maker of masks in the world, and in gratitude for saving my life last year, I wish to give you my masterpiece. Will you come home with me to collect it?”

  ‘I could see that Luisa was taken by surprise. She whispered to one of her guitarists, and by his gestures, it was obvious that the man was telling her that the mask would be worth a lot of money. She hesitated for a few moments and then, with a toss of her head, took Radmazov’s arm and went off with him.

  ‘I speeded on in advance and took up my position on the loggia. Soon I saw them enter the room and Luisa cried out in fright and amazement as she beheld the mask. As I have said, señor, it was so life-like that it might have been her own face she was looking at. Then the Russian was gazing at her with those curious eyes of his, and she was trying to shield her own eyes with her hands. Suddenly she was in his arms in a close embrace and her lips were upon his. Then, like a woman in a trance, she loosened her clothes and removed the garments one by one until her naked body gleamed all golden in the light of the lamp. And, as he caressed her firm breasts, I stole away, for it was not right that I should witness their sin.