Midsummer Mysteries Read online

  He was vaguely disappointed. He had hoped for better things.

  ‘What has been arranged, Anna?’ asked Denman. ‘The thing will have to be put off, I suppose. I heard you ringing the Roscheimers up.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No—there is no need to put it off.’

  ‘But you can’t do it without the ballet?’

  ‘You certainly couldn’t have a Harlequinade without Harlequin and Columbine,’ agreed Anna Denman drily. ‘I’m going to be Columbine, John.’

  ‘You?’ He was astonished—disturbed, Mr Satterthwaite thought.

  She nodded composedly.

  ‘You need not be afraid, John. I shall not disgrace you. You forget—it was my profession once.’

  Mr Satterthwaite thought: ‘What an extraordinary thing a voice is. The things it says—and the things it leaves unsaid and means! I wish I knew …’

  ‘Well,’ said John Denman grudgingly, ‘that solves one half of the problem. What about the other? Where will you find Harlequin?’

  ‘I have found him—there!’

  She gestured towards the open doorway where Mr Quin had just appeared. He smiled back at her.

  ‘Good lord, Quin,’ said John Denman. ‘Do you know anything of this game? I should never have imagined it.’

  ‘Mr Quin is vouched for by an expert,’ said his wife. ‘Mr Satterthwaite will answer for him.’

  She smiled at Mr Satterthwaite, and the little man found himself murmuring:

  ‘Oh, yes—I answer for Mr Quin.’

  Denman turned his attention elsewhere.

  ‘You know there’s to be a fancy dress dance business afterwards. Great nuisance. We’ll have to rig you up, Satterthwaite.’

  Mr Satterthwaite shook his head very decidedly.

  ‘My years will excuse me.’ A brilliant idea struck him. A table napkin under his arm. ‘There I am, an elderly waiter who has seen better days.’

  He laughed.

  ‘An interesting profession,’ said Mr Quin. ‘One sees so much.’

  ‘I’ve got to put on some fool pierrot thing,’ said Denman gloomily. ‘It’s cool anyway, that’s one thing. What about you?’ He looked at Oranoff.

  ‘I have a Harlequin costume,’ said the Russian. His eyes wandered for a minute to his hostess’s face.

  Mr Satterthwaite wondered if he was mistaken in fancying that there was just a moment of constraint.

  ‘There might have been three of us,’ said Denman, with a laugh. ‘I’ve got an old Harlequin costume my wife made me when we were first married for some show or other.’ He paused, looking down on his broad shirt front. ‘I don’t suppose I could get into it now.’

  ‘No,’ said his wife. ‘You couldn’t get into it now.’

  And again her voice said something more than mere words.

  She glanced up at the clock.

  ‘If Molly doesn’t turn up soon, we won’t wait for her.’

  But at that moment the girl was announced. She was already wearing her Pierrette dress of white and green, and very charming she looked in it, so Mr Satterthwaite reflected.

  She was full of excitement and enthusiasm over the forthcoming performance.

  ‘I’m getting awfully nervous, though,’ she announced, as they drank coffee after dinner. ‘I know my voice will wobble, and I shall forget the words.’

  ‘Your voice is very charming,’ said Anna. ‘I should not worry about it if I were you.’

  ‘Oh, but I do. The other I don’t mind about—the dancing, I mean. That’s sure to go all right. I mean, you can’t go very far wrong with your feet, can you?’

  She appealed to Anna, but the older woman did not respond. Instead she said:

  ‘Sing something now to Mr Satterthwaite. You will find that he will reassure you.’

  Molly went over to the piano. Her voice rang out, fresh and tuneful, in an old Irish ballad.

  ‘Shiela, dark Shiela, what is it that you’re seeing?

  What is it that you’re seeing, that you’re seeing in the fire?’

  ‘I see a lad that loves me—and I see a lad that leaves me,

  And a third lad, a Shadow Lad—and he’s the lad that grieves me.’

  The song went on. At the end, Mr Satterthwaite nodded vigorous approval.

  ‘Mrs Denman is right. Your voice is charming. Not, perhaps, very fully trained, but delightfully natural, and with that unstudied quality of youth in it.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed John Denman. ‘You go ahead, Molly, and don’t be downed by stage fright. We’d better be getting over to the Roscheimers now.’

  The party separated to don cloaks. It was a glorious night and they proposed to walk over, the house being only a few hundred yards down the road.

  Mr Satterthwaite found himself by his friend.

  ‘It’s an odd thing,’ he said, ‘but that song made me think of you. A third lad—a Shadow Lad—there’s mystery there, and wherever there’s mystery I—well, think of you.’

  ‘Am I so mysterious?’ smiled Mr Quin.

  Mr Satterthwaite nodded vigorously.

  ‘Yes, indeed. Do you know, until tonight, I had no idea that you were a professional dancer.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mr Quin.

  ‘Listen,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. He hummed the love motif from the Walküre. ‘That is what has been ringing in my head all through dinner as I looked at those two.’

  ‘Which two?’

  ‘Prince Oranoff and Mrs Denman. Don’t you see the difference in her tonight? It’s as though—as though a shutter had suddenly been opened and you see the glow within.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Quin. ‘Perhaps so.’

  ‘The same old drama,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I am right, am I not? Those two belong together. They are of the same world, think the same thoughts, dream the same dreams … One sees how it has come about. Ten years ago Denman must have been very good-looking, young, dashing, a figure of romance. And he saved her life. All quite natural. But now—what is he, after all? A good fellow—prosperous, successful—but—well, mediocre, good honest English stuff—very much like that Hepplewhite furniture upstairs. As English—and as ordinary—as that pretty English girl with her fresh untrained voice. Oh, you may smile, Mr Quin, but you cannot deny what I am saying.’

  ‘I deny nothing. In what you see you are always right. And yet—’

  ‘Yet what?’

  Mr Quin leaned forward. His dark melancholy eyes searched for those of Mr Satterthwaite.

  ‘Have you learned so little of life?’ he breathed.

  He left Mr Satterthwaite vaguely disquieted, such a prey to meditation that he found the others had started without him owing to his delay in selecting a scarf for his neck. He went out by the garden, and through the same door as in the afternoon. The lane was bathed in moonlight, and even as he stood in the doorway he saw a couple enlaced in each other’s arms.

  For a moment he thought—

  And then he saw. John Denman and Molly Stanwell. Denman’s voice came to him, hoarse and anguished.

  ‘I can’t live without you. What are we to do?’

  Mr Satterthwaite turned to go back the way he had come, but a hand stayed him. Someone else stood in the doorway beside him, someone else whose eyes had also seen.

  Mr Satterthwaite had only to catch one glimpse of her face to know how wildly astray all his conclusions had been.

  Her anguished hand held him there until those other two had passed up the lane and disappeared from sight. He heard himself speaking to her, saying foolish little things meant to be comforting, and ludicrously inadequate to the agony he had divined. She only spoke once.

  ‘Please,’ she said, ‘don’t leave me.’

  He found that oddly touching. He was, then, of use to someone. And he went on saying those things that meant nothing at all, but which were, somehow, better than silence. They went that way to the Roscheimers. Now and then her hand tightened on his shoulder, and he understood that she was glad of
his company. She only took it away when they finally came to their destination. She stood very erect, her head held high.

  ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I shall dance! Do not be afraid for me, my friend. I shall dance.’

  She left him abruptly. He was seized upon by Lady Roscheimer, much bediamonded and very full of lamentations. By her he was passed on to Claude Wickam.

  ‘Ruined! Completely ruined. The sort of thing that always happens to me. All these country bumpkins think they can dance. I was never even consulted—’ His voice went on—went on interminably. He had found a sympathetic listener, a man who knew. He gave himself up to an orgy of self-pity. It only ended when the first strains of music began.

  Mr Satterthwaite came out of his dreams. He was alert, once more the critic. Wickam was an unutterable ass, but he could write music—delicate gossamer stuff, intangible as a fairy web—yet with nothing of the pretty pretty about it.

  The scenery was good. Lady Roscheimer never spared expense when aiding her protégés. A glade of Arcady with lighting effects that gave it the proper atmosphere of unreality.

  Two figures dancing as they had danced through time immemorial. A slender Harlequin flashing spangles in the moonlight with magic wand and masked face … A white Columbine pirouetting like some immortal dream …

  Mr Satterthwaite sat up. He had lived through this before. Yes, surely …

  Now his body was far away from Lady Roscheimer’s drawing room. It was in a Berlin museum at a statuette of an immortal Columbine.

  Harlequin and Columbine danced on. The wide world was theirs to dance in …

  Moonlight—and a human figure. Pierrot wandering through the wood, singing to the moon. Pierrot who has seen Columbine and knows no rest. The Immortal two vanish, but Columbine looks back. She has heard the song of a human heart.

  Pierrot wandering on through the wood … darkness … his voice dies away in the distance …

  The village green—dancing of village girls—pierrots and pierrettes. Molly as Pierrette. No dancer—Anna Denman was right there—but a fresh tuneful voice as she sings her song ‘Pierrette dancing on the Green’.

  A good tune—Mr Satterthwaite nodded approval. Wickham wasn’t above writing a tune when there was a need for it. The majority of the village girls made him shudder, but he realized that Lady Roscheimer was determinedly philanthropical.

  They press Pierrot to join the dance. He refuses. With white face he wanders on—the eternal lover seeking his ideal. Evening falls. Harlequin and Columbine, invisible, dance in and out of the unconscious throng. The place is deserted, only Pierrot, weary, falls asleep on a grassy bank. Harlequin and Columbine dance round him. He wakes and sees Columbine. He woos her in vain, pleads, beseeches …

  She stands uncertain. Harlequin beckons to her to begone. But she sees him no longer. She is listening to Pierrot, to his song of love outpoured once more. She falls into his arms, and the curtain comes down.

  The Second Act is Pierrot’s cottage. Columbine sits on her hearth. She is pale, weary. She listens—for what? Pierrot sings to her—woos her back to thoughts of him once more. The evening darkens. Thunder is heard … Columbine puts aside her spinning wheel. She is eager, stirred … She listens no longer to Pierrot. It is her own music that is in the air, the music of Harlequin and Columbine … She is awake. She remembers.

  A crash of thunder! Harlequin stands in the doorway. Pierrot cannot see him, but Columbine springs up with a glad laugh. Children come running, but she pushes them aside. With another crash of thunder the walls fall, and Columbine dances out into the wild night with Harlequin.

  Darkness, and through it the tune that Pierrette has sung. Light comes slowly. The cottage once more. Pierrot and Pierrette grown old and grey sit in front of the fire in two armchairs. The music is happy, but subdued. Pierrette nods in her chair. Through the window comes a shaft of moonlight, and with it the motif of Pierrot’s long-forgotten song. He stirs in his chair.

  Faint music—fairy music … Harlequin and Columbine outside. The door swings open and Columbine dances in. She leans over the sleeping Pierrot, kisses him on the lips …

  Crash! A peal of thunder. She is outside again. In the centre of the stage is the lighted window and through it are seen the two figures of Harlequin and Columbine dancing slowly away, growing fainter and fainter …

  A log falls. Pierrette jumps up angrily, rushes across to the window and pulls the blind. So it ends, on a sudden discord …

  Mr Satterthwaite sat very still among the applause and vociferations. At last he got up and made his way outside. He came upon Molly Stanwell, flushed and eager, receiving compliments. He saw John Denman, pushing and elbowing his way through the throng, his eyes alight with a new flame. Molly came towards him, but, almost unconsciously, he put her aside. It was not her he was seeking.

  ‘My wife? Where is she?’

  ‘I think she went out in the garden.’

  It was, however, Mr Satterthwaite who found her, sitting on a stone seat under a cypress tree. When he came up to her, he did an odd thing. He knelt down and raised her hand to his lips.

  ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘You think I danced well?’

  ‘You danced—as you always danced, Madame Kharsanova.’

  She drew in her breath sharply.

  ‘So—you have guessed.’

  ‘There is only one Kharsanova. No one could see you dance and forget. But why—why?’

  ‘What else is possible?’

  ‘You mean?’

  She had spoken very simply. She was just as simple now. ‘Oh! but you understand. You are of the world. A great dancer—she can have lovers, yes—but a husband, that is different. And he—he did not want the other. He wanted me to belong to him as—as Kharsanova could never have belonged.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘I see. So you gave it up?’

  She nodded.

  ‘You must have loved him very much,’ said Mr Satterthwaite gently.

  ‘To make such a sacrifice?’ She laughed.

  ‘Not quite that. To make it so light-heartedly.’

  ‘Ah, yes—perhaps—you are right.’

  ‘And now?’ asked Mr Satterthwaite.

  Her face grew grave.

  ‘Now?’ She paused, then raised her voice and spoke into the shadows.

  ‘Is that you, Sergius Ivanovitch?’

  Prince Oranoff came out into the moonlight. He took her hand and smiled at Mr Satterthwaite without self-consciousness.

  ‘Ten years ago I mourned the death of Anna Kharsanova,’ he said simply. ‘She was to me as my other self. Today I have found her again. We shall part no more.’

  ‘At the end of the lane in ten minutes,’ said Anna. ‘I shall not fail you.’

  Oranoff nodded and went off again. The dancer turned to Mr Satterthwaite. A smile played about her lips.

  ‘Well—you are not satisfied, my friend?’

  ‘Do you know,’ said Mr Satterthwaite abruptly, ‘that your husband is looking for you?’

  He saw the tremor that passed over her face, but her voice was steady enough.

  ‘Yes,’ she said gravely. ‘That may well be.’

  ‘I saw his eyes. They—’ he stopped abruptly.

  She was still calm.

  ‘Yes, perhaps. For an hour. An hour’s magic, born of past memories, of music, of moonlight—That is all.’

  ‘Then there is nothing that I can say?’ He felt old, dispirited.

  ‘For ten years I have lived with the man I love,’ said Anna Kharsanova. ‘Now I am going to the man who for ten years has loved me.’

  Mr Satterthwaite said nothing. He had no arguments left. Besides it really seemed the simplest solution. Only—only, somehow, it was not the solution he wanted. He felt her hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I know, my friend, I know. But there is no third way. Always one looks for one thing—the lover, the perfect, the eternal lover … It is the music of Harlequin one hears. No lover ever satisfies one, for all lovers ar
e mortal. And Harlequin is only a myth, an invisible presence … unless—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Unless—his name is—Death!’

  Mr Satterthwaite shivered. She moved away from him, was swallowed up in the shadows …

  He never knew quite how long he sat on there, but suddenly he started up with the feeling that he had been wasting valuable time. He hurried away, impelled in a certain direction almost in spite of himself.

  As he came out into the lane he had a strange feeling of unreality. Magic—magic and moonlight! And two figures coming towards him …

  Oranoff in his Harlequin dress. So he thought at first. Then, as they passed him, he knew his mistake. That lithe swaying figure belonged to one person only—Mr Quin …

  They went on down the lane—their feet light as though they were treading on air. Mr Quin turned his head and looked back, and Mr Satterthwaite had a shock, for it was not the face of Mr Quin as he had ever seen it before. It was the face of a stranger—no, not quite a stranger. Ah! he had it now, it was the face of John Denman as it might have looked before life went too well with him. Eager, adventurous, the face at once of a boy and a lover …

  Her laugh floated down to him, clear and happy … He looked after them and saw in the distance the lights of a little cottage. He gazed after them like a man in a dream.

  He was rudely awakened by a hand that fell on his shoulder and he was jerked round to face Sergius Oranoff. The man looked white and distracted.

  ‘Where is she? Where is she? She promised—and she has not come.’

  ‘Madam has just gone up the lane—alone.’

  It was Mrs Denman’s maid who spoke from the shadow of the door behind them. She had been waiting with her mistress’s wraps.

  ‘I was standing here and saw her pass,’ she added.

  Mr Satterthwaite threw one harsh word at her.