CHAPTER XVI.

AT VALLEY HOUSE.

Joan Fordibras Makes a Confession.

A French valet came to me when General Fordibras had gone, and offered both to send to the yacht for any luggage I might need, and also, if I wished it, to have the English doctor, Wilson, up from Villa do Porto, to see me. This also had been the General’s idea; but I had no hurt of last night’s affray beyond a few bruises and an abrasion of the skin where I fell; and I declined the service as politely as might be. As for my luggage, I had taken a dressing-case to the Villa San Jorge, and this had now been brought up to the chalet, as the fellow told me. I said that it would suffice for the brief stay I intended to make at Santa Maria; and dressing impatiently, I went down to make a better acquaintance both with the house and its inmates.

Imagine a pretty Swiss chalet set high in the cleft of a mountain, with a well-wooded green valley of its own lying at its very door, and beyond the valley, on the far side, the sheer cliff of a lesser peak, rising up so forbiddingly that it might have been the great wall of a fortress or a castle. Such was Valley House, a dot upon the mountain side—a jalousied, red-roofed cottage, guarded everywhere by walls of rock, and yet possessing its own little park, which boasted almost a tropic luxuriance. Never have I seen a greater variety of shrubs, or such an odd assortment, in any garden either of Europe or Africa. Box, Scotch fir, a fine show both of orange and lemon in bloom, the citron, the pomegranate, African palms, Australian eucalyptus, that abundant fern, the native cabellinho—here you had them all in an atmosphere which suggested the warm valleys of the Pyrenees, beneath a sky which the Riviera might have shown to you. So much I perceived directly I went out upon the verandah of the house. The men who had built this chalet had built a retreat among the hills, which the richest might envy. I did not wonder that General Fordibras could speak of it with pride.

There was no one but an old negro servant about the house when I passed out to the verandah; and beyond wishing me “Good-morning, Massa Doctor,” I found him entirely uncommunicative. A clock in the hall made out the time to be a quarter past eleven. I perceived that the table had been laid for the mid-day breakfast, and that two covers were set. The second would be for Joan Fordibras, I said; and my heart beating a little wildly at the thought, I determined, if it was possible, to reconnoitre the situation before her arrival, and to know the best or the worst of it at once. That I was a prisoner of the valley I never had a doubt. It lay upon me, then, to face the fact and so to reckon with it that my wit should find the door which these men had so cunningly closed upon me.

Now, the first observation that I made, standing upon the verandah of the house, was one concerning the sea and my situation regarding it. I observed immediately that the harbour of Villa do Porto lay hidden from my view by the Eastern cliff of the valley. The Atlantic showed me but two patches of blue-green water, one almost to the south-west, and a second, of greater extent, to the north. Except for these glimpses of the ocean, I had no view of the world without the valley—not so much as that of a roof or spire or even of the smoke of a human habitation. Whoever had chosen this site for his chalet of the hills had chosen it where man could not pry upon him nor even ships at sea become acquainted with his movements. The fact was so very evident that I accepted it at once, and turned immediately to an examination of the grounds themselves. In extent, perhaps, a matter of five acres, my early opinion of their security was in no way altered by a closer inspection of them. They were, I saw, girt about everywhere by the sheer walls of monstrous cliffs; and as though to add to the suggestion of terror, I discovered that they were defended in their weakness by a rushing torrent of boiling water, foaming upwards from some deep, natural pool below, and thence rushing in a very cataract close to the wall of the mountain at the one spot where a clever mountaineer might have climbed the arrête of the precipice and so broken the prison. This coincidence hardly presented its true meaning to me at the first glance. I came to understand it later, as you shall see.

Walls of rock everywhere; no visible gate; no path or road, no crevice or gully by which a man might enter this almost fabulous valley from without! To this conclusion I came at the end of my first tour of the grounds. No prison had ever been contrived so cunningly; no human retreat made more inaccessible. As they had carried me through a tunnel of the mountain last night, so I knew that the owner of the chalet came and had returned, and that, until I found the gate of that cavern and my wits unlocked it, I was as surely hidden from the knowledge of men as though the doors of the Schlussenburg had closed upon me.

Such a truth could not but appal me. I accepted it with something very like a shudder and, seeking to forget it, I returned to the hither garden and its many evidences of scientific horticulture. Here, truly, the hand of civilisation and of the human amenities had left its imprint. If this might be, as imagination suggested, a valley of crime unknown, of cruelty and suffering and lust, none the less had those who peopled it looked up sometimes to the sun or bent their heads in homage to the rose. Even at this inclement season, I found blooms abundantly which England would not have given me until May. One pretty bower I shall never forget—an arbour perched upon a grassy bank with a mountain pool and fountain before its doors, and trailing creeper about it, and the great red flower of begonia giving it a sheen of crimson, very beautiful and welcome amidst this maze of green. Here I would have entered to make a note upon paper of all that the morning had taught me; but I was hardly at the door of the little house when I discovered that another occupied it already, and starting back as she looked up, I found myself face to face with Joan Fordibras.

She sat before a rude table of entwined logs, her face resting upon weary arms, and her dark chestnut hair streaming all about her. I saw that she had been weeping, and that tears still glistened upon the dark lashes of her eloquent eyes. Her dress was a simple morning gown of muslin, and a bunch of roses had been crushed by her nervous fingers and the leaves scattered, one by one, upon the ground. At my coming, the colour rushed back to her cheeks, and she half rose as though afraid of me. I stood my ground, however, for her sake and my own. Now must I speak with her, now once and for ever tell her that which I had come to Santa Maria to say.

“Miss Fordibras,” I said quietly; “you are in trouble and I can help you.”

She did not answer me. A flood of tears seemed to conquer her.

“Yes,” she said—and how changed she was from my little Joan of Dieppe!—“Yes, Dr. Fabos, I am in trouble.”

I crossed the arbour and seated myself near her.

“The grief of being misnamed the daughter of a man who is unworthy of being called your father. Tell me if I am mistaken. You are not the daughter of Hubert Fordibras? You are no real relative of his?”

A woman’s curiosity is often as potent an antidote to grief as artifice may devise. I shall never forget the look upon Joan Fordibras’s face when I confessed an opinion I had formed but the half of an hour ago. She was not the General’s daughter. The manner in which he had spoken of her was not the manner of a father uttering the name of his child.

“Did my father tell you that?” she asked me, looking up amazed.

“He has told me nothing save that I should enjoy your company and that of your companion at the breakfast table. Miss Aston, I suppose, is detained?”

This shrewd and very innocent untruth appeared to give her confidence. I think that she believed it. The suggestion that we were not to be alone together did much to make the situation possible. She sat upright now, and began again to pluck the rose leaves from her posy.

“Miss Aston is at the Villa San Jorge. I did not wish to come alone, but my father insisted. That’s why you found me crying. I hated it. I hate this place, and everyone about it. You know that I do, Dr. Fabos. They cannot hide anything from you. I said so when first I saw you in London. You are one of those men to whom women tell everything. I could not keep a secret from you if my life depended upon it.”

“Is there any necessity to do so, Miss Fordibras? Are not some secrets best told to our friends?”

I saw that she was greatly tempted, and it occurred to me that what I had to contend against was some pledge or promise she had given to General Fordibras. This man’s evil influence could neither be concealed nor denied. She had passed her word to him, and would not break it.

“I will tell you nothing—I dare not,” she exclaimed at length, wrestling visibly with a wild desire to speak. “It would not help you; it could not serve you. Leave the place at once, Dr. Fabos. Never think or speak of us again. Go right now at once. Say good-bye to me, and try to forget that such a person exists. That’s my secret; that’s what I came up here to tell you, never mind what you might think of me.”

A crimson blush came again to her pretty cheeks, and she feared to look me in the eyes. I had quite made up my mind how to deal with her, and acted accordingly. Her promise I respected. Neither fear of the General nor good-will toward me must induce her to break it.

“That’s a fine word of wisdom,” I said; “but it appears to me that I want a pair of wings if I am to obey you. Did they not tell you that I am a prisoner here?”

“A prisoner—oh no, no?——”

“Indeed, so—a prisoner who has yet to find the road which leads to the sea-shore. Sooner or later I shall discover it, and we will set out upon it together. At the moment, my eyes show me nothing but the hills. Perhaps I am grown a little blind, dear child. If that is so, you must lead me.”

She started up amazed, and ran to the door of the arbour. The quick pulsations of her heart were to be counted beneath her frail gown of muslin. I could see that she looked away to the corner of the gardens where the boiling spring swirled and eddied beneath the shallow cliff.

“The bridge is there—down there by the water,” she cried excitedly. “I crossed it an hour ago—an iron bridge, Dr. Fabos, with a little flight of steps leading up to it. Why do you talk so wildly? Am I so foolish, then?”

I went and stood beside her, a rose from her bundle in my hand.

“The elves play with us,” I said evasively; “your bridge has vanished with the morning mists. The fairies must have carried it over the mountains for the love of a footprint. Let us put it out of our thoughts. Who knows, if we have the mind, that we cannot build another?”

This I said that she might read into it a deeper meaning of my confidence, but the words were vain. White and frightened and terribly afraid, she looked at me for an instant as though I were in some way a consenting party to this evil conspiracy; then as quickly repented of her look, and declared her woman’s heart.

“I cannot believe it,” she cried; “I am so helpless. Tell me, Dr. Fabos, what shall I do—in God’s name, what shall I do?”

“Accept my friendship and bestow upon me your confidence. Promise that you will leave this place when I leave it, and end for ever your association with these men? I ask nothing more. My own secret must go with me yet a little while. But I shall call you Joan, and no name shall be dearer to me—if you wish it, little comrade?”

She turned from me, the hot tears in her eyes. I knew that she would never be afraid of me again, and when a little while had passed I led her to the house, and, as any brother and sister, we sat at the breakfast table and spoke of common things.

And yet, God knows, the shame of such an hour lay heavily upon me. For had not these people been willing to buy their own safety at the price of this young girl’s honour?