“I certainly don’t want to butt into the middle of some highly illicit affair,” he argued. “On the other hand who knows what trouble may be occurring behind that curtained door? A sudden illness perhaps! Perhaps a crime! At the worst I can be sent about my business. At the best I may be of help.”
Thus he stood and disputed. But his romantic disposition got the upper hand. He advanced and rapped gently upon the framework of the glass door; and at once the light went out. But with a speed so instantaneous that the knock upon the door and the extinction of the light seemed to be not so much two consecutive movements as two facets of the same one.
Mr. Ricardo had the most uncomfortable sensations. Someone in that room had heard the sound of his pumps upon the stone slabs of the terrace. That someone had been ever since half expecting and wholly dreading that he would knock upon the window, had been ready then with ears alert and fingers actually on the switch. But who? Mr. Ricardo’s eyes could not pierce those curtains; nor had he the least excuse to renew his signal. He retired discreetly to his room without troubling to select a book from the library at all. There he watched one by one the windows on the hill fade into the night. But whether the emotions through which he had passed were the cause, or the mere movement and fresh air, he fell at once into a heavy sleep, and never stirred until the morning.
Indeed, although he dressed with the utmost expedition that he was capable of, it was after ten o’clock before he was equipped to leave his room. The vineyards were alive with the stooping figures of peasants stripping the plants, the house itself as empty as on his arrival yesterday. Mr. Ricardo walked to the chalet. The office opened directly on to the little flower garden, but that was empty too. He crossed some rough grass to the line of chäis. The grapes were being brought to the door in little handcarts, and thence carried to the winepresses above the vats. Robin Webster was standing in the great room on the first floor, watching the press move backwards and forwards on its rollers. He looked up at Mr. Ricardo with a smile and extended his left hand, which Mr. Ricardo took, or rather touched, a trifle haughtily. For he was punctilious in such matters. He might be nobody of importance, but youngish managers of vineyards must not behave to him as if they were dukes, and he a hireling.
“You must excuse my left hand,” said Robin Webster the next moment. “You see?”
His right hand was inside his double-breasted jacket, the wrist resting upon one of the buttons. He drew the hand out and showed that it was bandaged.
“I did you an injustice,” said Mr. Ricardo.
“So I saw,” Robin Webster replied with a smile.
“You are badly hurt?”
“A trifle. I came here early this morning, before anyone was about, to make sure that everything was ready, and as I tried the press I caught my hand in it. But it is not a wound which needs a doctor.”
Once more the curiously precise articulation of the young man struck Mr. Ricardo as familiar, and yet he could not define it.
“You were up before everyone, then. You had little sleep last night,” he said.
Robin Webster watched the great slab of iron move backwards and forwards on its rollers, crushing the grapes beneath it.
“Do you know we are the only vineyard which uses machine-driven presses?” he said. “Yes, I was late last night. No doubt you saw the light in my office when you went to bed.”
“And hours afterwards I saw the light in your bedroom,” said Mr. Ricardo.
Once more the press rumbled backwards and forwards.
“It must have been nearly two o’clock in the morning when I put it out,” Robin Webster remarked.
“It was two o’clock to the minute,” said Mr. Ricardo.
He strolled away and spent a pleasant morning wandering about the three hundred and fifty acres of the estate. It was a day of bright sunshine, with strips of white cloud streaming out here and there in the blue of the sky. The broad water of the Gironde was dotted with sailing ships at anchor waiting the turn of the tide to carry them to the river’s mouth, and every now and then a steamer with a fantail of tumbled foam and a distant throb of engines rushed past towards the port of Bordeaux. Mr. Ricardo wandered down to the little harbour. It was empty and that was quite as it should be. The Belle Simone had sailed with the inward tide at six in the morning. No doubt she was now nearing Bordeaux. But as he turned away he had a flash of a suspicion that she was doing nothing of the kind. For sailing merrily upwards from the lower reaches of the river a gabare was at that moment passing the garden with the sunlight upon her bows; and she was near enough to the bank for him to see that one word of her name stood out in a brilliant relief upon the grimed timber. He was puzzled. Of course, he argued, the Belle Simone might not be the only boat upon the river which followed the practice of her sex and changed her name. And yet—! Nothing was too trivial for Mr. Ricardo’s speculations. In a twinkling he scuttled back to the house; in another he was back again with his expensive field-glasses lifted to his eyes. The gabare was just opposite to him now. He could read the glistening name Simone, and there were other words in front of it too discoloured for him to make out. Undoubtedly this was La Belle Simone, whose captain had been
