Mercado was a poor fish, and I don’t suppose Mrs. Leidner really cared two hoots for his admiration—but his wife cared. If I wasn’t mistaken, she minded badly and would be quite willing to do Mrs. Leidner a bad turn if she could.
I looked at Mrs. Leidner sitting there and sewing at her pretty flowers, so remote and far away and aloof. I felt somehow I ought to warn her. I felt that perhaps she didn’t know how stupid and unreasoning and violent jealousy and hate can be—and how little it takes to set them smouldering.
And then I said to myself, “Amy Leatheran, you’re a fool. Mrs. Leidner’s no chicken. She’s close on forty if she’s a day, and she must know all about life there is to know.”
But I felt that all the same perhaps she didn’t.
She had such a queer untouched look.
I began to wonder what her life had been. I knew she’d only married Dr. Leidner two years ago. And according to Mrs. Mercado her first husband had died about fifteen years ago.
I came and sat down near her with a book, and presently I went and washed my hands for supper. It was a good meal—some really excellent curry. They all went to bed early and I was glad, for I was tired.
Dr. Leidner came with me to my room to see I had all I wanted.
He gave me a warm handclasp and said eagerly:
“She likes you, nurse. She’s taken to you at once. I’m so glad. I feel everything’s going to be all right now.”
His eagerness was almost boyish.
I felt, too, that Mrs. Leidner had taken a liking to me, and I was pleased it should be so.
But I didn’t quite share his confidence. I felt, somehow, that there was more to it all than he himself might know.
There was something—something I couldn’t get at. But I felt it in the air.
My bed was comfortable, but I didn’t sleep well for all that. I dreamt too much.
The words of a poem by Keats, that I’d had to learn as a child, kept running through my head. I kept getting them wrong and it worried me. It was a poem I’d always hated—I suppose because I’d had to learn it whether I wanted to or not. But somehow when I woke up in the dark I saw a sort of beauty in it for the first time.
“Oh say what ails thee, knight at arms, alone—and (what was it?)—palely loitering . . . ? I saw the knight’s face in my mind for the first time—it was Mr. Carey’s face—a grim, tense, bronzed face like some of those poor young men I remembered as a girl during the war . . . and I felt sorry for him—and then I fell off to sleep again and I saw that the Belle Dame sans Merci was Mrs. Leidner and she was leaning sideways on a horse with an embroidery of flowers in her hands—and then the horse stumbled and everywhere there were bones coated in wax, and I woke up all gooseflesh and shivering, and told myself that curry never had agreed with me at night.
Seven
THE MAN AT THE WINDOW
I think I’d better make it clear right away that there isn’t going to be any local colour in this story. I don’t know anything about archaeology and I don’t know that I very much want to. Messing about with people and places that are buried and done with doesn’t make sense to me. Mr. Carey used to tell me that I hadn’t got the archaeological temperament and I’ve no doubt he was quite right.
The very first morning after my arrival Mr. Carey asked if I’d like to come and see the palace he was—planning I think he called it. Though how you can plan for a thing that’s happened long ago I’m sure I don’t know! Well, I said I’d like to, and to tell the truth, I was a bit excited about it. Nearly three thousand years old that palace was, it appeared. I wondered what sort of palaces they had in those days, and if it would be like the pictures I’d seen of Tutankahmen’s tomb furniture. But would you believe it, there was nothing to see but mud! Dirty mud walls about two feet high—and that’s all there was to it. Mr. Carey took me here and there telling me things—how this was the great court, and there were some chambers here and an upper storey and various other rooms that opened off the central court. And all I thought was, “But how does he know?” though, of course, I was too polite to say so. I can tell you it was a disappointment! The whole excavation looked like nothing but mud to me—no marble or gold or anything handsome—my aunt’s house in Cricklewood would have made a much more imposing ruin! And those old Assyrians, or whatever they were, called themselves kings. When Mr. Carey had shown me his old “palaces,” he handed me over to Father Lavigny, who showed me the rest of the mound. I was a little afraid of Father Lavigny, being a monk and a foreigner and having such a deep voice and all that, but he was very kind—though rather vague. Sometimes I felt it wasn’t much more real to him than it was to me.
Mrs. Leidner explained that later. She said that Father Lavigny was only interested in “written documents”—as she called them. They wrote everything on clay, these people, queer, heathenish-looking marks too, but quite sensible. There were even school tablets—the teacher’s lesson on one side and the pupil’s effort on the back of it. I confess that that did interest me rather—it seemed so human, if you know what I mean.
Father Lavigny walked round the work with me and showed me what were temples or palaces and what were private houses, and also a place which he said was an early Akkadian cemetery. He spoke in a funny jerky way, just throwing in a scrap of information and then reverting to other subjects.
He said: “It is strange that you have come here. Is Mrs. Leidner really ill, then?”
“Not exactly ill,” I said cautiously.
He said: “She is an odd woman. A dangerous woman, I think.”
“Now what do you mean by that?” I said. “Dangerous? How dangerous?”
He shook his head thoughtfully.
“I think she is ruthless,” he said. “Yes, I think she could be absolutely ruthless.”
“If you’ll excuse me,” I said, “I think you’re talking nonsense.”