THE POSITION was made quite clear. Whether Julian lived or died, Lewis had no authority of any sort in the household. Benevides was emphatic about that. His sister, he asserted, was quite solicitous that her husband’s brother should be tendered every comfort, but Mr. Page must always remember that he was her guest – since Julian was incapable of acting as host – and it was hoped that as a guest he would respect the wishes of his hostess.
“I am ready to do so.” Lewis tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but the antipathy he felt for Benevides must have been evident. “The sooner I meet your sister, the better,” he asserted. “In the meantime, I shall wait by my brother.”
“Do you mean to-night?” Benevides asked, with an inflection of pained surprise.
“Can there be any objection to that?”
“It is completely forbidden, Mr. Page.” The tone seemed to convey regret. “Julian is carefully watched over at all times. You must have observed that he is in a very weak state. If, by any chance, he should recover consciousness, he would be quite unprepared for your presence, and we have been warned that even a small emotional disturbance could be disastrous. I do not want to believe, Mr. Page, that you have come here to cause us a new worry.”
“Certainly not.”
“Then you will permit yourself to be shown to your room. You are tired, I think, from your journey. After a rest, you will be in a better state for judgment.”
Perhaps it was true. Perhaps weariness and anxiety were the springs of unjustifiable fears.
Lewis gave up and went to his room. He undressed and stretched out on the bed, but to rest was impossible. At best he could relax his body. The turmoil went on in his mind and was only increased by his efforts to resolve his bewilderment. He told himself that any woman that Julian had married must be a reasonable woman, a kind and gentle creature, yet he knew that the argument was absurd. Julian, like any other man, could be betrayed by his emotions. Like any other man . .
A cry that had a wild, inhuman note of agony in it caused him to start up. He listened in a sweat of fear. The sound was repeated, and then he knew that it was the wail of a night-bird. A guácharo, perhaps.
The cry came again, in the distance, echoing. There was a rustling, nearer, in the shrubbery outside. He rose and went to the window, but nothing was there that he could see. The scurrying sound of a small animal reached him. That was all.
He was lodged in the new east wing and his window looked out on the-forecourt with its gravelled drive and wide lawn and its stone images of gods and warriors deployed in two lines. They were, in Julian’s words, the guardians of the house, but the Indians of the hills believed that they had power to bring misfortune to the man who had disturbed them.
Lights still burned in the main part of the house; in the hall, in the living-room. Lewis turned from the window, opened his door, and listened. The house was silent, and he had the thought that he might pass stealthily to Julian’s room. A wish to see his brother again moved him, but he gave up the idea as soon as he had stepped through the doorway. Where the passage joined the corridor of the main house, an Indian servant sat, back to the wall, his legs sprawled out barring the way.
The man’s head hung forward so that his chin was muffled in the folds of a short poncho. He might be asleep, but a movement close to him would surely wake him.
Benevides was making sure that Julian should not be disturbed.
Back in his room, Lewis paced in anger. In the morning there must be an end to this situation. In the morning he would insist on his authority whatever this wife of Julian’s might say. He would go down to Trajano and demand the services of the best doctor he could find.
It was a programme. It was settled. He went back to bed, and then he began to think of Anne. First thing he would have to get a cable off to her. Whatever the preparations made, her voyage would have to be cancelled, for it was impossible to bring her here now.
Mentally he composed a message, amended it, made it more explanatory. Mentally he repeated it over and over, and some time in the process exhaustion overcame him and he dozed.
The sound of a car, the tyres grinding the loose gravel, brought him from his sleep. He struggled through a moment of fresh bewilderment, seeing unfamiliar objects in bright moonlight, hearing strange voices. Then he was alert, and anxiety returned like the pain of a wound.
A car in the night must mean that the doctor was here again, and that meant crisis. Julian . . .
He sprang from the bed and seized his dressing-gown. He heard voices in the forecourt and ran to the window. The car was standing in front of the main entrance, and the driver, a short, broad-built man, was opening the door for his passenger. Benevides came from the hall into the moonlight, and at that moment a woman emerged from the car.
A woman. Not the doctor.
The wave of the relief was like something tangible. Lewis gripped the window-sill.
Benevides spoke to the woman. The words were inaudible, but the tone expressed displeasure. He was protesting or complaining, and the woman retorted in a similar mood, her voice rising in pitch till Benevides cut in on her, caught at the sleeve of her loose coat, and turned her towards the house, obviously ordering her to get inside. Wrenching her arm from his grasp, she went quickly indoors. Benevides strode after her, and the driver followed with two suitcases and a small travelling bag.
Lewis waited. After a minute Benevides and the driver reappeared. They talked for a while earnestly, then parted. As the car rolled off along the drive, Benevides went back inside and closed the front door, and a moment later the lights in hall and living-room were switched off.
The time was seven minutes past four.
Lewis returned to his bed and settled himself once more. The house was a cage of silence in the still night, but not for long. The voices of Benevides and the woman were raised again in the main corridor, and next they were arguing hotly in a room that was either in or close to the east wing.
If they were man and wife, this was certainly no happy homecoming for Señora Benevides, but perhaps the husband had a reasonable cause for complaint in the hour of her arrival. Definitely he was putting his foot down, and shouting so that he could be heard all over the house.
“I’m giving the orders. You’ll do as I command.”
“No!” the woman cried. “You have no right.”
Something crashed dully on the carpeted floor and a scream of pain made Lewis start for the door. The scream was cut off abruptly, as if by a smothering hand, and Lewis halted in the passage in a state of agonising indecision. The sounds he had heard suggested that murder might be done if no one intervened. Yet he was exaggerating, perhaps; putting a melodramatic construction on an episode that might mean little or nothing in the lives of jealous and hot-tempered people.
He hesitated and was spared. The slam of a door was like the shock of an explosion. Then the tread of a retreating male sounded from the corridor.
Lewis listened intently for fully a minute, but there was nothing more to hear.
At the end of the passage, the man in the poncho still sat on the floor with his legs sprawled out and his head bent forward.