The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Had they gone forward or turned back? She looked round her, utterly bewildered, then spied in the wall a narrow aperture to which admission was apparently given by a hinged panel, hung, as was the rest of the salon, with red brocade.

This, then, was where and how the other two had disappeared. She felt relieved, even a little ashamed of her unreasoning fear.

For a moment she hesitated, then stepped through the aperture into a narrow corridor, shaped like an S, and characteristic—but Motey knew nothing of this—of French château architecture; for these curiously narrow passages, tucked away in the thickness of the wall, form a link between the state rooms of many a great palace and the 'little apartments' arranged for their owner's daily and familiar use.

The inner twist of the S-shaped corridor was quite dark, but very soon Mrs. Mote found that the passage terminated with an ordinary door, through which, the upper half being glazed, she saw her mistress and the Spaniard engaged in an apparently very animated conversation.

The room in which stood the two she sought was almost ludicrously unlike those to which it was so closely linked by the passage in which the onlooker was standing. Perhaps the present owner of the old house, or more probably his wife, had found the Goyas oppressive company, for here no pictures hung on brocaded walls; instead, the round, domed room, lighted only from above, was lined with a gay modern wall-paper, of which the design simulated a fruitful vine, trained against green trellis-work. Modern French basket furniture, the worse for wear, was arranged about a circular marble fountain, which, let into the tiled floor, must have afforded coolness on the hottest day.

Memories of former occupants, and of another age, were conjured up by a First Empire table, pushed back against the wall; and opposite the door behind which the old nurse stood peering was the entrance, wide open, to a darkened room, while just inside this room Mrs. Mote was surprised to see a curious sign of actual occupancy—a small, spider-legged table, on which stood a decanter of white wine, a plate of chocolate cakes, and a gold bowl full of roses.

But these things were rather remembered later, for at the time the old woman's whole attention was centred on her mistress and the latter's companion. Mrs. Robinson, her back turned to the darkened room beyond, was standing by a slender marble pillar, rimmed at the top with a tarnished gilt railing; a long grey silk cloak and boat-shaped hat, covered with white ostrich feathers, accentuated her tall slenderness, for in these early days of widowhood Penelope was exquisitely, miraculously slender. With head bent and eyes cast down, she seemed to be listening, embarrassed and ashamed, to Don José Moricada. One arm and hand, the latter holding a glove, rested on the marble pillar, and her whole figure, if instinct with proud submissiveness, breathed angry, embarrassed endurance.

As for the Spaniard, always sober of gesture, his arms folded across his breast in the dignified fashion first taught to short men by Napoleon, he seemed to be pouring out a torrent of eager, impassioned words, every sentence emphasized by an imperious glance from the bright dark eyes, which, as Mrs. Mote did not fail to remind herself, had always inspired her with distrust.

The unseen spectator of the singular scene also divined the protestations, the entreaties, the reproaches, which were being uttered in a language of which she could not understand one word.

For a few moments she felt pity, even a certain measure of sympathy for the man. To her thinking—and Mrs. Mote had her own ideas about most matters—Penelope had brought this torrent of words and reproaches on herself; but when the old nurse heard the voice of the Spaniard become more threatening and less appealing, when she saw Mrs. Robinson suddenly turn and face him, her head thrown back, her blue eyes wide open with something even Motey had never seen in them before—for till that day Penelope and Fear had never met—then the onlooker felt the lesson had indeed lasted long enough, and that, even at the risk of angering her mistress, the time had come when she should interfere. Her hand sought and found the handle of the door. She turned and twisted it this way and that, but the door remained fast, and suddenly she realized that Penelope was a prisoner.