Velvet Shadows Read online

  A yellow dust finer than any sand sifted down. With it were three very tiny lumps. One—ivory white—the tooth of some small animal. Another was a seed. There was not more than a half-teaspoonful in all though I wrung and squeezed the cloth to make sure. From it arose a faint, sickly-sweet odor. I sniffed twice and then sat down quickly on the edge of the divan bed, shaking my head, sneezing involuntarily. There was something here—evil— or could it be only my imagination?

  Quickly I twisted paper and bag together, took the packet into the lavatory and disposed of it. Then I hurried back to examine once more my shawl, inch by inch. That bag had been newly concealed there I was sure, for the shawl was my constant companion.

  I shivered. Who had stitched that in the hem and for what purpose? So small a thing and yet—

  Should I ask questions? But of whom?

  I patted smooth my shawl and could not rid myself of the odd fancy that someone had besmirched it. As if before my eyes it had been wantonly draggled in some slimed pool. Though I determined not to dwell upon my find, or fancy such odd and disturbing reasons for it.

  I had not been able to push away all those fancies when our party assembled that night in the elegant dining section of the car. I cheered a little in the brightness of the lamp-lit room. Now and then in a window one caught a glimpse of a light marking some farmhouse, for the thick brocade curtains had not been drawn against the dark.

  Victorine sat across the table from me. Her languid airs were gone, lost in a vivaciousness I had not seen her show before. She seemed to be listening eagerly as Mr. Sauvage spoke of the sights of the West. He had a fund of exciting tales, showed an animation to match his sister’s, his dark face losing that set expression which had made a mask of it at our first meeting. I wondered if the further we advanced toward his own chosen territory the more he would relax, to be the man he was underneath the veneer of the city.

  As he spoke I could almost close my eyes and return through the years to another time, another table. Just so had my father opened new doors of knowledge for me. But that was all so long ago—

  But at any rate I did forget the shawl, though when, at the end of the evening, I returned to my stateroom and found that looped across my newly opened bed, I felt again that prick of uneasiness, almost illness—so that I sat down and once more investigated the whole of the border. However, I found nothing.

  During the next few days Victorine made no more excuses of ill health but apparently shared my delight in watching the unrolling country—sometimes from the observation platform, sometimes through the salon windows. We always spoke English at her request, she insisting that I correct any expressions she used that might sound odd or strange. In addition she had Amélie bring a number of fashion magazines, apparently brought from France, and the three of us (for Mrs. Deaves displayed as much animation over these) made choices from their colored plates. It was Mrs. Deaves who assured us that San Francisco was no raw country town, but a city which possessed shops easily comparable to those of Paris, in reality some staffed by one-time Parisians.

  A large section of that city was French in sympathy and blood. Immigrants, some of noble families, had been among the first gold seekers. She had laughingly said that it was no secret today that counts had been among wharf laborers when those golden dreams had been dashed, and that others of the bluest blood had peddled oranges and cigars in the streets. There existed a French newspaper and a theatre.

  As for shops—well, there was the Ville de Paris, named for a ship from whose decks a fine cargo had been auctioned off in 1850. There was also the silk shop of Belloc Frères, Madame Oulif’s bonnet-selling establishment. No Frenchwoman, she assured Victorine, need believe herself an exile in San Francisco.

  And Victorine listened, her eyes shining. It was plain that such talk was fast reconciling her to her new home. But it was that very night that my complacency was shattered.

  Our car was dropped from the train which had brought us thus far, left in a freight yard to await the second one to which it would be attached for the rest of the trip. Mr. Sauvage warned us—Mrs. Deaves reinforcing that warning with the strict tone of a chaperone—that while we were so situated, we should retire early to our staterooms where the windows would be completely curtained. There could be the curious who would seek to peer in.

  I was writing a journal letter which I had promised Madam Ashley and had just reached out to dip my pen in the inkwell of my traveling desk when I was startled by a sound. It might have been caused by someone scratching with a stick along the outside of my window. It came the second time, impatiently, as if demanding my attention. Remembering the warnings, I had no intention of looking out, perhaps to face on the other side of the pane some befuddled drunk.

  A third scratching—then a low whistle. I had set down my desk and now I strained to hear. For that tune I knew. Only this morning Victorine had amused us by whistling a series of birdlike notes she said had been taught her in France.

  That man—Madam Ashley’s warning, Alain Sauvage’s letter—could the rejected suitor have followed the girl, be out there now in the night striving so to attract her attention? He might well have mistaken the position of her stateroom. I must find some vantage point from which I could see who was there.

  The lamps in the corridor had been turned very low. I hurried through the half-gloom to the dining salon—to the door at its end. That was heavy but not locked and I pushed it open far enough to step on the small platform. From there I would look back along the side of the car.

  I was right! A shadow by the shaded window. But the figure was moving—toward Victorine’s stateroom. While from there came a sudden gleam of brighter light. The curtain within had been moved.

  Gathering my skirts, I sped at a pace far from dignified back the length of the car to the door of the master stateroom where I rapped urgently. Mr. Sauvage answered so suddenly he might have been waiting such a signal. But during the few moments it had taken me to reach his door I had decided to edit my first alarm. After all I could not be sure Victorine welcomed this stranger in the night

  “Miss Penfold! What is the matter?”

  “Someone made a noise outside my window, sir. I believe that there is a prowler—”

  I did not have time to complete my sentence. He swung around to snatch up a pistol lying on his desk, and brushed past me through the salon and out the observation door. I heard his voice raised in challenge and then what could only be the crack of a shot.

  “Miss Penfold!”

  “Tamaris!”

  Mrs. Deaves’ door had been flung open. As she took a step or two into the corridor I saw Victorine was behind her. So—I had been right to keep my first suspicion to myself. Victorine had not moved that curtain to welcome any lurker in the shadows. Then who—a sneak thief striving to discover if the stateroom was occupied? But for such a one to run such a brazen chance of discovery seemed hardly probable.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Mrs. Deaves clutched the folds of her wrapper tighter across her ample bosom. Her hair cascaded loose over her plump shoulders, showing a metallic, almost artificial, gleam when so freed from its usual elaborate dressing.

  “There was a prowler along the car. I went to see from the dining room who was causing such odd sounds. By that time he had reached Victorine’s window—”

  “A thief!” Victorine showed far more excitement than fear. “But what did he hope to find? My jewels are all in the safe. What could he have been looking for—this prowler?”

  “Perhaps whatever he could find. Anything which could be pawned for money for spirits.” Mrs. Deaves drew her wrapper closer, her voice was distilled disdain. It was plain that she found the adventure sordid and unpleasant “But how careless of him to make enough noise to alert you, Miss Penfold. Doubtless he was drunk. Was he trying to force your window?”

  She peered at me and it seemed that now there was a hint of excitement in both her full eyes and her voice. Did the thought of me as bait for
such an intruder please her? It was hard not to make such assumptions concerning Mrs. Deaves after my enforced close companionship with one who made it very plain she did not approve of me, of my reason for being here—though she masked that all so well that only one very used to the nuances of feminine company could detect it.

  And now I was certain myself that the shadow I had seen had had more than theft on his mind.

  “I do not know what he wanted,” I returned evenly. “I came to warn Mr. Sauvage.”

  “So you did.” Mrs. Deaves gave a shiver. “Had you not done so we might have all been strangled in our beds!” Her tone, the exaggeration of that last, were meant far differently, suggesting that I had created for some purpose of my own, and doubtless a disreputable one, an unseemly uproar.

  Victorine had pushed past her and was crowded close against one of the salon windows, her hands cupped about her eyes to cut out the dim lamplight and see the better what might lie outside. “There was a shot—did we not hear a shot also?”

  “Mr. Sauvage took a pistol with him—”

  “A pistol! Perhaps then he has killed this bandit! He is a good shot, my brother. I have heard this said of him. Yes—there are lanterns—men coming with lanterns! They are running—”

  “Victorine!” Mrs. Deaves hurried forward, setting a hand on the girl’s shoulder to draw her away from the window. “My dear, if you can see out, it is even more certain that they can see in. Come away at once! None of us are dressed in a manner to face strangers, and we must not present a disgraceful spectacle for the vulgarly curious!”

  For the first time I became aware that one member of our party was missing.

  “Where is Amélie?”

  Victorine whirled about. The rebellious pout which had been her answer to Mrs. Deaves’ warning faded.

  “Amélie!” she repeated as if calling her maid. Then she caught up the trailing skirt of her wrapper, ran down the corridor. “But Amélie—she must have been in my stateroom. Perhaps this—this thief has harmed her! Ma pauvre Amélie!”

  So—then there had been someone in Victorine’s stateroom to answer that summons at the window. Had the fellow come to meet Amélie? In spite of the careful primness of her clothing the girl was strikingly beautiful. It could well be that she had caught the eye of someone of the train crew; perhaps she was not adverse to such attentions.

  Victorine tugged open the door of her stateroom with another loud call of the maid’s name:

  “Amélie!”

  Inside we could see the girl huddled down on the divan, her hands covering her face, her shoulders shaking. The small lace cap had slid from its anchorage on the coils of her hair and the hair itself straggled in elf-locks about her hidden face.

  Victorine gave a little cry and sat down beside her, her arms around the shivering maid.

  “Amélie—ma pauvre petite—what is it? What has happened?”

  The torrent of French which broke in answer to Victorine’s question was mainly unintelligible to me. It was plain in her fright the maid had reverted to a patois. But Victorine appeared to understand, uttered small murmurs of comfort, trying to soothe the overwrought girl. She looked up over Amélie’s shoulder at us.

  “This is indeed horrible. Ma pauvre Amélie has suffered such a fright. She looked to see what made a strange noise at the window and there was outside a face! A face of such horror that her senses nearly departed from her. She could not even cry out for help, so great was her fear!” Victorine shivered in sympathy. “Then the face—suddenly it was gone. She heard cries—a shot—it was terrible for her—

  “Come, ma petite.” Now she spoke more softly and a great deal more calmly to Amélie—it might have been that she had deliberately summoned emotion to make certain we understood the enormity of what happened. “You are altogether safe now—we are here. My brother, the men of the train, they shall make certain no more evil comes near you. And I have to thank you, Tamaris,” she said directly now to me, “that so quickly you found help. Had you not done this—who knows what might have happened?”

  Within moments, as Victorine continued to speak soothingly to the distraught girl, Mr. Sauvage returned. The intruder had vanished completely, the shot had been fired by him, but into the air as a warning.

  However, noticing the set of his chin as he told us that, I believed that he wished he had aimed at his elusive target. From now on, he assured us tersely, there would be a guard set. And it would not be long before our car was picked up by the westward-bound train.

  But when I returned to my stateroom I was unable to busy myself once more with my letter. Certain points of difference between the evidence of my own eyes and Amélie’s story arranged a pattern as I pulled them out of memory. In the first place that first noise certainly had not been made by an intruder striving to force a window. No, certainly it had been a tapping to attract attention—and there was the whistling also.

  Then when I had looked out and there had been that lifting of the curtain at Victorine’s pane there had been no face pressed against the glass there—the shadow had been well away from the side of the car.

  But these were small things, only enough to awaken suspicion, nothing to carry proof. I could not use them to impeach the maid’s story. Amélie was lying, I was sure. I must watch her—

  There was a sudden jar and then a jerk. We were once more ready to move on. Wearily I undressed and got into bed. There was a sense of relief at being free of the yard tracks and on the move. If Amélie had planned an amorous adventure it had failed and that was that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Morning brought sunlight and disbelief. Now that we were well away from the dark and the would-be invader, I must not allow my imagination to build a shadow into frightening substance.

  Mr. Sauvage spent more time with us in the salon, pointing out scenes of general interest. And Mrs. Deaves, now all smiles and soft words, appropriated all she might of his attention. He had shed much of that polished shell which had made him a forbidding person, he seemed less and less one of that fashionable world Mrs. Deaves seemed to consider her own. Yet apparently she welcomed this change in him.

  Still I could see in him that which I had always admired in my father and the other ship’s officers I had known as a child—competency and a sense of duty. His manners were never too brusque, yet his more negligent dress, the hearty note which crept into his speech, his enthusiasm, made me believe in New York he had been forced into a tight mold he disliked; now he showed the man he really was.

  I think my first reaction was envy. It was so easy for a man to break with conventions, a relief denied to my sex. I looked back to those very hard months when I had been transferred from the freedom of my father’s ship to the prison (for then so it seemed) of a school ashore. I had learned my lesson well, perhaps too well, for I had passed from student to teacher, only to discover that my new role required even more from me in the way of discipline.

  When I watched Mr. Sauvage swing off the train at some station to visit a telegraph office (it seemed very necessary that he keep in constant touch with his affairs both east and west), I wished for the first time in years that I could claim only a few small liberties.

  Several times he suggested that we also leave the car for a short stroll on the splintered wood of the platforms at such halts. Mrs. Deaves plainly disliked such visits to these stations where ragged Indians begged, small boys sold caged prairie dogs, and men in red or blue sweat-stained shirts, wearing high-crowned, wide-brimmed hats and great cruel-looking spurs on their boots, stood and stared at us, their jaws moving as they continually chewed tobacco.

  But Victorine was eager to go whenever her brother asked. She rattled along in French, making rudely frank comments on what we saw, taking her brother’s arm amiably as if she already held him in high affection.

  Though there was much which was drab or unpleasing, there was a grandeur in the land itself. And there was a vigor in these rough men, akin to that of seamen. They were de
termined to bend the country, rugged and forbidding as much of it was, to their strong wills. Only, I thought, it was not a land which any woman could love with the same inarticulate passion.

  Our silks and frills, laces and fringes, were as out of place as those red shirts, spurs, and neckerchiefs would be in the East. One had to learn to accept the stares and understand that we were the rarities here. And I came to understand that such stares were compliments and not a matter of rude discourtesy.

  Other passengers from the forepart of the train also stretched seat-cramped limbs and we came in time to recognize faces among them. So I realized that there was one man who continued to position himself in order to watch our party as long as we remained outside the coach.

  The stranger wore a wide-brimmed hat which well overshadowed his face, and also a full black beard. Thus between the shadow of the hat brim and that sweep of hair, he might as well have been masked. But I thought he was young. His body was slender, even though he wore one of the bulky dusters as a protection against the grime and cinders of travel. At the halts he opened that and tossed it back as one might a cloak, showing the broadcloth of a city man.

  I had just become uneasy at this continual watch upon us when it ceased. When he did not appear again, I decided, with an odd feeling of relief for which I could not account, that he must have left the train. I must not let myself imagine things and hold in suspicion everything and everyone.

  “What do you think of this country, Miss Penfold?” Mr. Sauvage’s question started me out of that prudent resolution.

  Outside there wandered a stream paralleling the tracks at this point. The tumbling water seemed to offer such cool refreshment that I wished for a moment I could walk beside it. Meanwhile my employer seated himself in the chair next to mine, adjusting it a little so his attention could be divided between the outer world and me.

  I caught at words hastily.

  “It is certainly very beautiful. But I do not think it will be easily tamed. I wonder how cool that water is—”