Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Mr. Quin

Mr. Satterthwaite wondered if he was mistaken in fancying that there was just a moment of constraint.

"There might have been three of us," said Denman, with a laugh. "I've got an old Harlequin costume my wife made me when we were first married for some show or other." He paused, looking down on his broad shirt front. "I don't suppose I could get into it now."

"No," said his wife, "you couldn't get into it now."

And again her voice said something more than mere words.

She glanced up at the clock

"If Molly doesn't turn up soon, we won't wait for her."

But at that moment the girl was announced. She was already wearing her Pierrette dress of white and green, and very charming she looked in it, so Mr. Satterthwaite reflected.

She was full of excitement and enthusiasm over the forthcoming performance.

"I'm getting awfully nervous, though," she announced, as they drank coffee after dinner. "I know my voice will wobble, and I shall forget the words."

"Your voice is very charming," said Anna. "I should not worry about it if I were you."

"Oh, but I do. The other I don't mind about―the dancing, I mean. That's sure to go all right. I mean, you can't go very far wrong with your feet, can you?"

She appealed to Anna, but the older woman did not respond. Instead she said―

"Sing something now to Mr. Satterthwaite. You will find that he will reassure you."

Molly went over to the piano. Her voice rang out, fresh and tuneful, in an old Irish ballad.

"Shiela, dark Shiela, what is it that you're seeing? What is it that you're seeing, that you're seeing in the fire?"

"I see a lad that loves me―and I see a lad that leaves me. And a third lad, a Shadow Lad―and he's the lad that grieves me."

The song went on. At the end, Mr. Satterthwaite nodded vigorous approval

"Mrs. Denman is right. Your voice is charming. Not, perhaps, very fully trained, but delightfully natural, and with that unstudied quality of youth in it."

"That's right," agreed John Denman. "You go ahead, Molly, and don't be downed by stage fright. We'd better be getting over to the Roscheimers now."

The party separated to don cloaks. It was a glorious night I and they proposed to walk over, the house being only a few hundred yards down the road.

Mr. Satterthwaite found himself by his friend.

"It's an odd thing," he said, "but that song made me think of you. A third lad,―a Shadow Lad―there's mystery there, and wherever there's mystery I―well, think of you."

"Am I so mysterious?" smiled Mr. Quin.

Mr. Satterthwaite nodded vigorously.

"Yes, indeed. Do you know, until Tonight, I had no idea that you were a professional dancer."

"Really?" said Mr. Quin.

"Listen," said Mr. Satterthwaite. He hummed the love motif from the Walkre. "That is what has been ringing in my head all through dinner as I looked at those two."

"Which two?"

"Prince Oranoff and Mrs. Denman. Don't you see the difference in her Tonight? It's as though―as though a shutter had suddenly been opened and you see the glow within."

"Yes," said Mr. Quin. "Perhaps so."

"The same old drama," said Mr. Satterthwaite. "I am right, am I not? Those two belong together. They are of the same world, think the same thoughts, dream the same dreams , One sees how it has come about. Ten years ago Denman must have been very good-looking, young, dashing, a figure of romance. And he saved her life. All quite natural. But now―what is he, after all? A good fellow―prosperous, successful―but―well, mediocre. Good honest English stuff―very much like that― Hepplewhite furniture upstairs. As English―and as ordinary―as that pretty English girl with her fresh untrained voice. Oh, you may smile, Mr. Quin, but you cannot deny what I am saying. I deny nothing. In what you see you are always right. And yet―――"

"Yet what?"

Mr. Quin leaned forward. His dark melancholy eyes searched for those of Mr. Satterthwaite. "Have you learned so little of life?" He breathed. He left Mr. Satterthwaite vaguely disquieted, such a prey to meditation that he found the others had started without him owing to his delay in selecting a scarf for his neck. He went out by the garden, and through the same door as in the afternoon. The lane was bathed in moonlight, and even as he stood in the doorway he saw a couple enlaced in each other's arms.

For a moment he thought――-

And then he saw. John Denman and Molly Stanwell.

Denman's voice came to him, hoarse and anguished.

"I can't live without you. What are we to do?"

Mr. Satterthwaite turned to go back the way he had come, but a hand stayed him. Someone else stood in the doorway beside him, someone else whose eyes had also seen.

Mr. Satterthwaite had only to catch one glimpse of her face to know how wildly astray all his conclusions had been.

Her anguished hand held him there until those other two had passed up the lane and disappeared from sight He heard himself speaking to her, saying foolish little things meant to be comforting, and ludicrously inadequate to the agony he had divined. She only spoke once.

"Please," she said, "don't leave me."

He found that oddly touching. He was, then, of use to someone. And he went on saying those things that meant nothing at all, but which were, somehow, better than silence.

They went that way to the Roscheimers. Now and then her hand tightened on his shoulder, and he understood that she was glad of his company. She only took it away when they finally came to their destination. She stood very erect, her head held high.

"Now," she said, "I shall dance! Do not be afraid for me, my friend. I shall dance."

She left him abruptly. He was seized upon by Lady Roscheimer, much bediamonded and very full of lamentations. By her he was passed on to Claude Wickam.

"Ruined! Completely ruined. The sort of thing that always happens to me. All these country bumpkins think they can dance. I was never even consulted―――" is voice went on―went on interminably. He had found a sympathetic listener, a man who knew. He gave himself up to an orgy of self-pity. It only ended when the first strains of music began.

Mr. Satterthwaite came out of his dreams. He was alert once more the critic. Wickam was an unutterable ass, but he could write music―delicate gossamer stuff, intangible as a fairy web―yet with nothing of the pretty pretty about it.

The scenery was good. Lady Roscheimer never spared expense when aiding her protege's. A glade of Arcady with lighting effects that gave it the proper atmosphere of unreality.

Two figures dancing as they had danced through time immemorial. A slender Harlequin flashing spangles in the moonlight with magic wand and masked face... A white Columbine pirouetting like some immortal dream...

Mr. Satterthwaite sat up. He had lived through this before. Yes, surely...

Now his body was far away from Lady Roscheimer's drawing-room. It was in a Berlin Museum at a statuette of an immortal Columbine.

Harlequin and Columbine danced on. The wide world was theirs to dance in...

Moonlight―and a human figure. Pierrot wandering through the wood, singing to the moon Pierrot who has seen Columbine and knows no rest. The Immortal two vanish, but Columbine looks back. She has heard the song of a human heart

Pierrot wandering on through the wood... darkness. ,. his voice dies away in the distance...

The village green―dancing of village girls―pierrots and pierrettes. Molly as Pierrette. No dancer―Anna Denman -was right there―but a fresh tuneful voice as she sings her song "Pierrette dancing on the Green."

A good tune―Mr. Satterthwaite nodded approval. Wickham wasn't above writing a tune when there was a need for it. The majority of the village girls made him shudder, but he realised that Lady Roscheimer was determinedly philanthropical.