THE GREAT IMPERSONATION
By E. Phillips Oppenheim
First published 1920.
CONTENTS
THE GREAT IMPERSONATION
CHAPTER I
The trouble from which great events were to come began when Everard Dominey, who had been fighting his way through the scrub for the last three quarters of an hour towards those thin, spiral wisps of smoke, urged his pony to a last despairing effort and came crashing through the great oleander shrub to pitch forward on his head in the little clearing. It developed the next morning, when he found himself for the first time for many months on the truckle bed, between linen sheets, with a cool, bamboo-twisted roof between him and the relentless sun. He raised himself a little in the bed.
“Where the mischief am I?” he demanded.
A black boy, seated cross-legged in the entrance of the banda, rose to his feet, mumbled something and disappeared. In a few moments the tall, slim figure of a European, in spotless white riding clothes, stooped down and came over to Dominey's side.
“You are better?” he enquired politely.
“Yes, I am,” was the somewhat brusque rejoinder. “Where the mischief am I, and who are you?”
The newcomer's manner stiffened. He was a person of dignified carriage, and his tone conveyed some measure of rebuke.
“You are within half a mile of the Iriwarri River, if you know where that is,” he replied,—“about seventy-two miles southeast of the Darawaga Settlement.”
“The devil! Then I am in German East Africa?”
“Without a doubt.”
“And you are German?”
“I have that honour.”
Dominey whistled softly.
“Awfully sorry to have intruded,” he said. “I left Marlinstein two and a half months ago, with twenty boys and plenty of stores. We were doing a big trek after lions. I took some new Askaris in and they made trouble,—looted the stores one night and there was the devil to pay. I was obliged to shoot one or two, and the rest deserted. They took my compass, damn them, and I'm nearly a hundred miles out of my bearings. You couldn't give me a drink, could you?”
“With pleasure, if the doctor approves,” was the courteous answer. “Here, Jan!”
The boy sprang up, listened to a word or two of brief command in his own language, and disappeared through the hanging grass which led into another hut. The two men exchanged glances of rather more than ordinary interest. Then Dominey laughed.
“I know what you're thinking,” he said. “It gave me quite a start when you came in. We're devilishly alike, aren't we?”
“There is a very strong likeness between us,” the other admitted.
Dominey leaned his head upon his hand and studied his host. The likeness was clear enough, although the advantage was all in favour of the man who stood by the side of the camp bedstead with folded arms. Everard Dominey, for the first twenty-six years of his life, had lived as an ordinary young Englishman of his position,—Eton, Oxford, a few years in the Army, a few years about town, during which he had succeeded in making a still more hopeless muddle of his already encumbered estates: a few months of tragedy, and then a blank. Afterwards ten years—at first in the cities, then in the dark places of Africa—years of which no man knew anything. The Everard Dominey of ten years ago had been, without a doubt, good-looking. The finely shaped features remained, but the eyes had lost their lustre, his figure its elasticity, his mouth its firmness. He had the look of a man run prematurely to seed, wasted by fevers and dissipation. Not so his present companion. His features were as finely shaped, cast in an even stronger though similar mould. His eyes were bright and full of fire, his mouth and chin firm, bespeaking a man of deeds, his tall figure lithe and supple. He had the air of being in perfect health, in perfect mental and physical condition, a man who lived with dignity and some measure of content, notwithstanding the slight gravity of his expression.
“Yes,” the Englishman muttered, “there's no doubt about the likeness, though I suppose I should look more like you than I do if I'd taken care of myself. But I haven't. That's the devil of it. I've gone the other way; tried to chuck my life away and pretty nearly succeeded, too.”
The dried grasses were thrust on one side, and the doctor entered,—a little round man, also clad in immaculate white, with yellow-gold hair and thick spectacles. His countryman pointed towards the bed.
“Will you examine our patient, Herr Doctor, and prescribe for him what is necessary? He has asked for drink. Let him have wine, or whatever is good for him. If he is well enough, he will join our evening meal. I present my excuses. I have a despatch to write.”
The man on the couch turned his head and watched the departing figure with a shade of envy in his eyes.
“What is my preserver's name?” he asked the doctor.
The latter looked as though the questions were irreverent.
“It is His Excellency the Major-General Baron Leopold Von Ragastein.”
“All that!” Dominey muttered. “Is he the Governor, or something of that sort?”
“He is Military Commandant of the Colony,” the doctor replied. “He has also a special mission here.”
“Damned fine-looking fellow for a German,” Dominey remarked, with unthinking insolence.
The doctor was unmoved. He was feeling his patient's pulse. He concluded his examination a few minutes later.
“You have drunk much whisky lately, so?” he asked.
“I don't know what the devil it's got to do with you,” was the curt reply, “but I drink whisky whenever I can get it. Who wouldn't in this pestilential climate!”
The doctor shook his head.
“The climate is good as he is treated,” he declared. “His Excellency drinks nothing but light wine and seltzer water. He has been here for five years, not only here but in the swamps, and he has not been ill one day.”
“Well, I have been at death's door a dozen times,” the Englishman rejoined a little recklessly, “and I don't much mind when I hand in my checks, but until that time comes I shall drink whisky whenever I can get it.”
“The cook is preparing you some luncheon,” the doctor announced, “and it will do you good to eat. I cannot give you whisky at this moment, but you can have some hock and seltzer with bay leaves.”
“Send it along,” was the enthusiastic reply. “What a constitution I must have, doctor! The smell of that cooking outside is making me ravenous.”
“Your constitution is still sound if you would only respect it,” was the comforting assurance.
“Anything been heard of the rest of my party?” Dominey enquired.
“Some bodies of Askaris have been washed up from the river,” the doctor informed him, “and two of your ponies have been eaten by lions. You will excuse. I have the wounds of a native to dress, who was bitten last night by a jaguar.”
The traveller, left alone, lay still in the hut, and his thoughts wandered backwards. He looked out over the bare, scrubby stretch of land which had been cleared for this encampment to the mass of bush and flowering shrubs beyond, mysterious and impenetrable save for that rough elephant track along which he had travelled; to the broad-bosomed river, blue as the sky above, and to the mountains fading into mist beyond. The face of his host had carried him back into the past. Puzzled reminiscence tugged at the strings of memory. It came to him later on at dinner time, when they three, the Commandant, the doctor and himself, sat at a little table arranged just outside the hut, that they might catch the faint breeze from the mountains, herald of the swift-falling darkness. Native servants beat the air around them with bamboo fans to keep off the insects, and the air was faint almost to noxiousness with the perfume of some sickly, exotic shrub.
“Why, you're Devinter!” he exclaimed suddenly,—“Sigismund Devinter! You were at Eton with me—Horrock's House—semi-final in the racquets.”
“And Magdalen afterwards, number five in the boat.”
“And why the devil did the doctor here tell me that your name was Von Ragastein?”
“Because it happens to be the truth,” was the somewhat measured reply. “Devinter is my family name, and the one by which I was known when in England. When I succeeded to the barony and estates at my uncle's death, however, I was compelled to also take the title.”
“Well, it's a small world!” Dominey exclaimed. “What brought you out here really—lions or elephants?”
“Neither.”
“You mean to say that you've taken up this sort of political business just for its own sake, not for sport?”
“Entirely so. I do not use a sporting rifle once a month, except for necessity. I came to Africa for different reasons.”
Dominey drank deep of his hock and seltzer and leaned back, watching the fireflies rise above the tall-bladed grass, above the stumpy clumps of shrub, and hang like miniature stars in the clear, violet air.
“What a world!” he soliloquised. “Siggy Devinter, Baron Von Ragastein, out here, slaving for God knows what, drilling niggers to fight God knows whom, a political machine, I suppose, future Governor-General of German Africa, eh? You were always proud of your country, Devinter.”
“My country is a country to be proud of,” was the solemn reply.
“Well, you're in earnest, anyhow,” Dominey continued, “in earnest about something. And I—well, it's finished with me. It would have been finished last night if I hadn't seen the smoke from your fires, and I don't much care—that's the trouble. I go blundering on. I suppose the end will come somehow, sometime—Can I have some rum or whisky, Devinter—I mean Von Ragastein—Your Excellency—or whatever I ought to say? You see those wreaths of mist down by the river? They'll mean malaria for me unless I have spirits.”
“I have something better than either,” Von Ragastein replied. “You shall give me your opinion of this.”
The orderly who stood behind his master's chair, received a whispered order, disappeared into the commissariat hut and came back presently with a bottle at the sight of which the Englishman gasped.
“Napoleon!” he exclaimed.
“Just a few bottles I had sent to me,” his host explained. “I am delighted to offer it to some one who will appreciate it.”
“By Jove, there's no mistake about that!” Dominey declared, rolling it around in his glass. “What a world! I hadn't eaten for thirty hours when I rolled up here last night, and drunk nothing but filthy water for days. To-night, fricassee of chicken, white bread, cabinet hock and Napoleon brandy. And to-morrow again—well, who knows? When do you move on, Von Ragastein?”
“Not for several days.”
“What the mischief do you find to do so far from headquarters, if you don't shoot lions or elephants?” his guest asked curiously.
“If you really wish to know,” Von Ragastein replied, “I am annoying your political agents immensely by moving from place to place, collecting natives for drill.”
“But what do you want to drill them for?” Dominey persisted. “I heard some time ago that you have four times as many natives under arms as we have. You don't want an army here. You're not likely to quarrel with us or the Portuguese.”
“It is our custom,” Von Ragastein declared a little didactically, “in Germany and wherever we Germans go, to be prepared not only for what is likely to happen but for what might possibly happen.”
“A war in my younger days, when I was in the Army,” Dominey mused, “might have made a man of me.”
“Surely you had your chance out here?”
Dominey shook his head.
“My battalion never left the country,” he said. “We were shut up in Ireland all the time. That was the reason I chucked the army when I was really only a boy.”
Later on they dragged their chairs a little farther out into the darkness, smoking cigars and drinking some rather wonderful coffee. The doctor had gone off to see a patient, and Von Ragastein was thoughtful. Their guest, on the other hand, continued to be reminiscently discursive.
“Our meeting,” he observed, lazily stretching out his hand for his glass, “should be full of interest to the psychologist. Here we are, brought together by some miraculous chance to spend one night of our lives in an African jungle, two human beings of the same age, brought up together thousands of miles away, jogging on towards the eternal blackness along lines as far apart as the mind can conceive.”
“Your eyes are fixed,” Von Ragastein murmured, “upon that very blackness behind which the sun will rise at dawn. You will see it come up from behind the mountains in that precise spot, like a new and blazing world.”
“Don't put me off with allegories,” his companion objected petulantly. “The eternal blackness exists surely enough, even if my metaphor is faulty. I am disposed to be philosophical. Let me ramble on. Here am I, an idler in my boyhood, a harmless pleasure-seeker in my youth till I ran up against tragedy, and since then a drifter, a drifter with a slowly growing vice, lolling through life with no definite purpose, with no definite hope or wish, except,” he went on a little drowsily, “that I think I'd like to be buried somewhere near the base of those mountains, on the other side of the river, from behind which you say the sun comes up every morning like a world on fire.”
“You talk foolishly,” Von Ragastein protested. “If there has been tragedy in your life, you have time to get over it. You are not yet forty years old.”
“Then I turn and consider you,” Dominey continued, ignoring altogether his friend's remark. “You are only my age, and you look ten years younger. Your muscles are hard, your eyes are as bright as they were in your school days. You carry yourself like a man with a purpose. You rise at five every morning, the doctor tells me, and you return here, worn out, at dusk. You spend every moment of your time drilling those filthy blacks. When you are not doing that, you are prospecting, supervising reports home, trying to make the best of your few millions of acres of fever swamps. The doctor worships you but who else knows? What do you do it for, my friend?”
“Because it is my duty,” was the calm reply.
“Duty! But why can't you do your duty in your own country, and live a man's life, and hold the hands of white men, and look into the eyes of white women?”
“I go where I am needed most,” Von Ragastein answered. “I do not enjoy drilling natives, I do not enjoy passing the years as an outcast from the ordinary joys of human life. But I follow my star.”
“And I my will-o'-the-wisp,” Dominey laughed mockingly. “The whole thing's as plain as a pikestaff. You may be a dull dog—you always were on the serious side—but you're a man of principle. I'm a slacker.”
“The difference between us,” Von Ragastein pronounced, “is something which is inculcated into the youth of our country and which is not inculcated into yours. In England, with a little money, a little birth, your young men expect to find the world a playground for sport, a garden for loves. The mightiest German noble who ever lived has his work to do. It is work which makes fibre, which gives balance to life.”
Dominey sighed. His cigar, dearly prized though it had been, was cold between his fingers. In that perfumed darkness, illuminated only by the faint gleam of the shaded lamp behind, his face seemed suddenly white and old. His host leaned towards him and spoke for the first time in the kindlier tones of their youth.
“You hinted at tragedy, my friend. You are not alone. Tragedy also has entered my life. Perhaps if things had been otherwise, I should have found work in more joyous places, but sorrow came to me, and I am here.”
A quick flash of sympathy lit up Dominey's face.
“We met trouble in a different fashion,” he groaned.
CHAPTER II
Dominey slept till late the following morning, and when he woke at last from a long, dreamless slumber, he was conscious of a curious quietness in the camp. The doctor, who came in to see him, explained it immediately after his morning greeting.
“His Excellency,” he announced, “has received important despatches from home. He has gone to meet an envoy from Dar-es-Salaam. He will be away for three days. He desired that you would remain his guest until his return.”
“Very good of him,” Dominey murmured. “Is there any European news?”
“I do not know,” was the stolid reply. “His Excellency desired me to inform you that if you cared for a short trip along the banks of the river, southward, there are a dozen boys left and some ponies. There are plenty of lion, and rhino may be met with at one or two places which the natives know of.”
Dominey bathed and dressed, sipped his excellent coffee, and lounged about the place in uncertain mood. He unburdened himself to the doctor as they drank tea together late in the afternoon.
“I am not in the least keen on hunting,” he confessed, “and I feel like a horrible sponge, but all the same I have a queer sort of feeling that I'd like to see Von Ragastein again. Your silent chief rather fascinates me, Herr Doctor. He is a man. He has something which I have lost.”
“He is a great man,” the doctor declared enthusiastically. “What he sets his mind to do, he does.”
“I suppose I might have been like that,” Dominey sighed, “if I had had an incentive. Have you noticed the likeness between us, Herr Doctor?”
The latter nodded.
“I noticed it from the first moment of your arrival,” he assented. “You are very much alike yet very different. The resemblance must have been still more remarkable in your youth. Time has dealt with your features according to your deserts.”
“Well, you needn't rub it in,” Dominey protested irritably.
“I am rubbing nothing in,” the doctor replied with unruffled calm. “I speak the truth. If you had been possessed of the same moral stamina as His Excellency, you might have preserved your health and the things that count. You might have been as useful to your country as he is to his.”
“I suppose I am pretty rocky?”
“Your constitution has been abused. You still, however, have much vitality. If you cared to exercise self-control for a few months, you would be a different man.—You must excuse. I have work.”
Dominey spent three restless days. Even the sight of a herd of elephants in the river and that strange, fierce chorus of night sounds, as beasts of prey crept noiselessly around the camp, failed to move him. For the moment his love of sport, his last hold upon the world of real things, seemed dead. What did it matter, the killing of an animal more or less? His mind was fixed uneasily upon the past, searching always for something which he failed to discover. At dawn he watched for that strangely wonderful, transforming birth of the day, and at night he sat outside the banda, waiting till the mountains on the other side of the river had lost shape and faded into the violet darkness. His conversation with Von Ragastein had unsettled him. Without knowing definitely why, he wanted him back again. Memories that had long since ceased to torture were finding their way once more into his brain. On the first day he had striven to rid himself of them in the usual fashion.
“Doctor, you've got some whisky, haven't you?” he asked.
The doctor nodded.
“There is a case somewhere to be found,” he admitted. “His Excellency told me that I was to refuse you nothing, but he advises you to drink only the white wine until his return.”
“He really left that message?”
“Precisely as I have delivered it.”
The desire for whisky passed, came again but was beaten back, returned in the night so that he sat up with the sweat pouring down his face and his tongue parched. He drank lithia water instead. Late in the afternoon of the third day, Von Ragastein rode into the camp. His clothes were torn and drenched with the black mud of the swamps, dust and dirt were thick upon his face. His pony almost collapsed as he swung himself off. Nevertheless, he paused to greet his guest with punctilious courtesy, and there was a gleam of real satisfaction in his eyes as the two men shook hands.
“I am glad that you are still here,” he said heartily. “Excuse me while I bathe and change. We will dine a little earlier. So far I have not eaten to-day.”
“A long trek?” Dominey asked curiously.
“I have trekked far,” was the quiet reply.
At dinner time, Von Ragastein was once more himself, immaculate in white duck, with clean linen, shaved, and with little left of his fatigue. There was something different in his manner, however, some change which puzzled Dominey. He was at once more attentive to his guest, yet further removed from him in spirit and sympathy. He kept the conversation with curious insistence upon incidents of their school and college days, upon the subject of Dominey's friends and relations, and the later episodes of his life. Dominey felt himself all the time encouraged to talk about his earlier life, and all the time he was conscious that for some reason or other his host's closest and most minute attention was being given to his slightest word. Champagne had been served and served freely, and Dominey, up to the very gates of that one secret chamber, talked volubly and without reserve. After the meal was over, their chairs were dragged as before into the open. The silent orderly produced even larger cigars, and Dominey found his glass filled once more with the wonderful brandy. The doctor had left them to visit the native camp nearly a quarter of a mile away, and the orderly was busy inside, clearing the table. Only the black shapes of the servants were dimly visible as they twirled their fans,—and overhead the gleaming stars. They were alone.
“I've been talking an awful lot of rot about myself,” Dominey said. “Tell me a little about your career now and your life in Germany before you came out here?”
Von Ragastein made no immediate reply, and a curious silence ebbed and flowed between the two men. Every now and then a star shot across the sky. The red rim of the moon rose a little higher from behind the mountains. The bush stillness, always the most mysterious of silences, seemed gradually to become charged with unvoiced passion. Soon the animals began to call around them, creeping nearer and nearer to the fire which burned at the end of the open space.
“My friend,” Von Ragastein said at last, speaking with the air of a man who has spent much time in deliberation, “you speak to me of Germany, of my homeland. Perhaps you have guessed that it is not duty alone which has brought me here to these wild places. I, too, left behind me a tragedy.”
Dominey's quick impulse of sympathy was smothered by the stern, almost harsh repression of the other's manner. The words seemed to have been torn from his throat. There was no spark of tenderness or regret in his set face.
“Since the day of my banishment,” he went on, “no word of this matter has passed my lips. To-night it is not weakness which assails me, but a desire to yield to the strange arm of coincidence. You and I, schoolmates and college friends, though sons of a different country, meet here in the wilderness, each with the iron in our souls. I shall tell you the thing which happened to me, and you shall speak to me of your own curse.”
“I cannot!” Dominey groaned.
“But you will,” was the stern reply. “Listen.”
An hour passed, and the voices of the two men had ceased. The howling of the animals had lessened with the paling of the fires, and a slow, melancholy ripple of breeze was passing through the bush and lapping the surface of the river. It was Von Ragastein who broke through what might almost have seemed a trance. He rose to his feet, vanished inside the banda, and reappeared a moment or two later with two tumblers. One he set down in the space provided for it in the arm of his guest's chair.
“To-night I break what has become a rule with me,” he announced. “I shall drink a whisky and soda. I shall drink to the new things that may yet come to both of us.”
“You are giving up your work here?” Dominey asked curiously.
“I am part of a great machine,” was the somewhat evasive reply. “I have nothing to do but obey.”
A flicker of passion distorted Dominey's face, flamed for a moment in his tone.
“Are you content to live and die like this?” he demanded. “Don't you want to get back to where a different sort of sun will warm your heart and fill your pulses? This primitive world is in its way colossal, but it isn't human, it isn't a life for humans. We want streets, Von Ragastein, you and I. We want the tide of people flowing around us, the roar of wheels and the hum of human voices. Curse these animals! If I live in this country much longer, I shall go on all fours.”
“You yield too much to environment,” his companion observed. “In the life of the cities you would be a sentimentalist.”
“No city nor any civilised country will ever claim me again,” Dominey sighed. “I should never have the courage to face what might come.”
Von Ragastein rose to his feet. The dim outline of his erect form was in a way majestic. He seemed to tower over the man who lounged in the chair before him.
“Finish your whisky and soda to our next meeting, friend of my school days,” he begged. “To-morrow, before you awake, I shall be gone.”
“So soon?”
“By to-morrow night,” Von Ragastein replied, “I must be on the other side of those mountains. This must be our farewell.”
Dominey was querulous, almost pathetic. He had a sudden hatred of solitude.
“I must trek westward myself directly,” he protested, “or eastward, or northward—it doesn't so much matter. Can't we travel together?”
Von Ragastein shook his head.
“I travel officially, and I must travel alone,” he replied. “As for yourself, they will be breaking up here to-morrow, but they will lend you an escort and put you in the direction you wish to take. This, alas, is as much as I can do for you. For us it must be farewell.”
“Well, I can't force myself upon you,” Dominey said a little wistfully. “It seems strange, though, to meet right out here, far away even from the by-ways of life, just to shake hands and pass on. I am sick to death of niggers and animals.”
“It is Fate,” Von Ragastein decided. “Where I go, I must go alone. Farewell, dear friend! We will drink the toast we drank our last night in your rooms at Magdalen. That Sanscrit man translated it for us: 'May each find what he seeks!' We must follow our star.”
Dominey laughed a little bitterly. He pointed to a light glowing fitfully in the bush.
“My will-o'-the-wisp,” he muttered recklessly, “leading where I shall follow—into the swamps!”
A few minutes later Dominey threw himself upon his couch, curiously and unaccountably drowsy. Von Ragastein, who had come in to wish him good night, stood looking down at him for several moments with significant intentness. Then, satisfied that his guest really slept, he turned and passed through the hanging curtain of dried grasses into the next banda, where the doctor, still fully dressed, was awaiting him. They spoke together in German and with lowered voices. Von Ragastein had lost something of his imperturbability.
“Everything progresses according to my orders?” he demanded.
“Everything, Excellency! The boys are being loaded, and a runner has gone on to Wadihuan for ponies to be prepared.”
“They know that I wish to start at dawn?”
“All will be prepared, Excellency.”
Von Ragastein laid his hand upon the doctor's shoulder.
“Come outside, Schmidt,” he said. “I have something to tell you of my plans.”
The two men seated themselves in the long, wicker chairs, the doctor in an attitude of strict attention. Von Ragastein turned his head and listened. From Dominey's quarters came the sound of deep and regular breathing.
“I have formed a great plan, Schmidt,” Von Ragastein proceeded. “You know what news has come to me from Berlin?”
“Your Excellency has told me a little,” the doctor reminded him.
“The Day arrives,” Von Ragastein pronounced, his voice shaking with deep emotion. He paused a moment in thought and continued, “the time, even the month, is fixed. I am recalled from here to take the place for which I was destined. You know what that place is? You know why I was sent to an English public school and college?”
“I can guess.”
“I am to take up my residence in England. I am to have a special mission. I am to find a place for myself there as an Englishman. The means are left to my ingenuity. Listen, Schmidt. A great idea has come to me.”
The doctor lit a cigar.
“I listen, Excellency.”
Von Ragastein rose to his feet. Not content with the sound of that regular breathing, he made his way to the opening of the banda and gazed in at Dominey's slumbering form. Then he returned.
“It is something which you do not wish the Englishman to hear?” the doctor asked.
“It is.”
“We speak in German.”
“Languages,” was the cautious reply, “happen to be that man's only accomplishment. He can speak German as fluently as you or I. That, however, is of no consequence. He sleeps and he will continue to sleep. I mixed him a sleeping draught with his whisky and soda.”
“Ah!” the doctor grunted.
“My principal need in England is an identity,” Von Ragastein pointed out. “I have made up my mind. I shall take this Englishman's. I shall return to England as Sir Everard Dominey.”
“So!”
“There is a remarkable likeness between us, and Dominey has not seen an Englishman who knows him for eight or ten years. Any school or college friends whom I may encounter I shall be able to satisfy. I have stayed at Dominey. I know Dominey's relatives. To-night he has babbled for hours, telling me many things that it is well for me to know.”
“What about his near relatives?”
“He has none nearer than cousins.”
“No wife?”
Von Ragastein paused and turned his head. The deep breathing inside the banda had certainly ceased. He rose to his feet and, stealing uneasily to the opening, gazed down upon his guest's outstretched form. To all appearance, Dominey still slept deeply. After a moment or two's watch, Von Ragastein returned to his place.
“Therein lies his tragedy,” he confided, dropping his voice a little lower. “She is insane—insane, it seems, through a shock for which he was responsible. She might have been the only stumbling block, and she is as though she did not exist.”
“It is a great scheme,” the doctor murmured enthusiastically.
“It is a wonderful one! That great and unrevealed Power, Schmidt, which watches over our country and which will make her mistress of the world, must have guided this man to us. My position in England will be unique. As Sir Everard Dominey I shall be able to penetrate into the inner circles of Society—perhaps, even, of political life. I shall be able, if necessary, to remain in England even after the storm bursts.”
“Supposing,” the doctor suggested, “this man Dominey should return to England?”
Von Ragastein turned his head and looked towards his questioner.
“He must not,” he pronounced.
“So!” the doctor murmured.
Late in the afternoon of the following day, Dominey, with a couple of boys for escort and his rifle slung across his shoulder, rode into the bush along the way he had come. The little fat doctor stood and watched him, waving his hat until he was out of sight. Then he called to the orderly.
“Heinrich,” he said, “you are sure that the Herr Englishman has the whisky?”
“The water bottles are filled with nothing else, Herr Doctor,” the man replied.
“There is no water or soda water in the pack?”
“Not one drop, Herr Doctor.”
“How much food?”
“One day's rations.”
“The beef is salt?”
“It is very salt, Herr Doctor.”
“And the compass?”
“It is ten degrees wrong.”
“The boys have their orders?”
“They understand perfectly, Herr Doctor. If the Englishman does not drink, they will take him at midnight to where His Excellency will be encamped at the bend of the Blue River.”
The doctor sighed. He was not at heart an unkindly man.
“I think,” he murmured, “it will be better for the Englishman that he drinks.”
CHAPTER III
Mr. John Lambert Mangan of Lincoln's Inn gazed at the card which a junior clerk had just presented in blank astonishment, an astonishment which became speedily blended with dismay.
“Good God, do you see this, Harrison?” he exclaimed, passing it over to his manager, with whom he had been in consultation. “Dominey—Sir Everard Dominey—back here in England!”
The head clerk glanced at the narrow piece of pasteboard and sighed.
“I'm afraid you will find him rather a troublesome client, sir,” he remarked.
His employer frowned. “Of course I shall,” he answered testily. “There isn't an extra penny to be had out of the estates—you know that, Harrison. The last two quarters' allowance which we sent to Africa came out of the timber. Why the mischief didn't he stay where he was!”
“What shall I tell the gentleman, sir?” the boy enquired.
“Oh, show him in!” Mr. Mangan directed ill-temperedly. “I suppose I shall have to see him sooner or later. I'll finish these affidavits after lunch, Harrison.”
The solicitor composed his features to welcome a client who, however troublesome his affairs had become, still represented a family who had been valued patrons of the firm for several generations. He was prepared to greet a seedy-looking and degenerate individual, looking older than his years. Instead, he found himself extending his hand to one of the best turned out and handsomest men who had ever crossed the threshold of his not very inviting office. For a moment he stared at his visitor, speechless. Then certain points of familiarity—the well-shaped nose, the rather deep-set grey eyes—presented themselves. This surprise enabled him to infuse a little real heartiness into his welcome.
“My dear Sir Everard!” he exclaimed. “This is a most unexpected pleasure—most unexpected! Such a pity, too, that we only posted a draft for your allowance a few days ago. Dear me—you'll forgive my saying so—how well you look!”
Dominey smiled as he accepted an easy chair.
“Africa's a wonderful country, Mangan,” he remarked, with just that faint note of patronage in his tone which took his listener back to the days of his present client's father.
“It—pardon my remarking it—has done wonderful things for you, Sir Everard. Let me see, it must be eleven years since we met.”
Sir Everard tapped the toes of his carefully polished brown shoes with the end of his walking stick.
“I left London,” he murmured reminiscently, “in April, nineteen hundred and two. Yes, eleven years, Mr. Mangan. It seems queer to find myself in London again, as I dare say you can understand.”
“Precisely,” the lawyer murmured. “I was just wondering—I think that last remittance we sent to you could be stopped. I have no doubt you will be glad of a little ready money,” he added, with a confident smile.
“Thanks, I don't think I need any just at present,” was the amazing answer. “We'll talk about financial affairs a little later on.”
Mr. Mangan metaphorically pinched himself. He had known his present client even during his school days, had received a great many visits from him at different times, and could not remember one in which the question of finance had been dismissed in so casual a manner.
“I trust,” he observed chiefly for the sake of saying something, “that you are thinking of settling down here for a time now?”
“I have finished with Africa, if that is what you mean,” was the somewhat grave reply. “As to settling down here, well, that depends a little upon what you have to tell me.”
The lawyer nodded.
“I think,” he said, “that you may make yourself quite easy as regards the matter of Roger Unthank. Nothing has ever been heard of him since the day you left England.”
“His—body has not been found?”
“Nor any trace of it.”
There was a brief silence. The lawyer looked hard at Dominey, and Dominey searchingly back again at the lawyer.
“And Lady Dominey?” the former asked at length.
“Her ladyship's condition is, I believe, unchanged,” was the somewhat guarded reply.
“If the circumstances are favourable,” Dominey continued, after another moment's pause, “I think it very likely that I may decide to settle down at Dominey Hall.”
The lawyer appeared doubtful.
“I am afraid,” he said, “you will be very disappointed in the condition of the estate, Sir Everard. As I have repeatedly told you in our correspondence, the rent roll, after deducting your settlement upon Lady Dominey, has at no time reached the interest on the mortgages, and we have had to make up the difference and send you your allowance out of the proceeds of the outlying timber.”
“That is a pity,” Dominey replied, with a frown. “I ought, perhaps, to have taken you more into my confidence. By the by,” he added, “when—er—about when did you receive my last letter?”
“Your last letter?” Mr. Mangan repeated. “We have not had the privilege of hearing from you, Sir Everard, for over four years. The only intimation we had that our payments had reached you was the exceedingly prompt debit of the South African bank.”
“I have certainly been to blame,” this unexpected visitor confessed. “On the other hand, I have been very much absorbed. If you haven't happened to hear any South African gossip lately, Mangan, I suppose it will be a surprise to you to hear that I have been making a good deal of money.”
“Making money?” the lawyer gasped. “You making money, Sir Everard?”
“I thought you'd be surprised,” Dominey observed coolly. “However, that's neither here nor there. The business object of my visit to you this morning is to ask you to make arrangements as quickly as possible for paying off the mortgages on the Dominey estates.”
Mr. Mangan was a lawyer of the new-fashioned school,—Harrow and Cambridge, the Bath Club, racquets and fives, rather than golf and lawn tennis. Instead of saying “God bless my soul!” he exclaimed “Great Scott!” dropped a very modern-looking eyeglass from his left eye, and leaned back in his chair with his hands in his pockets.
“I have had three or four years of good luck,” his client continued. “I have made money in gold mines, in diamond mines and in land. I am afraid that if I had stayed out another year, I should have descended altogether to the commonplace and come back a millionaire.”
“My heartiest congratulations!” Mr. Mangan found breath to murmur. “You'll forgive my being so astonished, but you are the first Dominey I ever knew who has ever made a penny of money in any sort of way, and from what I remember of you in England—I'm sure you'll forgive my being so frank—I should never have expected you to have even attempted such a thing.”
Dominey smiled good-humouredly.
“Well,” he said, “if you inquire at the United Bank of Africa, you will find that I have a credit balance there of something over a hundred thousand pounds. Then I have also—well, let us say a trifle more, invested in first-class mines. Do me the favour of lunching with me, Mr. Mangan, and although Africa will never be a favourite topic of conversation with me, I will tell you about some of my speculations.”
The solicitor groped around for his hat.
“I will send the boy for a taxi,” he faltered.
“I have a car outside,” this astonishing client told him. “Before we leave, could you instruct your clerk to have a list of the Dominey mortgages made out, with the terminable dates and redemption values?”
“I will leave instructions,” Mr. Mangan promised. “I think that the total amount is under eighty thousand pounds.”
Dominey sauntered through the office, an object of much interest to the little staff of clerks. The lawyer joined him on the pavement in a few minutes.
“Where shall we lunch?” Dominey asked. “I'm afraid my clubs are a little out of date. I am staying at the Carlton.”
“The Carlton grill room is quite excellent,” Mr. Mangan suggested.
“They are keeping me a table until half-past one,” Dominey replied. “We will lunch there, by all means.”
They drove off together, the returned traveller gazing all the time out of the window into the crowded streets, the lawyer a little thoughtful.
“While I think of it, Sir Everard,” the latter said, as they drew near their destination. “I should be glad of a short conversation with you before you go down to Dominey.”
“With regard to anything in particular?”
“With regard to Lady Dominey,” the lawyer told him a little gravely.
A shadow rested on his companion's face.
“Is her ladyship very much changed?”
“Physically, she is in excellent health, I believe. Mentally I believe that there is no change. She has unfortunately the same rather violent prejudice which I am afraid influenced your departure from England.”
“In plain words,” Dominey said bitterly, “she has sworn to take my life if ever I sleep under the same roof.”
“She will need, I am afraid, to be strictly watched,” the lawyer answered evasively. “Still, I think you ought to be told that time does not seem to have lessened her tragical antipathy.”
“She regards me still as the murderer of Roger Unthank?” Dominey asked, in a measured tone.
“I am afraid she does.”
“And I suppose that every one else has the same idea?”
“The mystery,” Mr. Mangan admitted, “has never been cleared up. It is well known, you see, that you fought in the park and that you staggered home almost senseless. Roger Unthank has never been seen from that day to this.”
“If I had killed him,” Dominey pointed out, “why was his body not found?”
The lawyer shook his head.
“There are all sorts of theories, of course,” he said, “but for one superstition you may as well be prepared. There is scarcely a man or a woman for miles around Dominey who doesn't believe that the ghost of Roger Unthank still haunts the Black Wood near where you fought.”
“Let us be quite clear about this,” Dominey insisted. “If the body should ever be found, am I liable, after all these years, to be indicted for manslaughter?”
“I think you may make your mind quite at ease,” the lawyer assured him. “In the first place, I don't think you would ever be indicted.”
“And in the second?”
“There isn't a human being in that part of Norfolk would ever believe that the body of man or beast, left within the shadow of the Black Wood, would ever be seen or heard of again!”
CHAPTER IV
Mr. Mangan, on their way into the grill room, loitered for a few minutes in the small reception room, chatting with some acquaintances, whilst his host, having spoken to the maître d'hôtel and ordered a cocktail from a passing waiter, stood with his hands behind his back, watching the inflow of men and women with all that interest which one might be supposed to feel in one's fellows after a prolonged absence. He had moved a little to one side to allow a party of young people to make their way through the crowded chamber, when he was conscious of a woman standing alone on the topmost of the three thickly carpeted stairs. Their eyes met, and hers, which had been wandering around the room as though in search of some acquaintance, seemed instantly and fervently held. To the few loungers about the room, ignorant of any special significance in that studied contemplation of the man on the part of the woman, their two personalities presented an agreeable, almost a fascinating study. Dominey was six feet two in height and had to its fullest extent the natural distinction of his class, together with the half military, half athletic bearing which seemed to have been so marvellously restored to him. His complexion was no more than becomingly tanned; his slight moustache, trimmed very close to the upper lip, was of the same ruddy brown shade as his sleekly brushed hair. The woman, who had commenced now to move slowly towards him, save that her cheeks, at that moment, at any rate, were almost unnaturally pale, was of the same colouring. Her red-gold hair gleamed beneath her black hat. She was tall, a Grecian type of figure, large without being coarse, majestic though still young. She carried a little dog under one arm and a plain black silk bag, on which was a coronet in platinum and diamonds, in the other hand. The major-domo who presided over the room, watching her approach, bowed with more than his usual urbanity. Her eyes, however, were still fixed upon the person who had engaged so large a share of her attention. She came towards him, her lips a little parted.
“Leopold!” she faltered. “The Holy Saints, why did you not let me know!”
Dominey bowed very slightly. His words seemed to have a cut and dried flavour.
“I am so sorry,” he replied, “but I fear that you make a mistake. My name is not Leopold.”
She stood quite still, looking at him with the air of not having heard a word of his polite disclaimer.
“In London, of all places,” she murmured. “Tell me, what does it mean?”
“I can only repeat, madam,” he said, “that to my very great regret I have not the honour of your acquaintance.”
She was puzzled, but absolutely unconvinced.
“You mean to deny that you are Leopold Von Ragastein?” she asked incredulously. “You do not know me?”
“Madam,” he answered, “it is not my great pleasure. My name is Dominey—Everard Dominey.”
She seemed for a moment to be struggling with some embarrassment which approached emotion. Then she laid her fingers upon his sleeve and drew him to a more retired corner of the little apartment.
“Leopold,” she whispered, “nothing can make it wrong or indiscreet for you to visit me. My address is 17, Belgrave Square. I desire to see you to-night at seven o'clock.”
“But, my dear lady,” Dominey began—
Her eyes suddenly glowed with a new light.
“I will not be trifled with,” she insisted. “If you wish to succeed in whatever scheme you have on hand, you must not make an enemy of me. I shall expect you at seven o'clock.”
She passed away from him into the restaurant. Mr. Mangan, now freed from his friends, rejoined his host, and the two men took their places at the side table to which they were ushered with many signs of attention.
“Wasn't that the Princess Eiderstrom with whom you were talking?” the solicitor asked curiously.
“A lady addressed me by mistake,” Dominey explained. “She mistook me, curiously enough, for a man who used to be called my double at Oxford. Sigismund Devinter he was then, although I think he came into a title later on.”
“The Princess is quite a famous personage,” Mr. Mangan remarked, “one of the richest widows in Europe. Her husband was killed in a duel some six or seven years ago.”
Dominey ordered the luncheon with care, slipping into a word or two of German once to assist the waiter, who spoke English with difficulty. His companion smiled.
“I see that you have not forgotten your languages out there in the wilds.”
“I had no chance to,” Dominey answered. “I spent five years on the borders of German East Africa, and I traded with some of the fellows there regularly.”
“By the by,” Mr. Mangan enquired, “what sort of terms are we on with the Germans out there?”
“Excellent, I should think,” was the careless reply. “I never had any trouble.”
“Of course,” the lawyer continued, “this will all be new to you, but during the last few years Englishmen have become divided into two classes—the people who believe that the Germans wish to go to war and crush us, and those who don't.”
“Then since my return the number of the 'don'ts' has been increased by one.”
“I am amongst the doubtfuls myself,” Mr. Mangan remarked. “All the same, I can't quite see what Germany wants with such an immense army, and why she is continually adding to her fleet.”
Dominey paused for a moment to discuss the matter of a sauce with the head waiter. He returned to the subject a few minutes later on, however.
“Of course,” he pointed out, “my opinions can only come from a study of the newspapers and from conversations with such Germans as I have met out in Africa, but so far as her army is concerned, I should have said that Russia and France were responsible for that, and the more powerful it is, the less chance of any European conflagration. Russia might at any time come to the conclusion that a war is her only salvation against a revolution, and you know the feeling in France about Alsace-Lorraine as well as I do. The Germans themselves say that there is more interest in military matters and more progress being made in Russia to-day than ever before.”
“I have no doubt that you are right,” agreed Mr. Mangan. “It is a matter which is being a great deal discussed just now, however. Let us speak of your personal plans. What do you intend to do for the next few weeks, say? Have you been to see any of your relatives yet?”
“Not one,” Dominey replied. “I am afraid that I am not altogether keen about making advances.”
Mr. Mangan coughed. “You must remember that during the period of your last residence in London,” he said, “you were in a state of chronic impecuniosity. No doubt that rather affected the attitude of some of those who would otherwise have been more friendly.”
“I should be perfectly content never to see one of them again,” declared Dominey, with perfect truth.
“That, of course, is impossible,” the lawyer protested. “You must go and see the Duchess, at any rate. She was always your champion.”
“The Duchess was always very kind to me,” Dominey admitted doubtfully, “but I am afraid she was rather fed up before I left England.”
Mr. Mangan smiled. He was enjoying a very excellent lunch, which it seemed hard to believe was ordered by a man just home from the wilds of Africa, and he thoroughly enjoyed talking about duchesses.
“Her Grace,” he began—
“Well?”
The lawyer had paused, with his eyes glued upon the couple at a neighbouring table. He leaned across towards his companion.
“The Duchess herself, Sir Everard, just behind you, with Lord St. Omar.”
“This place must certainly be the rendezvous of all the world,” Dominey declared, as he held out his hand to a man who had approached their table. “Seaman, my friend, welcome! Let me introduce you to my friend and legal adviser, Mr. Mangan—Mr. Seaman.”
Mr. Seaman was a short, fat man, immaculately dressed in most conventional morning attire. He was almost bald, except for a little tuft on either side, and a few long, fair hairs carefully brushed back over a shining scalp. His face was extraordinarily round except towards his chin, where it came to a point; his eyes bright and keen, his mouth the mouth of a professional humourist. He shook hands with the lawyer with an empressement which was scarcely English.
“Within the space of half an hour,” Dominey continued, “I find a princess who desires to claim my acquaintance; a cousin,” he dropped his voice a little, “who lunches only a few tables away, and the man of whom I have seen the most during the last ten years amidst scenes a little different from these, eh, Seaman?”
Seaman accepted the chair which the waiter had brought and sat down. The lawyer was immediately interested.
“Do I understand, then,” he asked, addressing the newcomer, “that you knew Sir Everard in Africa?”
Seaman beamed. “Knew him?” he repeated, and with the first words of his speech the fact of his foreign nationality was established. “There was no one of whom I knew so much. We did business together—a great deal of business—and when we were not partners, Sir Everard generally got the best of it.”
Dominey laughed. “Luck generally comes to a man either early or late in life. My luck came late. I think, Seaman, that you must have been my mascot. Nothing went wrong with me during the years that we did business together.”
Seaman was a little excited. He brushed upright with the palm of his hand one of those little tufts of hair left on the side of his head, and he laid his plump fingers upon the lawyer's shoulder.
“Mr. Mangan,” he said, “you listen to me. I sell this man the controlling interests in a mine, shares which I have held for four and a half years and never drew a penny dividend. I sell them to him, I say, at par. Well, I need the money and it seems to me that I had given the shares a fair chance. Within five weeks—five weeks, sir,” he repeated, struggling to attune his voice to his civilised surroundings, “those shares had gone from par to fourteen and a half. To-day they stand at twenty. He gave me five thousand pounds for those shares. To-day he could walk into your stock market and sell them for one hundred thousand. That is the way money is made in Africa, Mr. Mangan, where innocents like me are to be found every day.”
Dominey poured out a glass of wine and passed it to their visitor.
“Come,” he said, “we all have our ups and downs. Africa owes you nothing, Seaman.”
“I have done well in my small way,” Seaman admitted, fingering the stem of his wineglass, “but where I have had to plod, Sir Everard here has stood and commanded fate to pour her treasures into his lap.”
The lawyer was listening with a curious interest and pleasure to this half bantering conversation. He found an opportunity now to intervene.
“So you two were really friends in Africa?” he remarked, with a queer and almost inexplicable sense of relief.
“If Sir Everard permits our association to be so called,” Seaman replied. “We have done business together in the great cities—in Johannesburg and Pretoria, in Kimberley and Cape Town—and we have prospected together in the wild places. We have trekked the veldt and been lost to the world for many months at a time. We have seen the real wonders of Africa together, as well as her tawdry civilisation.”
“And you, too,” Mr. Mangan asked, “have you retired?”
Seaman's smile was almost beatific.
“The same deal,” he said, “which brought Sir Everard's fortune to wonderful figures brought me that modest sum which I had sworn to reach before I returned to England. It is true. I have retired from money-making. It is now that I take up again my real life's work.”
“If you are going to talk about your hobby,” Dominey observed, “you had better order them to serve your lunch here.”
“I had finished my lunch before you came in,” his friend replied. “I drink another glass of wine with you, perhaps. Afterwards a liqueur—who can say? In this climate one is favoured, one can drink freely. Sir Everard and I, Mr. Mangan, have been in places where thirst is a thing to be struggled against, where for months a little weak brandy and water was our chief dissipation.”
“Tell me about this hobby?” the lawyer enquired.
Dominey intervened promptly. “I protest. If he begins to talk of that, he'll be here all the afternoon.”
Seaman held out his hands and rolled his head from side to side.
“But I am not so unreasonable,” he objected. “Just one word—so? Very well, then,” he proceeded quickly, with the air of one fearing interruption. “This must be clear to you, Mr. Mangan. I am a German by birth, naturalised in England for the sake of my business, loving Germany, grateful to England. One third of my life I have lived in Berlin, one third at Forest Hill here in London, and in the city, one third in Africa. I have watched the growth of commercial rivalries and jealousies between the two nations. There is no need for them. They might lead to worse things. I would brush them all away. My aim is to encourage a league for the promotion of more cordial social and business relations between the people of Great Britain and the people of the German Empire. There! Have I wasted much of your time? Can I not speak of my hobby without a flood of words?”
“Conciseness itself,” Mangan admitted, “and I compliment you most heartily upon your scheme. If you can get the right people into it, it should prove a most valuable society.”
“In Germany I have the right people. All Germans who live for their country and feel for their country loathe the thought of war. We want peace, we want friends, and, to speak as man to man,” he concluded, tapping the lawyer upon the coat sleeve, “England is our best customer.”
“I wish one could believe,” the latter remarked, “that yours was the popular voice in your country.”
Seaman rose reluctantly to his feet.
“At half-past two,” he announced, glancing at his watch, “I have an appointment with a woollen manufacturer from Bradford. I hope to get him to join my council.”
He bowed ceremoniously to the lawyer, nodded to Dominey with the familiarity of an old friend, and made his bustling, good-humoured way out of the room.
“A sound business man, I should think,” was the former's comment. “I wish him luck with his League. You yourself, Sir Everard, will need to develop some new interests. Why not politics?”
“I really expect to find life a little difficult at first,” admitted Dominey, with a shrug of his shoulders. “I have lost many of the tastes of my youth, and I am very much afraid that my friends over here will call me colonial. I can't fancy myself doing nothing down in Norfolk all the rest of my days. Perhaps I shall go into Parliament.”
“You must forgive my saying,” his companion declared impulsively, “that I never knew ten years make such a difference in a man in my life.”
“The colonies,” Dominey pronounced, “are a kill or cure sort of business. You either take your drubbing and come out a stronger man, or you go under. I had the very narrowest escape from going under myself, but I just pulled together in time. To-day I wouldn't have been without my hard times for anything in the world.”
“If you will permit me,” Mr. Mangan said, with an inherited pomposity, “on our first meeting under the new conditions, I should like to offer you my hearty congratulations, not only upon what you have accomplished but upon what you have become.”
“And also, I hope,” Dominey rejoined, smiling a little seriously and with a curious glint in his eyes, “upon what I may yet accomplish.”
The Duchess and her companion had risen to their feet, and the former, on her way out, recognising her solicitor, paused graciously.
“How do you do, Mr. Mangan?” she said. “I hope you are looking after those troublesome tenants of mine in Leicestershire?”
“We shall make our report in due course, Duchess,” Mangan assured her. “Will you permit me,” he added, “to bring back to your memory a relative who has just returned from abroad—Sir Everard Dominey?”
Dominey had risen to his feet a moment previously and now extended his hand. The Duchess, who was a tall, graceful woman, with masses of fair hair only faintly interspersed with grey, very fine brown eyes, the complexion of a girl, and, to quite her own confession, the manners of a kitchen maid, stared at him for a moment without any response.
“Sir Everard Dominey?” she repeated. “Everard? Ridiculous!”
Dominey's extended hand was at once withdrawn, and the tentative smile faded from his lips. The lawyer plunged into the breach.
“I can assure your Grace,” he insisted earnestly, “that there is no doubt whatever about Sir Everard's identity. He only returned from Africa during the last few days.”
The Duchess's incredulity remained, wholly good-natured but ministered to by her natural obstinacy.
“I simply cannot bring myself to believe it,” she declared. “Come, I'll challenge you. When did we meet last?”
“At Worcester House,” was the prompt reply. “I came to say good-bye to you.”
The Duchess was a little staggered. Her eyes softened, a faint smile played at the corners of her lips. She was suddenly a very attractive looking woman.
“You came to say good-bye,” she repeated, “and?”
“I am to take that as a challenge?” Dominey asked, standing very upright and looking her in the eyes.
“As you will.”
“You were a little kinder to me,” he continued, “than you are to-day. You gave me—this,” he added, drawing a small picture from his pocketbook, “and you permitted—”
“For heaven's sake, put that thing away,” she cried, “and don't say another word! There's my grown-up nephew, St. Omar, paying his bill almost within earshot. Come and see me at half-past three this afternoon, and don't be a minute late. And, St. Omar,” she went on, turning to the young man who stood now by her side, “this is a connection of yours—Sir Everard Dominey. He is a terrible person, but do shake hands with him and come along. I am half an hour late for my dressmaker already.”
Lord St. Omar chuckled vaguely, then shook hands with his new-found relative, nodded affably to the lawyer and followed his aunt out of the room. Mangan's expression was beatific.
“Sir Everard,” he exclaimed, “God bless you! If ever a woman got what she deserved! I've seen a duchess blush—first time in my life!”
CHAPTER V
Worcester House was one of those semi-palatial residences set down apparently for no reason whatever in the middle of Regent's Park. It had been acquired by a former duke at the instigation of the Regent, who was his intimate friend, and retained by later generations in mute protest against the disfiguring edifices which had made a millionaire's highway of Park Lane. Dominey, who was first scrutinised by an individual in buff waistcoat and silk hat at the porter's lodge, was interviewed by a major-domo in the great stone hall, conducted through an extraordinarily Victorian drawing-room by another myrmidon in a buff waistcoat, and finally ushered into a tiny little boudoir leading out of a larger apartment and terminating in a conservatory filled with sweet-smelling exotics. The Duchess, who was reclining in an easy-chair, held out her hand, which her visitor raised to his lips. She motioned him to a seat by her side and once more scrutinised him with unabashed intentness.
“There's something wrong about you, you know,” she declared.
“That seems very unfortunate,” he rejoined, “when I return to find you wholly unchanged.”
“Not bad,” she remarked critically. “All the same, I have changed. I am not in the least in love with you any longer.”
“It was the fear of that change in you,” he sighed, “which kept me for so long in the furthest corners of the world.”
She looked at him with a severity which was obviously assumed.
“Look here,” she said, “it is better for us to have a perfectly clear understanding upon one point. I know the exact position of your affairs, and I know, too, that the two hundred a year which your lawyer has been sending out to you came partly out of a few old trees and partly out of his own pocket. How you are going to live over here I cannot imagine, but it isn't the least use expecting Henry to do a thing for you. The poor man has scarcely enough pocket money to pay his travelling expenses when he goes lecturing.”
“Lecturing?” Dominey repeated. “What's happened to poor Henry?”
“My husband is an exceedingly conscientious man,” was the dignified reply. “He goes from town to town with Lord Roberts and a secretary, lecturing on national defence.”
“Dear Henry was always a little cranky, wasn't he?” Dominey observed. “Let me put your mind at rest on that other matter, though, Caroline. I can assure you that I have come back to England not to borrow money but to spend it.”
His cousin shook her head mournfully. “And a few minutes ago I was nearly observing that you had lost your sense of humour!”
“I am in earnest,” he persisted. “Africa has turned out to be my Eldorado. Quite unexpectedly, I must admit, I came in for a considerable sum of money towards the end of my stay there. I am paying off the mortgages at Dominey at once, and I want Henry to jot down on paper at once those few amounts he was good enough to lend me in the old days.”
Caroline, Duchess of Worcester, sat perfectly still for a moment with her mouth open, a condition which was entirely natural but unbecoming.
“And you mean to tell me that you really are Everard Dominey?” she exclaimed.
“The weight of evidence is rather that way,” he murmured.
He moved his chair deliberately a little nearer, took her hand and raised it to his lips. Her face was perilously near to his. She drew a little back—and too abruptly.
“My dear Everard,” she whispered, “Henry is in the house! Besides—Yes, I suppose you must be Everard. Just now there was something in your eyes exactly like his. But you are so stiff. Have you been drilling out there or anything?”
He shook his head.
“One spends half one's time in the saddle.”
“And you are really well off?” she asked again wonderingly.
“If I had stayed there another year,” he replied, “and been able to marry a Dutch Jewess, I should have qualified for Park Lane.”
She sighed.
“It's too wonderful. Henry will love having his money back.”
“And you?”
She looked positively distressed.
“You've lost all your manners,” she complained. “You make love like a garden rake. You should have leaned towards me with a quiver in your voice when you said those last two words, and instead of that you look as though you were sitting at attention, with a positive glint of steel in your eyes.”
“One sees a woman once in a blue moon out there,” he pleaded.
She shook her head. “You've changed. It was a sixth sense with you to make love in exactly the right tone, to say exactly the right thing in the right manner.”
“I shall pick it up,” he declared hopefully, “with a little assistance.”
She made a little grimace.
“You won't want an old woman like me to assist you, Everard. You'll have the town at your feet. You'll be able to frivol with musical comedy, flirt with our married beauties, or—I'm sorry, Everard, I forgot.”
“You forgot what?” he asked steadfastly.
“I forgot the tragedy which finally drove you abroad. I forgot your marriage. Is there any change in your wife?”
“Not much, I am afraid.”
“And Mr. Mangan—he thinks that you are safe over here?”
“Perfectly.”
She looked at him earnestly. Perhaps she had never admitted, even to herself, how fond she had been of this scapegrace cousin.
“You'll find that no one will have a word to say against you,” she told him, “now that you are wealthy and regenerate. They'll forget everything you want them to. When will you come and dine here and meet all your relatives?”
“Whenever you are kind enough to ask me,” he answered. “I thought of going down to Dominey to-morrow.”
She looked at him with a new thing in her eyes—something of fear, something, too, of admiration.
“But—your wife?”
“She is there, I believe,” he said. “I cannot help it. I have been an exile from my home long enough.”
“Don't go,” she begged suddenly. “Why not be brave and have her removed. I know how tender-hearted you are, but you have your future and your career to consider. For her sake, too, you ought not to give her the opportunity—”
Dominey could never make up his mind whether the interruption which came at that moment was welcome or otherwise. Caroline suddenly broke off in her speech and glanced warningly towards the larger room. A tall, grey-haired man, dressed in old-fashioned clothes and wearing a pince-nez, had lifted the curtains. He addressed the Duchess in a thin, reedy voice.
“My dear Caroline,” he began,—“ah, you must forgive me. I did not know that you were engaged. We will not stay, but I should like to present to you a young friend of mine who is going to help me at the meeting this evening.”
“Do bring him in,” his wife replied, her voice once more attuned to its natural drawl. “And I have a surprise for you too, Henry—a very great surprise, I think you will find it!”
Dominey rose to his feet—a tall, commanding figure—and stood waiting the approach of the newcomer. The Duke advanced, looking at him enquiringly. A young man, very obviously a soldier in mufti, was hovering in the background.
“I must plead guilty to the surprise,” the Duke confessed courteously. “There is something exceedingly familiar about your face, sir, but I cannot remember having had the privilege of meeting you.”
“You see,” Caroline observed, “I am not the only one, Everard, who did not accept you upon a glance. This is Everard Dominey, Henry, returned from foreign exile and regenerated in every sense of the word.”
“How do you do?” Dominey said, holding out his hand. “I seem to be rather a surprise to every one, but I hope you haven't quite forgotten me.”
“God bless my soul!” the Duke exclaimed. “You don't mean to say that you're really Everard Dominey?”
“I am he, beyond a doubt,” was the calm assurance.
“Most amazing!” the Duke declared, as he shook hands. “Most amazing! I never saw such a change in my life. Yes, yes, I see—same complexion, of course—nose and eyes—yes, yes! But you seem taller, and you carry yourself like a soldier. Dear, dear me! Africa has done wonderfully by you. Delighted, my dear Everard! Delighted!”
“You'll be more delighted still when you hear the rest of the news,” his wife remarked drily. “In the meantime, do present your friend.”
“Precisely so,” the Duke acquiesced, turning to the young man in the background. “Most sorry, my dear Captain Bartram. The unexpected return of a connection of my wife must be my apology for this lapse of manners. Let me present you to the Duchess. Captain Bartram is just back from Germany, my dear, and is an enthusiastic supporter of our cause.—Sir Everard Dominey.”
Caroline shook hands kindly with her husband's protege, and Dominey exchanged a solemn handshake with him.
“You, too, are one of those, then, Captain Bartram, who are convinced that Germany has evil designs upon us?” the former said, smiling.
“I have just returned from Germany after twelve months' stay there,” the young soldier replied. “I went with an open mind. I have come back convinced that we shall be at war with Germany within a couple of years.”
The Duke nodded vigorously.
“Our young friend is right,” he declared. “Three times a week for many months I have been drumming the fact into the handful of wooden-headed Englishmen who have deigned to come to our meetings. I have made myself a nuisance to the House of Lords and the Press. It is a terrible thing to realise how hard it is to make an Englishman reflect, so long as he is making money and having a good time.—You are just back from Africa, Everard?”
“Within a week, sir.”
“Did you see anything of the Germans out there? Were you anywhere near their Colony?”
“I have been in touch with them for some years,” Dominey replied.
“Most interesting!” his questioner exclaimed. “You may be of service to us, Everard. You may, indeed! Now tell me, isn't it true that they have secret agents out there, trying to provoke unsettlement and disquiet amongst the Boers? Isn't it true that they apprehend a war with England before very long and are determined to stir up the Colony against us?”
“I am very sorry,” Dominey replied, “but I am not a politician in any shape or form. All the Germans whom I have met out there seem a most peaceful race of men, and there doesn't seem to be the slightest discontent amongst the Boers or any one else.”
The Duke's face fell. “This is very surprising.”
“The only people who seem to have any cause for discontent,” Dominey continued, “are the English settlers. I didn't commence to do any good myself there till a few years ago, but I have heard some queer stories about the way our own people were treated after the war.”
“What you say about South Africa, Sir Everard,” the young soldier remarked, “is naturally interesting, but I am bound to say that it is in direct opposition to all I have heard.”
“And I,” the Duke echoed fervently.
“I have lived there for the last eleven years,” Dominey continued, “and although I spent the earlier part of that time trekking after big game, lately I am bound to confess that every thought and energy I possess have been centered upon money-making. For that reason, perhaps, my observations may have been at fault. I shall claim the privilege of coming to one of your first meetings, Duke, and of trying to understand this question.”
His august connection blinked at him a little curiously for a moment behind his glasses.
“My dear Everard,” he said, “forgive my remarking it, but I find you more changed than I could have believed possible.”
“Everard is changed in more ways than one,” his wife observed, with faint irony.
Dominey, who had risen to leave, bent over her hand.
“What about my dinner party, sir?” she added.
“As soon as I return from Norfolk,” he replied.
“Dominey Hall will really find you?” she asked a little curiously.
“Most certainly!”
There was again that little flutter of fear in her eyes, followed by a momentary flash of admiration. Dominey shook hands gravely with his host and nodded to Bertram. The servant whom the Duchess had summoned stood holding the curtains on one side.
“I shall hope to see you again shortly, Duke,” Dominey said, as he completed his leave-taking. “There is a little matter of business to be adjusted between us. You will probably hear from Mr. Mangan in a day or two.”
The Duke gazed after the retreating figure of this very amazing visitor. When the curtains had fallen he turned to his wife.
“A little matter of business,” he repeated. “I hope you have explained to Everard, my dear, that although, of course, we are very glad to see him back again, it is absolutely hopeless for him to look to me for any financial assistance at the present moment.”
Caroline smiled.
“Everard was alluding to the money he already owes you,” she explained. “He intends to repay it at once. He is also paying off the Dominey mortgages. He has apparently made a fortune in Africa.”
The Duke collapsed into an easy-chair.
“Everard pay his debts?” he exclaimed. “Everard Dominey pay off the mortgages?”
“That is what I understand,” his wife acquiesced.
The Duke clutched at the last refuge of a weak but obstinate man. His mouth came together like a rat-trap.
“There's something wrong about it somewhere,” he declared.
CHAPTER VI
Dominey spent a very impatient hour that evening in his sitting-room at the Carlton, waiting for Seaman. It was not until nearly seven that the latter appeared.
“Are you aware,” Dominey asked him, “that I am expected to call upon the Princess Eiderstrom at seven o'clock?”
“I have your word for it,” Seaman replied, “but I see no tragedy in the situation. The Princess is a woman of sense and a woman of political insight. While I cannot recommend you to take her entirely into your confidence, I still think that a middle course can be judiciously pursued.”
“Rubbish!” Dominey exclaimed. “As Leopold Von Ragastein, the Princess has indisputable claims upon me and my liberty, claims which would altogether interfere with the career of Everard Dominey.”
With methodical neatness, Seaman laid his hat, gloves and walking stick upon the sideboard. He then looked into the connecting bedroom, closed and fastened the door and extended himself in an easy-chair.
“Sit opposite to me, my friend,” he said. “We will talk together.”
Dominey obeyed a little sullenly. His companion, however, ignored his demeanour.
“Now, my friend,” he said, beating upon the palm of one hand with the forefinger of his other, “I am a man of commerce and I do things in a business way. Let us take stock of our position. Three months ago this very week, we met by appointment at a certain hotel in Cape Town.”
“Only three months,” Dominey muttered.
“We were unknown to one another,” Seaman continued. “I had only heard of the Baron Von Ragastein as a devoted German citizen and patriot, engaged in an important enterprise in East Africa by special intercession of the Kaiser, on account of a certain unfortunate happening in Hungary.”
“I killed a man in a duel,” Dominey said slowly, with his eyes fixed upon his companion's. “It was not an unforgivable act.”
“There are duels and duels. A fight between two young men, in defence of the honour of or to gain the favour of a young lady in their own station of life, has never been against the conventions of the Court. On the other hand, to become the lover of the wife of one of the greatest nobles in Hungary, and to secure possession by killing the husband in the duel which his honour makes a necessity is looked upon very differently.”
“I had no wish to kill the Prince,” Dominey protested, “nor was it at my desire that we met at all. The Prince fought like a madman and slipped, after a wild lunge, on to the point of my stationary sword.”
“Let that pass,” Seaman said. “I am not of your order and I probably do not understand the etiquette of these matters. I simply look upon you as a culprit in the eyes of our master, and I feel that he has a right to demand from you much in the way of personal sacrifice.”
“Perhaps you will tell me,” Dominey demanded, “what more he would have? I have spent weary years in a godless and fever-ridden country, raising up for our arms a great troop of natives. I have undertaken other political commissions in the Colony which may bear fruit. I am to take up the work for which I was originally intended, for which I was given an English education. I am to repair to England, and, under such identity as I might assume after consultation with you at Cape Town, I am to render myself so far as possible a persona grata in that country. I do not wait for our meeting. I see a great chance and I make use of it. I transform myself into an English country gentleman, and I think you will admit that I have done so with great success.”
“All that you say is granted,” Seaman agreed. “You met me at Cape Town in your new identity, and you certainly seemed to wear it wonderfully. You have made it uncommonly expensive, but we do not grudge money.”
“I could not return home to a poverty-stricken domain,” Dominey pointed out. “I should have held no place whatever in English social life, and I should have received no welcome from those with whom I imagine you desire me to stand well.”
“Again I make no complaints,” Seaman declared. “There is no bottom to our purse, nor any stint. Neither must there be any stint to our loyalty,” he added gravely.
“In this instance,” Dominey protested, “it is not a matter of loyalty. Everard Dominey cannot throw himself at the feet of the Princess Eiderstrom, well-known to be one of the most passionate women in Europe, whilst her love affair with Leopold Von Ragastein is still remembered. Remember that the question of our identities might crop up any day. We were friends over here in England, at school and at college, and there are many who still remember the likeness between us. Perfectly though I may play my part, here and there there may be doubts. There will be doubts no longer if I am to be dragged at the chariot wheels of the Princess.”
Seaman was silent for a moment.
“There is reason in what you say,” he admitted presently. “It is for a few months only. What is your proposition?”
“That you see the Princess in my place at once,” Dominey suggested eagerly. “Point out to her that for the present, for political reasons, I am and must remain Everard Dominey, to her as to the rest of the world. Let her be content with such measure of friendship and admiration as Sir Everard Dominey might reasonably offer to a beautiful woman whom he met to-day for the first time, and I am entirely and with all my heart at her service. But let her remember that even between us two, in the solitude of her room as in the drawing-room where we might meet, it can be Everard Dominey only until my mission is ended. You think, perhaps, that I lay unnecessary stress upon this. I do not. I know the Princess and I know myself.”
Seaman glanced at the clock. “At what hour was your appointment?”
“It was not an appointment, it was a command,” Dominey replied. “I was told to be at Belgrave Square at seven o'clock.”
“I will have an understanding with the Princess,” promised Seaman, as he took up his hat. “Dine with me downstairs at eight o'clock on my return.”
Dominey, descending about an hour later, found his friend Seaman already established at a small, far-away table set in one of the recesses of the grill room. He was welcomed with a little wave of the hand, and cocktails were at once ordered.
“I have done your errand,” Seaman announced. “Since my visit I am bound to admit that I realise a little more fully your anxiety.”
“You probably had not met the Princess before?”
“I had not. I must confess that I found her a lady of somewhat overpowering temperament. I fancy, my young friend,” Seaman continued, with a twitch at the corner of his lips, “that somewhere about August next year you will find your hands full.”
“August next year can take care of itself,” was the cool reply.
“In the meantime,” Seaman continued, “the Princess understands the situation and is, I think, impressed. She will at any rate do nothing rash. You and she will meet within the course of the next few hours, but on reasonable terms. To proceed! As I drove back here after my interview with the Princess, I decided that it was time you made the acquaintance of the person who is chiefly responsible for your presence here.”
“Terniloff?”
“Precisely! You have maintained, my young friend,” Seaman went on after a brief pause, during which one waiter had brought their cocktails and another received their order for dinner, “a very discreet and laudable silence with regard to those further instructions which were promised to you immediately you should arrive in London. Those instructions will never be committed to writing. They are here.”
Seaman touched his forehead and drained the remaining contents of his glass.
“My instructions are to trust you absolutely,” Dominey observed, “and, until the greater events stir, to concentrate the greater part of my energies in leading the natural life of the man whose name and place I have taken.”
“Quite so,” Seaman acquiesced.
He glanced around the room for a moment or two, as though interested in the people. Satisfied at last that there was no chance of being overheard, he continued:
“The first idea you have to get out of your head, my dear friend, if it is there, is that you are a spy. You are nothing of the sort. You are not connected with our remarkably perfect system of espionage in the slightest degree. You are a free agent in all that you may choose to say or do. You can believe in Germany or fear her—whichever you like. You can join your cousin's husband in his crusade for National Service, or you can join me in my efforts to cement the bonds of friendship and affection between the citizens of the two countries. We really do not care in the least. Choose your own part. Give yourself thoroughly into the life of Sir Everard Dominey, Baronet, of Dominey Hall, Norfolk, and pursue exactly the course which you think Sir Everard himself would be likely to take.”
“This,” Dominey admitted, “is very broad-minded.”
“It is common sense,” was the prompt reply. “With all your ability, you could not in six months' time appreciably affect the position either way. Therefore, we choose to have you concentrate the whole of your energies upon one task and one task only. If there is anything of the spy about your mission here, it is not England or the English which are to engage your attention. We require you to concentrate wholly and entirely upon Terniloff.”
Dominey was startled.
“Terniloff?” he repeated. “I expected to work with him, but—”
“Empty your mind of all preconceived ideas,” Seaman enjoined. “What your duties are with regard to Terniloff will grow upon you gradually as the situation develops.”
“As yet,” Dominey remarked, “I have not even made his acquaintance.”
“I was on the point of telling you, earlier in our conversation, that I have made an appointment for you to see him at eleven o'clock to-night at the Embassy. You will go to him at that hour. Remember, you know nothing, you are waiting for instructions. Let speech remain with him alone. Be particularly careful not to drop him a hint of your knowledge of what is coming. You will find him absolutely satisfied with the situation, absolutely content. Take care not to disturb him. He is a missioner of peace. So are you.”
“I begin to understand,” Dominey said thoughtfully.
“You shall understand everything when the time comes for you to take a hand,” Seaman promised, “and do not in your zeal forget, my friend, that your utility to our great cause will depend largely upon your being able to establish and maintain your position as an English gentleman. So far all has gone well?”
“Perfectly, so far as I am concerned,” Dominey replied. “You must remember, though, that there is your end to keep up. Berlin will be receiving frantic messages from East Africa as to my disappearance. Not even my immediate associates were in the secret.”
“That is all understood,” Seaman assured his companion. “A little doctor named Schmidt has spent many marks of the Government money in frantic cables. You must have endeared yourself to him.”
“He was a very faithful associate.”
“He has been a very troublesome friend. It seems that the natives got their stories rather mixed up concerning your namesake, who apparently died in the bush, and Schmidt continually emphasised your promise to let him hear from Cape Town. However, all this has been dealt with satisfactorily. The only real dangers are over here, and so far you seem to have encountered the principal ones.”
“I have at any rate been accepted,” Dominey declared, “by my nearest living relative, and incidentally I have discovered the one far-seeing person in England who knows what is in store for us.”
Seaman was momentarily anxious.
“Whom do you mean?”
“The Duke of Worcester, my cousin's husband, of whom you were speaking just now.”
The little man's face relaxed.
“He reminds me of the geese who saved the Capitol,” he said, “a brainless man obsessed with one idea. It is queer how often these fanatics discover the truth. That reminds me,” he added, taking a small memorandum book from his waistcoat pocket and glancing it through. “His Grace has a meeting to-night at the Holborn Town Hall. I shall make one of my usual interruptions.”
“If he has so small a following, why don't you leave him alone?” Dominey enquired.
“There are others associated with him,” was the placid reply, “who are not so insignificant. Besides, when I interrupt I advertise my own little hobby.”
“These—we English are strange people,” Dominey remarked, glancing around the room after a brief but thoughtful pause. “We advertise and boast about our colossal wealth, and yet we are incapable of the slightest self-sacrifice in order to preserve it. One would have imagined that our philosophers, our historians, would warn us in irresistible terms, by unanswerable scientific deduction, of what was coming.”
“My compliments to your pronouns,” Seaman murmured, with a little bow. “Apropos of what you were saying, you will never make an Englishman—I beg your pardon, one of your countrymen—realise anything unpleasant. He prefers to keep his head comfortably down in the sand. But to leave generalities, when do you think of going to Norfolk?”
“Within the next few days,” Dominey replied.
“I shall breathe more freely when you are securely established there,” his companion declared. “Great things wait upon your complete acceptance, in the country as well as in town, as Sir Everard Dominey. You are sure that you perfectly understand your position there as regards your—er—domestic affairs?”
“I understand all that is necessary,” was the somewhat stiff reply.
“All that is necessary is not enough,” Seaman rejoined irritably. “I thought that you had wormed the whole story out of that drunken Englishman?”
“He told me most of it. There were just one or two points which lay beyond the limits where questioning was possible.”
Seaman frowned angrily.
“In other words,” he complained, “you remembered that you were a gentleman and not that you were a German.”
“The Englishman of a certain order,” Dominey pronounced, “even though he be degenerate, has a certain obstinacy, generally connected with one particular thing, which nothing can break. We talked together on that last night until morning; we drank wine and brandy. I tore the story of my own exile from my breast and laid it bare before him. Yet I knew all the time, as I know now, that he kept something back.”
There was a brief pause. During the last few minutes a certain tension had crept in between the two men. With it, their personal characteristics seemed to have become intensified. Dominey was more than ever the aristocrat; Seaman the plebian schemer, unabashed and desperately in earnest. He leaned presently a little way across the table. His eyes had narrowed but they were as bright as steel. His teeth were more prominent than usual.
“You should have dragged it from his throat,” he insisted. “It is not your duty to nurse fine personal feelings. Heart and soul you stand pledged to great things. I cannot at this moment give you any idea what you may not mean to us after the trouble has come, if you are able to play your part still in this country as Everard Dominey of Dominey Hall. I know well enough that the sense of personal honour amongst the Prussian aristocracy is the finest in the world, and yet there is not a single man of your order who should not be prepared to lie or cheat for his country's sake. You must fall into line with your fellows. Once more, it is not only your task with regard to Terniloff which makes your recognition as Everard Dominey so important to us. It is the things which are to come later.—Come, enough of this subject. I know that you understand. We grow too serious. How shall you spend your evening until eleven o'clock? Remember you did not leave England an anchorite, Sir Everard. You must have your amusements. Why not try a music hall?”
“My mind is too full of other things,” Dominey objected.
“Then come with me to Holborn,” the little man suggested. “It will amuse you. We will part at the door, and you shall sit at the back of the hall, out of sight. You shall hear the haunting eloquence of your cousin-in-law. You shall hear him trying to warn the men and women of England of the danger awaiting them from the great and rapacious German nation. What do you say?”
“I will come,” Dominey replied in spiritless fashion. “It will be better than a music hall, at any rate. I am not at all sure, Seaman, that the hardest part of my task over here will not be this necessity for self-imposed amusements.”
His companion struck the table gently but impatiently with his clenched fist.
“Man, you are young!” he exclaimed. “You are like the rest of us. You carry your life in your hands. Don't nourish past griefs. Cast the memory of them away. There's nothing which narrows a man more than morbidness. You have a past which may sometimes bring the ghosts around you, but remember the sin was not wholly yours, and there is an atonement which in measured fashion you may commence whenever you please. I have said enough about that. Greatness and gaiety go hand in hand. There! You see, I was a philosopher before I became a professor of propaganda. Good! You smile. That is something gained, at any rate. Now we will take a taxicab to Holborn and I will show you something really humorous.”
At the entrance to the town hall, the two men, at Seaman's instigation, parted, making their way inside by different doors. Dominey found a retired seat under a balcony, where he was unlikely to be recognised from the platform. Seaman, on the other hand, took up a more prominent position at the end of one of the front rows of benches. The meeting was by no means overcrowded, over-enthusiastic, over-anything. There were rows of empty benches, a good many young couples who seemed to have come in for shelter from the inclement night, a few sturdy, respectable-looking tradesmen who had come because it seemed to be the respectable thing to do, a few genuinely interested, and here and there, although they were decidedly in the minority, a sprinkling of enthusiasts. On the platform was the Duke, with civic dignitaries on either side of him; a distinguished soldier, a Member of Parliament, a half-dozen or so of nondescript residents from the neighbourhood, and Captain Bartram. The meeting was on the point of commencement as Dominey settled down in his corner.
First of all the Duke rose, and in a few hackneyed but earnest sentences introduced his young friend Captain Bartram. The latter, who sprang at once into the middle of his subject, was nervous and more than a little bitter. He explained that he had resigned his commission and was therefore free to speak his mind. He spoke of enormous military preparations in Germany and a general air of tense expectation. Against whom were these preparations? Without an earthly doubt against Germany's greatest rival, whose millions of young men, even in this hour of danger, preferred playing or watching football or cricket on Saturday afternoons to realising their duty. The conclusion of an ill-pointed but earnest speech was punctuated by the furtive entrance into the hall of a small boy selling evening newspapers, and there was a temporary diversion from any interest in the proceedings on the part of the younger portion of the audience, whilst they satisfied themselves as to the result of various Cup Ties. The Member of Parliament then descended upon them in a whirlwind of oratory and in his best House of Commons style. He spoke of black clouds and of the cold breeze that went before the coming thunderstorm. He pointed to the collapse of every great nation throughout history who had neglected the arts of self-defence. He appealed to the youth of the nation to prepare themselves to guard their womenkind, their homes, the sacred soil of their country, and at that point was interrupted by a drowsy member of the audience with stentorian lungs, who seemed just at that moment to have waked up.
“What about the Navy, guv'nor?”
The orator swept upon the interrupter in his famous platform manner. The Navy, he declared, could be trusted at all times to do its duty, but it could not fight on sea and land. Would the young man who had just interrupted do his, and enroll his name for drill and national service that evening?—and so on. The distinguished soldier, who was suffering from a cold, fired off a few husky sentences only, to the tune of rounds of applause. The proceedings were wound up by the Duke, who was obviously, with the exception of the distinguished soldier, much more in earnest than any of them, and secured upon the whole a respectful attention. He brought in a few historical allusions, pleaded for a greater spirit of earnestness and citizenship amongst the men of the country, appealed even to the women to develop their sense of responsibility, and sat down amidst a little burst of quite enthusiastic applause.—The vote of thanks to the chairman was on the point of being proposed when Mr. Seaman, standing up in his place, appealed to the chairman for permission to say a few words. The Duke, who had had some experience with Mr. Seaman before, looked at him severely, but the smile with which Mr. Seaman looked around upon the audience was so good-natured and attractive, that he had no alternative but to assent. Seaman scrambled up the steps on to the platform, coughed apologetically, bowed to the Duke, and took possession of the meeting. After a word or two of compliment to the chairman, he made his confession. He was a German citizen—he was indeed one of that bloodthirsty race. (Some laughter.) He was also, and it was his excuse for standing there, the founder and secretary of a league, doubtless well known to them, a league for promoting more friendly relations between the business men of Germany and England. Some of the remarks which he had heard that evening had pained him deeply. Business often took him to Germany, and as a German he would be doing less than his duty if he did not stand up there and tell them that the average German loved the Englishman like a brother, that the object of his life was to come into greater kinship with him, that Germany even at that moment, was standing with hand outstretched to her relatives across the North Sea, begging for a deeper sympathy, begging for a larger understanding. (Applause from the audience, murmurs of dissent from the platform.) And as to those military preparations of which they had heard so much (with a severe glance at Captain Bartram), let them glance for one moment at the frontiers of Germany, let them realise that eastwards Germany was being continually pressed by an ancient and historic foe of enormous strength. He would not waste their time telling them of the political difficulties which Germany had had to face during the last generation. He would simply tell them this great truth,—the foe for whom Germany was obliged to make these great military preparations was Russia. If ever they were used it would be against Russia, and at Russia's instigation.—In his humble way he was striving for the betterment of relations between the dearly beloved country of his birth and the equally beloved country of his adoption. Such meetings as these, instituted, as it seemed to him, for the propagation of unfair and unjustified suspicions, were one of the greatest difficulties in his way. He could not for a moment doubt that these gentlemen upon the platform were patriots. They would prove it more profitably, both to themselves and their country, if they abandoned their present prejudiced and harmful campaign and became patrons of his Society.
Seaman's little bow to the chairman was good-humoured, tolerant, a little wistful. The Duke's few words, prefaced by an indignant protest against the intrusion of a German propagandist into an English patriotic meeting, did nothing to undo the effect produced by this undesired stranger. When the meeting broke up, it was doubtful whether a single adherent had been gained to the cause of National Service. The Duke went home full of wrath, and Seaman chuckled with genuine merriment as he stepped into the taxi which Dominey had secured, at the corner of the street.
“I promised you entertainment,” he observed. “Confess that I have kept my word.”
Dominey smiled enigmatically. “You certainly succeeded in making fools of a number of respectable and well-meaning men.”
“The miracle of it extends further,” Seaman agreed. “To-night, in its small way, is a supreme example of the transcendental follies of democracy. England is being slowly choked and strangled with too much liberty. She is like a child being overfed with jam. Imagine, in our dear country, an Englishman being allowed to mount the platform and spout, undisturbed, English propaganda in deadly opposition to German interests. The so-called liberty of the Englishman is like the cuckoo in his political nest. Countries must be governed. They cannot govern themselves. The time of war will prove all that.”
“Yet in any great crisis of a nation's history,” Dominey queried, “surely there is safety in a multitude of counsellors?”
“There would be always a multitude of counsellors,” Seaman replied, “in Germany as in England. The trouble for this country is that they would be all expressed publicly and in the press, each view would have its adherents, and the Government be split up into factions. In Germany, the real destinies of the country are decided in secret. There are counsellors there, too, earnest and wise counsellors, but no one knows their varying views. All that one learns is the result, spoken through the lips of the Kaiser, spoken once and for all.”
Dominey was showing signs of a rare interest in his companion's conversation. His eyes were bright, his usually impassive features seemed to have become more mobile and strained. He laid his hand on Seaman's arm.
“Listen,” he said, “we are in London, alone in a taxicab, secure against any possible eavesdropping. You preach the advantage of our Kaiser-led country. Do you really believe that the Kaiser is the man for the task which is coming?”
Seaman's narrow eyes glittered. He looked at his companion in satisfaction. His forehead was puckered, his eternal smile gone. He was the man of intellect.
“So you are waking up from the lethargy of Africa, my friend!” he exclaimed. “You are beginning to think. As you ask me, so shall I answer. The Kaiser is a vain, bombastic dreamer, the greatest egotist who ever lived, with a diseased personality, a ceaseless craving for the limelight. But he has also the genius for government. I mean this: he is a splendid medium for the expression of the brain power of his counsellors. Their words will pass through his personality, and he will believe them his. What is more, they will sound like his. He will see himself the knight in shining armour. All Europe will bow down before this self-imagined Caesar, and no one except we who are behind will realise the ass's head. There is no one else in this world whom I have ever met so well fitted to lead our great nation on to the destiny she deserves.—And now, my friend, to-morrow, if you like, we will speak of these matters again. To-night, you have other things to think about. You are going into the great places where I never penetrate. You have an hour to change and prepare. At eleven o'clock the Prince Von Terniloff will expect you.”
CHAPTER VII
There had been a dinner party and a very small reception afterwards at the great Embassy in Carlton House Terrace. The Ambassador, Prince Terniloff, was bidding farewell to his wife's cousin, the Princess Eiderstrom, the last of his guests. She drew him on one side for a moment.
“Your Excellency,” she said, “I have been hoping for a word with you all the evening.”
“And I with you, dear Stephanie,” he answered. “It is very early. Let us sit down for a moment.”
He led her towards a settee but she shook her head.
“You have an appointment at half-past eleven,” she said. “I wish you to keep it.”
“You know, then?”
“I lunched to-day at the Carleton grill room. In the reception-room I came face to face with Leopold Von Ragastein.”
The Ambassador made no remark. It seemed to be his wish to hear first all that his companion had to say. After a moment's pause she continued:
“I spoke to him, and he denied himself. To me! I think that those were the most terrible seconds of my life. I have never suffered more. I shall never suffer so much again.”
“It was most unfortunate,” the Prince murmured sympathetically.
“This evening,” she went on, “I received a visit from a man whom I took at first to be an insignificant member of the German bourgeoisie. I learnt something of his true position later. He came to me to explain that Leopold was engaged in this country on secret service, that he was passing under the name which he gave me,—Sir Everard Dominey, an English baronet, long lost in Africa. You know of this?”
“I know that to-night I am receiving a visit from Sir Everard Dominey.”
“He is to work under your auspices?”
“By no means,” the Prince rejoined warmly. “I am not favourably inclined towards this network of espionage. The school of diplomacy in which I have been brought up tries to work without such ignoble means.”
“One realises that,” she said. “Leopold is coming, however, to-night, to pay his respects to you.”
“He is waiting for me now in my study,” the Ambassador asserted.
“You will do me the service of conveying to him a message from me,” she continued. “This man Seaman pointed out to me the unwisdom of any association between myself and Leopold, under present conditions. I listened to all that he had to say. I reserved my decision. I have now considered the matter. I will compromise with necessity. I will be content with the acquaintance of Sir Everard Dominey, but that I will have.”
“For myself,” the Ambassador reflected, “I do not even know what Von Ragastein's mission over here is, but if in Berlin they decide that, for the more complete preservation of his incognito, association between you and him is undesirable—”
She laid her fingers upon his arm.
“Stop!” she ordered. “I am not of Berlin. I am not a German. I am not even an Austrian. I am Hungarian, and though I am willing to study your interests, I am not willing to place them before my own life. I make terms, but I do not surrender. Those terms I will discuss with Leopold. Ah, be kind to me!” she went on, with a sudden change of voice. “Since these few minutes at midday I have lived in a dream. Only one thing can quiet me. I must speak to him. I must decide with him what I will do. You will help?”
“An acquaintance between you and Sir Everard Dominey,” he admitted, “is certainly a perfectly natural thing.”
“Look at me,” she begged.
He turned and looked into her face. Underneath her beautiful eyes were dark lines; there was something pitiful about the curve of her mouth. He remembered that although she had carried herself throughout the evening with all the dignity which was second nature to her, he had overheard more than one sympathetic comment upon her appearance.
“I can see that you are suffering,” he remarked kindly.
“My eyes are hot, and inside I am on fire,” she continued. “I must speak to Leopold. Freda has asked me to stay and talk to her for an hour. My car waits. Arrange that he drives me home. Oh! believe me, dear friend, I am a very human woman, and there is nothing in the world to be gained by treating me as though I were of wood or stone. To-night I can see him without observation. If you refuse, I shall take other means. I will make no promises. I will not even promise that I will not call out before him in the streets that he is a liar, that his life is a lie. I will call him Leopold Von Ragastein—”
“Hush!” he begged her. “Stephanie, you are nervous. I have not yet answered your entreaty.”
“You consent?”
“I consent,” he promised. “After our interview, I shall bring the young man to Freda's room and present him. You will be there. He can offer you his escort.”
She suddenly stooped and kissed his hand. An immense relief was in her face.
“Now I will keep you no longer. Freda is waiting for me.”
The Ambassador strolled thoughtfully away into his own den at the back of the house, where Dominey was waiting for him.
“I am glad to see you,” the former said, holding out his hand. “For five minutes I desire to talk to your real self. After that, for the rest of your time in England, I will respect your new identity.”
Dominey bowed in silence. His host pointed to the sideboard.
“Come,” he continued, “there are cigars and cigarettes at your elbow, whisky and soda on the sideboard. Make yourself at home in that chair there. Africa has really changed you very little. Do you remember our previous meeting, in Saxony?”
“I remember it perfectly, your Excellency.”
“His Majesty knew how to keep Court in those days,” the Ambassador went on. “One was tempted to believe oneself at an English country party. However, that much of the past. You know, of course, that I entirely disapprove of your present position here?”
“I gathered as much, your Excellency.”
“We will have no reserves with one another,” the Prince declared, lighting a cigar. “I know quite well that you form part of a network of espionage in this country which I consider wholly unnecessary. That is simply a question of method. I have no doubt that you are here with the same object as I am, the object which the Kaiser has declared to me with his own lips is nearest to his heart—to cement the bonds of friendship between Germany and England.”
“You believe, sir, that that is possible?”
“I am convinced of it,” was the earnest reply. “I do not know what the exact nature of your work over here is to be, but I am glad to have an opportunity of putting before you my convictions. I believe that in Berlin the character of some of the leading statesmen here has been misunderstood and misrepresented. I find on all sides of me an earnest and sincere desire for peace. I have convinced myself that there is not a single statesman in this country who is desirous of war with Germany.”
Dominey was listening intently, with the air of one who hears unexpected things.
“But, your Excellency,” he ventured, “what about the matter from our point of view? There are a great many in our country, whom you and I know of, who look forward to a war with England as inevitable. Germany must become, we all believe, the greatest empire in the world. She must climb there, as one of our friends once said, with her foot upon the neck of the British lion.”
“You are out of date,” the Ambassador declared earnestly. “I see now why they sent you to me. Those days have passed. There is room in the world for Great Britain and for Germany. The disintegration of Russia in the near future is a certainty. It is eastward that we must look for any great extension of territory.”
“These things have been decided?”
“Absolutely! They form the soul of my mission here. My mandate is one of peace, and the more I see of English statesmen and the more I understand the British outlook, the more sanguine I am as to the success of my efforts. This is why all this outside espionage with which Seaman is so largely concerned seems to me at times unwise and unnecessary.”
“And my own mission?” Dominey enquired.
“Its nature,” the Prince replied, “is not as yet divulged, but if, as I have been given to understand, it is to become closely connected with my own, then I am very sure you will presently find that its text also is Peace.”
Dominey rose to his feet, prepared to take his leave.
“These matters will be solved for us,” he murmured.
“There is just one word more, on a somewhat more private matter,” Terniloff said in an altered tone. “The Princess Eiderstrom is upstairs.”
“In this house?”
“Waiting for a word with you. Our friend Seaman has been with her this evening. I understand that she is content to subscribe to the present situation. She makes one condition, however.”
“And that?”
“She insists upon it that I present Sir Everard Dominey.”
The latter did not attempt to conceal his perturbation.
“I need scarcely point out to you, sir,” he protested, “that any association between the Princess and myself is likely to largely increase the difficulties of my position here.”
The Ambassador sighed.
“I quite appreciate that,” he admitted. “Both Seaman and I have endeavoured to reason with her, but, as you are doubtless aware, the Princess is a woman of very strong will. She is also very powerfully placed here, and it is the urgent desire of the Court at Berlin to placate in every way the Hungarian nobility. You will understand, of course, that I speak from a political point of view only. I cannot ignore the fact of your unfortunate relations with the late Prince, but in considering the present position you will, I am sure, remember the greater interests.”
His visitor was silent for a moment.
“You say that the Princess is waiting here?”
“She is with my wife and asks for your escort home. My wife also looks forward to the pleasure of renewing her acquaintance with you.”
“I shall accept your Excellency's guidance in the matter,” Dominey decided.
The Princess Terniloff was a woman of world culture, an artist, and still an extremely attractive woman. She received the visitor whom her husband brought to her in a very charming little room furnished after the style of the simplest French period, and she did her best to relieve the strain of what she understood must be a somewhat trying moment.
“We are delighted to welcome you to London, Sir Everard Dominey,” she said, taking his hand, “and I hope that we shall often see you here. I want to present you to my cousin, who is interested in you, I must tell you frankly, because of your likeness to a very dear friend of hers. Stephanie, this is Sir Everard Dominey—the Princess Eiderstrom.”
Stephanie, who was seated upon the couch from which her cousin had just risen, held out her hand to Dominey, who made her a very low and formal bow. Her gown was of unrelieved black. Wonderful diamonds flashed around her neck, and she wore also a tiara fashioned after the Hungarian style, a little low on her forehead. Her manner and tone still indicated some measure of rebellion against the situation.
“You have forgiven me for my insistence this morning?” she asked. “It was hard for me to believe that you were not indeed the person for whom I mistook you.”
“Other people have spoken to me of the likeness,” Dominey replied. “It is a matter of regret to me that I can claim to be no more than a simple Norfolk baronet.”
“Without any previous experience of European Courts?”
“Without any at all.”
“Your German is wonderfully pure for an untravelled man.”
“Languages were the sole accomplishment I brought away from my misspent school days.”
“You are not going to bury yourself in Norfolk, Sir Everard?” the Princess Terniloff enquired.
“Norfolk is very near London these days,” Dominey replied, “and I have experienced more than my share of solitude during the last few years. I hope to spend a portion of my time here.”
“You must dine with us one night,” the Princess insisted, “and tell us about Africa. My husband would be so interested.”
“You are very kind.”
Stephanie rose slowly to her feet, leaned gracefully over and kissed her hostess on both cheeks, and submitted her hand to the Prince, who raised it to his lips. Then she turned to Dominey.
“Will you be so kind as to see me home?” she asked. “Afterwards, my car can take you on wherever you choose to go.”
“I shall be very happy,” Dominey assented.
He, too, made his farewells. A servant in the hall handed him his hat and coat, and he took his place in the car by Stephanie's side. She touched the electric switch as they glided off. The car was in darkness.
“I think,” she murmured, “that I could not have borne another moment of this juggling with words. Leopold—we are alone!”
He caught the flash of her jewels, the soft brilliance of her eyes as she leaned towards him. His voice sounded, even to himself, harsh and strident.
“You mistake, Princess. My name is not Leopold. I am Everard Dominey.”
“Oh, I know that you are very obstinate,” she said softly, “very obstinate and very devoted to your marvellous country, but you have a soul, Leopold; you know that there are human duties as great as any your country ever imposed upon you. You know what I look for from you, what I must find from you or go down into hell, ashamed and miserable.”
He felt his throat suddenly dry.
“Listen,” he muttered, “until the hour strikes, I must remain to you as to the world, alone or in a crowd—Everard Dominey. There is one way and one way only of carrying through my appointed task.”
She gave a little hysterical sob.
“Wait,” she begged. “I will answer you in a moment. Give me your hand.”
He opened the fingers which he had kept clenched together, and he felt the hot grip of her hand, holding his passionately, drawing it toward her until the fingers of her other hand, too, fell upon it. So she sat for several moments.
“Leopold,” she continued presently, “I understand. You are afraid that I shall betray our love. You have reason. I am full of impulses and passion, as you know, but I have restraint. What we are to one another when we are alone, no soul in this world need know. I will be careful. I swear it. I will never even look at you as though my heart ached for your notice, when we are in the presence of other people. You shall come and see me as seldom as you wish. I will receive you only as often as you say. But don't treat me like this. Tell me you have come back. Throw off this hideous mask, if it be only for a moment.”
He sat quite still, although her hands were tearing at his, her lips and eyes beseeching him.
“Whatever may come afterwards,” he pronounced inexorably, “until the time arrives I am Everard Dominey. I cannot take advantage of your feelings for Leopold Von Ragastein. He is not here. He is in Africa. Perhaps some day he will come back to you and be all that you wish.”
She flung his hands away. He felt her eyes burning into his, this time with something more like furious curiosity.
“Let me look at you,” she cried. “Let me be sure. Is this just some ghastly change, or are you an imposter? My heart is growing chilled. Are you the man I have waited for all these years? Are you the man to whom I have given my lips, for whose sake I offered up my reputation as a sacrifice, the man who slew my husband and left me?”
“I was exiled,” he reminded her, his own voice shaking with emotion. “You know that. So far as other things are concerned, I am exiled now. I am working out my expiation.”
She leaned back in her seat with an air of exhaustion. Her eyes closed. Then the car drove in through some iron gates and stopped in front of her door, which was immediately opened. A footman hurried out. She turned to Dominey.
“You will not enter,” she pleaded, “for a short time?”
“If you will permit me to pay you a visit, it will give me great pleasure,” he answered formally. “I will call, if I may, on my return from Norfolk.”
She gave him her hand with a sad smile.
“Let my people take you wherever you want to go,” she invited, “and remember,” she added, dropping her voice, “I do not admit defeat. This is not the last word between us.”
She disappeared in some state, escorted through the great front door of one of London's few palaces by an attractive major-domo and footman in the livery of her House. Dominey drove back to the Carlton, where in the lounge he found the band playing, crowds still sitting around, amongst whom Seaman was conspicuous, in his neat dinner clothes and with his cherubic air of inviting attention from prospective new acquaintances. He greeted Dominey enthusiastically.
“Come,” he exclaimed, “I am weary of solitude! I have seen scarcely a face that I recognise. My tongue is parched with inaction. I like to talk, and there has been no one to talk to. I might as well have opened up my little house in Forest Hill.”
“I'll talk to you if you like,” Dominey promised a little grimly, glancing at the clock and hastily ordering a whisky and soda. “I will begin by telling you this,” he added, lowering his tone. “I have discovered the greatest danger I shall have to face during my enterprise.”
“What is that?”
“A woman—the Princess Eiderstrom.”
Seaman lit one of his inevitable cigars and threw one of his short, fat legs over the other. He gazed for a moment with an air of satisfaction at his small foot, neatly encased in court shoes.
“You surprise me,” he confessed. “I have considered the matter. I cannot see any great difficulty.”
“Then you must be closing your eyes to it willfully,” Dominey retorted, “or else you are wholly ignorant of the Princess's temperament and disposition.”
“I believe I appreciate both,” Seaman replied, “but I still do not see any peculiar difficulty in the situation. As an English nobleman you have a perfect right to enjoy the friendship of the Princess Eiderstrom.”
“And I thought you were a man of sentiment!” Dominey scoffed. “I thought you understood a little of human nature. Stephanie Eiderstrom is Hungarian born and bred. Even race has never taught her self-restraint. You don't seriously suppose that after all these years, after all she has suffered—and she has suffered—she is going to be content with an emasculated form of friendship? I talk to you without reserve, Seaman. She has made it very plain to-night that she is going to be content with nothing of the sort.”
“What takes place between you in private,” Seaman began—
“Rubbish!” his companion interrupted. “The Princess is an impulsive, a passionate, a distinctly primitive woman, with a good deal of the wild animal in her still. Plots or political necessities are not likely to count a snap of the fingers with her.”
“But surely,” Seaman protested, “she must understand that your country has claimed you for a great work?”
Dominey shook his head.
“She is not a German,” he pointed out. “On the contrary, like a great many other Hungarians, I think she rather dislikes Germany and Germans. Her only concern is the personal question between us. She considers that every moment of the rest of my life should be devoted to her.”
“Perhaps it is as well,” Seaman remarked, “that you have arranged to go down to-morrow to Dominey. I will think out a scheme. Something must be done to pacify her.”
The lights were being put out. The two men rose a little unwillingly. Dominey felt singularly indisposed for sleep, but anxious at the same time to get rid of his companion. They strolled into the darkened hall of the hotel together.
“I will deal with the matter for you as well as I can,” Seaman promised. “To my mind, your greatest difficulty will be encountered to-morrow. You know what you have to deal with down at Dominey.”
Dominey's face was very set and grave.
“I am prepared,” he said.
Seaman still hesitated.
“Do you remember,” he asked, “that when we talked over your plans at Cape Town, you showed me a picture of—of Lady Dominey?”
“I remember.”
“May I have one more look at it?”
Dominey, with fingers that trembled a little, drew from the breast pocket of his coat a leather case, and from that a worn picture. The two men looked at it side by side beneath one of the electric standards which had been left burning. The face was the face of a girl, almost a child, and the great eyes seemed filled with a queer, appealing light. There was something of the same suggestion to be found in the lips, a certain helplessness, an appeal for love and protection to some stronger being.
Seaman turned away with a little grunt, and commented:
“Permitting myself to reassume for a moment or two the ordinary sentiments of an ordinary human being, I would sooner have a dozen of your Princesses to deal with than the original of that picture.”
CHAPTER VIII
“Your ancestral home,” Mr. Mangan observed, as the car turned the first bend in the grass-grown avenue and Dominey Hall came into sight. “Damned fine house, too!”
His companion made no reply. A storm had come up during the last few minutes, and, as though he felt the cold, he had dragged his hat over his eyes and turned his coat collar up to his ears. The house, with its great double front, was now clearly visible—the time-worn, Elizabethan, red brick outline that faced the park southwards, and the stone-supported, grim and weather-stained back which confronted the marshes and the sea. Mr. Mangan continued to make amiable conversation.
“We have kept the old place weathertight, somehow or other,” he said, “and I don't think you'll miss the timber much. We've taken it as far as possible from the outlying woods.”
“Any from the Black Wood?” Dominey asked, without turning his head.
“Not a stump,” he replied, “and for a very excellent reason. Not one of the woodmen would ever go near the place.”
“The superstition remains then?”
“The villagers are absolutely rabid about it. There are at least a dozen who declare that they have seen the ghost of Roger Unthank, and a score or more who will swear by all that is holy that they have heard his call at night.”
“Does he still select the park and the terrace outside the house for his midnight perambulations?” Dominey enquired.
The lawyer hesitated.
“The idea is, I believe,” he said, “that the ghost makes his way out from the wood and sits on the terrace underneath Lady Dominey's window. All bunkum, of course, but I can assure you that every servant and caretaker we've had there has given notice within a month. That is the sole reason why I haven't ventured to recommend long ago that you should get rid of Mrs. Unthank.”
“She is still in attendance upon Lady Dominey, then?”
“Simply because we couldn't get any one else to stay there,” the lawyer explained, “and her ladyship positively declines to leave the Hall. Between ourselves, I think it's time a change was made. We'll have a chat after dinner, if you've no objection.—You see, we've left all the trees in the park,” he went on, with an air of satisfaction. “Beautiful place, this, in the springtime. I was down last May for a night, and I never saw such buttercups in my life. The cows here were almost up to their knees in pasture, and the bluebells in the home woods were wonderful. The whole of the little painting colony down at Flankney turned themselves loose upon the place last spring.”
“Some of the old wall is down, I see,” Dominey remarked with a frown, as he gazed towards the enclosed kitchen garden.
Mr. Mangan was momentarily surprised.
“That wall has been down, to my knowledge, for twenty years,” he reminded his companion.
Dominey nodded. “I had forgotten,” he muttered.
“We wrote you, by the by,” the lawyer continued, “suggesting the sale of one or two of the pictures, to form a fund for repairs, but thank goodness you didn't reply! We'll have some workpeople here as soon as you've decided what you'd like done. I'm afraid,” he added, as they turned in through some iron gates and entered the last sweep in front of the house, “you won't find many familiar faces to welcome you. There's Loveybond, the gardener, whom you would scarcely remember, and Middleton, the head keeper, who has really been a godsend so far as the game is concerned. No one at all indoors, except—Mrs. Unthank.”
The car drew up at that moment in front of the great porch. There was nothing in the shape of a reception. They had even to ring the bell before the door was opened by a manservant sent down a few days previously from town. In the background, wearing a brown velveteen coat, with breeches and leggings of corduroy, stood an elderly man with white side whiskers and skin as brown as a piece of parchment, leaning heavily upon a long ash stick. Half a dozen maidservants, new importations, were visible in the background, and a second man was taking possession of the luggage. Mr. Mangan took charge of the proceedings.
“Middleton,” he said, resting his hand upon the old man's shoulder, “here's your master come back again. Sir Everard was very pleased to hear that you were still here; and you, Loveybond.”
The old man grasped the hand which Dominey stretched out with both of his.
“I'm right glad you're back again, Squire,” he said, looking at him with curious intentness, “and yet the words of welcome stick in my throat.”
“Sorry you feel like that about it, Middleton,” Dominey said pleasantly. “What is the trouble about my coming back?”
“That's no trouble, Squire,” the old man replied. “That's a joy—leastways to us. It's what it may turn out to be for you which makes one hold back like.”
Dominey drew himself more than ever erect—a commanding figure in the little group.
“You will feel better about it when we have had a day or two with the pheasants, Middleton,” he said reassuringly. “You have not changed much, Loveybond,” he added, turning to the man who had fallen a little into the background, very stiff and uncomfortable in his Sunday clothes.
“I thankee, Squire,” the latter replied a little awkwardly, with a motion of his hand towards his forehead. “I can't say the same for you, sir. Them furrin parts has filled you out and hardened you. I'll take the liberty of saying that I should never have recognised you, sir, and that's sure.”
“This is Parkins,” Mr. Mangan went on, pushing his way once more into the foreground, “the butler whom I engaged in London. And—”
There was a queer and instantaneous silence. The little group of maidservants, who had been exchanging whispered confidences as to their new master's appearance, were suddenly dumb. All eyes were turned in one direction. A woman whose advent had been unperceived, but who had evidently issued from one of the recesses of the hall, stood suddenly before them all. She was as thin as a lath, dressed in severe black, with grey hair brushed back from her head and not even a white collar at her neck. Her face was long and narrow, her features curiously large, her eyes filled with anger. She spoke very slowly, but with some trace in her intonation of a north-country dialect.
“There's no place in this house for you, Everard Dominey,” she said, standing in front of him as though to bar his progress. “I wrote last night to stop you, but you've shown indecent haste in coming. There's no place here for a murderer. Get back where you came from, back to your hiding.”
“My good woman!” Mangan gasped. “This is really too much!”
“I've not come to bandy words with lawyers,” the woman retorted. “I've come to speak to him. Can you face me, Everard Dominey, you who murdered my son and made a madwoman of your wife?”
The lawyer would have answered her, but Dominey waved him aside.
“Mrs. Unthank,” he said sternly, “return to your duties at once, and understand that this house is mine, to enter or leave when I choose.”
She was speechless for a moment, amazed at the firmness of his words.
“The house may be yours, Sir Everard Dominey,” she said threateningly, “but there's one part of it at least in which you won't dare to show yourself.”
“You forget yourself, woman,” he replied coldly. “Be so good as to return to your mistress at once, announce my coming, and say that I wait only for her permission before presenting myself in her apartments.”
The woman laughed, unpleasantly, horribly. Her eyes were fixed upon Dominey curiously.
“Those are brave words,” she said. “You've come back a harder man. Let me look at you.”
She moved a foot or two to where the light was better. Very slowly a frown developed upon her forehead. The longer she looked, the less assured she became.
“There are things in your face I miss,” she muttered.
Mr. Mangan was glad of an opportunity of asserting himself.
“The fact is scarcely important, Mrs. Unthank,” he said angrily. “If you will allow me to give you a word of advice, you will treat your master with the respect to which his position here entitles him.”
Once more the woman blazed up.
“Respect! What respect have I for the murderer of my son? Respect! Well, if he stays here against my bidding, perhaps her ladyship will show him what respect means.”
She turned around and disappeared. Every one began bustling about the luggage and talking at once. Mr. Mangan took his patron's arm and led him across the hall.
“My dear Sir Everard,” he said anxiously, “I am most distressed that this should have occurred. I thought that the woman would probably be sullen, but I had no idea that she would dare to attempt such an outrageous proceeding.”
“She is still, I presume, the only companion whom Lady Dominey will tolerate?” Dominey enquired with a sigh.
“I fear so,” the lawyer admitted. “Nevertheless we must see Doctor Harrison in the morning. It must be understood distinctly that if she is suffered to remain, she adopts an entirely different attitude. I never heard anything so preposterous in all my life. I shall pay her a visit myself after dinner.—You will feel quite at home here in the library, Sir Everard,” Mr. Mangan went on, throwing open the door of a very fine apartment on the seaward side of the house. “Grand view from these windows, especially since we've had a few of the trees cut down. I see that Parkins has set out the sherry. Cocktails, I'm afraid, are an institution you will have to inaugurate down here. You'll be grateful to me when I tell you one thing, Sir Everard. We've been hard pressed more than once, but we haven't sold a single bottle of wine out of the cellars.”
Dominey accepted the glass of sherry which the lawyer had poured out but made no movement towards drinking it. He seemed during the last few minutes to have been wrapped in a brown study.
“Mangan,” he asked a little abruptly, “is it the popular belief down here that I killed Roger Unthank?”
The lawyer set down the decanter and coughed.
“A plain answer,” Dominey insisted.
Mr. Mangan adapted himself to the situation. He was beginning to understand his client.
“I am perfectly certain, Sir Everard,” he confessed, “that there isn't a soul in these parts who isn't convinced of it. They believe that there was a fight and that you had the best of it.”
“Forgive me,” Dominey continued, “if I seem to ask unnecessary questions. Remember that I spent the first portion of my exile in Africa in a very determined effort to blot out the memory of everything that had happened to me earlier in life. So that is the popular belief?”
“The popular belief seems to match fairly well with the facts,” Mr. Mangan declared, wielding the decanter again in view of his client's more reasonable manner. “At the time of your unfortunate visit to the Hall Miss Felbrigg was living practically alone at the Vicarage after her uncle's sudden death there, with Mrs. Unthank as housekeeper. Roger Unthank's infatuation for her was patent to the whole neighbourhood and a source of great annoyance in Miss Felbrigg. I am convinced that at no time did Lady Dominey give the young man the slightest encouragement.”
“Has any one ever believed the contrary?” Dominey demanded.
“Not a soul,” was the emphatic reply. “Nevertheless, when you came down, fell in love with Miss Felbrigg and carried her off, every one felt that there would be trouble.”
“Roger Unthank was a lunatic,” Dominey pronounced deliberately. “His behaviour from the first was the behaviour of a madman.”
“The Eugene Aram type of village schoolmaster gradually drifting into positive insanity,” Mangan acquiesced. “So far, every one is agreed. The mystery began when he came back from his holidays and heard the news.”
“The sequel was perfectly simple,” Dominey observed. “We met at the north end of the Black Wood one evening, and he attacked me like a madman. I suppose I had to some extent the best of it, but when I got back to the Hall my arm was broken, I was covered with blood, and half unconscious. By some cruel stroke of fortune, almost the first person I saw was Lady Dominey. The shock was too much for her—she fainted—and—”
“And has never been quite herself since,” the lawyer concluded. “Most tragic!”
“The cruel part of it was,” Dominey went on, standing before the window, his hands clasped behind his back, “that my wife from that moment developed a homicidal mania against me—I, who had fought in the most absolute self-defence. That was what drove me out of the country, Mangan—not the fear of being arrested for having caused the death of Roger Unthank. I'd have stood my trial for that at any moment. It was the other thing that broke me up.”
“Quite so,” Mangan murmured sympathetically. “As a matter of fact, you were perfectly safe from arrest, as it happened. The body of Roger Unthank has never been found from that day to this.”
“If it had—”
“You must have been charged with either murder or manslaughter.”
Dominey abandoned his post at the window and raised his glass of sherry to his lips. The tragical side of these reminiscences seemed, so far as he was concerned, to have passed.
“I suppose,” he remarked, “it was the disappearance of the body which has given rise to all this talk as to his spirit still inhabiting the Black Wood.”
“Without a doubt,” the lawyer acquiesced. “The place had a bad name already, as you know. As it is, I don't suppose there's a villager here would cross the park in that direction after dark.”
Dominey glanced at his watch and led the way from the room.
“After dinner,” he promised, “I'll tell you a few West African superstitions which will make our local one seem anemic.”
CHAPTER IX
“I certainly offer you my heartiest congratulations upon your cellars, Sir Everard,” his guest said, as he sipped his third glass of port that evening. “This is the finest glass of seventy I've drunk for a long time, and this new fellow I've sent you down—Parkins—tells me there's any quantity of it.”
“It has had a pretty long rest,” Dominey observed.
“I was looking through the cellar-book before dinner,” the lawyer went on, “and I see that you still have forty-seven and forty-eight, and a small quantity of two older vintages. Something ought to be done about those.”
“We will try one of them to-morrow night,” Dominey suggested. “We might spend half an hour or so in the cellars, if we have any time to spare.”
“And another half an hour,” Mr. Mangan said gravely, “I should like to spend in interviewing Mrs. Unthank. Apart from any other question, I do not for one moment believe that she is the proper person to be entrusted with the care of Lady Dominey. I made up my mind to speak to you on this subject, Sir Everard, as soon as we had arrived here.”
“Mrs. Unthank was old Mr. Felbrigg's housekeeper and my wife's nurse when she was a child,” Dominey reminded his companion. “Whatever her faults may be, I believe she is devoted to Lady Dominey.”
“She may be devoted to your wife,” the lawyer admitted, “but I am convinced that she is your enemy. The situation doesn't seem to me to be consistent. Mrs. Unthank is firmly convinced that, whether in fair fight or not, you killed her son. Lady Dominey believes that, too, and it was the sight of you after the fight that sent her insane. I cannot but believe that it would be far better for Lady Dominey to have some one with her unconnected with this unfortunate chapter of your past.”
“We will consult Doctor Harrison to-morrow,” Dominey said. “I am very glad you came down with me, Mangan,” he went on, after a minute's hesitation. “I find it very difficult to get back into the atmosphere of those days. I even find it hard sometimes,” he added, with a curious little glance across the table, “to believe that I am the same man.”
“Not so hard as I have done more than once,” Mr. Mangan confessed.
“Tell me exactly in what respects you consider me changed?” Dominey insisted.
“You seem to have lost a certain pliability, or perhaps I ought to call it looseness of disposition,” he admitted. “There are many things connected with the past which I find it almost impossible to associate with you. For a trifling instance,” he went on, with a slight smile, inclining his head towards his host's untasted glass. “You don't drink port like any Dominey I ever knew.”
“I'm afraid that I never acquired the taste for port,” Dominey observed.
The lawyer gazed at him with raised eyebrows.
“Not acquired the taste for port,” he repeated blankly.
“I should have said reacquired,” Dominey hastened to explain. “You see, in the bush we drank a simply frightful amount of spirits, and that vitiates the taste for all wine.”
The lawyer glanced enviously at his host's fine bronzed complexion and clear eyes.
“You haven't the appearance of ever having drunk anything, Sir Everard,” he observed frankly. “One finds it hard to believe the stories that were going about ten or fifteen years ago.”
“The Dominey constitution, I suppose!”
The new butler entered the room noiselessly and came to his master's chair.
“I have served coffee in the library, sir,” he announced. “Mr. Middleton, the gamekeeper, has just called, and asks if he could have a word with you before he goes to bed to-night, sir. He seems in a very nervous and uneasy state.”
“He can come to the library at once,” Dominey directed; “that is, if you are ready for your coffee, Mangan.”
“Indeed I am,” the lawyer assented, rising. “A great treat, that wine. One thing the London restaurants can't give us. Port should never be drunk away from the place where it was laid down.”
The two men made their way across the very fine hall, the walls of which had suffered a little through lack of heating, into the library, and seated themselves in easy-chairs before the blazing log fire. Parkins silently served them with coffee and brandy. He had scarcely left the room before there was a timid knock and Middleton made his somewhat hesitating entrance.
“Come in and close the door,” Dominey directed. “What is it, Middleton? Parkins says you wish to speak to me.”
The man came hesitatingly forward. He was obviously distressed and uneasy, and found speech difficult. His face glistened with the rain which had found its way, too, in long streaks down his velveteen coat. His white hair was wind-tossed and disarranged.
“Bad night,” Dominey remarked.
“It's to save its being a worse one that I'm here, Squire,” the old man replied hoarsely. “I've come to ask you a favour and to beg you to grant it for your own sake. You'll not sleep in the oak room to-night?”
“And why not?” Dominey asked.
“It's next her ladyship's.”
“Well?”
The old man was obviously perturbed, but his master, as though of a purpose, refused to help him. He glanced at Mangan and mumbled to himself.
“Say exactly what you wish to, Middleton,” Dominey invited. “Mr. Mangan and his father and grandfather have been solicitors to the estate for a great many years. They know all our family history.”
“I can't get rightly into touch with you, Squire, and that's a fact,” Middleton went on despairingly. “The shape of you seems larger and your voice harder. I don't seem to be so near to you as I'd wished, to say what's in my heart.”
“I have had a rough time Middleton,” Dominey reminded him. “No wonder I have changed! Never mind, speak to me just as man to man.”
“It was I who first met you, Squire,” the old man went on, “when you tottered home that night across the park, with your arm hanging helplessly by your side, and the blood streaming down your face and clothes, and the red light in your eyes—murderous fire, they called it. I heard her ladyship go into hysterics. I saw her laugh and sob like a maniac, and, God help us! that's what she's been ever since.”
The two men were silent. Middleton had raised his voice, speaking with fierce excitement. It was obvious that he had only paused for breath. He had more to say.
“I was by your side, Squire,” he went on, “when her ladyship caught up the knife and ran at you, and, as you well know, it was I, seizing her from behind, that saved a double tragedy that night, and it was I who went for the doctor the next morning, when she'd stolen into your room in the night and missed your throat by a bare inch. I heard her call to you, heard her threat. It was a madwoman's threat, Squire, but her ladyship is a madwoman at this moment, and with a knife in her hand you'll never be safe in this house.”
“We must see,” Dominey said quietly, “that she is not allowed to get possession of any weapon.”
“Aye! Make sure of that,” Middleton scoffed, “with Mother Unthank by her side! Her ladyship's mad because of the horror of that night, but Mother Unthank is mad with hate, and there isn't a week passes,” the old man went on, his voice dropping lower and his eyes burning, “that Roger Unthank's spirit don't come and howl for your blood beneath their window. If you stay here this night, Squire, come over and sleep in the little room they've got ready for you on the other side of the house.”
Mr. Mangan had lost his smooth, after-dinner appearance. His face was rumpled, and his coffee was growing cold. This was a very different thing from the vague letters and rumours which had reached him from time to time and which he had put out of his mind with all the contempt of the materialist.
“It is very good of you to warn me, Middleton,” Dominey said, “but I can lock my door, can I not?”
“Lock the door of the oak room!” was the scornful reply. “And what good would that do? You know well enough that the wall's double on three sides, and there are more secret entrances than even I know of. The oak room's not for you this night, Squire. It's hoping to get you there that's keeping them quiet.”
“Tell us what you mean, Middleton,” the lawyer asked, with ill-assumed indifference, “when you spoke of the howling of Roger Unthank's spirit?”
The old man turned patiently around.
“Just that, sir,” he replied. “It's round the house most weeks. Except for me odd nights, and Mrs. Unthank, there's been scarcely a servant would sleep in the Hall for years. Some of the maids they do come up from the village, but back they go before nightfall, and until morning there isn't a living soul would cross the path—no, not for a hundred pounds.”
“A howl, you call it?” Mr. Mangan observed.
“That's mostly like a dog that's hurt itself,” Middleton explained equably, “like a dog, that is, with a touch of human in its throat, as we've all heard in our time, sir. You'll hear it yourself, sir, maybe to-night or to-morrow night.”
“You've heard it then, Middleton?” his master asked.
“Why, surely, sir,” the old man replied in surprise. “Most weeks for the last ten years.”
“Haven't you ever got up and gone out to see what it was?”
The old man shook his head.
“But I knew right well what that was, sir,” he said, “and I'm not one for looking on spirits. Spirits there are that walk this world, as we well know, and the spirit of Roger Unthank walks from between the Black Wood and those windows, come every week of the year. But I'm not for looking at him. There's evil comes of that. I turn over in my bed, and I stop my ears, but I've never yet raised a blind.”
“Tell me, Middleton,” Dominey asked, “is Lady Dominey terrified at these—er—visitations?”
“That I can't rightly say, sir. Her ladyship's always sweet and gentle, with kind words on her lips for every one, but there's the terror there in her eyes that was lit that night when you staggered into the hall, Squire, and I've never seen it properly quenched yet, so to speak. She carries fear with her, but whether it's the fear of seeing you again, or the fear of Roger Unthank's spirit, I could not tell.”
Dominey seemed suddenly to become possessed of a strange desire to thrust the whole subject away. He dismissed the old man kindly but a little abruptly, accompanying him to the corridor which led to the servants' quarters and talking all the time about the pheasants. When he returned, he found that his guest had emptied his second glass of brandy and was surreptitiously mopping his forehead.
“That,” the latter remarked, “is the class of old retainer who lives too long. If I were a Dominey of the Middle Ages, I think a stone around his neck and the deepest well would be the sensible way of dealing with him. He made me feel positively uncomfortable.”
“I noticed it,” Dominey remarked, with a faint smile. “I'm not going to pretend that it was a pleasant conversation myself.”
“I've heard some ghost stories,” Mangan went on, “but a spook that comes and howls once a week for ten years takes some beating.”
Dominey poured himself out a glass of brandy with a steady hand.
“You've been neglecting things here, Mangan,” he complained. “You ought to have come down and exorcised that ghost. We shall have those smart maidservants of yours off to-morrow, I suppose, unless you and I can get a little ghost-laying in first.”
Mr. Mangan began to feel more comfortable. The brandy and the warmth of the burning logs were creeping into his system.
“By the by, Sir Everard,” he enquired, a little later on, “where are you going to sleep to-night?”
Dominey stretched himself out composedly.
“There is obviously only one place for me,” he replied. “I can't disappoint any one. I shall sleep in the oak room.”
CHAPTER X
For the first few tangled moments of nightmare, slowly developing into a live horror, Dominey fancied himself back in Africa, with the hand of an enemy upon his throat. Then a rush of awakened memories—the silence of the great house, the mysterious rustling of the heavy hangings around the black oak four-poster on which he lay, the faint pricking of something deadly at his throat—these things rolled back the curtain of unreality, brought him acute and painful consciousness of a situation almost appalling. He opened his eyes, and although a brave and callous man he lay still, paralysed with the fear which forbids motion. The dim light of a candle, recently lit, flashed upon the bodkin-like dagger held at his throat. He gazed at the thin line of gleaming steel, fascinated. Already his skin had been broken, a few drops of blood were upon the collar of his pyjamas. The hand which held that deadly, assailing weapon—small, slim, very feminine, curving from somewhere behind the bed curtain—belonged to some unseen person. He tried to shrink farther back upon the pillow. The hand followed him, displaying glimpses now of a soft, white-sleeved arm. He lay quite still, the muscles of his right arm growing tenser as he prepared for a snatch at those cruel fingers. Then a voice came,—a slow, feminine and rather wonderful voice.
“If you move,” it said, “you will die. Remain quite still.”
Dominey was fully conscious now, his brain at work, calculating his chances with all the cunning of the trained hunter who seeks to avoid death. Reluctantly he was compelled to realise that no movement of his could be quick enough to prevent the driving of that thin stiletto into his throat, if his hidden assailant should keep her word. So he lay still.
“Why do you want to kill me?” he asked, a little tensely.
There was no reply, yet somehow he knew that he was being watched. Ever so slightly those curtains around which the arm had come, were being parted. Through the chink some one was looking at him. The thought came that he might call out for help, and once more his unseen enemy read his thought.
“You must be very quiet,” the voice said,—that voice which it was difficult for him to believe was not the voice of a child. “If you even speak above a whisper, it will be the end. I wish to look at you.”
A little wider the crack opened, and then he began to feel hope. The hand which held the stiletto was shaking, he heard something which sounded like quick breathing from behind the curtains—the breathing of a woman astonished or terrified—and then, so suddenly that for several seconds he could not move or take advantage of the circumstance, the hand with its cruel weapon was withdrawn around the curtain and a woman began to laugh, softly at first, and then with a little hysterical sob thrusting its way through that incongruous note of mirth.
He lay upon the bed as though mesmerised, finding at his first effort that his limbs refused their office, as might the limbs of one lying under the thrall of a nightmare. The laugh died away, there was a sound like a scraping upon the wall, the candle was suddenly blown out. Then his nerve began to return and with it his control over his limbs. He crawled to the side of the bed remote from the curtains, stole to the little table on which he had left his revolver and an electric torch, snatched at them, and, with the former in his right hand, flashed a little orb of light into the shadows of the great apartment. Once more something like terror seized him. The figure which had been standing by the side of his bed had vanished. There was no hiding place in view. Every inch of the room was lit up by the powerful torch he carried, and, save for himself, the room was empty. The first moment of realisation was chill and unnerving. Then the slight smarting of the wound at his throat became convincing proof to him that there was nothing supernatural about this visit. He lit up half-a-dozen of the candles distributed about the place and laid down his torch. He was ashamed to find that his forehead was dripping with perspiration.
“One of the secret passages, of course,” he muttered to himself, stooping for a moment to examine the locked, folding doors which separated his room from the adjoining one. “Perhaps, when one reflects, I have run unnecessary risks.”
Dominey was standing at the window, looking out at the tumbled grey waters of the North Sea, when Parkins brought him hot water and tea in the morning. He thrust his feet into slippers and held out his arms for a dressing-gown.
“Find out where the nearest bathroom is, Parkins,” he ordered, “and prepare it. I have quite forgotten my way about here.”
“Very good, sir.”
The man was motionless for a moment, staring at the blood on his master's pyjamas. Dominey glanced down at it and turned the dressing-gown up to his throat.
“I had a slight accident this morning,” he remarked carelessly. “Any ghost alarms last light?”
“None that I heard of, sir,” the man replied. “I am afraid we should have difficulty in keeping the young women from London, if they heard what I heard the night of my arrival.”
“Very terrible, was it?” Dominey asked with a smile.
Parkins' expression remained immovable. There was in his tone, however, a mute protest against his master's levity.
“The cries were the most terrible I have ever heard, sir,” he said. “I am not a nervous person, but I found them most disturbing.”
“Human or animal?”
“A mixture of both, I should say, sir.”
“You should camp out for the night on the skirts of an African forest,” Dominey remarked. “There you get a whole orchestra of wild animals, every one of them trying to freeze your blood up.”
“I was out in South Africa during the Boer War, sir,” Parkins replied, “and I went big game hunting with my master afterwards. I do not think that any animal was ever born in Africa with so terrifying a cry as we heard the night before last.”
“We must look into the matter,” Dominey muttered.
“I have already prepared a bath, sir, at the end of the corridor,” the man announced. “If you will allow me, I will show you the way.”
Dominey, when he descended about an hour later, found his guest awaiting him in the smaller dining-room, which looked out eastwards towards the sea, a lofty apartment with great windows and with an air of faded splendour which came from the ill-cared-for tapestries, hanging in places from the wall. Mr. Mangan had, contrary to his expectations, slept well and was in excellent spirits. The row of silver dishes upon the sideboard inspired him with an added cheerfulness.
“So there were no ghosts walking last night?” he remarked, as he took his place at the table. “Wonderful thing this absolute quiet is after London. Give you my word, I never heard a sound from the moment my head touched the pillow until I woke a short while ago.”
Dominey returned from the sideboard, carrying also a well-filled plate.
“I had a pretty useful night's rest myself,” he observed.
Mangan raised his eyeglass and gazed at his host's throat.
“Cut yourself?” he queried.
“Razor slipped,” Dominey told him. “You get out of the use of those things in Africa.”
“You've managed to give yourself a nasty gash,” Mr. Mangan observed curiously.
“Parkins is going to send up for a new set of safety razors for me,” Dominey announced. “About our plans for the day,—I've ordered the car for two-thirty this afternoon, if that suits you. We can look around the place quietly this morning. Mr. Johnson is sleeping over at a farmhouse near here. We shall pick him up en route. And I have told Lees, the bailiff, to come with us too.”
Mr. Mangan nodded his approval.
“Upon my word,” he confessed, “it will be a joy to me to go and see some of these fellows without having to put 'em off about repairs and that sort of thing. Johnson has had the worst of it, poor chap, but there are one or two of them took it into their heads to come up to London and worry me at the office.”
“I intend that there shall be no more dissatisfaction amongst my tenants.”
Mr. Mangan set off for another prowl towards the sideboard.
“Satisfied tenants you never will get in Norfolk,” he declared. “I must admit, though, that some of them have had cause to grumble lately. There's a fellow round by Wells who farms nearly eight hundred acres—”
He broke off in his speech. There was a knock at the door, not an ordinary knock at all, but a measured, deliberate tapping, three times repeated.
“Come in,” Dominey called out.
Mrs. Unthank entered, severer, more unattractive than ever in the hard morning light. She came to the end of the table, facing the place where Dominey was seated.
“Good morning, Mrs. Unthank,” he said.
She ignored the greeting.
“I am the bearer of a message,” she announced.
“Pray deliver it,” Dominey replied.
“Her ladyship would be glad for you to visit her in her apartment at once.”
Dominey leaned back in his chair. His eyes were fixed upon the face of the woman whose antagonism to himself was so apparent. She stood in the path of a long gleam of morning sunlight. The wrinkles in her face, her hard mouth, her cold, steely eyes were all clearly revealed.
“I am not at all sure,” he said, with a purpose in the words, “that any further meeting between Lady Dominey and myself is at present desirable.”
If he had thought to disturb this messenger by his suggestion, he was disappointed.
“Her ladyship desires me to assure you,” she added, with a note of contempt in her tone, “that you need be under no apprehension.”
Dominey admitted defeat and poured himself out some more coffee. Neither of the two noticed that his fingers were trembling.
“Her ladyship is very considerate,” he said. “Kindly say that I shall follow you in a few minutes.”
Dominey, following within a very few minutes of his summons, was ushered into an apartment large and sombrely elegant, an apartment of faded white and gold walls, of chandeliers glittering with lustres, of Louise Quinze furniture, shabby but priceless. To his surprise, although he scarcely noticed it at the time, Mrs. Unthank promptly disappeared. He was from the first left alone with the woman whom he had come to visit.
She was sitting up on her couch and watching his approach. A woman? Surely only a child, with pale cheeks, large, anxious eyes, and masses of brown hair brushed back from her forehead. After all, was he indeed a strong man, vowed to great things? There was a queer feeling in his throat, almost a mist before his eyes. She seemed so fragile, so utterly, sweetly pathetic. And all the time there was the strange light, or was it want of light, in those haunting eyes. His speech of greeting was never spoken.
“So you have come to see me, Everard,” she said, in a broken tone. “You are very brave.”
He possessed himself of her hand, the hand which a few hours ago had held a dagger to his throat, and kissed the waxenlike fingers. It fell to her side like a lifeless thing. Then she raised it and began rubbing softly at the place where his lips had fallen.
“I have come to see you at your bidding,” he replied, “and for my pleasure.”
“Pleasure!” she murmured, with a ghastly little smile. “You have learnt to control your words, Everard. You have slept here and you live. I have broken my word. I wonder why?”
“Because,” he pleaded, “I have not deserved that you should seek my life.”
“That sounds strangely,” she reflected. “Doesn't it say somewhere in the Bible—'A life for a life'? You killed Roger Unthank.”
“I have killed other men since in self-defence,” Dominey told her. “Sometimes it comes to a man that he must slay or be slain. It was Roger Unthank—”
“I shall not talk about him any longer,” she decided quite calmly. “The night before last, his spirit was calling to me below my window. He wants me to go down into Hell and live with him. The very thought is horrible.”
“Come,” Dominey said, “we shall speak of other things. You must tell me what presents I can buy you. I have come back from Africa rich.”
“Presents?”
For a single wonderful moment, hers was the face of a child who had been offered toys. Her smile of anticipation was delightful, her eyes had lost that strange vacancy. Then, before he could say another word, it all came back again.
“Listen to me,” she said. “This is important. I have sent for you because I do not understand why, quite suddenly last night, after I had made up my mind, I lost the desire to kill you. It is gone now. I am not sure about myself any longer. Draw your chair nearer to mine. Or no, come to my side, here at the other end of the sofa.”
She moved her skirts to make room for him. When he sat down, he felt a strange trembling through all his limbs.
“Perhaps,” she went on, “I shall break my oath. Indeed, I have already broken it. Let me look at you, my husband. It is a strange thing to own after all these years—a husband.”
Dominey felt as though he were breathing an atmosphere of turgid and poisoned sweetness. There was a flavour of unreality about the whole situation,—the room, this child woman, her beauty, her deliberate, halting speech and the strange things she said.
“You find me changed?” he asked.
“You are very wonderfully changed. You look stronger, you are perhaps better-looking, yet there is something gone from your face which I thought one never lost.”
“You,” he said cautiously, “are more beautiful than ever, Rosamund.”
She laughed a little drearily.
“Of what use has my beauty been to me, Everard, since you came to my little cottage and loved me and made me love you, and took me away from Dour Roger? Do you remember the school chidden used to call him Dour Roger?—But that does not matter. Do you know, Everard, that since you left me my feet have not passed outside these gardens?”
“That can be altered when you wish,” he said quickly. “You can visit where you will. You can have a motor-car, even a house in town. I shall bring some wonderful doctors here, and they will make you quite strong again.”
Her large eyes were lifted almost piteously to his.
“But how can I leave here?” she asked plaintively. “Every week, sometimes oftener, he calls to me. If I went away, his spirit would break loose and follow me. I must be here to wave my hand; then he goes away.”
Dominey was conscious once more of that strange and most unexpected fit of emotion. He was unrecognisable even to himself. Never before in his life had his heart beaten as it was beating now. His eyes, too, were hot. He had travelled around the word in search of new things, only to find them in this strange, faded chamber, side by side with this suffering woman. Nevertheless, he said quietly:
“We must send you some place where the people are kinder and where life is pleasanter. Perhaps you love music and to see beautiful pictures. I think that we must try and keep you from thinking.”
She sighed in a perplexed fashion.
“I wish that I could get it out of my blood that I want to kill you. Then you could take me right away. Other married people have lived together and hated each other. Why shouldn't we? We may forget even to hate.”
Dominey staggered to his feet, walked to a window, threw it open and leaned out for a moment. Then he closed it and came back. This new element in the situation had been a shock to him. All the time she was watching him composedly.
“Well?” she asked, with a strange little smile. “What do you say? Would you like to hold as a wife's the hand which frightened you so last night?”
She held it out to him, soft and warm. Her fingers even returned the pressure of his. She looked at him pleasantly, and once more he felt like a man who has wandered into a strange country and has lost his bearings.
“I want you so much to be happy,” he said hoarsely, “but you are not strong yet, Rosamund. We cannot decide anything in a hurry.”
“How surprised you are to find that I am willing to be nice to you!” she murmured. “But why not? You cannot know why I have so suddenly changed my mind about you—and I have changed it. I have seen the truth these few minutes. There is a reason, Everard, why I should not kill you.”
“What is it?” he demanded.
She shook her head with all the joy of a child who keeps a secret.
“You are clever,” she said. “I will leave you to find it out. I am excited now, and I want you to go away for a little time. Please send Mrs. Unthank to me.”
The prospect of release was a strange relief, mingled still more strangely with regret. He lingered over her hand.
“If you walk in your sleep to-night, then,” he begged, “you will leave your dagger behind?”
“I have told you,” she answered, as though surprised, “that I have abandoned my intention. I shall not kill you. Even though I may walk in my sleep—and sometimes the nights are so long—it will not be your death I seek.”
CHAPTER XI
Dominey left the room like a man in a dream, descended the stairs to his own part of the house, caught up a hat and stick and strode out into the sea mist which was fast enveloping the gardens. There was all the chill of the North Pole in that ice-cold cloud of vapour, but nevertheless his forehead remained hot, his pulses burning. He passed out of the postern gate which led from the walled garden on to a broad marsh, with dikes running here and there, and lapping tongues of sea water creeping in with the tide. He made his way seaward with uncertain steps until he reached a rough and stony road; here he hesitated for a moment, looked about him, and then turned back at right angles. Soon he came to a little village, a village of ancient cottages, with seasoned, red-brick tiles, trim little patches of garden, a church embowered with tall elm trees, a triangular green at the cross-roads. On one side a low, thatched building,—the Dominey Arms; on another, an ancient, square stone house, on which was a brass plate. He went over and read the name, rang the bell, and asked the trim maidservant who answered it, for the doctor. Presently, a man of youthful middle-age presented himself in the surgery and bowed. Dominey was for a moment at a loss.
“I came to see Doctor Harrison,” he ventured.
“Doctor Harrison retired from practice some years ago,” was the courteous reply. “I am his nephew. My name is Stillwell.”
“I understood that Doctor Harrison was still in the neighbourhood,” Dominey said. “My name is Dominey—Sir Everard Dominey.”
“I guessed as much,” the other replied. “My uncle lives with me here, and to tell you the truth he was hoping that you would come and see him. He retains one patient only,” Doctor Stillwell added, in a graver tone. “You can imagine who that would be.”
His caller bowed. “Lady Dominey, I presume.”
The young doctor opened the door and motioned to his guest to precede him.
“My uncle has his own little apartment on the other side of the house,” he said. “You must let me take you to him.”
They moved across the pleasant white stone hall into a small apartment with French windows leading out to a flagged terrace and tennis lawn. An elderly man, broad-shouldered, with weather-beaten face, grey hair, and of somewhat serious aspect, looked around from the window before which he was standing examining a case of fishing flies.
“Uncle, I have brought an old friend in to see you,” his nephew announced.
The doctor glanced expectantly at Dominey, half moved forward as though to greet him, then checked himself and shook his head doubtfully.
“You certainly remind me very much of an old friend, sir,” he said, “but I can see now that you are not he. I do not believe that I have ever seen you before in my life.”
There was a moment's somewhat tense silence. Then Dominey advanced a little stiffly and held out his hand.
“Come, Doctor,” he said. “I can scarcely have changed as much as all that. Even these years of strenuous life—”
“You mean to tell me that I am speaking to Everard Dominey?” the doctor interposed.
“Without a doubt!”
The doctor shook hands coolly. His was certainly not the enthusiastic welcome of an old family attendant to the representative of a great family.
“I should certainly never have recognised you,” he confessed.
“My presence here is nevertheless indisputable,” Dominey continued. “Still attracted by your old pastime, I see, Doctor?”
“I have only taken up fly fishing,” the other replied drily, “since I gave up shooting.”
There was another somewhat awkward pause, which the younger man endeavoured to bridge over.
“Fishing, shooting, golf,” he said; “I really don't know what we poor medical practitioners would do in the country without sport.”
“I shall remind you of that later,” Dominey observed. “I am told that the shooting is one of the only glories that has not passed away from Dominey.”
“I shall look forward to the reminder,” was the prompt response.
His uncle, who had been bending once more over the case of flies, turned abruptly around.
“Arthur,” he said, addressing his nephew, “you had better start on your round. I dare say Sir Everard would like to speak to me privately.”
“I wish to speak to you certainly,” Dominey admitted, “but only professionally. There is no necessity—”
“I am late already, if you will excuse me,” Doctor Stillwell interrupted. “I will be getting on. You must excuse my uncle, Sir Everard,” he added in a lower tone, drawing him a little towards the door, “if his manners are a little gruff. He is devoted to Lady Dominey, and I sometimes think that he broods over her case too much.”
Dominey nodded and turned back into the room to find the doctor, his hands in his old-fashioned breeches pockets, eyeing him steadfastly.
“I find it very hard to believe,” he said a little curtly, “that you are really Everard Dominey.”
“I am afraid you will have to accept me as a fact, nevertheless.”
“Your present appearance,” the old man continued, eyeing him appraisingly, “does not in any way bear out the description I had of you some years ago. I was told that you had become a broken-down drunkard.”
“The world is full of liars,” Dominey said equably. “You appear to have met with one, at least.”
“You have not even,” the doctor persisted, “the appearance of a man who has been used to excesses of any sort.”
“Good old stock, ours,” his visitor observed carelessly. “Plenty of two-bottle men behind my generation.”
“You have also gained courage since the days when you fled from England. You slept at the Hall last night?”
“Where else? I also, if you want to know, occupied my own bedchamber—with results,” Dominey added, throwing his head a little back, to display the scar on his throat, “altogether insignificant.”
“That's just your luck,” the doctor declared. “You've no right to have gone there without seeing me; no right, after all that has passed, to have even approached your wife.”
“You seem rather a martinet as regards my domestic affairs,” Dominey observed.
“That's because I know your history,” was the blunt reply.
Uninvited Dominey seated himself in an easy-chair.
“You were never my friend, Doctor,” he said. “Let me suggest that we conduct this conversation on a purely professional basis.”
“I was never your friend,” came the retort, “because I have known you always as a selfish brute; because you were married to the sweetest woman on God's earth, gave up none of your bad habits, frightened her into insanity by reeling home with another man's blood on your hands, and then stayed away for over ten years instead of making an effort to repair the mischief you had done.”
“This,” observed Dominey, “is history, dished up in a somewhat partial fashion. I repeat my suggestion that we confine our conversation to the professional.”
“This is my house,” the other rejoined, “and you came to see me. I shall say exactly what I like to you, and if you don't like it you can get out. If it weren't for Lady Dominey's sake, you shouldn't have passed this threshold.”
“Then for her sake,” Dominey suggested in a softer tone, “can't you forget how thoroughly you disapprove of me? I am here now with only one object: I want you to point out to me any way in which we can work together for the improvement of my wife's health.”
“There can be no question of a partnership between us.”
“You refuse to help?”
“My help isn't worth a snap of the fingers. I have done all I can for her physically. She is a perfectly sound woman. The rest depends upon you, and you alone, and I am not very hopeful about it.”
“Upon me?” Dominey repeated, a little taken aback.
“Fidelity,” the doctor grunted, “is second nature with all good women. Lady Dominey is a good woman, and she is no exception to the rule. Her brain is starved because her heart is aching for love. If she could believe in your repentance and reform, if any atonement for the past were possible and were generously offered, I cannot tell what the result might be. They tell me that you are a rich man now, although heaven knows, when one considers what a lazy, selfish fellow you were, that sounds like a miracle. You could have the great specialists down. They couldn't help, but it might salve your conscience to pay them a few hundred guineas.”
“Would you meet them?” Dominey asked anxiously. “Tell me whom to send for?”
“Pooh! Those days are finished with me,” was the curt reply. “I would meet none of them. I am a doctor no longer. I have become a villager. I go to see Lady Dominey as an old friend.”
“Give me your advice,” Dominey begged. “Is it of any use sending for specialists?”
“Just for the present, none at all.”
“And what about that horrible woman, Mrs. Unthank?”
“Part of your task, if you are really going to take it up. She stands between your wife and the sun.”
“Then why have you suffered her to remain there all those years?” Dominey demanded.
“For one thing, because there has been no one to replace her,” the doctor replied, “and for another, because Lady Dominey, believing that you slew her son, has some fantastic idea of giving her a home and shelter as a kind of expiation.”
“You think there is no affection between the two?” Dominey asked.
“Not a scrap,” was the blunt reply, “except that Lady Dominey is of so sweet and gentle a nature—”
The doctor paused abruptly. His visitor's fingers had strayed across his throat.
“That's a different matter,” the former continued fiercely. “That's just where the weak spot in her brain remains. If you ask me, I believe it's pandered to by Mrs. Unthank. Come to think of it,” he went on, “the Domineys were never cowards. If you've got your courage back, send Mrs. Unthank away, sleep with your doors wide open. If a single night passes without Lady Dominey coming to your room with a knife in her hand, she will be cured in time of that mania at any rate. Dare you do that?”
Dominey's hesitation was palpable,—also his agitation. The doctor grinned contemptuously.
“Still afraid!” he scoffed.
“Not in the way you imagine,” his visitor replied. “My wife has already promised to make no further attempt upon my life.”
“Well, you can cure her if you want to,” the doctor declared, “and if you do, you will have the sweetest companion for life any man could have. But you'll have to give up the idea of town houses and racing and yachting, and grouse moors in Scotland, and all those sort of things I suppose you've been looking forward to. You'll have for some time, at any rate, to give every moment of your time to your wife.”
Dominey moved uneasily in his chair.
“For the next few months,” he said, “that would be impossible.”
“Impossible!”
The doctor repeated the word, seemed to roll it round in his mouth with a sort of wondering scorn.
“I am not quite the idler I used to be,” Dominey explained, frowning. “Nowadays, you cannot make money without assuming responsibilities. I am clearing off the whole of the mortgages upon the Dominey estates within the next few months.”
“How you spend your time is your affair, not mine,” the doctor muttered. “All I say about the matter is that your wife's cure, if ever it comes to pass, is in your hands. And now—come over to me here, in the light of this window. I want to look at you.”
Dominey obeyed with a little shrug of the shoulders. There was no sunshine, but the white north light was in its way searching. It showed the sprinkling of grey in his ruddy-brown hair, the suspicion of it in his closely trimmed moustache, but it could find no weak spot in his steady eyes, in the tan of his hard, manly complexion, or even in the set of his somewhat arrogant lips. The old doctor took up his box of flies again and jerked his head towards the door.
“You are a miracle,” he said, “and I hate miracles. I'll come and see Lady Dominey in a day or so.”
CHAPTER XII
Dominey spent a curiously placid, and, to those with whom he was brought into contact, an entirely satisfactory afternoon. With Mr. Mangan by his side, murmuring amiable platitudes, and Mr. Johnson, his agent, opposite, revelling in the unusual situation of a satisfied landlord and delighted tenants, he made practically the entire round of the Dominey estates. They reached home late, but Dominey, although he seemed to be living in another world, was not neglectful of the claims of hospitality. Probably for the first time in their lives, Mr. Johnson and Lees, the bailiff, watched the opening of a magnum of champagne. Mr. Johnson cleared his throat as he raised his glass.
“It isn't only on my own account, Sir Everard,” he said, “that I drink your hearty good health. I have your tenants too in my mind. They've had a rough time, some of them, and they've stood it like white men. So here's from them and me to you, sir, and may we see plenty of you in these parts.”
Mr. Lees associated himself with these sentiments, and the glasses were speedily emptied and filled again.
“I suppose you know, Sir Everard,” the agent observed, “that what you've promised to do to-day will cost a matter of ten to fifteen thousand pounds.”
Dominey nodded.
“Before I go to bed to-night,” he said, “I shall send a cheque for twenty thousand pounds to the estate account at your bank at Wells. The money is there waiting, put aside for just that one purpose and—well, you may just as well have it.”
Agent and bailiff leaned back in the tonneau of their motor-car, half an hour later, with immense cigars in their mouths and a pleasant, rippling warmth in their veins. They had the sense of having drifted into fairyland. Their philosophy, however, met the situation.
“It's a fair miracle,” Mr. Lees declared.
“A modern romance,” Mr. Johnson, who read novels, murmured. “Hello, here's a visitor for the Hall,” he added, as a car swept by them.
“Comfortable-looking gent, too,” Mr. Lees remarked.
The “comfortable-looking gent” was Otto Seaman, who presented himself at the Hall with a small dressing-bag and a great many apologies.
“Found myself in Norwich, Sir Everard,” he explained. “I have done business there all my life, and one of my customers needed looking after. I finished early, and when I found that I was only thirty miles off you, I couldn't resist having a run across. If it is in any way inconvenient to put me up for the night, say so—”
“My dear fellow!” Dominey interrupted. “There are a score of rooms ready. All that we need is to light a fire, and an old-fashioned bed-warmer will do the rest. You remember Mr. Mangan?”
The two men shook hands, and Seaman accepted a little refreshment after his drive. He lingered behind for a moment after the dressing bell had rung.
“What time is that fellow going?” he asked.