Kitabı oku: «Her Majesty's Minister», sayfa 8
“No, the name is quite unfamiliar to me.”
“Why,” cried Sibyl suddenly, “that was the name of the dark-bearded man who was so charming to me at the de Chalencon’s the other night. Is he the same?”
“Yes,” I said. “His character, however, is none of the best. I would only warn you to have nothing whatever to do with him – that’s all.”
“He was awfully kind to me the other evening,” she protested.
“Well,” I replied earnestly, “but you and I are friends of old standing, and I consider that I have a right to give you warning when it seems to be necessary.”
“And is one actually needed regarding Rodolphe Wolf?” asked the Baronne, evidently much puzzled, for she undoubtedly knew him, even though she had declared her ignorance of his existence.
“Yes,” I said, “he is a person to be avoided. More, I cannot tell you.”
Chapter Fifteen
Across the Channel
A week went by, but the war-cloud still hung heavily upon the political horizon.
At my direction Grew, assisted by other members of the secret service, had searched high and low in Paris for Rodolphe Wolf; but in vain. After entering that dingy old house on the Quai, he had suddenly and unaccountably disappeared. The fishing-tackle shop was not, as I had believed, his headquarters, but he had evidently only made a visit there, and had afterwards left Paris suddenly, at almost the same time as the Countess de Foville and Yolande. The ladies had also completely eluded us. They were not in Marienbad, for inquiries had been made in that town without result.
I was in daily expectation of Kaye’s return to Paris; but he did not arrive, and I had heard nothing of his whereabouts. The astute secret agent had a habit of being lost to us for weeks, and of then returning with some important piece of information; not infrequently with a copy of some diplomatic document by means of which our Chief was able to foil the machinations of England’s enemies. Nevertheless, in view of the curious events which had occurred, I was anxious to learn what facts he might have ascertained in Berlin regarding Yolande.
Lady Barmouth was receiving in the grand salon of the Embassy one afternoon, the fine apartment being full to overflowing with the usual chattering cosmopolitan men and women who circle about from one embassy to another, when I suddenly encountered my friend Captain Giraud, the Belgian military attaché. He had been absent on leave for several days, and had only just returned to Paris.
“I’ve been to Brussels,” he exclaimed, after we had exchanged greetings. “A cousin of mine has been married, and I went to the feasting.”
“And now you have the usual attack of liver, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he laughed. “I’m feeling a little bit seedy after all the merry-making. But, by the way, you knew my cousin, Julie Montbazon? She was often a guest of the Countess de Foville at the château.”
“Of course I remember her. She was tall, fair-haired, and spoke English extremely well,” I said.
“The same. Well, she has married the son of Tanchot, the banker, of Antwerp – an excellent match.”
“And the Countess and Yolande, what news of them?”
“They are in Paris, are they not?”
“No, they left suddenly some days ago.”
“Well, they are not to be blamed,” he said, smiling. “No one stays in Paris during this heat if they can possibly avoid it. Yolande told me she was going to Marienbad.”
“She told me so, too. But they have altered their plans, it seems.”
“Oh! So you have met again?” he cried, opening his eyes widely. “I thought your friendship had ended long ago?”
“So it had.”
“Then it has been resumed?”
“No, it has not,” I replied.
“Are you certain?” he inquired, with sudden earnestness. He had been one of my most intimate friends in Brussels in the old days, and knew well the secret of our broken engagement.
“Quite certain.”
“And they have left for some destination unknown to you?”
“Yes.”
“But why did you seek her again, my dear Ingram? It was scarcely wise, was it?”
“Wisdom has to be thrown to the winds in certain circumstances,” I answered. “I was in this instance compelled to see her.”
“Compelled?” he echoed, puzzled. “Then you did not call upon her of your own free will?”
“No. I called, but against my own inclination.”
“And are you absolutely certain, mon cher Ingram, that all is broken off between you – that you have no lingering thought of her?”
“Quite. Why?”
He paused, as though in doubt as to what reply he should make to my question.
“Because,” he said slowly, at last – “well, because if my information is correct, her character has changed since you parted.”
What could he know? His words implied that he was aware of the truth regarding her.
“I don’t quite understand you,” I said eagerly. “Be more explicit.”
“Unfortunately I cannot,” he answered.
“Why?”
“Because I never condemn a woman, either upon hearsay or upon suspicion.”
A couple of merry fellows, attachés of the Russian Embassy, strolled up, and we were therefore compelled to drop the subject. Their chief, they told us, was about to leave Paris for his country house in Brittany – a fact interesting to Lord Barmouth, as showing that the political atmosphere was clearing. One ominous sign of the storm had been the persistent presence of all the ambassadors in Paris at a time when usually they are in the country or by the sea. The representative of the Czar was the first to move, and now without doubt all the other representatives of the Powers would be only too glad to follow his example, for the month was August, and the heat in Paris was almost overpowering enough to be described as tropical.
In the diplomatic circle abroad the most accomplished, the merriest, the most courteous, and the best linguists are always the Russians. Although we at the British Embassy were sometimes in opposition to their policy, nevertheless Count Olsoufieff, the Russian Ambassador, was one of Lord Barmouth’s most intimate friends, and from the respected chiefs downwards there existed the greatest cordiality and good feeling between the staff of the two embassies, notwithstanding all that certain journalists might write to the contrary. Volkouski and Korniloff, the two attachés, were easy-going cosmopolitans, upon whose shoulders the cares of life seemed to sit lightly, and very often we dined and spent pleasant evenings together.
We were gossiping together, discussing a titbit of amusing Paris scandal which Volkouski had picked up at a dinner on the previous night, and was now relating, when suddenly Harding approached me.
“His Excellency would like to see you at once in his private room, sir.”
I excused myself, having heard the dénouement of the story and laughed over it, and then mounted the grand staircase to the room in which my own Chief was standing with his hands behind his back, gazing thoughtfully out of the window. As I entered and closed the door, he turned to me saying:
“The political wind has changed to-day, Ingram, and although the mystery regarding Ceuta remains the same, the outlook is decidedly brighter. I had a chat with de Wolkenstein and Olsoufieff over at the Quai d’Orsay an hour ago, and the result makes it plain that the tension is fast disappearing.”
“Olsoufieff leaves for Brittany to-morrow,” I said.
“He told me so,” answered the Ambassador. “Yet with regard to Ceuta I have learned a very important fact, which I must send by despatch to the Marquess. Anderson, however, left for Rome to-day, and we have no messenger. You, therefore, must carry it to London by the night service this evening. If you object, Vivian can be sent.”
“I’ll go with pleasure,” I responded, glad of an opportunity of spending a day, and perhaps even a couple of days, in town. We who are condemned to exile abroad love our dear old London.
“Then if you will get out the cipher-book I’ll write the despatch.”
I unlocked the safe, handed him the book, and then stood by, watching as he reduced the draft despatch which he had already written to the puzzling array of letters and numerals. The operation of transcribing into cipher always occupies considerable time, for perfect accuracy is necessary, otherwise disastrous complications might ensue.
At last, however, His Excellency concluded, appended his signature, and took from a drawer in his big writing-table a large envelope bearing a formidable red cross. Despatches placed in those envelopes are for the eye of the principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs alone, and are always carried by the Royal messengers in the chamois-leather belt worn next their skin. They are essentially private communications, which British ambassadors are enabled to make with the great statesman who, untiring by night and by day, controls England’s destinies. The messengers carry the ordinary despatches to and fro across Europe in their despatch-boxes, but what is known in the Foreign Office as a “crossed despatch” must be carried on the person of the messenger, and must be delivered into the actual hand of the person to whom it is addressed.
When the communication was placed in its envelope, duly secured by the five seals of the Ambassador’s private seal – a fine-cut amethyst attached to his plain watch-guard of black silk ribbon – he handed it to me to lock in the safe until my departure. This I did, and after receiving some further verbal instructions went to my rooms to prepare for the journey. I dined early, called at the Embassy for the despatch, which I placed in my waist-belt, and left the Gare du Nord just as the summer twilight had deepened into dusk.
I was alone in the compartment on that tedious journey by Amiens to Calais. The night service between Paris and London never holds out a very inviting prospect, for there is little comfort for travellers as compared with the saloon carriages of the Chemin de Fer du Nord and the fine buffet cars of the Wagon Lit Company which run in the day service between the two greatest capitals of the world. The boats by the night service, too, are not all that can be desired, especially if a strong breeze is blowing. But on arrival at Calais on the night in question all was calm; and although the boat was one of the oldest on the service, nevertheless, not the most delicate among the lady passengers had occasion to seek the seclusion of a cabin or claim the services of the portly, white-capped stewardess.
In the bright moonbeams of that summer’s night I sat on deck smoking and thinking. What, I wondered, did Giraud know concerning Yolande? It was evident that as my friend he had my interests at heart, and wished to warn me against further association with her, even though he had done it clumsily and without the tact one would have expected of a man so well schooled in diplomacy. I remembered how at one time he was frequently a guest at the Château of Houffalize; indeed, we had been invited there at the same time on several occasions for shooting and wild-boar hunting in the Ardennes forest.
Yes, it seemed apparent that he knew the truth, that Yolande was actually a secret agent. But she had disappeared. Perhaps, after all, it was as well. I had no desire that Kaye and his smart detectives should hunt her through Europe, unless it could be actually proved that through her the secret of our policy towards Spain with regard to Ceuta had been betrayed to those Powers which were ever at work to undermine British prestige.
But how could she possibly have obtained the secret? That was the crux of the whole situation. The despatch from the Marquess of Malvern to Lord Barmouth had been a crossed one, and it had never left the person of the foreign service messenger until placed in my Chief’s hands with the seals intact. The mystery was absolutely inscrutable.
The moonbeams, reflected by the dancing waters, and the many lights of Dover harbour as we approached it, combined to produce an almost fairy-like picture. Indeed, in all my experience of the Channel I had never known a more perfectly calm and brilliant night, for the sea was almost like a lake, and on board the passengers were promenading as they chatted and laughed, pleasantly surprised to find the passage such an enjoyable one.
But as I lolled in my deck-chair, my eyes fixed upon the silver track of the moonbeams, a figure suddenly passed along the deck between my vision and the sea. There were a good many passengers, for a P&O steamer had come in at Marseilles, and about a couple of hundred travellers from the Far East were hurrying homeward. Every moment they were passing and repassing me; therefore I cannot tell what it was that attracted my attention to that particular silhouette dark against the silvery sea.
I only saw it during a single second, for next instant it had passed and become lost in the crowd of promenaders on deck. It was that of a woman of middle height, wearing a long travelling-cloak heavily lined with fur and a small sealskin toque. The fur collar of her coat was turned up around her neck, and thus hid the greater part of her face; indeed, I saw little of her countenance, for it was only a grey blotch in the shadow; yet her dark eyes had glanced at me inquiringly, as though she wished to mark well my appearance. Her height and gait struck me as somewhat unusual. I had seen some person before closely resembling her, but could not remember the occasion. She had passed me by like a shadow, yet somehow a strange conviction had in an instant seized me. That woman had followed me from Paris. She had stood on the platform of the Gare du Nord watching me while I had walked up and down awaiting the departure of the train.
I rose and searched the deck from end to end, but could not rediscover her. I went below, wandering along the gangway, past the engines, where sometimes passengers seek shelter from the chill winds, but she was not there. As far as I dared, I peered into the ladies’ cabin, but saw no one resembling her. In every part of the vessel I searched, but she had disappeared as though by magic. Indeed, a quarter of an hour later I was questioning myself as to whether I had really seen that figure or whether it had been merely a chimera of my excited imagination.
But there was no doubt that a tall, well-dressed woman had passed me and had peered into my face; and equally certain was it that, apparently fearing detection, she had disappeared and hidden herself somehow. Upon a vessel at night there are many dark corners where one can escape observation; besides, the most likely spot for a hiding-place was one or other of the private deck-cabins.
Try as I would, I could not rid myself of the recollection of that face. Now that I reflected, I remembered that when I saw her on the railway-platform I noticed she was dark-eyed, with a thin, elongated, rather striking, careworn face; a figure almost tragic in expression, yet evidently that of a woman of the world Her nationality was difficult to distinguish, but by her tailor-made travelling-dress and her rather severe style, I had put her down as English. Her glance in the semi-darkness had, however, been a curious one, and the reason was rendered the more puzzling by her sudden disappearance.
As we reached the pier at Dover I stationed myself at the gangway, and closely scrutinised every person who went ashore, waiting there until the last passenger had left. But no one resembling her appeared. She seemed to have vanished from the boat like a shadow.
I went ashore, and ran from end to end of both trains, the Chatham and Dover and South Eastern, but could not find her. Then, entering a compartment in the latter train, I travelled to Charing Cross, much puzzled by the incident. I could not doubt but that this thin-faced woman had followed me for some mysterious purpose.
Chapter Sixteen
Dawn
When in the early morning I drove into Downing Street and entered the office of the chief of the night staff, I was informed that the Marquess of Malvern was in town; therefore I drove on to Belgrave Square.
The Prime Minister’s house was a large, old-fashioned, substantial-looking mansion, devoid of any outward show or embellishment, and with very little attempt at ornamentation in the interior. Everything was solid and good, but long out of date. The gimcrack painted deal abominations, miscalled art-furniture, had not been invented in the day when the town house of the great family had been renovated in honour of the marriage of the fourth Marquess, the present Prime Minister’s grandfather, and very little had been altered by the two generations who had succeeded him. The time-mellowed stability of the place was one of its greatest charms. The footman led me upstairs through the great reception-room which every foreign diplomatist in London knows so well, where the furniture was at present hidden beneath holland shrouds, and down a long corridor, till we found the valet, who, in obedience to the strict orders of his master, went and awakened him. The Marquess, attentive to the affairs of State by night as well as by day, was always awakened on the arrival of a crossed despatch from any of Britain’s representatives at the Foreign Courts.
“His lordship will see you in his dressing-room in a few moments, sir,” the valet said when he returned, as he ushered me into a small room close at hand.
I had sat there before on previous occasions when I had been the bearer of secret reports from my Chief. I had only to wait a few moments, and the great statesman – a tall, thin, grave-faced gentleman, wrapped in his dressing-gown, opened the door and stood before me.
“Good-morning, Mr Ingram!” he exclaimed affably; for to all the staff of the Foreign Office, from ambassador down to the lower-grade clerk, the Marquess was equally courteous, and often gave a word of encouraging approval from his own lips. Many times had he been heard to say, “Each of us work for our country’s good. There must be neither jealousy nor pride among us.” The esprit de corps in the Foreign Office is well known.
I bowed, apologised for disturbing him at that early hour – it was half-past five – and handed him the despatch.
“You’ve been travelling while I’ve been sleeping,” laughed the director of England’s foreign policy, taking the envelope and examining the seals to assure himself they were intact. Then he scrawled his signature upon the receipt which I handed him, tore open the envelope, and glanced at the cipher.
“Have you any idea of the contents of this?” he inquired.
“No, it is secret. Lord Barmouth wrote it himself.”
“Then kindly come this way;” and he led me down a long corridor to a large room at the end – his library. From the safe he took his decipher-book, and after a few minutes had transcribed the despatch into plain English.
I saw from his face that what he read was somewhat displeasing, and also that he was considerably surprised by the news it contained. He re-read the lines he had written, twisting his watch-guard nervously within his thin white fingers. Then he said:
“It seems, Ingram, that you have some extremely difficult diplomacy in Paris just now – extremely difficult and often annoying?”
“Yes,” I said, “there are several problems of late that have required great tact and finesse. But we at the Embassy have the utmost confidence in our Chief.”
“Lord Barmouth is a man of whom England may justly be proud. Would that there were many more like him in our service!” said the Prime Minister. “Kindly ask him to keep me posted constantly regarding the progress of the matter he has just reported. It is serious, and may necessitate some drastic change of policy. It is for that reason that I wish to be kept informed.”
“Do you require me to return to my post to-day?”
“Certainly not,” he replied quickly. “Now you are in England you may remain a couple of days or so, if you wish. I am well aware how all of you long for a day or two at home.”
I thanked his lordship; and then, after a short and pleasant chat upon the political situation in Paris and the mystery regarding Ceuta, I went out, mounted into my cab, and drove down to the St. James’ Club, where I made myself tidy, and breakfasted.
When I had finished my second cup of tea and glanced through the morning paper, eight o’clock was striking. I rose, went to the window, and looked out upon Piccadilly, bright and brilliant in the morning sun. With hands in my pockets I stood debating whether I should act upon a suggestion that had been constantly in my mind ever since leaving Paris. Should I take Edith by surprise, and go down to visit her?
The fact that the Marquess had given me leave so readily showed that the outlook had become clearer, notwithstanding the fact that my Chief had transmitted, for the eye of the Foreign Minister only, the secret despatch of which I had been the bearer.
At that early hour there was no one in the club, yet as I wandered through those well-remembered rooms my mind became filled with pleasant recollections of merry hours spent there in the days before my duty compelled me to become an exile abroad. I thought of Yolande, and tried to decide whether or no I really loved her. A vision of her face arose before my eyes, but with a strenuous effort I succeeded in shutting it out. All was of the past. Besides, had not Kaye proved her to be a secret agent, or, to put it plainly, a spy? Daily, hourly, I had struggled with my conscience. In the performance of what was plainly my duty I had visited her, and had nearly fallen into the trap she had so cunningly baited, for she no doubt intended, after all, to become my wife; and in this she was acting, I felt confident, in concert with that man who was my bitterest enemy – the man who now called himself Rodolphe Wolf. No, I had treated Edith unfairly, and therefore resolved to run down to Norfolk and visit her. With that object, an hour later I left London for Great Ryburgh, the small village where she delighted to live reposeful days in company with her maiden aunt, Miss Henrietta Foskett. In due course I arrived by the express at Fakenham, drove in a fly to the quiet little village, and descended before the large, low, roomy old house with mullioned windows and tall chimneys, which lay back from the village street behind a garden filled with those old-world, sweet-smelling flowers so much beloved by our grandmothers.
I walked up the garden-path, knocked, and was admitted by the neat maid, Ann, who for fifteen years had been in Miss Foskett’s service.
It has always seemed to me that except by their immediate heirs, maiden aunts are often nearly forgotten among a bustling younger generation always striving and toiling. They are left to dust their own china and sharply to superintend the morals and manners of their general servant, save when the holiday-times of the year come round, when their country houses are more apt to recur to their relatives’ minds; their periodical letters, in the delicate pointed Italian hand, essential in the days of their youth as the hall-mark of gentility, are then more eagerly replied to, for Aunt Jane’s or Aunt Maria’s proffered hospitality will generally furnish an economical change of air.
Edith’s case was not an unusual one. Her father, a wealthy landowner in Northumberland, had died in her youth, while five years ago, just before she left college at St. Leonard’s, her mother, who was constantly ailing, also succumbed. She was left entirely alone; but she had succeeded to a handsome income, derived from property in the city of Newcastle. Her Aunt Henrietta, her mother’s only surviving sister, had constituted herself her guardian. Miss Foskett had been able through stress and change to cling to the old house – the old place, once so full, from which so many had gone out to return no more.
I knew that interior well. There was a haunting sense of pathos in those old rooms, and the ancient furniture was arranged in unyielding precision.
When Ann ushered me into the musty-smelling drawing-room, I glanced round and shuddered. Aunt Henrietta’s rules were the household rules of her mother before her, and she severely reprobated the domestic slackness and craving for mere comfort and luxury of the present generation. Her lace curtains, carefully dressed, were hung up, and fires banished from all her fireplaces, on the first of May. Untimely frost and snow had no power to move the prim old wool-work screen, glazed and framed, that hid the steel bars of the grate; the simpering ladies, in their faded blue and scarlet dresses, looked unsympathetically at the light carpet, the white curtains, the anti-macassared armchairs, the round table with books, miniatures, and a flowering plant, whatever the state of the thermometer.
Through the windows a pleasant vista was presented across a well-kept lawn with broad pasture-lands beyond, and the spire of Testerton church rising in the distance behind the belt of trees. While I sat there awaiting Edith, who was no doubt amazed at the announcement of my presence, and was now rearranging her hair, as women will, I glanced up at the feeble watercolours and chalk drawings traced by the hand of “dear Aunt Fanny, who had a wonderful talent for drawing.” It occurred to me that Fanny’s great-nieces, with perhaps less artistic excuse, now studied at the Slade, copied at the National Gallery, and lived in flats with some feminine friend on tea and pickles. Such girls give lunches and teas to stray bachelors, and own a latchkey. But such doings could hardly be thought of among Fanny’s muddled trees and impossible sunsets, with Fanny’s pictured eyes smiling sweetly, if a trifle inanely, from behind her bunches of fair, hanging curls, at grandmother’s mild face and folded hands on the opposite wall.
Notwithstanding the inartistic character of the place, there was everywhere a tranquillity and an old-world charm. Through the open window came the scent of the flowers, the hum of insects in the noonday sun, and the call of the birds. How different was the life there from my own turbulent existence in the glare and glitter of the gayest circle in Paris! I sighed, and longed for quiet and rest at home in dear old rural England.
Suddenly the door opened, and Aunt Henrietta, a prim, shrunken, thin-faced old lady in stiff black silk, and wearing a cap of cream lace, came forward to greet me.
“Why, you have taken us entirely by surprise, Mr Ingram!” she said in her high-pitched voice. “When Ann told me that it was you, I would scarcely believe her. We thought you were in Paris.”
“I had to come to London on business, so I thought I would run down to see how you all are,” I answered. “I hope my visit is not inconvenient?”
“Oh no,” answered the old lady. “I’ve told Edith, and she will be down in a moment. She’s been worrying for the past week because she has received no letter from you.”
“Well, I’ve come personally, Miss Foskett,” I laughed. “I hope my presence will partly make up for my failure as a correspondent.”
Her grey, wizened face puckered into a smile. I knew that she had not altogether approved of Edith becoming engaged to me. But her niece was of age, mistress of her fortune, and, I shrewdly suspected, contributed handsomely towards the expenses of that small, prim household.
Although Aunt Hetty was of a somewhat trenchant type, and shook her head over the wilful vagaries of a world that had outgrown her philosophy of life, yet she still preserved a motherly instinct of patient love for all mankind. She was, in common with most maiden aunts, a great church-goer and firm supporter of the parish clergy of Great Ryburgh; but in parochial matters I believe she was more dreaded than loved for the uncompromising force of her doctrine and demeanour. She was severe on the faults and failings of her inferiors, and apt to discriminate in her almsgiving. Frequent curtseys and a little adroit flattery from “the poor” were a surer road to her purse than morose merit, however great.
The old lady straightened out an antimacassar that chanced to be a trifle awry, then, spreading out her skirts slowly, seated herself, and began to relate to me gossip concerning people whom I knew in the neighbourhood – the squire, the doctor, the parson, and other local worthies, all of whom, taken together, made up her quiet little world.
At last the door opened again, and next instant, as I sprang up, I became conscious of a fair vision in a simple white gown standing before me. The touch of her soft, tiny hand, the love-glance of those beautiful eyes, the glad smile of welcome, the music of that voice, came upon me as a sudden revelation. Her perfect type of English loveliness became disclosed to me for the first time. She was absolutely incomparable, although never before that moment had I realised the truth. But in that instant I became aware that she held me irrevocably beneath her spell.
I took her hand, and our eyes met. My gaze wavered beneath hers, and what words I uttered in response to her greeting I cannot tell. All that I knew was that I was unworthy of her love.
