Kitabı oku: «Mrs. Fitz», sayfa 17

CHAPTER XXX
REACTION

The week which followed the royal departure was a season of reaction at Dympsfield House. The tension of our recent life had been well-nigh unendurable. But now the die was cast, the problem solved; we could live and move and enjoy our being according to our wont.

To be sure the unhappy Fitz was still our anxiety. He and his small daughter were still under our roof, and would so remain until the house of his fathers had been rebuilt or until such time as he should choose some other asylum for his shattered life.

It is not too much to say that Fitz, with all his quiddity, had become dear to us. The tragic wreck of his life had called forth all that latent nobility which I at any rate, as his oldest friend, had always known to be there. His submission to the fate which he had himself invoked had seemed to soften the grosser elements that were in his clay. He had now only his small elf of four to live for. In that vivid atom of mortality were reproduced many of the characteristics of the ill-starred "circus rider from Vienna."

During the first few days a kind of stupor lay upon Fitz. He hardly seemed able to realise what had happened. He went out hunting and actively superintended the rebuilding of the Grange, almost as if nothing had occurred to him. But, all too soon, this merciful veil was withdrawn from his mind. He became consumed by restlessness. He could not sleep nor eat his food; he could not settle to any sort of occupation; nothing seemed able to engage his interest; his mind lost its stability, and slowly but surely his will began to lose that reawakened power that it had seemed to be the special function of his marriage to sustain and promote.

By the time the first week had passed we began to have forebodings. Already signs were not wanting that the demons of a sinister inheritance were silently marshalling themselves in order that they might swoop down upon him. One afternoon I found him asleep on a sofa drunk.

As Coverdale was well acquainted with his temperament and all the most salient facts in its history, and as, moreover, he was a man for whose natural soundness of judgment I had the greatest respect, I was moved to take him into my confidence.

"He must get away from England," said Coverdale, "for a time at any rate. And he must go soon."

This was an opinion with which I agreed. It happened that Coverdale knew a man who was about to start on a journey across Equatorial Africa and who proposed to form a hunting camp and indulge in some big game shooting by the way. Such a scheme appeared so eminently suited to Fitz's immediate needs that I hailed it gladly.

Alas! when I discussed this project with him he declined wholly to entertain it; moreover he declined with all that odd decision which was one of his chief characteristics.

"No," he said. "I must stay here and see to the building of the house, and I must look after Marie."

It was in vain that I launched my arguments. The scheme did not appeal to him and there, as far as he was concerned, was the end to the matter.

"I must look after Marie," he said. "We are getting her to do sums. Her mother could never do a sum to save her life."

Argument was vain. Such a nature was incapable of accepting a suggestion from an outside source; the mainspring of all its actions lay within.

The total failure of the attempt to get him to respond to so hopeful an alternative vexed me sorely. At the time it seemed to promise the only means of saving him from the danger which already had him in its toils. He grew more and more restless; his distaste for food grew more pronounced, and in an appallingly short time it became clear to us that whatever there remained to be done for him must be done at once.

We were helpless nevertheless. To anything in the nature of persuasion he remained impervious. He could not be brought to see the nearness of the danger. It was like him never to heed the question of cost. He could never have ordered his life as he had done, had he not had the quality of projecting the whole of himself into the actual hour.

Those who had his welfare at heart were still taking counsel one of another in respect of what could be done to help him through this new crisis, when a mandate was received from Mrs. Catesby to dine at the Hermitage. Fitz was included in it, but it did not surprise us that he declined an invitation which less uncompromising persons were inclined to regard in the light of a command.

It was not that he bore malice. He was altogether beyond the pettiness of the minor emotions; it was as though his entire being, for good or for evil, had been raised to another dimension or a higher power. But as he said with his haggard face, "I don't feel up to it."

Lowlier mortals, more specifically Mrs. Arbuthnot and myself, accepted humbly and contritely. We felt that a certain piquancy would invest the gathering. Not that we knew exactly who had been bidden to attend it, but Mrs. Arbuthnot's feminine instinct – and what is so impeccable in such matters as these? – proclaimed this dinner party to be neither more nor less than the public signature of the articles of peace.

Accordingly we set out for the Hermitage, not however without a certain travail of the spirit, for poor Fitz would be left to a lonely cutlet which he would not eat. As a matter of fact, when we went forth he had not returned from London, where he had spent most of the day in consultation with his solicitors.

There assembled at the Hermitage, at which we arrived in very good time, nearly every identical member of the company we expected to meet. Coverdale, Brasset, Jodey, who still enjoyed the hospitality of our neighbour, the Vicar and his Lavinia, Laura Glendinning, Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins. Also, as became one whose house provided a kind of via media to that greater world of which the Castle was the embodiment, Mrs. Catesby's dinner table was graced by a younger son and a daughter-in-law of the ducal house.

Good humour reigned. It might even be said to amount in the course of the pleasant process of deglutition to a sort of friendly badinage. An atmosphere of tolerance pervaded all things. If bygones were not actually bygones, they were in a fair way of so becoming. At least this particular section of the Crackanthorpe Hunt was on the high road to being once again a happy and united family.

The revelation of the "Stormy Petrel's" identity had had a magic influence upon an immense aggregation of wounded feelings. It was now felt pretty generally that all might be forgiven without any grave sacrifice of personal dignity. It was conceded that great spirit had been shown on both sides, but in the special and peculiar circumstances a display of Christian magnanimity was called for.

Irene was morally and wickedly wrong – the phrase is Mrs. Catesby's own – in keeping the secret so well. Of course "the circus proprietor" had deceived nobody: it was merely childish for Irene to suppose for one single moment that he would; and for her to attempt "a score" of that puerile character was positively infantile. But in the opinion of the assembled jury of matrons, plus Miss Laura Glendinning specially co-opted, it was felt very strongly that Irene had not quite played the game.

"Child," said the Great Lady, speaking ex cathedra, with a piece of bread in one hand and a piece of turbot on a fork in the other, "when I consider that I chose your husband's first governess, quite a refined person, of the sound, rather old-fashioned evangelical school, I feel that it was morally and wickedly wrong of you to withhold from me of all people the identity of the dear Princess."

"But Mary," said the light of my existence, toying demurely with her sherry, "I didn't know who she was myself until nearly a week after the fire."

The Great Lady bolted her bread and laid down her fork with an approximation to that which can only be described as majesty.

"Would you have me believe," she demanded, "that when you took her to your house on the night of the fire you really and sincerely believed that she was merely the wife of Nevil?"

"Yes, Mary," said the joy of my days, "I really and sincerely believed that she was the circus – I mean, that is, that she was just Mrs. Fitz."

General incredulity, in the course of which George Catesby inquired very politely of the Younger Son if he had enjoyed his day.

"Never enjoyed a day so much," said the Younger Son, with immense conviction, "since we turned up that old customer without a brush in Dipwell Gorse five years ago to-morrow come eleven-fifteen g.m."

"Eleven-twenty, my lad," chirruped the noble Master. "Your memory is failin'."

"Irene," said the uncompromising voice from the end of the table, "I cannot and will not allow myself to believe that you were not in the secret before the fire."

"Tell it to the Marines, Irene," said Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins.

"Wonder what she will ask us to believe next," said Miss Laura Glendinning.

"What indeed!" said the Vicar's wife.

"It isn't human nature," affirmed Lady Frederick.

"Very well, then," said the star of my destiny, with an ominous sparkle of a china-blue eye, "you can ask Odo."

"Odo!" I give up the attempt to reproduce the cataclysm of scorn which overwhelmed the table. "Odo is quite as bad as you are, if not worse. He knew from the first. He knew when the Illryian Ambassador came in person to the Coach and Horses and fetched her in his car; he knew when she chaffed dear Evelyn so delightfully that night at the Savoy."

"What if he did?" said the undefeated Mrs. Arbuthnot. "He didn't tell me. Did you now, Odo?"

With statesmanlike mien I assured the company that Mrs. Fitz's identity was not disclosed to our household despot until some days after her arrival at Dympsfield House.

"I am obliged to believe you, Odo," said Mrs. Catesby. "But mind I only do so on principle."

Somehow this cryptic statement seemed to minister to the mirth of the table. It was increased when the Younger Son, who evidently had been waiting his opportunity, came into the conversation.

"Odo Arbuthnot, M.P.," said he, "I expect when Dick sees what you have done to his wall he'll sue you. Anyhow I should."

The approval which greeted this sally made it clear that the incident had become historical.

"By royal command," said I; "and what chance do you suppose has a mere private member against the despotic will of the father of his people?"

"A gross outrage. An act of vandalism. Postlewaite says – "

"Postlewaite's an ass."

"Whatever Postlewaite is, it don't excuse you. He says you were all talking the rankest Socialism, and he was quite within his rights not to give you the book."

"I repeat, Frederick, that Postlewaite is an ass. If the Postlewaites of the earth think for one moment that the Victors of Rodova will turn the other cheek to the retort discourteous, the sooner they learn otherwise the better it will be for them and those whom they serve."

"Hear, hear, and cheers," said my gallant little friend, Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins, in spite of the fact that the Great Lady had fixed her with her invincible north eye.

"Ferdinand Rex one doesn't mind so much," proceeded Frederick, "and the Princess is all right of course, and von Schalk is a bit of a Bismarck, they say; but when you come to foot the bill with Odo Arbuthnot, M.P. – well, as Postlewaite says, it is nothing less than an act of vandalism. The M.P. fairly cooked my goose, I must say."

The M.P. was very bad form, everybody agreed, with the honourable and gallant exception of la belle Americaine.

"Might be a labour member! I don't know what Dick'll say when he sees it."

"Two alternatives present themselves to my mind," said I, impenitently. "Postlewaite can either clear off the whole thing before he returns, or else append a magic 'C' in brackets after the offending symbols."

"You ain't entitled to a 'C' in brackets. You grow a worse Radical every day of your life and everybody is agreed that it is time you came out in your true colours."

"Hear, hear," from the table.

"I've half a mind to oppose you myself at the next election as a convinced Tariff Reformer, Anti-Socialist, Fair Play for Everybody, and official representative of a poor but deserving class."

"We shall all be glad to sign your nomination paper," affirmed George Catesby.

"Well, Lord Frederick," said my intrepid Mrs. Josiah, "I will just bet you a box of gloves anyway that you don't get in."

"And I'll bet you another," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

"He's not such a fool as to try," said the noble Master.

"Frederick," said the Great Lady, "stick to your muttons. You have plenty to do to raise breed and quality. Why not try a cross between the Welsh and the Southdown? At least I am convinced that in these days the House of Commons offers no career for a gentleman."

"I've a great mind to cut in and have a shot anyway," said the scion of the ducal house, with a mild confusion of metaphor. "I don't see why these Radical fellers – "

Whatever the speech was in its integrity, it was destined never to be completed. For at this precise moment the door was flung open in a dramatic manner, and a haggard man, wearing an overcoat and carrying his hat in his hand, broke in upon Mrs. Catesby's dinner party.

CHAPTER XXXI
NEWS FROM ILLYRIA

The man was Fitz.

"A thousand apologies," he said. "So sorry to disturb you. But there's news from Illyria."

Such a very remarkable obtrusion enchained the attention of us all. And this was not rendered less by the self-possession of the speaker's manner.

"Ferdinand has been assassinated." Fitz's tone was slow and contained. "The Monarchy has been overthrown; Sonia is a close prisoner in the Castle at Blaenau, and her fate hangs in the balance."

"What is your authority?" said Coverdale.

"Reuter," said Fitz. "A telegram is printed in the evening papers. I happened to buy one at the book-stall as I left town."

He produced the Westminster Gazette from the pocket of his overcoat and handed it to the Chief Constable.

"You don't suppose," said Coverdale, frowning heavily, "that they are capable of personal violence towards the Princess?"

"At bottom they are only half civilised," said Fitz, "and when their passions are aroused they are capable of anything. You will see the telegram says the government is in the hands of a committee of the people. And no wise man ever trusts the people and never will."

This feudal sentiment was uttered in a tone of the oddest conviction.

"By Jove!" said the scion of the ducal house. "Here is the chap we are looking for."

But the intrusion of Fitz was too deadly serious for any side issue to be allowed to distract our attention.

"I apologise to you, Mrs. Catesby, for spoiling your dinner party like this," he said, "but it is my firm conviction that if the Princess is to be saved there is not a moment to lose."

"One is inclined to agree with you," said Coverdale, slowly and thoughtfully. "Has it occurred to you that anything can be done?"

Fitz's reply, given quietly enough, was characteristic of the man.

"To-day is Monday," he said. "By midnight on Thursday we shall have her out of Blaenau."

"Impossible, my dear fellow, impossible," said the Chief Constable, "if this account is correct."

"Nothing is impossible," said the Man of Destiny. "There is just time now to catch the ten o'clock to-night from Middleham. First thing to-morrow morning we will get our papers if we can, and if we can't we'll go without them. We shall be in Paris some time in the afternoon; and if all goes well by Wednesday evening we shall be in Vienna. By five o'clock on Thursday we ought to be at Orgov on the Milesian frontier, and six hours' easy riding over the mountains with a couple of baits will land us at Blaenau."

We who knew Fitz and had followed him in high affairs knew better than to venture upon criticism of this bald and unconvincing scheme. Those who did not know him could only smile incredulously.

"Sounds easy," said Lord Frederick, "but assuming, Fitzwaren, that you get to Blaenau like that, what can it profit you if the Princess is in the Castle under lock and key?"

"Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage," quoted the Man of Destiny. "Once we get to Blaenau we shall have her out of the Castle, never fear about that. But there is no time to discuss the matter now. If we go at once and collect our gear – so sorry, Mrs. Catesby, but absolutely unavoidable – we can be in town by twelve-fifteen, arrange about our papers and keep well in front of the clock."

The man's calm assumption that we should all unhesitatingly follow his lead and commit ourselves to this rather mad and certainly most uncomfortable enterprise was remarkable.

"There is not a minute to lose," he said. "By the way, Arbuthnot, I've told Peters to pack a kit-bag for you. And this time, old son, you had better see that you don't forget your revolver."

Under the goad of the Chief Constable's uneasy eye I was fain to gaze at the black silk handkerchief, which still bore my wrist.

"I'm afraid I'm a lame duck anyway," I said.

"You will do to hold the horses at the foot of the Castle rock. Climbing up the face of that cliff will be out of the question as far as you are concerned. Now then, you fellows," the Man of Destiny took out his watch, "you have just two minutes to finish your port and get your cigars alight and then it's boot and saddle."

"Nevil," said the imperious voice of the Great Lady, "I am really afraid you are mad."

The Man of Destiny did not deign to heed this irrelevant suggestion.

The exigencies of historical truth render it necessary to record the fact that Joseph Jocelyn de Vere Vane-Anstruther was undoubtedly the first respondent to the call. My relation by marriage drank his port wine and rose in his place at Mrs. Catesby's board. There was a fire in his eye and the suspicion of a hectic flush upon his countenance which seemed to contrast strangely with the habitual languor of his bearing.

"First thing we must do is to send a wire to old Alec," he said; "although he is certain not to be in if we send it. If we get to town by twelve-fifteen I will trot round to the Continental. The beggar is sure to be there until they kick him out, as there is a ball to-night at Covent Garden."

This reasoning may have been lucid and it may have been pregnant; at least it recommended itself to the comprehensive intellect of the Man of Destiny.

"Quite right, Vane-Anstruther. I shall hold you responsible for O'Mulligan."

"Joseph," said the Great Lady upon a stentorian note, "are you mad also?"

Hardly had this pertinent inquiry been advanced when the noble Master was on his legs.

"So awfully sorry, Mrs. Catesby," he said with a long-drawn sweetness of apology, "but it can't be helped in the circumstances, can it? I leave hounds in the care of George and Frederick. Keep Potts up to his work, George, and see that he pays proper attention to their feet. And Frederick, I charge you to make it your business to see that Madrigal has a ball every Friday."

"Reginald," said his hostess with great energy, "in the unavoidable absence of your widowed and unfortunate mother I absolutely forbid you to bear a part in this hare-brained enterprise. I really don't know what Nevil can be thinking of."

In Ascalon whisper it not, but this was the precise moment in which I found the cynical eye of the Chief Constable upon me for the second time. The eye was also wary and a little pensive, but the great man rose in his place with an air of profound rumination. He slowly cracked a walnut and then turned to the butler, with a coolness which to my mind had a suspicion of the uncanny.

"Just tell my chap to have my car round at once," he said; and then with great deference to his hostess, "a thousand apologies, Mrs. Catesby, but you do see, don't you, that it can't be helped?"

Whether I rose to my feet by an act of private volition or at the subconscious beck of another's compelling power, there is no need to attempt to determine. But somehow I found myself upon my legs and adding my own imperfect apologies to the equally imperfect ones of the Chief Constable.

"Odo Arbuthnot," said my hostess, "sit down at once. A married man, a father of a family, and a county member! Sit down at once and get on with your fruit. Colonel Coverdale! I am surprised at you."

"Finished your port, Arbuthnot?" said Fitz, calmly. "Time's about up. But I've told your chap about the car."

Consternation mingled now with the lively feminine bewilderment, but Mrs. Arbuthnot, whom Fitz's news had excited and distressed, issued no personal edict. If the life of Sonia was really at stake it was right to take a risk. Nevertheless it showed a right feeling about things to betray a little public perturbation at the prospect of being made a widow.

"Jodey and Reggie and Colonel Coverdale must go," said Mrs. Arbuthnot. "They haven't wives and families dependent upon them. But you, Odo, are different. And then, too, your wrist. You would be of no use if you went."

"I shall do to hold the horses at the foot of the Castle rock," said I, saluting a white cheek.

Fitz was already withdrawing from the room with his volunteers when Lord Frederick rose in his place at the board.

"Look here, Fitzwaren," he said. "If you have a vacancy in your irregulars I rather think I'll make one."

"By all means," said Fitz. "The more the merrier."

Bewilderment and consternation mounted ever higher around Mrs. Catesby's mahogany.

"Freddie! Freddie!" There arose a tearful wail from across the table.

"You ought to be bled for the simples, Frederick," said his hostess.

However, even as the Great Lady spoke, honest George, most conscientious of husbands, and notwithstanding his rank in the Middleshire Yeomanry, the most peace-loving of men, was understood to make an offer of active service.

"Well done, George," said his friend the Vicar. "I shouldn't mind coming as the chaplain to the force myself."

"George," said an imperious voice from the table head, "George!"

The Man of Destiny halted a moment on the threshold of the banquet hall with the frank eye of cynicism fixed midway between the Great Lady and the warlike George.

"George! Sit down!"

Finally George sat down with a covert glance at his friend the Vicar.

By the time we had got into our overcoats and mufflers and the means of travel had been provided for us, a scene with some pretensions to pathos had been enacted in the hall.

"Odo, you really ought not, but if dear Sonia really is in danger – !"

"We shall all be back a week to-night," the Man of Destiny informed my somewhat tearful monitor with a note of assurance in his voice.

Moving objurgations of "Freddie! Freddie!" were mingled with the clarion note of Mrs. Catesby's indignation.

"It is a mad scheme, and if you get your deserts you will all be shot by the Illyrians."

But Fitz and I were already seated side by side in the car. We waved a farewell to the bewildered company upon the hall steps, and then the fact seemed slowly to be borne in upon my numbed intelligence that yet again I was irrevocably committed to this latest and maddest call of my evil genius. There he sat by my side, his cigar a small red disc of fire, and he self-possessed, insouciant, dæmonic, almost gay.

The flaccid, rudderless creature of the past ten days was gone as though he had never been. It was hard to realise that this born leader of others, who courted war like a mistress, the magic of whose initiative the coolest and sanest could not resist, was the self-same broken fragment of human wreckage who twenty-four hours ago had not the motive power to perform the simplest action. But there could be no question of the magic he knew how to exert over the most diverse natures; and as we sat side by side in the semi-darkness of the car while it flew along the muddy, winding and narrow roads to Dympsfield House, I yielded almost with a thrill of exultation to the director of my fate.