The Great Impersonation

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

  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 towards 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 alone 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 impostor? 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 set 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 wilfully,” 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 tonight 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 that 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 tomorrow 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 this matter for you as well as I can,” Seaman promised. “To my mind, your greatest difficulty will be encountered tomorrow. 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.

  Mr. Mangan shook 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, eh?”

  “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 on one side.

  “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 acr
oss 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?”