by Sax Rohmer
Lithely as one of the wild things with whom she was half kin and who seemed to recognise the kinship, Flamby came to her feet, shaking off the restraining hand, turned and confronted the man who had crept up behind her.
He was an undersized, foxy fellow, dressed as a gamekeeper and carrying a fowling-piece under one arm. His small eyes regarded her through narrowed lids.
“So I’ve caught you at last, have I,” he said; “caught you red-handed.”
He suddenly seized her wrist and dragged her towards him. The bright colour fled from Flamby’s cheeks leaving her evenly dusky; but her grey eyes flashed dangerously.
“Poachin’, eh?” sneered the gamekeeper. “Same as your father.”
Deliberately, and with calculated intent, Flamby raised her right foot, shod in a clumsy, thick-soled shoe, and kicked the speaker on the knee. He uttered a half-stifled cry of pain, releasing her wrist and clenching his fist. But she leapt back from him with all the easy agility of a young antelope.
“You’re a blasted liar!” she screamed, her oval face now flushing darkly so that her eyes seemed supernormally bright. “I wasn’t poaching. My father may have poached, but you hadn’t the pluck to try and stop him. Guy Fawkes! Why don’t you go and fight like he did?”
Fawkes — for this was indeed the keeper’s name — sprang at her clumsily; his knee was badly bruised. But Flamby eluded him with ease, gliding behind the trunk of a friendly oak and peering out at the enraged man elfishly.
“When are they going to burn you?” she inquired.
Fawkes laid his gun upon the ground, without removing his gaze from the flushed mocking face, and began cautiously to advance. He was a man for whom Flamby in the ordinary way entertained a profound contempt, but there was that in his slinking foxy manner which vaguely disturbed her. For long enough there had been wordy warfare between them, but to-day Flamby realised that she had aroused something within the man which had never hitherto shown upon the surface; and into his eyes had come a light which since she had passed her thirteenth year she had sometimes seen and hated in the eyes of men, but had never thought to see and fear in the eyes of Fawkes. For the first time within her memory she realised that Bluebell Hollow was a very lonely spot.
“You daren’t hit me,” she said, rather breathlessly. “I’d play hell.”
“I don’t want to hit you,” replied Fawkes, still advancing; “but you’re goin’ to pay for that kick.”
“I’ll pay with another,” snapped Flamby, her fiery nature reasserting itself momentarily.
But despite the bravado, she was half fearful, and therefore some of her inherent woodcraft deserted her, so much so that not noting a tuft of ferns which uprose almost at her heels, she stepped quickly back, stumbled, and Fawkes had his arms about her, holding her close.
“Now what can you do?” he sneered, his crafty face very close to hers.
“This,” breathed Flamby, her colour departing again.
She seized his ear in her teeth and bit him savagely. Fawkes uttered a hoarse scream of pain, and a second time released her, clapping his hand to the wounded member.
“You damned witch cat,” he said. “I could kill you.”
Flamby leapt from him, panting. “You couldn’t!” she taunted. “All you can kill is rabbits!”
Through an opening in the dense greenwood a ray of sunlight spilled its gold upon the carpet of Bluebell Hollow, and Flamby stood, defiant, head thrown back, where the edge of the ray touched her wonderful, disordered hair and magically turned it to sombre fire. Venomous yet, but doubtful, Fawkes confronted her, now holding his handkerchief to his ear. And so the pair were posed when Paul Mario and Donald Courtier came down the steep path skirting the dell. Don grasped Paul by the arm.
“As I live,” he said, “there surely is my kindly coy nymph of the woods — now divinely visible — who led me to your doors!”
Together they stood, enchanted by the girl’s wild beauty, which that wonderful setting enhanced. But Flamby had heard their approach, and, flinging one rapid glance in their direction, she ran off up a sloping aisle of greenwood and was lost to view.
At the same moment Fawkes, hitherto invisible from the path, stooped to recover his fowling-piece and turned, looking up at the intruders. Recognising Paul Mario, he raised the peak of his cap and began to climb the dell-side, head lowered shamefacedly.
“It’s Fawkes,” said Paul— “Uncle Jacques’ gamekeeper. Presumably this wood belonged to him.”
“Lucky man,” replied Don. “Did he also own the wood-nymphs?”
Paul laughed suddenly and boyishly, as was his wont, and nodded to Fawkes when the latter climbed up on to the path beside them. “You are Luke Fawkes, are you not?” he asked. “I recall seeing you yesterday with the others.”
“Yes, sir,” answered Fawkes, again raising the peak of his cap.
Having so spoken Fawkes become like a man of stone, standing before them, gaze averted, as a detected criminal. One might have supposed that a bloody secret gnawed at the bosom of Fawkes; but his private life was blameless and his past above reproach. His wife acted as charwoman at the church built by Sir Jacques.
“Did you not observe a certain nymph among the bluebells, Fawkes?” asked Don whimsically.
At the first syllable Fawkes sprang into an attitude of alert and fearful attention, listened as to the pronouncement of a foreman juror, and replied, “No, sir,” with the relieved air of a man surprised to find himself still living. “I see Flamby Duveen, I did,” he continued, in his reedy voice— “poachin’, same as her father....”
“Poachin’ — same as her father,” came a weird echo from the wood.
Paul and Don stared at one another questioningly, but Fawkes’ sandy countenance assumed a deeper hue.
“She’s the worst character in these parts,” he went on hastily. “Bad as her father, she is.”
“Father, she is,” mocked the echo.
“She’ll come to a bad end,” declared the now scarlet Fawkes.
“A bad end,” concurred the magical echo, its accent and intonation eerily reproducing those of the gamekeeper. Then: “Whose wife stole the key of the poor-box?” inquired the spirit voice, and finally: “When are they going to burn you?”
At that Don succumbed to uncontrollable laughter, and Paul had much ado to preserve his gravity.
“She appears to be very young, Fawkes,” he said gently; “little more than a child. High spirits are proper and natural after all; but, of course I appreciate the difficulties of your position. Good day.”
“Good day, sir,” said Fawkes, again momentarily relieved apparently from the sense of impending harm. “Good day, sir.” He raised the peak of his cap, turned and resumed his slinking progress.
“A strange coincidence,” commented Don, taking Paul’s arm.
“You are pursuing your fancy about the nymph visible and invisible?”
“Not entirely, Paul. But you may remember, if the incident has not banished the fact from your mind, that you are at present conducting me, at my request, to Something-or-other Cottage, which I had failed to find unassisted.”
“Quite so. We are almost there. Yonder is Babylon Lane, which I understand is part of my legacy. Dovelands Cottage, I believe, is situated about half-way along it.”
“Babylon Lane,” mused Don. “Why so named?”
“That I cannot tell you. The name of Babylon invariably conjures up strange pictures of pagan feasts, don’t you find? The mere sound of the word is sufficient to transport us to the great temple of Ishtar, and to dazzle our imagination with processions of flower-crowned priestesses. Heaven alone knows by what odd freak this peaceful lane was named after the city of Semiramis. But you were speaking of a coincidence.”
“Yes, it is the mother of the nymph, Flamby, that I am going to visit; the Widow Duveen.”
“Then this girl with the siren hair is she of whom you spoke?”
“Evidently none other. I told you, Paul, that I bo
re a message from her father, given to me under pledge of secrecy as he lay dying, to her mother. Paul, the man’s life was a romance — a tragic romance. I cannot divulge his secrets, but his name was not Duveen; he was a cadet of one of the oldest families in Ireland.”
“You interest me intensely. He seems to have been a wild fellow.”
“Wild, indeed; and drink was his ruin. But he was a man, and by birth a gentleman. I am anxious to meet his widow.”
“Of course, she knows of his death?”
“Oh, you need fear no distressing scenes, Paul. I remember how the grief of others affects you. He died six months ago.”
“It affects me, Don, when I can do nothing to lessen it. Before helpless grief I find myself abashed, afraid, as before a great mystery — which it is. Only one day last week, passing through a poor quarter of South London, my cab was delayed almost beside a solitary funeral coach which followed a hearse. The coffin bore one poor humble little wreath. In the coach sat a woman, a young woman, alone — and hers was the wreath upon the coffin, her husband’s coffin. He had died after discharge from a military hospital; so much I learned from the cabman, who had known the couple. She sat there dry-eyed and staring straight before her. No one took the slightest notice of the hearse, or of the lonely mourner. Don, that woman’s face still haunts me. Perhaps he had been a blackguard — I gathered that he had; but he was her man, and she had lost him, and the world was empty for her. No pompous state funeral could have embodied such tragedy as that solitary figure following the spectre of her vanished joy.”
Don turned impulsively to the speaker. “You dear old sentimentalist,” he said; “do you really continue to believe in the faith of woman?”
Paul glanced aside at him. “Had I ever doubted it, Yvonne would have reassured me. Wait until you meet a Yvonne, old man; then I shall ask you if you really continue to believe in the faith of woman. Here we are.”
IV
A trellis-covered path canopied with roses led up to the door of Dovelands Cottage. On the left was a low lichened wall, and on the right a bed of flowers bordering a trimly kept lawn, which faced the rustic porch. Dovelands Cottage was entirely screened from the view of anyone passing along Babylon Lane by a high and dense privet hedge, which carried on its unbroken barrier to the end of the tiny orchard and kitchen-garden flanking the bungalow building on the left.
As Paul opened the white gate a cattle-bell attached to it jangled warningly, and out into the porch Mrs. Duveen came to meet them. She was a tiny woman, having a complexion like a shrivelled pippin, and the general appearance of a Zingari, for she wore huge ear-rings and possessed shrewd eyes of Oriental shape and colour. There was a bluish tinge about her lips, and she had a trick of pressing one labour-gnarled hand to her breast. She curtsied quaintly.
Paul greeted her with the charming courtesy which he observed towards everyone.
“Mrs. Duveen, I believe? I am Paul Mario, and this is Captain Courtier, who has a message to give to you. I fear we may have come at an awkward hour, but Captain Courtier’s time is unfortunately limited.”
Mrs. Duveen repeated the curtsey. “Will it please you to step in, sirs,” she said, her eyes fixed upon Don’s face in a sort of eager scrutiny. “It is surely kind of you to come, sir” — to Don.
They entered a small living room, stuffy because of the characteristically closed windows, but marked by a neatness of its appointments for which the gipsy appearance of Mrs. Duveen had not prepared them. There were several unframed drawings in pastel and water-colour, of birds and animals, upon the walls, and above the little mantelshelf hung a gleaming German helmet, surmounted by a golden eagle. On the mantelshelf itself were fuses, bombs and shell-cases, a china clock under a glass dome, and a cabinet photograph of a handsome man in the uniform of a sergeant of Irish Guards. Before the clock, and resting against it so as to occupy the place of honour, was a silver cigarette case.
Don’s eyes, as his gaze fell on this last ornament, grew unaccountably misty, and he turned aside, staring out of the low window. Mrs. Duveen, who throughout the time that she had been placing chairs for her visitors (first dusting the seats with her apron) had watched the captain constantly, at the same moment burst into tears.
“God bless you for coming, sir,” she sobbed. “Michael loved the ground you walked on, and he’d have been a happy man to-day to have seen you here in his own house.”
Don made no reply, continuing to stare out of the window, and Mrs. Duveen cried, silently now. Presently Paul caught his friend’s eye and mutely conveying warning of his intention, rose.
“Your grief does you honour, Mrs. Duveen,” he said. “Your husband was one I should have been proud to call my friend, and I envy Captain Courtier the memory of such a comrade. There are confidences upon which it is not proper that I should intrude; therefore, with your permission, I am going to admire your charming garden until you wish me to rejoin you.”
Bareheaded, he stepped out through the porch and on to the trim lawn, noting in passing that the home-made bookshelf beside the door bore copies of Shakespeare, Homer, Horace and other volumes rarely found in a workman’s abode. Lémpriére’s Classical Dictionary was there, and Kipling’s Jungle Book, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and Selous’ Romance of Insect Life. Assuredly, Sergeant Duveen had been a strange man.
* * * * * *
Some twenty minutes later the widow came out, followed by Don. Mrs. Duveen’s eyes were red, but she had recovered her composure, and now held in her hand the silver cigarette case from the mantelpiece.
“May I show you this, sir,” she said, repeating her quaint curtsey to Paul. “Michael valued it more than anything he possessed.”
Paul took the case from her hand and examined the inscription:
To Sergeant Michael Duveen, — Company, Irish Guards, from Captain Donald Courtier, in memory of February 9th, 1916.
Opening the case, he found it to contain a photograph of Don. The latter, who was watching him, spoke:
“My affairs would have terminated on February the ninth, Paul, if Duveen had not been there. He was pipped twice.”
“His honour doesn’t tell you, sir,” added Mrs. Duveen, “that he brought Michael in on his back with the bullets thick around him.”
“Oh! oh!” cried Don gaily. “So that’s the story, is it! Well, never mind, Mrs. Duveen; it was all in the day’s work. What the Sergeant did deserved the V.C., and he’d have had it if I could have got it for him. What I did was no more than the duty of a stretcher-bearer.”
Mrs. Duveen shook her head, smiling wanly, the thin hand pressed to her breast. “I’m sorry you couldn’t meet Flamby, sir,” she said. “She should have been home before this.”
“No matter,” replied Don. “I shall look forward to meeting her on my next visit.”
They took their departure, Mrs. Duveen accompanying them to the gate and watching Don as long as he remained in sight.
“Did you observe the drawings on the wall?” he asked Paul, as they pursued their way along Babylon Lane.
“I did. They were original and seemed to be interesting.”
“Remarkably so; and they are the work of our wood nymph.”
“Really! Where can she have acquired her art?”
“From her father, I gather. Paul, I am keenly disappointed to have missed Flamby. The child of such singularly ill-assorted parents could not well fail to be unusual. I wonder if the girl suspects that her father was not what he seemed? Mrs. Duveen has always taken the fact for granted that her husband was a nobleman in disguise! It may account for her adoration of a man who seems to have led her a hell of a life. I have placed in her hands a certain locket which Duveen wore attached to a chain about his neck; I believe that it contains evidence of his real identity, but he clearly intended his wife to remain in perpetual ignorance of this, for the locket is never to be opened except by Flamby, and only by Flamby on the day of her wedding. I fear this popular-novel theme will offend your æsthetic sensibilit
ies, Paul!”
“My dear fellow, I am rapidly approaching the conclusion that life is made up more of melodrama than of psychological hair-splitting and that the penmen dear to the servants’ hall more truly portray it than Henry James ever hoped to do or Meredith attempted. The art of to-day is the art of deliberate avoidance of the violent, and many critics persist in confusing it with truth. There is nothing precious about selfish, covetous, lustful humanity; therefore, good literature creates a refined humanity of its own, which converses in polished periods and never comes to blows.”
“What of Madame Caligula? And what of the critics who hailed Francesca of the Lilies as a tragedy worthy to name with Othello!”
“Primitive passions are acceptable if clothed in doublet and hose, Don. My quarrel with to-day is that it pretends to have lived them down.”
“Let us give credit where credit is due. Prussia has not hesitated to proclaim her sympathy with the primitive. Did you observe an eagle-crowned helmet above Mrs. Duveen’s fireplace?”
“Yes; you know its history?”
“Some part of its history. It was worn by a huge Prussian officer, who, together with his staff, was surprised and captured during the operations of March 1st, 1916; a delightful little coup. I believe I told you that Sergeant Duveen had been degraded, but had afterwards recovered his stripes?”
“You did, yes.”
“It was this incident which led to his losing them. He was taking particulars of rank and so forth of the prisoners, and this imposing fellow with the golden helmet stood in front of all the others, arms folded, head aloft, disdainfully surveying his surroundings. He spoke perfect English and when Duveen asked him his name and rank and requested him to hand over the sword he was wearing, he bluntly refused to have any dealings whatever with a ‘damned common sergeant.’ Those were his own words.