“One of those houses?” he asked.
She nodded.
“That and other things. They say that anything goes on there.”
They reached a dark stretch of road as they swung away from the race course. Her arm stole around him.
“Paul,” she whispered, “it makes me so happy to have you back again. You are brutal with me, you are all the bad things a man can be, you are mean, you give me so little and yet—I love you.”
He relaxed slightly. His arms drew her into his embrace.
“Poor Rosa,” he mocked. “Always dissatisfied.”
Their lips met and for a time she seemed content. She drew back breathless and smoothed his cheeks with her hands.
“Ah, well,” she sighed, “I have you now. It is something.”
They jolted and rattled along the badly laid road but for the moment she made no complaints. She was glorying in the strength of his arms. More than once she had to point to Pierre sitting immovable in front. Presently the car slackened speed. They turned to the left—a newly made road. There was a gaunt unfurnished villa, a patch of pine trees, a strip of waste ground, then they turned in and pulled up before a small house wrapped in darkness. It was a cheaply built, ugly affair with a scrap of ill-tended garden and a garage something little better than a tin shed. She stepped out, latchkey in hand, and he followed her to the threshold. The chauffeur, with a grumpy good-night, drove off. The jeweller from Warsaw lingered on the step looking around him into the uncertain night. It was a lane which seemed to have failed in its object. The land which had been sold was cumbered with a few mushroom-like villas mostly unoccupied. There were building materials left in the ill-made road, a few sickly looking trees cut down, which no one troubled to strip and cart away. He chuckled as he turned and followed her.
“I chose well,” he said as he took off his overcoat. “It is a secluded neighbourhood, this. It is what I like. Who would think of searching in a wilderness like this for me?”
She opened the door of a small salon. It was ill-furnished with a suite which seemed to have been removed wholesale from one of the popular emporiums. There was an inferior rug upon the floor but upon the table there was a goodly sight of bottles—vodka, whisky, brandy. He rubbed his hands with pleasure and threw off his coat.
“I love to sit like this in my shirt sleeves,” he declared. “Pass me the whisky, Rosa. I will drink to you once more in your own home.”
“My home,” she scoffed, pushing the bottle towards him. “Paul, listen to me. Look round you. Look at this ugly room, this miserable villa, this wretched neighbourhood. Look at my clothes, the best I can afford to buy. You treat me badly, miserably. Oh, if people knew!”
He looked at her steadily. He did something which, coming from him, seemed unnatural. He placed upon the table before him the tumblerful of whisky which he had been raising to his lips, which he had not yet tasted. He caught her by the shoulders.
“Listen, you fool,” he cried, “and understand if you can. How do you think I live from day to day? Well, I will tell you. I am not boasting of it. I live in luxury. I live in a palace. Castles were stripped of their finest furniture for my rooms. My bed has been slept in by queens. One hundred men watch me while I sleep. Millions are ready to obey when I give the word. Women? God, how I hate the women who infest the place—stinking of perfume—silks and chiffons, coiffured hair, blazing with jewels but shrieking for more, drunken with drugs or wine—playing at life but without the strength in their feeble bodies to know what it is to feel—you hear, woman?—to feel real passion.”
He paused for a moment. She felt his breath upon her neck.
“Now listen and understand me forever,” he finished, and his arms were drawing round her like a vice. “I love this ugliness. I love your clothes, readymade from the Galeries though they may be. I love your coarse body, You are a woman. You are what was bred in my bones. I hate those sycophants, those soiled butterflies. They haunt my dreams. I feel like wringing their necks when they bring me their kisses. Here, come to me. This is the room I want to love in, this is the palace I want to sleep in. Rosa—”
His kiss scorched her lips. A sort of hysteria seemed to sweep over her. She gripped him like mad, tore at his shirt.
“Paul!”
She was choking. The words would have fallen over one another but she was choking. Her strength for the moment seemed almost equal to his…Then it seemed as though all the world were crashing around them. She saw his eyes rivetted upon that ill-painted deal door. She turned her head and looked. Very slowly, an inch at a time, the door was opening. She flung herself away from him.
“Who is there?” she cried.
The jeweller from Warsaw had risen to his full height. His face was terrible but no sound passed his lips. His hand stole around to his hip pocket but never reached it. He was suddenly gripped from behind. She heard his cry. She too looked round. The cheap ill-fitting doors of communication from behind had also been pushed open. A little man, whose face seemed to her strangely familiar, had crept out. One arm was round Agrestein’s neck, the other seemed to be breaking his wrist. She heard the bones crunch, she heard the roar come from his lips as he swung helplessly round, she heard his cry as he swayed upon his feet. The door in front of him was now wide open. A little procession entered the room. There was a curiously impressive looking man who was a stranger to her. Behind there were two others—also strangers—sinister looking men who seemed poised upon their feet for action. Mr. Cheng, who was in the front, spoke quietly.
“Tie him up and leave him alone, Jonson,” he directed. “Madame will be so kind as to raise her hands. It is necessary to be assured that she has no weapon.”
The woman sank into a chair. She was beginning to shriek. Cheng raised his hand slightly. In a moment she was in the grasp of one of the men. Something was thrust into her mouth, hands travelled over her, not the amorous hands of the man on the other side of the table bound and helpless, but hands which speedily accomplished their purpose.
“It is fortunate,” Mr. Cheng continued, leaning slightly against the wall. “I like weapons only when they are to be used. You recognise me, my enemy?” he added, turning to the man who carried Paul Agrestein’s passport in his pocket. “Yes, I see by your face that you do. I am the prospective victim for whom you formed a special little corps—a trio of amiable ruffians to make sure of my destruction. Jonson, who has just trussed you up so magnificently, was one of them. I knew too much of you and your country—yes? You have been a foul murderer. You are a sham despot, a wild beast born in the guise of a man and dealing out to your fellows every sort of inhumanity. If the ghosts of your victims could be here to see you to-night they would fill this room and stretch to the sea. The Princess Oronoff—you remember her parents, you remember your treatment of them? You remember her sister? You remember the millions you stripped them of after you had robbed them of everything else in life? Little Jonson, the man who has just made such a wonderful success of tying you up. He does that on the stage for money, you know, only he knows the secret of escape. Another black spot upon your memory, I think.”
The bound man turned towards Rosa. Lines seemed to have bitten their way down his yellow cheeks and to his twisted mouth. His eyes were aflame.
“It is you who have done this!” he shouted. “This is your trap.”
“Not on my soul,” she shrieked. “Not on my soul, Paul. I knew nothing.”
The rope, strong though it was, became taut as a steel hawser with the man’s straining. Jonson watched his work with a smile.
“If he stands up,” he confided amiably, “he will fall down again. He can stretch at his bonds like that all day and all night but they will not give. Yet when they did that to me—his clumsy man Hanson—I was free in thirty seconds. Just a knack.”
“It was too simple a thing,” Mr. Cheng went on, “for you to die in the Casino at Nice to-night although you were surrounded by men who carried your death warrant in their hands. T
hese few minutes were necessary. You have been a clever scoundrel to send your dummy into your country home with nurses whilst you year by year took your holiday here. Clever up to a point only. Once too often you have stolen away from the high places to breathe the air of liberty. Have you anything to say?”
“Name your terms,” the writhing man called out in a voice which no one would have recognised as his. “I will live here for the rest of my life. I will go into exile where you will. I will pledge my word never to return to Moscow.”
“Is that all?” Cheng asked.
“What more can I say? Rosa, you speak. I will marry this woman. We will live here and I will give you my bond written in my own blood, if you will, that I will never leave this place.”
Mr. Cheng sighed.
“If it were not against the laws which hedge me round,” he said, “if I had not been born of a royal line to whom certain actions are forbidden, I should kill you with my own hand. As it is—shoot.”
Two reports rang out almost simultaneously. The bound man seemed to shrink within the ropes that held him. They saw the shadow of death flicker across his face. No words passed his lips. A few feet away from him the silence of the woman was also like the silence of annihilation.
CHAPTER XX
Table of Contents
Eastwards from the Valley of the Winds itself, hidden in the bosom of the mountains towards which Cheng had gazed so often, the turmoil had ceased. The purple-black masses of clouds lost their density as the rising sun appeared from behind the snow capped peaks. For a moment or two the fading stars paled only to be blotted out altogether by the pearly mists. A dim rosy glow shone upon the farther range of mountains. The morning light came and passed away, came again as the sun gathered power and the slanting rain fell from the drifting clouds through the valleys to the seaboard. It pattered upon the stone pavement of the château whose buttresses seemed part of the jagged sides of the precipice. The girl, who had risen from her couch to meet the sunrise, shivered slightly. For an hour she had watched the agonies of the stormily born day. Now the struggle was over. The rain seemed to be washing the hard mountain side from the grim caress of the mistral. Now softness had come to the trees and the pasture land below…
The joy of an early spring morning lay soon upon the flower gardens and the woods of the Château des Tourettes. The sun was shining from a cloudless sky, the wind was a gentle zephyr-like breeze from the south, the perfume from great beds of violets floated up from the terrasse below. From the worn stone balustrade Hou Hsi leaned over with half closed eyes breathing in the fragrance of the morning. She was wearing a Chinese dress of scarlet silk, richly embroidered. Her lithe, exquisite body was quivering, perhaps with the dreams of the night, perhaps with some subtle response to the song of the birds. The Marquise Shih-fu, her chief lady-in-waiting, came out to join her. She, too, seemed rejuvenated. She was gaily clad in the clothes of the eastern world but in manner and bearing, even the pitch of her voice, she seemed to have acquired something of the atmosphere of her immediate surroundings.
“My Princess,” she exclaimed, “it is indeed a joyful clay for you. Even for us others it is full of distractions. Your maids are chattering like birds whilst they work. Fang Tê-Chen, with the same book of holy prayer clasped in his hands, walks ceaselessly up and down the great hall. Three times he has sent for me in despair. Of course you realise there are many, many ceremonies not possible here.”
Hou Hsi was dancing gracefully, with tiny little steps, balancing herself first on one foot and then on the other.
“What do I care?” she laughed, and the sound of her rippling mirth was sweeter even than the song of the birds. “I shall be married just the same. Cheng Ziao Han is coming. He sent his messengers yesterday. He keeps his word.”
The woman by her side was gazing seawards. She seemed indifferent to the beauty of the morning. Her eyes were looking beyond the line of the horizon, always beyond.
“Perhaps we shall return,” she said softly. “Perhaps we shall breathe once more the air of our own country, hear our own tongue spoken. Hou Hsi, the perfume of those violets is wonderful but it is not the perfume that comes to me now—the perfume of the flowering fruit trees—the magnolia, the lotus.”
“We are going back to it all,” Hou Hsi murmured ecstatically. “Ziao Han is so silent but he has told me this. We are to rebuild, so far as we can in our lifetime, the beauty of the old world.”
“You will have no regrets?” the Marquise smiled.
“None whatever,” was the confident reply. “There are some strangely pleasant people amongst these Westerners but they make of life a failure. They have lost their vision. They are happy because they have invented wonderful things, because they have learnt to swing the pendulum of life until they have left themselves no room for living or for reflection. They have made of existence a fever…Nothing will ever change them. Do I not know? I have lived in Paris. I have lived in London. Life is a war for them. The men spend their days in the cities fighting one another—not for glory but for gold. They worship no other god.”
“More and more they are to be left alone,” Shih-fu declared. “They are not of our world. More and more I have felt that in every city I have visited.”
“But Ziao Han does not wish to leave them altogether alone,” Hou Hsi reflected. “He has great schemes in his mind. He wants to end war for all time, to establish in the world an everlasting peace.”
“Prince Cheng is a dreamer,” the Marquise sighed.
“To me,” the girl declared, “he seems to be half a god. He lived so long with the priests when he was young he seems to have some inspiration we others lack.”
“You will teach him,” her companion said fervently, “all that he still has to learn in life.”
Hou Hsi smiled. She had never looked more childlike, more innocently beautiful.
“What is there I could teach a man like Ziao Han?” she asked gently.
“There is much,” Shih-fu insisted. “You, Hou Hsi, come from even a stronger and a purer strain than his. Think of your own ancestors, my child. From thousands of years back to the days of your great-great-grandmother, the omnipotent Empress, they worshipped beauty and dwelt in beauty whilst Prince Cheng’s ancestors were simply soldiers.”
Hou Hsi sighed.
“But my dear protectress,” she pointed out, “this is what sometimes makes me lose confidence. But for these Westerners and their thirst for knowledge, but for their gift of probing history and delving into the past, should we ever have known of our own greatness? Even Ziao Han was forced to go out into the world to learn from then, and to bring new life and power to our country he has had to seek their aid.”
The long sobbing note of a motor horn was heard in the far distance. Hon Hsi threw up her arms and cried out with joy. The Marquise turned away.
“I shall go to prepare Fang Tê-Chen,” she exclaimed. “He is in the chapel now. Your maids are there. You yourself have seen the flowers placed in the chancel and upon the altar. And Hou Hsi,” she wound up, with a gleam of humour in her eyes, “after all, these Western notions have crept even into our household. I have seen a snow white wedding cake! The French part of the household is all excited.”
Hou Hsi had ceased to listen. Her eyes were watching the curving road. Soon the car came into sight. The great bell of the château, deep and mellow, was wakening strange echoes from the wall of granite opposite. The high gates were thrown open. Hou Hsi, with her scarlet robes floating around her, walked towards them. Cheng, springing from the car, dropped on one knee for a moment as he took her two hands and kissed them. Her arms stole round his neck.
“Mine is the bridal dress of hundreds of years ago,” she whispered, as they walked slowly along the paved way. “Part of it belonged to my great-great-grandmother when she was married in the palace at Pekin. Part of it is older still.”
“I can match you in no way, sweetheart, except in my love,” he told her. “I wear the clothes of this ge
neration of savages but my heart at least is with yours.”
The bell ceased. The Priest, in those strange robes which he had never dreamed of wearing in a barbarous country, stood framed by the huge pillars in the great entrance to the castle. He turned as they approached and led the way inside across the courtyard. The chapel swallowed them up.
Later in the afternoon Hou Hsi and Cheng Ziao Han stood hand in hand once more looking across the gardens, across the deep gorge, the smiling stretch of flowering fruit trees and orchards to the sea. Hou Hsi was very pale indeed—white as the night lilies of her country. She was silent but her eyes shone with happiness. Behind them were little bursts of shrill laughter from her attendants still seated at the feast. The heavy perfume of the joss sticks, mingled with the scent of the white jasmine and lilies with which the room was decked, stole out to them through the open windows.
“Ziao Han,” she whispered, “a great peace seems to have come to me. I am your bride. Now I am to share in all those great things that are in your mind.”
“I have lived my life in secret,” he told her. “I am proud and happy from now on to share it. Can you stoop down from heaven a little way to be my helper?”
She looked at him and he was answered.
“My task,” he continued, “our task has only just begun. If you will take your place now by my side, Hou Hsi, it will sweeten all my labours. At first there may be nothing to remind you that you are a great Princess—even an Empress. You will have no Court, there will be no ceremony around you. Those things will come. You will see me perhaps tired, you will have to listen sometimes to sad things danger even may hover around us.”
“I shall be with you,” she whispered.
“We shall have to live for a time as Westerners live,” he went on. “We shall have no palace with gardens and rivers, and mountains to climb within our boundaries. You will have to walk upon the earth which is pressed by the feet of other people, breathe the same air, forget who you are and who I am.”
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