His master waved him away.
“That will be all for the night.”
Mark threw himself into an easy chair. His brain was full of grotesque fancies. Once more he was tearing along those mountain roads like a madman, throwing the pebbles into the air, raising clouds of dust, swaying at the corners, skidding to the very point of catastrophe, righting himself automatically as though by a miracle, driving through the grey obscurity of the low hanging mists to emerge and see the carpet of lights below, feeling the stronger winds, as he climbed, upon his cheeks—mad, mad! That was what he had been for an hour—two hours perhaps. The crash against the wall with one wheel, the one that had dislodged the topmost stones hanging over the precipice, was what had finally sobered him. Some labourers came to his help, not one of them doubting but that it was an attempted suicide. He had filled their pockets and started off again, driven on and on until he had found himself once more in familiar places—the Bureau—Cheng—sanity!…
He walked restlessly up and down the room. He stood at the window and watched fragments of black clouds driven across the face of the moon by the rising wind. They travelled on their way across the sky and once more he looked out upon the incoming tide with its white-crested waves and listened to its sullen roar. He walked more rapidly up and down. Movement seemed a necessary part of life to him. If only he could get tired. If only he could keep his thoughts from wandering to those glorious hours of the morning with Catherine by his side, smiling into his face, teaching him with every look and word the happiness which was so near—almost within his reach. A new charm had come as though to madden him during those last few hours, the charm of a woman subdued by a great emotion. She had cared for him. He knew it. Her eyes, her movements, her lips, that queer new timidity which seemed suddenly to have made her so reliant upon him, and him only. He thought of their luncheon, of their joyous little trip upstairs, their scarcely breathed plans, the fat servant unpacking her simple dressing-case…The room was too small. He must escape somewhere. Then a wild thought came to him, an irresistible, maddening desire to seek self-torture. Nevertheless as swiftly as it had come he yielded to it. This time he was sane enough. He remembered the key, he took his coat from the rack in the hall, he made his way carefully to the garage, took out a smaller car with scarcely a glance towards the semi-wreck with its bent mudguard and thick coating of mud and dust, backed the two-seater out and drove steadily along the Promenade des Anglais, through Cagnes once more, the pain in his heart growing as the madness decreased, up to the right, up along the winding road to the few scanty lights above, round the last corner on to the place of the Colombe d’Or. He stepped down, left the car in the shadow of the wall and crossed the terrace to the parapet. He was close to the table where they had lunched. It seemed to him that he could catch a faint torturing return of the rapture of that hour, could hear her voice, could see that sweet intense light which was shining in her eyes. What a fool! What a mad quest this pilgrimage of agony!
The waiter, a little sleepy but still on duty, came out to him.
“Monsieur will take something?” he enquired.
Monsieur ordered a bottle of wine at random. The man’s stifled yawn and forced smile had their effect. He watched him disappear into the house. Then an idea came to him—the maddest idea of all. The bare thought of the Bureau was agonising. The empty places, the room where she had sat, the bed where he had slept last night and dreamed of her. He turned away from the terrace and walked towards the hotel. He took one of the candlesticks, struck a match, lit the candle and climbed the stairs. Only a few hours ago they had climbed them together arm in arm. What madness! He was like a man deliberately torturing himself, courting pain and mocking at himself. He had reached the landing. Here at least he had reached the limits of his endurance. He kept his eyes away from the opposite door. He turned the handle of his own. Everything was as he had left it except that his pyjamas were laid out upon the bed.
The room was haunted, the place was haunted! Memories tore hard enough at the heartstrings—but this! Very slowly his door had been pushed open and Catherine, in the rose coloured negligée he had caught a glimpse of in her dressing-case, stood there on the threshold for a moment looking at him. She came quietly in. He held up his hands. It was madness! His was the low cry of a wounded man. She came a little nearer.
“Mark,” she whispered. “You see I am here.”
His arms went suddenly around her. He had stepped out of that valley of torturing dreams, if only for a second. This was reality. It was Catherine who had crept into his arms and whose lips were upraised to his. His eyes devoured her. She, too, had been suffering. Her face was almost gaunt and she was as pale as death. Fear and joy seemed mingled together in her eyes, her heart was beating madly against his.
“Mark,” she faltered. “I knew that you would come. Now that you are here I am afraid…”
The fear had gone from her face when at last he drew reluctantly away. There was some expression there which baffled him, but the love was there. Mark was a man again. The madness had all passed. Life was flowing through his veins.
“What does it mean, Catherine?”
“You know—you should know—”
Her fingers were clutching feverishly at his shoulders but her head was downcast.
“It was so sudden,” she went on. “Remember that before you came, and all the time since, except when I have been at the Bureau, I have been with the Archbishop. It was almost my life that—just to help to do what I could for all those suffering people and to talk with him sometimes, to hope and to pray night by night that something might change it all—that the old life might come back. I did not realise what had happened to me at first with you, Mark. When I had gone—when I had left you there I knew. It was as though someone had torn the life out of me. We went to the Chapel and he talked to me wonderfully—but his words were the words of another world out of which I had slipped. I did not belong any longer. The sweeter he was the less I seemed to feel. We prayed together, the sacristan lit the candles and we prayed, and the words seemed dead. He took me back to the home he keeps for the people who have no other. The nuns all tried to be kind. I sat there feeling that death was gripping me. When he came and told me what I was to do I did it, Mark, because all these years he and the Church and the hopes of a new world have filled my life. I obeyed. I did not realise how strong this new thing was. They left me alone. I prayed them to leave me alone and I knew that something had happened, that I did not belong any longer, that I could not go back, that I was not afraid even of anything the Church could do, and I stole away. I came here, and the only prayer that has left my lips tonight has been that you would come—and you are here.”
Mark looked around the little bedroom. He felt the quivering of her arms, the wild beating of her heart, as she clung to him. His own passion was rising—fiery, tormenting with all its sweetness.
“Catherine,” he asked her, “are you really so terrified of what your Archbishop threatened—of excommunication?”
“I was,” she confessed. “Now I do not know. To me it was as though a man who had taken the place of God all my life had lifted a curtain and shown me a real hell. There did not seem any choice at first. I just did as he told me—as he willed. It was not until I got away that I realised I was not the same person. I realised, too, how selfish I had been. I have given you all my love, Mark. You have given me yours. Nothing else matters. I want to make you happy.”
“You have made me happier than I ever dreamed I should be again in this world,” he told her.
“Well?” she whispered, her lips clinging to his.
For a moment he felt that he was weakening. The waves of torment were breaking over his head.
“Catherine—”
“Mark—my love.”
“Will you do what I ask?”
“Anything you choose. Command me.”
“Put on your coat,” he begged. “We are going to sit down at that table and talk.”
She drew slowly away. Her eyes seemed full of wonder. “You do not like any longer our little rooms, Mark?”
“Some day we will spend a month here,” he answered.
“Just now I want to talk to you—down there.”
“It is not that you are angry with me?” she pleaded.
He stooped down and kissed her very tenderly, kissed her so that a new expression of peace came into her face.
“Catherine,” he said, “I shall never be angry with you in my life. I shall love you as long as we live. I shall protect you and try to show you how we can be happy together. You will never lose me, Catherine. Do you hear that? And I never mean to let you go,” he continued. “Now that you understand that I want for a time to talk seriously.”
She looked down at her bare feet.
“Of course I am terribly cold standing here,” she confided. “Wait—just five minutes.”
Back on the terrace. She sat by his side and made him put his arm around her. They sent for the waiter and had him open the bottle of wine which Mark had ordered and which was still upon the table. He looked at them as though they were mad, but he obeyed.
“Now for our serious talk,” Mark began.
“I am here to do your will,” she answered.
“This afternoon you were cruel. You were carried away by this terror, you were moved by your affection for the Archbishop and all that he represented in your life. You forgot yourself. You forgot me.”
“It is true,” she sighed. “But now—”
“The pendulum swung back,” he went on firmly. “Tonight you are so full of remorse that you are too kind. You imagine me as I was—hurt and miserable—and you want to atone. It was your sweetness and generosity which brought you here.”
“It was my love for you,” she pleaded, with a passionate break in her voice. “It is my own choice. No one else will suffer.”
“The Patriarch, who after all is next door to a saint, would suffer,” he pointed out. “It might even kill him. You would suffer afterwards. I would suffer because in my greed for happiness and my love for you I had taken more than I should.”
“Mark,” she protested with a queer, dubious little smile upon her lips. “You are talking to me all of a sudden as though you were the Archbishop himself—instead of my lover!”
He smiled and patted her hand tenderly.
“Some day soon I shall make it very clear indeed which of the two I am, sweetheart!”
“But surely I may give myself if I desire when I choose! I belong to myself, do I not?”
“Not altogether,” he told her. “You belong to some extent to what you have built up in your past life of self sacrifice, to that weary and tired old man with one foot in the grave, and to the little circle of poor people you have kept together and to the Church you have supported.”
She sighed.
“The Patriarch is one of the saints of the world,” she confessed.
“And you are one of his children. Of course he is narrow—all zealots are. When he talked about excommunicating you, and frightened you to death, he was off the rails. I do not think he will ever do that again, Catherine. You are going to tell him to-morrow that we have agreed to wait for a little time, but you are also going to tell him that you will not marry Alexander, even though he and Cheng believe that it would be the redemption of your country. Alexander can find another wife.”
“You do not mean to give me up, then?” she asked anxiously.
“I certainly do not.”
“You are sure, quite sure that you are happy, that you will forget how hideously selfish I was? If you will not promise me that, I will not let you go away.”
He held her tightly in his arms.
“I promise,” he said firmly.
Very slowly she drew away from him. She still clasped his hands. There was a soft light in her eyes more beautiful than anything he had ever seen.
“Mark, my love,” she whispered. “You mean more to me now than anything else on earth or in heaven. You have made me happier still because of to-night. You are wonderful. I cannot say any more.”
They crossed the courtyard with its dwarf orange trees in gay green tubs. Once more he kissed her on the lips.
“Just to show,” he exclaimed, himself a little breathless as he drew away and stepped into the car, “that I am still loving you, Catherine.”
The moon had shaken herself free of the clouds as he drove serenely down the winding road. He caught glimpses of the meadows on either side of him, of the olive trees with their gnarled trunks dotted about here and there like grim spectres of the night, of the orchards with their fluttering wealth of blossom, of the glimmering sea beyond. Once more the world was a beautiful place.
CHAPTER XXIX
Table of Contents
The Right Honourable James P. Mountain, United States Ambassador to France, received something of a shock when his first secretary, without any previous announcement, ushered Mark Humberstone into his study. He was somewhat of a stickler for etiquette and Mark’s flying kit was scarcely the costume in which one paid an ambassadorial visit.
“What’s the meaning of this, Harding?” he asked a trifle severely.
“I will explain if you will allow me to, sir,” the secretary said. “This is Mr.—I think he is generally called Professor Mark Humberstone.”
“What, Humberstone of Beaumont Park?”
“Yes, sir,” Mark replied. “I am his son. I have been working down at Nice.”
The ambassador rose to his feet and held out his hand.
“Your father was an old friend of mine,” he acknowledged. “I have seen you before, too. A spot of trouble down in your part of the world, isn’t there?”
“Well, in a sort of way there is,” Mark admitted. “I have had to dodge the police all the way from Le Bourget and we reached the back entrance of the Embassy in the nick of time. I sent a wireless to Harding—we were at Harvard together—to meet me at the flying ground if he could. I have just flown up from Nice.”
The ambassador’s expression changed.
“It is true, then, what I have heard. You have been working at the International Bureau there?” he asked.
Mark nodded.
“Working there like a slave for about two years, sir,” he admitted cheerfully.
“And got yourself into trouble, I hear.”
“Our time table did not exactly work, sir.”
The ambassador waved him to a seat.
“Do you want my help?”
“We certainly do,” Mark admitted.
“Who are we?”
“My partner in the work I have been doing. Cheng his name is, Prince Cheng I ought to call him, I suppose, now that we are coming out into the open.”
“Prince Cheng, I gather, is not an American born?” the ambassador asked, settling himself down a little more comfortably in his chair.
“He is a Chinese,” Mark confided. “A descendant of one of the great Manchu families. Cheng is married to Hou Hsi, the great-great-granddaughter of the famous Empress T’zu Hsi.”
“All this is very interesting,” Mr. Mountain said, “but if he is in trouble I can do nothing to help Prince Cheng, whatever his antecedents may be. You, as an American citizen, of course, are different. What is it you want from me?”
“I want immunity from arrest until I have had time to explain certain things, or rather until Cheng has.”
“What is the charge against you?”
“Retsky, the Soviet dictator, has disappeared from Moscow, as, of course, you know, sir. The Soviet council have appealed to the French police. They believe that he has cone to France. The French police think that he came to Nice. The authorities there believe that we are responsible for whatever may have happened to him.”
“Well?”
“What we want,” Mark continued, “is to place certain facts of immense importance to the French nation and to the whole world before the Premier or the President, whichever you think b
est. When they have grasped them, I think that they will grant us—that is to say Prince Cheng and me—one of those special passports, laissez passers, they used to be called, which would ensure us against any police interference with our movements.”
“Can you prove that you had nothing to do with the disappearance of Retsky?” Mr. Mountain asked.
“That is rather a negative sort of business, isn’t it?” Mark pointed out. “There is no one can charge us with anything direct. Our only trouble is that a woman who was with the man supposed to be Retsky declares that the International Bureau had something to do with his disappearance.”
“And had it?”
Mark hesitated.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “I am going to ask you not to put that question for a short time. You know, don’t you, that I am Administrator of the Council of Seven, who are working on my father’s trust?”
“I do, indeed,” the ambassador replied, “and for that I, and every thinking person in the United States, admire you and wish you well.”
“I only mention this,” Mark went on, “because I think, sir, it does give us a certain right to plead for special consideration. I have already spent millions, I could almost say billions, upon the work my father left me to perform. We have reached the crucial point. We are on the very threshold of taking the whole world into our confidence. We want just time to explain ourselves and then we will answer your questions about this Retsky business or anything else we may have done that needs elucidation.”
There was a knock at the door. Very apologetically, Harding, the first secretary, presented himself once more. He moved over to the ambassador’s desk.
“Your Excellency,” he announced, “General Levissier begs earnestly for a word with you. There are two police cars outside,” he added.
Mr. Mountain rose and walked into the anteroom. He spoke on the telephone for several minutes. Harding leaned towards Mark.
“You have kind of upset the apple-cart here, Mark,” he confided. “Three Soviet officials arrived this morning by air. They have got the ear of police headquarters. I shouldn’t wonder if they hadn’t raided your Bureau by this time!”
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