“Wont you tell me, please, what you mean?” he begged.
“Isn’t it clear?” she answered, very softly but with a suspicion of scorn in her low tones. “You kissed me because I deliberately invited it. I know that quite well. My anger—and I have been angry about it—is with myself.”
He was a little taken aback. Her perfect naturalness was disarming, a little confusing.
“You certainly did seem provocative,” he confessed, “but I ought to have remembered.”
“You are very stupid,” she sighed. “I deliberately invited your embrace. Your withholding it would simply have added to my humiliation. I am furious with myself, simply because, although I have lived a great part of my life with men, on equal terms with them, working with them, playing with them, seeing more of them at all times than of my own sex, such a thing has never happened to me before.”
“I felt that,” he said simply.
For a moment her face shone. There was a look of gratitude in her eyes. Her impulsive grasp of his hand left his fingers tingling.
“I am glad that you understood,” she murmured. “Perhaps that will help me just a little. For the rest, if you wish to be very kind, you will forget.”
“If I cannot do that,” he promised, “I will at least turn the key upon my memories.”
“Do more than that,” she begged. “Throw the key into the sea, or whatever oblivion you choose to conjure up. Moments such as those have no place in my life. There is one purpose there more intense than anything else, that very purpose which by some grim irony of fate it seems to be within your power to destroy.”
He remained silent. Ordinary expressions of regret seemed too inadequate. Besides, the charm of the moment was passing. The other side of her was reasserting itself.
“I suppose,” she went on, a little drearily, “that even if I told you upon my honour, of my certain knowledge, that the due delivery of that packet might save the lives of thousands of your countrymen, might save hearts from breaking, homes from becoming destitute—even if I told you all this, would it help me in my prayer?”
“Nothing could help you,” he assured her, “but your whole confidence, and even then I fear that the result would be the same.”
“Oh, but you are very hard!” she murmured. “My confidence belongs to others. It is not mine alone to give you.”
“You see,” he explained, “I know beforehand that you are speaking the truth as you see it. I know beforehand that any scheme in which you are engaged is for the benefit of our fellow creatures and not for their harm. But alas! you make yourself the judge of these things, and there are times when individual effort is the most dangerous thing in life.”
“If you were any one else!” she sighed.
“Why be prejudiced about me?” he protested. “Believe me, I am not a frivolous person. I, too, think of life and its problems. You yourself are an aristocrat. Why should not I as well as you have sympathy and feeling for those who suffer?”
“I am a Russian,” she reminded him, “and in Russia it is different. Besides, I am no longer an aristocrat. I am a citizeness of the world. I have eschewed everything in life except one thing, and for that I have worked with all my heart and strength. As for you, what have you done? What is your record?”
“Insignificant, I fear,” he admitted. “You see, a very promising start at the Bar was somewhat interfered with by my brief period of soldiering.”
“At the present moment you have no definite career,” she declared. “You have even been wasting your time censoring.”
“I am returning now to my profession.”
“Your profession!” she scoffed. “That means you will spend your time wrangling with a number of other bewigged and narrow-minded people about uninteresting legal technicalities which lead nowhere and which no one cares about.”
“There is my journalism.”
“You have damned it with your own phrase ‘hack journalism’!”
“I may enter Parliament.”
“Yes, to preserve your rights,” she retorted.
“I am afraid,” he sighed, “that you haven’t a very high opinion of me.”
“It is within your power to make me look upon you as the bravest, the kindest, the most farseeing of men,” she declared.
He shook his head.
“I decline to think that you would think any the better of me for committing a dishonourable action for your sake.”
“Try me,” she begged, her hand resting once more upon his. “If you want my kind feelings, my everlasting gratitude, they are yours. Give me that packet.”
“That is impossible,” he declared uncompromisingly. “If you wish to alter my attitude with regard to it, you must tell me exactly from whom it comes, what it contains, and to whom it goes.”
“You ask more than is possible.. You make me almost sorry—”
“Sorry for what?”
“Sorry that I saved your life,” she said boldly. “Why should I not be? There are many who will suffer, many who will lose their lives because of your obstinacy.”
“If you believe that, confide in me.”
She shook her head sadly.
“If only you were different!”
“I am a human being,” he protested. “I have sympathies and heart. I would give my life willingly to save any carnage.”
“I could never make you understand,” she murmured hopelessly. “I shall not try. I dare not risk failure. Is this room hot, or is it my fancy? Could we have a window open?”
“By all means.”
He crossed the room and lifted the blind from before one of the high windows which opened seawards. In the panel of the wall, between the window to which he addressed himself and the next one, was a tall, gilt mirror, relic of the days, some hundreds of years ago, when the apartment had been used as a drawing-room. Julian, by the merest accident, for the pleasure of a stolen glance at Catherine, happened to look in it as he leaned over towards the window fastening. For a single moment he stood rigid. Catherine had risen to her feet and, without the slightest evidence of any fatigue, was leaning, tense and alert, over the tray on which his untouched whisky and soda was placed. Her hand was outstretched. He saw a little stream of white powder fall into the tumbler. An intense and sickening feeling of disappointment almost brought a groan to his lips. He conquered himself with an effort, however, opened the window a few inches, and returned to his place. Catherine was lying back, her eyes half-closed, her arms hanging listlessly on either side of her chair.
“Is that better?” he enquired.
“Very much,” she assured him. “Still, I think that if you do not mind, I will go to bed. I am troubled with a very rare attack of nerves. Drink your whisky and soda, and then will you take me into the drawing-room?”
He played with his tumbler thoughtfully. His first impulse was to drop it. Intervention, however, was at hand. The door opened, and the Princess entered with Lord Shervinton.
“At last!” the former exclaimed. “I have been looking for you everywhere, child. I am sure that you are quite tired out, and I insist upon your going to bed.”
“Finish your whisky and soda,” Catherine begged Julian, “and I will lean on your arm as far as the staircase.”
Fate stretched out her right hand to help him. The Princess took possession of her niece.
“I shall look after you myself,” she insisted. “Mr. Orden is wanted to play billiards. Lord Shervinton is anxious for a game.”
“I shall be delighted,” Julian answered promptly.
He moved to the door and held it open. Catherine gave him her fingers and a little half-doubtful smile.
“If only you were not so cruelly obstinate!” she sighed.
He found no words with which to answer her. The shock of his discovery was still upon him.
“You’ll give me thirty in a hundred, Julian,” Lord Shervinton called out cheerfully. “And shut that door as soon as you can, there’s a good fellow. There’s a most
confounded draught.”
CHAPTER IX
Table of Contents
It was at some nameless hour in the early morning when Julian’s vigil came to an end, when the handle of his door was slowly turned, and the door itself pushed open and closed again. Julian, lying stretched upon his bed, only half prepared for the night, with a dressing gown wrapped around him, continued to breathe heavily, his eyes half-closed, listening intently to the fluttering of light garments, the soft, almost noiseless footfall of light feet. He heard her shake out his dinner coat, try the pockets, heard the stealthy opening and closing of the drawers in his wardrobe. Presently the footsteps drew near to his bed. For a moment he was obliged to set his teeth. A little waft of peculiar, unanalysable perfume, half-fascinating, half-repellent, came to him with a sense of disturbing familiarity. She paused by his bedside. He felt her hand steal under the pillow, which his head scarcely touched; search the pockets of his dressing gown, search even the bed. He listened to her soft breathing. The consciousness of her close and intimate presence affected him in an inexplicable manner. Presently, to his intense relief, she glided away from his immediate neighbourhood, and the moment for which he had waited came. He heard her retreating footsteps pass through the communicating door into his little sitting room, where he had purposely left a light burning. He slipped softly from the bed and followed her. She was bending over an open desk as he crossed the threshold. He closed the door and stood with his back to it.
“Much warmer,” he said, “only, you see, it isn’t there.”
She started violently at the sound of his voice, but she did not immediately turn around. When she did so, her demeanour was almost a shock to him. There was no sign of nervousness or apology in her manner. Her eyes flashed at him angrily. She wore a loose red wrap trimmed with white fur, a dishabille unusually and provokingly attractive.
“So you were shamming sleep!” she exclaimed indignantly.
“Entirely,” he admitted.
Neither spoke for a moment. Her eyes fell upon a tumbler of whisky and soda, which stood on a round table drawn up by the side of his easy-chair.
“I have not come to bed thirsty,” he assured her. “I had another one downstairs—to which I helped myself. This one I brought up to try if I could remember sufficient of my chemistry to determine its contents. I have been able to decide, to my great relief, that your intention was probably to content yourself with plunging me into only temporary slumber.”
“I wanted you out of the way whilst I searched your rooms,” she told him coolly. “If you were not such an obstinate, pig-headed, unkind, prejudiced person, it would not have been necessary.”
“Dear me!” he murmured. “Am I all that? Won’t you sit down?”
For a moment she looked as though she were about to strike him with the electric torch which she was carrying. With a great effort of self-control, however, she changed her mind and threw herself into his easy-chair with a little gesture of recklessness. Julian seated himself opposite to her. Although she kept her face as far as possible averted, he realised more than ever in those few moments that she was really an extraordinarily beautiful person. Her very attitude was full of an angry grace. The quivering of her lips was the only sign of weakness. Her eyes were filled with cold resentment.
“Well,” she said, “I am your prisoner. I listen.”
“You are after that packet, I suppose?”
“What sagacity!” she scoffed. “I trusted you with it, and you behaved like a brute. You kept it. It has nothing to do with you. You have no right to it.”
“Let us understand one another, once and for all,” he suggested. “I will not even discuss the question of rightful or wrongful possession. I have the packet, and I am going to keep it. You cannot cajole it put of me, you cannot steal it from me. To-morrow I shall take it to London and deliver it to my friend at the Foreign Office. Nothing could induce me to change my mind.”
She seemed suddenly to be caught up in the vortex of a new emotion. All the bitterness passed from her expression. She fell on her knees by his side, sought his hands, and lifted her face, full of passionate entreaty, to his. Her eyes were dimmed with tears, her voice piteous.
“Do not be so cruel, so hard,” she begged. “I swear before Heaven that there is no treason in those papers, that they are the one necessary link in a great, humanitarian scheme. Be generous, Mr. Orden. Julian! Give it back to me. It is mine. I swear—”
His hands gripped her shoulders. She was conscious that he was looking past her, and that there was horror in his eyes. The words died away on her lips. She, too, turned her head. The door of the sitting room had been opened from outside. Lord Maltenby was standing there in his dressing gown, his hand stretched out behind him as though to keep some one from following him.
“Julian,” he demanded sternly, “what is the meaning of this?”
For a moment Julian was speechless, bereft of words, or sense of movement. Catherine still knelt there, trembling. Then Lord Maltenby was pushed unceremoniously to one side. It was the Princess who entered.
“Catherine!” she screamed. “Catherine!”
The girl rose slowly to her feet. The Princess was leaning on the back of a chair, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief and sobbing hysterically. Lord Shervinton’s voice was heard outside.
“What the devil is all this commotion?” he demanded.
He, too, crossed the threshold and remained transfixed. The Earl closed the door firmly and stood with his back against it.
“Come,” he said, “we will have no more spectators to this disgraceful scene. Julian, kindly remember you are not in your bachelor apartments. You are in the house over which your mother presides. Have you any reason to offer, or excuse to urge, why I should not ask this young woman to leave at daybreak?”
“I have no excuse, sir,” Julian answered, “I certainly have a reason.”
“Name it?”
“Because you would be putting an affront upon the lady who has promised to become my wife. I am quite aware that her presence in my sitting room is unusual, but under the circumstances I do not feel called upon to offer a general explanation. I shall say nothing beyond the fact that a single censorious remark will be considered by me as an insult to my affianced wife.”
The Princess abandoned her chorus of mournful sounds and dried her eyes. Lord Waltenby was speechless.
“But why all this mystery?” the Princess asked pitifully. “It is a great event, this. Why did you not tell me, Catherine, when you came to my room?”
“There has been some little misunderstanding,” Julian explained. “It is now removed. It brought us,” he added, “very near tragedy. After what I have told you, I beg whatever may seem unusual to you in this visit with which Catherine has honoured me will be forgotten.”
Lord Maltenby drew a little breath of relief. Fortunately, he missed that slight note of theatricality in Julian’s demeanour which might have left the situation still dubious.
“Very well, then, Julian,” he decided, “there is nothing more to be said upon the matter. Miss Abbeway, you will allow me to escort you to your room. Such further explanations as you may choose to offer us can be very well left now until the morning.”
“You will find that the whole blame for this unconventional happening devolves upon me,” Julian declared.
“It was entirely my fault,” Catherine murmured repentantly. “I am so sorry to have given any one cause for distress. I do not know, even now—”
She turned towards Julian. He leaned forward and raised her fingers to his lips.
“Catherine,” he said, “every one is a little overwrought. Our misunderstanding is finished. Princess, I shall try to win your forgiveness to-morrow.”
The Princess smiled faintly.
“Catherine is so unusual,” she complained.
Julian held open the door, and they all filed away down the corridor, from which Lord Shervinton had long since beat a hurried retreat. He stood t
here until they reached the bend. Catherine, who was leaning on his father’s arm, turned around. She waved her hand a little irresolutely. She was too far off for him to catch her expression, but there was something pathetic in her slow, listless walk, from which all the eager grace of a few hours ago seemed to have departed.
It was not until they were nearing London, on the following afternoon, that Catherine awoke from a lethargy during which she had spent the greater portion of the journey. From her place in the corner seat of the compartment in which they had been undisturbed since leaving Wells, she studied her companion through half-closed eyes. Julian was reading an article in one of the Reviews and remained entirely unconscious of her scrutiny. His forehead was puckered, his mouth a little contemptuous. It was obvious that he did not wholly approve of what he was reading.
Catherine, during those few hours of solitude, was conscious of a subtle, slowly growing change in her mental attitude towards her companion. Until the advent of those dramatic hours at Maltenby, she had regarded him as a pleasant, even a charming acquaintance, but as belonging to a type with which she was entirely and fundamentally out of sympathy. The cold chivalry of his behaviour on the preceding night and the result of her own reflections as she sat there studying him made her inclined to doubt the complete accuracy of her first judgment. She found something unexpectedly intellectual and forceful in his present concentration,—in the high, pale forehead, the deep-set but alert eyes. His long, loose frame was yet far from ungainly; his grey tweed suit and well-worn brown shoes the careless attire of a man who has no need to rely on his tailor for distinction. His hands, too, were strong and capable. She found herself suddenly wishing that the man himself were different, that he belonged to some other and more congenial type.
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