“But you joined me in spite of them,” said Adrian.
A smile swept the shadow away.
“Thanks to the footman Eric. He said, ‘I have no orders, Miss, about the area door.’ I was down the kitchen stairs in a second and up the area steps the next.”
“But it’s absurd,” Adrian cried. “Nowadays!”
Yes, it was absurd. The days of Sir Tunbelly Clumsy were over and done with. You couldn’t lock up grown girls nowadays, even though you had stolen their fortunes. But it had happened.
“Who is the man?” Adrian asked.
“Can’t you guess?”
Adrian ran over in his mind the names of all the young men of the day with great names and great estates. Any one of them would be blessed to have his Sonia promised to him. Whom had he seen her dancing with? Who had been trotting at her heels?
“No. Tell me!”
“George Andros.”
Adrian gasped. Why, the man was old enough to be Sonia’s father. Only such a man couldn’t have been her father. He was the Minotaur come to life again.
“They must be mad, all of them,” he exclaimed.
“I think they’ve made a bargain — all three of them,” Sonia returned.
“A bargain!”
“I fancy Andros has some sort of hold over them.”
“I’m sure he has,” Adrian said grimly.
“And he presses it,” Sonia continued. “Oh, I don’t suppose he wants me for myself—”
“But of course he does,” cried Adrian.
Sonia smiled tenderly.
“You see me with very kind eyes, my dear,” she said. “No, I expect he thinks that marriage with someone like me will give him a more solid position in the world.”
“And you’re to be sacrificed for that!” Adrian exclaimed in a fury. “I’ll tell you something, Sonia. Every marriage license ought to carry a third-party risk so that one could deal properly with people like Andros—” He turned suddenly to Sonia and gently took her hands. “My dear,” he said, in a voice which had changed in a minute to a quiet tone of absolute conviction, “we have got to be together, you and I. I feel that we have been separated before and more than once
“I, too, have been feeling that all the morning,” she answered in a whisper.
“Now we have got to be together. I think perhaps that we might, together, do some service.”
It was simply spoken. The two thoughts were interwoven in his mind — Sonia and service. It seemed to him that whilst he was here with her at his side in the garden of Ranelagh, he could hear in the high house above St. Ann’s Bay in Jamaica the clear reverberating strokes of Big Ben telling the hour of midnight. Sonia looked across the garden to the old red house mellowed by the sun. She, too, had a fancy. She fancied that she heard a thin harsh voice gently telling her of shame and pain endured in a great service; and out of the story she fashioned a high hope and promise.
She turned to her lover.
“What will you do?” she asked. “We’re supposed to go to Scotland at the end of the month. I can’t. No, I can’t! Whatever you do, be quick! Dear heart, be quick!”
There was neither doubt nor trouble in Adrian’s mind any more than, now, in hers.
“We’ll go back to London. We’ll lunch together. We’ll go together to Grosvenor Street afterwards. We won’t have any trouble, I promise you. You’ll pack some clothes and I’ll take you to Joan Bletchworth’s. Then we’ll get married. Then we’ll go off”
“Where to?” she cried.
“Where you like, so long as in the end we get to Rome. I want to see Rome with you. I think I’ve been dreaming of it for centuries.”
They wandered back, her hand in his, across the lawns to the Clubhouse. Their hearts told them that there had never been happiness so radiant, a morning so golden, a place so magical. Perhaps there had been one such place — a hollow of the Downs under Bignor Hill. Perhaps, too, there had been another, the Closewalks of Cowdray Park.
XXXIII. SOMETHING NEW TO THE PILGRIM
For though through many straits and lands I roam
I launch at Paradise and I sail towards home;
The course I there began shall here be stay’d,
Sails hoisted there, struck here and anchors laid
In Thames which were at Tigris and Euphrates weigh’d.
— Donne
To Sonia that morning her lover was a magician upon his holiday. He secured a table by the open window. He ordered food from fairyland and got it. And when, with a start of dismay, she discovered the Crattons lunching with a party on the opposite side of the restaurant, he transformed that inopportunity into an advantage. He wrote a polite note asking them to receive Sonia and himself that afternoon and sent it across by a waiter.
“I’ll make you a bet, Sonia,” he said. “Everything will be settled here within the hour,” and to her amazement, when the room was gradually emptying, she saw Spencer Cratton drifting across the floor towards them with his indolent affability completely unruffled.
“I hold not only the grand slam, darling,” said Adrian with a smile, “I’ve got the whole pack of cards in my pocket. Just see!” And he ordered the waiter to set another chair by the table.
“Will you sit down, Sir?” he said, and Mr Spencer Cratton accepted the invitation.
“For a moment,” he said, and he produced Adrian’s note. “It will be a little difficult to arrange a formal meeting this afternoon. I must be at the House and your mother, Sonia, has engagements. But is a formal meeting necessary?”
Adrian glanced triumphantly at Sonia. Here in the restaurant they were on public ground. Decorum and good manners would be the conditions of their talk. There would be no recrimination, no violent words. In fact the atmosphere would be exactly of that temperature which was most agreeable to Spencer Cratton.
“No,” Adrian answered. “What we wanted to say was that Sonia and I wish to marry.”
Spencer Cratton lit a cigar.
“You won’t expect me to register surprise, will you?” He turned to Sonia. “Your mother, my dear, as you are no doubt aware, had other views for you. But if you young people have really made up your minds, you have the spirit of the times in your favour. Only” — he turned back again to Adrian— “you know, of course, that Sonia will not come of age for a year and that until that time has passed, her mother’s consent to her marriage is necessary.”
Spencer Cratton spoke politely — truculence, in any case, was never amongst his weapons — but the bargaining had begun.
“No doubt,” Adrian replied, “but I entertain a hope that her consent will be given.”
Spencer Cratton shrugged his shoulders.
“Even if it were given,” he replied, “neither she nor I could abandon our other responsibilities toward Sonia.”
In other words, neither Lydia nor Spencer Cratton was going to allow any young jackanapes of a suitor to claim a right to an account of Sonia’s estate. If Adrian wanted to marry Sonia now, the price of the marriage would be a discreet inattention to the facts that Sonia had inherited a fortune and that the fortune had gone. Thus Adrian interpreted the condition and admired the words in which it was conveyed. That they could not abandon their responsibilities seemed a phrase quite worthy of Spencer Cratton.
“I quite understand,” Adrian agreed. “I have obviously no rights in the matter at all.”
“Ah!”
The sigh was undoubtedly one of relief. Spencer Cratton leaned back in his chair. A greater ease was apparent in his attitude.
“I am remiss,” said Adrian. “Will you take a liqueur?”
“And why not?” said Cratton. “They have some brandy here, and they have the discretion not to call us fools by calling it Napoleon.”
When the brandy stood in a big goblet at his hand, Spencer Cratton resumed with a tolerant smile.
“And I suppose that, both of you being young and impatient, you are anxious that there should be no delay.”
The
blood surged into Sonia’s face. Adrian answered: “A special license seems to be indicated.”
“Sonia’s mother insists upon a church.”
“A church it certainly shall be. Today is Wednesday. Shall we say Friday morning?”
“Oh!” cried Sonia.
“Clothes can be got after marriage as easily as before,” said Adrian sententiously, “with the added advantage that, in that case, the husband pays for them.”
“It may certainly be Friday,” said Spencer Cratton. “Sonia’s mother and I will put off for a day our journey to Scotland with the greatest pleasure.”
“And meanwhile—” Adrian began.
“Yes?”
“Sonia, I believe, would like to spend a couple of days with two very good friends of mine in Upper Brook Street, the Bletchworths.”
Adrian looked towards Sonia for corroboration, and she nodded her head.
“Is that necessary,” Spencer Cratton asked easily, “since we know, don’t we, that love laughs at locks?”
“But it doesn’t want to bruise its fingers picking them more than once,” Adrian rejoined.
Spencer Cratton abandoned the argument and drank his brandy.
“We shall all meet at the church, then,” he said, “and in that case we shall issue no invitations. It will just be a private affair for the family.”
Sonia said, “Yes.”
“By the way,” Cratton resumed. “The little house you have, Mr Shard—”
“Was very useful for your secretary,” Adrian continued. “I recognized how useful last night, Mr Cratton.”
For a moment Spencer Cratton lost his equanimity. He changed colour. To Sonia it almost seemed that he was afraid.
“But for a married couple it would be too small. I shall get rid of that little house. It has no memories for me at all. On the other hand, I have one very definite memory of my service with you, Mr Cratton.”
Spencer Cratton shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Adrian was in no hurry to put him at his ease. A little discomfort, a moment or two of anxiety, were a trifling punishment for the evil turn he had tried to do to Adrian yesterday.
“Yes?” Cratton asked warily.
“I remember some words you spoke to me at Genoa. England couldn’t be beaten. I remember all that you said then. For you made it clear that you meant it.”
Spencer Cratton rose to his feet.
“Oh, yes, I remember, too,” he said.
So he owed his entire immunity, Adrian’s silence not only about the trick of last night, but about the speculation in Basra Oilfields, to his chance utterance of the creed in which he believed.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose that was the timeliest speech I ever delivered. What is it we say in Italy? A rivederla!” and with a smile he dawdled away.
In the beginning of October Adrian and Sonia, his wife, motored from Rimini to the south. They travelled by the old Flaminian way and when they entered the Campagna, a passionate excitement seized upon Adrian.
“Ages ago, Sonia, I promised to bring you to Rome.”
“We shall see it together,” said she, pressing his arm. “At last.”
They passed Soracte rising solitary from the plain, the Matterhorn of the Campagna, a villa in a garden of cypress, a clump of pines on a cliff of travertin; and then the Italian chauffeur turned to them.
“Beyond the next hill is Castel Nuovo. From the top of the hill you shall see Rome.”
The car took the steep gradient slowly. Adrian was on his feet whilst the white road still faced him.
“Sonia! Sonia!”
The sky opened out beyond the hill, the plain came into view.
“There! There!” cried the chauffeur and brought the car to a standstill. “There, Signor!”
Far away the great city slept on its low hills. Adrian’s eyes devoured it. He said no word at all, but on his face there was a great perplexity.
He stretched out his arm.
“What’s that?” he asked.
The chauffeur looked where he pointed.
“That?” he asked.
“Yes, that new thing.”
The chauffeur stared at Adrian. “That, Signor, is the dome of St. Peter’s.”
Adrian dropped back in his seat.
“Of course,” he said. “Of course.”
But the wonder was still there in his gaze and in his voice.
“You hadn’t expected it,” said Sonia.
“No, I suppose I hadn’t,” he replied slowly.
AND he hadn’t. For it was eighteen hundred years since he had last seen Rome.
THE END
The Sapphire (1933)
CONTENTS
Chapter I In the Forest
Chapter 2 The Packet
Chapter 3 First Appearance of the Sapphire
Chapter 4 Prisoners of the Sun
Chapter 5 The Door Closes
Chapter 6 Children at Play
Chapter 7 Uncle Sunday
Chapter 8 The First Ascent of the Dent du Pagoda
Chapter 9 On Adam’s Peak
Chapter 10 Again the Shadow
Chapter 11 The Magic Pipe
Chapter 12 Fear and Imogen
Chapter 13 The Indian
Chapter 14 A Council at the Rock Temple
Chapter 15 The Last of the Peak
Chapter 16 The Silent Room
Chapter 17 The Man from Limoges
Chapter 18 Imogen Asks Questions
Chapter 19 Jill Leslie
Chapter 20 The First Night of Dido
Chapter 21 A Summary
Chapter 22 At the Masquerade Ball
Chapter 23 Letty Ransome’s Handbag
Chapter 24 The Fourth Theft
Chapter 25 The Crown Jewel
Chapter 26 Crooks All
Chapter 27 The Last
The first edition
Chapter I In the Forest
I CANNOT PRETEND that the world is waiting for this story, for the world knows nothing about it. But I want to tell it. No one knows it better than I do, except Michael Crowther, and he, nowadays, has time for nothing but his soul.
And for only the future of that. He is not concerned with its past history. The days of his unregenerate activities lie hidden in a cloud behind his back. He watches another cloud in front of him lit with the silver — I can’t call it the gold — of the most extraordinary hope which ever warmed a myriad of human beings. But it is in that past history of his soul and in those activities that the heart of this story lies. I was at once near enough to the man and far enough away from him to accept and understand his startling metamorphoses. I took my part in that dangerous game of Hunt the Slipper which was played across half the earth. Dangerous, because the slipper was a precious stone set in those circumstances of crime and death which attend upon so many jewels. I saw the affair grow from its trumpery beginnings until, like some mighty comet, it swept into its blaze everyone whom it approached. It roared across the skies carrying us all with it, bringing happiness to some and disaster to others. I am Christian enough to believe that there was a pattern and an order in its course; though Michael Crowther thought such a doctrine to be mystical and a sin. Finally, after these fine words, I was at the core of these events from the beginning. Indeed I felt the wind of them before it blew.
Thus:
My father held a high position in the Forest Company and I was learning the business from the bottom so that when the time came I might take his place. I had been for the last six months travelling with the overseer whose province it was to girdle those teak trees which were ripe for felling. The life was lonely, but to a youth of twenty-two the most enviable in the world. There was the perpetual wonder of the forest; the changes of light upon branch and leaf which told the hours like the hands of a clock; the fascination to a novice of the rudiments of tree-knowledge, the silence and the space; and some very good shooting besides. Apart from game for the pot, I had got one big white tiger ten feet long as he lay, a t’sine, and
a few sambur with excellent heads. I had the pleasant prospect, too, of returning to England for the months of the rainy season, and giving the girls there a treat they seldom got.
I parted from the overseer in order to make the Irrawaddy at Sawadi, a little station on the left bank of the river below Bhamo, but above the vast cliff which marks the entrance to the Second Defile. The distance was greater than a long day’s march, but one of the Company’s rest-houses was built conveniently a few miles from the station. I reached it with my small baggage train and my terrier, about seven o’clock of the evening. A small bungalow was raised upon piles with steps leading up to the door, and a hut with the kitchen and a sleeping-place for the servants was built close by. Both the buildings were set in a small clearing. I ate my dinner, smoked a cheroot, put myself into my camp bed and slept as tired twenty-two should sleep, with the immobility of the dead.
But towards morning some instinct alert in a subconscious cell began to ring its tiny bells and telegraph a warning to my nerve centres that it would be wise to wake up. I resisted, but the bells were ringing too loudly — and suddenly I was awake. I was lying upon my left side with my face towards the open door, and fortunately I had not moved when I awaked. The moon rode high and the clearing to the edge of the trees lay in a blaze of silver light. Against that clear bright background at the top of the steps, on the very threshold of the door, a huge black panther sat up like a cat. His tail switched slowly from side to side and his eyes stared savagely into the dark room. They were like huge emeralds, except that no emerald ever held such fire.
“He wants my terrier dog, Dick,” I explained to myself. I could hear the poor beast shivering under the bed. “But that won’t help me if he crouches and springs.”
My rifle lay on a table across the room. To jump out of bed and make a dash for it was merely to precipitate the brute’s attack. Moreover, even were I to reach it, it was unloaded. So I lay still except for my heart; and the panther sat still except for his tail. He was working out his tactics; I was hoping that I was not shivering quite so cravenly as my unhappy little terrier dog beneath my bed. As I watched, to my utter horror the panther began to crouch, very slowly, pushing back his haunches, settling himself down upon them for a spring. And that spring would land him surely on the top of the bed and me.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 636