Affinities and Other Stories Part 31

By this time we were well up the lane, and the other car shot past along the highroad. But our pace did not moderate, and after a little the other car found its mistake and came back. We could hear it a quarter of a mile or so behind us. And at that precise instant we began to slow up: the engine struggled for a few yards, began to pant, gave two or three exhausted gasps, and then turned over on its side and died. The next moment we were all three in the road and running like mad up a hill.

If one knows _where_ one is going, and whom one is with, and who is behind one shouting "Stop thief!" it is not so bad. But to have a man you don't know take you by the arm and drag you along through briers and mud toward Heaven knows where, with half a dozen other men just below climbing faster than you can run, and it is raining, and you haven't an idea what it is all about--well, it is not pleasant. And I had lost a heel off one slipper and was three inches shorter on one side than on the other.

Sir George was for refusing the hill and for dodging among the trees, but our deliverer (?) held him tight. Once, in a frenzy of alarm, he did break loose, but he was promptly captured and brought back, with apologies, but firmness. It was easy to see why. He would have caught his death of cold if he had wandered over those hills all night in the rain, and what would have become of England? (I am very glad there are no Prime Ministers in America, and most of the Presidents that I recall would be as easy to run away with as a bull hippopotamus.)

And then we found ourselves at a side entry of what seemed to be a colossal house. The door was partly open and a man in livery was asleep on a bench just inside the door.

The hold on my arm was released. The Prime Minister, a.s.sisted by The Unknown, went up the steps and in through the door.

I struggled up alone, with my lungs suddenly collapsed and yells from somewhere behind me in the darkness. I could hardly lift my feet, and yet I knew I must get up the steps and through that open door before somebody reached out from the black behind me and clutched me. It was a nightmare come to life. And then the footman caught my outstretched hand and dragged me in, the door slammed, and I sat down very quietly on the hall bench and fainted away.

(One of the people in this story insists that I was _not_ left to drag myself up the steps alone, and that he took me up and put me on the bench. But he was excited, and I should know what really happened. He never even glanced at me.)

VII

I am sure, gentle reader--you can see what facility I am gaining; I would not have dared the "gentle reader" in Chapter I--I am sure you will think me stupid not to have understood the situation by that time.

But I did not. When I came to myself the footman was standing by, very stiffly, with a gla.s.s of wine on a tray, and it was easy to see that he knew I had lost my heel and that one of my lace sleeves was gone. When I unclenched my hand and found the necklace still there, and then dropped it on the tray while I drank the wine, his jaw fell. But where he had said, "Will you have some wine, Miss?" before, now he said, "Shall I call 'Awkins, my lady?"

"Don't call any one," I said wearily. "Or--I wish you would find the--the person who just came in with Sir George." And as he turned to go, looking very puzzled, "Where am I?" I asked.

This really should have been said when I first roused.

"At Wimberley Towers, my lady," the man answered, but he looked at me again curiously.

There was loud talking going on down the hall, and, as I sat, I could make out sc.r.a.ps of it. A man's voice, vaguely familiar, in an even monotone, followed by a shrill, excited one, also masculine.

"Berthold said there was a woman in the car, and that was what threw us off, sir. He's always seeing women."

A cold, high English voice came next and then another, but without the incisiveness of the earlier night--Sir George's voice, heavy and lifeless, yet with an undercurrent of scorn.

"Surely you do not think _that_ necessary," he said.

The door was closed again, but a word reached me now and then, occasional raisins in the loaf of my darkness. (This is a better metaphor than I expected it to be, because I was loafing and the hall was dark!) There was talk about Three-Mile Lane, and somebody being accosted at a station, and a jingle of something that sounded like money, followed by the heavy tramping of men along a distant corridor and the closing of a door. Then a machine started somewhere outside with half a dozen shot-like reports followed by the soft hum of the engine. I had a queer feeling of being deserted in a strange place, and it came over me suddenly that I had heard there was a Lady Lethbridge at Wimberley, only they mostly called her Snooksie--English people use the queerest diminutives--and what if she came and asked me what I was doing and how I got there? Or perhaps Sir George would wire to town and bring down a lot of people to take me off to the Tower. The more I thought of it, the surer I felt that this was what was coming. I hoped they would let me change my gown, anyhow--white satin and what was left of bits of lace sleeves would look so queer being carried off to prison.

And to think how I had dreamed of that gown, and how, because it was my first really dignified evening gown--all the rest being tulle and dancing frocks--how I had thought I would wear it just once and perhaps meet somebody who liked it terribly and me in it. And then I would lay it away, and some time later--much later--I would bring it out, a little yellow, and say, "Do you remember it?" And he would say, "Remember it?

As long as I live." And I would say, "I thought of having baby's christening cloak made of it on account of the sentiment." And then he would hold out his arms and say, "Please don't!"

I had not heard any one come along the hall, because I was sniffling; so, when something touched me on the shoulder I looked up, and there _he_ was, just as I had been--well, there he was. And he sat down on the bench beside me, in a puddle, and helped me find my handkerchief.

"I didn't mean to leave you," he said gently, "but there was something that had to be attended to and couldn't wait. Can you walk as far as the library? There is a fire there and I will get you something dry. We can't go upstairs, because I suppose you don't care to let Blanche in on this?"

"Blanche?" I said, trying to balance on my one heel.

"My brother's wife," he explained. "Luckily, she's a little deaf, and Thad has gone up to see she doesn't snoop. What in the world is the matter? Just now you were quite tall and stately, and now you are hardly to my shoulder!"

So I told him about my heel, and he said he liked little women, and that no person who was just five feet two inches and had really curly hair was ever a Militant at heart, and that he had always thought young American girls were well heeled. It was an astonis.h.i.+ng joke for an Englishman, until it developed that he had been living in California for a dozen years and was only home on a visit. And that his name was John, although he was mostly called Jack. When we were nicely settled by the library fire and the man had brought me a cup of tea that would have floated an egg, I asked him quite casually if there was a Mrs. John. He drew his chair up just opposite me and leaned forward with his chin in his hands.

"Not yet," he said.

Something made me draw my breath in sharply--I think it was his tone--and I quite scalded my throat with the tea. The fire was very hot, and little clouds of steam began to rise from my white satin.

"I have spoiled my gown," I said ruefully, "and I had such plans for it."

"What kind of plans?" he asked, moving his chair forward a little. "Do tell me. I'm always making plans myself. And pretty soon, when you are dry and the motor is ready, I shall have to take you back to Ivry, and when we meet again--if we ever do, for Daphne is going to kill me on sight--you will be very, very formal and have both your heels."

"I hope you will forgive me," I said stiffly, "for calling you a--a thief and locking you up and--everything. I don't understand anything yet; it must be because I am so sleepy."

"Poor little girl!" he said. "What you have gone through! And as for forgiving you, you saved my life to-night. Why, if you thought me a thief, did you unload that revolver? If you tell me that I will try to clear up the rest of the mysteries."

"I was afraid he might become excited and shoot you," I returned simply.

And he bent over and took my hand.

"I hoped that was it," he said, just as simply. He did not relinquish my hand.

(When I told Daphne the story I merely said of this: "I dried myself by the library fire.")

But suddenly I saw something that fairly made my blood chill in my veins. On the floor, at his very feet, the firelight dancing on their polished metal, lay a pair of handcuffs.

"Oh!" I cried and jumped to my feet, pointing. "You haven't been telling me the truth. They have given you a few minutes, and then they are coming back to take you away. Oh, don't let them to do it. I couldn't stand it!"

Yes, that is what I said. It was utterly shameless, of course, and no properly-behaved young woman would ever have said it. But no properly-behaved young woman would have kidnapped a Prime Minister, anyhow, and sat in a strange house while her hostess was asleep, drinking tea at four o'clock in the morning.

When I stood up _he_ stood up, too, and looked down at me. "It is worth while having been a brute and a villain," he said soberly, "to hear that. I am not under arrest or going to be. The fact is that two entirely different and--if you will forgive me--nefarious schemes have been under way at the same time, and the lines crossed. You and I got tangled in them and nearly submerged. But that was not accident; it was destiny." He took my other hand.

At that absorbing moment the footman announced cautiously that the motor was at the door. It was horribly disappointing. From destiny to motor wraps is such a descent.

"Do we have to go right away?" I said.

VIII

It was just dawn when we started, one of the grey dawns that have a suggestion of pink, like a smoke-coloured chiffon over a rose foundation. The rain was over, and down in the valley below us lay shadowy white lakes of mist. I threw back my head and took a great breath.

"How beautiful!" I said. And he repeated, "Beautiful!" But he looked directly at me. I had a queer, thrilly feeling in the back of my neck.

And then we were flying down the hillside we had climbed so painfully the night before, and were dipping into the mist pools. Here and there grey shadows moved under the trees and resolved themselves first into rocks and then into sheep. (My descriptions are improving.) And as we went along he told me the story.

It seems he had come back from America for a visit, and on the second day of his stay the Wimberley Romney had been stolen by an expert picture thief posing as a tourist. He had caught a glimpse of the visitor, so when the Romney was missed he started out at once on the search, taking a motor cycle. The whole countryside was roused, and three detectives came down from London. But he had an idea that he would find his man somewhere on the moor, and he had lost himself there. After a night under a rock he had found a cottage and got his bearings. But the rain kept him there. He had got as far as Harcourt Hall when another storm came up. To his surprise he found the place almost in decay, but the house open. He went in, dropped asleep in the morning-room on a divan, wakened by hearing me pa.s.s within a foot of where he lay, and followed me. When I threw my necklace at him, at first he was puzzled and amused. Later, he kept it deliberately.

The next part of his story he had secured, I think he said, by sitting on Bagsby's chest down the road, after he had escaped by means of a broken shutter from the rear room where we had locked him. Bagsby had had a puncture, and finding he had no time to go back to Ivry for Daphne and the rest, he went directly to the station. A train had just pulled out, and a man in an ulster and travelling-cap was standing on the platform. He said, "The car for Gresham Place, sir"--which is what he was to say--and the gentleman climbed in. But about two miles out of town he (the pa.s.senger) had discovered he had made a mistake, and demanded to be set down. But Bagsby had his orders. He carried him to the door of the Hall on the third speed, and the rest we knew.

"Then," I cried breathlessly, "Sir George was _not_--Sir George!"

"Far from it," he said cheerfully. "Poor old chap, what a front he put up! It seems that after he got the picture the alarm was raised too soon for him. He cut back over the country to make the railroad at Hepburn, and was overtaken by a storm. He found the Hall, crawled in through a rear window, concealed the picture there--it is still rolled in that carpet in the room where we hid, and waited for the storm to cease. But hunger drove him out. The picture off his hands, he made a break for it, got to Newbury just in time to miss the train, saw the constable and a posse approaching in a machine and bristling with guns, and at that minute Bagsby said: 'Gresham Place, sir.' From that time on he was virtually our prisoner, poor chap. He fell in with the plot because he didn't know what else to do. But what a shock it must have been when Bagsby dumped him back at the Hall, after he had walked six miles to get away from it."

"But you?" I exclaimed in bewilderment. "If you knew all the time----"

"I didn't. I did not recognise him until he took off his mackintosh at the lodge. After that I had two problems: to capture him without alarming you, and to prevent the old-woman constable of the country from discovering us and dragging you and Daphne and all the rest into notoriety. Thanks to your cooperation it will never be known that a Suffragette plot to kidnap the Prime Minister was foiled last night."