Mrs. Fitz Part 51

"Finished your port, Arbuthnot?" said Fitz, calmly. "Time's about up.

But I've told your chap about the car."

Consternation mingled now with the lively feminine bewilderment, but Mrs. Arbuthnot, whom Fitz's news had excited and distressed, issued no personal edict. If the life of Sonia was really at stake it was right to take a risk. Nevertheless it showed a right feeling about things to betray a little public perturbation at the prospect of being made a widow.

"Jodey and Reggie and Colonel Coverdale must go," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

"They haven't wives and families dependent upon them. But you, Odo, are different. And then, too, your wrist. You would be of no use if you went."

"I shall do to hold the horses at the foot of the Castle rock," said I, saluting a white cheek.

Fitz was already withdrawing from the room with his volunteers when Lord Frederick rose in his place at the board.

"Look here, Fitzwaren," he said. "If you have a vacancy in your irregulars I rather think I'll make one."

"By all means," said Fitz. "The more the merrier."

Bewilderment and consternation mounted ever higher around Mrs.

Catesby's mahogany.

"Freddie! Freddie!" There arose a tearful wail from across the table.

"You ought to be bled for the simples, Frederick," said his hostess.

However, even as the Great Lady spoke, honest George, most conscientious of husbands, and notwithstanding his rank in the Middles.h.i.+re Yeomanry, the most peace-loving of men, was understood to make an offer of active service.

"Well done, George," said his friend the Vicar. "I shouldn't mind coming as the chaplain to the force myself."

"George," said an imperious voice from the table head, "George!"

The Man of Destiny halted a moment on the threshold of the banquet hall with the frank eye of cynicism fixed midway between the Great Lady and the warlike George.

"George! Sit down!"

Finally George sat down with a covert glance at his friend the Vicar.

By the time we had got into our overcoats and m.u.f.flers and the means of travel had been provided for us, a scene with some pretensions to pathos had been enacted in the hall.

"Odo, you really ought not, but if dear Sonia really is in danger----!"

"We shall all be back a week to-night," the Man of Destiny informed my somewhat tearful monitor with a note of a.s.surance in his voice.

Moving objurgations of "Freddie! Freddie!" were mingled with the clarion note of Mrs. Catesby's indignation.

"It is a mad scheme, and if you get your deserts you will all be shot by the Illyrians."

But Fitz and I were already seated side by side in the car. We waved a farewell to the bewildered company upon the hall steps, and then the fact seemed slowly to be borne in upon my numbed intelligence that yet again I was irrevocably committed to this latest and maddest call of my evil genius. There he sat by my side, his cigar a small red disc of fire, and he self-possessed, insouciant, daemonic, almost gay.

The flaccid, rudderless creature of the past ten days was gone as though he had never been. It was hard to realise that this born leader of others, who courted war like a mistress, the magic of whose initiative the coolest and sanest could not resist, was the self-same broken fragment of human wreckage who twenty-four hours ago had not the motive power to perform the simplest action. But there could be no question of the magic he knew how to exert over the most diverse natures; and as we sat side by side in the semi-darkness of the car while it flew along the muddy, winding and narrow roads to Dympsfield House, I yielded almost with a thrill of exultation to the director of my fate.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

MORE ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS

We had no difficulty in reaching Middleham railway station, that familiar rendezvous, at the appointed time. Even Lord Frederick, who lived farther afield than any of us, was able, by putting a powerful car to an illegal use, to arrive on the stroke of the hour.

It was to be remarked that the prevailing tone in our coupe was one which almost amounted to gaiety. Judged by the cold agnostic eye, the scheme was only a little this side of madness. But it had the sanction of a high motive. Further, we were brothers in arms who had smelt powder together upon a more dubious enterprise; we had faith in one another; and above all we were sustained, one might even say translated, by the epic quality of an incomparable leader.

Fitz smoked his cigar and cut in at a rubber of bridge with an air of indulgent and serene content.

"It is lucky," he said, "that I know an old innkeeper on the frontier who will be rather useful if we have to go without pa.s.sports. He is about a mile on the Milesian side, and will be able to provide us with horses and smuggle us across in the darkness. He will also find for us a couple of guides over the mountains."

"You say we can get from the frontier to the Castle at Blaenau in six hours?" inquired the gruff voice of the Chief Constable.

"Yes, unless there is a lot of snow in the pa.s.ses."

"But if the country is in a state of revolution, aren't we likely to be held up?"

"Perhaps; perhaps not. We shall find a way if we have to take an airs.h.i.+p. Eh, Joe?"

The Man of Destiny gave my relation by marriage a fraternal punch in the ribs.

"Ra-_ther_!" That hero was in the act of cutting an ace and winning the deal.

"I shall arrange," said Fitz, "for a change of horses at Postovik, which is about half way. If all goes well we shall be at the foot of the Castle rock a little before midnight on Thursday. I am thinking, though, that we may have to swim the Maravina."

"Umph!" growled the Chief Constable, declaring an original spade, "a moderately cheerful prospect on a January night in Illyria."

"It may not come to that, of course. But all the bridges and ferries are sure to be guarded. And even if they are, with a bit of luck we may be able to rush them."

As our leader began to evolve his plan of campaign it could not be said to forfeit any of its romance. But I think it would be neither fair nor gracious to Mr. Nevil Fitzwaren's corps of irregulars to say that this spice of adventure made less its glamour. We could all claim some little experience of war and that mimic sphere of action "that provides the image of war without its guilt, and only thirty per cent. of its dangers." Some of us had taken cover upon the veldt and others had crossed the Blakiston after a week's rain; and we all felt as we sped towards the metropolis at the rate of sixty miles an hour, and at the same time endeavoured to restrain the cards from slipping on to the floor, that whatever Fate, that capricious mistress, had in store for us, our hazard was for as high a stake as any set of gamesters need wish to play.

Punctual to the minute, we came into the London terminus. As on the occasion of that former adventure, we posted off to Long's quiet family hotel, with the exception of Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther, who confided his kit-bag to the care of his man Kelly, and adjured him to see that a decent room was found for him, while he went "to rout out Alec at the Continental before they fired the beggar out."

"Tell him we leave Charing Cross at ten-forty in the morning," said Fitz. "That will give me time to see what can be done in the way of papers, although as far as Illyria is concerned, diplomatic relations are pretty sure to have been suspended."

Driving again to Long's Hotel, I was regaled with the remembrance of our former journey; of the incident of the cab which followed us through the November slush; of the weird sequel; of that long night of alarums and excursions, which yet was no more than a prelude to a chaotic vista of events.

I recalled the drive from Ward's with Coverdale; the slow-drawn tragi-comedy of suspense; the waiting-room at the Emba.s.sy, the plunge up the stairs, the charming player of Schumann, the presentation to her Royal Highness. I recalled the pa.s.sages with the Amba.s.sador and their terrible issue; the drive with the Princess to the Savoy; the episode of the pink satin at which I could now afford to laugh. Again I recalled our _bizarre_ visit to Bryanston Square; our reception by my Uncle Theodore, his "Fear nothing" and his still more curious prevision of that which was to come to pa.s.s. I recalled our dash for this same Grand Central railway station and the merciful shattering of our hopes midway. I recalled the Scotland Yard inspector with the light moustache, the hand of the Princess guiding me through the traffic, the cool-fingered doctor, the bowl of crimson water at which I did not care to look. Finally, in this panoramic jumble of wild occurrences, the memory of which I should carry to the grave, I recalled that n.o.ble, complex, misguided emblem of our species, the Victor of Rodova, the clear-sighted, subtle yet great-hearted hero of an epoch in the destiny of nations; the father of his people, whom his children had slain even while the hand of death was already upon him.

I pictured him lying riddled with bullets on the steps of his palace at Blaenau, riddled with the bullets he had so often despised. Even from the brief account in the evening papers it was clear that the end of the Victor of Rodova had been heroic.

The smouldering volcano had burst into flame at last. A tax-gatherer had been slain in an outlying district. At the signal, a whole province, at the back of one half-patriot, half-brigand, rose up, marched armed to the Capital, and called upon the King at his palace to grant a charter to the people. The King met them alone, as was his custom, on the steps of his palace, and having listened with kindness and patience to their demands, made the reply "that he would take steps to procure the charter for his people if the peccant son who had slain a faithful servant treacherously was rendered to justice."

Whether the King deliberately misread the temper of his subjects, or whether he overestimated the personal power it was his custom to exert, was hard to determine, but in this reply which was so strangely deficient in that high political wisdom in which no man of his age excelled him, lay his doom. The leader of the armed mob, who himself had slain the tax-gatherer, laughed in the King's, face, and immediately riddled him with bullets. And as the King fell, the burghers of Blaenau poured in at the gates, the soldiers revolted because their wages were over-due, possession was taken of the Castle; and the long-deferred republic was proclaimed.

"And where were the aristocracy and the supporters of the monarchy while all this was happening?" I asked, as we sat in the lounge at the hotel having a final drink before turning in.