"Natural, very natural," thought Mr. Hall, unfortunately aloud.
"What is natural?" asked Leah, seeing his eyes on her.
The man's parchment cheeks reddened. "I beg your pardon, Duchess. I did not intend to speak aloud; a trick of mine, when I am interested. Bad habit--bad habit. I was thinking that you looked weary--natural, very natural."
"Weary!" Leah placed her elbows on the table which stood between them. "I tell you what, Mr. Hall: unless you bring my husband back soon, I shall take to drink."
"My--dear--Duchess."
"Well, and don't men take to drink when they are worried? What better can a poor woman do than imitate the lords of creation? You are so inconsistent. What about my particular lord? Has that beast spoken out?"
"No. He refuses to speak save on his own terms, which are, I may say, preposterous--extremely so."
Leah thought of the price to be paid for the imprisonment Strange was now undergoing, and smiled dryly. "He is the kind of man who would ask for the sun--and get it," she added, as an afterthought.
"Whether he gets it is for you to determine, Duchess."
"Oh!" She looked at him sharply. "Am I to arbitrate?"
"Quite so--quite so. A very well-chosen word--arbitrate." He chuckled heartily, and adjusted his pince-nez.
"And the joke, Mr. Hall?"
"It might almost be one, Duchess, so preposterous is the demand of this man. He refuses to reveal the whereabouts of his Grace, unless--prepare yourself for a surprise--unless he is set free. Now then, Duchess"--Mr. Hall threw himself back in his chair, and flung open his frock-coat--"is that not pre--pos--ter--ous?"
"I can't see it myself," replied Leah, coolly. "He seems to be a very sensible man."
"But--but--he ought to be punished."
"I fear he would not agree with you there. Is this what you have come to see me about?"
"Yes. All attempts to find the Duke have been made in vain: the resources of civilisation are exhausted. Only one thing remains--to accede to the prisoner's terms. I saw the Reverend Lionel Kaimes, and he agrees not to prosecute. Now I come to you----"
"To ask me not to prosecute?"
"Exactly--exactly. The man attempted to blackmail you and the Reverend Mr. Kaimes. If neither one of you will prosecute, the magistrate will be obliged to dismiss the case for want of evidence. And then----"
"Then Captain Strange--that is his name, isn't it?--will send Jim back."
"I question it--I question it. Once free, he may again attempt to blackmail--that is, he may refuse to surrender his prisoner without money being paid."
"I do not agree with you," said Leah, mendaciously. "The man has had a fright, and will not trust himself again into the lion's mouth. Besides, even if he did try to blackmail, we could refuse, and he can't keep my husband for ever on board his dirty little boat. A prisoner who cannot be ransomed would be expensive to keep. Jim has an enormous appetite."
Hall smiled at the aristocratic jest. "True--true; you put the case concisely--very concisely, I may say. The question is, whether it is right to set the man free, and trust to an honour which I fear he does not possess."
Leah thought for a few minutes, playing her part to perfection. "It appears that Captain Strange, very wisely, will not open his mouth so long as he is shut up. If set free he promises to be amenable to reason. Of two evils I choose the least, as Mr. Kaimes has done."
"That means you will not prosecute?"
"Yes. Let the man go, and probably my husband will arrive within the week. How can it be done?"
"Very easily. To-morrow, or the next day, Strange can be brought before the magistrate; but as neither you nor Mr. Kaimes will appear, the charge will be dismissed."
"And then?"
"Then, my dear Duchess, he will vanish into the world, and we shall have to trust to the honour of an admitted blackmailer. It is really a terrible dilemma," cried the lawyer, dismally, "and forms such an evil precedent--oh, a most deadly blow at justice, I assure you."
"Not at all," contradicted Leah, coolly; "we can say that Captain Strange turned King's evidence."
"But, my dear Duchess"
"What's the use of talking?" she snapped impolitely. "I have told you what to do. Go and do it."
"Really----"
"Pardon me if I am rude, but I am not fit to talk;" and she hurried out of the room, glad that she had settled the matter thus. Hall departed to London, reflecting that the rudeness of the Duchess was quite explicable under the circumstances, but resenting it all the same. To punish her he had a great mind to delay the return of the Duke, until his good sense, or his avarice, told him that this would be a costly price to pay for a petty revenge.
In this way Captain Strange triumphed, as most people can, by simply holding his tongue. As no evidence was forthcoming, when he presented himself before the magistrate, he could not be committed for trial, and after a few formalities walked out of the dingy court a free man. Hall followed him as quickly as was consistent with the dignity of a Lincoln's Inn Fields solicitor, but stepped into the open air to find his bird had flown. Nor did inquiries at the third-rate Strand hotel result in an interview. The buccaneer, warned of possible danger, never reappeared to claim the carpet-bag which held a few shirts and oddments. He disappeared, apparently into the air, as did Macbeth's fortune-tellers. Hall was vexed, as he had intended Strange should be shadowed by detectives. Of this the astute sailor might have been aware, as he gave no chance to the bloodhounds of the law. "And we have to depend upon his honour about restoring the Duke," thought Hall, with anguish. It might have eased his mind had he known that the dependence was really to be placed on six thousand pounds being paid within a stated period. But of that he was ignorant, and Leah did not think it necessary to comfort her legal adviser in any way.
Indeed, she needed comfort herself sorely, for when a week passed and Jim did not reappear, she began to think that Strange was contriving some new villainy. Perhaps he was about to put up his price, and Leah was determined not to ransom Jim at any greater sum than that she had already agreed to. The newspapers were filled with astonished paragraphs about the inexplicable conduct of the authorities in connection with Strange's acquittal, and some kind friend sent the most spiteful of these to the waiting wife. Leah did not read the opinions of cranks set forth in inferior English and was much more taken up with a letter from Katinka Aksakoff. It was not easy to answer such a letter, yet she would be compelled to reply.
Mademoiselle Aksakoff wrote indignantly, saying that she did not believe the statements of the papers concerning the conspiracy of Constantine Demetrius. She denied that such a noble man would act in so base a way, and reminded Leah of their conversation on the terrace at Monte Carlo. "You then said that you did not love him," complained the letter, "and insisted that he did not love you. But if he kidnapped your husband, so that you might be free to marry him, he must love you and you have lied. But I cannot believe that you would break my heart in this way, nor can I credit so honourable a man with such conduct." Katinka then went on to say that Demetrius had not been seen since he crossed to Paris. Where was he? Did Lady Jim know? If so, let her tell the writer, or else--then the epistle ended with a vague threat about hunting out Demetrius and learning the truth. "And when I do," ran the final line, "your conscience will tell you if we are to be friends or foes." This challenge--as it truly was--came from Paris, where Katinka was stopping at the Russian Embassy. It had been registered, to ensure delivery.
A most unpleasant letter. Leah felt inclined to tear it up, but some instinct told her that Katinka Aksakoff was a persistent girl, with much obstinacy in her character. If no reply came she would probably hasten to Firmingham for an interview, and Lady Jim did not care about having the second honeymoon of herself and her restored husband spoilt by the scene which would surely take place. After destroying several sheets of note-paper she produced a concise reply, saying as little as ever she could. Nevertheless, she was forced to say much she would have preferred left unsaid. Captain Strange, said Lady Jim's reply, declared that Demetrius had so conspired. But he had been set free and had disappeared. What he said might be true, or might not. Nothing could be known for certain unless Lord James returned, and up to the date of the letter he had not put in an appearance. Demetrius certainly had come to Paris--not to see the writer, but to interview M. Aksakoff about a possible pardon. At the Henri Trois Hotel the doctor had been seized with a fit, and a Dr. Helfmann had taken charge of him. "Since then," wrote Lady Jim, "I have not seen him. However, I enclose a letter which he sent me on the day I left Paris. It would seem that he has gone to Russia."
"And I hope Katinka will follow him there," said Leah, after adding a few Judas words of endearment. "Aksakoff might keep her on his Volga estate. She'll only make mischief if she comes to England. I'll warn her father of that;" and she did, for M. Aksakoff received a letter, which hinted that his daughter might prove to be a possible fire-brand. And so the matter, for the time being, ended.
But Jim had not yet arrived. Seven days passed, and the eighth night since the buccaneer's release closed in. Leah felt the strain terribly, and hardly ate or slept. Hilda did what she could to cheer her up, but, not knowing the whole truth, could do very little. Lady Jim declined to take drugs, as her last experience of these had shown her how they aged people, though that might have been her fancy. All she could do, and did do, was to keep a tight rein on her emotions, and beyond looking pale, and a trifle haggard, no one could have told that she was in any way disturbed. Joan was a great comfort to her in those days of strain, and so was Lionel, with his prophecies that all would yet be well. But Leah had no one to whom she could tell the whole shocking truth, and it was desperately trying to a woman, whose nervous system was almost wrecked, to hold her tongue. These still waters were running very deep.
She found a certain relief in motion, and while Hilda wept and wailed that the bodies of her dear husband and his father had never been cast ashore for Christian burial, Leah's motor-car tore round the country through storm and sunshine. She would not even take a chauffeur, but engineered the machine herself. Providence, or the fetish that stood to her in place of it, watched over her escapades. She met with no accident, not even the most trivial, although in her reckless driving she did her best to reduce the car to match-wood. Like a witch on a broomstick she flew round the country, frantic and insistent, as though she sought the enjoyment of some wizard Sabbath. The motor flung mile after mile behind, with a buzz and a hum, and the speed of a destroyer buffeting a rough sea. Leah, with her hand on the levers, swooped down narrow lanes, spun furiously along the King's highway, crashed through scared villages, and raced the setting sun to the verge of the astonished lands. It was the extreme danger of these flights which delighted and strengthened her; and if she had a large bill to pay for breaking every known law in the county policemen's note-books, it was easy for the Duchess of Pentland to pay for such frolics. The thrill, the dash, the knowledge of power, the governance of a flying bomb-shell--these things were worth double, treble, quadruple the money. She was inebriated with danger, exalted by the constant nearness of death, and, like a she-Satan, defiantly self-sufficient, scorned both God and man. Of woman, needless to say, she took no account whatsoever.
Then came one memorable night, riotously wild with wind and rain. With gleaming lamps, at top speed, facing the wrath of conflicting elements battling under a stormy sky, she drove her machine roaring up the avenue. A quick turn of the hand and she stayed it, fuming and whirring like a live thing, before the porch. Contrary to custom, the door was open. Against the light she saw Lionel, and in a moment guessed the inevitable. Leaving the chauffeur to attend to the monster, this Mrs. Frankenstein sprang up the steps and dragged Lionel under the glare of the electric lamp. A look into his face redoubled the beat of her heart. There, sure enough, she saw what she expected to see.
"Take me to him," she breathed, still retaining her grip on his arm.
"But are you quite prepared? He is in the library, and----"
Leah flung the curate away so forcibly that he staggered against the wall. She was out of the hall, she was at the library door, she was in the library itself, and all in two quick-drawn breaths.
"Hulloa, Leah," said a well-known voice, in a well-known manner.
She did not answer, but stared with a bloodless face, possessed entirely by the devil of hysteria. Then she dropped, without a cry or a word. Like a blood-mare, she had held out to the winning-post, and thus paid the price of victory.
There are periods in the growth of a tree when the sap, unable to circulate freely, coagulates into knots and protuberances. Leah had heard some empirical dabbler in science say as much, and recognised it as a truthful symbol of her existence for the twelve months following Jim's return. There was certainly a knot in her life, for somehow, in an unaccountable way, things seemed to be at a standstill. Before intermeddling with criminal matters she had indulged her senses in every possible way, and now that she had receded within the legal limits of action, she was prepared to indulge them again. To her surprise, they did not respond, and she discovered that the nursery stage of enjoyment had been passed. That intermezzo of fierce endeavour, of scheming and fighting, of dancing on the edge of a precipice, and of wandering in perilous ways, had ruined her for untroubled days and comfortable nights. While battling with desperate fortunes she had detested the storm and necessary stress of the encounter; now she longed to set her forces in array once more and dare the worst. The salt had lost its savour, and her vitiated palate demanded pepper--red pepper, hot and biting--to flavour the good things ready for her eating at life's banquet.
But Leah found, as many had done before her, that desire is better than success, that there is more zest in striving than in attaining. She had longed for ample funds, and since she possessed full control of the Pentland income this longing was almost, but not quite, satisfied. Nevertheless, her soul was hungry still. She bought everything she fancied, and scarcely cast a look on her most costly and attractive purchases. She travelled with the luxurious surroundings of a queen, and only felt bored; she stopped at home, and yawned incessantly twice round the clock. She would have willingly remunerated the inventor of a new pleasure, but like Xerxes, she could not find so imaginative a man. It was truly lamentable to think that she should possess the moon she had cried for, only to find it was but a used-up world.
Jim, on the contrary, flourished healthily under his strawberry leaves, and this best-of-all-possible-world satisfaction added to his wife's exasperation. Daily he grew stouter and more plethoric, daily he made the same stupid observations, and daily he indulged in the gross material pleasures dear to his infinitesimal soul, which was being smothered in superabundant flesh.
"You are like a pig removed into a new sty," his wife scornfully informed him.
"Not a bad sty," answered the Duke, looking round the room.
"Good enough for middle-class people, but not for us, Jim. We are desperately poor as Duke and Duchess."
"That's so, Leah; but you spend most of the income."
"I have a right to. Don't forget what I have done for you."
"You give me no chance," said her husband, bitterly. "Every time we have a row you mention things that needn't be mentioned. And after all, Leah, you got me back for your own convenience."
"I am not so sure of that. I wish now that I had kept the thirty thousand which we had to pay back, and had let you remain where you were."
"On board Strange's odd-job steamer? It wasn't so bad, though I was chained by the leg. I learnt a lot about engines there; used to watch 'em when she was bumping through hurricanes. They were triple expansion, too. It was fun to watch the old Scotch engineer with his hand on the throttle-valve, and hear him curse when the screw leaped sky-high to race like a motor. I've had worse times--much worse."
He spoke with more animation than usual, and Leah sympathised with his enthusiasm. She also would have enjoyed herself on a rotten hulk with doubtful engines and an hourly chance of going down into the great green seas; the excitement would have been intense, and the death a clean one. Perhaps Jim had forgotten the softer emotions of man when the tramp stormed north with every rivet in her hull straining for dispersion. She wondered. "I suppose you missed Señorita Fajardo then?"
"No; curiously enough, I didn't. There was too much fun in thinkin' what would come next to bother about her. I'm a bit of a philosopher, Leah, an' when I can't get cake I chew bread. Now I've got the cake I'm enjoyin' it."
"And eating too much of it. Look how stout yon are getting."
"Respectable men always get stout when they grow old."
"You are not old."
"I'm a bit elderly. Somehow I don't enjoy larks so much as I used to," mused Jim, thoughtfully--"sign of age, I suppose. But I daresay I'll get some sort of fun out of life, an' maybe will need old Jarvey Peel's money at sixty. It'll be more than thirty thousand by then."
"Less the six thousand you paid Strange," said his Duchess, cruelly.
Jim winced. "Bit of a pull, that--hey! Nice fancy price I've had to pay for your fun, Leah."
"It was to bring you back."
"To make you a Duchess, you mean."
"One would think you were middle class to hear you talk of titles in that respectful way. Who bothers about such things nowadays? I have been bored to death since Strange's blackmail turned you into a pauper Duke."
Her husband made a grimace at this very plain speaking. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Leah. Hang it, I thought you really loved me when you fainted on my return."
"All acting, my good man," she assured him, annoyed by his recalling that twelve-month-old weakness. "I had to impress the family somehow."
"Then you don't love me?" said Jim, slowly.
"What a question to ask after nearly seven years of married life."
"But I'm respectable now," urged Jim, setting forth the contents of the new page he had turned over. "I don't race or bet overmuch, an' never look at a pretty woman. I go to church, an' sit in the Lords, an' take the chair at charity dinners, an'----"
"You do that last because you love eating. All the charity funds are spent on the victuals, and the poor get about a penny in the collected pounds. Oh, you are quite a model, Jim, and so dull."
This is but a sample of the few conversations the ducal pair allowed themselves, for they did not foregather with any enthusiasm. For propriety's sake the Duke and Duchess of Pentland were seen together at the few functions they could attend during the months of mourning; their home life was outwardly harmonious, and the crying down of a grass-widow which had been heard during those weeks of suspense following Strange's arrest had changed to crying up, when it was seen how very correctly the new Duchess behaved. Therefore they saw one another only officially, save on rare occasions. Leah found Jim dull, as she had frankly told him, and he winced always at his wife's tongue, which had lost none of its cutting power. Even his stupid brain grasped the fact that she was changed, though in what way he could not exactly say. She was certainly restless, and his bovine contentment with things-as-they-are could not understand this phase. Also she was dissatisfied, although she had secured all she had wanted by almost a miracle.
"Rum creatures, women," soliloquised the philosopher, sauntering to his club. "If you gave 'em the solar system to play with they'd howl for the universe," which was a high flight for Jim to take in the way of metaphor.
Leah sometimes thought that the long period of mourning might have darkened her outlook on life. She and Jim were forced by a ridiculously particular world to live quietly, and she could not indulge herself to the full. A constant succession of black dresses palled on one fond of colours, and custom forbade her filling the various ducal residences with amusing people, who in any case were almost impossible to find. Then, as Leah stated, they were really poor, considering the title. What with regiments of servants and the stately mansions which housed them, the horses and carriages, and motors, and rents and taxes, and unnecessary personal expenditure, and equally unnecessary charities, it was truly difficult to make two aristocratic ends meet. The Duchess of Pentland had to contrive and arrange almost as much as had Lady Jim. From two thousand a year to twenty-five times that amount seems a large jump, but the title nullified the value of the estates. Leah ardently prayed that the fetish would increase the incoming and decrease the outgoing, but her Baal seemed to think that it had done enough, even for so devout a woman. "Am I never going to have a good time?" wailed Leah. Later she found that the wail was unnecessary, for the fetish pitied his worshipper and granted her prayer. Coal of the best quality was found on a Welsh property of the Kaimes family, and Hall prophesied that in a year or two the ducal income would be doubled. Leah took heart at this sign of grace, as one really could manage pretty well on one hundred thousand a year. But a pound a minute was Leah's idea of a moderate income, and then she would have grumbled that each hour only brought her in sixty sovereigns. However, she decided to spend what she had and what was coming along from the coal to the last farthing, and arranged when the year of sorrow was ended--as it now was--to take her place in the very gayest of society. She would be presented again this season according to custom, and then would see about exhausting the most advanced pleasures of a civilisation that could not do enough for one of her greedy appetite. This she told to Lady Canvey.
"That is a mistake," rejoined the sagacious octogenarian, who was a year older in body and a year younger in brain. "If you exhaust everything in this world, nothing will be left for you but to try the next. And I don't think you are quite prepared for that, my dear."
"Perhaps not. I never set up for being a saint."
"No. That is a pleasure you have not yet exhausted. Why not try it?"
"Because I am no hypocrite. What is the use of pretending to be goody-goody, when you are not?"
"Saints are holy, not goody-goody."
"It's the same thing."
"It might be with you, certainly. But you are not the sort to be canonised."
"Well, I don't know. A sinner is the raw material out of which a saint is manufactured. You can't be really good, unless you have been really very bad."
"That is useful information," said Lady Canvey, dryly; "and very encouraging to people like yourself. You might make an attempt at being Saint Leah or Saint Jezebel."
"Lady Canvey!"
"Oh," the old dame chuckled, "then you do know something of Scripture."
"Yes, but I don't quote it to annoy other people."
"Your tongue is quite clever enough to do without such aid, my dear. And don't lose your temper--I am only talking for your good."
"Disagreeable conversations are always prefaced by that remark. Yes?"
"I was thinking you might begin on your saintly career by endowing a church with this coal money. They build churches very cheap nowadays. You can have one of red brick, and----"
"There are too many churches, and too few worshippers," interrupted the Duchess, with a shrug; "besides, I propose to endow myself with the coal money. I daresay I shall give fifty pounds or so to Lionel for his paupers."
"You must not ruin yourself, my dear," said Lady Canvey, with affectionate spite. "I thought that Lionel, as a married man, and the Vicar of Firmingham, had nothing to do with paupers. There are none in the parish there--at least, there were none in Pentland's time," she ended with emphasis.
"I suppose you mean to hint that Jim is stopping his charities and putting on the screw. Don't distress yourself, godmother; everything is as it was, save that our tenants and villagers are more gorged and much more impudent. Lionel doesn't appreciate the godliness of his heritage, because his parishioners pay their rents regularly and come to church without the whip. They are so pious that his occupation is gone."
"That would not suit an energetic Christian like Lionel."
"It doesn't. He and Joan take pleasure trips into the Lambeth slums and ask seedy ruffians to stay with them in the country. What with converted burglars and wives who assure you they haven't been beaten for weeks, the place is quite a Whitechapel Paradise. Lionel preaches to the ruffians, and Joan listens to the wives with whole skins. I believe they join forces to wash the children. Oh, they have rollicking times at Firmingham Vicarage, I assure you."
"Very meritorious times," said Lady Canvey, reprovingly--"quite like the primitive Christian Church."
"Less clean, I fancy, and more ungrammatical," murmured Leah.
"Don't mock, my dear. Lionel is a noble man."
"I quite agree with you, and without mockery. Jim is also a noble man, in a different sense, if you will forgive the pun."
"It is unworthy of your wit."
"I cannot always be pyrotechnical. You need flint and steel to strike fire, and I find no flints amongst the idiots I have to entertain. Do you know, godmother,"--Leah stared into the fire--"I often wish that Lionel had remained the Duke."
"And your husband had been really a corpse? How like you!"
"Well," said the Duchess, cheerfully. "Jim might have been of some use if his,--what do you call those things?--oh, yes,--if his vortices had combined with other elements to grow into plants and sheep and cows, and generally do the sort of things which vortices are supposed to do. But as a Duke he is a failure."
"I don't exactly know what you mean by your heathen talk of vortices," snapped Lady Canvey. "Dust we are, and unto dust shall we return."
"Not Jim," protested Leah: "he would return to mud. He just looks as though he were made of sticky, clayey, stodgy mud."
"It is not original to abuse your husband."
"I know that; but you are too old-fashioned to admire originality."
Lady Canvey thumped with her stick vigorously. "Do not be so desperately sharp, Leah; you make my head ache. By the way, I have news for you about that nice boy you treated so badly."
"I have treated so many nice boys badly. Billy Richardson, Algy Turner, Harry Askew----"
"The last. He is to be married."
"I knew that a year ago. He left before Jim came home to make some Spanish creature his wife."
"Miss Mamie Mulrady does not sound like a Spanish name."
"That girl! You don't say so?" Leah looked genuinely surprised. "I suppose Señorita Fajardo would not have him. Perhaps she is waiting for Mr. Berring."
"Who is he?"
"Oh--er--a friend of mine;" she put up her muff to hide a smile.
"I know that U.S.A. heiress--a nice girl if she did not affect the Wild West of which she knows absolutely nothing. No doubt she thinks it chic to let Europeans hear the American eagle scream in the vernacular. Fancy!--and to Askew! A good match for him. I suppose he will call pounds, shillings and pence collectively dollars now that he is brother to George Washington."
"I don't think so. Mrs. Askew will probably be more English than the English."
"She might easily be that, since the English are mostly aliens nowadays. Well, I must go. Good-bye. I have enjoyed my hour. I always do with you, godmother. Such a clever tongue!"