There were times during their rapid journey when Seaman, studying his companion, became thoughtful. Dominey seemed, indeed, to have passed beyond the boundaries of any ordinary reserve, to have become like a man immeshed in the toils of a past so absorbing that he moved as though in a dream, speaking only when necessary and comporting himself generally like one to whom all externals have lost significance. As they embarked upon the final stage of their travels, Seaman leaned forward in his seat in the sombrely upholstered, overheated compartment.
“Your home-coming seems to depress you, Von Ragastein,” he said.
“It was not my intention,” Dominey replied, “to set foot in Germany again for many years.”
“The past still bites?”
“Always.”
The train sped on through long chains of vineyard-covered hills, out into a stretch of flat country, into forests of pines, in the midst of which were great cleared spaces, where, notwithstanding the closely drawn windows, the resinous odour from the fallen trunks seemed to permeate the compartment. Presently they slackened speed. Seaman glanced at his watch and rose.
“Prepare yourself, my friend,” he said. “We descend in a few minutes.”
Dominey glanced out of the window.
“But where are we?” he enquired.
“Within five minutes of our destination.”
“But there is not a house in sight,” Dominey remarked wonderingly.
“You will be received on board His Majesty's private train,” Seaman announced. “The Kaiser, with his staff, is making one of his military tours. We are honoured by being permitted to travel back with him as far as the Belgian frontier.”
They had come to a standstill now. A bearded and uniformed official threw open the door of their compartment, and they stepped on to the narrow wooden platform of a small station which seemed to have been recently built of fresh pine planks. The train, immediately they had alighted, passed on. Their journey was over.
A brief conversation was carried on between Seaman and the official, during which Dominey took curious note of his surroundings. Around the station, half hidden in some places by the trees and shrubs, was drawn a complete cordon of soldiers, who seemed to have recently disembarked from a military train which stood upon a siding. In the middle of it was a solitary saloon carriage, painted black, with much gold ornamentation, and having emblazoned upon the central panel the royal arms of Germany. Seaman, when he had finished his conversation, took Dominey by the arm and led him across the line towards it. An officer received them at the steps and bowed punctiliously to Dominey, at whom he gazed with much interest.
“His Majesty will receive you at once,” he announced. “Follow me.”
They boarded the train and passed along a richly carpeted corridor. Their guide paused and pointed to a small retiring-room, where several men were seated.
“Herr Seaman will find friends there,” he said. “His Imperial Majesty will receive him for a few minutes later. The Baron Von Ragastein will come this way.”
Dominey was ushered now into the main saloon. His guide motioned him to remain near the entrance, and, himself advancing a few paces, stood at the salute before a seated figure who was bending over a map, which a stern-faced man in the uniform of a general had unrolled before him. The Kaiser glanced up at the sound of footsteps and whispered something in the general's ear. The latter clicked his heels together and retired. The Kaiser beckoned Dominey to advance.
“The Baron Von Ragastein, your Majesty,” the young officer murmured.
Dominey stood at attention for a moment and bowed a little awkwardly. The Kaiser smiled.
“It pleases me,” he said, “to see a German officer ill at ease without his uniform. Count, you will leave us. Baron Von Ragastein, be seated.”
“Sir Everard Dominey, at your service, Majesty,” Dominey replied, as he took the chair to which his august host pointed.
“Thorough in all things, I see,” the latter observed. “Sit there and be at your ease. Good reports have reached me of your work in Africa.”
“I did my best to execute your Majesty's will,” Dominey ventured.
“You did so well,” the Kaiser pronounced, “that my counsellors were unanimous in advising your withdrawal to what will shortly become the great centre of interest. From the moment of receiving our commands you appear to have displayed initiative. I gather that your personation of this English baronet has been successfully carried through?”
“Up to the present, your Majesty.”
“Important though your work in Africa was,” the Kaiser continued, “your present task is a far greater one. I wish to speak to you for these few minutes without reserve. First, though, drink a toast with me.”
From a mahogany stand at his elbow, the Kaiser drew out a long-necked bottle of Moselle, filled two very beautiful glasses, passed one to his companion and raised the other.
“To the Fatherland!” he said.
“To the Fatherland!” Dominey repeated.
They set down their glasses, empty. The Kaiser threw back the grey military cloak which he was wearing, displaying a long row of medals and decorations. His fingers still toyed with the stem of his wineglass. He seemed for a moment to lose himself in thought. His hard and somewhat cruel mouth was tightly closed; there was a slight frown upon his forehead. He was sitting upright, taking no advantage of the cushioned back of his easy-chair, his eyes a little screwed up, the frown deepening. For quite five minutes there was complete silence. One might have gathered that, turning aside from great matters, he had been devoting himself entirely to the scheme in which Dominey was concerned.
“Von Ragastein,” he said at last, “I have sent for you to have a few words concerning your habitation in England. I wish you to receive your impressions of your mission from my own lips.”
“Your Majesty does me great honour,” Dominey murmured.
“I wish you to consider yourself,” the Kaiser continued, “as entirely removed from the limits, the authority and the duties of my espionage system. From you I look for other things. I desire you to enter into the spirit of your assumed position. As a typical English country gentleman I desire you to study the labour question, the Irish question, the progress of this National Service scheme, and other social movements of which you will receive notice in due time. I desire a list compiled of those writers who, in the Reviews, or by means of fiction, are encouraging the suspicions which I am inclined to fancy England has begun to entertain towards the Fatherland. These things are all on the fringe of your real mission. That, I believe, our admirable friend Seaman has already confided to you. It is to seek the friendship, if possible the intimacy, of Prince Terniloff.”
The Kaiser paused, and once more his eyes wandered to the landscape which rolled away from the plate-glass windows of the car. They were certainly not the eyes of a dreamer, and yet in those moments they seemed filled with brooding pictures.
“The Princess has already received me graciously,” Dominey confided.
“Terniloff is the dove of peace,” the Kaiser pronounced. “He carries the sprig of olive in his mouth. My statesmen and counsellors would have sent to London an ambassador with sterner qualities. I preferred not. Terniloff is the man to gull fools, because he is a fool himself. He is a fit ambassador for a country which has not the wit to arm itself on land as well as by sea, when it sees a nation, mightier, more cultured, more splendidly led than its own, creeping closer every day.”
“The English appear to put their whole trust in their navy, your Majesty,” Dominey observed tentatively.
The eyes of his companion flashed. His lips curled contemptuously.
“Fools!” he exclaimed. “Of what use will their navy be when my sword is once drawn, when I hold the coast towns of Calais and Boulogne, when my cannon command the Straits of Dover! The days of insular nations are passed, passed as surely as the days of England's arrogant supremacy upon the seas.”
The Kaiser refilled his glass and Dominey's.
“In some months' time, Von Ragastein,” he continued, “you will understand why you have been enjoined to become the friend and companion of Terniloff. You will understand your mission a little more clearly than you do now. Its exact nature waits upon developments. You can at all times trust Seaman.”
Dominey bowed and remained silent. His companion continued after another brief spell of silent brooding.
“Von Ragastein,” he said, “my decree of banishment against you was a just one. The morals of my people are as sacred to me as my oath to win for them a mightier empire. You first of all betrayed the wife of one of the most influential noblemen of a State allied to my own, and then, in the duel that followed, you slew him.”
“It was an accident, your Majesty,” Dominey pleaded. “I had no intention of even wounding the Prince.”
The Kaiser frowned. All manner of excuses were loathsome to him.
“The accident should have happened the other way,” he rejoined sharply. “I should have lost a valuable servant, but it was your life which was forfeit, and not his. Still, they tell me that your work in Africa was well and thoroughly done. I give you this one great chance of rehabilitation. If your work in England commends itself to me, the sentence of exile under which you suffer shall be rescinded.”
“Your Majesty is too good,” Dominey murmured. “The work, for its own sake, will command my every effort, even without the hope of reward.”
“That,” the Kaiser said, “is well spoken. It is the spirit, I believe, with which every son of my Empire regards the future. I think that they, too, more especially those who surround my person, have felt something of that divine message which has come to me. For many years I have, for the sake of my people, willed peace. Now that the time draws near when Heaven has shown me another duty, I have no fear but that every loyal German will bow his head before the lightnings which will play around my sword and share with me the iron will to wield it. Your audience is finished, Baron Von Ragastein. You will take your place with the gentlemen of my suite in the retiring-room. We shall proceed within a few minutes and leave you at the Belgian frontier.”
Dominey rose, bowed stiffly and backed down the carpeted way. The Kaiser was already bending once more over the map. Seaman, who was waiting outside the door of the anteroom, called him in and introduced him to several members of the suite. One, a young man with a fixed monocle, scars upon his face, and a queer, puppet-like carriage, looked at him a little strangely.
“We met some years ago in Munich, Baron,” he remarked.
“I acknowledge no former meetings with any one in this country,” Dominey replied stiffly. “I obey the orders of my Imperial master when I wipe from my mind every episode or reminiscence of my former days.”
The young man's face cleared, and Seaman, by his side, who had knitted his brows thoughtfully, nodded understandingly.
“You are certainly a good actor, Baron,” he declared. “Even your German has become a little English. Sit down and join us in a glass of beer. Luncheon will be served to us here in a few minutes. You will not be recalled to the Presence until we set you down.”
Dominey bowed stiffly and took his place with the others. The train had already started. Dominey gazed thoughtfully out of the window. Seaman, who was waiting about for his audience, patted him on the arm.
“Dear friend,” he said, “I sympathise with you. You sorrow because your back is now to Berlin. Still, remember this, that the day is not far off when the sentence of exile against you will be annulled. You will have expiated that crime which, believe me, although I do not venture to claim a place amongst them, none of your friends and equals have ever regarded in the same light as His Imperial Majesty.”
A smiling steward, in black livery with white facings, made his appearance and served them with beer in tall glasses. The senior officer there, who had now seated himself opposite to Dominey, raised his glass and bowed.
“To the Baron Von Ragastein,” he said, “whose acquaintance I regret not having made before to-day. May we soon welcome him back, a brother in arms, a companion in great deeds! Hoch!”
Sir Everard Dominey, Baronet, the latest and most popular recruit to Norfolk sporting society, stood one afternoon, some months after his return from Germany, at the corner of the long wood which stretched from the ridge of hills behind almost to the kitchen gardens of the Hall. At a reasonable distance on his left, four other guns were posted. On one side of him stood Middleton, leaning on his ash stick and listening to the approach of the beaters; on the other, Seaman, curiously out of place in his dark grey suit and bowler hat. The old keeper, whom time seemed to have cured of all his apprehensions, was softly garrulous and very happy.
“That do seem right to have a Squire Dominey at this corner,” he observed, watching a high cock pheasant come crashing down over their heads. “I mind when the Squire, your father, sir, gave up this corner one day to Lord Wendermere, whom folks called one of the finest pheasant shots in England, and though they streamed over his head like starlings, he'd nowt but a few cripples to show for his morning's work.”
“Come out with a bit of a twist from the left, don't they?” Dominey remarked, repeating his late exploit.
“They do that, sir,” the old man assented, “and no one but a Dominey seems to have learnt the knack of dealing with them proper. That foreign Prince, so they say, is well on to his birds, but I wouldn't trust him at this corner.”
The old man moved off a few paces to some higher ground, to watch the progress of the beaters through the wood. Seaman turned to his companion, and there was a note of genuine admiration in his tone.
“My friend,” he declared, “You are a miracle. You seem to have developed the Dominey touch even in killing pheasants.”
“You must remember that I have shot higher ones in Hungary,” was the easy reply.
“I am not a sportsman,” Seaman admitted. “I do not understand sport. But I do know this: there is an old man who has lived on this land since the day of his birth, who has watched you shoot, reverently, and finds even the way you hold your gun familiar.”
“That twist of the birds,” Dominey explained, “is simply a local superstition. The wood ends on the slant, and they seem to be flying more to the left than they really are.”
Seaman gazed steadfastly for a moment along the side of the wood.
“Her Grace is coming,” he said. “She seems to share the Duke's dislike of me, and she is too great a lady to conceal her feelings. Just one word before I go. The Princess Eiderstrom arrives this afternoon.”
Dominey frowned, then, warned by the keeper's shout, turned around and killed a hare.
“My friend,” he said, with a certain note of challenge in his tone, “I am not certain that you have told me all that you know concerning the Princess's visit.”
Seaman was thoughtful for a brief space of time.
“You are right,” he admitted, “I have not. It is a fault which I will repair presently.”
He strolled away to the next stand, where Mr. Mangan was displaying an altogether different standard of proficiency. The Duchess came up to Dominey a few minutes later.
“I told Henry I shouldn't stop with him another moment,” she declared. “He has fired off about forty cartridges and wounded one hare.”
“Henry is not keen,” Dominey remarked, “although I think you are a little hard on him, are you not? I saw him bring down a nice cock just now. So far as regards the birds, it really does not matter. They are all going home.”
The Duchess was very smartly tailored in clothes of brown leather mixture. She wore thick shoes and gaiters and a small hat. She was looking very well but a little annoyed.
“I hear,” she said, “that Stephanie is coming to-day.”
Dominey nodded, and seemed for a moment intent on watching the flight of a pigeon which kept tantalisingly out of range.
“She is coming down for a few days,” he assented. “I am afraid that she will be bored to death.”
“Where did you become so friendly with her?” his cousin asked curiously.
“The first time we ever met,” Dominey replied, “was in the Carlton grill room, a few days after I landed in England. She mistook me for some one else, and we parted with the usual apologies. I met her the same night at Carlton House Terrace—she is related to the Terniloffs—and we came across one another pretty often after that, during the short time I was in town.”
“Yes,” the Duchess murmured meditatively. “That is another of the little surprises you seem to have all ready dished up for us. How on earth did you become so friendly with the German Ambassador?”
Dominey smiled tolerantly.
“Really,” he replied, “there is not anything so very extraordinary about it, is there? Mr. Seaman, my partner in one or two mining enterprises, took me to call upon him. He is very interested in East Africa, politically and as a sportsman. Our conversations seemed to interest him and led to a certain intimacy—of which I may say that I am proud. I have the greatest respect and liking for the Prince.”
“So have I,” Caroline agreed. “I think he's charming. Henry declares that he must be either a fool or a knave.”
“Henry is blinded by prejudice,” Dominey declared a little impatiently. “He cannot imagine a German who feasts with any one else but the devil.”
“Don't get annoyed, dear,” she begged, resting her fingers for a moment upon his coat sleeve. “I admire the Prince immensely. He is absolutely the only German I ever met whom one felt instinctively to be a gentleman.—Now what are you smiling at?”
Dominey turned a perfectly serious face towards her. “Not guilty,” he pleaded.
“I saw you smile.”
“It was just a quaint thought. You are rather sweeping, are you not, Caroline?”
“I'm generally right,” she declared.—“To return to the subject of Stephanie.”
“Well?”
“Do you know whom she mistook you for in the Carlton grill room?”
“Tell me?” he answered evasively.
“She mistook you for a Baron Leopold Von Ragastein,” Caroline continued drily. “Von Ragastein was her lover in Hungary. He fought a duel with her husband and killed him. The Kaiser was furious and banished him to East Africa.”
Dominey picked up his shooting-stick and handed his gun to Middleton. The beaters were through the wood.
“Yes, I remember now,” he said. “She addressed me as Leopold.”
“I still don't see why it was necessary to invite her here,” his companion observed a little petulantly. “She may—call you Leopold again!”
“If she does, I shall be deaf,” Dominey promised. “But seriously, she is a cousin of the Princess Terniloff, and the two women are devoted to one another. The Princess hates shooting parties, so I thought they could entertain one another.”
“Bosh! Stephanie will monopolise you all the time! That's what's she's coming for.”
“You are not suggesting that she intends seriously to put me in the place of my double?” Dominey asked, with mock alarm.
“Oh, I shouldn't wonder! And she's an extraordinarily attractive woman. I'm full of complaints, Everard. There's that other horrible little man, Seaman. You know that the very sight of him makes Henry furious. I am quite sure that he never expected to sit down at the same table with him.”
“I am really sorry about that,” Dominey assured her, “but you see His Excellency takes a great interest in him on account of this Friendship League, of which Seaman is secretary, and he particularly asked to have him here.”
“Well, you must admit that the situation is a little awkward for Henry,” she complained. “Next to Lord Roberts, Henry is practically the leader of the National Service movement here; he hates Germany and distrusts every German he ever met, and in a small house party like this we meet the German Ambassador and a man who is working hard to lull to sleep the very sentiments which Henry is endeavouring to arouse.”
“It sounds very pathetic,” Dominey admitted, with a smile, “but even Henry likes Terniloff, and after all it is stimulating to meet one's opponents sometimes.”
“Of course he likes Terniloff,” Caroline assented, “but he hates the things he stands for. However, I'd have forgiven you everything if only Stephanie weren't coming. That woman is really beginning to irritate me. She always seems to be making mysterious references to some sentimental past in which you both are concerned, and for which there can be no foundation at all except your supposed likeness to her exiled lover. Why, you never met her until that day at the Carlton!”
“She was a complete stranger to me,” Dominey asserted.
“Then all I can say is that you have been unusually rapid if you've managed to create a past in something under three months!” Caroline pronounced suspiciously. “I call her coming here a most bare-faced proceeding, especially as this is practically a bachelor establishment.”
They had arrived at the next stand, and conversation was temporarily suspended. A flight of wild duck were put out from a pool in the wood, and for a few minutes every one was busy. Middleton watched his master with unabated approval.
“You're most as good as the old Squire with them high duck, Sir Everard,” he said. “That's true very few can touch 'em when they're coming out nigh to the pheasants. They can't believe in the speed of 'em.”
“Do you think Sir Everard shoots as well as he did before he went to Africa?” Caroline asked.
Middleton touched his hat and turned to Seaman, who was standing in the background.
“Better, your Grace,” he answered, “as I was saying to this gentleman here, early this morning. He's cooler like and swings more level. I'd have known his touch on a gun anywhere, though.”
There was a glint of admiration in Seaman's eyes. The beaters came through the wood, and the little party of guns gossiped together while the game was collected. Terniloff, his usual pallor chased away by the bracing wind and the pleasure of the sport, was affable and even loquacious. He had great estates of his own in Saxony and was explaining to the Duke his manner of shooting them. Middleton glanced at his horn-rimmed watch.
“There's another hour's good light, sir,” he said. “Would you care about a partridge drive, or should we do through the home copse?”
“If I might make a suggestion,” Terniloff observed diffidently, “most of the pheasants went into that gloomy-looking wood just across the marshes.”
There was a moment's rather curious silence. Dominey had turned and was looking towards the wood in question, as though fascinated by its almost sinister-like blackness and density. Middleton had dropped some game he was carrying and was muttering to himself.
“We call that the Black Wood,” Dominey said calmly, “and I am rather afraid that the pheasants who find their way there claim sanctuary. What do you think, Middleton?”
The old man turned his head slowly and looked at his master. Somehow or other, every scrap of colour seemed to have faded out of his bronzed face. His eyes were filled with that vague horror of the supernatural common amongst the peasant folk of various localities. His voice shook. The old fear was back again.
“You wouldn't put the beaters in there, Squire?” he faltered; “not that there's one of them would go.”
“Have we stumbled up against a local superstition?” the Duke enquired.
“That's not altogether local, your Grace,” Middleton replied, “as the Squire himself will tell you. I doubt whether there's a beater in all Norfolk would go through the Black Wood, if you paid him red gold for it.—Here, you lads.”
He turned to the beaters, who were standing waiting for instructions a few yards away. There were a dozen of them, stalwart men for the most part, clad in rough smocks and breeches and carrying thick sticks.
“There's one of the gentlemen here,” Middleton announced, addressing them, “who wants to know if you'd go through the Black Wood of Dominey for a sovereign apiece?—Watch their faces, your Grace.—Now then, lads?”
There was no possibility of any mistake. The very suggestion seemed to have taken the healthy sunburn from their cheeks. They fumbled with their sticks uneasily. One of them touched his hat and spoke to Dominey.
“I'm one as 'as seen it, sir, as well as heard,” he said. “I'd sooner give up my farm than go nigh the place.”
Caroline suddenly passed her arm through Dominey's. There was a note of distress in her tone.
“Henry, you're an idiot!” she exclaimed. “It was my fault, Everard. I'm so sorry. Just for one moment I had forgotten. I ought to have stopped Henry at once. The poor man has no memory.”
Dominey's arm responded for a moment to the pressure of her fingers. Then he turned to the beaters.
“Well, no one is going to ask you to go to the Black Wood,” he promised. “Get round to the back of Hunt's stubbles, and bring them into the roots and then over into the park. We will line the park fence. How is that, Middleton?”
The keeper touched his hat and stepped briskly off.
“I'll just have a walk with them myself, sir,” he said. “Them birds do break at Fuller's corner. I'll see if I can flank them. You'll know where to put the guns, Squire.”
Dominey nodded. One and all the beaters were walking with most unaccustomed speed towards their destination. Their backs were towards the Black Wood. Terniloff came up to his host.
“Have I, by chance, been terribly tactless?” he asked.
Dominey shook his head.
“You asked a perfectly natural question, Prince,” he replied. “There is no reason why you should not know the truth. Near that wood occurred the tragedy which drove me from England for so many years.”
“I am deeply grieved,” the Prince began—
“It is false sentiment to avoid allusions to it,” Dominey interrupted. “I was attacked there one night by a man who had some cause for offence against me. We fought, and I reached home in a somewhat alarming state. My condition terrified my wife so much that she has been an invalid ever since. But here is the point which has given birth to all these superstitions, and which made me for many years a suspected person. The man with whom I fought has never been seen since.”
Terniloff was at once too fascinated by the story and puzzled by his host's manner of telling it to maintain his apologetic attitude.
“Never seen since!” he repeated.
“My own memory as to the end of our fight is uncertain,” Dominey continued. “My impression is that I left my assailant unconscious upon the ground.”
“Then it is his ghost, I imagine, who haunts the Black Wood?”
Dominey shook himself as one who would get rid of an unwholesome thought.
“The wood itself, Prince,” he explained, as they walked along, “is a noisome place. There are quagmires even in the middle of it, where a man may sink in and be never heard of again. Every sort of vermin abounds there, every unclean insect and bird are to be found in the thickets. I suppose the character of the place has encouraged the local superstition in which every one of those men firmly believes.”
“They absolutely believe the place to be haunted, then?”
“The superstition goes further,” Dominey continued. “Our locals say that somewhere in the heart of the wood, where I believe that no human being for many years has dared to penetrate, there is living in the spiritual sense some sort of a demon who comes out only at night and howls underneath my windows.”
“Has any one ever seen it?”
“One or two of the villagers; to the best of my belief, no one else,” Dominey replied.
Terniloff seemed on the point of asking more questions, but the Duke touched him on the arm and drew him to one side, as though to call his attention to the sea fogs which were rolling up from the marshes.
“Prince,” he whispered, “the details of that story are inextricably mixed up with the insanity of Lady Dominey. I am sure you understand.”
The Prince, a diplomatist to his fingertips, appeared shocked, although a furtive smile still lingered upon his lips.
“I regret my faux pas most deeply,” he murmured. “Sir Everard,” he went on, “you promised to tell me of some of your days with a shotgun in South Africa. Isn't there a bird there which corresponds with your partridges?”
Dominey smiled.
“If you can kill the partridges which Middleton is going to send over in the next ten minutes,” he said, “you could shoot anything of the sort that comes along in East Africa, with a catapult. If you will stand just a few paces there to the left, Henry, Terniloff by the gate, Stillwell up by the left-hand corner, Mangan next, Eddy next, and I shall be just beyond towards the oak clump. Will you walk with me, Caroline?”
His cousin took his arm as they walked off and pressed it.
“Everard, I congratulate you,” she said. “You have conquered your nerve absolutely. You did a simple and a fine thing to tell the whole story. Why, you were almost matter-of-fact. I could even have imagined you were telling it about some one else.”
Her host smiled enigmatically.
“Curious that it should have struck you like that,” he remarked. “Do you know, when I was telling it I had the same feeling.—Do you mind crouching down a little now? I am going to blow the whistle.”
Even in the great dining-room of Dominey Hall, the mahogany table which was its great glory was stretched that evening to its extreme capacity. Besides the house party, which included the Right Honourable Gerald Watson, a recently appointed Cabinet Minister, there were several guests from the neighbourhood—the Lord Lieutenant of the County and other notabilities. Caroline, with the Lord Lieutenant on one side of her and Terniloff on the other played the part of hostess adequately but without enthusiasm. Her eyes seldom left for long the other end of the table, where Stephanie, at Dominey's left hand, with her crown of exquisitely coiffured red-gold hair, her marvellous jewellery, her languorous grace of manner, seemed more like one of the beauties of an ancient Venetian Court than a modern Hungarian Princess gowned in the Rue de la Paix. Conversation remained chiefly local and concerned the day's sport and kindred topics. It was not until towards the close of the meal that the Duke succeeded in launching his favourite bubble.
“I trust, Everard,” he said, raising his voice a little as he turned towards his host, “that you make a point of inculcating the principles of National Service into your tenantry here.”
Dominey's reply was a little dubious.
“I am afraid they do not take to the idea very kindly in this part of the world,” he confessed. “Purely agricultural districts are always a little difficult.”
“It is your duty as a landowner,” the Duke insisted, “to alter their point of view. There is not the slightest doubt,” he added, looking belligerently over the top of hispince nezat Seaman, who was seated at the opposite side of the table, “that before long we shall find ourselves—and in a shocking state of unpreparedness, mind you—at war with Germany.”
Lady Maddeley, the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, who sat at his side, seemed a little startled. She was probably one of the only people present who was not aware of the Duke's foible.
“Do you really think so?” she asked. “The Germans seem such civilised people, so peaceful and domestic in their home life, and that sort of thing.”
The Duke groaned. He glanced down the table to be sure that Prince Terniloff was out of hearing.
“My dear Lady Maddeley,” he declared, “Germany is not governed like England. When the war comes, the people will have had nothing to do with it. A great many of them will be just as surprised as you will be, but they will fight all the same.”
Seaman, who had kept silence during the last few moments with great difficulty, now took up the Duke's challenge.
“Permit me to assure you, madam,” he said, bowing across the table, “that the war with Germany of which the Duke is so afraid will never come. I speak with some amount of knowledge because I am a German by birth, although naturalised in this country. I have as many and as dear friends in Berlin as in London, and with the exception of my recent absence in Africa, where I had the pleasure to meet our host, I spent a great part of my time going back and forth between the two capitals. I have also the honour to be the secretary of a society for the promotion of a better understanding between the citizens of Germany and England.”
“Rubbish!” the Duke exclaimed. “The Germans don't want a better understanding. They only want to fool us into believing that they do.”
Seaman looked a little pained. He stuck to his guns, however.
“His Grace and I,” he observed, “are old opponents on this subject.”
“We are indeed,” the Duke agreed. “You may be an honest man, Mr. Seaman, but you are a very ignorant one upon this particular topic.”
“You are probably both right in your way,” Dominey intervened, very much in the manner of a well-bred host making his usual effort to smooth over two widely divergent points of view. “There is no doubt a war party in Germany and a peace party, statesmen who place economic progress first, and others who are tainted with a purely military lust for conquest. In this country it is very hard for us to strike a balance between the two.”
Seaman beamed his thanks upon his host.
“I have friends,” he said impressively, “in the very highest circles of Germany, who are continually encouraging my work here, and I have received the benediction of the Kaiser himself upon my efforts to promote a better feeling in this country. And if you will forgive my saying so, Duke, it is such ill-advised and ill-founded statements as you are constantly making about my country which is the only bar to a better understanding between us.”
“I have my views,” the Duke snapped, “and they have become convictions. I shall continue to express them at all times and with all the eloquence at my command.”
The Ambassador, to whom portions of this conversation had now become audible, leaned a little forward in his place.
“Let me speak first as a private individual,” he begged, “and express my well-studied opinion that war between our two countries would be simply race suicide, an indescribable and an abominable crime. Then I will remember what I represent over here, and I will venture to add in my ambassadorial capacity that I come with an absolute and heartfelt mandate of peace. My task over here is to secure and ensure it.”
Caroline flashed a warning glance at her husband.
“How nice of you to be so frank, Prince!” she said. “The Duke sometimes forgets, in the pursuit of his hobby, that a private dinner table is not a platform. I insist upon it that we discuss something of more genuine interest.”
“There isn't a more vital subject in the world,” the Duke declared, resigning himself, however, to silence.
“We will speak,” the Ambassador suggested, “of the way in which our host brought down those tall pheasants.”
“You will tell me, perhaps,” Seaman suggested to the lady to his right, “how you English women have been able to secure for yourselves so much more liberty than our German wives enjoy?”
“Later on,” Stephanie whispered to her host, with a little tremble in her voice, “I have a surprise for you.”
After dinner, Dominey's guests passed naturally enough to the relaxations which each preferred. There were two bridge tables, Terniloff and the Cabinet Minister played billiards, and Seaman, with a touch which amazed every one, drew strange music from the yellow keys of the old-fashioned grand piano in the drawing-room. Stephanie and her host made a slow progress through the hall and picture gallery. For some time their conversation was engaged solely with the objects to which Dominey drew his companion's attention. When they had passed out of possible hearing, however, of any of the other guests, Stephanie's fingers tightened upon her companion's arm.
“I wish to speak to you alone,” she said, “without the possibility of any one overhearing.”
Dominey hesitated and looked behind.
“Your guests are well occupied,” she continued a little impatiently, “and in any case I am one of them. I claim your attention.”
Dominey threw open the door of the library and turned on a couple of the electric lights. She made her way to the great open fireplace, on which a log was burning, looked down into the shadows of the room and back again at her host's face.
“For one moment,” she begged, “turn on all the lights. I wish to be sure that we are alone.”
Dominey did as he was bidden. The furthermost corners of the room, with its many wings of book-filled shelves, were illuminated. She nodded.
“Now turn them all out again except this one,” she directed, “and wheel me up an easy-chair. No, I choose this settee. Please seat yourself by my side.”
“Is this going to be serious?” he asked, with some slight disquietude.
“Serious but wonderful,” she murmured, lifting her eyes to his. “Will you please listen to me, Leopold?”
She was half curled up in a corner of the settee, her head resting slightly upon her long fingers, her brown eyes steadily fixed upon her companion. There was an atmosphere about her of serious yet of tender things. Dominey's face seemed to fall into more rigid lines as he realised the appeal of her eyes.
“Leopold,” she began, “I left this country a few weeks ago, feeling that you were a brute, determined never to see you again, half inclined to expose you before I went as an impostor and a charlatan. Germany means little to me, and a patriotism which took no account of human obligations left me absolutely unresponsive. I meant to go home and never to return to London. My heart was bruised, and I was very unhappy.”
She paused, but her companion made no sign. She paused for so long, however, that speech became necessary.
“You are speaking, Princess,” he said calmly, “to one who is not present. My name is no longer Leopold.”
She laughed at him with a curious mixture of tenderness and bitterness.
“My friend,” she continued, “I am terrified to think, besides your name, how much of humanity you have lost in your new identity. To proceed it suited my convenience to remain for a few days in Berlin, and I was therefore compelled to present myself at Potsdam. There I received a great surprise. Wilhelm spoke to me of you, and though, alas! my heart is still bruised, he helped me to understand.”
“Is this wise?” he asked a little desperately.
She ignored his words.
“I was taken back into favour at Court,” she went on. “For that I owe to you my thanks. Wilhelm was much impressed by your recent visit to him, and by the way in which you have established yourself here. He spoke also with warm commendation of your labours in Africa, which he seemed to appreciate all the more as you were sent there an exile. He asked me, Leopold,” she added, dropping her voice a little, “if my feelings towards you remained unchanged.”
Dominey's face remained unrelaxed. Persistently he refused the challenge of her eyes.
“I told him the truth,” she proceeded. “I told him how it all began, and how it must last with me—to the end. We spoke even of the duel. I told him what both your seconds had explained to me,—that turn of the wrist, Conrad's wild lunge, how he literally threw himself upon the point of your sword. Wilhelm understands and forgives, and he has sent you this letter.”
She drew a small grey envelope from her pocket. On the seal were the Imperial Hohenzollern arms. She passed it to him.
“Leopold,” she whispered, “please read that.”
He shook his head, although he accepted the letter with reluctant fingers.
“Read the superscription,” she directed.
He obeyed her. It was addressed in a strange, straggling handwriting toSir Everard Dominey, Baronet. He broke the seal unwillingly and drew out the letter. It was dated barely a fortnight back. There was neither beginning or ending; just a couple of sentences scrawled across the thick notepaper:
“It is my will that you offer your hand in marriage to the Princess Stephanie of Eiderstrom. Your union shall be blessed by the Church and approved by my Court.
“WILHELM.”
Dominey sat as a man enthralled with silence. She watched him.
“Not on your knees yet?” she asked, with faint but somewhat resentful irony. “Can it be, Leopold, that you have lost your love for me? You have changed so much and in so many ways. Has the love gone?”
Even to himself his voice sounded harsh and unnatural, his words instinct with the graceless cruelty of a clown.
“This is not practical,” he declared. “Think! I am as I have been addressed here, and as I must remain yet for months to come—Everard Dominey, an Englishman and the owner of this house—the husband of Lady Dominey.”
“Where is your reputed wife?” Stephanie demanded, frowning.
“In the nursing home where she has been for the last few months,” he replied. “She has already practically recovered. She cannot remain there much longer.”
“You must insist upon it that she does.”
“I ask you to consider the suspicions which would be excited by such a course,” Dominey pleaded earnestly, “and further, can you explain to me in what way I, having already, according to belief of everybody, another wife living, can take advantage of this mandate?”
She looked at him wonderingly.
“You make difficulties? You sit there like the cold Englishman whose place you are taking, you whose tears have fallen before now upon my hand, whose lips—”
“You speak of one who is dead,” Dominey interrupted, “dead until the coming of great events may bring him to life again. Until that time your lover must be dumb.”
Then her anger blazed out. She spoke incoherently, passionately, dragged his face down to hers and clenched her fist the next moment as though she would have struck it. She broke down with a storm of tears.
“Not so hard—not so hard, Leopold!” she implored. “Oh! yours is a great task, and you must carry it through to the end, but we have his permission—there can be found a way—we could be married secretly. At least your lips—your arms! My heart is starved, Leopold.”
He rose to his feet. Her arms were still twined about his neck, her lips hungry for his kisses, her eyes shining up into his.
“Have pity on me, Stephanie,” he begged. “Until our time has come there is dishonour even in a single kiss. Wait for the day, the day you know of.”
She unwound her arms and shivered slightly. Her hurt eyes regarded him wonderingly.
“Leopold,” she faltered, “what has changed you like this? What has dried up all the passion in you? You are a different man. Let me look at you.”
She caught him by the shoulders, dragged him underneath the electric globe, and stood there gazing into his face. The great log upon the hearth was spluttering and fizzing. Through the closed door came the faint wave of conversation and laughter from outside. Her breathing was uneven, her eyes were seeking to rend the mask from his face.
“Can you have learnt to care for any one else?” she muttered. “There were no women in Africa. This Rosamund Dominey, your reputed wife—they tell me that she is beautiful, that you have been kindness itself to her, that her health has improved since your coming, that she adores you. You wouldn't dare—”
“No,” he interrupted, “I should not dare.”
“Then what are you looking at?” she demanded. “Tell me that?”
Her eyes were following the shadowed picture which had passed out of the room. He saw once more the slight, girlish form, the love-seeking light in those pleading dark eyes, the tremulous lips, the whole sweet appeal for safety from a frightened child to him, the strong man. He felt the clinging touch of those soft fingers laid upon his, the sweetness of those marvellously awakened emotions, so cruelly and drearily stifled through a cycle of years. The woman's passion by his side seemed suddenly tawdry and unreal, the seeking of her lips for his something horrible. His back was towards the door, and it was her cry of angry dismay which first apprised him of a welcome intruder. He swung around to find Seaman standing upon the threshold—Seaman, to him a very angel of deliverance.
“I am indeed sorry to intrude, Sir Everard,” the newcomer declared, with a shade of genuine concern on his round, good-humoured face. “Something has happened which I thought you ought to know at once. Can you spare me a moment?”
The Princess swept past them without a word of farewell or a backward glance. She had the carriage and the air of an insulted queen. A shade of deeper trouble came into Seaman's face as he stepped respectfully to one side.
“What is it that has happened?” Dominey demanded.
“Lady Dominey has returned,” was the quiet reply.