These were days, to all dwellers in London, of vivid impressions, of poignant memories, reasserting themselves afterwards with a curious sense of unreality, as though belonging to another set of days and another world. Dominey long remembered his dinner that evening in the sombre, handsomely furnished dining-room of his town house in Berkeley Square. Although it lacked the splendid proportions of the banqueting hall at Dominey, it was still a fine apartment, furnished in the Georgian period, with some notable pictures upon the walls, and with a wonderful ceiling and fireplace. Dominey and Rosamund dined alone, and though the table had been reduced to its smallest proportions, the space between them was yet considerable. As soon as Parkins had gravely put the port upon the table, Rosamund rose to her feet and, instead of leaving the room, pointed for the servant to place a chair for her by Dominey's side.
“I shall be like your men friends, Everard,” she declared, “when the ladies have left, and draw up to your side. Now what do we do? Tell stories? I promise you that I will be a wonderful listener.”
“First of all you drink half a glass of this port,” he declared, filling her glass, “then you peel me one of those peaches, and we divide it. After which we listen for a ring at the bell. To-night I expect a visitor.”
“A visitor?”
“Not a social one,” he assured her. “A matter of business which I fear will take me from you for the rest of the evening. So let us make the most of the time until he comes.”
She commenced her task with the peach, talking to him all the time a little gravely, a sweet and picturesque picture of a graceful and very desirable woman, her delicate shape and artistic fragility more than ever accentuated by the sombreness of the background.
“Do you know, Everard,” she said, “I am so happy in London here with you, and I feel all the time so strong and well. I can read and understand the books which were a maze of print to me before. I can see the things in the pictures, and feel the thrill of the music, which seemed to come to me, somehow, before, all dislocated and discordant. You understand, dear?”
“Of course,” he answered gravely.
“I do not wonder,” she went on, “that Doctor Harrison is proud of me for a patient, but there are many times when I feel a dull pain in my heart, because I know that, whatever he or anybody else might say, I am not quite cured.”
“Rosamund dear,” he protested.
“Ah, but don't interrupt,” she insisted, depositing his share of the peach upon his plate. “How can I be cured when all the time there is the problem of you, the problem which I am just as far off solving as ever I was? Often I find myself comparing you with the Everard whom I married.”
“Do I fail so often to come up to his standard?” he asked.
“You never fail,” she answered, looking at him with brimming eyes. “Of course, he was very much more affectionate,” she went on, after a moment's pause. “His kisses were not like yours. And he was far fonder of having me with him. Then, on the other hand, often when I wanted him he was not there, he did wild things, mad things; he seemed to forget me altogether. It was that,” she went on, “that was so terrible. It was that which made me so nervous. I think that I should even have been able to stand those awful moments when he came back to me, covered with blood and reeling, if it had not been that I was already almost a wreck. You know, he killed Roger Unthank that night. That is why he was never able to come back.”
“Why do you talk of these things to-night, Rosamund,” Dominey begged.
“I must, dear,” she insisted, laying her fingers upon his hand and looking at him curiously. “I must, even though I see how they distress you. It is wonderful that you should mind so much, Everard, but you do, and I love you for it.”
“Mind?” he groaned. “Mind!”
“You are so like him and yet so different,” she went on meditatively. “You drink so little wine, you are always so self-controlled, so serious. You live as though you had a life around you of which others knew nothing. The Everard I remember would never have cared about being a magistrate or going into Parliament. He would have spent his time racing or yachting, hunting or shooting, as the fancy took him. And yet—”
“And yet what?” Dominey asked, a little hoarsely.
“I think he loved me better than you,” she said very sadly.
“Why?” he demanded.
“I cannot tell you,” she answered, with her eyes upon her plate, “but I think that he did.”
Dominey walked suddenly to the window and leaned out. There were drops of moisture upon his forehead, he felt the fierce need of air. When he came back she was still sitting there, still looking down.
“I have spoken to Doctor Harrison about it,” she went on, her voice scarcely audible. “He told me that you probably loved more than you dared to show, because someday the real Everard might come back.”
“That is quite true,” he reminded her softly. “He may come back at any moment.”
She gripped his hand, her voice shook with passion. She leaned towards him, her other arm stole around his neck.
“But I don't want him to come back!” she cried. “I want you!”
Dominey sat for a moment motionless, like a figure of stone. Through the wide-flung, blind-shielded windows came the raucous cry of a newsboy, breaking the stillness of the summer evening. And then another and sharper interruption,—the stopping of a taxicab outside, the firm, insistent ringing of the front doorbell. Recollection came to Dominey, and a great strength. The fire which had leaped up within him was thrust back. His response to her wave of passion was infinitely tender.
“Dear Rosamund,” he said, “that front doorbell summons me to rather an important interview. Will you please trust in me a little while longer? Believe me, I am not in any way cold. I am not indifferent. There is something which you will have to be told,—something with which I never reckoned, something which is beginning to weigh upon me night and day. Trust me, Rosamund, and wait!”
She sank back into her chair with a piquant and yet pathetic little grimace.
“You tell me always to wait,” she complained. “I will be patient, but you shall tell me this. You are so kind to me. You make or mar my life. You must care a little? Please?”
He was standing up now. He kissed her hands fondly. His voice had all the old ring in it.
“More than for any woman on earth, dear Rosamund!”
Seaman, in a light grey suit, a panama, and a white beflowered tie, had lost something of the placid urbanity of a few months ago. He was hot and tired with travel. There were new lines in his face and a queer expression of anxiety about his eyes, at the corners of which little wrinkles had begun to appear. He responded to Dominey's welcome with a fervour which was almost feverish, scrutinised him closely, as though expecting to find some change, and finally sank into an easy-chair with a little gesture of relief. He had been carrying a small, brown despatch case, which he laid on the carpet by his side.
“You have news?” Dominey asked.
“Yes,” was the momentous reply, “I have news.”
Dominey rang the bell. He had already surmised, from the dressing-case and coats in the hall, that his visitor had come direct from the station.
“What will you have?” he enquired.
“A bottle of hock with seltzer water, and ice if you have it,” Seaman replied. “Also a plate of cold meat, but it must be served here. And afterwards the biggest cigar you have. I have indeed news, news disturbing, news magnificent, news astounding.”
Dominey gave some orders to the servant who answered his summons. For a few moments they spoke trivialities of the journey. When everything was served, however, and the door closed, Seaman could wait no longer. His appetite, his thirst, his speech, seemed all stimulated to swift action.
“We are of the same temperament,” he said. “That I know. We will speak first of what is more than disturbing—a little terrifying. The mystery of Johann Wolff has been solved.”
“The man who came to us with messages from Schmidt in South Africa?” Dominey asked. “I had almost forgotten about him.”
“The same. What was at the back of his visit to us that night I cannot even now imagine. Neither is it clear why he held aloof from me, who am his superior in practically the same service. There we are, from the commencement, confronted with a very singular happening, but scarcely so singular as the denouement. Wolff vanished from your house that night into an English fortress.”
“It seems incredible,” Dominey declared bluntly.
“It is nevertheless true,” Seaman insisted. “No member of our service is allowed to remain more than one month without communicating his existence and whereabouts to headquarters. No word has been received from Wolff since that night in January. On the other hand, indirect information has reached us that he is in durance over here.”
“But such a thing is against the law, unheard of,” Dominey protested. “No country can keep the citizen of another country in prison without formulating a definite charge or bringing him up for trial.”
Seaman smiled grimly.
“That's all very well in any ordinary case,” he said. “Wolff has been a marked man for years, though. Wilhelmstrasse would soon make fuss enough, if it were of any use, but it would not be. There are one or two Englishmen in German prisons at the present moment, concerning whose welfare the English Foreign Office has not even thought it worth while to enquire. What troubles me more than the actual fact of Wolff's disappearance is the mystery of his visit to you and his apprehension practically on the spot.”
“They must have tracked him down there,” Dominey remarked.
“Yes, but they couldn't thrust a pair of tongs into your butler's sitting-room, extract Johann Wolff, and set him down inside Norwich Castle or whatever prison he may be in,” Seaman objected. “However, the most disquieting feature about Wolff is that it introduces something we don't understand. For the rest, we have many men as good, and better, and the time for their utility is past. You are our great hope now, Dominey.”
“It is to be, then?”
Seaman took a long and ecstatic draught of his hock and seltzer.
“It is to be,” he declared solemnly. “There was never any doubt about it. If Russia ceases to mobilise to-morrow, if every statesman in Servia crawls to Vienna with a rope around his neck, the result would still be the same. The word has gone out. The whole of Germany is like a vast military camp. It comes exactly twelve months before the final day fixed by our great authorities, but the opportunity is too great, too wonderful for hesitation. By the end of August we shall be in Paris.”
“You bring news indeed!” Dominey murmured, standing for a moment by the opened window.
“I have been received with favour in the very loftiest circles,” Seaman continued. “You and I both stand high in the list of those to whom great rewards shall come. His Majesty approves altogether of your reluctance to avail yourself of his permission to wed the Princess Eiderstrom. 'Von Ragastein has decided well,' he declared. 'These are not the days for marriage or giving in marriage. These, the most momentous days the world has ever known, the days when an empire shall spring into being, the mightiest since the Continents fell into shape and the stars looked down upon this present world.' Those are the words of the All Highest. In his eyes the greatest of all attributes is singleness of purpose. You followed your own purpose, contrary to my advice, contrary to Terniloff's. You will gain by it.”
Seaman finished his meal in due course, and the tray was removed. Soon the two men were alone again, Seaman puffing out dense volumes of smoke, gripping his cigar between his teeth, brandishing it sometimes in his hand to give effect to his words. A little of his marvellous caution seemed to have deserted him. For the first time he spoke directly to his companion.
“Von Ragastein,” he said, “it is a great country, ours. It is a wonderful empire we shall build. To-night I am on fire with the mighty things. I have a list of instructions for you, many details. They can wait. We will talk of our future, our great and glorious destiny as the mightiest nation who has ever earned for herself the right to govern the world. You would think that in Germany there was excitement. There is none. The task of every one is allotted, their work made clear to them. Like a mighty piece of gigantic machinery, we move towards war. Every regiment knows its station, every battery commander knows his positions, every general knows his exact line of attack. Rations, clothing, hospitals, every unit of which you can think, has its movements calculated out for it to the last nicety.”
“And the final result?” Dominey asked. “Is that also calculated?”
Seaman, with trembling fingers, unlocked the little despatch box which stood by his side and took from it jealously a sheet of linen-backed parchment.
“You, my friend,” he said, “are one of the first to gaze upon this. This will show you the dream of our Kaiser. This will show you the framework of the empire that is to be.”
He laid out a map upon the table. The two men bent over it. It was a map of Europe, in which England, a diminished France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, were painted in dark blue. For the rest, the whole of the space included between two lines, one from Hamburg to Athens, the other from Finland to the Black Sea, was painted a deep scarlet, with here and there portions of it in slightly lighter colouring. Seaman laid his palm upon the map.
“There lies our future Empire,” he said solemnly and impressively.
“Explain it to me,” Dominey begged.
“Broadly speaking, everything between those two lines belongs to the new German Empire. Poland, Courland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine will possess a certain degree of autonomous government, which will practically amount to nothing. Asia is there at our feet. No longer will Great Britain control the supplies of the world. Raw materials of every description will be ours. Leather, tallow, wheat, oil, fats, timber—they are all there for us to draw upon. And for wealth—India and China! What more could you have, my friend?”
“You take my breath away. But what about Austria?”
Seaman's grin was almost sardonic.
“Austria,” he said, “must already feel her doom creeping upon her. There is no room in middle Europe for two empires, and the House of Hapsburg must fall before the House of Hohenzollern. Austria, body and soul, must become part of the German Empire. Then further down, mark you. Roumania must become a vassal state or be conquered. Bulgaria is already ours. Turkey, with Constantinople, is pledged. Greece will either join us or be wiped out. Servia will be blotted from the map; probably also Montenegro. These countries which are painted in fainter red, like Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece, become vassal states, to be absorbed one by one as opportunity presents itself.”
Dominey's finger strayed northward.
“Belgium,” he observed, “has disappeared.”
“Belgium we shall occupy and enslave,” Seaman replied. “Our line of advance into France lies that way, and we need her ports to dominate the Thames. Holland and the Scandinavian countries, as you observe are left in the lighter shade of red. If an opportunity occurs, Holland and Denmark may be incited to take the field against us. If they do so, it means absorption. If they remain, as they probably will, scared neutrals, they will none the less be our vassal states when the last gun has been fired.”
“And Norway and Sweden?”
Seaman looked down at the map and smiled.
“Look at them,” he said. “They lie at our mercy. Norway has her western seaboard, and there might always be the question of British aid so far as she is concerned. But Sweden is ours, body and soul. More than any other of these vassal states, it is our master's plan to bring her into complete subjection. We need her lusty manhood, the finest cannon food in the world, for later wars, if indeed such a thing should be. She has timber and minerals which we also need. But there—it is enough. First of all men in this country, my friend, you Von Ragastein, have gazed upon this picture of the future.”
“This is marvellously conceived,” Dominey muttered, “but what of Russia with her millions? How is it that we propose, notwithstanding her countless millions of men, to help ourselves to her richest provinces, to drive a way through the heart of her empire?”
“This,” Seaman replied, “is where genius steps in. Russia has been ripe for a revolution any time for the last fifteen years. We have secret agents now in every city and country place and throughout the army. We shall teach Russia how to make herself a free country.”
Dominey shivered a little with an almost involuntary repulsion. For the second time that almost satyr-like grin on Seaman's face revolted him.
“And what of my own work?”
Seaman helped himself to a liqueur. He was, as a rule, a moderate man, but this was the third time he had replenished his glass since his hasty meal.
“My brain is weary, friend,” he admitted, passing his hand over his forehead. “I have a great fatigue. The thoughts jump about. This last week has been one of fierce excitements. Everything, almost your daily life, has been planned. We shall go over it within a day or so. Meanwhile, remember this. It is our great aim to keep England out of the war.”
“Terniloff is right, then, after all!” Dominey exclaimed.
Seaman laughed scornfully.
“If we want England out of the war,” he pointed out, “it is not that we desire her friendship. It is that we may crush her the more easily when Calais, Boulogne and Havre are in our hands. That will be in three months' time. Then perhaps our attitude towards England may change a little! Now I go.”
Dominey folded up the map with reluctance. His companion shook his head. It was curious that he, too, for the first time in his life upon the same day, addressed his host differently.
“Baron Von Ragastein,” he said, “there are six of those maps in existence. That one is for you. Lock it away and guard it as though it were your greatest treasure on earth, but when you are alone, bring it out and study it. It shall be your inspiration, it shall lighten your moments of depression, give you courage when you are in danger; it shall fill your mind with pride and wonder. It is yours.”
Dominey folded it carefully up, crossed the room, unlocked a little safe and deposited it therein.
“I shall guard it, according to your behest, as my greatest treasure,” he assured his departing guest, with a fervour which surprised even himself.
There was something dramatic, in the most lurid sense of the word, about the brief telephone message which Dominey received, not so many hours later, from Carlton House Terrace. In a few minutes he was moving through the streets, still familiar yet already curiously changed. Men and women were going about their business as usual, but an air of stupefaction was everywhere apparent. Practically every loiterer was studying a newspaper, every chance acquaintance had stopped to confer with his fellows. War, alternately the joke and bogey of the conversationalist, stretched her grey hands over the sunlit city. Even the lightest-hearted felt a thrill of apprehension at the thought of the horrors that were to come. In a day or two all this was to be changed. People went about then counting the Russian millions; the steamroller fetish was to be evolved. The most peaceful stockbroker or shopkeeper, who had never even been to a review in his life, could make calculations of man power with a stump of pencil on the back of an old envelope, which would convince the greatest pessimist that Germany and Austria were outnumbered by at least three to one. But on this particular morning, people were too stunned for calculations. The incredible had happened. The long-discussed war—the nightmare of the nervous, the derision of the optimist—had actually materialised. The happy-go-lucky years of peace and plenty had suddenly come to an end. Black tragedy leaned over the land.
Dominey, avoiding acquaintances as far as possible, his own mind in a curious turmoil, passed down St. James's Street and along Pall Mall and presented himself at Carlton House Terrace. Externally, the great white building, with its rows of flower boxes, showed no signs of undue perturbation. Inside, however, the anteroom was crowded with callers, and it was only by the intervention of Terniloff's private secretary, who was awaiting him, that Dominey was able to reach the inner sanctum where the Ambassador was busy dictating letters. He broke off immediately his visitor was announced and dismissed every one, including his secretaries. Then he locked the door.
“Von Ragastein,” he groaned, “I am a broken man!”
Dominey grasped his hand sympathetically. Terniloff seemed to have aged years even in the last few hours.
“I sent for you,” he continued, “to say farewell, to say farewell and make a confession. You were right, and I was wrong. It would have been better if I had remained and played the country farmer on my estates. I was never shrewd enough to see until now that I have been made the cat's-paw of the very men whose policy I always condemned.”
His visitor still remained silent. There was so little that he could say.
“I have worked for peace,” Terniloff went on, “believing that my country wanted peace. I have worked for peace with honourable men who were just as anxious as I was to secure it. But all the time those for whom I laboured were making faces behind my back. I was nothing more nor less than their tool. I know now that nothing in this world could have hindered what is coming.”
“Every one will at least realise,” Dominey reminded him, “that you did your best for peace.”
“That is one reason why I sent for you,” was the agitated reply. “Not long ago I spoke of a little volume, a diary which I have been keeping of my work in this country. I promised to show it to you. You have asked me for it several times lately. I am going to show it to you now. It is written up to yesterday. It will tell you of all my efforts and how they were foiled. It is an absolutely faithful narrative of my work here, and the English response to it.”
The Prince crossed the room, unlocked one of the smaller safes, which stood against the side of the wall, withdrew a morocco-bound volume the size of a small portfolio, and returned to Dominey.
“I beg you,” he said earnestly, “to read this with the utmost care and to await my instructions with regard to it. You can judge, no doubt,” he went on a little bitterly, “why I give it into your keeping. Even the Embassy here is not free from our own spies, and the existence of these memoirs is known. The moment I reach Germany, their fate is assured. I am a German and a patriot, although my heart is bitter against those who are bringing this blot upon our country. For that reason, these memoirs must be kept in a safe place until I see a good use for them.”
“You mean if the governing party in German should change?”
“Precisely! They would then form at once my justification, and place English diplomacy in such a light before the saner portion of my fellow countrymen that an honourable peace might be rendered possible. Study them carefully, Von Ragastein. Perhaps even your own allegiance to the Party you serve may waver for a moment as you read.”
“I serve no Party,” Dominey said quietly, “only my Country.”
Terniloff sighed.
“Alas! there is no time for us to enter into one of our old arguments on the ethics of government. I must send you away, Von Ragastein. You have a terrible task before you. I am bound to wish you Godspeed. For myself I shall not raise my head again until I have left England.”
“There is no other commission?” Dominey asked. “No other way in which I can serve you?”
“None,” Terniloff answered sadly. “I am permitted to suffer no inconveniences. My departure is arranged for as though I were royalty. Yet believe me, my friend, every act of courtesy and generosity which I receive in these moments, bites into my heart. Farewell!”
Dominey found a taxicab in Pall Mall and drove back to Berkeley Square. He found Rosamund with a little troop of dogs, just entering the gardens, and crossed to her side.
“Dear,” he asked, taking her arm, “would you mind very much coming down to Norfolk for a few days?”
“With you?” she asked quickly.
“Yes! I want to be in retreat for a short time. There are one or two things I must settle before I take up some fresh work.”
“I should love it,” she declared enthusiastically. “London is getting so hot, and every one is so excited.”
“I shall order the touring car at three o'clock,” Dominey told her. “We shall get home about nine. Parkins and your maid can go down by train. Does that suit you?”
“Delightfully!”
He took her arm and they paced slowly along the hot walk.
“Rosamund dear,” he said, “the time has come which many people have been dreading. We are at war.”
“I know,” she murmured.
“You and I have had quite a happy time together, these last few months,” he went on, “even though there is still that black cloud between us. I have tried to treat you as kindly and tenderly as though I were really your husband and you were indeed my wife.”
“You're not going away?” she cried, startled. “I couldn't bear that! No one could ever be so sweet as you have been to me.”
“Dear,” he said, “I want you to think—of your husband—of Everard. He was a soldier once for a short time, was he not? What do you think he would have done now that this terrible war has come?”
“He would have done what you will do,” she answered, with the slightest possible tremor in her tone. “He would have become a soldier again, he would have fought for his country.”
“And so must I—fight for my country,” he declared. “That is why I must leave you for an hour now while I make some calls. I shall be back to luncheon. Directly afterwards we must start. I have many things to arrange first, though. Life is not going to be very easy for the next few days.”
She held on to his arm. She seemed curiously reluctant to let him go.
“Everard,” she said, “when we are at Dominey shall I be able to see Doctor Harrison?”
“Of course,” he assured her.
“There is something I want to say to him,” she confided, “something I want to ask you, too. Are you the same person, Everard, when you are in town as when you are in the country?”
He was a little taken aback at her question—asked, too, with such almost plaintive seriousness. The very aberration it suggested seemed altogether denied by her appearance. She was wearing a dress of black and white muslin, a large black hat, Paris shoes. Her stockings, her gloves, all the trifling details of her toilette, were carefully chosen, and her clothes themselves gracefully and naturally worn. Socially, too, she had been amazingly successful. Only the week before, Caroline had come to him with a little shrug of the shoulders.
“I have been trying to be kind to Rosamund,” she said, “and finding out instead how unnecessary it is. She is quite the most popular of the younger married women in our set. You don't deserve such luck, Everard.”
“You know the proverb about the old roue,” he had replied.
His mind had wandered for a moment. He realised Rosamund's question with a little start.
“The same person, dear?” he repeated. “I think so. Don't I seem so to you?”
She shook her head.
“I am not sure,” she answered, a little mysteriously. “You see, in the country I still remember sometimes that awful night when I so nearly lost my reason. I have never seen you as you looked that night.”
“You would rather not go back, perhaps?”
“That is the strange part of it,” she replied. “There is nothing in the world I want so much to do. There's an empty taxi, dear,” she added, as they reached the gate. “I shall go in and tell Justine about the packing.”
Within the course of the next few days, a strange rumour spread through Dominey and the district,—from the farm labourer to the farmer, from the school children to their homes, from the village post-office to the neighbouring hamlets. A gang of woodmen from a neighbouring county, with an engine and all the machinery of their craft, had started to work razing to the ground everything in the shape of tree or shrub at the north end of the Black Wood. The matter of the war was promptly forgotten. Before the second day, every man, woman and child in the place had paid an awed visit to the outskirts of the wood, had listened to the whirr of machinery, had gazed upon the great bridge of planks leading into the wood, had peered, in the hope of some strange discovery into the tents of the men who were camping out. The men themselves were not communicative, and the first time the foreman had been known to open his mouth was when Dominey walked down to discuss progress, on the morning after his arrival.
“It's a dirty bit of work, sir,” he confided. “I don't know as I ever came across a bit of woodland as was so utterly, hopelessly rotten. Why, the wood crumbles when you touch it, and the men have to be within reach of one another the whole of the time, though we've a matter of five hundred planks down there.”
“Come across anything unusual yet?”
“We ain't come across anything that isn't unusual so far, sir. My men are all wearing extra leggings to keep them from being bitten by them adders—as long as my arm, some of 'em. And there's fungus there which, when you touch it, sends out a smell enough to make a man faint. We killed a cat the first day, as big and as fierce as a young tigress. It's a queer job, sir.”
“How long will it take?”
“Matter of three weeks, sir, and when we've got the timber out you'll be well advised to burn it. It's not worth a snap of the fingers.—Begging your pardon, sir,” the man went on, “the old lady in the distance there hangs about the whole of the time. Some of my men are half scared of her.”
Dominey swung around. On a mound a little distance away in the park, Rachael Unthank was standing. In her rusty black clothes, unrelieved by any trace of colour, her white cheeks and strange eyes, even in the morning light she was a repellent figure. Dominey strolled across to her.
“You see, Mrs. Unthank,” he began—
She interrupted him. Her skinny hand was stretched out towards the wood.
“What are those men doing, Sir Everard Dominey?” she demanded. “What is your will with the wood?”
“I am carrying out a determination I came to in the winter,” Dominey replied. “Those men are going to cut and hew their way from one end of the Black Wood to the other, until not a tree or a bush remains upright. As they cut, they burn. Afterwards, I shall have it drained. We may live to see a field of corn there, Mrs. Unthank.”
“You will dare to do this?” she asked hoarsely.
“Will you dare to tell me why I should not, Mrs. Unthank?”
She relapsed into silence, and Dominey passed on. But that night, as Rosamund and he were lingering over their dessert, enjoying the strange quiet and the wonderful breeze which crept in at the open window, Parkins announced a visitor.
“Mrs. Unthank is in the library, sir,” he announced. “She would be glad if you could spare her five minutes.”
Rosamund shivered slightly, but nodded as Dominey glanced towards her enquiringly.
“Don't let me see her, please,” she begged. “You must go, of course.—Everard!”
“Yes, dear?”
“I know what you are doing out there, although you have never said a word to me about it,” she continued, with an odd little note of passion in her tone. “Don't let her persuade you to stop. Let them cut and burn and hew till there isn't room for a mouse to hide. You promise?”
“I promise,” he answered.
Mrs. Unthank was making every effort to keep under control her fierce discomposure. She rose as Dominey entered the room and dropped an old-fashioned curtsey.
“Well, Mrs. Unthank,” he enquired, “what can I do for you?”
“It's about the wood again, sir,” she confessed. “I can't bear it. All night long I seem to hear those axes, and the calling of the men.”
“What is your objection, Mrs. Unthank, to the destruction of the Black Wood?” Dominey asked bluntly. “It is nothing more nor less than a noisome pest-hole. Its very presence there, after all that she has suffered, is a menace to Lady Dominey's nerves. I am determined to sweep it from the face of the earth.”
The forced respect was already beginning to disappear from her manner.
“There's evil will come to you if you do, Sir Everard,” she declared doggedly.
“Plenty of evil has come to me from that wood as it is,” he reminded her.
“You mean to disturb the spirit of him whose body you threw there?” she persisted.
Dominey looked at her calmly. Some sort of evil seemed to have lit in her face. Her lips had shrunk apart, showing her yellow teeth. The fire in her narrowed eyes was the fire of hatred.
“I am no murderer, Mrs. Unthank,” he said. “Your son stole out from the shadow of that wood, attacked me in a cowardly manner, and we fought. He was mad when he attacked me, he fought like a madman, and, notwithstanding my superior strength, I was glad to get away alive. I never touched his body. It lay where he fell. If he crept into the wood and died there, then his death was not at my door. He sought for my life as I never sought for his.”
“You'd done him wrong,” the woman muttered.
“That again is false. His passion for Lady Dominey was uninvited and unreciprocated. Her only feeling concerning him was one of fear; that the whole countryside knows. Your son was a lonely, a morose and an ill-living man, Mrs. Unthank. If either of us had murder in our hearts, it was he, not I. And as for you,” Dominey went on, after a moment's pause, “I think that you have had your revenge, Mrs. Unthank. It was you who nursed my wife into insanity. It was you who fed her with the horror of your son's so-called spirit. I think that if I had stayed away another two years, Lady Dominey would have been in a mad-house to-day.”
“I would to Heaven!” the woman cried, “that you'd rotted to death in Africa!”
“You carry your evil feelings far, Mrs. Unthank,” he replied. “Take my advice. Give up this foolish idea that the Black Wood is still the home of your son's spirit. Go and live on your annuity in another part of the country and forget.”
He moved across the room to throw open a window. Her eyes followed him wonderingly.
“I have heard a rumour,” she said slowly; “there has been a word spoken here and there about you. I've had my doubts sometimes. I have them again every time you speak. Are you really Everard Dominey?”
He swung around and faced her.
“Who else?”
“There's one,” she went on, “has never believed it, and that's her ladyship. I've heard strange talk from the people who've come under your masterful ways. You're a harder man than the Everard Dominey I remember. What if you should be an impostor?”
“You have only to prove that, Mrs. Unthank,” Dominey replied, “and a portion, at any rate, of the Black Wood may remain standing. You will find it a little difficult, though.—You must excuse my ringing the bell. I see no object in asking you to remain longer.”
She rose unwillingly to her feet. Her manner was sullen and unyielding.
“You are asking for the evil things,” she warned him.
“Be assured,” Dominey answered, “that if they come I shall know how to deal with them.”
Dominey found Rosamund and Doctor Harrison, who had walked over from the village, lingering on the terrace. He welcomed the latter warmly.
“You are a godsend, Doctor,” he declared. “I have been obliged to leave my port untasted for want of a companion. You will excuse us for a moment Rosamund?”
She nodded pleasantly, and the doctor followed his host into the dining-room and took his seat at the table where the dessert still remained.
“Old woman threatening mischief?” the latter asked, with a keen glance from under his shaggy grey eyebrows.
“I think she means it,” Dominey replied, as he filled his guest's glass. “Personally,” he went on, after a moment's pause, “the present situation is beginning to confirm an old suspicion of mine. I am a hard and fast materialist, you know, Doctor, in certain matters, and I have not the slightest faith in the vindictive mother, terrified to death lest the razing of a wood of unwholesome character should turn out into the cold world the spirit of her angel son.”
“What do you believe?” the doctor asked bluntly.
“I would rather not tell you at the present moment,” Dominey answered. “It would sound too fantastic.”
“Your note this afternoon spoke of urgency,” the doctor observed.
“The matter is urgent. I want you to do me a great favour—to remain here all night.”
“You are expecting something to happen?”
“I wish, at any rate, to be prepared.”
“I'll stay, with pleasure,” the doctor promised. “You can lend me some paraphernalia, I suppose? And give me a shake-down somewhere near Lady Dominey's. By-the-by,” he began, and hesitated.
“I have followed your advice, or rather your orders,” Dominey interrupted, a little harshly. “It has not always been easy, especially in London, where Rosamund is away from these associations.—I am hoping great things from what may happen to-night, or very soon.”
The doctor nodded sympathetically.
“I shouldn't wonder if you weren't on the right track,” he declared.
Rosamund came in through the window to them and seated herself by Dominey's side.
“Why are you two whispering like conspirators?” she demanded.
“Because we are conspirators,” he replied lightly. “I have persuaded Doctor Harrison to stay the night. He would like a room in our wing. Will you let the maids know, dear?”
She nodded thoughtfully.
“Of course! There are several rooms quite ready. Mrs. Midgeley thought that we might be bringing down some guests. I am quite sure that we can make Doctor Harrison comfortable.”
“No doubt about that, Lady Dominey,” the doctor declared. “Let me be as near to your apartment as possible.”
There was a shade of anxiety in her face.
“You think that to-night something will happen?” she asked.
“To-night, or one night very soon,” Dominey assented. “It is just as well for you to be prepared. You will not be afraid, dear? You will have the doctor on one side of you and me on the other.”
“I am only afraid of one thing,” she answered a little enigmatically. “I have been so happy lately.”
Dominey, changed into ordinary morning clothes, with a thick cord tied round his body, a revolver in his pocket, and a loaded stick in his hand, spent the remainder of the night and part of the early morning concealed behind a great clump of rhododendrons, his eyes fixed upon the shadowy stretch of park which lay between the house and the Black Wood. The night was moonless but clear, and when his eyes were once accustomed to the pale but sombre twilight, the whole landscape and the moving objects upon it were dimly visible. The habits of his years of bush life seemed instinctively, in those few hours of waiting, to have reestablished themselves. Every sense was strained and active; every night sound—of which the hooting of some owls, disturbed from their lurking place in the Black Wood, was predominant—heard and accounted for. And then, just as he had glanced at his watch and found that it was close upon two o'clock, came the first real intimation that something was likely to happen. Moving across the park towards him he heard the sound of a faint patter, curious and irregular in rhythm, which came from behind a range of low hillocks. He raised himself on his hands and knees to watch. His eyes were fastened upon a certain spot,—a stretch of the open park between himself and the hillocks. The patter ceased and began again. Into the open there came a dark shape, the irregularity of its movements swiftly explained. It moved at first upon all fours, then on two legs, then on all fours again. It crept nearer and nearer, and Dominey, as he watched, laid aside his stick. It reached the terrace, paused beneath Rosamund's window, now barely half a dozen yards from where he was crouching. Deliberately he waited, waited for what he knew must soon come. Then the deep silence of the breathless night was broken by that familiar, unearthly scream. Dominey waited till even its echoes had died away. Then he ran a few steps, bent double, and stretched out his hands. Once more, for the last time, that devil's cry broke the deep stillness of the August morning, throbbing a little as though with a new fear, dying away as though the fingers which crushed it back down the straining throat had indeed crushed with it the last flicker of some unholy life.
When Doctor Harrison made his hurried appearance, a few moments later, he found Dominey seated upon the terrace, furiously smoking a cigarette. On the ground, a few yards away, lay something black and motionless.
“What is it?” the doctor gasped.
For the first time Dominey showed some signs of a lack of self-control. His voice was choked and uneven.
“Go and look at it, Doctor,” he said. “It's tied up, hand and foot. You can see where the spirit of Roger Unthank has hidden itself.”
“Bosh!” the doctor answered, with grim contempt. “It's Roger Unthank himself. The beast!”
A little stream of servants came running out. Dominey gave a few orders quickly.
“Ring up the garage,” he directed, “and I shall want one of the men to go into Norwich to the hospital. Doctor, will you go up and see Lady Dominey?”
The habits of a lifetime broke down. Parkins, the immaculate, the silent, the perfect automaton, asked an eager question.
“What is it, sir?”
There was the sound of a window opening overhead. At that moment Parkins would not have asked in vain for an annuity. Dominey glanced at the little semicircle of servants and raised his voice.
“It is the end, I trust, of these foolish superstitions about Roger Unthank's ghost. There lies Roger Unthank, half beast, half man. For some reason or other—some lunatic's reason, of course—he has chosen to hide himself in the Black Wood all these years. His mother, I presume, has been his accomplice and taken him food. He is still alive but in a disgusting state.”
There was a little awed murmur. Dominey's voice had become quite matter of fact.
“I suppose,” he continued, “his first idea was to revenge himself upon us and this household, by whom he imagined himself badly treated. The man, however, was half a madman when he came to the neighbourhood and has behaved like one ever since.—Johnson,” Dominey continued, singling out a sturdy footman with sound common sense, “get ready to take this creature into Norwich Hospital. Say that if I do not come in during the day, a letter of explanation will follow from me. The rest of you, with the exception of Parkins, please go to bed.”
With little exclamations of wonder they began to disperse. Then one of them paused and pointed across the park. Moving with incredible swiftness came the gaunt, black figure of Rachael Unthank, swaying sometimes on her feet, yet in their midst before they could realise it. She staggered to the prostrate body and threw herself upon her knees. Her hands rested upon the unseen face, her eyes glared across at Dominey.
“So you've got him at last!” she gasped.
“Mrs. Unthank,” Dominey said sternly, “you are in time to accompany your son to the hospital at Norwich. The car will be here in two minutes. I have nothing to say to you. Your own conscience should be sufficient punishment for keeping that poor creature alive in such a fashion and ministering during my absence to his accursed desire for vengeance.”
“He would have died if I hadn't brought him food,” she muttered. “I have wept all the tears a woman's broken heart could wring out, beseeching him to come back to me.”
“Yet,” Dominey insisted, “you shared his foul plot for vengeance against a harmless woman. You let him come and make his ghoulish noises, night by night, under these windows, without a word of remonstrance. You knew very well what their accursed object was—you, with a delicate woman in your charge who trusted you. You are an evil pair, but of the two you are worse than your half-witted son.”
The woman made no reply. She was still on her knees, bending over the prostrate figure, from whose lips now came a faint moaning. Then the lights of the car flashed out as it left the garage, passed through the iron gates and drew up a few yards away.
“Help him in,” Dominey ordered. “You can loosen his cords, Johnson, as soon as you have started. He has very little strength. Tell them at the hospital I shall probably be there during the day, or to-morrow.”
With a little shiver the two men stooped to their task. Their prisoner muttered to himself all the time, but made no resistance. Rachael Unthank, as she stepped in to take her place by his side, turned once more to Dominey. She was a broken woman.
“You're rid of us,” she sobbed, “perhaps forever.—You've said harsh things of both of us. Roger isn't always—so bad. Sometimes he's more gentle than at others. You'd have thought then that he was just a baby, living there for love of the wind and the trees and the birds. If he comes to—”
Her voice broke. Dominey's reply was swift and not unkind. He pointed to the window above.
“If Lady Dominey recovers, you and your son are forgiven. If she never recovers, I wish you both the blackest corner of hell.”
The car drove off. Doctor Harrison met Dominey on the threshold as he turned towards the house.
“Her ladyship is unconscious now,” he announced. “Perhaps that is a good sign. I never liked that unnatural calm. She'll be unconscious, I think, for a great many hours. For God's sake, come and get a whisky and soda and give me one!”
The early morning sunshine lay upon the park when the two men at last separated. They stood for a moment looking out. From the Black Wood came the whirr of a saw. The little troop of men had left their tents. The crash of a fallen tree heralded their morning's work.
“You are still going on with that?” the doctor asked.
“To the very last stump of a tree, to the last bush, to the last cluster of weeds,” Dominey replied, with a sudden passion in his tone. “I will have that place razed to the bare level of the earth, and I will have its poisonous swamps sucked dry. I have hated that foul spot,” he went on, “ever since I realised what suffering it meant to her. My reign here may not be long, Doctor—I have my own tragedy to deal with—but those who come after me will never feel the blight of that accursed place.”
The doctor grunted. His inner thoughts he kept to himself.
“Maybe you're right,” he conceded.