In a first-class carriage of a train speeding Balkanward across the flat,
green Hungarian plain two Britons sat in friendly, fitful converse. They
had first foregathered in the cold grey dawn at the frontier line, where
the presiding eagle takes on an extra head and Teuton lands pass from
Hohenzollern to Habsburg keeping—and where a probing official beak
requires to delve in polite and perhaps perfunctory, but always tiresome,
manner into the baggage of sleep-hungry passengers. After a day’s break
of their journey at Vienna the travellers had again foregathered at the
trainside and paid one another the compliment of settling instinctively
into the same carriage. The elder of the two had the appearance and
manner of a diplomat; in point of fact he was the well-connected
foster-brother of a wine business. The other was certainly a journalist.
Neither man was talkative and each was grateful to the other for not
being talkative. That is why from time to time they talked.
One topic of conversation naturally thrust itself forward in front of all
others. In Vienna the previous day they had learned of the mysterious
vanishing of a world-famous picture from the walls of the Louvre.
“A dramatic disappearance of that sort is sure to produce a crop of
imitations,” said the Journalist.
“It has had a lot of anticipations, for the matter of that,” said the
Wine-brother.
“Oh, of course there have been thefts from the Louvre before.”
“I was thinking of the spiriting away of human beings rather than
pictures. In particular I was thinking of the case of my aunt, Crispina
Umberleigh.”
“I remember hearing something of the affair,” said the Journalist, “but I
was away from England at the time. I never quite knew what was supposed
to have happened.”
“You may hear what really happened if you will respect it as a
confidence,” said the Wine Merchant. “In the first place I may say that
the disappearance of Mrs. Umberleigh was not regarded by the family
entirely as a bereavement. My uncle, Edward Umberleigh, was not by any
means a weak-kneed individual, in fact in the world of politics he had to
be reckoned with more or less as a strong man, but he was unmistakably
dominated by Crispina; indeed I never met any human being who was not
frozen into subjection when brought into prolonged contact with her.
Some people are born to command; Crispina Mrs. Umberleigh was born to
legislate, codify, administrate, censor, license, ban, execute, and sit
in judgement generally. If she was not born with that destiny she
adopted it at an early age. From the kitchen regions upwards every one
in the household came under her despotic sway and stayed there with the
submissiveness of molluscs involved in a glacial epoch. As a nephew on a
footing of only occasional visits she affected me merely as an epidemic,
disagreeable while it lasted, but without any permanent effect; but her
own sons and daughters stood in mortal awe of her; their studies,
friendships, diet, amusements, religious observances, and way of doing
their hair were all regulated and ordained according to the august lady’s
will and pleasure. This will help you to understand the sensation of
stupefaction which was caused in the family when she unobtrusively and
inexplicably vanished. It was as though St. Paul’s Cathedral or the
Piccadilly Hotel had disappeared in the night, leaving nothing but an
open space to mark where it had stood. As far as was known nothing was
troubling her; in fact there was much before her to make life
particularly well worth living. The youngest boy had come back from
school with an unsatisfactory report, and she was to have sat in
judgement on him the very afternoon of the day she disappeared—if it had
been he who had vanished in a hurry one could have supplied the motive.
Then she was in the middle of a newspaper correspondence with a rural
dean in which she had already proved him guilty of heresy, inconsistency,
and unworthy quibbling, and no ordinary consideration would have induced
her to discontinue the controversy. Of course the matter was put in the
hands of the police, but as far as possible it was kept out of the
papers, and the generally accepted explanation of her withdrawal from her
social circle was that she had gone into a nursing home.”
“And what was the immediate effect on the home circle?” asked the
Journalist.
“All the girls bought themselves bicycles; the feminine cycling craze was
still in existence, and Crispina had rigidly vetoed any participation in
it among the members of her household. The youngest boy let himself go
to such an extent during his next term that it had to be his last as far
as that particular establishment was concerned. The elder boys
propounded a theory that their mother might be wandering somewhere
abroad, and searched for her assiduously, chiefly, it must be admitted,
in a class of Montmartre resort where it was extremely improbable that
she would be found.”
“And all this while couldn’t your uncle get hold of the least clue?”
“As a matter of fact he had received some information, though of course I
did not know of it at the time. He got a message one day telling him
that his wife had been kidnapped and smuggled out of the country; she was
said to be hidden away, in one of the islands off the coast of Norway I
think it was, in comfortable surroundings and well cared for. And with
the information came a demand for money; a lump sum of £2000 was to be
paid yearly. Failing this she would be immediately restored to her
family.”
The Journalist was silent for a moment, and them began to laugh quietly.
“It was certainly an inverted form of holding to ransom,” he said.
“If you had known my aunt,” said the Wine Merchant, “you would have
wondered that they didn’t put the figure higher.”
“I realise the temptation. Did your uncle succumb to it?”
“Well, you see, he had to think of others as well as himself. For the
family to have gone back into the Crispina thraldom after having tasted
the delights of liberty would have been a tragedy, and there were even
wider considerations to be taken into account. Since his bereavement he
had unconsciously taken up a far bolder and more initiatory line in
public affairs, and his popularity and influence had increased
correspondingly. From being merely a strong man in the political world
he began to be spoken of as _the_ strong man. All this he knew would be
jeopardised if he once more dropped into the social position of the
husband of Mrs. Umberleigh. He was a rich man, and the £2000 a year,
though not exactly a fleabite, did not seem an extravagant price to pay
for the boarding-out of Crispina. Of course, he had severe qualms of
conscience about the arrangement. Later on, when he took me into his
confidence, he told me that in paying the ransom, or hush-money as I
should have called it, he was partly influenced by the fear that if he
refused it the kidnappers might have vented their rage and disappointment
on their captive. It was better, he said, to think of her being well
cared for as a highly-valued paying-guest in one of the Lofoden Islands
than to have her struggling miserably home in a maimed and mutilated
condition. Anyway he paid the yearly instalment as punctually as one
pays a fire insurance, and with equal promptitude there would come an
acknowledgment of the money and a brief statement to the effect that
Crispina was in good health and fairly cheerful spirits. One report even
mentioned that she was busying herself with a scheme for proposed reforms
in Church management to be pressed on the local pastorate. Another spoke
of a rheumatic attack and a journey to a ‘cure’ on the mainland, and on
that occasion an additional eighty pounds was demanded and conceded. Of
course it was to the interest of the kidnappers to keep their charge in
good health, but the secrecy with which they managed to shroud their
arrangements argued a really wonderful organisation. If my uncle was
paying a rather high price, at least he could console himself with the
reflection that he was paying specialists’ fees.”
“Meanwhile had the police given up all attempts to track the missing
lady?” asked the Journalist.
“Not entirely; they came to my uncle from time to time to report on clues
which they thought might yield some elucidation as to her fate or
whereabouts, but I think they had their suspicions that he was possessed
of more information than he had put at their disposal. And then, after a
disappearance of more than eight years, Crispina returned with dramatic
suddenness to the home she had left so mysteriously.”
“She had given her captors the slip?”
“She had never been captured. Her wandering away had been caused by a
sudden and complete loss of memory. She usually dressed rather in the
style of a superior kind of charwoman, and it was not so very surprising
that she should have imagined that she was one; and still less that
people should accept her statement and help her to get work. She had
wandered as far afield as Birmingham, and found fairly steady employment
there, her energy and enthusiasm in putting people’s rooms in order
counterbalancing her obstinate and domineering characteristics. It was
the shock of being patronisingly addressed as ‘my good woman’ by a
curate, who was disputing with her where the stove should be placed in a
parish concert hall that led to the sudden restoration of her memory. ‘I
think you forget who you are speaking to,’ she observed crushingly, which
was rather unduly severe, considering she had only just remembered it
herself.”
“But,” exclaimed the Journalist, “the Lofoden Island people! Who had
they got hold of?”
“A purely mythical prisoner. It was an attempt in the first place by
some one who knew something of the domestic situation, probably a
discharged valet, to bluff a lump sum out of Edward Umberleigh before the
missing woman turned up; the subsequent yearly instalments were an
unlooked-for increment to the original haul.
“Crispina found that the eight years’ interregnum had materially weakened
her ascendancy over her now grown-up offspring. Her husband, however,
never accomplished anything great in the political world after her
return; the strain of trying to account satisfactorily for an unspecified
expenditure of sixteen thousand pounds spread over eight years
sufficiently occupied his mental energies. Here is Belgrad and another
custom house.”