It was just dawn when we started, one of the grey dawns that have a
suggestion of pink, like a smoke-coloured chiffon over a rose
foundation. The rain was over, and down in the valley below us lay
shadowy white lakes of mist. I threw back my head and took a great
breath.
"How beautiful!" I said. And he repeated, "Beautiful!" But he looked
directly at me. I had a queer, thrilly feeling in the back of my neck.
And then we were flying down the hillside we had climbed so painfully
the night before, and were dipping into the mist pools. Here and there
grey shadows moved under the trees and resolved themselves first into
rocks and then into sheep. (My descriptions are improving.) And as we
went along he told me the story.
It seems he had come back from America for a visit, and on the second
day of his stay the Wimberley Romney had been stolen by an expert
picture thief posing as a tourist. He had caught a glimpse of the
visitor, so when the Romney was missed he started out at once on the
search, taking a motor cycle. The whole countryside was roused, and
three detectives came down from London. But he had an idea that he would
find his man somewhere on the moor, and he had lost himself there. After
a night under a rock he had found a cottage and got his bearings. But
the rain kept him there. He had got as far as Harcourt Hall when another
storm came up. To his surprise he found the place almost in decay, but
the house open. He went in, dropped asleep in the morning-room on a
divan, wakened by hearing me pass within a foot of where he lay, and
followed me. When I threw my necklace at him, at first he was puzzled
and amused. Later, he kept it deliberately.
The next part of his story he had secured, I think he said, by sitting
on Bagsby's chest down the road, after he had escaped by means of a
broken shutter from the rear room where we had locked him. Bagsby had
had a puncture, and finding he had no time to go back to Ivry for Daphne
and the rest, he went directly to the station. A train had just pulled
out, and a man in an ulster and travelling-cap was standing on the
platform. He said, "The car for Gresham Place, sir"--which is what he
was to say--and the gentleman climbed in. But about two miles out of
town he (the passenger) had discovered he had made a mistake, and
demanded to be set down. But Bagsby had his orders. He carried him to
the door of the Hall on the third speed, and the rest we knew.
"Then," I cried breathlessly, "Sir George was _not_--Sir George!"
"Far from it," he said cheerfully. "Poor old chap, what a front he put
up! It seems that after he got the picture the alarm was raised too soon
for him. He cut back over the country to make the railroad at Hepburn,
and was overtaken by a storm. He found the Hall, crawled in through a
rear window, concealed the picture there--it is still rolled in that
carpet in the room where we hid, and waited for the storm to cease. But
hunger drove him out. The picture off his hands, he made a break for it,
got to Newbury just in time to miss the train, saw the constable and a
posse approaching in a machine and bristling with guns, and at that
minute Bagsby said: 'Gresham Place, sir.' From that time on he was
virtually our prisoner, poor chap. He fell in with the plot because he
didn't know what else to do. But what a shock it must have been when
Bagsby dumped him back at the Hall, after he had walked six miles to get
away from it."
"But you?" I exclaimed in bewilderment. "If you knew all the time----"
"I didn't. I did not recognise him until he took off his mackintosh at
the lodge. After that I had two problems: to capture him without
alarming you, and to prevent the old-woman constable of the country from
discovering us and dragging you and Daphne and all the rest into
notoriety. Thanks to your coöperation it will never be known that a
Suffragette plot to kidnap the Prime Minister was foiled last night."
"Then--the real Prime Minister"--I could hardly speak. I was horribly
disappointed. I had hitched my wagon to a star and it had turned out to
be a dirt-grubbing little meteorite.
"His grandchildren at Gresham Place took measles and they telegraphed
him not to come."
There was silence for a moment. We were both thinking. Then:
"I am sure you managed it all very nicely," I conceded, "and I am very
grateful now that you saved my necklace and--and all that. But if you
think you captured _him_ without alarming me you are mistaken. I shall
never, never be the same person again. And as for the reward, I don't
want it. I shall give it to Daphne for The Cause."
He looked around at me quickly. "To take my place," I amended. "I don't
really care anything about voting, and, anyhow, I should never do it
properly. They will welcome the money in my place, although doesn't it
really belong to you?"
"I have already three rewards," he said, looking straight ahead. "The
revolver which you emptied for fear our friend might shoot me, the limp
little ball that is your handkerchief in my breast pocket, and this hour
that belongs to me--the dawn, the empty world, and you sharing it all
with me. Do you know," he went on, "that Daphne has seventeen pictures
of you, and that I used to say I was going to marry you? There was one
in very short skirts and long, white----"
"Mercy!" I broke in. "What is that over there?"
The mist had parted like a curtain, and on a lower road we saw, moving
slowly, a strange procession. We stopped the machine and watched. Daphne
was leading. She had the tail of her pink velvet gown thrown up over her
shoulders and _she was in her stocking feet_. She carried her slippers
dejectedly in her hand and she was ploughing along without ever
troubling to seek a path. Behind her trailed the others. Most of them
limped: all were mud-stained and dishevelled. An early sun-ray touched
Violet and showed her wrapped, toga-fashion, in the hall banner. The red
letters of "Votes for Women" ran around her diagonally like the stripes
of a barber-pole. Poppy was trailing listlessly at the end of the
procession, her gown abandoned to its fate and sweeping two yards behind
her; a ribbon fillet with a blue satin rose that had nestled above her
ear had become dislodged and the rose now hung dispiritedly at the back
of her neck. Her short hair was all out of curl and lay matted in very
straight little strands over her head.
And bringing up the tail of the procession--kicking viciously at Poppy's
blue satin train in front of him--came Bagsby, a sheepish Bagsby loaded
down with the hamper, a pail, a broom and a double-burner lamp with
green shades. Even as he watched he took a hasty look ahead at the
plodding back of his mistress, raised the lamp aloft and flung it
against a stone. The crash was colossal, but not one head was turned to
see the cause. They struggled along, sunk in deep bitterness and gloom.
And so they passed across our perspective, unseeing, unheeding, and the
mists of the valley claimed them again.
The man beside me turned to me, his hands on the wheel. "Are you sorry
you are not with them?" he asked gently. But I cowered back in my wraps
and shook my head. "Take me home," I implored, "and please don't look at
me again. If they all look like that I must be unspeakable!"
"We will get there ahead and wait for them together," he said. "And
to-night I shall bring Thad and Blanche over to meet you. You--you won't
mind seeing me again so soon?"
"Oh, no," I said hastily. "It--it is hours until evening."
"It will seem like eternities," he reflected.
"Yes, it will," I said.
(For it would to me, and if a man likes you and you like him, why not
let him know it? And if he liked me the way I looked then, what would he
think when he saw me clothed properly and in my right mind?)
He leaned over and kissed my hands as they lay in my lap. "Bless you!"
he said. "I suppose you couldn't possibly wear that gown? Will you have
to throw it away?"
"No," I announced, "I am going to lay it away. I--I may use it some
time."
"How?" He was as curious as a child. "Are you going to make a banner of
it, with gold fringe all round and 'Votes for Women' embroidered on it?"
"_No!_" I said decisively.