The sky was all aflame with the glory of one of late June's gorgeous
sunsets when he came up over the long sweep of meadowland and saw
her straying about and gathering wild flowers to fill the vases in
the wee house's wee little drawing-room, and singing to herself the
while in a voice that was like honey--thin but very, very sweet--and
at the sight something seemed to lay hold of his heart and quicken
its beating until it interfered with his breathing, yet brought with
it a curious sense of joy.
"Good afternoon, Mistress of the Linnets!" he called out to her as
he advanced (for she had neither seen nor heard his coming) with the
big sheaf of roses he had brought held behind him and the bracken
and kingcups smothering him in green and gold up to the very thighs.
She turned at the sound, her face illumined, her soft eyes very
bright--those wondrous eyes that had lit a man's way back from
perdition and would light it onward and upward to the end--and
greeted him with a smile of happy welcome.
"Oh, it is you at last," she said, looking at him as a woman looks
at but one man ever. "Is this your idea of 'spending the afternoon'
with one, turning up when tea is over and twilight about to begin?
Do you know, I am a very busy young woman these days"--blushing
rosily--"and might have spent a whole day in town shopping but
that Dollops brought me word that I might look for you? But, of
course----No! I shan't say it. It might make you vain to hear that
you had the power to spoil my day."
"Not any vainer than you have made me by telling me other things," he
retorted with a laugh. "I am afraid I have spoiled a good many days
for you in my time, Ailsa. But, please God, I shall make up for them
all in the brightness of the ones that are to come. I couldn't help
being late to-day--I'll tell you all about that presently--but may I
offer something in atonement? Please, will you add these to your
bouquet and forgive me?"
"Roses! Such beauties! How good of you! Just smell! How divine!"
"Meaning the flowers or their donor?"--quizzically. "Or, no! Don't
elucidate. Leave me in blissful ignorance. You have hurt my vanity
quite enough as it is. I was deeply mortified--cut to the quick,
I may say, if that will express my sense of grovelling shame any
clearer--when I arrived here and saw what you were doing. Please,
mum"--touching his forelock and scraping his foot backward after
the manner of a groom--"did I make such a bad job of my work in
that garden that when you want a bouquet you have to come out here
and gather wild flowers? I put fifty-eight standard roses on that
terrace just under your bedroom window, and surely there must be a
bloom or two that you could gather?"
"As if I would cut one of them for anything in the world!" she gave
back, indignantly. Then she laughed, and blushed and stepped back
from his impetuous advance. "No--please! You fished for that so
adroitly that you landed it before I thought. Be satisfied. Besides,
Mrs. Condiment is at her window, and I want to preserve as much as
possible of her rapidly depreciating estimate of me. She thinks
me a very frivolous young person, 'to allow that young Mr. Hamilton
to call so frequent, miss, and if you'll allow me to say it, at such
unseemly hours. I don't think as dear Captain Burbage would quite
approve of it if he knew.'"
"Gad! that's rich. What a mimic you are. It was the dear old girl
to the life. She hasn't an inkling of the truth, then?"
"Not one. She doesn't quite approve of you, either. 'I likes to see
a gent more circumpec', miss, and a trifle more reserved when he's
gettin' on his thirties. Muckin' about with a garden fork and such
among a trumpery lot of roses, and racin' here, there, and everywhere
over them medders after ferns and things, like a schoolboy on a
holiday, aren't what I calls dignified deportment in full-grown
men, and in my day they didn't use to do it!' Sometimes I am in
mortal terror that she intends to give me notice and to leave me bag
and baggage; for she is always saying that she's 'sure dear Captain
Burbage couldn't have known what he was a-doing of, poor, innocent,
kind-hearted gentleman--and him so _much_ of a gent, too, and so
wonderful quiet and sedate!'"
"Poor old girl!" said Cleek, laughing. "What a shock to her if she
knew the truth. And what on earth _would_ you do if she were to
chance to get a peep at Dollops? But then, of course, there's no fear
of that--the young beggar's too careful. I told him never to come
near the house when he carries any notes."
"And he never does. Always leaves them under the stone in the path
through the woods. I go there, of course, twice every day, and I
never know that he has been about until I find one. I am always glad
to get them, but to-day's one made me very, very happy indeed."
"Because I told you you might expect me?"
"Yes. But not that alone. I think I cried a little and I _know_ I
went down on my knees--right there--out in those woods, when I read
those splendid words, 'There is but one more debt to be paid. The
"some day" of my hopes is near to me at last.'"
Her voice died off. He uncovered his head, and a stillness came that
was not broken by any sound or any movement, until he felt her hand
slip into his and remain there.
"Walk with me!" he said, closing his fingers around hers and holding
them fast. "Walk with me always. My God! I love you so!"
"Always!" she made answer in her gentle voice; and with her hand
shut tight in his, passed onward with him--over the green meadows
and into the dim, still woods, and out again into the flower-filled
fields beyond, where all the sky was golden after the fierce hues
of the sunset had drained away into the tender gleam of twilight,
and there was not one red ray left to cross the path of him.
"You have led me this way from the first," he said, breaking silence
suddenly. "Out of the glare of fire, through the dark, into peaceful
light. I had gone down to hell but for you--but that you stooped
and lifted me. God!"--he threw back his head and looked upward, with
his hat in his hand and the light on his face--"God, forget me if
ever I forget that. Amen!" he added, very quietly, very earnestly;
then dropped his chin until it rested on his breast, and was very
still for a long time.
* * * * *
"Yes," he said, taking up the thread of conversation where it had
been broken so long a time ago, "there is but one more debt to be
cleared off: the value of the Princess Goroski's tiara. A thousand
pounds will wipe that off--it was not a very expensive one--and I
could have had that sum to-day if I had thought of myself alone.
Mr. Narkom thinks me a fool. I wonder what you will think when you
hear?" And forthwith he told her.
"If you are again 'fishing'," she replied with a quizzical smile,
"then again you are going to be successful. I think you a hero. Kiss
me, please. I am very, very proud of you. And that was what made you
late in coming, was it?"
"Not altogether that. I might have been earlier but that we ran
foul of Waldemar and the Apaches again, and I had to lose time in
shaking them off. But I ought not to have told you that. You will
be getting nervous. It was a shock to Mr. Narkom. He was so sure
they had given up the job and returned home."
"I, too, was sure. I should have thought that the rebellion would
have compelled that, in Count Waldemar's case at least," she
answered, gravely. "And particularly in such a grave crisis as his
country is now called upon to face. Have you seen to-day's papers?
They are full of it. Count Irma and the revolutionists have piled
victory on victory. They are now at the very gates of the capital;
the royal army is disorganized, its forces going over in hordes to
the insurgents; the king is in a very panic and preparing, it is
reported, to fly before the city falls."
"A judgment, Alburtus, a judgment!" Cleek cried with such vehemence
that it startled her. "Your son drinks of the cup you prepared for
Karma's. The same cup, the same result: dethronement, flight, exile
in the world's wildernesses, and perhaps--death. Well done, Irma!
A judgment on you, Mauravania. You pay! You pay!"
"How wonderful you are--you seem to know everything!" declared Ailsa.
"But in this at least you appear to be misinformed, dear. I have been
reading the reports faithfully and it seems that death was not
the end of all who shared in Queen Karma's exile and flight. Count
Irma is telling a tale which is calling recruits to the standard
of the revolutionists hourly. The eldest son--the Crown Prince
Maximilian--is still alive. The count swears to that; swears that
he has seen him; that he knows where to find him at any moment. The
special correspondent of the _Times_ writes that everywhere the
demand is for the Restoration, the battle cry of the insurgents
'Maximilian!' and the whole country ringing with it."
"I can quite believe it," he said, with one of his queer, crooked
smiles. "They are an excitable people, the Mauravanians, but,
unfortunately, a fickle one as well. It is up to-day and down
to-morrow with them. At present the cry is for Maximillian; this time
next month it may be for Irma and a republican form of government,
and--Maximillian may go hang for all they want of him. Still, if
they maintain the present cry--and the House of Alburtus falls--and
the followers of Irma win----But what's the use of bothering about
it? Let us talk of things that have a personal interest for us,
dear. Give me to-morrow, if you can. I shall have a whole day's
freedom for the first time in weeks. The water lilies are in bloom in
the upper reaches of the Thames and my soul is simply crying for the
river's solitudes, the lilies, the silence, and _you_! I want
you--all to myself--up there, among God's things. Give me the day,
if you can."
She gave him not one but many, as it turned out; for that one day
proved such a magic thing that she was only too willing to repeat it,
and as the Yard had no especial need of him, and the plain-clothes
man who had been set upon Waldemar's track had as yet nothing to
report, it grew to be a regular habit with him to spend the long days
up in the river solitudes with Ailsa, picnicking among the swans,
and to come home to Dollops at night tired, but very happy.
It went on like this for more than ten days, uninterruptedly; but at
length there came a time when an entry in his notebook warned him
that there was something he could not put off any longer--something
that must certainly be attended to to-morrow, in town, early--and he
went to bed that night with the melancholy feeling that the next day
could only be a half holiday, not a whole one, and that his hours
with her would be few.
But when that to-morrow came he knew that even these were to be
denied him; for the long-deferred call of the Yard had come, and
Narkom, ringing him up at breakfast time, asked for an immediate
meeting.
"In town, dear chap, as near to Liverpool Street and as early as you
can possibly make it."
"Well, I can't make it earlier than half-past ten. I've got a
little private business of my own to attend to, as it happens, Mr.
Narkom," he replied. "I'd put it off if I could, but I can't.
To-day before noon is the last possible hour. But look here! I
can meet you at half-past ten in Bishopsgate Street, between St.
Ethelburga's Church and Bevis Narks, if that will do. Will, eh?
All right. Be on the lookout for me there, then. What? The new
blue limousine, eh? Right you are. I'm your man to the tick of the
half hour. Good-bye!"
And he was, as it turned out. For the new blue limousine (a
glistening, spic-span sixty-horsepower machine, perfect in every
detail) had no more than come to a standstill at the kerb in the
exact neighbourhood stated at the exact half hour agreed upon,
when open whisked the door, and in jumped Cleek with the swiftness
and agility of a cat.