THE TREASURE
At that morning hour of the sea-fight the half-caste Oyone and her
dagger were already at Chinnery’s in the Horseferry Road—a common old
house, whose door was as often open as shut, but was shut now; so the
girl lurked about till “Monty” came—an old soul rather shaky in her
gait and being, who “did” for Chinnery (Chinnery for some reason called
her his “laundress,” though few were the things that Monty washed). And
when Monty went in, leaving the door “on the jar,” Oyone slipped into
the closet under the stairs.
The dash from closet-door to front-door would hardly occupy a second;
and she had an _alibi_ and everything planned in case of mishap.
But let us not watch her horrors while she waits there in darkness with
wet hands, groaning again and again, “I can’t do it! gods, I can’t!”
her will still fixed like nickel—needless agitations, for a cypher
was even then on the wires for her from Li Ku Yu, countermanding that
sinister cypher of his respecting the Prince before the declaration of
war—but let us watch instead a young man away up in the Whitechapel
Road in the dress of a private of Marines, a cloak hanging over one
arm, he walking briskly to and fro a little, his palm anon on his brow,
feeling seedy and fretful, having spent the night in a vile den on a
four-penny bed—in a doss-house in Dorset Street near.
And presently he stepped into a “Cocoa Rooms,” up into a “First Class
Room,” paid threepence at a counter, and carried his fare to a table
nailed to the floor—no one up there but him.
But when he tasted the coffee it did not please him—it was not really
coffee; the bread-and-butter—it was not really butter. And the cup
displeased him deeply, the saucer, the saw-dust—everything there.
And he tapped with his nail, saying: “It’s bad, it’s wrong, it’s
beneath the dignity of modern man: so, if foreigners surpass and smash
us, here will be the reason—feudalism in the twentieth century—the
monstrous tommy-rot! And if I haven’t gun-fire and gumption enough in
me to worry it to rags, then, I’ll go with my girl to Samoa, and smoke
under a cocoa-nut tree.”
Now he rose, picked up a little poker, and, smiling with his lips,
but not with his eyes, he smashed his cup and saucer, muttering, “not
good enough,” he brought down the shop-mirror in a shower of sherds,
murmuring, “not good enough,” he spurted past an agitated man in an
apron who ran up staring, and he hurled the urns of tea, coffee, cocoa,
one after the other, into a flood over the floor, muttering “not good
enough,” and now the poker was scattering crackling crockery from
shelves, until wreckage was the condition of that first-class room.
By this time the attendant had afresh rushed below, keenly seeking a
policeman; but now the young man was with him at the door, muttering:
“Don’t make a fuss—only letting off steam a little. What’s the damage?
Twenty pounds? With five for yourself”—and, tossing some bank-notes,
he was gone with a brisk and busy sailor-gait that waggled his
jack-trousers round his legs, leaving behind him a thing that said:
“Well, I’m ——!”
But the more he advanced westward, the more he found his way impeded
with people, and in Leadenhall Street had to stop and wait long: for a
crowd had surrounded all that Bank-region to hear the Sergeant-at-Arms,
attended by a throng of City dignitaries, read out the Declarations of
War from the steps of the Stock Exchange.
When at last he could move to procure a cab, the cab had to creep, and
near Charing-Cross was blocked by a rattle of limbers and the showering
hoofs of a 15th Hussars battalion bound for Dover: for already England
was pouring into France, troops debarking at up and down platforms
alike, and at sidings. So, at the stoppage, the young man, who had
given an address in the Horseferry Road, called to his cabman: “Do get
me out of this! Drive round to Buckingham Palace”—and now he threw
round him a roomy cloak which covered his costume.
At the palace-gate he asked a sentry if the Queen had come in, was told
no, and went on to stroll about the grounds, praising God for the air
of heaven after his night of pain.
But, as he went, he caught a glimpse of the Princess Elizabeth with
three ladies near the Lake; and it may almost be said that he hid—stood
behind laurel, and cut an eye at space: for the Queen was in love with
the Princess for him, and the Princess in love with him for herself.
Soon, however, a sound of cheering reached him from without, and the
Queen, who had set the fashion of early Park-drives, dashed into
the courtyard, the damask of her colour still comely as a damsel’s,
she habited in royal simplicity, but for the boisterous sea of her
immoderate hat.
The royal horses drew up, as the cloaked figure came bare-headed to
speak at the carriage, from which the Princess Alexandra and a Maid
of Honour got out after some talk; and the Queen then said: “Again?”
nodding toward the costume which she knew that the military cloak
covered.
“Yes, Mother,” he answered.
“Why is it necessary? I don’t see.”
“I have imposed it upon myself, Mother: once a month, if ashore, I
sleep there, if it kills me.”
“Is it very bad?”
“You wouldn’t believe—headache, sickness. The men—sigh. And these
people feed me, cushion me, love me in a way—for nothing: I’ll taste
their cup just once in a month to show good-will.”
“Do it, do it, I don’t want to stop you.”
“I see that I should, till it’s ended. A good race, mother: but, oh, we
do need a dictator for one week.”
“Yes, but that word is too often on your lips of late, Teddy! Drop it,
mind you. Your place is to influence men, not yourself to take upon you
the cure of your country.”
“I hear you, Mother. But what news? I couldn’t sleep till five, then
overslept, and couldn’t get one paper to buy.”
“Well—do you know that the House three times read last night a Bill
granting eighty millions for the war? and reducing Government Stock
interest by one and a quarter?”
“Yes, I knew that. But about the _Mauretania_? She reported?”
“I—don’t think so,” the Queen answered; “I haven’t seen or heard
anything.”
“I have had her on the brain all night! Suppose the Germans have
snapped her up? That would be rather sharp practice—so soon—don’t
you think? And shouldn’t I revenge myself for it, if I can manage
something.”
“Manage what?”—the Queen leaned keenly toward him; for what she called
“manfulness” in the Prince of Wales was now her liquor and secret meat:
and her doubt whether all men saw in him the Drake which she saw, her
care that they should, had become rather common and morbid. He and hats
were her vanities.
The possibility that some day he might turn out to be “manful” beyond
her liking, “manful” enough to scare her to death, had not yet occurred
to her.
He put his foot on the step to tell her: “You saw the paragraph on
Tuesday about a strange object having been seen in the air—standing
still, mind—a most momentous thing in history, Mother, if it is true.
Well, I assume that it is Chinnery’s doing, and, if so, I have a
thought of going to Spandau in it, blowing up the Tower, and grabbing
what the Tower contains. What do you think?—if I find it practicable.”
The Queen shrank sharply, but said nothing; considered it with lowered
lids; flushed a little; paled a little; and suddenly bringing her eyes
close to his, let her lips breathe: “You might try it on.”
The Prince laughed, saying: “Mother, I think you’re the most audacious
She that ever buckled on stays.”
“And you?” she said, smiling at him with her forehead raised; but then,
touched with sudden gravity: “You are aware that ladies buckle on such
armour.”
“Scott, Mother,” said the Prince with lowered lids: “aren’t I a sailor?
and ships feminine? and often in stays?”
“Not very brilliant,” the Queen’s lips just muttered: “ships are in
stays when coming round, but ladies when standing off”—adding aloud:
“But have you spoken with the Princess Elizabeth? There she is over
yonder, thinking of you, I declare! Let the footman run and request Her
Imperial Highness to join us a minute.”
“Mother,” said the Prince ruefully—“if you could forgive me: I have to
go to Chinnery’s, and am late.”
“Oh, you are going now to Mr Chinnery’s? You didn’t say. My goodness,
how I should love to be there!”—with the levity of a schoolgirl
hankering after a spree—“to hear you two chit-chatting about chucks,
and jockeys, and washers, and rockers, and ‘H’ and ‘B’—the holiest,
highest, Divinest babble yet babbled on this planet—Divine because
true, Divinest because truest. I _love_ that young man!—don’t tell your
exalted father.”
“Then—come, Mother.”
The Queen reflected. “I’m afraid it can’t be contrived—though it
might!—No, I think not”—and when the Prince had left her side, she
half-rose to say that she might after all, but sat again.
He, not seeing a cab beyond the gates, started to walk fast, heated
himself, and threw off the cloak, having little fear that the streets
would see the Prince of Wales in a marine.
Meantime, in the closet at Chinnery’s Oyone waited—the Prince over an
hour late; and her growing doubt whether he would come, and the long
tension of her nervous system, had proved very enervating, for each
carriage-wheel drew from her the hiss “this is he!” and at the last she
was on the floor, prostrated, vaguely wretched.
But suddenly a brisk step—the door pushed open—and she was up afresh,
tense and ready.
However, she was so sure of a _carriage_, and his appearance on
entering was so different from the image of him in her expectation,
that her sub-conscious conclusion was that this was a sailor sent to
make an excuse. She had never seen the Prince, and it was only when
a voice pelting up the stairs called “_Richard!_” that the thought
stabbed her heart: “_that—was—he!_” whereupon she collapsed again,
weeping at her defeat and her relief, and when her weeping ceased, the
catches of her breath still reached the rats’ ears in there, going on
like gutter-sobs gushing on nights of rain long after the rain has
dried its tears.
Her chance for that day was gone, since Chinnery would be sure to
accompany the Prince down, so she stole upstairs, washed her face with
the right decoctions, and went to listen at the workroom keyhole.
Chinnery by this time had told the Prince that the _Mauretania_ had
been waylaid, for he had instruments of great delicacy, and Oyone
could hear the Prince stepping restively about, talking hotly,
saying: “Germany, eh?—touch the old coffee-pot with the oxy-hydrogen,
Richard—to see Germany grow and grow like this, and sit still! Thirty
years ago—ten—why didn’t we blast every German battleship out of the
sea, as we could, and then say ‘Shake hands, but no more German ships
eternally’? Or if we _must_ let Germany, why didn’t we say to Germany:
‘Here’s India—Australia—call them German, if they’ll let you, you
leaving them as open to us as we to you, and let’s abolish navies and
educate mankind.’ Would England have been a penny the worse, Germany
the better? They _think_ so: but, then, the heads of the mass of men
are infested with such a fog of feckless, fantastical fixed-ideas got
from their grandmothers, that when they think that they are thinking,
they are only remembering—remembering what some dead Swazi thought
that he thought. Whenever they do think straight, it is only due to
their mother-wit, not to any training in mentation that they are given!
Nor have their governors any! By whom is the world still handled? Not
by young scientists trained in facts, but by old lawyers trained in
opinions—quoting ignoramuses—pundits—scott, what can you expect? The
Queen tells me, Richard, that within two years Sky-Blue has cut off
370 pundits’ heads—crass rascal: but I can quite understand why he
is doing it. Pundits! Fantastic catchwords!—‘colonies,’ ‘Empire,’—as
though such a thing as a modern Empire was the least bit possible
outside China; ‘slow evolution’—as if ‘slowness’ improved evolution;
‘hasty legislation’—as if every scientific experiment ought not to be
as ‘hasty’ as life is short. Fantastic fads! The contribution of the
colonies to us is £667,000—just think: they cost tens of millions; this
war will cost hundreds of millions, because some English and German
lawyers have heard someone say ‘colonies,’ ‘Empire’—little rages and
delusions of Crusaders! Considering that £87,000,000 of British capital
has been invested in Argentina within five years, could Argentina
be more profitable to Britain if a British colony? What is wanted
is not colonies! but the recognition that the whole globe, and each
inch of it, is the private property of each man, as in Law the whole
of a business, or ship, and each inch of it, is the private property
of each partner. But think of France shutting in Madagascar against
trade without paying one penny of rent to the rest of men, and all the
nations not instantly declaring war against France! Well, the French
are our good friends. I don’t want—but—scott—was it the arm of some
mannikin at the Quai d’Orsay that dragged up Madagascar out of the
main, and granted her mangoes, and gross groves, and grace of face? Oh,
my earth, my mother, my own, my poem, my Altar, my heirloom—I am not
a Martian, but of her dark marl—and is not this thing an intolerable
wrong to me that some impossibly crude little duke, or some ’cute fool
at the Quai d’Orsay should say to me ‘this bit of her is somehow more
mine than yours,’ and rob me of her roundness? Forgive me, Richard, I
can’t always talk calmly of the insolence of these little slaves, my
blood boils——”
“And now the coffee, too, Ted,” Oyone heard Chinnery say, “and now for
Monty and the kidneys!”
A button was pressed: and the Prince was next heard to say: “Not that
the Germans are so lawyer-ridden—I see that in 1897 the French navy
was thrice stronger than the German; in 1909 the German was 40,000
tons the stronger; and in those twelve years had spent £36,000,000
less on her navy than France—just think. France?—no go at sea. What’s
the French for ‘Stand by!’ ‘_Attonsiaun!_’—with a nasal singing of the
‘aun.’ That’s no good. ‘Fred, dear, please try’—_attonsiaun!_—scott.
On land, yes; but England on the sea. Not that I believe one bit in
English, or any, sea-power as represented in Dreadnoughts—as you know.
‘_Dreadnoughts_’ is one of the fixed ideas!—nothing weaker—not a clock.
I calculate, Richard, that one German capital-ship is a match for any
four English, and one English for any four-and-a-half-German—meaning
that they’ll all sink: and where’s your sea-power then? We shall soon
see.”
“And your _Asahel_ will be put to the test of thunder, Ted,” Chinnery
said. “Don’t get killed.”
“Scott, not I. Too busy to stop to die. I shouldn’t wonder if, for one
thing, I shall have Mr Chin-Chin to stamp on before I’m done, for I had
a dream of it one night. Do you know I believe he’s at the bottom of
this war?”
“It sounds quite likely”—from Chinnery. “The day he left Brockweir,
guess what he said: ‘I go, but will come back in multitudes’—amusing
person. And I dare say he will, since he says so—good luck to him.”
“To Sky-Blue? I say, don’t you care at all for your country, my friend?”
“I wonder?” said Chinnery: “not much, I think, Ted. His ‘multitudes’
will certainly never come into the Horseferry Road, for I should stop
them at the corner. But, for the rest, if we know that blessedness
is the destiny of Life, isn’t it a little irreligious to fret about
the road—Here’s my Mont!” as Monty, smart in cap and apron that
morning, entered with a tray: and for about a minute Oyone heard no
sound—Chinnery seeing to the coffee, which he always cooked himself:
but all at once an outcry—a howl as of horror—was heard to burst from
Chinnery: “For God’s sake! _Teddy!_ Don’t touch!”—mixed with a clatter
of the dropped coffee-pot.
Then silence: and Oyone knew that Chinnery had dropped into a chair,
panting—his heart not strong.
The Prince was now heard to say: “You mean that cubical box?”
Then Chinnery: “Oh, Teddy, you startled—forgive me. It is my Redlike
Ray of which I wrote you—just finished—and I meant to cap it yesterday,
but was dragged out to see the crowd; and now the coffee’s done for. It
would have struck us blind, not to mention Monty and half Horseferry
Road, if you had chanced to touch the little spider-hub just inside the
hole. As to the coffee—Run, Mont!—a jugful at Marzucco’s——”
On which Monty trotted tottery, exchanging a smile with Oyone outside;
and Oyone knew that the Prince was now eating and discussing the
Redlike Ray with Chinnery in a jargon of which she understood nothing:
for, with all her nimbleness, science remained a rocky and foreign
thing to her forehead.
In fact, Chinnery was telling of a method of changing five of the
waves of white light into an X-wave resembling the red, yet not the
red—shorter—which irritated to hyperpyrexia, and then instantly
atrophied, the optic nerve, striking a dog blind in five seconds. But
the Prince seemed bewildered, and Chinnery said: “when you’ve finished
you’ll see the mechanism.”
The Prince presently remarked: “Which seems to mean that you may become
the king of any country any day you please.”
“Quite so—I never thought of that,” answered Chinnery smiling: “but oh,
Ted, the bore.”
In fact, so far from wishing to be a King, Chinnery lived on just two
hundred pounds a year, for from the list of his inventions he had made
not a penny. Many of them were not even known to have been made! for he
forgot last year’s inventions like last year’s socks, no more seeking
reward from science than the sweet-tooth seeks reward for eating
sweets. Some little men whose lives like flies were in his hand had
offered him—a knighthood! But he had forgotten to post his reply.
“But about the boat,” Oyone heard the Prince say next: “no engine, you
say?”
“No,” answered Chinnery; “you’ll see her presently.”
“Then, how on earth—Tut, how magical!”
“Not really, Teddy, I think,” said Chinnery. “You must remember that
the problem of flying has not hitherto been tackled by thinkers: for
the aeroplane, of course, is not a product of thought, but of the
gallantry of some nobodies who dared to go into the air on a kite with
an engine for string—grand lads! but, of course, not great. You, I
know, are a famous ‘flyer’; but ah, Teddy, the risk! I should die of
heart-failure the instant the engine started with me! Its absurdity
consists in its imitation of the bird! When we want to run faster than
the deer, we don’t imitate the deer’s legs, we get into a train; to
swim faster than the shark, we don’t imitate fins, as canoe-savages
do, we use sails and screws. And the problem of flight, even beyond
the atmosphere, is not really difficult. I know of four ways of making
an apple fall up instead of down; and there must be eight ways: for I
haven’t given the matter any systematic thought.”
“But what is it takes this boat up—something new in the way of force?”
“Oh, Lord, no: just a trick with the old forces.”
“Electricity?”
“No, magnetism. A little electricity, of course, to get the magnetism—a
few amps. out of a toy dynamo-and-oil-engine. A battery would do. It is
quite simple, as you will say presently.”
“And quite safe, you say?”
“Safe five times over—since I, the chief of cowards, went over London
in it on Tuesday, with a young lady, who steered and managed it.
Several times safer, even in a storm, than riding a bicycle in a
lane—barring lightning. Even if this particular one fell a thousand
feet, one wouldn’t be hurt, though one would if she fell five hundred.”
“But how does magnetism—— By the way, does this young lady know the
secrets of your inventions?”
“It’s Oyone Umé—which signifies ‘Plum-blossom,’ Ted.... Yes, as far
as I can tell her, she knows the ‘secrets’; but that’s not far, I’m
afraid.”
“A good thing perhaps, Richard. But what weight would this boat carry?”
“This particular one?—half-a-ton: but any desired weight—according to
the size of the electro-magnets, their ampere-turns, and the _mu_ of
the iron specimen.”
“I see. And her speed?”
“Seventy-five miles, this one. But any speed, according to the stern
magnet, or magnets.”
“And how long did she take you to make?”
“Five hours. She is just rough boards nailed together.”
“So in three days you could get me ten of her to carry five tons at 120
miles?”
“If I can get some carpenters to work on Sunday. But why?”
“Let’s blow up the Julius Tower at Spandau and grab the lucre!—six
millions sterling in gold bars. I’ll send you a cheque—What do the
boats cost?”
“About £25. But what is this Julius Tower?”
“Where the Germans keep the French war-indemnity of ’71. I know it
well; and I’ll get ten of my best _Asahel_ fellows, and pilot the
expedition myself. This treasure, which comes out of the woollen
stocking of many a poor French peasant, has been set aside by the
Germans for their next-war war-chest; nor have they touched it yet, I
know, for it can only be touched by a joint order of the Bundesrat and
the Reichstag. We’ll show them _Mauretania_.... And you, Richard, will
come with us.”
“_I_, Teddy, throw bombs?” Oyone heard Chinnery say with a break of
laughter in his voice: and the girl was pallid at those words “_six
millions_,”—which is a lot in China.
“You come,” she heard the Prince say: “you need not throw anything;
but you will thank me for dragging you out of this hole. You have got
to grovel here over your gold; though I praise you, Richard, with bent
head, priest of God, because your delight is in the laws of your
Lord, and in His laws you meditate day and night; and when you have
entered into your closet and shut your door, you draw near to your
Father who is in secret, and your Father who walks in secret rewards
you publicly”—extracts from the so-called “Brockweir Praise-book”
which “Teddy” uttered in a low, slow recitative with no little unction
and relish, during which Oyone’s prying eye saw Chinnery’s eyes fly
skywards once, and drop: for all Brockweir boys were very profoundly
devout—Li Ku Yu, too, though he disliked quotations.
“Still, one needn’t fester in one’s closet,” the Prince added: “you
come for the spree. As for the coffee, doesn’t matter: I’ll see the
boat now, and then the redlike ray, for my girl will soon be due, and
then I must go.”
But in that moment Monty had arrived outside the door, Oyone was taking
the coffee from her, and the half-caste rapped, and entered.
There, smiling, looking under her eyes, she stood like a show at
the end of the long litter that lay under two frosted skylights—the
Prince’s breakfast-table a brass coffer near the lathe in the centre,
the linoleum holey, the bookcase shaky, and there were chemical
shelves, dusty old motors, ammeters, microscopes, with tools, tools,
invading the electric furnace, the brazing-hearth, and, ah, how many
different kinds of iron! Swedish, mild steel, cast dynamo-steel, alloys
of tungsten, titanium, tantallum—without any end. The girl stood in it
like a bird-of-paradise in a stable, dressed in Kyoto silk—crimson with
large splashes of pansy—but _à la Européenne_, a toque cocked on her
top.
The Prince started at that sight!
“Well, I did not know that you had come,” Chinnery said.
“Here is your coffee.”
“This is—Mr Edward Reeks; Mademoiselle Oyone, Teddy—Plum-blossom.”
Hands were shaken amid smiles.
Then—“conversation”! Was Mr Reeks a sailor? in the Navy? How terrible
a thing was war! Why could not nations contrive——? So she had been up
in the air? Had she not been afraid? She _had_, but still had gone. And
how did it feel? It felt sweet: like sitting on a throne with one’s
feet on the throat of the world; and the wild flight: ah! the wild wine
rioting through one’s arteries. Some delights only a woman could fully
taste; men were a little stolid, were they not?
Chinnery, proud of her, kept glancing at “Teddy,” glad to see “Teddy’s”
glances rest on her, and drop. A cup of coffee had been poured, but was
never drunk.
The formality of “conversation” was broken by the exhibition to Mr
Reeks of a Taoist amulet-ring on Oyone’s finger, whereupon Chinnery
tickled the finger with a copper commutator-brush, Oyone slapped
Chinnery, and Chinnery chased Oyone round the lathe. Thereafter
Oyone stood crucified, her two arms stretched against the wall,
chatty and kittenish, letting her eyes rest kindly upon the pretty
milk-and-pinkiness of the Prince—eyes into which some kind of fire
would wildly fly up an instant, and die out.
Then Chinnery, putting hand to pocket, flung a flying glance round,
drank a gulp—the Prince and Oyone pretending not to see—and now
suggested a geisha-dance: on which Oyone ran, got her long-handled
_gaita_, and her dagger, and first geishaed like a bird-girl through
the intricate litter, bringing a brightness into the boys’ eyes, and
then began a dagger-dance, in which she lassooed the Prince with her
stole, dragged him to act as foil, and having him in bondage with one
hand, with the other kept stabbing with the dagger at his neck, his
side, smiling with an underlook, as she danced.
And this gaiety was at its height, when a fourth person was suddenly in
the room—a girl in nurse’s uniform—Eulalia.
Monty had rapped unheard, and had let her in.
Eulalia remained standing within the door, taking it in: and the first
fact that registered itself in her chronicles was the half-caste’s
loveliness, then the fact of “Teddy” foolishly lassooed with Oyone’s
stole, while the half-caste brandished the _kokotana_ with a dancing
arm. In another instant Chinnery noticed the new-comer; Oyone and the
Prince started apart, he rather red and vexed.
Chinnery flew to Eulalia—she had met her “Teddy” here before—then
proceeded to present the two ladies, and their hands were half out to
meet, when “Teddy,” by a very deft and tactful piece of acting, took
both of Eulalia’s hands to swing them a little in welcome—not wishing
her to shake hands with Plum-blossom: and the ladies exchanged a bow
instead.
But Oyone understood: and for a moment a most ferocious expression of
rancour marred her face.
The Prince, meantime, was whispering Chinnery that he must go, and,
without having seen either the boat or the Redlike Ray after all, he
was soon in the taxicab which had brought Eulalia.
In it Eulalia sat with her lids pensively lowered; and for some time
not much speech was between them.
“It is two months, three days, and three hours since we have been
together,” he said.
She did not answer this, but presently asked: “Why are you dressed like
a marine?”
“Just a masquerade!” he answered with a laugh.
“Just a masquerade” was not very understandable. But she had become
accustomed to obscure replies from him, and had learned not to pursue
inquiry.
They were silent. Then he, shaking her little finger: “Cross about
anything?”
“Why, no.”
“What’s your name?”
It was with the same pensiveness that she said: “My name’s Eulalia.”
“Whose girl are you?”
“I am Teddy Reeks’ girl.”
“All of you?”
“Yes, all.”
And with the same pensiveness and lowered lids she asked: “What’s your
name?”
“My name,” said he, “is Teddy.”
“Whose boy are you?”
“I am Eulalia’s boy.”
“_All_ of you?”
“Yes, all.”
With this he quickly kissed her fingers—they were passing out of the
crowd of Victoria Street into Buckingham Palace Road—and the Queen and
the Princess Elizabeth both saw that kiss.
These two were on the way to Chinnery’s in a motor brougham to meet
the Prince! for Her Majesty had, after all, managed, and, having to
keep the Princess interested, had considered that a visit to Chinnery’s
den would be a piquant little experience for her, so had brought her,
always eager for the Princess to meet the Prince: and they got a
glimpse of that finger-kiss.
When the Princess next looked at Her Majesty, it was to see her with
her lids shut down, her countenance blanched and rigid; and she said:
“Your Majesty!” but Her Majesty did not answer.
Quickly the Princess—a palish, plainish Gretchen, thin, very German
in expression, spectacled, with a spiteful little pressure of her
lip—quickly she bid the coachman “turn back”; and while she held ottar
under Her Majesty’s nostrils, kept the taxicab in view. When it turned
into Grosvenor Place, she told the coachman “up here.”
She saw the pair enter a mansion with blinded windows, to which the
Prince had a key: and she marked the house-number.
Her Majesty, meantime, was not unconscious, more or less saw, but was
too overwhelmed for speech or motion. All at once her Kingdom was
departed from her, on her white knight’s scutcheon—a _tache_.
Of course, all her sorrow was for the male, all her hatred, rage and
red revenge for the hussy, whose face she had distinctly seen.