THE HAUNTED SUBMARINE
In that train she sat alone with that racking question: _Did she see?_
Only an absolute necessity to be in London dragged Oyone from France
that night.
But she would soon be back to that “2nd Somersetshires,” she said to
herself.
If Eulalia had really seen, then, all was up—the hoard gone—the prison
cell—the English scaffold. What hissing luck! Were there gods who
saw, and maliciously managed chances to punish sin? Undoubtedly she
had sinned; she seemed to be becoming rather deep-dyed and rank, a
new creature from the Oyone she used to be. Should she now repent?
and nourish friendly feelings to everyone? and wrench Li Ku Yu by the
roots out of her flesh? and make a new will? Or was it not too late?
There was a sweet thing in sinning, in being quite, quite untrammelled,
in flying and dropping bombs upon humanity; and, as for gods, they
were well when they gave success, but when they interfered with their
hissing luck, one hissed and hated them. What _was_ the girl doing
there?—she, a Prince’s _mignonne_. Had they quarrelled? Yes, evidently:
for her letter handed him at the Piccadilly Fountain had stunned him.
And this was odd: that the girl had tossed up her chin, and said “My
h——!” Could he be her husband—by chance? In that case he might be
caught like a fish.
She resolved to try it, and did not delay: in the hour that she reached
London she wrote to the Prince.
And three hours later she entered a back room, narrow and long, dim,
windowless, with an alcove at one end—on the first floor. There was a
prisoner in it, yet the door was not locked, for the prisoner never had
any impulse to escape; and said she, as if addressing a child: “Look! I
have brought you a bottle to-day, instead of a half, because——”
“My precious Oyone,” breathed Richard Chinnery, sitting in slippers and
dressing-gown over a fire in a tiny grate in the south-east corner of
the room, whose length ran north-and-south, the door being in the west
wall; and he clutched at the bottle with trembling fingers.
“Because,” repeated Oyone, “I want you to be good, as I am going to
move you——”
“Oh, Oyone, not the stairs! not the stairs!” he cried, with fright in
his eyes.
“Yes,” said she, “the stairs. And if you make the least to-do, I
will take the bottle back. It is a shame in you to be such a coward.
And you should be glad, for I am going to put you to live now in the
Garden-house out of this dark den, where you can walk on fine days, and
see the sun and the trees. It is all ready for you. Come.”
“Oh, Oyone!”
“Come”—she took his hand, led him step by step, he silent,
concentrating his noble soul to it, but at the stair-top failed and
shrank, breathing with bated breath: “Oh, no, no, no....”
This irritated her, and pulling his arm round her neck, she hurried
him cruelly down, he as wildly staring as a zebra with a lion riding
its back; till they were down, and now he was eyeing piningly at her,
panting “my precious ... my precious....”
She now led him out into the tangled back-grounds, in which, when they
were near the Garden-house, his eyes lighted up an instant, as he
cried, “_My air-boat!_”—for there under an awning it lay.
“Yes, I brought it,” she said, and his interest died out, as he
disappeared with her into the Garden-house.
To her letter to the Prince, and her removal of Chinnery, add this:
that three streets away was a house To Let, which she knew well, since
some friends of hers had lived there, and in the late afternoon she
went, veiled, to the letting-agents, got the keys to inspect the house,
and before returning the keys jammed the front-door with a wedge of
wood, leaving it so unlocked....
Her letter, marked “Urgent” and “Private,” got through to the Prince
by the hand of a workshop assistant, an engineer named Sturge, at
eight-thirty that evening, the Prince being then in his workshop.
There he sat in his apron, not yet quite himself from his wound, the
envelope hanging unopened in his fingers, at his feet a model of the
Chinnery air-boat, or an attempt at a model, which had just failed to
work.
But he was not thinking of the failure, but of Eulalia, and an upward
glance of her eyes from the pillow at his side—a Divine glance—perfect
God, perfect man—unfathomable sapphire, implying the whole bottomless
world, eternity, infinity, Kashmir, Mars—a thing like treasure hid in a
field, which when a man finds, he sells all, and buys that field.
It was lost: he could not find it. His ambassador sent to her home for
inquiries had not even been heard by her father—had been turned out of
the garden-gate, with a retriever’s teeth at his heels! and she had
so very cleverly covered up her traces from the moment of leaving the
hospital, that his agents still had no suspicion that she was in the
army. He was now thinking of breaking through everything, clamouring
the fact of his marriage aloud, and demanding her from the whole world.
It was Sir Robert Barrington who patted him on the arm, and bade him
wait, be patient—for his mother’s sake.
_She_, the Queen, knew where Eulalia was—and was full of wonderings as
to the girl’s motive for going! Eulalia, not waiting to be banished,
had banished herself—luck! But the reason? The Queen conceived that
the Prince, having turned over a new leaf, may have dismissed her. But
still, the girl must be rich from him: why, then, did such a person,
a paramour, and rich, rush into the hardships of war-nursing? This
baffled Her Majesty.
She kept her eyes incessantly on the Prince’s face in silent inquiry....
He himself had no more knowledge than his mother of Eulalia’s
motive!—unless she had discovered what he was? But he could not think
how....
Anyway, after a month of her loss the face of death commenced to
acquire a smile for him. It was being said that since the fall of
Metz the combined enemy were making tremendous haste to muster the
remainders of their naval strength, with the aim of making such a rip
in Britain’s metal, as to compel her in self-defence to withdraw her
land-forces from France: in the face of which danger the British people
were frankly eager that the Prince should be the British leader in that
foreseen Armageddon of the sea; and he was now looking forward to it
with thoughts and hopes more curious than any knew.
For he was aware that Eulalia was essentially wayward, wilful,
headstrong, prideful under her smile, difficult to be flexed when once
fixed; and the notion of really losing her both infuriated and made him
a cry-cry baby. Four days before this he had almost quarrelled with
Sir Robert Barrington, scenting that the baronet knew more of Eulalia
than he told—and, in fact, Sir Robert _knew_ where she was, for to him
alone Eulalia had told it in a letter, but had sealed his lips; and the
Prince had looked daggers, but then with water in his eyes had begged
his friend’s pardon.
Suddenly now he sighed, and remembered the letter in his hand....
And there she was! found! found!
He, pleased as Punch in each muscle of his meat, like a castaway
suddenly drunken with luxury at a banquet, muttered: “_I_’ll show her
pride; _I_’ll show her things.”
“Your Royal Highness does not, I hope, take too seriously
the moods and whims that actuate cats and women,” Oyone
wrote.... “My poor Eulalia, since her separation from Your
Royal Highness, has been much with me, and I have been able
to determine from the first that she is only suffering from
her sex.... I have worked hard on her, and I think with some
success, though I am not yet certain.... Anyway, I am venturing
to lay a trap for her: she is coming to my place to-night,
and if Your Royal Highness were then to appear on the scene,
I think the match would be laid to the bomb that will blow
you both into heaven. I have to be at a house, No. 13 Seymour
Street, N.W., at 8.45 +p.m.+, and if Your Royal Highness
desires to join me there at 9, I could then convey Your Royal
Highness in my car to my place.... I shall be obliged if Your
Royal Highness will bring this letter to return to me, since
Eulalia can be resentful....”
The Prince noticed that no address was on the letter; and also, as he
was being dressed, he thought, “Since when has Eulalia become intimate
with Plum Blossom?” But he was not in a state for reflection; was soon
away; and behind him, shadowing him, two detectives.
When he arrived at No. 13 Seymour Street, he noticed that there were
lights in only two rooms, and at once had an impression of dirty and
uncurtained windows, though the lighted windows had curtains—no blinds;
and he did not observe, what the detectives observed, that “Let” was
painted on a window, the “To” scraped off, the “Let” left—for lack of
time probably!
After passing through a garden, he rapped to find the Japanese girl
stooping through a curtsey before him; at the same time his brougham
turned to return—to the detectives’ wonder, who ran to ask the
chauffeur “_Why?_” The answer was “Orders.”
The girl, meantime, was leading towards the back through a long
hall which had that afternoon been furnished, and yet gave a vague
impression of strangeness—lighted by candles, and those two lighted
rooms, if looked into, would have been seen to be empty, but for
candles standing on boxes, and curtains.
“My car is just there by the back garden-gate,” she said, when they
were on a verandah at the back, and she led down some steps to a
shrubbery-path.
“I am very sensible of all your pains,” he then said in a low and
heartfelt way.
“We are not yet out of the bush, Your Royal Highness”—her voice
was very frail and quavery—“Heaven send that she may not take it
resentfully. Has Your Royal Highness brought me my letter?”
“Here it is. Don’t fear—_I_ can handle her, if I once get hold of her.
Do you know, I have wished to see you, to speak with you of our friend,
Chinnery: but the old woman—what was her name?—_Monty!_—did not know
your address. Ah! Richard Chinnery! What became of _him_? Tell me that,
and I will call you a sibyl. That was a high head, and a wise eye.” He
cast his eyes to the stars of a dark sky.
“He may be still alive, I often think,” murmured the girl, as they
passed by a little green gate across a lane into a narrow street, where
her car was waiting; and they were away to the Chinese mansion.
There was something so curiously recluse about the mood of this house,
that its gate was kept constantly locked, and no tradesman, save the
coalman, ever entered its grounds. Oyone herself had to set a bell
babbling to be admitted by an old pigtail bent down double, who eyed
the ground sidelong, with mutterings.
Thence she led her captive along an avenue dark and mossy into a hall
of lanterns, all hues, but subdued as moonlight, mute as the tomb,
where the foot moved without the faintest sound.
“Up here,” she whispered, with a busy secrecy, a sexual fellowship, “I
will leave you, and bring her from my guardian”—and up the stairs they
stepped, along a passage, to the room whence Richard Chinnery had been
removed that day.
“_You wait in there!_”—and, as he went, she locked the door quick,
catching her hand off the key as if it scorched her, and remained
glaring at it, grinning, some instants, then dropped against the
opposite wall, gasping, relaxed, her eyes closed, worn out, dying,
satisfied.
Meantime, the two detectives waited, watching the Seymour Street
house, until, after two hours, one said: “But is the house on
fire?—look there!”—for one or more candles standing in their own grease
on boxes had probably collapsed, and before the fire-brigade could
effect an entrance, the place was a conflagration.
Let the mental condition of England the next day be conceived—the
Prince gone—no trace of any body in the gutted house.
The furniture store from which the curtains, etc., had been purchased
could only say that the purchaser was a woman, veiled; Sturge, the
workshop assistant, could only say that the Prince had sprung up on
reading the letter at 8.30, and that the handwriting seemed feminine.
Neither letter nor envelope could be found—no trace, no clue.
There was not one English heart which was not gashed now, nor perhaps
one German not urged toward compassion. Western humanity, one may say,
sat down in sorrow to ponder this problem.
All which world-turmoil concerning him the Prince knew in detail: for
from the third day the girl took a habit of coming to sit on a stool
outside his door, in the door being a hole, iron-lined, big enough to
admit plates or a biscuit-box of coals; and she, sitting there for
hours, mornings, afternoons, sewing silks, painting on ivory or satin,
never for two minutes ceased to speak as to an old-established member
of the household, telling him the world-news, her pettiest household
cares, the daily history of A-lu-te’s illness, the secrets of her heart
as regards Li Ku Yu and others, the story of the destruction of the
air-boats, the story of Alexis the Sexton, and how for a century his,
the Prince’s, bones would bear her marks, that scar in his neck, too,
being from her hand, and how she had met Eulalia within the wood of the
Six Millions, and suspected that Eulalia had noticed her, and meant to
end Eulalia before many days. And mixed with all her facts were some
falsehoods for falsehood’s sake.
And never from within the dimness of that prison a syllable answered
her—never, day after day, as if he had become mummy-dumb. He took his
seat, indeed, near the hole, to hear and hear, till the seductive
sculpture of her nose was old and dull to him, but uttered nothing; and
although he more and more suspected that he was being slow-poisoned, he
made no moan.
Of course, she is not to be judged by our standards: for if, just
lately, a Divine Manifestation has enlarged _our_ minds, and assuaged
_our_ hearts of the heinousness of Hottentots, _she_, like her race,
belonged to the age of our grandfathers, nay, farther back to the
blackness of Bloody Mary and Butcher Henry ages: for, not only had
she no science, and the sun was to her nothing more, nor older, than
he looked, but science was quite _alien_ to the stage of development
of the age in which, so to say, she lived, so that she had failed to
acquire any, in spite of her birdlike briskness, her desire to learn,
and her nighness to Chinnery.
Hence her mood was still that of gory old Queens of England, Italy,
gross and gory Popes, grisly Empresses of the Chinese, whose names are
like a sneeze, Tsu Hsi, and Wu of the Han Dynasty, and Lu, with their
“off with his head!” and Blue-Beard cellars, and wells for throwing one
down for fun; so that, as she sat there with her snakes and a parrot,
relating in a sensuality of frankness the narrative of her depravities,
there were seconds when her face had the nakedness of a drunken man’s,
marred by fleeting expressions of feeling, when she was by no means
pretty.
Frequently in the deep of night she would rise to creep to the
peep-hole and try to spy him asleep on the petty iron bed in the
north-west corner, and stay there in the night-silence till the
night-cold, clutching her under her night-attire, drove her shuddering.
In all which she had an uneasy, yet sweet, sense of acting “on her
own”: for Li Ku Yu, on hearing of the capture, had commanded immediate
action, and the same day she had cabled him: “It is done”—so that _he_
believed the Prince dead and buried, and dreamt at night of a Prince.
But she could no more kill him at once than the cat can its victim,
he was so much her secret sweet, which all the world searched after,
but Oyone alone owned. She could see the parabola of his shirt-front,
he being in evening dress, turn gradually from dirty to drab—since he
had to make his own bed, light his own fire, etc.; and though she told
herself every day that she should be going back to France to see to the
Six Millions and Eulalia, she could not tear herself from contemplating
the monument she had accomplished, and resting on her laurels.
“You should like me better than her,” she said one day, a snip of
thread resting on her lip, as she bent over her sewing: “she has a kind
of little English grace, and nice eyes, but I could have whistled you
from her, if I had wished. That day at Richard’s when you danced with
me, do you think I could not see what was going on in you—married or
not? _Are_ you married, I wonder?”
But she had ceased to expect any answer from him. Once only a moan,
smothered in the coming, had broken from his throat, when she told how
she had dosed Chinnery before taking his air-boat, and he must have
longed then to know if Chinnery was living, and where the boat now
was—for she did not say—but had asked nothing.
And on she chattered, slattern this afternoon and loose in a sooty
dressing-gown; and another day she was like a painting of a Parisienne;
another day an Eastern Queen reeking of scents; each day a fresh
creature, her hair changed, her whole impression, everything; and the
more she changed the more she was the same thing, bewitching—like those
working stars on magic-lantern curtains which dart into new hues and
moods, and still are stars.
“Think of a Prince without a harem! Your ancestors had, so why not you?
but they say it is your mother, and your school, that have made you
like that—like Li Ku Yu. I see that she is ill, and is being ‘nursed
by the Princess Elizabeth.’ What is a Princess doing in a country at
war with her own? She must want you very badly! and would no doubt be
glad to strangle your Eulalia for me. They say her father is always
trying to get her back to Germany in vain—dreads the war-dangers of
the voyage! What amuses is that there are references in the papers
to her ‘efforts to unravel the mystery’ of you. That is laughable how
the charlatanism and child’s play of people in high places is taken
seriously! This Princess, it appears, is one of ‘the clever’: she draws
diagrams to find you, wraps herself in abstraction, frowns profoundly,
looks furiously acute, and the Queen and everyone at Court have a queer
hope that she will yet discover her Teddy—so the society papers say.
Courts are queer things.”
Her bird’s-tongue took some seconds rest, and went on: “What makes the
English mad is that you will not be at the sea-fight—it is for their
own skins they care, not for you. _The Times_ says that the war cannot
last another three weeks, for then every nation will be bankrupt and
starving; so the sea-battle will be in a week, people believe, and
America has too much to do to help England.
“The Italians, French, English and Russians have mostly sunk one
another in the five Mediterranean and Black Sea fights; and the
remaining Italians and Russians escaped through the Straits of
Gibraltar three nights since, to join the Germans. The English have
gathered all their Atlantic and Home ships; but if the two forces
annihilate each other, the Continentals will be the victors, since
there will then be nothing to prevent them from invading England again.
“England is already invaded—by aeroplanes. Last night a fourth
town—Hull—was utterly destroyed, and there is a fine outcry about
it. The Germans say it is only what _you_ did to their Spandau, but
one Sir Robert Barrington in to-day’s _Times_ calls that ‘a lie,’
since you dropped your bombs upon military spots, not upon civilians.
It is being suggested that the English should retaliate, but most
of them are against it. That’s stupid—and yet—I don’t know. It _is_
stupid, of course—and yet—no, I don’t know. The English are the best
of the whites—but so gullible. Who could be more gullible than you
and Richard? The night of your capture I groaned a hundred times to
myself: ‘Will the man not _think it odd_ that I should make him go
first to a different house, with my car at the back’—I _had_ to, since
detectives were always following you. But I might have spared myself
all those torments—you came thinking that everyone is exactly like
yourself—sleepy-headed! capable of seeing deeply, but not quickly,
except when your minds are excited.”
She severed a thread with her teeth, and proceeded: “Look at what Li Ku
Yu has done to Europe—only by a trick, and perhaps not a soul, except
you, has seen his hand in it. Even you never can dream what he means,
or you would never have troubled about fighting in the _Asahel_, or
about your Eulalia, or anything. All is over with you whites, you have
had your day, this is your midnight. You do not know the Chinese, they
will fry you in pans like sprats, with onions. Li Ku Yu says it is
‘God’s Will,’ which is what he always says when he wants anything.
“I am glad, for the Easterns know how to enjoy themselves better, eat
nicer things, are nicer clothed and housed, with more colours and
charm, and enjoy life with more delight.
“You here are taught by your lamas and priests to be afraid of your
god, who gets jealous if you enjoy pleasures; but that is an African
fancy.
“The Orientals will paint out the European grey with greens and
crimsons. And they have begun to come. A comet which appeared in the
East some nights ago is growing you would not think how quickly—its
face terrifies: and persons are asserting that this world will dive
into it on a certain night, and that it is an omen of moanings to
humans. I think it is the announcer sent out with the name of Li Ku Yu
in its mouth, though no man can understand its language: for Li Ku Yu
is great to heaven—swift and bright! a younger brother of the heavenly
bodies.
“In China he has the titles of Long-lived, Orthodox, Prosperous, Quite
Obvious, Perfect, Respectful, Glorified, Holy, and All-Nourishing; and
as the Grand Lama has proclaimed him to be Confucius Reincarnate, he
has lately passed through the Empire from Manchuria to Quang-si, and
from Lhassa to Ningpo, to reveal to the people the face of the Saviour
of their race.
“The Orient throws itself down before the throne he rolls on, without
raising its eyes, lest his brightness strike them blind like that Ray
of Richard’s, which, perhaps, _you_ have—have you? Tell me where, and I
will set you free—will you?
“But it is all lies, he is not Confucius, he is Li Ku Yu, and nobody
else, swifter and brighter than two Confuciuses.
“And he is coming! Listen to what he says”—she read from a letter:
“‘impossible to understand anything of air-boat from your account;
therefore, either I send you a steamer for it, or meet you with it on
the Belgian coast about the middle of April’—soon! Then I will see him!
and my veins will entwine his life with a vine of fire!
“Li Ku Yu? Like the bullet of a gun! And China is like a bicycle which
he rides with his legs! He has so worked upon them, that now, he says,
no power could hold them—they suppose that Europe is full of streams
of diamond and anæmic creatures who sigh and make love, just waiting
for Chinamen’s fingers to come and tear their limbs, as one’s thumb and
finger tears mice and tender chicken-flesh.
“You do not know what is happening there, because the cables have been
cut, the Legations sacked, the whites massacred at the concessions and
treaty-ports, and since the Hwang Hai Battle all Hong Kong has been
overrun and put to the sword. Li Ku Yu is the sheen of a sharp falchion
unsheathed! They say that he dislikes tortures, but a life is no more
to him than a kite that flies. Let it be blood: let’s dye our eyebrows,
and clean our teeth, with blood. Glory! A thousand years! Let’s tread
in red, and drown in red!
“There is nothing to stop it now. What is called the Army of India,
after winning its way almost to Moscow, has been cut to atoms by a
mixed German and Russian army, and India is already opening its arms
to embrace the Chinese. From south to north all Asia is shouting ‘a
thousand years!’ over the fall of the fair faces. The Japanese have
crossed Lake Baikal on the ice, and have the Siberian Railway. Russia
has called out all her Reserves, and is asserted to be now exhausted.
The Italian Regular Army is reduced to a few. France has out the
Reserve of her Territorial Army, and her Southern Corps have vanished.
It is being asserted that Germany will have to admit being bankrupt
within two weeks, and England within four. Li Ku Yu says that there are
twenty-nine millions of Mongolians already living in Europe—in Hungary,
Turkey, Finland and Lapland—who will welcome the Chinese, and are to be
left alive to be the nucleus of a new kind of civilisation which he has
invented in his head for Europe. As for the Japanese, they appear to be
penetrating everywhere like fleas ‘on the spree’! Now they have British
Columbia, as well——”
But here her prisoner got up to go into the alcove at the north end.
When he was long she put in her head, and saw him sitting on the alcove
floor, his face in his arms against his washstand leg, and she thought
that she saw his body bob as if with sobs: no sound, however. And
presently he rose, closed the alcove door, and she was conscious of a
plash of water from his tap washing into his basin.
Afterwards he came back, threw coals upon his grate in the south-east
corner, and sat again, his hair brushed, as always, his white-black tie
and collar on.
“I think you have wept,” she said: “did I say anything to make you? I
was speaking about the Japanese having British Columbia. Perhaps you
are getting hungry. There will be swallow-nest soup to-day: it is Li,
the eunuch, who fled with us from Peking, who cooks it for one to lick
the lips, though he is such a dirty lazy pig.
“But as to the Japanese, it is not strange, they have a genius for
war and butchery. In a battle at Nerchinsk they could not get past a
certain trench, and at last the front rank dragged the Russian bayonets
into their own breasts, so that the rest might rush the trench: for
they butcher themselves as merrily as others, if once everything is
red.
“They have only been frightened once, it seems—when taking Australia;
and a very strange story is told of that in the papers. They were
making a raid one midnight upon Williamstown, the naval _dépôt_ near
Melbourne, where those ships of the Australian Navy were which had not
been destroyed in the Hwang Hai Battle, and they stole up the harbour
in the dark in submarines.
“Now one of these submarines, called the E.3, had been British, but had
been captured in the Hwang Hai, and it is said that she had once sunk,
and her British crew had perished in her; but she had been raised.
“At any rate, the raid failed owing to the fact that this submarine,
E.3, rose up prematurely, and stood still on the sea. When she was
taken by the Australians, all her crew of Japanese were seen to be
dead, and the matter cannot be understood.
“It is being said that the submarine may be haunted by her former crew,
since the dead Japanese had stares of awe and horror, and had evidently
intended to cast themselves pell-mell into the water, several having
the aspect of strangled rats.
“The Australians had her two weeks, but in the second raid the Japanese
got her back.... What was ever the good of the Australians struggling
against Japan? It was foolish to think that a few Englishmen could
keep all that continent to themselves. What is the good of any of you
struggling? Look at this bit in _The Times_ to-day: ‘From our own
Correspondent. By Anglo-American Cable Co., New York. An _Evening Post_
correspondent at Astrakhan wires _viâ_ Odessa that a body of Turkestan
Mongols, eight to twelve thousand strong, have captured the railway
from Krasnovodsk to Khokand, and the Samarcand fort which the Indian
Army dismantled, and have finally turned up on the Caspian shore. Their
objects have not been ascertained.’ ... Do you think what this means?
The wall that will fall upon all is drizzling a little dust.
“Good-bye. I will go to see A-lu-te, and will send your dinner. You
will not speak to me, but do not tempt me too long. If a bird will not
please the ear, let him please the teeth.”
She collected her things, and went laden, trailing them.
He saw her no more till eleven in the night when, he being then in
bed, she called in at the hole: “A-lu-te is dying! I have summoned
an English doctor in spite of Huang, and shall order a nurse. You
will see little of me to-morrow, for I am going to France to see to
my interests, so as to get that over before the death, the funeral
troubles, and the invitation to ascend. Good-night! You are not asleep;
you hear me; but will not speak....”