THE HOARD OF GOLD
But the question now was: where to lock away Oyone?
These were days of scanty house-room, and of a care for half-pence
among Kings. Sandringham, first closed, had then been handed over,
half to the Imperial Family of Russia, half to the Austrian Emperor’s
throng. England was rich in crowned heads: one crowd herding at
Windsor—Servia, Montenegro, Greece, Bavaria, Spain—while Italy, Norway,
Denmark made merry at Osborne—let us not pry into their privy purses.
The German Emperor held Balmoral, though the Princess Elizabeth, by a
kind of right now, bided at Buckingham Palace: for she, when death was
in men’s minds, meditated still on marriage, and, by a steady activity
of negotiation and a sending of telegrams, had now her Imperial
parent’s seal to her espousal to the Prince of Wales, and had kissed
her ring like Kitty in a lane. The Prince, too, now lived at Buckingham
Palace.
Our Civil List, meantime, had undergone much modification. The King,
for one, had suggested a considerable reduction of his income, and had
insisted. For no seer was needed to see that the break-up was so near,
that it would quickly be a question of finding the shilling to pay
the fighter. Treasury Bonds were light as air, Consols a vain thing,
credit, public, private, dead—this _before_ the irruption; _after_ the
European stampede into Britain, every day beheld civilisation more
ailing, every midnight the passions of ten million men dealt her an
added death-blow. Shops, mansions, banks were pillaged; a cracking of
pistol-shots rang in the land.
In which case, nothing was left to be taxed but land; and Sir Bostock
Henry, the Chancellor, suggested in his budget a 2s. 4½d. tax.
To this, however, the “owners” of England—some 2000 men—said in their
hearts “No.”
They made no outcry, as previously when taxed by half-pennies; now they
were in earnest, and quietly said “No.”
And having, of course, seen what was coming, they had leagued
themselves into an essentially secret Landowners’ Protection League.
So—that was four days after the capture of Oyone—they sent ambassadors
to Li Ku Yu.
They were perfectly aware that, if the Prince of Wales managed to crush
Li Ku Yu at sea, he would then be virtually Dictator of England; they
were fairly certain that he would then take what at that date they
still quite seriously called “their” land from them; and since the
land-tax was to be spent in the repair of ships to fight Li Ku Yu, this
gave a basis for negotiation: they sent ambassadors.
It was late in the night, the Prince was in his laboratory, transferred
to Buckingham Palace—a room looking on the park—when his assistant,
Sturge, handed him a letter come “by hand” from the Continent:
“To His Royal Highness, Prince Edward of Wales, The First, The
Last.[1]
“Let the Prince of Wales be aware that the landowners of
Britain, having made overtures to Li Ku Yu, are in negotiation.
Terms: Li Ku Yu to give guarantees as to their estates; they to
refuse to pay tax.
“Li Ku Yu needs no aid from traitors: but does not reject their
offers, having reasons for wishing to cheat them.
“From a Younger Brother to the Prince.”
Now, the passions of the Prince of Wales were volcanic: so away now he
dashed the letter, violently enraged, and went ranging, light-footedly
dodging among obstacles, just shaving bench-corners, saying: “No
more dukes—no more lords—they’ve done it now—they’ve dug their own
graves—no dukes—no crowd of little clown-kings ...” but in the midst
suddenly paused, pshawed, thought, “one mustn’t be incensed at lower
types of life,” and now picked up the letter to pry at the writing,
asking himself: “From _him_?” muttering, “_Decent_,” for some bits of
it looked as if Li Ku Yu had designed to disguise his writing, but had
been impatient of the pains.
He was still studying it, when Lord Percy Burnett—who had been sent to
search for Eulalia’s remains, and had an interview for that hour—was
announced. He entered looking very depressed, so that the Prince said
at once: “Bad news; sit down; stab it in straight—used to it.”
“Only this,” said Lord Percy with a stir of the hand: “I have been a
traitor.”
Silence.
“You in it, too?” the Prince cried out—“Oh, yes, I know all about it!—a
Sky-Blue negotiation.”
“I came back from the Continent this morning, I and—someone.”
“_You_, Percy? A friend of mine? A Brockweir boy?”—the Prince was
frowning piercingly.
“That is the fact. I am sorry. I thought I’d tell you, before——” he
paused, staring at the ground with an expression of great depression.
“Seen Sky-Blue?”
“Yes.”
“But I can’t believe my ears!”—with passion—“I could forgive the
rest!—but you, a cultivated intellect——”
“Teddy——”
“Teddy me no Teddy!”
Lord Percy bowed. “I was going to say, Sir—you speak of ‘a cultivated
intellect,’ but possibly you do not quite fully realise the conditions.
A boy of my caste may have quite strong impulses toward nobility of
living, but, born into a hopelessly false position, what chance has he?
If he can think a little, he pretty quickly realises that he is not
an Englishman, but a true foreigner, as every parasite is a foreigner
to the organism it fastens on—without a country—living _on_ England,
but never _in_ England, having no social function, belonging to a mob
of rent-pocketers, who only care for England for what they can get out
of her, and are quite ready to throw England to the dogs the instant
this jumps with what they imagine to be their self-interest—pure Jews,
only, with their bad heredity, lacking the brains of Jews. What is a
poor boy, so handicapped, to do? He remarks that his caste, living by
a nefarious trade, must necessarily be men of a muddy conscience, and
though, theoretically, a boy might have the mental strength to say,
‘Oh, this isn’t good enough, I’ll chuck the rent, and start on the
square,’—does he ever? Tolstoy did, but not by mental strength, but
by quixotism of temperament. In the case of a sane boy, by the time
he might have the sense to say that, he is already vitiated by his
environment, his ideals dying or dead, his moral sense compromised.
Thenceforth he is hopelessly in it—only one remedy, a bullet. And it’s
not much good if his head’s ‘cultivated’ when the rest of him is stuck
in mud.”
“Well, but I know,” said the Prince stepping petulantly about;
“there’s a saying that ‘to understand is to pardon’; and, of course, I
understand; and yet I can’t pardon. Really, you men have ‘done evil as
you could’—for centuries; and many men have sighed and died of you. And
for what? If twenty million men live in bliss at the expense of twenty
millions in misery, that mayn’t be very ‘just,’ but I think there’s
much to be said for it; or if two thousand live in bliss at the expense
of forty millions—or if one single man live in bliss—I think there’s
something to be said for it. But you men! You are as unacquainted
with gladness of heart in your muggy comfort as the multitudes who
moan under you, scarcely a little less ignorant, vulgar and crass
yourselves than the classes you drag through ignorance, crassness
and vulgarity. Wouldn’t men blessed with one drop of generous blood,
seeing this, have said long ago, ‘No, let’s throw it up, the game’s
not half worth the candle’? But not you cowardly clowns: never, never,
any generous temperature, or pretence of being gentlemen. Let twenty
million women and children sink with bubbling shrieks within reach of
your ear, if _you_ but float with your clown-countess in your loathsome
boat, then you can shower tips all round upon your bishop-boatmen, to
keep men’s mouths from shouting the shame of your meanness. Lately
there has been a little light in the world round you: but you have
deliberately elected to remain eighteenth-century barbarians. The sun
is one of the stars of a constellation, and you persist in thinking
that the universe ends five miles up where the sky is. Well, you’ve
got me against you now, if we don’t all go under. I have been dull in
country-houses, hoping to influence you, and been ill of _ennui_ among
you at race-meetings—no more, by God. You can’t influence wood but with
an axe. You may mention it—it’s no secret. And it won’t be any good for
anybody to come begging me for any money, because I won’t give any.”
“Quite so, Sir: though that may be embittering”—with an under-glance.
“Oh, you’re a worthless lot,” said the Prince, with a laugh:
“embittering? If you shoot at me, you’re sure to miss; if you stab at
me, you probably don’t know that the heart of mammals is on the left,
and you’ll stab on the right. Embittering? I should like to catch
myself being affrighted at such blind mice.”
“I hardly meant any threat, Sir—only to suggest some clemency.
They—we—cherish the superstition that a little of the greatness of
England is due to us——”
“The blindlings!—as though the littlest mouse of good could come out of
a mountain of ignominy. What _right_ have you to cherish superstitions?
If you have never peeped into a history-book yourselves, ask somebody
in the streets whether it is not in spite of the hissings and grins of
you varlets that England is not still a sixteenth-century land? Inch by
inch against you she has had to battle her bitter way; against every
blessing to men you have darted to arms; every noble thing has found in
you a foe, a delay, and a diluter. I say, cursed is the name of men
of that sort; you’re a worthless lot; blessed above men be the man who
exterminates you.”
“Well, so I say, too, Sir.... I only hope you do not include the Throne
in the proposed overthrow.”
“On the contrary, I support the Throne.... Because I’m a Prince, of
course. Think that?”
“No, Sir, I do not think that.”
“Like a publican who is theoretically in favour of public-houses,
because _he_ is a publican—what? Or a King who thinks well of monarchy,
because son métier _à lui_ est d’être roi? I am unable to conceive a
baser being, or to believe that God ever gave birth to a dirtier dog.
So you are right there—that’s not why I support the Throne. Not that I
support it _much_; but—it has something of a function, is pretty and
historic, costs the country nothing—half-a-million—that is, _nothing_.
To abolish it would cost far more energy than the abolition was worth!
And there’s a difference between one king, and two thousand kings,
isn’t there? Between one pound and two thousand pounds? Between one
fire in a room which warms you, and two thousand which scorch you to
ashes? Besides, there’s this to be said for Monarchy, that any day a
monarch may be born with light and eyes; and how splendid then the
room to his elbow that the Throne will lend him! The same thing is
true of aristocracy; but, then, the aristocrat’s uneasy consciousness
of unclean hands and of a false position keeps him from being ever
anything much more than a rent-collector. Hence every class has
produced great-like men, and quite two or three Kings have seen
something new a little, done something a little memorable; but never
one of you men, never, never one.”
“I perfectly see, Sir,” said Lord Percy, rising. “I wished, Sir, to let
you know that there is a negotiation with Li Ku Yu, and that I am in
it. You perceive, Sir, that I first betray the country I live on, and
then I betray my confederates. I will say—good-night, Sir.”
The Prince did not answer. The other passed through the doorway.
But as he vanished, the Prince dashed after, caught him in a passage,
with, “I am willing to make it up, Percy.”
Lord Percy bowed. “Your Royal Highness is very gracious.”
“Rot. A man can do no more than repent. Shake hands!”
Their hands wrung together, and they parted.
But two hours later Lord Percy Burnett blew out his brains in a chamber
in St James’s Street; so that in a new embassy to the Continent on the
next day another took his place.
Now, it appears that at this time Li Ku Yu felt some need of treasure;
and Oyone had been captured just when about to lead him to the Six
Millions. It was not, therefore, only on account of the air-boat
(which had vanished as strangely from him as from the Prince), that he
was eager to get Oyone free: for he needed the Six Millions for the
knocking together of the inconceivable fleet of junks and barges soon
to swarm the sea toward England. Hence, he (a born bargainer) said to
the Landowners’ League ambassadors: “You set me first free a girl named
Oyone, and then we may come to terms.”
But that was the Sphinx’s riddle! no one having any notion where the
Prince had put Oyone.
However, the handsome young Marquis of Tullibardine, who had at one
time rather drawn the eye of the Princess Elizabeth, and was intimate
with her, had an idea: and he, approaching the Princess, suggested that
since this Oyone was said to be so beautiful, that might be rather a
desirable thing if she was set free from being the prisoner of a young
Prince.
Now, it so happened that Oyone was in all the Princess Elizabeth’s
thoughts—ever since Oyone had made the statement that the Prince was
“_married_” to Eulalia: for though the Princess could scarce believe
that the Prince, if married, would have engaged himself to her, the
mere statement was a seed of unease in her. She would not, then, have
wept to be told that Eulalia was in heaven, and often wondered how
Oyone was getting on.
Tullibardine, therefore, found her ears open. She whispered that she
would try to find out where Oyone was kept; and thenceforth set herself
to pry upon the Prince’s steps.
One night when the Royal Family were _chez eux_ after dinner, a card
was handed to the Prince with the name of Commander Pilcher; and just
then the Princess Elizabeth found occasion to step out before the
Prince could.
She did not advance far; saw the Prince enter an apartment to Pilcher;
and since in Courts the luck of the ear is indigenous, she luckily, _en
passant_, could hear the Prince say: “I want you, Pilcher, to have one
more try with this Oyone: I’ll be with you in two minutes.”
On which the Princess tripped back to the _salon_, muttered something
to the Queen, was speedily out again, and then, her head in a wrap, was
out of the palace, she and another looking both ways out of a cab in
Constitution Hill.
She saw Pilcher and the Prince pass from the Park Gate in a brougham,
and she followed slowly through the thronged thoroughfares—to “Ning
Shou Kung.”
For the Prince had, without ceremony, turned out the Chinese occupants
of “Ning Shou Kung,” given the gate a fresh lock, installed three
retainers, and thrown Oyone into the room where he had moaned.
So now Pilcher sat on the stool where she had used to sit sewing before
the hole in the door, while the Prince hung near, unseen, listening;
and Pilcher renewed the offer—liberty within one week, if she would
reveal in what kind of hiding-place she had contrived to secrete the
air-boat.
Soon a voice spoke out of the gloom within, glum, low, slow, as if in
soliloquy: “I am happy here. I no longer long for the insect’s wing
of liberty. The world is vanity and wrapping-paper. I trample under
my feet its sweets and its pomps that merely lead mortals into evil
paths. My heart is changed and white as a virgin’s, and my eyes turn
themselves toward Heaven. Here a Holy Sorrow is my paramour, and I am
the compliant wife of Calamity. For nothing is good but to be good,
and there is no carousing but in renouncing. I, for my part, envelop
Pensiveness with my arms, I smother Moodiness with my kisses——”
“But the air-boat,” suggested Pilcher.
Now she was sharp! “I have told you that the Chinese have the air-boat!
The instant I alighted Li Ku Yu sent men to take her——”
“No; not true,” said Pilcher, getting up; and he and the Prince went
away.
Suddenly, in twenty minutes more, the Princess Elizabeth was with her;
and Oyone’s heart started.
The three retainers—two men and a woman—had duly said, “Against
orders,” but the Princess had said, “I just wish to peep—the Prince
needn’t know,” with an intimate manner; and their toadyism and her
cajolery had readily opened her way to Oyone.
Oyone was like an escaped canary in the room, exclaiming: “Now I shall
be free! free! I expected you, and you did not come!”
The Princess pressed a button in a bracelet, and produced a ray. “You
must see that _I_ daren’t let you out. But there are others who may. We
will see in time.”
“_Time?_ Not to-night?”
“No.”
Oyone wrung her hands, asking at once: “Have you found out now that he
is married to Eulalia Bayley?”
“That is nonsense. The Prince of Wales is definitely affianced to me.”
“Then, he may think her dead! I told him in bragging, for I was
angry-mad, that I had killed her, and—possibly—he thinks her dead. But
she is quite alive in the East End! and he any moment may discover it,
for she has in her possession an object which the police are eagerly
seeking for for him—a black box, that he’d give his life to get——”
“What is in this box?”
“It is a kind of infernal machine,” said Oyone, chary of mentioning the
Redlike Ray: “let me free this night! Then I will get it, and he won’t
find her, even if she keeps alive, otherwise he must; and it is certain
that they are married—_she_ bragged of it—_he_ admitted it—only there
is some quarrel between them——”
Elizabeth was white. “Is this box her property?” she asked.
“No, it is mine.”
“Then, _I_ will get it for you.”
Oyone moaned; but then said: “Do so, then. But I am not sure that
she has it—I saw her posting a parcel like it; but, _if_ she has it,
remember it is dangerous! it will blow Your Imperial Highness to pieces
the size of a fly’s feet, if you handle it wrongly, or keep it without
knowing its moods. So, will you bury it at once, to give to me——?”
“And if it blows me into flies’ feet when I touch it?” suggested the
Princess.
“Not if you hold it carefully by the sides.”
When they had discussed it a long time, Elizabeth set off for the East
End with Eulalia’s address, to fumble through the drizzle of a dismal
London blinking dully upon its muddled multitudes through half the old
number of lamps, it being now about nine in the night.
But, once in the slum, Eulalia’s abode was obvious, for there on a pane
was a square of paper pasted to say in three languages: “A Skilled
Nurse Lives Here.”
And the door was open; a wondering woman told her “third floor back;
she may be in, or she mayn’t”; and the Princess picked her way through
swarms of children and sinister visages, thinking: “What a strange
place!”
At Eulalia’s door she listened, could hear nothing, rapped, no answer,
passed in, and rayed a beam from her bracelet upon a wee oasis of
daintiness within this wilderness—the wee bed lily-white, the Prince
within a silver frame on the petty mantelpiece, a canary, and there on
a chair a parcel which must be “the box.”
She tore the already torn wrapping to see that it was “black”; but
then, on seeing, had a throe of fright....
If she held it “carefully by the sides,” it would be well: but which
were “the sides”? The box was a cube! “Oh, no,” she breathed, and stood
suspended near the door.
Just then, for the third time in two minutes, she heard steps, for the
third time fled out, and this time it was Eulalia.
They passed each other swiftly on the rickety stair, where it was not
so dim but that Eulalia was aware with some amazement of fairy raiment
in Tatter-land; had a fresh surprise in finding her door open; and, on
lighting her lamp, a fresh surprise in spying the wrapping of the box
more torn than before.
“This is funny!” she went, with a laugh.
And as that wrapping was no good any more for the post, she now tore it
off, posited the box on the oilskin of her little table, and sat before
it, for the first time wondering what was in the box—why it had been
buried—and was of importance to “Taska.”
It looked like a kodak; there was a cap to it; if she moved that,
perhaps she could see within....
But there was a paper pasted above the cap, and writing under the
grime, which, when she held the lamp quite near, seemed to say: “Do Not
Touch....”
Which was tempting to one’s curiosity. For who can help touching, when
mysteriously told “_Do Not Touch_” like that? Eve touched, and suffered
touching. No doubt there was money in it....
It was this probability that held her from touching when on the point
of touching: for she had it in trust from the dead. “Better not,” she
said at last.
She then laid out her shopping—bacon, cheese, and loaf—bacon no longer
what it had been, nor bread, nor she any longer the fanciful Sappho,
fanning the atmosphere with volleys of sighs, of her opulent times,
spare diet having dispirited the love-wine in her vitals.
She was very poor: not that she lacked patients, for she was constantly
occupied, but her patients did not pay. Her mother or sister had never
answered her; and butter had become a Sunday luxury.
However, to the rich indigence is a spree, and she was just about to be
infinitely rich.
For it chanced that she had been summoned to nurse a certain nut-brown
young sailor named “Buddo,” a Berkshire boy, stabbed in a Commercial
Street affray: which “Buddo” had conceived for her a passion, half
amorous, half idolatrous: and the point was, that having lived five
years at Shanghai, Buddo was a Chinaman among other things.
So when she had told him that she had a vast mass of gold in France,
but the Chinese would have it now, his answer had been: “They won’t,
miss: I could get it for you as sweet as kissing your hand.”
His plan was to go with a couple of mates in a large sail-barge—“get
one for sixpence now,” he said—to a solitary spot on the French coast,
he to land in Chinese disguise, the others to come home, and go back
for him.
He would need some horses and carts, but he reckoned that £45 would see
him through, if she could get it. The Chinese were pretty deep, but
he an inch deeper still, could speak Chinese better than they, and it
could be worked as sweet as a nut.
In going to her to show himself as a pigtail, he had been twice mobbed
on the way.
Eulalia had then gone late in the night to Sir Robert Barrington to lay
the plot before him; and, finding him suddenly aged ten years, let her
head rest on his shoulder where he drew it.
“Will the Chinese be getting into England?” she breathed to him.
His forehead dropped. “Dear, I can see nothing to prevent it. The
Prince of Wales is a great captain of ships, but cannot create ships.
It is a question whether some even of those we have will be available:
for while the Chinese preparations are near completion, we have an
aristocracy refusing to be taxed——”
“Yes! I have wondered. Do these men by chance call themselves
Englishmen?”
“They even _think_ themselves Englishmen—at least, the more weak-headed
among them. But, as things are, there is scarcely any machinery
available against their combined resistance; the regunning of the
_Donnernde_ has had to be abandoned; and the Prince has enough to do
to——”
“Yet he finds time to get engaged!”
“Yes. And here—frankly—Your Royal Highness is doing wrong. I do entreat
you, dear, to release me immediately from this extremely difficult
position. Not two hours since the Prince was with me—referred to your
death—and for me to stand dumb and see him——”
“I _cannot_ understand how he can think me dead, whatever this Oyone
may have told him, considering that, just before, he heard me call
him—answered me——”
“Hallucination! Boo-boo! And he reasons that, if it had been really
you, it would have been you who released him. But it was the Princess
Elizabeth, a young lady, I assure you, of quite superhuman acumen—in
the Queen’s eyes at least. Hence he, in gratitude to her—to please the
Queen——”
“Is the Queen at all times quite all-wise? He will hate this girl. And
though Her Majesty has been pleased to speak of _me_ as a miserable
little woman——”
“Never mind _that_! One more glass? Yes?”—he had noted with passionate
pain the _soupçon_ of avarice with which she drank sherry now, and ate
cake; insisted upon another glass; and then proceeded to discuss again
the details of the “Buddo” Six Millions scheme, of which his judgment
approved, though he prophesied that the whole hoard would hardly
come to her hand. But to this she answered: “I think it will, every
grain, if any comes: for I trust my rough Buddo not less than I would
an angel. There are people essentially excellent—sincere, competent,
proud——”
Sir Robert had bowed, with “That is very true, Your Royal Highness”;
and he had lent her £45 for the adventure.
At that date of the Princess Elizabeth’s visit to the slum, the hoard
was slowly moving over the Dover road in four old dust-carts for
London....
They arrived before the house in the slum five days later when
Eulalia was out, and there stood the faithful “Buddo,” wiping his
perspiration—for two hours amid crowds of people who, had they
conceived the least suspicion of what lay beneath those pieces
of sail-cloth, would certainly have made short work of Germany’s
Reichskriegsschatz.
Then came Eulalia, and, seeing, leapt in a glee to buss her Buddo
on both brown cheeks; gave one greedy little peep beneath a tip of
sail-cloth; and then, taking a letter from her pocket, said, “Now, you
have to take it straight, with this letter, to Buckingham Palace: and
remember this, whoever wants to know about the sender, you know nothing
whatever.”
And “Buddo,” after one stare of amaze, cried out: “Right you are!” and
rolled to a horse’s head to obey.
This grotesque procession of carts, on arriving before Buckingham
Palace gates at three in the afternoon, was refused admittance. But the
letter bored and bored a way to Her Majesty’s hand:
“To Her Most Gracious Majesty, the Queen.
“Your Majesty, I am venturing to present to the service of
the country in its need (through Your Majesty’s most gracious
hands) the German Six Millions, which I lately discovered in
France.
“Your Majesty’s loyal subject,
“+An Irishwoman+.”
The letter fell of its own weight out of Her Majesty’s hand.
“_Well!_” her lips breathed; then, “listen to this”—she read out the
letter—“or is it some hoax?”
“The carts are said to be before the palace, Ma’am,” answered a lady.
“Fly! Let the Prince know....”
She herself made haste, and the carts soon now found an entrée to
the Quadrangle, to remain there for hours, the King, the Court,
Ministers and everyone coming to visit and revisit them, picking up
the bars, some of them bent and chipped from the bombing, “Buddo”
still there, waiting for his strings of horses, scratching his pate
in a pretence of idiocy at the hosts of questions poured upon him,
everyone on the heights of delight, save Elizabeth, in whose upper
lip was something white and spiteful, for this was German _Gut_, with
“Reichskriegsschatz” stamped on it.
Six millions then was six hundred millions, and when someone said: “Who
can have sent it? What boundless bounty!” the Princess was seen to
smile omnisciently, secretly; and now someone asked someone: “Is it a
German Princess who has presented this German treasure to Britain?” For
it was fashionable at Court to discover ever deeper depths and meanings
in the Princess.
Now, the Prince of Wales was aware (from Oyone) that Eulalia had known
where the hoard had lain, and when he heard that the gift was from “An
Irishwoman,” some half of a half of a something moved in the vague
depths of him, and he said: “Show me this letter.”
The Queen was standing there by the carts with him, so was Elizabeth,
when his eyes fell on the letter, and both noticed him going slowly
pale, paler, to that paleness of the gold before them. For, though
Eulalia had very carefully disguised the writing, she had a fantastic
manner of making her M’s which emerged like murder; and he knew that
she liked to call herself “Irish.”...
To the Queen his pallor was all a mystery; but Elizabeth, seeing it,
felt the world whirl away beneath her feet, with a feeling in her: “It
comes from that girl ... he thought her dead ... and they are really
married....”
But the Prince was left in utter doubt. When he took “Buddo” away to
cross-examine, to tempt, to coax, to command him, Buddo proved even
more ingeniously foolish than before: could tell nothing whatever of
the lady, save that she was an elderly lady.
But when the Prince sent post-haste for Sir Robert Barrington to
tell of it, he noted with a steady under-look of suspicion how the
baronet’s palm slowly rose toward his forehead, and thought: “He knows
something....”
And felt something! for three days later the Queen received this
confidential letter from the baronet:
“In venturing to pen this to Your Majesty, I commit something
akin to a breach of trust. But, truth to tell, I am unable
any longer to bear the strain of refraining from mentioning
to Your Majesty the fact that I have reason to believe that
the lady who has presented the Six Millions to the nation is
living in want on a third-floor of that noisome whirlpool which
Whitechapel now is.... Her address is 19 Chapel Street....”
This made Her Majesty moan; and she said: “Oh, this day I go myself to
that woman....”
By this time the discovery of the Six Millions, and its presentation to
the nation by a woman, was being bellowed by the papers, most of which
continued to be published in shortened form; and since that unknown
“Irishwoman” was the wonder and joy of the nation, which had lately
raged at the fiasco of the Budget and the action of the aristocracy,
it was quite in harmony with the mood of the moment that Her Majesty
should decide to go herself to that idolised donor.
Yet she had a sense of disappointment at Sir Robert’s letter: for
an innuendo had worked its way to her—through all the Court—into
the papers—that the real secret donor was a certain wonder-working
Princess, whose detective acumen had already been proved in the
discovery of the Prince’s prison; the whisper was now all about
the Court; subtle reasons were discovered by the subtle ones for
the Princess signing herself “Irishwoman,” not “Englishwoman”; the
quick-eyed ones whispered that they had caught knowing looks passing
between her and “Buddo”; the Princess had a smile of Isis, and,
denying, did not deny it. Hence Her Majesty’s sense of disappointment.
And the Princess got a scare on the day of Sir Robert’s letter, when
whispered by a maid-of-honour that Her Majesty was preparing to go
herself to the giver!
“And what is this giver’s address?” the Princess asked.
“It is 19 Chapel Street, East.”
Now she knew that Eulalia was the giver, and instantly was desperate.
“Well, I suppose I must speak out a little,” she now said, “for I
can’t, after all, see the Queen flying off to Whitechapel for nothing.
You, Lady Julia, whisper quickly to Her Majesty that you heard me
say that I don’t think her acumen here quite so keen as usual. Point
out that Sir Robert Barrington must have got some false information
somehow, and give Her Majesty this proof of it: that the giver can’t be
‘living in want’ when, as Her Majesty knows, one whole bar of the gold
has been taken out—over £3000. The giver can’t be ‘in want’: whisper
it, Lady Julia, to Her Majesty: but please do not whisper whom _you_
imagine the giver is, for I know well whom you imagine.”
Now, one complete bar of the gold had, really, been found missing—taken
by Oyone that evening when Eulalia had seen Oyone in the wood. So that
day Her Majesty, after all, made no descent upon Whitechapel; and that
night it was generally known among the sager heads of the Court that it
was the witch-Princess who was the donor: on hearing which that evening
in the reel and rage of his preoccupation the Prince of Wales struck
his forehead.